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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANACHAMPAIGN 
 
 on 26 
 
 i3/b 
 
 SEP 2 4 Ij73 
 
 OCT 8l9t9 
 MJ6 291^5 
 
 Wfi? 
 
 m^ 
 
 L161 — O-1096
 
 THE WOMAN 
 
 W 
 
 HO WAITS 
 
 
 FRAN 
 
 BY 
 
 CES DONOVAN 
 
 
 1 
 
 "VtAim ct v6RnAnlf?l 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS
 
 Copyright, 1920, by Richard G. Badger 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
 
 
 ^\ A- 
 3D '"l\'^v*) 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Woman Who Waits .... 7 
 
 II My First Experience as a Waitress . 17 
 
 III LiLLiE 31 
 
 IV Feeding the "Loop Hounds" ... 39 
 V Working Extra 59 
 
 VI A Supper Girl 70 
 
 VII A Tea Room for Men 82 
 
 VIII Home Hungry Janet 97 
 
 IX Where the Waitress Works . . . 107 
 
 X The Work of the Waitress . . , 120 
 
 XI Where the Waitress Comes From . 133 
 
 XII Harvest Time 146 
 
 XIII The Kosher Salami 163 
 
 XIV The Meadow Lark 172 
 
 XV The Illinois Waitresses' Alliance . 185 
 
 XVI Tipping 194 
 
 XVII The Lure of Dress 203 
 
 XVIII The Sex Game 211 
 
 XIX The Price of Independence . . . 221
 
 THE WOMAN WHO WAITS
 
 THE WOMAN WHO WAITS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WOMAN WHO WAITS 
 
 One Saturday morning between seven and 
 eight o'clock I took an elevated train at the sta- 
 tion of one of our large cities in the Middle West, 
 and rode down to the city to do some shopping. 
 The crowds on the train at this early hour at- 
 tracted me. The tide, which flows to and fro, 
 from the circumference to the center of the city, 
 was now at flood. I was interested particularly 
 in the women. There were great numbers of 
 them who swarmed into the coaches as fast as the 
 gates could be opened and shut. They were work- 
 ing women, but the privileged class, the aristo- 
 crats, the women who labored in the "Loop." 
 
 There were women of every physical type; 
 there was the blond girl with the pearl earrings 
 and high-topped laced boots, and the brunette 
 with a bewitching nose veil; there was the tall 
 slender girl in a "strictly tailored suit," and the 
 
 7
 
 8 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 short, fat girl in a frilly lace collar ; there was the 
 middle-aged woman who, with rouge and an ex- 
 travagantly short skirt, was making a pitiful at- 
 tempt to cheat the years, and the woman in rusty 
 black, and flat heelless shoes who had given up the 
 struggle for youth and was boldly and admittedly 
 old. 
 
 The first thing that interests one woman in 
 another is the success of the other's efforts at per- 
 sonal charm. Most of these women were young, 
 many of them were undeniably pretty, some even 
 beautiful, while one or two of them, without any 
 of the ordinary physical attractiveness, had some- 
 how acquired that elusive charm which we describe 
 as "interesting." 
 
 There are all sorts of people in the ranks of 
 the working women in Chicago. After some ex- 
 perience I have got to know them. There is the 
 high-salaried manager of a fashionable tea room, 
 the private secretary of a prominent lawyer, the 
 office executive, the stenographer, the typist, and 
 the little filing clerk; there is the saleslady, the 
 shop girl, and the bundle wrapper; the masseuse, 
 the chiropodist, the manicurist, and the lady bar- 
 ber; the boot and shoe worker, the garment 
 worker, the glove operator, the bindery woman. 
 All are a part of the great army of women work- 
 ers that every working day pours itself into that
 
 The Woman Who Waits 9 
 
 part of Chicago's downtown district known to 
 every Chicagoan as the "Loop." 
 
 Where do they all come from? What sort of 
 homes are they living in? Have they been born 
 in the city or have they drifted here later in life? 
 What has determined their choice of an occupa- 
 tion? Would it not be Interesting to have some 
 definite information in regard to some one of 
 these vocational types? These were some of the 
 questions that came to my mind. 
 
 It is a significant fact that statistics show that 
 the number of girls in Chicago between the ages 
 of fourteen and twenty-one greatly exceeds the 
 number of boys. Every morning paper records 
 the misfortune of some young girl, who has come 
 to the city in search of adventure. How many 
 thousand are there whose stories we never learn? 
 
 Why do they come? Because life is dull in the 
 small town or on the farm and because there is 
 excitement and adventure, In the city. The lure 
 of the stage, of the movie, of the shop, and of 
 the oflfice make of It the definite El Dorado of the 
 woman. It is her frontier and In It she is the 
 pioneer. 
 
 A few years ago the United States Department 
 of Agriculture sent out letters to thousands of 
 women who were living on farms inviting them to 
 tell what was wrong with the rural life of women.
 
 10 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 They were flooded with answers. These letters 
 gave many reasons why farm life had lost its hold 
 upon the farmer's wife, but back of all was the 
 complaint that life was hard and dull. Is it not 
 possible that many a woman on the farm has di- 
 rectly or indirectly, intentionally or unintention- 
 ally, encouraged her daughter to seek her fortune 
 in a different and a brighter way? 
 
 Another source of supply lies in the second gen- 
 eration of the stockyards and factory workers. 
 They, like the daughters of the farm, are encour- 
 aged by their mothers to seek an easier and more 
 attractive method of earning a livelihood. And, 
 because they cannot take with them into this new 
 life, the old world background of custom and tra- 
 dition that belongs to their parents, they are 
 even more poorly prepared than are the daugh- 
 ters of the American farm for the transition from 
 the old to the new life. Consequently, in enter- 
 ing upon these new contacts, the dangers and losses 
 incurred by them will be even greater than those 
 which will come to the woman who is in some 
 measure prepared by her American standards of 
 living. 
 
 It is comparatively easy for these girls to find 
 employment in the great city and it is from them 
 that a great part of this vast industrial army that 
 empties itself into the streets daily is recruited. 
 The employer in the Loop can utilize this cheap
 
 The Woman Who Waits II 
 
 labor most effectively in his well-organized ma- 
 chine. 
 
 "Carson Pirie, Scott and Company and Man- 
 del Brothers!" the conductor had sung out as the 
 L slowed down at the Madison Street station. 
 
 There was a rush and scramble. The crowd 
 seemed to move bodily towards the door. I was 
 among the rest. Down the stairs of the L plat- 
 form we rushed and were soon lost in the vast 
 throngs that were hurrying along Wabash Avenue. 
 On Madison Street I stopped and looked 5n 
 through the huge plate glass windows of a res- 
 taurant. I saw waitresses in white caps and 
 aprons walking about. 
 
 "Why not find out about the waitress?" I 
 asked myself, and the idea made a strong appeal 
 to me. 
 
 I walked on again. I went into several stores 
 on different errands and every time I came out 
 of a store I saw a restaurant and through the 
 windows waitresses moving about at their allot- 
 ted tasks. That I saw so many was not remark- 
 able when one knows that of the two thousand or 
 more restaurants in Chicago, approximately one- 
 fifth are located in the Loop. 
 
 I found myself saying again and again, "Why 
 not find out about the waitress?" 
 
 And then suddenly another Idea came to me, 
 "Why not be a waitress?"
 
 ti The PFoman Who Waits 
 
 But first I wanted to know what was already 
 known about the waitress. I searched through 
 the Hbraries but was unable to find anything ex- 
 cept one little pamphlet got out by the Consumers' 
 League of New York City entitled "Behind the 
 Scenes in a Restaurant." This gave statistics of 
 wages and working hours merely, but no real 
 information, no real insight into the situation. 
 
 I inquired of the Bureau of Labor in Wash- 
 ington and received the following reply: 
 
 "We have not made any special study relative 
 to the wages, hours of labor, or any matters per- 
 taining especially to the work of the waitress, and 
 consequently have nothing along this line to send 
 you." 
 
 When I decided to become a waitress, I had 
 no idea of writing a book. I did not at this time 
 imagine that I was going to get anything out of 
 my adventures except an experience. I thought I 
 might get some material for articles that might 
 be of real Interest and I thought that I could do 
 this in a short space of time. I had no idea of 
 what I should discover, I did not Imagine that 
 I was entering a new world and that I should 
 return with a knowledge of life new and strange 
 to me. I had had no particular desire to make 
 discoveries. I merely wanted to see what other 
 women, not in my world, were doing. I went on 
 and explored until I felt that I had gone a long
 
 The Woman Who Waits 13 
 
 way. Then I sat down to try and give an account 
 of what I had seen. 
 
 When I first started out to write this matter, 
 I purposed to make it simply a general statement, 
 such as I had read, about the conditions of life in 
 restaurants as I had found them without reference 
 to places where I had worked. I concluded that 
 I would mal^e no real contribution to the subject 
 unless I told the whole story accurately and in de- 
 tail. I decided that, though I did not know how 
 far my discoveries represented conditions in other 
 cities nor in other restaurants in Chicago where I 
 had not worked, I would make my account faith- 
 ful and accurate of what I knew to be true, my 
 object being not so much to give information as to 
 present a vivid picture of the life I had known. 
 
 I worked for nine months in the restaurants of 
 Chicago, not continuously but steadily, with short 
 intervals between each job. These intervals I 
 employed in writing and reflection. I knew the 
 difficulties of seeing clearly when one looks on 
 from the outside and I wished to make my account 
 as reliable as it was possible for one to make it 
 who has set out to interpret a situation entirely 
 foreign to one's previous understanding of life. 
 
 I made many friends in the waitress group, so 
 many in fact that I feel a certain sense of dis- 
 loyalty in writing down these intimate stories 
 of their lives. A good many portraits will un-
 
 14 The ffoman Jflio ff'aits 
 
 doubtedly be recognized but what I have said will 
 be no news to the originals and the outside world 
 will never know the persons involved. This reflec- 
 tion relieves my conscience somewhat, though not 
 entirely. 
 
 What makes the ston,- of the waitress impor- 
 tant, aside from its human interest, is the fact 
 that these women represent the advance guard of 
 working women who are marching steadily deeper 
 and deeper into the world of economic competi- 
 tion, getting into new and dangerous contacts. 
 
 The movement of women out of the home into 
 the world began long ago. Since the war they 
 have gone forward into the shop, the factory, and 
 the office at a more rapid pace than ever before. 
 There is now no talk of "back to the home.'' The 
 war has made conclusive a revolution that had al- 
 ready begun. Naturally a change so vast and so 
 far-reaching as that which is now going on can- 
 not be ettected without some losses. If women arc 
 destroyed or injured in this new life, there will 
 be a loss to working women generally. 
 
 The occupation of the waitress will have to be 
 classed for some time to come among the danger- 
 ous trades and the dangers are not such as might 
 occur to men. Tliey should be considered, how- 
 ever, in the same practical way because women are 
 particularly well fitted for this work if the proper 
 conditions are created. Losses which the women
 
 The Woman Who Waits 15 
 
 of today are incurring, if understood, will serve 
 to change conditions so that other women coming 
 after may be safe. 
 
 The question is not economic as I shall show 
 in the following pages and it is not one of over- 
 work. I have been a teacher, a housewife, an 
 office executive, and a waitress, and I have not 
 found the last named occupation any more difficult 
 than the other three. Every occupation, if en- 
 tered into seriously and because of necessity, 
 brings with it its quota of routine and drudgery 
 and, while I was more tired physically as a wait- 
 ress, I found this occupation more healthful than 
 teaching or office work. I found also that I 
 could earn as much money as, or more than, I had 
 earned when I first started out to be a teacher. 
 
 Personally I found this experience interesting. 
 Trying as it was and disagreeable as it was, I 
 have come out of it with wider sympathies for all 
 persons concerned, sympathies not only for the 
 girls and for the men who conduct restaurants, 
 but even for the patrons. The question is not 
 one of persons but of institutions. These condi- 
 tions have grown up naturally and inevitably out 
 of the existing situation. If anybody Is respon- 
 sible it is society, and society ought to Intervene to 
 improve conditions. 
 
 A great deal of what I have written will seem 
 shocking to many readers. The experiences were,
 
 1 6 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 in fact, shocking to me. It is probable, however, 
 that any intimate and realistic picture of life 
 would be shocking to some one. I once heard a 
 wise man say that there are many things shock- 
 ing in human nature but only shocking because not 
 understood. That we do not understand a situa- 
 tion in which we find ourselves is the reason we 
 are shocked. 
 
 This book is, then, an intimate, personal, and 
 realistic account of the life of a waitress in Chi- 
 cago restaurants. If it has any value at all it is 
 because it gives a truthful, sober, and exact state- 
 ment of what conditions of life are for the woman 
 who works in a restaurant and of what her in- 
 terests and ideals of life are. It has no other 
 purpose than that of making a certain situation 
 intelligible.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MY FIRST EXPERIENCE AS A WAITRESS 
 
 I STUDIED the "Female Help Wanted" columns 
 of the great organ of labor exchange, the Chicago 
 Daily News, and under the one headed "Domes- 
 tics-South Side," I found the addresses of several 
 restaurants which were in need of waitresses. 
 Then, dressed in my oldest and shabbiest black 
 suit, I started out one morning in search of a 
 job. 
 
 My first address was on West Van Buren 
 Street. I fought my way from Wabash Avenue 
 through the hurrying soot-stained crowds, while 
 the surface cars creaked and groaned at my side 
 and the "L" thundered furiously over my head, 
 drowning all other sound except the shrill whistle 
 of the traffic policeman, along narrow dark Van 
 Buren Street, until I came upon the number I 
 sought. It proved to be a restaurant and as I 
 looked in at the people calmly eating at the little 
 white-covered tables, I saw neat girls in white 
 aprons carrying food on plates from the rear of 
 the room towards these tables. 
 
 17
 
 i8 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 I started to enter, drew back, hesitated, tried 
 to think clearly, but the din of the street seemed 
 to interfere. I made another attempt. With my 
 heart beating so fast that it nearly choked me, I 
 pushed myself through the swinging door and 
 walking up to the man who stood at the cigar 
 counter, I asked: 
 
 "Do you need a waitress here?" 
 
 "We did," he replied, "but we hired one yes- 
 terday." 
 
 "All right," I said, and escaped gladly into the 
 street. 
 
 That was all he said and all I said. My relief 
 was enormous. I felt that by his refusal I was 
 absolved from the obligation to become a waitress. 
 After all, perhaps I did not actually need to be 
 one. Perhaps I could go around and ask people 
 about them. There was something terrifying 
 about the idea of life so totally new, so absolutely 
 outside the realm of my experience. But I had 
 made this bargain with myself. 
 
 I was by this time walking along another street 
 that crossed Van Buren. I looked at my next ad- 
 dress. There it was, directly opposite me. I 
 crossed and entered, not quite so excited this time. 
 There was a woman at the cigar counter. 
 
 "Do you need a waitress?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes," said she, "see the manager in the back 
 down there by the kitchen."
 
 My First Experience as a Waitress 19 
 
 I walked toward the kitchen. I met a nice- 
 looking young man in a white coat with the name 
 of the restaurant embroidered on it in read leeters. 
 
 "Are you the manager?" I asked. 
 
 "Naw," said he, "in there," and he indicated a 
 little door in the wall. 
 
 I opened the little door. There stood a httle 
 dark man sorting out piles of aprons and coats. 
 
 "Do you want a waitress?" I asked again. 
 
 "Yes," said he, looking me over, "where you 
 worked before?" 
 
 "Nowhere in Chicago." 
 
 "Can you step lively?" 
 
 "Don't 1 look as though 1 could?" 
 
 "What's your size?" 
 
 "Forty." 
 
 "When do you want to go to work?" 
 
 "Right now." 
 
 "All right, take these," and he handed me a pile 
 of white things. He opened the door. "Do you 
 want to be a dinner girl or a steady girl?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "I think I had better start as a dinner girl," I 
 answered. 
 
 By this time we were out in the restaurant. 
 "Take this girl downstairs," he said to one of 
 the boys in a white coat, "and tell them to show 
 her how to rig up." 
 
 I followed the boy down a narrow passage
 
 20 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 and a narrow stairway into a damp, musty-smell- 
 ing basement. At one end of it was a little room 
 lined with lockers. 
 
 "Show this girl how to get into her duds," 
 yelled the boy, and departed. 
 
 There were about ten girls in the little base- 
 ment room. They were putting on their aprons, 
 combing their hair, powdering their noses, apply- 
 ing lip stick to their lips and rouge to their cheeks, 
 all the while tossing back and forth to each other, 
 apparently in a spirit of good-natured comrade- 
 ship, the most vile epithets that I had ever heard 
 emerge from the lips of a human being, and 
 mingled with these were long oaths of obscene 
 profanity. 
 
 I felt dizzy, stunned, as though I were just 
 coming out of the effects of an anaesthetic and 
 things were not real to me. I was frightened, too. 
 The musty-smelling little room seemed to take 
 on an air of evil and of horror indescribable. 
 
 No one paid any attention to me. I attempted 
 to get into my uniform. Finally a plain-looking 
 girl, who had said nothing, offered to pin my 
 collar and to tie my sash. She said her name 
 was Lillie. 
 
 When I was dressed I went upstairs and the 
 manager gave me a belt and a punch and the 
 woman at the cigar counter gave me a bunch of
 
 My First Experience as a tVaitress 2i 
 
 checks and told me how to punch them. Then the 
 manager put me behind a counter up in front and 
 told a blond girl to show me what to do. 
 
 "Ever worked in a restaurant before?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Not this kind." 
 
 "Well, you got a lot to learn, kiddo," said she, 
 and with that word "kiddo" she seemed to admit 
 me into the fraternal order of restaurant workers. 
 
 "You wait on them five stools, right here in 
 front, see," she instructed, "first give 'em their 
 'set-ups,' that's a glass of water, silver and a 
 napkin. Then take their order. And as soon as 
 you bring 'em their order, you punch 'em a ticket. 
 Then if they want more you punch that after- 
 wards." 
 
 A bleary-eyed man was eating just in front of 
 us and he droned to himself in a sing-song tone, 
 "Another new girl ! a new girl every day ! where 
 do they all come from!" And turning to me, he 
 said, "You bet you got a lot to learn, kiddo, but 
 she's a good little pal, a darn good little pal she'll 
 show you." 
 
 Just then a man sat down on an empty stool. 
 I gave him his set-up, and then I said, "What'll 
 you have?" 
 
 "Ham on rye and a cup of coffee." 
 
 I knew where the coffee was, but I could not
 
 ±2 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 see any "hams on rye." "Where do you get a 
 ham on rye?" I whispered to a white-coated 
 youth. 
 
 ."Over there," he answered, "yell for it," and 
 then he yelled for me "Ham on rye!" to a little 
 grill on one side of the room. 
 
 "Yell over there for all the sandwiches, girlie," 
 he said kindly, "and when they're ready that fel- 
 low sets 'em here on the counter and you pick 'em 
 up. Seel" 
 
 I began taking orders thick and fast. When 
 they asked for sandwiches and coffee, or a glass 
 of milk with doughnuts or pie, all of those things 
 were just behind me or I could yell for them across 
 to the little grill, but when I got an order for a 
 "Roast Beef Special," I did not know what to do. 
 
 "Where do I get a 'Roast Beef Special?'" I 
 asked the waiter boy. 
 
 "Down in the foundry," he said. 
 
 "What's the foundry?" 
 
 "Aw, the kitchen, kid, down there In the 
 back." 
 
 I flew to the foundry, a narrow enclosure at 
 one side which was separated from the main room 
 of the restaurant by a railing piled high with 
 plates and platters and side dishes. There stood 
 a dozen girls all yelling orders to three perspiring 
 chefs. Great dishes of meat, potatoes, and vege- 
 tables stood on the steam table just underneath
 
 My First Experience as a Waitress 23 
 
 the railing. The sound of fryings and sizzlings 
 emerged from sicillets on a big range in the back 
 of the kitchen and mingled in the din made up of 
 the clatter of the dishes and the yelling of the 
 girls. 
 
 "Roast Beef Special!" I yelled. 
 
 A chef picked up a plate, and with a huge 
 spoon ladled out some mashed potatoes and 
 plopped them down upon it, sprinkled a spoonful 
 of spaghetti beside them, and passed the plate to 
 a big cross-eyed chef, who with a huge knife cut 
 a piece of beef from a big roast and slid it onto 
 the plate. 
 
 "Here you are, dearie," he said, "charge him 
 thirty cents." 
 
 A little later a man came in who wanted hot 
 milk toast. I went to the foundry for it as I 
 had been told that was where to go for hot 
 things. 
 
 "Hot milk toast," I screamed. 
 
 "Get that in the laundry, girlie," said the big 
 chef kindly. 
 
 "And where's the laundry?" I asked in des- 
 pair. 
 
 "Up in front." 
 
 So I went back and yelled my orders across to 
 the laundry. Most of the people that T waited on 
 ordered ten and fifteen cent meals, although occa- 
 sionally some one went as high as thirty cents.
 
 24 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 At the counter there came men only and men of 
 all kinds. Some were well dressed and quiet in 
 demeanor, of sedentary habits and with small 
 purses. They ordered meat with coffee and pie. 
 Once in a while there would come a nice-looking 
 boy in a fitted overcoat and with a generally well- 
 dressed air. He was sure to order a cream puff 
 or chocolate eclair. 
 
 Once, when there was a lull in business, a big 
 bold-looking girl came up to me and said, "Do 
 you see that man down there with the light hat 
 and the red necktie?" 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, he wants to talk to you.'* 
 "What does he want to talk to me about?" 
 "How should I know? Go over and find out." 
 The man leered at me from slanting, half- 
 shut eyes. I quickly decided that I did not want 
 to talk to him. 
 
 "Oh!" I said, imitating the manner and the 
 accent of my new companions, "he doesn't want 
 to talk to me," and I went on with my work. 
 
 I worked from eleven-thirty in the morning 
 until two-thirty in the afternoon. I flew from 
 laundry to foundry, from coffee urn to cream 
 spout, from setting up "set-ups" to swabbing off 
 the counter and piling the dirty dishes in boxes 
 underneath it. My fellow waiters and waitresses 
 were very considerate and helped me in every way.
 
 My First Experience as a Waitress 25 
 
 They called me "dearie," "Girlie," "kid," and 
 "kiddo," and gave me whispered tips to save the 
 butter, bits of breads, etc. and to use a dirty glass 
 if I couldn't find a clean one, but not to let any- 
 one see me do it. 
 
 At two-thirty Lillie came to me and said, "Let's 
 eat." 
 
 "That's right," I said, "it is time. I almost for- 
 got about It." 
 
 "Gee! I never forget to eat I" said she, "that's 
 the main business." 
 
 "Can we have anything we want?" I asked. 
 
 Lillie and the otKers laughed heartily at this. 
 
 "Gosh, no!" said she, "we can have some meat 
 stew, coffee, and pudding and that's all." 
 
 After we had finished our lunch, Lillie and I 
 went down to the basement room and put our uni- 
 forms into our lockers. Then we started home 
 together. When we reached State Street, Lillie 
 said, "Where do you want to go?" 
 
 "I think I'll go over to Woolworth's," I said. 
 I mentioned Woolworth's because it occurred to 
 me that it was a place likely to be patronized by 
 waitresses. But it got no reaction from Lillie. 
 
 "All right," she said, indifferently. "I live 
 down here just a few blocks. Good-bye, see you 
 tomorrow," and she walked on. 
 
 The next morning when I opened the basement 
 door a pretty young girl was sitting on a bench
 
 26 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 smoking a cigarette and spitting eloquently all 
 over the place. The other girls were grouped 
 around her. They were discussing their sweet- 
 hearts, and the way they had spent the previous 
 night. The pretty girl, who was about eighteen, 
 said that among her lovers there was a street-car 
 conductor. 
 
 Another spoke up and said, "I used to have a 
 street-car conductor, and I never paid any fare 
 then. But I ain't got any now, they all either got 
 married or turned me down." 
 
 A girl about forty years old said that when 
 she was out she couldn't take any beer because 
 she was under the doctor's care and then she told 
 what was the matter with her. 
 
 One of the others said, "And is that what you 
 got the matter with you ! Aw, Hattie, I thought 
 you was decent!" 
 
 A loud laugh greeted this remark, and a girl 
 said, "Hattie ain't never pretended to be decent 
 as long as I've known her, have you, Hattie?" 
 
 "No," said Hattie, "I don't make no claims to 
 being decent." 
 
 I looked at Hattie closely, for I supposed that 
 people who had such things the matter with them 
 bore outward and visible signs, but Hattie, though 
 common looking, was rather attractive, and had 
 a smooth, clean-looking skin. 
 
 Just then a pretty dark girl pulled up her skirts
 
 My First Experience as a fFaitress 27 
 
 and showed us her legs encased in white silk 
 stockings and adorned with yellow silk garters. 
 
 "Gee where'd you get 'em?" cried all the girls 
 at once. 
 
 "Stole 'em from my landlady to wear today," 
 replied the girl. 
 
 "Say, she'll kill you if she finds it out," said 
 some one. 
 
 "Tral la!" laughed the girl, "she ain't a-going 
 to find it out." 
 
 They went on with their toilets amid exclama- 
 tions of profanity, vile remarks and jibes at each 
 other, all perfectly good natured. They were very 
 attractive girls with fresh-looking skins in spite 
 of the rouge and the lip stick, and their chests and 
 breasts were creamy white. I feel sure that it 
 would have taken a specialist with the Wasserman 
 test to have detected anything wrong with them. 
 They seemed proud of their way of living and 
 wished to flaunt it in everybody's face. They 
 appeared to be happy, too, not cast down and 
 ashamed of their degradation. 
 
 As we were going up stairs, Lillie put her arm 
 around me and said, "Ain't them girls awful?" 
 I could see that she wished me to believe that 
 she was decent. When we got upstairs we joined 
 the other dinner girls who were eating their break- 
 fast at the counter before going to work. 
 
 I stayed at this place four days. Each morn-
 
 28 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 ing while I was putting on my uniform, I listened 
 to the conversations of the waitresses, and each 
 morning I felt sick at heart. It seemed at times 
 that I must rush out anywhere to get away from 
 it, that I could not endure it for another minute. 
 
 But when I was upstairs I forgot this side of the 
 life in the excitement of filling orders for the ever- 
 changing occupants of my stools. Between eleven- 
 thirty and one the revolving doors were never 
 still. They seemed fairly to push and shove the 
 vast throng into the restaurant. We could not 
 clear away the debris quickly enough to make 
 room for the newcomer. We slammed the "set- 
 ups" onto the counter and rushed madly after 
 orders while the manager walked excitedly up and 
 down outside the counters and yelled wildly as 
 he snapped a napkin at us, "Step lively, there! 
 step lively, girls!" And we stepped lively and 
 yelled in our turn, "Through, please!" to the boy 
 who was trying to remove the boxes of dirty 
 dishes, and to the little Polish girl who was trying 
 to cut the pie. 
 
 On the fourth day about two o'clock, a man 
 sat down at my counter who ordered bread and 
 butter, sliced peaches, and black coffee. I brought 
 the order. Then the manager came up and yelled 
 at me. 
 
 "Bring him some cream for his coffee!" 
 
 "He doesn't want it," I said.
 
 My First Experience as a JVaitress 29 
 
 "Bring it anyway," he snarled. 
 
 "What's the use; he doesn't want it?" 
 
 "No, I don't want it," said the man, turning to 
 the manager. 
 
 After the man had gone, the manager came to 
 me and gave me what he then characterized as 
 a "calling down." He was very angry. In con- 
 clusion, he said, "You do as I tell you if you 
 want to stay here." 
 
 And before I knew it, I had said, "Fm not par- 
 ticular about staying." 
 
 "That's enough!" he yelled, "Take your apron 
 off. You're fired! I'll give you your time. Go 
 get your dinner and then gimme your duds." 
 
 I took off the "duds" and handed them to him, 
 then walked out from behind the counter and 
 down the basement stairs. Several of the girls 
 were in the little dressing-room. 
 
 "What's the matter, kid?" asked one, "you 
 ain't off till two-thirty." 
 
 "I'm fired," I said. 
 
 "You are!" they cried in chorus, "what'd he 
 fire you for?" 
 
 I told them. 
 
 "Ain't that a damn shame I Say, ain't he the 
 mean cuss ! He was awful today!" and they were 
 all sympathy and kindness. 
 
 "Never mind, honey," said one, "you ain't lost 
 anything wheij you lost this job. You'll get
 
 30 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 another. Try over at number 20. They won't 
 ask you no questions." 
 
 The big bold girl came up and stroked my arm. 
 "Ain't that the prettiest waist she's got on, girls?" 
 said she, "I ben noticin' it every day, it's made so 
 cute." 
 
 Another girl said, "Ain't she got the pretty 
 brown eyes !" 
 
 "Ain't she!" repeated the big bold girl, and 
 turning to me she added, "You better leave them 
 eyes behind." And then she smiled. 
 
 I felt certain that I should weep. It was not 
 so much sympathy for myself that moved me, 
 though it all seemed very real to me, but it was 
 the kindness and sweetness of these girls. Their 
 sympathy for what they believed to be my misfor- 
 tune touched me deeply. 
 
 "Good-bye, girlie," they all sang out as I was 
 leaving, "Good luck to you! You won't have no 
 trouble gettin' another job." 
 
 "Thanks, girls," I said, "I hate to leave you. 
 I was just beginning to get acquainted," and amid 
 a chorus of "Good-bye, honey, good-bye," I left 
 the little basement room and climbed the narrow 
 stair way into the restaurant. 
 
 I stopped to say good-bye to Lillie and she gave 
 me her address. At the desk the cashier paid 
 me for my four days' work and did not dock me 
 for the half hour that I had not worked that day.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 LILLIE 
 
 The sign above a doorway In the lodging house 
 area known In Chicago as the "Port of homeless 
 men" reads "Marguerite Hotel, Rooms 50c, 75c, 
 $1.00 per day and up." As I went up a long, 
 narrow stairway, I was haunted by a vague Im- 
 pression that something was going to reach out 
 and grab me. Eventually I bumped into some- 
 thing. Thinking it might be a door, I knocked. 
 As a matter of fact, I pounded vigorously. An 
 elderly woman In spectacles and a white apron 
 opened this door and peered out inquiringly. 
 
 "Does Lillle C live here?" I asked, and 
 
 added in the same breath, "I've come to see 
 her." 
 
 Lillie was the dinner girl who had been so kind 
 to me. 
 
 I stepped into a narrow hall heated by a big 
 base-burner stove. 
 
 The woman groped her way up another flight 
 of stairs. I was interested In Lillie, so I looked 
 about. Leading from the hall were a number of 
 
 -31
 
 32 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 small, cheaply furnished bed rooms. These were 
 but reasonably clean. 
 
 Lillle's restaurant voice called from above, 
 "Come on up! I'm awful glad to see you!" 
 
 She led the way into a little room. A decrepit 
 double bed sagged in the middle of the floor, a 
 dresser with its mirror half hidden by gay neck- 
 ties, appeared to be sliding towards one window, 
 a rusty stove attempted to warm the dingy atmos- 
 phere, and a ragged strip of carpet tried to hide 
 the splinters in the worn floor. 
 
 "Take off your things," urged LiUie cordially 
 as she put a lump of soft coal on the fire that was 
 smoldering in the little stove and poked it into a 
 blaze. Then she drew up two chairs very close 
 to the stove and we sat down together. 
 
 "Why didn't you come before?" she asked, "I 
 ben lookin' for you every day. I ben sick and I 
 ain't worked for a week. I fell on the ice and cut 
 my head," and pushing back her hair she showed 
 me a long ugly gash across the top of her head. 
 
 I have often wondered since what really hap- 
 jpened to her. 
 
 I rocked back and forth in Lillie's biggest rock- 
 ing chair and she rocked back and forth in her 
 smallest one. The fire crackled and snapped mer- 
 rily threatening to burst open the little stove, the 
 surface cars rumbled cheerlessly below the win-
 
 Lillie 33 
 
 dows, and the smoke and fog of the winter day 
 seeped in through the cracks and filled every cor- 
 ner of the little room. 
 
 "You know I'm married," said Lillie. "I had 
 half a mind to tell you before, but I was afraid 
 you'd tell them girls down to the restaurant, and 
 I didn't want them to know. I don't have nothin' 
 to do with none of 'em, and I don't want 'em to 
 know my business." 
 
 "This is my man," she said as she handed me 
 a photograph. 
 
 It showed a young working man dressed up in 
 his Sunday best and Lillie herself wearing a wide- 
 brimmed hat adorned with artificial roses and 
 with a ribbon tied under her chin in a huge bow. 
 
