SURVEY HsiU QJoUegc of Agriculture Jlttrata, ^. % Htbrarg . Hcixrve... 'Ecja-no.-m)..c,&.. Cornell University Library HD 8085.P6B9 Women and the trades, Pittsburgh, 1907-1 3 1924 013 813 344 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013813344 WOMEN AND THE TRADES RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS THE STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG WORKING- MEN'S FAMILIES IN NEW YORK CITY. By Robert CoiT Chapin, Ph.D. 388 pages. 131 tables. 16 diagrams. Price, postpaid, I2.00. MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS. By Luther Halsey Gulick, M.D., and Leonard P. Ayres, A.M. 286 pages. Third edition. Price, postpaid, |i. 00. LAGGARDS IN OUR SCHOOLS: A Study on Retarda- tion and Elimination in City School Systems. By Leonard P. Ayres, A.M. 252 pages. 106 tables. 38 diagrams. Price, postpaid, $1.50. THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY. Findings in six vol- umes. The first volume, Butler's "Women and the Trades," published December, 190Q. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS IN THE UNITED STATES: Including a Directory of Institu- tions dealing with Tuberculosis in the United States and Canada. Compiled under the direction of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tubercu- losis. By Philip P. Jacobs. 467 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.00. REPORT ON THE DESIRABILITY OF ESTABLISH- ING AN EMPLOYMENT BUREAU IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. By Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D. 238 pages. Paper. Price, postpaid, $1.00. THE SALARY LOAN BUSINESS IN NEW YORK CITY. By Clarence W. Wassam, Ph.D. With Ex- tracts from an unpublished Report by Frank Julian Warne, Ph.D. 143 pages. Paper. Price, postpaid, 75 cents. THE CHATTEL LOAN BUSINESS. By Arthur H Ham. 60 pages. Paper. Price, postpaid, 25 cents. FIRSTSTEPS IN ORGANIZING PLAYGROUNDS. By Lee F. Hanmer. Paper. Price, postpaid, 10 cents. FIELD DAY AND PLAY PICNIC FOR COUNTRY CHILDREN. By Myron T. Scudder. Paper. Price, postpaid, 10 cents. CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMiWITTEE 105 east 22D STREET, NEW YORK 158 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO 1 |ri J ■im. ^^SPH 1 I M . JL i i i P 1 ^ b% ^H >,V' J ■^1 V/ji. , r _ ■ ^^ *■ m """^rtJi^fc "7 "^^^ r ^mmk III -"^^^ ? p^ .1 ** /^ ■ ' ' -l^' ^»' 1 '■* ■ -:^ mi mm-M a n ,.^, '^ b [^^ "' '^jBP'M iii:' . i.l "''"■m, Glass Decorators Photo, hy nine By polishing the glass on a revolving wheel the decorator brings out the brilliancy of the ruby color RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION WOMEN AND THE TRADES PITTSBURGH, 1907-1908 By ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BUTLER FORMER SECRETARY, CONSUMERS LEAGUE OF NEW JERSEY THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY FINDINGS IN SIX VOLUMES Edited by PAUL UNDERWOOD KELLOGG NEW YORK CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE . . . MCMIX ^ 12.\ 5"5 Copyright, 1909, by The Russell Sage Foundation PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO., PHILADELPHIA INTRODUCTORY ONE of the first acts of the trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation was to make an appropriation of $7,000 for the work of the Pittsburgh Survey. Other appropri- ations followed during the year, that made a total sum of 127,000. The plan of the survey proposed a careful and fairly compre- hensive study of the conditions under which working people live and labor in a great industrial city, and a fair public statement of facts discovered. It was hoped that these facts would lead to the prompt application of some practical measures, whose value to the com- munity would be readily recognized, and that with respect to such conditions as are firmly rooted in custom and convention, they would afford a basis for efforts to secure legislative or other reme- dies. It was hoped, too, that they would constitute a body of evi- dence, such as we had never had, bearing on our national civiliza- tion, and that they would supply a foundation for further study in a deeper and more comprehensive way of conditions whose con- sequences are little understood, although they affect vitally our whole community life. These anticipations have already been realized. The appointment by the Mayor of Pittsburgh of a Civic Commission composed of eminent citizens and specialists in various lines, to devise and advocate measures to promote the welfare of Pittsburgh's people, and to advance their standards materially and spiritually, may in itself prove a sufficient justi- fication and return for the effort and expenditure put into the survey. These volumes will present a vivid picture of certain phases of life in Pittsburgh. We do not claim that it is a complete pic- ture nor that it is entirely free from error. But we believe that it presents fairly and justly dominant elements in the lives of many individuals who form a large and important proportion of Pittsburgh's population. We believe that the facts are not INTRODUCTORY only representative of the life of Pittsburgh, but that in large measure they are matched in all our bigger cities. The Pittsburgh Survey had been planned by the editors of "Charities and The Commons" before the organization of the Russell Sage Foundation. The Charities Publication Committee accepted and assumed responsibility for the project. The financial co-operation of the Russell Sage Foundation permitted the work to be begun more promptly and with a larger stafi" of investigators and advisers than would have been possible with- out it. The work was under the immediate direction of Paul U. Kellogg. He also edits the volumes containing the reports of the investigations. John M. Glenn Director Russell Sage Foundation EDITOR'S FOREWORD IF second sight were the gift of the economic investigator, all that is put down in these pages might well have been read between the lines of any one of a hundred Pittsburgh pay- rolls, where the names of girls and immigrant women are entered beside those of boys and men, or are crowding them out entirely. As it is, this volume presents the findings of a year of exacting inquiry among employers, foremen and operatives as to the 22,000 women employed at wages in Pittsburgh, and the conditions under which they worked in the manufacturing and mercantile establish- ments in 1907 and 1908. In an inclusive sense these women make up a new labor force such as employers of an earlier generation would not have hired, for they had not the instruments to use it economically; nor would they have had social sanction for doing so. The group may be regarded as a great fragment, torn off from the traditional occupations of women in the home; or as an entering wedge of a new and changing industrial order in which an increasing share of the efforts of factory production will be expended by women. In either case the articulation of this group of human beings to the processes, buildings, tools, wages, hours and health environ- ment of modern industrial plants, becomes a matter charged with importance far beyond the numerical strength of this com- pany of wage-earning women. They complicate every industrial question; and on the other hand, the conditions and tendencies affecting their employment cannot adequately be dealt with apart from the general problems of the community. As a thing by itself Miss Butler's investigation has been the first general survey of the women employing trades of an American city. A close study was made of some four hundred establish- ments. No intensive study was attempted of the women in any particular occupation, nor of the scientific problems, such as factory sanitation and health, opened up by the field work. To 3 EDITOR S FOREWORD such specialized inquiries, wherever made, this general review should supply framework and background. The investigation was, moreover, an integral part of a larger undertaking, the Pittsburgh Survey, which was carried out in 1907-8 under the Charities Publication Committee with funds supplied by the Russell Sage Foundation. This Survey as a whole attempted a diagnosis of an American industrial district along social and economic lines, and included within its scope such subjects as sanitation, public health, dependency, assimilation, wages, hours and organization of labor. Beside this general work, four special inquiries were carried on throughout the year. The findings of the staff will be issued in six volumes; these volumes will be consistent and related, but they afford the writers a larger individuality of treatment than would be the case were they parts of a formal report. As a contribution to a city's self-knowledge, this report is a piece of joinery, bringing together for the first time the experience of employers and employes in many Pittsburgh industries. It supplies a record of labor adjustments and technique in factory work such as neither mechanical nor business training afl'ord the individual manager. Let me illustrate by the case of one of the higher officials of a great Pittsburgh manufacturing establishment. Young, enthusiastic, a man with engineering training, he had shown a party of investors and others through a department where expert mechanics were at work on a new turbine. Next a room was entered where hundreds of girls were employed at high-speed machines. These workers, he said, were paid |20 per week. There was nothing in the look or dress of the girls to show such prosperity, and surprise was expressed by one of the party, the headworker of an East Side settlement whose large staflF of nurses visits every section of the New York tenements. The official was confident and called for the payroll of the department. The earnings of the women were found to be for the most part I5.00 to $7.00 a week. It was the forewoman who was paid $20. He had carried this figure in his mind and believed it true of them all. My point is not so much the meagreness of the actual wages, as the disparity between the technical equipment of this official and his ignorance of the human factors in production. He had at 4 EDITOR S FOREWORD his finger tips the threads, the measurements, the temper, the revolutions per second — all the factors that were going into the new turbine. Yet here was human machinery, more delicate, more sensitive, of finer metal than his propeller shaft. And of this he was ignorant. One of the several points made by Miss Butler is the need for vocational training of the girls, many of them crude and undis- ciplined, who go to work in Pittsburgh. No less real is the need for a more practical working knowledge of these new recruits to industry on the part of their employers ; or, as a more immediate suggestion, the need for an interchange of such working knowledge as there is. For if a conference were called of those who have dealings with working girls in Pittsburgh, there are in the city pickle canners, cracker makers, electrical manufacturers, laundry owners, department store managers, a good company of thern, who could contribute methods and experience which, if combined into a standard, would put a new meaning into the day's work, — a standard which physicians, educators, and social economists, no less than the general public, could set seal upon; as today they cannot in conscience nor in thrift. As a beginning toward this common knowledge. Miss Butler's survey is offered. It is an interpretation of an industrial situation which is repeated over and over in American cities. Wherever it is repeated, and the longer it is repeated, it gruels health and numbs the faculties upon which industrial progress no less than the fuller life depend. Paul U. Kellogg Director Pittsburgh Survey TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introductory, by John M. Glenn i Editor's Foreword 3 List of Illustrations 11 List of Tables 13 WORKERS AND WORKROOMS Chapter I Workers and Workrooms 17 FOOD PRODUCTION Chapter II The Canning Industries 31 Chapter III Confectionery Factories 44 Chapter IV The Cracker Industry 60 THE STOGY INDUSTRY Chapter V The Stogy Industry 75 THE NEEDLE TRADES Chapter VI The Garment Trades: Factories loi Chapter VII The Garment Trades : The Small Shops and Outwork 1 27 Chapter VIII The Minor Needle Trades 141 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS THE CLEANING INDUSTRIES Chapter IX ^^^^ Laundries: Washing, Mangling and Starching i6i Chapter X Laundries: Ironing, Sewing, Checking and Sorting 178 Chapter XI Institutional Laundries. The Industry as a Whole 193 Chapter XII Dyeing and Cleaning 204 METALS, LAMPS AND GLASS Chapter XIII The Metal Trades 209 Chapter XIV Lamp Manufacture 230 Chapter XV Glass Factories 239 MISCELLANEOUS TRADES Chapter XVI Broom, Brush and Paper Box Making 249 Chapter XVII Caskets, Cork, Paint, Soap, Trunks 262 THE COMMERCIAL TRADES Chapter XVIII The Printing Trades 275 Chapter XIX Telephone and Telegraph Operators 282 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter XX pace Mercantile Houses 295 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF WORKING WOMEN Chapter XXI In the Factories 311 Chapter XXII Outside the Factories 318 SUMMARY OF INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS Chapter XXIII Wages 337 Chapter XXIV Hours '. 351 Chapter XXV Health 358 Chapter XXVI Economic Foothold 368 APPENDICES A. Plan and Methods of Study 379 B. Tables Illustrative of Wages, Hours and Conditions in the Industries 382 C. The Margaret Morison Carnegie School for Women 410 D. Legal Restrictions of Working Hours for Women 412 Bibliography 419 Index 425 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Glass decorators Frontispiece Location of establishments employing women 23 Bottling pickles and onions 33 Where jars are washed and stacked 33 Filling and capping mustard jars 37 Bottling olives with a grooved stick 41 Sorting and packing stogies by the thousand 75 Stripping tobacco by the pound 79 Location of stogy factories and sweatshops, 1907 83 Proportions of men and women employed in the stogy indus- try 83 Mold stogy rolling in a large factory , 85 Tobacco stripping in a Hill sweatshop 87 Work at the suction table 91 A sweatshop proprietor and two of her employes 95 Tobacco strippers 97 A prevailing type of garment workroom 103 The feeder at a cylinder mangle 169 Receiving operators at a mangle 173 Starching by hand 177 The body ironer, protected and unprotected 179 The body ironer at work 183 A laundry ironing room 187 The head of the checkroom 191 Between the noon whistles. Types of laundry workers 20 1 Women core makers 211 II LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The mica pasting department of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company 215 The coil winding room of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company 219 Sorters in a sheet and tinplate mill 227 Glassware is washed and cleaned preparatory to packing 239 Glass decorators at work 245 Pasting cigar boxes by the thousand 257 The dangerous staying machine at work 261 Girl press feeders at the presses 275 Folders at work in a job printing office 279 A telephone exchange 287 Lunch room for workers in a stogy factory 311 Recreation room in the McCreary store 315 Lunch room of the Keystone laundry 315 Lodging houses flanked by disreputable resorts 321 Mrs. Matthews' Working Girls Club at Kingsley House 325 Craft-work of girls' club at Kingsley House 329 This narrow, ill-lighted alley houses many a working girl .... 333 Workrooms where health conditions are bad 363 12 LIST OF TABLES NUUBER PAGE 1 . Distribution of women in trade groups 19 2. Occupations of women in Pittsburgh canneries 37 3. Number of men and women and occupations of women employed in candy factories 49 4. Arrangement of floors in craclter factories 69 5. Distribution of work among women employes in cracker factories 70 6. Rates of pay in the stogy industry 84 7. Posted rates for rollers in a North Side stogy factory 85 8. Sliding scale for rollers in four stogy factories 86 Q. Output of an expert filler stripper during one week 87 10. Output of an expert wrapper stripper during four weeks 88 1 1. Output of six expert mold stogy rollers during one week 89 12. Distribution of work among men and women in stogy factories 91 13. Physical characteristics of garment workrooms 104 14. Payroll: Factory No. i. Article manufactured: Pants 117 15. Payroll: Factory No. 2. Articles manufactured: Pants, coats and vests. 117 16. Payroll: Factory No. 3. Article manufactured: Overalls 118 17. Payroll: Factory No. 4. Articles manufactured: Shirts (custom and stock) 1 19 18. Payroll: Factory No. 5. Article manufactured: Shirts (stock) 120 19. Range of weekly wages of single-needle operators 121 20. Distribution of women in various occupations among wholesale millinery houses 144 21 . Physical characteristics of washrooms 166 22. Ventilation in ironing rooms 179 23. Displacement of men checkers and sorters by women 191 24. Opening and closing time in the departments of a laundry 199 25. Number of women in various divisions of the metal trades 210 26. Number of women in each weekly wage group in the metal trades 229 27. Occupations of women in the glass industry 239 28. Occupational groups of women in the glass industry 240 29. Number of women in miscellaneous trades 249 30. Division of work in Pittsburgh telephone exchanges 287 31 . Number of seats supplied for saleswomen 301 32. Hours schedule of saleswomen in a small mercantile house 302 33. Occupations of thirty-one members of Business Woman's Club 328 34. Recreation facilities offered by ten outside agencies 332 35. Number of women in each weekly wage group in each trade 338 36. Number of women workers in various occupation groups 369 APPENDIX B 37. Canneries. Number of employes in each Pittsburgh cannery 384 38. Confectionery. Range of weekly wages paid to wrappers, labelers, choco- late and cream dippers in each factory 384 39. Cracker factories. Number of men and of women in each factory 385 40. Cracker factories. Range of weekly wages paid women in each factory. . 385 13 LIST OF TABLES NUMBER PAGE 41. The stogy industry. Location of factories and sweatshops, and distribu- tion of workers 385 42. The stogy industry. Physical characteristics of Hill sweatshops 386 43. The stogy industry. Physical characteristics of sweatshops outside the Hill district 387 44. The stogy industry. Location of workroom and of drying room in Hill sweatshops 388 45. The stogy industry. Distribution of work among men and women in sweatshops and factories. — By district 388 46. Garment trades. Number of women employed and number in each weekly wage group in each factory 389 47. Awnings. Number of men and of women in each factory 389 48. Awnings. Range of weekly wages in each factory 390 49. Awnings. Hours of work, overtime and slack seasons in each plant 390 50. Mattresses and bedding. Number of women and division of work 390 51. Mattresses and bedding. Range of weekly wages in each factory 391 52. Millinery. Division of work among women 391 53. Millinery. Range of weekly wages. — By divisions of work 391 54. Laundries. Number of men and of women in each laundry 392 55. Laundries. Physical characteristics of cellar and basement washrooms. . 393 56. Laundries. Physical characteristics of mangle rooms 393 57. Laundries. Range of weekly wages in each mangle department 394 58. Laundries. Summary of number in weekly wage groups in mangle departments 394 59. Laundries. Range of weekly wages of starching room employes 396 60. Laundries. Physical characteristics of checkrooms 397 61. Laundries. Displacement of men by women in checking and sorting departments 398 62. Laundries. Weekly wages in checking and sorting departments 399 63. Laundries. Weekly wages of machine ironers 400 64. Laundries. Weekly wages of fine ironers 401 65. Metal trades. Number of women in each weekly wage group 402 66. Lamps. Division of work among women in each factory 402 67. Lamps. Number of women in each factory, and range of weekly wages. 404 68. Glass making. Number of women in each factory, and division of work. 404 69. Glass making. Range of weekly wages in each factory 405 70. Glass making. Number of women in each wage group in each factory. . . 405 71. Paper box factories. Number of men and of women in each-factory, and distribution of work 406 72. Paper box factories. Range of weekly wages in each factory 406 73. Paper box factories. Number in each weekly wage group in each factory. 407 74. Printing trades. Number of women in each weekly wage group 407 75. Mercantile houses. Number of women in each store, and distribution in weekly wage groups 408 76. Boarding homes. Census and capacity of the several boarding homes, and the numbers of women from the groups under consideration reached 408 77. Wages. Percentages of women in each weekly wage group, in each trade. 409 '4 WORKERS AND WORKROOMS CHAPTER I WORKERS AND WORKROOMS PITTSBURGH as a workshop for women seems a contra- diction in terms. Workshop this city is, but a workshop which calls for the labor of men. To dig crude ores, to fuse and forge them, are not among the lighter handicrafts at which wo- men can r,eadily be employed. Look down from Mount Washington at the merging of the two dull brown rivers, at the irregular succession of bridges, at scows and small river craft slowly finding way from wharf to wharf; and on either shore, at the black en- closures, gleaming now with leaping flames, now with the steady white-hot glow of Bessemer converters, but everywhere swarthy from the rising columns of black smoke. The cry of the dwarfs under the earth, the first metal smiths, rings again in the blows of the miners' tools and in the shouts of gangs of furnacemen and engine crews in the recesses of the mills. Nevertheless, in this city whose prosperity is founded in steel, iron and coal, there has come into being beside the men a group of co-laborers. If we listen closely enough, we hear the cry of the dwarfs not only from gangs of furnacemen, but from the girl thread makers at the screw and bolt works, and from the strong-armed women who fashion sand cores in foundries planned like Alberich's smithy in the underworld. And if we listen still more closely, we shall hear answering voices in many other work- rooms, in the hum of machines in a garment factory, in the steady turn of metal rolls in a laundry, and even in the clip of the stogy roller's knife in a tenement loft. For Pittsburgh is not only a great workshop, it is many workshops; and in these workshops women stand beside the men. Forced by individual and group! necessities, they have found a place in industry in the steel dis- trict of the Alleghenies. Various selective forces have played a part in recruiting these women, in the teeth of the tonnage industries that shut 17 WOMEN AND THE TRADES them out. The influence of climate, the commercial wants of a rich producing district and the demands of a great laboring force as consumers, can readily be seen in tracing the development of the trades which employ them. As the shopping center of a nest of mill towns, Pittsburgh gives employment to over 6,000 saleswomen. The city is also an office center for plants and mines; and the printing trades, alive in every city, have taken on charac- ter, and with almost no edition work, turn out the ledgers and office paper of the big companies. In walking through the busi- ness streets, you are impressed by the number and size of the commercial stationers. They fairly flourish on every corner, and the function of Pittsburgh's pressrooms and binderies is to supply them. Pittsburgh's location and its knot of railroad lines have made it a distributing point within a radius of 200 miles for ar- ticles of use and wear. Scattered industrial plants make brooms and brushes, caskets, trunks and suit-cases, and cork. The manu- factories of foodstuffs (canned goods, crackers and candy) were first called into being by the demands of neighboring counties in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, but now they supply national markets. The success of the stogy industry is traceable in large measure to the demand for cheap tobacco of workingmen who for forty miles along the rivers are busy at metals or coal or steel. Similarly, garment trades came into being to supply cheap jeans and railroad jumpers by the hundred thousands. Moreover, no making of fine garments, no textile manufacture, could persist in this region of smoke-clouds. The city sets its seal upon fabrics. They survive by their wearing qualities and by their ability to withstand smoke and grime and fog. Although the growth of the city and of neighboring towns developed a market for a greater variety of goods, workmen's overalls are still the staple article of trade. All of these Pittsburgh industries have recruited women as wage-earners. As occupations, some of them, such as the mer- cantile employments, differ but little from the forms they take in other cities. Others, like stogy making, printing and the gar- ment trades, bear a distinctive stamp. From a national stand- point, the trades of far-reaching significance are those in which we find women molding metals, shaping lamps and making WORKERS AND WORKROOMS glass. Here women's work has reached the midst of the mechani- cal industries upon which is founded the city's wealth. Altogether, 22,185 women wage-earners, excluding agricul- tural and professional workers and domestic servants, are em- ployed in Pittsburgh. TheSe figures are based on a careful census of the women-employing trades, made during the winter of 1907-8. This working force is distributed in 449 factories and shops and stores. The following table gives the trade groups in the order of their numerical importance: TABLE I. — DISTRIBUTION OF WOMEN IN TRADE GROUPS* 1. Mercantile Houses 7.54° 2. Food Production 2,726 Canneries Confectionery Crackers Molasses 3. Cleaning Industries . . 2,685 Dyeing and cleaning Laundries 4. Stogy Industry 2,61 1 5. Metal Trades . . . 1,954 Electrical appliances Screw and bolt works Miscellaneous trades Machine shops and foundries 6. Needle Trades i>494 Garments Awnings Mattresses and bedding Gloves Millinery 7. Miscellaneous Manufactures '.'37 Cork Paper boxes Soap Caskets Paint Brooms and brushes Trunks and suit-cases 8. Lamps and Glass 864 9. Telephone and Telegraph ^^^ 10. Printing Trades 397 Total women workers .22,185 * This study deals only with part of the working women tabulated in the U. S. Census. The Census of igoo, for instance, groups women's work under 5 headings: (i) Agricultural pursuits, (2) Domestic and personal service, (3) Pro- »9 WOMEN AND THE TRADES This table is in a sense an arithmetical summary of the results of the selective processes of the industries in drawing girls into them. In order to understand fully the place which women have taken, we should need to know more than has been written of the industrial history of the "forks of the Ohio," from trading post and frontier settlement to mill town, and to the complexly developed city of today. We know a little of the life of women pioneers, who were themselves producers of goods; and have hints here and there of household industries, such as weaving and stogy making,* in intermediate decades, which helped make the lives of women in miners' households active and significant. There are gaps in our recorded knowledge of the process of change, of the forces that little by little have called into the factories high- strung girls of American birth along with young exiles from Russia, fieldworkers from Austria, and fair-haired Poles — a call away from the four walls that sheltered the industries of the home and out to mills and shops, to division of labor and to specialization of work at a machine. One fact significant of the situation in Pittsburgh today is the excess of male over female population, a trifle less than ten thousand, according to the United States Census of 1900. When the industries of the district first drew on Europe for laborers, it was the men of Ireland and Germany, of Italy, Austria and Poland, who came. Later in smaller numbers the women fol- lowed. They came because their husbands and brothers were here, but not often for the purpose of forging out a life of their own. Similarly the women of the later immigrant races, the Slavs and the Southern Europeans, are lagging behind. Giuseppina keeps the little Italian cottage, sure that Pietro will return or will make his way before he sends for her. Life in America for her fessional service, (4) Trade and transportation, (5) Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. In this table (i) Agricultural pursuits and (3) Professional service, are ex- cluded; also (2) Domestic and Personal Service, with the exception of the cleaning industries. The cleaning industries in Pittsburgh engage 2685 women, 12.10 per cent of the number we are considering. Under the census grouping of (4) Trade and Transportation, would come saleswomen, telephone and telegraph operators in Pittsburgh to the number of 8317 (37.4 percent). The remainder, 1 1,183 women (50.4 per cent), are engaged in (5) Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits. ♦Abbott, Edith: Employment of Women in Industries. Cigar Making. Jour. Pol. Econ., 15: 1-25. 20 WORKERS AND WORKROOMS is not a settled destiny. It is a growing probability, to be sure, for all those populations whose demands exceed the productive power of the soil ; but even to the strong it remains something of an experiment, something for which peasant women must await the issue before they follow in numbers equal to the men. Length of settlement becomes a measure, then, both of the domestic life and of the industrial success of an immigrant group. Irish and Germans, in fact, we no longer think of as immigrants. Their households are as much wrought into the fabric of the nation as those which we are pleased to called American. Jewish immi- grants from Austria and Russia have trebled in numbers with the recent religious persecutions, yet they have been part of the life of the city for so long that among them there is a distinct family grouping, and a nearly normal proportion of men and women. This is in part due to race tradition, as well as to length of settle- ment. In the congested Italian neighborhoods, on the other hand, women are but an unimportant factor. Sections of the city, of course, such as the Hill district,* contain streets of Italian families where the women still honor the custom of life in the household. A scattered few roll paste-smeared tobacco leaves into tobies after the Italian fashion, or follow with painstaking docility the signs of the forewoman in a garment workshop. But there are, after all, few of these forerunners of congregate activity among the Latins. Ties of tradition that keep the girl to her house and to early marriage are too strong for more than a very few to break. Pittsburgh offers small opportunity for them at once to preserve their self-respect and to earn money by sewing at home. The smoky air bars out flowers of delicate tints and fine embroideries, such as are made by their countrywomen in New York tenements. Such outwork as there is dates back before their time; it fell naturally into the hands of Irish and Germans, whose homes are scattered in early settled regions in the coal-filled hills. In the mill neighborhoods and in outlying districts, within * This general name is given to the old residence district on high ground above the main business quarter of Pittsburgh. The Hill district is now one of the most congested portions of the city and is largely tenanted by Jewish immigrants. Italians, Greeks, Assyrians and Negroes have each their particular section of the Hill. 21 WOMEN AND THE TRADES reach of railroads and mines, still fewer women are to be found among the colonies of young Italian laborers, whose numbers contribute largely to the excess male population of the city. Among still later immigrants, the situation is intensified. For example, near the Pressed Steel Car Works, there are streets of two-story houses, each house exactly like every other, and each filled with its familyof "boarders," single men who club together or rent a room jointly of a boarding-boss in order to make their pay serve both for their own support and for the help of those in the old country. The majority are Slavs — " Hunkies." They are underworkmen in mill, mine and machine shop. Some of the first comers have worked up from the subordinate jobs, and have brought their wives and families. Some few sisters and friends, with the desire to try a new fortune, have come too, leaving their families behind. But this boarding-house population is in the main made up of single men who are Slavic immigrants. It would seem that the families among the Slavs have tended to settle rather in the glass-making district, or near factories which turn out steel products and which make use of quick fingers as well as of strong and untrained arms. Here the women have not the conservatism which keeps the Italian girl at home. They have not the same standard of close-knit family relationships. There is flexibility in their attitude toward life and toward their part in it. Already in numbers and in work these Slavic women are to be reckoned with in industry. From this raw material, native born and immigrant, each woman-employing trade in Pittsburgh has drawn its characteris- tic racial group, and in some cases a secondary racial group. At the same time, of course, women of the same nationality may be found in several trades. No other occupation seems so desirable as "clerking" to the girl with some personal ambition, but with- out the training necessary for an office position. The saleswomen are for the most part native born, of Irish or German parents, but among them is many a bright Jewish girl whose deep-seated dis- like of noisy machines has kept her away from factories. The stogy factories and the garment factories, like the mer- cantile houses, are employers of Jewish girls. In all three in- dustries many Americans are to be found, but they are in the more 22 WORKERS AND WORKROOMS desirable positions, and in the better-class shops which make provision for light and air. Americans have the nervous readiness to learn new ways, the adaptability and measure of skill which tend to bring them both the better work and the better work- places. The Jewish girls predominate in the cheap and hustling shops. They put up with the drive in rarely cleaned upper rooms, where between narrow walls faint daylight finds its way toward the machines, and where drifting lint and ten hours' stooping over a power-driven needle come in time to affect the strength of even a girl with rugged generations behind her. The newcomers cannot choose either workshop or wages. With the subordination of the industrially unadjusted, they crave a chance to learn, whether it be by the whirr of the needle or by team work at cheap mold stogies to supply the workingmen's demand. The least desirable work in the needle trades does not fall to Jewish or American girls, but to a different group. When garment manufacturers of Pittsburgh were spurred to pro- duction by the increasing army of laborers who bought their \ wares, they gave the jeans and railroad jumpers to Irish or German ! women who would make them at home. The sweating system, ' as old and older than the ready-made trade, adapted itself to the city, and took on a form scarcely recognizable to one familiar with the contract shops among the Italians and Russians on New York's East Side. There is no contract system here. Rather, the outwork entrenched itself in individual homes before the present day immigrants had settled into districts, when the only available outworkers were the wives of workingmen in Carrick and Lower St. Clair. Even today, it takes a rambling journey along muddy footpaths, across brooks and fields and along the edges of the barren hills, to bring you to the sweated district. , The workroom here is not a crowded tenement, but a small wooden i house with six machines filling the living room, and every member of the family, from father to baby, steadily occupied. ) Outworkers pay the driver a percentage on every dozen that he brings, according to the distance from town. As the driver knows the people and often gives them the chance to work, his position is in some respects that of a middleman. A seemingly inaccessible hill country within the city limits, wooden shacks 23 WOMEN AND THE TRADES swarming with chickens and children, a whirr of machines audible from the field below — these contradictions characterize the sweating system in Pittsburgh. The garment factories, then, employ Jewish and American girls, while Irish and German women, the hill-dwelling wives of the miners, hold the subordinate place. The inferior work of stogy factories falls to Slavic women, some of them married and others raw immigrant girls. The least desirable occupation in this industry is tobacco stripping, pulling the stems out of the moist leaves, weighing and tying them in pounds for the rollers. In tenement shops you may find these strippers in a cellar, their backs against a damp wall, working by a flaring gas jet. In a large factory they sit in low stalls, row behind row, stemming and weighing and throwing the waste to one side. "They would work all night," a foreman said to me, "if I would give them the chance. We never have any trouble with them. We can't give them enough work to do." In this case they were married women; but the rule holds good, and the Slavic hands in a stogy factory seldom make trouble. They are there too much on suf- ferance for grievances to be worth their while. They have en- trenched themselves in the stripping room, and are found now and then at a bunching machine, or rolling stogies at the suction table; but stogy-rolling, in that it requires more dexterity and is in con- sequence more desirable, is still largely in the hands of American and Jewish girls. But women of the Slavic races have already pushed their way into a wider circle of industries than have the Jewish girls. A close study of the service of this one race to the different in- dustries would be as significant as such a study as has just been out- lined of the actual racial make-up of the needle and tobacco trades. For the most part, the Slavic women in Pittsburgh are limited by lack of training, trade indifference, and a stolid physical poise that cannot be speeded at the high pressure to which an American girl will respond. They accept factory posi- tions that girls of other races regard as socially inferior. They consent to do the rough and unpleasant work, work that leads and can lead to nothing except coarsening of fibre and a final break in strength. They change from one place to another with an 24 WORKERS AND WORKROOMS irresponsibility, an independence, born perhaps of long-slumber- ing memories of revolution in their own land. In canneries and cracker factories, to be sure, the Slavic girls are fair, light-handed, delicately built. They have the ner- vous energy to pack or to fill jars at high speed, to stand beside the traveling conveyor which carries cans of beans, and to slip a bit , of pork into each can as it passes. Without turning their heads '. or changing their positions, working with high concentration and i intensity, they can keep pace with the chains. While the ma- ! jority do mechanical work, hulling and stemming berries, prepar- ing fruit, filling and labeling cans, the Slavs are found also among the bottling girls, on whom the responsibility for the looks of the finished product so largely rests. Each pickle or piece of pre- served fruit is put in place according to model. The girl uses a grooved stick to slip the pickle into place, and is obliged to be accurate as well as quick, for she works under inspection on a piece basis. If she misplaces an onion in a jar of mixed pickles she is required to do all the work over at her own expense. Possibly between the Slavic girls in the canneries and their kinswomen in the metal trades there is the difference between the child of the city and the child whose life and the life of whose parents has been close to earth. With knee and hand and metal- centered glove, these rough-skinned stolid women open the sheets of tin still warm from the furnaces of the sheet and tin-plate mill; they screw nuts on bolts by a fish-oil process, and carry heavy trays in foundries where they have displaced men. They are the packers in glass factories, the riveters and foot-press opera- tors in lamp works. They have a hundred miscellaneous things to do, no one of which is a trade or can be a trade so long as a shifting group of women, women with muscular strength and readiness to do disagreeable things, is at hand for the odd jobs about a factory. They learn to operate one machine, but they are not among the hands who know the ways of the shop and work up to the better occupations. Either through the barrier of language or in part through their own indifference, they are still used for the less desirable work in such occupations as in a measure they have made their own. Slavic girls of both types are to be found in laundries, but 25 WOMEN AND THE TRADES in most cases they are employed only in the mangle room. Their work is to feed in sheets under the metal rolls, to shake them out before feeding, or to receive and fold them at the other end, while the steam rises from the hot metal and from the huge washing cylinders below. To complete my racial analysis of industries employing women : in the candy factories, the miscellaneous manufactories, telephone and telegraph offices, the wholesale millinery houses, and the printing trades, the employes are largely English-speak- ing. Telephone and telegraph work, like "clerking," is socially desirable, and by reason of this, claims the American girl. The same is true of the millinery workroom in spite of irregular hours and short seasons. Perhaps a reflected "odor of sanctity," an association by proxy with clerical work, has made the pressrooms and binderies favored above more obviously manufacturing pur- suits. Perhaps, too, location of the binderies in the business section of the city has given them American employes, for the Slavic girl, like her Jewish co-worker, is limited in her imaginings to factories and shops within the few streets that make up the sum of her experience. Yet, to a limited extent, pressrooms and binderies employ girls of foreign birth, and in the cork factory also many of the sorters are Slavs. The candy trade is in high esteem among women workers and is largely in the hands of Americans. Surveying the city, then, we see English-speaking girls holding the positions for which a few months' training and some intelligence are needed, a knowledge of English, or of reading and writing. The Italian girl, hindered by tradition, scarcely figures, but within a limited circle of industries, immigrant Jewesses hold positions beside girls of native birth. We see much .inferior and unpleasant work yielded to Slavic immigrants, and we see these newcomers, sometimes by sheer physical strength, some- times by personal indiiference and a low standard, competing on the basis of lower wages for men's work which otherwise would never have been given to girls to do. Workrooms that would not long be tolerated for American women have been regarded with indifference for the Slavs, perhaps because of our inability to share the sensations of a foreigner. The place of the Slav, scrub- 26 WORKERS AND WORKROOMS bing floors and sorting onions for canners, packing crackers, strip- ping tobacco for stogy makers, and trimming bolts for the metal workers, is lowest industrially among the women workers of Pittsburgh. It is the place of the woman who is fighting her way, but has not yet thought where she is going. Marriage is not suffered to act as a hindrance. A determination to work and to earn is uppermost. Our survey of the city shows us more than this. We see that since the days of settlement and mill town, Pittsburgh has be- come an industrial center whose workrooms give hire to more than 22,000 wage-earning women. These women have left household work and honle industry for the field of collective service. From doing the whole of a thing and from knowing the user, the younger generation has gradually found its work more and more minutely subdivided; the individual worker makes not even a whole hinge, but a tenth part of it, and knows neither the use nor the destination of the finished product. She does not know the rela- tion of her fraction of the work to the other fractions nor to the product as a whole, — and she works with a speed unknown to the houseworker. These younger women have pushed past the tradi- tional activities of cleaning and cooking and sewing. Relatively few are occupied even by the congregate form of these industries, such as the laundries and garment factories. They have not only gone into pressrooms and binderies, into cork factories, and workrooms where candies are made and fruit is preserved, but they help to finish the glass tumblers that the men in the next room blow, they make the cores for the foundrymen, they are among the shapers of metals for lamps and for hinges and bolts and screws. In a district that is pre-eminent for the making of steel and iron and the products of steel and iron, women have gained a foothold in industries that seemed wholly in the hands of men. If mere numbers were the criterion, in the discussion of occupations which follows the Pittsburgh saleswomen should de- mand our first attention ; but it has been the task of this investi- gation to consider primarily these factory trades where women are extending the boundaries of their industrial activity. Pittsburgh as a city of wage-earning women is seen in all this to be not a contradiction in terms, but an actuality. From 27 WOMEN AND THE TRADES river to river, women have rapidly come to share in the modern industrial life of the city. It is a movement 22,000 strongs An industrial movement which makes for cheapness, or for effi- ciency, or for the utilization of a hitherto only partially utilized labor force, cannot be turned back by any theory as to its inajj- propriateness. But our survey shows us still other and more fundamental issues to be reckoned with in this situation. Many of these women are put to work at wages below the cost of subsistence, for hours longer than the measure of their strength, in buildings and at ill-constructed machines which cannot but injure their health, and at processes which must handicap heavily the development of both body and mind. Industrial movements and practices which lead to such consequences may not easily be stayed, yet they may be directed and controlled by law and by public opinion grounded on considerations of the social welfare. To this end the investigation has sought more thorough knowl- edge of conditions under which women work in the indus- tries than has hitherto been available to the public, to the progressive individual employer, or to the women themselves. The study has thrown light on how the occupations of women and of men are related, how far women have reached the point of self-support, and what the social effect of their work seems to be. The numbers of women workers in competitive industry are greater,, not less, than they were fifty years ago, or twenty-five years ago, or ten years ago. There is every indication that these numbers will continue actually and proportionately to increase. We have no reason to think that the problems presented by the industrial employment of women will be solved by a cessation of that employment. But there is reasonable prospect that through change in the conditions of their labor much that seems evil in it may be done away, and the participation of women in indus- try may become a force of permanent value. 28 FOOD PRODUCTION CHAPTER II THE CANNING INDUSTRIES THE commercial use of electricity has fairly revolutionized methods of transportation and manufacture in the domi- nant industries of Pittsburgh. Yet nothing short of that change will serve, by way of comparison, in estimating the effect industrially upon women of the transfer of much of their work of production from houses to factories. Little by little the nineteenth century has seen one home in- dustry after another gathered out of its individual relations into a collective impersonal unit. At the beginning of the century, brewing and baking, cooking, cleaning and sewing, as well as much spinning, knitting and weaving were done within house- hold walls. The family was not only a social but an industrial unit. Today the bakeshop, the brewery, the laundry, and the garment factory have in large measure supplanted the house- wife's ovens, vats, washtubs and sewing baskets. Little by little, as these industries passed out of the home the women fol- lowed them. From being all-round artisans, many became, for example, packers of candy, of crackers and fruit, operators of ironing machinery and power sewing machines. Others have gone farther. Many who entered the doors of the factory in following after their home occupation found their way into industries which had left the home so long before that the line of descent seemed broken if it ever existed. In Pittsburgh they have gone into cork and soap and paint factories. They have learned to grind and melt and paint the edges of glassware, to bore and rivet metal, to sort the corn for brooms, to put threads in screws and bolts on nuts, to wind coils for electric motors and to tear apart the sheets of tin still faint-red from the furnace heat. Into these industries we shall follow them. We shall find the women workers of Pittsburgh in great groups of factory trades — ^food produc- 3' WOMEN AND THE TRADES tion, the needle trades, the cleaning industries, stogy making, lamp and glass making and the metal trades. To understand the significance to women and to the community of this indus- trial change, we shall need to consider in connection with each industry what work it is that the women employes do and what tools they use, how long and for what wages they are em- ployed, what is likely to be the physical effect upon them of this work, and what is the reaction, socially and intellectually, of their factory environment. Food production in Pittsburgh as a factory employment for women falls into three main trade groups: the canning industry, the making of confectionery and the cracker industry. The two largest canneries in Pittsburgh may be seen from the Alle- gheny river. They are in the built-up city district. By quality of output, as well as by abundant advertising, they have ex- tended their reputation so far that vegetable and fruit preserv- ing and pickle bottling are known everywhere as characteristic Pittsburgh industries, no less than the mills and furnaces whose smoke is the insignia of the city. Food production in such an at- mosphere would seem full of risks, yet the cool green country near the farms whence fruit and berries come, apparently an ideal site for a cannery, cannot compare in transportation facilities with this point at the meeting of rivers and of railroads from east and west. The raw fruits gathered in along a hundred converging lines from Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, are transformed by industrial alchemy and sent out in bottles and tins to innumer- able local centres. The commercial advantage is with the city cannery. In the country canneries long, low sheds are grouped about the main buildings ; a vast but irregular force of employes comes and goes with the seasons; farmers' wives and daughters work a few hours a day in berry time; troops of Italians, coming by fami- lies in carloads from the cities, live in shacks near the sheds, and work early and late until the chill of winter sends them back. Often women after a day in the fields come to the sheds at night to prepare the fruit they have picked. Often padroni contract to supply the labor force. The very out-of-door atmosphere of the work, whether in shed or field, the bright scarfs of the Italian 32 Bottling Pickles and Onions Where Jars are Washed and Stacked Photos, by Hine THE CANNING INDUSTRIES women, the children asleep on benches, the interchange between indoor and outdoor days — all these things give to the country cannery a character almost primitive, suggestive of some old- world industry in the fields of Austria or Italy; an aloofness from industrial developments as we know them in the larger cities of the United States. With these city canneries, however, we meet a different situation. Here there is no background of rolling fields and fore- ground of low, open sheds with the wind sweeping through. There are no rude frame shacks close by for intermittent occupa- tion by a foreign labor force. Instead, there are brick buildings, enclosed, with tight windows, and a fairly permanent force of workers gathered from throughout the city or from neighboring towns. The gay colors of the Italian women are missing. The little children asleep on the benches are not here. When children come, they come as individuals to work and carry their earnings home with them. There are few mature women in the canneries. Instead, there are young girls, sixteen to twenty, sometimes older, seldom coming back as married women to the trade. The Ameri- can girls are omnipresent, although compared with girls of Slavic origin they are a minority. Many of the processes, such as washing bottles, scrubbing floors and paring fruit, are near of kin to domestic service. For this reason, perhaps, American girls are often reluctant to take positions in a cannery; when they do, they tend to enter departments which require the higher degrees of dexterity. Now and then there is a Russian or Hungarian girl, and still oftener the quiet, steady German. Most numerous are the Poles, Hungarians, and Croatians — slight, fair-haired girls with low foreheads, high cheekbones, and a dull patient look about their blue eyes. "They are the best workers I have," said one employer, of four Hungarian girls who pared quinces in a little cage of a room, "they keep at it just like horses." There are seven canneries in Pittsburgh. Three of them employ 1350 of the 1400 workers in the trade. Some of the fac- tory buildings are small wooden structures, with dark beams, much-washed floors, and narrowly subdivided interiors. Some are crowded with barrels of syrup and stained with decaying fruit. One of the larger canneries, which stands between railroad track 3 33 WOMEN AND THE TRADES and river in a dip of the hill, is a five-story brick building which has gathered its various processes into wide cool rooms connected by long corridors. Above storage cellars and offices, on third, fourth, and fifth floors, is the actual factory work. Another factory, the largest in Pittsburgh, occupies eight buildings. The walls of light brick, scrupulously cleaned, stand out against the murky background of the city; and within doors, the light walls, wide windows, and spotless white of work tables bear out first impressions that the management has high standards both for the surroundings of its work-people and the quality of its product. From the central building, bridges connect with the neighboring buildings on upper floors; and allied processes are grouped to- gether in common units of space. Tin cans are made in one building, boxes and barrels are nailed together in a second, and in a third pickles are sorted, bottled and labeled preparatory to shipping; in other buildings fruits are stemmed, hulled, washed and sliced, mustard grains are ground in mechanical presses which crush a slow yellow mass into the receiving tubs, beans are baked and prepared for shipment, and the cooking and sealing for a condiment-loving people go forward with speed and ingenuity. Although the canning of vegetables in factories is not pre- eminently a woman's trade, women are in the majority. They numbered, in 1907, 55.8 per cent of the total cannery workers, 728 altogether as compared with 618 men. The men, however, do all the responsible work, such as the actual cooking and preserv- ing of fruit, the pickling of cucumbers and the baking of beans. They make the boxes and barrels when the cannery is large enough to have a box factory or a coopershop of its own ; they attend to the shipping and plan new methods of sale and of process. The women workers do not compete with the men, but have a division of the trade distinct and characteristic. They wash bottles and scrub floors and help about the kitchens. They sort and bottle pickles, prepare raw materials, label and fill the jars of preserves. Their work, in other words, is secondary and comparatively mechanical. Graded from most to least skill, the main processes in which women employes take part are bottling, sorting, labeling by hand, labeling by machine, tin-can cutting and preparation work. 34 THE CANNING INDUSTRIES OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN Bottling pickles requires the highest dexterity. Blue- gowned, white-capped girls sit at long tables in rows transferring pickles from bowls to squat, thick glass bottles that signify vinegar and preserves to the mind of the retail customer. Each girl holds in her right hand a grooved stick which she thrusts into the bottle, then with her left hand she starts the pickle along the groove to the precise spot which, according to the model, it must occupy. The model jar shows how every pickle is to be placed. Bottles of olives and pickled cucumbers are planned to economize space, and bottles of mixed pickles are so arranged that each bit of color will be just right to make a harmonious whole. After the bottles are filled, they are inspected and compared with the model. The quick, sure touch with which the bottling girls follow the pattern and manage their tools is not learned in a day's appren- ticeship, but must be acquired by continued practice. Sorters of onions and of pickles, but especially of pickles, have a task that also requires a quick eye. The onion sorters sit on long benches with groups of boxes in front of them into which they throw onions of different sizes. The small work is done by a series of sieves in a machine. Pickles are sorted entirely by hand. Each sorter stands by a table with the pickles in front of her, and behind her eight boxes for eight different sizes of pickles which she throws over her shoulder with an intuitive aim that strikes the right box every time. All the boxes are inspected and any imperfectly sorted lots sent back. She has need for quick judg- ment in order to make the day's work pay, for there is no time allowance for hesitancy. A second's hesitation, a careless toss of the hand, means a decrease in her possible earnings. Labeling is done by hand on jars of applebutter, jellies, preserves or mustard, or bottles of pickles, olives or gherkins. On each jar four labels are pasted, — two side labels, a third on the top, and a fourth around the neck, — and when the jars stand finished in a symmetrical row, the labels, too, must appear symmetrical, every one placed exactly alike. To do this work well, to pick up the right label from the different piles, to fix it so exactly in the right spot that it can pass a critical inspec- 35 WOMEN AND THE TRADES tion for perfection of appearance — this also requires a good eye, a sure hand, a neat touch, and time in which to learn. A labeling mathine is used for cans of beans and soup. In the middle of the machine are the labels dipped in paste. The cans are placed on belts and carried over the paste-dipped labels which they pick up en route, going on to be stacked at the other end. The operators place the cans on the machine and stack them when labeled. Six or eight girls are required for each machine to keep the cans racing in unbroken succession. Tin-can cutting is a subsidiary occupation. Boys were formerly used for this work, but they were found to be careless and accidents were frequent. The girls who now run the foot presses are paid no less than the boys whom they succeeded. Ten tops for cans are cut from each sheet of tin. The foot-press operator places the sheet in the press and gauges it so that it will fall evenly and exactly and the tin will not be wasted. A slight, quick pressure of the foot is required to clip the tin for each top, and this slight, quick pressure is repeated forty times a minute, 24,000 times a day. Soldering of tins is done by machine. The operator passes a rolled tin (the side of the can) over the arm of her machine, which revolves horizontally around a pivot under a soldering iron, carries the soldered tin back to the point of starting, and drops it into a traveling chain which in turn leads to another part of the room where the top is put on. The work of the tin-can department, arranged not according to the estimated demand from year to year, but simply from week to week, varies with the volume of business and the demand of other departments. This living from hand to mouth, as it were, implies, of course, considerable irregularity of work. Since orders are executed as they are received, a week of overtime until nine o'clock nightly is often followed by a week when the entire department is laid off. Lowest in the industrial scale of a cannery is preparation work. This is of various kinds. Some of the new hands assist at the machines which put lids on catsup bottles. Three girls work at each machine, one putting the bottles underneath while the lid is automatically clamped on, one washing the bottles, and the third removing them and putting them into a basket. Some girls pack bottles in the sterilizing retorts; some wash bottles and 36 THE CANNING INDUSTRIES scrub floors; others pare and cut fruit. Occasionally pickle cutting occupies an entire department. Women, with their fingers bound with cloths to break the slip of the knife, sit at long tables emptying tubful after tubful of pickles at a fierce rate of speed. The pickles are cut lengthwise or crosswise according to their shape. Hand knives are used, but the incessant downward motion of blade and fingers looks like the vibrations of a machine. A blind haste that allows not a moment to look up or away spurs the nerves of the workers from early morning until night. The beanery girls, also, have work which requires a low grade of dexterity. The beans, which are cooked on an upper floor, slide through a shute to the floor below into a traveling chain of cans which passes automatically beneath the shute. This chain carries its freight past a row of girls who put slices of pork into the cans as they pass. Each girl serves as an extra arm of the machine. The chain is not set to her pace, but she must adjust herself to the pace of the machine, at a speed which is hard for tired arms to sustain. She cannot turn her head or change her position, or she will miss a can, and fail to slip in a slice of pork. The chain is inexorable. A moment's idling means waste of the product. The main points to be noted about women's work in can- neries, besides the general character of the processes, are the num- ber of women in each, the wages paid, and the seasonal over- time. All women employes, and especially the unskilled, are liable to be shifted from one piece of work to another. In de- scribing the processes, I roughly grouped them according to dex- terity. The following table summarizes the distribution of women in occupations in order of numbers in each: TABLE 2. — OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN IN PITTSBURGH CANNERIES Number of Occupation Women Sorting pickles . . . 48 Wrapping . . 50 Preparation work (stemming, paring, shelling, etc.) ... 67 Filling cans 7° Tin-can cutting or soldering . 75 Bottling ... 179 Labeling • ■■ 293 Total . . 782 37 WOMEN AND THE TRADES WAGES Under several heads in this table there is both work that re- quires dexterity and work that is totally mechanical. Wages in canneries, although determined by the location of the plant and the occupation of the individual, tend to fall within certain fixed limits of variation. One suburban cannery pays I7.00 a week to each of its women employes, "because," said the clerk, "we have to pay higher wages than most of them or we couldn't get the girls out here." Another firm guarantees its girls $6.00 a week," and then if they earn more than $6.00, allows them something extra on a piece basis; most of the girls make under $7.00. In a third plant the usual rate is $3.50, and none of the girls earn over $4.00. This plant is so far out on the edge of the hills that there are few industries to compete with it. Half the force is laid off from October until May, and even in the busy season there is no opportunity for extra earnings, but the factory is able to obtain all the employes it wants, on its own terms. The three large canneries pay most of their women employes by the piece. New hands are usually given a day rate, as also are some of the machine hands (such as operators of labeling machines) whose outjjut could not readily be calculated. The standard pay for a trained and dexterous girl is $1.25 a day. This does not mean that this pay is never exceeded, but rather that the average output of employes is calculated in departments which demand the most careful work, and the piece rate fixed with reference to this standard. If at times a girl exceeds the standard pay, it is usually attributable to a " run of good mater- ial." For instance, in one factory the bottling girls, who are generally the best-paid workers, make from I1.30 to I1.50 a day. In another factory where a premium of 5 per cent to 10 per cent of each bottling girl's total earnings is added to her pay every six months for neatness and general excellence of work, one of the more successful girls received |i8 in July, 1907 (at 10 per cent), which represented |i8o earned in half a year, or an average of I6.92 a week. Bottling is enough of a trade to warrant a higher level of wages. High dexterity, like skill, can only be acquired by time. Whereas some of the older hands exceed the 38 THE CANNING INDUSTRIES Standard pay, many others are not able to earn more than $ .90 to 1 1. 