Making Both Ends Meet Part 19

One of the folders on light work, a wonderfully skilful young woman, who had folded 155 pieces a day before, and now folded 887, could run far beyond her task without exhaustion and earn as much as $15 a week. She and some of the expert workers paused in the middle of the morning for 10 or 15 minutes' rest and ate some fruit or other light refreshment, and sometimes took another such rest in the afternoon.

Another strong worker, employed on heavy material, though she liked the bonus system, and said "it couldn't be better," had remained at work at about the same wages as before, because she was a little ahead of the others before and earned $8 a week; and now, as there was hardly more than enough of her kind of work to occupy her for more than four days a week, she still earned about $8.

One folder was made very nervous by a constant fear that she would not earn her bonus. She always did complete the necessary amount; but when the system was first introduced, she had been sleepless night after night. Though this sleeplessness had pa.s.sed away, she still took a nerve tonic to brace her through her work; and this was the case with another folder. The mothers of both these girls urged them to return to week work. But this was of poor quality--odds and ends--and the girls disliked it, and persisted in the new system.

In tying ribbons around the bolts of material, the girls sit at work.

Their wages had been $1 a day for tying ribbons around 600 pieces; and now, on a bonus for 1200 pieces, is at times for quick workers, as high as $11. But the ribbon tying was not steady work. It is applied to only some of the material, and the task and bonus here are intermittent. The girls who knot, or run silk threads through the selvages, paste on tinsel ribbon, and wrap are younger than the other workers. Their wages before had been from $5.80 to $6 a week. Now they are in some cases over $8; in others about $7; in others about $6. The work reaches them in better condition than before. They said it was more interesting, and the chief difficulty was in lifting occasionally a greater number of heavy pieces in piling. Seats were provided for these workers except for those at tinselling; and if they found they were able to complete the task easily, they sat at the work. At the heavier work, the girl at yarding, the folder, knotter, and ticketer, all worked tandem, and if the girl at yarding loses her bonus, all the girls lose the bonus.

In the last process of stamping tickets and ticketing, the girls work without one superfluous motion, with a deftness very attractive to see; and both here and at book folding justify the claim made by Scientific Management that speed is a function of quality. The wages here had been $6 before, and were now in full time from $9 to $10. As the task before had been combined with various other processes, it was, as in other cases, impossible to determine how much the work of each worker had been increased. The present task was that of ticketing 39 bundles of 5 pieces each hourly, with different rates for different amounts of tickets, and was not considered at all a strain. But at the ticketing connected with the adding machines the work was not differentiated so carefully. More of the heavy work came to these ticketers, and the lifting was sometimes too exhausting. But the work was better than in former times, and the wages of from $9 to $10 were thought just, if a higher rate had been added for the heavier work here.

III

All this work described at the tenter hooking, the yarding, the folding, inspection, and ticketing, was of a different character from that carried on under the bonus and task system in a large room where sheets and pillowcases were manufactured. This work afforded the only instance of an application of Scientific Management to the processes involved in the great needle trades and was, on that account, of special interest.

The white cloth is brought on trucks to the girls, who tear it into lengths, in accordance with written orders received with each consignment. They snip the cloth with scissors, place the cut against the edge of an upright knife, set at a convenient height on a bench, and pull the two sides of the cloth so that the knife tears through evenly to the end; then they stamp the material, fold it over, and place it on a truck to be carried to the machine sewer. The weekly wages before the bonus was introduced had been $5.98 and were now with the bonus $6.75, though workers sometimes tore more than the 1190 sheets required by the task and made from $7 to $7.50 by a week's work. The quick workers occasionally stopped for 10 or 12 minutes in the morning and ate a light lunch. The task was severe for the muscles of the hand and forearm, and apt to cause swollen fingers and strained wrists, though the girls bound their wrists to prevent this. All the work was done standing. The loosened starch flying here was annoying, both to the tearers and the girls at the sewing-machines.

Since the time of the inquiry, all the girls engaged in tearing have been relieved and transferred to other positions, and the work of tearing has been done by men.

Here the sheets are turned back and hemmed by workers who sew tandem, one girl finishing the broader hem and the other the narrower one, their task being 620 sheets a day. The girls at the machines formerly earned $7.50, and now earn with the machine set at the higher rate of speed from $8 to $11. They stop for 10 minutes in the morning, and clean the machines and clear away the litter around them. The sewing and stooping are monotonous, and the work on bonus here is apt to cause nervousness, because of uncertainty occasioned by frequent breakages in the machines.[54]

There is a room at one side of the department, where the girls were to rest when they had completed their tasks. But the present foreman, not understanding the system, comes to the rest room and hurries them out again, even after the 620 sheets are finished.[55] One of the girls in the department, an Italian girl, who used to run far beyond the task at the machine, had fallen ill under the strain of the work, or at least left the factory looking extremely ill and saying that she had broken down and could not remain. Another unfortunate result of the speed at the sewing-machines is that the girls are more apt than before to run the needles through their fingers.

