In a workingman’s family, it is sometimes said, the woman’s work-day is two hours longer than the man’s. But if this statement is correct in general, the augmentation stated is insufficient in these abnormal homes where the women are required to have many meals and dinner buckets ready at irregular hours to accommodate men working on different shifts.
The Serbo-Croatian women who, more than any of the others, do all this work are big, handsome, and graceful, proud and reckless of their strength. During the progress of the investigation, in the winter months, they were frequently seen walking about the yards and courts, in bare feet, on the snow and ice-covered ground, hanging up clothes or carrying water into the house from a yard hydrant.
Whether it harmed them to expend their force and vigor as they did could not be determined in individual cases, but their babies are the ones who died off with the greatest rapidity, their infant mortality rate being 263.9, as compared with the rates of 171.3 for all the foreign; 104.3 for the natives; and 134 for the entire group as shown in Table [18]. Excluding babies of Serbo-Croatian mothers, the infant mortality rate for babies of foreign mothers is but 159.7.
ITALIAN
The Italian mothers visited in Johnstown bore 75 children in 1911, 4 being stillborn. The infant mortality rate among the live born was 183.1, the highest of any racial group excepting the Serbo-Croatian, where it was 263.9.
The Italians have been in Johnstown somewhat longer than the Serbo-Croatians and they seem to have a little firmer grip on the community life there. Their homes are a shade better, a trifle cleaner, and somewhat less crowded than those of the Serbo-Croatians, although their hygienic standards seem little if any higher and they rank no better in literacy. The women do not perform the arduous duties that are the lot of so many of the Serbo-Croatian women; they have not the robust physique of the latter and the men are not found in those branches of the steel industry which require the extraordinary strength possessed by the Serbo-Croatians. The occupations of the Italian fathers were found to be more diversified than those of the Serbo-Croatians, some being fruit, grocery, or cheese merchants; steamship agents; bricklayers, carpenters, or workers at other skilled and semiskilled trades.
SLOVAK, POLISH, ETC.
The infant mortality rate in the group designated “Slovak, Polish, etc.” is 177.1. In this group are included all the Slavic races represented in the investigation excepting the Serbo-Croatian. The babies of Slovak[[17]] mothers were found to be most numerous, there being 276 of them. There were 108 babies of Polish,[[18]] 2 of Bohemian,[[19]] and 7 of Ruthenian[[20]] mothers. In addition, one baby of a Scandinavian (Danish) mother was included, not because Scandinavians bear the least racial resemblance to the Slavic races, but because the few Scandinavians in Johnstown happened to be on about the same economic footing as the “Slovak, Polish, etc.”
[17]. Slovaks occupy practically all except the Ruthenian territory of northern Hungary; also found in great numbers in southeast Moravia. They are the Moravians conquered by Hungary. In physical type no dividing line can be drawn between Slovaks and Moravians. It is often claimed that Slovak is a Bohemian dialect.
[18]. The west Slavic race native to the former Kingdom of Poland. For the most part they adhere to the Roman rather than the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church.