00 per day. This is as true of sorters and labelers as of bottlers. Pickle sorters, on a "good day," when the pickles are well-shaped and firm, can earn I1.83. On other days they make from |i.oo to I1.25. Labelers are paid | .03 a dozen for pasting four labels on mustard jars. In one plant, the fastest girl in the department, who has had four years' experience, can finish sixty dozen jars a day. Yet, although she can often earn $1.80, neither of the girls beside her can earn more than | .98. Tin-can cutters, machine labelers and many preparation hands are paid day rates. The foot-press operators in the tin-can department are paid $1.25 a day, and the machine labelers are paid 1 .60. Some of the beanery girls and some of the preparers are paid | .75 to $ .83, and some few are paid | .95. On the other hand, some are paid | .40 to | .50 a day. In general, it is girls under sixteen years of age who get | .60 down, and the older ones who earn from | .70 to $ .85. Even this rate of wages marks an advance for the beanery girls due to the difficulty in getting hands even for regular work. In 1906 the maximum price for unskilled labor was raised from | .60, which was formerly the standard, to I .85 a day. To sum up the wage groups in canneries : a majority of the bottlers, all the sorters, and a third of the labelers are earning I1.25 a day, and sometimes more. This third among the label- ers are hand workers who have had experience ; so, too, are the sorters and bottlers. Contrasted with these 324 girls, comprising 41 per cent of the women employes, who are earning I7.00 and half of them |8.oo a week, are the remaining 458 girls (59 per cent) who are earning |6.oo or less. In both groups, accuracy and some dexterity is needed, and in both the work is done at high speed. HOURS OF WORK AND OVERTIME Overtime is a condition characteristic of the canning indus- try. The regular working day, in every cannery but one, is from seven a. m. to six p. m., but during the busy season four of the canneries work every night until nine, and the others work at 39 WOMEN AND THE TRADES least two nights a week. This makes a working week of 72 hours, although the legal limit for women is 60 hours per week. Even the factories which work but two nights a week are ex- ceeding by four hours the maximum working week allowed by the Pennsylvania law. The busy season begins in May and lasts on through the summer, reaching its climax from early September to late Novem- ber. Vegetables and fruits come into the yards in quantities. Crops of berries, fruits, peas, corn, beans and tomatoes follow each other in rapid succession, and with increasing heat the necessity for the quick handling of raw material becomes more urgent. The carloads of perishable foodstuffs must be cared for at once or they will be unfit for use, a loss to the company. The problem of the factory management is to deal with these raw materials without loss of time or of product. The management does not know when the carloads of fruits or vege- tables may arrive, and hence cannot plan far ahead for temporary increase in the numbers of its employes. Overtime is habitual in country canneries, in spite of the elastic labor force at their command. The labor force available for city canneries is less elastic. A few women can be called in from the neighborhood, children can be used after school hours for simple preparation work, and there is always a residuum of the unemployed. One cannery, by arrangement with a neighboring parochial school, systematically employed school children from eleven to fourteen years of age during the months of May and June as berries came in. As many as 200 children could be obtained for afternoons on a moment's notice to tide over the difficulty, by hulling strawberries by the quart, under direction. Other can- neries feel, however, that the extensive employment of children is inadvisable. Progressive educators certainly do. Sometimes a rush of work is met by the transfer of work- ers from one room to another. Pickles yield precedence to straw- berries for a day, and half the pickle department is set at hulling and sorting the perishable fruit. Yet such transfers of sections of the working force can be effected only to a limited extent, as orders for all departments are constantly coming in and must be finished and shipped without undue delay. In general, and in- 40 Bottling Olives with a Grooved Stick Photo, by Hive THE CANNING INDUSTRIES variably when these meagre sources of extra labor supply fail, the situation is met by the management by requiring continued overtime work of the factory force. There is not a cannery in Pittsburgh of which this is not true. It is difficult to say how much effort is actually made to secure extra hands when needed. Neighborhood women available for such irregular and impermanent employment are few. Those who need to earn a living wish steady jobs. For the others, the cannery does not offer money enough to induce them to leave their housework. It would seem, however, that more successful efforts might be made to reach the girls in other seasonal occupations who are laid off in summer, and that the system of transferring workers from one department to another might perhaps be developed further. It is worth noting that in the bottling room there is almost no overtime. Whenever possible, the girls are sent home not later than six p. m. To a less extent, this is true of the hand labelers, but when we get to the more mechanical processes, such as machine tending or the stemming and paring of vegetables and fruits, overtime is ordered by the management without hesitation. The managers in this industry do not say, like makers of stogies and confectionery, that overtime is simply a loss because the girls do poorer work the next day, and that if it were not for the unregulated demand of local dealers, the trade would be glad to get along without ever working over hours. Stogies and confectionery are lines in which the appearance of the finished product depends on the alertness of the employes. This is so far recognized that the managers regard overtime as a regrettable necessity. Similarly, in bottling pickles, and some labeling, much of the appearance of the finished product depends on the worker. In these two departments in the canneries, overtime is rare. But preparation work, tending machinery, or filling cans, affects the appearance of the sales package only to a very limited degree. It can be done by women without training or experience, and by women who are already jaded by twelve- hour days behind them, and by a ten-hour day just passed. So far as the sale of the product goes, overtime in these depart- ments makes no difference. The first concern of the manage- 4> WOMEN AND THE TRADES ment is to handle the raw material and the orders, with overtime if necessary, not to eliminate in some way the long weeks of night work in the fall. The average tenure of position, both among skilled and un- skilled workers in canneries, is less than two years. This instabil- ity and brief trade life is a result of two untoward factors in can- nery work as it is carried on in Pittsburgh. Overtime admittedly involves danger to health and nervous strain. The other fac- tor is that the pace of many workers is pitched high by a piece rate, or set to follow a machine with a gear which entails excessive strain. This pace setting runs like a black line through many industries. THE CANNING OF MOLASSES With the other canneries should be grouped a special fac- tory where molasses is tinned. Pittsburgh's location at the head- waters of the Ohio, which reaches down to the canefields of the South, may account for its development; for with its sixty em- ployes, forty of whom were girls, it was in 1907 one of the largest factories of its kind in the world. Girls are employed for everything in connection with the canning of molasses, from cut- ting the tin to putting tops on the filled cans. The women who fill the cans work, four at a machine, in a dark room, where floor and walls, machines and girls, are sticky with the exudations of syrup, and a visitor can scarcely walk without being fastened like a fly to whatever spot he touches. The stickiness is of course in the very nature of the business. The room and the machines are cleaned once a week, but a far greater degree of comfort could be obtained, as in some of the sticky departments of the fruit canneries, by the constant service of a staff of attendants armed with boiling water and strong brushes. Molasses comes in a continuous stream from the spout of the machine and spatters the girls as well as every exposed spot of floor or wall nearby. One girl pushes the cans under the spout, another takes them out and puts the tops on, a third clamps the top at another machine, and a fourth puts the can on a chain which takes it to the labeling table. The machine which puts the 42 THE CANNING INDUSTRIES tops on the cans is difficult to adjust, yet- if it is a sixteenth of an inch out of gear, the molasses splashes all over the girls and the floors. Two girls in another part of the room sterilize and label the cans by hand. On the floor above, there are twenty girls who cut the tin and solder sides of cans. Soldering is done by hand, each girl having an assistant who puts the tin on the iron, takes it off and replaces it instantly with another. The solderer simply goes over the side seam with the iron. On the same floor other girls run a machine which presses screw tops into screw-top cans. This operation is similar to that of clamping into place the tops of cans which have been filled. The four soldering girls are considered the most skilled and earn the best wages, from I8.50 to |io a week. Most of the others, solderers' assistants and em- ployes at machines, earn $4.00, I5.00, or in a few cases $6.00. Hours of work are ten daily with half an hour for rest at noon. The girls employed at the disagreeable work of filling cans are Slavic, and the girls at the relatively clean work on the upper floor, German or American — a typical circumstance in this small compact factory, which will be found repeated over and over again in the broad groupings of nationalities and occupations in the other industries of Pittsburgh. 43 CHAPTER III CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES VERY small people, from Kate Greenaway's time to Miss Daskam's, have thought of candy only as a beautiful confection to be sucked at in supreme disconcern. Grown-ups, of more serious bent, have put forth much critical writing on the subject of candy making, but almost invariably from the standpoint of the consumer. We have been informed of dirty workrooms, of candy dippers with sores on their hands, of glucose and paraffin and aniline dyes. From this point of view, the confectionery trade acquires an interest painfully acute. What touches our digestion, concerns us nearly. Yet there is a third point of view with regard to the trade, no less significant. I have nothing to add about adulteration of materials, and shall say very little about the uncleanliness of workrooms, but much of candy making as a trade from the standpoint of the girls who are working at it, and whose occupations are in wider variety within the limits of the city of Pittsburgh, than even the lively imagina- tions of small people with a liking for sweets would consider possible. Among the seventeen candy factories in Pittsburgh some firms deal only in hard candy, others incline to salted peanuts and prize bags, and a majority manufacture the classic cara- mel, chocolates, and creams. The number of employes ranges from two to 400, only four exceeding the hundred mark on their payrolls. Of 1240 people engaged in the trade in 1907, 372 were men and 868 were women.* TYPES OF FACTORIES AND KINDS OF WORK The types of building are various. Here is a single, roomy workroom above a retail store, there a little shed where Polish * If the chewing gum factory be included in this enumeration, the number of men in the trade is 374 and the number of women g66. 44 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES girls prepare cheap goods for some of the foreign shops; here a dingy third floor of a factory building, and there a square brick structure built for the sole purpose of candy making. With the exception of two small workrooms in the East End and three medium-sized plants on the North Side, most of the factories are located in the old business section of the city near the low ground where the two rivers meet. Narrow streets radiate out from "the Point," narrow buildings seek a few square feet of frontage, narrow workrooms grasp at uncertain daylight from windows at either end, and even these windows, meagre as they would be for purposes of ventilation, are kept closed. Candy as a food product must be protected from the smoke which makes the city picturesque to a non-resident. Yet the means adopted to protect the product from outside impurities involves serious harm to the workers. The atmosphere indoors is cloudy from boiling kettles and cooling candies; the need for fresh air is urgent. Some of the small workrooms are well kept and well aired, it is true, but the type of room most in evidence is steamy, dark, and narrow, with windows tight closed. One plant which illustrates several kinds of manufacture is in a five-story brick building not far from the freight yards. A small jobbing and retail selling business is carried on on the first floor, above are stock and warerooms, and on the fourth and fifth floors the actual manufacturing is done, generally by six men and fifteen girls, but with the number of girls increased in the rush season to eighteen or twenty. There is a roar of trains and a pufling of black smoke outside the windows at either end of the long room; inside, there are steaming copper kettles, white- aproned men who pass back and forth, and the quick, silent move- ments of a tableful of girls, dipping chocolates, wrapping and packing, or filling prize bags. It has long been declared that men make the best cooks. In recurring instances, when cooking is for a critical public, and not for an indulgent home, some rule of survival selects the undomestic sex to do the work. The whole- sale making of candy is no exception. Men are the cooks, the makers. In this factory, on the fourth floor, they preside over the open furnaces where the chocolate is melted and the caramel is prepared; they bake the peanuts; they have entire charge of the 45 WOMEN AND THE TRADES hard candy making, with all its wonderful possible variations of peppermint canes, round kisses with red stars in the middle, suckers and chips in green, white, and red. With the poster ar- tist's eye for color, they lift the great, white vanilla slabs, and cut them into fives; knead the translucent wintergreen into a ship's anchor, set the vanilla slabs pillarlike about it, and bind the gay sweetmeat with a ring of crimson. Then comes the pull, the quick cuts of the knife, and, strange to behold, the huge pink anchor is transformed into a thousand little anchors, each with its five- pointed white star and its crimson ring. A ship's feast is made from the contents of one kettle. All this the men do. The girls wrap candies and dip chocolates at the other end of the room. The wrappers twine waxed paper about the peppermint canes, and twist the peanut kisses with a little rosette at each end. There are nine girls to handle the output of three furnaces; they work here by the week, because the kinds of candy change so frequently that at piece rates they would not be able to make any- thing. Half of them were laid off in February, but in March the sudden popularity of peanut kisses brought in so many orders that the wrappers had to work overtime every night for three weeks. Separated by piles of boxes and cases of stock are six choco- late dippers, two of them experts. Their work is more nearly a trade than that of the other girls, and they are respected accord- ingly. As one woman said to me, who had been employed at teaching new girls in factories from Boston to Denver, "You can't just teach a dipper. A girl's got to have a natural talent for it, or she'll never succeed. It's like millinery, an art that you're bom with. " The girls sit at a table with pans of the hot melted stuff in front of them. Each girl has a mixing board, and beside her a square of waxed paper, indicating where the chips are to be put, and how many each paper is to hold. Taking the chip in her left hand, she dips first the top and then the bottom in the chocolate, and with her right hand puts it on the waxed paper and finishes by a ridge or other decoration. She is paid by the hundred pounds. The packer takes the waxed sheets of chips from the table, and puts up the candy in half-pound boxes, crediting each dipper with her amount, at f .01^ a pound. The two expert dippers can usually turn out loo pounds a day, which 46 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES means a total pay of $9.00 a week. The visitor carries away a picture of a little workroom shut in by rough boards and sooty walls; of deep pans emptied and refilled; of squares and squares of tempting brown chips arranged by the packer; and of chocolate cooling and reheated, stirred, kept in motion and at the right temperature by the vigilant right hand of each girl at her place. Upstairs two girls fill prize bags, ugly little paper packets which retail for a cent apiece and contain four or five peanuts, two pieces of cheap candy, and a prize — a tin cockade, a two-inch American flag, or a wooden whistle. For children of country towns where life holds few possibilities of excitement, the prize bag is a wonderland. Wishfulness for happenings such as are not put down on the routine calendar of one's daily life, the reckless gambling instinct that expends a penny for one knows not what — all this idealistic pursuit of the unknown is gratified by the mottled little bag on the candy counter of the country store. And the girls who pack the bags? They stand at a table with boxes before them, from which they take peanuts, candy, and prizes with quick automatic motion. They turn down the two corners of each bag, and string the bags when full in long bulky curls of seventy-two. The pay is $ .04 a hundred, and the faster of the two girls turns out 3000 a day. With ten hours' work, that means 300 an hour or five a minute. At that rate, when work is steady, she can earn $7.50 a week. One of the large Pittsburgh firms recently pijt up a new building which illustrates some of the best features of factory construction, demonstrating anew that whereas a small concern is apt to cling to a close economy to the detriment of both employes and goods, a large concern, with industrial imagination, can house both on lines dictated by far-sighted economy, which is after all synonymous with the best conditions. Built square on a large lot, facing toward the river and with windows on four sides, with high ceilings and large light rooms, this plant makes comfort possible even on a hot day. Cleanliness in candy factories is recognized as axiomatic. The guilty unscrubbed factory is likely to close its doors to visit- ors. But sufficient air, pure air, circulation of air, are essentials to health which are not axiomatic, and the absence of which is 47 WOMEN AND THE TRADES met with at every hand. A minimum air space in cubic feet means little when the air is vitiated and unchanged from day to day. Even this minimum is not always enforced in the candy factories. There is reason for congratulation then, when good and sufficient air is found voluntarily provided, as in the case of this factory whose square rooms with long rows of windows and high white ceilings give breathing space even when there are loo girls in the room. In the dipping department the air is changed at frequent intervals and artificially cooled to about 60 degrees, so that the chocolate will be kept at the right heat. Upstairs in the hard candy department cold water runs under marble slabs on which the candy cools. This quickens the cooling process and lessens the workers' discomfort. The emphasis is on quality of output, and a spirit of consideration runs through the relations of the firm with its employes. There are neither fines nor bad work, nor rate cutting if "the girls make too much." Instead, the rates are in many cases a little better than those of the other factories, the attitude of the managers is a little more liberal, and the result is the retention of the best candy makers in the Pittsburgh trade. WAGES AND OCCUPATIONS OF GIRLS In taking up the range of wages in the candy factories, the table on page 49 showing what work falls to the girls in the differ- ent plants, will afford a basis for discussion. The first thing that stands out in this summary is that 473, or nearly half the girls in the trade, are engaged in wrapping, labeling, and packing. Many of the packers are entirely unskilled. Some by long practice have acquired that speed and accuracy which is a high degree of dexterity. In one factory, where work is done for local stores, a few packers earn more than dippers, but their work is to put up fancy boxes, selecting from the difi^er- ent kinds of stock, and combining sizes and colors. Even here the planning of the boxes is not left to their judgment, but pat- tern styles are given them to follow. The bulk of the output from Pittsburgh factories is not candy of the highest grade, and a majority of the packers merely wrap in tin-foil or waxed paper. 48 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES TABLE 3. — NUMBER OF MEN AND WOMEN AND OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN EMPLOYED IN CANDY FACTORIES No. of Men No. of IVomen Occupations OF Women No. of plant Wrappers, Packers and Labelers Cream Dippers Chocolate Dippers Miscel- laneous , 3 6 3 3* 2 2 6 4 2 + 3 3 10 3 7 4 35 75 75 5 1 10 5 2 3 6 4 18 6 6 6 7 100 '5 '5 8 I 2 • • I I't 9 10 89 59 30 10 6 >5 1 1 4 1 1 2 10 8 2 12 35 20 20 '3 9 3' '3 4 14 ■4 100 300 100 50 103 47 15 10 60 50 10 ig I I I 17 50 200 100 25 75 Total § 372 868 473 87 255 53 * Hard candy Department. f Cooking Candy. X Salting nuts. § Total, 374 men and 966 women if chewing gum factory is included. As packing demands speed and not judgment or skill, it is not as a rule highly paid. Sometimes all are paid a flat rate of $5.00. The minimum runs from $2.50 to $4.00, and in one case to I5.00. In six factories, three-fourths of the packers do not earn over I5.00, and in two factories |6.oo is the highest amount ever paid to a packer. Wages vary considerably, how- ever, according to the dexterity of the hands. For instance, in one factory, all the girls are packers. Seventy-five of them work in a bleak, square room fronting on an alley; the light shut off by high buildings set back from the street beyond, the walls dirty, and the floors unswept. They sit at a long table, working at a nervous pace. The piece rate is | .01 a pound for kisses and 4 49 WOMEN AND THE TRADES $ .01 1 for caramels, the number of candies per pound varying with the different kinds. One caramel runs 60 to the pound, and at this work the best of the wrappers reached a maximum of 1 50 pounds in ten hours, that is, 9000 caramels a day, with a pay of 1 1. 87. Others in the same department cannot wrap more than fifteen pounds a day. The superintendent states that an indus- trious worker ought to be able to make |6.oo a week. In general, $7.00 is the maximum for all packers except forewomen. What is true of packers is true of the miscellaneous hands. Many of these are transferred to the packing department for seasonal work. Before Easter, packers are set at tinting rabbits or filling the centres of nuts, and in December these unclassified workers are set to wrapping and packing. Some of them during the rest of the year salt nuts; two Polish girls cook candy. Others spend most of their time thrusting little wooden sticks into penny suckers. These latter are paid by the box; in each box are 72 rows with 12 suckers to a row, that is, a total of 864 candies into which handle-sticks are to be forced while the can- dies are still soft. The girls are paid $ .03 a box. They could finish twenty-five boxes a day, the manager estimates, if they kept at the one task, but they are usually transferred to some other piece of work before they have a chance to develop speed. The wage basis for both the packers and the miscellaneous hands is on the whole the same, and that same is extremely low. Of the 526 girls in the two departments, only twenty-one are earning I7.00 a week; the majority earn from I4.00 to $5.00. Among the dippers, however, we may expect to find a different situation.* Here we have seen that real skill is needed, or if not skill, a knack that everyone does not possess. Sometimes a girl can learn to dip in two weeks; again, it will take six months, and there are some who never learn. The chocolate curls, hearts, and bands on top of creams are marks of hand-dipped work, and it is the pride of a good dipper to make exact decorations on piece after piece, gauging each time the right amount of chocolate. She must be able, too, to gauge the temperature both of chocolate and of creams and to estimate the quality. Creams must be dipped ♦For range of wages in different occupations, see Appendix B, p. 584, Table 38. 50 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES immediately or they will grow stale, but after dipping they mellow by keeping. If the cream is too cool when dipped, the butter in the chocolate hardens and it will not dry properly; the dipper must understand this to prevent waste and arrange for to be reheated. If the chocolate itself is either too hot or too cold, it cannot be used, and if when dipped, one hot streak be left on the outside of the chocolate, it will not dry and the piece will be worthless. The dipper must keep adding hot chocolate to her board from the steam-heated pan on the table to keep it at the right working temperature; moreover, she must see to it that the air in the workroom is dry, or the chocolate will be sticky and cannot be worked easily. The cold-air system which has been spoken of in connection with one Pittsburgh factory does this for her, but in the other plants the responsibility is on the dippers themselves to keep their windows closed most of the time. The tendency in Pittsburgh seems to be for most of the girls to dip by hand rather than with a fork. Ordinarily a cer- tain amount of chocolate is supposed to cover a given number of creams, and a fork dipper is apt to use too much chocolate. Almonds and some other small work of the same kind are still fork dipped. Four factories have dipping machines. Two girls place the white centers on a continuous belt, like pawns on a running chess board, and as they pass under the glass screen of the machine, these whites are drenched by a stream of liquid chocolate until they finally emerge in hostile livery, to be straight- ened and set to rights by a girl at the other end. Here the machine has proved itself. It saves time and labor, it does its work ac- curately and cheaply; 46 girls who tend dipping machines turn out nearly all the smooth work made in Pittsburgh. The growth of machine work, however, does not seem to threaten the hand dippers' trade. Even very cheap wafers have a ridge across the centre which is put on by hand, and this is true of the great majority of chocolates sold, except "penny creams." The dipping of creams in cream is an occupation distinct from chocolate dipping. There are only 87 cream dippers in Pittsburgh, although two large factories and three small ones have a department where this work is done. The cream is thicker to handle than chocolate. Chocolate dippers can usually 51 WOMEN AND THE TRADES work in cream without much difficulty; but a cream dipper who attempts to work with chocolate has to learn over again. The earnings in either case are about the same. We should expect, in work which demands some skill, like cream or chocolate dipping, and which demands invariably both deftness of touch, not possessed by every one, and sureness of judgment as to temperature and quality of material, that the rates of pay would be high enough to attract girls abler than the majority of operatives in factories. What is the case? There are 342 dippers. In six factories they are paid by the week, and in three by the piece, while two factories have both systems in use. Where week wages are paid, we find head girls earning a maximum of $9.00 a week; in three cases the maximum wage is $7.00, and in one case a flat rate of I7.00 is paid to all hands. One employer pays his two best girls $6.50 a week and the other ten girls sums ranging from I3.00 to I5.00. Another factory which employs 30 dippers pays 24 of its girls $5.50. With piece payments the case is no different. Almond dipping is paid at the rate of | .oi^ a pound in some factories, I .03 a pound in one. The rate for pecans is | .04 and for creams $ .01 to | .05. Marshmallows, which are very light, are paid for, not by weight, but by time. The number of dippers who can earn over I7.00 a week is small, as the girls are held responsible for bad work, and output at high speed one week is likely to mean a slackening of pace the next. Possibly this is because only a small proportion of those who come into the trade have the "natural talent" for it which seems necessary. The wo- man quoted before, a teacher of dippers in a chain of factories, now herself an employer, told me that not more than 2 per cent of the learners become really expert enough to earn |io or even I9.00 a week in the piece-work factories. The other 98 per cent either remain at low wages or change to some other occupation. In Pittsburgh I found that 112, or one-third of all the dippers, earned wages of |6.oo and under a week. One hundred eighty- eight of them earned I7.00, and 66, or less than one-fifth, earned weekly wages of from $7.00 to I9.00. 53 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES HOURS AND OVERTIME The hours of work in candy factories vary with the seasons. During three-fourths of the year twelve of the seventeen factories in Pittsburgh have a ten-hour day and five have a nine and a half-hour day. December overtime is universal. It comes about very simply. The holly-trimmed box carries Christmas good- will with a natural readiness. It has a spontaneous holiday air that suggests "best wishes," and it sometimes seems the only solution to a puzzled purchaser whose gift-giving imagination has failed. In spite of the wide varieties in possible gifts, candies continue to hold their popularity. Retail dealers, zealous to be well supplied, order two or three times as large a stock as during the rest of the year. Wholesalers, eager to meet the retail demand, increase on the volume of these orders in sending to the factories. The factories meet the situation as best they can. For much of the work, especially for dipping, they cannot use untrained hands ; the number of experienced hands is limited ; and, therefore, to fill orders on time, the trained employes work often unlimited hours at night in December. In half of the factories there is in addition frequent night work from September until the first of the year. One manager told me, with a twinkle in his eye, that his girls worked 75 hours a week for two months every year, and that in a neighboring factory they worked 80 hours a week; "but," he said, "the inspectors don't interfere with us. They usually come around in September and then again after the holidays and they never see any overtime. This year I guess somebody had stirred them up and they came later, not till the first of November, but they didn't see us working at night and nothing was said. I don't think they mean to interfere with factories where the other conditions are good. They know it's a business matter with us and that we don't like it any better than they do." The girls in one workroom which supplies a well- known caterer have been kept nearly all night just before the holidays, and a little factory in the Polish district on Penn Avenue keeps open at night for four months in order to assist its neighbors in a proper celebration of Christmas. Overtime 53 WOMEN AND THE TRADES is found to the greatest extent in the chocolate and cream- dipping departments, and among the packers of all fancy makes of candy. Hard candy making does not require overtime for the girls who work at it. For example, one firm has found it practicable to confine all overtime to the men employes. The men do the making, boiling, squaring, coloring, cutting, and packing in pails. The girls merely pack the peanut bars in boxes, and by a little rearrangement of work they can keep up to the men's output without staying later than six o'clock at night. There is not a manufacturer in the trade but will admit that overtime is a bad thing. It is no longer questioned that long hours mean inferior work the next day, and that the Christmas trade, upon which the prosperity of the industry so largely depends, means a long pull and a physical strain not to be counterbalanced by extra pay and easier work afterward. The gratuitous overtime which once existed — a redoubling of efforts toward increased production, a speculation almost, taking at the flood the public's impulse to buy — is no longer found among the candy manufacturers in Pittsburgh. On the contrary, managers are alive to the fact that this seasonal rush must, as far as possible, be diminished. There would seem to be two ways of meeting the situation : one of them suggests itself naturally from the experience of other trades. Salesmen in many lines of Christmas specialties arrange with local dealers for Christmas orders during the early part of the year. This has not been done in the candy industry, in part because of inertia, and in part because the goods are perishable. Were Pennsylvania's prohibition of overtime for women less flexible, and were factories in consequence unable to meet late-coming orders on time, such an arrangement and re- distribution of orders would clearly be necessary. At the present time, instead of ordering their Christmas goods six months to a year ahead, retailers have a panic as fall wears on lest they shall not have a large enough stock on hand. They order too much at the last moment, and then during January and February send in no orders at all. The factories, unable to plan ahead, are con- gested by the rush of incoming orders. This congestion of work, however, cannot be avoided by a redistribution of orders alone. A second solution lies in carrying 54 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES to a further point methods of handHng materials, which are already familiar to the technical men in the industry. By further studies of the keeping qualities of candy it is not impossible that much candy made in the spring can be used for the fall trade. To a certain extent this is already done in the case of chocolates. A good chocolate mellows by keeping and has a better taste six months after it is made than the day after. The cream inside is protected from the air, and so remains in good condition. If orders are but given in advance, experienced candy makers hold that it will in time be entirely possible to make up in the spring chocolates for the Christmas trade. Creams present a different problem, for no way has yet been found by which they can be kept any length of time without de- terioration. The trade in them is lighter than the trade in choco- lates, and could possibly be handled in the fall without inconven- ience if the other goods were largely made up in the spring. The situation is at least hopeful enough to warrant the belief that there is no intrinsic need for an interminable succession of years with overtime work, wearing out the strength of one group of working girls after another. THE SLACK SEASON The obverse side of the fall rush is the summer depression. In January and February there is a slack season in the hard-candy trade, but in most of the factories the dull time comes during the warm months, beginning sometimes in May and lasting well through August. There are several reasons for this. People do not eat quantities of chocolate in summer. The same impulse which sends them to a candy store when it is cool, sends them to a soda fountain when it is warm, and if they do buy candy, it is of the less substantial and less perishable kind. Further, it is difficult in summer to induce either chocolates or creams to harden prop- erly. Manufacturing is confined to filling daily orders. One factory keeps its dippers to make up stock for the winter, but in most factories the girls are laid off in large numbers. This long slack season brings up questions of wages. Is a candy maker's skill so slight that the girl will fit readily into some 55 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Other equally unskilled occupation when the dull season comes ? And does the dull season come at a time when other trades are busy ? Or, if the opportunity for subsidiary occupation is small, are the wages received during the year sufficient to carry a wrapper or dipper through a possible two months of unemployment ? We need not touch on the girls in the packing departments, because very evidently they are a less dexterous and less charac- teristic element in the trade. But the dippers have a specialized dexterity which does not fit them to enter other occupations, such as canneries, on an equal level. Furthermore, their dull season comes at a time when most other trades are also dull. Some few find employment selling candy in the parks or at places of amuse- ment near the city; the majority have to count most of the sum- mer as lost time. This relation of wages to the slack season becomes acute in view of the proportion of girls in the trade who are obliged to be self-supporting. In the smaller factories the girls come from homes in the neighborhood, but a majority of the girls in the larger plants come from towns nearby to learn the trade, and are paying board in the city. For instance, one forewoman who directs about loo chocolate dippers states that most of them are from homes outside of Pittsburgh, and that at least a third board with strangers. Yet less than one-fourth of the dippers (one- thirteenth of all the women in the trade) are earning wages that give them even a slight margin over living expenses. Even if we were to suppose that this slight margin is sufficient to carry a girl who is laid off through her season of unemployment, we could scarcely take it for granted that it is the more fortunate or able girl who is laid off. On the contrary, when forces are reduced, it is the girls with less ability, less accuracy, and a smaller output per day who go. It is the I7.00 girls, and the girls whose earnings are below I7.00. In part, of course, the girls return to their homes, and their families bear the loss due to seasonal unemploy- ment. But in part the cost, in undernutrition, in unsocial em- ployment, is borne, as ultimately every individual human loss is borne, by the community of which the chocolate dippers are a part. Despite slack seasons and Christmas rush the trade is a 56 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES popular one among working girls. It attracts girls of good ap- pearance, of quiet ways, usually of good physical development. In the first place, it has a reputation among the girls for health- fulness. Windows are closed, it is true, and this is undesirable, but there is no dust about the work, and a majority of the rooms are clean and well scrubbed. Perhaps the very handling of sugar and the eating of it help to make so many of the girls plump and round-armed. The desire to make so pleasurable a thing as candy plays its part. In choosing factory work (supposing a girl does not choose whatever happens to be next door or across the street), she is more likely to think well of a place where interesting things to eat are cooked, than of places in which impersonal things are made for a great unpersonified public. There is a third reason, which, I think, enters with the others, to select the type of girl found in these factories. That is the element of manual dexter- ity. In that there is a challenge, though often unacknowledged, to the girl who even by a generation's right can call herself Ameri- can. She has a pride in doing the thing that the "Hunkies" without her four or five years in school are less apt to do. Here is an undeveloped germ-like sense of craftsmanship. With the reputed healthfulness of candy making, the pleasure of it, and the challenge of a necessary slight degree of skill combining to draw into the trade a desirable class of girls, it is possible for wages to remain at a relatively low level. Such indeed is the case in the absence of effective demand on the part of the employes. Managers say that they have more applicants than positions, and that there is never a lack of girl apprentices. Once in a candy factory, the girls tend to stay. They do not marry until they are twenty-two or twenty-three years old, which is three or four years later than with a majority of unskilled factory operatives. The percentage of change from this trade to others and within the trade itself seems remarkably low. Some managers can point out girls who have been in their employ for eight or nine years. "Once a chocolate dipper, always a chocolate dip- per," they say. 57 WOMEN AND THE TRADES CHEWING GUM A chewing-gum factory at the rim of the woods at the west end of town belongs logically in this chapter, although the work differs enough from candy to make a separate description neces- sary. A hundred employes work in a large, light building with square rooms and bright windows. Many of them come from the North Side, where the factory was formerly located, but a minor- ity live nearby, in tiny weather-gray houses, along the unpaved roads, or farther in toward town, at the foot of the hill. The making of chewing gum, like the making of candy, is done by men. Chickel comes in hard blocks, and has to be ground, pulverized, mixed with other things, and cooked in vacuum kettles, before it can be rolled thin and cut by the girls. A slab of gum, twelve inches square, is fed in and out under the rolls until it is as thin as the commercial piece of chewing gum. The cutting machine marks it into oblong pieces six inches by twelve, and a girl breaks it along the marks made by the machine. Next her, at a wooden table, sit four "breaking-off " girls, who gather up the narrow lengths of gum and break them crossways into pieces short enough to fit into the slot machines. From here, the gum is taken to the packing girls. They sit at long tables working in pairs, the first girl covering each piece of gum with waxed paper and a printed outside wrapper; the second girl wrapping five sticks in a package, and putting five packages in a box. When this department is running full time there are 57 girls here, all of them piece workers. Some of them earn I7.00 a week, but the majority do not make more than $6.00. On the second floor is the Chu-Chu department — a name given to a brand of popcorn that is put up in prize packages and sent out to the neighboring towns. Here the product suggests that of many candy factories, but the work is on a larger scale, and the machinery diflferent. The Chu-Chu is put up first in a waxed cardboard package, which is afterward inserted in a colored card wrapper. One end of the wrapper is machine glued, and sent on a traveling chain past the girls who stand at benches close by. As the colored wrappers pass them the girls slip the 58 CONFECTIONERY FACTORIES waxed packages of popcorn into the conveyor, which takes the packages through the machine a second time, to be glued at the other end. There are 35 girls here. One little girl explained to me with much detail what she did with every box. She put the prize in, picked up a tiny strip stating what the prize was, pasted the strip on the box, put the waxed paper on, and ironed the waxed paper smooth. She was paid | .03 for twenty boxes, and "though I just sweated at that work," she said, "I couldn't make more than | .30 a day. " This is, of course, extreme, for most of the girls creep up to I5.00 and some to $6.00 after they have had enough experience to gain speed. Summer is the harvest time for this factory, and in the very months when the candy factories are laying off their hands, the chewing-gum and popcorn packers are working at night to supply the demand from circuses and pleasure parks and shows. 59 CHAPTER IV THE CRACKER INDUSTRY IT is a far cry from a pan of biscuits in a solitary kitchen to a seven-story factory, whence food-stuffs are shipped to all the United States. Individual bread baking is still with us, but individual cracker baking has become an anachronism. Gradually cracker bakeries have been combined into chains of factories under the National Biscuit Company, reaching from coast to coast, with careful arrangement for the making of this prod- uct here and that product there, and with large economy in labor, freight charges, and machinery. Co-existing with this chain of factories are local independent plants which send out goods within a radius of a hundred miles. Crackers in their num- berless varieties are not only an occasional convenience to the housewife who still struggles with her cook stove, but a staple food to the host of roomers and lodgers who have drifted into the city to forge out a way of life. A bewildering and irrepressible inventiveness characterizes the cracker-planning mind. Not only are we given more and more improved styles of the soda cracker, the ginger snap, and other friends honored by length of acquaintance; but we are given hitherto unimagined varieties of cracker-cakes, marshinallows and chocolates, grated nuts, and Scotch oatmeal cakes with an ancestry of flat stones behind them, but now, like their confreres, of the progeny of the oven. Even such changelings as cheese sandwiches have made their appearance among the rest. The trade list of products for a small factory makes a magazine-sized pamphlet with four pages of fine type, and for a large factory, the catalogue assumes the proportions of a small book. Bread baking in Pittsburgh is done by men, but the cracker industry stands fifth in the employment of women. Of its 1810 employes in 1907, 928, a little more than half, 60 THE CRACKER INDUSTRY were women * There are five factories. One little four-story plant has stood looking out at the river for twenty years; it does much of its work by hand now, as it did in the begin- ning, and employs 25 women and 13 men. A huge seven- story loft building has been rearranged and forcibly adjusted to turning out every variety of oven product, at the hands of 1 100 employes. A more modest but newer five-story building boasts a force of 175. In these three plants are stratified, as it were, the diiferent stages in the growth of the industry and in its adapta- tions of factory construction. Less than ten men mix the dough for all this output. They know the formulae and the secret combinations on which every manufacturer builds his faith in his business success; they are the only skilled workers in the plant. In one factory they are paid from I75 to 1 100 a month. In the very largest plant there are only three of them ; in others, two or one. Men are employed also to tend the ovens, to work in storerooms and shipping depart- ments, to polish cans, and to carry the heavy trays of dough. The women's work is to tend the cracker machines, to pack, to ice the cakes, and to mend cans. They are kept as a rule in one department, not because this is a trade which they have learned, but because the attainment of maximum speed requires phy- sical and mental concentration on doing one thing, the repeti- tion of one operation a thousand times in a day, ten thousand times in a week, and that over and over again from month to month. A girl is given a job in a cracker factory, and in an hour's teaching may be able to do the thing as she is told ; but it will be a week, perhaps a month, before she can do the same thing as many times in a day as the experienced girl who was there before her. Her muscles have to be taught to keep pace with the ma- chine. Her senses have to grow accustomed to the smell of the dough if she works near the ovens, to the heat of the cooling crackers if she is a packer, and to the sight of the chains con- stantly traveling beneath her eyes. For the most part, the work is done standing and at high speed. New girls come and go. Sel- dom do they acquire individuality in the eyes of their employers ; they work in numbers too large, and at operations too me- *See Appendix B, p. 385, Table 39. 61 WOMEN AND THE TRADES chanical, for that. Where they come from or where they go to the men who deal with them do not know. They may drift to the mangle rooms of laundries, or to some of the screw and bolt works, or to packing other kinds of food-stuffs in canneries or candy factories. They have the speed equipment to do any of these things, but they will not be found in lines of work that re- quire judgment, skill, or a strong physique. The cracker factory girl is of different type, both in nationality and age, from the girl in the candy factory. Seven out of nine girls in the trade are foreign born; some few are Ital- ians, but most of them Poles. Race prejudice is strong, and the knowledge that the "Hunkies" are in a trade is often enough to keep native-born girls away. In the packing room and the icing room the work is of such a nature that girls as young as fourteen years can be used, and, in consequence, it is a possible first em- ployment for a child who has just secured her working papers. As such, it is to her mind and to her mother's less a permanent calling than a two or three years' interlude, during which ex- perience is gained, and a small addition made to the family wage. TYPES OF FACTORIES AND KINDS OF WORK The primitive factory offers an introduction to the industry. Here the icing girls have no machine with which to keep pace. They work by hand, placing round crackers under a hole in a board a quarter of an inch thick. With a scraper they brush icing over the hole, so that the cracker is decorated symmetrically. On square cakes, the girls spread the icing with their fingers, using no tools at all, but proceeding with their work in a reflective and leisurely manner as if no such things as machines and a minimum output had ever been known in the world. On the floor below, in the cracker-making department, there is the same absence of haste. A woman here for twenty years has done nothing but lift the great heavy masses of dough from the tray to the squeezer of the cracker-making rolls that flatten and stamp them. Two other girls brush flour over the dough, and keep the raw crackers straight on the trays. In the same room there are fifteen girls packing. They have no conveyor, no traveling chain of boxes 62 THE CRACKER INDUSTRY with which to keep pace, and although they work quickly, they work without overstrain. In the wareroom there are girls, too, doing such work as in other factories is done only by men. They fill the orders that come in, lifting the heavy boxes of crackers, and packing them in crates, lifting the great square crates on trucks, and putting them on the freight elevator to be taken down to the drivers. The three girls here are pale and anemic, with an older look than the rest. They earn I7.00 a week. I talked with one of them as she took me through the factory. She had been working there twenty years and h.ad never worked anywhere else. I asked her if she thought the work unhealthful, and she said, "Oh, I don't know as it is, but it's tiresome. I always think I'd never work in a cracker factory again if I had to start over. Yet the girls has it easy now. We used to work until seven-thirty every night, and often until nine, without any extra pay, but now the girls get out at five-thirty, and when they work at night until nine they get paid extra. They don't get paid by the piece either, but by the week, and they don't have to work nearly so hard." In three other of the Pittsburgh cracker factories employes are paid by the week, but in the largest, where 450 girls are em- ployed, almost half of all in the trade in Pittsburgh, the piece system is in use. This largest factory, one of the chain in differ- ent cities, illustrates a different type. An old building has been made over to house it. Large and square as it is, with narrow frame stairways and a single fire-escape along the side, its interior construction and few exits suggest constant danger for the thou- sand employes, half of whom are on the upper floors. By starting at the top floor of the factory we shall get the clearest idea of the arrangement of departments. On the seventh floor are the cracker ovens. Here the dough is mixed by huge metal blades, shaped like the wings of a windmill. It is rolled, cut into thin sheets, and fed into the cracker-making machine, which stretches almost from end to end • of the room. The first roller flattens the dough and stamps on it a pattern; the second roller is simply a brush roller, which shakes on flour and prevents the raw sheet from sticking to the metal; the third marks the dough with the lines into which it is to be broken 63 WOMEN AND THE TRADES for separate crackers. At the second roller sits a girl whose duty it is to brush on the flour. The motion of her arm is quick and incessant, as following the moving line of dough she keeps the rolls dry and flour-filled. At the end of the machine the crackers are slipped onto trays to be taken by oven boys, who, with their flannel shirts thrown open, pass back and forth in the intense heat carrying the trays. On either side of the machine at this end are two other girls. They straighten the crackers and throw the scrappy, unformed edges of the dough into a tin to be fed with fresh dough into the funnel at the other end of the room. Their workplace is not six feet from the ovens. The men say that not many of the girls can stand the work for long. In the excessive heat, with the smell of the dough, they' must stare at the trays which pass slowly, continuously, beneath their eyes. They become light-headed and ill. I saw one who had been in the place three years. She was white, with a .faint look about her mouth, but the clerk said that she stood the work well. She was an Itahan, and they had advanced her to $5.00 a week, "for it's worth while to keep a girl who really stands the work when once you get her. " Directly below the cracker ovens, on the sixth floor, crack- ers are packed and fancy cakes are made. The factory has a small trade in special orders, such as pies, crullers, or wedding cake, which are made by hand. Fifteen of the 20 girls in this depart- ment are scullery hands, busied at cutting apples, washing pans, or sugaring crullers, but the others have the more important task of icing and decorating the fancy cakes. These hand cake- makers and other "specials" hold their positions insecurely. Trade is variable; they stand in constant likelihood of being laid off through the year, and are certain of unemployment in July and August. On the same floor, in another room, there are 200 packers. These are piece workers, folding and filling boxes of soda biscuit and other crackers at high speed. The boxes pass on a narrow traveling chain which runs parallel to a second conveyor, on which the crackers come from the floor above. The girls stationed at the conveyor gather handfuls of crackers and fill the boxes as they pass rapidly by; further down the room other girls wrap the 64 THE CRACKER INDUSTRY sides and still others the ends. The pace of each worker is pitched to the highest point. I noticed especially one small girl with flushed cheeks and white lips who was folding the ends of soda cracker boxes and putting on each end a red stamp. She earned $ .01 a dozen, and if she could make a hundred dozen a day, she would get I .10 bonus, altogether |i.io. Her teeth were set, and her breath came hard, like that of an overspent runner at the end of a race; yet it was only ten o'clock in the morning. Her arms moved irregularly, jerkily, as if she were spurring her nervous energy to its limit. The office boy who was standing near watch- ing her, said casually, "She's lucky if she makes her bonus. I was in this department a while ago and I seen these girls get so tired their arms was ready to drop off at night but they wouldn't make no hundred boxes." Yet she was not an exception. The others were working at top speed and many, like her, were forcing themselves to keep to it. In the icing room on the fifth floor, where the fancy crackers are made, the machinery does most of the work. Continuous chains pass from floor to ceiling, across the room, then down to the floor again and across. Carried along each chain at intervals of a few inches are wire trays, each with a series of spikes on which cakes are so fastened that they come in contact with nothing, and have an opportunity to become dry on all sides. The icing is made and measured by a man at the far end of the floor, and there is a uniform process of dipping which the girls follow without the need of using much judgment of their own. As the chain passes, the girls at the starting point lift off the trays and dip them, with one motion covering all the cakes. I was told that the girls here are considered the most skilled in the factory, because they have to know how many times to dip the various kinds of cakes ; they are paid not more than |6.oo a week, and most of them not more than $5.00. In the next room are more girls packing like those on the floor above, and adjoining is a room where old tins sent back by customers are repaired. Damage to a can is usually charged to the customer. The company repairs a can, puts in new glass, repaints and polishes, before sending it out for use again. This room is noisy with the rattling of tin, and now and then with the crash of broken glass as the old pieces are thrown 5 65 WOMEN AND THE TRADES away and new pieces slipped into place. Some of the girls simply paste on labels and freshen rough edges, but most of them work on the tins themselves. All the buffing is done by boys in an- other part of the room. Below this floor are more machines and more packing, and on the third floor are the bread ovens where only men are employed. But the heat from these ovens affects not only them but the hundreds of girls on the floors above, where the work, at best, is done in a high temperature and under the double pressure of a piece-rate system and pace setting by a machine. Here, then, in broad lines, is a striking contrast to the old-time, primitive cracker bakery near the river. Two other factories are housed much like this one; the fifth Pittsburgh factory is constructed on a different plan. Here there is the same division of work between men and women, but there are more American girls than Poles. On the sixth floor of the building, above not below the other departments, are the mixing department and all the ovens. A high ceiling, with open win- dows on three sides, even without forced ventilation affords good circulation of air. The ovens are of recent make, and the heat given oif is less than that in the baking rooms elsewhere. A sweep of breeze from window to window makes work in this room tolerable, even to the people nearest the ovens. The height of the ceilings protects the workers on the lower floors from the heat; even on the floor directly below it is scarcely noticeable, and the ovens do not afi'ect the temperature in other depart- ments at all. In the icing department on the fifth floor about 20 girls are employed. Some of them are at the icing trolleys, and others, marshmallow girls, squeeze liquid marshmallow out of cheese- cloth bags. Still others sprinkle grated nuts on the marshmallow cakes as they pass. The girls in this department are shifted frequently from one sort of work to another, but the marshmallow girls are ordinarily kept at the job, for it takes at least a week to learn and sometimes a month or two. At the other end of the trolley there are girls to remove the cakes and pack them away in tins. The cracker packing is on the fourth floor. From the ovens 66 THE CRACKER INDUSTRY the trays of crackers pass slowly on a conveyor through the two floors, and at the point where the conveyor dips into the packing room, moving horizontally across it, electric fans are set so that the crackers will be thoroughly cooled by the time they reach the girls. This has a two-fold effect, keeping the crackers in better condition after they are packed, and making the work of the pack- ers less disagreeable. Each girl is supposed to lift from the pass- ing trays a certain share of the crackers, so that by the time the conveyor has passed a given number of girls it will be entirely empty. Sometimes it is six months before a new girl has learned how to pack the different styles of crackers and to manage her share of the conveyor. There is a second conveyor in this room, which carries the filled boxes to the girls who wrap and label them. When the wrapper has covered a box, she replaces it and the conveyor carries it away to the shelves to be stacked. ' Below the packing room there are two floors of storerooms and offices, and on the first floor, which is really a basement, a tin-can room where cans are labeled, stamped, and freshened. IMPORTANCE OF THE BUILDING PLAN As I have already pointed out, these three factories may be taken as three broad types of different phases in the development of the industry. It is in the old factory with limited equipment that women are doing heavy lifting in the order room and at the machines. It is there, too, that one gets the impression of leisure, and that cake-icing is carelessly done in an unsanitary way. The volume of trade is small ; the manager is easy-going and makes little effort to increase it. There may be some slight advantage to the employes in an " easy-going boss," but though the pack- ers do not work at high speed, they work in the same room with the baking ovens, in a deadly heat that is never stirred nor lifted by a breeze. The huge building which the largest factory has adapted to its uses is crowded with machines and with workers, for maximum output from available space. When an oven was needed, an oven was put in wherever there was room, without reference to the number of employes working above it, and without regard for 67 WOMEN AND THE TRADES possible devices for deflecting some of the heat from the upper floors. When a new department was needed, a new department was introduced where there was room. The unvarying emphasis has been on the saving of space. There has been a meagre com- pliance with the orders of the factory inspection department in the erection of fire-escapes, and in some other primary demands of the law. Beyond this there is no standard save the one of output. Yet it can scarcely be other than costly economy to work 450 women and 200 men on floors above the bread ovens, where they must stand on scorching boards, unrelieved by cur- rents of air between the low walls or by any system of forced ventilation to carry off the heat from above or below. It is an economy which is one cause of the instability of the women workers; it is certainly a cause both in men and in women of lowered vitality which can mean only industrial inefficiency and social unfitness. That a better building plan is possible is evidenced by the fifth factory (see Table 4, "Standard"). Here the ovens are on the top floor with its open windows. The artificial cooling of the crackers results both to the advantage of the firm commer- cially and to the increased comfort of the packing girls. The building of the factory on large lines, with wide rooms and many windows, with high ceilings and ample space between floors, seems a partial recognition of the fact that for each industry must be worked out a special standard of ventilation and sanitation if it is to be adequate. The factory law specifies a volume of air space per person with the intent of assuring individual workers the quality of air necessary to health. This is a minimum. It may be suffi- cient in some trades ; in other trades where the air becomes readily vitiated, it is far from sufficient. Conceivably, less air might be needed in the packing room of a candy factory than in the over- heated packing room of a cracker factory. Only where the vol- ume of air is sufficient for health is the intent of the law observed. This fifth factory has set a standard in observing the spirit of the law. It has shown that such a standard is commercially practicable. How far the other Pittsburgh cracker factories are at vari- ance with this standard will be clearer by a schedule which gives, 68 THE CRACKER INDUSTRY comparatively, the arrangement of departments. I have put first the factory which has been described as showing the best building plan : TABLE 4. — ARRANGEMENT OF FLOORS IN CRACKER FACTORIES Floors Factory No. 5 " Standard " Factory No. I Factory No. 2 Factory No. 3 Factory No. 4 I 5 4 3 2 I Cracker ovens Icing dept. Packing Store-rooms Store-rooms; offices Tin-can room (Candy) Icing Ovens Offices Packing Ovens Packing (Candy) Offices Packing Mixing; packing Ovens Icing dept.; offices Tin-can room. Cracker ovens Packing; fancy cakes Icing dept. Packing Cracker ovens; bread ovens Warerooms Offices The schedule does not show that in the four other factories the ceilings are low and the buildings overcrowded, that a few windows are made to do duty for a large room, and that forced ventilation is not provided. But the schedule does show a clear failure of these factories to meet the intent of the law, which is the conservation of health among workers. HOURS, WAGES AND CONDITIONS OF WORK As in other manufacturing industries in Pittsburgh, a ten- hour day is customary in cracker manufacture. For soda wafers and other crackers of the same order, the season of picnics makes unflagging demand, and packers the year round are steadily em- ployed. The icing girls are sometimes kept on short time for a period of two months, and the girls on special work are likely to be laid off altogether, but aside from this the trade is steady. There is little seasonal overtime. Night work is resorted to to fill a rush order or to get out work when there is unusual demand. The mother of one girl told me indignantly that her daughter had to work three nights a week overtime during the month of July 69 WOMEN AND THE TRADES without any time oflf for supper; and that if she worked until exactly nine o'clock she received $ .25 extra, but if she stopped a few minutes before nine, she did not get any extra pay at all. Rates of pay in specific instances have already been men- tioned. There is no apparent distinction between departments, but a general flat rate of minimum, advanced, and maximum pay.