“There wasn’t a chair in the place….If we were lucky there’d be fish, but if we were waiting for a boat sometimes you’d have to wait all morning long. Course this time of the year it would be desperate because those big doors would be open down stairs and all the breeze would be coming in from the wharves. You had to stand around and wait. You didn’t dare leave because it meant a dollar if you stayed. This was your livelihood. And the top pay that you could make was 33½ cents an hour at that time. And if they wanted you to work seven days a week you worked seven days a week.”
Marjorie Stout When Gloucester was Gloucester: Toward an Oral History of the City, Gloucester 350th Anniversary Celebration Inc. Stout’s later work included directing Action Inc., a social service agency, for over a decade.
