Making Both Ends Meet Part 14

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 Sat.u.r.days, except to workers not working on Sat.u.r.days, 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.]

[Footnote 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 _Vorwarts_; 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.]

[Footnote 32: This statement is written in the last week of September, 1910.]

CHAPTER VI

WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK

(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 const.i.tutionality 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 const.i.tutionality 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 pa.s.sed 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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.

I

"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 pa.s.sed 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-ap.r.o.n 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 ap.r.o.n-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 cooperative 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 sn.o.bbishness. 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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 Sat.u.r.day, 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, p.r.o.nounces 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.