Clothing Manufacturers: Before the United States entered the war, 184,691 women were working in New York State making every conceivable garment for people to wear. The work is subdivided so that one worker does one thing all day long. There are sixty-five operations in the making of trousers. Twenty to sixty different operations take place in the making of men’s shirts. Women tuck or hem materials for women’s wear hour by hour, driven by the juggernaut electric machine which knows no fatigue and needs no rest.
Laundries: Ten thousand women worked in laundries in this State, where the washing and ironing are done usually by machines. They stand and push down a treadle of the ironing-machine with their feet, making as many as sixty-three to eighty-one foot pressures a minute. In this action a bad twist of the body is necessary, which may result in permanent injury. Clouds of steam rise from the mangles, and when no exhaust hoods are used, the room is filled with steam. Tuberculosis is a common disease among laundry workers. Unprotected machinery is a constant danger.
Restaurant Workers: There were fifteen thousand restaurant workers, waitresses, cooks, kitchen girls, and pantry hands. Until 1917, they were without any protection by law. They worked any number of hours, and seven days a week. They now come under the fifty-four-hour law, in first and second class cities, but the law is difficult to enforce. They often walk five miles a day carrying heavy trays; and varicose veins, flat feet, and pelvic disorders are common.
Textile Operators: In New York State 35,168 women worked in textile-mills making silks, woolens, cottons, carpets, knit underwear, etc. The din of machinery is deafening in many of these factories, and often the machinery is so closely placed that there is difficulty in passing without danger of skirts catching.
The whole development of machinery in industry has been worked out for the purpose of extending trade and output, without consideration of the human factor involved. Machines have been watched so they did not wear out or break, and they have been carefully repaired. Girls and women, the human factor, have been discarded if they wore out; they are of less worth to the employer and can be easily replaced without cost to him. But the cost to the State has been heavy in the toll of hospitals, insane asylums, and homes for destitutes and delinquents.
There is hardly a trade which has not some elements of danger or unhealthfulness in it. Women working in meat-packing plants in sausage-making rooms stand all day at their work on water- and slime-soaked floors. Women work in industries where industrial poisons are used or where they are generated in the process of manufacturing. The pressure of piece-work, the monotony of one single operation, are nerve-racking and nerve-exhausting.
The health of women who spend hours a day in factories depends largely upon factory laws and sanitary codes. Light, air, sanitation, overcrowding in factories, mills, and shops, all vitally affect the health of the workers. No one can measure the cost of industry in the life of women. The strength and vitality taken from them will show in the lowered vitality of their children. A low birth-rate, a high death-rate, and an impaired second generation are the inevitable results. Infant mortality where the mothers work in factories is notoriously high.[9]
War and Woman’s Work: With the insistent demand for increased production occasioned by the war, women have been brought into many new positions formerly held only by men. They have gone into the steel-mills; they are employed in large numbers in the munition-factories; they are working on the railroads, in railroad yards, and inspecting tracks, as well as in the ticket-offices and baggage-rooms. The Pennsylvania Railroad has 2,300 women employed as car-cleaners, track-walkers, upholsterers, locomotive despatchers, and machine-hands. Some are operating trains. They are engaged as conductors on street-cars and subways, and as elevator operators.
These new industries are not included in the provisions for women of the State labor laws.
New York State has a nine-hour day for women working in factories and mercantile occupations, and night work is prohibited in these industries; but this protection does not extend into other occupations.