training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to
another, till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined.
That, however, to which all the more helpless turn at once, as the one
thing about the doing of which there can be no doubt or difficulty, is
the one most over-crowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of
payments lessening year by year. The girl too ignorant to reckon
figures, too dull-witted to learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing
in one of its many forms as the one thing possible to all grades of
intelligence; often the need of work for older women arises from the
death or evil habits of the natural head of the family, and fortunes
have sunk to so low an ebb that at times the only clothing left is on
the back of the worker in the last stages of demoralization. Employment
in a respectable place thus becomes impossible, and the sole method of
securing work is through the middlemen or sweaters, who ask no questions
and require no reference, but make as large a profit as can be wrung
from the helplessness and bitter need of those with whom they reckon.
The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support
is limited to the needle, whether in machine or handwork, are fourfold:
first, her own incompetency must very often head the list, and prevent
her from securing first-class work; second, middlemen or sweaters lower
the price to starvation point; third, contract work done in prisons or
reformatories brings about the same result; and fourth, she is underbid
from still another quarter,--that of the countrywoman living at home,
who takes the work at any price offered.
The Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 contains a mass of
evidence so fearful in its character, and demonstrating conditions of
life so tragic for the worker, and so shameful on the part of the
employer, that general attention was for the time aroused. It is
impossible here to make more than this general statement referring all
readers to the report itself for full detail. Thousands herded together
in tenement houses and received a daily wage of from twenty-five to
sixty cents, the day's labor being often sixteen hours long. "The Bitter
Cry of Outcast London" found its parallel here, nor has there been any
diminution of the numbers involved, though at some points conditions
have been improved. But the facts recorded in the report are practically
the same to-day; and the income of many workers falls below two dollars
a week, from which sum food, clothing, light, fuel, and rent are to be
provided for. The sum and essence of every wrong and injustice that can
hedge about the worker is found at this point, and remains a problem to
every worker among the poor, the solving of which will mean the solution
of the whole labor question.
New Jersey reports have from the beginning followed the phases of the
labor movement with a keen intelligence and interest. They give general
conditions as much the same as those of New York State. The wage-rate is
but $5; and Newark especially, a city which is filled with manufacturing
establishments of every order, reproduces some of the evil conditions of
New York City, though in far less degree. Taking the State as a whole,
legislation has done much to protect the worker, and other reforms are
persistently urged by the bureau. They are needed. In the official
report of conditions among the linen-thread spinners of Paterson we
find: "In one branch of this industry women are compelled to stand on a
stone floor in water the year round, most of the time barefoot, with a
spray of water from a revolving cylinder flying constantly against the
breast; and the coldest night in winter, as well as the warmest in
summer, these poor creatures must go to their homes with water dripping
from their underclothing along their path, because there could not be
space or a few moments allowed them wherein to change their
clothing."[40]
Thus much for the East; and we turn to the West, where some of the most
practical and suggestive forms of investigation are now in full
operation.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics of
Rhode Island, 1889, p. 22.
[40] Report of the Bureau of Labor for the State of New Jersey, 1888.
X.
GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN STATES.
The reports from Kansas and Wisconsin give a wage but slightly above
that of New Jersey, the weekly average being $5.27. Of the 50,000 women
at work in 1889,--the number having now nearly doubled,--but 6,000 were
engaged in manufacturing, the larger portion being in domestic service.
Save in one or two of the larger towns and cities, there is no
overcrowding, and few of the conditions that go with a denser population
and sharper competition. Kansas gives large space to general conditions,
and, while urging better pay, finds that her working-women are, as a
whole, honest, self-respecting, moral members of the community. Factory
workers are few in proportion to those in other occupations; and this is
true of most of the Western States, where general industries are found
rather than manufactures.
The report from Colorado for 1889 includes in its own returns certain
facts discovered on investigation in Ohio and Indiana, and matched by
some of the same nature in Colorado. The methods of Eastern competition
had been adopted, and Commissioner Rice reports:--
"In one of the large cities of Ohio the labor commissioners of that
State discovered that shirts were being made for 36 cents a dozen;
and that the rules of one establishment paying such wages employing
a large number of females, required that the day's labor should
commence and terminate with prayer and thanksgiving."
In Indiana matters appear even worse. By personal investigation, it was
found that the following rates of wages were being paid in manufacturing
establishments in Indianapolis: For making shirts, 30 to 60 cents a
dozen; overalls, 40 to 60 cents a dozen pairs; pants, 50 cents to $1.25
per dozen pairs. "In our own State," writes the commissioner, "owing to
Eastern competition on the starvation wage plan, are found women and
girls working for mere subsistence, though the prices paid here are a
shade higher. It is found that shirts are made at 80 cents a dozen, and
summer dresses from 25 cents upward."