 Lillie's wages at the restaurant were four dol- 
 lars a week. * 
 
 "Of course, I couldn't have a place like this 
 if I wan't married," said she, and she glanced 
 around the room with a look that said, "Ain't it 
 pretty nice ! It is my home and my man gives It 
 to me." 
 
 "He's a printer," she went on, "I have to get 
 up every morning to get his breakfast at five-thirty 
 and he doesn't get home to supper until seven. 
 If I didn't work, I'd be awful lonesome." 
 
 Lillie said that she was an orphan and had been 
 brought up by an uncle who had kept a restaurant.
 
 34 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 It was a restaurant with an assignation house 
 above it called at that time, Lillie said, a hotel on 
 the "European plan." 
 
 "But he raised me awful strict," said she. 
 "Them's the kind that is most careful about their 
 women folks. I worked in the kitchen at first and 
 after that I took the cash but he would never let 
 me do chamber work or wait on tables." 
 
 There was, however, an artist with curly hair 
 and white hands, soft "like a lady's," Lillie said, 
 who lived over the restaurant on the European 
 plan. Lillie, who was a greenhorn, thought he 
 was "grand." One day, when she was busy, but 
 not too busy, in the back court, he leaned out of 
 his window and said "Come on up, Lillie, I'll give 
 you an apple." 
 
 Lillie ran as quick as a flash up those back 
 stairs. "When I got to his door he was waitin' 
 and pulled me in and shut the door tight," said 
 she. 
 
 Her uncle found her later hidden in a closet, 
 whereupon he grabbed the artist by the collar 
 and kicked him downstairs. "I didn't have nothin' 
 more to do with fellers until I was married, but 
 I was married when I was eighteen. I ben mar- 
 ried thirteen years. This is my second husband," 
 said Lillie. 
 
 She seemed to attach but little importance to 
 
 I
 
 Lillie 35 
 
 this tragedy in her life, but went on telling me 
 enthusiastically about her wedding. 
 
 "I made my wedding dress all myself," said 
 she. "It was blue satin and I had white kid slip- 
 pers and white kid gloves, and a veil, and gee ! 
 but I was swell. My uncle had been payin' me 
 fifteen dollars a week and I had money laid by. 
 We got a little flat and I bought all the linen and 
 made it," and Lillie rocked comfortably to and 
 fro in her rocking chair. 
 
 "You are the first girl I've met since I lived 
 in Chicago this time that I've asked to come to 
 see me," said she later. Lillie, like the rest of us, 
 was a bit of a snob. 
 
 This remark of hers recalled to my mind the 
 scene of my first experience as a waitress. The 
 contrast of this life in the basement dressing room 
 was so immense that I wanted to know more 
 about the people. It encouraged Lillie to gossip. 
 
 "Lord, no. Myrtle's not a sport!" said she, 
 "she's rich, she is, she owns property and her hus- 
 band is a policeman, a sergeant, if you please I" 
 I had never understood before what it meant to be 
 the wife of a police sergeant. "But," added 
 Lillie, "I don't wonder you thought she was a 
 sport; she's the awfullest talkin' woman down 
 there." 
 
 Then, lowering her voice and leaning confiden-
 
 36 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 tially over toward me, as I sat slowly roasting 
 beside the rusty little stove, Lillie retailed to me 
 some of the more memorable and outrageous 
 sayings of Myrtle, the wife of the police ser- 
 geant. 
 
 I learned much about life that afternoon from 
 Lillie, about the life of the Loop, the life of 
 men, the low, common, vulgar, intimate life of 
 laboring men and women. 
 
 "I tell you there ain't a nicer place in Chicago 
 to work than that place," she went on. "The 
 manager treats you right and them chefs is the 
 nicest that I ever had anything to do with. Why, 
 in some places, the chefs are that mean they'll 
 pick up a plate of stew and throw it at you ! 
 You'll find when you get to working around that 
 conditions ain't no better anywhere than they are 
 at number 40. I'm sorry you left. You should 
 a took what the old man said to you. You know 
 you can't sass the manager or the head waitress, 
 not and stay in the place." 
 
 When I was ready to go, Lillie showed me her 
 little closet kitchen where she prepared the food 
 for herself and her "man" and then said, "I'll go 
 along with you as far as the butcher shop." She 
 put a skirt over the one that she already had on, 
 slipped into her coat and tied her head up in a 
 scarf fastening the ends well over her chin "on 
 account of my teeth," she explained.
 
 Lillie 37 
 
 When we reached the lower hall, she said, 
 "Come on, I want to Introduce you to 'Mam,' and 
 she led me way towards a back room. 
 
 "Mam" proved to be the elderly woman in 
 spectacles and white apron, the keeper of the 
 hotel, who had opened the door for me. The 
 kitchen where we found her was apparently very 
 small, but in reality it must have been of fair 
 size, for it contained a cooking range which 
 seemed to be fighting with a dining-room table for 
 first place, a sink which vainly tried to escape 
 notice by vanishing obliquely towards the wall in 
 one corner, a sewing machine, two chairs, astride 
 one of which sat an old man who regarded us 
 with stolid composure, a poll parrot in a huge 
 gilded cage which kept shrieking "Who's your 
 friend. Mam? who's your friend?" and "Give 
 poor Joe a cracker, Mam!" in an alternating sing- 
 song, and two little woolly dogs as white as the 
 snow down below in the street. On the table and 
 on the sewing machine were piles of women's 
 under muslins, the kind one sees in the shops on 
 the tables marked 79c or 95c. 
 
 "Mam" said that she was pleased to meet me 
 and I assured her that the pleasure was mutual. 
 We then exchanged a few remarks about the 
 weather and about Lillie's illness, and Mam made 
 the parrot speak a piece for me and the two 
 woolly dogs stand on their hind legs and shake
 
 38 The JVoman Who Waits 
 
 hands, and by that time I felt that I must go. 
 
 LiUie accompanied me down the street until 
 we came to the butcher shop. I bade her good- 
 bye and then watched her disappear through the 
 frost-covered door of the dingy, dirty little shop 
 that caters to the trade of the "down and outers" 
 who inhabit this region of Chicago, because they 
 cannot afford to pay carfare and must live within 
 walking distance of the places which offer them 
 some chance of casual employment. 
 
 I never saw Lillie again, but with her uneven 
 skirts flapping over the run-down heels of her 
 shoes, her shabby jacket buttoned across her flat 
 chest, the ugly gash cut in her head, the scarf 
 tied over her neglected and aching teeth as she 
 passed through the door of the little butcher 
 shop to purchase "the soup bone for her man's 
 supper," she has always represented to me all 
 that is most decent, all that there is of domesticity 
 in that port of homeless men and women.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FEEDING THE "LOOP-HOUNDS" 
 
 I DID not find it an easy matter to get my second 
 job. I went from place to place only to be told 
 that I was not wanted. At one place I learned 
 that I could have work fiv^e hours per day, for 
 which I would receive $5.00 per week, and that I 
 must buy two uniforms consisting of a white skirt 
 at $2.00, a waist at $1.25, and an apron at 75c. 
 These must be purchased through the company 
 and it would be part of my work to keep them 
 laundered. I did not take the job. 
 
 Finally at East Congress Street, an oldish 
 young man told me I might work from eleven to 
 eight. I suggested eleven to two-thirty. He 
 agreed to give me a trial. 
 
 He was a nice httle man. He showed me where 
 to hang my coat on a nail in the back of the room 
 and gave me a tiny white apron to put on. Then 
 he took me into the kitchen and said, with a wave 
 of his hand, "Over there's where you get your 
 hot stuff, and there are your sandwiches, and des- 
 serts and coffee you pick up yourself. You'll find 
 
 39
 
 40 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 the napkins and glasses in the dining-room." 
 
 There was almost no one feeding in the res- 
 taurant at that hour. Some girls were changing 
 table cloths and setting up the tables, others were 
 sitting in the back of the room washing, wiping, 
 and filling sugar bowls. The sound of dishes 
 and silver shding in and out of pans came muffled 
 through the doors leading to the kitchen and the 
 smell of roasting meat and boiling vegetables 
 made pungent the whole atmosphere of the little 
 place. Occasionally some one would sniff the air 
 appreciatively and say, "Smells good today, 
 doesn't it?" 
 
 I helped a girl to fold napkins. 
 
 "Ever worked before?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, you'll like it here. This is the grandest 
 place and they're the grandest people. That fel- 
 low you was with, he's the manager, he's Billie 
 Foyle, and the cashier is his sister. They're just 
 grand!" 
 
 "What kind of people are the customers?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Mostly women," answered the girl, "and 
 some of 'em are darn cranky. But you can't bawl 
 'em out. You've got to get along with 'em. 
 Billie won't stand for anything else. They just 
 about never give you a tip, and if they do it's a 
 nickel and they act' like it was a ten-dollar bill."
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds'' 41 
 
 "No men at all?" 
 
 "Once in a while a man blows in. But he looks 
 lonesome in here. Men most always give you a 
 dime, but tips depend on you. If they like you, 
 you gotta good chance for ten cents." 
 
 The scene changed. The rush began. I was 
 soon swamped. I attempted to take three or four 
 orders at once, got them hopelessly confused, for- 
 got napkins, spoons, and glasses of water, and 
 tried to return to the kitchen through the wrong 
 door. 
 
 "For God's sake, look what you're doin' !" 
 "My God, girl, can't you see I got my hands full 
 of hot stuff!" "Other door, girlie!" were the re- 
 marks that were shot at me by the exasperated 
 waitresses. Meantime Billie's eye was on me. 
 I felt it even when my back was turned. It was 
 clear that my days at Foyle's Teashop were to 
 number no more than one or two. 
 
 The girls crowded through the kitchen throw- 
 ing their dirty dishes into one pan, their dirty 
 silver into another, and stacking the glasses on 
 a shelf where they could be grabbed and used 
 again. 
 
 "One roast beef." 
 
 "One chicken salad sandwich!" 
 
 "Two on the fire, chef! Quick, my customer's 
 waiting!" 
 
 "That ain't your sandwich. Quit pickin' up
 
 42 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 my order!" were the remarks that filled the little 
 kitchen in quick succession. A girl said to me in 
 a low voice in passing. 
 
 "There's twenty cents on your table, dear, bet- 
 ter pick it up." 
 
 I hastened back to pick up the tips that I had 
 somehow earned. There were two dimes and 
 they had been left by two men. Under one lay 
 a man's business card with his name, address, 
 and 'phone number upon it I crumbled it up and 
 threw it among the dirty dishes. Later I learned 
 to know the meaning of the card left down 
 turned upon the waitress' table. 
 
 At half-past two the girls sat down to lunch at 
 two little tables in the back of the room. They 
 were permitted to eat anything they wished. This 
 is what they did eat: meat, salads, pastry, espe- 
 cially French pastry, and ice cream. The cashier 
 sat down with them. They called her "Rose," 
 and treated her as one of themselves. They 
 talked about their clothes, their housekeeping, 
 prices of food, and men. They always talked of 
 men. Then they turned to the discussion of the 
 girl whose place I had been hired to fill and who 
 had failed to appear at work a couple of days 
 before. It was because she had met with a hor- 
 rible experience in a "Yellow Cab." 
 
 "It was a darn shame," said some one, "she 
 was a decent girl till then. But I kept tellin'
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds" 43 
 
 her that she couldn't go out with fellows and 
 drink and expect to stay straight." 
 
 "Sure not," said another, "fellows ain't spend- 
 ing their money takin' you to "cabarets for nothin'. 
 You can't expect 'em to." 
 
 "And if you once get stewed," said the first 
 girl, "you're lost." 
 
 I was two days at Foyle's. On the second, in 
 attempting to enter the kitchen through the wrong 
 door, I collided with another girl and her tray 
 went crashing to the floor. When I was ready 
 to go home, Rose paid me $1.50 for my two days' 
 work and told me, as nicely as she could, that they 
 had hired a steady girl and would need me no 
 longer. 
 
 I was again in search of a job and in a few 
 days I found one. An amiable manager of a tea 
 room one day directed me to the Cafe des Re- 
 flections with the remark, "They are always put- 
 ting on girls." 
 
 The Cafe des Reflections in a basement on 
 
 Street, is a restaurant of mirrors. The 
 
 ceihng is mirrors, the walls are mirrors and the 
 pillars and posts that support the ceiling are 
 mirrors. There are glass-topped tables and white 
 painted chairs and blazing electric lights. The 
 effect upon entering is like a blare of trumpets. I 
 found later why the Cafe was always putting on 
 girls. It was because of these mirrors.
 
 44 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 I consulted the manager. He called the head 
 waitress. 
 
 "Do you need a girl, Ellen?" he asked. 
 
 "No," said she, "I have one coming from the 
 Alliance." 
 
 "Take this one anyway," said he, "she looks 
 like a very bright girl and I would rather have 
 too many girls than not enough." 
 
 Ellen led me to the basement dressing-room, 
 assigned me a locker and gave me an apron. She 
 told me to report to her as soon as I was ready. 
 I hurried into my uniform. 
 
 The noon rush was on. People streamed into 
 the cafe. Dazzled by the glitter and excited by 
 the hurry and rush of the place, these clutched 
 hastily at the backs of chairs lest they lose a 
 chance for a place. Girls with trays laden with 
 food and balanced perilously upon their right 
 hands wound in and out among the glass-topped 
 tables. Bus boys with trays of dirty dishes held 
 high above their heads, slipped through the crowds 
 on their glittering way to the kitchen. 
 
 Ellen stood in the front of the room ready to 
 seat the patrons as they entered. In her left 
 hand she held the long menu cards ready to hand 
 to the guests. As soon as a "party" came down 
 the basement stairs, she signaled to them, then 
 led the way to vacant tables, walking with that 
 swaying movement of the hips that is characteris-
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds" 45 
 
 tic of the head waitress, her blond head held high, 
 her bosom, compressed within a tight brassiere, 
 rising and falling underneath the lace of her 
 "open work" blouse, and her waist held taut in 
 the viselike grip of her double-barreled Nemo 
 corset. 
 
 She assigned me two tables. I had to have 
 help with my orders. At this hour the Cafe des 
 Reflections was serving a table d'hote luncheon of 
 four courses. There were girls here however, 
 who were waiting on four or five tables and who 
 found time to smile, to chew gum, and to touch 
 the guests lightly on the arm as they served them, 
 but I could not remember whether the man at 
 my first table was ready for dessert or salad or 
 whether the lady at my second was waiting for 
 her finger bowl. And this was a matter of ex- 
 treme importance, for the finger-bowl is the shib- 
 boleth of the lowbrow and the highbrow res- 
 taurant, and the Cafe des Reflections is the cheap- 
 est place where one can be got in the Loop. 
 
 In my anxiety and haste I spilled soup upon the 
 hat of one man. Covered with confusion I began 
 to apologize. He was a most gallant gentleman 
 and with an air of great magnanimity insisted 
 upon leaving me a tip although I begged him not 
 to do so. 
 
 At half-past two Ellen told me that I might 
 go, but that I must return at half-past five.
 
 46 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "But I want only a lunch job," I said. 
 
 "We don't have lunch girls here, only steady 
 girls and two-meal girls," said she, and added with 
 the air of a Prussian general, "You are a two- 
 meal girl. You work from eleven to two-thirty 
 and from five-thirty to eight-thirty." 
 
 "And what are the wages?" 
 
 "You get six a week from the house and the 
 side money you make is up to you." 
 
 I went down to the little basement dressing- 
 room where I found laughter and confusion. The 
 girls were changing from their black uniforms 
 into stylish street costumes. They crowded 
 around the one little mirror, splashing their cheeks 
 with rouge taken from tiny boxes, dabbing their 
 noses with little powder puffs, and outlining their 
 lips with sticks of vermillion paint. The air 
 buzzed with feminine voices. 
 
 "Where are you going. Marietta? . . . It's 
 the States for me. North American? . . . Why 
 don't you try something classy? I'm for a cig- 
 arette at the Russian Tea Room. . . Oh, hell, 
 my garter's busted ! Gee ! Winter Garden's punk 
 this week! Don't hog the mirror, you son of 
 a !" 
 
 The girls at the Cafe des Reflections used bet- 
 ter grammar than I had been accustomed to in the 
 "Quick Eats," but they were just as careless in
 
 Feeding the ^'Loop-Hounds" 47 
 
 their genders when they swore and they swore a 
 great deal. 
 
 I seemed the only girl who was not changing 
 for the street. I wore the shabby black suit that 
 I had considered suitable for a waitress. I 
 thought the other girls were a little contemp- 
 tuous of me because of it. 
 
 "I'm going over to the Alliance," said a girl. 
 "I'm tired and need rest." 
 
 "Oh, gee! life's too short to spend much of it 
 at the Alliance, Flossie," said some girl gaily, 
 "You can go there when there is no other place 
 to go." 
 
 I told Flossie that I should like to go to the 
 Alliance with her. 
 
 "Sure, come on," she replied. 
 
 On the fifth floor of the Merchants Building 
 on State Street, is a door with a sign on it which 
 reads, "Junior Alliance Rest Room." Flossie and 
 I entered through this door and found ourselves 
 #n a large pleasant room furnished with light- 
 colored porch furniture. Gay rugs were on the 
 floor. In two corners were writing tables lighted 
 by small wicker lamps, and in another corner were 
 two sewing machines, while the fourth corner was 
 partitioned off to form a tiny kitchenette and laun* 
 dry. A second large room led from the first, but 
 the door between was shut. It was always kept
 
 48 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 shut, for in the second room tired girls were 
 stretched out on narrow cots resting. Most of 
 them needed rest." 
 
 "Is this a Waitresses' Alliance?" I asked of 
 Flossie. 
 
 "No," said she. 
 
 "Well, what is it, then?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Who supports it?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 A stupid Scandinavian woman seemed to be 
 the matron. She was sewing. 
 
 "Is this a working girls' club?" I asked her. 
 
 "Naw," she said, and nothing more. 
 
 "What is it, then? Who gives it to the girls?" 
 
 "The society," she went on sewing. 
 
 "What society?" 
 
 "Just the society." She continued to sew. 
 
 "What's the name of the society?" 
 
 "It's no name, just the big society." She bent 
 her head low over her work. 
 
 "But who belongs to it, Jews, Catholics?" 
 
 "Naw, just ladies. Mrs. Armour and Mrs. 
 McCormick, and ladies." 
 
 Light dawned upon me. "You mean some 
 society ladies give it to the girls," I said. 
 
 "Yaw," said she. 
 
 The big room was full of girls. Some were 
 curled up on couches, some were stretched out on
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds'* 49 
 
 steamer chairs, others were talking together, but 
 many were merely sitting saying nothing. There 
 were plenty of old magazines on the table but no 
 one was reading them. 
 
 Flossie greeted her friends and then we went 
 into the rest room. We lay down on the little 
 cots. I could not sleep, however, because of the 
 noise made by the girls in the bathrooms and 
 shower baths which opened from this room. These 
 girls splashed and giggled and gurgled and swore. 
 They flung gibes at each other of the same coarse 
 good-natured kind that I had become familiar 
 with among the girls at the restaurant. I visited 
 the place several times and always the same sort 
 of conversations, mingled with the damp, sweaty 
 odors of bodies, floated over the cots where the 
 tired girls lay, as the doors of the bathrooms were 
 opened and shut. 
 
 "Better cut it out, kid! Too much is not a 
 good thing!" . . . "Say, you're beginning to 
 show what you do nights." . . . "There's some- 
 thing about a cigarette that gets me. I can't leave 
 'em alone." . . . "Say, do you think you own 
 this place?" . . . "That's my towel, you damn 
 
 bug! Quit grabbin' that soap!" . . were 
 
 some of the remarks that I overheard from time 
 to time. 
 
 When I returned to the restaurant I thought I 
 had been promoted. Ellen gave me four tables,
 
 50 The JVoman IVho Waits 
 
 and they were up in the front of the room. I 
 realized that I had been demoted when the girl 
 next to me said: "It's too bad, kid, it's the poorest 
 station in the house; all the hens sit here, but the 
 new girl always gets it. You'll get moved back 
 in time." 
 
 I got along well at dinner. It was tray service 
 and, although trays are heavy, they save trips. 
 But there seemed never to be any dishes. Silver, 
 glasses, napkins, were not to be had when I 
 needed them most. The bus boys were supposed 
 to keep our buffets set up with necessary dishes 
 but they never did even though we tipped them. 
 The usual tip to a bus boy is ten cents a meal. 
 
 At half-past eight I descended to the basement 
 dressing-room thoroughly exhausted. But, al- 
 though I was tired, nervously tired, I did not want 
 to go home. I was in a mood for anything, any- 
 thing but home. The other girls were dressing 
 to go to the theater, to a movie, or to a cabaret. 
 I was sorry that I had made no such plans myself. 
 I had been in the habit of reading or studying 
 quietly in the evenings until ten or eleven o'clock, 
 but after the excitement of such a day, I felt that 
 to dance in a cabaret to the music of a jazz band 
 was just the sort of recreation that I would appre- 
 ciate. One dollar and ninety-five cents in dimes 
 and nickels, my tips for the day, jingled lightly in 
 my pocket. The jingle added to my excitement.
 
 Feeding the ''Loop-Hounds" 51 
 
 I was beginning to feel the fascination of the 
 tip. 
 
 The next day was Sunday and Ellen had told 
 me that I would have to work from eleven in the 
 morning until eight in the evening with no time off 
 in the afternoon. I was afraid that I could not 
 do it, but when I had finished the day, I was not 
 so tired as I had been on Saturday. The Sunday 
 work was more regular and not so confusing. My 
 tips for the day came to two dollars and sixty-five 
 cents. Never before had ten cents seemed so 
 much to me as the little shining dimes that I picked 
 up from amongst the dirty dishes which each guest 
 left behind him. I learned to look as anxiously as 
 any other girl for this appreciation. 
 
 By Monday I had become relatively acclimated 
 to mirrors and the glitter of the Cafe des Reflec- 
 tions. In the morning, when I first went to work, 
 Emma, the girl whose station was next to mine, 
 wanted to leave the floor for a few minutes. She 
 asked me to look after two men whom she had 
 served and to get her tip if they left her one, 
 before the bus boys could steal it. 
 
 I got the tip for her. I also served an old man 
 at one of her tables. When she returned, I gave 
 her the dime that had been left for her, but when 
 she cleared the table where the old man whom I 
 had served had been sitting, she stole the dime 
 he had left for me. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 ONlVERSin OF ILLINOIS 
 
 \mmh
 
 52 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 Later she borrowed my pencil and kept it. I 
 asked her for it, and she gave me hers which was 
 like mine, but broken. It was only by insisting 
 that I recovered mine. All day she kept slipping 
 my orders on to trays that were half full of dirty 
 dishes and taking my tray for her own use. Yet 
 she did not seem to dislike me, for she spent 
 every leisure moment in good-natured gossip with 
 me. 
 
 "You'll make no dough here, kid," she said 
 kindly, "if you wear a wedding ring. String it 
 around your neck if you're afraid to leave it 
 home." 
 
 When I was ready to go home that night, the 
 cashier stopped me and said, "You owe the house 
 thirty cents, Fannie,. Can you pay me now out 
 of your tips?" 
 
 "How is that?" I asked. 
 
 "Here are two checks, this one with an under- 
 charge of twenty cents and this with one of ten 
 cents. You have to make them good. And here's 
 one with an overcharge of ten cents. You don't 
 have to pay that," and she slipped the checks over 
 the spindle on her desk. 
 
 "I have that last coming to me, I suppose," 
 said I. 
 
 She looked at me, and there was infinite sar- 
 casm in her glance. "That goes to the house," 
 said she.
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds" 53 
 
 I handed her the thirty cents, three precious 
 dimes from my little store, 
 
 I worked at the Cafe des Reflections five days 
 in all. I felt that I was getting along better all 
 the time until suddenly on the evening of the fifth 
 day, everything seemed all at once to go wrong. 
 The crowd began to arrive as early as half-past 
 five and there was a steady stream all evening. 
 There were not dishes enough to 2fO around. 
 There was no silver, no napl^ins, no bread. In 
 the kitchen there was a shortage of food. 
 
 The kitchen became a mad house. The cook 
 swore at the under-cook. The dish washers 
 cursed the waitresses who kept grabbing dishes 
 out of the dirty dish water and drying them on 
 napkins. The pantry maids snapped and snarled 
 while the waitresses shrieked their orders high 
 above the din. 
 
 About eight o'clock a dark nervous man and a 
 very blond lady sat down at my small table. 
 They ordered two fifty-cent dinners with beer. 
 I brought their soup and immediately afterwards 
 their meat course and beer. Then I went into the 
 kitchen to get dessert for four little ballet girls 
 from the Winter Garden who were at one of my 
 larger tables. I was loading my tray down when 
 Emma rushed into the kitchen and shouted: 
 
 "Come in here, quick, Fannie, that fellow you 
 just waited on is raisin' Hell!"
 
 54 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 I hurried back into the restaurant. When the 
 dark man caught sight of me, he pounded on the 
 table and shrieked, "I want some service here." 
 
 "What is it that you wish?" I asked. 
 
 "What do I wish!" he repeated savagely, 
 "I wish my coffee, of course." 
 
 I brought the coffee as quickly as I could. We 
 were in the habit of serving coffee, with the des- 
 sert unless the patron asked to have it with the 
 meat, and it had not occurred to me that this 
 man would want both beer and coffee with his 
 meat. 
 
 I served the dessert to the little ballet girls and 
 then began to remove the dirty dishes from the 
 table where the dark man and the blond lady 
 were sitting. He kept growling at me while she 
 sat embarrassed in silence. A fork slipped from 
 a dirty plate and slid rapidly down the seam of 
 the man's trousers. He jumped from his chair 
 as though he had been stuck with a pin, waved 
 his arms frantically in the air, screaming and 
 cursing. All eyes In the restaurant were turned 
 towards him. He rose and stalked in majestic in- 
 dignation past the cashier's desk and up the stairs 
 that led into the street. The blond lady laid a 
 quarter on the table for me and then she fol- 
 lowed him, stopping on her way at the cashier's 
 desk to pay the bill. That night the little ballet 
 girls each left me five cents as tokens of their
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds" 55 
 
 sympathy. They had never before given me a 
 tip. 
 
 When I was ready to go home-, Ellen came to 
 me and said, though very kindly, "The manager 
 says I'll have to let you go, you aren't experienced 
 enough for this place." And she handed me an 
 envelope containing my wages for the five days. 
 
 I went down to the basement dressing-room in 
 disgrace. The two-meal girls were changing into 
 their street suits. It was a gay scene and I felt 
 that I should miss it when I had no longer a part 
 in it. Marietta was tilting a ravishing hat over 
 one eye at an irresistible angle; Lorraine, seated 
 upon the floor, was pulling a pair of lavender silk 
 stockings over her slender young legs; Dolly was 
 pasting a microscopic bit of court plaster just 
 above the dimple on her right cheek, and Irene 
 was carefully adjusting a hair net and nose veil. 
 All were talking about their engagements which 
 they had for the evening or for the night and 
 quite frankly saying v/hat they expected to get 
 from this or that fellow in the line of money, 
 amusement, or clothes. 
 
 Flossie entered the dressing-room. 
 
 "Ellen told me 'he' made her fire you," said 
 she, "she feels real bad about It," and then she 
 added, 'Tm awful sorry, kid." 
 
 I was exhausted and my nerves were raw. The 
 tears began chasing each other down my cheeks.
 
 $6 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 1 could make no reply to Flossie. Finally I gave 
 myself up to my grief and sobbed with uncon- 
 trolled ardor. The girls flocked about me and 
 began to sympathize. 
 
 "I know that fellow," said Marietta, "he was 
 brought up in my town. He's in vaudeville and 
 that's his partner, that blond that was with him. 
 He's a dope fiend, takes morphine. You don't 
 want to pay any attention to him, he don't know 
 what he's doing any of the time." 
 
 "But the boss made Ellen fire her just the 
 same," explained Flossie. 
 
 "It was a damn shame to fire you for that, 
 kid," said Tillie, a big blond as she put her arm 
 around me. "Fm quittin' myself tonight, the 
 damn place gets on my nerves. Don't you care, 
 you'll get another job." 
 
 "But it makes you feel so mean to be fired," 
 
 interposed one of the others. 
 
 "Yes, it does," admitted Flossie, "but don't cry, 
 Fannie, it ain't worth it. Get on your things and 
 come along home with me. You live South, don't 
 you?" 
 
 At the Elevated I had completely regained 
 my composure and was ready to smile at the whole 
 thing. Flossie and I settled ourselves for a little 
 visit together. 
 
 "The Cafe des Reflections is one of the best 
 places in the Loop," said she, "and it's too bad
 
 Feeding the "Loop-Hounds" 57 
 
 you struck it before you were entirely experienced. 
 Now, I'll tell you what to do; you go up to the 
 Illinois Waitresses' Alliance at — W. Washing- 
 ton Street and tell Hilda I sent you. She's the 
 head of the Alliance and she'll send you around to 
 work extra until you get experience. Don't try 
 another steady job until you are an experienced 
 waitress." 
 
 I promised Flossie that I would do as she said 
 and I wrote the address of the Alliance on a card 
 that I had in my purse and then I ventured to ask 
 a question that had been in my mind. 
 
 "Flossie," I asked, "are Marietta and Lor- 
 raine and those other girls as bad as they try to 
 make us believe. I have been wondering if per- 
 haps they were not trying to show off a little but 
 did not really do the things they say they do." 
 
 "Yes," answered Flossie, "they are just as 
 tough as they say they are. I did just as they are 
 doing for years. You seel was left a widow when 
 I was only twenty, and my mother-in-law took my 
 boy to raise. I worked in all the restaurants up 
 and down the Santa Fe and I went out with the 
 boys and had as good a time as anybody. But 
 I wouldn't do anything like that now. I'm mar- 
 ried and it wouldn't be right." 
 
 "Does your husband know that you led this 
 kindof hfe?" 
 
 "Of course," laughed Flossie, "he led the same
 
 58 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 kind himself." But we are satisfied with each 
 other now." 
 
 By this time we had reached 51st Street, and 
 with a cordial invitation for me "to come see her 
 soon," Flossie bade me goodnight and left the 
 train.
 
 CHAPTER V\ 
 
 WORKING EXTRA 
 
 I FOUND the Waitresses' Alliance without any 
 trouble and introduced myself to Hilda. 
 
 "Sit down," she said, "I get you a job." 
 
 She then went on answering telephone calls, 
 completely ignoring me. I began to study Hilda. 
 She was short and stout, of middle age, with a 
 false front of brown hair that was not as decep- 
 tive as it was intended to be. A pair of nose 
 glasses tilted uncertainly upon the bridge of her 
 small nose. She wore a fussy shirt waist that had 
 been laundered too many times In the wash bowl 
 at home and a silk skirt with three broad bands 
 of satin around the bottom. A pencil poked into 
 the false front just above her ear added a rakish 
 touch. Her appearance in no way betrayed her 
 for the genius and diplomat I soon discovered- 
 her to be. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when I arrived and there 
 had been but one girl besides myself In the office. 
 Presently, however, the door opened letting in in 
 rapid succession some twenty or thirty girls. 
 
 59
 
 6o The Woman Who Waits 
 
 There were all types, the young and pretty, the 
 plain and neat, the modish person, the sloven, and 
 the frump. They distributed themselves about 
 the office; some crossed their legs and read news- 
 papers, some gossiped, and many merely sat 
 quietly with hands lying loosely in their laps and 
 did nothing at all. 
 
 The phone began to ring. "Main 246," said 
 Hilda as she took down the receiver. "Yes, I 
 send you couple girls." 
 
 "Who wants to go to Worthley's ?" she called 
 out. 
 
 Two girls arose and passed out of the door 
 without saying a word. 
 
 A little silence followed. A girl arose from her 
 seat near the table, walked over to the steam radi- 
 ator, spat behind it, and nonchalantly resumed 
 her place at the table. The 'phone began to ring 
 again. 
 
 "Yes, ma'am," said Hilda. "I get you two 
 girls over there by 'leven o'clock. Yes, ma'am, 
 you can depend upon me," and turning to the room 
 full of girls, she called out. 
 
 "The woman at the College Club, she want 
 two girls in a black waist. She pay a dollar. 
 Who want to go?" and two girls responded to this 
 request juct as they had responded to the former 
 one.
 
 Working Extra 6i 
 
 This occurred again and again until Hilda had 
 sent out every girl in the office except me. 
 
 "How much does it cost to join the Alliance?" 
 I asked, 
 
 "Two dollar," replied Hilda, and added, with 
 a glance at my shabby suit, "If you can pay a little 
 now all right, or you can pay after you have 
 worked." 
 
