Women Wage-Earners Part 11

"Has civilization civilized?" is the involuntary question, as one by one the fearful conditions hedging about workers on either side of the sea become apparent. At once, in any specific investigation, we face abuses for which the system of production rather than the employer is often responsible, and for which science has as yet found either none or but a partial remedy. Alike in England and on the Continent work and torture become synonyms, and flesh and blood the cheapest of all nineteenth-century products. The best factory system swarms with problems yet unsolved; the worst, as it may be found in many a remote district of the Continent and even in England itself, is appalling in both daily fact and final result. It would seem at times as if the workshop meant only a form of preparation for the hospital, the workhouse, and the prison, since the workers therein become inoculated with trade diseases, mutilated by trade appliances, and corrupted by trade a.s.sociates, till no healthy fibre, mental, moral, or physical, remains.

In the nail and chain making districts of England, Sundays are often abolished where these furnaces flame, and such rest as can be stolen comes on the cinder-heaps. But these workers are few compared with the myriads who must battle with the most insidious and most potent of enemies,--the dust of modern manufacture. There is dust of heckling flax, with an average of only fourteen years of work for the strongest; dust of emery powder, that has been known to destroy in a month; dust of pottery and sand and flint, so penetrating that the medical returns give cases of "stone" for new-born babes; dust of rags foul with dirt and breeding fever in the picker; dust of wools from diseased animals, striking down the sorter. Wood, coal, flour, each has its own, penetrating where it can never be dislodged; and a less tangible enemy lurks in poisonous paints for flowers or wall-paper, and in white lead, the foundation of other paints,--blotching the skin of children, and ending for many in blindness, paralysis, and hideous sores.

This is one form; and side by side with it comes another, dealt with here and there, but as a rule ignored,--vapors as deadly as dust; vapors of muriatic acid from pickling tins; of choking chlorine from bleaching-rooms; of gas and phosphorus, which even now, where strongest preventives are used, still pull away both teeth and jaws from many a worker in match-factories; while acids used in cleaning, bleaching-powders, and many an industry where women and children chiefly are employed, eat into hands and clothing, and make each hour a torture.

With the countless forms of machinery for stamping and rolling and cutting and sawing, there is yet, in spite of all the safeguards the law compels, the saying still heard in these shops: "It takes three fingers to make a stamper." Carelessness often; but where two must work together, as is necessary in tending many of these machines, the partner's inattention is often responsible, and mutilation comes through no fault of one's own. Add to all these the suffering of little children taught lace-making at four, sewing on b.u.t.tons or picking threads far into the night, and driven through the long hours that they may add sixpence to the week's wage, and we have a hint of the grewsome catalogue of the human woe born of human need and human greed.

For the United States there is a steadily lessening proportion of these evils, and we shall deal chiefly with those found in existence by the respective bureaus of labor at the time when their investigations were made. Private and public investigation made before their organization had brought to light in Connecticut, and at many points in New England, gross abuses both in child labor and that of woman and girl workers. It is sufficient, however, for our purpose to refer the reader to the mention of these contained in the first report of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bureau of Labor, as well as to Dr. Richard T. Ely's "History of the Labor Movement in America," and to pa.s.s at once to the facts contained in the fifteenth report from Ma.s.sachusetts.

The ventilation of factories and of workrooms in general is one of the first points considered. Naturally, facts of this order would be found in the testimony only of the more intelligent. Where factories are new and built expressly for their own purposes, ventilation is considered, and in many is excellent. But in smaller ones and in many industries the structures used were not intended for this purpose. Closely built buildings shut off both light and air, which must come wholly from above, thus preventing circulation, and producing an effect both depressing and wearing. The agents in a number of cases found employees packed "like sardines in a box;" thirty-five persons, for example, in a small attic without ventilation of any kind. Some were in very low-studded rooms, with no ventilation save from windows, causing bad draughts and much sickness, and others in bas.e.m.e.nts where dampness was added to cold and bad air.

