Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/750

 730 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

tion always was, "Don't stay long." The unpleasantness of asking for a pass was sometimes overcome by girls slipping away in the crowd without permission. We thought some woman might be commissioned to grant such requests. We had to endure so many unnecessary hardships.

The cloak-, toilet-, and lunch-rooms were the gloomiest and filthiest it was ever my misfortune to enter. The cobwebs and dirt-besmeared floors looked "spooky" under the flickering glare of insufficient gaslight. The only ventilation came through a foul basement, and there the little girl attendants stayed all day and late into the night. And that was where the girls who brought lunches had to eat them. A few rough board tables and chairs in a more or less advanced state of ruin were pro- vided, and scores of hungry girls sat around and ate lunches from newspaper parcels and drank coffee from tin cans.' It was not a healthful atmosphere, either physically or morally, and yet it was typical of the poorer class of stores. The slang of the streets, interspersed with oaths, formed the staple medium of communication. A young and innocent newcomer could not fail to feel shocked at what she heard. But the surroundings were not conducive of elevated thoughts. Refinement of thought and speech would soon disappear in such an environment. I never saw a clean towel in the toilet-room. Several hundred pairs of hands were wiped on the coarse, filthy piece of crash each day, and there was no woman in attendance to see that things were kept in a sanitary condition. Two little girls were in the cloak-room, but they had nothing to do with the adjoining places. The rooms were merely narrow hallways. The wretch- edness of all these appointments was forced upon me the day my fellow-worker was so ill. It was so hard to get our wraps at night, for then all the employes were there pushing their way to the front. One night a young girl in the line was rather rest- less, and one of the store officials charged her with crowding, and jerked her out of line so that she struck against a counter on the right. He then shoved her back with such force that she fell against another on the left. She was badly hurt, and the

' Coffee was supplied to employes at the rate of two cups for five cents.