 Just then the 'phone rang again. "Yes, sir, 
 I send you a girl right away," and turning to me 
 Hilda said: 
 
 "You go to — North Joliet and work lunch." 
 She handed me the official card of the Alliance 
 with the address of my lunch job written on the 
 back. 
 
 The address was not hard to find and I was 
 soon busily at work. I was assigned three tables, 
 but the place was so small and so conveniently ar- 
 ranged that the work was not hard for me. It 
 was a little German place with a German pro- 
 prietor, German food, and many German patrons. 
 It was also very dirty. In this it was like the other 
 German restaurants I met later. However, it 
 had an atmosphere of Gemiltlichkeit characteris- 
 tic of German restaurants. 
 
 The proprietor greeted the patrons personally 
 as they came into the restaurant and exchanged 
 jokes or remarks about the weather with them.
 
 62 Th^ JTom^n Who Waits 
 
 After they were seated, he went about from one 
 to another to see if eadi was properly served. 
 Often he dianged a plate with the remark, "That 
 order is cx>ld. Let me give you some that is hot" 
 Now and then he laid an arm afiectionately across 
 the shoulders of a guest. Occasionally he walked 
 to the door arm in arm with a patron, stood chat- 
 tiiig while he paid his dieck, and then bade him a 
 pcnonal farcwclL In every way he showed a per- 
 sonal interest in all who patronized his little place. 
 
 Towards the end of the lunch hour, two Ger- 
 man bo3rs, evidently frcHn the country, came in 
 with their mother. They ordered huge quantities 
 oi wUurr sckujtzrJ, noodles, rye bread, and cofiee, 
 They spoke German to one another; so I spoke 
 to them in German. Tliey beamed with pleasure 
 and ve got on famously. The mother entered 
 into the spirit. When they left the boys shook 
 hands with me and each left a quarter in my 
 pahn. The German proprietor was pleased. He 
 offered to hire me *'steady'' on the spot. 
 
 I noticed that he was very much mterested in 
 ooe of the waitresses, a Gretchen-faced young 
 gai idio seemed to share with him the respona- 
 bifitj of the management of the little place. I 
 wandered if she was his daughter. 
 
 At the end of the famcfa hour, when we were^ 
 not bosy, an old man sat down at a table and this 
 yoong giii tock. his order. He entered into con- 
 
 I
 
 JVorking Extra 6"^ 
 
 versation with her and, after a time, I heard him 
 say, 
 
 "You can't stuff that down me, there isn't a 
 good girl working in a restaurant in the Loop." 
 
 Gretchen began to cry. The proprietor over- 
 heard the conversation. He walked behind the 
 table, put his arm around the girl, and, turning 
 to the old man, said: 
 
 "Ach, Gott! you should not talk to her like 
 that; she was good once." 
 
 I went to the Alliance every day for several 
 weeks and Hilda sent me out every day. I worked 
 in all kinds of restaurants. In the course of 
 time I acquired considerable knowledge about the 
 w^ork of the waitress. As I became "experienced," 
 I learned what the term meant. 
 
 One thing which I might have known, came 
 home to me with the force of a discovery. I 
 learned that the relation between the waitress and 
 patron Is a distinctly personal one. It is a good 
 deal more Intimate for example than that which 
 exists between the frigid person who sits as a 
 window in the Randolph Street Railway Station 
 and scornfully hands out tickets to the sheeplike 
 public that pass her windows. 
 
 Eating In a restaurant Is not exactly a sacra- 
 ment, but under any sort of human conditions, 
 it is something of a ceremony, a ceremony in 
 which the waitress plays an important role. The
 
 $4 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 existing intimacy is greater perhaps if the patron 
 is a man than if she is a woman, though in the 
 latter case the intimacy exists. 
 
 The men who patronize the cheaper restaurants 
 look upon the waitress as a social equal and any 
 man who comes in other than the rush hour ex- 
 pects a little visit with her. These conversations 
 are never particularly edifying, but as a means of 
 defining the cultural status of such places they are 
 of value. 
 
 One day when I was working at a lunch coun- 
 ter on South Deering Street, a weary young man 
 came in and seated himself on a stool at my 
 counter. 
 
 "Say, kid," he began confidentially, "I've just ' 
 had an awful blowl" 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 "Why," he continued, "after being up all night 
 and making a night of it, I woke up this morning 
 to find that my best girl had taken the big leap 
 and married another fellow. i\nd, girlie, I want 
 a pot of coffee, a big pot of coffee, and two hand- 
 picked eggs, boiled four minutes, and some thin 
 toast. I'm willing to pay for them just so they're 
 the real thing." 
 
 I chirruped something intended to be cheery. 
 He responded with "You bet! and girlie you 
 bring me that pot of coffee right now."
 
 Working Extra 6^ 
 
 I asked one of the other girls where they kept 
 the pots of coffee. 
 
 "Pot of coffee I Gee I" she said, "he must be 
 a swell guy. We don't have that kind around 
 here very often. Get a tea pot and fill it up." 
 
 I did so and then I mentioned the hand-picked 
 eggs boiled four minutes. 
 
 "Say, you tell him these are A No. i specials 
 right from under the hen," said the cook, and 
 put them in to boil. 
 
 The cook's remarks in regard to those eggs 
 were, as usual, ironical. Besides it occurred to 
 me that eggs hard boiled were no real balm for 
 broken hearts. I said to the young man, "These 
 eggs are guaranteed A No, i specials by the cook 
 but not by me." 
 
 "That's right, kid," he said laughing, "play 
 safe," and when he left he put a dime on the coun- 
 ter for me. 
 
 Another day two Yellow Cab drivers sat at 
 my station in an "eat quick" restaurant. They 
 were two young boys, so I began pleasantly, 
 
 "Well, boys, what'll you have?" 
 
 "What you got?" 
 
 "Just everything." 
 
 "Well, give us calves' brains and scrambled 
 eggs on toast twice, and be quick, girlie, we been 
 up all night and we're hungry."
 
 66 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 I hurried their orders back to the kitchen. 
 
 "On the fire, kid," said the cook, "pick 'em up 
 later." 
 
 I returned to the counter and gave the boys 
 their bread and butter. "What kept you up all 
 night?" I ventured. 
 
 "Arrested," replied one, "spent the night in 
 the Harrison station." 
 
 A little later he explained. He said, "The 
 Marquette Hotel is tryin' to run its own cabs 
 and it won't let a Yellow Cab in there, not even 
 if we are called. So last night us two got into a 
 fight, and we got arrested. 
 
 "That was too bad," I said, because I could 
 not think of anything else to say. 
 
 "Naw," said the cabby, "it was a lot of fun. 
 We got fined a hundred and costs but the rom- 
 pany paid it. They stand by us all right." 
 
 "Lots of excitement down in that Harrison 
 station. Two girls was arrested yesterday for 
 stealin' aigrettes at Usher Lane's. They had 
 nine or ten of them stuck in under their hats. 
 What do you know about that?" 
 
 "And there was a married woman that stole 
 some furs, sable furs," supplemented the other 
 cabby, "and the judge sent her up, and she has 
 two little kids at home." 
 
 "That was tough," said the first cabby. "She 
 bawled somethin' awful, but that old judge down
 
 Working Extra 67 
 
 there, sent her up in spite of her havin' them 
 kids. You know that ain't right. She was dressed 
 awful poor and she said her heart was set on 
 havin' them furs. Queer how women like them 
 things." 
 
 "Now them two young girls," he added, "they 
 was only about sixteen and they was dressed awful 
 stylish and they tried to act smart. They was 
 just as bold! They got ninety days and I was 
 glad of it." 
 
 "Why, if they were so young?" 
 
 "Oh, say, if you knew what I knew about girls 
 in this burg!" 
 
 I registered Interest. 
 
 "There ain't no decent girls here," he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "You surely can't mean that?" 
 
 "Yes, I do. I have experience with all kinds 
 them that's sports and them whose folks is re- 
 spectable, and they're all alike. All they want you 
 to do is to spend money on 'em. If you'll take 
 'em cabarayin' and spend fifty dollars on 'em, you 
 can have about any girl around, I know, 'cause 
 I've done it." 
 
 I protested mildly, in defense of my sex. 
 
 "Well, they're some, but they're darn scarce," 
 said the cabby. "The girls here is the wisest 
 bunch. A fellow ain't got no chance against 
 em.
 
 J 
 
 68 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 A restaurant is not just the place I would 
 choose to discuss the sex problem. But I was 
 interested. I suggested that men were partly to 
 blame. 
 
 "No they ain't. A girl has to show she's 
 willin'. There ain't no fellow that a decent girl 
 can't stop if she wants to. She's got the thing 
 right in her hands." 
 
 "I got acquainted with a girl from a good fam- 
 ily once," he continued, "and she started a flirta- 
 tion with me, but I knew she was respectable and 
 I couldn't marry her and I wouldn't go with her 
 for no other purpose, so I turned her down. She 
 was a pretty girl, too, and I liked her. Say, she 
 started the same thing with another fellow, and 
 in three months he made a bum of her. Awl it 
 makes you sick! I got five sisters and they ain't 
 never comin' here." 
 
 These children gaVe me ten cents as they went 
 out. 
 
 "You can't get along in any kind of restaurant," 
 said a girl to me, "unless you jolly the customers." 
 
 And certainly the customers look for the jolly. 
 Many times it is simply friendly and innocent but 
 quite as often the man starts deliberately to ex- 
 plore. He had, perhaps, merely an intellectual 
 interest. But few men, however, are looking for 
 purely platonic adventures. 
 
 If the waitress is too busy for jollying, the at-
 
 Working Extra 69 
 
 titude of the patron is quite different. During 
 the rush hour at a counter in a hash house, the 
 waitress might as well be a machine as a human 
 being for all the consideration she gets from 
 the men she waits on. The busier she is, the 
 greater her difficulties, the more impatient and 
 clamorous become the men. And it is always at 
 the noon hour that the coffee urn runs dry, 
 that there is no silver in the drawer, and no 
 napkins are to be found. The man is hungry, 
 the way to his heart is through his stomach, 
 and the waitress cannot take that way quickly 
 enough; so he vents all his accumulated wrath 
 upon her. The final hardship is that he neglects 
 to leave a tip. It is a well-known fact that the 
 waitress always makes her best tips on the slow 
 days and in the slow hours. The patrons' 
 lack of sympathy is one of the hardest things that 
 the waitress has to bear.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A SUPPER GIRL 
 
 Up to this time I had worked as a waitress in 
 about fifteen different restaurants, lunch coun- 
 ters, tea rooms, cafes, employees' lunch rooms and 
 department store lunch rooms. I had learned to 
 throw food on the counter at some places like the 
 Adams Lunch at i8i West Adams Street, which 
 are called "dumps" in the waitress world; to serve 
 it with as great dispatch but with a little more 
 art, at hash houses like White and McCreary's at 
 227 South Lincoln Avenue, and to be gentle and 
 refined in the service which I gave to the members 
 of the College Club in the Chandler Building. 
 I had learned that I need never expect a tip from 
 the women who, with bundles and babies, eat in 
 the lunch room at Worthley's nor from the pa- 
 trons of the employees' lunch room at the Amer- 
 ican Heat and Light Company, nor from the 
 habitues of the Park Tea Room, the rendezvous 
 of the oiiice woman. 
 
 Already I was learning a great deal about the 
 nature of woman and a great deal about Hfe. I 
 
 70
 
 A Supper Girl 71 
 
 knew by this time, in a general way, about fifty 
 waitresses. A number of those I knew intimately. 
 I knew Evelyn, who stayed decent because she had 
 a little girl, and it was Evelyn who loaned me 
 eight cents for a lunch which we bought and ate at 
 the Alliance one day when there were not enough 
 jobs to go around and I had been caught down- 
 town with only the nickel for my return carfare 
 in my purse. I had made the acquaintance of 
 Dottie, who was now married and decent, al- 
 though she told me that when she needed a pair 
 of shoes she had found it easy to "earn" them in 
 the way that other girls did. Then there was Lucy 
 who was old and deaf and stout, and who half the 
 time was out of work, and Minnie, whose hus- 
 band kept a saloon on the West Side, and who 
 worked for companionship and on occasion hired 
 a taxicab to come to the Alliance, and Selma, who 
 was chairman at all the Alliance meetings, ore- 
 siding like an I.W.W., and commanding by sheer 
 force of personality and loudness of voice, with 
 her, "My God, girls, listen to what I'm say- 
 ing." 
 
 I learned also to know men: the gay old man 
 who always paid the waitress silly compliments; 
 the grouchy, puffy, youngish fellow who clamored 
 impatiently for food, and the pathetic, middle- 
 aged clerk whose salary of fifteen dollars per 
 week condemned him to a hopeless daily struggle
 
 72 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 to satisfy a man's appetite and still leave a margin 
 for clothes and room rent. Among other familiar 
 figures were the man with a diamond ring who 
 radiated an odor of strong tobacco, the boy with 
 the restless shamefaced interest in woman as 
 represented by the waitress in her white apron, 
 and the father of a family who gratified a roving 
 disposition for adventure by coquettish little jokes 
 with the girl who served him. 
 
 I felt by this time that I knew a great deal 
 about the Loop restaurants and about the Loop 
 life. I began to be curious about the restaurants 
 in other parts of the city. I determined to get 
 my next job in some neighborhood outside the 
 Loop. Therefore, one afternoon at the Alliance, 
 when someone asked, "Who wants a supper job 
 at the Hayden Square .Tea Room?" I immediately 
 became interested. 
 
 "I worked there last nite," continued the girl 
 who had spoken, "but I live North and it's too 
 far for me, so I'm going to give it up." 
 
 "I worked there last summer," said another 
 girl, "it's a hard place to work, so many damn 
 steps to go up and down and the fellow that runs 
 it never wants you to do the same thing two days 
 in succession, but the money's good and the people 
 are nice to wait on." 
 
 I volunteered the information that I lived 
 South.
 
 A Slipper Girl 73 
 
 "It's the job for you, then," said the girl. 
 "Stop in on your way home; I'm sure he'll take 
 you. He needs a girl awful bad." 
 
 I went to work that evening at the Hayden 
 Square Tea Room as a supper girl, that is from 
 five to eight. I worked there for four weeks 
 every day including Sunday and I received in 
 wages seventy-five cents per day or $5.25 in 
 wages per week for three hours' work per day. 
 On Sundays I worked from four in the afternoon 
 until midnight because an extra girl was always 
 needed to handle the extra Sunday night business. 
 For this extra time I received another seventy- 
 five cents, thus bringing my wages for the week 
 to $6.25. 
 
 I found that the "money" was indeed good and 
 particularly good on Sundays. The first week I 
 earned in tips and wages, $8.75, the second 
 $11.90, the third $11.30, and the fourth $11.40, 
 making the total for four weeks' work $43.35. 
 And this job, except on Sundays, required only 
 three hours per day. Besides my wages and tips, 
 I received each night an excellent dinner made up 
 of anything I wished to choose from the bill of 
 fare, and I could have all that I wanted. 
 
 Between the patron of the tea room and the 
 waitress, the social gulf is wider than it is in 
 the cheaper restaurants. This differs in degree 
 in the Loop tea room and the neighborhood tea
 
 74 The JVoman Who Waits 
 
 room. For example, the relation between patron 
 and waitress was much freer at Foyle's than at 
 the Hayden Square, the reason being that the for- 
 mer is downtown, while the latter is a neighbor- 
 hood gathering-place. 
 
 At the Hayden Square, however, the relation 
 was extremely friendly and not at all suggestive. 
 The patrons here preferred courtsy to swiftness 
 and in such a place a really nice girl could do 
 very well. There were half a dozen pleasant old 
 gentlemen who liked green tea with whom I be- 
 came very friendly indeed, and there was a young 
 man with horn-rimmed spectacles and an unusually 
 sweet smile who came to dinner every night with 
 his wife and baby and who said to me, "I wish that 
 you could wait on us always." 
 
 A certain doctor and his wife were pleased to 
 have me wait on them. He used to joke pleas- 
 antly with me and she was very curious about me 
 although too well-bred to ask any direct ques- 
 tions. In fact I built up a nice little clientele in 
 the four weeks that I worked at the Hayden 
 Square. Three young Jewish men were particu- 
 lar favorites with all of the waitresses both be- 
 cause of their agreeable manners and their lib- 
 eral tips. All the Jews who came to the Hayden 
 Square were especially courteous to the waitress. 
 
 One evening a woman became angry with me 
 because I kept her waiting. I told her that I was
 
 A Supper Girl 75 
 
 sorry and explained that two of our waitresses 
 were sick, but she received my apology ungra- 
 ciously and muttered something about "that being 
 no excuse." She left me no tip and, although I 
 waited on her several times after that and gave 
 her excellent service, she never gave me a tip. 
 She did not fail to tip the other waitresses. For 
 the most part the people that patronize a place 
 like the Hayden Square are well bred and no one 
 has a better chance of judging this than the 
 waitress. When I met with discourtesy from any 
 one it was from a woman. 
 
 There were some curious types at the Hayden 
 Square. There was an unmarried woman about 
 thirty-five who was staying at the hotel and who 
 was in love with the soda-fountain man. He did 
 not respond, although he had to be courteous. 
 She used to come down In the afternoons and sit 
 talking to him. The waitresses hugely enjoyed 
 all this, but It was really pathetic. Another used 
 to come when we were not busy, order some tea, 
 and carry on a long monologue about things that 
 happened In the hotel. It was harmless gossip 
 and hard to follow, but she did not seem to need 
 any response from us, though apparently we were 
 her audience. Several women who came for 
 afternoon tea would converse in loud tones about 
 "my housekeeper," "my car," and "my chauf- 
 feur," all with the obvious intention of Impressing
 
 76 The JVoman Who Walts 
 
 the waitresses. I often wished that they could 
 have heard the diagnosis of Letty, our Irish girl. 
 
 who would say: "The damn they haven't 
 
 got a car! Their husbands are traveling men 
 and they do their own work just like we do." 
 
 The waitresses who worked here were pretty. 
 They were even stylish. They began at once to 
 take an interest in me, and to make suggestions 
 about the improvement of my appearance. 
 
 "Why don't you wear shorter skirts, Fannie?" 
 asked Mary, and added, "long skirts make a girl 
 look like an old woman." 
 
 "If you would 'dip' your hair a little in the 
 front, Fannie, you'd be a real good looking girl," 
 suggested Louise. 
 
 "Don't you change your hair, Fannie," inter- 
 posed Letty, And to the others, she said. 
 
 "Fannie's hair is all right. Lots of the swells 
 who come in here wear their hair that plain way. 
 I think it looks nice. That's the way I'd do 
 mine only it's all broke off with the curling iron." 
 
 Letty was the best waitress we had and the 
 most popular both with the patrons and with the 
 other girls. She said that she had run away from 
 home when she was seventeen and that at first 
 she had done office work but that there was no 
 money in It, so she had quit and "gone to hashin'." 
 She had worked all over the Loop. A year be- 
 fore I met her, she had married. She said that
 
 A Supper Girl 77 
 
 her husband was from a good family, but that 
 he had run away from home when a small boy. 
 
 "He lived with women from the time he was 
 seventeen," said she, "and they supported him. 
 But since we've been married, he's had a steady 
 job. He gets twenty-five a week now and he's 
 the grandest man and so good to me ! And the 
 thing I like best about him, Fannie, is that the 
 drunker he gets, the more of a gentleman he is. 
 He can be as drunk as a fool, but he's always 
 a gentleman,'" 
 
 Letty and her husband were devotees of the 
 cabaret. It was nothing for them, so she said, 
 to spend five or ten dollars in an afternoon or 
 evening on eating and drinking in these places. 
 This was their ideal of perfect enjoyment. Letty 
 would often come to work at five o'clock much 
 the worse for drink and at these times her temper 
 was frightful. At times she was in a state bor- 
 dering on delirium tremens. She would scream 
 and clutch the hands of one of the girls and beg 
 her to hold tight, crying pitifully. 
 
 "I am going crazy; oh, I know that I am going 
 crazy!" 
 
 And Mary, one of the other girls, exchanged 
 wise glances with me and said: 
 
 "Letty and her husband ain't got no sense. 
 Too much drives you nuts." 
 
 One night in the kitchen, Letty smashed a plat-
 
 78 The JVoman Who Waits 
 
 ter over the head of one of the negroes and we 
 always had a feeling that she might throw a 
 glass of water in the face of any one of us on the 
 slightest provocation. 
 
 Letty and IVlary quarreled constantly although 
 they were very fond of each other. These quar- 
 rels were comedy, low comedy. Both girls were 
 dishonorable and never hesitated to tell lies about 
 each other. Mary would insist that a certain tray 
 of dirty dishes belonged to Letty and Letty would 
 insist that it belonged to Mary. They played all 
 sorts of mean little tricks on each other. Letty 
 carried out as few dirty dishes as possible. She 
 had a clever way of slipping a few on to this 
 girl's tray and a few on to that girl's tray until 
 almost none were left for her. The rest of us 
 "stood" for this quite amiably, but when It was 
 Mary's turn, there was always a battle. 
 
 A certain family group, consisting of father, 
 mother, two sons and a daughter, used to come to 
 the Hayden Square almost every night. None of 
 the girls wanted to wait on them for as they said, 
 "It takes all night and they are only good for 
 a quarter or maybe fifteen cents." Mary was 
 little and quick and when she saw them coming, 
 she would escape into the kitchen and remain hid- 
 den behind the tall racks of dishes, whispering 
 gleefully to the rest of us as we passed by,
 
 A Supper Girl 79 
 
 "Gee, Letty got the 'family' tonight. I ducked 
 when I saw them coming!" 
 
 The girls here watched for the tip and were in- 
 dignant if they did not receive one from every 
 person served. It made Letty furious to have 
 a patron "stick her up" and Louise used to say, "If 
 they can't afford to tip, they have no business eat- 
 ing in a place like this." 
 
 And while I was a waitress, I found myself 
 agreeing with Louise. 
 
 There was in this group no code of "honor 
 among thieves." I often lost a tip that was mine 
 because the patron would hide it among the dishes. 
 If another girl cleared that table, she took the tip. 
 There were many quarrels about this among the 
 girls although each knew that she would do the 
 same thing when the opportunity offered. 
 
 The kitchen of the Hayden Square was to all 
 appearances clean. But at night It was infested 
 with rats. Great fat, gray rats, as big as kit- 
 tens used to slink across the tables and racks, or 
 stand on their hind legs on the floor and blink at 
 the waitresses as they hurried by with their trays 
 of dirty dishes, or lurk In the sinks waiting for the 
 scraps of food left on the plates. Mother rats, 
 with whole families of babies, would forage 
 around among the discarded plates and saucers 
 and squeak and squeal with pleasure when a
 
 8o The Woman Who Waits 
 
 choice morsel was discovered. The waitresses 
 and the kitchen men used to make coarse jokes 
 about these rats in which the ever-present sex 
 interest was the important factor. 
 
 In fact the entire conversation centered about 
 this interest. We waitresses used to eat our din- 
 ner in a little windowless closet of a room which 
 we called the "boudoir" and in the half hour 
 allotted for the purpose, Mary and Letty talked 
 freely of the intimate life which they had with 
 their husbands, and the unmarried girls, with but 
 little attempt at concealment, that which they had 
 with their lovers. 
 
 In the kitchen the same atmosphere prevailed. 
 A man could not cut a piece of meat for a girl 
 without making a filthy joke about It or making a 
 suggestive movement towards her. There was 
 never any open violation of the proprieties but 
 always the suggestive talk and behavior. After- 
 wards in the "boudoir" each girl would retail 
 what the men had said to her. They enjoyed 
 these things, in fact they felt complimented by 
 them. After hearing these women talk, I realized 
 for the first time, how fragile a thing are the re- 
 finements of life. 
 
 The waitress had brought with her into the 
 home atmosphere of the Hayden Square the man- 
 ners of the downtown restaurant. The sort of 
 jokes that are current in the kitchen of a restau-
 
 A Supper Girl 8i 
 
 rant, as, of course, might be expected, are not 
 refined. They are broad Rabelaisian, dirty. In 
 the easy familiar contact with men, these girls 
 had acquired in regard to matters of sex (in 
 which, like most women, they were mainly inter- 
 ested) the incredible candor of men.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A TEA ROOM FOR MEN 
 
 I DID not get my job at Usher Lane's through 
 the Alliance, because Usher Lane does not employ 
 Alliance or Union help. I answered an adver- 
 tisement for "Long and Short-Hour Serving 
 Maids," which appeared one morning in the 
 Tribune. When I applied at the Men's Grill on 
 the sixth floor of Usher Lane's, the manager ( let 
 us call her Mrs. Chesney) said: 
 
 "Come tomorrow morning ready for work. 
 Your hours will be from eight-thirty to five-fif- 
 teen." 
 
 A little later she asked, "What is your name 
 and where do you live?" 
 
 I gave an address on Thirty-second Street. 
 
 "That is in my neighborhood," said Mrs. Ches- 
 ney pleasantly. 
 
 "Indeed!" said I politely, "and w'here do you 
 live?" 
 
 She told me. She lived in the same apart- 
 ment building that I lived in myself. 
 
 I did some quick thinking and decided that 
 
 So
 
 A Tea Room for Men ' 83 
 
 sjnce we had lived there for a year without hav- 
 ing seen each other, we should probably live 
 there several more without meeting. 
 
 When I reported for work the next morning, 
 Mrs. Chesney was waiting for me at her desk 
 and in front of her was a large application blank. 
 
 "I'll write this for you, Mrs. Robinson, if you 
 will answer some questions," said she. I noted 
 that she did not call me "Fannie" as they had 
 done in all the other places where I had worked. 
 
 She wrote down rapidly my name, address, and 
 phone number, a list of the places where I had 
 worked previously, together with the length of 
 time spent at each place, and then in conclusion 
 demanded the names of two persons as refer- 
 ences. I was utterly unprepared for this. 
 
 "References!" I cried in dismay, "no one ever 
 before asked me for references." 
 
 "Usher Lane must have them from every em- 
 ployee," said she. 
 
 I hesitated, looking hopelessly confused. 
 
 "It was not until seven years ago that I took 
 a business position," said she, and added kindly, 
 
 "We ought not to be ashamed of honest work, 
 Mrs. Robinson; we can dignify our labor by the 
 manner of our performance. Let me give you 
 a little advice; even though you may not have 
 had to work for your living always, do not let the 
 girls know that it Is new to you. If they think
 
 84 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 that you feel above them, you will not get on 
 well." 
 
 I began to see that Mrs. Chesney thought that 
 I belonged to the class of "sheltered" woman 
 who, when overtaken by a sudden reversal of 
 fortune, finding herself untrained turns to what- 
 ever seems most expedient at the moment. 
 
 "I think you will like it here," she went on; 
 "we try to make working conditions pleasant for 
 the girls. There are many advantages here that 
 are not afforded elsewhere. We give each em- 
 ployee a shopping card which entitles her to a 
 liberal discount on all purchases and we furnish 
 free medical care during illness. When you have 
 been with us six months, we give you one week's 
 vacation with pay, and when you have been with 
 us a year, we give you a two weeks' vacation 
 with pay. We aim to keep our girls. Miss 
 Clark, one of our long hour girls, has been with 
 us for fifteen years and you will find that most 
 of our girls have been with us two and three 
 years. We like the kind of girl who is willing 
 to remain In a place a long time. You are the 
 type of young woman that Usher Lane likes to 
 get and likes to keep. If there is any way that 
 I can help you, never hesitate to come to my 
 desk and speak to me." 
 
 She dropped her r's and her accent showed
 
 A Tea Room for Men 85 
 
 that she had come from the neighborhood of Bos> 
 ton but her voice was utterly devoid of any sug- 
 gestion of affectation. 
 
 "Thank you," I said gratefully to the kindly, 
 gentle, little woman, and I felt guilty and un- 
 comfortable with the knowledge of my real pur- 
 pose in my mind. With her New England 
 standards of honor and honesty, I knew that she 
 would not approve of me. 
 
 When she had taken down my references, Mrs. 
 Chesney turned me over to a nice plain girl 
 named Ada, who conducted me to the kitchen and 
 showed me how to pick up my breakfast. 
 
 "We are allowed only rolls and coffee," said 
 she, "or toast if we make It ourselves." 
 
 The kitchen was a long narrow room. Against 
 the wall at the back were machines for washing 
 china, glasses, and silver. In front of these were 
 great racks where the clean dishes could be 
 placed. In the center along the wall were refrig- 
 erators where the milk, cream, and butter were 
 kept and also the vegetables and all materials for 
 making salads. In front of these refrigerators 
 were racks where the cream and butter, and the 
 salads after they were made, could be placed 
 ready for the waitresses to pick up as they came 
 through. Next In order were the baking ovens 
 and behind these stood women rolling out cookies
 
 S6 The Woman Who Watts 
 
 or beating up cakes and muffins. At one end 
 were huge ranges in front of which the meat 
 and vegetable cooks were working. 
 
 All along the opposite wall were narrow cup- 
 boards with sliding doors where the china and 
 glassware were kept. On this side also a nar- 
 row niche was reserved for the coffee urn. 
 Everything was exquisitely clean and the women 
 working there in blue gingham dresses and white 
 caps and aprons looked most attractive. All at 
 once I felt hungry. I hastened to pick up my 
 breakfast of bran muffins (delicious ones that 
 you can get nowhere except at Lane's) and coffee 
 and, seated on a big box near a warming oven, 
 I ate it with relish. 
 
 After breakfast I helped Ada to wash buf- 
 fets and tables until ten o'clock when we went to 
 another kitchen on the seventh floor to pick 
 chicken from bones. This was a smaller kitchen 
 and only three women were working there. One 
 was making pastry, another was preparing vege- 
 tables and mixing white sauce in a huge machine 
 designed for that purpose, and a third was mash- 
 ing potatoes in a big mashing machine. 
 
 Ada and I were joined at the chicken picking 
 by two other girls, Adelaide and Kathleen. The 
 girls began to gossip together. Adelaide was a 
 widow but said that nothing could induce her to
 
 A Tea Room for Men 87 
 
 marry again because as soon as a woman married 
 a man she lost him, but, if she were not married 
 she could keep half a dozen on the string. She 
 resembled my conception of a "madame" of a 
 house of prostitution. 
 
 Kathleen was a pretty Irish girl with the Crans- 
 parent white skin and delicately colored cheeks 
 that so often characterize the Irish maiden. She 
 began a friendly conversation with me. She said 
 that she was engaged to a young Irishman who 
 had been In America the same length of time 
 that she had, that they had expected to be married 
 In June but she had begged off for another year 
 because they could not yet afford marriage. 
 
 "If I had to go on working, I couldn't keep 
 my flat as it ought to be kept," said Kathleen. 
 "And anyway," she added, "I don't know that 
 I could stand a man around every day just yet. 
 Now I see him only Wednesdays and Sundays, 
 and that Is very nice. If I see a man more than 
 twice a week, I get sick of him." 
 
 Just here the pastry cook took about a dozen 
 apple pies out of the oven and set them out on 
 racks to cool. The aroma from them filled the 
 air deliciously. We sat silent for a moment ab- 
 sorbing the delightful odor. 
 
 "You ought to get rich making those pies, 
 Martha," said some one.
 
 88 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "Well, ain't I one of Usher Lane's high sala- 
 ried employees?" remarked Martha drily, as she 
 went on rolling crusts. 
 
 "Perhaps when I am older," continued Kath- 
 leen, "and need a home, I will feel differently 
 about it. But while I am young, I like to be free. 
 It's fun to doll up for a man twice a week; any 
 girl enjoys dolling up that often, but to have one 
 around all the time is no fun." 
 
 "What do you do the nights you are not with 
 him?" I asked. 
 
 "I mend my stockings and do my laundry work 
 and have a quiet time at home. I let him have 
 Saturday night to take out some other girl. I 
 think it is only fair to a man to let him see other 
 girls once in a while." 
 
 "Time to dress, girls 1" called a voice outside 
 the kitchen door. 
 
 We hurried to the dressing room. There a 
 maid handed us each a clean apron, clean collar 
 and cuffs, and a perky little hair bow of white 
 muslin. The dressing room was large, com- 
 fortable, and very clean. We dressed carefully. 
 The rouge, the powder, and the lip stick were in 
 evidence here just as they had been in other dress- 
 ing rooms but there were fewer oaths and less 
 filthy language. The percentage of plain, de- 
 cent girls seemed greater than at other places 
 where I had worked.
 
 A Tea Room for Men 89 
 
 When we were dressed, we returned to the grill 
 room where we assisted the short hour girls, 
 who work from elev^en until half past two, to set 
 the tables. There were about sixty-five girls al- 
 together and of this number two-thirds were short 
 hour girls, for but one meal Is served here. 
 
