* *

There was one place I was not going to work, and that was a laundry! I
had been through laundries, I had read about laundries, and it was too
much to ask anyone--if it was not absolutely necessary--to work in a
laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I
entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly
come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a
large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working
day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The
labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons
and thread manufactured and patterns cut and garments made up, and
fitted, or not, and then to keep those garments _clean_! We talk with
such superiority of the fact that we wear clothes and heathen savages
get along with beads and rushes. For just that some six hundred and
fifty thousand people work six days a week doing laundry work
alone--not to mention mother at the home washboard--or electric
machine. We must be clean, of course, or we would not be civilized,
but I do not see why we need be so fearfully sot up about it.

A new Monday morning came along, and I waited from 7.40 to 9.15 in a
six-by-nine entry room, with some twenty-five men and women, to answer
the advertisement:

GIRLS, OVER 18

with public school education, to learn machine ironing,
marking, and assorting linens; no experience necessary;
splendid opportunity for right parties; steady positions;
hours 8 to 5.30; half day Saturday.

What the idea was of advertising for superior education never became
clear. No one was asked how far she had progressed intellectually. I
venture to say the majority of girls there had had no more than the
rudiments of the three r's. It looked well in print. One of the girls
from the brassworks stood first in line. She had tried two jobs since
I saw her last. She did not try the laundry at all.

I was third in line. The manager himself interviewed us inside, since
the "Welfare Worker" was ill. What experience had I? I was experienced
in both foot and power presses. He phoned to the "family" floor--two
vacancies. I was signed up as press ironer, family. I wouldn't find it
so hard as the brassworks--in fact, it really wasn't hard at all. He
would start me in at fourteen dollars a week, since I was experienced,
instead of the usual twelve. At th