50 to $10 a week.
"You gotta be pretty brassy to ask for work here," said the little girl.
"Everybody wants to work here. But you can't get anything unless you're
b-brassy, can you?"
We entered a big-windowed, red-bricked factory, and in response to our
timid application, a black-clad woman shook her head wearily. Down a
puddly, straw-strewn lane we were blown to one of the factories next in
size--a fifty to 100 hand factory is considered big in Dublin. The sign on
the door was scrawled:
"No Hands Wanted."
But in the courage of companionship we mounted the black, narrow-treaded
wooden stairs to a box-littered room where white-aproned girls were nailing
candy containers together. While we waited for the manager to come out, we
stood with bowed heads so that the sleet could pool off our hats, and
through a big crack in the plank floor we could see hard red candies
swirling below. Suddenly we heard a voice and looked up to see the
ticking-aproned manager spluttering:
"Well, can't you read?"
Up in a loft-like, saw-dusty room where girls were stuffing dolls and
daubing red paint on china cheeks, an excited manager declared he was
losing his own job. The new woman's trade union league wanted him to pay
more than one dollar a week to his girls. He would show the union his
books.
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