N my return from Atlantic City Mrs. Wilkins insisted that I had lost twenty pounds, while Alice candidly assured me that I could not look worse had I been buried and dug up. Such backhanded compliments did not encourage me to take either of them into my confidence. And, though Alice remarked on the length of time it had taken me to get from Atlantic City to New York, it did not seem necessary for me to mention having stopped off at a station in Pennsylvania long enough to be interviewed by the housekeeper of Sutton House. Neither did I feel called on to confide that the housekeeper had engaged me to take the position to be left vacant, three weeks hence, by Mary's cousin.

Having returned to New York six dollars poorer than I quitted it, the necessity of paying in advance for my room and my food left me no time to loaf. Though experience had taught me that Tuesday is the least desirable day in the week to hunt a job I determined to take my chances in spite of Mrs. Wilkins and Alice urging me to remain in bed and rest. Both offered to lend me money.

The most promising advertisement in the help-wanted columns that morning was that of a biscuit factory on Long Island-women and girls at seven dollars a week. The advertisement stated that only one car-fare was needed from Manhattan-such an important detail that it might be called an inducement.

Begrudging this sixty cents a week I

debated with myself the wisdom of following the advice of Alice and the hat-trimmer-waiting until later in the week. My antipathy to borrowing money of my friends finally outweighed my unwillingness to pay car-fare and I set out. Though I reached the biscuit factory a half-hour before the doors opened there were seven women ahead of me. Fiftyone came later.

After Sea Foam, I enjoyed standing in the open air and chatting with the women and girls. It was a balmy spring morning, and a sheen of soft green covered the trees and fields. My fellow applicants were all comfortably dressed and appeared to be cheerful. There was no pushing and crowding for place near the entrance.

When finally the doors were opened we filed in smiling and in order. The bare little employment office was spotlessly clean and there were plenty of seats.

The method of selection was unusual. The manager asked all who had worked for the factory to stand up; fifty-three rose. As he took the name of each girl and woman he asked why she had left, and if she preferred to return to the department in which she had previously worked. About half claimed to have left because they were needed at home, many had tried other work in hope of bettering themselves, and one had been discharged.

Instead of asking this girl the reason for her discharge the manager handed her paper and pencil and requested her to write it out while he attended to us other applicants. Not knowing how to spell a

word this girl, who sat next me, showed me what she had written-she had been sent away from the factory because the boss in the packing department said she needed a bath.

When my turn came I elected to be sent to the packing department, and for the single reason that I wished to see and know the boss who had enough courage to send home a worker who had neglected to wash her face and hands. This boss, Jane Ward, proved to be one of the most admirable characters I have ever known and one of the most capable of women. It took her about three minutes to show me how to pack crackers-I began with saltines.

The packing department filled one floor of the huge factory. It was perfectly lighted, heated, and ventilated. The women and girl workers wore all-enveloping blue cotton aprons with becoming Dutch caps to match. These caps covered the hair as completely as the aprons covered our dresses. The men, both workers and managers, wore coats and caps of white cotton. These garments were all supplied and laundered by the factory, fresh ones being distributed every other day.

Like folding circulars and addressing envelopes, packing crackers is monotonous, though neither fatiguing nor disagreeable. Indeed, for the first few days I found it uncommonly pleasant-workers being allowed to eat all the crackers they wish providing they take none from the building. Several times during my first morning Jane Ward, when making her rounds, would fill my apron pockets with several varieties. And the girls working at the machines would make it convenient to pass me along a handful of fresh ones from the wide iron flats on which they came hot from the ovens.

During the first day I ate ravenously. By the afternoon of the second day it did not require much self-denial to pass a machine without sampling that bake. At the end of the week I was entirely content to allow Mrs. Wilkins and Alice to consume the bag of fresh broken crackers which I purchased at one-third the regular price and took home with me every evening.

The happy faces of my fellow workers

were a continual source of pleasure to me. In no place where I had worked had I found such unmistakable evidence of general contentment. In spite of the fatigue resulting from my Atlantic City experience I found myself even on my first day feeling more and more encouraged as the hours wore away. By lunch-time I had become almost light-hearted.

But when Jane asked a girl who worked at the same table with me to take me with her to the lunch-room conducted by the factory for its employees I drew back. My memory of the lunch-room conducted by the department store for its employees was still too vivid. Never again would I be caught in such a trap! I thanked Jane, but when she had passed on I told the girl that it being my habit to take a walk in the fresh air during the lunch-hour I would look for an eating-place on the street.

"I've never been able to stomach the food in these joints around here," the girl replied. "And their prices is something fierce."

On my inquiring if the food she got in the factory lunch-room was really eatable she very wisely advised me to come and see before putting on my hat and coat. Stepping inside the door of the restaurant I stared in amazement at the food, the helpings, and the service.

It was a cafeteria with the servingcounter shaped like an elongated horseshoe. A squad of men, all in spotless white, stood within the hollow of the horseshoe serving the workers as they passed along, the women on one arm of the shoe, the men on the other. On paying their score the men turned into the men's dining-room, and the women into that reserved for women workers.

