The New York State Labor Law as it stands makes it illegal to employ women in factories and mercantile establishments more than fifty-four hours or six days in any one week, or between ten o’clock at night and six o’clock in the morning. So far, so good. If these laws are enforced, we may feel fairly confident that women in these branches of industry at least have some measure of protection. But what of the women not safeguarded by the law? Who are they, and why should they be neglected?
Between fifteen and twenty thousand of these women are workers in restaurants—waitresses, cooks, kitchen girls, pantry hands—upon whose services all of us depend at one time or another for our comfort and pleasure. The Consumers’ League of New York City has long felt the need of including restaurant workers under the provisions of the Labor Law. The State Department of Labor lays special stress upon this need.[1] Believing, therefore, both from casual observation and from the statement of the Labor Department that women in restaurants are not properly guarded from industrial strain, the League planned to explore the field further, to discover just what actually are the hours, wages and general conditions of work in this branch of industry and to learn their effect upon the life and health of the worker.
A valuable study of this subject was made in 1910 by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for New York and several of the larger cities of the country.[2] Though the Consumers’ League has not entered upon wholly new ground, yet with adequate time for detailed study it has been possible for it to make a more exhaustive inquiry than any made heretofore, and to bring to light new phases of the question. The story of its discoveries is told in the pages that follow, to this end, that with wider knowledge of facts, public interest may be reawakened and stimulated to demand adequate legal protection for women employed in restaurants.
PLAN OF STUDY.
Believing that one of the most satisfactory sources of information in regard to labor conditions is the word of the workers themselves, the Consumers’ League decided to base its study mainly upon interviews with restaurant employees. One thousand and seventeen (1,017) women were interviewed in New York City and in six of the larger cities of the State. They were seen in their homes, at their places of employment and through employment agencies.
In New York City all the interviews were held at the Occupational Clinic of the Board of Health, where, through the courtesy of Dr. Harris, Chief of the Bureau of Industrial Hygiene, a room was set aside for the use of the League investigator. In response to a requirement of the Health Department, all food-handlers in the city come to the Clinic for a physical examination and certificate testifying that they are free from communicable disease. The investigator could in this way meet the women on neutral ground when there was no temptation to conceal or distort facts, and talk confidentially with them. The interviews taken at the Clinic in five months would have required at least a year to get in any other way.
The New York State Consumers’ League and the branch leagues in Buffalo, Syracuse and Mr. Vernon co-operated in interviewing women in localities outside of New York City, and the same undesirable conditions were found to prevail throughout the State.
Supplementary information was also obtained from all other available sources, such as employers, employment agencies, girls’ clubs and published reports. The workers came from every kind of restaurant, including hotels, tea-rooms, buffet and dairy lunches, cafeterias and clubs. In this way it was possible to get in touch with a thoroughly representative group of workers, including the best paid as well as the most underpaid.
In undertaking the investigation, the League sought to answer three questions: first, what are the actual conditions of labor prevailing in the restaurants of New York State; second, are these conditions such that the worker may lead a wholesome, normal life; and third, how do these conditions react through the individual worker upon society as a whole.