In many cases the nature of the trade compelled closed windows, and no provision was made for ventilation in any other way. In one case girls were working in "little pens all shelved over, without sufficient light or air, windows not being open, for fear of cooling wax thread used on sewing-machines."[41]

For a large proportion of the workrooms visited or reported upon was a condition ranging from dirty to filthy. In some where men and women were employed together in tailoring, the report reads: "Their shop is filthy and unfit to work in. There are no conveniences for women; and men and women use the same closets, wash-basins, and drinking-cups, etc."[42] In another a water-closet in the centre of the room filled it with a sickening stench; yet forty hands were at work here, and there are many cases in which the location of these closets and the neglect of proper disinfectants make not only workrooms but factories breeding-grounds of disease.

Lack of ventilation in almost all industries is the first evil, and one of the most insidious. Other points affecting health are found in the nature of certain of the trades and the conditions under which they must be carried on. Feather-sorters, fur-workers, cotton-sorters, all workers on any material that gives off dust, are subject to lung and bronchial troubles. In soap-factories the girls' hands are eaten by the caustic soda, and by the end of the day the fingers are often raw and bleeding. In making b.u.t.tons, pins, and other manufactures of this nature, there is always liability of getting the fingers jammed or caught. For the first three times the wounds are dressed without charge.

After that the person injured must pay expenses. In these and many other trades work must be so closely watched that it brings on weakness of the eyes, so that many girls are under treatment for this.

In bakeries the girls stand from ten to sixteen hours a day, and break down after a short time. Boots and shoes oblige being on the feet all day; and this is the case for saleswomen, cash-girls, and all factory-workers. In type-founderies the air is always filled with a fine dust produced by rubbing, and the girls employed have no color in their faces. In paper-box making constant standing brings on the same difficulties found among all workers who stand all day; and they complain also of the poison often resulting from the coloring matter used in making the boxes. In book-binderies, brush-manufactories, etc., the work soon breaks down the girls.

In the clothing-business, where the running of heavy sewing-machines is done by foot-power, there is a fruitful source of disease; and even where steam is used, the work is exhausting, and soon produces weakness and various difficulties.

In food preparations girls who clean and pack fish get blistered hands and fingers from the saltpetre employed by the fishermen. Others in "working-stalls" stand in cold water all day, and have the hands in cold water; and in laundries, confectionery establishments, etc., excessive heat and standing in steam make workers especially liable to throat and lung diseases, as well as those induced by continuous standing.

Straw goods produce a fine dust, and cause a constant hacking among the girls at work upon them; and the acids used in setting the colors often produce "acid sores" upon the ends of the fingers.

In match-factories, as already mentioned, even with the usual precautions, necrosis often attacks the worker, and the jaw is eaten away. Sores, ulcerations, and suffering of many orders are the portion of workers in chemicals. In many cases a little expenditure on the part of the employer would prevent this; but unless brought up by an inspector, no precautions are taken.

The question of seats for saleswomen comes up periodically, has been at some points legislated upon, and is in most stores ignored or evaded.

"The girls look better,--more as if they were ready for work," is the word of one employer, who frankly admitted that he did not mean they should sit; and this is the opinion acted upon by most. Insufficient time for meals is a universal complaint; and nine times out of ten, the conveniences provided are insufficient for the numbers who must use them, and thus throw off offensive and dangerous effluvia.

It is one of the worst evils in shop life, not only for Ma.s.sachusetts, but for the entire United States, that in all large stores, where fixed rules must necessarily be adopted, girls are forced to ask men for permission to go to closets, and often must run the gauntlet of men and boys. All physicians who treat this cla.s.s testify to the fact that many become seriously diseased as the result of unwillingness to subject themselves to this ordeal.

One of the ablest factory-inspectors in this country, or indeed in any country, Mrs. f.a.n.n.y B. Ames of Boston, reports this as one of the least regarded points in a large proportion of the factories and manufacturing establishments visited, but adds that it arises often from pure ignorance and carelessness, and is remedied as soon as attention is called to it.

