Chapter 8 #2
“He’s my most important foreman,” Bert explained as they walked away and he showed Victoria around.
“He’s worked for me for nineteen years, since he was sixteen.
He came here from Sweden. He lost his family and came to work in the coal mines and wound up here instead.
He’s the most valuable man I have. He’s smart, he’s devoted to the company, loyal, and he knows everything there is to know about cotton and how it needs to be handled.
He’s a hard taskmaster, but the men respect him and do what he says.
He’s an excellent leader of his men. He used to run the warehouses and stopped a robbery single-handed one night.
He’s one of the best men I’ve got. He could run this whole factory if he had to.
I rely on him and trust him completely.”
They walked around the factory for another half hour after Thor went back to work.
Bert explained what the men were doing in different parts of the building.
There were hundreds of men working there.
When Bert and Victoria left the building, she had had a rapid education in a single morning.
She was in awe of him after what she’d seen.
“How do you run all that? It’s like an entire village of male employees working for you.”
“It is a village of sorts,” he said as they got back in his car, and he drove home for lunch, where Patrick had a rich stew waiting for Bert and had prepared some plain fish for Victoria.
The stew was more of a meal than she wanted at lunchtime, and he had already learned her preferences.
The sole Patrick had prepared was light and delicate, from a French recipe he had found while looking for meals that would appeal to her.
She went down her list of questions with Bert as they ate. They were all intelligent, and he was impressed by how observant she was. She had an instinct for what he did, and a thirst for knowledge on the subject.
“If you were a man, I would hire you in a minute,” he said to her when he had answered all her inquiries. Her questions had been excellent.
“I’m not sure if that’s an insult or a compliment,” she said to him. “Why couldn’t women do some of that work?”
“They could, but the men would walk out on the spot. They don’t want to believe that a woman could do their jobs.
The right women could, but there’s no room for women in jobs like this in this country.
Except delicate handwork, like beading and embroidery.
No one would let women do the heavy work.
Cotton is men’s work, and they protect it fiercely.
I would hire women if they’d let me, but this is a man’s world,” Bert said simply, and Victoria had seen that when she followed him.
The men didn’t like having her there, she could sense it, especially from the Swedish foreman.
He was uneasy even speaking to her. “Men are never going to give up their jobs to women in this country,” Bert confirmed.
“Maybe one day they’ll have to,” she said pensively. “They can’t keep women out of the workforce forever. They can’t own an entire industry,” she said.
“But they do, for now. Some of the work would be too heavy for women anyway. If you had to work, you wouldn’t want to work in a factory,” Bert reminded her.
“If I had a family to support, and I got better pay in a factory, I think I would,” she said, and he smiled.
“That’s probably true,” he said, admiring her. “You probably would, but most women wouldn’t.”
“Why do men always get the opportunities? For education, for hard labor, for everything. It’s not fair. Why can’t I go to university and get a degree, for instance? It doesn’t make sense. By keeping women uneducated, everyone loses.”
“No, it doesn’t make sense,” Bert agreed.
“But men want to believe that women aren’t capable of doing what they do or that they might even do it better.
But if I brought women in to work under him, a man like Thor Lindqvist would quit.
It will change one day, it has to, at every level.
But I think that day is still a long way off, and I can’t run a business and swim against the tides.
It would cause a revolution. Revolutions are necessary at the right time.
It won’t happen in my lifetime, or maybe even yours.
One of these days, they’ll have to admit women into universities and give them the same degrees they give men.
But most men are going to put up a fight to keep them out.
And in factories, it’ll take even longer because men like Thor will fight hard to exclude them and protect their jobs.
They don’t want women earning the same wage they do, even if they do the same work.
Our whole social structure would crash if they did. ”
“Maybe it needs to,” she said with fire in her eyes, and he smiled.
“I see I have a rebel on my hands,” he teased her.
“Your father didn’t warn me of that. But I’ll tell you right now, Lady Victoria, I will not give you a job in my factories.
I’d have a riot on my hands. Besides, I need you with me.
You can come to the office whenever you want.
I loved having you with me today. You make me very proud. ” She was touched by what he said.
“I’m going to take you up on that,” she said, and he could see that she meant it, and so did he.
She was a joy to have with him, in every way.
Her ability to understand new concepts that were entirely foreign to her astounded him.
What stunned her even more was that the aristocracy could condemn him for the expertise he had and the important job he performed.
He deserved their respect, and instead all they had was contempt for him, despite his skill, and anger at his success.
He had lived with it all his adult working life.
He was responsible for major changes and improvements in the industry, and provided thousands of jobs, and they shunned him for it instead of welcoming him with open arms and being grateful.
It made Victoria furious on his behalf. Bert was long past caring about it.
What meant much more to him was her pride in him, which he knew he had.
And she had his. He was very proud of her.
She was an admirable wife and an exceptional woman.
She didn’t go back to the office with him that afternoon.
He said he had several tedious meetings she wouldn’t enjoy, and she went to the library instead, to get some books on the cotton industry to do some studying.
She wanted to learn more. As Seamus drove her into town, she thought about the foreman’s reaction to her.
He wanted to pretend she didn’t exist, and was resentful of her just being there.
He felt threatened by her for all the reasons Bert had said.
From then on, Victoria went to the office with Bert two or three days a week.
She took out all the books she could find at the library about the cotton industry, and silks, which were a smaller line for Bert, but silk was a specialty he loved for its quality, delicacy, and elegance.
She studied wool too, and questioned Bert about it, after she read the books.
She sat in on meetings with him, and never spoke.
She always had a long list of questions for him afterward, which he answered carefully, adding to her store of knowledge.
She had a very good grasp of his business.
She toured the factories with him, and was well aware of the dark looks she got from the men.
She was an intruder. The tall Swede was still barely able to speak to her.
His anger was always boiling just below the surface, and the best she ever got from him was a nod, and the shortest answer possible to any question.
Bert, on the other hand, was always impressed by the pertinence of her questions.
She had learned a lot in a short time, and had applied herself diligently.
She tried to improve their social life too.
She invited Florence West to tea, and found that she liked her.
Florence had a good sense of humor and Victoria was happy to have a new friend in Manchester, particularly since her friends in London had abandoned her when she married Bert.
Florence hated it there, and longed to go back to Detroit and Grosse Pointe.
She had a lively mind, and Victoria invited her and Johnny to dinner with a few other couples Bert knew that were closer to her age than his.
He wanted her to have a circle of friends there, so she wasn’t lonely.
But she was happy with him and going to the office with him kept her busy.
They gave a Christmas party, and Victoria decorated the house for Christmas, the way she used to for her father, with a tree and beautiful decorations.
They spent a week in London over New Year’s.
She wanted to give a dinner party there and called several of her friends, but none of them returned her calls.
Their position on Bert was clear and hadn’t changed.
As long as she was married to him, they wanted nothing to do with her.
They shunned her entirely and felt she was a traitor to her own kind.
The servants in London were happy to see her. They had put up a tree and decorated it with all the ornaments she had used with her father. It gave her a terrible pang of missing him, but she was busy with Bert and enjoyed married life.
She had a Christmas card from Delphine. Their fourth child had been another girl, and she was pregnant again.
Frederick was still desperate for an heir.
And Bert had been true to his word when he married her, and saw to it that there were no children in their life, and Victoria was grateful to him. Childbirth was still her worst fear.