Chapter VIII. The Keepers of
the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing,
and the Play of a Brute
“THE first question that we have to settle,” commented my aunt, when we returned home with the mill-certificate, “is, what is Al going to work at in the mill?”
“It might be well to let him go into the weave-shed and learn to weave,” said my uncle; “after he’s learned, he might be able to run some looms and earn more than he could in any other part of the mill.”
“Meanwhile, he don’t draw any money while he’s learning, and it takes some months, don’t it?”
“Yes.”
Then I interrupted, “I’d like the weave room, Aunt Millie. I want to draw as big a wage as I can.”
“You shut your yap!” she retorted, angrily. “You haven’t any finger in this, mind. I say that he must get to work at something right away, that will bring in immediate wages.”
“But think of the pay he’d get after he’d learned weaving, Millie,” retorted my uncle; “It would make up for the time he’d spent in learning. He’d get treble what he can by taking up sweeping, in the long run!”
“Into the mill he goes,” concluded my aunt, firmly, “and he goes to work at something that will pay money right off, I don’t care a snap what it is!”
“That’s no reason!”
“Reason,” she snapped, “you speaking of reason, and here we are head over ears in debt. It’s time this fellow was earning his keep.”
Next neighbor to us was a family named Thomas. My aunt exchanged library books with Sarah Ann Thomas. Uncle went to the Workingmen’s Club with “Matty” Thomas, and I was the boon companion of “Zippy” Thomas. When Zippy learned from me that I had secured my mill-certificate, his joy was unbounded. He gave me a broad wink, and whispered, “You had to fake it, didn’t you, Al?” I nodded.
“They did mine, too! I won’t tell, you know. I wish you’d come and work in the same room with me. I’m sweepin’, and get three plunks a week.” Then he winked again, and said, “There’s some nice girls sweepin’ with me, too. Won’t it be bully if you can strike it with me. They need another sweeper. One got fired this morning for boring a hole in the belt-box to get electricity on a copper wire to kill cockroaches. You could get his job if you wanted and tried.” I told him to wait for me till I ran and told my uncle about it.
Uncle came out with me, and met Zippy.
“Where does the second hand live, lad?” he asked.
“He’s Canadian, his name’s Jim Coultier,” announced Zippy. “He lives at the other end of the tenements.”
We found Jim at home. No sooner was the object of our visit made known than he nodded his head, and said, “Tol’ him to coom wid Sippy’ morrer mornin’,” whereat my uncle was so pleased that he invited the Frenchman to go out with him to Riley’s saloon, to celebrate my entrance into the mill.
“So you’re going to be a wage-earner, like your uncle, are you?” laughed my aunt, when I returned with the news of my success. “Run right down to the Jew’s and get a pair of overalls, the blue ones, and two two-for-a-quarter towels, the rough, Turkish ones. Then come right home, and get to bed, for you’ll have to get up in good season to-morrow morning, so’s to be on hand when Zippy calls for you.”
The next morning I was awakened at half-past five, though it took very little to awaken me. My aunt was busy with the breakfast when I went out into the kitchen to wash my face. She turned to me with a kindness that was unusual, and said, “How many eggs shall I fry, Al? Have as many as you want this morning, you know.” I said that three would do.
I came into a place of respect and honor in the family that morning. My aunt actually waited upon me, and watched me eat with great solicitude. There was toast for me, and I did not have to wait until uncle was through before I got my share of it. With no compunction whatever, I asked for a second piece of cake!
Then, while the six o’clock mill bell was giving its half-hour warning, Zippy knocked on the door, while he whistled the chorus of, “Take back your gold, for gold will never buy me!” Five minutes more were spent in listening to moral counsels from my aunt and uncle and to many hints on how to get along with the bosses, and Zippy and I went out on the street, where we joined that sober procession of mill people, which, six mornings out of seven, the whole year round, goes on its weary way towards the multitude of mills in that city.
Zippy did all he could to make my advent in the mill easy. Before we had reached the mill gates he had poured forth a volume of sage advice. Among other counsels, he said, “Now Al, if any guy tells you to go and grease the nails in the floor, just you point to your eye like this,” and he nearly jabbed his forefinger into his left eye, “and you say, ‘See any green there?’ Don’t ever go for a left-handed monkey-wrench, and don’t go to the overseer after a carpet-sweeper; them’s all guys, and you don’t want to catch yourself made a fool of so easy. If the boss puts you to sweepin’ wid me, why, I’ll put you on to most of the dodges they catches a new guy wid, see!”
