However that may be, when the workers and their families surged around the Vorwärts office and asked the leaders if they had betrayed them, Schlesinger, the business manager, and the old strike leaders addressed them from the windows, and said to the people, with painful emotion: "You are our masters. What you decide we will report back to the association lawyers. What you decide shall be done."
Terrible was the position of these men. Well they knew that the winter was approaching; that the closed shop could not win; that the workers could not hear the truth about the preferential Union shop, and that the man who stood avowedly for the preferential shop, now the best hope of victory for the Union, would be called a traitor to the Union.
In great anxiety, the meetings assembled. The workers had all come to the same conclusion. They all rejected the Marshall agreement.
Soon after this, the tide of loyalty to the closed shop was incited to its high-water mark by the action of Judge Goff, who, as a result of a suit of one of the firms of the Manufacturers' Association, issued an injunction against peaceful picketing, on the part of the strikers, on the ground that picketing for the closed shop was an action of conspiracy in constraint of trade, and therefore unlawful.
The manufacturers were now, naturally, more deeply distrusted than ever on the East Side. [29] The doctrine of the closed shop became almost ritualistic. Early in September, one of the Labor Day parades was headed by an aged Jew, white-bearded and fierce-eyed,—a cloak maker who knew no other words of English than those he uttered,—who waved a purple banner and shouted at regular intervals: "Closed shop! Closed shop!" That man represented the spirit of thousands of immigrants who have recently become trade-unionists in America. Impossible to say to such a man that the idea of the closed shop had been an enemy to the spread of trade-unionism in this country by its implication of monopolistic tyranny.
Impossible, indeed, to say anything to Unionists whose reply to every just representation is, "Closed shop"; or to employers whose reply to every just representation is, "We do not wish other people to run our business." This reply the Marshall conference still had to hear for some days. It was now the first week in September. There was great suffering among the cloak makers. On the manufacturers' side, contracts heretofore always filled by certain New York houses, in this prolonged stoppage of their factories were finally lost to them and placed with establishments in other important cloak making centres—Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and even abroad. Two or three large Union houses settled for terms, in hours and wages, which were satisfactory to every one concerned, though lower than the demands on these points listed in the cloak makers' first letter.
Curiously enough, wages and hours had been left to arbitration, had never been thoroughly considered in the whole situation before. Neither the workers nor the employers had clearly stated what they really would stand for on these vital points. No one, not even the most wildly partisan figures on either side, supposed that the first demands as to wages and hours represented an ultimatum. The debaters in the Marshall conference now agreed on feasible terms on these points, [30] though, curiously enough, the rates for piece-work were left to the arbitration of individual shops. In spite of this fact, the majority of the workers are paid by piece-work. The former clauses of the agreement relating to the abolition of home work and of subcontracting remained practically as they had stood before. [31] As for the idea of the preferential Union shop, it had undoubtedly been gaining ground. Naturally, at first, appearing to the Vorwärts' staff and to many ardent unionists as opposed to unionism, it had now assumed a different aspect. This was the final formulation of the preferential Union shop in the Marshall agreement: "Each member of the Manufacturers' Association is to maintain a Union shop, a 'Union shop' being understood to refer to a shop where Union standards as to working conditions prevail, and where, when hiring help, Union men are preferred, it being recognized that, since there are differences of skill among those employed in the trade, employers shall have freedom of selection between one Union man and another, and shall not be confined to any list nor bound to follow any prescribed order whatsoever.
"It is further understood that all existing agreements and obligations of the employer, including those to present employees, shall be respected. The manufacturers, however, declare their belief in the Union, and that all who desire its benefits should share in its burdens."
As will be seen, this formulation signified that the Union men available for a special kind of work in a factory must be sought before any other men. The words "non-union man," the words arousing the antagonism of the East Side, are not mentioned. But whether the preference of Union men is or is not insisted on as strongly as in the Brandeis agreement must remain a matter of open opinion.
This formulation was referred to the strike committee. It was accepted by the strike committee, and went into force on September 8.