 This grill room is furnished with dark, mas- 
 sive furniture upholstered in leather; heavy 
 draperies of pompous velvet shut out any ray of 
 light that might force Its way in If It happened 
 to be a fair day in the Loop, and lights are low 
 or carefully shaded. A fountain In the center 
 gurgles sleepily and sends out a breeze to refresh 
 the heavy city air. 
 
 At the four corners of the main room are small 
 rooms shut off by thick hangings, which are known 
 as "party rooms." These have a seating capac- 
 ity for from twelve to twenty men and may be 
 reserved In advance by groups desiring a privacy 
 greater than can be afforded In the main room. 
 Around the sides of the main room are booths 
 with wide, deep cushioned seats, and tables with 
 small shaded lamps, at which five or six men can 
 find places. 
 
 Here the lords of creation are free to scatter 
 cigar and cigarette ashes where they will, and to 
 sit with legs crossed without fearing that any 
 critical feminine eye will search them out, for 
 no woman Is permitted to enter as a guest. If
 
 90 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 a man wishes to entertain his wife, his friend, or 
 his sweetheart, at Usher Lane's, he must do so 
 in the women's lunch rooms. 
 
 By half past eleven the grill room is ready for 
 the day's guests. Every chair has been carefully 
 dusted and every table has been carefully washed. 
 Each table has its centerpiece and plate doilies 
 in pi.'"", its napkins neatly folded, and its allow- 
 ance of silver correctly laid. The maids then 
 stand around, very prim and neat in their de- 
 mure uniforms and await the advent of the pa- 
 trons of this exclusive rendezvous, this tea room 
 for men. 
 
 Shortly before twelve, the elevators in the 
 front of the room begin to unload the guests of 
 the day who stop at the cigar counter to purchase 
 smoking materials and then leisurely stroll past 
 the gurgling fountain until they reach their ac- 
 customed places. The maids hand each a menu 
 card, and then, with flattering deference, await 
 the orders. 
 
 On this, my first day, a handsome old gentle- 
 man with white hair and an air of being bored 
 with all things at present existing, sat down at 
 one of my tables. Nonchalantly he unfolded his 
 napkin, stuck a pince nez on the bridge of his aris- 
 tocratic nose, and glancing hastily at the menu 
 card, said indifferently: 
 
 "Bring me half a lobster and a cup of coffee."
 
 A Tea Room for Men 9! 
 
 After a very long interval, I returned from 
 the kitchen with the half of lobster and the cup 
 of coffee on my tray. But the accompaniments 
 of that small order were truly legion. The lob- 
 ster reposed upon a bed of lettuce, and around 
 about him was a dabby little mixture dotted with 
 caviar; a lump of yellow mayonnaise nestled 
 coyly underneath a claw; an olive marked the 
 apex of his tail; a sprig of parsley contrasted 
 vividly with the orange red of his horny exterior, 
 and a bit of pimento gave the needed dash of 
 color to the whole. And to serve this luncheon 
 with a nicety demanded by the exquisite dignity 
 of the grill room, I brought extra plates and 
 knives, designed especially for the serving of 
 lobster in half portions, and, beside the cup of 
 coffee I placed a graceful little crea.ii >itcher with 
 a swanlike neck, and a silver bow] ..ontaining ob- 
 longs of sugar upon which lay a tiny pair of sil- 
 ver tongs. 
 
 When the gentleman had finished pecking 
 away at the costly half of lobster and sipping his 
 coffee from the Haviland china cup with its 
 wreath of roses making a conventional border 
 around the rim, he ordered an orange ice for his 
 dessert. This I served to him with even greater 
 ceremony than had attended the serving of the 
 lobster. Finally I placed before him a tiny sil- 
 ver finger bowl garnished underneath with a lit-
 
 92 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 tie square of white peppermint candy. No gen- 
 tleman who lunches at this tea room would ever 
 consider his meal complete without it, and woe 
 to the waitress who, in her hurried progress 
 through the kitchen, fails to secure it for her 
 guest. In his righteous indignation he will for- 
 get to deposit beside his plate the little shining 
 dime which is his recognition of her service to 
 him as a personage. 
 
 We long-hour girls dined each day in the larg- 
 est of the party rooms which was in the corner 
 of the grill that was nearest the kitchen. 
 Promptly at two o'clock we filed into the 
 kitchen, and, tray in hand, collected from the va- 
 rious racks and warming ovens the materials for 
 our meal. We were permitted anything we 
 wished, including dessert and generous pots of 
 tea or coffee. We used the same dishes and sil- 
 ver that were used by the guests and those who 
 wished could indulge in the luxury of a napkin, 
 but on our dining table, instead of doilies or table 
 cloth, were spread sheets from the newspapers 
 left carelessly behind by the men who had eaten 
 and gone. 
 
 We were allowed one hour for this meal and 
 that hour was every day packed full of fun and 
 frolic. The girls told stories, played jokes, gave 
 impersonations, and jollied one another about the 
 happenings of the day. For example, one day
 
 A Tea Room for Men 93 
 
 I had taken a drink of water in the dining-room. 
 It was at the close of the lunch hour and almost 
 no one was in the room except the girls, but my 
 act caused a mild sensation. It seemed that this 
 was against the rules. At lunch an English girl 
 named Janet, who was very clever and jolly, 
 leaned across the table towards me and said: 
 
 "I hear you've taken to drink, Fannie." 
 
 "You may do that elsewhere but not at Usher 
 Lane's," said some one else, with mock solem- 
 nity. 
 
 "Do you not realize, Fannie, that you are a 
 part of a great organization?" said another 
 clever girl, "you are not a 'hasher.' " And then 
 she added in imitation of Mrs. Chesney's man- 
 ner, "you are a saleswoman. Your business is 
 to sell food but you are no less a saleswoman than 
 the young person who sells cloaks and suits." 
 
 "It's well for you, Fannie dear, that mamma 
 didn't see you," interposed Janet, "or you would 
 be this minute at the desk in the front of the 
 room getting a little lecture on how to behave 
 at Usher Lane's." 
 
 "Are you going to report me, Janet?" 
 
 "Report nothing!" laughed Janet, "we are 
 tickled to death that you got away with it." 
 
 After dinner each day we did side work, i.e., 
 filling sugar bowls, cleaning ash trays, etc. At 
 this work there was plenty of opportunity for
 
 vj 
 
 94 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 sociability and the girls did not fail to avail 
 themselves of it. 
 
 One day Kathleen told us at great length how 
 a "swell" dinner had been served in the home of 
 an English gentleman in London where she had 
 once been employed. The side remarks of 
 Janet and Ellen during this recital were exquisite 
 comedy. The girls screamed with laughter. 
 
 Then Kathleen started to repeat Wolsey's 
 farewell speech but Ellen told her to cut out the 
 highbrow stuff and give us something that we 
 could understand. 
 
 Ellen was an American girl of the Bowery 
 type, frankly common and vulgar but very clever. 
 Janet, however, had an air of quiet refinement 
 which I have noticed is characteristic of the Eng- 
 lish servant. Both had once been maids in pri- 
 vate families but neither would have returned to 
 that occupation. It is the group life in the 
 waitress world that makes the appeal and the lack 
 of It Is the strongest reason why girls are un- 
 willing to work in private families. 
 
 Just then I looked up from the sugar bowls 
 that I was piling high with Crystal Domino and 
 Ellen said, "Sh!" shrugged her shoulders and re- 
 marked ironically for my benefit, "Yes, and if 
 she hears, she'll think we're tough here and of 
 course we are not." 
 
 Every evening at half past five there was a
 
 A Tea Room for Men 95 
 
 great rush and hurry in the dressing room for 
 the girls were anxious to get to Worthley's, the 
 Boston Store, or the Mart to shop. 
 
 At the end of a week I decided to leave Lane's. 
 It was my first long hour job and I found it very 
 exhausting. I had never worked in a more badly 
 managed kitchen. The women who served the 
 waitresses in the kitchen were slow and unbusi- 
 nesslike. They were always running out of rolls, 
 dishes, etc. In the dining-room we had to hunt 
 all over for extra linen with which to set up our 
 tables the second time. In fact the entire grill 
 room was run in far from the businesslike, mod- 
 ern manner which I had expected from such a 
 firm. 
 
 On Thursday I told Mrs. Chesney that I 
 should leave and I explained why. She said, 
 "Finish out the week, perhaps you will have a 
 change of heart by Saturday," 
 
 I remained firm in my decision to leave but 
 I found it very diflicult. Not only did Mrs. 
 Chesney use every argument to induce me to 
 change my mind, but the girls themselves came 
 to me and begged me to stay. "And why won't 
 you stay, Fannie?" they insisted, "don't you like 
 us?" 
 
 In vain I argued that the hours were too long, 
 the work too hard, and the wages too small. 
 
 "But you will like it here just the same if you
 
 g6 The fVoman Who Waits 
 
 will only stay a little longer," they insisted, and 
 Janet offered as a special inducement, to give 
 me her station which was a little better for tips 
 than mine. 
 
 When I went to the paymaster's window to 
 get my check cashed, one of the kitchen women 
 was there drawing out some money, 
 
 *'Why are you leaving, girlie?" she asked. 
 
 I told her. 
 
 "We get six dollars a week, the same wages 
 as the waitresses, and we make no tips," said she. 
 
 "But why do you put up with it?" I asked, and 
 added, "it is a crime to pay such wages. No 
 restaurant in the Loop pays so little." 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears as she replied, "You 
 are young, girlie, you can afford to be independ- 
 ent, but I am old. If I give up this job, where 
 can I get another?" 
 
 Usher Lane's keep their help. In spite of the 
 low wages the girls stay on. They take a keen 
 interest in their work and do not need to be told 
 V/ to do things. Each feels a personal responsi- 
 bility. It is the policy of Usher Lane's that holds 
 them, the feeling that they are safe. They 
 know that they will be given every chance to 
 make good and do not fear that they will be 
 "fired" for a trivial fault and sent out into the 
 world to hunt another job. It is the sense of 
 security that makes the appeal.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HOME HUNGRY JANET 
 
 When I was eating lunch the last day I spent 
 at Usher Lane's, Janet, the English girl, leaned 
 across the table towards me and said: 
 
 "I'm mad at you for leaving us, Fannie, but 
 come tomorrow and drink a cup of tea with me 
 just the same. I want to show you my nice little 
 flat that I live in all by myself." 
 
 The next day was Sunday. I started out to 
 pay my visit to Janet. She had given me an ad- 
 dress on Homefield Avenue near Thirty-seventh 
 Street, one of the business thoroughfares of the 
 city. 
 
 It was a lovely spring day. As I walked 
 along looking for Janet's number, the surface 
 cars, carrying their heavy Sunday loads rumbled 
 noisily past me. The little shops on either side 
 of the avenue were closed and radiated an air of 
 small town respectability. Some sort of religious 
 meeting was being held in a vacant store build- 
 ing and men and women of the small town type, 
 dressed in their Sunday best were passing in 
 
 97
 
 98 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 through the open door. Children in white 
 stockings and cheap straw hats were playing on 
 the walks. 
 
 Janet's number turned out to be an office build- 
 ing with stores on the ground floor. An en- 
 trance at the side disclosed a stairway leading 
 to the rooms above. I mounted the stairs and 
 found myself in a narrow corridor with doors 
 opening upon it which bore the signs of doctors 
 dentists, and dressmakers. On one door was 
 the name, J. S. Littleton. 
 
 I knocked. Janet opened the door. 
 
 "Oh! it's you, Fannie!" she cried with pleas- 
 ure, and, taking my hand, she led me in. 
 
 She had a tiny apartment consisting of a bed- 
 sitting room, a combination dining-room and 
 kitchen, and a bath. In spite of the fact that the 
 dining-kitchen had no outside light nor ventila- 
 tion and that the plumbing in the bathroom was 
 antique and unsanitary, the little place had a 
 charming air of hominess and cleanliness. 
 Photographs of Janet's family were scattered 
 about and several books of the popular novel va- 
 riety were on the little living room table. Gay 
 colored cushions decorated the bed couch and a 
 comfortable rocker was drawn up before the one 
 small window. 
 
 Janet was strangely like her little apartment. 
 Her pale sickly skin spoke of the lack of sunshine
 
 Home Hungry Janet 99 
 
 and fresh air, yet there was about her the same 
 air of cleanliness and respectability. Her smile 
 was gay like the cushions on the bed couch and 
 she suggested the same sort of romance that was 
 written between the covers of the books which 
 lay on the little table. The light of her strong 
 sweet soul lighted up her plain face just as the 
 one small window with its little potted plant gave 
 light and cheer to the little sitting room. 
 
 Janet was very proud of her home. "You 
 know I roomed for years," said she, "and then I 
 felt that I must have a place of my own. I wanted 
 it all to myself so I could wash when I pleased, 
 take a bath when I pleased, and have things as I 
 wanted them. I was afraid at first to live all alone 
 like this, that is why I put my name on the door 
 J. S. Littleton, so strangers wouldn't know that a 
 woman lived here. And I was afraid on account 
 of what people would say about a girl living alone, 
 that they wouldn't understand that I was just 
 home hungry. The landlord didn't want to rent 
 to me, either. This is a respectable building and 
 they have to be careful. But I gave Mrs. Chesney 
 as a reference and I didn't have any trouble get- 
 ting my flat after that." Then she added proudly, 
 "It's a good recommendation for a girl to work 
 at Usher Lane's." 
 
 "I had a room-mate, a nice, refined girl," con- 
 tinued Janet, "but she went away, and, although
 
 100 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 I have lots of girl friends, I don't like any of 
 them well enough to have them live with me. As 
 long as I can afford it I want to keep this place 
 alone. It costs me twelve dollars a month, but it 
 is worth it to me. I don't spend money on clothes 
 and cabarets the way most of the girls do. I'd 
 rather have a home." 
 
 Janet set the table for us in the little dining- 
 kitchen and we sat down to have a cup of tea with 
 bread and marmalade. She reveled in the atmos- 
 phere of domesticity and played the hostess to 
 perfection urging me again and again to take 
 another cup of tea and to have more bread and 
 marmalade. We gossiped the afternoon away, 
 "just as my mother and I used to do in the old 
 country," said Janet. 
 
 "My room-mate was a Bohemian girl," began 
 Janet, as she poured my second cup of tea, "so 
 nice and refined, but she never did well at Lane's 
 because she wouldn't fight, and if you want to get 
 on in this world you've got to fight for your rights. 
 I felt just as she did when I first began to work 
 and the other girls walked all over me. Then I 
 woke up and began to fight back. I'd like to see 
 anyone try to put anything over on me now. A 
 working girl has to fight every inch of her way, 
 Fannie." 
 
 "I've worked here for years; ever since I came
 
 Home Hungry Janet lol 
 
 from England, and I've had good jobs. Two 
 years ago I had two hundred and fifty dollars in 
 the bank. Then I was sick and had to use up all 
 my savings. A year ago last fall I was down and 
 out; I didn't know how I was going to eat. Jobs 
 are hard to get in the fall. The only thing I 
 could get was this job at Lane's. It wasn't as 
 good as other jobs I'd had, but I had to stick. 
 Every day it seemed as though I couldn't stand it 
 another day. The work was so hard and I never 
 saw the sunhght for months except on Sunday. 
 It was dark when I went to work in the morning 
 and dark when I came back at night and I was 
 shut up all day in that dark room with those 
 electric lights and no fresh air. That's why we 
 all look pale and sickly. As soon as I saw you, 
 I knew that you had never worked much, you 
 looked so fresh." 
 
 "I like the girls, and I hke Mrs. Chesney. If 
 it wasn't for the fun I have there cutting up with 
 the girls, I'd go mad. But I've saved a hundred 
 and fifty dollars now and as soon as I can, I want 
 to go on short hours and then I'll learn tailoring. 
 I can't afford to be a waitress all my life." 
 
 "It was six months before I made any money 
 at Lane's. At first my tips were not more than 
 ten or twenty cents a day. It's hard for a decent 
 quiet girl to make tips anywhere. Now I have
 
 iti The Woman M^Jio Watts 
 
 my regular customers, married men with families, 
 who don't come up there to flirt, and I generally 
 make a dollar a day in tips." 
 
 "I've never had a word out of the way said to 
 me. But we have all kind of girls at Lane's just 
 as at every other place, and the sporty girls and 
 the ones that jolly the men make the good tips. 
 Not that I'm narrow minded, Fannie, living 
 around this way takes all that out of you, and I 
 don't criticize the girls. If a girl has a lover and 
 they think It best not to marry, as long as they 
 are not injuring any third party, I think it's be- 
 tween them and God. But when it's for money, 
 I don't hold with that." 
 
 "I think I'm pretty lucky now. I'm getting 
 six and a half in wages because I have worked 
 there a year and a half, and I have this little place 
 all to myself, and just about everything I want 
 except a piano. I do want a piano; I love music 
 so ! I've got a pile of music that high," making a 
 motion with her hands, "and I feel that I must 
 have a piano to play it on pretty soon. I'm think- 
 ing of renting one." 
 
 I wondered where she could put it in that tiny 
 flat. 
 
 As I listened to Janet, I was filled with admira- 
 tion. Alone in a great city, absolutely detached 
 from her family and the friends of her childhood, 
 she had the courage to make this struggle for
 
 Home Hungry Janet 1 03 
 
 existence and at the same time to cling* fast to her 
 ideals, and to do this in an environment which 
 so obviously did not demand this adherence. She 
 stood for all that was most decent, most respec- 
 table, most wholesome in the waitress world and 
 yet, so broad were here sympathies and so wide 
 her vision of life, that she had no word of criti- 
 cism for those who did not order their ways in 
 conformity with her standards and ideas of con- 
 vention. 
 
 When I asked Janet if she liked the movies, she 
 replied: 
 
 "Yes, indeed I do. I go once or twice every 
 week. Last week I saw such an impressive pic- 
 ture called 'the Reward of Virtue.' " She pro- 
 ceeded to sketch rapidly the scenario, dwelling 
 with the greatest pleasure upon all the details. 
 
 "It was the story of a chorus girl in a big city 
 and she was beautiful. Of course they are al- 
 ways beautiful in the movies," and Janet smiled 
 wisely here. "And she was the only one who was 
 good in that whole chorus. The other girls and 
 the manager put all sorts of temptations in her 
 way, but she resisted them all. Finally a rich 
 young fellow asked her to go to supper with him 
 at a cafe and he tried to tempt her but she said 
 no even to him, though she loved him. When he 
 found he could not tempt her, he gave her his 
 card with his name and address on it, and he told
 
 104 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 her to come to him at that address if she ever de- 
 cided that it did not pay to be virtuous. 
 
 "A day comes when the chorus girl is dis- 
 charged by the manager because he* says that she 
 does not help to fill the house with her friends as 
 the other girls do. Soon she is without money and 
 without food. So she goes to the apartment of 
 the rich young man and she tells him that she has 
 decided that it does not pay to be virtuous, and 
 that she will stay with him. 
 
 "The young man tells her to stay there, but 
 that he has an engagement for the early part of 
 the evening, but he will return later. He goes out 
 and gets drunk and does not return until the next 
 morning. 
 
 "Well, that night when the girl is sitting wait- 
 ing for the young man to come home, there is a 
 knock at the door and a servant from the apart- 
 ment across the hall says that her mistress is sick 
 and will the girl come and stay with her while she 
 gets a doctor. 
 
 "The chorus girl goes and she stays all night 
 because the woman is very sick and they can't get 
 a nurse. The woman has a baby and when it is 
 born, the doctor shows the girl how to wash and 
 dress it and when It is washed and dressed she sits 
 and holds it in her arms and then, all at once, she 
 feels so glad that she has escaped a great danger. 
 
 "The next morning early she goes back to the
 
 Home Hungry Janet 105 
 
 young man's apartment and finds him sitting there. 
 She tells him where she has been and then she 
 takes him by the hand and leads him across the 
 hall and they look through a glass door at the 
 mother and her baby lying on the bed. Oh ! it was 
 such a beautiful picture, Fannie! The sun was 
 coming in through the windows and shining with 
 such lovely colors on the mother and child and the 
 chorus girl said to the young man, 'I have decided 
 that it does pay to be virtuous, for the reward of 
 virtue is motherhood.' 
 
 " 'Yes,' said the young man, *the reward of 
 virtue is motherhood. Will you be my wife?' 
 And then the curtain went down." 
 
 "It was the most impressive picture, Fannie, 
 every girl ought to see it," and Janet's eyes were 
 bright with warm appreciation and sincere 
 pleasure. There was no question in her mind as 
 to whether or not marriage with the rich young 
 man could be looked upon altogether in the light 
 of a reward. 
 
 When I was ready to go Janet accompanied me 
 to the door. 
 
 "Do come again, Fannie," she urged. "You 
 don't know how I have enjoyed this visit ! I have 
 the girls at the restaurant, of course, but I haven't 
 very many friends on the outside and it's nice 
 to know a girl that you can ask in for a cup of 
 tea and a bit of toast and marmalade of a Sun-
 
 io6 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 day afternoon. I'm sorry you've left the restau- 
 rant. I liked you from the very first day, and if 
 you'd stayed you'd have been like Marie to me. 
 Not that I blame you, though; it's hard to work 
 long hours and that six dollars at the end of the 
 week looks pretty small. 
 
 "And Fannie," she added, "if you want to work 
 at the places where the money's good, don't tell 
 that you've ever worked at Lane's. They'll just 
 laugh at you and say that In that case they don't 
 want you." 
 
 "Why is that?" 
 
 "It's the lack of system. You don't have to be 
 swift to work at Usher Lane's. Any old lady 
 can get a job there," and she laughed as she bade 
 me good-bye.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WHERE THE WAITRESS WORKS 
 
 ^ The waitress will say, when talking of jobs, 
 "Anything is better than a hash house," and she 
 will worl^ in one only when she can find no other 
 place. She very often begins her career in one 
 but, if she is a girl with any ambition, she works 
 into something better as soon as possible. If she 
 remains a waitress for life, she is almost sure to 
 end in one, for the hash house does not demand 
 youth and physical attractiveness in its waitresses. 
 Of the 1,250 or 1,500 restaurants in Chicago, 
 I feel that I can safely say that approximately 75 
 per cent, are hash houses. Two or three are 
 found in every block in the Loop, and they are 
 scattered along every business street throughout 
 the city no matter how insignificant that street 
 may be. They do most of their business at the 
 lunch counters which occupy the greater part of 
 their rooms, but invariably they have a sign on 
 the window outside which reads, "Tables for 
 Ladies." These tables are, however, few in num- 
 ber and the ladies who frequent the hash houses 
 
 107
 
 lo8 The JVoman Who Waits 
 
 are fewer still, even with the most liberal inter- 
 ypretation of the term. The hash house depends 
 ^ for patronage upon men customers. 
 
 The hash house is open day and night. The 
 employees, both men and women, work in 
 "watches" of nine or ten hours each. These 
 watches are known as the straight watch, i.e., ten 
 hours in succession, and the split watch which may 
 be from 7 A. M. until 2 P. M., and from 5 to 
 8 P. M. The straight day watch may begin at 
 any hour after 5 P. M. and the straight night 
 watch any time after 4 P. M. The waitresses who 
 work a straight or split watch are called "steady" 
 girls. 
 
 Because of the great rush of business at the 
 noon hour, the hash house in the Loop also em- 
 ploys a large number of extra girls between the 
 hours of 1 1 A. M. and 2 P. M., who are known 
 y as "dinner girls." The hash house serves only 
 short orders and "plate dinners" (meat, potatoes, 
 and one vegetable all on one plate), and aims to 
 make good by serving these orders at top speed. 
 It caters to the business man who wishes to swal- 
 low the necessary amount of nourishment in the 
 smallest possible amount of time and to pay the 
 minimum price. 
 
 The tea room is different. In the first place It 
 has no counter. All the guests are seated at 
 tables and there Is an affectation of clean linen and
 
 Where the Waitress Works 109 
 
 attractive service. The tea room caters to women 
 and to the sedentary business man whom long ex- 
 perience has taught a certain caution and who pre- 
 fers a light repast rather than a square meal. It 
 specializes in dainty sandwiches and salads, and 
 in desserts that have a little flavor of the home- 
 made about them. The waitress in the tea shop 
 wears a nifty little apron instead of one of the 
 all-enveloping variety; she takes time to visit a 
 little with her patrons, to study their wishes, and 
 to serve the food to them rather than to throw it 
 at them. In time she acquires a mincing manner 
 that indicates refinement. The meat dishes are 
 garnished with a bit of parsley or a lettuce leaf 
 and the desserts rest upon small plates that are 
 "underlined" with doilies; the china is dainty, the 
 napkins have a bit of individuality about them; the 
 ices and sherbets are finished with a luscious 
 cherry; the prices are about double those of the 
 hash house. 
 
 The tea room is found all over the Loop, but 
 especially upon or near Michigan Avenue. It is 
 seldom located upon the ground floor but hides 
 itself away upon the upper floor of an office build- 
 ing and is easily accessible only to the initiated. 
 It is also found in every neighborhood in the city 
 and more often it is located in a house or in the 
 basement of an apartment building than on a 
 business street.
 
 no The Woman Who Waits 
 
 The tea room is open only in the day time. The 
 girls who work there come on watch in time to 
 serve breakfast, and work until after dinner at 
 night. The Loop tea room also employs extra 
 dinner girls who should be called lunch girls, who 
 work from 11.30 A. M. until 2.30 P. M., and 
 the neighborhood tea room employs extra supper 
 girls who work from 5 to 8 P. M. 
 
 The tea room seems to attract a better class 
 of waitress, a neater, prettier and usually a 
 younger girl. The seclusion of the tea room ap- 
 peals to her. At the Park Tea Room which is lo- 
 cated on the second floor of the State Building, 
 a waitress said to me, "This is a nice place to 
 work if you've got swell friends and you don't 
 want them to know that you are working." 
 
 The cafe serves three meals a day and it serves 
 them at tables, not at a lunch counter. It aims to 
 give substantial food at these meals and at a rea- 
 sonable price, but it does not attempt to provide 
 the dainties either in food or appointments that 
 are set forth by the tea room. The manager of 
 the cafe tries to employ the youngest, prettiest, 
 and most efficient girls that he can find and he 
 has little trouble in finding them, for the cafe is the 
 most lurcative place in which the waitress can 
 work, not because the wages paid by the manage- 
 ment are better than those paid in other places
 
 Where the Waitress Works 1 1 1 
 
 but because of the tips which, in the cafe, are the 
 greatest source of income. The result is that the 
 chorus-girl type of waitress is found in the cafe, 
 the girl whose stockings are always silk, whose un- 
 derwear is pink crepe de chine, and whose street 
 clothes are la derniere crie in fashion modes. 
 
 The patrons of these cafes are vaudeville ar- 
 tists, chorus girls, actors and actresses in the legit- 
 imate drama, office men, brokers, shop girls, tele- 
 phone girls, waitresses with their lovers, chauf- 
 feurs, railroad conductors with their wives, 
 mothers and daughters from "down State" who 
 are in town to do a little shopping, farmers from 
 Iowa who are seeing the city, greasy Italians with 
 their greasy wives and still greasier babies; in 
 fact, a truly cosmopolitan crowd. 
 
 The cafe gives them a really good table d'hote 
 luncheon for fifty cents and an equally good table 
 d'hote dinner for sixty cents, and it makes no dif- 
 ference to those who do not know, that the pers- 
 piration drips from the chef's nose into the soup 
 and that all the help spit indiscriminately upon the 
 floor in the kitchen. For these conditions are gen- 
 eral in all kitchens in all public eating places 
 where men are employed. 
 
 Two other types of eating place where the 
 waitress works are the employees' lunch room pro- 
 vided by large manufacturing concerns and the
 
 112 The JVoman Who Waits 
 
 clubs like the College Club, The Advertisers' 
 Club, the Woman's Club, the Men's City Club, 
 etc. 
 
 In the employees' lunch room the management 
 gives a substantial meal at the least possible cost. 
 For example at the x'\merican Heat and Light Co. 
 the employees get soup, stew with potatoes, salad 
 or a vegetable, and dessert with tea, coffee or 
 milk, all for fifteen cents. At the College Club a 
 two-course luncheon is served for thirty-five cents, 
 and a four-course luncheon for fifty cents. The 
 club is open only to members and such guests as 
 they may choose to bring. 
 
 Both the clubs' and the employees' lunch rooms 
 are carefully avoided by the waitress, for the 
 wages are small, the hours long, and there are no 
 tips. It is, however, much easjer to keep a job in 
 these kinds of places and the working conditions 
 are likely to be good, but they offer none of the 
 fascinations of the profession and into positions 
 of this sort drift the older women who have 
 passed through the stage where new experience is 
 all important, and have reached that where rela- 
 tive security has more value. 
 
 Then there is the department store lunch room, 
 which is a combination of the tea room and the 
 cafe and open only during the day. It caters 
 chiefly to women and for this reason is also 
 avoided by the waitress as long as she is young
 
 Where the Waitress Works 113 
 
 and attractive enough to get a job where men are 
 patrons. But when she has lost the charms of 
 youth, when she becomes slow of hand and foot, 
 the department store lunch room may become a 
 haven of refuge. Any observer can verify the 
 truth of these statements in Usher Lane's Tea 
 Rooms for women, where the waitresses are mid- 
 dle-aged, with hair screwed tightly back and fas- 
 tened with one pin, and where it would be diffi- 
 cult to find a kissable mouth or a pair of enticing 
 eyelashes. Many of these middle-aged women 
 have never worked as waitresses until they began 
 at Usher Lane's where the minimum wage is paid 
 and the tips from the wealthy patrons are few in 
 number. The pretty and efficient waitress goes 
 where her services receive more active apprecia- 
 tion. 
 
 The neighborhood restaurant may be of the 
 cafe or tea room type. Very often the cafe has 
 a lunch counter in connection with it but in a 
 restaurant of this type more business is done at 
 the tables than at the lunch counter. The neigh- 
 borhood restaurant is a more significant factor in 
 city life than the Loop eating place, because the 
 downtown restaurant, for the most part, feeds 
 business people who must of necessity eat away 
 from home, while the neighborhood restaurant is 
 usurping an important function of the home itself, 
 for its patrons are not only those detached indi-
 
 114 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 viduals who live in furnished rooms, but also mar- 
 ried couples who are just beginning life together, 
 and mothers and fathers with their children. 
 
 The girl who formerly did general housework 
 in the home is now a waitress. She escapes much 
 of the drudgery which falls to the lot of the house 
 servant, for that is done in the restaurant kitchens 
 by negroes or by Polish immigrants; she has com- 
 panionship and definite hours; and she makes' 
 more than twice as much money as the maid in the 
 private home. 
 
 As one of our writers on home economics has 
 said: 
 
 "The city housewife, who finds it diflicult to 
 get a servant and expensive to keep one, or who 
 may herself be employed during the day, turns to 
 the restaurant for the solution of her problem. 
 She does not, however, find it satisfactorily solved, 
 for the restaurant keeper is too interested in profit 
 making to pay any attention to dietetics. The 
 restaurant at its best to-day is merely a make- 
 shift during this period of transition from the 
 home dining-room to some sort of cooperative eat- 
 ing place." Just how we will work out a satis- 
 factory solution for this problem of modern city 
 life is an interesting subject for speculation. 
 
 The attitude of the employer towards the wait- 
 ress may be described as one which alternates be- 
 tween patient resignation and active exasperation. 
 He expects her to lie to him, to steal from him, "to
 
 Where the Waitress Works 115 
 
 stick him up" [i.e., fail to report for work with- 
 out giving him notice), and she makes it a point 
 not to disappoint his expectations. In the summer 
 months, when girls are scarce, he is at her mercy, 
 but in the winter he has his innings. 
 
 I began work in the winter of 191 7 and I was 
 repeatedly fired from my first jobs for some tri- 
 fling mistake. I was not a competent waitress, 
 but if any of the managers had had any vision, 
 they might have seen that I was the material out 
 of which a good waitress could be evolved and 
 that it would pay to be patient with me. But they 
 did not see it and it suited my purpose to be dis- 
 charged. In fact I preferred being "fired" to 
 quitting, for once or twice I found some difficulty 
 in formulating reasons for v/ishing to depart. 
 
 When I was discharged I immediately got 
 another job. I never had any trouble about that. 
 In fact I found it much easier to get a job than 
 to keep it. But my progress from hash house 
 to cafe, from cafe to tea room, and from tea room 
 back again to hash house, taught me something 
 about the business and about life. I discovered 
 that in a Greek restaurant the waitress was ex- 
 pected to be "on the job" every minute, that there 
 was no time for visiting or for comradeship. The 
 Greek feeds his waitresses only the commonest 
 food, never provides them with a dressing room 
 or even a mirror, but with a few hooks only on a
 
 ii6 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 wall upon which to hang their hats and coats. In- 
 variably he wants them to wear caps. A waitress 
 hates a cap. 
 
