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 constitutionality 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 constitutionality 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
passed 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
advertisements 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 passed 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-apron 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 apron-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 coöperative 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 snobbishness. 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 Saturday.
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 Saturday,
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,
pronounces 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.
"In recompense for these long hours of standing, the piece-worker often
has fairly high payment financially. But the opposite is true of the week
worker. In the down-town laundries, where the wage scale runs lower, the
amount is usually inadequate for the barest need.
"The payment in laundries is extremely varied. The wages of the majority
of women I talked to in laundries amounted to between $8 and $4.50 a
week. But wages ranged from the highest exceptional instances in
piece-work, in hand starching and in hand ironing, at $25 a week, for a
few weeks in the year, down to $3 a week.
"High wages generally involved long hours. For instance, in one laundry,
young American women between twenty and thirty were employed as hand
starchers at piece-work. They made $10 a week, when times were slack, by
working once or twice a week, from seven in the morning until eleven at
night. In busy times they sometimes made $22 a week by working
occasionally from seven o'clock one morn till two o'clock the following
morning.[36]
"Although Italians, Russians, Irish, Polish, Germans, Americans, and
Swedes are employed in New York laundries, the greater part of the work
is done by Irish and Italians. The Irish receive the higher prices, the
Italians the lower prices. The best-paid work, the hand starching of
shirts and collars and the hand ironing, is done by Irish women, by
colored women, and by Italian and Jewish men. The actual process of hand
starching may be learned in less than one hour. Speed in the work may be
acquired in about ten days. On the other hand, to learn the nicer
processes of the ill-paid work of feeding and folding at the mangle--the
passing of towels and napkins through the machine without turning in or
wrinkling the edges, the passing of table-covers between cylinders in
such a way that the work will never come out in a shape other than
square--to learn these nicer processes requires from thirteen to fifteen
days. The reason for the low wages listed for mangle work seems to lie
only in nationality. Mangle work, as a rule, is done by Italians. In two
laundries I found, working side by side with American and Irish girls,
Italians, who were doing exactly the same work, and were paid less,
solely because they were Italians. The employer said he never paid the
Italians more than $4 a week.
"In the next best-paid work after hand starching, the work of hand
ironing, paying roughly from $8 to $18 a week, Italian women are
practically never employed.
"The worst part of mangle work, the shaking, is done by young girls and
by incapable older women of many nationalities. One of the ill-paid
girls, who had $4.50 a week, gave $3.50 a week board to an aunt, who
never let her delay payment a day. She had only $1 a week left for every
other expense. This girl was 'keeping company' with a longshoreman, who
had as much as $25 in good weeks. She had been engaged to him, and had
broken her engagement because he drank--'he got so terribly drunk.' But
when I saw her she was in such despair with her low wage, her hard hours
of standing, and only $5 a week ahead of her, that she was considering
whether she should not swallow her well-founded terror of the misery his
dissipation might bring upon them, and marry him, after all.
"The shakers are the worst paid and the hardest worked employees. The
young girls expect to become folders and feeders. The older women are
widows with children, or women with husbands sick or out of work or in
some way incapacitated. Indeed, many of all these laundry workers,
probably a larger proportion than in any other trade, are widows with
children to support. 'The laundry is the place,' said one of the women,
'for women with bum husbands, sick, drunk, or lazy.' The lower the pay
and the damper and darker the laundry, the older and worse off these
women seem to be.
"The low wages and long hours of the great majority of the women workers,
the gradual breaking and loss of the normal health of many lives through
undernourishment and physical strain, are, in my judgment, the most
serious danger in the laundries. The loss of a finger, the maiming of a
hand, even the mutilation of the poor girl who lost the use of both of
her hands--the occasional casualties for a few girls in the
laundries--are, though so much more salient, far less grave than the
exhaustion and underpayment of the many.
"This, then, is the situation in general for women workers in the
commercial laundries. With respect to sanitation, the heat is excessive
wherever ironing is done by machinery. Many of the rooms are full of
steam. Some of the laundries have insanitary toilet and cloak rooms. With
respect to danger of injury, in a large proportion of places there is
unguarded or inadequately guarded machinery. In respect to hours of
labor, these often extend over the sixty-hour limit in rush seasons. The
hours are not only long, but irregular. A twelve to fourteen-hour
working-day is not infrequent. In a few places closing on Mondays and
Saturdays, or open for short hours on Mondays, the working-day runs up on
occasions to seventeen hours. Almost all the laundry work is done
standing. Wages for the majority of the workers are low."