That, my first lunch, as recorded in my diary, consisted of two slices of roast beef, each as large as my hand and almost as thick, on a mound of mashed potatoes with a-plenty of brown gravy; one-eighth of a large apple pie; bread and butter; a cup of coffee with grade A milk and all the sugar I wanted-all for eighteen cents. Everything was deliciously cooked and carefully served. After the atrociously cooked and slovenly served meals of the Belgrave this factory lunch-room seemed to me nothing short of marvellous.

That night I recounted my experience

to Alice, the hat-trimmer, and the little organist. They all threatened to give up their jobs and go to packing crackers. Every evening after that they never failed to ask:

"Well, what did you have for lunch today?"

The portions were so surprisingly generous that I often found it difficult to eat it all. It may have been that our stern course of appetite suppression had affected me. Be that as it may, there were several days when only shame prevented me from asking permission to take home with me the slice of meat I had not been able to eat. Mrs. Wilkins and Alice would have been glad to get it.

At that time meats of all sorts were so high that none of us women on the top floor thought of having it oftener than once a day. Potatoes were so expensive that Mrs. Wilkins and the organist had stopped buying them-Alice and I were rice-eaters. Milk had gone up a cent a pint, and the loaf of bread for which we were then paying eight cents was decreasing in size so rapidly that each time we bought one we wondered if we would not be forced to use a magnifying-glass to be able to see our next.

Ah me! The time came all too soon when I had to leave this job of good food and cheerful surroundings—a whole week before the date set for me to take the position left vacant by the marriage of Mary's cousin. And I bitterly resented the circumstances that caused me to leave though it was the offer of a promotion.

"We never promote a girl until she has been here two weeks," Jane Ward said to me late in the afternoon of my second Friday. "Your second week won't be up until next Tuesday, but you have done so well that the manager says I may put you in charge of that machine." She indicated a machine which at the time she spoke was bringing down hot gingersnaps from the oven on the floor above. Then she added: "It means a dollar a week raise for you and it is a sit-down job."

For two whole days I debated with myself the question-to accept the promotion or not to accept. Those bountiful well-cooked lunches were a real temptation. Alice and Mrs. Wilkins had remarked more than once on the change in

my appearance. The scales proved that I had regained seven of the fifteen pounds lost while in Atlantic City. If Jane had not been so eager to reward me! Or if only I hadn't been so eager to make good.

Late Sunday afternoon I posted a letter telling Jane that it would be impossible for me to return to work the following day as I was needed at home. Though untrue, that excuse represented the awakening of my sense of personal responsibility.

For had I accepted that promotion I would have taken the place of some woman who really needed the dollar a week raise. Besides, I would have given Jane the trouble of training me. No such qualms of conscience had troubled me when the manager of the premium station offered me permanent employment though I was perfectly aware that fiftysix other women had been hoping and working for the position.

Before turning away from the biscuit factory I wish to state that even to-day, after my experience in so many different lines of work, I have but one criticism to make: There is no reason why women should be forced to stand while packing crackers.

This may seem a small matter, but to the woman worker it is most serious. In all my experience I have never found any work so fatiguing as standing on my feet continuously for several hours at a time. The fact that the feet are incased in pointed-toed shoes with high heels does not lessen the strain.

Women should have better sense than to wear such shoes to work. Indeed? Let any one making such a protest try to buy, in New York, a pair of shoes with round toes and moderately low heels when the other style is in fashion. I have tried, and though I succeeded, it was after much searching and always at an additional cost of several dollars. Besides, because a woman works for her living does not make her any less a woman; and every woman, unless she is a fool, wishes to appear well dressed-in the fashion.

Though I was up and out before eight o'clock the next morning, I returned to my room late in the afternoon without having secured a position. It was not for the lack of trying. I called at nine places advertising for workers. At the first

place there were twenty-two applicants for two vacancies. At another there were forty women waiting when I arrived, and several came later-only six vacancies. Before the door of a down-town candy factory I was one of more than fifty women and girls. Many of them had been waiting since eight o'clock. At twelve a man came out and roughly ordered us all off. When some of us protested he burst out laughing and informed us that all vacancies had been filled before eight-thirty.

The next day I was more fortunate that is, I was taken on at the first place to which I applied. This was an up-town candy factory. After packing fancy chocolates during the morning I was sent to another department and assigned to the task of helping a chocolate-dipper. This position, so my fellow packers informed me, was very desirable since the next step up is chocolate-dipping, a work that always commands a good wage.

"It's grand!" one little girl, who looked as though she had not washed her face or combed her hair for a week, assured

me.

"You'll learn how to dip. They make big money, dippers do. I've gotter cousin who married a dipper. She used to make as much as eighteen a week. She has the swellest clothes!"

During my first day in this candy factory I imagined that the unneat appearance of my fellow workers was caused by dirt accumulated since their arrival that morning. The next day taught me better. There were precious few of them, either men or women, who had the appearance of having washed their faces before leaving home.

