The older married women worked either because they had to, since the male breadwinner was disabled (an old fat Irishwoman at the chocolate dipper had a husband with softening of the brain. He was a discharged English soldier who “got too much in the sun in India”) or because his tenure of job was apt to be uncertain and they preferred to take no chances. Especially with the feel and talk of unemployment in the air, two jobs were better than none. A few, like Mrs. Lewis, worked to lay by toward their old age. Mrs. Lewis's husband had a job, but his wages permitted of little or no savings. Some of her friends told her: “Oh, well, somebody's bound to look out for you somehow when you get old. They don't let you die of hunger and cold!” But Mrs. Lewis was not so sure. She preferred to save herself from hunger and cold.
Such inconveniences of the job as existed were taken as being all in the day's work—like the rain or a cold in the head. At some time they must have shown enough ability for temporary organization to strike for the Saturday half holiday. I wish I could have been there when that affair was on. Which girls were the ringleaders? How much agitation and exertion did it take to acquire the momentum which would result in enforcing their demands? Had I entered factory work with any idea of encouraging organization among female factory workers, I should have considered that candy group the most hopeless soil imaginable. Those whom I came in contact with had no class feeling, no ideas of grievances, no ambitions over and above the doing of an uninteresting job with as little exertion as possible.
I hated leaving Tessie and Mrs. Lewis and little Pauline. Already I miss the life behind those candy scenes. For the remainder of my days a box of chocolates will mean a very personal—almost too personal for comfort!—thing to me. But for the rest of the world....
Some place, some moonlight night, some youth, looking like a collar advertisement, will present his fair love with a pound box of fancy assorted chocolates—in brown paper cups; and assured of at least a generous disposition, plus his lovely collar-advertisement hair, she will say yes. On the sofa, side by side, one light dimly shining, the nightingale singing in the sycamore tree beside the front window, their two hearts will beat as one—for the time being. They will eat the chocolates I packed and life will seem a very sweet and peaceful thing indeed. Nor will any disturbing notion of how my feet felt ever reach them, no jarring “you heifer!” float across the states to where they sit. Louie to them does not exist—Louie, forever on the run with, “_Louie_, move these trays!” “_Louie_, bottoms!” “_Louie_, tops!” “_Louie_, cardboards!” “_Louie_, the truck!” “_Louie_, sweep the floor! How many times I told you that to-day!” “_Louie_, get me a box a' ca'mels, that's a good dope!” “_Louie_, turn out them lights!” “_Louie_, turn on them lights!” “_Louie_, ya leave things settin' round like that!” “_Louie_, where them covers?” and then Louie smashes his fingers and retires for ten minutes.