Taking up the other New England reports in which reference to these evils is found, the testimony is the same. Law is often evaded or wholly set aside,--at times through carelessness, at others wilfully. The most exhaustive treatment of this subject in all its bearings is found in the report of the New Jersey Bureau of Labor for 1889, the larger portion of it being devoted to the fullest consideration of the hygiene of occupation, the diseases peculiar to special trades, and general sanitary condition and methods of working, not only in "dangerous, unhealthy, or noxious trades," but in all. Commissioner Bishop, from whose report quotations have already been made (p. 197), gives many instances of working under fearful conditions, absolutely destructive to health and often to morals; and the report may be regarded as one of the most authoritative words yet spoken in this direction.

The Factory Inspection Law for the State of New York, in detail much the same as that of Ma.s.sachusetts, is sufficiently full and explicit to secure to all workers better conditions than any as yet attained save in isolated cases. There is, however, constant violation of its most vital points; and this must remain true for all States, until the number of inspectors is made in some degree adequate to the demand. At present they are not only seriously overworked, but find it impossible to cover the required ground. The law which stands at present as the demand to be made by all factory-workers and all interested in intelligent legislation, will be found in the Appendix.

Destructive to health and morals as are often the factories and workshops in which women must work, they play far less part in their lives than the homes afforded by the great cities, where the poor herd in quarters,--at their best only tolerable shelters, at their worst unfit for man or beast. It is the tenement-house question that in these words presents itself for consideration, and that makes part of the general problem. Taking New York as ill.u.s.trative of some of the worst forms of over-crowding, though Boston and Chicago are not far behind, we turn to the work of one of the closest and most competent of observers, Dr. Annie S. Daniel, for many years physician in charge of out-practice for the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. The report of this practice for 1891 includes a series of facts bearing vitally on every phase of woman's labor. Known as an expert in these directions, her testimony was called for in the examination of 1893 into the sweating-system of New York, made by a congressional committee and now on record in a report to be had on application to the New York Congressmen at Washington.[43] For years she has watched the effects of child-labor, taking hundreds of measurements of special cases, and studying the effects of the life mothers and children alike were compelled to live. "The medical problems," she writes, "which present themselves to the physician are so closely connected with the social problems that it is impossible to study one alone. The people are sick because of insufficient food and clothing and unsanitary surroundings, and these conditions exist because the people are poor. They are often poor _because they have no work_." At another point, commenting on drinking among the poor, she writes: "Drinking among the women is increasing. In the majority of cases we have studied, it has been the effect of poverty, not the cause."

In the region between Houston Street and Ca.n.a.l Street, known now to be the most thickly populated portion of the inhabited globe, every house is a factory; that is, some form of manufacture is going on in every room. The average family of five adds to itself from two to ten more, often a sewing-machine to each person; and from six or seven in the morning till far into the night work goes on,--usually the manufacture of clothing. Here contagious diseases pa.s.s from one to another. Here babies are born and babies die, the work never pausing save for death and hardly for that. In one of these homes Dr. Daniel found a family of five making cigars, the mother included. "Two of the children were ill of diphtheria. Both parents attended to these children; they would syringe the nose of each child, and without washing their hands return to their cigars. We have repeatedly observed the same thing when the work was manufacturing clothing and undergarments to be bought as well by the rich as by the poor. Hand-sewed shoes, made for a fashionable Broadway shoe-store, were sewed at home by a man in whose family were three children sick with scarlet-fever. And such instances are common.

Only death or lack of work closes tenement-house manufactories ... When we consider that stopping this work means no food and no roof over their heads, the fact that the disease may be carried by their work cannot be expected to impress the people."

Farther on in the report, she adds: "The people can neither be moral nor healthy until they have decent homes." Yet the present wage-rate makes decent homes impossible; and though Brooklyn and Boston have a few model tenement-houses, New York has none, the experiment of making over in part a few old ones hardly counting save in intention. Into these homes respectable, ambitious, hard-working girls and women are compelled to go. That they live decent lives speaks worlds for the intrinsic goodness and purity of nature which in the midst of conditions intolerable to every sense still preserves these characteristics. That they must live in such surroundings is one of the deepest disgraces of civilization.