Prices are higher here than at almost any other portion of the United
States, and thus the wage gives less return. In spite of the general
impression that women fare well at this point, the report gives various
details which seem to prove abuses of many orders. It made special
investigation into the conditions of domestic service, that in hotels
and large boarding-houses being found to be full of abuses, though
conditions as a whole were favorable. In so new a State there are few
manufacturing interests; and the factories investigated are many of them
reported as showing an almost criminal disregard of the comfort and
interests of the employees. Aside from this, the report indicates much
the same general conditions as prevail in other States.
In Minnesota, with its average wage of $6 per week, there are few
factories,--manufacturing being confined to clothing, boots and shoes,
and a few other forms. Domestic service has the largest number of women
employed, and stores and trades absorb the remainder. There is no
overcrowding save here and there in the cities, as in St. Paul or
Minneapolis, where girls often club together in rooming. While many of
the workers are Scandinavian, many are native born; and for the latter
there is often much thrift and a comfortable standard of living. The
same complaints as to lowness of wage, resulting from much the same
causes as those specified elsewhere, are heard; and in the clothing
manufacture wages are kept at the lowest possible point As a whole, the
returns indicate more comfort than in Colorado, but leave full room for
betterment. The chapter on "Domestic Service" shows many strong reasons
why girls prefer factory or general work to this; and as the views of
heads of employment agencies are also given, unusual opportunity is
afforded for forming just judgment in the matter.
Next on the list comes the report from California for 1887 and 1888. The
resources of the bureau were so limited that it was impossible to obtain
returns for the whole State, and the commissioner therefore limited his
inquiry to a thorough investigation of the working-women of San
Francisco, in number about twenty thousand. The State has but one
cotton-mill, but there are silk, jute, woollen, corset, and shirt
factories, with many minor industries. Home and general sanitary
conditions were all investigated, the bureau following the general lines
pursued by all.
Wages are considered at length; and Commissioner Tobin states that the
rate paid to women in California "does not compare favorably with the
rates paid to women in the Eastern States, as do the wages of men, for
the reason that Chinese come more into competition with women than with
men. This is especially the case among seamstresses, and in nearly all
our factories ... in other lines of labor the wages paid to females in
this State are generally higher than elsewhere."
Rent, food, and clothing cost more in California than in the Eastern
States. The wage-tables show that the tendency is to limit a woman's
wage to a dollar a day, even in the best paid trades, and as much below
this as labor can be obtained.
In shirt-making, Commissioner Tobin states that she is worse off than in
any of the Eastern States. Clothing of all orders pays as little as
possible, the best workwomen often making not over $2.87 per week. Even
at these starvation rates, girls prefer factory work to domestic
service; and as this phase was also investigated, we have another
chapter of most valuable and suggestive information. In spite of low
wages and all the hardship resulting, working women and girls as a whole
are found to be precisely what the reports state them to
be,--hard-working, honest, and moral members of the community. General
conditions are much the same as those of Colorado, the summary for all
the States from which reports have come being that the average wage is
insufficient to allow of much more than mere subsistence.
The labor reports for the State of Missouri for 1889 and 1890 do not
deal directly with the question of women wage-earners; but indirectly
much light is thrown by the investigation, in that for 1889, into the
cost of living and the home conditions of many miners and workers in
general trades; while that for 1890 covers a wider field, and gives,
with general conditions for all workers, detailed information as to many
frauds practised upon them. The commissioner, Lee Merriweather, is so
identified with the interests of the worker, whether man or woman, that
a formal report from him on women wage-earners would have had especial
value.
Last on the list of State reports comes an admirable one from Michigan,
prepared by Labor Commissioner Henry A. Robinson, issued in February,
1892, which devotes nearly two hundred pages to women wage-earners, and
gives careful statistics of 137 different trades and 378 occupations.
Personal visits were made to 13,436 women and girls living in the most
important manufacturing towns and cities of the State; and the blanks,
which were prepared in the light of the experience gained by the work of
other bureaus, contained 129 questions, classified as follows: social,
28; industrial, 12; hours of labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21; and
seven other questions as to dress, societies, church attendance, with
remarks and suggestions by the women workers. The result is a very
minute knowledge of general conditions, the series of tables given being
admirably prepared. In those on the hours of labor it is found that
domestic service exacts the greatest number of hours; one class
returning fourteen hours as the rule. In this lies a hint of the
increasing objection to domestic service,--longer hours and less
freedom being the chief counts against it. The final summary gives the
average wage for the State as $4.86; the highest weekly average for
women workers employed as teachers or in public positions being $10.78.