 The Greek is efficient; he is thrifty, and he is 
 clean in so far as efficiency demands cleanliness, 
 but no farther. He aims to turn out a certain 
 standardized type of food at as low a price as 
 possible and yet leave for himself a fair margin 
 of profit. He takes the impersonal attitude both 
 with his employees and with his patrons. He 
 usually works in the restaurant himself in some 
 capacity, perhaps as cook or counterman. The 
 patrons seldom know who he is. 
 
 The German manager is the direct opposite 
 of the Greek. Every patron knows him. Clad 
 in the height of fashion, and wearing nothing that 
 would suggest the employee, he circulates among 
 the patrons and is a good fellow. His food al- 
 ways has a certain individuality, and, although he 
 charges a good price for it, the same people come 
 back to him day after day. They sit in the same 
 places daily and laugh and joke together, for the 
 German restaurant is permeated by an atmosphere 
 "ffemutlichkeit." The German is not particular 
 about sanitary conditions nor fussy about details 
 of service, and the waitress likes to work for him. 
 He always provides a little dressing room for his 
 girls and does not appear to notice if they linger 
 a little over their toilets. He allows them time
 
 Where the Waitress Works 117 
 
 to eat and to gossip over their food and he does 
 not nag at them while they work nor shout at 
 them to step lively when he knows that they are 
 already working at top speed. 
 
 At the Hayden Square the girls were paid the 
 best of wages and were given the best of food." 
 They can't make a distinction by feeding you dif- 
 ferent food because you are working girls," said 
 the manager, "I won't stand for that." And he 
 was kind in many other ways. The Hayden 
 Square was the chummiest place that I worked in 
 and I really liked it better than any other. The 
 working conditions, however, were poor; the kit- 
 chen was enormous and it took so many steps to 
 collect the food for a table d'hote dinner that a 
 girl certainly earned the ten cent tip that she was 
 quite sure to get from each patron. 
 
 The waitresses here had to carry out all the 
 dirty dishes. That was very hard, for the loads 
 were too heavy for any woman. Whenever I 
 could, I hired Tom, the soda-fountain boy, to 
 "bus" mine out for me. The manager was very 
 unreasonable about this and I got many a scold- 
 ing because I did not carry my dishes out promptly 
 enough. One night he said to me, "This is your 
 tray, Fannie, take it out," and then he piled on it 
 a lot of dirty dishes that he had used for his own 
 dinner although it was already entirely loaded and 
 very heavy. I went into the kitchen and gave a
 
 Ii8 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 negro a dime to come and carry it out for me. 
 One of the girls noticed this and said, " 'Van' will 
 be awful mad if he knows you are hiring a nigger 
 to work for you. He expects us to 'bus' out our 
 own dishes." 
 
 "Van" was a good individual type of manager, 
 kindly at times and then again unreasonable. One 
 night he would tell me to "pick up" people that 
 were seated near each other and the next night 
 he would scold me for doing it. He never per- 
 mitted a girl to use her own intelligence. One 
 night he stopped me on my way to the kitchen to 
 get an order for a customer and sent me back for 
 a tray of dirty dishes. "But," I said, "why keep 
 the man waiting while I unload that tray of dishes. 
 I can take it out later." 
 
 "You do as you are told," he said angrily, and 
 his reply defined his attitude. He wished every 
 one to obey his dictation, to recognize him as 
 "boss" and never to dispute his position as mas- 
 ter. The class of girl that he had working for 
 him said meekly, "Yes, sir," and stormed behind 
 his back. The waitress learns to accept what such 
 a boss says without protest no matter how unjust 
 he may be. She endures patiently until sometime 
 when she is exhausted and her nerves are all on 
 edge ; then she throws discretion to the winds, tells 
 him what she thinks of him and is fired. When- 
 ever there was a woman who had something to 
 
 I
 
 Where the Waitress Works 119 
 
 do with the management, the girls were more con- 
 tented and got along better together. Women arc 
 given credit for being naggers, but I did not find 
 this true in the restaurant world. 
 
 Thousands of people are eating food prepared 
 under the filthiest conditions, and it was only in 
 places where there was a woman at the head that 
 I found any attempt at cleanliness. At such places 
 also, the food had more individuality. Women 
 are not as competent executives as men, but the 
 reason is because they have not yet been long 
 enough in the business world. Neither do women 
 shave the margin of profit so close, but on the 
 whole they make better managers of eating places 
 than men and I believe that in the very near future 
 this field will be given over entirely to them.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE WORK OF THE WAITRESS 
 
 The work of the waitress differs in the different 
 types of restaurants and depends also upon 
 whether she is a long or short-hour girl. The 
 short-hour girl does little or no side work, but 
 spends all of her time in waiting upon people while 
 to the long-hour girls falls all the drudgery called 
 in waitress language "side work." 
 
 In the hash-house, however, even the long-hour 
 girl puts in the greater part of her time in wait- 
 ing. This is because the hash house serves meals 
 continuously all day and all night. Short-hour 
 girls come on only to handle the noon rush and 
 the waiting at all other times is done by the long- 
 hour girl. Most of the side work is done by 
 Polish girls called porters who are hired for the 
 purpose and the waitress in her leisure moments 
 merely folds napkins, or wipes and fills sugar 
 bowls, pepper and salt shakers, or catsup bot- 
 tles. 
 
 In the tea room there is much more side work, 
 tables to reset, silver to clean, glassware to wash
 
 The Work of the Waitress 121 
 
 and wipe, linen to count, and, in some places the 
 dining-room to sweep. 
 
 In the Men's Grill at Usher Lane's there 
 seemed to be httle except side work. Each long- 
 hour girl was given a section to clean; i.e., a cer- 
 tain number of chairs, tables, booths, and buffets, 
 two booths with a large table and two extra chairs 
 in each besides the leather seats and woodwork, 
 one large round table with six chairs, fifteen small 
 tables with two chairs each, and a big party room 
 containing an immense table and eighteen chairs. 
 I also cleaned the woodwork and windows in this 
 room. The tables and buffets had to be washed 
 and the chairs and woodwork thoroughly dusted. 
 
 When this was done I put linen on all the 
 tables : i.e., centerpieces, plate doilies, and nap- 
 kins, and then counted out silver and glasses for 
 each table. This meant the counting and placing 
 of sixty knives, sixty forks, sixty large service 
 spoons, sixty tea spoons, sixty butter spreaders, 
 sixty glasses, and sixty napkins and plate doilies. 
 
 After this task was finished I was expected to 
 go to the kitchen to wipe sugar bowls or silver, 
 and to pick chicken from bones or to shell peas, 
 until eleven-thirty. 
 
 After dinner at three o'clock the girls all had 
 certain jobs assigned to them as side work and 
 these took from 3 until 5 P. M. My job was to 
 clean and fill three hundred sugar bowls. Another
 
 122 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 girl cleaned ash trays, another salt and pepper 
 shakers. 
 
 In fact almost the entire day at Lane's was 
 spent in doing side work, only a couple of hours 
 daily being devoted to actual waiting. I imagine 
 that the men who go there have little idea of the 
 amount of labor it takes to get ready for them 
 before they come and to clean up after them when 
 they leave. When a man pays fifty cents for a 
 tiny chicken pie made up of a cover of puff paste, 
 some gravy and a few bits of chicken, he is not 
 paying for the ingredients in that pie; he is paying 
 for the side work that has been done in the room 
 where that pie is being served. The pie itself 
 may be worth ten cents, the remaining forty cents 
 pays for the service and the furnishings. 
 
 The hardest thing that the waitress has to 
 contend with is the rush and this is to be met in 
 every kind of restaurant at meal time, and I do 
 not know whether it is worse at the hash house 
 where the men keep up a constant clamor but are 
 content to have you throw the food down on the 
 counter and let them eat it in the midst of the 
 dirty dishes that you cannot get time to remove, 
 or at Usher Lane's where if you fail to remember 
 the square of peppermint that should accompany 
 his finger-bowl, the wrathful gentleman will forget 
 your tip. 
 
 But in any place the rush is nerve wracking.
 
 The Work of the Waitress 123 
 
 Your success in handling orders depends not only 
 upon your own swiftness but upon that of the chef 
 and pantry girl and also upon their mood at the 
 time when you arrive. Chefs are usually good 
 natured as well as efficient, but pantry maids are 
 slow and stupid. The exceptions to this rule were 
 the Greek cook at Chiros' when I was there, who 
 screamed angrily at us in Dago lingo and the 
 pantry maid at the Hayden Square, a pretty 
 rosy-cheeked girl who was both swift of hand and 
 sweet of disposition. 
 
 The working conditions in the kitchen during 
 the rush hour were worse at Lane's than at any 
 other place that I worked. It was necessary to 
 have so many dishes on which to serve the food 
 and so many frills. Every little sprig of parsley, 
 every tiny dish of relish, every little doilie of 
 paper lace, meant a long delay, and when you had 
 your tray all set up with the accessories, you had 
 to stand in line an interminable time before the 
 cooks filled your orders and another interminable 
 time before the checker checked you out. The 
 men get very impatient waiting, but the remark 
 of one of the girls one day explains the situation. 
 "It Isn't because we are such bum hashers, it's the 
 way this kitchen Is run." 
 
 The reason this kitchen Is so poorly managed 
 is because all the kitchen help are women who 
 can cook, but who have no ability to manage.
 
 124 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 They are paid from $4.00 to $7.00 or at most 
 $10.00 or $12.00 (depending upon length of 
 service with the company) per week, and natur- 
 ally the most efficient women do not care for these 
 jobs. 
 
 Another great occupational difficulty of the 
 waitress is the lack of sufficient dishes, linen, and 
 silver. I found this true in every place I worked 
 except the Hayden Square Cafe, where there was 
 always plenty. Of the hash houses, White and 
 McCreary's was the best equipped. At the Cafe 
 des Reflections the girls spent half their 
 time running all over the dining-room in search 
 of napkins, spoons, or glasses, or in wash- 
 ing dishes in the kitchen when about to serve an 
 order. \ 
 
 / The work of the waitress may be classified as 
 casual labor. Occasionally a waitress stays a year 
 or even several years in a place, but such instances 
 are the exceptions. Fully 90 per cent, of the 
 waitresses whom I questioned told me they had 
 spent at most only a few months at each job. 
 
 There is a variety of reasons for this. In the 
 first place it is easy for a waitress to be hired. 
 She is required to give no references and she may 
 not be asked where she has worked before. Some- 
 times she works weeks in a place without being 
 asked to give her full name and her address. She 
 is known simply as May or Susie. If the manager
 
 The Work of the Waitress 125 
 
 or the head waitress happens to be in need of help 
 the waitress gets a job. She keeps it as long as 
 she gives satisfaction or as long as she can get 
 along with her fellow workers. In some places 
 a girl cannot keep a job unless she meets with the 
 approval of the cook. Quarrels are frequent be- 
 tween waitresses and between waitresses and those 
 higher in authority, the *'boss" or perhaps the 
 cashier. 
 
 Sometimes the waitress is laid off because some 
 more attractive girl has applied for her job. This 
 was what happened to Millie who was working at 
 the Taylor Cafe. A dashing blond applied for a 
 job in the afternoon and so pleased the eye of the 
 young Greek who ran the place that Millie was 
 laid off that night. To be laid off was for MiUie 
 a serious misfortune for she was a divorced 
 woman with two children to support, and the loss 
 of even one day's work meant a great deal to her. 
 
 The girls themselves, however, quit on the 
 slightest pretext. A girl will work a few months 
 at a good job, save some money, and then take a 
 vacation and spend it all. She takes the gambler's 
 chance on getting as good a job when she is ready 
 to go back to work. 
 
 The work of the waitress is also seasonal in 
 character as well as casual. In the summer there 
 is always plenty of work. The summer hotels, 
 amusement parks, golf clubs, and excursion steam-
 
 126 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 ers are all running then and require a great num- 
 ber of waitresses. The proprietor in the Loop has 
 a hard time to secure enough help to handle his 
 trade. But in the fall conditions are reversed, 
 the proprietor has his innings. He has his choice 
 of the most attractive and efficient girls, and the 
 others have a hard pull to get through the winter. 
 
 One day in the spring an old, broken waitress 
 said to me, "There ain't no chance for an old hen 
 to get a job now, but," she added gleefully, "sum- 
 mer is coming, and then we'll get even, they'll be 
 glad to get us." 
 
 The wages of the waitress are about the same 
 as those received by the ordinary office girl or 
 typist, and a little better than those of the shop 
 girl. For example, the steady girl in any type of 
 restaurant receives not less than $8.00 per week 
 for ten hours' work per day and more often she 
 receives $10.00, and since the war, many places 
 are paying as high as $1 i.oo and $12.00 per week. 
 The only exception that I know is Usher Lane's 
 where the steady girl is paid only $6.00. 
 
 The dinner girl in the Loop is paid $4.00, $4.50 
 or $5.00 per week for three hours' work, the 
 wages being a little less in the places where the 
 tips are best. The two meal girl in the cafe is 
 paid $6.00 or $7.00 per week and the supper girl 
 in the neighborhood restaurant receives $4.50 or 
 even $5.50 per week for three hours' work. The
 
 The Work of the Waitress 127 
 
 wages are a little better in the restaurants outside 
 the Loop. This is because the waitress prefers 
 to work in the Loop as she is then downtown 
 where there is life and excitement and near the 
 Alliance or the Union which are her clubs, and 
 where she meets her friends when her work is 
 over. 
 
 The golf clubs and resorts pay the steady girls 
 during the summer wages ranging from $30.00 to 
 $45.00 per month with room and board. These 
 places also need extra girls for week ends and 
 holidays and pay $2.50 or $3.00 per day and 
 carfare. 
 
 During the summer many of the girls work 
 "extra" in the Loop as dinner girls; i.e., they are 
 sent out by the Alliance in answer to telephone 
 calls to fill temporary vacancies. In this way the 
 waitress is sure of 75 cents or $1.00 in wages for 
 three hours' work and she can count on working 
 every day that she goes to the Alliance for a job. 
 This, with the $5.00 or $6.00 which she can earn 
 in the week end insures her of an income of $9.00 
 or $10.00 every week. 
 
 But the waitress does not depend upon her 
 wages alone for her income. The tips she re- 
 ceives are in some instances as great as and in 
 some greater than her wages, and she receives 
 tips in almost every place where she works al- 
 though some places are better for tips than others,
 
 -128 The JFoman Who Waits 
 
 the cafe and the neighborhood restaurant being 
 generally recognized as the best places in which 
 to make tips. 
 
 The wages of the steady girl are not fair in 
 proportion to the amount of labor which she per- 
 forms. She does all the side work, puts in more 
 than three times as many hours and receives only 
 twice as much in wages as the short-hour girl. To 
 be sure she is given three meals a day, but the 
 short-hour girl is given two. The short-hour girl 
 works only at the time when there is the best 
 chance of making tips. 
 
 This injustice is particularly noticeable at 
 Lane's, w^here the short-hour girl receives $4.00 
 for three and a half hours' work and has a better 
 chance to make tips because she spends a half 
 hour more in actual waiting than the long-hour 
 girl does. The girls themselves spoke of this but 
 I could not find out why the steady girl stood for 
 it. 
 
 Often a girl works a dinner job in the Loop and 
 also a supper job out south or north at a neigh- 
 borhood restaurant. In this way she avoids the 
 side work, has two or three hours off in the after- 
 noon, and makes more money. 
 
 The waitress is markedly individualistic in her 
 attitude toward life, and the status of her occu- 
 pation as it exists today tends towards the indi- 
 vidualistic. She does only what she has to do to
 
 The Work of the JFaitress 129 
 
 earn her wages and her only real interest is in the 
 tip. In her work she does not often consider the 
 house, the manager, nor her fellow workers, but 
 herself only, and she seldom hesitates to advance 
 her own interests at the expense of others. For 
 example, one evening at the Cafe des Reflections, 
 I went out into the kitchen before the supper rush 
 began and washed and wiped a number of spoons 
 and brought them in to set up my tables. But be- 
 fore I could use them, a girl came along and 
 grabbed up every one. I ran after her and said 
 indignantly, "Those are my spoons, I had to wash 
 them myself!" 
 
 "Well, they are mine now," she said with a 
 laugh, and she would not give them back. 
 
 And often after your tables are all set up with 
 glasses, silver, and napkins, a girl from another 
 part of the room will come and steal your set-ups 
 when your back is turned. Such a thing as team 
 work among waitresses is unknown. 
 
 Another time I said to a girl, "It is a shame to 
 use these nice linen napkins for side towels." 
 
 "We should worry!" she answered, with a care- 
 less shrug of her shoulders. 
 
 The work of the waitress, because it is so ir- 
 regular in character, because it can be entered 
 upon at any time without much previous training, 
 and because the waitress can quit a job today and 
 be very sure that she can get another just as good
 
 130 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 tomorrow, has but little disciplinary value. The 
 attitude of the employer is an important factor 
 also. He is too ready to discharge his help at 
 the slightest provocation. Consequently they have 
 no sense of security or permanence. 
 
 The work of the waitress, however, could be 
 organized upon a distinctly social basis, and there 
 might be great opportunities in this occupation if 
 the waitress could be made to see the value of 
 the individual to society, if her occupation could 
 be made more creative. 
 
 T noticed that the girls who worked in the 
 Men's Grill at Usher Lane's had a more social 
 and less individualistic attitude toward their work 
 than ^t any other place, at least where I had 
 worked, and the ones who had worked there for 
 any length of time were actually interested in 
 working for the house. This was due to the atti- 
 tude of their employer, who was a woman of 
 character and refinement. She made them feel 
 that they were part of a great organization and 
 got them to look upon their work as a profession. 
 She did not nag at them as most male employers 
 do, but after clearly defining the work, placed the 
 responsibility of its performance upon them. 
 
 The work of the waitress does not rank very 
 high in the occupational scale. The waitress her- 
 self is ashamed of her job, and tries to conceal 
 from her friends that she is a waitress. "What's
 
 The Work of the Waitress 131 
 
 the use of letting everybody know that you are a 
 hasher?" she will say. And by working in the 
 Loop or in some place far from her own neigh- 
 borhood, she can easily conceal the fact that she 
 is "hashing" for a hving. This is particularly 
 easy for the married woman, who usually works 
 only as a short-hour girl. 
 
 I can, however, see possibilities In the occupa- 
 tion of waitress, although first there must be a 
 change in the attitude of the employer and a 
 recognition of length of service. Then a better 
 class of girl might go into the work and the 
 standards of the girl already in will be improved. 
 The "hiring and firing" of today is productive of 
 great economic waste. 
 
 During my investigation, I have met one edu- 
 cated waitress, a graduate of an Eastern college. 
 She belonged to the Alliance and worked in the 
 Loop because she needed to earn her living. "I 
 can earn just as much money and have a great 
 deal more freedom than I could as an ordinary 
 teacher and I meet more interesting people," she 
 said, when I asked her why she was in the work, 
 and she continued, "In the East you will find 
 many college girls working as waitresses in the 
 better class of places, but you do not find them 
 here." 
 
 But while the income of the waitress, made up 
 as it is of wages and tips, is much better than that
 
 132 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 of the office or shop girl and compares very 
 favorably with that of the average teacher, sten- 
 ographer, or well-paid saleswoman, she seldom 
 saves any money, and is more often "broke" than 
 women in other occupations. It is not that the 
 wages of the waitress are too much. She can 
 not live a decent life on less. She is dependent 
 entirely upon her own resources, and does not, 
 like the shop girl and the office girl "live at home." 
 She needs all she makes. But what she needs 
 more is education and a different attitude upon 
 the part of the public towards her occupation.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 WHERE THE WAITRESS COMES FROM 
 
 There is an astonishing uniformity in the con- 
 ditions which prevail in the life of the waitress. 
 This is particularly true in regard to her place of 
 origin. She usually comes from a small town in 
 Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, or some state not 
 too far away, and is herself of American birth 
 although she may be of foreign parentage. She 
 often speaks with an accent which betrays this 
 parentage. Her father may have been a cement 
 contractor, or a small-town merchant, but he has 
 probably been merely a laboring man. She may 
 be of any age. There are grandmothers in the 
 waitress group. They look surprisingly young 
 and take a keen interest in life. But whether a 
 waitress is an adolescent or a patriarch, she is a 
 girl still, for all women in the waitress world are 
 known as girls and are called by their Christian 
 names. 
 
 The waitress becomes a waitress because she 
 needs the money that she earns. If she is mar- 
 ried, she needs it to supplement the income of her 
 
 133
 
 134 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 husband in providing for the household needs, 
 while if she is unmarried or divorced, she depends 
 entirely upon her earnings for support. 
 
 I have questioned hundreds of girls during the 
 course of my investigation and I think it is a safe 
 guess that approximately 50 per cent, of them 
 were married, 40 per cent, were divorced and the 
 remaining 10 per cent, were unmarried. I found 
 no "old maids." 
 
 Short-hour girls are usually, but not always, 
 married women and long-hour girls single or di- 
 vorced. The married waitress has often been a 
 domestic servant before marriage, the divorced 
 waitress has married between the ages of sixteen 
 and twenty and her marriage has not proved a 
 success. Her husband may have been a drunkard, 
 a follower of other women, or perhaps merely an 
 economic failure, either incapable or unwilling to 
 support a wife. But all alike, the married, the 
 divorced, and the young girl, have entered the 
 life because it offers the most lucrative occupation 
 open to untrained and uneducated women. 
 
 "I never went further than the fourth grade," 
 said a girl one morning. 
 
 "I never went to school three months in my 
 whole life," said another. 
 
 "Did you ev^er hear of a waitress that had 
 an education?" said the first, "If she had, she 
 wouldn't be in the business."
 
 Where the Waitress Comes From 135 
 
 Such a girl has a choice of but few callings, 
 and she chooses that of the waitress because of 
 its greater remuneration and its greater freedom. 
 "I'd never do housework again," said a girl. 
 "You might as well be a nun, it's so darn lone- 
 some." It is the group life that makes the ap- 
 peal, the sociabihty and the comradeship during 
 working hours. 
 
 The divorced or unmarried waitress looks a 
 little scornfully upon the married waitress and 
 the latter, if she is wise, does not mention her 
 husband. 
 
 "It makes me sick to hear folks braggin' about 
 their men when they have to go out and work," 
 said a German girl one day. 
 
 There are distinctions among waitresses just 
 as there are among all classes of women, and 
 distinction is based upon the sort of clothes a 
 girl wears more than upon anything else. Of 
 course it is the skillful waitress who earns the 
 money to buy the clothes. Efficiency is a factor 
 here as elsewhere. Silk stockings, a feather, a 
 georgette waist, a brooch, and above all, a dia- 
 mond ring, are the sort of things that make dis- 
 tinction in the waitress group, as they do else- 
 where for that matter. 
 
 There is a certain type of waitress who wishes 
 to be considered refined. She dresses in good 
 taste, tries to speak good English, but betrays
 
 136 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 herself by the frequent use of "God" and "Hell" 
 in her conversation. Letty, the Irish girl, at the 
 Hayden Square, was of this type. The night she 
 reproved some girls who were using vulgar lan- 
 guage, "Girls," said she, "refined people do not 
 use such language." She also corrected a girl 
 who said, "I have et." But a little later I heard 
 her say to another girl: 
 
 "For God's sake leave that pin at home. It 
 looks as though you got it at a ten-cent store. 
 I wouldn't wear it to a dog-fight. Fannie is the 
 only one here that has got a decent pin. Anyone 
 can see that hers is a real antique." 
 
 At home the waitress may have been a Catholic, 
 a Lutheran, a IMethodist, she may have been a 
 member of a conventional small-town group, but 
 when she comes to the city, she puts aside the 
 standards that she has inherited and sets up new 
 ones for herself. These girls say, "When we 
 stayed at home we did not know anything about 
 life. Now we are working for a living, we know 
 everything." 
 
 For example, Evylin, a Catholic girl, who was 
 divorced from her husband, said, "What did I 
 get by gettin' married honest by the priest instead 
 of just runnin' off with some man. I've had noth- 
 ing but trouble — a bad husband, hard work, and 
 nothing to live on. I've kept straight on account 
 of my little girl, but I don't blame the girls if they
 
 Where the Waitress Comes From 137 
 
 go with some man even if they ain't married. 
 What's the use of gettin' married! As long as 
 it's just one man and you hke the fellow, I don't 
 see no harm in it. But," she added as an after- 
 thought, "I don't hold to this layin' up with just 
 every old man that comes along." 
 
 And another little girl said to me, "When I 
 was at home, I used to sit every night by the table 
 and knit, but when I came to the city, it wasn't 
 three weeks before I was goin' out every night 
 to the movies and shows just like all the other 
 girls." 
 
 The waitress reads almost nothing except per- 
 haps the newspaper (she likes the murders and 
 the evening story especially), and that only in a 
 superficial way, and she does not talk much about 
 what she reads but about things that are to her of 
 more importance. She talks about her work, 
 about the meanness of the "boss" or the head 
 waitress, about the patrons who "stick her up" 
 (fail to give her a tip), about her clothes, how 
 much she pays for this or that, about some girl 
 who works with her and whom she does not like, 
 about the divorces that are being obtained by the 
 members of her group, about her "friend" (lover) 
 and about all sorts of human, personal things. 
 Personalities represent 99 per cent, of all she 
 thinks worth mentioning in conversation. 
 
 The waitress who is married spends a short
 
 138 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 time whenever she can spare it at the Alliance, 
 or the Union, where she meets others for a little 
 gossip and relaxation, and once in a while she 
 goes to a movie or to a dance. But most of the 
 time that she is not working as a waitress she 
 spends in household duties. For example, a girl 
 at Lane's was allowed to go home one day at 
 three o'clock instead of staying until 5.15. She 
 was very happy about it. "Now I can start my 
 washing by daylight!" she exclaimed joyfully. 
 "I do hate washing after dark." 
 
 For the unmarried waitress home is usually a 
 furnished room and she spends only the time there 
 that is necessary for washing, ironing, and mend- 
 ing her clothes. Practically all her leisure is 
 spent at the' movies, cabarets, and restaurants, 
 where she goes with her "friend" or with some 
 other girl. There is nothing that a waitress en- 
 joys more than a meal where she can sit down at 
 a table and be waited upon. 
 
 The waitress seeks constant amusement in her 
 leisure time because the rush of her work keys 
 her up to a nervous pitch where she demands more 
 stimulation. But her pleasures do not make for 
 efficiency, they have little or no stability and pro- 
 ductivity and are a great waste. 
 
 When Lillie, on the first day that I was a wait- 
 ress, said "Eatin' is the main business," she em- 
 phasized an important value in the waitress world.
 
 Where the Waitress Comes From 139 
 
 And I am inclined to think that it is more of a 
 "main business" with all of us than we are willing 
 to admit. Anyone who doubts this statement 
 might try being a waitress or a "bus" boy and 
 see how she or he enjoys a dish of stew and po- 
 tatoes, with rolls and coffee, eaten from a counter 
 in a hash house. 
 
 The girls like to work where they are given 
 good food. The Advertisers' Club is a favorite 
 because you can have "any old thing to eat, even 
 dessert." 
 
 "I like to go to East Meadows," some one will 
 say, "Gee, we had chicken and ice cream." 
 
 These girls eat what is left on the plates of the 
 patrons of the restaurant. A bit of choice meat 
 or fish, some salad, a fragment of pie or a spoon- 
 ful of ice cream is eagerly gobbled up and choked 
 down in the kitchen during the rush, even though 
 it is against the rules to eat during working hours. 
 At lunch time the girls bargain with the cook for 
 something a little unusual and steal pie and 
 French pastry and eat it surreptitiously behind the 
 manager's back. 
 
 The religion of the waitress world is a free one. 
 "Think what you please, it makes no difference to 
 me," is the attitude. The oath of initiation into 
 the Alliance is prefaced by this statement, "What 
 you are about to swear will not interfere with your 
 nationality or with your religion."
 
 140 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 I once overheard this conversation between 
 girls : 
 
 "And so while my father was over to the sa- 
 loon my little brother had three convulsions and 
 died," said the first girl. "Ma sent for him and 
 when he came home and saw that my little brother 
 was dead, he took on something awful. He said 
 to Ma that it was a punishment that God had sent 
 him because he had went so much to the saloon 
 instead of stayin' with her and helpin' with the 
 housework and the children and after that for 
 three years he never went near a saloon." 
 
 "And you think that your little brother died 
 for a punishment to your father," said the other. 
 "Well, I don't. I don't believe that there is a 
 God sendin' out punishments to folks. I think 
 things happen that are goin' to happen, that it's 
 your destiny, and no matter what you do, you 
 can't change what is goin' to happen to you." 
 
 The moral sentiments, the prevailing ideas of 
 rights and duties of this group are difficult to 
 define. It seems to me that the waitress is a 
 genuine Bohemian, Her life is spent in trying to 
 escape definitions and to avoid suppressions. She 
 has little idea of honor nor of personal obligation. 
 She cannot be depended upon to keep her word. 
 
 One day Hilda wanted me to go to White and 
 McCreary's to work lunch.
 
 Where the Waitress Comes From 141 
 
 "Indeed I won't go there!" I said indignantly. 
 "Do you know wliat he did? Once I went there 
 and he hired me for a steady lunch job, but it 
 was only ten o'clock so I said I'd do a little shop- 
 ping and be back at eleven, and when I went back 
 there he had hired another girl and he wouldn't 
 give me the job." 
 
 "You couldn't blame him, Fannie," said Hilda, 
 "he thought you didn't Intend to come back." 
 
 "But I said I would." 
 
 "That makes no difference. The word of a 
 waitress ain't nothin'. Nine girls out of ten 
 would never have showed up," answered Hilda, 
 and then continued coaxingly, "you go on over 
 there and work lunch, Fannie, he needs a girl 
 awful bad and he has always treated us right. 
 Now you belong to the Alliance; you'll get your 
 money all right even if you don't work. Just so 
 long as you are sent out by the Alliance, you 
 ain't comin' in off the streets no more and askin' 
 for jobs. 
 
 "No, you ain't a streetwalker no more, Fan- 
 nie," laughed a girl who stood near. 
 
 One Sunday when I was working at Laconia 
 Park where only Alliance girls are employed, I 
 was standing at the end of a line waiting for my 
 tray to be checked when a girl coming from the 
 kitchen called me to open the door for her. She
 
 142 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 had a very heavy tray, so I quickly opened the 
 door and stood holding it until she had passed 
 through. 
 
 She took my place in the line. I attempted to 
 pass her but she blocked the narrow passage with 
 her body. 
 
 "I was willing to hold the door for you, but 
 I'm not going to give you my place in the line," 
 I said Indignantly. "Let me passl" 
 
 She stubbornly held her position. I raged. 
 "Did you ever see anything to beat that?" I ex- 
 claimed to the girls who stood near. 
 
 "Aw, shut up!" said the girl, "makin' such a 
 fuss because I asked you to open the dooro Can't 
 you do a little thing like that for a person with- 
 out makin' a fuss!" 
 
 "I'm not making a fuss about the door," I pro< 
 tested, "I want my place in the line." 
 
 "Well, you won't get it," she said. 
 
 And I did not. The checker looked at me re- 
 provingly, and said : 
 
 "If you can't get along with the other girls 
 out here, you better not come." 
 
 The members of the Alliance swear in their 
 oath of Initiation to help each other in every way 
 that they can. But the extreme individualism of 
 the waitress is responsible for a lack of honor 
 and honesty even in her dealing with other mem- 
 bers of the Alliance.
 
 Where the Jl'aiiress Comes From 143 
 
 Another vice peculiar to the group is steaHng. 
 The girls steal even from each other. You can- 
 not leave an apron at the Alliance and go back in 
 an hour and find it there. Some one stole the 
 nickel plate from under the sewing machine that 
 one of the girls had loaned the Alliance, although 
 this could have been of no possible value to the 
 thief. And one day I left a ragged coat outside 
 my locker at a restaurant where I was working, 
 and a girl said: 
 
 "Better put it in your locker, honey, someone 
 will steal it." 
 
 "But it is so old, no one could possibly want 
 It." 
 
 "That makes no difference, someone will steal 
 it just for the fun of stealin' it." 
 
 And I felt that that very girl might do so, 
 though she liked me and had a better coat than 
 mine. 
 
 It is only occasionally that you will find a girl 
 who is willing to tell you about the good places 
 to work. Even though she knows that she has no 
 chance there, she is reluctant about "tipping off" 
 another to a good thing. 
 