As to wages, concerning which there seems to be a general opinion that steady rise has gone on, we find Dr. Daniel giving the rates for many years. She writes:--

"Wages have steadily decreased. Among the women who earned the whole or part of the income, finishing pantaloons was the most common occupation. For this work, in 1881, they received ten to fifteen cents a pair; for the same work in 1891, three to five, at the most ten cents a pair. The women doing this work claim that wages are reduced because of the influx of Italian women, but few Italian women do the poor quality of trousers. While we are glad to note some excellent sanitary changes in the tenement-house construction, the people we believe to be just as poor, just as overcrowded and wretched to-day, as in 1881 and 1853, the only difference being that there are a greater number of people who are poor now."

These statements apply in great part to unskilled labor; but there is always in these houses a large proportion of skilled labor disabled by sickness or other causes and out of work for the time being. The wage at best for skilled labor is given by the Labor Commissioner as $5.29. Let any one study the possibilities of this sum per week, and the wonder will arise, not why living is not easier, but how it goes on at all.

Specific evils speak for themselves, and are gradually being eliminated.

They are before the eyes, and the least experienced student may gauge their bearing and judge their effects. But wider-reaching than any or all the worst abuses of the worst trades is the wrong done to the child and to family life as a whole, by the continuous labor of married women in factories, or at any occupation which demands, for ten hours or more a day, unremitting toil. At all points where scientific observation has been made the expert lifts up a warning voice. It is the future of the race that is in question. Child labor, while not entering directly into our present examination, is, as has already been said, inextricably bound up with the question of woman's work and wages. The two must be studied together; and for our own country there are already admirable monographs on this subject,[44] two authoritative ones coming from the American Economic a.s.sociation, and one hardly less so from a close and keen observer whose scientific training gives her equal right to form conclusions.[45]

A dispa.s.sionate observer, Mr. W. Stanley Jevons, whose conclusions are founded on long investigation and deduction, years ago wrote words which he has at various times emphasized and repeated, and which sum up the evils to which the infancy of the children of overworked mothers is subject, as well as the consequences to the State in which they are born, and which faces the results of the system which produces them. He writes as follows:--

"We can help evolution by the aid of its own highest and latest product,--science. When all the teaching of medical and social science lead us to look upon the absence of the mother from the home as the cause of the gravest possible evils, can we be warranted in standing pa.s.sively by, allowing this evil to work itself out to the bitter end, by the process of natural selection?

Something might perhaps be said in favor of the present apathetic mode of viewing this question, if natural selection were really securing the survival of the fittest, so that only the weakly babes were killed off, and the strong ones well brought up. But it is much to be feared that no infants ever really recover from the test of virtual starvation to which they are so ruthlessly exposed. The vital powers are irreparably crippled, and the infant grows up a stunted, miserable specimen of humanity, the prey to every physical and moral evil."[46]

It is hardly necessary to go on specifying special violations of sanitary law or special ill.u.s.trative cases. The Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 is a magazine of such cases,--a summary of all the horrors that the worst conditions can include. Aside from the revolting pictures of the life lived from day to day by the workers themselves, it gives in detail case after case of rapacity and over-reaching on the part of the employers; and parallel ones may be found in every labor report which has touched upon the subject.

In New York a "Working Woman's Protective Union," formed more than twenty-five years ago, has done unceasing work in settling disputed claims and collecting wages unjustly withheld. No case is entered on their books which has not been examined by their lawyer, and thus only well grounded complaints find record; but with even these precautions the records show nearly fifty thousand adjudicated since they began work. Many cities have special committees, in the organized charities, who seek to cover the same ground, but who find it impossible to do all that is required. From East and West alike, complaints are practically the same. It is not only women in trades, but those in domestic service, who are recorded as suffering every form of oppression and injustice.