When we arrived at the mill gates, Zippy looked at the big tower clock, and announced, “Al, we’ve got twenty minutes yet before the mill starts, let’s sit out here. You’ll be right in the swim!” and he pointed to a line of men and boys sitting on the dirt with their backs braced against the mill fence. Either side of the gate was thus lined. Zippy and I found our places near the end of the line, and I took note of what went on. The air thereabouts was thick with odors from cigarettes and clay pipes. The boys near me aimed streams of colored expectoration over their hunched knees until the cinder walk was wet. Everybody seemed to be borrowing a neighbor’s plug of tobacco, matches, cigarette papers, or tobacco pouch. Meanwhile, the other employees trudged by. Some of the men near us would recognize, in the shawled, bent women, with the tired faces, their wives, struggling on to a day’s work, and would call, jocosely, “’Ello, Sal, has’t got ’ere? I thowt tha’d forgot to come. Hurry on, girl, tha’s oilin’ t’ do!” Or the younger boys would note a pretty girl tripping by, and one would call out, “Ah, there, peachy!” The “peachy” would turn her coiffured head and make her pink lips say, “You old mutt, put your rotten tongue in your mouth, and chase yourself around the block three times!” A woman, who was no better than her reputation came into view, a woman with paint daubed on her cheeks, and that was the signal for a full venting of nasty speech which the woman met by a bold glance and a muttered, filthy curse. Girls, who were admirable in character, came by, many of them, and had to run the gauntlet, but they had been running it so long, day in and day out, that their ears perhaps did not catch the significant and suggestive things that were loudly whispered as they passed.
When at last the whistles and the bells announced five minutes before starting time, the keepers of the gate jumped up, threw away cigarette stubs, emptied pipes, grumbled foully, took consolation from tobacco plugs, and went into the mill.
Zippy led me at a run up three flights of iron-plated stairs, through a tin-covered door, and into a spinning-room. When we arrived, not a wheel was stirring. I almost slipped on the greasy floor. Up and down the length of the room the ring-spinning frames were standing like orderly companies of soldiers forever on dress parade. Above, the ceiling was a tangled mass of belts, electric wires, pipes, beams, and shafting. The room was oppressively heated, and was flavored with a sort of canker breath.
As I stood there, interested in my new surroundings, the wheels began to move, almost silently, save for a slight, raspy creaking in some of the pulleys. The belts began to tremble and lap, the room was filled with a low, bee-like hum. A minute later, the wheels were whirling with such speed that the belts clacked as they turned. The hum was climbing up the scale slowly, insistently, and one could not avoid feeling sure that it would reach the topmost note soon. Then the girl spinners jumped up from the floor where they had been sitting, and went to their frames. Some pulled the levers, and tried their machines. Everybody seemed to be shouting and having a last word of gossip. The second hand stood near the overseer’s desk with his fingers stuck in his mouth. He whistled, and that was the signal for all the girls to start their frames. At last the pulleys had attained that top note in their humming, like a top, and with it were mixed screams, whistles, loud commands, the rattle of doffer’s trucks, poundings, the clanking of steel on steel, and the regular day’s work was begun.
Zippy had gone into the elevator room and changed his clothes. He stood near me, and I saw his lips move.
“What?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
He laughed, and then warned, “Don’t thunder so. I can hear you if you speak lower. You’ll get used to hearing soon. Come with me. The boss says for me to show you where to dress.”
“To dress!” At last I was to put on overalls and go barefooted! Zippy led me to the elevator room, a large, quiet place, when the thick door was shut and there were cheerful windows open, where the cool air came in. I stripped off my clothes and put on the overalls. I was ready for work. “The boss wants to see your certificate,” announced Zippy.
I WAS GIVEN A BROOM, AND THEN I FOUND MYSELF ALONE WITH MARY
The overseer was a Canadian, like the second hand. He had his feet on the desk, and was engrossed in the Morning Mercury when I reached him. He turned around with a terrific speed on his swivel chair, when we came up to him, and enquired, somewhat kindly, “Well?”
“Please, sir,” I began, “I come to work—to sweep. Jim Coultier told me to come last night!”
“Take him to Jim. Don’t bother me,” grumbled the overseer. “Jim will settle it.”
Jim did settle it. He took my certificate and gave it to the overseer, and then told me to follow him to the other end of the mill. In a cupboard was a great supply of new brooms, waste, and oil cups. He took out a broom, spread it wide, and gave it to me.
