"The dining rooms were usually below the street-level, and varied in ventilation, crowding, and disorder. In one the waiters were Greek immigrants, who were in their shirt-sleeves, wore ticking aprons and no collars, and were frequently dirty and unshaved. In the fourteen meals I had there, I sat down only once to a clean table. The coffee boilers along the side of the room would be boiling over and sending streams of water over the charwomen. The dirty dishes would be piled into large tin tubs with a clatter, and pulled out rasping over the floor. The charwomen would beg the waiters to clear the tables, which looked as if garbage-cans had been emptied upon them. The steward could not enforce his authority. There was constant noise and disorder in the room. In another dining room, that of a pleasant, ramshackle old hotel near the river, where a breeze came into our laundry through sixteen windows, the employees were seated in one of the restaurant dining rooms after the noon rush hour was over, served by the regular waiters, and given attractive and varied fare and meat from the same cuts as the guests. 'They have respect for the help here,' said one of the women.
"The dormitories were, with one exception, on upper stories. One room in an expensive modern hotel, where there were twenty-seven beds, in tiers, was aired only by three windows on an inner court. The room looked fresh and pleasant because of its white paint and blue bedspreads; but it was badly ventilated, both by condition and because the girls would keep the windows closed for warmth. This was a frequent cause of poor ventilation in other dormitories and in work-rooms.
"The hours of work were irregular, and varied in different places. In one large laundry I worked over ten hours for seven days in the week—more than seventy-two hours. About nine and a half hours seemed to be the usual day. Four hotels gave fifteen-minute rest pauses for tea, morning and afternoon; two gave them once a day. These rests are of incalculable relief. One hotel gave twenty-minute pauses, so that the hours were: 7.20 to 9; 9.20 to 11.25; 12.30 to 2; 2.20 to closing time. This arrangement gave very short work periods, but during them the women were able to work vigorously; and they accomplished an astounding amount.
"However, in most of the hotel laundries the women were tired all the time. They dragged themselves out of bed at the last possible minute. They lay in their beds at noon; they crawled into them again as soon as the work was over in the evening. Some did not go out into the air for days at a time. The greatest suffering from any one physical cause came from feet. 'Feet' was the constant subject of conversation. But the women had no idea what was the trouble with their feet, and, in many cases, accepted as inevitable discomfort that could have been alleviated by foot-baths, care, plates, and proper shoes. Colds hung on endlessly. Sore throats were common. A girl who fed doilies into a mangle complained that constantly watching a moving apron made her eyes 'sore,' so that she could not see distinctly and sometimes fed in several doilies at a time without noticing it. The lack of air undoubtedly had a profound influence on the women's vigor. In the old hotel near the river, where the laundry had sixteen windows, the women were in capital health.
"In general, the older hotels, in spite of their more insanitary dressing-rooms and less well-guarded machines, were more considerate of their workers. But in one of the newer, more expensive hotels a sick girl is attended by the hotel physician, and is provided with soup, milk, etc. Her pay is not docked. She is treated with genuine sympathy. Here I once overheard a woman telling the boss that she was ill and asking permission to go to the dormitory. He gave the permission without question. None of the women ever abused his kindness. The women here were in fairly good shape, except, it must be admitted, for the extreme fatigue which seems to sweep over almost all the laundry women, and which arises from their hours of standing.
"I used to notice one girl who was as light on her feet as a kitten, and who seemed tireless; but every noon, as soon as she had finished her lunch, she would wrap herself up in a blanket and lie motionless for the whole period. One evening a woman stumbled into a dormitory, sat down on a trunk, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and, as she rubbed her swollen foot, cursed long and methodically all her circumstances—cursed the other workers who had held back work by their slowness; cursed the manager, who had asked of her extra work; cursed the dormitory and the laundry; cursed the whole world. At the first word of sympathy I offered her, she paused, and said with quiet truth, 'Dear heart, we're all tired.'
"Here are my notes for one day:—
When I went into the dormitory a little before half past seven, several of the girls were dragging themselves out of bed to dress. These went to work without breakfast, needing an extra half hour of rest more than they craved food.
Two stayed in bed. One had an ulcerated tooth extracted the night before. I asked the other if she were sick. She groaned. "I'll get up just as soon as the pains are gone out of my stomach." Within an hour she was in the laundry, carrying armfuls of men's working-suits to the drying-closet. She worked until half past eight that night.
All the morning I stood beside Old Sallie, who kept asking, "What time is it now, dear?" because she could not see the clock.
At noon, as we sat or lay on the beds in the dormitory, one of the girls said, "My God! I wish I could stay in bed this afternoon."
In the afternoon I stood beside Theresa, who kept repeating: "It is so long to work until half past five! If I could only go to bed at half past five!"
I walked out to supper with a girl named Kate, who had sprained her ankle a week ago. I said, "Hasn't the doctor seen it?" She turned on me. "My God! when do I get time to see a doctor?" She has a bad humor on her face, which is scarlet, and sometimes, in the morning, covered with fine white scale. She obtains relief by wiping her cheeks with the damp napkins she shakes.
After supper I went up to the dormitory for a minute. Here I found a cousin of Theresa's giving her some tea in bed, where I urged her to stay. The cousin shook her head. "Ah, na," she said, "she must na' give up; she's new yet at the job—they wou'na like her to be sick." Theresa arose and crawled back to the shaking-table, to work until seven o'clock.
Throughout the evening I stood beside a girl, whose foot, when she walked, hurt her "'way to the top of her head." She said, "I've been on it ever since half past seven."
On my way back to the dormitory at half past eight, one of the girls told me how her arms ached and her legs ached. In the dormitory, the girl who had been in bed all day was sobbing and feverish. She had a sore throat, and was spitting blood. She had been lying there all day, with no care, except to have tea and toast brought to her by a maid.
In looking back on this past week, it seems impossible it could have been true. Watching these women has been like seeing animals tortured.
"Such a day of long hours as this generally follows some large festivity. The Hudson-Fulton celebration, or the automobile show, or a great charity ball, or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are the occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a lavish use of beautiful table linen, to be dried and mangled and folded next day by the laundry girls underground.
"All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is produced, not by ill-willed persons who are consciously oppressive,—indeed, as will be seen, much of it was produced by sheer social good will and persons of most progessive intent,—but simply by the unregulated conditions of the laundries."