The Vorwärts posted the news as a great Union victory. At the first bulletin, the news ran like wildfire over the East Side. Multitudes assembled; men, women, and children ran around Rutgers Square, in tumult and rejoicing. The workers seized London, the unionists' lawyer, and carried him around the square on their shoulders, and they even made him stand on their shoulders and address the crowd from them. People sobbed and wept and laughed and cheered; and Roman Catholic Italians and Russian Jews, who had before sneered at each other as "dagoes" and "sheenies," seized each other in their arms and called each other brother.
Now that the men and women have returned to their shops, it remains for all the people involved—the manufacturers, the workers, the retailers, and the interested public—to make a dispassionate estimate of this new arrangement. Is the preferential shop so delicate a fabric as to prove futile? Has it sustaining power? Will the final agreement prove, at last, to be a Union victory? Will both sides act in good faith—the manufacturers always honestly preferring Union men, the Union leaders always maintaining a democratic and an inclusive Union, without autocracy or bureaucratic exclusion? Undoubtedly there will be failures on both sides. But the New York cloak makers' strike may be historical, not only for its results in the cloak industry, but for its contribution to the industrial problems of the country.
No outsider can read the statement of the terms of the manufacturers' preference without feeling that a joint agreement committee should have been established to consider cases of alleged unfair discrimination against Union workers. On the other hand, no outsider can hear without a feeling of uneasiness such an assertion as was made to one of the writers—that strike breakers had been obliged to pay an initiation fee of one hundred dollars to enter the Cloak Makers' Union.
There is undoubtedly, on both sides, need of patience and a long educational process to change the attitude of hostility and bitterness engendered by over twenty years of a false policy of antagonism. But never before, in the cloak makers' history, have the men and women gone back to work after a strike holding their heads as high as they do to-day. [32] It can be reasonably believed that their last summer's struggle will achieve a permanent gain for the workers' industrial future. This narrative of the industrial fortunes of the women cloak makers in New York in the last year is given for its statement of the effects of the struggle for the Preferential Union Shop on their trade histories, and for its account of their gains as workers in the same trade with men.
These cloak makers' gains were local. What national gains have American working women been able to obtain? For an answer to this question we turned to the results of the National Consumers' League inquiry concerning the fortunes of women workers in laundries and its chronicle of the decision of the Federal Supreme Court on the point of their hours of labor.
[23] Printed statement of the Cloak, Skirt, and Suit Manufacturers' Protective Association, July 11, 1910.
[24] Estimate of the Waverly Place Office of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, November 26 to 30.
[25] For this account of the position of different cloak manufacturers the writers wish to acknowledge the kindness of Miss Mary Brown Sumner of the Survey.
[26]
These were the most important clauses of these early
settlements as regards women workers:—
I. The said firm hereby engages the Union to perform all the tailoring, operating, pressing, finishing, cutting, and buttonhole-making work to be done by the firm in the cloak and suit business during one year ... from date; and the Union agrees to perform said work in a good and workmanlike manner.
II. During the continuance of this agreement, operators shall be paid in accordance with the annexed price list. The following is the scale of wages for week hands: ... skirt makers, not less than $24 per week; skirt basters, not less than $15 per week; skirt finishers, not less than $12 per week; buttonhole makers, not less than $1.10 per hundred buttonholes.
III. A working week shall consist of forty-eight hours in six working-days.
IV. No overtime work shall be permitted between the fifteenth day of November and the fifteenth day of January and during the months of June and July. During the rest of the year employees may be required to work overtime, provided all the employees of the firm, as well as all the employees of the outside contractors of the firm, are engaged to the full capacity of the factories. No overtime shall be permitted on Saturday nor on any day for more than two and a half hours, nor before 8 A.M. or after 8 P.M. For overtime work the employees shall receive double the usual pay. No contracting or subcontracting shall be permitted by the firm inside its factory, and no operator or finisher shall be permitted more than one helper.
XIII. No work shall be given employees to be done at their homes.
XV. Only members of respective locals above named shall be employed by the firm to do the said work.
[27] Mr. London for the cloak makers, and Mr. Cohen for the manufacturers.
[28] Stenographic minutes of the Brandeis conference.
