Newspaper Page Text
4
American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
Two could live as cheaply as one, he explained, and
lie would save the expense of employing a type
writer. Kmmy declined, with thanks. Breaking
into the life of this great city did not seem as easy
as she had supposed. By Saturday night she was
thoroughly tired out and a trille discouraged.
She did not confine her search for a position en
tirely to those advertisers who wanted stenographers.
While looking over the daily papers she saw many
other notices of various sorts offering employment
to women. Some of them she did not understand;
others appeared to offer opportunities to make a
living which she felt it might be worth her while to
investigate. After all, she reasoned, it made little
difference to her just what sort of work she did, pro
vided it carried with it the chance to meet worth
while men; she could always go back to her type
writing if she were not pleased. One day, toward the
end of the week, she cut out several of these adver
tisements and went to the addresses given in them.
She at once found a difference in the reception
accorded her. During the earlier days of the week
she had been offering for sale-solely her abilities as a
worker—a stenographer—and had, in most cases,
been met, somewhat to her chagrin, on that basis.
On this day she found that she had entered a new
market, a market in which wo
men competed on a physical
basis. She had thought that
the field seemed bvercrowded,
where even the slight measure
of training necessary to operate
a typewriting machine was the
only requirement. Now she
found that the number of such
women was small indeed, com
pared with that of the women
who had nothing to offer but
themselves. It amazed her to
realize how many utterly un
trained women were in search
of work. At the very first place
to which she went, the office of
a manufacturer of women’ssuits,
she found so large a crowd of
girls ahead of her that she could
not summon up courage enough
to join their jostling and turbu
lent ranks. There must have
been nearly a hundred of them,
pushing and crowding to be the
first to enter. And it discon
certed her somewhat to find that
a very great many of these women
were almost, if not quite, as good looking as herself.
The pay named in the advertisement—twenty dol
lars a week—had attracted her, as well as the fact
that she had read of cloak and suit models who had
married well. She had thought that her face, her
figure, would give her a distinct advantage in those
lines of employment in which good looks alone were
paid for; it came as something of a shock to find
that physical attractiveness was both plentiful and
cheap, that there seemed to'be a hundred women
with nothing but their good looks to offer in exchange
for a living, to one who could offer training of even
the most meagre description.
The experience she had at this first place was
repeated over and over during the day. One of her
addresses proved to be that of a theatrical employ
ment agency. Emmy did not know this until she
arrived, whereupon she determined to wait and see
what she was offered. The stage was by no means a
bad place for showing off one’s wares.
Here, also, she found a crowd of young women
that jammed the dingy little outer office and over
flowed into the hall. It was over two hours before
she at last found herself in the agent’s sanctum. He
was a small, dark, greasy-looking little man, and he
eyed her covetously, asked her weight, felt her arms as
he might have felt the legs of a horse, and offered her
a position in the chorus of a traveling burlesque show.
“You’re solid,” he said appreciatively, “right
weight and age, and a bear for looks. We’re adver
tising ‘twenty hot young birds—you provide the
cold bottle.’ Pretty good tag, eh? Sixteen a week.
Fights, of course, and you double for the living pic
tures. Go out in two weeks. What do you say? ”
Emmy said she would consider it and let him
know. She escaped into Broadway, regretting her
wasted hours. She knew the sort of men that
patronize burlesque shows.
Another address led her to the box office of a thea
tre. A girl was wanted to take charge of the men’s
coatroom. “ What we want,” a young man explained
to her, “is a girl who can put up a good front—one
that all the men will say is a pippin. No salary, of
course—you get your tips. Big money in it, if you’re
wise to your job. You know how it is with these
guys. They’ll be wanting to hand you a line of hot
air. You’ve got to come back at ’em with the quick
stuff. If they see you’re a live one they’ll stake you
to a quarter, and some of ’em are likely to ask you
out to supper. The last girl we had got a swell guy
on the string, and I hear he’s putting up big for her.
Great chance, if you work it right.”
Emmy did not take this position, in spite of the
advantages which the young man pointed out. She
walked down to Fourteenth Street, in response to an
advertisement which said “Easy work and good pay
for young woman with good figure.” She found her
self at the office of a firm engaged in the manufacture
of women’s underwear. They wanted a girl to pose,
in combination suits, for photographs to be used in
advertising their goods. It was a temporary posi
tion only, and Emmy saw nothing in it for her.
Chapter VI
Wanted to “demonstrate
kind of corset
a new
HE last place she visited was a
store on Twenty-third Street,
where a young woman was vvanted
to “demonstrate” a new kind of
corset. Applicants had been re
quested to call between four and
five o’clock. The pay was large—
two dollars a day. She found at
least thirty girls waiting in a small
office, and their number was being
steadily augmented. Emmy got
into conversation with one of
them, a very attractive girl, with
red hair. She told Emmy that
“demonstrating” consisted, in this
case, in posing for several hours a
day in her underclothes, putting
on and taking off corsets of differ
ent sorts, to show the superiority of
the particular one she was to adver
tise. Emmy became quite interest
ed in this woman’s talk. She spoke
plainly, and somewhat bitterly.