The folding in this department is also exhausting, and the management is trying to find a better system of conducting this process than that now employed. The folders here stoop and pick up the sheets and fold them lengthwise and crosswise. The task is 1200 a day; and the wage with the bonus comes to between $6 and $7 a week. But after the bonus is earned, payment is, for some reason, not suitably provided on work beyond the task. One worker said she used to fold one or two pieces above the amount without any objection, but lately she had folded as many as 200 beyond, without payment.

From the folders the sheets are carried away to a mangle, where they are folded over again by young girls. The work is light, but the payment of $5.80 to $6 for 770 pieces an hour is low. The mangle is well guarded. By an excellent arrangement here, the material is piled on a small elevator, so that the girl at the mangle does not have to stoop or lift, but easily adjusts the elevator, so that she can feed the mangle from the pile at her convenience. The girl at a mangle can earn from $7 to $8 and is not tired in any way by her work.

The final stamping and wrapping in paper and tying with cord are done at a rate of 25 pieces an hour, for a wage coming to $6 a week, by young girls; and the situation is otherwise about the same as with the other wrappers.

Except at the mangle, the operation of the sheet and pillow-case factory was unsatisfactory to the management, who had begun to study the department for reorganization just before the time of the inquiry.

Compet.i.tion had so depressed the price of the manufacture of sheets that the commission men, for whom these processes described were executed, paid 25 cents a dozen sheets for the work. This does not, of course, include the initial cost of the material. It means, however, that all of the following kinds of machine tending and manual labor on a sheet were to be done for 2-1/2 cents:--

Tearing; (men workers) Hemming; (women workers) Folding; (women workers) Mangling; (women workers) Book-folding; (women workers) Wrapping; (women workers) Ticketing; (women workers)

The management lost in its payment for labor here, and yet felt the work was too hard for its workers, and should be changed. Alterations in the rest periods are now being introduced. For the girls the system of operation at the time of the inquiry in the sheet and pillow-case factory, except on the mangle, was undoubtedly more exhausting than the old method, though their wages had been increased and their hours shortened.

In general in the Cloth Finishing establishment Scientific Management had increased wages.

It had shortened hours.

In regard to health and fatigue, outside the sheet factory, when the general vague impression that the new system was more exhausting than the other was sifted down, the grist of fact remaining was small, and consisted of the instances mentioned. About forty young women told me their experience of the work. Sometimes their mothers and their fathers talked with me about it. Every one whose health had suffered under the new task had been exhausted by some old difficulty which had remained unremedied. This point will be considered in relation to the industry of the other women workers in the other houses after the accounts of their experience of Scientific Management.

IV

There are over 600 workers in the New Jersey cotton mill. Of these 188 are women. One hundred and ten of the women workers are at present engaged under the bonus and task system, though the management expects to employ eventually under this system all of its workers, and is in this establishment markedly in sympathy with Scientific Management. The mill is a large, well-lighted brick structure, with fields around it, and another factory on one side, on the outskirts of a factory town. The establishment is composed of a larger and newer well-ventilated building, with washed air blown through the work-rooms; and an older building, where the part of the work is carried on which necessitates both heat and dampness to prevent the threads from breaking.

The cotton, which is of extremely fine quality, comes into the picker building in great bales from our Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is fed into the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes of carding, combing, drawing, and making into roving. The carding product consists of a very delicate web, which, after being run through a trumpet and between rollers, forms a "sliver" of the size of two of one's fingers, from which it issues in a long strand. This strand or sliver Is threaded into a machine with other ends of slivers and rolled out again in one stronger strand; and this doubling and drawing process is innumerably repeated, till the final roving is fed into a machine that gives it a twist once in an inch and winds it on a bobbin. There are three kinds or stages of twisting and winding roving on these machines, and at the last, the "speeders," women are employed.

Up to this point all the workers have been men. These speeders are in the carding rooms, which are large and high, filled with great belts geared from above, and machines placed in long lanes, where the operatives stand and walk at their work. Humidifying pipes pa.s.s along the room, with spray issuing from their vents. The lint fibres are constantly brushed and wiped up by the workers, but there is still considerable lint in the air.