[29] This decision met with disapproval, not only on the East Side. The New York Evening Post said: "Justice Goff's decision embodies rather strange law and certainly very poor policy. One need not be a sympathizer with trade-union policy, as it reveals itself to-day, in order to see that the latest injunction, if generally upheld, would seriously cripple such defensive powers as legitimately belong to organized labor."
And the Times: "This is the strongest decision ever handed down against labor."
[30] These are the clauses of the Marshall agreement on wage scale and hours of labor which affect women workers. The term "sample makers" includes, of course, sample makers of cloaks. The week workers among the cloak makers are principally the sample makers. But the greater proportion of the workers in the cloak factories are piece-workers. This explains why there is no definite weekly wage schedule listed for cloak workers as such. Sample makers, $22; sample skirt makers, $22; skirt basters, $14; skirt finishers, $10; buttonhole makers, Class A, a minimum of $1.20 per 100 buttonholes; Class B a minimum of 80 cents per 100 buttonholes.
As to piece-work, the price to be paid is to be agreed upon by a committee of the employees in each shop and their employer. The chairman of said price committee of the employees shall act as the representative of the employees in their dealings with the employer.
The weekly hours of labor shall consist of 50 hours in 6 working days, to wit, nine hours on all days except the sixth day, which shall consist of five hours only.
No overtime work shall be permitted between the fifteenth day of November and the fifteenth day of January, or during the months of June and July, except upon samples.
No overtime work shall be permitted on Saturdays, except to workers not working on Saturdays, nor on any day or more than two and one-half hours, nor before 8 A.M., nor after 8.30 P.M.
For overtime work all week workers shall receive double the usual pay.
[31] There has been practically no complaint on the part of the workers or the public concerning the sanitary conditions of the larger houses. At present the strike settlement has established a joint board of sanitary control, composed of three representatives of the public, Dr. W.J. Scheffelin, chairman, Miss Wald of the Nurses' Settlement, and Dr. Henry Moskowitz of the Down-town Ethical Society; two representatives of the workers, Dr. George Price, Medical Sanitary Inspector of the New York Department of Health, 1895-1904, and Mr. Schlesinger, Business Manager of the Vorwärts; and two representatives of the manufacturers, Mr. Max Meier and Mr. Silver. The work of this committee will be the enforcement of uniform sanitary conditions in all shops, including the more obscure and smaller establishments.
[32] This statement is written in the last week of September, 1910.
(This article is composed of the reports of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, supplemented with an account of the Federal Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of the Oregon Ten-Hour Law for laundry workers.)
What do self-supporting women away from home in New York give in their work, and what do they get from it, when their industry involves a considerable outlay of muscular strength? For a reply to this question the National Consumers' League turned to the reports of women's work as machine ironers and hand ironers, workers at mangles, folders, and shakers of sheets and napkins from wringers in the steam laundries of New York.
For, although the labor at the machines in the laundry wash-rooms is done by men, and all work in laundries consists largely of machine tending, still women's part in the industry can be performed only by unusually strong women.[33]
In the winter of 1907-1908 the National Consumers' League had received from different parts of New York a series of letters filled with various complaints against specified laundries in this city—complaints stating that hours were long and irregular, wages unfair, the laundries dirty, and the girls seldom allowed to sit down, and containing urgent pleas to the women of the Consumers' League to help the women laundry workers.
After consulting some of the laundry women, the League determined to secure through a special inquiry a well-ascertained statement of conditions as a basis for State factory legislation for uniform improvements. A few months before, the constitutionality of the present New York legislation, as well as of almost all of the State legislation concerning the hours of work of adult women in this country, had been virtually determined by the decision of the Federal Supreme Court in regard to the ten-hour law for women laundry workers in Oregon. The opinion of the National Supreme Court, which practically confirmed the passed New York laundry laws and made future laws for fair regulation for the women workers seem practicable, will be given after the account of women's work in laundries in New York.