* One firm starts all new hands at I3.50, and after a little advances them toward I5.00. Fifty of its 300 girls are considered experienced enough to be making the maximum pay, which is ?5.50. No one, except a forewoman or two at |8.oo, earns more than this. Factory number 5 pays a new hand I3.00 or I3.50 at the start, according to her size, and, "of course," said the su- perintendent, "we shouldn't think of starting a girl who was twenty years old, for instance, at less than $4.00. " Packing and icing girls are advanced to $5.00, sometimes to |6.oo. The head girl earns I7.00. These cases are representative of the rest. The highest pay of any of the regular hands is I7.00, and 700 of the 900 girls are earning weekly wages of $4.00 to I5.00, or I5.00 to |6.oo. They are without opportunity for advancement or for developing any quality except speed. The following table shows the distribution of work among women employes in the five factories: TABLE 5. — DISTRIBUTION OF WORK AMONG WOMEN EMPLOYES IN CRACKER FACTORIES No. of Plant Packing Icing Tin-can Room Cracker-mak- ing machines Specials Order Room 2 3 4 5 15 40 245 300 70 t 16 18 30 'I 3 I 3 30 2 2 20 3 5 2 Total 670 94 94 38 22 10 So far as number of employes is concerned, packing is the important process in a cracker factory. Two-thirds of the women * See Appendix B, page 385, Table 40. 70 THE CRACKER INDUSTRY are working at the traveling conveyors, rapidly lifting the hot crackers, and filling box after box to be shipped fresh from the ovens. Most of the icing girls' work is done while sitting and at a relatively even pace, under more pleasant conditions than those of the packers. It is the girls at the cracker machines, few though they are in number (only thirty-eight altogether), who stand out in the industry as deserving of most serious social concern. The ten hours that they spend close to the intolerable heat of the ovens is given over to work which demands neither judgment, skill, nor speed. Consider, by way of comparison, that in machine shops a lathe that bores in oil is supplied with the oil mechanically. If women were not available for work at the cracker machines, a way might be found to supply the flour for the brush roller mechan- ically, and to remove the scraps of dough and carry them to the funnel at the other end of the room. In other industries there are self-feeding machines and machines which adjust themselves to waste at the sides. With respect to girl-saving machinery, as with respect to the lay-out of buildings, a little ingenuity and consideration for health have done much for the cracker industry, and would do far more were they given wider application. 7' THE STOGY INDUSTRY CHAPTER V THE STOGY INDUSTRY THE explanation of the stogy industry is the workmen's demand for a cheap luxury, for the companionable dissi- pation of a "smoke." To clerk, mechanic and laborer, no less than to the business man, it is at once a source of compla- cent enjoyment and an occasion for fellowship. The aroma of the brown leaves is a symbol of the good things in the leisure hours of life. But to the tenement tobacco worker the stogy is grossly materialized. With the lessening of leisure hours, with the steady monotony of isolated work, it is reduced to lowest terms, an object of barter and sale. Wheeling, where the stogy industry started, and Pittsburgh, where it shortly took root, are recognized as the two centres from which it has spread through many towns of West Virginia, West- ern Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The original stogy, or toby, was a long, loosely rolled cigar, made only of crumpled filler leaf and smooth, fine wrapper. The binder leaf was left out to lessen cost both in time and material, making it possible to sell the best stogy for from half to a third the price of the cheapest cigar. Changes in the trade have blurred this distinction. There are still many undoubted stogies on sale, but beside them in larger numbers are short filler "mold stogies," indistinguishable from cigars in size or shape. The district has given continuity to the name, and through all this section of the middle west, stogies of either brand still have a selling price which meets the needs of men who want a cheap smoke. The industry gives an impression of complexity and varied development. Some of the skilled craftsmen, hand stogy makers, work systematically in large factories; others, in their little shops in the tenement districts, use a room or two for the entire process of manufacture, sometimes putting wives and children to work 75 WOMEN AND THE TRADES at the preliminary stripping, sometimes exploiting a newly ar- rived compatriot until he learns wisdom and establishes a shop of his own. Of the women workers, some are craftsmen, too, but most of them are employed at subordinate occupations in the trade, such as rolling or bunching. Barely one in fifty of them is engaged in work demanding a high degree of skill. The women outnumber the men nearly three to one. Factories, sweatshops, home workshops, working in part at cross purposes and in part developing the industry along different lines — all these are of immediate interest to us, both as avenues of employ- ment for more women than any other one factory trade in Pitts- burgh, and as illustrations of varying industrial tendencies which are found in more than one American city. There were in 1907, in what has become greater Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh and Allegheny), 32 stogy factories and 203 sweat- shops,* a total of 235 work places. The sweatshops employed 400 women and 453 men ; the factories, 22 1 1 women and 463 men; 3527 workers in the trade as a whole, 916 of them men and 261 1 women. A TYPICAL STOGY FACTORY The best means of introduction to the industry is to follow step by step the process of stogy making, drawing our descrip- tion from departments in different factories. Departments could be cited which are better, others much worse; therefore this description may be considered even more representative than if one factory were described throughout. Little bunches of rich brown leaves are spread out in the drying room on an upper floor to mellow and grow soft and workable. They are " air dried" for the finest work. This takes a month or two, sometimes a year for work of the best grade; sometimes, when there is haste, not more than a few days. In any case natural drying without heat produces leaf more responsive to the touch of the shaper. In another room close by, tobacco may be drying by heat; the windows are closed, and a stove keeps the room at high tem- * For tables, showing in detail conditions in the industry, see Appendix B, pp. 385-388, Tables 41-45. 76 THE STOGY INDUSTRY perature. Fine dust from the brittle leaves sifts through the air, and the leaves themselves are so dusty and burnt that they seem scarcely akin to the mellow things in the next room. This heat- dried tobacco is for mold stogies. It is shaped artificially by a quick process, and can be used when so dry that hand work upon it would be impossible. Since time and space are both saved where mold stogies are made and air drying is unnecessary, the cost to the consumer is greatly reduced. Both drying rooms are tended by men, old men, worn out at their trade, but still with the feel of tobacco in their hands- In contrast, the basement is full of women. There you see a roomful of strippers, perhaps a hundred in number. Each woman sits low in her little stall, and leans against a piece of rough board; her lap is full of tobacco, and close beside her are a scale and a low rounded stand. Light from the windows hardly reaches all parts of the great square room, but the work is so purely mechani- cal that light is almost unnecessary. The stem of filler tobacco is pulled out, the leaf is thrown into the scales, and tied pound by pound. The wrapper leaf, and sometimes the binder, is wet and smoothed out over the rounded stand. Care must be taken to cut the stem without tearing the rest of the leaf, but aside from this, the work presents no difficulty. Its very simplicity has drawn into it women of a type diflferent from the others in the factory. Many of the strippers are mature women, coming into a trade which they have not learned. There is a peasant look about their faces, a something near the soil and the growing of dark leaves out-of-doors. Some of them are young girls, a little stupid, a little inefficient, here and there with a defect of sight, here and there with a slightly deformed body, nearly always in some respect physically below the standard strength that keeps pace with a machine. Some of the strippers belong to yet a different group: they are wrecks of the trade. Once they worked upstairs bunch- ing or at the suction tables. Others who had started with them married. These kept on until the day when their pace began to fall ofi" and their output to diminish, and at length they dropped back among the older untrained women, the young girls whose physique is below par, and the Slavic girls whom race prejudice bars out of every room but this. 77 WOMEN AND THE TRADES On the floor above are the hand stogy makers. All of them are men, craftsmen. They sit opposite one another at long tables which run the length of the room, although at the far end there is little daylight and no provision for artificial lighting. They mani- fest their skill in the close cutting of the leaf, in their choice of exactly the right amount of long filler, in the rolling, molding, and final loose curling of the head. The best stock is used. The worker's deft hands are here the most important factor in pro- duction. The men have had an apprenticeship of at least a year, and they have a craft which still holds a strong position in spite of the encroachments of cheaper and more mechanical methods of manufacture. Team work among women in the making of mold stogies is the rival of hand work among the men. Both rolling and bunch- ing are done with the help of a machine. The buncher stands with her foot on the treadle, puts on the horizontal plate of the machine her handful of scrap filler and her bit of binder leaf, and presses the treadle; canvas rolls wind about the leaf and release it, making a bunch. This bunched leaf is placed in one of a row of cigar-shaped transverse grooves, six to eight inches long, cut in a wooden board. When the rows are full, a second matrix board is faced down on the first and the two are put under a press until the bunches are molded permanently into shape, ready for the rollers. Some rollers work by hand, cutting the wrapper and shaping it around these molded bunches one by one, finishing either with curl or paste head. Each girl has her little cutting board, her knife, and her clipper to cut the end. These tools are the stock in trade which the stogy maker carries with her from place to place. The demand upon her for training of the eye and hand is greater than upon her neighbors at the suction table, who are also called rollers, but who have scarcely any responsibility left. They spread the leaf over a little metal stand which is so arranged that the leaf is drawn out and held in place by suction. The operative cuts the tobacco after the guide line on the metal block, always the same shape and size, then rolls it round the bunch and puts it into the box beside her. There are perhaps three times as many rollers as there are girls at the bunching machines, but all 78 o u < o o THE STOGY INDUSTRY of them work with a degree of intensity which is the joint result of a piece rate and untired youth. These girls are young, seven- teen, eighteen, sometimes twenty. The oldest among them have worked for four or five years, and will perhaps keep it up for another year or so. Many are Jewish girls, who would rather be in a quiet workplace than in factories where actual muscular effort is more in demand. Nervous energy they expend freely. The packers are like unto them. They stand beside tables, ranged in front of the windows, and beside them are stools, not for the girls, but to hold the box of stogies from which a packer sorts out light, medium, and dark into piles in front of her. Some she packs on end, a hundred at a time, into round tins; others she puts in square boxes in rows of ten. By the help of a sloping board she slips one row after another into place, cuts short the time of shrinkage by vigorously squeezing the stogies together under a press, nails down the cover and ties — all this with a sure- ness of sight which discriminates unhesitatingly between differ- ent colors and a quickness of hand which the watcher can scarcely follow. The bander across the room takes some of the boxes apart, unpacks and pastes bands on the stogies, row by row. Then she repacks them just as they were before and again nails and ties. High speed is in the atmosphere. There is no stopping to rest or to think. Evidently the girls are working by the thousand. Most of the packers are Americans; they stand the pace better than the occasional Jewish girls, therefore preference is given to them. In every factory and in every sweatshop these branches of the trade are duplicated in one way or another. There are strippers, bunchers and rollers, hand stogy makers and packers. Given these constant factors to be reckoned with, it is left for us to see how factories and sweatshops group themselves, where they are found and how constructed, what wages and hours of work they offer, and how they have been influenced by the unions, the trust, and the labor laws of the state. A word must be said, too, about the displacement of men by women, and of hand work by machine work, and about the physical effects of the trade as it now is compared with the possible physical effects under a somewhat different method of factory construction. 79 WOMEN AND THE TRADES HILL FACTORIES AND SWEATSHOPS The factories and sweatshops are scattered widely as the limits of the city allow, but in some districts there are colonies of shops, partly as the result of nationality groupings, and partly on lines of business convenience.* In a number of shops the ad- vantage is with "the Hill," where the bulk of the immigrant Jewish population lives, and where nine factories and 124 sweat- shops employ nearly a third of the workers in the trade. These workers are Austrian and Russian, sometimes German Jews. The only Gentiles are the handful of Italians who make stogies as it is done "in Napoli." A majority of the Jewish men are foreign born, but many of the women were born in this country of foreign parents. A newcomer gravitates naturally to the shop of a friend, and the girl whose life is bounded by the circle of a few streets is not likely to go to some unknown downtown factory, when she can find employment for such hours as she likes in the little workroom next door. The typical Hill factory is a small place, not over two stories high. With the exception of one plant owned by the trust and an independent factory of some size, there are no pretensions to large output or to an extensive business. The old buildings are often L-shaped, adapted and readapted for their present uses, and reeking with the disabilities which come of age and unfit con- struction. In contrast are a few trim little brick structures of recent erection, small enough to be well lighted, and comparably well aired. These small factories on the Hill deal to a large extent in mold stogies, which are cheaper to manufacture than hand-made stogies, and equally sure of sale. At best they are unimportant competitors of the large concerns, although more sharply pushed, in that they bid for a wider market than the sweatshops in the neighboring dwellings, whose entire commercial life may begin at the leaf wholesaler's store across the way, and end at the cigar- seller's on the corner. * The distinction made for the sake of clearness in this study between factory and sweatshop is based solely on the uses to which the whole building is put. Where stogies are made in a building constructed or otherwise used for business purposes, the place is called a factory, as distinguished from a sweatshop, which occupies part of a dwelling-house. 80 THE STOGY INDUSTRY It is in the Hill sweatshops that most of the hand stogy makers are found. The types of shop are as various as the pros- perity of the owners. Simplest of all, the primitive cell of the organism of stogy manufacture, is the kitchen workbench, such as that of Joseph Lebovitz, who, soon after he came from Russia, was taken in hand by his neighbors and trained to be a stogy maker. He is rather thin, but still brown of face and tall, and with the help of his wife earns enough at stogies to live and to pay the rent of two rooms on the first floor. His bench and bag of tobacco are close to the one window. A little farther away stands the cradle of the new baby, rocked between times by the little Russian mother in the moments that can be spared from housekeeping and stripping tobacco for her husband. Lebovitz is under bond, of course, to the revenue oifice. Now and then he has to go down to the great stone building and buy stamps for his boxes of stock, but otherwise the Hill is large enough to supply all his needs. There is a box factory a few squares away; in the very next house is the man who sells leaf to half the small shops on the Hill. The cigar-seller on Centre Avenue deals with his neighbors in preference to the big factories that demand a large amount of trade. In this district there are twenty of these home shops, where no outside hands are employed. Sometimes the little place has continued for years in the same way until it has absorbed children as well as parents, and expanded without breaking the family tie. I caught a glimpse of one such group of workers through the foot-high window of a cellar where the utmost economy of space and lack of air were combined with that marvelous neatness so expressive of the righteous German soul. The dark cellar was so full of cases of stock as to tax the ingenuity of any one who sought entrance. Inside there were two rooms, perhaps eight by eight, with a seven-foot ceiling. Here Fritz Rosenberg, a patriarchal gray-bearded German, worked with his wife and daughter at a table set beneath the tight-closed wire-screened window. A foot below the ceiling hung a wide wooden rack. Finished stogies were drying on it, and tobacco leaves were heaped high on a sofa at the rear of the room. Although I wondered how such an overrun place could ever be cleaned, there was evidence of 6 8i WOMEN AND THE TRADES care in the clean floor and benches. But freedom from scrap cannot compensate for lack of air. In many cases such a workshop is operated in connection with a retail store, but more often it is independent. The first outsider to be brought in as trade expands is another man to help, a girl to strip, or a small child after school. The girl will sometimes be shared by several shops. If more workers are added, just here the point of divergence in method usually comes. Sometimes there will be three or four men making only hand sto- gies, with one or two girls to strip for them. More often, however, it happens that as the shop grows its policy changes, girls and cheaper men being taken on to work at molds. I have come upon such a transformed workshop in a half cellar, reached through an alley-way from the rear; or under a low sloping roof on the third floor; but more often than not, when I found a license sign at the door, and walked boldly through the family parlor and up the dark staircase in the middle of the tenement, at the top I would encounter the odor of tobacco leaves. The stairs would have to be climbed in total darkness, for the doors at either side are always closed, but behind one of them would be my workshop. Within, the atmosphere is businesslike; there is no furniture that has not its use for the manufacture of stogies. The rollers have their benches against the two front windows, and the bunchers work at the dark side of the room; the round white finished boxes are piled ceiling-high against the walls, and in the comer which no one happens to be using there are little heaps of tobacco spread out to dry. Three of the rollers are strong peas- ant types, immigrants, whose forebears tilled fields in Austria. The other roller and two of the three bunchers are men. Both of the strippers are women. They work next the bales of tobacco and the case of stems, in a little corner of the cellar which is not heated in winter or dried in summer. Unless the heat is unbear- able, windows are not opened, because tobacco is injured by a too variable temperature. In general, the workplaces on the Hill are characterized by a lack of cleanliness, by overcrowding (as low as 150 cubic feet of air space to a person in some shops), by an absence of ventila- tion and of sanitary accommodations. Dirt and scrap are heaped 82 THE PITTSSURCH SilJHVEV IPinrTS!BIUlS©[Kl, STOGIE f=ACTOKIES AKD SWE/VTSnOPS • PACXOKIES O SWEAXSttOPS Location of Stogy Factories and Sweatshops, 1907 1 m 1 5? ■n ^* J? jj^O j!; ■ J? Si d? fc S ^^^1 H <0 i OLuei: ,3=- NICHE RSBtJ NCHC E«\CHE RS ST -RiPPir ■id P ACKtr 1C PROPOWTIOKIS OP'I^EISI Ub WOP^IErsJ EMF^I-OYED |M OlF-F-EWer-^T ^-n«KMCIHeS OF- STOGY T19/M3E ]Bl./^c:k — h-iEisi WHITE VS^OI*^EIS| THE STOGY INDUSTRY under the tables. In two-fifths (53) of the shops visited tobacco was dried in the room, sometimes on the floor, sometimes at the side or overhead, in part breaking into dust as it dries, and in part weighting down the atmosphere with nicotine— for both reasons a potent cause of ill-health among the workers. In the smaller shops the strippers are discriminated against, so far as workroom accommodations are concerned. Whenever a cellar is used, they work in the cellar. When the upper part of the house is used, they work at the staircase landing, or at the entrance of the dark room where tobacco is stored. They are sometimes Negroes, sometimes Slavs, sometimes Jews of a lower grade than the molders of the leaf, and they take such places as are provided. I went into one cellar opposite a Hill factory where two women and one man, all Negroes, were stripping in a room less than seven feet in height. The only source of air was a narrow door leading by a flight of steps up to the street. A tiny slit of a window at the far end was close barred, and two-thirds of the cubic space in the room was occupied by bales of tobacco and cases of stripped stock. Pools of muddy water stood on the earth floor, and the air was foul beyond endurance. Nearby, in another cellar workroom, three low-grade Polish girls and a feeble-minded man worked behind a closed door in the underground dampness. Steps led down from the yard to a room not over eight feet square. On dark days a flaring gas jet helped to exhaust the oxygen. Except for the gas jet there was no way of heating the place in the winter or drying the damp floor and walls in summer. Such conditions are not exceptional. They are the workplaces of the inert or least vigorous, of the children, the old women, the girls broken down with illness who have lost their speed, the unskilled women too ambitionless to learn something that pays better, too spiritless to combat exploit- ation. Elsewhere in the city, the genesis of sweatshops has been along the same lines, although sometimes one finds that the pro- prietor is an ex-resident of the Hill who has moved away in pursuit of space and light and air. The Jewish stock predominates, but there are groups of tenement shops to be found in the straggling unpainted Italian streets in the East End or among the colonies of Slavic and Celtic people on the South Side, three downtown, and 83 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Others among the Germans of the North Side — a total of 30. Of the 69 shops outside Hill district, 43 are operated in connection with retail stores. A double business of this sort indicates delib- erate, purposeful choice of occupation, rather than the chance em- ployment, the eager learning of the nearest thing at hand, charac- teristic of the Jewish immigrants in the congested district. The standard of cleanliness and sanitation is higher. The majority of the large factories are near the business center of the city. RATES OF PAY Before discussing earnings in the stogy industry it is necessary to have a general understanding of rates of pay and the causes which affect them. "Equal pay for equal work" is the rule in factories and tenement shops alike, but, as we shall see, there are variables in the system of payment which lead to speeding as readily as in industries where rate cutting is frequent. Rates of pay are as follows : TABLE 6. — RATES OF PAY IN THE STOGY INDUSTRY Strippers Mold Stogy Makers District 1 4- Rollers Bunchers Hand Stogy ^8 ■ft. •si Makers Hill f North and] 1 South Side J l.oij .oii ? .02 .02-.03 f .04 .05 i.ii .12 1. 12 •'3 |.o8 .08 1.03 .05 I2.00 per 1000 $3.00-3. joper 1000 The rate of pay, of course, gives no clue to actual earnings. There are alwlays natural differences of speed among the workers, but there is, besides, much variation in the quality of stock. A leaf that is old or weak in fibre is likely to break in handling and takes two or three times as long to strip as "Kentuck", which is heavy and tough, as tobaccos go. Similarly, the difficulties of rollers and bunchers are increased. When the stock is poor, the 84 >< o < H O <: in M a o P< o o THE STOGY INDUSTRY problem of cutting without waste checks the speed and output of even the best workers, and to the less efficient it is disastrous. Sometimes a "run of poor stock" comes to the roller as a matter of chance, and sometimes it is a deliberate means of cheapening cost. The large factories are more apt than the small shops to cut down expenses in this way because they can use scrap at a profit, whereas small shops attempt to keep a few customers for goods of even quality rather than to bid for a varied trade. This is a generalization, however, with many exceptions. Irregu- lar hours, no less than difference in speed and quality of stock, affect the amount earned. An estimate based on a nine-hour day in a factory could not be equally true for a ten- or twelve- hour day in a sweatshop; nor could an estimate based on high- pressure work be equally true in a shop where the pace is relatively even and unstrained. PREMIUMS AND SLIDING SCALE There are eight factories which employ a hundred hands or more. In each of them, as well as in some smaller plants which approach them in size, there are speed requirements.- For in- stance, while no sweatshop falls below the | . 1 1 rate for rollers, one factory pays only | .09 a hundred if a roller turns out less than 6000 stogies a week. In other cases emphasis is placed on close cutting as well as on speed. The following regulations are posted on a workroom door:* TABLE 7. — POSTED RATES FOR ROLLERS IN A NORTH SIDE STOGY FACTORY Pump Handles (Cigars) All rollers getting an average of below 275 a pound will receive 13 cents a 100. All rollers getting an average of 275 or better will receive 13 cents a loo. All rollers getting an average of over 325 will receive 35 cents additional to their week's pay. Little Havana Specials All rollers getting an average of below 325 a pound will receive 12 cents a 100. All rollers getting an average of 325 or better will receive 13 cents a 100. AH rollers getting an average of over 375 will receive 25 cents additional to their week's pay. * This factory is on the North Side where thirteen cents a hundred is the standard rate. ' 85 WOMEN AND THE TRADES It is true that were there no requirement of the sort, many girls might become careless and waste an unnecessary amount of leaf. It is also true that such a requirement greatly increases the worker's expenditure of nervous energy. She is pulled in two directions, urged on the one hand by the necessity for speed if she is to have a good sum at the end of the week and keep her place in the factory, and urged on the other hand to slacken her pace on each stogy in order to increase her output per pound. In four of the larger factories the scale is as follows: TABLE 8. — SLIDING SCALE FOR ROLLERS IN FOUR STOGY FACTORIES No. per found Rate per \oo 300 stogies 10 cents 325 " II " 350 " 12 " 375 " 13 " 400 " 13J-14 cents A higher pace with economy of material can scarcely be obtained. The girl's goal is both the highest total number of stogies each day and the highest total number cut from each pound. Every girl is kept by this double tension at her maxi- mum. That maximum means minimum cost to the firm. In one case the forewoman said to me, " Every one of my girls makes 1400 stogies a day." I asked her how that was possible, and she replied, " If she does not make 1400 a day, she is discharged." Further, premiums are given in some factories to stimulate speed. I have been told that one factory which employs 300 girls pays a biweekly premium of | .50 in four departments (long filler rolling and bunching, and scrap rolling and bunching) to the two girls in each department who have the highest total, both in the actual number of stogies made and in the number cut from each pound of tobacco. The girls whose speed and number of stogies per pound have come nearest to that of the premium girls are paid the regular rate, but the blow falls on those at the foot of the list. By an ingenious but not wholly clear process of rea- soning they are fined | .30 to | .3 5 a pound for their scrap, although this is more than the wrapper tobacco costs retail, and the scrap is by no means a total loss to the management. 86 l-l Hi H o o o < o THE STOGY INDUSTRY Without placing too much emphasis upon this instance, it is within the facts to say that the tendency in the larger factories is to stimulate the speed of the workers to a high pitch within the working day; in tenement shops as a rule there is a slower going atmosphere of taking things as they come, but working overtime at will. These differences of tension, of stock, and of natural ability must be considered, as well as rates of pay, in estimating actual output and earnings in the several branches of the trade. To begin with the lowest industrial grade: among strippers I found every variation, from the curly-haired little boy of five who could strip "zwolf Handel" a day, to the expert whose average at filler work is between 60 and 70 pounds. Tobacco is weighed after the stems are put. The filler is stripped least carefully because it is crumpled and rolled inside the other leaves. The output of one of the best filler strippers on the Hill for a week was as follows: TABLE 9. — OUTPUT OF AN EXPERT FILLER STRIPPER DURING ONE WEEK Day Pounds Monday ■ ■ 79 Tuesday . Wednesday Thursday . Friday Saturday . Daily Average ^9i 62i The general average of filler strippers is 40 to 60 pounds; the pay is $ .01^ per pound. Binder strippers turn out 30 to 50 and wrapper strippers have an average of not more than 20 pounds a day (| .80 to |i.oo). In the following schedule of an unusu- ally rapid stripper the gaps and variations in the day's work show how statements of individual high output in this trade must be discounted. Tessa with natural optimism would tell you that she could strip 34 pounds, but she reached this maximum only once. Often she fell much below 30. On days that are blank she was sent home because there was no work, and several times she had to battle with poor stock. 87 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 10. — OUTPUT OF AN EXPERT WRAPPER STRIPPER DURING FOUR WEEKS If^eek of August—. '07. Pounds IVeek of September- -. '07. Pounds Monday . Tuesday . Wednesday Thursday . Friday Saturday . ■ 33 • 33 • 3' • 31 12 Monday . Tuesday . Wednesday Thursday . Friday Saturday . 32 25 33 IVeek of September- -, '07. Pounds IVeek of September- - '07. Pounds Monday . Tuesday . Wednesday Thursday . Friday Saturday . . 19 20 ■ 31 ■ 34 Monday . Tuesday . Wednesday Thursday . Friday Saturday . 6 29 13 23 23 From these four weeks we get a daily average of 18.9 pounds, or (at the rate of | .05 per pound) $ .94. An old stogy maker who has worked with several generations of girl strippers says that not one of them can average over I5.00 a week, and that a fair estimate, counting in seasons of dull trade and of overtime, would be from I .60 to 1 .80 a day. Stripping is almost entirely in the hands of women. Of 523 strippers, only 18 were men. Of these, four were colored, two were feeble-minded, three were boys; the rest were too old to be trusted with any other work. Machine bunch makers are a step higher than the strippers. Earlier in this chapter, one kind of bunch making by machine was mentioned. Among the various types in use is a large power- driven machine operated by, two girls, who with good stock turn out 8400 bunches a day. One girl feeds the filler, and the other the binder, but the machine makes the bunches and carries them on a conveyor the length of the work table to seven rollers whom it keeps constantly supplied. Each machine girl is paid $ .17^ per 1000 bunches, or about I1.40 a day. In tenement shops is found an old-style foot machine for short filler work. The funnel is filled with scrap; the operator presses the treadle, and in so doing opens the funnel just enough to let a handful of scrap fall on the leaf to be wound about it. Incidentally a cloud of dust flies out into the room. From 3000 to 5000 bunches a THE STOGY INDUSTRY day can be made on such a foot machine, and this work is paid for at the rate of $ .03, and sometimes $ .05, per 100. Bunches for long filler work are made by hand at the rate of 1 .08 per 100 in the small shops and in many factories. With high endurance and prolonged working hours, some men can earn as much as $2.00 a day, and for this reason probably we find twice as many men bunching as rolling. In each branch of the trade, however, the number of women is greater than the number of men. A woman of moderate ability does not turn out over 1400 a day, with earnings of |i.oo to |i.2o. I learned of no woman who had reached the record of one man on the Hill, 2000 bunches. Among rollers of mold stogies who have learned their trade,* daily output varies widely because of difference in stock and in market demand, and sometimes because of high speeding one day with exhaustion the next. I have heard of one woman who made 2000 a day, but she stood alone in the experience of the boss who knew her. The consensus of opinion seems to be that 1000 is a good output for an experienced roller, and the following schedules, taken from the payroll of six experts for the same week, show a daily average of 930. According to these schedules, an ex- perienced hand can expect to earn |i.oo to I1.30 a day. In some cases, with additional night work, the girl's total income is brought up to I lo or more a week. TABLE II. — OUTPUT OF SIX EXPERT MOLD STOGY ROLLERS DURING ONE WEEK No. Lbs. No. 2 Lbs. No. 3 Lbs. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 800 400 1000 1000 1000 1200 Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1300 1400 1500 600 1000 1600 Monday Tuesday Wednesday. Thursday . Friday Saturday . 600 600 1 100 1000 1000 300 No. 4 t No. 5 No. 6 Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1400 1400 1400 1500 1500 Monday Tuesday "^ Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1300 1400 1300 1 100 Monday Tuesday Wednesday . Thursday . Friday Saturday . 400 1200 1700 500 * Each roller, when learning her trade, has the initial expense of I1.35 for tools. 89 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Trained packers at piece rates (| .07 to | .50 a 1000) turn out at the lowest rate not less than 14,000 (| .98) a day. Banding is paid at the rate of | .25 a 1000. There are so many different styles of packing stogies that there is little opportunity to acquire speed with accuracy in a single line, and pay by the week has often been found more satisfactory. Seven-tenths of the 209 girl packers earn week wages of I3.00 to |io, the large majority being paid I4.00 to $6.00 for their 56 to 60 hours' work. The hand stogy makers, with whom the trade started, are its best paid workers. On the Hill they are paid I2.00 a 1000; on the South Side, where the union influence still persists, I3.00 to I3.50, and in a very few shops I3.75 per 1000. The output of an experienced hand stogy maker at dry rolling is 1000 a day. Italian women are employed in one factory to make stogies after the Italian fashion, smearing the board with paste and carelessly rolling the leaf without finishing either end. They are paid $1.75 a 1000, and often do not make over 500 a day. The rest of the women hand stogy makers are found in small shops, work- ing with their husbands in most cases. Qjunting factory and home workers, there are not more than 56 of them altogether, as com- pared with 392 men. Turning now to the effect of hours and seasons of work on wages : in the tenement shops, as stated before, there is a decided tendency toward irregular hours, night work being optional with outside hands, but often a matter of course with the families. Half the shops which employ outsiders confessedly work at night. The largest Hill factory is open until ten p. m., but no compul- sion is exerted to keep women employes after six. As a rule, the factories work overtime only for the Christmas trade, twenty- two of them having a ten-hour day during the year. The rest, with one exception, have a working day of seven and a half hours to nine and a half. Overtime is admitted to be a failure. Com- paratively few men in the trade willingly keep their hands at night during the rush from August until December. For every night worked, poorer work is done during the day. This fact has so far won recognition that in seven factories there is no overtime at all ; in others, night work is reduced to two nights a week, or three at most. Yet since factories are run according to orders 90 THE STOGY INDUSTRY received and since dealers do not order long ahead, there comes an inevitable rush and crowding during the fall months, succeeded by utter deadness of trade in January and February. It rarely happens that a factory shuts down in the slack season, but instead the payroll is reduced materially by continuous use of bad stock. Sometimes in a week's pay strippers earn $i.oo less than when trade is normal, and rollers I1.50 less. DISTRIBUTION OF WORK This discussion of rates of pay and output in general brings us to more specific consideration of the relation of women's work to the trade. Are the women craftsmen or machine operators? Are they competing with men for the same work at the same pay or for different work at lesser pay? A graphic statement will give the best basis for an answer to these questions : TABLE 12. -DISTRIBUTION OF WORK AMONG MEN AND WOMEN IN STOGY FACTORIES 1 a. a. 1 U Q X Z < CQ u z u u 0? a: 8 ai z Q X 1 ^ 3 5 4 9 161 162 I § s ^ :5 s ^ ^ 1 ^ Sweat shops Fac-' tories Total '3 5 iS 148 357 505 88 77 .65 '47 1 185 1332 118 190 308 56 289 345 4 205 209 224 168 392 44 12 56 5 18 23 2 2 453 463 916 400 221 1 261 1 The figures show that stripping, the most mechanical and poorly paid branch of the trade, is almost exclusively in the hands of women. In team work by hand or by machine, women out- number men nearly four to one, whereas there is only one woman among seven men at hand stogy making. So far as numbers go, 91 WOMEN AND THE TRADES it is clear that the women in the stogy industry are not craftsmen. Overwhelmingly they are machine operators or engaged in pre- paration work. We have found that wage rates are general, not special according to sex. Where men and women enter the shop to- gether to do the same work, they receive the same rate of pay, and the employment of one or the other is largely a matter of chance. They are regarded in sweatshops as equally desirable, and are employed in about equal numbers — ^453 men to 400 women. The real competition is between higher skill and lesser skill, hand work and machine work, men hand stogy makers and women mold stogy makers doing work of cheaper grade for lower wages. It is in rolling and bunching that the numbers of women loom large, in considering their competition with or displacement of men. Men who do rolling and bunching are comparatively few, because as laborers they can earn more elsewhere after they have learned the ways of the country and found themselves. There are no trustworthy figures to show whether the group of hand workers has actually, as well as proportionately,* diminished, but the point on which we can be certain is that the great increase has come among the less skilled machine workers, who put out a product which by its very cheapness has a strong hold on the market. This distribution of work shows absolutely the dis- placement in the industry at Pittsburgh of men at a handicraft by women at machines. INFLUENCE OF THE TRUST AND OF UNIONS The growth of the tobacco trust in Pittsburgh is closely bound up with this change in the character of the industry. Within the last few years the Union American Cigar Company has acquired four of the largest factories in the Pittsburgh dis- trict to turn out a cheap grade of mold work, mainly for the western trade. Three of the factories use machines for rolling and bunching, and in one case stripping machines have been in- stalled. The fourth factory, where mold work is done without * The proportion of hand stogy makers to the total number of workers in the trade is i : 7.87. 92 THE STOGY INDUSTRY machines, employs 50 women and 50 men; but in the other three, all but ten of the 1025 employes are women. The impetus given by the trust to trade in machine-made goods can hardly be overestimated. Of course, back of this action is the constant demand of the consumer for a lower purchasing price, and of the investor for a lower cost of production. The apprentice system is not found fully developed in the independent factories, although most large plants will take an occasional learner. In the factories of the Union American Cigar Company, however, apprentices are regularly employed in each department, and trained for the work. A learner is given no op- portunity to become familiar with more than a single branch of the work, and her apprenticeship is mainly a speed-developing proc- ess. For the first week she receives a premium of I2.50 in addi- tion to what she earns. Each week her premium is reduced by I .25* until the tenth week, when she is supposed to be able "to make her time." It is by no means true that she can acquire high speed in rolling (unless by machine) in so short a time, but merely enough sureness of touch to warrant her being trusted on the various sorts of work. The apprentices are usually young girls not much over fourteen. They fit into pace-setting ways and in a couple of years reach their maximum output. The only active opponents of trust methods have been the labor unions, but their history in the stogy industry is in large measure characterized by ineffective action, disunion, and inter- nal quarrels. Within a single year I came across shops belonging to four different labor organizations, no one of which controlled an influential portion of the trade. The Industrial Workers of the World and the Cigar Makers' International Union were no longer represented in this trade in Pittsburgh in 1907. The National Stogy Makers, an offshoot from the Knights of Labor, have been unable to duplicate here their wonderfully successful work in Wheeling, where their boast is that "there is not a trust factory, and every stogy maker in town has his union, card." They control one Pittsburgh factory, but the other union shops are under the Knights of Labor. This latter organization has its strongest hold among German shops on the South Side which use the label, * In one case by fifty cents. 93 WOMEN AND THE TRADES although the workmen are charged with taking what wages they can get even if the rate is below the regular scale. Hand stogy makers have always been sought after most by the union. At one time a number of women mold workers were organized, but the women accepted pay below the scale from one manufacturer. Men in the shop remonstrated with the firm, and then went out on strike to force up the women's pay, but the women would not go. Meanwhile a hostile union came in and organized the shop while the old employes were striking. Since then the enthusiasm of the union for women members has waned. Five or six women still belong to the local Knights of Labor, but by the constitution of the National Stogy Makers they are definitely excluded. Among the Jewish shops every attempt at organiza- tion has failed. The rate of pay on the Hill is a third less than on the South Side, but union men have been powerless to break through the barrier of clannishness and suspicion characteristic of shifting immigrants. A third outside influence, which besides the unions and the trust organization has been brought to bear upon the industry, is the state factory law. There are no clauses having especial reference to stogy making, but this industry, like others, is affected by the general prohibition of excessive hours of work for women, and of unsanitary buildings.* That twelve hours is the maximum working day for women undoubtedly has influenced the atti- tude of the larger factories toward overtime. CONDITIONS AFFECTING HEALTH Poor lighting, overcrowding, and lack of sanitary accommo- dations are found here as in other trades. Insufficient ventila- tion in the factories of a dust-producing occupation calls for es- pecial comment. In loi factories and sweatshops, tobacco is dried in the workroom. Thirty-one of this number keep the brown leaves heaped on the floor, but 17 have racks over- head, and 53 have racks built at the side of the room. * Also of child labor. In 1907 there were ninety to one hundred children from five to twelve years old stripping tobacco in tenement sweatshops in Pitts- burgh; and double that number stripping after school. 94 THE STOGY INDUSTRY This economy of space is a source of danger to the workers. The air grows heavy from the nicotine exhaled by the mellowing leaves, and thick with the dust of pulverized scrap and brittle edges. Yet because of the uneven climate, windows are kept closed. The possibility of artificial ventilation does not seem to be recognized, and with few exceptions factories large and small are offenders against health by their lack of pure air. Tenement shops are frequently the worst offenders, but these seem to be diminishing in number. In Wheeling, the force which has been effective in preventing sweatshops has been the union. In Pittsburgh it seemS/to be the trust. Combinations among leaf growers, packers, and manufacturers had doubled the price of leaf in 1907 within the year, until a point was reached so far pro- hibitive to small dealers that twenty-four had left the trade and more had cut down the number of their employes. Yet with tenement shops eliminated, the problem of health in the stogy industry would still be unsolved. There is no conclusive evidence that disease is caused by working in tobacco, but evidence is abundant that the long hours during which the roller sits at her bench in one position, the tight closed windows, the dust sifting through the air, tend to produce diseases of throat and lungs, in many cases tuberculosis. Danger is increased by dry sweeping during working hours and often by requiring the girls to clean their own work benches. No brushes are provided, and the girls sweep the dust and scrap into each other's aprons and faces. In some factories the rollers bite the ends of their stogies instead of cutting them, but this is sharply looked after by the manage- ment. The danger of infection is increased by the custom of placing workers opposite one another to save space, instead of facing them in the same direction. The law would be strength- ened by specific legal prohibition of drying tobacco in workrooms, by more definite requirements for ventilation and for a higher minimum of air space per person. Serious as the menace of tuberculosis is, even more serious is the threat to racial vitality by the nervous exhaustion of the girl workers. The two react upon each other. I have spoken of the double tension on the stogy maker, who must cut close and at the same time have a high output. To earn the wages they wish at 95 WOMEN AND THE TRADES the rate set, the girls speed themselves; the company's sliding scale per pound of material makes that speeding tense and ex- hausting. "No girl can keep up her pace more than six years," said the manager of one large factory to me. Others put it that the girls get tired of working and do not take the same interest, while some think that the nicotine makes them sluggish. The majority admit that except for girls of the most robust physique, the tension seldom can be maintained. Cases are cited of rollers who have worked ten years (in one instance, sixteen), whose output has not diminished and whose general health has no appearance of having suffered from any nervous tension due to the work., But against these cases could be cited many where the reverse is true. Sarah Cohen, a stripper, twenty-one years old, is an instance of this. I should have thought her a woman of thirty-five. The first break in her strength came from typhoid, four years ago, but she never has been able to regain the speed which she had at sixteen. With overtime rolling, she was able at one time to earn $ 1 2 a week. She has to-day dropped behind into the stripping room of an alley sweatshop where she cannot finish in a day over fourteen pounds, at | .05 a pound. This means an income of I4.20 a week. Rose Bernstein, a slight little girl with drooping mouth and sloping shoulders, told me that in three years her output had dropped from 1000 to 700 stogies a day and that now she is losing perceptibly. Such instances are too numerous to be put aside or denied by anything short of a thorough medical inquiry as to the condition both of the girls in the trade and of those who have left it. Where there is such nervous loss its cost is not borne by the industry. Most of the girls marry at twenty or twenty-one, just at the time when their speed breaks. Some of the cost is borne by the homes into which they go. This social waste, more serious by far than the destruction of the individual, we have not yet had means of estimating. Those who know these factory workers intimately know only that in case after case the industry is taking young undeveloped girls, lifting their speed to its high- est pitch, and wearing them out. They know, too, after the gap of a few years, their unfit homes and undervitalized children. In a city where typhoid and bad housing have been general, as 96 THE STOGY INDUSTRY in Pittsburgh, it would be rash to conclude that any one thing is wholly responsible; but we may be sure beyond possibility of doubt that a trade which often causes nervous exhaustion is at least a factor. To sum up : in the large factories, the emphasis in women's work is on output rather than on craftsmanship; on a high rate of cheap production rather than on a moderate rate of superior production. The growth in numbers has come among team workers and to a large extent among workers at the machine. In the tenement shops there is less emphasis on speed and more laxity as to hours, but there are counterbalancing disadvantages of frequent night work, congested workrooms, and unsanitary as well as unventilated buildings. The brown stogy, that symbol of fellowship, social inter- course, and the good things of the leisure hours of life, has become socially a costly thing to produce. No small share of this social cost is needless waste. 97 THE NEEDLE TRADES CHAPTER VI THE GARMENT TRADES FACTORIES GARMENT making, among all the industries which have left the home and ranged themselves in the fact6ries, is perhaps of the first importance. It is impartial in the employment of men and of women, and it numbers its employes the country over among the hundreds of thousands. It has reached out and gathered one garment after another beneath the metal guides of its power sewing machines. In Pittsburgh, however, garment making has been sharply limited by circumstance. The black smoke of the mills has de- termined the scope of the industry. No Pittsburgh factory would risk the making of shirtwaists and gowns.* There remains the making of men's clothing — coats, vests, trousers, overalls, and shirts, but even here the atmosphere has curtailed the field in which the industry thrives. It is goods dark in color and coarse in material which are made up in bulk for the ready-made trade. Jeans and corduroys, overalls and coarse shirts, are the staple products of the local factories. The demand for these goods, which alone can be kept in stock in the midst of the Pittsburgh smoke without undue harm, begins at the very doors of the gar- ment factories in the vast numbers of workmen employed in the tonnage industries within a radius of two hundred and fifty miles of the city, and extends throughout the Ohio Valley. The plants in which garments are made divide themselves into factories and workshops. As a working definition for the terms as used in this chapter, the establishments which occupy buildings used only for business purposes and in which power machinery is installed will be called factories; when the shop * The work of individual dressmaliers is not considered in this study. lOI WOMEN AND THE TRADES occupies a building used also as a residence, or when although in a business building, it makes use of foot power and hand work, it will be called a workshop. The factory side of the industry concerns us first, next the workshops, their occasional degenera- tion into sweatshops, and the outwork system. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FACTORIES Garment making in factories may be thought of as a single trade in which people work at power machines, making different kinds of clothes, or it may be thought of as an aggregate of different lines of production. The several branches of the trade, such as the making of coats and vests, trousers, overalls, and shirts, are alike in much of the machinery that they use and in many of the working conditions. To some extent, however, they are different in their demands on the workers and in the specialization of machinery. As the number of factories in each division of the Pittsburgh garment industry is small, we shall think of it primarily as one trade presenting characteristics common to each of its component divisions; and indeed these similarities are more striking than the differences. As you mount the narrow staircase of a downtown overall factory and open the door, you are greeted with a roar of wheels and a quivering of the floor that bear witness to the harnessing of the sewing machine. The sewing machine itself we think of as a late development. Many among us can remember when we hailed it as a time saver, a burden bearer of our individual cares. It is just at this point that the further development has come. By the application of steam power to the sewing machine principle, work is done for the.community instead of for the individual home. The possibilities of ready-made garments, both for men and women, are increasing yearly. The demand for them, too, is increasing. More skill among the cutters, new modifications of the machines, a higher standard in the work that is turned out, suggest for this industry a growing future. As you enter the workroom, in addition to the roar of wheels and the quivering of the wooden framework, you hear the un- mistakable sound of many needles being driven through cloth. 102 THE GARMENT TRADES Breaking upon the light, steady, determined whirr of the steel, come the clamp of a button stamper and half a dozen other abrupt utterances of the power, momentarily released in some new ma- chine. The long high-ceilinged room is keyed to quick production. The power carries with it its own tenseness. The operators feel the spur and never relax. Near the door are long tables stacked high with piles of cloth just sent from the cutting room below. They are arranged in bundles so that a lot can be easily carried away by each girl to replenish the pile she has finished. Because of the seventy-five-foot distance between front and rear windows, the center of the room is dim in spite of the electric bulbs hung over each machine. The walls are dull grayish from dirt and old paint ; the floor, which is swept weekly, has thread and scraps of cloth and dust scattered about it. At each end of the room is a row of machines. The girls who are farthest from the windows use continuously the electric bulbs above their needles, and on dark days the girls at the rear must also do so; the high buildings fronting on the next street cut off a good share of their daylight. Outside are brick walls. Inside are two double rows of tense women, facing each other, and bending forward over their machines with eyes fixed on the glint and flash of the needle and the dark seam of the cloth. No girl who is incapable of concentration can stay in a garment factory. No girl who is so unambitious as not to care whether she drives her piece wages up to |6.oo a week can hold her place at the machine. Others whose needs sharpen their ambition are waiting for her place. There are young girls here, but they are not irresponsible. Like the older ones, they are eager and single minded, as they give light touch to the treadle and turn out piece after piece their dozens of garments. In numbers of firms represented, shirt making is the most important of the garment trades in Pittsburgh. Of the twenty- one factories, eight in 1907 made shirts alone, four of them as feeders for retail stores operated by the same firms, while three made both overalls and shirts. Two made overalls only and five made pants only. One made pants, coats, and vests, and one made vests only. In one factory muslin underwear was manu- factured. 103 WOMEN AND THE TRADES STRUCTURE Two factories have put up eight-story buildings to accom- modate their large stockrooms, cutting rooms, and warerooms; another firm has a six-story and another a seven-story plant. Each of nine other factories occupies an entire building, but in con- trast these buildings are usually small, not more than three stories high, and have been used indifferently for various manufacturing purposes or for warerooms. Eight factories simply rent floors or small workrooms in business buildings. Even in the larger plants, the actual manufacturing occupies only a small part of the space, With the exception, then, of the four plants first noted, the workrooms in general are small and have been adapted to their present use. Their other physical characteristics will stand out more clearly in a summary of lighting, cleanliness, and the guard- ing of machinery. TABLE 13. — PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GARMENT WORKROOMS No. of Grade Arrangement of Windows Workrooms A Large room; windows on four sides, or three sides and skylight 3 B Square room; windows on two sides .... . 3 C Long room; windows front and rear or at one end ... 13 D No windows; inadequate skyUght or dark basement windows 2 Use of Artificial Light * 21 A None; daylight sufficient . . 6 B Shaded light above machine ... 8 C Electric bulbs shining directly on needle .... 3 D Workroom dark, but no provision for artificial light 5 Cleanliness 21 A Excellent * . . . .2 B Goodt . 9 C FairJ ... .6 D Bad§ . . . . • . 4 Guards in Front of Machines 21 f A Complete protection .... ... . . o B Narrow boards in front of all machines . 10 C Narrow boards in front of some machines 3 D No guards . . 8 * Room swept daily; walls freshly painted. 21 ■f Room swept daily. J Room swept weekly. § No specified time for cleaning room; accumulated dirt on floor. 104 THE GARMENT TRADES Clearly the type of workroom most in evidence is the com- mercial loft, or the room in an old building, long and narrow, with windows at either end and the machines set toward the win- dows. Such a room is the antithesis of a factory planned on a large scale with provisions for growth and comfort. There is an element of chance about it; it means that the tenant has had to content himself with things as he found them. For a small plant comfort may be possible under such conditions, but one cannot wisely assume that a business will always remain of the same di- mensions. The row of machines will be added to until finally there are three rows of machines reaching from the two narrow windows well into the room, and so crowded together that one cannot pass between. Even if the business does not grow to this extent, this type of workroom is often at the mercy of its neigh- bors. A large building directly opposite, another one in the rear, a gradual filling up of the vacant bits of court space, and the clear ample daylight that once came in through the windows has vanished. A small square room with windows at two sides is likely to bear some of the same disadvantages, but there is always this in its favor, that light has not so far to travel from side to side of the room, and artificial lighting is less likely to be essential. Of the two garment factories that I have put in the lowest grade structurally, one is a shirt factory on the third floor of a small building. There are two windows at one end which is partitioned off and used as the oifice, so that no light reaches the rest of the room. Two-thirds of the remaining air space is taken up by piles of cloth, made-up stock, and so on. The machines are stationed at the dark farther end, lighted only by a small and very dim skylight just above them. Artificial light is imperative here, and ventilation is almost impossible. Take out of the cubic air space in the room the bulk of the piles of material, and less than the legal minimum per person remains. There is a wholesome hatred of this place among the employes, and its reputation among garment workers is far reaching. The other factory is practically a cellar: over two-thirds of the workroom is below ground. Light comes from small basement windows in the rear. In the front are only the house wall and the 105 WOMEN AND THE TRADES furnace. The machines are near the back, where the windows are, and the Hght, although never bright, is nearly sufficient on a clear day. When the weather is dark outside, it is difficult to see how the eight girls employed manage to do their work at all. The place has a dry floor and is thoroughly clean, but even so, with its eight-foot ceiling and imperfect light, it cannot be ade- quately ventilated and healthful. At the time of my visit the proprietor stated that it was a temporary expedient, but the room had been in use for a number of months and there was little prob- ability of change before the season of summer heat. On the contrary, when a business has become so well estab- lished that the management can venture to plan large, and to build a. garment factory, as such, there is better promise of work- rooms arranged on lines of comfort and efficiency. The trade in Pittsburgh is fortunate in having two new and excellently planned factory buildings, one for the manufacture of stock shirts and one for coats, vests, and pants, neither one of which has as yet reached its maximum capacity for output. In these it has be- come possible to develop a better type of workroom. There is not the same menace of encroachment by neighboring buildings. The ceilings are fourteen feet high. Light comes from all sides through large windows set close together along the wall, and in addition there are skylights with shades adjusted. ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING AND CLEANLINESS Turning now to the next category in the schedule, — ar- rangements for artificial light, — it is noteworthy that only two factories use the method of fastening unshaded electric bulbs to the individual machines. By this method, the glare falls directly on the needle and is reflected back into the eyes of the operator, causing serious eyestrain. In the other eight factories which provide electric lights, the bulbs are hung above the machines and usually are covered with a green shade. This method of lighting offers this advantage, that a bright steady light is thrown on the work and not in the eyes of the worker. Eleven factories have no artificial light. This does not mean that in these eleven factories the workrooms are flooded with 1 06 THE GARMENT TRADES daylight; on the contrary, in five cases the reverse is true. Manu- facturers of stock or custom goods for discriminating customers must provide sufficient Hght for their employes so that the work will be turned out well, but when the articles manufactured are of cheap quality the standard of finish is low, and light in the work- room becomes of less importance. In the former case daylight or well-planned artificial lighting has a commercial value; in the latter case its value is considerably lowered. That this kind of economy results in eyestrain among the employes does not go down on the ledger of the business. Sunlight and cleanliness are nearly parallel in the extent of their effect on health, and in a garment factory both are important. The goods are dusty, lint sifts to the floor, strips of cloth and threads fall from the machines, all becoming nuclei for the accumulation of dirt. In the schedule I have called two shops "excellent." This means not simply absence of dirt, but a mani- fest cleanliness, occasional lanes of sunlight through the windows, the movement of fresh air, newly white-washed walls and ceil- ings, a floor that is scrubbed as well as swept. Nine other shops are "good." While they have not the newness and freshness of these two, they are swept daily and are free from accumulation of dirt; the management has a standard as to workroom condi- tions. In other shops, where conditions are not so good, there are weekly sweepings. This does not mean cleanliness. It means that the management has either failed to realize the quantity of dust produced by a score of power sewing machines running at full speed through an eight- or ten-hour working day, or else has failed to assume responsibility for meeting the situation. In four cases the best that can be said is that cleanliness is absent. Scattered about the floor are undisturbed accumulations of rub- bish, and the lighting is so poor that there can be no possible dis- infection by sunshine. One-fifth of the garment factories show such evidences of neglect. GUARDING OF MACHINERY Adequate guarding of machinery is no less important a factor in work environment in trades where power is used. In 107 WOMEN AND THE TRADES the garment trade there is obviously not the danger of serious accident that there is in many others, but the notices posted by cautious employers are significant. The machinery of immediate interest is the row of power sewing machines connected about six inches from the floor by a revolving shafting to which small wheels are attached at intervals. As the girl sits at her work, her skirts may catch in the wheels of the shafting. This is guarded against by a narrow board so placed in front of the shafting that while the girl is occupied in sewing there is very little likelihood of accident. Whether or not such protection is complete, it puts the maximum probability on the side of safety. It does not prevent a girl from stooping under her machine to pick up a spool and having her hair caught in the wheel. This recently happened to a girl who was partly scalped and badly cut about the head. Her employer ascribed the cause of the accident to her carelessness. Undoubtedly it was due to her carelessness. "Carelessness," however, is not an ultimate cause, but a re- sultant from any one of a multitude of things, one of which is the haste and disregard of personal risk resulting almost inevitably from a piece-work system. I have seen a girl stoop down and slip into its place on a rapidly revolving wheel the belt- ing which had become loosened. Had she been hurt, the accident, judging from past instances, would have been characterized as carelessness. Yet the machine was totally without protective devices. In eight factories out of the twenty-one, when I visited them in 1907, no skirt board was provided. Some employers were apparently ignorant that it is necessary, and obviously the state factory inspection department had failed to demand it. Other employers attempted to shift the responsibility for accidents to their employes. One man, for instance, who employed ninety girls, had placed this placard on the wall : " Girls must not work at any machine without board over shaft." On the day of my visit half the girls had been laid off, but of the remaining forty-five, there were twelve girls at one side of the room working at un- guarded machines. The other side of the room was so much in the dark and crowded with girls that I could not count how many machines were guarded. Ordinarily, in the other factories skirt 108 THE GARMENT TRADES guards are attached to the machines, although a guard is occa- sionally missing. Ventilation in garment factories has been impossible to tabulate. There are no systems of forced ventilation in use in these Pittsburgh factories, and in the absence of such definite provision for fresh air, the quality of the air is a matter of degree rather than of kind. The need for ventilation in this industry is especially urgent. The materials are full of lint and dust, the workrooms are often crowded, and the operators are bent for eight or nine hours daily over their machines. Windows are un- reliable as a source of fresh air, because they create a draft. Some- times, of course, the windows are opened, and sometimes the ceil- ings are high, but even so the atmosphere in these rooms is often heavy and unsafe to breathe. In one workroom, by way of con- trast, the upper parts of the windows are opened systematically at intervals, and in this workroom in which there are windows on three sides the quality of the air is noticeably good. In summing up the physical characteristics of garment workrooms, I find it impossible to say categorically that so many are good, so many are fair, so many are bad. I remember one as intolerably and inexcusably bad on all counts; another as showing care in arrangement, a general excellence at every point far beyond what is required by the law or even by the common standards of the industry. Of most of the factories it can be said that they have some good and some bad qualities, according as the managers have been able actually to plan their workrooms for garment making, and as they have reckoned with the commercial value of a healthy and contented working force. SYSTEM OF WORK What work falls to the men and what to the women in these workrooms next concerns us, and how the women's work is sub- divided into minor tasks. The factory trade at its height in 1907 engaged 1006 persons in the twenty plants. One hundred and thirty-eight of these were men and 868 women, a proportion of one to six (6.2) in favor of women workers. Leaving the cutting rooms to men, contesting in part for the pressing departments, 109 WOMEN AND THE TRADES women have in their own hands the work of garment making by the entire garment system, or, under the section system, the oper- ating of single-needle and special machines. These divisions will have more meaning as I take them up one by one. The cutters arrange the cloth, and in large factories some- times cut through thirty-two ply at a time with their electric knives. Their work, which is the best paid of any occupation in the trade, requires knowledge of material, judgment in the lay- out of the cloth, and some muscular strength in the use of the knife — qualities not generally possessed by the women employes. Assistant cutters sometimes make as little as |i2 a week. In time, however, as they are given responsibility, they can earn from |20 to $30. In the muslin underwear factory, where a coarse grade of goods is made, the forewoman does the cutting. Another woman cutter is in a small shirt factory, where she acts as assistant to the proprietor, who himself does the more important cutting. At one time the assistant was a girl who had been trained in an eastern factory, and who earned I14. Now the employe is an inexperienced girl who cuts out cuffs and collars under direction by the use of brass forms, and who is paid I7.50 a week. With these minor exceptions, all the cutting of garments is done by men. Where vests are made also the men have the main part of the work to do, and you see the immigrant of not many years back cutting and pressing and machining the entire garment, with women compatriots to help at the finishing. Men of this type, however, are found more generally in the smaller factories and in the workshops. In Pittsburgh most of the gar- ment factory employes are "genuine Americans," they will tell you, and they have learned much of their power to bargain since the days when the trade was of less importance. Indeed, it is common report that a few years ago men were kept at work ma- chining for eighteen hours at a stretch and were even locked in until the boss was willing to let them go. That was before the union was started and before the workers had really found themselves. Three of the largest shops have now signed trade agreements with the union which has brought about a reduction of hours to nine daily, with a half day Saturday, and has increased the wages of week workers I2.00 a week. The cutters have organized a sepa- IIO THE GARMENT TRADES rate local, but they cooperate with the other local in helping Americanize newcomers and in getting them out of the sweating work and into the factories. The pressing department, on the contrary, is a contested field between men and women. Pressers have charge of shrink- ing cloth goods, and, following this, of seam pressing and garment pressing. Frequently new hands are given only seam pressing to do until they are familiar with the work. Although electric irons are sometimes used, in Pittsburgh gas irons are more usual. As contestants for this work, men have the advantage in muscular strength, women in the cheapness of their labor. The fine custom work is done almost entirely by men. Sometimes heavier irons are used for work of this kind, and invariably more care and experience are needed in handling the goods than when the work is of cheaper grade. As the quality of the work cheapens, women tend to enter the pressing department. In three factories where men's suits are made, both men and women pressers are employed, the men for the better grade of work and the women for the in- ferior grade. For the same kind of occupation on a different grade of material men are paid |i6 a week and women $6.00 to $7.00. In another similar factory women do all the pressing on goods of all grades. Seam pressers start at $4.50 a week, and in time may work up to |io or |ii. Although men in the department assert that women have not strength for the work, it does not appear in four out of the five pants factories, for instance, that the cheaper material -on which women are employed is in reality any lighter than the goods the men handle. Twenty-six of the thirty-seven women pressers in the trade are employed on work of this kind, apparently for the sole reason that it requires less skill and can be done by cheaper labor. In shirt and overall factories the situation is somewhat differ- ent. Most of the shirts are laundered outside the factory, and only a few pressers are needed for inside work. Unquestionably, too, the work is light, the irons are easily handled, and the degree of skill required is less than in pressing fine custom suits. In consequence women have full possession of the department in plants where articles of this kind are manufactured. Four shirt or overall factories employ six women pressers, the largest shirt III WOMEN AND THE TRADES factory employing three women pressers, and the others one each. The muslin underwear factory employs five women pressers. OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN More important numerically than this contested field are the various occupations held solely by women. The basis of all later specialization is the single-needle, power-driven machine, which still sews most of the seams and puts together most parts of the garments. A touch of the treadle starts the machine and no further foot motion is involved. Of the 591 women engaged at single-needle work at the time of the investigation, 205 (34.6 per cent) worked by the entire garment system; that is, each girl did all the work on one garment that can be done by a machine of this kind. Each factory, of course, must have a few special machines for buttonholing, button sewing, or clamping. The entire garment system is of advantage to the girl in that it equips her to do different kinds of work if she changes her position, and makes it less difficult for her to fit into another place. It is of advantage to the factory in that it places emphasis on accurate work rather than on speed. It is quite as likely to be used in large factories where 160 hands are employed, as in small factories where there are only eight operators, and is found quite as fre- quently in one line of the industry as in another. The experience of each shop decides the owners on the plan of work most profit- able. Yet, although no one line of manufacture shows a distinct tendency toward the adoption of the section system, certain in- dividual plants have abandoned the entire garment system in its favor. Sixty-five per cent of the factories, and of the opera- tors in fact, did only section work in 1907. Undeniably speed is gained by minimizing the work done on a garment by an indi- vidual, and where inspection is thorough, this speed is not gained at the expense of accuracy. Since the system is used by a majority of the factories and a majority of the operators, it probably secures the highest output efficiency. The section system may perhaps be understood best through some specific cases. In one shirt factory one operator makes the 112 THE GARMENT TRADES bosoms, one the cuffs and neckband, and one seams and closes the shirt. This latter is the best paying work here, but in another shirt factory nearby the best girls do the trimming; that is, make the cuffs, neckbands, and bands for the bosom. In a pants fac- tory, the division of work on the cheaper grade of goods is as fol- lows : ( I ) making fronts and putting in pockets ; (2) joining seams ; (3) hemming bottoms; (4) putting canvas in and belt on; (5) putting in curtains (hand work). The best grade of goods is made in three sections only, and belt and canvas as well as cur- tains are put in by hand. After the single-needle work has been done, some sections of the garment must be finished on special machines. The num- ber of these machines varies according to the kind of work and the size of the shop, but in all cases there are only two distinct principles of operation. Either a touch of the treadle releases the power and starts the machine, — as in machines for buttonholing, button sewing, tacking (for ends of pockets), serging edges of seams, and all double-needle work, — or the work is done without power by forceful pressure of the treadle. Everything that must be clamped in place, such as hooks and eyes, buttons for overalls, and so forth, is clamped by a machine operated on this second principle. Often it is necessary to have three or four different machines for different kinds of buttons, and in a small shop one operator may run several of the "specials"; but in the large shops there is a girl for each machine. Except in a few custom shirt workrooms, button-sewing machines are universal. The operation is so simple that the machine is often run by a young girl. The button is inserted in the jaws of the machine, the garment is fastened in place, and by a touch of the treadle the needle moves rapidly back and forth until the button is firmly fastened. Chief among the "specials," however, is the double-needle machine. This is of two kinds, either a "flat-bed," set in the table like any of the single needles, or a "cylinder," standing out from the table and made so that the arm or leg of a garment may be passed over it. The cylinder double needle is used for closing the sleeves of shirts or for the long inner seams in overalls. The flat-bed, which is somewhat less in evidence, is used in the larger 8 113 WOMEN AND THE TRADES factories for putting in sleeves. The advantages of the machine are, of course, that a double seam can be made by one operation, and that there is saving both in time and in number of employes. The operator is an expert hand, and among the best paid girls in the factory. But even quite large shops do not use more than one or two machines, and the very largest uses only eight, so the demand for operators is relatively small. In pants factories, double needles are not required. As a vacancy at this work is usually filled by the forewoman until one of the other hands can be trained, it follows that a skilled girl would not have many opportunities for employment. Buttonholing is now done by machine much more generally than it was two years ago, as improvements have been introduced which make it possible to operate without injury even to very fine material. Buttonholes are worked by hand only at the re- quest of the customer. Many manufacturers do not consider the hand buttonholes more desirable even for the best grade of custom shirts; while for trousers or other cloth goods they are not used at all. By the introduction of a control for the knife in a button- hole machine, it has become possible so to regulate it that the cloth is not cut until the operator wishes, the value of this being that if the thread tangles, or there is any other imperfection of finish, the buttonhole can be remade before any cutting is done. HAND FINISHING With these machines in use there is less occasion for ex- tensive hand finishing of shirts, which formerly led to so much outwork. Even manufacturers for the most exclusive trade use machines for much of their work and have the rest hand-done inside. Similarly, the hand finishing necessary for pants has been greatly reduced, and the five plants where hand finishing is needed at all are so organized that finishing is done within the factory. There were in 1907, 87 inside finishers in the trade, 74 of them at work on pants, putting in curtains, loops, and sometimes belts and canvas. In the union shops finishing is a recognized part of the manufacturing process, and as such has 114 THE GARMENT TRADES the scale of prices regulated and fixed, so that possible earnings may run as high as $io. In the non-union pants factories, finish- ers, who earn at most $4.00 to $8.00 a week, do not fare so well. Coats and vests require more hand work, but there are only two factories of any size where they are made. Other manufacturers who deal in them give out the contract to some one of the small tailor shops on Smithfield Street, or Sixth Street, where in most cases, although the work is done on the premises, the conditions are anything but desirable. In shirt factories expert hand workers of buttonholes rarely succeed in earning over $5.00 or $6.00. In one case, where in addi- tion to the buttonholes the customer's initials have to be embroid- ered on each shirt, the income of these girls with their unmarket- able skill does not average over |8.oo a week the year round. Clearly, the demand for hand finishing is waning, and in cases where it still seems an integral part of the work, it is being sys- tematized and brought under factory control. Most factories employ examiners or inspectors to pass upon the complete articles, as a check to possible carelessness. Some- times this is held not as a separate position, but in conjunction with other work, and it rarely commands such wages as can be obtained by expert machine hands. In shirt factories, articles after being laundered are re-inspected. Trimmers, folders and boxers are among the other employes in this department. The trimmer's duty is to clip the threads left long by the operators. She is usually a young girl paid by the day, $ .65 or 1 .70, but in one place the forewoman has developed a different system. Instead of four trimmers at day rates, there is now but one, who is paid by the piece and earns as much as I9.50 a week. The girls at the machines were raised $ .01 on their work and encouraged to clip their ends more closely, so that they too are able to earn more. WAGES Although some departments in nearly all factories are paid by time, the piece-payment system is far more prevalent. Time payments are, of course, necessary for folders, trimmers, boxers, and examiners; frequently, also, the same system proves most •'5 WOMEN AND THE TRADES convenient for pressers, and, when the kind of work constantly changes, for buttonhole operators and button sewers. Two fac- tories, however, both small and both making custom shirts, pay all their employes by the week. In one there are only two girls and each does several kinds of work, so that a calculation of piece rates would be almost impossible. In the other, where nine girls are employed, section work is the rule, but so much attention is paid to finish that the firm prefers to pay by the week, and to raise wages when good work is turned out rapidly, rather than to put the emphasis primarily on speed. Under the piece-payment system in the other factories, checks upon carelessness, such as inspection, and the rule that girls must remake bad work with- out pay, are relied on to keep the output up to standard. One employer summarized the disadvantages of each plan after this fashion: "Piece-work girls are apt to hurry," he said, "and to set the machine for long stitches in order to get out more work; but, on the other hand, week workers are likely to be lazy and have to be watched constantly. " On the whole, the piece-work system with inspection seemed to him more efficient. By requiring a mmimum output from each section, and by keeping after hours any section that is behind with its work, he has secured a record for high speeding. There is little advantage in giving in detail the various piece rates on which wages are based. For the different qualities of goods, for the different articles, and for the different sections of each article, there are special rates. One garment may be much easier to do than another apparently like it, and often a higher wage is earned on a piece of goods that is easy to handle than on the same section of heavy goods, for which a higher rate is paid. The points to be noted are the possible range of wages* between slow workers and fast workers, the sums earned by the majority, and the pressure brought to bear upon them in getting out their work. A summary of the payrolls of a few typical factories may serve to illustrate these points: *For range of wages in each garment factory see Appendix B, p. 389, Table 46. 116 THE GARMENT TRADES TABLE 14. — payroll: FACTORY NO. I. ARTICLE MANUFACTURED; PANTS Number of Employes: Men, 15; Women, 70. Total, 85. Occupations of IVomen No. of IVomen Weekly Wages (piece system) Minimum Maximum Majority Single-needle operators Specials Buttonhole Button stamping . Button sewing Serging edges of seams Pressers Seam presser Shrinker . Others Examiners . Hand finishers 28 3 5.00 6.00 4.00 (wk.) 4.00 $9.00 7.00 4.00 (wk.) 6.00 7.50 6.00 7.00 7.00 8.00 (wk.) 8.00 $7.00 6.00 Factory No. i is a non-union shop in which the wages were reduced by a 15 per cent cut during the business depression in 1 907- 1 908. For the next summary, one of the large union shops has been taken: TABLE 15. — payroll: FACTORY NO. 2. ARTICLES MANUFACTURED: PANTS, COATS, AND VESTS Number of Employes: Men, 65; Women, 95. Total, 160. Occupations of IVomen No. of IVomen Weekly Wages (piece system) Minimum Maximum Majority Single-needle operators (pants and coats) Specials (several machines op- erated by one girl) . Pressers .... Hand finishers (pants) (coats) Vest makers (each worker does all work on vest, even to the pressing) .... Examiners 76 2 4 7 3 2 $6.00 5.00 (wk.) 8.00 7.00 7.00 8.00 5.00 $12.00 8.00 (wk.) 11.00 10.00 10.00 1 1. 00 8.00 ?Q.OO 10.00 8.00 8.00 10.00 117 WOMEN AND THE TRADES The scheme of work and wages in one of the overall factories* is shown in the next schedule (Factory No. 3). This is in a part of the city where there are few competing industries. Most of the girls live in the neighborhood and accept a slightly lower wage because of the convenient location which enables them to save carfare. An interesting thing about this plant set on the slope of a hill is that it was originally built for a school-house, and the machine hands have inherited the fine square rooms, lighted by high windows, and in summer the free sweep of air to lessen the burden of long hours. TABLE 16. — payroll: FACTORY NO. 3. ARTICLE MANUFACTURED: OVERALLS Number of Employes: Men, 2; Women, 38. Total, 40. No. of IVomen Weekly Wages (piece system) Occupations of IVomen Minimum Maximum Majority Single-needle operators Specials .... Double-needle operators Buttonhole machine Button-sewing machine Presser and folder 32 3 I I 1 $5.00 8.00 18.00 12.00 7.00 (wk.) 4.50 (wk.) 5.50 (wk.) ?7.oo 9.00 The advantage which double-needle girls have over their co- workers in this factory is true of the other overall factories. When a girl once has the knack of the machine, she can easily bring her pace to a pitch which totals a good sum weekly. The long seams closing the legs and the short seam across the back are paid for in union shops at the rate of | .09 a dozen. In one place, the present operator, who is not an experienced girl, is able already to make twenty dozen (|i.8o) a day, and her predecessor earned, as a rule, $2.70, the pay for thirty dozens. The schedules of one small shirt factory with a custom trade, and of a large one which manufactures goods for stock, will fairly * In this factory, the entire garment is made by one girl, except special machinmg and pressing. Non-union. 118 No section work. THE GARMENT TRADES give the range of possibilities in this branch of the industry. The smaller of the two follows: TABLE 17. — PAVROLL: FACTORY NO. 4. ARTICLES MANUFACTURED: SHIRTS (custom AND STOCK) Number of Employes: Men, i; Women, 9. Total, 10. No. of tVomen Weekly Wages (time system) Occupations of IVomen Minimum Maximum Majority Single-needle operators 5 I7.00 In.oo $9.00 Specials Buttonhole machine oper- ators I 7.00 Hand finishing (fine em- broidering of initials) . 3 5.50 6.50. In this factory, where wages are paid by time instead of by piece, the gross sum does not vary greatly from that earned by piece workers. Yet there is not that nervous intensity which char- acterizes the face and manner of the garment worker. Stress is laid on quality of output rather than on speed, wages are secure whether material is good or bad, and a girl is not so much at the mercy of the whims or favoritism of the forewoman in her depart- ment. The complaints of some girls on this score in the other factories give evidence that there is often genuine ground for ill feeling. The last of these schedules (see page 1 20) is for the largest of the shirt factories, whose building and equipment are in many respects model, and whose management is notable for small courtesies toward its workers. Here the forewoman finds that there are always half a dozen girls who earn $13 or I14, and below them about twenty others earning |io to|i2. The per cent earning |io or over is remark- ably high, but the girls have no reason to fear having their wages cut if they make too much. They have been allowed to share in the firm's progress. For instance, when a few years ago new buttonhole machines were introduced which could do the work formerly done by four machines, the operators, each of whom was 119 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 1 8. — payroll: FACTORY NO. 5. ARTICLE MANUFACTURED: SHIRTS (stock) Number of Employes: Men, 5; Women, 75. Total, 80. No.of Weekly Wages (piece system) Occupations 0/ IVomen Minimum Maximum Majority Single-needle operators . 5' I5.00 $15.00 18.00 Specials Double-needle, flat bed 4 6.00 12.00 7.00 Double-needle, cylinder 4 6.00 12.00 7.00 \ Buttonhole .... 3 5.00 15.00 Button-sewing 1 2 5.00 6.50 Examiners 4 6.50 (wk.) 1 1. 00 Pressers 3 4.50 (wk.) 10.00 Trimmer . . . . 1 9.50 Folder 2 6.00 (wk.) Boxer I 6.00 (wk.) turning out at the new machine a third more work, were paid at the same piece rate as before and consequently were able to earn much higher wages weekly. A less far-sighted firm would im- mediately have cut the rate. The members of this firm, however, feel that some of the profit from a new invention should go to the girls as well as to them. Much has been gained for the girls, too, through the influence of the forewoman, who takes more than a commercial interest in her charges. " I see them more hours than their mothers do," she says, "and I want these hours to count for as much as possible to them." The foregoing tables illustrate the wages that can be earned at special machines, as well as at single needles. Clearly, among specials the double-needle operators are in a class by themselves with an earning capacity of I4.00 to $5.00 a week more than the operators of buttonhole, button-sewing, or button-stamping ma- chines. Whereas these others earn for the most part $4.00 to I7.00 a week, the button stampers being paid the least, double- needle operators can earn as much as |i2. This rate of earnings is exceeded only in one instance among specials, by a buttonhole operator who makes I15 a week. This case, however, is excep- tional, and in general it may be said that the double-needle opera- tors earn the highest wages obtainable at special work. 120 THE GARMENT TRADES As the single-needle operators are much more numerous than the specials, and as their occupation is really the determining characteristic of the trade, a detailed summary of the wages paid them in each of the Pittsburgh garment factories may be of interest : TABLE 19.- -RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES OF SINGLE-NEEDLE OPERATORS No. of Plant Article Manufactured No. Single- needle Weekly Wages Operators Minimum Maximum Majority 1 Shirts .... >5 $6.00 1 1 2.00 $7.00 2 Pants .... 114 4.00 14.00 9.00 3 Muslin underwear 34 4.00 10.00 7.00 4 Shirts .... 10.00* 5 Shirts 3 8^00 10.00 8.00 6 Overalls 15 1.00 12.00 8.00 7 Shirts . 24 6.00 8.00 8.00 8 Shirts and overalls 39 4.00 12.00 8.00 9 Pants . 37 3.00 12.00 8.00 10 Overalls 34 5.00 8.00 7.00 1 1 Pants 6 3.00 Q.OO 7.00 12 Pants . 28 4.00 6.00 9.00 7.00 13 Shirts and overalls 26 10.00 8.00 '4 Shirts and overalls 75 6.00 10.50 7.00 ■ 5 Shirts 5 7.00* I 1 .00* 16 Pants . 10 4.00 Q.OO 8.00 17 Pants, coats, and vests . 49 7.00 12.00 9.00 18 Shirts . 18 7.00 14.00 10.00 19 Shirts . 51 5.00 15.00 8.00 20 Vests t . . . . 21 Shirts 7 6.50 12.00 8.00 * Time wages. t Women do only hand finishing. It is evident from this table that earnings vary less accord- ing to the article manufactured than according to the policy of individual shops. The majority of the operators reach the same point, I7.00 to $8.00 a week. In shops 2 and 16 which are the largest in this local of the United Garment Workers, they have reached a higher point, $9.00 a week. Shop 17, however, which is non-union, has the highest majority earnings; the policy of the firm has brought more upward pressure to bear on the wage- scale than could a delegation of union representatives. Yet this 121 WOMEN AND THE TRADES case is exceptional, and for the trade as a whole it seems a fair inference that the union has been able slightly to raise the general level of wages. HOURS AND SEASONS The longest regular working day in any of the factories is nine hours and a half; this obtains in one of the unorganized pants factories. In seven other factories the hours run from nine to nine and a quarter daily. In 60 per cent of the factories, however, the working hours daily are less than nine. The characteristic working day in the trade is comparatively short. Sometimes overtime occurs as a matter of individual policy. One proprietor, for instance, requires a stated minimum number of pieces to be produced daily by each section of his factory work- ers. If the girls in one section fall behind in their output, they are obliged to stay after hours and finish. This system in reality operates to secure from each section the maximum output, rather than a minimum to which all can without too great effort attain. Under the same circumstances in other firms the situation is handled not by requiring the belated section to stay, but by giving some of its work to a more advanced section, so that by the closing hour all the employes may have completed the desired amount. The exaggerated alternation of slack and busy seasons in garment factories has become almost proverbial, but in this respect the trade in Pittsburgh, by its stability, is distinguished markedly from the same trade as carried on in the east. Not one of the Pittsburgh firms depends for its success on goods made of ex- pensive materials. Although garments of good quality are made to some extent, and although in the demand for them there is some fluctuation, the staple articles of manufacture are railroad jumpers and workingmen's jeans. Since the kind of clothing worn by workmen in the Pittsburgh district varies but little from season to season, the rough goods are put on the market steadily without reference to seasonal change. The probable demand for these goods can be calculated from year to year, and production so distributed that the workers are steadily employed. Save for three days' stock-taking the first of the year, the pants 122 THE GARMENT TRADES factories and all the overall factories except one have steady work the year round. There is no off season in which they can shut down and lay oflf their hands. One overall factory closes for two weeks in summer. Seasonal overtime occurs occasionally in several lines of the trade. The pants manufacturers who supply the local ready- made trade in medium and high-class goods sometimes have night work as orders come in during the fall and winter. The largest of these firms works overtime until nine o'clock for three months in the fall. Another which had the heaviest record for overtime work in 1907, worked two, three, and four nights a week from Sep- tember to March, at times reaching a working week of sixty-six hours. The vest factories have four months of night work during the winter, and when times are prosperous, the custom shirt factories have two months of night work in the fall. Yet, taking the trade as a whole, overtime is exceptional in Pittsburgh, and in some of the most important plants, where only cheap goods are manufactured, it is never required. Individual propri- etors freely express their disapproval of the practice. For in- stance, one man who runs a small shop for the ready-made trade said on this point, "No, we never have overtime. Nine hours is enough for the girls and they can't stand it if we keep them at it any longer than that. The work is hard enough for all day, but at night it is too much." Thus, just as overtime in a majority of the garment trades in Pittsburgh has been minimized, so the slack season, because of this balancing influence of a steady trade in cheap goods, has been largely obviated. The making of custom shirts and of the finer grade of stock shirts, however, is more subject to seasonal varia- tion and sensitive to changes in the money market. Seasonal change is of less importance than change in general business pros- perity. In summer, because customers are away, the trade is always dull and the girls may be laid off for from two weeks to three months, although usually this summer cessation of work, which is ordered whenever the demand for work fails, is not for more than three or four weeks. Changes in business prosperity, on the other hand, may occur at any time, and with any dullness or insecurity of the market the volume of business in the shirt 123 WOMEN AND THE TRADES factories instantly shrinks and the giris are threatened with a period of idleness. During the depression in igoynaS one-fourth of the women in the trade were laid off, and others were kept only on part time. This represented an exceptional condition, how- ever, and cannot rightly be compared with years more nearly normal. But the making of custom shirts engages only a small frac- tion, less than 7 per cent, of the women in the Pittsburgh trade. The representative line of garment making — cheap jeans and rail- road jumpers — ^is subject to none of these vicissitudes, and of the trade as a whole it may be said that few plants require overtime, slack time is almost unknown, and work in general is steady the year round. SUMMARY OF TRADE CONDITIONS The final point to be noted about a trade is the personnel of the workers in it, for through them often may be made the clear- est estimate of its opportunities. Some of the women in garment factories are Jewish; others are native born of Irish or German stock. Almost no Italians have come into the trade. One man prefers Jewish girls because they make the quickest workers. "Italians marry too young," he says; "one no sooner teaches them the work than they leave to get married, and we want girls who will stay with us a few years at least." In seven factories none but Jewish girls are employed. Other employers object to them, especially to immigrant Jewish girls, because "they don't take to the work as well as American girls; they're not used to factories and they complain about the work being hard." In five factories Americans and Jews are employed in equal numbers, and in the rest the majority of the girls are American. They are not of the shifting type, who go from factory to factory, from one kind of work to another. They have a trade, and they stay at it. A girl with a grievance has always the possi- bility of obtaining work with some other firm; yet these girls are far less hasty in parting with a place than are others in occupations that demand less skill. There is no room for one who will not work hard, and who does not keep up to a certain minimum pace. 124 THE GARMENT TRADES Repeatedly one hears the statement, " If a girl can't make |6.oo a week, we don't want her. Her place at the machine is worth more than she is." From among the hosts of applicants and trial hands, there are sifted out the quick, steady girls with a capacity for concentration and endurance. The type is fundamentally good, but some years of the work seem to make the girls thin and nervous. Few leave the trade in less than two years; many are engaged at it for six or seven years, and some for more. They stand the work, as a rule, without any slackening of their pace. "Of course, they are tired," said one forewoman, "but no more so at this than they would be at any other thing." One manager who has had longer experience does not altogether agree with the foregoing. He manufactures pants; has worked at a machine himself, he says, and knows that it is hard. "A girl might work for I5.00 or |6.oo a week all her life and stand it, but when it comes to earning |8.oo, that wears her out. Many a time an ambitious foreign girl has come over here, only to be worn out and have to drop the trade after three years; the pace is too high." That one hears less testimony of this sort in the larger shops is no doubt due to the fact that mere numbers are a screen to the wearier ones, and that they may drop out with little comment in the course of the year's work. Among these girls, sifted out for speed and endurance as they are, the life outside the workroom is in part determined by nationality. Girls of American stock with few exceptions live with their parents, and their earnings are a contribution to the family income. Not less than 38 per cent* of the women garment workers, however, are boarding with strangers. Most of these homeless girls are Jewish, of foreign origin. They have left their families in the old country, and through agencies of their race, have gradually come into the trade. Their problem is distinctly different from that of the girl who is one of a family group. In most cases they must learn the trade here and manage to live either on savings or by the help of others, until they have worked up to a good weekly income. Past experiences of girls who came to a factory with no * This percentage is based on the statements of forewomen in each of the 21 garment shops. 125 WOMEN AND THE TRADES intention of learning the trade, took their week's wages and left, have made employers cautious in paying apprentices. The larger factories will take apprentices; the others want experienced girls. From four employers only may a beginner look for payment by the week while she learns. Elsewhere, the beginner is paid what she makes and she must shoulder the disappointment of having earned a dollar after a week's work, if she wants to keep on and in time earn more. Estimates vary as to how long it will take her. "After a week or so, she ought to know how to run the machine," says one employer, but the forewoman says, "four months at the very least, before she can earn good wages, and often six months." Theory may be acquired in a week, but not dexterity. It is of interest to know that in the factory with the largest proportion of foreign Jewish girls, apprentices are paid weekly instead of by the piece from the start. In view of the large number who are here without family connections, it is significant that practically none who stay at their work earn less than $6.00 a week, and that half of these earn over $7.00. 126 CHAPTER VII THE GARMENT TRADES THE SMALL SHOPS AND OUTWORK THE factory trade where goods are made by the hundred dozen would seem to be easily marked off for study. But when we come to consider its ramifications, we realize how verily rootlike it has grown, now here, now there, through a chain of small tailor shops in lofts and stores, out to women in their homes in the Hill district, in the slums of the North Side among the coal hills of Carrick, and as far as Millvale and Grafton. With the exception of custom shirts, most of the garments made up in factories are "ready made"; that is, they are turned out in wholesale quantities after patterns in stock sizes. Some of these factories which sell entire suits, make up in their own workrooms perhaps only one of the parts which go into the suits. This leads to the further puzzle of workrooms to all outward appearance factories, in which no manufacturing whatever is carried on save the cutting of cloth, but from which finished garments are turned out each week by the hundreds. We may sum up our queries and deal with them one by one: When a pants factory undertakes to handle orders for whole suits, where and how are the coats and vests made ? How is the custom work of the city handled? Where are garments made and finished for the workrooms in which there is no machine equipment, and in which cutting only is done? When thousands of orders for suits are handled by a pants factory, the genesis of vests and coats is to be found in Smithfield Street, Sixth Street, and on Liberty Avenue. A factory that is not equipped to make coats and vests gives the order to a small shop in the neighborhood. The contract system, as known in the seaboard cities, 127 WOMEN AND THE TRADES does not exist in Pittsburgh. We do not find here a chief contractor who gets the order from the factory, cutting out the goods and giving the machining to a subcontractor, who in turn may give out the buttonholing, felHng, and other finishing to a second subcontractor, who, as another link in the chain, may turn over much of the handwork to women in the tenement households. Contracting in Pittsburgh is of a diflferent sort. Instead of this complex subdivision of work and profits, we find that the subor- dinate contract shop which depends on factory orders for its existence has itself a force of perhaps from eight to twelve people, sufficient to make up the goods inside. These small shops are technically factories, and as such are subject to inspection. Being located for the most part in business buildings, they are not technically "sweatshops," for in the Penn- sylvania law that term is applied only to a workshop in a tenement or dwelling in which articles are manufactured for sale by others than members of the family which rents the room. Yet in make-up and characteristics they fall within the meaning of the term as it is employed by those who know the slums of our manufacturing cities, where populations, largely immigrant, throw out their frail defenses against the threatening encroachments of high rent and intolerable living conditions. The word stands for a system of work which may or may not be legally assailable, but which in itself is at least definite, vivid, and industrially indefensible. In this sense, contract shops belong to the sweatshop type. One of them can be reached from Strawberry Alley by climbing three flights of narrow, dark stairs. You pass the retail cigar store on the ground floor, the dingy Chinese restaurant on the floor above, and above that silent warerooms. Pausing for breath at the blind landing just below the roof, you see through the half-open door half a dozen stocky, undersized, foreign-look- ing men passing from stove to table with their irons, or machining at the far end of the room. In the corner of the room near one window, where the ceiling slants, a group of women in blousy, ill-fitting wrappers bend over lapfuls of coats into which they are putting the linings. The ceiling is nowhere more than eight feet high, and by the window it is only six and a half feet. The hand- sewers and the two or three machine-workers get what light there 128 THE GARMENT TRADES is from the street. The cutters and pressers work on tables far- ther away. Near the door is a small gas stove, partly broken down, on which all the irons are heated. In the other corner, also near the door, is an unpainted and battered tin basin with a disabled faucet; this serves as a lavatory. Such machinery as there is is of the most primitive type, foot-power sewing machines, hand shears, hand knives. The workers, too, are in a sense primitive ; they have served apprenticeship neither to the life of the city nor to the standards of industrial work. The men are Jewish immigrants from Russia and Roumania; the women are Neapoli- tans. Both for the men and for the women this is their first at- tempt at factory production. Other of the contract shops are variations on this type. One, even more primitive, occupies a three-cornered room in an old building on Fifth Avenue. This room boasts one window, one table, and two or three broken chairs. The laths of the walls are exposed in places where the plaster has broken away, and the floor is littered with the decay of old boards and discarded scraps of cloth. Three men and three women are employed here. The women finish by hand, one man cuts, another presses, and a third machines the goods. Such shops as inhabit the upper and cheaper floors of old buildings are characterized in general by low ceilings, by poor light through one or two small windows, with occasionally a flaring gas jet to help out the far dim end of the room, by walls gray with neglect and floors burdened with refuse. In contrast I could take you to shops that are clean, light, and well-managed, but they are exceptions. Colonies of undesirable workrooms are the distinguishing feature of the streets where small contract shops prevail. Men, and men only, recent Jewish immigrants from the Slavic and Balkan countries, work at the machines. Women, some of them the wives of these men, and others from southern Italy, finish the garments by hand. The shops have neither regular hours nor regular wages. Each individual strikes his bargain with the proprietor, who is often an immigrant only a few years in advance of his employes, for pay by the week if the proprietor cares to run the risk, or more often for pay by the piece. Sometimes the piece rate will be for making and finishing 9 129 WOMEN AND THE TRADES a garment entire, and at other times it will be split up into smaller piece rates for work on different sections. Sometimes two of the employes work by teams and pool their earnings. In general, the men make I7.00 to I9.00 a week, the women I4.00 to $5.00, although even in a workshop of this type, an exceptionally effi- cient hand may forge ahead and secure a much larger sum for the week's work. The ambitious have an opportunity to make extra earnings, through longer hours than are permitted in larger fac- tories. Here the day begins at seven o'clock if you wish. The lunch hour is a casual interval, often omitted. The close of the day comes sometimes at six, sometimes at nine, sometimes at ten; in fact, whenever the work is finished. If the work is not too pressing, those who wish may go home by nightfall, but when a rush of orders calls for it, employes are tacitly obliged to stay. Whereas none of the garment factories has a working day of more than nine and a half hours, the contract shops have a working day of ten to fourteen hours. Whereas the garment factories employ English-speaking, frequently native-born girls, who by their unions have secured for many of their number a living wage, the contract shops employ immigrant labor at rates which often enable them to underbid factory production. The check to the trade of the contract shop is in many in- stances the necessarily inferior quality of the output. Yet con- tract shops are found which not only handle stock coats and vests of the cheaper grade for factories, but which take over from these same factories their finest grade of custom work. The factory equipment may be unsuited to the filling of special orders, or it may be suited for the filling of special orders only in part. The rest of the orders which the customer has no doubt arranged for with great particularity of detail, may go with the lump order for stock suits, to be made in one of the contract shops dependent on the factory. That part of a suit is made under fair conditions implies nothing as to the rest of it, and the mating of a well- equipped factory with an unsanitary workshop, in their joint contri- bution to a customer's outfit, is a matter of daily occurrence. 130 THE GARMENT TRADES CUSTOM TAILORING This brings us part of the answer to the second question, as to where and how the custom work of the city is done. The con- tract shops handle much of the custom trade that comes through factories. The rest of it, and by far the larger portion, is carried by the merchant tailors, who number 1 500 in Pittsburgh and the North Side. It has been beyond the possibilities of this investi- gation to attempt to cover statistically the work of women in these shops. As most of them employ one or two women each for hand finishing, the estimate of an old tradesman in the district that 2000 women are used in this tailoring work is probably not far wrong. The conditions of their employment are as various as the parts of the city where they work. You find the wife of a small tailor increasing the family income by saving the wages of an employe, but herself receiving no payment and having no regular hours for the work. You find efficient hand finishers who are employed spring and fall by a larger merchant nine hours a day for a sixteen weeks' season at I9.00 a week. On the other hand, you find hours and wages which more nearly approach the sweatshop conditions, and you find women workers of the immi- grant type. In workrooms, there is every gradation from the clean, light, well-equipped room back of a well-built store to dim basements where two or three men and women work at the same task with poor tools and for uncounted hours. There is still to be answered the third question, as to the mak- ing of garments that are cut out by so-called factories which have no machine equipment for putting the cloth together before sell- ing it in suits. In this category also falls the residue of cheap garments ordered through fully equipped factories, but which they cannot turn out in quantities sufficient to meet the demand. This question is answered primarily by the scattered out- workers in different parts of the city. On I ten Street, where a straggling little row of houses clings to the edge of a North Side hill, I found two women in rooms reached by an unsteady outside staircase. Once within, the clean oilcloth and carefully scrubbed sink bespoke the neat German housewife, whom no amount of work and poverty can deprive of her inbred tradition of scrupulous •31 WOMEN AND THE TRADES cleanliness. The I7.00 rent gave them only two small rooms. One sister took in two washes a week and both worked on trousers. At the sewing they made not over I3.00 a week, although when the price was higher they used to make I4.80. When they started in, there had been a sick mother to care for, a small brother and sister at home, and the two older girls felt that they could not work in a shop. The mother had died since then, the brother and sister had married and gone away. These two who were left had kept on at the only trade they knew. One of them went to the factory last year to see if she could work inside, but the noise and dust made her ill ; so she went back to the old way. Spring Garden, beyond the end of the car line, has some colonies of such outworkers, and still others are in the down-town section of the city. In a back street whose six frame houses are alike without paint or plumbing or sewerage connection, I found a little gray lady, a vest maker, on the second floor. There were no numbers and no bells, but children playing outside gave me the clue, A glance at the room showed that a fight for a standard had been made here. The surroundings were not wholly clean; the garments were finished with a nervous haste that could not keep pace with lowering of prices. When Mrs. Neil's husband died fifteen years before, she took the insurance and tried to keep a store, but failed. There was a little daughter, then only four years old, and there was apparently no resource but the trade that she used to work at long ago, vest making. She found that by taking the vests home and working several hours in the evening, as well as during the day, she could make a dozen and a half in a week, which paid her I6.30. This meant doing the entire work on each vest, even to buttons and buttonholes. After a while the pay was cut from $ .35 to | .25 for a vest. To make up the diflFerence and earn as much as before, Mrs. Neil redoubled her energy, but beyond a certain point, speed can be increased only for a spurt, not for a steady pull. The result was a fall in output below the amount that she had made at first. Her limit is a dozen a week now, and no matter how hard she works, it seems to her impossible to do more. The I3.00 which she earns is supplemented by the earnings of her daughter. Together they manage to meet the I7.00 a month rent for their two rooms and to provide food and clothes. 132 THE GARMENT TRADES "But it's a pull," said Mrs. Neil to me, "and it's taken the life out of us both." THE OUTWORK DISTRICT As you go farther beyond the built-up portion of the city, this question as to the manufacture of garments is answered more fully. One early spring morning I set out with the secretary of the Cutters' Local to find the further answer. We rode through the factory district of the South Side, past streets of small brick houses to the end of the Carson Street line, and then walked for perhaps half a mile along a muddy, unpaved road, the Allegheny River at our left and on our right an irregular, broken line of hills. After a while, we climbed an embankment along which ran the narrow track of a railroad. Twice the busy little engine passed us, carrying coal direct from mine to river. At length we came to a steep wagon road leading into the hills. These hills are full of little settlements, made up of groups of people who have taken houses near the mines in order to be near their work, who have left the city to get cheaper rent, or who, farming in meagre fashion, have never known another sort of life than this isolation, unlovely and sordid as only country slums can be. This district is within the city limits of Pittsburgh, but to all appearance it might be away a hundred miles. The houses, scattered wide apart, are tiny, broken-down affairs, dilapidated and unsightly. The state- ment that "as a rule one family occupies a house" must be taken with due consideration of the size of the house. Three rooms, one of which is the kitchen, shared by a household of nine or ten, may mean as much actual congestion as three rooms shared by two families. At the left of the first wagon road were perhaps half a dozen houses. The whirr of machines from within doors broke in louder than any other sound upon the stupor that seemed to hang over the invisible life of the street. This whirr of machines, repeated from house to house, told of the presence of garment makers whose scattered forces, if drawn together, would more than outdistance the working force of the largest Pittsburgh factory in this trade. In one tiny gray cottage I found a family of three. The son is a miner, home that day and lying helpless from a fall of rock in the '33 WOMEN AND THE TRADES mine some weeks before. The old German mother and her daughter make jeans, they told me, at $r.io a dozen, and have done this work for years. It helps out during good seasons, and when the son is out of work, or hurt, as now, it keeps them going. The driver brings the goods from the city and they pay him | .oji a dozen for hauling, which comes out of their profits. The thread is furnished them and the goods are cut at the factory, but they are expected to send the garments back completely made, finished even to the buttons and buttonholes. Although the price for this work has gone up, they cannot be sure what they will receive. A few years ago, before the union was strong, the makers of cheap jeans received not over $ .70 a dozen. That was in the days when the scattered workers among the hills were so many cogs fitting into the machine that brought prosperity to the employer, so many uncomplaining profit makers for the big firms in the city. Yet a few years have made a great difference in the trade. The United Garment Workers, who were organized in 1900 in one of the large factories with the idea that the union label would secure additional trade to the firm, proved capable of standing their ground and bargaining for their own advantage. The union then began to deal with this menace of the outworkers, to make them, too, a coherent part of its growth. When there was a vacancy at a factory machine, the union tried to bring in one of the hill girls to fill the place. When a factory was to be enlarged, the union men went out to the forlorn little groups of houses, and told the workers how much more they could earn and how much better places they could work in, if they would come into the city and belong to a union shop, instead of toiling at a foot-power machine day in and day out for a week's earnings of I4.50. Now and then a girl went into the city to test the truth of what the union men had told her, and once at a power machine, she stayed. Others followed, until by degrees the outworkers' contingent began to lose its younger members. Naturally, it was the more ambitious and more efficient who broke their tradi- tions and went down to the city. Behind were left the pale, tired girls who would not break into the old ways of their life by a new routine, the mothers whose duties kept them to the house, and the families in which each member, old and young, was so util- '34 THE GARMENT TRADES ized that imagination proved powerless to suggest, should their forces be scattered, other means of obtaining equal earnings. Thus the union sifted out possible factory workers, but this process could not be continued indefinitely. Against the women of these three groups who still manufacture in their homes, the most logical arguments proved futile. They felt apparently that some of the logic was on their side. Yet the campaign of the union was not without its effect upon them. They had learned what the union prices were. They had learned about wage scales, and when a neighbor's daughter went to the city and came back with $i2 a week, being paid at the rate of $1.35 a dozen for jeans, there began a counter-reformation. The little factories that gave out all their work, saving expense in rent, machinery, and lighting, but competing for orders with "closed shops," were forced to reckon with the hill-women. For fear of losing their outwork employes these shrewd employers found it expedient to raise the rates for making goods. Pay for making jeans went up to | .85, to | .90, and finally to I1.05. This was for the cheaper grade of work. Material a little better, which required more care, paid the work- ers |i. 10, and heavy jeans with pockets were rated at $1.25. Of course, the output of a foot-power machine can never approach the output of a steam-driven machine, but with this increase of prices the pay for the finished piece of goods, done by unorganized outworkers, was beginning to approach the pay for a finished piece made by a union girl. The union prices were still about 25 per cent higher, but the increase to the outworkers meant that the union was to be reckoned with. The two German women in the little gray cottage knew the union arguments, but the mother spoke no English; she was used to her housework and to her quiet seven or eight hours of sewing day after day. She had her son's earnings and did not have to work unduly hard. Why should she go into the city? And her daughter ? A girl to whom the idea of a factory is ter- rible. The noise, the rush, the exactions appall her; she too is used to the quiet daily work at home and wants no other. Mother and daughter together do not make more than five dozen pairs a week in summer, but in winter they can make six or seven dozen. They work only in the daytime. Trade is always steady, for 135 WOMEN AND THE TRADES out work, like factory work in tiie district, is free from alter- nating seasonal rush and slack times. Across the road from the gray cottage the hill goes steeply down into a hollow where are other houses. One, a long, gray, weathered shack with a porch of decaying boards, is the home of two more outworkers. Close to it runs a creek, and opposite is a little whitewashed building of some nondescript material, built like a stable. Here, too, through the dull white walls, I heard the sound of a machine. The driver never takes the trouble to go down so far with his bundles, but throws them somewhere over the hill, and the woman, or a child or two, comes out of the house, wades through the creek, and carries home the load of clothing to be. To reach one house that day we had to strike through the fields, across a brook, and finally to trust to a footpath that led along the steep slope of one hill out to the summit of another. There, a brief little road with its end and beginning not more than a quarter of a mile apart, boasted two houses. At the first I stopped. It was small, one and a half stories high, and built of gray boards. At the rear the hill sloped upward. In front was a tiny yard fenced in, and as I unfastened the sagging gate and stooped under the drain-pipe which ran diagonally across the yard, a family of children came to the door to greet me. All of them seemed undersized, for the mother told me that the oldest boy was nineteen and the girl seventeen; the slight little fellow who had worked in a glass-house all the fall was fifteen, she said. The enumeration ran through a series of six or seven youngsters, down to the littlest one who could only just walk, but was very dexterous at pulling threads. The mother herself fitted in with her sur- roundings. Had she been older and grayer, her spare figure and sunken cheeks might have belonged to one of the scrub-women who clean our city offices in the dark of the morning. But she was brown-haired and her fingers were quick and nervous. The house was small enough to show all its possibilities at once. Two rooms and an attic housed a family of nine people, six ducks, and twenty-four chickens, the latter living contentedly in the kitchen. In the other room were six machines, and there the family slept — 1 could not see where, unless it were on the piles .36 THE GARMENT TRADES of clothing. The attic was reserved just then for one small boy, about whom I did not hear until a little girl up the road called out to me, "Say, did you see Johnnie? He's got the measles orful and he's getting worser." Mrs. J. has worked on jeans for twenty years, she told me. Her husband used to be in the mill, but one of his hands was crippled and he lost his job. The children were little then. The rent for the crazy little shack was only I3.50, but food was a serious item. The result was that husband and wife began to make jeans at home, and as fast as the children could hold a needle they were pressed into service. Besides the two oldest children, the second boy and a girl of thirteen now work at the machines, and the others who are still younger sew on buttons, make but- tonholes, and pull out threads. The hours of work seem incred- ible; from four in the morning until nine at night, one steady drive for every member of the household. The output is only fifteen to twenty dozen pairs of jeans a week at best, which brings an income for the family of |i6 to I22. It is no wonder that the bare floors seem never to have been cleaned; that the children are ragged, ignorant, uncared for; that for mere life everything has been sacrificed to the dark piles of clothes on the floor. "Sometimes I think I'd do better by goin' out washin' onct or twict a week," said Mrs. J., "but then washin's hard to git regu- lar and I'm used to the pants." Here is not the only household in which the steel mills have thrown the burden onto the women. Farther down the hill, where dwellings are set together more thickly, a small red house is built behind its bigger neighbors. Here, too, the family has six machines, and here, too, father, mother, sons, and daughters bend over a joint task, the making of jeans. " He had to do it," said Mrs. Freude, "he vas hurt in de mill and ve could both vork together and make somedings, but he couldn't get vork nowhere else." It is a far cry from the great half-lit spaces of the mill, and from handling the unfinished rails which glide white-hot through the dusk, to living in the back room of a little red cottage and working by the hour at a sewing machine. This is one way in which the handicapped from the steel industry have placed them- selves. The two sons and two daughters of this family have 137 WOMEN AND THE TRADES grown up to the work since babyhood. By allowing no time for cleaning the workroom or for care of the house, by working twelve to thirteen hours a day, they turn out forty-five dozen pairs a week, and sometimes as many as fifty dozen. They have kept at work even when every one else was unable to secure the goods. Just as I came through the gate the driver's heavy wagon stood outside and he tossed one bundle after another down the alley in the direction of the red house. Down they tumbled from muddy step to step, until the ex-mill worker picked them up and threw them on the floor. The scattered city workers carry their bundles back and forth from the shop, but in Carrick the business is managed by a system of drivers. There are two or three men, rough old Germans, who know every inch of the hills and all the women on them, and who can be trusted to drive off each trip with their thirty or forty dozen pairs of cut-out jeans to be made up somewhere and called for later on. The owners of the cloth themselves do not know where the drivers go. Sometimes the women come into the city for the money, and in that way become known to their employers, but often the driver is a go-between and to all intents is himself the women's employer. The rates charged for hauling, which might in a sense be regarded as a commission, vary with the resi- dence of the outworker. Whereas $ .06 or | .07 a dozen is charged for hauling to fairly accessible places, the women far up among the hills must