But there is a great deal of improper feeding of infants which,
apparently due to ignorance, is in reality due to other causes, and the
same is true of what appears to be neglect. In every large city there
are hundreds of married women and mothers who must work to keep the
family income up to the level of sufficiency for the maintenance of its
members. According to the census of 1900 there were 769,477 married
women “gainfully employed” in the United States, but there is every
reason to believe that the actual number was much greater, for it is a
well-known fact that married women, especially in factories, often
represent themselves as being single, for the reason, possibly, that it
is considered more or less of a disgrace to have to continue working
after marriage. Moreover, it is certain that many thousands of women who
work irregularly, a day or two a week, or, as in many cases, only at
intervals during the sickness or unemployment of their husbands, were
omitted. A million would probably be well within the mark as an estimate
of the number of married women workers, the census figures
notwithstanding. These working mothers may be conveniently divided into
two classes, the home workers, such as dressmakers, “finishers” employed
in the clothing trades, and many others; and the many thousands who are
employed away from their homes in cigar-making, cap-making, the textile
industries, laundry work, and a score of other occupations including
domestic service.
The proportion of married women having small children is probably larger
among those employed in the home industries than in those which are
carried on outside of the homes. Out of 748 female home “finishers” in
New York, for instance, 658 were married and 557 had from one to seven
children each.[26] The percentage could hardly equal that in the outside
industries. While there are exceptional cases, as a rule no married
woman, especially if she has young children, will go out to work unless
forced to do so by sheer necessity. Dr. Annie S. Daniel, in a most
interesting study of the conditions in 515 families where the wives
worked as finishers, found that no less than 448, or 86.78 per cent of
the whole, were obliged to work by reason of poverty arising from low
wages, frequent unemployment, or sickness of their husbands. Of the
other 67 cases, 45 of the women were widows, 15 had been deserted, and 7
had husbands who were intemperate and shiftless. Of all causes low wages
was the most common, the average weekly income of the men being only
$3.81. The average of the combined weekly earnings of man and wife was
$4.85, and rent, which averaged $8.99 per month, absorbed almost
one-half of this. In addition to the earnings of the men and women,
there were other smaller sources of income, such as children’s wages and
money received from lodgers, which brought the average income per family
of 4½ persons up to $5.69 per week.[27]
[Illustration:
POLICE STATION USED AS A “CLEAN MILK” DEPOT, ROCHESTER, N.Y.
]
Nothing could be further from the truth than the comfortable delusion
under which so many excellent people live, that so long as the work is
done at home the children will not be neglected nor suffer. While it is
doubtless true that home employment of the mother is somewhat less
disadvantageous to the child than if she were employed away from
home,—though more injurious from the point of view of the mother
herself,—the fact is that such employment is in every way prejudicial to
the child. Even if the joint income of both parents raises the family
above want, the conditions under which that income is earned must
involve serious neglect of the child. The mother is taken away from her
household duties and the care of her children; her time is given an
economic value which makes it too precious to be spent upon anything but
the most important thing of all,—provision for their material needs. She
has no time for cooking and little for eating; the children must shift
for themselves.
Thus the employment of the mother is responsible for numerous evils of
underfeeding, improper feeding, and neglect. She works from early morn
till night, pausing only twice or thrice a day to snatch a hasty meal of
bread and coffee with the children. Her pay varies with the kind of work
she does, from one-and-a-half to ten cents an hour. Ordinarily she will
work from twelve to fourteen hours daily, but sometimes, when the work
has to be finished and delivered by a fixed time, she may work sixteen,
eighteen, or even twenty hours at a stretch. And then there are the
“waiting days” when work is slack, and hunger, or the fear of hunger,
weighs heavily upon her and crushes her down. Hard is her lot, for when
she works there is food, but little time for eating and none for cooking
or the care of her children; when there is no work there is time enough,
but little food.
In Brooklyn, in a rear tenement in the heart of that huge labyrinth of
bricks and mortar near the Great Bridge, such a mother lives and
struggles against poverty and the Great White Plague. She is an
American, born of American parents, and her husband is also native-born
but of Scotch parentage. He is a laborer and when at work earns $1.75
per day, but partly owing to frequently recurring sickness and partly
also to the difficulty of obtaining employment, it is doubtful whether
his wages average $6 a week the year through. Of six children born only
two are living, their ages being seven years and two-and-a-half years
respectively. Both are rickety and weak and stunted in appearance. As
she sat upon her bed sewing, only pausing to cough when the plague
seemed to choke her, she told her story: “It’s awful,” she said, “but I
must work else we shall get nothing to eat and be turned into the street
besides. I have no time for anything but work. I must work, work, work,
and work. Often we go to our beds as we left them when I haven’t time or
strength to shake them up, and Joe, my husband, is too tired or sick to
do it. Cooking? Oh, I cook nothing, for I haven’t time; I must work. I
send the little girl out to the store across the way and she gets what
she can,—crackers, cake, cheese, anything she can get—and I’m thankful
if I can only make some fresh tea.” Neither of this woman’s two little
children has ever known the experience of being decently fed, and their
weak, rickety bodies tell the results. From a bare account of their diet
it might be inferred that the mother must be ignorant or neglectful, but
she is, on the contrary, a most intelligent woman and devoted to her
children. Under better conditions she would perhaps have been a model
housewife and mother, but it is not within the possibilities of her
toil-worn, hunger-wasted body to be these and at the same time a
wage-earner. So, without attempting to minimize the part which ignorance
plays, it is well to emphasize the fact, so often lost sight of and
forgotten, that what appears to be ignorance or neglect is very
frequently only poverty in one of its many disguises.