VII
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]]
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.