pay |r. 50 each trip, whether the goods are many or few. Seven of the Fifth Avenue shops send out all their work, and for five factories a part of the work is done outside. The total of these home workrooms, when times are prosperous, ranges up to three thousand dozen pairs of jeans a week. A third of the work is made up in Lower St. Clair, and an- other third in Millvale, or elsewhere near the city. That it is cheap work does not mean that it is carelessly made or that any sort of machining will pass. There is inspection enough to insure precaution on the part of the women, and there is enough poorly cut work sent out to tax their ingenuity. This is not true in the larger factories. There the cutters are allowed an extra two to four yards of goods on each lot. In the little shops, on the other 138 THE GARMENT TRADES hand, the policy of saving is carried to an extreme. "It would cost us far more," said one man, "to have the women inside. We would have to rent another floor to make room for their machines; we would have to buy the machines, and we would have gas and heat, and then have to pay them more, may be, into the bargain." He did not add that the cost of material would be increased, be- cause no operator can make speed at a power machine if there is much piecing to be done. The time of the outworker, however, does not concern the owner of the shop. Consequently, on each lot of cloth he can save a good deal by having it cut short and com- pelling the women to piece it out themselves. This is the regular custom, the women claim, in six out of seven of the Fifth Avenue shops, and takes away not a little from their total possible earn- ings. A standing grievance with them is the hours that they have spent piecing, when they might have been going ahead on straight work and earning more. "An' it's always the worst paid work that has to be pieced the most," they say. Altogether, between 150 and 180 families are engaged in home manufacture. There could scarely be a sharper contrast to the modern city factory than this outwork. The factory itself is a gathering place for women engaged at the same task. How- ever ill kept and gloomy it may be, there is always the background of the city itself, with its centres for social activity, its light and movement, and the meeting together of kind with kind. But in Carrick, or in the nameless lanes of Mount Oliver, there are none of these things. This is not country, if by that we mean farmland instinct with life. These are coal hills, green at times, but often the gray brown of an exhausted soil, unproductive, unpromising, scarred. The dwellings are casual, unrelated, and too far apart for common work or intercourse. When men have worked since daylight in a mine, and women since the day's beginning have sewed seam after seam with unrelaxed energy, it is not enough that social opportunity is not difficult ; it must be distinctly easy. To accomplish this in wholesome ways is one of the problems of the city. Out in these wayplaces, where the pulse of life is low and the succession of days is void of meaning, even the social impulse seems numb. The struggle to live is reduced to its lowest terms. All that we have read into the words "to live," all the '39 WOMEN AND THE TRADES color and richness that we think of as an integral part of tolerable life, is absent. Factory work has its evils, but such outwork as this is no solution of them. Where it is not regulated, as here, it carries those evils out into the hill shacks, and, as in the case of outwork in the tenements, puts a check to the wholesome growth of family life. Though the amount of work given out has been cut down again and again, the sum of it is still great enough to show that among these barren hills is a stronghold of sweated work and cheap labor for some years to come. 140 CHAPTER VIII THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES WHAT I shall call the minor needle trades in Pittsburgh, millinery, glove making, mattress and awning manu- facture, are minor only in the sense that fewer plants and fewer people are engaged in their work. In contrast to the 868 women employed in making garments, in 1907 these four branches of the trade together employed 629. Like the garment trades, three of them, awning, mattress, and glove making, are needle trades which have further adapted and specialized the power sewing machine. Two of them, the glove and millinery indus- tries, are again like the garment trades in that they produce articles of wear, millinery continuing largely as a hand industry, while the glove industry has involved a specialization of machine work. With the exception possibly of glove making, they all inherit some of the seasonal characteristics of the prime industry. The women employes in these minor needle trades are with few exceptions American. MILLINERY The retail millinery trade, like dressmaking, is without the province of this study. The wholesale trade, however, comes well within its boundaries in that large numbers of girls work together in a single plant under the direction of a single firm. Wholesale millinery houses have established themselves in long, narrow buildings along the business streets of the downtown section of Pittsburgh. These buildings are usually five stories high, well lighted both with shaded electric bulbs which can be turned upon the cases in the showrooms, and with high wide windows. Freshly painted walls and light board floors reflect the light and add an impression of cleanliness in dainty contrast to 141 WOMEN AND THE TRADES some of the contract sweatshops in the same district. The hat shapes are piled on tables in the centre of the workroom and the work is done near the windows. When visited in June, such a workroom is almost empty; the downstairs rooms are deserted, and the elevator boy leisurely considers possible alternatives before rising to answer the bell. The only models are a couple of forlorn remnants of the season just closed, which rest on their forms with an air of general indiffer- ence. There are a few boxes of unused flowers and draped and vacant shelves. Half a dozen girls are working without haste or interest on the last order. Visit the place in mid-August and you will find the workroom so crowded with seats between the tables that there is scarcely room to pass. This seasonal change of the two midsummer months is the great fact in the wholesale milli- nery trade. For such a millinery house is much more than a fac- tory; it is a sales centre. Through the open door in the season you get glimpses of shelves upon shelves of flowers and plumes, of alert buyers examining the trimmed and untrimmed models, and of attentive clerks. You must go past floor after floor devoted to flowers and plumes before you find the girls in their workroom at the top. The progress of a hat, in all its absurd contortions of shape, from factory workroom to wearer, through the hands of shaper, maker, and trimmer, has given rise to a set of trade conditions in some respects unique, and to a group of workers unlike in training and in opportunity to the workers in the other needle trades. In the regular seasons the women in the five wholesale houses of Pittsburgh number about 400. The Pittsburgh trade stands in contrast to that of New York and Philadelphia, where the making of cheap stock hats is of first importance. Recognizing that this field is held secure by eastern houses, the Pittsburgh wholesalers act as distrib- utors of French hats, and of medium-grade American models, to smaller local centres within a radius of 200 miles. To a limited extent, they act also as agents fOr the cheaper hats. But as manufacturers they confine themselves almost entirely to hats of the better sort. Their business is not large. Their opportun- ity for expansion lies in the field where the personal element 142 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES enters, where orders are relatively small but flexible in the expres- sion of local preferences. In two houses straw hats are made, but in the others straw and felt shapes are bought from factories and trimmed in the workrooms. The number of makers, rela- tively skilled hands, in Pittsburgh houses, judged by New York standards, is disproportionately large, and the preparers who assist them are frequently given the opportunity to do dainty bits of work. Instead of being stifled by a mechanically sub- divided section system, in which one trimmer keeps two dozen preparers busy, personal ability has a chance to show itself. In New York, many of the workrooms are really factories where women are paying for the cheapness by life itself, and hats are turned out by the thousand. Pittsburgh does not compete with this price and section system, but pays by the week and places the emphasis on quality of work. The ■ Pittsburgh wholesale millinery house which most resembles the New York type employs 76 girls in mid-season. Forty of them are sewers of straw foundations — work that elsewhere is done frequently by machine. These girls start their spring work before Christmas, and their season lasts longer than that of the trimmers— on into June. All the sewing is done by hand and pay is by the piece, $ .25 for making an ordinary hat. The difference in cost to the wearer is not in the making but in the fineness of the straw, and the girls get the same rate for coarse hats and fine. Thirty out of the 40 girls are able to make about I6.00 a week, and the others range upward toward |io, with the exception of five "drapers," who are on salary. These "drapers" loop or drape the crown of the hat over the brim; they have had longer experience and training than the piece workers and are paid 1 10 to $12 a week. The trimming room in this factory shows us at a glance the main occupations in the trade. There are 36 girls in regular employment. They sit 12 at a table, with the three trimmers in charge. These three trimmers — the forewoman and her two assistants — do all the actual planning and much of the trimming; below them are six copyists, two at a table, who fol- low out their plans and do much of the secondary work, while to assist the copyists there is a force of 24 makers and preparers. M3 WOMEN AND THE TRADES OCCUPATIONS AND WAGES OF WOMEN The following summary, ranged in order of most to least skill and of most to least wage-earning opportunity, shows the distribution of women in occupations in the Pittsburgh milli- nery trade as a whole: TABLE 20. — DISTRIBUTION OF WOMEN IN VARIOUS OCCUPATIONS AMONG WHOLESALE MILLINERY HOUSES Kind of work No. of girls Trimmers . . ... -49 Expert makers . Copyists . . . . Straw hat makers Preparers and inexpert makers Apprentices . . ... . . 68 4' i6i '7 Total 406 Regular trimmers in a wholesale house can command from $1 5 to I25 a week, the majority earning not more than |i8. They plan the stock hats and do all original work on the models. The line between a maker and a copyist is not always clear. In one factory there are no girls called copyists, but trimmers and makers work together, the maker copying the first under parts of a hat, and the trimmer copying or finishing the rest of it. Where there are copyists distinct from makers, they are paid from |io to $15, and the expert makers from |8.oo to |io. Even the best maker cannot command more than fio, and she, too, must have ability to seize an idea and execute it — "the unteachable quality of being a good milliner." It must be remembered, however, that the inexpert makers are greatly in the majority and that they, with the girls engaged in preparation work, are earning from I4.00 to $6.00, or sometimes not more than $3.00. The trade at the height of the season shows the larger percentage of girls to be inexpert. Counting preparers and the poorer makers, appren- tices and many of the straw-hat sewers,* there are 288 (56 per cent) whose weekly earnings are I4.00 to $6.00 or less, 83 earn- ing between |8.oo and |io, and 95 earning above |io — altogether * Fifty straw hat makers earning $6.00 or less. 144 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES 178 girls (43.87 per cent) earning |8.oo or more. These wages are not for the year round, but during the season only. APPRENTICESHIP Millinery apprenticeship lasts for two seasons. The new- comer to the trade is expected to serve through the spring and the fall term without pay, doing odd jobs, sewing bandeaus, and tucking chiffon — and if the forewoman looks out for her, really learning something of how hats are made. As a rule, however, after she has learned a few fundamental things, she is a convenience to the rest of the employes and the process of her own education is a secondary matter. She has to stay in the wholesale workroom for a much longer time than the term of her apprenticeship before she has learned enough of the trade for her to be useful to a retail dealer. One firm, contrary to the custom in the wholesale trade, pays its apprentices. The forewoman reasons that if a girl is not worth I3.00 a week, she is not worth her place at the table, and that if a girl shows ability before the end of her apprentice- ship, she should be given the opportunity to advance. Here one apprentice works at each table, and in the course of the season she is initiated into one process of hat trimming after another. She is allowed to undertake work as fast as she shows capacity for it. One girl, for' instance, was taken as an apprentice at Christmas time, and by May she was placed with a retail firm as an expert copyist at |i2 a week. HOURS AND SEASONS The hours in the trade are not so long as they have been in the past, for there has come a reaction, in some cases, at least, against overtime. The hours in one house are from eight to five- thirty, although this is shorter by half an hour than elsewhere, and the workers had only two nights' overtime during the season. Another house had eight nights' overtime. These two represent the advance guard, however, in the reaction against night work, for in other cases "night work was frequent," and one firm ordered night work three times a week during February, March, '45 WOMEN AND THE TRADES and April. In the millinery trade, overtime for girls on salary does not mean extra pay. There is a rush to catch the tide of business at the flood, and every hand in the workroom must do her share. The experience acquired in a wholesale house is far too valuable to be lightly thrust aside even though it be gained at the cost of much-needed rest and essential hours of sleep. The fall season is from August first until December first; the spring season, from January first to the middle of May — in some houses until Decoration Day. The condition of work as well as the hours and the number of employes fluctuates with the seasons. In mid-August there are at least 500 milliners in the wholesale workrooms. Many are trimmers who come for a week or two at a time until the wholesalers send them out to retail establishments, for these girls find it easier to get season positions in this way and the retailers insist on sending to wholesale houses for girls. The smaller dealers think that the girls who have worked a week or two in a large establishment will have more ideas and will do better work. But to the wholesalers this demand of their customers is a source of much annoyance. They complain that the girls come merely to fill in time and get the |i.oo a day that they command, and do not try to learn the ways of the house nor to do good work. The vagrant trimmers, it is claimed, are in many cases quite inefficient and frequently spoil good material, but they are sure to be taken on year after year because of the demand of retail firms. Toward September, the workrooms thin out a little; three firms have a force of 100, but they are likely week by week to lay off girls, until some have as few as 25 at the close of the fall season. The number in the trade varies too much to justify an inflexible statement, but at least the limits to its variation can be stated from one part of the season to another. After the irreg- ular force of trimmers had passed into the retail workrooms, there remained in the five wholesale houses in 1907, 406 girls in regular employment. By December first, the end of the autumn season, this number had fallen to 280. After the lapse of a few weeks, the number is again as large as it was in September, until the season wanes once more and workrooms close for the summer. This leaves a blank of six weeks in winter and of two months in 146 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES summer which the more expert girls fill in when possible by a few weeks at the retail trade. The retail season lasts two weeks later in winter and a month later in spring, so the period of enforced idleness is reduced to six weeks for such of the girls as are placed in a retail firm at the end of their wholesale season. Necessarily, this possibility is only for the few from each house. In December some girls clerk in the stores for two or three weeks, but even this leaves them with an idle two weeks at the beginning of the year. In view of these gaps in the working year, it is of interest to learn how many of these girls have families within reach. Those who come from small towns to learn the trade seem to be much in the minority. It is more usual for a girl to be appren- ticed to a retailer in her own village and then to come in for what is practically a second apprenticeship at a wholesale house. These girls do not stay in the city, but use their time there rather as a means of increasing their local trade after their return. There remains, however, a contingent of girls who have not their families back of them in time of stress ; how many there are, the forewomen do not definitely know. The term "milliner" suggests immediately that quality of taste, that sense of color and form, which cannot be taught to her who lacks them. A trade in which a natural gift is the funda- mental need, carries with it inevitably social esteem in higher degree than a trade in which success is open to large numbers. No distinction is made by outsiders between the girl with real ability and the girl called by the same trade term who is merely a routine hand. The millinery worker has a certain standing which makes other factory workers envy her, and to gain this standing girls are willing to accept the low wages and irregular work in the trade. Although the trimmers and copyists are sure of the longest seasons and of fairly steady work, few even of them earn enough wholly to support themselves between seasons. Unquestionably, also, the less expert makers and those who are below them are not only unable to earn enough for the dull two months, but in many cases receive wages inadequate for their support when the season is at its height. For the expert trimmer, with an instinctive sense of form and color, there are possibilities of $50 a week with some retail firms, but for the girl •47 WOMEN AND THE TRADES of inferior ability there is scant possibility of an income adequate to carry her through the year. The forewoman in one of the large houses was contrasting the trade in Pittsburgh with the trade in New York; she had the enthusiasm bom of instinctive love for the work and insisted that it was good trade. "Yet, even so," she said, "although it's a better trade here than in New York because we pay week wages and not those ridiculously low prices for piece work, it's only the few who can make good wages, and only the exceptional ones who can make wages that are at all high. The trade is full of inefficient girls who would never make steady hands, and who are entirely without the natural gift to develop into experts even at mechanical processes." GLOVE MAKING Unlike the millinery trade, which has never secured a foot- hold in the making of cheap stock goods, the glove industry in Pittsburgh has distinctly served the demands of the wage-earning population. Just as the lines primarily important in the garment trades are overalls and jeans, so in the glove industry the chief and indeed the only lines of goods put on the market by the local factories have been cheap gloves, in canvas, leather, and heavy sheepskin. Fine gloves can be imported or shipped in from the east, but these gloves made close to the point of sale are not for decoration of the hands but for protection in hard work. They wholesale for | .50 to |i.oo, and they are sold to the miners and millmen who in so many of the Pittsburgh industries create the effective demand. In this district the glove industry is young; it is represented by only two firms, the larger of which shut down completely during the depression of 1907-08, throwing 100 girls out of em- ployment, while the smaller, with its force of eight employes, ran on short time. The experience of the larger factory in put- ting inexperienced girls on piece work is significant. The manager of the factory proposed to pay the girls $4.00 a week at the start, then to raise them every two weeks until they were making $1.00 a day, and to keep them on this until they could work rapidly enough to be put on piece work. " For a dollar a day, " he said, 148 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES "you can get any number of girls in Pittsburgh, but if they don't make that much they get discouraged and want to try something else. When a girl isn't making a dollar a day, she is likely to go off all of a sudden and get married; but if she is making that much or more, she will think twice." The firm, however, was unwilling to pay beginners time wages for more than two weeks. The girls were told that in two weeks they ought to be able to make |i.oo a day easily; but when they found that instead of li.oo they could not make more than | .40, they usually lost in- terest and gave up the work. The result was that within a few months more than 500 different girls were engaged to fill the lOO positions at the factory. As you look down the workroom, in this larger factory, the machines in rows seem a bit like the machines in a garment factory, but there are variations and adaptations for different sorts of work. One glove goes through six or eight different hands in the making, each section being finished by a special machine. There are single-needle machines, and flat-bed double needles, and a four-needle to put the fancy stitching on the backs of gloves. There is a binder for the bottom of gloves, which puts on the bind- ing with one operation. This was formerly done by stitching the binding on one side with a single-needle, then turning the rough edge under and stitching down again. A dozen gloves could not be bound in less than half an hour in the old way, whereas by the new method they can be bound in fifteen minutes. There is an overstitch machine for putting the leather decorations on the flap of the glove, and a "walking-foot" machine for stitch- ing thumb and fingers. The single needle is used to put lining and outside together, and the double needle to stitch together the flap and the main part of the glove. The smaller factory belongs to the International Glove Workers' Union. The owner, who has been a union man himself, has required the girls to join and to keep in touch with union doings, although he recognizes that success at the machine de- pends on many conditions unspecified in the union scale. Band- ing and binding, for instance, are paid at a certain price, but the scale does not specify whether the binding be done in one opera- tion or by a series of operations. Neither does the scale differen- 149 WOMEN AND THE TRADES tiate between materials, whether leather, or heavy sheepskin, or fine sheepskin. Yet the quality of material and the way in which the glove is cut and sewed obviously aflfect the possible speed rate of the operator. All the cutting is done by men, and if it is poorly done, the difficulty of machine work is greatly in- creased. Cutters have had to be brought from other cities, but the operators are usually either from Pittsburgh or from neigh- boring towns. Machines, power, and needles are furnished to the operators. There is no tenement work in Pittsburgh in this trade. There is undoubtedly a large market in the locality for the development of a really strong glove-making business. How the industry will work its way through the difficulties of a general trade depression, it is hard to tell. Up to 1908 there were other difficulties in securing labor and training girls unused to this trade, for the city had no available force of experienced glove makers. Lack of judgment among girls whose education is defective and who have gone to work too young, is a subject of frequent com- plaint by the management. No girl can become expert in less than a year, but after that she should earn, one manager says, not less than I9.00 a week. Were a sufficient force of operators paid on a wage basis that would enable them to keep at work until they had learned, there is reason to think that this industry should take its place with the other needle trades, as one in which the opportunities for fair wages and steady work are relatively good. AWNINGS AND MATTRESSES The making of awnings and of mattresses are omnipresent industries. There are few large factories in these lines; estab- lishments in the different cities seek for a local trade and alike are prosperous or idle according to season. The reason for this trade restriction, however, differs in the two industries. The awning industry is confined to the filling of orders. Windows and shop fronts are of too many sizes for a manufacturer to be able advantageously to meet the demand from his made-up stock. He must delay starting his machines until shop-keepers send in orders for the kinds of lettering and stripes and sizes that they 150 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES want. In the mattress industry, on the other hand, the reason for small local factories and for a seasonal trade lies in the fact that mattresses cannot well be made up for stock. If they are piled on top of one another, they flatten, and if they stand on end, they become uneven — in either case, unsaleable. They must therefore be made to order and shipped while still fresh from the makers' hands. The busy seasons in the two industries fall at about the same times, from March through June, when new houses are being rented and when shop fronts are being redecorated; and again in September, the second renting season, and the time when tarpaulins are looked over for the winter. In the fall, the awning industry becomes a tarpaulin industry and lasts for only a few weeks ; the mattress factories continue their customary work until November. During winter and summer, both indus- tries are dull. Of the eight awning companies in Pittsburgh, seven,* in 1907, had workrooms of their own. A room above stairs, or in the rear, served for the power machines. The eighth had a small business and no workroom in connection with the shop. The workroom has often an accidental appearance, a look of unpremeditated staying on through the habit of the thing, rather than from any real appropriateness or fitness for the work carried on there. Dim windows and crowded floors, narrow passageways, machines excessive in size for the floor and air space, piles of tar- paulin and canvas — and somewhere in the midst of all these you find five or six women who have learned this branch of machine operating. In one case only does the workroom seem to have been built for the purpose. In the others, there are varied de- grees of crowding and of imperfect light. Fourteen women, nearly a third of the women in the trade, are employed in one factory, which is an extreme illustration of the chance use of a building. On the first floor are office and storeroom. You mount to the second by a totally dark and very dirty staircase, over which hangs an unlighted electric bulb. Except for cases and scrap, this second floor appears not to be used, but across the room and close to the next flight of steps a * See Appendix B, p. 389, Table 47, for number of men and of women in each factory. '5' WOMEN AND THE TRADES four-inch wide power belt, unprotected, rises diagonally. The staircase has no railing, though protection is needed from the rapidly moving belt, and a part of the steps is cut away to allow ropes to pass through, so that the actual space for walking is very narrow. At the top is a triangular workroom, with three dim windows along one side. Little light can pass the grimed and cobwebbed panes; each machine must have its electric bulb or the girls would be unable to work at all. The operators are not young girls who have learned the use of power here and the handling of cloth, but older workers who for one reason or another, perhaps because work of other sorts failed, have come into this less desirable trade. They are seasoned to nine hours a day over the flashing needle. For four months in the spring and two months in the fall the full force is employed, but after that the number is reduced to seven, and sometimes to three or four. During the season, the trade is steady, but whether in off seasons the girls fit into other trades the owner of the business did not know. For years, this factory has been in the same place. With growth in business and in reputa- tion, the little haphazard workroom has not grown or changed. In a building not planned for the use of power, nor adapted skil- fully; in a room not designed for long rows of machines, with poor light and air, even with absolute uncleanliness, orders continue to be filled successfully. You can only guess how this loft chanced to be used in the first place, but from the unfit appearance of the room today you judge that the first chance usage has crystallized into an unhealthful permanence. In contrast, one awning factory, recently erected, has ade- quate provision for the present scope of the business. The work- room is on the second floor, above storeroom and offices. In the dull season not more than two girls besides the forewoman are employed, but in spring there are as many as seven. A row of open windows fronts on the street and invites the river breeze. The equipment consists of five single-needle machines and one double-needle, and a press for putting in staples. By use of the double-needle, the work of five girls is saved, congestion in the workroom is avoided, both floor and window space being econo- mized, and the factory is able to turn out more work with fewer 152 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES hands. Nevertheless, this is the only instance where a double- needle machine is in use. The other factories have all their work done on single-needles. One girl is used for finishing. The others work by sections, some sewing the goods lengthwise, others put- ting the ends on, others the curtains, or flaps, in front. A " sleeve " or opening must also be run in the curtain for the rod. The firm will not take an inexperienced girl. The main difficulty is in handling the goods, which are heavy, bulky and awkward to manage. This is especially true of the winter work, the stiff unmanageable tarpaulin for wagon covers which are made up during two months in the fall. WAGES AND HOURS In the first factory mentioned wages are paid by the piece. The operators can increase their earnings by occasional overtime, but even so, few make more than |6.oo a week. Elsewhere wages are paid by time.* A beginner is started at I5.00 or |6.oo and ad- vanced to $7.00, |8.oo or sometimes |io. Although the work is hard in any case, the girls are worn out much more quickly under a piece system — some of them in three years, the forewoman says. She herself has been in the trade six years, but she thinks that if she were making a fresh start she would never go into it again. "It takes too much out of you," she says. In one factory the hours of work are ten a day, but in four others the operators work nine, and in three cases only eight hours a day. Yet overtime from March until July often brings the total up to 12 hours a day and 72 a week for weeks at a time. Orders do not come in until the warm weather begins; then, with the first warm days, all the customers order at once, and the girls have to stay night after night so as to comply as speedily as possible with the demand. Here would seem to be a case in which business might be distributed more evenly through- out the year if tradesmen would order in advance. Were this done, it would be a great gain to girls in the workrooms. Two of the smaller awning companies have been able to reduce their over- time to a few nights, but in the others through May and June, * See Appendix B, p. 390, Table 48, for range of wages in each factory. •53 WOMEN AND THE TRADES often from March to July, the power runs until nine o'clock at night.* In August, and after the brief fall season, there is wholesale dismissal of hands; in 1907, 30 out of the 41 in the trade were obliged to seek other positions. In summer they can scarcely hope to place themselves, but in the winter there are more oppor- tunities. Some make draperies and others take advantage of the longer fall season in the mattress factories to seek work there. MATTRESS MAKING In mattress factories, to turn to the final branch of the needle trades, the unfit conditions of buildings and of workrooms which are to be found in the awning factories are repeated outside and in. The walls seem dingy and worn-out, innocent of paint, crusted with accumulations of lint and dust, and on the windows is the residue of dust-making processes — cotton-picking, filling, closing. The cotton is prepared for use by a picking machine, which unless there is an exhaust equipment, fills the air with fine particles. This machine is managed by men; they also tuft the filled mat- tresses, forcing long needles through and pulling the twine fast; then forcing the needle through in the opposite direction and pulling the twine again, until rows of knots are made from end to end. In some cities, this work is done by women, but not in Pittsburgh. Here women close mattresses, however, often in rooms where the air is bad, and sometimes with their machines placed directly beside the filling machines. Other girlsf make spring beds or knot wire springs. Some of them stand at a form, start the wire and clip it at the end, the machine itself inter- twining the wire, and forming it. No special training is required. Inexperienced girls who do not earn over $6.00 a week can be used for this work. Some managers say there is jealousy between them and the sewing girls who make the ticks and who of necessity have been longer in training and have greater dexterity. This * Fourteen hours a day, 84 a week, in one factory. See Appendix B, p. 390, Table 49, for hours of work in each factory. t See Appendix B, p. 390, Table 50, for division of work among women in mattress factories. •54 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES may be an instance* not unlike what we shall find in the laundry industry, of class distinction within a factory. In some cases the sewing girls use a binder single-needle machine, although one factory owner states that this kind of machine is really not so satisfactory, but simply enables a firm to make use of inex- perienced girls. The test of an experienced girl is the ability to sew binder and tick in one operation, and when she has learned this she can work more quickly with an ordinary single-needle. Pay is by the piece quite as frequently as by the week, but under either system the mattress workers earn far more than the workers on awnings. The rate of pay varies from | .08 to | .12J for a tick, and the girls are expected to earn something over |i.oo a day. In one case, when a manager was asked how long it took the girls to learn, he replied that he had a girl who was unable to make more than two ticks in a week, but that even beginners could usually work more quickly. One firm pays time wages of $4.50 a week for three weeks, and then puts the girls on piece work, with the understanding that if they do not make more than I4.50 they will be dropped. In other cases, the minimum for experienced girls is I7.00 a week and the maximum |io. Forty-eight of the 71 girls in the trade in 1907 earned |8.oo to I9.00 a week. Although the num- ber of women in the trade is small, this percentage (67.6 per cent) earning more than I7.00 a week is highest among factory trades. The hours of work are longer in this industry than in the awning factories, — usually nine to nine and a half and ten hours, and in three out of four cases there is occasional overtime. But the overtime is not so long continued nor at such high pressure, and the slack season does not mean such wholesale dismissal of hands. Two factories do not lay ofi^ their girls at all; others dis- miss only three or four. One firm keeps all its girls on part time, half the force working one week and the other half the next. Although in the awning factories three-fourths of the girls are out of work five months in the year, in the mattress factories three- fourths of the girls are at work the year round. The work is heavier in spring when old things are discarded and houses refur- * Cf. class distinction in laundries, p. 188. WOMEN AND THE TRADES nished, but even in summer and mid-winter the trade does not fall away entirely. It is doubtful whether the girls who are laid off are able generally to place themselves with other firms. One man says that he does not think that any of his girls find posi- tions, as very often he calls them in during the summer for special orders; that one girl does dressmaking between seasons, and the others have families with whom they can stay. Contrasting with the awning industry, which wears out its girls so rapidly, these factories draw the mature steady type of American girl who works at a power machine, often for ten years, until she leaves to be married. One firm employs a few Italians and says that they keep at the work better than the Americans, but this opinion is apparently not shared by the other firms, among whose employes there are few changes. Competition with family workshops among the Hill tene- ments has almost died out, and in Pittsburgh, at least, mattress making is now a factory trade. Two of the small home shops were burned and did not reopen. There is one which is still turning out cheap work in limited quantities, but it is negligible in comparison with the trade of the larger factories. The making of awnings is altogether a factory trade. These two industries, so similar in many of their working conditions, are notably unlike in their effect on their employes. The work both in mattress and awning factories is productive of dust and lint; in both industries the workrooms are in general makeshift and haphazard, and in both industries the work fluc- tuates with the seasons. The great advantage which the mattress industry has over the awning industry is the relative lightness of the work. Ticks for mattresses are light and easy to handle; awnings and tarpaulins are stiff and difficult; It is in this differ- ence in the character of the work, perhaps, that an explanation is to be found for the marked contrast between the three- or four- year working life of the awning maker, and the ten-year working life of the mattress maker. To this, too, as well as to the greater extent of underemployment in the awning industry, may be attributed the difference between the types of workers in the two trades. Heavy work inevitably draws a lower grade of worker — the woman of coarser physique, less industrial stability, and a 156 THE MINOR NEEDLE TRADES lower wage-value. It acts in two ways to shorten the awning maker's working life, both by wearing her out physically and by making her lose interest so that she seeks the first avenue of escape. The mattress maker, on the other hand, because she has to rely less on physical strength than on dexterity, gains wage-value, and in consequence tends to stick to her trade. In the one case, better workrooms and a more even distribution of work might do much to mitigate the unpleasant features of the industry and to improve the grade of workers; in the other, in spite of dust and lint and unpleasant workrooms, the greater opportunity offered has selected a desirable type of employe. '57 THE CLEANING INDUSTRIES CHAPTER IX LAUNDRIES WASHING, MANGLING AND STARCHING SOLITARY washtub and red-armed washwoman as indus- trial types are passing as surely as individual loom and shuttle have passed, and the individual dye-vat for cloth. The type in the ascendant today is the low stone building with its washing machine, mangles and steam ironers of a dozen kinds, its system of marking worked out in minute detail, and its net- work of agencies and drivers' routes to gather in trade from hotels and factories, from railroads and private houses. Here and there circumstances give added reasons for the growth of the newer type. A railroad center with its stream of travelers demanding quick, efficient service, its stations and Pullman cars with their immaculate porters, its hotels and cafes sending out wagon loads of table linen — these are consumers who seldom can wait until it is the whim of the sun that their linen be dried. The commercial laundry is the only possibility. The knot of railroad lines, the travelers, the hotels, have helped make the industry prosperous in Pittsburgh, but the best allies of the laundrymen have been the black smoke and the smoke-filled fog. From the lower city to the East End there were in 1907 no less than 32 steam laundries, four of them in charitable institutions, but all of them commercial, with a force of 2402* employes, of whom 2185 were women. As employers of women, exclusive of clerical work, the laundries stand third. Mercantile houses rank first and the stogy industry second. * This total is exclusive of drivers and of office help. It represents the number employed in the actual manual work of checking incoming clothing, wash- ing, starching, drying and ironing it, and finally sorting it out and wrapping it to send away. See Appendix B, p. 392, Table 54, for number of men and women in each laundry. II 161 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Corner sites which allow for a maximum number of windows have frequently been made use of in the newer buildings. A con- siderable minority of the laundrymen, however, still occupy small structures in the middle of business blocks, overcrowded, and in large part shut out from light and air. If you walk along Chartiers Street near seven in the morning, you may see the girls coming down the street to their work. Bleak and dull red and square, the low buildings of a laundry stand against the gray light. A single driver's wagon is in the alley-way. Several men, high- cheeked Slavs, have just gone in, but close behind them come half a dozen American girls, collarless and rough jacketed. There is pride in their look, but none of the almost defiant independence which one instinctively reads into the stubborn pace of the three Polish girls who follow. These are linked together in the spirit of "we against the world," even if "we" be only three feeders at a mangle, and the world that large impersonal thing represented by the foreman. There are young girls, too, girls out of school only a month or two, lacking the training of eye or hand or brain which might set them a step higher at the start. A rough-armed Irishwoman, a grandmother, walks with them. With the loss of her early strength she has lost the customers for whom she worked by the day, and has found here her only chance to get a steady job. Some of the workers are women who have spent their youth too quickly, and have sold their strength at a little price; others are women worn out at other trades. Lastly, there are girls with fresh faces and bright eyes, girls who step quickly, surely, with the pride that comes from the consciousness of a trained hand and a clear brain. There are only a few of these, but of the others there are many. The whistle from a neighbor- ing factory shrills out the hour, there is the slow sound of an en- gine starting, a gathering whirr of belts and wheels, and the last girls disappear to take their places at the machines. Before we discuss the work a word must be said about the managerial side of the business. The apparent prosperity of .the industry has not resulted from a trade combination. The various plants have worked in the main as individuals, and there- fore suffered somewhat both from the rise in prices of materials and from the expenses of competition, without being able to save 162 LAUNDRIES duplication of running expenses. The price of wrapping paper, twine, soap and starch has gone up 1 5 to 20 per cent even within a year. Wages, too, have advanced. Employers are of the opin- ion that the demands of their employes have become exorbitant, out of all proportion to the profits of the business. " Fifteen years ago when I started," said the owner of one plant, "you didn't have to pay the best girl in the laundry more than $6.00 or I7.00 a week, and you could get an inexperienced hand for $2.50. Now they won't start work for less than $4.00, and you have to raise them to I5.00 pretty quickly, or they leave you and go somewhere else." This was in a district where many opportuni- ties of employment are open to girls. It is true, however, of laundries which employ the cheapest help, that ten years has seen an increase of 30 per cent in the wages of women employes. Steam laundries, by ancestral connection with the washtub, have shared the difficulties of individual housekeepers in obtain- ing hands. In the years immediately before the trade depression of 1907-08, laundry workers were known to be an unusually in- dependent group, ready to leave in an instant if they fancied themselves offended, and ready to increase their value by bargain- ing now with one employer and now with another, until their wages showed a high absolute and proportionate increase. Many a manager complained of brother laundrymen who would waylay his new shirt girl, for instance, as she came from work, and ask, "How much are you getting at ?" "Five dollars." "Well, come to us and we will give you |6.oo." The desire for advancement, too, has prompted many a girl, paid I4.00 at one laundry, to ask for a job at another laundry a few squares away. "Have you ever worked before?" "Yes, at ." "How much did you get ?" "Five-fifty." "All right, we will give you that and more if you make good." Gampetition for drivers has been another managerial diffi- culty. An able driver is as important a source of trade as the traveling salesman for a commercial house. He often is paid a commission, and is responsible both for keeping the customers on his route and for getting more. With eager desire to gain the market, rival managers forced up the wages of drivers and even bribed men to leave former employers and bring customers to .63 WOMEN AND THE TRADES them. The increase of this practice produced a chaotic state of affairs. From Friday night until Monday morning, no man felt sure that his drivers and his agencies might not have seceded to a competing firm, and left him without means of keeping his trade. Some firms, in order to get business, had recourse to a desperate cutting of prices. Employes became notably* unreliable, and seemed to lose all sense of the relation between service given and wages earned; between competitors there was constant irrita- tion and suspicion. Price cutting and increasing expenses finally led to the for- mation of the Laundrymen' s Association in 1 90 1 . The Association does not attempt to district the city, although this would mean great saving in the cost of drivers and agencies, nor does it at- tempt to fix the wages of employes, and to prevent one plant from outbidding another for its more valuable hands. Its jurisdiction extends only to a flexible arrangement with regard to prices charged, and to a working agreement against " stealing agencies " and drivers. The division of labor in a laundry is carried far as in a factory. There is specialization for speed. Most of the women are young, as factory girls are young. Women are found in the washroom — a few of the older women, bending over hot tubs of dainty clothes ; at the mangles — young untrained girls shaking and folding and feeding the flat work into the machines; in the starching room — young girls still, dipping the pieces by machine and rubbing them smooth by hand; in the ironing department — raw newcomers and seasoned machine hands, operating a dozen different presses and heated rolls ; and in the checking and sorting room where the work is in part clerical. WASHING DEPARTMENT At the preliminary processes* of washing, mangling, and starching, place is found for the beginners and the girls of lowest grade. The washroom is usually on the first floor or in the cellar, its location being partly for the convenience of drivers and partly because of tradition, referable perhaps to the location of washtubs * The four institutional laundries will be considered separately in Chapter XI. 164 LAUNDRIES in the kitchen. This is preeminently the man's part of the laundry, and the few women who work here are employed on fine work which can more conveniently be done by hand. The washer- men, frequently American, and the wringermen, who are nearly always Slavs, have full charge of the washing machines — huge cylinders full of hot water and steaming clothes, and of the ex- tractors, which twist the clothes and fling out the water by cen- trifugal force. With haste always at their heels, the men do not wait to let all the water run out before they lift the dripping garments into trucks and wheel them over to the metal wringers. The results are a wet floor and a cloud of steam, which aifect the workers not only here, but on the floor above. From this point of view, the washroom is the most important department in a laundry. The health of workers in all parts of the building is dependent upon its location, its drainage, and its provision for the escape of steam and forced ventilation. (Table 21 on the following page shows the location, as well as other physical characteristics, of the washrooms, in the twenty- eight Pittsburgh laundries.) Yet there is only one laundry in Pittsburgh in which the washroom is on a floor above the other departments. One other has a second floor washroom, but the rest choose first floors or cellars with fine disregard of the discom- fort and positive ill health that may result. We might expect that even if location were not considered carefully in the arrangement of departments, such means would be provided for the escape of steam and for adequate ventilation as to make the workrooms more tolerable. But in considering provision for the escape of steam, we find a situation characteris- tic of Pittsburgh. In only one case is there any outlet except through the windows, and on a foggy day windows are useless. For the Pittsburgh fog is not the fog that a coast town knows; it is moisture permeated with coal dust and grime, perilous to the eyes and throat of the pedestrian, and of a fatal, penetrating quality wherever open door or window gives it a chance to enter. It has to answer for the spoiUng of many a lot of clothes on their way from washing machine to extractor — a mishap not discover- able until they reach the ironing room and have to be sent back ignominiously for a second washing. What wonder, then, that 165 WOMEN AND THE TRADES orders are issued for doors and windows to be kept closed? What wonder that in seven cases the washroom windows are so small and low, not over three feet by three, that steam has small chance to fly out; or that in three cases there are no windows or other openings at all? TABLE 21. — PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF WASHROOMS* No. of Grade Location IVorkrooms A Second floor . . . . 2 B First floor . . . . 13 C Basement .... .6 D Cellar ... Drainage A Gutters; drainage good*; floors convex B Gutters; drainage good C Gutters; drainage imperfect f D No gutters; floor drainage | . Escape for Steam A Windows B Windows, small and low, 3x3 C Shaft to roof D No escape § ... Ventilation A Exhaust fans — adequate . B Inadequate C Iron pipes admitting outside air D Shaft to roof .... E No provision for ventilation Gutters run length of machines. • _7 28 . I 16 • J 28 17 7 I J 28 I 9 1 I 16 28 Floor is flat. * Gutters; drainage good. but most water is carried off. f Gutters; drainage imperfect. Gutters have not sufficient slope to carry off water. Floor is flat, worn, with numerous holes. Water stands in pools. X Floor; no gutters. Water that is spilled remains on floor; opening to drain only at one point. . § No escape. Cellar entirely closed in, without windows or other access to outer air. But to the girls sitanding just above, the hot boards seem scorching. The steam works its way through cracks and crevices, and attacks them like a vicious thing until in dismay they give up their jobs and try what chance may have for them elsewhere. One girl told me that as long as she worked in a laundry she went home by a back street so that no one should see the old shoes * See also Appendix B, p. 393, Table 55. 166 LAUNDRIES which she had to wear. Tight-fitting shoes were unendurable. " I never knew anyone who worked in a laundry long," said another girl, "the work's too hard, and you simply can't stand the heat." Sometimes electric fans are placed by the slit of a window at the far end of the room or near the stairway, but one or two fans are but a feeble defense against clouds of steam rising from two to six boiling cylinders, ten hours a day. Even iron pipes to admit outside air, a device used in one basement washroom, are power- less in the presence of a hot six-roll mangle and a row of washing machines, cellar-wide. Good drainage would make ventilation less difficult. In all but three cases, gutters run under the washing machines to carry off the waste, and where the floor is convex, there need not be much waste water under foot, if reasonable care is used in lifting the clothes. But in a majority of the rooms, nineteen cases, I found that the floor was either flat or sunken and filled with holes, and that the water stood in pools. Sometimes the ill- drained washroom was in a cellar, closed in by rough, damp stones and lighted by a flaring gas jet : sometimes it was on a first floor, a few steps away from the mangle room and just beneath the ironers. Often it was in a basement, half lighted by small, dim panes of glass, damp from steam that had risen and cooled upon them for months, and foul with the odor of soiled linen. To the women, and to all the other workers in the plant, the location of the washroom below rather than above other departments, the imperfect drainage, inadequate ventilation, and lack of provision for the escape of steam, make work unnecessarily hard, and take too great a toll from their store of strength. One washroom which is a strong contrast to the usual type in Pittsburgh, contains all the good features which most of the others lack. It is on the top floor of the building, shut off by concrete walls. The flooring, which is of slate, is graded down toward the gutters, and the gutters are sloped toward the drains. The window space on one side occupies over 60 per cent of the wall area, and fans are placed at the windows to draw off the steam. Even in the midst of work, the air in this washroom is not oppressive. The point of danger in the washing department is the ex- 167 WOMEN AND THE TRADES tractor. In loading the wringer, the goods must be distributed so that the weight and therefore the outward pressure will be the same at all points. As the machine rapidly revolves, the water in the goods is thrown by centrifugal force out at the perforations in the sides of the inner basket, caught in the outer can, and carried down to the drain. The basket is made of steel or copper, rein- forced by iron bands, strong enough to allow for a limited margin of overweight at some point, in the event of careless loading. If this margin is exceeded, there is danger that the basket will strike hard against the case and break, and be hurled about the room by the great force with which it is revolved. For the women in these washrooms, there are few miti- gating circumstances. No women are employed regularly in twenty of the laundry washrooms. But in eight laundries thir- teen hand-washers, and more under extra pressure of trade, are regularly employed. " You can't get a young woman to do this work," managers say. The hand-washers are women whose strength has gone at other trades, mainly housewifery. For |i.oo a day they work ten hours over the tubs, at flannels and socks and bits of finery that would need to be handled by an extra machine if they were machine-done. From the record of a visit to one laundry, I have taken the following: "Cellar washroom; eight men employed. Two women hand-washers for flannels. The firm finds that its trade in articles of this kind has doubled since it began to do this work by hand. The washroom is not well drained. Gutters beneath washing machines, but the floor is flat and has sunk in places. Windows are small, three feet by three. Ceiling low, less than ten feet. No escape for steam, and the air is foul." It is incongruous to find this survival of the home industry, with its discomforts, incorporated in a department of a factory industry imperfectly developed. It is questionable whether this survival is necessary. Some laundries succeed with- out it, even treating fine goods en masse without undue wear and tear. It would seem, in any event, that some solution other than this hand work would be needed when the present generation of old women has passed away. Recruits are not readily found among the younger women, with whom the factory tradition, the idea of collective work, is fundamental. i68 M W O g « W M LAUNDRIES MANGLE ROOM * Opening out of the washroom or on the floor just above it is the room where the mangle stands. The size and weight of the machine are reasons for placing it on the first floor. Then, too, by close connection between mangling and washing depart- ments, flat work can be speedily finished, sorted and given to the drivers. Under the steam-heated metal rolls, or around the steam cylinder of the great machine, winding in tortuous ways through inner recesses, go table and bed linen, towels and all manner of flat things, to come out smooth and dry at the farther end. There is a fascination in watching the even pace of the continuous apron that carries the sheet along, the developed efficiency of this socialized household ironing day. The mangle department as a whole still has some disabili- ties. In addition to the steam from the nearby washroom, the mangle itself is a steam-producer, as it dries and irons articles that pass through its rolls. The point at which invention has been taxed is in arrangement for sufficiently long contact with a steam-heated surface, and at the same time for intervals of ex- posure to the air, to allow for the escape of steam. If the article travels over too short a heated surface, it will need to be passed through the mangle several times. Similarly, if the steam has too little chance to escape, the article will still be damp and will need to be ironed again. For economy of time, fuel, and ma- chinery, a mangle must be so constructed that the articles shall be ironed in as few operations as possible. Chest mangles are con- structed with a series of heated rolls, seldom less than four, above a steam chest. One firm has two six-roll mangles, each with a capacity of ten sheets a minute, dried perfectly in once passing through. Cylinder mangles, in which a traveling apron passes under heated rolls around a steam cylinder, are also built on large lines, to allow for a long heated surface, and ample provision for the escape of steam. All this means that steam, much steam, is inevitable in the mangle room. The point for laundrymen to solve is how to take care of it. Nineteen mangle rooms have no forced ventilation whatever. * See Appendix B, pp. 393-3Q5, Tables 56-58. 