The apron handed me on my second day was so soiled that I asked the woman in charge how often she had them washed. "Wash these things," she cried, laughing, as she held up another apron in a worse condition than the one she had given me, "they ain't never washed sence I been here. When they gets so sticky and stuck up that they spoil your clothes they take 'em away and give me some more. I guess they burn 'em. They ain't fitten for nothing else."

"If customers knew that, perhaps they wouldn't pay such high prices for your candies," I suggested.

"What folks don't know don't hurt 'em none," she retorted.

That night I had a severe bilious attack and when morning came I was too sick to think of going to work. Had it been the biscuit factory or any other position in which I had worked, excepting the department store, I would have gotten Alice to telephone and give my reason for not reporting.

Two days in that candy factory were enough for me. Even the money due me -at the rate of eight dollars a weekwas not sufficient to draw me back. Now when I see the name of that firm on a candy box I very gladly allow other people to consume it. Yet I am fond of candy.

Fortunately, on Friday morning the postman brought me a letter from the housekeeper at Sutton House enclosing a railroad ticket. When I told Alice that I had engaged to go as head chambermaid she rose in wrath. A domestic servant in a hotel was bad enough, she protested, but going in a private family was a disgrace for which she could not find a name.

"Yet when you are at home you make beds, sweep the floors, and do other socalled menial work," I reminded her.

"I'm a college woman," she haughtily informed me.

"If a lack of education in the worker renders the work disgraceful," I replied, trying to argue with her, "then surely my degree together with my attainments as a writer should remove the stigma."

But she would not argue. It was disgraceful of me to go as a domestic servant. Nobody would ever have any respect for me and that was all there was to it. It was the one subject to which there was but one side. Domestic service was disgraceful.

This in the country that my ancestors had struggled to found that all under its flag might be free and equal.

The family at Sutton House comprised Mr. and Mrs. Sutton, both under thirty, their only child a boy eight years old, and his tutor, a young college man.

The place was very beautiful. The house, Southern colonial, was large and dignified without being showy. The park and gardens surrounding it contained

eleven acres at least the chauffeur, who brought me from the station, so informed me. Certainly they were ample and perfectly kept. The trees were noticeably handsome, all of them indigenous. Though an unusually elaborate establishment for America, it was not an imitation. Perhaps its most striking feature was that it did not suggest England or any other foreign country. It looked to be just what it was the country home of a wellbred American family of large fortune.

The American atmosphere was so distinct that watching the house as we approached along the wide drive, I had a subconscious expectation of seeing an old negro, immaculately dressed, make his appearance. He didn't come. Nor when we passed near the stables and garage was there any sound of laughing or singing. At the side entrance I was met by the housekeeper, an Englishwoman.

There were fifteen servants besides the men in the stables, in the garage, and the gardeners. Every one of them foreigners. "Why will Americans persist in surrounding themselves with indifferent foreign 'help' when they might have the best servants, and most loyal Americans, for the asking?" was the question that I asked myself that night after my arrival at the Sutton House, and I am still asking it.

I have known many foreign servants. Even the best of them was not so good as a competent negro would have been in the same place. I am a Southerner born and bred among negroes. Besides, I am descended from a long line of slave-owning ancestors. I do not believe that Abraham Lincoln himself was a more loyal American than the present-day descendants of the people he fought to free. Yet in spite of their excellent qualities, their loyalty, we turn them down. Just let an American family get a little money, and the first thing they do in the way of display is to secure as many "help as their pocketbook will permit.

Being foreigners, all the servants at Sutton House were, of course, "help." Even the French maid spoke of herself as "Madame's porsonal help," and even the fact that she received sixty dollars a month in wages, her laundry, a room to herself, and all the clothes that her misVOL. LXX.-32

tress did not care to wear the second time did not prevent her from disloyalty. A negro girl would have given better service than this woman and never have permitted her to be criticised in her presence.

Under my direction there were five chambermaids, a scrub woman, and a man for cleaning. The man was a Swede and the maids all Irish. My wages were forty dollars a month with the laundry and a room to myself. Because I chanced to take the fancy of the housekeeper I took all my meals with her instead of with the other servants. Had it been otherwise I would have heard more back-stairs gossip than I did.

Certainly I heard enough to make me know that, excepting the housekeeper, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Sutton had a friend among their "help." Unlike the horde of foreigners who have usurped their rightful places, the negro servants are loyal to their employers. A negro, as a rule, has too much self-esteem to belittle the person from whom he takes wages.

Sutton House was crowded with guests every week-end, but from Monday noon to Friday afternoon Mrs. Sutton was generally alone with her little son and his tutor. Mr. Sutton usually returned to the city with the first of his guests to leave Monday morning and seldom made his appearance before Saturday afternoon. He stood well in his profession, was a hard worker, and might have been devoted to his home had the distance between his office and Sutton House admitted of his spending his nights there.

Mrs. Sutton, so I learned from the housekeeper, was an only child of wealthy parents-the darling of her old father, who had insisted on humoring every whim. It being her whim to come to Sutton House before her husband's business permitted him to leave town, the family had moved out.