The League's conclusions in regard to legislation will be placed at the
close of the following accounts of the laundries of the large New York
hospitals and hotels, the first report being written by Miss Elizabeth
Howard Westwood, the second report by Miss Mary Alden Hopkins.
II
"By a decision of the District Attorney, hotel and hospital laundries,
provided they do no outside work, do not come under the jurisdiction of
the Department of Labor. Women may work far beyond the sixty-hour limit
on seven days of the week without any interference on the part of the
government. Nor is there any authority that can force hospitals and hotel
keepers to guard their machinery.
"While the hospitals did not, as a rule, exceed legal hours, were
excellent as a rule in point of sanitation, and paid better wages than
the commercial laundries to all but the more skilled workers, the
machinery was adequately guarded in only one of the eight hospital
laundries where I worked.
"In some, the belt that transfers the power was left unscreened, to the
danger of passing workers. In others the mangle guard was insufficient.
In all the hospitals I heard of casualties. Fingers had been mashed. A
hand had been mashed. An arm had been dragged out. Unguarded machinery
was, of course, a striking inconsistency, more inexcusable in the
hospitals than in hotels or in commercial laundries. For hospitals are
not engaged in a gainful pursuit, regardless of all humanitarian
considerations. On the contrary, they are not only avowedly philanthropic
in aim, but are carried on solely in the cause of health.
"The living-in system prevails in the hospitals, and wages are paid
partly in board and lodging. The laundry workers share the dormitories
and dining rooms of the other hospital employees. The dormitories were
in every case furnished with comfortable beds, and chiffonniers or
bureaus and adequate closet space were provided. Miss Hopkins and I did
not sleep in, but had our beds assigned us, and used our dormitory rights
merely for a cloak room. Here we lingered after hours to gossip, and here
we often retired at noon to stretch out for a few minutes' relaxation of
our aching muscles. The dormitories varied in size. Each hospital had
several large and several small ones. In most cases these dormitories
were on upper floors. In one they occupied the basement. Here, however, a
wide sunken alley skirted the house wall and gave the windows a fairly
good access to the air.
"In all but two hospitals the food was excellent and the meals decently
served. There were eggs and milk in abundance. The soups were delicious,
the meats of fair quality and well cooked. There were plenty of
vegetables, and the desserts were appetizing. We sat, as a rule, at long
tables accommodating from ten to twenty. Sometimes we had table-cloths
and napkins; sometimes a white oil-cloth sufficed. We were waited on by
maids.
"In most of the hospitals there is a fifteen or twenty-minute rest in the
morning and in the afternoon, when milk, tea, and bread and butter are
served. These oases of rest and nourishment were of extraordinary value
to us in resisting fatigue. Their efficiency in keeping workers in
condition is a humane and practical feature of the laundries which should
be sharply emphasized.
"There was little variation in wages between the different grades of
workers. As a rule, only two prices obtained--one for all the manglers
and plain ironers, another for the starchers and shirt and fancy ironers.
In one laundry the wage fell as low as $10 a month. In the others it was
$14 and $15 for the lower grade of work, and $16 and $20 for the higher.
One of the laundries gave board, but no room, and here the universal
price was $20 a month.
"As to hours, three of the hospitals had an eight-hour day; four had a
nine-and-a-half-hour day. In one of these there was no work on Saturday
afternoon, so that the weekly hours were forty-four. Another hospital
worked seventy-two hours a week, with no recompense in the form of
overtime pay. Generally the catchers at the mangles sat at their work. In
one hospital the feeders also sat, using high stools. We wondered why
this was not more often the custom. The difference in vigor in our own
cases when we worked sitting was marked. Sitting, we escaped unwearied;
standing all day left us numb with fatigue. In only one hospital was
artificial light necessary in the work-room. The rooms, as a rule, were
well ventilated and the air fresh when one came into them.