Miss Carola Woerishofer conducted the inquiry, which was confined to steam laundries, as hand laundries were more favorably described by many reliable authorities. Among these, the large laundries were commercial laundries, such as we all patronize, and hotel and hospital laundries. The features chiefly observed in all these establishments were sanitation, the danger of injury, and wages and hours of labor. For the account of the hospital and hotel laundries the Consumers' League of the city of New York obtained the services of Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood of Smith College and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins of Wellesley College. As a means of investigating commercial laundries, Miss Woerishofer, answering advertisements as they came, worked in laundries in trade employed in nearly every branch of the industry in which women are engaged throughout the borough of Manhattan. Her report follows.
"Naturally, the first question which faced me was that of finding a job. For this I turned to the laundry want 'ads' in the newspapers. To my surprise, as my investigation was made in the summer, which is, curiously enough, by far the slackest season in New York commercial laundries, I was never without work for more than a day at a time, although I changed continually, for the sake of experience, averaging about a week in a place.
"The first establishment to which I went was known as a model laundry. It was large and well ventilated and had a dry floor. These sanitary conditions may be said to be fairly typical. In only one laundry did I find a girl who was compelled to stand in a wet place, though water overflowed sometimes into the girls' quarters from the wash-rooms, where the men worked. In some of these wash-rooms the water is at times ankle-deep, a condition due only to bad drainage, as other wash-rooms are absolutely dry. Whatever the condition of the work-rooms, the women's dressing-rooms frequently had insanitary plumbing, and were verminous and unhealthful. In one laundry the water supply was contaminated, smelling and tasting offensively when it came from the faucet, and worse after it had passed through the cooler. The women here at first kept bottles of soda-water. Some old women had beer. But on a series of hot days, with hours from half past seven to twelve, and from one till any time up to ten at night, 10 cents' worth of beer or soda-water a day did not go far to alleviate thirst, and soon drank a big hole in a wage of $5 a week. A complaint was sent to the Board of Health. After nearly three weeks, the Board of Health replied that the complaint must be sent to the Water Department. From the Water Department no reply could possibly come for several weeks more. And in the meantime, all the women workers in the laundry, impelled by intolerable thirst, drank the contaminated water.
"The work-room where I was employed had, on the whole, plenty of windows. These were left open. But when a room is large and full of machinery, artificial light is needed all day, and the outside air does not come in very far to drive away the heat and the dampness. On going out at noon from a laundry where I had dipped shirts in hot starch all the morning at a breakneck pace, I was struck by the coolness of the day. That night I discovered that the thermometer had been registering 96° in the shade. A few fans should be put in each laundry. They could be run by the power that runs the machines.
"In the 'model laundry,' I worked at first at a mangle, running spreads and sheets and towels between two revolving cylinders. Here I found there was danger of slipping my fingers too far under the cylinders in the process of feeding. The mangle had a guard, to be sure,—a flexible metal bar about three-quarters of an inch above the feeding-apron in front of the cylinder. But I learned that this acted as a warning rather than a protection. 'Once you get your fingers in, you never get them out,' Jenny, the Italian girl beside me, said repeatedly. The Italian girls Anglicized their names, and Jenny had probably been Giovanna at home.
"At the collar machine, at which I was stationed after lunch, there was an adequate guard where the collars were slipped in. Where they came out, however, they had to be pushed in rapid succession under the farther side of a burning hot cylinder with no guard at all. To avoid touching the cylinder with my arm in this process, I was obliged either to raise it unnaturally high, or to stand on tiptoe. 'You didn't get burned to-day or yesterday,' said Jenny, 'but you sure will sometime. Everybody does on that machine.'
"In the ironing of collars and cuffs by machinery, there is continual risk of burns on hands and arms. At a sleeve-ironing machine, in another place I received some slight burn every day. And when I asked the girls if this were because I was 'green,' they replied that every one got burned at that machine all the time. Each burn is due to 'carelessness,' but if the girls were to be careful, they would have to focus their minds on self-protection instead of the proper accomplishment of their task, and would also have to work at a lower rate of speed than the usual output of the laundries demands. A graver danger than that from hot surfaces and from slightly protected gas flames is from unguarded belts and gears.