The heat, the whir of the machines, the heaviness of the atmosphere, and the lint are at first overpowering to a visitor. While many of the girls say that they grow accustomed to these conditions, others cannot work under them, and go away after a few days' or sometimes a few hours'

trial.[56]

The speeders stand at one end of a long row of 160 bobbins and watch for a break in the parallel lines of 160 threads, and twist the two ends together when this occurs. The greater number of the speeders used to earn $6 a week. But two or three women, on piece-work, earned about $9 and did nearly twice as much as the other workers. The speeders had helpers who used to a.s.sist them to thread the back of the machine and to remove and place the bobbins in front. The change or "doff" occupied about 20 minutes. It generally occurred five times in the day of the better worker and thus consumed an hour and forty minutes of her working time. The hours in the cotton mill are ten and a half a day with five and a half on Sat.u.r.day,--58 hours a week.

In order to ascertain the proper task for the speeders, a time-study was made of the work of one of the abler workers, who may be called Mrs.

MacDermott, a strong and skilful Scotch woman, who had been employed at speeding in the mill for 14 years. Mrs. MacDermott was employed to teach the other speeders how to accomplish the same amount in the same time.

The girls now thread the back of the machines with her help. Mrs.

MacDermott, the speeder tender herself, and the doff boys, all working together, remove the bobbins and fill the frame, thus accomplishing the change in 7 minutes instead of 20 minutes. The girls are paid, while learning better methods from Mrs. MacDermott, at their old rate of a dollar a day. If they accomplish the task allotted, they receive a dollar a week more flat-rate, a bonus equivalent to a few cents a pound on each pound received by the management; and this brings the wage to $1.65 a day, or between $8 and $10 a week. The work tires the girls no more than it did before. They receive about thirty per cent more wages, and the management receives from the speeders nearly twice as great an output as before. Mrs. MacDermott's wage as a teacher has been raised to $12.

From the speeders, the doff boys send the roving--called fine roving in the mill, because the other rovings in preceding operations are coa.r.s.er--upstairs in the older building to the spinners. Spinning is a more difficult task than speeding. Two rovings are here twisted together by the machines. The spinners have 104 bobbins on one side of a frame, and watch for breakage, and change the bobbins on three frames, or six "sides." Spinners formerly worked at piece-work rates and by watching eight sides, and frequently doing the work very imperfectly, would earn about $9. After a time-study was taken, the task was set at six sides, and doffs as called for by a schedule. With the bonus the girls' weekly wage comes to about $10. In the spinning department there is a school for spinners. The heads receive a dollar for every graduate who learns to achieve the task and bonus.

The yarn is carried from the spinners to the spoolers, and wound from bobbins to spools for convenience in handling. The work of the spool tenders seemed to the present writer to be the severest work for women in this cotton mill. The bobbins run out very rapidly, and require constant change. The girls watch the thread for breakages just as at the other machines. In replacing the bobbins and fastening the broken threads with a knot tier, the girls have to stoop down almost to the floor. Before the time-study was taken, the girls were watching 75 bobbins, hurrying up and down the sides, bending up and down perpetually at this work. Some of the spool tenders had $6 a week on piece-work; others, more experienced workers, were able to earn $10.50 at piece-work, although the work was frequently unsatisfactory and had loose ends. A little Italian girl, who may be called Lucia, an extremely rapid worker, used to run wildly from one end of the frame to the other, and in the summer-time fainted several times at her work from exhaustion. A time-study was taken from the work of a very deft young Polish girl, and from Lucia. The other spoolers were taught to work with the same rapidity, and were soon able to earn with the bonus and the work done beyond the task a sum which brought their wage up to nearly $12 a week.

This lasted for about two months. But the work was so improperly done and the spools were so full of loose and untied ends, etc., that the number of spindles to be tended was reduced from 75 to 50, and the machines were run at a lower rate of speed. The task was changed accordingly so that the worker's wage, simply with the bonus, was as it had been before. But she was unable to overrun the task as far as she had, formerly. By the workers' constant attention, the work now improved in quality, but the limit of quant.i.ty, was, of course, lower. The wages with the bonus dropped back to a smaller excess, or $1.47 a day. This was, of course, disheartening, though Lucia said it was better, she was so much less tired by the work than she had been before. But the work is still undoubtedly very wearying and difficult. The spoolers still give incessant attention to their work, still do their best, and yet make by close application far less than they had grown accustomed to expect whether justly or unjustly.[57] The task is now 12 doffs a day--each doff requiring a change of 208 bobbins. So that in changing bobbins alone the girls have to stoop down over 2000 times a day, without counting all the stooping for knot tying, which the forewoman said would about equal the labor of bending and working at bobbin changing. She had talked with the management about having the frames raised, so as to eliminate this exhausting process of stooping to work for the spoolers. This change had been made in two machines and will doubtless be extended.[58]

At the further twisting and plying of the cotton, the processes succeeding the spooling, men are employed. From these the yarn goes to the winding room in the newer building, where better air and temperature are possible than in the carding and spinning rooms. The winding room is large and light. At one side stand the warps, very tall and interesting to see, with their lines of delicate filament and high tiers of bobbins.