"We often noticed that the workers in the hospital laundries were far
less contented than those in the other classes of laundries. It was not
surprising that they lacked enthusiasm for their work, for laundering is
not an interesting task; but, with conditions far beyond any other type
of laundry, it was strange that the hospital workers should be the most
shifting, faultfinding, and dispirited laundresses we encountered. Part
of this we attributed to the depressing effect of an atmosphere of
sickness, part to the fact that workers living out are doubtless
stimulated by the diversion of having a change of scene--of seeing at
least two sets of people, and, above all, generally by some special
sympathy and concern for their individual fortunes. In the last hospital
laundry where we worked, one conducted by the Sisters of Charity, though
the hours were long and the wages were only $10 a month, there was an
exceptional air of cheerfulness and interest among the workers. This was
due to no special privileges of theirs, but to the contagious spirit of
personal interest and kindness inherent in all the Sisters in charge.
"The bitterness that characterized workers living in the hospitals was
observed by Miss Hopkins among the laundry workers living in the
hotels."
III
"The twenty-one hotels where we conducted our inquiry were extremely
varied, ranging from a yellow brick house near the Haymarket, with red
and blue ingrain carpets and old-fashioned bells that rang a gong when
one twisted a knob, to the mosaic floors and the pale, shaded electric
lights of the most costly establishments in New York.
"As to the sanitation of the twenty hotels visited, only six had their
laundries above ground. All the others were in basements or in cellars.
In most of these the ventilation was faulty and the air at times
intolerably hot. It is a striking fact--showing what intelligent modern
regulation can accomplish--that one laundry two stories underground in
New York was so high-ceiled and the summer cold-air apparatus so complete
that it was comfortable even in the hot months. In most of the hotel
laundries there were seats for the takers-off. Only three of the
laundries had wet floors; only three were dirty; only one had an
insanitary lavatory and toilet room.
"In regard to the danger of injury, of the nineteen mangles that I
inspected for dangerous conditions, six were insufficiently protected. It
is the custom in most hotels, when an article winds around the cylinder
of the mangle, to pluck it off while the mangle is in motion. The women
sometimes climb up on the mangle and reach over, in imminent danger of
becoming entangled either by their dresses catching or by pitching
forward. The machinery of hotel laundries is even less carefully guarded
than is that of a commercial laundry, and in some establishments is,
besides, dangerously crowded. This was the case in one laundry in a hotel
cellar. I worked here at the ironing-table on a consignment of suits from
the navy-yard. As work came in from outside the hotel, the establishment
should have been under the State inspection. The rooms were narrow. There
was a ventilating fan, placed very low, near where the girls hung their
wraps, and as soon as I came in, they warned me that it caught up in its
blades and destroyed anything that came near it. The belting of the
machines was unboxed. A blue flame used sometimes to blow out four inches
beyond the body-ironer, directly into the narrow space where the girls
had to pass before it. In connection with the danger from machinery,
danger from employees' elevators should be noted. In one hotel I rode
forty-four times on an elevator where the guard door was closed only
once, though the car was often crowded, and twice I saw girls narrowly
escape injury from catching their skirts on the landing doors and the
latches. In another hotel, inexperienced elevator boys were broken in on
dangerous cars containing signs that read: 'This elevator shall not carry
more than fifteen persons.' The cars were used, not only for people, but
for trunks and heavy trucks of soiled linen. On one trip a car carried
one of these enormous trucks, two trunks, and twelve girls; on another
trip there were twenty-two people.
"At eight of the hotels wages were paid partly in board and lodging. The
money wages are given below:--
WORKERS LIVING IN
PER MONTH
Ironers on flannels, stockings, and plain work $22
Ironers--skilled workers on family wash 25-30
Shakers 14-16
All beginners 14-16
WORKERS LIVING OUT
PER WEEK
Ironers $7 and upward
Shakers 6 and upward
Feeders 6 and upward
Folders 6 and upward
Starchers (shirt), piece-work wages, average. 8
Starchers (collars and cuffs) 15 and upward
"The eight hotels varied widely in living conditions. The food was
reasonably well cooked, but, like most hotel fare, monotonous, and
destitute of fresh vegetables and of sweets. One of the results of this
is that the women spend a large part of their wages for fruit and other
food to supplement their unsatisfactory meals. Only two hotels planned
meals intelligently.
