The Daring Ladies of Lowell (29 page)

“Daisy, where is this new concern of yours for the mill workers coming from?”

“I’m reading some of the essays in
The Lowell Offering,
” she said. “The stories those girls can tell—”

“That’s what they are—stories. Their jobs are reality, and if they have any sense, they’ll pull back on their threats.”

“They write poetry, too. Like me.”

Hiram stared at her, a condescending smile pulling at his face. “You?” he said.

“Not as good as theirs, of course.”

“I’ve seen some of Daisy’s poems, and I think they are quite respectable,” Samuel interjected. He saw his sister’s eyelids flutter as she looked directly at him.

“Thank you,” she said, clearly pleased.

“Very polite of you, Samuel, but hardly necessary,” said Hiram.

Daisy blushed but held her head up.

“Are you finished reading?” Hiram demanded of his elder son.

Samuel turned back to the document. He looked up at his father when he finished. “You can post that notice, but you’ll lose,” he said.

“You’re thinking of your little friend. It’s ridiculous, you’re losing your bearings.”

“Maybe not tonight. Maybe they’ll pull back, and you’ll win in the short run. The long run? You will lose.”

“I’ve always thought you understood how this business operates, Son.” A flicker of what might have been sadness passed over Hiram’s face. “We have to keep costs low; we’ve got more competitors trying to steal business every month now. There are people from everywhere who would give their souls to work in this factory.
We can’t lose.
”

Samuel looked down at the paper in his hands. “They want some shortening of their work hours and a pay increase. They want the most dangerous machinery fixed. They want to be able to breathe. Do you find those things outrageous, Father?”

No one spoke to Hiram Fiske this way. “If we had won that conviction, none of this would be happening. They’d be praising us, dancing in the streets.”

“Maybe. But these issues wouldn’t go away.”

“What is happening to you?” Fiske said to his son.

“Decrease their daily shift by half an hour. Increase pay by ten cents a day.”

Hiram stepped back. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“You need to show goodwill, to meet them partway.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then you lose.” Samuel glanced down again at the wrinkled piece of paper. “The windows by the looms stay open,” he said.

“Four hours a day, that’s all.”

“The girls get their lungs checked every month.”

“You’re pushing me too far.”

“How do you want your factory destroyed? By a strike or by killing the mill girls?”

“I’ll think about it. I have to confer with my partners, as you well know. Don’t expect anything. Are we done here?”

“Improve the machinery. One more accident, and you’ll have more than a strike on your hands.”

Hiram seemed to falter. “Damn it, Samuel. I said, are we done?”

“For now.”

They stared at each other.

“What are you holding over my head?” Hiram asked.

“I’ve realized I’m your employee, too. We all are.” Samuel handed the paper back to his father.

Jonathan, who had been silently cradling a glass of whiskey, put his drink down on a side table. “I’ll write all that out and post it at the mill,” he said eagerly. He stood, his young face flushed, looking for the first time like a man with a purpose.

“You’ll do no such thing,” snapped his father. “I’ll make the decisions around here.”

“Not all of them,” said Samuel.

Hiram stiffened. “You’ve got something else to say, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I suspected as much. Samuel—”

Samuel lifted his hand, a gesture to stop his father’s words.

The older man looked shaken. “Listen to me,” he said.

“It’s done.”

“Well, then.” Hiram pulled himself straight and looked at his son coldly. “Let’s hear it.”

T
he 4:30 a.m. shriek of the factory whistle was as loud as ever. Alice jumped out of bed and began donning her work clothes immediately, blinking her eyes rapidly to wake up. The other girls were doing the same. No sleepy, yawning laggards this morning; they had to be standing sturdy and strong for whatever was coming their way. She glanced out the window: it would be a sharp, blustery day, the kind that more often heralds winter than spring. A sign? Nonsense, she was not going to dwell on such superstition.