"At mangles, too, the danger is grave. What the girls call 'millionaire work'—work that has to come out straight—in contrast with 'boarding-house work," must be shoved up to within a quarter of an inch of the cylinder. Fingers once caught in such mangles are crushed. Consider, in connection with these two facts, the high rate of speed at which the girls feed the work into the machine, and the precarious character of their task will be realized. However, in many laundries, good mangles for table and bed linen are in use, which either have a stationary bar in front of the first cylinder, or else have the first roll, whether connected or not with the power, attached to a lever, and so constructed as to lift the pressure immediately from the finger, should it be slipped underneath.[34]
"For the purpose of inspecting the machinery I visited with different factory inspectors, through the courtesy extended by the Department of Labor, all, so far as I was able to determine, of the commercial steam laundries in the borough of Manhattan. Out of sixty laundries inspected, I found that twenty-six had either unguarded or inadequately guarded mangles, collar presses, and collar dampeners, or else unguarded or inadequately guarded gears and belts. In a laundry visited when the boss was out, we conferred with the engineer about one particularly bad mangle.
"'What's this machine for? To cut girls' hands off?' asked the inspector.
"'Well,', said the engineer, 'it came pretty near finishing up the last girl we had here—caught her arm in an apron-string and got both hands under the roll—happened over two months ago. Fingers cut off one hand, and all twisted and useless on the other.'
"Instead of having the machine guarded, after this mutilation, the owner had employed a man to take chances here, instead of a girl.
"This and all the illegal defects discovered were ordered remedied by the factory inspectors. But New York labor legislation, no matter how excellent, cannot be enforced, with the present number of inspectors. An inspector will arrive on one day; will discover that rules are violated; will impose a fine; will return in the next week and discover that rules are not violated; will, perforce, return to another part of the field; and after that the violation will continue as if he had never observed it.
"Further, it is difficult for the inspector to discover, through employees, violations of the State laws enacted in their interest, as they risk being discharged for complaints. In addition, moreover, to this danger, bringing a charge means that the complainant must go to court, thus losing both time and money. A union organization would be the only possible means of settling the matter. Made up of the workers themselves, it is always present to observe violations; and it offers to the workers the advantage of reporting to the State, not as individuals, but as a body. The coöperative spirit present among almost all of the laundry workers should make organization entirely feasible. [35]
"On entering a new situation I found, as a rule, cordiality and friendly interest. On several occasions it was expressed by this social form:—
"'Say, you got a feller?'
"'Sure. Ain't you got one?'
"'Sure.'
"The girls are really very kind to one another, helping one another in their work, and by loans of lunch and money.
"In one place a woman with a baby to support—a shaker earning $4.50 a week, and heavily in debt—used to borrow weekly a few pennies apiece from all the girls around her to pay her rent. And the pennies were always forthcoming, although the girls had hardly more than she had, and knew quite well that they were seldom returned. There was a great deal of swearing among the women in almost all of the laundries, but it was of an entirely good-natured character.
"While there was a natural division of labor, there was also an artificial one, created during lunch hours. A deep-rooted feeling of antagonism and suspicion exists between the Irish and the Italians, each race clubbing together from the different departments in separate bands.
"Aside from this distinction, there is another social cleavage—the high-wage earners sitting apart from the low-wage earners, through natural snobbishness. In one laundry, the high-wage earners, though they often treated the $5 girls to stray sardines, cake, etc., were in the habit of sending young girls to the delicatessen shop to get their lunches, and also to the saloon for beer. Then the girl had to hurry out on the street in her petticoat and little light dressing-sack that she wore for work, for they gave her no time to change. For this service the girl would get 10 cents a week from each of the women she did errands for. They did not—the boss starcher explained to me with quiet elegance—think of such a thing as drinking beer behind the boss's back, but they 'just didn't want him to know.'
"The same difficulties in enforcing the law about protected machinery in laundries exist in the enforcing of the law requiring that adult women in laundries shall not work more than sixty hours in a week. Just as in the case of protected machinery, these difficulties might be partly removed through trade organization.