"The dining rooms were usually below the street-level, and varied in
ventilation, crowding, and disorder. In one the waiters were Greek
immigrants, who were in their shirt-sleeves, wore ticking aprons and no
collars, and were frequently dirty and unshaved. In the fourteen meals I
had there, I sat down only once to a clean table. The coffee boilers
along the side of the room would be boiling over and sending streams of
water over the charwomen. The dirty dishes would be piled into large tin
tubs with a clatter, and pulled out rasping over the floor. The charwomen
would beg the waiters to clear the tables, which looked as if
garbage-cans had been emptied upon them. The steward could not enforce
his authority. There was constant noise and disorder in the room. In
another dining room, that of a pleasant, ramshackle old hotel near the
river, where a breeze came into our laundry through sixteen windows, the
employees were seated in one of the restaurant dining rooms after the
noon rush hour was over, served by the regular waiters, and given
attractive and varied fare and meat from the same cuts as the guests.
'They have respect for the help here,' said one of the women.
"The dormitories were, with one exception, on upper stories. One room in
an expensive modern hotel, where there were twenty-seven beds, in tiers,
was aired only by three windows on an inner court. The room looked fresh
and pleasant because of its white paint and blue bedspreads; but it was
badly ventilated, both by condition and because the girls would keep the
windows closed for warmth. This was a frequent cause of poor ventilation
in other dormitories and in work-rooms.
"The hours of work were irregular, and varied in different places. In one
large laundry I worked over ten hours for seven days in the week--more
than seventy-two hours. About nine and a half hours seemed to be the
usual day. Four hotels gave fifteen-minute rest pauses for tea, morning
and afternoon; two gave them once a day. These rests are of incalculable
relief. One hotel gave twenty-minute pauses, so that the hours were: 7.20
to 9; 9.20 to 11.25; 12.30 to 2; 2.20 to closing time. This arrangement
gave very short work periods, but during them the women were able to work
vigorously; and they accomplished an astounding amount.
"However, in most of the hotel laundries the women were tired all the
time. They dragged themselves out of bed at the last possible minute.
They lay in their beds at noon; they crawled into them again as soon as
the work was over in the evening. Some did not go out into the air for
days at a time. The greatest suffering from any one physical cause came
from feet. 'Feet' was the constant subject of conversation. But the women
had no idea what was the trouble with their feet, and, in many cases,
accepted as inevitable discomfort that could have been alleviated by
foot-baths, care, plates, and proper shoes. Colds hung on endlessly. Sore
throats were common. A girl who fed doilies into a mangle complained that
constantly watching a moving apron made her eyes 'sore,' so that she
could not see distinctly and sometimes fed in several doilies at a time
without noticing it. The lack of air undoubtedly had a profound influence
on the women's vigor. In the old hotel near the river, where the laundry
had sixteen windows, the women were in capital health.
"In general, the older hotels, in spite of their more insanitary
dressing-rooms and less well-guarded machines, were more considerate of
their workers. But in one of the newer, more expensive hotels a sick girl
is attended by the hotel physician, and is provided with soup, milk, etc.
Her pay is not docked. She is treated with genuine sympathy. Here I once
overheard a woman telling the boss that she was ill and asking permission
to go to the dormitory. He gave the permission without question. None of
the women ever abused his kindness. The women here were in fairly good
shape, except, it must be admitted, for the extreme fatigue which seems
to sweep over almost all the laundry women, and which arises from their
hours of standing.
"I used to notice one girl who was as light on her feet as a kitten, and
who seemed tireless; but every noon, as soon as she had finished her
lunch, she would wrap herself up in a blanket and lie motionless for the
whole period. One evening a woman stumbled into a dormitory, sat down on
a trunk, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and, as she rubbed her
swollen foot, cursed long and methodically all her circumstances--cursed
the other workers who had held back work by their slowness; cursed the
manager, who had asked of her extra work; cursed the dormitory and the
laundry; cursed the whole world. At the first word of sympathy I offered
her, she paused, and said with quiet truth, 'Dear heart, we're all
tired.'
"Here are my notes for one day:--
When I went into the dormitory a little before half past seven,
several of the girls were dragging themselves out of bed to
dress. These went to work without breakfast, needing an extra
half hour of rest more than they craved food.