169 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Some others set ventilating fans at the windows, but these fans draw the steam through the room on its way to the escape and do not greatly decrease the clouds of vapor about the operators. An open skylight and fans directly above the mangle have been sufficient in one case to carry away the steam. Two laundries, however, meet the situation effectively without a skylight. Gal- vanized iron hoods leading to exhaust pipes are placed about five feet above the rolls; and although this apparatus is expensive both to install and to operate, by increasing the comfort of the employes it greatly increases their efficiency. Sometimes the mangle room is in a cellar, damp with over- flow from the washroom, and the air is further vitiated by sput- tering gas lamps. Scarcely better are the seven first floor mangle rooms which are not separated from the washrooms at all, or the nine mangle rooms placed directly above the washing cylinders and exposed to rising heat and steam. The actual work in the department is done by machine. The responsibility on the girls is relatively small. First of all, goods come to the shakers-out. Near trucks full of tightly twisted knots of clothes stands a group of young girls and tired-faced women untwisting, unknotting, shaking out piece after piece, so that they may be fed into the mangle. Sometimes there is a wooden "tumbler" to make the work easier. Shaped like a washing machine, it untwists the clothes by revolving rapidly with a reversible motion; but only a few laundries provide these machines, and as a rule all the work of standing and shaking out falls on the girls. This occupation nowise involves training or skill. The shakers-out have not even responsibility for the ap- pearance of the finished product ; they stand between washers and ironers, their only care being not to interfere with the work of the one, nor to undo the work of the other. This is the first process at which a learner is put; it is sometimes the last process for a woman worn out at other trades. Some earn I4.00 a week, but the greater number, whether young girls or older unskilled women, are paid I3.50 and I3.00. For the younger ones, at least, there is opportunity for promotion. The first step of advancement in most mangle rooms is to the position of folder, but as this is the third process, I shall 170 LAUNDRIES speak of the feeders' work first. The feeders stand at one end of the mangle and push the flat goods over the metal apron until the rolls catch the goods and relieve the feeders of further re- sponsibility. One girl can feed in towels or other small pieces without help, but for table linen, or wide pieces of the sort, two and sometimes three girls are needed, so that they may hold the piece at several places, and feed evenly under the rolls. The work requires some care and attention, to keep the linen smooth and secure the desired finish by placing the proper side uppermost. Yet here, too, the process needs no skill, and but little training. It is learned in an hour, and thereafter the feeder needs only to give attention to the work to do it well. The feeder is marked out from other laundry workers by the dangerous nature of her work. Some years ago, when mangles were in process of development, it happened that as the flat piece was pushed over the roll, the roll frequently caught more than the cloth; it caught fingers and hand and arm of the girl opera- tive. Fingers and hand and arm were crushed flat as the cloth that they had been guiding, for there is no halting in the perfect mechanism of the mangle, no stopping place before the length of the rolls is reached unless the belt is shifted and the machine thrown out of gear. This meant not death, but hideous sufi'ering. From an economic standpoint it meant that the girl's wage-earning ca- pacity was irreparably lowered even if it were not altogether at an end. Accidents of this sort increased to the point where employers considered it advisable to guard the machine. Today one never finds a mangle unguarded. A small roll, two and a half inches in diam- eter, is sometimes set at a space of four to six inches from the heated rolls, so that its weight, which could not seriously injure the girls' hands should they go under it, yet might serve as a reminder to them. Sometimes this unheated roll is so connected with the belting that lifting the roll throws off the belt and stops the machine. In one case a large roll, four inches in diameter, is set at a distance from the heated rolls. Five mangles are guarded by upright bars placed directly in front of the rolls. In twenty-one of the laundries the small roll is used, because it serves the purpose of partly straightening the cloth as well as of guarding the feeders, and in consequence is more popular with 171 WOMEN AND THE TRADES laundrymen than a bar which has no use so far as the goods are concerned. Yet we may realize that this small roll is not wholly adequate, by comparing its diameter with that of the large steam heated rolls, two and one-half inches against twelve. The feeder works ten hours a day at least. Hour after hour and week after week she goes through the same operations. She loses respect for the danger of the thing which she seems to know so thoroughly. If the guard roll were set close to the heated rolls, it would tend simply to draw in her hand: set at a distance from the heated rolls, it leaves a space unguarded,* and if there is a space between small roll and large, and the sheet is started unevenly, what more easy than to straighten it before it reaches the large roll, in the perilous space between? To obviate this, one foreman had the small roll removed and an upright bar put in its place. The bar was set at the height of an inch above the metal apron, and the feeder had to depend on her own alertness quite as much as before. Three weeks after the change of guard, her attention slackened, and her fingers were crushed. Yet since a four-inch bar covers more of the heated rolls than a small roll possibly can, if it is set so that there is not space beneath for fingers to go through, an accident seems improbable. It seems to be the safest form of guard that up to the present has been put to commercial use. The wool and canvas covering of the rolls is changed at fre- quent intervals, often once a week. The guard is removed for this operation which is so admittedly dangerous that although sometimes done by the girls, it is more often a duty of men em- ployed about the plant. It is not my purpose to arraign the mangle departments of laundries for a record of maimed hands and arms. Indeed, as far as can be learned, the percentage of accidents yearly is not over 3 per cent of the total employes in the department. The point to be made is that accidents still occur, and that it is possible to prevent them. One could wish that as much thought had been * A large guard roll is open to the same objection — that the space between guard roll and heated roll makes an accident possible. . The laundry of an institu- tion near Pittsburgh guards its mangle by a heavy wire screen (removable for cleaning) over the rolls. This screen was designed and set up immediately after an accident at this laundry, and since the screen has been in place there has been no further accident. No commercial laundry, however, employs a safeguard of this sort. 172 o o H Pi! LAUNDRIES given to making a mangle accident, one of the most horrible of non-fatal accidents, impossible, as has been given in bringing to perfection the mechanical details of the machine. The one form of guard which seems generally to be effective, the upright bar, is in use in only five of the laundries ; the guards more gener- ally used depend for their effectiveness on the alertness of the employe. Yet should an accident occur and the injured employe bring suit, she could not recover, under the imperfect employers' liability law of Pennsylvania, if the machine were guarded by any of the methods described, for it could be shown that the employer had taken "all reasonable care," had used the guards that are customary, and the operative would therefore be judged " careless." The work of the folder, or receiving operator, may sometimes be dangerous, but it is not usually so. She sits in front of the shelving on which the goods fall from the machine. If she reaches up to catch an article that is being carried through the machine a second time, there is much chance that her hands will be caught. As a rule, however, the sheets drop from the rolls, and she has only to receive them and fold them to convenient size. Re- sponsibility for the attractive appearance of laundered articles rests on her. She is usually the only girl in the mangle room who can be seated, although in one laundry stools are provided for the feeders. On the whole, the mangle girls rank lowest among laundry workers. They are the most unstable, the most difficult to man- age. Socially they form a group by themselves. Where there is marked difference in ages, it is the mangle girls who are the young- est, and where there is difference in nationality, they are of the immigrant group. Their work, which requires least training, is paid at the lowest rates, in a third of the laundries at I3.00 to I4.00 a week, in half of the laundries at I4.00 to I5.00. Except in the position of head girl, no mangle girl is paid more than |6.oo. One plant which does nothing but flat work is in several important points an exception to what has been said. It was originally started by the Pullman Company to handle the linen used on sleeping and dining cars, but changed hands in 1891, and has since been privately operated. The bulk of its work is for the Pullman Company still, but it also has the trade of a large '73 WOMEN AND THE TRADES caf6, and of a local towel company — all of them customers who require perfect work. The building is old, and in some ways ill- adapted to laundry purposes, but so much has been done to make it comfortable, that it is preferable to many newer buildings. There are exhaust pipes over the mangles, and fans in the wall; and there are windows along the side. The feeders are seated while handling small work and the folders have comfortable benches. The two great six-roll mangles have a capacity of ten sheets a minute, the sheets being perfectly dry after once passing through, and the girls are trained to feed in and fold the goods with absolute accuracy. Slight imperfections are not tolerated. From the folders at the machines the articles go to eight especially expert folders who make bundles — ten napkins or ten pillow slips, etc. — of the small work. A knife placed along the edge of the bundles would not show the smallest measurable irregularity. Wages correspond to the greater exactness required. Al- though in other laundries few mangle girls earn more than I4.00 a week, in this plant all but four girls, shakers-out, are earning more. A few are paid $4.50 and the rest I5.00 to |6.oo. The head girls at the mangles are paid $8.00. The eight expert folders and the four coat girls upstairs earn $7.00 and |8.oo. The wages of employes are usually advanced each spring — a custom general in many other trades, but not so among the local laundries. "We expect good work," said the manager, "and we make it worth the girls' while to give it and to stay with us. " That the wages in this laundry are somewhat higher than those in most other mangle rooms, does not altogether account for the rare degree of contentment and stability among the girls. It must be remembered that with the exception of the four coat- ironers, all the forty to fifty girls in this plant belong to the group which in the trade as a whole has been characterized as shifting, unreliable, unstable. All with the exception of those four are employed at the mangles. Their wages, while far better than those of the majority, are yet not better than those of some of the other laundries, and their hours might be considered harder, since they have six ten-hour days each week. One factor in producing this greater reliability is unquestionably the spirit of consideration evidenced not only in exhaust pipes and seats 174 LAUNDRIES at the mangle, but in sympathetic friendliness on the part of the managing head. The other factor is the summoning into action of all the dexterity and care which these girls can give. Poor work will not pass. There is a challenge in that. Wages are not paid by the piece but by the week, and except through rank carelessness, the girls do not lose. Yet in keeping to the standard set by this laundry, there has become involved a point of honor — a point which the employes have seemed to recognize and wish to maintain. STARCHING DEPARTMENT The order of promotion is from mangle room to starching department. Here machinery is less in evidence, and hand work assumes prominence once more. As you pass through the room, you can see half a dozen girls, collarless, their waists turned in at the neck, faces flushed, sleeves rolled high; you see a few small machines with pans of boiling starch, a great square dryhouse, half as big as the room, with its chain of hooks moving slowly, steadily, in and out, and a long table where three or four other girls stand rubbing hundreds of collars smooth. The dryhouse is placed directly above the boiler, so that the pipes may run in a straight line, sometimes for the distance of three floors. This often means that the starching room is pushed into a corner of the building formed by an inside partition on one side and the dryhouse on the other, with light from the outside windows com- pletely shut off. Yet in this room movement of cool air is es- pecially important to the workers, because there is heat from the dryhouse as well as from the washroom on the lower floor. In a few cases electric fans have been set up, but otherwise there is no forced ventilation to the rescue. As to the work itself, shirt and collar starching are of the most importance. The principal machines are three: a collar starcher, a shirt bosom starcher, and a band starcher. The band starcher has two rolls about four inches wide, the lower one resting in a starch pan that is kept at high temperature by a steam chest underneath. Pressure of a treadle lifts the lower roll out of the starch, causing it to revolve against the upper roll, around which the article is placed, and in this way to rub in starch for as long a 175 WOMEN AND THE TRADES time as the pre.ssure is continued. Attached cuffs and collars, neckbands, wristbands, are starched at this machine. The pressure required is light, and the machine so largely automatic that little skill or experience is demanded of the operator. The same principle is applied in the shirt bosom starcher, but here there is only one roll, usually of cupped rubber. This roll rests in a steam-heated starch pan, until treadle pressure causes it to revolve backward and forward over the oval wiping board on which the shirt bosom is placed. The operator holds the shirt in position. Injured fingers often result from unintentional contact with an inflexible cylinder and with boiling starch. The collar starcher is more complex, but among the many different kinds in use there stand out only two distinct types. In all machines for this purpose the operator feeds in collars or cuffs, which are then carried by the conveying apron into contact with rolls immersed in hot starch; the starch is rubbed in, and the collars are brought by the conveying apron out to the receiving table at the other side. In twenty- two of twenty-eight laundries, wiping girls follow the work of the collar machine by rubbing in the starch with their hands, and then wiping the collars smooth with a cloth. To do this work properly the girls have to acquire a firm, even pressure and to use judgment as to the amount of starch. In this department, more than elsewhere in laundries, the similarity between the factory process and the household process is apparent, but this hand work is passing too. At least the change is clearly on its way, for four laundries use a new style collar starcher, which itself does the rubbing and wiping that in other cases the girls are required to do. There is no resemblance here to a former domestic process, for somewhere in the recesses of the machine the thinking is done, and the collars are rubbed clear before they reach the receiving table. The dryhouse* is operated automatically. Collars and cuffs hung by their eyelet holes on hooks are carried on a continuous chain through a series of loops in the closed, highly heated room. * Three laundries have an old style drying room. Collars have to be taken from the hooks by hand. Instead of a traveling chain, there are heavy wooden frames which the girls push in and out at need. 176 LAUNDRIES As they reach the outer air again they drop automatically into a basket and are taken away to be dampened and ironed. Shirts and larger articles are in another compartment; they are hung from hooks attached to sliding frames which can be pulled out when the door is opened. Machines for dampening shirts and collars are built like small mangles. The articles are carried by a conveying apron to inner rolls (one of which is constantly immersed in water), and after passing over the moist surface to the receiving table, are placed in an enclosed dampening press which keeps them evenly moist until they are ironed. In the case of the shirt dampener, the articles are fed directly between the rolls. Serious accidents formerly caused by this machine have led to the partial enclosure of the rolls by a wooden shield, and as the dampener is in use only intermittently in all but the very largest laundries, the danger from careless handling is minimized. Even in large laundries the dampener is seldom in constant use. One duty of the starching girls is to keep the conveyor (the traveling chain of hooks) clean. Early Monday morning, before the other girls are at work, they come to scrub to a state of shining perfection the long chain that hourly carries its freight of damp, starched clothes. This is a difficult piece of machinery to keep in good condition, for every hook of it must be gone over scrupu- lously. Yet, this extra duty notwithstanding, the wages* of starchers are still low. In many cases they are the same as those of the mangle girls. A tendency is observable, however, toward a little higher level. Although the wiping machine reduces the work in this department to a mechanical series of processes, this machine has not yet made sufficient headway to have affected wages. The hand work with the judgment needed for good results has brought the wages above the point reached in the mangle room. More of the starchers are earning I4.00 and I5.00. Some in time are advanced to |6.oo, and in some instances where the head girls are old employes they are earning I7.00 and |8.oo. * For table of wages of starching girls, see Appendix B, p. 396, Table 59. 177 CHAPTER X LAUNDRIES IRONING, SEWING, CHECKING AND SORTING THE preliminary laundry processes — washing, mangling, starching — ^were grouped together partly by order of occurrence, and partly through the grade of skill required by them. Ironing by hand and by machine, and the semi- clerical work of checking and sorting, demand as a rule still greater dexterity and are better paid. IRONING DEPARTMENT As you enter the ironing room on an upper floor of a laundry, you hear a rush of belting, the irregular sound of reversible rolls, and the sharp quick clamp of a metal press. A machine is set next each window, and others adapted for various uses stand one behind another toward the centre of the room. The girl ironers are specialists. This one adjusts the metal clamp to a neckband; a second forces a cuff press into position ; a third steps back and forth with steady treadmill motion as the rolls of the body ironer before her revolve and reverse, revolve and reverse, incessantly. No girl irons a whole article. Instead, she irons a sleeve, or a cuff, or yoke, or perhaps one side of a collar. In small laundries the girls are often taught to use all the machines, but more generally the operator is trained for speed and maximum output in one line of work. The ironing room is usually on the second floor. In twenty- four of the twenty-eight laundries, it is well lighted, with clear large windows, and often with skylights in addition. The ironers need to see well in order to do good work. They can do good work, however, without breathing fresh air. Ironing room, no less than starching room, feels the effect of steam from the wash- ing cylinders below, and in addition, each of its dozen or more 178 s < H S a- s 1 M Pi J3 - ^ 60.3 1= ■C 3 R ■3m H 'fo H O 'C o T3 •" a o 3T3 m" 1? o o o V X « B " <^ a - O 4 36 40 55 149 353 WOMEN AND THE TRADES If this table be rearranged so as to show the number and percentage of women not in each separate occupation, but in the three distinct groups of occupations, the order will be as follows : TABLE 28. — OCCUPATIONAL GROUPS OF WOMEN IN THE GLASS No. of Percentage of Occupational Group Women Women Unskilled work (cleaning, washing, packing) . 181 51.2 Finishing processes (cutting-off, grinding, fin- ishing) .... .... 50 14.1 Decorating (stamping, preparing for etching. gold enameling) . . . 1 22 34-5 Although the degrees of proficiency vary considerably within these occupational groups, this order indicates roughly the advance from least to most dexterity. Most of the glass-houses are on the South Side. Where the union is strong, all the employes, even in the packing rooms, are men, but in nine non-union factories women are employed. Some American girls work in the glass factories, especially in the decorating departments, but the greater number of the women employes are Slavic, drawn from the colonies of Polish and Croa- tian families which have grown up around the glass-houses where the men are day laborers. WASHING AND CLEANING The bottle factories have their packing done by men, but women packers are employed for the most part on glass chimneys and tableware of different sorts. As the glassware is finished near the furnaces, it is placed by the "carry-in" boys in the lehrs — the annealing furnaces through which it is slowly carried by means of moving trays out to the packing room. The packing girls stand near the lehrs, surrounded by crates and barrels and tables heaped with fine tissue and excelsior. Toward the day's end, they are covered with excelsior and dust. They wrap each piece separately and crate the glass, in some factories taking charge of the order blanks and making out the shipments. When they do this additional work they are usually women of more intelli- gence than the characteristic glass-house packer, for in order to 240 WOMEN IN GLASS FACTORIES make out the shipments properly they must know the stock numbers of all the articles manufactured in the factory, and be able to select the pattern by the stock number without hesitation or mistake. In factories where the surface of the glass has to be cleaned and polished for decorating, the glass must be washed. In such cases, the washroom, and not the packing room, is placed at the far end of the lehrs. Although the work is entirely unskilled, in a sense it serves as an apprenticeship for the decorating depart- ment proper, since when vacancies occur in the decorating room they are usually filled from among the washing girls. The mold cleaners, as their name implies, clean and scrape out the molds which have been used at the furnaces in shaping the glass. The work is hard and is likely to injure the hands, since the cleaning liquid is a mixture of acid, emery and oil. Mold cleaners are paid I5.00 a week, which is more than many of the packers earn. All of the women in this occupational group are time workers, the usual rates of pay being I3.00 to $3.50 a week. A few are paid I4.00 a week, and some of the packers who make up shipments are paid $5.00 a week. GRINDING AND CUTTING-OFF The work of the finishers is more closely allied to the actual processes of glass making. Some of these finishers do work in the outer room similar to what the boys are doing near the fur- naces. They take the annealed chimneys from the lehrs and carry them to a second annealing oven. Others cut off on a machine the spun edges of rough glass left by the blowers on chimneys and unfinished tumblers. The carrying girls are paid by time, I4.00 to I5.00 a week, but the cutters-off are paid in some places by time and in others by piece. They are paid I4.00 to |6.oo a week in tumbler factories. For work on chimneys they earn considerably more by piece. The rate is | .15 a 100, and their day's pay is usually from I1.25 to $1.40. With a run of good work they sometimes make I1.75. Grinding and finishing glass edges is done by girls in Pitts- burgh in tumbler factories only. The girls first grind the edges 16 241 WOMEN AND THE TRADES of the tumblers on a wheel fastened to a table and operated by power, a small three-inch belting running from table to ceiling. The action of the wheel on the glass produces a fine dust for which no exhaust is provided and which in consequence is inhaled by the operators. Grinding requires some training before it can be done well. It is paid for by the piece at the rate of | .75 a 1000, and the girls grind 1000 to 1500 tumblers a day. The edges are finished at another machine after they have been ground. The finishing girls set the tumblers in metal hold- ing-cups on a disc which revolves horizontally, passing the upper edges of the tumblers under a white-hot flame, which slightly melts and smoothes the surface of the glass. The heat from the flame of the machines and from the nearby annealing ovens makes this work especially trying. A foreman told me that he loses time frequently because the girls faint at their work. Finishing edges, like grinding, is paid by the piece, but at a lower rate because the machine finishes several tumblers at one time. The rate is | .35 a 1000, the output of the girls being from 3000 to 5000 a day. GLASS DECORATING This brings us to the occupations grouped under the general head of decorating, and here again I shall take them up in the order of least to most skilled. Decorating of some sort is done in four of the nine factories, the work in two cases being largely mechanical, and in the other two requiring some experience and skill. Stamping designs on glass and preparing glass for etching rank as mechanical, but gold enameling is work of much higher grade. By the first process, drinking glasses are stamped to order. The design is cut in a rubber stamp shaped to the glass. The girls brush ink over the design, place the inky surface next the glass, and rub the dry, outer surface until the design shows clear on the glass. The ware is then annealed. This stamping is paid for by time, at I4.50 to I7.00 a week. Designs are etched on wine glasses and on different kinds of fine ware by an acid process. The girls ink the design, which is printed on tissue paper, and wrap it around the glass; when they remove the paper, the pattern is outlined in heavy ink on 242 WOMEN IN GLASS FACTORIES the glass, the untouched surface of which must be protected from the acid. Others of the girls then wax over the broader parts of this exposed surface, and still others paint with heavy red ink the parts of the surface that the wax is too stiflF to reach. The inside of the glass is then filled with paraffin. A boy is employed to carry this ware to the bath of hydrofluoric acid in which it remains for half an hour while the acid eats out the design. Paraffin and ink are then scraped off, and the glass is cleaned and packed. The women employes at this work as at the rubber stamping are paid by time, the wages of most of them ranging from $4.00 to I4.50 a week, and in a few cases from I5.00 to I7.00. The hand-decorating department off'ers the highest grade of work done by women in the glass industry. A new girl is given small articles to edge with gold first, and later to touch daintily with gold on edge and sides; then she is taught the use of ruby paint, and finally a combination of ruby and gold. From small articles, such as individual cream pitchers, she is advanced to larger articles, six or eight inches wide, and to more complicated designs. The chief materials used are a liquid gold, ruby paint which looks like amber when first put on, white enamel, and some- times a dull silver, which, when finished, has the appearance of nickel plate. A new girl is not given enamel and silver work until she has thoroughly learned the other materials. All this decorating is done by hand, the color being put on with an artist's brush after a model copied by the forewoman from some design sent in by the management. The work is more or less mechanical. The main difficulty is to put on the color smoothly and to avoid wasting the gold. In the larger factory, no account is kept of the amount of color used by individuals, but finished articles are inspected for their appearance, which deviates from the stand- ard if the right quantity of color is not used. Glass painted a ruby color is polished on a small hand wheel, so that it will look like ruby glass. Hand decorators are paid by the piece, and never within the memory of those now employed has the rate per piece been cut because some employes were able to earn more than the usual amount. After six weeks' training, a girl is expected to make |i .00 a day, and a good worker can increase her speed until she earns 243 WOMEN AND THE TRADES 18.00 a week. In one factory, twenty out of the thirty earn |8.oo, but a few make as much as $12. A decorator strikes her pace after a while, and although she does not lose speed, she does not increase her output. The regular working day in all the glass-houses is ten hours. Sometimes an hour is allowed at noon, and sometimes, especially in the decorating works, the girls prefer to take only half an hour and close earlier at night. The work in the packing rooms is fairly even throughout the year, with overtime occurring only rarely under special pressure. The busy time for the decorators comes at the end of every month. The girls often have to work two nights a week to get out a shipment in time, although in the entire year this night work does not amount to more than a month of overtime. Summer is the time of underemployment. For six weeks as a rule the furnaces are shut down, and women and men employes alike are out of work. The heat of the work is one of its chief disadvantages. Although the glass-house proper where the men work is wide open, the packing rooms are usually enclosed, dusty, and hot from the lehrs and cooling glass. The same is true of the decorating rooms. The radiation from the ovens even on cool days makes the work- rooms overheated, and decorators, unlike packers, cannot well open their windows, since a draft dries the fresh color on the glass too quickly and tends to make the surface rough. Some scheme of forced ventilation which should carry the excess heat away from the workrooms and cool the air would do much to make the work more desirable. A bit of industrial biography may serve to show the bounds which may confine the talent of an exceptionally able girl. Louise Smead learned decorating at Tarentum, and for several years was employed on lamp shades, plates and other fine ware, with pay by the piece, and earnings of from |io to I14 a week. Then for a year she worked on the backgrounds of plates, blowing on the color. The girls were told to put cheesecloth over nose and mouth, but they were often careless and neglected to do this, especially when they were hurried. When Louise's throat became affected she was frightened and went back to plain decorating. Soon a German foreman took charge of the department, — a man 244 WOMEN IN GLASS FACTORIES with fixed opinions as to the pay suitable for women. He said that no girl ought to earn more than |i.oo a day, and cut down the wages, paying by the day instead of by the piece. Many of the decorators left, but a few kept on, Louise among them. After a few months, she saw that she could not hope to better herself there, so she left and came to Pittsburgh to take a position in a glass factory, boarding at a Home for Girls. There she paid I3.00 a week and as she had some clothes when she came, she was able to keep on for a while, although her pay amounted to only $5.00 or $6.00 a week. The ware was small and cheap, different from that to which she had been accustomed, and she could not get the knack of putting on the color rapidly. She did the work well, but she took too much time over it. A quick dash for effect was outside her experience. She was on the point of leaving and trying something else when the firm promised to advance her; just then it was that she contracted typhoid fever. The fever so exhausted her nervously that she did not regain strength of arm to work by the piece, but her former ability secured her a permanent position at |io per week. This is the trade history of an idealist, a girl who spends the weeks when the factory is shut down at work in crayon, watercolor and oils, whose mind is full of images of the color in trees and fields, but whose hand spends ten hours a day putting gold edges on glassware, after a pattern which must never vary. Her story carries us a-field into another range of ques- tions, the need for developing means more effective than any yet attempted in this great technical center, to find out and develop those artists and genuine craftsmen among the children of the people, who, stunted or undiscovered, are lost to the city and the race. It is a field too big with questions to go into here other than to suggest that it lies just outside, or even within, the trades, as shown in the life of one girl. MIRROR MAKING This subsidiary branch of the glass industry is represented by one firm on the North Side. One hundred and fifty employes, 40 of them girls, make up the working force, whose occupa- 245 WOMEN AND THE TRADES tions are various as the kinds of mirrors that the market de- mands. Large mirrors and small, cheap mirrors that sell for a few cents and fine bits of plate glass for the dressing table,— all these are made, buffed, silvered, riveted, and framed in this busy three-story brick building a few squares from the river. On the first floor, you see a line of girls buffing plate glass. Their calico dresses, their hands and their faces are stained with the oxide of iron in which they work, from the red of the tables and the dull edges of the mirrors, which are only by degrees ac- quiring the fine polish that is to make them saleable. Each girl stands, holding the glass against the buffing wheel. There are some others at the same work upstairs, but on the upper floor the occupations are more various, polishing and cleaning, and silvering the backs of the mirrors. There are three girls riveting parts of frames, and one lacquering. Five girls earn over I7.00 a week, three earn exactly I7.00, and the rest sums from I4.00 to |6.oo. On the third floor, packing is done. Here there are 18 girls, some of them framing mirrors, some of them fastening the corners of boxes by a machine, some of them wrapping and preparing the goods for shipment. The regular day is ten hours, and this is seldom exceeded, as the management believes that overtime does not pay. 246 MISCELLANEOUS TRADES CHAPTER XVI BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING PRECEDING chapters have dealt with large groups of indus- tries, industries that by adaptations of a single machine or by use of a common material or by similarity of product, have naturally been thought of together in a summary of women's work. Such are the needle trades, the industries for the produc- tion of food, the metal trades. We come now to a group of indus- tries which have no such basis of similarity. They are alike neither in product, material nor machines. Some of them, such as broom and brush factories, because of their product are of necessity local. Others, like the paper box factories, owe their importance to major local industries. A few are apparently sporadic; the success of their local plants is not clearly traceable to any of these influences. Just as the industries are distinct from each other, so the processes at which the women work are distinct. Arranged from least to most importance numerically, the trades are as follows: TABLE 29. — NUMBER OF WOMEN IN MISCELLANEOUS TRADES Trade No. of Women Broom making .... . 12 Trunks and suit-cases ... . 14 Brushes . . ... 20 Paint . . 50 Caskets . . 74 Soap . . . 128 Paper boxes . . . 238 Cork ... . . 600 Total . . iiq6 More than half of these women are employed as machine- tenders, a third are employed filling cans and boxes, sorting and 249 WOMEN AND THE TRADES packing, and the rest are employed at some form of hand work. This hand work, however, varies from the comparatively unskilled process of sorting corn in broom factories, to the difficult and expert work of raying silk for caskets. Some form of hand work, as some form of machine work, is found in almost every industry, and it is impossible to group the industries in toto according to the kind of work that they require. But it may be said of these mis- cellaneous trades as a whole, that the percentage of women employed at expert work is small, while those employed at routine hand work or at routine tending of a machine are greatly in the majority. BROOM MAKING Scarcely a city of importance is without its broom makers to meet the needs of the vigilant housewife. The reason lies in the fact, odd as it may seem, that a broom is after all a perishable commodity, unsaleable if made in quantities and stacked away for long periods of time. Like other perishable goods that are in constant local demand it can be more readily handled by small shops, which make only such articles as they have orders for, than by dealers on a larger scale, who must be prepared at times either to make up quantities of their product for stock, to run their plant at a loss, or to lie idle. Pittsburgh housewives have their source of supply near at hand, in several workshops and in one factory that is among the largest in the trade in this country. Another factor enters in, especially in Pennsylvania, in determining the character of the trade. Broom making is one of the prison trades. Efforts of the trade unionists to prohibit convict labor by statute in Pennsylvania have so far been in- effectual, and in the Western Penitentiary today, convicts are making by hand brooms which are afterward bought cheaply and sold at a large profit by jobbers and wholesalers in Pittsburgh. So long as any part of the broom making is done outside the peni- tentiary, this affords a loop hole by which to evade the statute* passed with the intent of prohibiting further competition. The small shops in Pittsburgh do not concern us, as they employ practically no women. Two are family shops where * Act April 28th, 1899. Sec. i and 2, P. L. No. 100. 250 BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING fathers and sons work together and no outsiders are employed. Others are conducted in small two-story buildings, in lofts, or parts of houses; they recall the era of the small business man who hired a few hands and earned a fair income, but never developed his interests along large lines. In these small shops boys are preferred to women because some of them may be depended upon to learn the trade. The one factory employs 32 people, 12 of whom are girls. The girls tend to stay in the one branch of the trade to which they have been admitted. The various processes at which women are not ordinarily engaged illustrate the limitations met with in women's work as a whole. First is the preparation of the corn. The stalks are washed and then immersed in green aniline dye, which gives the bright attractive color that we look for in a new broom. Herein lies the reason why brooms cannot be made for stock. The brightness given by the dye scarcely outlasts the sale of the broom; if the finished goods are retained for a short time in the warehouse it entirely disappears. A dull looking broom, the dealers say, will not sell. Women and boys sort the corn after it has been stacked and dried, but all the actual broom making is done by the men. They choose the different kinds of corn that go to make up a broom, bind them to the handle in the desired shape, and then send them to another department to be sewed. The sew- ing is done sometimes by hand, but usually by machine. To make the double rows of sewing that bind the corn, two needles flash back and forth, threading and unthreading, making stitch after stitch with a rapidity that the eye can scarcely follow. Bleaching, dyeing, and cleaning the corn are among the occupa- tions included in the sorting department, but the girls lack the ambition to learn these other processes, or to become forewomen in charge of a department. They are of the shifting group, who drift indifferently from one to another unskilled occupation. In sorting, the one requisite is a good eye for color. It takes only a day to learn. The stalks of corn are spread out on a table and separated into piles of different grades and colors^ a task which at first glance seems intricate. To the untrained 251 WOMEN AND THE TRADES eye yellow and green, or coarse and fine corn look so nearly alike that it would be puzzling to make even two absolute categories, and hopelessly confusing to attempt to distinguish the seven or eight different yellows and greens which sorters are expected to know. Sorters are paid I5.00 a week. The sizing, which is simply another sorting process, is also done by women or boys. The corn is separated according to its lengths, either by hand work or by a sizing machine. Both methods are used in the Pittsburgh broom factory, but the finer grade of corn is sized by one girl who works by hand. A small wooden box nailed to the side of the table serves her as a holder for the corn. A notched stick which is fastened to the side of the box, with eight notches each corresponding to a standard length, is used for measuring. Taking a handful of corn, the girl measures it against the stick, and puts the different lengths in different piles, with remarkable rapidity. Unlike her co- workers, she has behind her the experience of fourteen years in a broom factory, and has reached a high machine-like precision in the execution of her task. She is a week worker, earning I7.50, the largest amount paid to any girl in this factory. The work of the machine operators is exceedingly simple, but as they could do it either fast or slowly, the incentive of a piece rate is resorted to by the management. Narrow belts run lengthwise along the upper surface of the machine, and as the corn is laid on these belts, the different lengths are carried to different points; thus the sizing is done automatically. The operator merely places the corn on the machine. I am told that these girls often cannot make more than I2.50 a week, and that their maximum is from I4.00 to I5.00. One girl employed in a small shop has work more varied than that of other women in the trade. She not only does sorting and sizing, but cleans the brooms after they have been made, and sometimes when there is special need, she sews. She is paid I7.00 a week. The hours of work in the factory are ten hours a day. To gain speed the girls stand at their work tables, although the work itself could be done as well if they were seated. The air is full of dust from the corn, especially in the sorting department where 252 BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING sorters and sizers throw the yellow handfuls from one pile to an- other, but except through the windows which are usually closed to keep out the smoke, there is no means of ventilating the work- room. The trade agreements of the broom-makers' union, since May, 1907, have contained the clause "All shops shall be provided with proper heat, light and ventilation," and the men say that the conditions are better. Yet the union is too weak to thoroughly enforce a point so open to differences of interpretation. Only dyers and sewers are organized. Sorters are not excluded, but no group large enough to form a separate local has ever joined the national body, and in Pittsburgh they are not affiliated at all. Their work is considered so unimportant that no effort has been made to organize them. The men do not care whether the women are in the union or not. Yet the fact that the women are not organized leads to evasion of the convict labor law. Since the women in the factory sort and size the corn used by the penitentiary, the penitentiary cannot be held to be a broom factory in a technical sense. The factory arranges with the penitentiary for the sale of the brooms. This means that enough women must be employed to supply two factories, for the work of prisoners goes on irrespective of seasons, panics or depressions. This also means that although the women have been considered too unimportant to be organized, yet by keeping the prisoners supplied they are really acting in very concrete fashion against union interests and against the interests of their co-workers in the same shop, who were laid off in the winter of 1908, while the men in the penitentiary were kept busy. BRUSH MAKING This trade is grouped with broom making, not because of similarity in process, but because of joint association of brooms and brushes with cleaning day. There is only one brush factory in Pittsburgh; a large four-story building, it stands near the river on the South Side. It is one of the largest in the country, and makes brushes of every imaginable kind, from the soft camel's hair that artists use, to the great rough street brushes that clean trolley tracks and cobble-stones. It imports fine hair from 253 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Russia, and sea grass from the tropics, and exports far more of its product than it sells locally. The trade of brush making is still largely a handicraft. Within the last twenty years, the only change in method has been the substitution of steam power for foot power in drilling holes. A mixing machine is sometimes used in combining the different kinds of hair, but aside from this, combing, nailing, drawing, and all the various intricate processes, are carried on by hand. In cities farther east most branches of the trade are connected with the union, but here they are not. The men brush makers shift about a great deal. In the winter, they drift into the city and work until July; then with the coming of the slack season, they take to the road, and turn up the following winter, perhaps here, perhaps in some other city, for the next half-year's work. The Pittsburgh factory employs iio people, 20 of them girls. In other cities women are sometimes used for setting bristles in street brushes with pitch, but here that work is done by men. The girls work only at brush drawing. They sit at tables close to the windows in a long room with windows on three sides. The light is good, and there is little dust from the sea- grass. Most of them work on scrubbing brushes, — prosaic articles of household use made from bristles of tampico gathered in the South Seas. The bristles are bleached and dyed before they reach the factory. On the first floor, men drill the holes, semi- conical in shape, in the wooden backs of the brushes, the number of holes being gauged according to the standard shape of the brush. The backs are then sent to the girls, who clamp them, one at a time, to the table, so that the openings of the holes are exposed on each side. To "draw" a brush, the girl starts at the center. She fastens the wire to one hole, and pushes the wire through the wood from back to front. Next she takes a small bunch of bristles, doubles it into a U-shape, and pulls the wire through the loop of the U. Then she inserts the wire in the same hole again, drawing the bristles down with it. As the further end of the hole is smaller, the bristles cannot be drawn all the way through, but are held tightly in place. With the same wire, the girl goes on filling hole after hole until the row is complete. In the body of a brush there are usually five rows, and at each 254 BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING end is a V-shaped row of holes called "the wings." After the brush is completed, the body is trimmed by a gauge, so that the bristles of the wings stand out higher than the rest by a quarter of an inch. Sometimes for cleaning-brushes with long four-inch bristles, the loop, is not made of even length on each side, but has one long side, and one small butt through which the wire is drawn. These variations and others, together with the routine work of the trade, the new girl has to learn, although the returns at the end of her trial period are not high. Pay is so much a hundred holes. The number of holes in a particular kind of brush is the basis for rates of pay in that line of work. The pay for common scrubbing brushes, for example, is | .40 a dozen. The most skilful girl of the twenty in the factory earns $10 a week, but there are others who do not make more than I5.00, while the majority earn $6.50 to I7.00 the year round. The work cannot be learned in less than four or five months, and to acquire expertness takes at least a year. Time wages are paid for the first four weeks, although this is really a loss to the firm, because so much work is spoiled. After the four weeks are over, the newcomer must strike out for herself and do the best she can. The regular working day is ten hours, except for the four months from April through July, when there is usually two hours overtime every night, making a total working week of 72 hours for this period of the year. The possible earnings of piece workers during this busy time are counterbalanced by slack weeks in August and in the fall, when the manufacture of stock for the winter demand is not sufficient to keep the entire factory force employed. Allowing for this seasonal difference, the trade is steady, and the girl employes generally remain year after year. The demand for machine-drawn brushes is limited by their appearance, for the bristles are never so smooth nor so thick, and the brush consequently does not look well finished. In the Pittsburgh factory there are four machines for drawing scrubbing brushes, each built for a different style of brush. Since the de- mand is so light that only one machine needs to be run at a time, one girl operates all four machines. The holes for machine work are drilled only part way through the wood. The bristles are carried under the wire, which forms a staple, loops itself around 255 WOMEN AND THE TRADES the hole and is forced into the wood Hke a nail. For each loop the operator presses the treadle. This work takes several months longer to learn than the hand drawing, but it is too new a thing and the demand for it is too irregular, to admit of a definite statement as to the differences in wages earned by the two methods, and as to the differences in physical strain. PAPER BOX MAKING Cigar boxes, gay striped in yellow and red, demure wedding- cake boxes in white satin finish, large gray hat boxes and plain pasteboard shapes with strong corners guaranteed to wear, — the demand for these has created a trade important among the minor occupations in which Pittsburgh women are engaged. The maker of round pasteboard stogy boxes knows how his Russian compatriot shrinks from entering unfamiliar places to purchase supplies, so he sets his factory in the midst of a nest of Hill shops where stogies may be made in one tenement attic, and the boxes for them in the loft across the street. Within a few blocks is built up a colony of small interdependent industries. Of the nine box factories in Pittsburgh where women are employed, four make stogy boxes. For the rest, candy factories, department stores, and commercial stationers are the chief customers. Candy boxes lead, perhaps, in the bulk of the output, but close behind come shelving and file boxes, millinery bandboxes, and a host of nameless contrivances whose virtue lies in their adaptability. The largest of the factories, one where wooden boxes also are made, employs 70 people, of whom 30 are women. In the others, the proportion of men to women is reversed. From the small factory on the Hill, where the proprietor himself does all the scoring and cutting, and employs seven women for paste work, to the large factory in the business district with a force of 45 women and five men, one finds women in the majority by more than two to one. Out of the total 337 employes,* 238 (70.9 per cent), are women. * See Appendix B, p. 406, Table 71, for number of women and division of work in each paper box factory. 256 BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING The character of the work varies with the kinds of goods made. For instance, in one department of the large factory mentioned, the girls clamp the edges of pasteboard boxes for cheroots, and cover the edges with paper; while on the next floor there are girls making the large round boxes in which a hundred stogies stand on end. In another factory, almost all the girls are used for fine paste work on small goods of the better sort, or yet again, on rapid work at machines. The nationality of the employes is not distinctive, but varies with the neighborhood. Some girls are Jewish; a fifth are German. Here and there one finds an ambitious girl of Slavic origin, but more frequently an unambitious American, usually quite young and a little stupid. Indeed American girls are in the majority, but they are of the stock which has dropped behind in physique and in occupation. PROCESSES In the larger factories, men and women work on different floors. The men have sole charge of scoring, printing, and also of paper cutting, which is done by a heavy machine that has a record for minor accidents. Only one woman in the trade is used for cutting, and she does it not regularly, but at odd times. On the upper floors, girls do the actual box making. A new hand is put on as helper at the covering machine. The glue pot at one end of the machine is kept warm by steam, and the moving ribbon of paper is dipped in glue and passed through the machine to the operator who slips it into place about the box that whirls on a pivot at the other end. For high output, the machine is run by power, but I have seen it turned by hand, when the girls were doing especially careful work. When all the machines are in use, one sees a roomful of rapidly moving paper ribbons, slipped into place, caught and finished by the helpers alongside. As the boxes come from the machine, their edges are turned in by hand; they are then piled high, and carried away. Two girls to a machine can keep it running full capacity. After the new girl has been a helper for some time, she is taught stripping; that is, covering corners of boxes with small muslin pieces and strengthening ends and bottoms by pasting muslin strips along the edges. 17 257 WOMEN AND THE TRADES The last step in promotion, if the girl is a machine hand, is the actual operating of the covering machine. She stands * at the end and holds the moving paper ribbon, adjusting it around the turning box. If the girl is a hand worker, she is considered expert when she knows how to cover boxes, but this takes six months to a year to learn, and even then a new girl will not have gained speed. The hand workers stand at tables in a long room, each girl with her glue or paste pot, her brush, cloths and strips of colored paper, and the pasteboard forms. The skirts and waists of the girls are spattered with the glue and the air is full of the strong smell of it. At times one finds a foreman with a passion for an immaculate workroom, following after his employes with warm water and cloths, but often the accumulated glue of weeks has dried and hardened on the sides of the work tables, the accumu- lated smell of glue has found no determined breeze to carry it away. For the machines, the glue is made after a formula by workmen on another floor, but the hand workers are expected to know how to thin their own glue to the proper consistency. They have the knack of brushing on neither too much nor too little, of placing the strips of paper, each with one deft movement, so that they lie flat, without wrinkles. All this means a kind of expert- ness, a degree of familiarity with the materials and the way of handling them, that cannot be acquired except with time. At present, only one factory has a covering machine for small boxes, and all this fine work is done by hand; but for the large boxes, two or three factories have covering machines. Some firms have machines for incidental work, such as tacking and wire-stitching, or for printing even, when the boxes are to be letter-stamped. The Knowlton-Beach staying machine, used in six out of the nine factories, is, like the covering machine, characteristic of the industry. This machine carries a muslin or manila stay, dipped in glue, and clamps it on the corners of box covers and other small work. The operator holds the box in the machine as she presses the treadle, and in order to have firm hold, her hands are often dangerously near the knife that comes down to clip the stay. There are guards on either side of the * This work can be done equally well whether the operator stands or sits. 258 BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING knife, but the girls seem to think that the guards interfere with their work, and fasten them back rather than lower the rate of output. In a factory where two of these machines are used, I saw one with both guards fastened back, while in the other, one guard was entirely removed and the other fastened back. Some- times I was told that the girls kept the guards down, but wherever it was possible to see the machines in operation, the guards were found fastened out of the way of the operator. Two factories are trying the experiment of guarding the girl instead of the machine. The operator is given steel thimbles, which cover her forefingers to the first joint, and which should serve to check the downward progress of the knife if the fingers chanced to get in its way. HOURS AND WAGES The regular working day is nine hours in some cases, ten in others. A third of the factories open at eight in the morning instead of at the classic hour of seven, and others start work at seven thirty in concession to employes in whom the habit of tardiness seems to have been born. Overtime, while possibly less general in the Pittsburgh paper box factories than in those in the east, is yet characteristic of the trade. The box maker depends on the candy maker and on the stogy maker for his orders. He can make up only a small part of his goods for stock. The candy maker and the stogy maker, however, cannot order their boxes until they in turn receive orders from the wholesale dealers. As these orders from retailers and from wholesalers are delayed until the latest possible moment before the Christmas season actually begins, the congestion of work and consequent overtime in the fall in candy and stogy factories affects related industries such as box making, and causes similar congestion of work and overtime in box factories. The best equipped and best organized factories consciously attempt to limit the amount of night work and to have their order work distributed over a longer period of time. They realize that long hours are wasteful of their employes' strength, yet without change in the arrangement of work in other industries, they are powerless to avoid night work in the fall. Two factories, through special 259 WOMEN AND THE TRADES conditions in their trade, are in general able to do without more than a few nights' overtime. Another firm keeps its employes only six nights in the season. In the five remaining factories, however, the working hours during November and December range from 63 to 78 per week, an excess both by day and by week of the limit set by the factory law. Beginners are paid from I2.50 to I3.00 a week,* in one case I3.50, and are expected in six weeks at least to be able to make their time. After that they work by the piece. In one factory, the girls who clamp and cover edges of cheroot boxes, are paid at the rate of | .30 a 100. In one day, a girl can clamp 400 boxes, and the next day cover the edges, so that the pay for the two days is |i.20, or | .60 a day. Others paste strips of paper above the edges of cigar boxes. The rate is | .50 for 50 boxes of one grade, with a maximum output of 100 boxes a day. Another box, a little larger, pays | .60 for 50 boxes, for work of the same sort, and the girls can make 90 to 100 a day of these. Shelf and file boxes, which are made entirely by hand and covered with either cloth or paper, pay from | .50 to I .60 a dozen; the quicker girls can make two dozen in a day, but the majority in these factories do not make more than I5.00 or I6.00 a week, and the number who are earning less is surprisingly large. For instance, one manufacturer says that after a girl has learned the trade, he does not expect her to make less than I4.00 a week, but that even in a year she can scarcely gain speed enough to make |i .00 a day. One firm made a contract to finish a certain number of candy boxes within a specified time and the manager asked the girls how many they could turn out. They said 200, but upon much urging thought that they could turn out 250. Finally, he induced them to try to make 400, and when they succeeded in this, he promised a box of candy to the first girl who finished 500 boxes in a day. In a little while all the girls in the department had reached a daily output of 500 boxes and were earning I1.25. Yet as soon as the order was finished, the speed of the girls dropped with the change in their work, and as before, they earned from | .75 to | .80 daily. * See Appendix B, pp. 406-407, Tables 72 and 73, for details of wages in paper box factories 260 The Dangerous Staving Machine at Work BROOM, BRUSH AND PAPER BOX MAKING Some managers complain that the girls lack ambition; that they are unwilling to work hard in order to get work out. Others call them irresponsible. Yet even in the foregoing instance of speeding, the wages earned by the quickest could scarcely be called high. For those whose speed fell below the highest point, and for all the girls during the greater part of the year, the wages were unquestionably low. One manufacturer states that he employs only girls who live at home, because the trade does not offer a living wage. Altogether 79.8 per cent (190 girls) are in the ranks of the less efficient, earning less than |6.oo a week. There are 32 girls in the $7.00 wage group, and 16 who earn over I7.00. The percentage in the lowest wage group is seen to be re- markably high. Behind the secondary reason for this, based on the lack of ambition among box-factory employes, there is a primary reason. The number of women in the trade, the number of positions open, and the number of possible employers is relatively small; the chances of employment are constantly becoming less. Twenty years ago, one of the factories employed 1 10 people and the output was not so large as it is today. By the introduction of small covering machines, the number of employes was reduced first to 75, anS later to 50, when staying machines were put in and some improvements made in the cutting room. If the covering machines for the small candy boxes should be intro- duced now, the force could be reduced to 35 and there would be less difficulty in getting hands, because less training is neces- sary for successful operation of the machines than for accurate hand work. This fact, that to a great extent machine work is surely, if slowly, taking the place of hand work, and that machine operators can be taught more quickly and paid less than expert hand workers, means that within the trade potential machine production is a factor in keeping wages down. Lack of ambition among the employes, in part due to the poor physique and the lower grade of the American girls employed, is both an effect and a cause of low wages. The occupation at present offers a temporary ex- pedient to the many without efficiency who are shifting and un- certain in tenure of position. 261 CHAPTER XVII CASKETS, CORK, PAINT, SOAP, TRUNKS CASKETS THE two casket factories of Pittsburgh employ 74 women, 60 of them being in the larger plant on the North Side. Glue work is done on one floor. At an oblong table sit the girls, each with her glue-pot, her strips of black silk and the plain wooden bars. With one stroke of the brush, the reverse side of the silk is covered with glue and by a turn of the hand it is folded around the bar. Another girl is busied assembling the long metal bars for caskets, adjusting the different parts by a measuring rod and hammering them together. All the work on this floor is simple and easily learned. On the floor above, other girls are at miscellaneous work. Ebony, silver and composite, lead, brass, copper, and all the conventional shapes into which habit has worn our ceremonial for the dead, — bars and handles and decorations, — are piled high the length of the room. Of the 15 girl workers, all but two are assembling or packing. Some put together the ears, arms and tips for short bar handles, and others hammer the arms and tips together. All of them stand at their work. One girl sits at the table in another room, laying ebony paint on a silver base, for parts of metal bars. Judgment is needed to avoid waste of material, but otherwise this is the simplest of all decorating. Nearby is the lacquering room. Through the open door I could see one girl moving about, dipping trays of metal pieces in the lacquer bath, lifting them out, drying and placing them in the oven for final finish. Ordinarily the doors are shut, and the fumes are so strong that the manager said as we watched the work, "We won't stay in here more than a minute, if you don't mind 262 CASKETS, CORK, PAINT, SOAP, TRUNKS I can't stand the air." The girl, who is now well over twenty, entered the factory when she was fourteen; she says that she can stand the lacquer very well, although the fumes are apt to make one's head ache. The main diificulty about the work is to keep the lacquer clean. Windows have to be closed most of the time, as dust blows in from the nearby mills, and the least speck in the lacquer will disfigure some metal pieces, such as handles of solid brass. Fresh lacquer is used for brass work. When it becomes muddy and unfit for articles of this grade, it is strained and used for dull gray handles on which imperfections are not so noticeable. After a second straining, it can still be used for iron and other cheap materials. This means that there are always three baths of lacquer to be tended, one that is con- stantly being renewed with the freshly mixed liquid, and two that are strained between each two sets of handles dipped. When lacquer is being either mixed or strained, the fumes are heaviest. Sometimes in a busy season an assistant is needed, besides the girl regularly employed. The volume of lacquer work varies according to business prosperity, since the amount of ready money helps to determine choice of funeral accessories. For instance, during the business depression of 1907-08, the bulk of the orders were for plain silver handles rather than for the more expensive finish of composite lead, a choice which made considerable difference in the quantity of lacquering done. The lacquer girl is paid I9.00 a week, but in the other metal work departments few are earning more than $7.50, and at least half are not earning more than |6.oo. Work is steady the year round, except for the first week in July, when the factory shuts down to take stock and all the girls are laid off. The ten-hour day is the rule, and in the departments first described, there is little overtime. In the sewing room, however, the night hours are the girls' chief grievance. In the sewing rooms the robes are made. The lining of caskets is done here; also the tufting and raying, which only two or three in the department understand. New hands are started at I5.00, and are put on piece work after three or four weeks, making pillows or parts of linings or sections for the casket. They earn I7.00 or $8.00, never over I9.00, for, " If you earn ten," 263 WOMEN AND THE TRADES said one of the girls, "they cut the rate and you have to wear out your Hfe and soul trying to make anything at all." Some who are employed here have been dressmakers; most of them are a few years older than the majority of factory girls. Only those women whose hope of more normal occupation is gone continue in the sewing rooms. They are women who have lost a little of their strength; women who have the patience, the acquiescence that is born of failure. Nominally, they work from seven until six. Actually, each girl is on call two nights a week and every third Sunday. She must hold herself ready to work on her night whenever a special order comes in. If, for instance, an undertaker orders a casket lined with pearl white, and the manufacturer has none in stock, the girls are expected to work at night to execute the order. If the order is for a casket a little larger or a little smaller than the usual size, the girls on night duty will be called out. Indeed, they almost invariably have to work at the time when they are subject to call. After six o'clock, they are paid at the rate of a time and a quarter, but some of the machinery is shut down and the night orders always drag. The girls are not obliged to come the next morning, nor do they need to come at seven o'clock if they have worked until twelve the night before, but they nearly always do because they are on piece work, and they can make more in the morning than during the night. One woman in the department worked twenty-four hours at a stretch in July, 1907, and another has been called out at three in the morning and expected to work on through the next day. A third has sometimes sewed from seven at night until two the following morning, and often has worked until one o'clock. The very late night hours are less frequent than formerly, because the firm is carrying a larger stock; but even so, for small differences in the orders, the employes are still on call. One cannot challenge the length of the working week, for the total might not be over sixty hours. But the length of the working day? Not twelve but sometimes fifteen hours ; sixteen or eighteen when orders are heavy; in one case twenty-four. If the law 264 CASKETS, CORK, PAINT, SOAP, TRUNKS represents a possible maximum under which health can be con- served, what shall be said by the community vitally concerned, when this standard which it has set is thus violated? CORK The largest cork factory in the United States occupies two seven-story brick buildings near the river-front in Pittsburgh. The employes number 600 girls and from 800 to 900 men. From floor to floor, the river breeze sweeps up wide staircases and through open windows into high-ceilinged rooms. You can see lanes of power-driven machines, cutting, shaping, polishing corks, cutting cork-paper, shaping cork soles. You can see men punching cork-bark or shaping the large heavy sizes of corks, and you can see girls at work on the ordinary commercial sizes, tending machines, sorting, shaping, or finishing. The first process of cork making is blocking or punching; that is, cutting the oblong piece of bark to the desired size. Fol- lowing this, the corks are tapered, the ends are polished, and then the sides, and finally they are washed and sorted. The blocking or punching is done by machine, some of it by men and some by girls. The machine cuts the elongated piece of cork into squares which can be readily shaped; the operative simply feeds the cork into the machine. Tapering is the most dangerous of the finishing processes. By the old method, — and half the work is still done in this way, — the cork is fed into a groove, and carried by the machine to the edge of the knife, which shaves off one end on a slightly curved line. The hand of the operator is between the cork and the knife, which, though guarded by a steel rung, yet is responsible for the frequent clipped fingers that have given the tapering room an unenviable reputation. Recently the number of acci- dents has been lessened by the introduction of machines built like the polishing machines with a large funnel at the top, from which the corks are carried to the knife, and tapered automatically. Four machines of the new type are operated by one girl. The records of the company show that from January i, 1908, to October i, 1908, only 6 per cent of the employes in this depart- 265 WOMEN AND THE TRADES ment were injured, the small percentage being undoubtedly due to the method now in use. The sides and ends of corks are polished by machines, four of which can be tended by one girl. She has simply to feed the corks into a great funnel at the top, whence they are carried, one at a time, past a buffing wheel that polishes the sides or the end. The operator inhales the fine cork dust from the wheel which has no exhaust to cover it. The cork-paper cutting department illustrates a further development of the industry. By an adjustment of the machine, the blocks are cut into thin sheets which are recut into strips for the cork tips of cigarettes. This work requires some judgment; the operator watches the machine carefully, so as to stop it when- ever there is a flaw in the cork, and to adjust a fresh block. Men were employed for this work in 1906, but they have been discharged, and although one or two are still needed to look after the machines, the firm saves appreciably by employing 21 girls at half the wages formerly earned by the same number of men. In other departments, girls are engaged at hand cutting, sew- ing cork soles, and making life preservers. Imperfect corks which did not pass inspection are sent to the docking department to be recut by machine and pared down to a smaller size. Accidents rarely occur in this department, as the girl's hand does not neces- sarily approach the knife. Sorting is perhaps the most difficult work of all. The sorters- sit at long tables on which compartments are marked off for the different sizes and kinds of corks. According to the quality of the bark and according to the grade of workmanship, corks apparently exactly alike are inspected and separated into different grades. Wages in the cork factory range from $3.00 or $4.00 a week to I9.50. Usually a new girl is started at | .70 a day, and put on piece work as soon as she begins to "make her time," although if her work is changed, as often happens, she sometimes falls below her original time rate. Often it is three months before a new hand can "make out well" by piece payments. Some of the sorters do not make more than | .80 or $ .90 a day, but others make from I1.25 to I1.35. The hand cutters seldom make over 266 CASKETS, CORK, PAINT, SOAP, TRUNKS I1.25. The docking girls are paid |i.io and tiie girls at the funnel machines $ .80 a day. Cork sewers earn usually fi.oo a day, and the cork-paper cutters from |8.oo to I9.50 a week. In general, $1.25 may be regarded as the standard pay of the best girls. When piece workers have exceeded this, especially when the piece rate was experimental because of some change in method or the introduction of new machinery, there is evidence that rates have been cut. For instance, in 1905 a new kind of work ("fine ends") was given out in the hand cutting room, at $1.10 a barrel. After three months at this, the girls were able to make two barrels a day (I2.20), and the rate was promptly cut to I .90 a barrel. But in a year's time, the girls had again increased their speed, and again the rate was cut, this time to $ .60 a barrel. All departments have a ten-hour, day, five days in the week, with a half day Saturday, but in one department there are frequent calls for overtime. The busy season lasts from February to November. The machinery is stopped at night, but the sorters, who need no machinery, are often required to work later in order to finish the day's output of the other departments. For probably 1 50 days out of the year, during a normal year, the sorting depart- ment works from six in the evening to nine, though as a rule not more than two nights in one week. This keeps the weekly hours within the limit of the state factory law, but exceeds the law in the length of the working day, which is thirteen hours instead of twelve. In the smaller sorting room, there were only six nights overtime during the season of 1907, but in the other building, the girls at times worked every night except Wednesday. During the slack season from November until February, there is no very general dismissal of employes, but a whole depart- ment will sometimes be laid ofi' for one day each week. On the whole, the girls' work in the cork factory is either routine machine tending or routine hand work which is quickly learned. The location of the factory near the Lawrenceville section has brought in a large number of Irish-American employes, but it has also brought many a fair-haired Polish girl from the streets of low houses near the river. The working force is not notable for its stability. Without sense of appreciable change, 267 WOMEN AND THE TRADES the girls drift from one kind of machine tending to another kind of machine tending at which they have about the same hours, and after they have caught the knack of the thing, about the same Hmit to advancement. PAINT MANUFACTURE Although there are several paint factories here, only two are employers of women, and the women in these two are in the minority, 50 in all. Paint making is done by men. Women are used, however, in four capacities: (i) In the filling and sealing department, where the small cans are filled with paint and then closed by light, easily running machines; (2) in the labeling department, where the girls apply labels to the packages; (3) in the color department, where the girls paste on sheets of paper small strips of sample cards showing the shades in which the paint is made ; (4) in the printing department, where the sample cards are prepared. One paint factory employs five girls, one to fill and. four to label cans; the other factory employs 45 girls. In this larger plant, 10 are at the printing presses, turning out the bright sample cards. Labeling, at which the greater number of girls are employed, is paid by the week instead of by the piece, wages ranging from I4.00 to I9.00, with three-fourths of the girls earning not more than |6.oo a week. The higher pay is determined in part by length of service, in part by speed. Labeling is on the lower levels of unskilled employment, and this fact, together with the irregular seasons, tends to create a shifting group of employes in the trade. From February to May, and again in September and October, are the busiest seasons, although in January, 1908, the girls worked two nights a week to get out some orders. When the rush is over, when the spring and fall painting and refurnishing of houses is at an end and the pressure of business subsides, half the force is discharged. SOAP FACTORIES A stranger to the industry in Pittsburgh might suppose that the term "soap factories" implies a certain unity of product. 