“No news?” Delia was the first to ask Mrs. Holloway. Her face was strained with worry as she shushed a wiggling Ellie and tugged at the ties of the child’s work pinafore, pulling them tight before crowding in with the others at the breakfast table.

Mrs. Holloway shook her head. “I heard from the milkman a rumor they’re supposed to be posting their answer on the mill bulletin board sometime this morning.” She didn’t tell them that the milkman gave her the news while eyeing her with what could not be other than pity.

“Will they throw us out right away?” Ellie asked as she spooned heaping spoonfuls of thick oatmeal into her mouth.

“It won’t work like that at first,” Mrs. Holloway said. She sat down heavily, folding her hands together, then resting them on sturdy, ample legs. She looked worn this morning, beyond tired, Alice thought. For the first time, she noticed that Mrs. Holloway’s hair had turned quite gray, almost silver. “They’ll turn us down, then wait to see what we do. Maybe bring in a few Irish to make us sweat.”

“How do you know?” asked Jane.

“We tried for change, a few years ago. A small turnout.”

No one asked if there had been any good results.

N
o laughing or giggling this morning as the girls hurried down the path toward the bridge spanning the roaring Merrimack River. Alice found herself remembering Lovey’s blithe initiation on her first day, the casual way she had introduced the whole scene, giving it a kind of breathless magic. It seemed long, long ago. But what kind of fairy-tale protection had she expected? She and the others had staked their futures on the opportunities of the mill, tasting the excitement of first-time freedoms, ignoring the cost. But now they were standing up, taking a chance, risking—that was new, too.

Alice watched her friends ahead of her, holding on to the rail as they moved briskly over the bridge. Delia and Ellie, hand in hand as always; Jane, who paused for an instant at the bridge and hurriedly crossed herself—a prayer was winging its way to her God; let it do some good. Mary-o, head up, purposeful, a newly grim expression on her usually cheerful face. Braver than expected; a salute to you, Alice thought.

But for an instant she saw more. Tilda’s plump figure bobbing up and down just ahead, chattering with pride about how many looms she could handle at one time.

And Lovey. Yes, Lovey—skipping and laughing, teasing the others, somehow imbued with the gift of lightheartedness—her lively face, her curious, intelligent eyes. Alice blinked, her fantasy evaporating.

They were, all of them, child-women yearning to play, to work and dream and sing—perpetual “girls” of the mill. Few of them had experienced much childhood; that was for sure. But there was always an end to the time for that, and she knew in her bones it had come.

T
he factory room was heavy with moist air, the windows securely locked. The machinery was especially deafening—all looms were working. Ellie was running back and forth refilling bobbins, casting anxious peeks at her mother. The girls began glancing toward one another, nervous, as time for their lunch break approached. Where was the Fiske response? Were they intended to keep returning to the bulletin board by the door, lengthening the delay, allowing them all to grow more fearful? Briggs seemed as officious as ever. Did he know anything? What about the men working downstairs?

T
he lunch whistle didn’t ring. Five minutes, ten—still no bell. The girls worked on, unsure of what came next. Maybe this
was
the answer, whispered one to another. Hadn’t they been promised a response would come midmorning? Were they being tested?

“I’m hearing the men are going to walk out any minute,” one girl muttered to another. “They’re taunting us, that’s what they’re doing.”

Ellie stopped still, wiping sweat from her forehead with her apron, glancing from her mother to the others, and then suddenly dropped her bobbin tray. Even with the machinery going, they could all hear the clatter.

“All right, then, I know how this works,” Ellie said loudly in a tremulous child’s voice. “Somebody has to start the turnout, and I’m going to do it.” She lifted her chest, smoothed her apron, and started walking toward the door. “Follow me,” she said as she passed the shocked workers at the looms.

“Ellie, no, no!” screamed her mother, lunging after her. “Don’t let her walk out the door,” she shouted to the others. “She’ll be punished, I know it, they’ll take her away from me!”

