AFTER a few days, when she was viewing her situation in a calmer, more normal mood with the practical feminine eye, she regretted that she had refused Gideon's money.She was proud of that within herself which had impelled and compelled her to refuse it; but she wished she had it.Taking it, she felt, would have added nothing to her humiliation in her own sight;and for what he thought of her, one way or the other, she cared not a pin.It is one of the familiar curiosities of human inconsistency which is at bottom so completely consistent, that she did not regret having refused his far more valuable offer to aid her.
She did not regret even during those few next days of disheartening search for work.We often read how purpose can be so powerful that it compels.No doubt if Susan's purpose had been to get temporary relief--or, perhaps, had it been to get permanent relief by weaving a sex spell--she would in that desperate mood have been able to compel.Unfortunately she was not seeking to be a pauper or a parasite; she was trying to find steady employment at living wages--that is, at wages above the market value for female and for most male--labor.And that sort of purpose cannot compel.
Our civilization overflows with charity--which is simply willingness to hand back to labor as generous gracious alms a small part of the loot from the just wages of labor.But of real help--just wages for honest labor--there is little, for real help would disarrange the system, would abolish the upper classes.
She had some faint hopes in the direction of millinery and dressmaking, the things for which she felt she had distinct talent.She was soon disabused.There was nothing for her, and could be nothing until after several years of doubtful apprenticeship in the trades to which any female person seeking employment to piece out an income instinctively turned first and offered herself at the employer's own price.Day after day, from the first moment of the industrial day until its end, she hunted--wearily, yet unweariedly--with resolve living on after the death of hope.She answered advertisements; despite the obviously sensible warnings of the working girls she talked with she even consulted and took lists from the religious and charitable organizations, patronized by those whose enthusiasm about honest work had never been cooled by doing or trying to do any of it, and managed by those who, beginning as workers, had made all haste to escape from it into positions where they could live by talking about it and lying about it--saying the things comfortable people subscribe to philanthropies to hear.
There was work, plenty of it.But not at decent wages, and not leading to wages that could be earned without viciously wronging those under her in an executive position.But even in those cases the prospect of promotion was vague and remote, with illness and failing strength and poor food, worse clothing and lodgings, as certainties straightway.At some places she was refused with the first glance at her.No good-looking girls wanted; even though they behaved themselves and attracted customers, the customers lost sight of matters of merchandise in the all-absorbing matter of sex.In offices a good-looking girl upset discipline, caused the place to degenerate into a deer-haunt in the mating season.No place did she find offering more than four dollars a week, except where the dress requirements made the nominally higher wages even less.
Everywhere women's wages were based upon the assumption that women either lived at home or made the principal part of their incomes by prostitution, disguised or frank.In fact, all wages even the wages of men except in a few trades--were too small for an independent support.There had to be a family--and the whole family had to work--and even then the joint income was not enough for decency.She had no family or friends to help her--at least, no friends except those as poor as herself, and she could not commit the crime of adding to their miseries.
She had less than ten dollars left.She must get to work at once--and what she earned must supply her with all.A note came from Jeffries--a curt request that she call--curt to disguise the eagerness to have her back.She tore it up.She did not even debate the matter.It was one of her significant qualities that she never had the inclination, apparently lacked the power, to turn back once she had turned away.Mary Hinkle came, urged her.Susan listened in silence, merely shook her head for answer, changed the subject.
In the entrance to the lofts of a tall Broadway building she saw a placard: "Experienced hands at fancy ready-to-wear hat trimming wanted." She climbed three steep flights and was in a large, low-ceilinged room where perhaps seventy-five girls were at work.She paused in the doorway long enough to observe the kind of work--a purely mechanical process of stitching a few trimmings in exactly the same way upon a cheap hat frame.
Then she went to an open window in a glass partition and asked employment of a young Jew with an incredibly long nose thrusting from the midst of a pimply face which seemed merely its too small base.
"Experienced?" asked the young man.
"I can do what those girls are doing."
With intelligent eyes he glanced at her face, then let his glance rove contemptuously over the room full of workers."Ishould hope so," said he."Forty cents a dozen.Want to try it?""When may I go to work?"
"Right away.Write your name here."