Colorado and California, Kansas and Wisconsin, speak the same word. With varying industries wrongs vary, but the general summary is the same.

The system of fines, while on general principles often just, has been used by unscrupulous employers to such a degree as to bring the week's wages down a third or even half. It is impossible to give ill.u.s.trative instances in detail; but all who deal with girls, in clubs and elsewhere, report that the system requires modification.

On the side of the employers, and as bearing also on the evils which are most marked among women workers, we may quote from the Government Report, "Working Women in Large Cities":--

"Actual ill-treatment by employers seems to be infrequent....

Foreigners are often found to be more considerate of their help than native-born men, and the kindest proprietor in the world is a Jew of the better cla.s.s. In some shops week-workers are locked out for the half-day if late, or docked for every minute of time lost, an extra fine being often added. Piece workers have great freedom as to hours, and employers complain much of tardiness and absenteeism. The mere existence of health and labor laws insures privileges formerly unheard of; half-holidays in summer, vacation with pay, and shorter hours are becoming every year more frequent, better workshops are constructed, and more comfortable accommodations are being furnished."

This is most certainly true, but more light shows the shadows even more clearly; and the fact remains that every force must be brought to bear, to remedy the evils depicted in the reports of the bureaus quoted here.

The general conditions of working-women in New York retail stores were reported upon, in 1890, by a committee from the Working-Woman's Society, at 27 Clinton Place, New York. The report was read at a ma.s.s meeting held at Chickering Hall, May 6, 1890; and its statements represent general conditions in all the large cities of the United States. It is impossible to give more than the princ.i.p.al points of the report; but readers can obtain it on application to the Secretary of the a.s.sociation.[47] These are as follows:--

Hours are often excessive, and employees are not paid for over-time.

Many stores give no half-holiday, and keep open on Sat.u.r.days till ten and eleven o'clock in the evening, and at the holiday season do this for three or four weeks nightly.

Sanitary conditions are usually bad, and include bad ventilation, unsanitary arrangements, and indifference to the considerations of decency. Toilet arrangements in many stores are horrible, and closets for male and female are often side by side, with only slight part.i.tion between. One hand-basin and towel serve for all. Often water for drink can be obtained only from the attic.

Numbers of children under age are employed for excessive hours, and at work far beyond their strength, an investigation having shown that over one hundred thousand children under the legal age of fourteen were at work in factories, workshops, and stores.

Service for a number of years often meets with no consideration, but is regarded as a reason for dismissal. It is the rule in some stores to keep no one over five years, lest they come to feel that they have some claim on the firm; and when a saleswoman is dismissed from one house, she finds it almost impossible to obtain employment in another.

The wages are reduced by excessive fines, employers placing a value upon time lost that is not given to services rendered. The fines run from five to thirty cents for a few minutes' tardiness. In some stores the fines are divided at the end of the year between the timekeeper and the superintendent, and there is thus every temptation to injustice.

The report concludes:--

"We find that, through low wages, long hours, unwholesome sanitary conditions, and the discouraging effect of excessive fines, not only is the physical condition injured, but the tendency is to injure the moral well-being. It is simply impossible for a woman to live without a.s.sistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real necessities."

These were the conditions which, in 1889, led to the formation of the little society which, though limited in numbers, has done admirable and efficient work, its latest effort being to secure from the a.s.sembly at Albany a bill making inspection of stores and shops as obligatory as that of factories.

It was through the concerted effort of its members that the Factory Inspection Act became a law, though not without violent opposition. The bill originated in the Working-Woman's Society, was drawn up there, sent to Albany by its delegates, and pa.s.sed without the aid of money.

There are eleven thousand factories in New York State, and only one inspector to investigate their condition; while in England, scarce larger in territory, forty-one inspectors are appointed by the Government.

The Andrus bill, adding to the power of factory inspectors, raising the working age of children to fourteen years, and prohibiting night work for girls under twenty-one and boys under eighteen, was sent with the Factory Bill to the Central Labor Union, and the women were largely instrumental in obtaining the pa.s.sage of the measure.