In the winding room girls are engaged at machines which wind the yarn from spools back to bobbins for filling in the looms and also for the warp.

In winding the filling bobbins the girls watch the thread from eighteen bobbins, and replace and stop bobbins by pressing on foot pedals. The worker had made from $7 to $7.50 a week before a time-study was taken and the task increased. She can now make from $8 to $10.50 a week. The work is lightened for her by the fact that whereas she formerly placed the bobbins on the warp, doffers now do this for her. But the increased stamping of the pedals made necessary by the larger task is very tiring.

There are no women on bonus in the weave room, where the warp and the filling are now carried. After the woven product comes from the weaving room--an extremely heavy, strong stuff of the highest grade, used for filter cloth and automobile tires--it is hung in a large finishing room in the newer building over a gla.s.s screen lighted with sixteen electric lights which shine through the texture of the material and reveal its slightest defect. After it has been rolled over the screen, it is sent to girls who remedy these defects by needlework.

It is again run over the lighted screen by the inspectors and returned to the girls if there are still defects. Before the bonus system was applied, the girls had made $5.04 a week, and finished about 5 rolls a day. After the system was applied, they made from $7 to $8 and did sometimes 10 and sometimes 12 rolls a day. But, in spite of the greatest care on Mr. Gantt's part in standardizing the quality in this department, here, as with the spool tenders, requirement as to quality had recently caused a temporary drop in wages. This change in requirement was occasioned, not as at the spool tending by the negligence of the workers, but by the somewhat unreasonable caprice of a customer. Knots in the texture, formerly sewed down as they were, are now cut and fastened differently. To learn this process meant just as hard work for the girls, and put them back temporarily to their old day rate,[59] though they were recently becoming sufficiently quick in the new process to earn the bonus as well as before.

By and large, the wages of the women workers in the cotton mill had been increased by Scientific Management.

Their hours had not been affected. These were in all instances 10-1/2 a day and 5-1/2 on Sat.u.r.day. There was no overtime. But on five nights in the week, women preparing yarn for the following day worked at speeding and spinning from six at night until six in the morning, with half an hour for lunch at midnight. This arrangement had always been the custom of the mill. The girls go home at six for breakfast, sleep until about half past four, rise, dress, and have supper, and go to work in the mill again at six. The night workers I visited had worked at night in other mills in New England before they worked in New Jersey. Their sole idea of work, indeed, was night work; and if it were closed in one mill, they sought it in another. One of the youngest girls, a clever little Hungarian of 17, who had been only 3 years in this country and could barely speak English, knew America simply as a land of night work and of Sundays, and had spent her whole life here like a little mole. The present owner, the superintendent, and the head of the planning department all seriously disliked night work for women, and said they were anxious to dispense with it. But they had not been able to arrange their output so as to make this change, though they intended to inaugurate it as rapidly as possible.

Concerning the health and conservation of the strength of the women workers in the mill under Scientific Management, the task of the speeders and of the women at cloth inspection tired the girls no more than it had before. In the spool tending and the winding, as the two most exhausting operations in each process, the stooping and the stamping of the pedals, had been increased by the heightened task, the exhaustion of the workers was heightened. But the work of the excitable little spool tender mentioned was finally so arranged as to leave her in better health than in the days when she was employed on piece-work, and the management was now endeavoring to eliminate the stooping at the bobbins. At spinning almost all the spinners found the work easier than before, probably because Scientific Management demands that machine supervision and a.s.sistance shall be the best possible. It must be remembered that the adjustment of conditions in the mill here is comparatively new. Almost all the girls said: "They don't drive you at the mill. They make it as easy for you as they can." It was of special value to observe the operation of Scientific Management in an establishment where all the industrial conditions are difficult for women. As in the white goods sewing for the Cloth Finishing establishment, these industrial conditions are unfortunately controlled to a great extent by compet.i.tion and by custom for both the employer and the employees. The best omen for the conservation of the health of the women workers under Scientific Management in the cotton mill was the entire equity and candor shown by the management in facing situations unfavorable for the women workers'

health and their sincere intention of the best practicable readjustments.