"Nearly all laundry work is performed standing, and on heavy days, when the work is steady, except at lunch time, very few women get a chance to sit down during any part of the day. The chief difference between laundry work and that of other factories is in the irregularity of the hours. A manufacturer knows more or less at the beginning of the week how much work his factory will have to do, and can usually distribute overtime, or engage or lay off extra girls, according to his knowledge. The laundryman can never estimate the amount of work to be done until the laundry bundles are actually on the premises. He can never tell when the hotels, restaurants, steamboats, and all the small 'hand' laundries, whose family laundries he rough-dries, and whose collars and table and bed linen he finishes, will want their washing back. Hard as this is for the employer, it is still harder for the workers. The small hand laundry can seldom keep customers waiting longer than from Monday till Saturday. On this account, the steam laundry will be obliged to rush all of its work for the 'hand' laundry through in one or two days. I found some steam laundries in which no work at all is done on Monday or Saturday, but in the busy season the place keeps running regularly on the other four days from seven in the morning till half past eleven and twelve at night. Very seldom is there any compensation for these long hours. Few of the laundries pay overtime. Of these, some dock the girls proportionately for every hour less than sixty a week they work. No laundries in which I worked, except one, give supper money. A piece-worker at least gets some advantage to counterbalance long hours. But the week worker not only lacks recompense for actual labor, but is often put to greater expense.
"She does not know when her long day is coming, so she must buy her supper, when supper is waiting for her at home. She is often so tired that she must spend 5 cents for carfare, instead of walking. Seven cents is a fair average spent upon supper—2 cents for bread and 5 cents for sausage, cheese, or meat. If overtime is worked three nights a week, the girl is out of pocket 36 cents—not a small item in wages of $4.50 and $5 a week, where every penny counts. Often, also, she either has not extra money or she forgets to bring it. Then she has to share some one else's lunch. The girls are always willing to divide, however slight their own provisions. I once saw a 1-cent piece of cake shared by four girls.
"There are two kinds of long hours: those due to bad systematizing of laundry work, creating long waits between lots; and those due to very heavy work. In regard to the first kind, it must be said that the shirt starchers, who are the main sufferers from waiting for work, are the best paid, and hence are not as indignant at frequent overtime as the week workers are. Besides, though obliged to stay in the work-room, they are frequently seated throughout their waiting time, which sometimes lasts for four or five hours. I saw one woman about to be confined, who sometimes starched shirts until two in the morning, after arriving at the laundry at half past seven on the morning before.
"The other kind of long hours involves constant standing, and is most apt to occur in laundries where only mangle work is done. These laundries do not tend to work late at night, but they more frequently violate the sixty-hour law than the others do. Work is almost absolutely steady. The women stand on their feet ten and twelve hours, with just half an hour or an hour for lunch, and work with extreme speed.
"If your job is shaking the wrinkles out of towels and sheets, this in itself is violent exercise. The air is hot and damp because you stand near the washers. You are hurried at a furious rate. When you finish one lot, you have to roll heavy baskets, and dump them upon your table, and then go on shaking and shaking again, only to do more heavy loading and dumping. One girl always had a headache late in the afternoon. After standing ten or twelve hours, there are few whose feet or backs do not ache. The effect on the feet is perhaps the chief ground of complaint. Some merely wear rags about their feet, others put on old shoes or slippers, which they slit up in front and at the sides. The girls who press skirts by machine and those who do the body ironing have to press down on pedals in order to accomplish their tasks, and find this, as a rule, harder than standing still. An occasional worker, however, pronounces it a relief. But several I met had serious internal trouble which they claimed began after they had started laundry work. Few laundries give holidays with pay. Some give half a day on the legal holidays. In the others, 'shaking' and 'body ironing' and all the hard, heavy processes of laundry work continue straight through Christmas day, straight through New Year's day, straight through the Fourth of July, just as at other times.
"In recompense for these long hours of standing, the piece-worker often has fairly high payment financially. But the opposite is true of the week worker. In the down-town laundries, where the wage scale runs lower, the amount is usually inadequate for the barest need.
"The payment in laundries is extremely varied. The wages of the majority of women I talked to in laundries amounted to between $8 and $4.50 a week. But wages ranged from the highest exceptional instances in piece-work, in hand starching and in hand ironing, at $25 a week, for a few weeks in the year, down to $3 a week.