 These girls are great admirers of female 
 beauty. One day I went to the Art Institute with 
 a disreputable looking old waitress of the street- 
 walker type, and she was enthusiastic about the 
 nude statues of beautiful women. "I would love
 
 144 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 to touch her," said this girl as we stood before a 
 Venus mounted high on a pedestal, "Aren't her 
 arms lovely, and look at her breast!" 
 
 One night at the Hayden Square a pretty girl 
 was changing her waist in the dressing-room and 
 another went up to her and passed her hands 
 caressingly over the bare arms and breast of the 
 pretty girl and said, "Pretty! pretty!" and her 
 eyes were full of pleasure. 
 
 One day I was out with a waitress and we 
 stepped in at a restaurant for a lunch. She was 
 abominable to the girl who brought our order, 
 found fault with everything, and finally sent the 
 order back to the kitchen. I was much amused 
 for I could see that she was acting over again a 
 scene that had occurred between her and a patron, 
 this time with the positions reversed. 
 
 We always mixed a good deal of gossip with 
 our side-work at Lane's. One afternoon some one 
 referred to the day that Helen Morris came down 
 to the store drunk. There was no criticism of 
 Helen because she was drunk, but indignation wa-^ 
 expressed against her friends for permitting her 
 to come to her job in that condition. "No man 
 would let a pal of his go to his job like that and 
 her friends ought to have been ashamed of them- 
 selves," was the Indignant verdict of the group. 
 
 I did not find much drinking in this group as 
 a rule, although one girl said one day, "I quit 
 
 fl
 
 Where the Waitress Comes From 145 
 
 my job because they wouldn't give me a day off 
 for the dance. When I go to a dance, I get 
 stewed, and when I'm stewed, I don't care a damn 
 about any old job. I wanted a day to sober up 
 in and they wouldn't give it to me so I quit." 
 
 Vulgar language and the use of profanity are 
 the most glaring vices. The filthy language is 
 the outgrowth of the low ideal of sex around 
 which centers the great interest. There is not 
 much that is complex about the waitress and her 
 behavior can easily be reduced to the two funda- 
 mental appetites of food hunger and sex hunger. 
 She is intelligent, efficient, industrious, dishon- 
 est, and dishonorable, loose in her sex relations, 
 Impatient of the restraints put upon her by the 
 members of the group from which she came 
 (parents, relatives) and inclined to set up new 
 standards for herself and to make a new group 
 life in which these standards are approved.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HARVEST TIME 
 
 As soon as summer began, the Alliance became 
 a lonesome place. There were no girls sitting 
 around waiting for jobs, for there were more jobs 
 than there were girls to fill them. Hilda had con- 
 tracts to send girls to half a dozen of the best golf 
 clubs, including Lakewood and East Meadows, 
 and the manager at Laconia Park hired all his 
 waitresses through her. 
 
 "Summer is our harvest time," said Hilda. 
 Every day she refused dozens of calls for help. 
 The girls went like harvest hands from one job 
 to another, from the city restaurant to the country 
 club, and back again to the city restaurant, stay- 
 ing but a short time in each place and reaping a 
 harvest of high wages for the emergency work 
 that they had been called in to perform. I, like 
 the others, made the rounds and learned to know 
 the summer time, as well as the winter time life of 
 the waitress. 
 
 On the Fourth of July, Hilda had an order 
 from East Meadows for thirty girls to work 
 
 146
 
 Harvest Time 147 
 
 "extra" at three dollars per day. I was one of 
 the number chosen; so I arranged to meet one of 
 the others who had been at East Meadows on 
 Decoration Day. I wore the black uniform of 
 the waitress with white collar and cuffs. Molly 
 was late in meeting me and I stood for a long 
 time waiting for her. When she came, two other 
 girls who knew her but whom I did not know, 
 joined us. 
 
 Molly did not introduce us. Introductions 
 are not customary In the waitress world. One of 
 the girls said: 
 
 "I knew this lady was goin' out there the minute 
 I seen her," and she meant me. Always after 
 that I carried my black waist and white collars 
 and cuffs in a small handbag just as the other girls 
 did and wore a white waist. No matter how tired 
 she is, the waitress never fails to change her black 
 waist for a white one. 
 
 Every little while we were joined by two or 
 three more girls until in all there were about 
 twenty of us. When we reached Damon Avenue 
 we left the L and took the surface car for sev- 
 eral miles. At the end of the line, we got off and 
 walked for a mile and a half over fields and golf 
 links to the East Meadows Golf Club. 
 
 Molly and I walked together. "I wouldn't 
 mind comin' out on these jobs if I had someone 
 like you to pal around with," said she.
 
 148 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "Don't you pal with the Alliance girls?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "No, I don't," she repHed, "they want to know 
 too damn much!" and then she added. 
 
 "The girls are too cliquey. I'm a new member 
 and they don't notice me half the time. Decora- 
 tion Day I worked out here with a lot of them 
 and it was raining cats and dogs when we got 
 through work and them girls went and left me to 
 come home alone across these fields. I got a ride 
 with a chauffeur back to the car line or I'd have 
 had to stay all night." 
 
 By this time we had reached the club house. 
 We trailed around and entered the kitchen door. 
 In the back hall we were met by the locker woman 
 of the club who gave us aprons. These we put on 
 in a dirty bathroom where we were sent to wash 
 our hands and arrange our hair. Perhaps ser- 
 vants do not demand cleanliness; their toilets and 
 baths are always filthy. Later in the day I saw 
 the quarters of the club members and they were 
 as clean and attractive as those in a first-class 
 hotel. 
 
 We had two meals at East Meadows, both of 
 which were served in a dirty little basement room. 
 For lunch we had stewed chicken, potatoes, bread 
 and butter, and tea; arid for dinner, roast pork, 
 peas, bread and butter, and tea. The guests had 
 very appetizing meals with vegetables, salad and
 
 Harvest Time 149 
 
 dessert. The waitresses looked longingly at the 
 good things that they were not allowed to have 
 and hidden behind a door or In a dark corner of 
 the porch gulped down hastily the scraps that 
 were left on the plates of the guests. 
 
 There were not many guests at lunch and the 
 work was easy, but there were two hundred res- 
 ervations for dinner and It took the entire after- 
 noon to prepare the dining-room. No one could 
 have any idea of the amount of work necessary 
 unless she took an active part in the preparation. 
 
 When it came time to serve dinner, the girls 
 were all tired out and, as there was no hope of 
 tips, all were dull and spiritless. They plodded 
 mechanically through the task of serving dinner 
 and rejoiced when, at nine o'clock, they were each 
 paid three dollars and dismissed. 
 
 As we walked back over the golf links towards 
 the car line, everyone was quiet, everyone was 
 tired, and everyone was disposed to look gloomily 
 at life In spite of the beauty of the night. One or 
 two spoke of the moonlight and the freshness of 
 the country air, but for the most part, they walked 
 on in silence. 
 
 About half-way to the car line, a chauffeur 
 halted his big touring car beside us and called out 
 cordially: 
 
 "Jump in, girls, I'll take you the rest of the 
 way."
 
 150 The Woman tVho Walts 
 
 We jumped In gladly. The girls began to laugh 
 and talk. One put her arms around the chauffeur's 
 neck and cried: 
 
 "Ain't he the lovely man!" 
 
 Several leaned over and whispered to him, but 
 I did not catch their words. 
 
 The chauffeur expanded and puffed himself out 
 with satisfaction over this feminine adoration. 
 
 "I bet you can't guess where I been all day!" 
 he announced jovially. 
 
 And In response to the chorus of "Where? 
 Come on now, tell us!" he replied: 
 
 "I took the folks out to the club this morning 
 and then I beat it for the House-of-Many-MIr- 
 rors." 
 
 "Oh, was you there!" cried the girls enviously. 
 "I wish you'd taken me!" 
 
 "What Is the House-of-Many-MIrrors?" I 
 asked, and added, "it seems to me that I have 
 heard of it." 
 
 "Have you only heard of it?" exclaimed the 
 chauffeur in surprise. "Ain't you never been 
 there?" 
 
 "It's a road house," volunteered someone. 
 
 "Did any of you ever work there?" 
 
 "Work there! I should say not! It ain't a 
 place to go to work, it's a place to go for pleasure. 
 I was there a year ago today with a fellow and I 
 stayed all day and all night."
 
 Harvest Time 151 
 
 " mother 1" sang out a respec- 
 table looking old girl in spectacles, and vile words 
 fell wearily from her lips. "Ain't it lucky we 
 met this fellow ! That God damn club ought 
 to have a bus to take us back and forth. Ex- 
 pectin' us to work all day and then tramp through 
 them fields at this time o' night. And they think 
 they're^ swells!" 
 
 "Aw, shut up !" said another girl. "The folks at 
 East Meadows ain't swells, they're just nice peo- 
 ple." 
 
 I sat with Molly on the way home. "It's a 
 good thing we met that fellow when we was goin' 
 instead of comin'," said she, "or we'd have spent 
 the day at the House-of-Many-Mirrors instead of 
 at the East Meadows Golf Club." 
 
 One summer morning I went to the Alliance 
 about eleven o'clock. As I opened the door Hilda 
 said, "You go with Emily Mills to Cutler Broth- 
 ers to work lunch." 
 
 Emily Mills was seated in front of Hilda's 
 desk. She was a small, slender, rather pretty 
 girl, with a dull, listless expression, heavy sunken 
 eyes, and a skin covered with ugly pimples. 
 
 "I don't want to work, Hilda," said she. 
 
 "Shame on you, Emily Mills!" said Hilda, and 
 added coaxingly, "They pay a dollar for lunch!" 
 
 "I should worry about their lousy old dollar," 
 said Emily Mills.
 
 152 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "Come on now, girls," urged Hilda, "we don't 
 want to stick Mattie up." Mattie, the head wait- 
 ress at Cutler Brothers, was an Alliance girl. 
 
 Emily pouted, yawned, stretched herself, and 
 rose reluctantly from her seat. "If it wasn't for 
 Mattie I wouldn't go," said she. 
 
 Emily and I walked over together. 
 
 "Oh, gee! I'm sick o' workin'," said she, "if 
 I'd listened to my sweetheart and got married last 
 week, I wouldn't have to work." 
 
 "Who is your sweetheart?" I asked. 
 
 "He is a chauffeur," replied Emily, and then 
 she went on to tell me that he was a divorced man, 
 that she was a divorced woman, and the mother of 
 a child three years old. 
 
 The employees' lunch room at Cutler Brothers 
 is a dull and uninteresting place in which to work. 
 The trays are very heavy, the dishes thick and 
 cumbersome, and there are no tips. The wait- 
 resses here are called upon to wipe dishes after 
 the meal is over and that is the main reason why 
 Cutler Brothers is not popular at the Alliance. 
 
 While Emily and I were washing and wiping 
 the silver and glasses, the colored elevator boy 
 came into the kitchen to eat his lunch. 
 
 "Say," he called to us, "I'd like to a-died 
 a-Iaughin' after I brought you up in the elevator 
 this morning! I thought you was the boss's sister
 
 Harvest Time 153 
 
 and then 1 found out you was just a waitress. But 
 you look, just like her." 
 
 "If she is good looking, I'm sure I don't mind,'' 
 I said. 
 
 The elevator boy stared at me. "I'd hke to a- 
 died a-laughin'," he repeated, and walked away 
 chuckling to himself. 
 
 The waitresses at Cutler Brothers are not al- 
 lowed to eat until all the work is done. The food 
 had looked appetizing while we were serving it, 
 but by the time we were ready to eat it, it was 
 cold and messy looking. I did not eat, but waited 
 for Emily. 
 
 When we reached the street, I said to her, "Are 
 you going back to the Alliance to get a supper 
 job?" 
 
 "Not much I" she replied, "I'm going home and 
 take my baby to the park." 
 
 It was during the summer that I worked for 
 a week at the Taylor Restaurant. The pro- 
 prietors of this place were Greeks who spoke 
 scarcely intelligible English and who turned over 
 the management of the dining-room to a pert, 
 ignorant young girl of nineteen or twenty whom 
 they had engaged as cashier. She sat enthroned 
 upon a high stool behind the cash register at the 
 cigar counter in the front of the room, chewed 
 gum, and queened it over the other girls. With
 
 154 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 the crook of her little finger, or the pointing of her 
 pencil she would summon the waitresses to her 
 cigar counter and with severity lay down her 
 commands. Every night I made at least one trip 
 across the room to be told: 
 
 "I don't like them aperns, Fannie, them ain't 
 waitress aprens," or "Pull your cap further over 
 your hair in front, Fannie," or "Take out all your 
 'dead' dishes before you take fresh orders. 
 Nothin' makes a customer so sick as dead dishes 
 layin' round. You'll have to learn to work 
 faster." 
 
 I tried to take her reproofs meekly and feigned 
 an air of demure respect, but I could not always 
 suppress my amusement. Finally towards the end 
 of the week, she lost all patience with me. 
 
 "You ain't got nuthin' on me, Fannie!" she 
 burst forth, "to make you act so stuck up. When 
 it comes to looks and clothes both I can put it 
 over on you — see!!" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am," I answered meekly, although I 
 was choking with laughter. At the end of the 
 week when I went for my wages she said as she 
 handed my envelope to me: 
 
 "You're laid off, Fannie." She gave me what 
 she intended to be a "withering" glance and 
 added, "and, look here, if you try to knock me 
 after you get out-o'-here, Fll get you — See ! ! — I'll 
 get you and don't you forget it!" 
 
 J
 
 Harvest Time 155 
 
 It was while I was at the Taylor that I met 
 with an interesting experience. Just at eight 
 o'clock one night when we supper girls were car- 
 rying out our last dead dishes, a waitress grabbed 
 me by the arm and hissed into my ear, "My God, 
 Fannie! the kitchen girl's dying out in the alley. 
 Let's go out and watch her!" 
 
 Down went my dishes on to the counter and I 
 quickly followed the girl through the kitchen into 
 the back alley. There on the ground lay the 
 Polish kitchen girl twitching and moaning in 
 helpless agony and around her stood an audience 
 of considerable size. The cook was there with 
 a saucepan in his hand, another kitchen girl stood 
 winding her dish towel around her arm, the pro- 
 prietor, who had been helping the cook with the 
 evening rush, had run out with the perspiration 
 dripping from the end of his nose, and several 
 waitresses, the driver of a Yellow Cab, various 
 small boys, and passers-by from the street had 
 gathered around the arena in which the kitchen 
 girl was the sole performer. Somebody brought 
 out a chair and a couple of the men dragged the 
 poor kitchen girl up upon It. She hung limp over 
 its back with froth dripping from her lips. She 
 continued to moan. 
 
 "They may kill her," I thought. "What ought 
 I to do?" 
 
 I had had the short course In nursing at St.
 
 156 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 Luke's hospital in the spring that had been given 
 to prospective Nurses' Aids, but none of the 
 knowledge which I had acquired seemed to fit this 
 particular case. However, I knew that something 
 ought to be done. I stepped into the circle and 
 asserted myself. 
 
 "I think you should take her to a hospital," I 
 said. 
 
 The women in the party all protested. One of 
 the waitresses began to rub the arms of the kit- 
 chen girl, who continued to moan. The Greek 
 proprietor talked the matter over with the Yellow 
 Cabby and decided to adopt my suggestion. 
 
 "Will you go with her?" he asked. 
 
 The cabby backed his taxi into the alley and 
 soon I found myself inside with the moaning Po- 
 lish girl in my arms, her coat and hat, together 
 with mine, in a heap on the floor. T lurched from 
 side to side as the cab sped on and the kitchen 
 girl grew heavy as I held her. From time to time 
 I wiped her lips with my handkerchief. The 
 street lights made gay the summer night, the street 
 cars ground past us, and people gazed in at us 
 curiously when our cab was halted by the trafl'ic 
 of the streets. Finally the neighborhood through 
 which we were passing began to look familiar and 
 I realized that we were within a block or two of 
 St. Luke's. 
 
 I
 
 Harvest Time 157 
 
 I leaned forward and tapped the Greek pro- 
 prietor on the shoulder. "Why not take her to 
 St. Luke's?" I asked. 
 
 "But she is a county case," said the cabby. 
 
 "But St. Luke's takes charity cases." 
 
 The cabby took council with the Greek, then 
 directed his taxi around to the Indiana Avenue en- 
 trance of St. Luke's, where charity cases are re- 
 ceived. 
 
 We lifted the Polish girl into the wheel chair 
 that was sent out and took her to the examining 
 room. She had revived somewhat by this time 
 and was able to answer after a fashion, the ques- 
 tions that were put to her. After making the ex- 
 amination, the pompous little interne announced, 
 "Mild case of heat prostration, scarcely a hospital 
 case." 
 
 "But you will keep her for the night, won't 
 you? She lives alone in a furnished room." 
 
 "Yes, we'll keep her," said he, "but it's scarcely 
 worth mussing up our beds when they are no 
 worse than this. All she needs is a rest." He 
 bustled the poor kitchen girl into the wheel chair, 
 rang for a nurse, and gave orders to have the 
 patient taken to one of the wards. His whole 
 manner said plainly, "I'm doing this as a favor 
 to you." 
 
 "Thank you," I said meekly, "I'm sorry I
 
 158 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 troubled you needlessly, but she seemed very ill," 
 and gathering up the garments of the kitchen girl, 
 I trailed apologetically behind the wheel chair. 
 
 Soon the girl was tucked into a little white bed 
 in a dimly lighted ward where other women pa- 
 tients slept in huddled heaps in other small white 
 beds. 
 
 "Good-night," I whispered softly as I bent over 
 her, "I will come for you early in the morning. 
 You stay here till I come," 
 
 The kitchen girl caught my hand and pulled me 
 down close beside her. "You bring my brown 
 crepe de chine dress. I wear it home in the 
 morning, and my other shoes, my hat, they at the 
 restaurant." 
 
 It was nearly eleven o'clock. I was not anxious 
 for a long weary trip back on the L to the res- 
 taurant. 
 
 "But your kitchen dress is all right to go home 
 in," I said. It was a neat blue gingham. 
 
 The girl shook her head. "I not go on the 
 street car in that," said she. "I so ashamed. You 
 get brown crepe de chine." 
 
 I looked down at the swollen, shapeless mass 
 that was the kitchen girl's body, at the dull ugly 
 face with its small eyes and wisps of thin brown 
 hair. Even she must have a crepe de chine dress 
 or be ashamed to ride on the street car! 
 
 Obediently I returned to the restaurant for the
 
 "Harvest Time 159 
 
 clothes and the next morning I escorted away from 
 St. Luke's a proud kitchen girl decked out in silk 
 stockings, slippers, a hat with roses around the 
 crown and a brown crepe de chine dress. In one 
 silk stocking, tied up In an old rag, were thirty 
 dollars, all she had in the world. 
 
 It was also during the summer that Hilda of- 
 fered me a job at Lakewood. "It's to wait In 
 the help's dining-room, Fannie," said she. 
 
 I hesitated, then decided that it would not be 
 wise to work at Lakewood because several of the 
 girls who had been In my class at St. Luke's were 
 members of the Lakewood Club. Dottle, one 
 of the Alliance girls, who was in the office at the 
 time Hilda spoke to me, misunderstood my hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 "It's a good job, Fannie," said she, "and you 
 make good tips; better than In the guests' dining- 
 room. I worked there one summer and my chum 
 waited on the guests and we had a bet up which 
 would make the most money. Say, at the end of 
 a month, she hadn't made a cent and I had four- 
 teen dollars. The chauffeurs and maids will tip 
 when the guests won't." 
 
 I did not, however, go to Lakewood. 
 
 Laconia Park was the favorite week-end resort 
 of the waitress who preferred spending the sum- 
 mer In town to signing up for the season at a golf
 
 i6o The Woman Who Waits 
 
 club. I worked there several week ends. It is 
 a popular summer garden which offers an excel- 
 lent opera in an open-air theater and dancing 
 in an open pavilion as well as food and soft 
 drinks. It is located on the North Shore sev- 
 eral miles out of the city and is in the midst of a 
 beautiful wood. During the summer of 19 17 it 
 was crowded on Saturdays and Sundays with all 
 classes of people. 
 
 Every week-end Hilda booked twenty or thirty 
 girls for "extra" work at Laconia. We worked 
 on Saturdays from five in the afternoon until mid- 
 night and on Sundays from two until midnight. 
 We received five dollars in wages and some girls 
 made as much more in tips. I was not one of the 
 most efficient girls, but I could count on making 
 seven or eight dollars every week-end. We liked 
 to work at Laconia because the money was good 
 but the work itself was unusually difficult. We 
 had to walk a long distance with our trays be- 
 cause the kitchen was far from the dining-rooms 
 and so also were the soda fountains and cashier's 
 desk where we paid in all of our checks. This 
 last was most important, for if a customer es- 
 caped without payment, we were held responsible. 
 No small part of our job was keeping an eye on 
 the patron. 
 
 One rainy Sunday night when nearly every one
 
 TJarvestTime i6l 
 
 was at the concert or dancing in the open-air pa- 
 vilion, two soldier boys strayed into the little de- 
 serted dining-room where I was stationed. They 
 were tall, clean, healthy-looking country boys. 
 
 "Why aren't you dancing?" I asked as I took 
 their order for sandwiches and coffee. 
 
 "We don't know anybody," said one, "and we 
 haven't got the nerve to walk up to a girl we 
 don't know and ask her for a dance." 
 
 I registered sympathy and when I returned 
 with the orders, one boy said, "Can't you dance 
 with us?" 
 
 I shook my head, "I'm here to work." 
 
 "Don't you have any time off?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I work here only Saturdays and 
 Sundays." 
 
 "Can't you come out to the camp to see us some 
 night — say next Tuesday night, and bring a girl 
 friend? It^s awful lonesome out at that camp 
 without any girls." 
 
 "Oh, I can't," I said. 
 
 "Come on now, please," pleaded the boy, "You 
 bring another girl and come; we have from seven 
 until ten off every night and we can go for a walk. 
 It's awful pretty out by the camp." 
 
 "I'm sorry, but I live out South and it's too far 
 for me to come." 
 
 "You mean you don't like the looks of us. You
 
 1 62 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 know we haven't got much money and I bet you've 
 got a fellow with lots of dough that can show 
 you a good time." 
 
 "No, that's not it," I protested, laughing. 
 "You are all right, but I haven't time." 
 
 "See!" he said to the other boy with a grimace, 
 "that's the way they turn us down." 
 
 They rose to go, but as they walked off, the 
 boy turned and said, "If you knew how lonesome 
 we are, you'd take pity on us and come."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE KOSHER SALAMI 
 
 "Kosher Salami and potato salad," said the 
 first patron whose order I took on the morning 
 that I went to work in the Jewish restaurant at 
 South Wabash Avenue. 
 
 I must have looked a little puzzled, for he 
 added: 
 
 "If you don't know what that is, just give my 
 order to the cook, he will understand." 
 
 Then I remembered that one day when I was 
 visiting the Chicago stockyards, I had looked 
 down into the killing pens and there I had seen 
 a tall, black-robed, priestly figure moving about 
 among the cattle. Upon his head was a close- 
 fitting skull cap and in his right hand was a huge 
 sharp-pointed knife. 
 
 "It is the day that we have set aside for the 
 killing of the Jewish meat," my guide had ex- 
 plained. 
 
 As I watched him, the priestly figure leaned 
 over a cow that lay prostrate at his feet, his lips 
 murmured a few words of an ancient ritual and 
 
 163
 
 164 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 then, with nice precision he jabbed the point of 
 the knife into the jugular vein of the animal. 
 The blood spurted out like a stream from the 
 nozzle of a hose. Wiping his blade he passed 
 on to another victim. 
 
 This priestly figure was the "Shohet" of the 
 Jews, a man who had studied the art of killing 
 according to a Mosaic law. The meat killed by 
 him is called "Kosher" meat. The orthodox Jew 
 will eat no other and the orthodox Jew is so 
 numerous in Chicago that certain days are given 
 him in the pens at the yard for the killing of his 
 meat. This meat is afterwards kept separate 
 from other meat, labelled "Kosher," and sent 
 into the Jewish retail markets. 
 
 This restaurant which I shall call the Kosher 
 Salami, was owned and managed by Jews when 
 I worked there, but was patronized by Jews and 
 Gentiles in about equal numbers. It was on ac- 
 count of the Jews that Kosher meats were served 
 and there was no butter except by request. 
 
 This restaurant, which was in a basement, was 
 of the cafe type. The same men came day after 
 day and sat in little groups at the same tables and 
 here the gemiltUchkeit of the German restaurant 
 prevailed. This relation between the patron and 
 the waitress, was friendly, familiar, suggestive of 
 even greater intimacy. Practically every man left 
 a tip every day, but the tip was always a nickel.
 
 The Kosher Salami 165 
 
 This, so the girls said, was a New York custom. 
 The proprietor used to sit with the same girl 
 two days in succession and on one of these two 
 days he gave her a nickel. He never was known 
 to leave a tip both days. 
 
 The same girl patrons came day after day 
 also. They were mostly Jewish girls, stenog- 
 raphers, typists, and workers in the wholesale mil- 
 linery houses which are near Michigan Avenue. 
 The waitresses hated them because they never 
 knew what they wanted, said they would take this 
 or that, and when the waitress brought it, guessed 
 they wouldn't have it after all, but would take this 
 other instead. Or, if satisfied with the order, 
 would think of something they wanted that would' 
 necessitate another trip to the kitchen from 
 whence the first order had just been brought. 
 They demanded all sorts of attentions and never 
 left a tip. 
 
 The waitresses at the Kosher Salami were very 
 pretty girls. They gave a great deal of attention 
 to dress and were neat and smart in their ap- 
 pearance. I became well acquainted with several 
 of them. 
 
 Mayme, a pretty blond, told me that she had 
 a lover who had rented a flat for her to live in 
 with her little sister who was feeble-minded. She 
 was very proud of her home and talked of the 
 curtains she was making and of the plans she had
 
 1 66 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 for furnishing it, just as any married woman 
 might have done. 
 
 NeUie was a beautiful girl with a cameo-like 
 profile. She had a daughter thirteen years old 
 whom she was trying to keep in school. In talk- 
 ing with me about how difficult it was for I r to 
 do this, she said: 
 
 "Everyone thinks I'm foolish not to put her 
 to work but she's nothing but a baby. I don't 
 want to take her out of school yet." 
 
 Nellie was a decent girl but she laughed at the 
 smutty stories of the men who came to the Kosher 
 Salami and let them hold her hand and slap her 
 on the back. 
 
 "It makes you sick," said she, "but it gets tKe 
 money." 
 
 Rachel, the only Jewish waitress, was most un- 
 popular with the others. One day, when she ard 
 they were comparing expense accounts, she sai'd 
 that she paid eleven dollars a month for her flat 
 but that it had stove heat. The others said they 
 paid as high as twenty-eight and thirty dollars 
 for theirs which had steam heat. 
 
 Then Rachel went on to say that she earned ten 
 or twelve dollars a week and her husband earned 
 twenty-five and that, though they had been mar- 
 ried only a year, they had two hundred dollars 
 in the bank. "And we help our folks, too," said 
 she. "We give three dollars a week to his par-
 
 The Kosher Salami 167 
 
 ents and three dollars a week to my mother. 
 Mother has ten children and there are four little 
 ones still at home. The older ones all help mother 
 with the expenses, but it is not enough and mother 
 has to have help from the "Charities." 
 
 "And you let the Charities help your mother 
 when you've got two hundred dollars in the 
 bank!" exclaimed Nellie indignantly. "Before I'd 
 let the Charities help my mother, I'd take that 
 two hundred dollars out of the bank quick and 
 hand it to her!" 
 
 "But I have to think of my husband," pro- 
 tested Rachel. 
 
 "Husband, nothin' !" chimed in Mayme, "you 
 can get a dozen husbands — I guess I know, I've 
 had two — but you can only have one mother. 
 When it's a choice between a husband and a 
 mother, a husband can go to Hell!" 
 
 "But I have to think of myself and my hus- 
 band," repeated Rachel, stubbornly holding her 
 position. "We are both willing to give our folks 
 what we think we can afford, but not all. Every 
 two weeks my husband brings me fifty dollars and 
 I put ten in the bank and I send twelve to our 
 folks and the rest we use with mine to live on!" 
 
 "And you live in a flat with stove heat and call 
 that living," sniffed Mayme contemptuously. 
 "Well, I don't. We can only live once and I'm 
 going to have comforts. I have steam heat and
 
 1 68 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 hot water any old time of the day or night and 
 I got electric lights. Any old time I live in a 
 flat with stove heat just to save a little money !" 
 
 "Well, do you think I want to work always?" 
 asked Rachel, and added, "Of course I don't! I 
 want my husband should get ahead in the world. 
 I don't want he should always be a clerk in a 
 lawyer's office at twenty-five dollars a week. He 
 is a graduate of Northwestern University and I 
 want he should have a business of his own and 
 get ahead in the world. While I am young, I will 
 work and help him." 
 
 "And let the Charities take care of your little 
 brothers and you with two hundred dollars in the 
 bank!" said Nellie, and there was infinite scorn 
 in her voice. 
 
 "And why not?" asked Rachel, "they have good 
 care." And to excuse herself a little, she added, 
 "I give what my husband is willing I should give." 
 
 "To Hell with your husband!" cried Mayme, 
 "the fellow I'm goin' with helps me take care of 
 my little sister!" 
 
 "But you ain't married, honey," protested 
 Rachel, "when it's speaking of husbands, I've got 
 a good one but marriage is hard and fast, girlie; 
 it's not like having a sweetheart. Wait till you're 
 married to him and see !" 
 
 "Gee, none of us saves any money except you, 
 Rachel," said Ruth, a quiet little girl who had
 
 The Kosher Salami 169 
 
 been listening as she washed and wiped the sugar 
 bowls. "A waitress throws her money up in the 
 air and what sticks to the ceiling she puts in the 
 bank, and what comes down she spends — tra ! la 1" 
 
 Rachel said that she was true to her husband 
 but she talked freely about intimate matters with 
 the men who sat at her tables. It was this way 
 that she made her good tips. 
 
 As a matter of fact, all of the girls catered to 
 this taste. They laughed at the dirty jokes of 
 their patrons and listened to their obscene stories 
 and retold them among themselves when they 
 were doing their side work. They showed each 
 other verses of obscene poetry. They pointed 
 out to each other men who indulged secretly in 
 perverse sexual practices. And yet these men 
 looked and acted much as other people do. A 
 casual observer eating in this restaurant could 
 not have picked them out. 
 
 One day three young men sat down at one of 
 my tables. As I was returning from the kitchen 
 with their orders, I heard one of them say: 
 
 "Gee, you should have been with us the other 
 night. Vve had some French girls and they were 
 great!" 
 
 "Hush!" said one of the others when he saw 
 me. 
 
 The first speaker blushed and they discontinued 
 the conversation. They left me thirty-five cents in
 
 1 70 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 tips but, though they came every day to the res- 
 taurant they never again sat at my station. 
 
 Another day at lunch time, a very young girl 
 sat down at one of my tables which had a seating 
 capacity for eight. Several men were already 
 seated at this table and they seemed to know the 
 girl. She was very beautiful, slender and grace- 
 ful, with wonderful eyes and a bewitching expres- 
 sion made up of dimples and natural charm. In 
 a blaclc dress and huge hat she made an exquisite 
 picture. The men paid her silly extravagant com- 
 pliments. She smiled, beamed, enjoyed them all. 
 
 When she rose to go, in getting her coat off 
 a hook, she leaned over one of the men and her 
 body touched his at full length. Her dress was 
 very low and her breast showed as she leaned 
 over. He exchanged significant glances with the 
 other men. 
 
 Six men and one silly little girl, unusually 
 beautiful and attractive. She captivated the sand- 
 wich man also so that he stood with his knife 
 poised in the air, unable to cut another slice of 
 bread until she had gone, and even the waitresses 
 said: 
 
 "Ain't she a whiz! Gee, she is some classy 
 kid!" 
 
 The scullions in the public eating-places are 
 vile beyond description both in their language and 
 in their personal habits. People who eat in res-
 
 The Kosher Salami 17 1 
 
 taurants do not realize that their food is being 
 handled and prepared by the lowest type of men 
 that can be found in a great city. They are the 
 down-and-outers, the scum that comes from the 
 lodging-house districts where are huddled to- 
 gether that enormous host of the city's "home- 
 less" men. 
 
