Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate,
the Magic Shirt
Bosom, and Wise Counsel
on How to Grow Straight
THE ring-spinning room is generally the center of fashion in a cotton-mill. The reason may be that the ring-spinners, at least in New England, are generally vivacious French-Canadian girls. There were some in the mill where I began work, who possessed an inordinate thirst for ornament and dress. The ring-spinners had clean surroundings and much easier work than their sisters in the weave-shed. Their labor was more genteel than that of their sisters in the carding-room.
Marie Poisson, who ran frames which I cleaned and oiled, was the leader of fashion in the room, and well she was fitted for it. She resembled a sunflower on a dandelion stalk; she was statuesque even in a working-dress, and when you saw her hands you wondered how she ever got through the day without gloves. She lived on doughnuts, frosted cake, cold meats, and pickles, in order that her board bill might remain small and allow her a good percentage of her wages for dress. She had huge coiffures in all the latest styles, and when the little artistic dabs of powder were absent, her face had a lean and hungry look. Marie was a splendid specimen of compressed humanity: she must have suffered the tortures of the inquisition, for what tiny high-heeled shoes she took off and hid in the waste can, near the coat hooks! How many times a day did I see her pressing her hands to her waist as if to unbind herself and get a good gulp of air! How stiff her neck from its daily imprisonment in a high, starched collar! At that time, a certain dainty, mincing, doubled-up walk was affected by the fashionable society women of the country, a gait which was characterized as “The Kangaroo Walk!” The young ladies had to go in training for this fashion, had to adjust the body and the general carriage to a letter S mould, before the mincing daintiness could be shown. Marie was the first in the spinning-room to attain this goal. Her success inspired even such humble imitators as Mary and Jane to mould themselves, by daily posturings and prancings, in a wild effort to attain the same end.
The inevitable result of so much pride and fashion in the girls was to make the young men and boys pay strict attention to themselves; for so the mixing of the sexes tends everywhere, even in a mill. Probably Mallet, with his excessive vanities, had been produced through such contact. In any case, such fashion plates as I saw were merely contrasts which brought out my own insufficiencies. The first sign of this influence came in my purchase of a ten-cent celluloid rose which had a perfumed sponge in its heart, which could be filled over and over again when the scent had evaporated. I had a ten-cent bottle, large size, of Jockey Club for this purpose, which I also spilled over my handkerchiefs and clothes, and went to the mill leaving a perfumed trail behind me. As I could not swagger in such glaring and costly shirts as Mallet wore, several changes in a week, I bought from a fakir, one Saturday night, a wonderful shirt bosom, for ten cents! It permitted the wearer instantly to change the pattern of his shirt bosom twelve times, ranging all the way from a sober ministerial white, going through the innocent and inoffensive tints and checks, and at last reaching the vivid, startling gambler’s stripes and dots! These marvelous effects were very simply brought about. The Magic Bosom, as it was called, was a circular piece of stiff pasteboard on either side of which were pasted six segments of enameled paper, shaped like letter V’s, just large enough to fit behind the lapels of the vest. There were six turns of the circle for six patterns on one side, and then, by merely turning the whole thing around, the other six effects were possible. The only trouble was, I did not wear a vest in the mill, and so could only use it to and from the mill, to the theater, where I changed it during every act, and took care that others should notice the magic transformation. I wore it to a Sunday-school that I attended intermittently, and astonished my classmates by six transformations during the hour’s session!
Then I began to contrast my own hair with Mallet’s black and orderly curls. His hair always shone, and the barber kept it from growing down below the ear! That disturbed me, for neither comb nor brush could part mine or make it stay down. I was so disturbed over the matter that I confided in my aunt. She laughed, and said that she had a recipe that would satisfy me. She sent me down to a butcher shop for a large-sized marrow bone. Then she had me produce my large-sized bottle of Jockey Club. After boiling the marrow bone in water for two hours, she made me extract the marrow. Then I had to put in a certain amount of perfume and give the whole a good stirring. Aunt next produced a cold-cream jar, and put the decoction in and let it cool over night.
In the morning she said, “Now, Al, that’s a jar of the best hair grease you could buy for money anywhere. It’s an old recipe and will not only make the hair stay in place but is, at the same time, good for it. It makes the hair grow, and keeps it in good condition.” True enough it had a good odor to it, and was smooth like the stuff the barber put on my head when he cut my hair. I rubbed some on my head that morning, and not only did I have the satisfaction of seeing my hair shine, like Mallet’s, but it also stayed parted in the middle! I went to the mill that morning, with my cap balanced on the back of my head, so that everybody could see the shine and the parting. But I had not been in the mill long before the pomade evaporated, my hair sprang loose, and I was as badly off as before. By bringing the jar into the mill I managed to remedy that, and got along very well until one of the doffers rubbed his palm over my head, discovered the grease, sniffed it, and told all over the room that I was daubing bear’s grease on my hair to keep it down.