The remarks and suggestions of the women themselves are extraordinarily
helpful. Outside the cities organization among them is unknown; but it
is found that those trades which are organized furnish the best paid and
most intelligent class of girls, who conceived at once the benefits of a
labor bureau, and answered fully and promptly. The hours of work in all
industries ranged from nine to ten, and the wage paid was found to be a
little more than fifty per cent less than that of men engaged in the
same work. A large proportion supported relatives, and general
conditions as to living were of much the same order of comfort and
discomfort as those given in other reports. The fact that this report is
the latest on this subject, and more minute in detail than has before
been possible, makes it invaluable to the student of social conditions;
and it is entertaining reading, even for the average reader.
We come now to the final report, in some ways a summary of all,--that
of the United States Labor Department at Washington, and the work for
1889.
In the twenty-two cities investigated by the agents of this bureau, the
average age at which girls began work was found to be 15 years and 4
months. Charleston, S.C., gives the highest average, it being there 18
years and 7 months, and Newark, N.J., the lowest,--14 years and 7
months. The average period in which all had been engaged in their
present occupations is shown to be 4 years and 9 months; while of the
total number interviewed, 9,540 were engaged in their first attempt to
earn a living.
As against the opinion often expressed that foreign workers are in the
majority, we find that of the whole number given, 14,120 were native
born. Of the foreign born, Ireland is most largely represented, having
936; and Germany comes next, with 775. In the matter of parentage,
12,907 had foreign-born mothers. The number of single women included in
the report is 15,387; 745 were married, and 2,038 widowed, from which it
is evident that, as a rule, it is single women who are fighting the
industrial fight alone. They are not only supporting themselves, but
are giving their earnings largely to the support of others at home. More
than half--8,754--do this; and 9,813, besides their occupation, help in
the home housekeeping. Of the total number, 4,928 live at home, but only
701 of them receive aid or board from their families. The average number
in these families is 5.25, and each contains 2.48 workers.
Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop conditions,
15,831 reported. Of these, 10,458 were educated in American public
schools, and 5,375 in other schools; 5,854 attend Protestant churches;
7,769 the Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage,
comprehending 3,209, do not attend church at all.
In home conditions 12,120 report themselves as "comfortable," while
4,692 give home conditions as "poor." "Poor," to the ordinary observer,
is to be interpreted as wretched, including overcrowding, and all the
numberless evils of tenement-house life, which is the portion of many. A
side light is thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the
tables of earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who reported, 373 earn
less than $100 a year, and this class has an average of 86.5 lost days
for the year covered by the investigation. With the increase of
earnings, the lost time decreases, the 2,147 who earn from $200 to $450
losing but 37.8; while 398, earning from $350 to $500 a year, lost but
18.3 days.
Deliberate cruelty and injustice on the part of the employer are
encountered only now and then; but competition forces the working in as
inexpensive a manner as possible, and thus often makes what must sum up
as cruelty and injustice necessary to the continued existence of the
employer as an industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond
tolerable, and very often intolerable. Inspection,--the efficiency of
which has greatly increased,--the demand by the organized charities at
all points for women inspectors, and the gradual growth of popular
interest are bringing about a few improvements, and will bring more; but
the mass everywhere are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that
accompany ignorance--want of thoroughness, unpunctuality,
thriftlessness, and improvidence--are all in the count against the
lowest order of worker; but the better class, and indeed the large
proportion of the lower, are living honest, self-respecting, infinitely
dreary lives.
It is a popular belief, already referred to elsewhere, that the
working-women form a large proportion of the numbers who fill houses of
prostitution; and that "night-walkers" are made up chiefly from the same
class. Nothing could be further from the truth,--the testimony of the
fifteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor being in
the same line as that of all in which investigation of the subject has
been made, and all confirming the opinion given. The investigation of
the Massachusetts Bureau in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very
small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest
number, classed by occupations, came from the lowest order of worker,
those employed in housework and hotels; and the next largest was found
among seamstresses, employees of shirt-factories, and cloak-makers, all
of these industries in which under pay is proverbial. The great
majority, receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom
less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on the sum,
but assist friends, contribute to general household expenses, dress so
as to appear fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without.
More than this, since the deepening interest in their lives, and the
formation of working-girls' clubs and societies of many orders, they
contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent meeting-rooms, pay for
instruction in many classes, and provide a relief fund for sick and
disabled members.
This is the summary of conditions as a whole, and we pass now to the
specific evils and abuses in trades and general industries.
XI.
SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE AND IN GENERAL TRADES.
"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 associates, 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 buttons 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 Massachusetts
Bureau of Labor, as well as to Dr. Richard T. Ely's "History of the
Labor Movement in America," and to pass at once to the facts contained
in the fifteenth report from Massachusetts.
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 basements 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.