Alice reached Ellie first, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder. “Ellie, you are wonderfully brave, but not now, not this,” she said under her breath. “Wait, wait. They’ll respond.” Gently she delivered the child back to her mother.

“I’m no coward,” Ellie said staunchly. “I could do it, really.”

“I know you could,” her mother said. And began to cry.

It was one o’clock. Suddenly Briggs strode into the room with a large sheet of paper and walked straight to the bulletin board, looking neither to right nor left. One whack on a tack with a hammer; the notice was posted. He turned and walked out. At that moment, the whistle blew.

One by one, the looms went silent as, wiping nervous fingers on their aprons, they all clustered around the notice. Alice was closest and read it aloud.

This is to inform all employees that no form of turnout for any reason will be tolerated. Any employees who defy this rule will be immediately terminated.

There will be some operational changes:

The paper was signed by Hiram Fiske and Jonathan. Not by Samuel.

The girls looked at one another.

“Did we win?” whispered one.

“I don’t know,” said another.

“We get raises,” breathed yet another.

A sound at the door. Some of the men on the voting committee were standing there. “We got some of what we wanted,” one of them volunteered, looking down at the floor.

“It isn’t much,” said Mary-o. “And no promises to fix the machines.”

The men stared at her and at one another. “We’ve got families,” one said finally. “We have to be realistic.”

“But we have strength of numbers,” burst out a younger man. “This isn’t enough!”

“It’s uphill, lad,” said the first man.

Silence, at first. Then Mary-o began to cry. Something was gone from them, taken by the meager concessions allowed by the Fiskes. There had been a momentum, a sense of power, something reached for—but not grasped.

“Someday,” said the younger one.

The committee would wait until the evening to meet again and formally accept the concessions made by the Fiske family. There was both disappointment and relief, a cautious, guarded relief. They had won something. Was it enough?

Some thought so. Others wondered.

S
amuel stood on the balcony of his room, looking down onto Lowell. There really was no choice, he knew that. Hiram had kept his offer as tight and minimal as he could. How could these people walk away from their livelihoods even when offered so grudging a raise as three cents extra a day? Life would calm down in Lowell. There might even be talk again of its sprightly, forward-looking culture. Famed writers and historians would still come; the girls would march with green umbrellas to impress visiting dignitaries; all as usual. All in his father’s vision. But the heart of it was beating thin.

He rubbed his eyes; Lord, he was tired. Over by the door, his Moroccan leather valise, fully packed, waited. He checked the time on his gold-cased watch, his father’s gift when he had graduated from Harvard Law School. The coach to the train depot would be here soon. It was time for him to start using that law degree; Baltimore—a city of energy and change, wholly removed from the strictures of New England—would be his place to start.

“You really mean this?” his father had asked last night. His voice had been on the edge of bewilderment.

“Yes,” he had said as calmly as possible. “I’m not your heir anymore. This is not the life for me. Jonathan will serve you well.”

“I made concessions—” Hiram had stopped. What had transpired between the two of them went far beyond that now. There was no way to mend this tear, and he knew it, too. “When you change your mind, I guarantee you, it will be too late,” he said heavily. “Don’t think you have the option to come crawling back.”

“That would be the last thing I would ever do.”

Samuel took one last look out the balcony window, letting himself wonder briefly what Alice was doing right now. With great relief, he realized no picture of her was coming up in his mind; no connecting thread was unspooled between them, no linkage. That was a start. Imagine nothing from this point on. He walked to the door, picked up the valise, and exited the room.

T
he vote was taken quickly that evening. The offer accepted. Alice left the boardinghouse, eager to escape the strange, almost-surreal atmosphere that descended in the aftermath of the committee’s decision.

So, just enough to keep them all swinging on the ropes that tied them to Lowell. Why had Samuel’s name not been on that meager offer? As heir apparent, he signed every document with his father, but not this one. Something had happened between the two of them.