V

The application of Scientific Management to women's work in the Delaware Bleachery was very limited, extending only to about 12 girls, all employed in folding and wrapping cloth.[60] The factory, on the outskirts of a charming old city in Delaware, is an enormous, picturesque cement pile, reaching like a bastion along the Brandywine River, with its windows overlooking the wooded bank of the stream.

The girls stand in a large room, before tables piled with great bolts of material, and stamp tickets and style cards, fasten them to the roll, fold over the raw edges of the material in a lap, tie two pieces of ribbon around the bolt, wrap it in paper, stamp and attach other tickets, and tie it up with cord to be shipped. Here, after a time-study was made of the quicker girls in all the operations, different tasks were set for different weights of material; and if the task was accomplished, a bonus was paid, amounting, roughly speaking, to a quarter of the worker's hourly wage. The arrangement of the different processes was so different for each worker, after and before the system was installed, that none of the girls could compare the different amounts of work she completed at the different times. But the whole output, partly through a better routing of the work to the tables, and by paying the boys who brought it a bonus of 5 cents for each worker who made her bonus, was increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent.

The girls' hours were decreased from 10-1/4 a day with frequent overtime up to nine at night to 9-1/4 a day with no overtime, the Sat.u.r.day half-holiday remaining unchanged. Here is a list of the changes in the week wages. The work at the time of the inquiry was slack. Sometimes there were only a few hours in the day of wrapping of a kind on which the task and bonus was applied. Besides, these workers were in the midst of an establishment managed by another system. The bonus was given on the basis of the former wage. And this remained lower in the case of workers employed fewer years by the firm, though sometimes their task was the same as that of workers employed longer. Where the girls wrapped both the heavier and the lighter materials, the allotment of these was in the hands of a sub-foreman, who, instead of being in the new position of a teacher rewarded for helping each worker to make her bonus, was in the old position of a distributor of favors. The slackness of the work had led the management, in a good-willed attempt to provide as well as possible for the employees, to place several girls from other departments under this sub-foreman. One of these less strong and experienced girls, at the time of the inquiry, was receiving such an amount of heavy work that she could wrap only enough of the task to enable her to earn from $3 to $5 a week. The firm's policy was paternalistic, and while in many ways it had a genuine kindness, it was not in general sympathy with Scientific Management, though the superintendent is a thorough and consistent supporter of the new system. But he had not been able, single handed, to achieve all the necessary adjustments, in spite of the decided increase of output the new methods had already obtained for the company.

| PER WEEK | FORMERLY ----------------------------------------+-------------+--------- Folding and ticketing on light material | $5 to 6 | $4.84 Folding and ticketing on light material | 5 to 6 | 4.84 Wrapping light material | 6 to 7 | 4.56 Wrapping light material | 7 to 8 | 4.84 Wrapping light and heavy material | 6 to 6.50 | 4.56 Wrapping light and heavy material | | combined with napkin tying | 6 to 7 | 4.84 Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material | 5 to 6 | 4.84 Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material (unaccustomed to the | 4.59 | 4.56 work) | (once 6.69) | Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material (unaccustomed to the | | work) | 5 | 4.56 Folding and ticketing both light and | | heavy material (unaccustomed to the | | work) | 3 to 5 | 7 |(in another department) ----------------------------------------+-------------+---------

Even considering slackness, these increases per week for first-rate speed and work, though in many cases the work was light, cannot but seem small.

All the girls lived in attractive houses and pleasant places. All but one were with their families. The city has an open market. People of all grades of income go to market properly with market-baskets, choose food of excellent quality, and have fresh vegetables through the winter. The ladies of the house, the girls' mothers, preserve fruit from June strawberries to autumn apple-b.u.t.ter, and exhibit it proudly in row after row of gla.s.s jars. But the girls' wages could not pay for such living conditions. The girl who was boarding, and whose wages were sometimes $5 a week, could not always pay her board bill and had almost nothing left for other expenses.[61]

In regard to health and fatigue the main difficulty here, as at the Cloth Finishing factory, was in the lifting of heavier pieces of cloth. Two of the girls had suffered, since the introduction of the bonus and task, by straining themselves in this way. One of them was at home ill for a week, and is now quite well again. The other girl was away for two months, and though she is now at work, had not fully regained her health. The company had at once obtained employment less straining for the first of these girls, and the second said that the firm had always been fair with her in arranging the work. It was said that it had been Mr. Gantt's intention to have the heavier lifting done by men and boys, instead of combining it with the larger tasks the girls now accomplished under the new system.

But the department had never fully carried out its intention, and unfortunately since Mr. Gantt's departure rather more of the heavy material had been ordered from the house than before.