IV
Such, then, is the account of what women workers give and what they receive in their industry in the commercial, hotel, and hospital laundries of New York.
It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of the laundry conditions observed are due to the greed of employers. These features seem to be due rather to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures in the New York laundry business are frequent. Even in the short time elapsing between the Department of Labor's inspection of laundry machinery, early in February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six establishments that had improperly guarded machinery, made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of these twenty-six firms had collapsed. Miss Westwood found some of the same unfortunate features that characterized commercial and hotel laundries in existence in hospital laundries, which are quite outside trade.
After the New York City Consumers' League had received the inquirers' report, it determined that the wisest and most effective course it could take for securing fairer terms for the laundry workers would be an effort for the passage of the following legislation:— [[37]]
First: That an appropriation be made for additional factory inspectors.
Second: That no woman be employed in any mechanical establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State for more than ten hours during any one day.
Third: That the laundries of hotels and hospitals be placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor.
A New York State law now exists providing for proper sanitation and plumbing and clean drinking water for employees in factories and laundries.[ [38]] A law exists requiring that work-rooms where steam is generated be so ventilated as to render the steam harmless, so far as is practicable.[ [39]]
A law exists requiring the provision of suitable seats for the use of female employees in factories and laundries; and this law should cover the installation of seats for great numbers of workers now standing.[[40]]
The establishment of juster wages, as well as the observance of all these laws, and of the sixty-hour-a-week law, might be most practically furthered by the existence of a trade-union in the laundries, backed by stronger governmental provision for inspection.
V
It has been said that the unfortunate features observed in the laundry business in New York seemed to be due primarily to lack of general regulation. In February 1911, the Laundrymen's Association of New York State (President, Mr. J.A. Beatty), the Manhattan Laundrymen's Association (President, Mr. J.A. Wallach), and the Brooklyn Laundrymen's Association (President, Mr. Thomas Locken) conferred with the Consumers' League, and asked to coöperate with it in obtaining additional factory inspection, the legal establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, and the placing of hotel and hospital laundries under the jurisdiction of the State Labor laws.