“I may be able to send you one or two at one seventy-five,” she called over the wire. “Of course I’ll do the best I can for you. Good-by.” As she hung up the receiver she turned to me. “I was in hopes you’d be willing to help the Suffrage Party out,” she told me, and it was plainly evident that she was disappointed. “This is the last week before the election, and——”
“I’m going to take both positions,” I hastened to interrupt. “My first job was with Daskam & Howe—mail-order house. The manager of the addressers is a nice little man; he’ll let me get off afternoons in time to canvass for suffrage.”
“Any of them will do that now,” she assured me. “They’ll let you do about anything you want, they are so put to it to get workers. I’m glad you’re going to work for suffrage. Do you think there’s any chance of our winning?”
She turned on me and looked me up and down.
“There’s a sort of superstition at home—however hopeless a cause may appear, if I get busy and work for it it wins.”
“Why not?” I parried. “We all thought President Wilson’s chance for re-election was hopeless. At the eleventh hour I had myself made vice-president of a Woodrow Wilson League and got busy.”
“For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, pressing two cards of introduction into my hand. “Get busy and work for suffrage.”
Within half an hour I presented myself at the employees’ entrance of Daskam & Howe. Instead of the kindly little manager a young woman with a face like an Indian tomahawk received me. Being among the late-comers, I was seated in the room in which the buyers of the firm had their desks. All these buyers, including corsets and women’s underwear, were men. At least that was the condition the day that I began work. A day or so later a woman, the only woman employed by the firm as a buyer, returned from her vacation.
“Hello, fellers!” she called, stopping in the door on her return. “Damn busy, I see, chewing the rag. You’re a hell of a lot.” And after this a long string of oaths.
In the use of swear words I had imagined the men buyers unsurpassed. They couldn’t touch that girl. It did not seem possible for her to open her mouth without letting out a string of oaths. She swore at her fellow buyers, at the men and women who came bringing samples from manufacturers. She swore at members of the firm, at me, and all the other addressers, but most of all she swore at the telephone.