Two stayed in bed. One had an ulcerated tooth extracted the
night before. I asked the other if she were sick. She groaned.
"I'll get up just as soon as the pains are gone out of my
stomach." Within an hour she was in the laundry, carrying
armfuls of men's working-suits to the drying-closet. She worked
until half past eight that night.
All the morning I stood beside Old Sallie, who kept asking,
"What time is it now, dear?" because she could not see the
clock.
At noon, as we sat or lay on the beds in the dormitory, one of
the girls said, "My God! I wish I could stay in bed this
afternoon."
In the afternoon I stood beside Theresa, who kept repeating:
"It is so long to work until half past five! If I could only go
to bed at half past five!"
I walked out to supper with a girl named Kate, who had sprained
her ankle a week ago. I said, "Hasn't the doctor seen it?" She
turned on me. "My God! when do I get time to see a doctor?" She
has a bad humor on her face, which is scarlet, and sometimes,
in the morning, covered with fine white scale. She obtains
relief by wiping her cheeks with the damp napkins she shakes.
After supper I went up to the dormitory for a minute. Here I
found a cousin of Theresa's giving her some tea in bed, where I
urged her to stay. The cousin shook her head. "Ah, na," she
said, "she must na' give up; she's new yet at the job--they
wou'na like her to be sick." Theresa arose and crawled back to
the shaking-table, to work until seven o'clock.
Throughout the evening I stood beside a girl, whose foot, when
she walked, hurt her "'way to the top of her head." She said,
"I've been on it ever since half past seven."
On my way back to the dormitory at half past eight, one of the
girls told me how her arms ached and her legs ached. In the
dormitory, the girl who had been in bed all day was sobbing and
feverish. She had a sore throat, and was spitting blood. She
had been lying there all day, with no care, except to have tea
and toast brought to her by a maid.
In looking back on this past week, it seems impossible it
could have been true. Watching these women has been like seeing
animals tortured.
"Such a day of long hours as this generally follows some large festivity.
The Hudson-Fulton celebration, or the automobile show, or a great charity
ball, or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are the
occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a lavish use of beautiful
table linen, to be dried and mangled and folded next day by the laundry
girls underground.
"All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is produced, not by
ill-willed persons who are consciously oppressive,--indeed, as will be
seen, much of it was produced by sheer social good will and persons of
most progessive intent,--but simply by the unregulated conditions of the
laundries."
IV
Such, then, is the account of what women workers give and what they
receive in their industry in the commercial, hotel, and hospital
laundries of New York.
It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of the laundry conditions
observed are due to the greed of employers. These features seem to be due
rather to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures in the New
York laundry business are frequent. Even in the short time elapsing
between the Department of Labor's inspection of laundry machinery, early
in February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six establishments that had
improperly guarded machinery, made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of
these twenty-six firms had collapsed. Miss Westwood found some of the
same unfortunate features that characterized commercial and hotel
laundries in existence in hospital laundries, which are quite outside
trade.
After the New York City Consumers' League had received the inquirers'
report, it determined that the wisest and most effective course it could
take for securing fairer terms for the laundry workers would be an effort
for the passage of the following legislation:[37]--
First: That an appropriation be made for additional factory
inspectors.
Second: That no woman be employed in any mechanical
establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State for more
than ten hours during any one day.
Third: That the laundries of hotels and hospitals be placed
under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor.
A New York State law now exists providing for proper sanitation and
plumbing and clean drinking water for employees in factories and
laundries.[38] A law exists requiring that work-rooms where steam is
generated be so ventilated as to render the steam harmless, so far as is
practicable.[39]
A law exists requiring the provision of suitable seats for the use of
female employees in factories and laundries; and this law should cover
the installation of seats for great numbers of workers now standing.[40]
The establishment of juster wages, as well as the observance of all these
laws, and of the sixty-hour-a-week law, might be most practically
furthered by the existence of a trade-union in the laundries, backed by
stronger governmental provision for inspection.