268 CASKETS, CORK, PAINT, SOAP, TRUNKS This impression could not outlast one walk through the long low buildings where, in the main, the soap manufacture of the district is carried on. It would be displaced by successive impressions of confusion, of incoherence, almost of repulsion. The stench from the stockyards and the odor from the soap combine to daunt any but the most hardy seekers for employment. Un- ventilated and sometimes dirty rooms, a heterogeneous series of industrial processes, an atmosphere of nervous haste, low piece rates, high pressure, — such facts as these characterize a plant unique among Pittsburgh factories. In a single group of buildings there are made baking powder, laundry soap, perfumes, preserves, patent medicines, and various miscellaneous food products, such as chocolate and jelly powders. When so many unrelated processes are conducted under one roof, the growth of each process is necessarily somewhat restricted by every other, and it is not possible to effect that economy of pro- duction which is gained by the manufacture of large quantities of a single article. Economy must then be secured either in quality of material, in lack of care for the buildings, or in high speeding and low payment of employes, — possibly in all these ways. As elsewhere, men are employed here in the actual making and girls in packing and bottling the different articles. In the basement of one building, common laundry soaps are packed. Eight girls sit at a table; the room is almost totally dark, its low ceiling not over ten feet high, and most of the air space taken up by crates of finished stock. These girls are the most expert employes and at times they work so fast that one can scarcely follow the motions of their fingers. The standard box holds 100 cakes, other boxes hold 150 cakes of soap. Each cake is wrapped with a single square of paper. One of the packers has the record of having wrapped 12,100 cakes of soap in a day, and another for the last twelve years has averaged nearly 11,000. Occasionally a girl earns $12 a week. The most poorly paid in this department get $6.00, but for the majority, even at this rate of speed, |8.oo to I9.00 per week is a maximum. On the same floor, 15 girls work at machines, removing and packing away in crates the cakes of soap that pass on a traveling chain. 269 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Soap powder is packed on the first floor of the second build- ing. Windows are gray with dust, fine gray dust sifts through the air, and at long gray tables, gray women pack with rough hands and swift fingers in a swirl of fine soap particles. At the side of the room are great wooden tubs full of the powder. Pasteboard packages and heaps of powder are on each section of the tables. The need for haste, like an electric touch to a nerve- less limb, stirs the women to quick motion, lifting and forcing their arms into place swiftly, irregularly, with painful but contin- uous effort. The faces of the women are partly covered with cloths, but although this keeps some of the dust away, it cannot give them air where there is no air to be had. Every window is closed tight and the room is stifling. No one in this room earns more than I4.50 a week. On the upper floors, girls are employed to pack silica and baking powder, toilet soaps and extracts. Some fill bottles with perfumes; twelve others bottle pickles. The packers of silica and baking powder, like the packers of soap powder on the first floor, work in an atmosphere which it is impossible to breathe; there are 3 1 women in these two departments. In the two soap factories of Pittsburgh, 128 girls are em- ployed. Three of them, in a small factory on the South Side, are paid the wages of unskilled labor, $3.50 to $5.00 a week, and are shifted from one occupation to another, from wrapping soap to salting soap, or removing it from the machine. The other factory employs the remaining 125, many of them low- grade Germans from the unsightly shacks on the hills along the river, many of them Polish from the lower North Side. "They don't know there is any other place than 's where they could work," said the manager. "They never think of working anywhere else, and we don't have any trouble to keep them." Except for a cannery near by, there are no neighboring employers to compete, and it is possible to keep a hundred un- skilled girls at I5.00 or |6.oo or often I4.00 a week. The few in the bottling department and packing laundry soap earn from 16.00 to 1 1 0.00. A new hand is paid I3.00 during her first three weeks, and if at the end of that time, she is not able to earn more than her week wages, she is not retained. She cannot become 270 CASKETS, CORK, PAINT, SOAP, TRUNKS an expert packer in less than three months. The management has been successful in inducing the girls in all departments to work at high speed. The laundry soap was at one time put up in two wrappers and the girl used to slap one wrapper down, slap the soap on it, then take the other wrapper and wind it around. Now only one wrapper is used, but the girls who worked the former way think they must go through the same motions as if there were still two wrappers in order to keep their muscular and nervous speed. High speeding is often characteristic less of a trade than of individual systems of management, but in this case, the individual system is the trade. The demand for lavish expenditure of muscu- lar and nervous force, the neglect of the workrooms, the fine flying particles in the powder packing rooms, the buildings actually dirty and in the direct path of the wind that, blows through the stockyards, — all these conditions put soap factory work in the lower levels of occupations for women in the Pittsburgh district. TRUNKS AND SUIT-CASES This industry is represented by one factory in which 56 men and 14 women are employed. Small leather goods are not made in Pittsburgh but are shipped from cities farther east; but trunks and suit-cases in wide variety of style and shape are turned out with the help of an up-to-date machine equipment. Most of the work on trunks is done by men, women being employed chiefly to paste in the paper or cloth linings. There are five women in the trunk department. On suit-cases, the work is divided more evenly. Girls have to be trained by this firm, because there are no other places in the district where they can learn ; it takes about a year and a half for a new hand to become proficient. A man does not learn his part of the trade in less than three years, for he does more of the hand work and is kept at the better materials and on the better grade of suit-cases. Girls make the cheaper goods and do more of their work by machine. Men do all the leather cutting, but women glue the leather about cardboard frames, and make the handles, which are set in wooden frames and nailed into place 271 WOMEN AND THE TRADES until they assume the desired shape. They put on the handles, stamp the corners into shape on a cornering machine, rivet the corners and rivet handles and straps into place. Much of this is stiff, heavy work. This factory works a nine and a half hour day. Expert trunk makers among the men earn up to I35 a week. The women earn from I4.00 to $7.00, ten out gf the fourteen earning from $5.00 to I7.00. 272 THE COMMERCIAL TRADES i8 Ph Pi CHAPTER XVIII THE PRINTING TRADES NOT only as a manufacturing district, but as a commercial center and as a market, Pittsburgh makes use of num- bers of women working at allied occupations under one management. Printing offices and binderies might well be considered factories because of the nature of their machinery and of much of their product, and yet in another sense they are more nearly allied to the offices to which their product goes. Women in binderies are numbering and indexing and arranging more fre- quently perhaps than they are working at machines. Conditions in the trade are dependent upon conditions in offices. The telephone exchange and the telegraph office are striking examples also of the collective work of women. They are clearly commercial in that they manufacture no product but make the transaction of business possible. In the mercantile house, we come finally to the marketing of the articles which factories have produced, and which by means of commercial activity have been brought to their destination. It has been beyond the limits of this inquiry to consider stenographers and accountants and other office workers. In the bindery, the telephone exchange, the telegraph office, and the mercantile house, however, workers are gathered into organized groups which have much in common with the true factory sys- tem, and must be taken into consideration in surveying the women-employing trades in Pittsburgh. The printing trade has assumed an aspect like that of the district, intensely practical. We need not look in the small job offices or on the third or fourth floors overlooking dingy alleys for fine edition work, for gold-sticking in graceful designs, for backing in vellum on tooled leather, or even for the printing 275 WOMEN AND THE TRADES of the ordinary utilitarian novel. Save for the newspaper offices, an almanac, local society weeklies and a telephone directory, edition work is negligible. The demand which printing offices and binderies have risen to supply is the demand of office buildings for blank books and ledgers, office sheets and legal documents. Between printing work and bindery work in Pittsburgh, no sharp line can be drawn. Binding is done in printing estab- lishments ; it is subsidiary to the printing and is done very largely by the same force of employes. The establishments in general are small. The largest employs 240 people. Few others employ more than 60 and many have only four or five names on their payroll. Twenty establishments, including all the large and many of the small shops, employ 397 women, and with the possible exception of a few women engaged at odd jobs, this is the total number em- ployed in Pittsburgh printing establishments. THE PRESSROOM The work of women in pressrooms and binderies differs, as the trade itself differs, from that in other cities. The smallness of the establishments and the development of the industry to meet local needs, has interfered with specialization. Few of the employes are kept continuously at one occupation. Two-thirds of them are "miscellaneous workers," which includes occasional press work, hand folding, wire stitching, sewing, gathering, col- latmg, feeding the ruling machines, punching, perforating, round cornering and sometimes indexing. A small number have regular work at one occupation such as compositing or steady press feeding. So far as could be learned, Pittsburgh had eight women compositors in 1907. Three of them are old hands who "set up" side by side with the men, and whose employment dates from the days when the shop, now one of the largest in the city, was small. Others work at linotypes, which are operated like typewriters and at the press of a key drop the die which gives character to the warm type metal. The hand work in this latter shop is done by men, but the manager prefers women for the machines on the ground that they are more dependable. 276 THE PRINTING TRADES Press feeding is a field of work contested by men and women. Some firms employ men or women indifferently at both job and cylinder presses. In smaller establishments, where no girls are employed, it is claimed that boys are more useful, because they can "set up," and help in other ways. Boys are apprenticed to learn the trade, but girls never go beyond press work and are apt to leave in a few years, so the managers feel that it is not worth while to teach them. On the other hand, boy press feeders are paid $1.00 to I3.00 a week more, and the employment of girls means a saving to the larger shops. When a girl becomes a press feeder she tends to stay in the industry as long as she works rather than to change to some other where the way of the machine would have to be learned anew. BINDERY WORK In the bindery proper you see men finishing, backing, work- ing with heavy canvas, or holding gold leaf with their delicate tools. No women are employed in Pittsburgh at this part of the trade. Their work in the binderies is various ; more are employed steadily at folding than at any other occupation, but a girl is expected to be able to do a dozen different things. Machines have not yet invaded the Pittsburgh binderies to any extent, and the work at them has not become in any sense a well-defined occupation. A folding machine into which the sheets are fed as into a press is sometimes used in place of hand folding, but by some managers is considered unsatisfactory for register work. Similarly, some hold that machines cannot run a thread strong enough for books and ledgers, therefore many of the girls sew by hand. A sewing machine does the work of eight girls, and sews each section of a book separately, whereas if the threads of a single section of a hand-sewn book are cut the book is likely to fall apart. While in the big publishing centers machine sewing is displacing large numbers of hand sewers, here the hand sewers as yet scarcely seem to be threatened. They have not begun to know the strain of trying to keep up with the ever- increasing output of machines while behind every motion lurks the fear that in six months another machine will do all that they 277 WOMEN AND THE TRADES have learned and their whole department be swept aside. Wire- stitching machines are used for small folders. Treadle pressure forces the wire through the leaves and presses it flat. This work, like the operation of punching machines and perforating presses for pads and for loose-leaf ledgers, is usually done by girls. Gathering and collating are of so little importance, because of the small amount of edition work, that they are in the nature of odd jobs to be done by any one in spare moments. Indexing and numbering also are done by hand in all but the largest estab- lishments, the volume of work not being large enough to necessitate the use of machines. Twenty thousand numbers can be stamped by hand in a day, but where ledger pages are numbered by ma- chine, the output is 50,000. The indexing machine does even better, for it cuts the edges of the ledger at a rate which could be equalled only by the output of five girls. Hand work then, in these processes, gives employment to girls at present, but cannot be considered permanent. THE RULING DEPARTMENT In contrast, the ruling machines, with their bowls of colored inks, their cords and wooden frames, are in Pittsburgh a depart- ment in themselves. Men prepare the inks and superintend the ruling. The girls, perched high on stools, sit feeding sheet after sheet of the ledger pages with a perfect machine-like precision by the help of a left-hand gauge. On a slow-moving machine they feed in 500 sheets every fifteen minutes, or 1 8,000 in a nine-hour day, but on a machine that moves quickly, this rate may be doubled. "Faint line ruling" is for the horizontal lines of the ledger and "down line ruling" for the vertical lines. This latter process, complicated by a double set of gauges, isi the more difficult. The constant unvarying motion of the machines makes the feeders dizzy, and they forget to think as they gauge the speed to which the machine is set and make each sheet follow exactly upon the last, with only a second's interval between. Some of them say that they cannot learn in less than three months. Yet even in this department the Pittsburgh trade is in a transitional stage. One establishment has a ruling machine with 278 THE PRINTING TRADES automatic feeding attachment,— two metal lifters with hollow rubber ends which take up the sheets by suction. In the larger publishing centers, hand feeding has been entirely superseded in all but the small shops. WAGES Beginners in printing and bookbinding establishments are paid II3.00 or $4.00 a week.* In time, as they become familiar with the several different kinds of work, they are advanced a few dollars, but as a rule they are not highly paid. With a few exceptions they are "job hands," not specialists. They work in most places at an easy pace, for piece work in this industry is almost unknown in Pittsburgh. Under times of stress there have, of course, been exceptions. At one time, for instance, an establishment was trying to get out a rush order in small edition work, when the rate of the register folders was only 300 per hour. The girls said that they could not increase their speed, but they were put on piece work and in two days the rate went up to 500 per hour. Time payments were resumed, but the girls were expected, as in other cases quoted, to continue at the same pace. The forewoman said that those who learn under a time- payment system, can never work so fast as those who learn under a piece-payment system, but that by the latter plan they are soon exhausted nervously. Feeders at the ruling machines are usually paid |6.oo. The press feeders earn slightly more, from $5.00 to $7.00 at job presses and from |6.oo to $8.00 at cylinder presses. A very few of the hand indexers and operators of numbering machines who have acquired high speed earn |8.oo to $9.00. The most highly paid girls in the trade are the linotype operators. They are paid by time from |i 2 to $18 a week. Taking the trade as a whole, the percentage earning over $7.00 is small; 31 per cent of the girls have just reached I7.00 a week, and 45.59 per cent are earning $4.00 to |6.oo a week. One reason for this probably is that the work attracts the better type of American factory operative by the fact that it is clean * See Appendix B, p. 407, Table 74, for table of wages. 279 WOMEN AND THE TRADES and comparatively pleasant, and it can in consequence secure desirable hands without oflFering great financial inducements. Hours in printing establishments are in most cases nine or nine and a half. Five shops, however, have an eight-hour day, and even among the "open shops" the tendency toward a shorter work day is apparent. Nevertheless, the busy months bring overtime. Sometimes in July and sometimes in January, the season of heavy work sets in. One firm with orders to fill for the glass journals, follows its overtime during January and February by almost complete cessation of work in May. "We are not Rockefellers," the manager said, "and we can't keep the girls just for the good of the cause." The five girls employed by this company are on call when orders come in. Another firm requires night work regularly once a week in the cylinder press and folding departments. Once and a half the day rate of wages is paid. Twenty minutes are allowed for supper and work con- tinues until twenty minutes past nine. Sometimes, when there is special business, such as getting out the telephone books, or a section of one of the weekly papers, the girls are on duty three nights a week. One girl, paid at the rate of | . 1 6f an hour, worked 87 hours in one week, earning $14.50 for a week which averaged 14J hours' work each day. She was the feeder at a cylinder press. Her firm pays its job feeders | .12 an hour and workers in the bindery department | .07 and $ .08. In another estab- lishment, a premium is paid for overtime, the $8.00 girls earn- ing $1.00 extra, and the others | .75 extra, for every three hours of night work. Some firms, although they keep the presses run- ning all night, employ a double shift of men, and expect only occasional overtime from the girls. Some, on the contrary, regu- larly require four days' overtime a week in winter. Others keep all their employes 12 to 14 hours a day. SEASONAL WORK Since the busy time usually comes in the winter months, it is seldom that a girl can keep her time filled in the slack months of summer by changing employers. If she chooses this occupation, she is certain to be without employment for several weeks during 280 THE PRINTING TRADES the year. The seriousness of the situation is intensified in that a third of the girls in the printing trades have come from neighboring towns and are boarding in the city. Few girls are without homes to go to during a long season of unemployment, but when slack periods are scattered through the year, when at any moment the call to resume work may come, the expense of railroad fare looms large, and the advantage of going seems slight. Pay during the busy season is only occasionally sufficient to tide over a period of idleness. Sometimes, it is true, the girl in the printing trades is a casual worker, who wants work only occasionally. Yet, if she is not, if she has set herself to learn her work and to stay at it, three or four years' experience at one occupation does not prevent her from being thrown face to face with the city by periodic unemployment. A word should be said about the several unions in the print- ing trades, and their attitude toward women. The two or three women members of the typographical union are no longer in active employment, and the demand for women compositors has been so slight in Pittsburgh that the union has apparently not considered them in relation to the trade at all. The bookbinders have some remnants of a union, but they do not now control any of the shops. They excluded all women from membership who were not finishers, forwarders, or rulers, which was equivalent to exclud- ing women from the union entirely, for women do not hold these positions. Among the press feeders, women are admitted to membership on the same terms as men, and make a third of the total membership of the Pittsburgh local. At the time that this study was made, the union was struggling to win its strike* based on the eight- hour-day issue, but complicated by considerations of the wage- scale. The union scale has been I9.00 for cylinder press feeders and |8.oo for job press feeders. Possibly of equal if not of greater importance than the scale, is the present frequency of long hours, the periodic unemployment, and the danger of work at ill-guarded machines. * Eleven women were on the strike rolls during 1907, and in December, 1908, three were still on strike. 281 CHAPTER XIX TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS TELEPHONE OPERATORS WHEN you enter a telephone exchange, you see a half- circle of girls seated at the switchboard, thousands of " jacks," or holes for inserting the plugs in which wires terminate, the intermittent glowing of small lights, quick move- ments of operators covering the board with connections and clear- ing it again ; you hear a constant low buzz of questions and replies. There may be seven girls, as at the smallest exchanges, or there may be a hundred. All of them are young. Seldom is a telephone girl over twenty; most of them are seventeen or eighteen years of age, nervously flexible, adaptable and able to work at high speed. In some exchanges, the calls are few and easily handled, but in business districts, and even in the more populous residence sections, traific is heavy and apt to be difficult to deal with, unless the management provides for a greater number of operators when the number of calls increases, and sees to it that the one increase keeps pace with the other. The switchboard in many ways is the most complicated tool which women use in industry; apparatus and operating methods can well be described at sufficient length to give a working conception of what a day's calls mean to a switchboard girl. To quote S. J. Lamed, general superintendent of the Chicago Telephone Exchange : * "The machinery must be capable of making on an instant's notice any one of nearly seventeen billion possible combinations. The end of the conversation must be accurately noted and the ♦Originally published in the "Telephone Exchange." Quoted in "The World To-day," July, 1907, p. 686. 282 TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS line promptly disconnected. Before connection is made, it must be ascertained that the line asked for is not already carrying another message or temporarily disabled or unavailable for any other reason, . . . .yet the time consumed in each step of the process of connection must be measured as seconds or even fractions of a second "The answering jack is the point on the switchboard at which contact is made with subscriber's line by an operator, in response to his call. Connection is established between two lines by means of a set of flexible wires or conductors, generally of tinsel, incorporated in a braided linen cord. At each end, the cord terminates in a metal plug, which, when pushed into an answering jack, makes a contact between the subscriber's line and the tinsel conductor of the cord. When, therefore, the two plugs, or the pair of cords, are inserted in the spring jacks of two different lines, those lines are connected together, and in a condi- tion for conversation. Just over every answering jack, in the face of the switchboard, is mounted a small electric lamp, known as the line lamp, which is lighted whenever the telephone receiver at the corresponding subscriber's station is picked up. These answering jacks are placed in the lower part of the switchboard, a certain number before each operator, that number depending upon the use of the telephone, as each operator must answer all of the calls made by the subscribers whose answering jacks are placed directly in front of her. Some lines are used so fre- quently that but five or ten can be placed in a single operator's position, while other lines may be used so infrequently that more than one hundred can be placed in each position. "When any line lamp begins to glow, the operator promptly picks up a plug connected with any pair of cords and inserts it in the answering jack corresponding to the lighted lamp. The flexible wires leading from the plug to its mate are also connected to a small switch, called the ringing and listening key. By moving the handle of this ringing and listening key, the operator is able to bring the wires leading from her own telephone set into contact with the wires leading from the plug and consequently into contact with the line wire of the subscriber making the call. The operator is then able to converse with the subscriber and ascertain his 283 WOMEN AND THE TRADES wishes. Having received an order to connect his line with any other subscriber's line, the operator inserts the second plug of the pair into a spring jack connected with the called subscriber's line, and by another movement of the handle of the ringing and listening key, brings the line wire of the called subscriber into contact with the wires leading from the ringing generator, the effect being to ring the bell associated with the latter's telephone set and summon him to the telephone. The connection of the second plug with a spring jack of the called subscriber cannot be made with the answering jack of that second subscriber because that answering jack may be in a position a hundred feet away from the position in which the call is made. It is to meet this condition that the inward or multiple branch of the subscriber's line is designed. This branch is connected to spring jacks, exactly like the answering jacks, except that they are arranged to occupy as little space as possible. They are all marked with the call number of the subscribers that they represent, and are arranged in numerical order, and are piled row above row in the vertical face of the board. " It is possible to bring multiple jacks representing about ten thousand lines within the reach of an operator, and such a portion of the switchboard as contains one jack for each line connected with the office is called a section. Not more than three operators can work at a section of a switchboard and it is necessary to repeat the sections as often as the number of operators employed demands. Each section is the duplicate of every other, each subscriber's line being extended from the multiple jacks in one section to the corresponding multiple jack in the next section and so on through- out the entire length of the switchboard." For the human bearings of this complicated mechanism and its operation, we have equally authoritative testimony. The re- cent report of the Royal Commission* on the Bell Telephone Com- pany at Toronto, has so fully covered the conditions of work as they affect the girls employed, that I can perhaps best indicate the Pittsburgh situation by making comparison point by point be- * Report of the Royal Commission on a dispute respecting liours of employ- ment between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd., and Operators at Toronto, Ont. Ottawa, 1Q07. 284 TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS tween the two cities, and finally by summarizing the findings of the Commission in so far as these findings are applicable in the same or in greater degree to Pittsburgh. RATES OF PAY The main points to be noted are the rates of pay, the in- tensity of work, the hours of work, the system of reliefs, and the duration of service. In Toronto, under the former five-hour schedule,* the beginning wage of operators was |i8 a month, being gradually advanced after three years' service to I25 dollars, and by overtime work mounting at times to $35. In Pittsburgh, after the learner has worked three weeks on probation, the lowest wage paid by one company is I15 a month; overtime is regarded as so regular a requirement that nothing extra is paid for it. The other company pays | .85 a day to beginners, and a few cents extra for overtime. In time, but by no absolute schedule of advancement, wages are raised to I30, with a possible maximum of I35 to local operators, and $45 to chief supervisors. At the long distance exchange, a newcomer is paid |20 at the start, and is advanced every six months until if her work is good, she is earning $35 at the end of a year and a half. Assistants are paid $45 and the chief supervisor I70. These wages are lower than the wages of girls in the employ of the same company in Chicago or New York, but in spite of the wages, employes are always to be had. The fact that a telephone girl ranks higher socially than a factory operative, together with the fact that the actual work may be learned in three weeks (although speed efficiency is slower to develop), tends to keep the exchanges supplied with applicants, many of whom are unstable and entirely untrained. INTENSITY OF WORK From the description of the workings of an exchange, some idea may be gained of the character of the occupation upon which young and untrained applicants enter. To quote from the report of the Royal Commission (p. 48.) : * Some changes were made after the report submitted by the Commission, August 27, 1907. 285 WOMEN AND THE TRADES "The intensity of work, the amount accomplished within a given space of time, or in other words, the speed of operating, will depend first, upon the number of lines which an operator has running into her board and for which she is responsible; secondly, upon the number of phones connecting with the exchange, which of course determines the number of possible connections that can be made; and thirdly, upon the extent to which the different phones are used by subscribers." This work does not become automatic even after a girl has been long in the service, for each time a call is made, the rows upon rows of multiple jacks must be noted and the count made carefully and quickly, to avoid the unnecessary ringing of bells; when not in action, the operator is yet intent and alert to note the glowing of a lamp in any part of the board. The speed of operating is measured by the time consumed in making a plug connection, that is, connecting one subscriber with another, which should be done in three seconds. This never means that an operator carries a load of 1200 calls per hour. A period of intense application must always be succeeded by a period less intense, although not without nervous strain. It does mean, however, that at intervals the three-second rate must be main- tained, the duration of these intervals being dependent on the number of lines per operator, as specified before. "The average number of calls per operator during the busy hour for the first four months of the year (1906) were 287.6 for Toronto The operators in Toronto carry a heavier load, answer more calls than operators in cities of the same size elsewhere."* In Pittsburgh, the rate during the busy hour is 250 to 350 calls. The element of strain is increased sometimes by the excessive height of the switchboard, which varies from eighteen inches to thirty, and occasionally to thirty-six inches where traific is heavy and the maximum number of lines is admitted to the ex- change. At the higher boards, a girl can only with difficulty reach the upper rows of jacks, unless she stands or stretches in her chair, a motion which involves physical strain and causes * Report of the Royal Commission, pp 47, 52 286 B ;v!;-^7^H|||^^H ij ^, ^ ■ ;^^ V^^^t^^^H s W H la o B TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS delay. Stretching to either side of the three-part section of the switchboard is simplified by the system of team work. A less efficient operator will, be placed between two older and more rapid hands whose duty it is to watch the board of the middle girl as well as their own, to help her out with her calls if they come in too fast, and to carry her plugs over on their own boards when they can reach more easily than she. But it must not be supposed that the three-part sections are separate and isolated from each other. The outside girl of one section is the middle girl in the next section. With the group working together and each girl the length of the switchboard having watch of her neighbor's work as well as of her own, the operating force becomes a series of teams, in which weaker girls are supplemented by stronger ones and in which stronger ones are given supplemental work in order to efi^ect speed and economy of service. The operating force is made up not only of girls at the switch- board, but of supervisors, who continually walk back and forth behind the board to note any carelessness or inefficiency, and of chiefs, who have general supervision of the exchanges. A relief operator has no regular position at the board, but takes the place of one operator after another who is granted her few minutes' rest twice a day. The relief operators are the only extras; therefore, when one of the girls is absent, the force is rearranged either by giving one of the reliefs a regular place temporarily, or by asking some of the day operators to stay over- time. The work of monitors and teachers, separate in some other cities, is here merged with that of the supervisors. For Pittsburgh, the division of work is as follows : TABLE 30. DIVISION OF WORK IN PITTSBURGH TELEPHONE EXCHANGE Division No. of Operators Day operators ... ... 505 Night operators . . . . . 40 Relief operators . ... 69 Supervisors . ... 28 Assistants . • . . 10 Chiefs ... . . . 29 Total .687 287 WOMEN AND THE TRADES The presence of the supervisors, while necessary for the efficiency of the service, often tends to increase the nervous strain upon the girls at the switchboard. • In addition to the rate of speed, the height of the switch- board, the development of team work, the system of surveillance, a few minor points affecting health must be discussed before we pass to the hours of work and the collective effect of all these things on health. One minor point is with regard to the mouth- piece worn by each operator, although changing owners from time to time. In some cases this mouthpiece is sterilized daily, but in others the matter is left to the discretion of the chief operator. In one company, headgear is for the exclusive use of the individual, but in the other, it is an object of common owner- ship. The seats of the girls are comfortably constructed, but ventilation of the rooms is provided for only in haphazard fashion. The occasional presence of electric fans in some exchanges is an insufficient guarantee that the air in all of them is kept fresh and fit to breathe. HOURS OF WORK The effect of intense work with its various elements of strain is heightened if working hours are prolonged. When the company in Toronto proposed the change from a five-hour schedule without reliefs at high pressure, to an eight-hour schedule with discretionary relief, the trade dispute between operators and com- pany followed. The problem of the management is to maintain the telephone service without break during the twenty-four hours. The "traffic curve," or increase of business, mounts to "the peak of the load" at eleven in the morning, and at two- thirty to three-thirty in the afternoon. The business is handled successfully only when the "operating curve" follows both accurately and adequately the "traffic curve" to the time when traffic is heaviest and the rate of calls mounts to the highest point. The situation is met in all city exchanges by employing relays of operators to come on duty at different hours of the day. For example, from seven to eight-thirty in the morning, each half hour brings on an additional group of girls. At nine, a few 288 TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS girls come and stay until one, returning at five to stay until ten in the evening. This "split trick" as it is called, is a favorite method of dealing with the heavy traffic in mid-morning and mid- afternoon. Other girls come at noon and still others at one o'clock; at ten in the evening the night force comes on to stay until seven a. m. In general, a girl neither changes from one set of hours to another, nor is assigned in rotation to different turns, although after a year's service she may be granted leave to change from a split trick or "skip turn" to hours running straight through the day. Managers find that some girls prefer the lighter work of night hours, and that new girls can without difficulty be assigned to the night force or to the split turn for a period of a year. Sunday work devolves upon the girls as extra service, — a seven-day week once in three weeks for all who serve an unbroken turn of hours, and for split turn operators a seven- day week once in two and a half weeks. FINDINGS OF THE TORONTO COMMISSION When called upon to testify at the hearings in Toronto, the twenty-six physicians * (including those who were called on behalf of the telephone company) were practically unanimous, even as to minor details of their evidence. Dr. Robert Dwyer'sf testimony was as follows : " Four or five hours would be the maxi- mum of work I would consider for telephone girls on account of the extraordinary tension of most of the faculties that the operator is under; would divide the five hours into two equal periods with an hour and a half at least between. Operators would deteriorate with the five hours' continuous work. Eight hour service divided into two with an interval of one hour would render the work more injurious; twenty minutes' relief in each of the * "Twenty-six medical practitioners gave evidence before the Commission. Of this number six appeared at the request of the parties, the remainder were subpoenaed at the instance of the Commission from among physicians of the city who it was believed could speak with authority and from a wide range of experience. The physicians subpoenasd were nearly all selected from the medical faculty of the University of Toronto, and were without exception among the leading members of the profession in the city." Report of the Royal Commission, op. cit. p. 65. t Practicing in Toronto since 1891, for seven years Superintendent of St. Michael's Hospital, now visiting physician; Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine in Toronto University. 19 289 WOMEN AND THE TRADES four-hour periods would be no material relief, not long enough for the operators to recuperate from exhaustion. Five hours' continu- ous work would be preferable to either and easier on the ope'rator. I find the service intense all the time. Five hours' continuous service for two or three years would somewhat injure the nervous system of the average operator, the more so, if say, seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen years of age. If load were made so that operator could be working continuously within her ability, it would be better for her than if she was at times waiting, expecting calls — this thing has very far-reaching effects — the Telephone Company nor the doctors who see the operators do not see the final result; after these girls have gone on for four or five years and served the company, and they get married or for other pur- poses leave, then they turn out badly in their future domestic relations. They break down nervously and have nervous children and it is a loss to the community." This testimony is typical of that given by the other Toronto physicians. In the face of accumulated evidence of this sort, the Toronto Telephone Company modified its position with regard to the schedule, and adopted a seven-hour day with this arrangement of hours : two hours, then an intermission of half an hour, then an hour and a half, then an intermission of half an hour, and then an hour and a half. In conference, the counsel for the operators, J. Walter Curry, stated with reference to this arrangement: "The opinion of the Committee is that this schedule is more in the interest of their health, but they say further that the seven hours' work is still too heavy a load for them, and it is not such hours of service when it is spread over nine hours that they ought to be asked to work, that the strain is too great upon them for that period."* In Pittsburgh, where the traffic is no less heavy than in Toronto, and where in some cases there are i8o subscribers to a position, the employes of one company have an eight-hour working day, as against seven in Toronto at present; the employes of the other company have a nine-hour working day, as against seven hours in Toronto. The first company has two twenty-minute reliefs for its operators, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. * Report of the Royal Commission, p. 92. 290 TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS The Other company has two fifteen-minute reliefs as against half an hour in Toronto.* DURATION OF SERVICE We have seen that the intensity of work, as measured by the number of calls per busy hour of the day, is greater in Pitts- burgh than formerly in Toronto. The hours of work are longer than either the earlier or later schedule of the Toronto operators. The system of reliefs in Pittsburgh is the system declared by the medical experts before quoted to be totally inadequate. The duration of service in the two cities may serve as a further indica- tion that the degree of strain on Pittsburgh operators is even greater than formerly on operators in Toronto. The "life of an operator" in Torontof is two and one-quarter to three years. In Pittsburgh the "life of an operator" was stated to me by the managers to be from eighteen to twenty months in one company, fifteen months in the other. In other words, the duration of service in Pittsburgh is from 44 per cent to 50 per cent less than in Toronto, where the work was declared by a local manager to be done at "the pace which kills." Although some of the girls doubtless leave in order to marry, and although others leave through mere desire for change, the presumption is strong that the difference in duration of service between the two cities is the measure of the difference in intensity of work, hours of work and systems of reliefs; and that this indicates more ill- health and. nervous exhaustion among Pittsburgh operators than among the operators in Toronto where the conditions of work called forth the censure of the medical commissioners. It would seem that the experience of the Bell Telephone Gjmpany in one city should not need to be repeated by its own branches or by other companies in other cities. Where the social loss caused by this business policy has been so clearly demon- * A little girl who had wrapped chewing gum and split mica before going into a telephone exchange, said to me in reference to her new experience: "Fifteen minutes' relief isn't enough to rest you. You no sooner lie down than you hear the bell, and you nearly go crazy with the number of calls, and the supervisor at your back and the subscribers often so mean." t Report of the Royal Commission, p. 34 ff. 291 WOMEN AND THE TRADES strated, public opinion in a local community should demand a change, so far at least in accordance with the laws of health as has been found practicable in Toronto. The human cost to a city is too great if before adopting a change in policy the need and the practicability of which have already been proved elsewhere, it must repeat the same laboratory experiment with the nerve-cells of its young girls. TELEGRAPH OPERATORS The main office of a telegraph company impresses the unin- itiated observer but does not enlighten him. All that electricity implies of the miraculous seems expressed in the keys of the Morse instruments and in the wizardry of control that connects the operator at the board with his co-worker a thousand miles away. You see men and women, row back of row, receiving, sending, writing messages. You hear the intermittent click of the telegraph keys, the banging of typewriters, and you are conscious of a steady undercurrent of haste, concentration, quick efficiency. The main and branch offices of the two telegraph companies in Pittsburgh employ 90 women and 198 men. Men and women do the same kind of work, which they learn for the most part through apprenticeship as floor messengers and gradual promo- tion to manipulation of the keys. If there is a diiference in the grade of work assigned, it is that the women are employed more generally at branch offices and at the lighter wires. Yet although the work done by men and by women in telegraph offices is apparently the same, conditions growing out of the employment of women proved to be the pivot about which swung the strike of the summer of 1907 against one of the Pitts- burgh companies. A statement of the claims made by the strikers and the attitude of the company will serve to illustrate some of the more important points with reference to the industry. In Pittsburgh 38 women and about 150 men were in the union, together making up 75 per cent of the operating force. When the strike was ordered, the union asked that type- writers be furnished by the company, that the sliding scale of wages be abolished, and that a shorter working day be arranged. 292 TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS The typewriter is part of the operator's equipment. When it was first introduced, a special bonus was offered to employes who would learn to use it, and as its use became general, it proved as valuable to the employes as to the company. Many whose handwriting was poor, and who on this account had been classed below first-class, were able to draw higher pay. Operators, however, are required to buy and to keep in repair their own machines, which is a heavy initial expense. The demand for a shorter working day grew out of the fact that the telegraph service is continuous through the twenty- four hours. Shifts and relays have to be arranged for among the operating force. The schedule provided for a nine-hour day with overtime service to fill the places of absentees or in cases of emer- gency, and different turns were assigned to the operators in rota- tion. The night work schedule was shorter, seven hours and a half; and the "split trick," planned to accommodate the period of heaviest traffic, was eight hours, — ten to two, and five to nine. Once at the key-board, relief was granted for no cause, without specific permission from the traffic chief; and operators complained that at times they would have to stay at their posts all day without being relieved, and when relieved would frequently be allowed only twenty minutes at noon. Sunday work was assigned to different members of the force as extra work with pay based on seven hours as a full day. But important as these points were, abolition of the sliding scale was the cardinal demand. The grievance referred to as the "sliding scale" was the outcome of alleged differences in the work done by men and by women, and of resultant unfair discrimina- tion. Managers and operators as a rule agree that the lesser physical strength of women tells against them after several years of light wrist and finger motions; that because of this lesser strength, women have neither the speed nor the accuracy of men; and that they get "glass arm," a nervous inability to work, more frequently. On the other hand, both managers and opera- tors agree that although women work for the most part on light wires, the quantity of work done by given operators is fairly well equalized, and that the difference between a light and a heavy wire is less than would be supposed. Whereas an operator 293 WOMEN AND THE TRADES on a heavy wire does sending only, or receiving only, the operator on a light wire does both sending and receiving, or else works by a system of "floats" whereby three wires are handled by two operators. Yet the potential ability of men operators to do heavier work than women is reflected in the differences in wages. One company paid I30, I35, and I44 a month to women in branch offices, and $62 to women in the main office. The other company paid two-thirds of its women employes I30 to $55 a month, and one-third of its women employes from I55 to I75 a month. It was charged that the former company paid its salaries on the basis of individual bargaining, and not on the basis of kind or quantity of work done; that a man who had earned $82.50 on a heavy wire would be superseded by a woman at I75; and that a man who had been receiving I75 would be superseded by a woman at I62. By this system, the rates of payment for given wires were being lowered. Although the work might tell on women sooner than on men, and although they might in some cases be less efficient than men, they were yet sufficiently capable to supersede men at a lower rate of pay. They were lending them- selves to a scheme for cutting wages. The strike was broken in the fall, in part through the agency of unorganized women. Most of the women went out when the men went out, but a few of them stayed in, and others who had formerly been in the employ of the company were impressed for the occasion. In one point, however, the strike was not without effect. Conditions in the company against which the strike was chiefly directed remained unchanged, but the other company granted a 10 per cent increase in wages by which some of the women operators are now earning as much as the men can earn at the heavy wires. Two-thirds of the women employes of this company now earn from I33 to I60.50 a month, and one-third of the women earn from $60.50 to $82.50 a month. This scale would seem to show that this company does not discriminate against women nor force competition between women and men, but pays equally for equal work. 294 , CHAPTER XX MERCANTILE HOUSES SEVEN thousand five hundred women were employed in twenty-four Pittsburgh stores in 1907. No other one occupation in which women work in groups has so large a following in the city. No other has within four thousand as many women. As many as 1900 were employed in one store, wrapping, checking, selling goods, or, on the upper floors, engaged at subsidiary occupations, such as making draperies, trimming hats, or altering cloaks to the wearer's size. Occasionally, even a laundry is part of a department store, or again a kitchen with a group of red-cheeked Polish maids preparing vegetables. Or again, the whole force may number no more than nine, and the girls may step from one counter to the next. No attempt has been made to cover the small stores in which five women or less are employed. What is said of the large stores will be in the main applicable to them, although to a degree they are a problem in themselves. It is the large stores primarily, — the knot in the business centre of the city and the scattered ones in the East End, and on the main streets of the North and South Side, — ^with reference to which statistics of employes and of con- ditions have been obtained. In discussing these mercantile houses, I shall not speak of obvious sanitary needs in rpany of them, common also to many different industries, and within the jurisdiction of the health officers. Another chapter will treat of welfare work as such. Here, discussion may be confined to conditions which grow out of "clerking" as distinct from other women's occupations. A store must aim not merely to supply needs, but to create them; to meet the idea in the customer's mind, to profit by the indolence of other people's thought-processes, and to stimulate fancies by adroit suggestion. All these fall within the merchant's province, along with his heavy commercial and administrative 295 WOMEN AND THE TRADES responsibilities. They are his problem of sales psychology in dealing with the public. He faces a different problem in dealing with the women who make up the sales staff, — from the cash girl who has just entered the store, to the experienced saleswoman. A review of store conditions in Pittsburgh will not show that the merchants as a whole have addressed themselves to this second problem with any such imagination and measure of success as characterizes their approach to the first. The cash girl may be advanced to the position of wrapper or stock girl. If she is a wrapper, she will begin to feel her responsi- bility for maintaining a standard of work. An exclusive store in part maintains its exclusiveness by distinctive paper and seal, and even a more plebeian store gains many a customer by the care and attractiveness with which its parcels are wrapped. I was told by a manager that his wrapper girl was one of the most im- portant employes in the drapery salesroom and worth at least I5.00 a week. How quickly a bright cash girl is allowed to sell goods will depend somewhat on her size. Other things being equal, we are apt to fancy a tall person more efficient than a short one, and the burden of proof is on a short person who is young as well. This holds true of salesgirls as of mightier people. A short young person of timid appearance will scarcely convince us of her famili- arity with her stock, and if we too are timid, and need to be en- couraged to buy, we are likely to turn aside and go the other way. For speedy advancement, the cash girl needs to be well built and usually tall for her age, as well as quick to learn . She may show aptitude for clerical work and be turned aside into one of the offices, without ever working on the floor at all. The office work is like any office work. The other special departments, however, that are not in touch with customers, draw their recruits not from among the cash girls, who indeed know little of their existence, but from women in factory trades outside. SPECIAL DEPARTMENTS The Special departments which are not in touch with the customers are sometimes laundries and kitchens; in other cases, 296 MERCANTILE HOUSES drapery or awning workrooms. Numerically, these by-employ- ments are usually not important. Work in the alteration room, however, is suificiently distinct to warrant pausing long enough to describe it. In 1907,971 alteration hands on cloaks and suits, or trimmers of "Parisian" millinery, were employed in Pittsburgh de- partment stores. They produce by wholesale, but after a fashion different from that in a manufacturing house. A characteristic room of this type is one on a twelfth floor, which I visited in the midst of the spring season. Bare and whitewashed, with windows on two sides, the hugeness of the room, which was a block wide and long, made artificial light necessary throughout. Of the 115 people employed, only five or six were men. From the first of February until June, and from the middle of August to December, the power-driven needles whirr back and forth for more than ten hours a day. At eight o'clock the hands come in and work, with an interval for lunch, until half-past five. Then they go down to the lunch room and come up again at six, with a stretch of two and a half hours in the evening. They work hard while they can, for in the dull season they lose at least two months by periodic unemployment. Some have been dressmakers before, hand workers whose business it was to know how to cut and fit a garment. They put all that behind them when they enter an alteration room. If a girl has done only individual work before, the trade has to be learned again. The needles are power-driven. Changes are chalked on the goods, and suits are turned out wholesale for unknown customers. Rarely is an apprentice employed. Busier than in a wholesale house, the managers of the workroom have no place except for those with experience, to whom they pay |io a week during the season. "What's the use of paying more?" said one. "You can get a fine worker for |io, who knows how to do anything you want." Similarly, the girls in the millinery workrooms, like those in wholesale millinery houses, have their seasons of work. Except that some hats are altered and some are trimmed to order, the work is much the same as elsewhere in the trade, and the larger part of the time is given to trimming hats ready-made and ready- to-wear. The trimmers, like the alteration hands on suits, have a trade which for years they may have followed under other cir- 297 WOMEN AND THE TRADES cumstances, until chance brought them into the group of department store employes. The drapery and awning makers, too, are not apprenticed in the stores. Without factory experience in the use of material and tools, they could not obtain their positions. All these trained and taught hands in the department stores, however, are in the minority, numbering 14 per cent of the women employes. The salesgirls, untrained and untaught, are in the over- whelming majority. Of them, there were 6,534 in 1907. It is perhaps stretching a point to say that the material upon which they have to work is the pliant and receptive customer, or at other times, the irritable and impatient customer. It remains true that the tools at their hand are the cases of stock behind the counter, the counter displays, and the books or cases of samples. Equally true is it, that aisles and counters and departments make up the workrooms of these girls. As in the case of the factory industries, our first concern may well be the prime facts of the physical work-plant, hours and wages. STORE CONSTRUCTION Economy of floor space, ventilation and other elements in , store construction have a direct bearing on health. To an unusual degree these Pittsburgh stores are in parts of the city where land is expensive, and available ground space limited. Pittsburgh's business centre is wedged by hills into a fan-shaped piece of land at the intersecting point of the Allegheny and Monon- gahela rivers. Here office buildings, stores and railroad terminals are crowded together. Like the other business enterprises, the stores have followed the slope of the hills. Some have succeeded in getting a flat site, only to have basements and cellars threatened by the spring floods. Others have built farther from the river, following an ascending street which opens impartially on first floor front and second floor rear of the store. The rear of the first floor is, therefore, below the street level and would be dark except for electric lights. Yet this rear of the store, far from being unused, is usually in these stores an active centre of business. Clearly, if this half-underground area is to be a healthful place either for customers who stay there a short time, or for sales 298 MERCANTILE HOUSES people who stay until the release bell rings at night, provision for ventilation is essential. A fan or two in summer is an inefficient remedy. The dead air that tires the casual shopper weighs unrelieved on brain and nerves of the salesgirl who must breathe it the day through. The unwisdom of using a tunnel-like salesroom is surpassed only by the use of a cellar workplace, in which not even one end is open toward the light. Some stores use their basements for stockrooms only; others use them as the workplaces of their cashiers. Five stores, however, use their basements as sales- rooms. In these underground compartments which are without any openings to the outside air, 75 girls were employed in 1907 to sell goods in Pittsburgh. An electric fan in such a case is wholly ineffectual, either to drive out impure air or let fresh air in. This economy of space entails a serious physical drain. That the effects of it are not spectacular should render us no less quick to recognize them and to apply our American inventiveness toward developing a better method of shop arrangement and ventilation. Upper floors, too, although in lesser degree, are many of them in need of more thorough ventilating systems. To an unwarranted extent, reliance is placed by Pittsburgh store managers on the chance opening of a window and occasional open- ings on shafts to the roof, yet obviously the rooms are too wide for such a system to be effectual, and most of the salespeople are at too great a distance from the ventilators for them to profit by this method. Since adequate ventilation is as yet only half insisted upon in churches and courts and schools, we can perhaps be tolerant of the backwardness hitherto of stores in this respect. Yet we can scarcely continue to be so indefinitely. The stores have a direct economic advantage to be gained by fresh air. We expect of commercial enterprises an alert adaptation of what is new and serviceable. A word should be said about two stores which have been built up by throwing several smaller stores together. When all the component parts are on the same level, it is not easy to do this successfully, but when they are on different levels of a hill, difficulties are increased. The network of small stairways at 299 WOMEN AND THE TRADES right angles, the series of elevators, the arrangement of counters, and the crowding of much merchandise into small space in these stores, make effective ventilation even more difficult. SEATS Health and efficiency in a measure go hand in hand. The kind of efficiency that results from a clear brain and physical buoyancy, the kind that even an untrained salesgirl may have^ is sapped constantly by the breathing of vitiated air. It is sapped, too, by needless physical weariness, whether this results from counters built so close that the girls have not room to pass each other, and even when standing are cramped and uncomfortable, from the firm's neglect to provide seats, or from the tacit under- standing, of all too frequent occurrence, that seats when provided are not for use. This tacit understanding at times finds expres- sion in definite rules with penalties for non-observance. Insistence by managers that the girls shall be found standing at their posts, seems a primitive way to recognize the psychological value of a welcoming smile. Horses that are checked up to appear spirited, hardly counterfeit the free lift of a well-bred horse's head. Girls untrained in the ways of their trade, at work often under conditions distinctly unhealthful, are expected to counterfeit attentiveness by constantly standing. At times dur- ing the day they are not waiting on customers. At times, they have no stock to arrange and are obliged only to be at their places. That any should have always to stand seems obviously unneces- sary, and has become a point of specific legal attack in states that have built up a factory law. The law of Pennsylvania* requires that "every person, firm or corporation employing girls or adult women, in any establishment, shall provide suitable seats for their use, and shall permit such use when the employes are not neces- sarily engaged in active duties." The ratio which the number of seats bears to the number of girls in the stores is sufficient answer as to how the law is observed. In three of the best known Pittsburgh stores, the situation in 1907 was as follows: * Act May 2, igoj, Sec. 7, P. L. No. 226. 