"High wages generally involved long hours. For instance, in one laundry, young American women between twenty and thirty were employed as hand starchers at piece-work. They made $10 a week, when times were slack, by working once or twice a week, from seven in the morning until eleven at night. In busy times they sometimes made $22 a week by working occasionally from seven o'clock one morn till two o'clock the following morning.[36]
"Although Italians, Russians, Irish, Polish, Germans, Americans, and Swedes are employed in New York laundries, the greater part of the work is done by Irish and Italians. The Irish receive the higher prices, the Italians the lower prices. The best-paid work, the hand starching of shirts and collars and the hand ironing, is done by Irish women, by colored women, and by Italian and Jewish men. The actual process of hand starching may be learned in less than one hour. Speed in the work may be acquired in about ten days. On the other hand, to learn the nicer processes of the ill-paid work of feeding and folding at the mangle—the passing of towels and napkins through the machine without turning in or wrinkling the edges, the passing of table-covers between cylinders in such a way that the work will never come out in a shape other than square—to learn these nicer processes requires from thirteen to fifteen days. The reason for the low wages listed for mangle work seems to lie only in nationality. Mangle work, as a rule, is done by Italians. In two laundries I found, working side by side with American and Irish girls, Italians, who were doing exactly the same work, and were paid less, solely because they were Italians. The employer said he never paid the Italians more than $4 a week.
"In the next best-paid work after hand starching, the work of hand ironing, paying roughly from $8 to $18 a week, Italian women are practically never employed.
"The worst part of mangle work, the shaking, is done by young girls and by incapable older women of many nationalities. One of the ill-paid girls, who had $4.50 a week, gave $3.50 a week board to an aunt, who never let her delay payment a day. She had only $1 a week left for every other expense. This girl was 'keeping company' with a longshoreman, who had as much as $25 in good weeks. She had been engaged to him, and had broken her engagement because he drank—'he got so terribly drunk.' But when I saw her she was in such despair with her low wage, her hard hours of standing, and only $5 a week ahead of her, that she was considering whether she should not swallow her well-founded terror of the misery his dissipation might bring upon them, and marry him, after all.
"The shakers are the worst paid and the hardest worked employees. The young girls expect to become folders and feeders. The older women are widows with children, or women with husbands sick or out of work or in some way incapacitated. Indeed, many of all these laundry workers, probably a larger proportion than in any other trade, are widows with children to support. 'The laundry is the place,' said one of the women, 'for women with bum husbands, sick, drunk, or lazy.' The lower the pay and the damper and darker the laundry, the older and worse off these women seem to be.
"The low wages and long hours of the great majority of the women workers, the gradual breaking and loss of the normal health of many lives through undernourishment and physical strain, are, in my judgment, the most serious danger in the laundries. The loss of a finger, the maiming of a hand, even the mutilation of the poor girl who lost the use of both of her hands—the occasional casualties for a few girls in the laundries—are, though so much more salient, far less grave than the exhaustion and underpayment of the many.
"This, then, is the situation in general for women workers in the commercial laundries. With respect to sanitation, the heat is excessive wherever ironing is done by machinery. Many of the rooms are full of steam. Some of the laundries have insanitary toilet and cloak rooms. With respect to danger of injury, in a large proportion of places there is unguarded or inadequately guarded machinery. In respect to hours of labor, these often extend over the sixty-hour limit in rush seasons. The hours are not only long, but irregular. A twelve to fourteen-hour working-day is not infrequent. In a few places closing on Mondays and Saturdays, or open for short hours on Mondays, the working-day runs up on occasions to seventeen hours. Almost all the laundry work is done standing. Wages for the majority of the workers are low."
The League's conclusions in regard to legislation will be placed at the close of the following accounts of the laundries of the large New York hospitals and hotels, the first report being written by Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, the second report by Miss Mary Alden Hopkins.
"By a decision of the District Attorney, hotel and hospital laundries, provided they do no outside work, do not come under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. Women may work far beyond the sixty-hour limit on seven days of the week without any interference on the part of the government. Nor is there any authority that can force hospitals and hotel keepers to guard their machinery.