V
It has been said that the unfortunate features observed in the laundry
business in New York seemed to be due primarily to lack of general
regulation. In February 1911, the Laundrymen's Association of New York
State (President, Mr. J.A. Beatty), the Manhattan Laundrymen's
Association (President, Mr. J.A. Wallach), and the Brooklyn Laundrymen's
Association (President, Mr. Thomas Locken) conferred with the Consumers'
League, and asked to coöperate with it in obtaining additional factory
inspection, the legal establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, and
the placing of hotel and hospital laundries under the jurisdiction of the
State Labor laws.
The League agreed to print on a published white list the names of the
laundries conforming within a year to a common standard determined on at
the conference. These are the main points agreed upon and endorsed.
WHITE LIST STANDARD FOR LAUNDRIES
Physical Conditions
1. Wash rooms are either separated from other work-rooms or else
adequately ventilated so that the presence of steam throughout the
laundry is prevented.
2. Work, lunch, and retiring rooms are apart from each other and
conform in all respects to the present sanitary laws.
3. All machinery is guarded.
4. Proper drains under washing and starching machines, so that
there are no wet floors.
5. Seats adjusted to the machines are provided for at the
a. Collar ironer feeder.
b. Collar ironer catcher.
c. Collar dampener feeder.
d. Collar dampener catcher.
e. Collar straightener.
f. Collar starcher feeder.
g. Collar starcher catcher.
h. Handkerchief flat-work feeder and catcher.
i. Folders on small work.
j. Collar shaper.
k. Collar seam-dampener.
l. Straight collar shaper.
6. The ordinances of the city and laws of the State are obeyed in
all particulars.
Wages
1. Equal pay is given for equal work irrespective of sex, and no
woman who is eighteen years of age or over and who has had one
year's experience receives less than $6 a week. This standard
includes piece-workers.
Hours
1. The normal working week does not exceed 54 hours, and on no day
shall work continue after 9 P.M.
2. When work is continued after 7 P.M. 20 minutes is allowed for
supper and supper money is given.
3. Half holidays in each week during two summer months.
4. A vacation of not less than one week with pay is given during
the summer season.
5. All overtime work, beyond the 54 hours a week standard, is paid
for.
6. Wages paid and premises closed on the six legal holidays, viz:
Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year's Day, the Fourth of July,
Decoration Day and Labor Day.
The Laundrymen's Association of New York State appeared with the
Consumers' League at Albany at the last legislative session, and
repeatedly sent counsel to the capitol in support of a bill defining as a
factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power. The
association's support was able and determined. The bill has now passed
both houses.
Such responsible action as this on the part of the commercial laundry
employers of the State of New York, Brooklyn, and Manhattan is in
striking contrast with the stand taken by the Oregon commercial laundry
employers in the matter of laundry employees' legal hours of industry.
VI
The constitutionality of the present New York law concerning the hours of
labor of adult women in factories, laundries, and mechanical
establishments was virtually determined by the Federal decision in regard
to the Oregon Ten-Hour Day Law for working-women.
About three years ago the State of Oregon enacted a law of practically
the same bearing as the New York law on the same subject, though superior
in that it limited the hours of labor of adult women in mechanical
establishments, factories, and laundries to ten hours during the
twenty-four hours of any one day, where the New York law, of the same
provision in other respects, limits the hours of labor of adult women to
sixty in a week.
The laundries and the State of Oregon agreed to carry a test case to the
Federal Supreme Court to determine the new law's constitutionality.
Mr. Curt Muller of Oregon employed a working woman in his laundry for
more than ten hours. Information was filed against him by an inspector.
Mr. Muller's trial resulted in a verdict against him, and a sentence of a
ten-dollar fine. He appealed the case to the State Supreme Court of
Oregon, which affirmed his conviction. Mr. Muller then appealed the case
to the Federal Supreme Court.
In the defence of the law before the Federal Supreme Court, the National
Consumers' League had the good fortune to obtain, in coöperation with the
State of Oregon, the services of Louis D. Brandeis, the most
distinguished services that could have been received, generously rendered
as a gift. This fact alone may serve to indicate the vital character of
the case, and the importance, for industrial justice in the future, of
securing a favorable verdict for the laundry workers.
The argument of Mr. Muller was that the Oregon Ten-Hour Law was
unconstitutional: First, because the statute attempted to prevent persons
from making their own contracts, and thus violated the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment.[41] Next, because the statute did not apply equally
to all persons similarly situated and was class legislation. And,
finally, because the statute was not a valid exercise of the police
power; that is to say, there was no necessary or reasonable connection
between the limitations described by the act and the public health and
welfare.