These items of self-consciousness, so momentous to me at the time, were some of the signs of adolescence. I was growing very rapidly, and my whole self was in a whirl of change. Every bone seemed to have sprung loose, every muscle seemed to be expanding at once, all my strength seemed to have left my body! My bones were sore and every muscle ached. An infinite weariness and dizziness took possession of me, day and night. Sitting or standing I could find no rest. When I bent down, I suffered undue pain; when I reached for anything, I had to drop my arms before I had attained the object. I suffered as if jackscrews had been laid at all angles in my body, and were being turned and turned day and night without any stop. I could not bend and reach under the frames to clean them without excruciating pain sweeping over me, and a cold sweat. If I took hold of a broom, and tried to sweep, I had to drag the broom wearily after the first few moments. I went home after the day’s work as tired as if I had been holding up the world all day. And though I went to bed soon after supper, and slept soundly till the morning, I awoke as tired as if I had been toiling at a slave’s task every minute of the night.
I tried, in no complaining spirit, to describe my feelings to my aunt. “Why, they’re nothing but growing pains, Al,” she said. “You ought to feel proud that you’re going to be a tall man. It’ll pass. You must get all the rest you can by going to bed right after supper. That’ll help!”
But she never said, as I wanted her to say, “Get off from work while you’re suffering so, and don’t try to work while you’re in that condition.”
During this period, I grew to be supersensitive and self-conscious. I had a high, shrill voice, of which I was not aware till a doffer mimicked it one day. It was a small matter to him, but to me it was tragical. It wore on my imagination all through that day, it haunted me that night, it intruded itself on my solitude until I inwardly cried and grew depressed.
“What’s ailing you, lad?” commented my uncle the next morning. “You look as if you’d lost your best friend?” But I would not unburden myself of the load of guilty feeling that was on my shoulders—guilt, because my voice was high, shrill, and childish! I was afraid to meet people whom I knew on the street, and when I saw one I knew coming towards me, I would dash to the opposite side, or, if escape like that were impossible, I would turn towards a shop-window or pretend to be interested in a bit of dirt on a curbstone.
Mark Waterhouse, an old crippled Englishman, who ran the elevator and with whom I talked often while in the elevator room, seemed to understand me thoroughly when I told him how I felt.
“Aye, lad,” he said, “it’s growing tha’ art. Growing swift, too: tall like a bullrush. It’s bad for thee to be in this ’ot room an’ working. Tha’ needs fresh hair; lots on’t. Lots o’ fresh hair to get in th’ blood an’ bone, like.”
“But aunt won’t let me stay at home,” I said.
“Aye,” grumbled the old man with a slow nod of his head, “they all say it. Th’ll do that. It’s the way o’ th’ mill, lad, an’ we’re born to ’t. You con put a plank ower a rose bush while the shoots’r young an’ growing, and the shoots’ll turn aside, go crook’d, get twisted, but the bush will grow, lad, spite o’ the plank. This work and bad air’s the plank on top o’ ye, but yeu’ll grow, spite on’t. Yeu’ll grow, for God started ye growing an’ ye can’t stop God. But yeu’ll grow bent at’ shoulders, legs’ll twist, feet’ll turn, knees’ll bend in! Sure’s ye live, they will. See me, lad,” he said, “the plank was on top o’ me, too. I went int’ mill at nine, an’ worked ’ard for a babby, I did! Con I walk straight? See me,” and he went at a pathetic hobble across the room, one knee turned in, the other foot twisted out of joint. “That’s t’ way it took me, lad, when I was in your shoes. I’m not t’ only one, either. Th’ mills full on ’em! Do I freighten ye, lad? Never mind. Do your best, spite on’t. I tell ye what! Stretch your arms mony times through t’ day. Oxercise! Oxercise! Stretch thy muscles, thy legs, an’ get all the chance tha con so tha’ll grow spite on’t. Spite o’ work, bad air an’ all! Strengthen thasel’, lad. Don’t let twists, knots, an’ bends coom!”
This old man’s counsel made a deep impression on me. In terror of the things he described, and which he himself was, I made up my mind that I would not let my body get bent, crooked, or distorted, so I did as he said. I stretched myself to my full height many times a day. I exercised with weights and broom handles, even though I found it very painful. I gulped in the fresh air when out of the mill, and walked with my chest thrust out, a stiff, self-conscious, growing lad, fighting ever against the impending tragedy of a deformed body.