“Yes,” she said, in answer to a
remark from Emmy. “I’ve done
pretty much everything. You see, my husband
died four years ago—he was a clerk in a big office
downtown — and ever since then I’ve been up
against it. Wouldn’t care so much for myself,
but there’s the kid. It’s a tough game, believe
me, if you don’t know how to do something besides
just look pretty. My sister’s a trained nurse, and
makes twenty-five a week. Wish I was in her shoes.
And 1 know a girl that took up designing, and makes
fifty. I’m just a dub, I guess. Haven’t got any
thing to offer but my shape.”
“1 understand cloak models get pretty good pay,”
said Emmy.
“ Yes. I tried it for six months. It’s all a question
of how far you’re willing to go. 1 ’ve lost two or three
good jobs on account of being particular. I suppose
I’d take a chance, same as most, if it weren’t for the
kid; but 1 got to think of her. I handled that cloak
model job pretty well for quite a while. Jollied the
buyers along, and drew the line at anything more
than dinner and the theatre, but when the boss’s son
got after me I knew it was all up. I didn’t last
more'n a week after that. Same way in stores and
on the stage. I slapped a stage manager’s face once,
for getting fresh. Glad I did, too, though it cost me
my job. He was a dirty dog. Believe me, kiddo, if
you can pound a typewriter, as you say you can,
you're wasting your time here. Wish I could. You
won’t get quite as much money, perhaps, but you'll
last longer, unless, of course, you’re ready to play the
game the way it’s played here in New York, and go
the limit. You’ll get along, 1 guess,” she said, look
ing Emmy up and down, “with your looks. But
just figure for yourself what chance a homely girl,
who doesn’t know how to do anything, has got in
the game. I’d sooner be dead, believe me.”.
Emmy did not wait to put in an application for
the position as demonstrates She went home, and
cut out another lot of advertisements for stenog
raphers from the afternoon papers. The experiences
of the day had shown her that even the little training
she possessed gave her an enormous advantage over
the woman who had none. It seemed to her that
there was something unfair in the way things were
arranged. There were just as many women in the
world as men, yet altogether the latter were all, or
nearly all, sent out into the world knowing how to
do something whereby they might earn a living;
women, as a class, could live only by attaching them
selves, like a barnacle, to some man. She liked the
simile—and told it to her mother. Mrs. Moran
smiled her usual patient smile. “You have such
strange ideas, Emmy,” she said. “Marriage is a
sacred thing. You ought not to joke about it.
When the right man comes along you’ll think very
differently.’.’ Emmy thought it likely that she
would, and went on reading her paper. Since con
ditions, as she found them, made marriage a woman’s
chief profession, she felt that she might as well pur
sue it with something more in mind than board and
lodging. The dread of poverty, always strong within
her, had been intensified by her experiences since her
arrival in New York. In this city, she very soon
found out, there was no room for the incompetent.
Competition was too keen. Those who came into
the market place must come with something of value
to sell. If they could offer but a fresh young body
and a pretty face, the price they could demand
apparently varied in proportion to their necessities.
If confronted with starvation, Emmy knew that her
price would not vary greatly from that of any other
marketable flesh—a few cents a pound, perhaps.
If she could, by supporting herself, fix her own price,
she knew that even millions were not an impossi
bility. The thought of the life insurance money in
the bank reassured her. She reflected that she had
that much to thank her father for, in any event.
Mrs. Moran could not understand why Emmy had
grown so hard in her outlook upon life. “ When I say
that a woman should look forward to marriage,
Emmy, as her duty in life, I do not mean that she
should regard it as a means of making a living. There
is the question of love to be considered. You seem al
ways to forget that. If a man loves you it is perfect
ly right that he should support you. It is his duty.”
“ Exactly,” Emmy said, with a mischievous smile.
“And if the man who loves me, and has to support
me, has a million or two, so much the better, don’t
you think?”
“Why—yes—I suppose so. But you should not
let that be the chief consideration. You should con
sider a man’s character, and his—his honesty.”
“I know, mother, but a man with money is just as
likely to be honest as one without, isn’t he? Just
because I’m practical you say I’m hard. I’m not at
all. I believe in love just as much as you do; I mean
to have it, too; and it seems to me that if a man with
a lot of money offers to marry a poor girl like me,
it’s the best evidence in the world that he loves her.
Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Moran, confused by the girl’s
sophistry. “ But you might not love him.”
“I probably would before I got through. I’ve
read that they never do, in France, till after mar
riage, but it seems to work very well.”
Mrs. Moran had nothing to say to this argument.
She was greatly worried about Emmy. All that she
could do was to pray. She did that unceasingly, far
into the night, when Emmy lay beside her, sleeping
the untroubled sleep of youth.
The week ended with Emmy no nearer her goal
than she had been when it began. The discourage
ment that she felt arose from the impatience of inex
perience. It was this that caused her to write in her
diary that Saturday night:
“There’s not a man in this house worth knowing,
except the newspaper reporter who sits next to me.
1 think I shall have a talk with him. He said last
right that my eyes always made him think of a
woman he met in Morocco last year. An Ouled
Nail, he said, she was, or something of the sort. I
wonder what he meant. He might be able to find me
a position. If I don’t get something soon I believe
I'll write to Mr. Borden, and send him my address.
I wonder if 1 could make him marry me if I tried? ”