"While the hospitals did not, as a rule, exceed legal hours, were excellent as a rule in point of sanitation, and paid better wages than the commercial laundries to all but the more skilled workers, the machinery was adequately guarded in only one of the eight hospital laundries where I worked.
"In some, the belt that transfers the power was left unscreened, to the danger of passing workers. In others the mangle guard was insufficient. In all the hospitals I heard of casualties. Fingers had been mashed. A hand had been mashed. An arm had been dragged out. Unguarded machinery was, of course, a striking inconsistency, more inexcusable in the hospitals than in hotels or in commercial laundries. For hospitals are not engaged in a gainful pursuit, regardless of all humanitarian considerations. On the contrary, they are not only avowedly philanthropic in aim, but are carried on solely in the cause of health.
"The living-in system prevails in the hospitals, and wages are paid partly in board and lodging. The laundry workers share the dormitories and dining rooms of the other hospital employees. The dormitories were in every case furnished with comfortable beds, and chiffonniers or bureaus and adequate closet space were provided. Miss Hopkins and I did not sleep in, but had our beds assigned us, and used our dormitory rights merely for a cloak room. Here we lingered after hours to gossip, and here we often retired at noon to stretch out for a few minutes' relaxation of our aching muscles. The dormitories varied in size. Each hospital had several large and several small ones. In most cases these dormitories were on upper floors. In one they occupied the basement. Here, however, a wide sunken alley skirted the house wall and gave the windows a fairly good access to the air.
"In all but two hospitals the food was excellent and the meals decently served. There were eggs and milk in abundance. The soups were delicious, the meats of fair quality and well cooked. There were plenty of vegetables, and the desserts were appetizing. We sat, as a rule, at long tables accommodating from ten to twenty. Sometimes we had table-cloths and napkins; sometimes a white oil-cloth sufficed. We were waited on by maids.
"In most of the hospitals there is a fifteen or twenty-minute rest in the morning and in the afternoon, when milk, tea, and bread and butter are served. These oases of rest and nourishment were of extraordinary value to us in resisting fatigue. Their efficiency in keeping workers in condition is a humane and practical feature of the laundries which should be sharply emphasized.
"There was little variation in wages between the different grades of workers. As a rule, only two prices obtained—one for all the manglers and plain ironers, another for the starchers and shirt and fancy ironers. In one laundry the wage fell as low as $10 a month. In the others it was $14 and $15 for the lower grade of work, and $16 and $20 for the higher. One of the laundries gave board, but no room, and here the universal price was $20 a month.
"As to hours, three of the hospitals had an eight-hour day; four had a nine-and-a-half-hour day. In one of these there was no work on Saturday afternoon, so that the weekly hours were forty-four. Another hospital worked seventy-two hours a week, with no recompense in the form of overtime pay. Generally the catchers at the mangles sat at their work. In one hospital the feeders also sat, using high stools. We wondered why this was not more often the custom. The difference in vigor in our own cases when we worked sitting was marked. Sitting, we escaped unwearied; standing all day left us numb with fatigue. In only one hospital was artificial light necessary in the work-room. The rooms, as a rule, were well ventilated and the air fresh when one came into them.
"We often noticed that the workers in the hospital laundries were far less contented than those in the other classes of laundries. It was not surprising that they lacked enthusiasm for their work, for laundering is not an interesting task; but, with conditions far beyond any other type of laundry, it was strange that the hospital workers should be the most shifting, faultfinding, and dispirited laundresses we encountered. Part of this we attributed to the depressing effect of an atmosphere of sickness, part to the fact that workers living out are doubtless stimulated by the diversion of having a change of scene—of seeing at least two sets of people, and, above all, generally by some special sympathy and concern for their individual fortunes. In the last hospital laundry where we worked, one conducted by the Sisters of Charity, though the hours were long and the wages were only $10 a month, there was an exceptional air of cheerfulness and interest among the workers. This was due to no special privileges of theirs, but to the contagious spirit of personal interest and kindness inherent in all the Sisters in charge.
"The bitterness that characterized workers living in the hospitals was observed by Miss Hopkins among the laundry workers living in the hotels."