Mr. Brandeis' brief replied that, first, the guaranty of freedom of
contract was legally subject to such reasonable restraint of action as
the State may impose in the exercise of the police power for the
protection of the general health and welfare. It submitted that certain
facts of common knowledge established conclusively that there was
reasonable ground for holding that to permit women in Oregon to work in a
mechanical establishment or factory or laundry more than ten hours in one
day was dangerous to public welfare.
These facts of common knowledge, collected by Miss Josephine Goldmark,
the Publication Secretary of the National Consumers' League, were
considered under two heads: first, that of American and foreign
legislation restricting the hours of labor for women; and, second, the
world's experience, upon which the legislation limiting the hours of
labor for women is based.
These facts comprised the governmental restrictions of the number of
hours employers may require women to labor, from twenty States of the
United States, and from Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria,
Holland, Italy, and Germany. The laws were followed by authoritative
statements from over ninety reports of committees, bureaus of statistics,
commissioners of hygiene, and government inspectors, both in this country
and in all the civilized countries of Europe, asseverating that long
hours of labor are dangerous for women, primarily because of their
special physical organization.
In reply to the second allegation,--that the act in question was class
legislation, as it did not apply equally to all persons similarly
situated,--the plaintiff answered that the specific prohibition of more
than ten hours' work in a laundry was not an arbitrary discrimination
against that trade; because the present character of the business and its
special dangers of long hours afford strong reasons for providing a legal
limitation of the hours of work in that industry as well as in
manufacturing and mechanical establishments. Statements from industrial
and medical authorities described conclusively the present character of
the laundry business.
Mr. Brandeis finally submitted that, in view of all these facts, the
present Oregon statute was within Oregon's police power, as its public
health and welfare did require a legal limitation of the hours of women's
work in manufacturing and mechanical establishments and in laundries.
Justice Brewer delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United
States. The case was won. Here are, in part, the words of the decision:--
It may not be amiss in the present case, before examining the
constitutional question, to notice the course of legislation as
well as expressions of opinion from other judicial sources. In
the brief filed by Mr. Brandeis ... is a copious collection of
all these matters. The ... legislation and opinions referred to
... are significant of a widespread belief that woman's
physical structure and the special functions she performs in
consequence thereof, justify special legislation restricting or
qualifying the conditions under which she should be permitted
to toil.
Constitutional questions, it is true, are not settled by even a
consensus of present public opinion.... At the same time, when
a question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent to
which a special constitutional limitation goes is affected by
the truth in respect to the fact, a widespread and
long-continued belief concerning it is worthy of consideration.
We take judicial cognizance of all matters of general
knowledge....
That woman's physical structure and the performance of
maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle
for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the
burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by
abundant testimony of the medical fraternity, continuance for a
long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day,
tends to injurious effects upon her body, and as healthy
mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical
well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and
care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.
Nobody knowing the actual strain upon women laundry workers, no one who
had seen them lying motionless and numb with fatigue at the end of a long
day, or foregoing food itself for the sake of rest, could listen unmoved
to these thrilling words of the greatest court of our country.
The most eloquent characteristic of the Supreme Court's affirmation was
the fact that it was essentially founded simply upon clear, human truth,
firmly and widely ascertained, founded on a respect, not only for the
past, but for the future of the whole nation.
Too often does one hear that "law has nothing to do with equity," till
one might believe that law was made for law's sake, and not as a means of
deliverance from injustice. "The end of litigation is justice. We believe
that truth and justice are more sacred than any personal consideration."
Such was the conception of the office of the law expressed by Justice
Brewer twenty years before, on his appointment to the Supreme Bench. It
was this conception of law that made the determination of the Oregon case
a great decision in our country's history.
From time immemorial, women as well as men have been workers of the
world. The vital feature of the statement that six million women are now
gainfully employed in this country is not the "entrance" of multitudinous
women into industry, but the fact that their industry, being now carried
on in public instead of private, has been acknowledged and paid. This
acknowledgment has led to the establishment of juster terms for women's
labor by the Federal Supreme Court. Such an establishment, as the opinion
of the court affirmed, is surely a distinct gain, not only for women, but
for children, for men, for the race.