 Women will no longer do the kitchen work in 
 restaurants. Some time ago it was done by Irish 
 girls. Then the Irish girls became waitresses or 
 moved up even higher, and were replaced by the 
 women of other nationalities. When I first 
 started to be a waitress, there were still many 
 Polish and Lithuanian girls who were doing this 
 work, but they were being rapidly replaced by 
 men, until, when I left the restaurant world there 
 were but few women in the kitchens.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE MEADOW LARK 
 
 A SHORT distance from Fairfield Park, one of 
 Chicago's north shore suburbs, the Meadow Lark 
 Golf Club stands apart in a hvely country spot. 
 Wild flowers are in the woods and meadows just 
 behind it and close-cropped golf links roll out 
 before it. It is an example of the beauty that an 
 architect can create out of wood and stone and 
 of the harmony that can be realized by an artis- 
 tic assembling of furnishings in accord with the 
 structure as a whole. With its wide, cool rooms, 
 its broad screen porches, its brick-tiled grill, its 
 deep-cushioned chairs, Its capacious couches, it 
 extends a hearty welcome to the arriving guest 
 and tempts him to prolong his stay far beyond 
 the limits of his first intention. It delights the 
 eye with its soft-toned rugs and harmonious hang- 
 ings as much as the cool, soft breezes that blow 
 through the open French windows refresh the 
 skin. Truly an ideal place in which to loaf and 
 sip iced lemonade on a balmy summer day after 
 eighteen holes of strenuous golf. 
 
 172
 
 The Meadow Lark 173 
 
 I arrived, a waitress sent out by the Alliance, 
 at this paradise of golfers, late one afternoon in 
 July. My taxi drew up at the front entrance. 
 For me to arrive in a taxi was not out of keeping 
 with my role of waitress, for taxis, like cabarets 
 and Russian Tea Rooms, are patronized exten- 
 sively by waitresses. Suitcase in hand, I entered 
 the open door. No one was visible, so I walked 
 through the spacious rooms until I found the 
 kitchen. 
 
 "My goodness, Fannie !" said Rebecca, the pan- 
 try maid, a few days later, "I thought you were a 
 guest and I was just going to offer you a glass 
 of water and dust off a chair for you when you 
 said you were the new waitress." 
 
 I was not a little pleased at Rebecca's recogni- 
 tion for throughout my experiences I had been 
 chagrined at the success of my disguise which was 
 no disguise after all. I had merely put on an 
 apron and said that I was a waitress and imme- 
 diately every one accepted me as one. 
 
 After dinner the night of my arrival, the man- 
 ager told me to stay downstairs "on watch." He 
 also showed me how to lock up and informed me 
 that this would be my job every third night. I 
 sat around on the porch reading a book and en- 
 joying the marvelous beauty of the place. Later 
 the manager joined me for a time. "I was just 
 about to give up in despair and put on Japs here,"
 
 174 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 said he. "I've had Union girls and Alliance 
 girls, and they either will not stay or they will not 
 work while they are here. They tell me that they 
 are waitresses and they refuse to do anything ex- 
 cept waiting. Now a girl here has to do other 
 things as well; she has to take care of the dining- 
 room and wait on the guests when they come in; 
 she has to make lemonade for them and serve soft 
 drinks from the pantry. The hours are long and 
 indefinite in a place like this, but the work is not 
 hard. Surely in your Alliance of five hundred 
 members, there must be a few girls who would 
 appreciate an environment like this." 
 
 I thought to myself, "How little you under- 
 stand the waitress!" But I was spared the neces- 
 sity of an answer for just then the five guests 
 who were staying for the night returned from 
 motoring and I became very busy getting ice 
 water, showing them to their rooms, and attend- 
 ing to their many little wants. At ten o'clock I 
 was free to retire. I had been assigned a clean 
 little room containing a white iron bed, a dresser, 
 and a chair, and there I locked myself in. As 
 I dosed off to sleep, I heard one of the women 
 servants splashing about in the bathroom which 
 was next to my room. I was glad to discover 
 the next day that this bath was clean and reserved 
 for the women servants only. 
 
 The following morning, I arose at half past
 
 The Meadow Lark 175 
 
 six and after a somewhat hasty toilet, breakfasted 
 at seven o'clock in the servants' dining-room. 
 The food was good and everything about the 
 meal was very clean, in marked contrast with con- 
 ditions in the other restaurant in which I had 
 worked. On the big porch I served breakfast 
 to the five guests and in the dining room to the 
 family of three. Then I swept and dusted and 
 put in order the immense dining roorri and also 
 the dining porch. The manager had been with- 
 out help for several days and now I was the only 
 waitress. The room was very dirty and by the 
 time I had it cleaned, it was time to serve lunch- 
 eon. There were several extra guests for this 
 meal and I was busy until half past two. The 
 day was very warm and when I had straightened 
 the dining room, I prepared to go upstairs for 
 a rest. The manager then asked me to clean the 
 men's grill. 
 
 "I am tired," I said, "I will do it tomorrow." 
 He showed that he was angry. I did not al- 
 low that to bother me in the least but calmly 
 walked up the back stairs. "Too much Alliance 
 and too much Union!" I heard him mutter as 
 he turned away. 
 
 At half past five I was back on duty. There 
 were eleven guests for dinner besides the family 
 and I did not get through until half past nine. 
 The meals had to be served very carefully here
 
 176 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 and "service" takes time. For some reason the 
 manager's wife did not eat at the regular time 
 and I was asked to serve her after I had finished 
 with all the others. I was doing the work of two 
 waitresses but that seemed to entitle me to no 
 consideration either from the guests or the man- 
 ager. "What would happen to the girls if there 
 were no Alliance or no Union!" I thought indig- 
 nantly. "Their organizations protect them 
 from injustice. No wonder girls will not work 
 here!" 
 
 But I did not keep my independent attitude 
 long. I became intensely interested in the work 
 and I learned to like the manager. He was a 
 nervous man, quick tempered and often unrea- 
 sonable, but it was because he failed to understand 
 the waitress. He loved the Meadow Lark Golf 
 Club as though he had created it. He who had 
 always been the manager of hotels and restau- 
 rants had longed to be an architect. The beauty 
 of Meadow Lark appealed to his aesthetic sensi- 
 bility and he was overjoyed to find that I appreci- 
 ated it as he did. I soon saw that he was being 
 hard driven, harder even than he was driving us, 
 by the directors of the club who did not under- 
 stand his problems any better than he understood 
 ours. The house committee kept warning him 
 to keep down expenses; he was getting along
 
 The Meadow Lark 177 
 
 with an Insufficient kitchen force but was expected 
 to turn out only the best results. 
 
 I found myself working even longer hours than 
 those demanded by the manager. The artistic 
 perfection of the place made so strong an appeal 
 that I could not endure to see the tables badly 
 arranged nor the dining room out of order. I 
 gathered and arranged flowers to place before the 
 mirrors on the buffets because of the pleasure it 
 gave me to see them there. I followed up the 
 extra girls who came in for the week end to see 
 that they cleaned up well and did not leave spilled 
 water upon the tables or buffets, and I kept an 
 eye on the entire dining room in anticipation of 
 all needs, instead of concentrating upon my own 
 individual problem. 
 
 The members of Meadow Lark appeared to 
 be wealthy Americans, better bred than the 
 patrons of the average Loop restaurant although 
 they said "Was you?" frequently and their con- 
 versations at meals were dull and stupid. I have 
 a little Jewish friend who lives In a small west- 
 ern city and once when she was visiting me, she 
 remarked, "These people here look just like those 
 we see on the streets back home." And I, like 
 my little friend, found the members of the 
 Meadow Lark Club just like the society folks I 
 had known back home in my little western city.
 
 178 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 The women were pathetic creatures. They 
 seemed to have no real interest in life. The 
 men had their golf which they really enjoyed but 
 most of the women sat around with their knit- 
 ting talking about trivial matters, plainly bored 
 to death with each other. At dinner, in spite 
 of the cocktails and highballs, both men and 
 women were listless and uninterested, and yet 
 these dinners cost the host fifty or seventy-five 
 dollars. And when they danced it was without 
 joy or spontaneity. 
 
 I wondered why they had the club house, why 
 the beautiful furnishings and perfect appoint- 
 ments, why they spent so much money on pleas- 
 ure that was obviously no pleasure. And I de- 
 cided that perhaps if the women had some real 
 work to do, some real interest in hfe, then pleas- 
 ure would be a genuine recreation. For I am 
 convinced that there are thousands of people, 
 like the members of the Meadow Lark Club, who 
 are spending thousands of dollars every day on 
 pleasure that brings them no real joy nor satis- 
 faction, and I cannot help speculating on what 
 might be accomplished if this great stream of 
 wasted energy could be directed along other 
 channels. 
 
 The manager of Meadow Lark was subjected 
 to many petty annoyances. Members were sup- 
 posed to make reservations in advance for meals
 
 The Meadow Lark 179 
 
 and rooms but they dropped in at any time with- 
 out warning and expected every attention. One 
 Saturday night there were only forty reserva- 
 tions for dinner and between sixty and seventy 
 people came. There was no time in which to 
 get in extra help; the kitchen help that had been 
 working in peace arjd harmony began to quarrel 
 among themselves. The manager was distracted 
 and chaos reigned. I did the work of three wait- 
 resses besides keeping an eye on the entire din- 
 ing room and trying to expedite things in the 
 kitchen. I made the iced tea and also served the 
 drinks from the locker rooms at the tables where 
 there were extra waitresses. The members ate 
 on serenely unconscious of the havoc in the 
 kitchen. 
 
 We had provided wild flowers as decorations 
 for this dinner and when I was arranging them 
 for the tables, Kitty, a waitress, said to me, 
 "Can't these folks afford any good flowers In- 
 stead of them weeds!" 
 
 Kitty was not alone in her views. Just before 
 dinner one of the hostesses of the evening, a 
 slender, fragile young matron with a dead white 
 skin and discontented lips, came to me and de- 
 manded : 
 
 "Which is my table?" 
 
 "This one near the door." 
 
 "Take those flowers off," said she pettishly,
 
 l8o The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "I've brought my own," and she handed me a 
 huge tissue covered bouquet. 
 
 I moved the wild flowers to a buffet and sub- 
 stituted on her table, the pink rosebuds. All 
 evening they nodded there as pale, as fragile, as 
 altogether artificial as the young woman herself. 
 
 Another hostess entered and when she saw 
 the table we had prepared for her, she said: 
 
 "I won't have it, it is square and I want a 
 round one." 
 
 One morning I was serving breakfast to a man 
 alone on the porch and he said to me: 
 
 "You stay out here all the time, don't you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Pretty soft!" said he, "that's what I call 
 pretty soft!" 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "if working from the time 
 I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night 
 for not quite nine dollars a week is soft, then 
 this is a soft job. Perhaps you have never tried 
 to see how much you could buy for nine dollars 
 and found out how little." 
 
 "There may be something in that," said he, 
 and glancing at the magazine I had in my hand, 
 he added, "What are you reading?" 
 
 "The New Republic." 
 
 "Never heard of it. Where did you get it?" 
 
 "I brought it with me. There isn't anything
 
 The Meadow Lark i8i 
 
 to read here, not even the daily paper. Doesn't 
 anyone in this club ever read?" 
 
 He looked at me over his spectacles. 
 
 "I guess not," he answered, "we aren't the 
 reading kind. Is that a socialist magazine? I 
 suppose you are a socialist." 
 
 Just then the manager called to me. I found 
 out later why. Kitty had said to him: 
 
 "Fannie is out there on the porch tryin' to make 
 a date with one of the members." 
 
 This girl had come to Meadow Lark after I 
 had been there alone for four days. With her 
 advent, a different moral tone pervaded the serv- 
 ants' dining room. She diffused about her an 
 atmosphere of cynicism and indecency that had 
 been entirely absent until her coming. The men 
 servants, who had been perfectly respectful while 
 only decent women were present, responded in- 
 stantly to the new tone even though she was old 
 and ugly, had several teeth missing, was short- 
 sighted, and had feet bulging with bunions. 
 
 Every time she saw me exchanging a civil word 
 with a guest, she leered at me and said: 
 
 "How much will you get out of that one, Fan- 
 nie?" or, "Can't you do enough business in the 
 kitchen without goin' into the parlor?" A world 
 of social intercourse that did not involve the per- 
 verted sex game did not exist for her.
 
 1 82 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 The other servants at Meadow Lark were of 
 the upper class type. All were English except 
 one American pantry maid and the Swedish cook, 
 whose husband, the locker man, was, however, a 
 Cockney. The conversations in their dining 
 room were most intelligent. They discussed the 
 questions of the day and lamented because there 
 were no newspapers at Meadow Lark. 
 
 One day when one of the pantry maids had 
 been severely reprimanded by the manager, she 
 said at the dinner table : 
 
 "I thank God every day that my husband my 
 four boys are dead. We think it is hard to see 
 them die but God knows ! Living troubles are 
 harder to bear. You don't have to worry about 
 those that are dead." 
 
 "He was mean to you today, Mary," said the 
 cook sympathetically, "but I was glad that you 
 did not answer him back. I make it a rule never 
 to answer back nor to act sore no matter what a 
 boss says nor how unreasonable he is. I answer 
 back nice and pleasant. It is the only way to keep 
 a job." 
 
 On this particular day everything had gone 
 wrong. Alfred, the dishwasher, had been recov- 
 ering from a spree with which he had celebrated 
 his "off" day, and his nerves were completely out 
 of tune. He slammed the dishes around until
 
 The Meadow Lark 183 
 
 we wondered how there could be any whole one 
 left. Finally the manager discharged him. 
 
 When he was ready to go, he came back to the 
 kitchen for his money. He was dressed in his 
 best and carried his working clothes in a little 
 bundle under his arm. They were all he had in 
 the world, A working man "dressed up" is al- 
 ways a sight to move one to tears. Poor Alfred 
 haunted me all day; I have often wondered since 
 what becomes of these poor derelicts. 
 
 In all of the golf clubs there is a rule against 
 tipping. This is not fair to the steady girls. 
 The extra girls who were hired for Saturday and 
 Sunday at Meadow Lark received $2.50 per day 
 and their car fare. I worked for $35.00 per 
 month, not quite four dollars more per week and 
 I put in all of my time and had all of the respon- 
 sibility and all of the drudgery. I also had to 
 pay my own railroad fare. 
 
 The position of a steady girl at a club is like 
 that of a house servant. I averaged thirteen 
 or fourteen hours per day at Meadow Lark and 
 never had any time to call my own if I remained 
 in the building. Even when I went to my room 
 to dress or to rest a few moments, someone was 
 sure to call me to ask about something. 
 
 A golf club is a lonely place for a waitress for 
 she has no resources within herself. She does
 
 1 84 The TFoman TFho JVaits 
 
 not read and when her work is done, she longs 
 for the dance hall or the movie, or for the ex- 
 citement of merely mingling with the crowds on 
 the streets. And so for the same reasons that 
 it is difficult to keep house servants, it is difficult 
 to get a girl to work "steady" at a golf club. 
 She would rather earn $5.00 at the week end, 
 pick up a dollar at a lunch job in the city a few 
 days a week w^hen she feels like work and have 
 her freedom and the life of the city. 
 
 Then, too, at a golf club the attitude of the 
 patron towards the waitress is more convention- 
 alized. To him the waitress is a servant. "I 
 don't want to work there no more," said a girl 
 In speaking of a certain club, "those folks out 
 there never see you. They treat you like so 
 much dirt." Then she added, "There is no place 
 like the city to work. In any old hash house, 
 folks'll talk to you and act as though you was 
 somebody and slip you a dime once in a while. 
 None o' them swell clubs for me ! You ain't 
 anybody and you ain't got a chance to pick up 
 even a nickel."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE waitresses' ALLIANCE 
 
 The Waitresses' Alliance was organized in 
 March, 19 15. The objects of this Alliance as set 
 forth in the Constitution and By-Laws are as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 I — To provide a common meeting place for 
 women who make their living by serving in Res- 
 taurants, Lunch Rooms, Cafes, Hotels, and other 
 public eating places, or by assisting caterers at 
 social affairs; 
 
 2 — To improve Its members mentally, physi- 
 cally, and morally, and to obtain for Its members 
 proper working conditions; 
 
 3 — To facilitate the honorable and profitable 
 transaction of business by the members of the 
 Organization, as a whole, with employers; 
 
 4 — To protect the individual members from 
 unjust treatment on the part of unscruplous per- 
 sons; 
 
 5 — To confer with employers and arbitrate 
 differences and otherwise advance the Industrial 
 Welfare of all Its members; 
 
 185
 
 1 86 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 6 — To create a community of interests and to 
 maintain a reasonable standard of wages and 
 working conditions; 
 
 7 — To do everything possible to obtain em- 
 ployment for its members. 
 
 In 19 1 7 when I was a member, the Alliance 
 was located in a room in one of the large build- 
 ings on West Washington Street. This room 
 was large and pleasant and furnished cheerfully 
 with rugs, pictures, chairs, and cretonne window 
 curtains. 
 
 There were approximately 500 members in 
 the Alliance at this time. The initiation fee was 
 $2.00 and the dues thereafter were fifty cents 
 per month. 
 
 Mrs. Hilda McLean, a retired waitress, was 
 financial secretary and general manager. The 
 Alliance paid her a salary of $10.00 per week 
 which was raised to $15.00 during July and Au- 
 gust. The restaurant managers, when in need 
 of a waitress, telephoned Hilda and she did her 
 best to fill all orders. She had calls for all sorts 
 of girls but she did her greatest amount of busi- 
 ness in supplying extra girls for lunch jobs. I 
 have known her to send out as many as twenty 
 girls in less than forty-five minutes to different 
 places. In winter sometimes there were not 
 enough jobs for all so the first comers got them,
 
 The Waitresses' Alliance 187 
 
 but in summer there were always more jobs than 
 were girls to fill them. Lunch jobs had been 
 paying seventy-five cents but during the summer 
 of 19 1 7, Hilda made the employers pay one dol- 
 lar for an extra lunch girl. 
 
 Sometimes it was hard to get the girls to go 
 to certain places. "I don't want to work, there," 
 some one would say, "I want to work where I 
 can at least pick up one extra dime." "Not that 
 place for me, I can't stand that fellow," or "Do 
 you think I'll work under that damn red head?" 
 (meaning the head waitress), or "I don't want to 
 go there, the trays are too heavy." 
 
 But Hilda was a diplomat and before they 
 knew it, she had overcome their objections, they 
 had an Alliance card in their hands, and were out 
 in the hall pushing the button for the elevator. 
 Very often they would fail to "show up" at the 
 place where they had been sent, and then Hilda 
 would have trouble in appeasing the irate man- 
 agers and not losing the house for the Alliance. 
 Sometimes the girls would go but fail to make 
 good on the job and this gave the /\lliance a 
 bad name. "We have lost that house," Hilda 
 would say, "Caroline spoiled it for us; she ought 
 to be ashamed of herself!" And if Caroline 
 continued to spoil jobs, she would be asked to 
 resign from the Alliance.
 
 1 88 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 Most of the girls, however, took a great In- 
 terest in their AlHance and were jealous of its 
 prestige. One afternoon a South Side manager 
 phoned for an extra supper girl. "Who wants 
 to go?" asked Hilda, as she hung up the re- 
 ceiver. 
 
 "I do," said a nice looking young girl, "but I 
 will have to go home first and clean up." 
 
 "You should worry," remarked someone, 
 "you're clean enough, and anyway it's just for 
 tonight." 
 
 "I guess not," said the young girl, "do you 
 know what they say about us Alliance girls? 
 They say we are just filthy dirty," and she 
 scrambled into her coat and rushed out of the 
 door. 
 
 Every Thursday at three o'clock there was a 
 business meeting at the Alliance, at which the 
 president presided. The order of business was 
 much the same as that of any other Woman's 
 Club and was carried on in a very able manner. 
 When the business had been transacted, the new 
 members were asked to state what the Alliance 
 had done for them, and, in much the same manner 
 as the convert at the revival meeting, the new 
 member gave her experience. 
 
 "I am glad to tell what the Alliance has done 
 for me," said a pretty Swedish girl one Thurs- 
 day. "I came to the city six months ago and I
 
 The Waitresses' Alliance 189 
 
 walked the streets broke because I couldn't get 
 a job. Then a girl in a restaurant where I tried 
 to get work told me about the Alliance and I came 
 up here to Hilda. 'But I have no money to pay 
 the initiation fee!' I said to Hilda and she said, 
 'That makes no difference, you work first and 
 pay afterwards.' And ever since I have had 
 work, all I could do, and a nice job all summer 
 at Lakewood. And now I have money and I can 
 pay the Alliance and that is all what the Alliance 
 has done for me," and the pretty Swedish girl 
 smiled through her tears as she sat down amid 
 loud applause. 
 
 The Alliance Is an employment agency but It 
 has another equally important function. It pro- 
 vides a common meeting place for the exchange 
 of ideas. Every afternoon the members gather 
 at the Alliance to visit and gossip together. The 
 short-hour girl is off duty for the day at half 
 past two each day and even the steady girl gets 
 a little time off during the afternoon and she 
 always has one whole afternoon during the week 
 for herself. This room is the natural meeting 
 place for these girls who live In such widely scat- 
 tered homes that anything like house to house 
 visiting Is impossible for them. The conversa- 
 tions at these meetings set the standards for the 
 group. 
 
 For example a waitress will say, "I can't stay
 
 190 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 any longer today, girls, I've got to take my kid 
 to the dentist. I don't want her to have teeth 
 like mine. Isn't it great how the schools teach 
 such things now? Nobody ever told me how to 
 take care of my teeth when I was a kid." And 
 this will open up a discussion about rules of 
 health in which ideas of real value are passed 
 from one to another. 
 
 Through the Alliance are arranged the dances 
 and card parties that provide entertainment and 
 social recognition for the group. I was a mem- 
 ber of the committee which arranges the Alliance 
 card party in the fall of 19 17. Some of the 
 girls wanted to have drinks served but Hilda 
 would not permit it. "We won't have no 
 drinks," said she, "People think that waitresses 
 can't have a respectable party and we will show 
 them. This is going to be a nice quiet party and 
 we are going to invite the reporter from the 
 Tribune to come and give us a write up," 
 
 And a nice quiet party it was with dancing for 
 the younger members, a "Bunco" game for the 
 older ones, and a generous supper of potato salad, 
 spaghetti and layer cake for all at midnight. 
 Everyone wore a paper cap and blew a noise- 
 making instrument but for soberness and respec- 
 tability, it could compete with any small town 
 church social.
 
 The Waitresses' Alliance 191 
 
 The Alliance is of inestimable value to the 
 girls. "When we first come to the city," they 
 say, "and do not know about the Alliance, we 
 must walk the streets for jobs or go to the em- 
 ployment agencies and they skin us to the bone." 
 The Alliance makes a quick connection between 
 the girl and the job, and moreover, Hilda makes 
 it her business to know the character of the place 
 which sends In the call for help and she sends out 
 the girls best suited to the job. The old, the in- 
 experienced, the ugly, and the inefficient, are kept 
 as a reserve force to send out to fill gaps and to 
 meet emergency calls. That is why the service 
 at banquets and extra luncheons is always poor. 
 But so clev^er is Hilda in her collective bargain- 
 ing for the group, that these reserve workers are 
 paid a wage when they do work which is suffi- 
 cient to enable them to live although they may 
 have employment only part time. In summer 
 Hilda keeps them moving constantly and it is 
 only in the dull winter months that there is any 
 danger of hardship. Surplus in wages provides a 
 form of unemployment insurance. 
 
 When an Alliance member cannot get work 
 and is in real need, the organization helps her 
 out. Also when she is ill, the sick committee 
 calls upon her and sees to it that she is properly 
 provided for. At every Thursday meeting a
 
 11 
 
 192 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 basket is passed and each girl present drops in a 
 few pennies which are used to buy flowers for 
 the members who are ill. 
 
 The Alliance compels the patronage of the res- 
 taurant keeper. It is a great convenience for him 
 to be able to step to the telephone, call the Alli- 
 ance, and in less than half an hour have a waitress 
 there in an apron ready for work. He loses no 
 time in waiting for an answer to his advertise- 
 ment in the newspaper or for some girl to come 
 in off the street in answer to the sign "Waitress 
 Wanted," which he has put up in his window. 
 
 Not more than 25 per cent of the waitresses 
 in Chicago are organized yet those who are, are 
 a power in themselves. If all were organized 
 they would indeed be an enormous force. The 
 Waitresses' Union and Waitresses' Alliance have 
 won for the group the eight hour working day 
 and the relatively high wages. The girls on the 
 outside accept the benefits which these organized 
 workers have won for them. 
 
 I shall not attempt to tell anything about the 
 Waitresses' Union because I did not belong to 
 it. After I became an office executive I tried as 
 an outsider to get some information about it. 
 The attempt was worse than useless. I was told 
 things that I knew absolutely were not true. I 
 gave it up, and as this book is an account of what 
 I know I have judged it wiser to make no state-
 
 The Waitresses' Alliance 193 
 
 ments whatever about the Waitresses' Union, 
 except that in my opinion there is httle or no dif- 
 ference between it and the Alliance. I worked 
 with Alliance girls, Union girls, and "Scabs," and 
 the cultural status of all was the same but the 
 most intelligent, forceful and efficient girls be- 
 longed to one or the other of these organizations.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 TIPPING 
 
 I RECEIVED my first tip on the first day that I 
 was a waitress. A shabby, dissipated wreck of 
 a man came in and sat down on one of the stools 
 at my counter. To my surprise, he ordered a 
 forty-five cent meal. I became very busy and I 
 did not at once remove his dirty dishes. A boy 
 sat down on the stool vacated by this man and 
 I took his order. When I was attempting to 
 clear a place for it, I saw a greasy, dirty nickel 
 on the counter. The boy gave it a little push 
 towards me and said, "I guess this is yours." 
 
 "I thought it was yours," I said, and then I 
 realized that I had been given a tip. I knew 
 that it was customary to tip a waitress in more 
 fashionable eating places but that it was done 
 here, was a great surprise to me. Presently two 
 mail carriers came in, one white and one colored, 
 and each, when he left, gave me a dime. I had 
 tipped colored boys many times but it was in- 
 deed a new experience to have one tip me. 
 
 The second place that I worked was Foyle's 
 194
 
 Tipping 1 95 
 
 Tea Shop. One day when the waitresses were 
 eating their lunch in the rear of the room, a 
 plainly dressed woman entered and sat down at a 
 table near the front. 
 
 "There's a lady at your table, Florence," said 
 a waitress to a pretty girl who sat next to 
 her. 
 
 "I don't care if there is," said Florence, "I'm 
 tired and I'm going to eat my lunch. Somebody 
 else can wait on her." 
 
 In a few minutes she returned to the wait- 
 resses' table and showed, lying on the palm of 
 her hand, a bright new dime. 
 
 "Now aren't you sorry, Florence?" she asked, 
 and then added, "All she asked for was a bowl 
 of soup." 
 
 "Just my luck!" said Florence with a little 
 grimace as she went on eating. 
 
 "That's a movie ticket," said the other girl as 
 she slid the dime into her apron pocket. 
 
 But it was not until I reached the Cafe des Re- 
 flections that I began to realize the enormous im- 
 portance of the tip in the life of the waitress. It 
 was nothing unusual there, for a two meal girl 
 to make $i8.oo or $20.00 per week in tips, and 
 the steady girl made still more. I myself, as a 
 two meal girl, made $8.15 in tips in five days, and 
 I was inexperienced and had the poorest station 
 in the house. 
 
 I
 
 196 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "Did you make good today, girlie?" someone 
 would always ask. 
 
 "I would tell them how much I made. 
 
 "Well, you are new. You will do better after 
 a while. The new girl always gets the front sta- 
 tion and it's no good." 
 
 A station is a group of tables that Is assigned 
 to you. A back station is always better than a 
 front station and "deuces" (tables for two) are 
 better than larger tables. "I've got them three 
 deuces at the back of the room," a girl will say, 
 "and every time I have a couple sittin' at them 
 three deuces, that means three quarters for me. 
 You'd probably only get ten cents, where I'd get 
 a quarter, because you ain't on to the game." 
 
 "I can even get a tip out of a woman," another 
 will say. "I just stick around and act so darn 
 nice that she can't resist. But whether it's a man 
 or a woman, you got to stick around and act like 
 you expected it, or you won't get no tip." 
 
 I was never very successful at working peo^-le 
 for tips and never made over half what the other 
 girls made. One night at Laconia Park I had 
 an order from a man for a pitcher of Apollinaris 
 water and grape juice. Owing to the wretched 
 service at the soda fountain, I was a long time 
 getting it. Later the same man ordered a round 
 of sandwiches for his party, five in number. 
 
 "That was a nice party you had, kid," said
 
 Tipping 197 
 
 the girl next to me, "how much did you get out 
 of them?" 
 
 "Twenty cents," I answered. 
 
 "You didn't know how to handle him, then. 
 I've had him several times and he's good for a 
 half or a dollar always." 
 
 And one morning at breakfast in the servants' 
 dining room, at the Meadow Lark Golf Club, the 
 Cockney who had charge of the men's lockers, 
 said to me, "Well, Fannie, how much did Mr. L. 
 come through with last night in the dining room?" 
 
 "Not a cent," I said cheerfully. 
 
 "Well then," he said, "you didn't give him 
 service." 
 
 I protested mildly here. 
 
 "Well then, you didn't talk to him. That's 
 where you lost out. You should have talked to 
 him about his game. (The Cockney said 
 "gyme.") No matter whether you know any- 
 thing about golf or not you must say, 'i\nd how 
 many did you make it in today?' and if he says 
 '87,' you say, 'well, now that's not bad, you'll do 
 better next time, no doubt, Mr. L., and anyway 
 you've got a magnificent swing. I was looking 
 out just as you drove off the ninth tee and I must 
 say, Mr. L., you've surely got a swing.' Now 
 that's the talk that brings them. After that he'd 
 be good for a half or maybe a dollar. He ex- 
 pects a waitress to entertain him at dinner."
 
 198 The IV Oman Who Waits 
 
 During my experience as a waitress, I learned 
 that a girl can make tips anywhere if she under- 
 stands the game. I also learned that the poor 
 man tips just as frequently as the rich man and 
 that his tips are just as large. The standard tip 
 all over Chicago is a dime whether it be at a 
 hash house or at Usher Lane's exclusiv-e tea room 
 for men. 
 
 In fact at Usher Lane's I found the tips 
 smaller and less frequent than at any other place 
 where I worked. This was a matter of great 
 importance to the waitress because the lunch serv- 
 ice there lasts but two hours. Owing to the long 
 distance to the kitchen, the poor management, and 
 the number of dishes, doilies, finger bowls, and 
 decorations required to serve a luncheon, It is im- 
 possible for the average girl to serve more than 
 six or eight people in that time. Often men will 
 sit at a girl's table and smoke and chat the entire 
 two hours and then leave without giving her even 
 a dime. Of course while the seats are occupied, 
 she has no chance of getting other customers who 
 might give her a tip. 
 
 Usually a man gives a tip graciously but some- 
 times he is quite disagreeable about it. One day 
 a man at Lane's said to me, "I have no change, 
 but if you will meet me at the cashier's desk, I 
 will give you a dime."
 
 Tipping 199^ 
 
 "Oh, no, thank you," I said, "I'd rather not," 
 and my face was scarlet, 
 
 "All right," he answered, and walked away. 
 His whole manner had said plainly "I don't want 
 to give you this tip. It is a great nuisance. I 
 only give it because custom has decreed that I 
 must." 
 
 However, there are men at Lane's who give 
 generous tips and give them graciously. The 
 very first man I waited on there gave me a quar- 
 ter for serving him a seventy cent luncheon. But 
 I got the quarter in exchange for a smile. 
 
 It was my first day and I was feeling very fool- 
 ish and uncomfortable in my stiff collar and 
 apron as I stood waiting for a customer. All 
 around me were the sort of men I had been ac- 
 customed to meet socially. Now I was about 
 to meet them a waitress. I was smiling at a joke 
 I was having all to myself when an usher woke 
 me up by saying, "Take that man's order." 
 
 I walked over to a nice looking young fellow 
 and, in spite of myself, the smile wouldn't be 
 suppressed as I tried demurely to take his order. 
 He smiled back, although he did not know why, 
 and the quarter was his token of appreciation. 
 
 Another day at Lane's two men came in about 
 three o'clock in the afternoon and asked for 
 luncheon. It was after hours for serving any-
 
 200 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 thing hot but I went into the kitchen and persuaded 
 the cook to give them some fish and vegetables. 
 It was Friday and they had said that they were 
 Cathohcs. I fixed up an appetizing luncheon for 
 them and when I took it in they expressed a great 
 deal of pleasure and asked me to draw up a chair 
 and eat with them. I laughed and thanked them 
 but said, "It isn't done here." 
 