“Two a week,” he said, “no more.” Then he turned to Zippy, and said, “Show him whar for to do!”
Zippy, no doubt bursting with importance with all this supervision, led me to an open space in the middle of the long room, where, sitting near some waste boxes, were two girls, barefooted, about my own age. Zippy led me right up to them, and with a wave of the hand announced, “Girls, this here’s Al Priddy. This is Mary, and t’other’s Jane. Come on, girls, it’s time to go around the mill before the boss sees us.”
But just then the second hand caught us grouped there, and stormed, angrily, “Get to work!”
Mary was a very strong girl of thirteen, with a cheery, fat face. She had been in the mill a half year, and was learning to spin during her spare time. I noticed that her teeth were yellow, and with a bluntness that I did not realize I said to her, when she had taken me to show me how to sweep, “What makes your teeth so yellow, Mary?”
She laughed, and then said, confidentially, “I chew snuff. I’m learning from the older girls.”
“Chew snuff?”
She nodded, “I’m rubbing, you see,” and we sat down while she showed me what she meant. She took a strip of old handkerchief from her apron, and a round box of snuff. She powdered the handkerchief with the snuff, and then rubbed it vigorously on her teeth.
“I like it,” she announced. “It’s like you boys when you chew tobacco, only this is the girl’s way.”
My work required little skill and was soon mastered. I had to sweep the loose cotton from the floor and put it in a can. Then there were open parts of stationary machinery to clean and a little oiling of non-dangerous parts. This work did not take more than two-thirds of the ten and a half hours in the work day. The remainder of the time, Zippy, the girls, and I spent in the elevator room, where the doffers also came for a rest.
I had occasion to get very well acquainted with two of the doffers that first day. Their names were “Mallet” and “Curley,” two French Canadians. Mallet was a lithe, sallow-faced, black-haired depreciator of morals, who fed on doughnuts, and spent most of his wages in helping out his good looks with the aid of the tailor, the boot-maker, and the barber. He came to the mill dressed in the extreme of fashion, and always with his upper lip curled, as if he despised every person he passed—save the good-looking girls. Curley was Mallet’s antithesis in everything but moral ignorance. He was a towering brute, with a child’s, yes, less than a child’s, brain. He ran to muscle. He could outlift the strongest man in the mill without increasing his heartbeat. His chief diversions were lifting weights, boasting of his deeds with weights in contests of the past, and the recital of filthy yarns in which he had been the chief actor.
That afternoon of my first day in the mill, Mallet and Curley shut themselves in the elevator room with Zippy and me.
“Ah,” drawled Mallet, noticing me, as if for the first time, “who tol’ you for to come here, eh?”
“Because I want to,” I retorted.
“Curley,” he called to the brute, who was grinning at me, “gif heem a chew, eh?”
The brute nodded in glee, and pulled out a black plug of tobacco and handed it me.
“You take a big, big chew!” he commanded. I threw the plug on the floor and stoutly declared, “I won’t.” Both of the companions laughed, and came over to where I sat. Curley pinned me helplessly to the floor, while Mallet stuffed the piece of tobacco in my mouth that he had hastily cut off from the plug. Then Curley took an excruciating grip on one of my fingers so that by a simple pressure it seemed as if the finger would snap.
“You chew, or I brak it,” he glared down on me. I refused, and had to suffer intolerable agony for a minute. Then the brute bent his face close to mine, with his foul mouth over my eyes.
“I spit in your eye if you do not chew,” he announced, as he looked off for a second, and then with his mouth fixed he bent over me, and I had to chew.
In a short time I was deathly sick. This accomplished, the giant gave me up until he got to his feet, then he took me in his arms, as he would have taken a child, and carried me out into the spinning-room for the girls to laugh at.
“Dis man try for to chew plug,” announced Mallet. “Now heem seek. Oh! oh!” Then I was carried to the third hand, a friend of the doffers, and Mallet announced, “You’d best fire dis kid. Heem chew and get seek, boss.” The third hand scowled at me, and said, “Cut it out, kid, if you stay here.”
When I went home at the end of the day, aunt asked me what sort of a day I’d had. “Oh,” I said, “when I know the ropes it will be pretty fair.” I was thinking of the three dollars I should get the second week. I said nothing about the tobacco incident. When I sat down to supper, I could not eat. My aunt remarked, “Don’t let it take your appetite away, Al, lad. It takes strength to work in the mill.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, and I was not; for, before my imagination, there rose up the persecuting figures of Mallet and Curley, and I could still taste the stinging flavor of the plug.