When the preparation of food and clothing, the traditional household
labor of women, passed in large measure from household fires and
spinning-wheels into the canning factories and garment trades with the
invention of machinery, women simply continued their traditional labor
outside their houses instead of inside them.[42] The accounts of the
laundry, the shirt-waist and the cloak making trades in New York seem to
show that, where men and women engage in the same field of activity,
their work is, by a natural division, not competitive or antagonistic,
but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very
first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever
occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by
an offensive injustice to a man.
The chronicles of what self-supporting women have given and received in
their work in wage and in vitality, these working girls' budgets obtained
by the Consumers' League, will not have told their story truly unless
they have evoked with their narrative the presence of that impersonal
sense of right instinctive in the factory girls who go year after year to
Albany to fight against the long Christmas season hours for the
shop-girls, in the cloak makers in their effort to stop sweated home
work, in the responsible common-sense of countless working women. So that
the fact that six million women are now gainfully employed in this
country may finally tend to secure wiser adjustments and fairer returns
for the labor, not only of women, but of all the workers of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: Its severity may be indicated by an account of the work a
machine ironer in Illinois regularly performed before the passage of the
Illinois Ten-Hour Law, when conditions in that State were as they now are
in the hotel and hospital laundries of New York. Miss Radway used to iron
five hundred shirt bosoms a day. Holding the loose part of the shirt up
above her head to prevent the muslin from being caught in the iron, she
pressed the bosom in a machine manipulated by three heavy treads--by
bearing all of her weight on her right foot stamping down on a pedal to
the right; then by bearing all her weight on her left foot, stamping down
a pedal to the left; then by pressing down both pedals with a jump. To
iron five hundred shirt bosoms required three thousand treads a day.]
[Footnote 34: State Labor Law, paragraph 81.--Protection of Employees
Operating Machinery: "... If a machine or any part thereof is in a
dangerous condition or is not properly guarded, the use thereof may be
prohibited by the Commissioner of Labor, and a notice to that effect
shall be attached thereto. Such notice shall not be removed until the
machine is made safe and the required safeguards are provided, and in the
meantime such unsafe or dangerous machinery shall not be used."]
[Footnote 35: Here is a letter from the Secretary of the Women's
Trade-Union League, stating the results of organization in the West in
the laundry trade: "The laundry workers in San Francisco eight years ago
were competing with the Chinese laundries. The girls working in the
laundries there received about $10 a month, with the privilege of 'living
in.' Three days in the week they began work at 6 A.M. and worked until 2
A.M. the next morning. The other three days they worked from 7 A.M. to 8
P.M. Since organization, they have established the nine-hour day and the
minimum wage of $7. They have extended their organization almost the
entire length of the Pacific Coast."]
[Footnote 36: Perhaps a better survey of the standard of wages for all
departments of laundry work in which women are employed can be given by
the table below. By the word "standard" I mean the usual wage of a worker
of average skill who has been at work in a laundry for a period of at
least one year.
Hand starching (shirts) $12
Hand ironing 10
Hand starching (collars) 9
Hand washing 8
Machine ironing 7
Feeders 6
Folders 6
Catchers 5
Machine starching (shirts) 5
Collar ironing 5
Machine starching (collars) 4.50
Shakers 4.50]
[Footnote 37: One of the suggestions the inquirers had made, in regard to
danger of injury, was the recommendation of the passage of the State
Compensation Act, drafted by the joint conference of the Central Labor
Bodies of the city of New York. This act became a law in September, 1910,
but has since then (July 22, 1911) been declared unconstitutional.]
[Footnote 38: Laws of New York, Chapter 229, section 1, paragraph 88.
Became a law May 6, 1910.]
[Footnote 39: Laws of New York, Chapter 31 of the Consolidated Laws, as
amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86. Inquirers' suggestion: This law
would be simpler to enforce if an amending clause required that, in
laundries, washing be done in a separate room from the rest of the work.]
[Footnote 40: Laws of New York, Chapter 3 of the Consolidated Laws, as
amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86.]
[Footnote 41: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States: nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws."]
[Footnote 42: Jane Addams, "Democracy and Social Ethics."]