 When a woman comes into a restaurant, the 
 waitress slowly, and with a bored and disgusted 
 air, takes the glass of water and the pat of but- 
 ter from the sideboard and deposits in non- 
 chalantly in front of the patroness' plate. Then 
 more bored and more indifferent she stands hand 
 on hip and service towel in hand and awaits the 
 lady's order. And when it suits her convenience, 
 she brings it. 
 
 The manager has a hard time to contend with 
 this attitude. To him a woman is as profitable 
 as a man. At the Junior Alliance one day a 
 waitress from the Weymouth said, "Our boss 
 won't stand for anything like that. He has fired 
 more than one girl for lookin' disgusted when 
 a woman sits down at her table." 
 
 But when a man comes into a restaurant, he 
 always receives prompt attention. He repre- 
 sents the possibility of a tip. The man who gives 
 the tip likes to give it. It gives him a feeling 
 of generosity, of expansion ; it establishes between
 
 Tipping 201 
 
 him and the girl to whom he gives it, a little feel- 
 ing of intimacy. It is true that this sometimes 
 leads to an undesirable familiarity but this is not 
 the rule. 
 
 But if the waitress is disgusted with the woman 
 who does not tip, her scorn for the man who 
 forgets is unmitigated, "The damn cheap skate I 
 if he doesn't want to tip, let him sit at a lunch 
 counter. Believe me, if a guy comes to my table 
 more than twice without leavin' a tip, he don't 
 get no service from me." 
 
 The skillful waitress will not work in a place 
 where the tips are not good. For this reason 
 and because of the low wages, the most efficient 
 girls are not to be found at a place like Lane's. 
 A popular priced cafe is the place where the 
 waitress can make money. In two hours, she 
 can serve fifteen or twenty people because she 
 need not stop for frills and finger bowls, and at 
 least half of those served will give her a ten cent 
 tip. She also receives very good wages in this 
 sort of place because she serves so many people. 
 
 If tipping were abolished, the manager would 
 have to increase the price of the food served so 
 that the increase would cover the higher wages 
 that he would be obliged to pay his waitresses. 
 This would undoubtedly be more fair, as then the 
 wages of the waitress would be paid by all instead 
 of by a few. But I doubt if this is desired by the
 
 202 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 patron and I know that it is not by the waitress. 
 
 I have asked ev^ery girl with whom I have had 
 an intimate conversation how she feels about tip- 
 ping and always the answer is the same, "I like 
 to work where the 'side money' is good." 
 
 "Would you prefer to work where the 'side 
 money' is good or where the wages are good?" 
 
 "I like to 'pick up' money," answers the girl. 
 
 I soon learned that the success of each day de- 
 pended upon the tips. If the money had been 
 good, then at night when we were ready to go 
 home, there was laughter and gaiety in the little 
 basement dressing room, but if it had not, then 
 all was dull and spiritless. 
 
 Tipping is the gambling factor in the life of the 
 waitress. It redeems her work from dull routine 
 and drudgery and puts into it the problematical. 
 It is the same thing that makes the man shake 
 dice for his cigars instead of paying outright for 
 them. To get a tip is, as William I. Thomas 
 says, "like winning a game. It involves the same 
 uncertainty. It has in it the element of chance, 
 of luck; it is the getting something for nothing, 
 the legitimate satisfaction of the gaming instinct, 
 which is no more dormant in the female than in 
 the male."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE LURE OF DRESS 
 
 It was five o'clock and the two meal girls at 
 the Cafe des Reflections had returned to the base- 
 ment dressing room from the Russian Tea Room, 
 the North American, or the States' restaurants, 
 where they had spent their leisure time since half 
 past two, and were rapidly changing street finery 
 for demure black uniforms. Marietta was danc- 
 ing gaily about in a flowered taffeta petticoat and 
 pink crepe de chine camisole, Dolly was coaxing, 
 with invisible hairpins, the two little curls on each 
 temple to lie flat, and Mabel and Jennie and 
 Maude and Lorraine were putting powder and 
 lip stick wherever each thought it would be most 
 effective. 
 
 "Look here, girls," cried Irene, a lovely tall 
 girl, as she held up for inspection a clinging gor- 
 gette gown of a soft old rose shade. 
 
 Marietta stood still, Dolly gave her curls a 
 finishing pat, and Mabel and Jennie and Maude 
 and Lorraine stopped powdering their noses and 
 
 203
 
 204 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 all gave little gasps of admiration and delight, 
 
 "Oh where did you get it, Irene?" they all cried 
 as they drew up closely around the girl. And 
 instinctively they put their hands on the dress and 
 caressed it. 
 
 "It's lovely! just lovely!" someone said. 
 
 "And isn't it the sweetest shade!" 
 
 "How much did it cost you, Irene?" * 
 
 "I don't dare tell," replied Irene. "It cost 
 too much but I wanted it." And she began put- 
 ting it tenderly away in its tissue paper wrap- 
 pings. 
 
 "Whose your friend, Irene?" someone slipped 
 into the conversation. 
 
 Irene gave a little shrug of her shoulders as 
 she turned the key in the locker but she did not 
 resent the suggestion. 
 
 The waitresses at the Cafe des Reflections 
 were pretty girls, more the chorus girl than the 
 servant type and, on the whole, they were pretty 
 good imitators of their sisters whom we call "so- 
 ciety girls." They tried to use correct English, 
 attended the most expensive places of amusement, 
 wanted only the smartest clothes, and bought 
 them on twenty dollars a week. 
 
 On Easter Sunday evening a pretty woman who 
 wore a beautiful gown of old blue taffeta and 
 white kid shoes came to the Hayden Square Tea 
 Room to dine with her husband.
 
 The Lure of Dress 205 
 
 "Oh, look at that girl, Fannie 1 Isn't that the 
 loveHest dress!" whispered a young waitress 
 named Louise. 
 
 The girl who wore the dress was about the 
 same age as Louise but not so beautiful. Louise 
 continued to look and to admire and I could see 
 that she was envious. I assumed that she was 
 asking herself questions something like these: 
 "Why can I not have these things? I, too, am 
 young and beautiful, full of life and the joy of 
 living. I want the soft pretty things that make 
 life for a woman. Why can this woman have 
 them when I can not?" 
 
 The next night when it was time for us to go, 
 Louise said to me, "Stop in at my room on your 
 way home, Fannie, I want to show you my new 
 coat." 
 
 Louise lived with some people of the laboring 
 class, in a little flat over a grocery store. Her 
 room was just big enough for a dresser, a bed, 
 and a chair. The one little window, crowded up 
 against a brick wall, let in only dingy unwhole- 
 some light and one felt that microbes, and even 
 live insects, lurked in large numbers In the grimy 
 corners and along the unclean mop boards. 
 From an old fashioned wardrobe, Louise pro- 
 duced the new coat, and, putting It on, preened 
 herself proudly before the slanting mirror of the 
 dresser.
 
 2o6 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 Cherry, one of the other girls who had come 
 along with us, and I expressed our admiration. 
 "It is a beauty, Louise!" we said, "and it couldn't 
 be more becoming." 
 
 "How much did you pay for it?" asked Cherry. 
 
 "Only forty dollars," said Louise. "I got it 
 on 55 th Street. Down town it would have been 
 forty-five or fifty." 
 
 She then pulled out a number of large paste- 
 board boxes from the wardrobe and drew from 
 them new brown pumps, with silk stockings to 
 match, a handsome new hat, and a pretty little 
 silk dress, all in excellent taste. Very proud and 
 happy she dressed up to show us. I could see 
 that she felt sorry for me in my shabby black suit 
 and her sympathy enhanced her own pleasure. 
 Perhaps these clothes meant more to her because 
 she had earned them, because they representd 
 hours of hard work and endless anglings for tips. 
 All her income was invested in clothes and one 
 could see that in her life they were the supreme 
 value. 
 
 "Where will you wear all of these things, 
 Louise?" I asked. 
 
 "At the Woodlawn Cafe tomorrow night," she 
 answered, beaming. "I have a date with Henry. 
 If you come, you can see me all dressed up." 
 
 Cherry did not speak for a long time, merely
 
 The Lure of Dress 207 
 
 watching with envious eyes while Louise naively 
 displayed herself, but finally she said, "Before I 
 had the children, I used to have lots of nice 
 clothes, too. Now I spend all my money on 
 them." 
 
 I could see that Cherry deeply regretted this 
 necessity. . 
 
 There was the greatest rivalry in dress among 
 these girls and they never lost an opportunity to 
 impress one another with the superiority of an 
 individual garment. One night at the Hayden 
 Square, Letty was telling me about a fur coat that 
 her husband had bought for her the previous win- 
 ter for fifty dollars. "And it is lined throughout 
 with satin, Fannie," said she. 
 
 "It is not, Fannie," said Louise, who had been 
 listening to the conversation. "It is just plain 
 lining." Then followed a discussion that might 
 have been amusing if it had not been so serious. 
 In conclusion, Letty said, "I'll wear it and show 
 you, Fannie." But she never did. 
 
 Another day when they had all been getting 
 new spring clothes which were their one absorb- 
 ing topic of conversation, I said, "I'm not going 
 to have any new clothes at all this spring, girls, 
 perhaps you won't speak to me." 
 
 There was a most significant silence. Finally 
 a plain Swedish girl said in deadly earnestness.
 
 2o8 The IVoman Who Waits 
 
 "I will, Fannie. Even if you come in rags, I will 
 speak to you." 
 
 After another silence, Letty, the Irish girl, 
 said, "I will speak to you, too, Fannie." 
 
 The others said nothing. 
 
 Another day Clara was telling us about meet- 
 ing down-town a girl with whom she used to 
 chum before she was married. "I haven't seen 
 her since she was married. She had a baby in 
 her arms and the way she was dressed! She 
 looked awful shabby," said Clara. 
 
 "Why Clara," said the Swedish girl, "I would 
 not have thought that of you." 
 
 "I have felt mean about it ever since," admit- 
 ted Clara, "but she was so shabby that before I 
 knew it, I just went by without speaking." 
 
 "You should have seen the bunch that went to 
 East Meadow Decoration Day! Say, they 
 was dirty and shabby, and their shoes was run 
 down on the heels. Gee! I was ashamed to be 
 seen with them!" Such remarks voice the senti- 
 ments of the girls themselves. 
 
 And there is every excuse for this attitude. 
 The advertisements for "neat appearing girls as 
 waitresses" mean well dressed girls. The wait- 
 ress stands a better chance of getting a job if 
 she is well dressed when she applies for it and a 
 better chance of keeping it after she gets it. Good 
 clothes secure for her recognition from her em-
 
 The Lure of Dress 209 
 
 ployers and among her njates. It is not what 
 you are but what you wear that determines your 
 social standing as a waitress. 
 
 That a girl should have pretty clothes that 
 she may appear well in the eyes of her "friend" 
 is of still greater importance. In the city where 
 there are so many more women than men, the 
 competition is very keen. She must be well 
 dressed when she goes to the movie or to the 
 cabaret or someone else will make a stronger 
 appeal to the friend and she will lose him. 
 
 "You're a dandy, takin' my fellow away from 
 me last night," is a remark that I have often 
 heard in the little basement dressing rooms and 
 the argument that would follow would be unre- 
 served and bitter. 
 
 That a woman should spend all her money for 
 clothes is most significant. The love of dress is 
 unquestionably one of the most disorganizing fac- 
 tors in modern city life because of its individu- 
 alistic character. My observations have led me 
 to believe that not to have the pretty clothes is 
 even more disorganizing for without them a girl 
 can not hope to realize her personality. 
 
 As a matter of fact clothes are of great value 
 in the eyes of every woman. She has certain 
 beauty needs in this respect that must be satis- 
 fied. Even the intellectual woman, the woman 
 with an ideal, finds it difl'icult to resist the fas-
 
 2 10 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 cination of the dainty garment. She may give 
 precedence to other values but the lure of dress 
 must be reckoned with. In the life of the work- 
 ing girl it is small wonder that it is of such pre- 
 dominating importance. 
 
 The shopkeeper organizes his business in full 
 appreciation of this value. Every woman, as 
 she goes by his wnndow feels, although, perhaps, 
 subconsciously, just as did the little waitress, with 
 whom I walked down State Street one day when 
 she stopped in front of a window and said 
 naively, "Oh, look at that blue suit! I would 
 look cute in that!" 
 
 So each one of us is picking out a suit or a hat 
 and saying to ourselves, "Oh, wouldn't I be 
 lovely in that!"
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SEX GAME 
 
 Restaurants want women who are young 
 and good looking; the advertisements announce 
 it and most managers insist on it. "There ain't 
 no chance for an oM hen, they all want chickens 
 and they yvant 'em slender," is a remark which 
 defines the situation. It is quite true that some 
 restaurant managers prefer women with experi- 
 ence and do not assess personal charm at so high 
 a value, for plain women last longer. The sea- 
 soned waitresses are likely to be rather stout, 
 tight laced, efficient persons with a keen observ- 
 ing eye and a highly professional manner. But 
 for the most part the girl who Is good looking 
 has her pick of the jobs, for everywhere the 
 waitress is playing a .game. It is this which 
 makes the life, hard as it is, fascinating to her. 
 It is a woman's game, the sex game. 
 
 The girls in the waitress world discussed their 
 relationship with men with a candor that I cannot 
 and shall not attempt to reproduce. At some 
 places the game borders upon prostitution, al- 
 
 2?T
 
 212 The JVoman IF ho f Fails 
 
 though not actual prostitution because the wait- 
 resses earn the necessaries of life for themselves. 
 One day while I was there, a young girl came into 
 the basement dressing room with her apron full 
 of money. She sat down on a bench and dis- 
 played it. There were several one dollar bills. 
 
 "Them ain't tips," laughed another girl, "them 
 is dates, ain't they, Nell?" 
 
 "Sure," said Nell. 
 
 "Oh, Nell!" teased the girl, "ain't you the 
 cheap skate! Is that all you get, a dollar!" 
 
 "Be thankful for a dollar these hard times!" 
 
 "Where you goin' to meet 'em?" asked some- 
 one. 
 
 Nell named the place. 
 
 "I wouldn't go there," said the first girl who 
 had spoken, "I am afraid of the beds." 
 
 In the cafes where I worked these relations 
 were entered upon with a little more circumstance 
 although here also the girls frankly made dates 
 with the patrons. One day a girl named Mari- 
 etta danced up to me in the dressing room of a 
 cafe and offered me some candy from an open 
 box. 
 
 "Thanks, Marietta," I said, "that is good 
 candy. Where did you get it?" 
 
 "I went out with a fellow last night," an- 
 swered Marietta, "and he gave me this and a 
 bunch of tulips and today he is going to buy me
 
 The Sex Game 213 
 
 that yellow sweater over in Carson Pirie's win- 
 dow. Say, he is all right." 
 
 "How do you manage it, Marietta?" 
 
 She told me in unquotable words and added, 
 "I always keep two or three fellows on the string 
 and I get all I can out of them. I never 'come 
 through' unless I have to. Sometimes they get 
 tired out and quit but I always get others. I 
 have three now, this fellow I went out with last 
 night (and I'm good to him) and John, he's a 
 married man, and Jimmie, he's just a kid and 
 hasn't got much money. I string them along." 
 
 Another girl told me that she had worked for 
 years in the toughest places in the Loop and had 
 gone out with men and had drunk with them. 
 "But, when I was married," she said, "I was still 
 a virtuous girl." 
 
 "But how do you manage it?" I asked again. 
 
 "It's easy," replied she, "always make them 
 think that you intend to go the limit and then 
 when it comes to the show down, give 'em the 
 merry ha ! ha ! The damn fools will stand for 
 it over and over again. Men are easy to string." 
 
 "I don't have nothin' to do with no young fel- 
 low," continued this same girl a little later, "it 
 isn't worth it. Now an old fellow is worth 
 stringin' along, you can pull his leg and get some- 
 thin' out of him but these young fellows ain't got 
 any money."
 
 214 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 The waitress is not always promiscuous in her 
 relations. She often has but one lover. "George 
 is my only fellow," she will say, "I don't go with 
 nobody but him." And this is a situation that 
 is recognized and tolerated by all waitresses but 
 it is not prostitution. Such relations are mainly 
 social. The girl earns her own living but the 
 man takes her to places of amusement where she 
 has an opportunity to wear her clothes. He may 
 also give her money or articles of wearing ap- 
 parel but these are in the nature of a gift rather 
 than in payment of a service rendered. "The 
 fellow that I'm going with buys my clothes," a 
 girl will say. If she has any emotion about this, 
 it is pride rather than shame. She needs the 
 pretty clothes for her relation with her lover de- 
 mands that she be beautiful for him. Therefore 
 this material aid is natural. These women live 
 in a different world from ours. 
 
 "Nobody helps me," another girl will say, "I 
 scrimp along somehow. Not that I blame any- 
 body else, I just don't want to, that's all." And 
 the married waitress will say, "When I was a 
 girl, I went around with the fellows just like all 
 the rest do, but now it wouldn't be right." 
 
 One day a little girl named Fay told me that 
 the night before a young man had followed her 
 home and that after she was in the house he came 
 to her door and slipped under it a card with his
 
 The Sex Game 215 
 
 name and address on one side and the following 
 communication on the other : 
 
 "Dear little girl, I have been watching you 
 for a long time and I want to meet you. I would 
 like to meet you properly but since I can not, I 
 have to take this way. You are so pretty. I 
 am no confidence man nor kidnapper but just a 
 plain lad that would like to meet a sweet little 
 girl." 
 
 "I was fool enough to tell Joe" (her husband) , 
 remarked Fay regretfully, "and he said if he 
 caught him following me again, he'd beat him up 
 or set the police after him." 
 
 And here is presented the problem of the lone- 
 some boy in the city. He can get acquainted 
 with the waitress probably easier than with any 
 other woman; he can talk to her as soon as he 
 meets her and call her by her first name as soon 
 as he learns what it is. In this way many love 
 intimacies are formed that may or may not lead 
 to marriage. 
 
 One day in a Greek restaurant in the Loop, 
 the waitresses were all sitting at a counter eating 
 lunch when the girl next to me said as she handed 
 me a card, "What do you know about that!" 
 
 I looked at the card. It was a man's business 
 card with his name, address, and telephone num- 
 ber upon it. "Why, what about it?" I asked, 
 puzzled.
 
 2i6 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 "Gee, you're green, kid I" said she. "It means 
 that he wants me to call him up and make a date 
 with him." 
 
 "Oh, I see !" said I, and then I remembered the 
 card that had been left on my table at Foyle's 
 Tea Shop. "Why, a man left one of my table 
 one day but I thought he had dropped it by mis- 
 take and I put it into the pan with the dirty 
 dishes." 
 
 "You'll learn, kiddo," said the girl briefly. 
 
 "Are you going to call him up?" I asked. 
 
 "Not that guy," she answered contemptuously. 
 But her tone implied that she might have done 
 so had he been another "guy." She tore the card 
 into little bits and put the bits into her dirty coffee 
 cup. And I thought to myself, "At least, it's a 
 gentlemanly way of approaching the matter." 
 
 "No one ever says anything out of the way to 
 me," I said to some girls once, "I expected they 
 would, I had heard so much about what girls 
 had to put up with." 
 
 "Of course no one would insult you," one of 
 them answered. "Any one could tell from the 
 looks of you that you wouldn't stand for it." 
 From which I concluded that a woman is pro- 
 tected by her behavior even in a world of restau- 
 rants and waitresses. Of course there were cer- 
 tain men who paid every waitress silly compli- 
 ments and there were plenty of glances and
 
 The Sex Game 217 
 
 smiles that might have been interpreted as a will- 
 ingness upon the part of the man to receive a 
 signal, but nothing more. 
 
 The city man is wary. He takes no chances 
 of making a mistake. He waits for the signal 
 from the girl. "When a fellow says anything to 
 a girl, he knows darn well who he is sayin' it to," 
 says the waitress. The city man has learned his 
 lesson. He has had to pay so many times for 
 being the pursuer of the innocent victim that he 
 goes slow and sure. Owing to present day con- 
 ditions of city life, the man is the one pursued, 
 the woman the pursuer. His need is as great 
 as ever and he shows plainly that he wishes to be 
 pursued but he leaves the initiative to the woman. 
 She dresses to attract him, he hkes to be attracted 
 and is willing to pay the price to the girl to whom 
 he surrenders. 
 
 The waitress seems forced by the environment 
 of the modern city to take the initiative in court- 
 ship and I was not a little surprised one evening 
 when a man sat down at one of my tables and 
 said, "If you didn't have on that ring, I'd come 
 round some night and take you home in my au- 
 tomobile." 
 
 "It is too bad that I wear a ring," I answered 
 jokingly, "but there is a pretty girl at the next 
 station who hasn't one." 
 
 "Say," said he, as he laid down his knife and
 
 21 8 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 fork, "I've been coming here every night for a 
 week and you are the girl that I want to take 
 out in that automobile." 
 
 He came again the next evening and brought 
 his mother. I learned from her that he was 
 from a little town in Wisconsin, and that he had 
 just sold a small country hotel and come to the 
 city to look around. This explained his direct 
 method of attack. No doubt where he came 
 from it was still customary for the male to take 
 the initiative in affairs of the heart. He was not 
 a city man. 
 
 The sex game in the waitress world is a dirty 
 game. Even in the restaurants where the rela- 
 tions between patrons and waitresses was not ac- 
 tively sexual, there was the constant stimulation 
 of dirty jokes and unclean conversation. Whether 
 the place were the cheapest on South Pickering 
 Street or in Usher Lane's exclusive tea-room for 
 men, the uncleanness was always there. 
 
 One day in the dressing room at Lane's, a 
 pretty girl was telling how much she had made 
 that day in tips and some one said, "Tell us how 
 you do it, Daisy." 
 
 "I do this to them under the table," answered 
 Daisy, making a suggestive movement. 
 
 After Daisy had gone out, another girl spoke 
 up and said, "Yes, she does, and she gets the
 
 The Sex Game , 219 
 
 money. When she first came here to work, she 
 had nothing and was glad to pick, up an old pair 
 of gloves out of the garbage can and wear them. 
 Now she has everything, including a thousand 
 dollars' worth of diamonds and a sealskin coat. 
 She didn't earn them hashing at Lane's." 
 
 Sometimes I thought this uncleanness was the 
 fault of the men, that they demanded this atmos- 
 phere of the women, and again I thought it was 
 the fault of the women, but finally I concluded 
 that it was the fault of neither but the outgrowth 
 of a great fundamental human impulse common 
 to both, which has become, by certain conditions 
 of our city life, perverted into this unnatural ex- 
 pression. 
 
 The real goal of the waitress is domesticity. 
 She is always hoping to marry and to marry a 
 rich man. A girl at the Junior Alliance said to 
 me one day, "The Stock Exchange Restaurant is 
 the place to work. There is where you meet the 
 rich men. A girl I know married a fellow she 
 met when she was working there and now she 
 has a grand flat on the North Side where she en- 
 tertains her waitress friends at afternoon tea." 
 And the girl's eyes were full of envy as she de- 
 scribed the good fortune of her friend. 
 
 Because of the economic inefficiency of the men 
 in her world, the waitress fails to realize her
 
 220 The IFoman Who Waits 
 
 ideal of domesticity and so she takes on a life of 
 semi-prostitution. She is not, however, ex- 
 ploited nor driven into it, but goes with her eyes 
 wide open.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE PRICE OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 In most parts of the United States a woman 
 cannot obtain a teaching position if she is mar- 
 ried. In many business offices employees who 
 are married remove their wedding rings and re- 
 tain the title of "Miss" so that they may keep 
 their positions. If they do not, they may be 
 asked to work for a lower salary. They are all 
 girls and in this respect they are like the women 
 of the stage. No such sacrifice is demanded of 
 the waitress; married and unm.arried, divorced 
 or merely expectant, all come in on the same basis, 
 for the waitress has gained economic independ- 
 ence. 
 
 This independence is not, however, wholly of 
 her own choosing and it is quite Hkely that if the 
 family had remained what it formerly was, the 
 economic unit, the waitress would have been fairly 
 well content to live the quiet and secluded life of 
 the housewife. No doubt this life still has some 
 charms even for the most emancipated, but under 
 present economic conditions, the waitress has not 
 
 221
 
 222 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 much choice and, there is no question that in spite 
 of its hardships and difficulties, she does enjoy 
 her freedom. She is beginning to accommodate 
 herself to the ntw situation and gets many things 
 out of the new life that she could not get out of 
 marriage with the man with whom she would or- 
 dinarily be thrown. 
 
 She has better clothes for herself and for her 
 children and she can keep the latter in school for 
 a longer time. "I spend all I make on my kid," 
 she will say, "if he don't have good clothes when 
 he goes to school, the teacher won't pay no atten- 
 tion to him and he won't learn nothin' and the 
 other kids will make fun of him. I stay up 
 nights to wash and iron for him." 
 
 The divorced or the unmarried waitress would 
 exchange her independence any time for marriage 
 with a man who could support her in comfort but 
 the young girls in the waitress group are placed 
 in a position where they can have but little hope 
 of finding men to marry who could and would 
 maintain high standards of family life, largely 
 because of economic reasons. There are, on the 
 other hand, an indefinite number of men in the 
 city who have no desire to marry and yet who 
 desire sex relations and are willing to pay for 
 them. So an adaptation is made which is not 
 by any means an ideal one from the standpoint 
 of the ultimate needs of society but which is per-
 
 The Price of Independence 223 
 
 haps, in many cases, the best solution that can 
 be worked out under present day conditions. 
 Certainly the highest and strongest needs, the 
 deep craving for love and comradeship cannot 
 be satisfied by sexual relations of a transient na- 
 ture. 
 
 There is nothing permanent in the life of the 
 waitress. Certainly her profession offers her no 
 security. It is a blind alley job with no future 
 and it is a profession that is hard to stay in as 
 she grows older. She does not, as she might, 
 save her money with the idea of becoming the 
 owner and manage?- of a restaurant, largely be- 
 cause such a thing has not entered her mind. 
 And her relationships with men, even when they 
 lead to marriage, offer no security. 
 
 Yet, in order to have children, security is nec- 
 essary for women and the results disastrous when 
 they do not have it. "I'm workin' so we can save 
 enough so I can lay off in a year or two and have 
 a kid," a young wife in this group will say, "you 
 don't know you're livin' till you have a kid." 
 
 Since she cannot afford to have children and 
 knows but little about birth control, she resorts 
 to the common practice of abortion. A girl will 
 come back to work after a short absence and 
 announce with a cynical smile upon her ghastly 
 white face, "It cost me thirty-five dollars for the 
 job but, thank God, he says I'll never have any
 
 224 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 more." Yet if motherhood did not interfere 
 with wage earning abiHty, the waitress would 
 gladly undertake its responsibilities. But with 
 conditions such as they are, she will say, "Mar- 
 riage is for kids. If you can't afford kids, have 
 a 'friend' and be independent." 
 
 It is interesting to note that with economic in- 
 dependence the waitress has achieved a man's in- 
 dependence in her relations with men; she doesn't 
 have to get married and she doesn't have to stay 
 married very long. Almost every waitress has 
 two or more husbands in the course of her life. 
 Her relations with the male sex are free and in 
 this freedom she has acquired the same standards 
 as the men with whom she associates. Economic 
 freedom has brought with it relations of all con- 
 ventions. It has brought freedom of thought 
 and of speech; the waitress talks about every- 
 thing, men, marriage, God and religion with a 
 freedom which we expect to find only in the male 
 sex. She is a free soul, this waitress, and she often 
 manifests her freedom by swearing hke a trooper. 
 The city is her frontier; she has found independ- 
 ence and her sense of freedom expresses itself in 
 all the vulgarity and robustness of primitive life 
 everywhere. 
 
 The women who "wait" live in all parts of the 
 city, but whether North, South, or West, they 
 come together in their work and in their organ-
 
 The Price of Independence 225 
 
 izations, which, though primarily employment 
 agencies, are also clubs for the promotion of the 
 social life of the group. They know each other 
 in the restaurant life but not often in their neigh- 
 borhood life. I myself went out every day from 
 my home, lived for a few hours the life of the 
 waitress and almost never ran any risk of being 
 discovered by my neighbors. The city made it 
 possible for me to lead a double life with im- 
 punity. 
 
 The waitress does not live under the restraint 
 of the public eye and the public does not criticise 
 her. This emancipation has not, however, been 
 won without cost; she gives up the idea of social 
 appreciation which she would get in a neighbor- 
 hood group and if she has a social standing in 
 her neighborhood it is quite apart from that 
 which she has with her occupational group. For 
 example one evening when I was working in the 
 Taylor Restaurant, one of the girls came up to 
 me and said: "Let me hide behind you, Fannie, 
 I'm so ashamed! Do you see that man and his 
 wife at that table, they are my neighbors and 
 they don't know I work. We pay thirty-seven- 
 fifty for our flat and we live in a nice neighbor- 
 hood and they think we are somebody. If they 
 see that I work in a restaurant, what will they 
 think! Oh, I'm so shamed!" 
 
 When I went to work in the office downtown,
 
 226 The Woman JVho Waits 
 
 after I had completed my career as a waitress, I 
 found much that was new but nothing that was 
 starthng, nothing that could not be interpreted 
 in terms of experience. The little office girl, I 
 soon discovered, is bourgeoisie middle class, bound 
 by the same conventions and actuated by the 
 same motives as the housewives in the little west- 
 ern city where I had lived for many years, and 
 she will become, if she is fortunate, one of those 
 women who live in apartments and come running 
 with a smile to greet the husband when he rings 
 the bell at evening time. She will live the nar- 
 row, shut-in existence of the home cooking woman 
 in utter ignorance of life in its nakedness and 
 crudity. 
 
 The waitress is different; she is ignorant and 
 coarse, but genial. She is often unwashed and her 
 teeth are unfilled but she knows life and she is not 
 afraid of life which is to her big, dramatic, brutal 
 but vivid, full of color. She has^ to be sure^ her 
 dull moments but she is very busy and not given 
 to brooding. Even when she is a grandmother, 
 her life is still full, full to overflowing with ex- 
 citement and the fierce joy of struggle. It is the 
 struggle that keeps her young. To go out Into 
 the world and grab from it the right to live in 
 spite of the competition of youth is vastly more 
 interesting than to make weekly pilgrimages to 
 the beauty parlor in the vain attempt to get rid
 
 The Price of Independence 227 
 
 of the symbols of old age that bear witness to the 
 fact that you have never lived. 
 
 This woman who is not intellectual, who is 
 moving out into the new world with no idea of 
 emancipating her sex is, after all, the representa- 
 tive of the great mass of free women. Here we 
 have the feminist movement and ideals embodied 
 in a class. All the costs to her and to society 
 represent the costs which we must expect with 
 the great change which is going on in the relation 
 of the sexes. 
 
 The efforts that have been made to deal with 
 this problem from the outside by Woman's Clubs 
 are dilletante. Woman's Clubs start with pre- 
 suppositions that are contrary to fact, and from 
 what I know of women who are seeking to help 
 the waitress, these suppositions are pretty firmly 
 fixed, so much so that they will probably refuse 
 to accept any realistic statement. This problem 
 must be solved from the inside by the waitresses 
 themselves. They have made a beginning in 
 their organizations and the most practical thing 
 for those on the outside to do is to get acquainted 
 with the actual conditions and face them 
 squarely, not try to reform the women but to en- 
 courage them to organize further and, when nec- 
 essary, to support them with legislation. 
 
 The waitress is, in fact, already reforming her- 
 self. She is too intelligent not to see that her
 
 228 The Woman Who Waits 
 
 irregular sex life is demanding a huge toll in 
 venereal diseases * and she knows that abortions 
 are fatal to health and she realizes that children 
 are happiness for women. Because she knows 
 why things are wrong, she will be able to make 
 them right. There are many striking personali- 
 ties in this vulgar "Bohemian group (I have men- 
 tioned some of them) and they have their own 
 ideas about life. They live up to these without 
 any moral support outside themselves and they 
 will be the leaders of the group in establishing 
 new standards. 
 
 The emancipation of a group always involves 
 a break-down of social order on the part of the 
 individual and of society. It is, however, irra- 
 tional to blame either the individual or society, 
 irrational to talk about going backwards. Such 
 movements as this are a part of the great changes 
 that are going on in the city life. Just as in the 
 Middle Ages the serf got his freedom with the 
 development of the city, the woman is getting her 
 freedom under the conditions which prevail in the 
 modern city. This movement must be regarded 
 inevitable. 
 
 * Examination in 1915 of 2873 women by Morals Court of 
 Chicago : 
 
 Waitresses, 454. Seamstresses, 54, 
 
 Laundresses, 264. Prostitutes, 198. 
 
 House servants, 201. Manicurists, 12. 
 
 Cooks, 36. Clerks, 16. 
 
 Chambermaids, 34. Housewives, 286.
 
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