Night Work and One Day’s Rest in Seven.
Although the number of women employed in restaurants at night is not great, night work in this occupation is a factor to be seriously considered. The restaurants which employ women at night are the small establishments in the tenement districts of the city where hours are longest and surroundings most trying; the cheaper restaurants in the theatre districts where the employment of women is an added attraction to after-the-theatre supper parties; and restaurants in railway stations which are necessarily open all night.
The law makes it illegal to employ women in factories and mercantile establishments between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. The reasons which caused the state to exercise its police power to safeguard the health and morals of these classes of workers apply equally to the employment of women in restaurants. The very fact that only four per cent. of the workers interviewed were employed at night proves that night work for women in restaurants is not a necessary evil. That it is an evil is beyond question.
The dangers of night work are two-fold. First, it is a distinct menace to the health of the worker. The Factory Investigating Commission in its Report to the Legislature for 1913, states: “The chief danger to health from night work is ... due to the inevitable lack of sleep and sunlight. Recuperation from fatigue takes place fully only in sleep, and best in sleep at night. Hence night work is, in a word, against nature. This injury to health is all the greater because sleep lost at night by working women is never fully made up by day. For, in the first place, sleep in the day time is not equal in recuperative power to sleep at night.... Moreover, quiet and privacy for sleep by day is almost impossible to secure. Upon returning home in the middle of the night or at dawn the workers can snatch at most only a few hours’ rest.”
Often a woman will have one week of night work alternating with a week of work in the day time. She hardly gets accustomed to sleeping by day when she is taken off the night shift, to change back again at the end of the week. Thus it is impossible for her to form regular habits in sleeping and eating.
Secondly, there is a grave moral danger involved in night work, especially for restaurant workers since at this time they are open to the attentions of an undesirable class of men. “I don’t like to work at night,” one young waitress said. “The men are always fresher to girls at night than in the day time. Perhaps it’s because so many of those gamblers come in drunk.” Nor is it safe for a woman to go home alone after twelve o’clock at night. Instances of hideous occurrences are familiar to everyone. A little widow, the mother of seven children, told the investigator that she had given up her work as a dishwasher for this very reason. A friend of hers working in a nearby restaurant, was set upon, robbed and killed on her way home from work late one night. “I changed my work then,” said the woman, “for what would the children do if anything happened to me?”
The majority of restaurants employ men for night duty. It is evident, therefore, that the employment of women is not essential to the convenience and comfort of either restaurant owners or customers.
In nearly every branch of industry the working week is six days long. It is universally conceded that there must be one day in the seven for rest and relaxation if men and women are to give their best service. With restaurant workers, thirty-three per cent. of whom have no day of rest in seven, the need for such a time is particularly great because of the long working day. Otherwise they have no opportunity for a thorough rest and the poisons of fatigue are not thrown off. If these poisons are not eliminated, they accumulate in the system and finally result in physical breakdown.
And not only is this free day important on the score of health, but it is also the time for recreation and the strengthening of family ties. For the girl who has no leisure, no time for real relaxation and play, there is only a starved and empty existence. A woman who has no opportunity to be with and to know her children, who must leave them to the care of friends or a day nursery or the street, who has no day in the week to be at home with them, can hardly be a potent factor in shaping their lives. She suffers and so do the children, and the stability of such a family life is at best uncertain. One woman said, “If I get a half day off on Sunday to be with my children, it makes me happy all the week.”
Diagram 7.—Ages of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.
Diagram 8.—Nationality of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.