300 MERCANTILE HOUSES TABLE 31. — NUMBER OF SEATS SUPPLIED FOR SALESWOMEN Store A: 1st floor . . 500 girls; 19 seats. 2(1 floor . . 300 girls; 12 seats. 3d floor . • ■ 75 girls; 4 seats. 4th, 5th and 6th Alteration, floors millinery, and other workrooms. Store B: ist floor 400 girls; 16 seats. 2d floor 175 girls; 10 seats. Store C: ist floor . 600 girls; 32 seats. 3d floor . . 10 girls; no seats. 3d floor . . . 400 girls; 3 seats. 4th floor . . 10 girls; no seats. 5th floor . 15 girls; i seat. With reference to a smaller store, I find the following note: "Two floors used for salesrooms. Second floor, 6 girls, 3 seats. Girls allowed to use seats on this floor, but not on the first floor, where there are 39 girls, 1 1 seats." Ten stores have no seats at all, and in two stores there is one seat each. In contrast to all these, two stores observe not only the letter but the spirit of the law, providing in one case no less than four seats behind each counter, and in the other, two seats for each counter. Among the other stores, on the con- trary, whole sections of the floor are without a seat accessible to the salesgirls, or at counters fitted out with one seat there are perhaps a dozen girls to share it. When 19 seats are allotted to 500 girls, or 12 seats to 300 girls, there is no need to ask whether in the eyes of the law this is a provision of "suitable seats " for the female employes. The policy of the management as to the use of seats, when provided, often differs on first and second floors. Because the girls on the first floor are seen by the customer first, it is felt that they especially need, by always standing, to create an im- pression of attentiveness. In consequence, first floor girls are expected not to sit; while, if there comes a spare moment on the second floor, the girls may be seated without danger of reprimand. The head of stock in one department told me that if a girl were seen sitting, she would be discharged at once. Acknowledged rules against the use of seats are few, but in their place is the tacit understanding in seventeen of the stores that a girl has to stand if she is to retain her position. 301 WOMEN AND THE TRADES HOURS OF WORK The daily working hours in fourteen stores are from eight to five-thirty, and in eight stores from eight to six. Two stores are open not only Saturday evenings, but evenings during the week as well, until nine and ten o'clock. In the first of these all the girls are obliged to stay every night, but in the other the schedule is so worked out that each girl is on duty but two nights a week beside Saturday. When she works at night, she does not come until ten the next day. A typical schedule would be: TABLE 32. — HOURS SCHEDULE OF SALESWOMEN IN A SMALL MERCANTILE HOUSE Monday . . . . .8 a. m.- 6 p. m. Tuesday . . . . 8 a. m.- g p. m. Wednesday . 10 a. m.— 6 p. m. Thursday . ..8a. m.- 9 p. m. Friday . ... 10 a. m.- 6 p. m. Saturday .... ... 8 a. m.— 10 p. m. Total, 57 working hours a week. The time of year when long hours are felt most is before Christmas or during stock-taking time in January. It seems unbusinesslike that these night hours should be counted in as part of the week's work; that the girls should not have the option either of staying or of going; or if they do stay, the opportunity to earn extra pay in proportion to their time. Whether as a matter of health they should be allowed to work for the hours that the Christmas trade sometimes demands is another consideration.* One store has no Christmas overtime. Its trade apparently has not lessened because of its refusal to depart from its standard working day, but the others have ten *The Pennsylvania Statute, Act May 2nd, IQ05, Sec. 3, p. 8, No. 226, which was in effect when this investigation was made, reads in part as follows: "And provided further, That retail mercantile establishments shall be exempt from the provisions of this Section (i. e., a 60-hour working week) and a 12-hour working day permitted on Saturdays of each week, and during a period of 20 days, beginning with the 5th day of December and ending with the 24th day of the same month; Provided, That during the said 20 days preceding the 24th day of Decem- ber, the working hours shall not exceed ten hours per day, or sixty hours per week." As might be inferred, this confused and unmeaning clause has proved in- effectual as a barrier to overtime. The law which goes into effect January i, igio, provides for a 58-hour 302 MERCANTILE HOUSES days or two weeks of night work. Six of them have a double shift, an arrangement whereby the girls are on duty alternate evenings, coming later on the days following nights at work. Seventeen stores had no double shift the Christmas season of 1907, but required a working week of from 72 to 84 hours; seven gave extra pay in some form. In one case, "We go down and get what we like from the fountain," the girls said; in others, | .25 or $ .35 was paid for "supper money." This bears no proportion to the girl's weekly wages or to the estimated worth of her time, but simply enables the management to avoid appearing to require work without pay. One of the stores, a five and ten cent store, by the way, gives a bonus of I5.00 to each girl at Christmas time, after a year's service. This bonus is increased in amount yearly until the maximum sum of $25 is reached, after five years, service. The other small stores of this name not only give their employes no bonus, but do not even give supper money for the nights at work. It is in part the youth of the employes, in part their inability to bargain, and their lack of cohesion, that have helped to make an arrangement of this sort customary. Petty exactions in individual instances, that are manifestly unjust, could not exist any more than overtime without pay, were the girls to understand their bargaining power as a compact group. In one store, for instance, belated employes are docked a cent a minute, and the girl who is late half an hour is docked half a day's pay. In this same store, only two girls are paid as much as $5.00 a week. The rest are earning I3.50 and 14.00. Christmas week, all the girls were given |6.oo; but the next week, when trade was slack, the girls state they were all paid only I2.75. Two of the girls complained and the manager said, "Give them their regular wages and let them go." They were discharged. It is not at all necessary to go outside of Pittsburgh to find a higher standard, both as to the physical conditions of the sales- week and for a lo-hour day for girls under eighteen. It excludes them from all night work (after 9 p. m.), making no exception for mercantile houses at Christmas time. Ten hours is the legal day for all boys and girls under eighteen, by the new law, and boys under sixteen may not work after q p. m. except m glass-houses. These provisions should in effect close all stores at 9 p. m. at any time. 303 WOMEN AND THE TRADES rooms and as to the justness of work relations. Points of excellence are to be found in several stores, and in one, that marginal all- around excellence which sets it in a class by itself, ahead of its competitors. It exemplifies this higher standard at each point under discussion; in the comprehensiveness of its ventilating system; in its observance of the spirit of the law in providing an average of four seats to a counter for its employes; in the fact that it has no Christmas overtime and is consequently free from the imputation that it asks unpaid-for work; and finally, in its wage standard. The manager says that salesgirls are paid on the basis approximately of 5 per cent of their total sales. Work at counters where goods are cheapest, such as the notion counter, is paid at the lowest rates ; an employe of little experience can be used, as sales are quickly and easily made. A girl who shows ability is advanced to a counter where she can earn more, and theoretically there is no limit to the increase in wages of a capable girl. In practice, it works out that approximately 100 cash girls and wrapper girls are paid from I4.00 to $6.00, and that 700 saleswomen are paid $7.00. No saleswoman who is worth less will be retained. At the lace counter, in the cloak and suit department, and here and there where the selling of goods requires experience, lOO girls are paid from |8.oo to $10, and sometimes $15, in the case of a head of stock. WAGES How far this system of payments exceeds the rates which are paid in the general trade in Pittsburgh is shown by the fact that in the twenty-four stores as a whole the number of women and girls in the lowest wage group is overwhelmingly large. Five thousand five hundred and ten of the women employes, 73 per cent of those in the trade, were earning from $3.00 to |6.oo in 1907; 1555 women were earning I7. 00; 475 were earning from I7.00 or $8.00 to $10 or $12. These wages do not go so far as the same wages in a factory, for the period of unemployment in summer is likely to be longer. Saleswomen are laid off for from two to six weeks, and often for much longer in the cloak and suit depart- ments. The total yearly income is therefore lower than the in- 304 MERCANTILE HOUSES come estimated from what is paid by the week. Then, too, the shop girl must dress better than the factory girl. A clean shirt- waist and a trim skirt are part of her stock in trade, and her expenses for clothing and laundry are correspondingly high. Shop girls without friends or family ties are few. Shop girls to whom the family tie means an additional burden, are many; and there are many more who, with family ties and friends, are yet dependent upon themselves for support. Among girls in these circumstances, the temptation is ever present to lay hold of the opportunities which employment in a mercantile house offers to increase their income in unsocial ways. Low wages and the desire for pleasure incite the factory girl, but the shop girl is spurred in addition by her association with people of a higher standard of living than hers. Moreover, the stores are avenues through which any who will may come. The larger stores are in the busiest part of town, and the girls are free at noon to meet men on the streets. Without attracting attention, men can come into the stores and talk with the girls, and these conditions may exist not only without the encourage- ment of the management but even without its cognizance. Where the store is particular as to the mode of life of its employes and makes a point of dismissing those who offend against its standards, the percentage of girls who lead irregular lives is unquestionably lower than in stores where such conduct is tolerated or, as some- times happens, is encouraged. Yet from among the girls them- selves, from those who deal with them, and from police sources, my information was both explicit and general enough to indicate that in the moral jeopardy of shop girls lies one of the most widespread and serious social problems of the women-employing trades. This problem was beyond the scope of this investigation, but a few of the cases that came to my knowledge may serve to illustrate the as yet unanswered call to the best forces in the community to address themselves to it with courage and under- standing. Rose was employed at the ribbon counter. She had a mother and two sisters dependent upon her, and her mother was always urging her for more money. She began while still in the store to "make money on the side." The management 20 305 WOMEN AND THE TRADES discovered this and dismissed her. She left for a city in Ohio; went into a house of prostitution there from which she sends her mother money. Her wages at the ribbon counter were $6.00 a week. Vera is twenty years old. Four years ago she was em- ployed as a salesgirl at $3.50 a week. After a year she left for an- other store where she was employed as a cashier at a salary of |io a week, for making concessions to her employer. After two years she left the store for a house of prostitution. Jennie came to Pittsburgh from Akron, Ohio. She had no friends in the city and was obliged to be self-supporting. She obtained a position at $6.00 a week as a saleswoman. After five months in the store, she consented to be kept in an apartment in the East End. She still keeps her position in the store. Emma was employed in a waist department at I5.00 a week. She had no friends in the city, but sent money home to her people and paid board. At the end of six months, she became an occasional prostitute ; after a year was discharged by the firm. These girls are at the start not difi^erent from other girls. Their cases indicate simply that the pressure of low wages combined with the opportunities of a department store result in a social problem that cannot be ignored. Further investigation would be needed to disclose the extent of it. Some employers are generally reputed among salesgirls to assume that their women employes secure financial backing from outside relationships, and knowingly pay wages that are supplementary rather than wages large enough to cover the cost of a girl's support. Questions asked of girls seeking employment cannot be otherwise interpreted. In other cases, probably in the majority, the rate of wages is fixed not by any reckoning on the part of the employer with unsocial conduct, but by the tradition of the occupation. It is assumed that shop girls are only partly self-supporting and need only work for pin-money. The social position of the shop girl is in conse- quence higher than that of the factory girl, and the shop girl loses financially through her desire for social esteem. The very popu- larity of work in a store is another reason why the rate of wages remains low. Girls who come to Pittsburgh from small towns nearby would lose caste if they worked in a factory, but 306 MERCANTILE HOUSES they can work in a store and keep the respect of their friends. Likewise many a workingman's daughter who wants more money than her parents can give her, and the social standing held by well-dressed employes in the stores, looks for a position as a saleswoman. Some stores have a waiting list of applicants, and the girls, when they get positions, are loath to give them up. As one girl said, "The fact is, it 's so hard to get a job any- where that when you do get one, you hang on to it for fear you might be months getting another." Competition for positions in the stores is indeed often so keen as to create a shortage of workers in the factory districts, much more in domestic help. It is all part of the natural craving of American girls to get ahead; a part of the psychology of some of the most creative and pro- gressive tendencies in our national life, which in other spheres we applaud. Yet the fact remains that, for the vast bulk of salesgirls, the wages paid are not sufficient for self-support; and where girls do not have families to fall back on, some go under-nourished, some sell themselves. And the store-employ- ment which offers them this two-horned dilemma is replete with opportunities which in gradual, easy, attractive ways beckon to the second choice; a situation which a few employers not only seem to tolerate, but to encourage. TRADE TRAINING Yet, while the factors entering into the wage situation in the department stores are thus complicated along custom-hardened lines, it seems not impossible to hope for the gradual working out of a system of payments on a sounder economic basis. Recogni- tion of the commercial value of trade training is undoubtedly a first step. The exceptional girls are quick to pick up knowl- edge, or to profit by the hints of older employes. They become self-made saleswomen. Their hard-won proficiency sets a stand- ard, which shows the business advantage of bringing out in the girls who come to take places beside them, with least loss of time, such capacity as will sell goods well, and earn fair wages for doing it. Floorwalkers and inspectors ordinarily do not supply their 307 WOMEN AND THE TRADES saleswomen with a knowledge of the tools, an understanding of the goods. Their business is to oversee the daily events in the store, and for the previous training of the girls they can assume no responsibility. Neither do they teach a new girl, except by a few general directions, in what way her stock is distinctive and how she is to offer it. She is not often a person sufficiently ex- perienced in buying to be herself a judge of quality. She repeats what she has been told, but she cannot follow the goods to the customer's home where fabric has the actual test of wear. It is beginning to be felt that salesmanship, like many other occupations, is not an instinctive art, but an art that can be taught and understood. One Pittsburgh store, the same in which we found the physical conditions of work best, has started a course in salesmanship for those of its employes who have the ambition to study out of hours. Ninety people are in the morning class, and 36 in the evening class ; all of them have home-work and text-book lessons. The women who go through that course will give more valuable service and know something of their indus- trial value; they cannot fail to have a conception of their respon- sibility to the enterprise as a whole and of justice in industrial relations. Should this movement grow among Pittsburgh stores, inevitably we should see developed an esprit de corps which would go far to remedy small tyrannies, and to secure fair conditions of hours and wages. This women's work, as a whole, in Pittsburgh would be on a new plane, more profitable to the management, and more practicable to young women as a means of livelihood. With salesmanship training should go some system by which a girl's earnings increase with her interest and efficiency in her work. 308 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF WORKING WOMEN o H O < O o H (/I < z o o 5 CHAPTER XXI * IN THE FACTORIES THE very grouping of 600 women in a single building under one management for ten hours a day, suggests possibilities for congregate recreative activity. Here is a centre of association about which could be built such healthful occupation and interest as would renew the strength and freshen the mind that days of monotonous toil have dulled. THE NOON HOUR For such social activity the noon hour might well be a point of departure. Effective rest, as well as recreation, demands such an interval in the middle of the day. But in the Pittsburgh factories the noon "hour" is in most cases only half an hour long. The law* permits the time at noon to be shortened "for good cause" by the chief factory inspector if the closing hour is correspondingly earlier, and usage has interpreted this "good cause" as the wish of a majority of the employes. Judging by appearances, employes have very generally wanted an earlier closing hour. Factories with the full time at noon are so few as to be noticeable in the industrial group. One girl who told me about the change in her own workingtime, was asked why she did not care to take the full hour. "Well," she said, "we have no place to eat but just at our benches, and we get sick of the odor and the look of the room, and want to get away from it as soon as we can. Of course, if we had any place to go to at noon, or if we didn't always stay in the same room, it might be different. We don't think of it as noon to rest in. We just know that it doesn't take us an hour to eat lunch, and we want to get to work again and get through as soon as we can." Such are the motives * Act May 2, igoj, Sec. 9, P. L. No. 226. 311 WOMEN AND THE TRADES that lead the majority of the employes, when consulted, to vote for shortening the rest time. But the law of the body is not modifiable at the wish of a majority of the employes, nor in the service of industrial conven- ience. The framers of factory legislation in Pennsylvania in declaring for an hour's rest at noon, had in mind the need of the body to reenforce its strength after five hours of work. For proper assimilation of food, too, there must be an interval of rest before resuming work. In other words, the period necessary for eating a cold lunch at the work bench is by no means sufficient to enable the worker, with nervous loss restored, to go back when the whistle sounds in the afternoon as good a worker as when the whistle sounded in the morning. The time of rest may be reduced, but it will be reduced at the expense of the employes' strength and efficiency. LUNCH ROOMS Yet, even with the hour cut short, were lunch rooms more general, there might be spontaneous development of recreation groups. Rest is undoubtedly more complete with a change of surroundings, especially a change from an atmosphere of work. From the viewpoint of health it may almost be said that no large plant is fully equipped unless lunch rooms for men and women are provided apart from the general workroom. This need has won only a limited recognition. It is a gain, perhaps, when a space is set apart for a lunch room, even if that space is inadequate. Yet we should scarcely be willing to stop at that, or to think that the need is filled if a dark, ill-ventilated corner is set with tables and turned over to the girls at noon. That is a lunch room reduced to its lowest terms. It is a relief from the workroom atmosphere, but not a place for healthful recreation. I know one such place which is wholly useless in summer because it is so near the ovens that the most elaborate system of ventilation would be insufficient to dispel the heat, and not even the rudiments of ventilation have been installed. In contrast, a North Side laundry has set aside a bright, sunny section of the building; there are attractive dishes, tables covered with white cloths, comfortable chairs. The noon interval is an hour and a half. 312 IN THE FACTORIES The management considers it worth while to give the girls this time so that they may return to their work with energy. Two of the stogy factories and the cork factory have good lunch rooms. Of the mercantile houses, it is not possible to speak in general terms. Thirteen out of the 27 mercantile houses which employ over five saleswomen, have a space set apart for a lunch room, and seven of these serve light lunch at cheap rates. But the conditions in these rooms vary as greatly as the stores them- selves. In one store, whose employes number 2000, the lunch room is in a totally unventilated basement. A space near the cashier's desk is boarded off and lighted by one glaring electric globe, while the long table with a few benches is expected to serve for 1300 women. This room has acted not as a socializing but as a disintegrating force. In another case, some twenty bare and unscrubbed tables have been placed on an upper floor. At either side of the tables are greasy benches without backs. The dark monotony of the room is unbroken, and the row of windows at one side is obscured by packing cases. The lunch room in a neighboring store has all the desirable features that this one lacks. The furnishings are attractive; there are small tables of weathered oak and comfortable chairs. An inexpensive lunch is served at nominal rates, and light and fresh air are abundant. Although there is only this limited recognition of the social possibilities of factory grouping, other outgrowths from the congregate employment of men and women have won a certain popularity. These spring chiefly from a kindly feeling on the part of the management toward the working force, or from recognition of the value of the advertisement gained by welfare work. In one case they show a far-sighted business policy. A rest room for employes who are ill is provided in one or two of the larger factories, and four of the mercantile houses have such a room, in two cases arranging for a physician to be in attendance at certain times of the day. A more popular philan- thropy, irrespective of lunch or rest rooms, is the furnishing of coffee for the force at noon. Coffee, with its spur to nervous energy, is unquestionably what most of the girls wish. Few of them understand the difference between stimulant and nourish- ment. 3'3 WOMEN AND THE TRADES WELFARE WORK I can only mention these minor provisions looking toward the health or comfort of the employes. In two establishments, however, the system of welfare work is extensive. One of these, a factory, has a force of 600 girls. They are given excellent workrooms, clean, well-ventilated, well-constructed. The stair- ways are marble, and on the walls are engravings of action and battle and plunging horses. The stained-glass windows in the halls display mottoes about work and industry. In the auditorium is a large painting, rich in color, of Christ before Pilate. The girls are often summoned to the auditorium at noon to hear an address by some visitor or to sing; in this case they have an hour's recess, instead of half an hour. This does not involve financial loss to the day girls, because they are paid their day rates in any case, but the piece workers lose just so much in possible earnings. A roof garden for summer use has been erected above one of the buildings. There is a natatorium, with schedule so arranged that most of the girls may have a chance to swim once or twice a week after hours. The dressing rooms in the general factory building are beautifully kept, and the rest room is well equipped with necessities for those who are ill. The large lunch room, filled with long tables, can seat all the 600 girls at once, and for one cent a day, each girl is furnished with coffee, milk and sugar. In one corner stands a piano, and the walls are bright with pictures. Throughout the building everything is bright and trim and clean. The girls wear fresh blue and white aprons and trim white caps. They are as well-kept in appearance as the place in which they work. Excellent building construction, thorough cleanliness, dress- ing rooms, rest rooms, natatoria, are the tools of welfare work. Wherever they are at the service of the employes, we have reason to be glad. Yet in our enthusiasm for these tools, we must not forget that their value is to a great extent dependent on the con- ditions of work and wage which accompany them. Good in and of themselves, their service is of little effect if it serves merely to obscure facts of low wages and a high speed rate. Pleasant surroundings compensate neither for excessive work, nor for 314 Recreation Room in the McCreary Store Lunch Room of the Keystone Laundry IN THE FACTORIES a fundamental deficit in the financial basis of self respect. When higher wages are paid, even if fewer gifts are given, women em- ployes have the precious opportunity to work out their own lives, with their margin above a living wage. Speed pressure and a low rate of pay destroy nervous vitality, and keep the standard of life near the margin of degradation. It is true that a girl un- trained to habits of systematic attention, needs to be taught a standard pace for commercial efficiency. There is a point, however, beyond which the pace becomes excessive. A girl who works at so high speed that she cannot change her position, or turn her head, is unable to appreciate an engraving on the wall. The girl who cuts onions at $ .75 a day, cares very little for the polished upright piano in the lunch room, or for the roof garden which is reached only after a hard climb. Some necessities we need in order to appreciate luxuries. The pace of the machine is the primary nervous stimulus to a working girl, and if that pushes her too hard, especially if her returns are low, she is likely to be ungrateful for cleanliness and fresh air, incapable of enjoying recreation. Less elaborate, and developed after a somewhat different policy, is the work of one department store. First of all, you note that the quality of the air is different there from that in the streets outside, or even in other places indoors. For first floor and base- ment all the air is passed through a solid sheet of water, its grime and smokiness washed out before it is sent through shafts for the people on these two floors to breathe. Then too, you note the surprising cleanliness of everything, not only in the parts of the store where customers go, but in places that they do not ordinarily see. Behind each counter are seats, seats which the employes are expected to use. On the upper floors are ample dressing rooms, and a lunch room with mission chairs and tables, dignified and harmonious in its furnishings, but bright with sunlight. Here the girls are free to bring their own lunch, or to buy at cost the same things that are served in the customers' dining room. There is a hospital room, with a trained nurse in charge. The recreation room, with its smooth floor, its quiet furnishings, its piano and books, gives opportunity for making the noon hour really a rest hour. The social secretary visits employes who are 315 WOMEN AND THE TRADES ill, and is always in her place upstairs at noon to talk with and help the girls who may need her. Employes in a mercantile house, if themselves content, convey an atmosphere of satisfaction to customers. In adopting a policy, not of "doing good," but of "making the employes happy, to the end that they may give efficient service," the manage- ment repudiates the idea that it is philanthropic. It recognizes that many acts called philanthropic are agencies, if one sees far enough, for upbuilding a successful business. Fundamental to the art of selling goods, are the poise, the courtesy, the spontaneous readiness and pleasure with which the seller meets the possible customer. Little by little they arouse in the buyer a similar readiness and pleasure. A far-sighted business management realizes that this poise and readiness must be built from within. There must be a sufficient number of employes to handle the trade. The working force must have faith in the firm's sincerity and gen- uine goodwill; it must be paid wages high enough to live on; and must have rest time, and a place in which to rest. The tools of welfare work in this case are much the same although less elaborate than in the other. But the informing spirit is different. While it is true that store work calls for a more intelligent grade of girl, the basic fact is that this store has set a standard for the wages of saleswomen in the district. The force is kept to its work, not by a system of speeding which taxes nervous energy to its utmost, but through the influence of the firm's kindly criti- cism, unfailing courtesy and goodwill. THE EXTENSION WORK OF THE Y. W. C. A. In concluding this discussion of the social possibilities in factories and shops, a word should be said about the extension work of the Young Women's Christian Association. In eight factories, a fifteen-minute noon meeting is held once a week, from October until the last of May. Before the opening of these meetings in the fall, and for several weeks after their close, per- sonal visits are made by the secretaries in the attempt to develop a friendly acquaintance in the neighborhood. Character build- ing, rather than social betterment, is the point emphasized by 316 IN THE FACTORIES the extension workers. Sometimes they have a reading, and sometimes calisthenic exercises; in five factories there is a piano and an organized chorus of the girls. Very often, this extension work has been a means for the immediate improvement of con- ditions, as, for instance, in four factories which have established lunch rooms so that there might be a place where the secretaries could hold their meetings. The time allowed for singing and calisthenics, and for reading, is inordinately short, but it is at any rate a good beginning toward making the noon rest constructive. To sum up. Opportunities for wholesome social life among working women are few. In factories or stores the gathering together of men and women affords a chance for valuable construc- tive work along lines of social intercourse. Recreation rooms, with time in which to use them, are a medium for spontaneous betterment. With wise direction, they may become centres for manual, cultural, and, more especially, industrial training. Physical exercise, so chosen as to overcome the fatigue caused by routine work, calling forth a social effort, may occupy certain intervals of the day. The community loses, if the relationship of co-workers in a factory is only a work relationship. The workers lose if their ten hours is a steady stretch of expenditure, without chance to regain physical and mental vigor. The social possibilities of factory grouping are recognized only partially in Pittsburgh; they are utilized to a less degree. Lunch rooms are not general, and many of those in use are inadequate. Hot coffee at noon, hospital provision for illness, have appealed to the philanthropic instincts of some employers. In two cases, there is a developed system of welfare work, a system that in one plant, however, co-exists with high speeding, a thing which does harm that no half hour in a rest room can undo. In the other case, so far the flower of social effort in Pittsburgh's industrial establishments, the welfare work which is not called welfare work seems a natural part of the industry itself, a feature that is worth while to the management, in that it keeps the employes efficient. 317 CHAPTER XXII OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES A SIGHT of the factory does not enable us fully to under- stand the life of working women. We must know the homes and lodging places; we must know to what extent social life is made possible by the factory management, and in what way outside agencies, like settlements and clubs, supply the social privileges that home conditions deny. Important also are the districts in which these agencies are found and the oppor- tunities which they offer, as showing how far the living place in itself is a source of social life and recreation. The occupational map* of Pittsburgh working women is in a sense an interpretation of their home life. The workshops along the upper parts of the river, in Allegheny and in the East End, draw their workers from nearby streets. The tendency is strong for neighborhood women to go into the factories whose smoke- stacks have stared them in the face since babyhood, and in addi- tion to lower their weekly budget by saving carfare to and from work. The nearby factory sometimes means a saving in clothing, too, as well as in carfare, as in the case of the two young girls who went to the neighboring factory "because then they didn't have to wear hats as they would if they rode in the car." The grouping of industrial establishments on the Point, however, and in Alle- gheny near the Point, represents a working population which is a car-ride away from home. This group includes the large stores and some of the larger factories. THE NEIGHBORHOODS At the eastern end of town, a few girl workers live in the narrow streets that curve away from the larger avenues. Some * See map p. 23. OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES of them are coil winders, or makers of gas mantles, or laundry workers, but the occupations and the business streets are alike heterogeneous. This end of town is young. The years behind it are too few to have given it distinctive character in population, housing, or industrial development. On the Hill, the bluff not far above the meeting of the two rivers, the greater part of the immigrant Jewish population lives; this too, is a district where the number of working girls is relatively small. Along the unevenly paved streets, with their row after row of small brick houses, their dark courts with yet other houses thrust back and between, their little ill-smelling kosher shops, the life of the Jewish immigrant shows itself stripped of the picturesqueness, the gay colors and the ritual that blend not unfitly with the ways of an older city. A tenement here does not proclaim itself for what it is by lifting story above story out of all just relation to the width of the street, but crowds its three or four families into two small floors. For example, here is a family of seven living in two rooms of a house on Davis Street. The five children are from five to nineteen years of age, and the sleeping arrangements are on the principle of even division. The two younger children sleep in the room with their parents. The three older ones have the other room, which is also kitchen, dining room and parlor. The oldest girl in this family is a stogy maker and another daughter works in the paper box factory. Custom prevents the girls of a Jewish family from seeking recrea- tion out of doors, and such social life as they have is largely in the crowded rooms of their home. The Lawrenceville section is heterogeneous. Poles, Greeks and Assyrians are among the residents, but the characteristic nationality is Irish. From their homes along the uneven streets that dip toward the river, the girls go into the cork factory or the cracker factory, or they enter one of the two or three stogy factories nearby. Some of the houses are frame shacks, weathered and unsightly; others are dull red brick, two stories high. They may accommodate one or three families, according to circumstance. Frequently from the hall you are ushered directly into the parlor, impressive with its cheap draperies and crocheted coverings for the chairs, wax flowers, and large photographs of the family. 319 WOMEN AND THE TRADES You realize that whatever may be the crowding in the sleeping accommodations, this one room is sacred to the daughters of the family for their use in the evening's leisure. The family is poor indeed among the English-speaking group when the first floor front is a sleeping room obvious and unashamed. It is chiefly among the foreign residents of the section that the girls are forced to take to street corners for the opportunity to see their friends. On the South Side are numbers of Polish families; but across the river, at the north of Pittsburgh, the working districts are harder to characterize. Large sections of the town are filling up with Slavic people. Foreign districts are thus gradually set off chaotically, with streets of Americans straggling along the edge of them. These English-speaking families are often those who by reason of poor physique, or lack of ambition, or the cumulative effect of bad environment, have been left behind when their neighbors have climbed away from what was not then a slum. Among these Americans distinctive characteristics are effaced as in their neighborhood. Some live in brick-paved, unlighted alleys, in the shadow of the mills where they work. Others, a little removed, live toward the districts that have been claimed for the uses of vice. The majority are of low grade, physically, mentally, industrially; the home environment has clamped within narrow limits the developing faculties of the child. The neighborhood to which the working girl goes home is less a matter of choice than an accident of birth or convenience. She is born into a family group that has drifted through race affiliations, for cheap rent, or for convenient nearness to the mills, to one or another section of the city; she stays with the group, and from it builds out her own life. The girl who boards away from home is likewise limited in choice. She is not a figment of the imagination, this girl. She numbers in the garment trades 38 per cent* of their total force; in the printing trades, 33 J per cent; in the confectionery trade, 33^ per cent; in the wholesale millinery trade, 10 per cent; in * These percentages are based on factory-to-factory investigations, the num- ber in each case being given by the forewoman personally acquainted with the girls. 320 « O tn M O O g 3 Q O OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES mercantile houses, 20 per cent. On the lowest estimate, there are 2,300 of her kind in Pittsburgh, 10.5 per cent of the total working women studied. Poverty sends the seeker for room and board into districts of grade as low, and sometimes lower, than the usual slum. One unsightly shack on a mud-paved alley offers board for I3.00 a week. In others, by sleeping in the kitchen and helping with the housework, a girl can get board for the same sum. She will hardly find a room to rent in the thickly settled parts of the city for less than $10 a month. Even at this price, she cannot be sure that the character of the house is above re- proach. It gave me fresh appreciation of the problem faced by homeless girls to hear a conversation between two would-be lodgers and a slim Jewess whose house, twice raided within the few months past, again had a "To-let" sign on the door. "Where do you work ?" was her first question, and one girl answered that she was in a cigar factory, the other that " she worked down- town." They stood hesitating, shrinking back, like prisoners before the bar rather than wage-earning women in search of rooms. The Jewess eyed them shrewdly, noting details of untidy dress, stocky figure, curly hair. Working girls of their type, she thought, were not sufficiently promising customers. Finally she said, "Well, my rooms are $2.50 a week, and I might as well tell you that I don't allow no companies, no gentlemen friends and no lady friends; I can't be having no noise and talking in my house. Now, if youse want to see the rooms, youse can see them." The barren outlook afforded by dingy rooms in which there can be "no companies," is further darkened by the character of many of the neighborhoods where the "To-let" signs hang. The narrow cross-streets shelter houses of assignation and other resorts of vice; they are slums touched by more than the primary effects of poverty, more than low wages and the confusion attend- ant on life in a new land; they contain poverty in its secondary, its hereditary effects, the taint acquired by years of unwholesome stimuli and unnatural responses. For the stray wage-earner who prefers lodging with a group of co-workers to lodging alone, boarding homes* have been es- * For the census and capacity of each home, see Appendix B, p. 408, Table 76. " 321 WOMEN AND THE TRADES tablished in Pittsburgh to the number of seven. In June, 1908, the capacity of these homes was 396, the census, 275, the differ- ence being due in large part to the general trade depression, which made even the low rates charged too heavy for some girls to pay. There is wide variety in occupation among the residents; but 143, or a little more than half, are among the occupational groups considered in this study. The rest are stenographers, teachers, clerks, or workers in miscellaneous occupations. Criticisms commonly directed against boarding homes in general, are applicable to a majority of those in Pittsburgh. Five of them are large old residences made over into institutions, and characterized by monotony of dormitory arrangement, meagreness of furnishing, lack of attractiveness, and by the denial of that right so precious to the adult of either sex, the individual latchkey. One home, which may serve as an example of the rest, is in the business district. Smoke from the railroad clouds the win- dows, and the noise of trains interrupts sleep. Altogether, there are three single rooms, one double room, two rooms with four beds each, and 16 rooms with three beds each. All sleeping rooms are large and seem well-aired, but everything about them is dingy and barren. The wall paper is old, faded, of set design. The furnishings are void of interest. They have an ugliness that leaves the observer apathetic instead of arousing her to whole- some wrath. Closet room is meagre. Often three girls are obliged to manage with two bureaus, and no wardrobe or closet. Rates are from I4.75 to I5.25 a week for board and room. On the first floor is the parlor, a long hairclothed place, with an atmosphere which would resent the intrusion of levity. I asked the matron how the girls managed with their guests, and she said that the one parlor was quite sufficient, for it rarely happens that girls have callers on the same night. At ten-thirty lights are extinguished. Any one who remains out after that hour must give notice, and if it does not. happen too often, some one will be waiting for her when she comes in. In this home the girls have no complaint to make, as they have in some of the homes, about the quality of their food, some- times the positive unhealthfulness of it. Their complaint, so 322 OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES far as they can justly make one, is that personal expression is checked, and the leisure hours of the day stript of their value.,, A girl may stay in the house three years, and in the course of that time contribute nothing to the atmosphere of the room in which she lives. Scarcely a picture on the walls distinguishes the charac- teristics of the girls in one room from those in another. Lack of privacy, emphasis of the dormitory idea, represses the individual. A new departure is the remodeling of a tenement for a non- sectarian home, under the direction of the Catholic church. The bedrooms suffer a little for lack of light, because of adjacent buildings, but the furnishings, even though cheap, are attractive, making the rooms seem bright and cheerful. Here there is one dormitory with five and another with six beds for transients, but most of the rooms are double, renting for $3.00 and I4.00 a week. Residents are entitled to three meals, laundry privileges, the use of the parlor and sitting room. It is a relief from some of the funereal rooms which go by the name of parlors, to turn to this bright place furnished with piano, writing table, and comfortable couches, its very air an invitation to social intercourse. Some class work has also been undertaken as one of the regular functions of the home. Mention should be made, too, of the recently opened Athalia Daly Home, endowed for the express purpose of furnishing comfortable accommodations to self-supporting women who are not earning over |i2 a week. The ground plan of the building is so arranged that each room is an outside room, well lighted. The walls are rough plaster over tile, and cherry woodwork and furniture add to the artistic effect. For each room there is a white enameled bed with excellent mattress, white enameled washstand, a cherry bureau, table and chairs, and a closet. Bathing facilities are ample. A sewing room is provided, and in the basement a laundry with washing machine, ironing boards, tubs, drying-closet, and other up-to-date appliances. The large parlor on the first floor is, like the rest of the building, fitted out in rough plaster and cherry, with artistic furnishings, rugs, chairs, and some fine etchings on the wall. There are small parlors for the use of girls and their guests. This home has 39 single and 16 double rooms, but a flat rate of I4.00 is charged 323 WOMEN AND THE TRADES each resident. One thing that has tended to keep down the num- ber of residents is the distance of the home from the business centre, which makes it necessary for the girls to spend carfare each way. To the girl at home, the stimulus of her surroundings is slight, and evenings pass with an unbroken sameness. The homes, whether they be with family or friends, cannot of themselves supply recrea- tion. If in no other way, they are limited by mere lack of space. There is no opportunity for social intercourse, for conversation, except in connection with the family group that includes young and old. One is impressed by the lack of coherence in different neighborhoods, by the lack of heart to make use of leisure, and the absence of more than sporadic efforts to enjoy the free hours. "We just stay at home," one girl said, "we haven't anything else to do." She could not read at night because her eyes became so tired during the day from the fumes of lacquer; she sat in the win- dow looking out at the uninviting street. Lack of vitality more often than the absence of desire for recreation, keeps the girls within doors in the evening without occupation. "What do you do with your evenings ?" I asked so many girls, and grew used to hearing the answer, "Nothing." This simply expresses the atti- tude of the individual who disdains, or lacks animal energy for, the more violent diversions. For those who have both the vitality and the desire for pleasure, there are few opportunities for recrea- tion except roller-skating rinks, picture shows and dance halls. In recognition of this need of working women, outside agencies have been developed with the idea of supplementing the imperfect opportunities of the home, and supplying a means for social intercourse. There are settlements and semi-religious associations; there is the field house of the Playground Associa- tion. How far their influence goes, it would be difficult to estimate. Their impalpable share in the life and thought of the community cannot be gauged by roll-books or class records; yet the record of attendances on clubs and classes is a measure, at least, of their closer relationships. The total attendances by working women from the industrial groups under consideration are 720. Kingsley House, and the Columbian School and Settlement, in the Hill district, have a relatively small contingent of working 324 t3 O K a Hi o la (3 O OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES women. Neighborhood needs have led, in the main, to class work with men and small boys, and to some extent with mothers, al- though both settlements have some industrial classes for girls, and some social clubs. The industrial classes in cooking and sew- ing are an attempt, not to give trade training, but to overcome the pitiful inadequacy of an experience that includes only factory work, and leaves no time for a girl to learn the trade of house- keeping before she undertakes it. In these settlements, the weekly dances are a means of reaching many who have no other connection with class work. Perhaps the strongest work of the Wood's Run Industrial House is its girls' clubs. The Slovak population of the district seems to be untouched, but of Irish and German and scattered Jewish families, there are many who use the house, its gymnasium and reading rooms, as their own. Girls come from the stogy factory on the next street, and from the pickle factory with its low sheds near the river, from the broom factory and from res- taurants nearby. Classes are held in cooking, shirtwaist making and gymnasium work. The play and study clubs have an organi- zation often fluid enough to admit any neighborhood girl, whether in regular attendance or not, without the payment of dues. Except for this settlement house, all this section of the North Side, and the sections farther toward the river have been untouched by socializing influences. Near the Ohio River, in the mill region, where the hinge factory and the metal works are, a Congre- gational church is planning to carry on some social work, but as yet its plans are somewhat indefinite. As a whole, the North Side is marked by a lack of wholesome meeting places. At the Soho Baths Settlement, where a stand is being made against the desolation of the steel-shadowed slope near the Monon- gahela, one of the most successful clubs has been an evening social club, attended by i6 factory girls. A few are from paper box factories, and others are from the little stogy sweat- shops on neighboring streets. Some evenings have been given up to dancing, and some to an address by a visitor, but not to industrial work, for the girls have wanted relaxation rather than class routine. This settlement's other activities are in part relief work, in part elementary teaching of household economics 325 WOMEN AND THE TRADES as a means of uplift. It is handicapped by lack of a gymnasium and of a reading room for adults, which might serve to make the house more of a social centre than it can possibly be with its present limitations. Soho has no other social centre. The Young Women's Christian Association is strong in the business section of the city, on the South Side, and in Lawrence- ville, where an extensive work is done among factory girls. In each case the work is varied by the needs and the racial differences of the people. Only three or four factory girls are reached on the South Side, perhaps because the population is so largely Polish. When membership in a semi-religious association is required for admission, the neighborhood influence of the club is inevitably limited in a district where religious sects vary with nationality. The chief success of this branch of the association has been with mothers and with children's clubs, although industrial classes are offered in millinery, cooking and sewing. To some, the tuition must be prohibitive, but there has been a fair attendance of girls — at least ten department store girls and one from a glass- house — in the millinery and sewing classes. One of the most valuable parts of the South Side Young Women's Christian Association work, from the point of view of the working girl, is the lunch service daily and night lunch Satur- days. The department store just opposite, open late on Saturday nights, has a force of 60 girls, and no lunch room, but the cozy dining room of the Young Women's Christian Association offers a choice of dishes for either a whole lunch, or a supplement to the girl's own. Emphasis seems to be laid on the latter, because so many of the shop girls bring a part of their lunch from home with them. In Lawrenceville there is no lunch service, but a gathering in of girls from factories and stores to the number of 125 in various classes and clubs. An outdoor club has a membership of 32, all of them from factories, workers at cork and crackers and stogies. The dues are $ i .00, paid all at once or in instalments, as the members please, for the use of the recreation grounds with tennis courts and different games, and for the trips which the club promises during the summer. At the Philodora club, built on the broadest democratic lines, kindergarten teachers, school 326 OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES teachers, servants, four factory girls, five clerks, and several stenographers, meet on common ground once a week, for a social evening varied with talks and discussions and sometimes visits to places of interest. The millinery and sewing classes are conducted more for the personal use of the girls, to meet their own home problems, than with the idea of trade training. In the Bible class, the social value of meeting together is not forgotten, and once a month the class gives a supper and spends most of the evening time in games. The central Young Women's Christian Association has a large attendance of business women, — clerks and stenographers, — but it has yet to reach factory and shop girls in numbers that are at all comparable. Some are in the millinery class, and one social club, made up of wrapper girls from two nearby stores, meets on the same evening with a club of factory girls. These two clubs have light gymnasium drill together. Eight girls from factories and shops are being sent to Silver Bay by the association, although this means, as a rule, that the girl has to lose her time in her place of employment. The lunch and dinner service of the association is largely useful to working women, but there are no statistics to show exactly what groups make most use of it. Mention should be made here of the work carried on in noon and evening classes by the First Presbyterian Church in the midst of the business district down town. The shop girls come in during their hour at noon to the number of 50 or 75, for class work in sewing and basketry, and at night 200 girls take gymnasium drill and class work in basketry, cooking and sewing. The church has a strategic position near the shopping district; its cool basement, filled with quiet light through stained-glass windows, offers a restful interval between worktimes for those who are tired out with the hurry and confusion of the department store. The Business Woman's Club, an outgrowth of the Helping Hand Society, was started on the North Side some twenty-two years ago. It first leased and now owns the fine old house which it occupies, just one block from the main business street. The cool, dark hangings of the reception room are restful in themselves, and upstairs there is a real rest room for any one who may have 327 WOMEN AND THE TRADES a moment to spare. Lunch is served in the room back of the par- lor, about one hundred lunches a day, to non-members as well as to members. The food is varied, well-cooked, and all dishes are either five or ten cents. The shop girls from the neighborhood are among the regular customers, and from offices comes many a girl welcoming this opportunity to lunch in a quiet place. Club membership has nothing to do with club lunches; it entitles a girl to join the evening classes at reduced rates and to share the social evenings that occur at intervals. The number on the roll runs from 170 to 200, and if a year comes when a girl cannot pay her membership fee, she is dropped until the time when she wishes to join again ; she does not have to pay back member- ship dues. Of the 170 to 200 girls in the club, 31 are from the groups of working women studied. Their work is as follows : table 33. — occupations of thirty-one members of business woman's club No. of Occupation IVomen Laundry work . . i Milliners .1 Telephone operators . . . . . 2 Printing office . . ... . 2 Stogy rollers .... 2 Sales clerks . . . . Total 23 3' The classes in millinery, fancy work, sewing and cooking, are not for industrial training; they are attempts to give the girl an equipment that will make her personal life more worth while. In the millinery class, the girls are taught to sew braid, to make bows, to put on trimming and to combine colors. They are not taught to make wire frames, or to do such other things as would be essential to a milliner by trade. They make hats for them- selves and for their families; sometimes they come into the same class year after year in order to learn the season's styles from the teacher. Tuition is |i.oo a term, with three yearly terms. In the fancy work class, the girls are taught to make practical and attractive gifts, such as centre pieces, table covers and em- broidered neckwear. Color values are explained to them and the 328 Crapt-work of Girls' Club at Kingsley House OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES place of decoration in iiome furnishing. The sewing class con- fines itself to shirtwaist making. The girls make shirtwaists for themselves. If they become extraordinarily proficient in making both plain and fancy waists, they may go on to learn skirt making and the principles of more difficult sewing. They are not trans- formed into finished dressmakers, but are shown how to buy to the best advantage, and to put together garments that they or their families can wear. The tuition for the cooking class is a little more than for the others, I1.50 a term, but materials are furnished. The principles of cooking simple food are explained, and the class is taught combinations of foods, something of food values and how to use left over materials. The idea is to give the girls such practice as will be useful to them in their homes. Millinery and shirtwaist making have been the most popular classes, but in all its activities the club has won a place for itself as a thing of immediate usefulness. The monthly social evenings from October to June have usually some special form of enter- tainment besides dancing. Since this is preeminently a woman's club, the policy of its leaders is not to invite men to the social evenings, for difficulties are anticipated should the character of the club be changed. The last of the outside agencies for social occupation is the Lawrence Field House, maintained by the Pittsburgh Play- ground Association. This is not a settlement, nor wholly a play place, but something between the two. In this, its first year (1907-08), it has succeeded in becoming a vital part of the neigh- borhood life. On a little hill, barren as yet, after the wont of Pittsburgh hills, stands the small red brick building, with its sloping roof and leaded windows, altogether inviting and attractive in the midst of the dreary sordidness of the Lawrence ville slums. The gymnasium, two stories high, is the all-important room; it is used not only for gymnasium work, but for dances, for basket ball, and as an auditorium. There are smaller rooms upstairs and down, and a basement finished in concrete. The house, opened in November, 1907, is emphatically a neighborhood house. Afternoon classes are held for the children, and evening classes for working girls. Every first and third 329 WOMEN AND THE TRADES Saturday night a concert or lecture is given for the parents of the children, and some parents who have come during the day to see what the children are doing, have asked if they might not have similar classes for themselves. They are families of mill workers, some of them German, but in most cases Irish and American. In this connection, the evening work with the girls is of especial interest, although the classes have changed in member- ship several times since the house opened in the fall. In the beginning there was an evening attendance of 1 50,* 25 stenogra- phers, 15 factory girls, and 1 10 sales clerks. Some of the factory girls were stogy rollers and others were employes in the cork factory; two were from the Westinghouse plant, one was from a cracker factory, one from a telegraph office, and one from a laundry. Ten or twelve laundry girls applied, but found that they could not come because they had to work every Monday and Friday night. On these nights, although they live near the laundry, they do not even go home to supper, but have barely time for a cold lunch in the midst of their work. With the Christmas recess, the working girls began to drop out, and as the spring wore on there were more high school girls, more from offices, fewer from factories and stores. The teachers at the Field House think that these latter classes are harder to interest than the girls who came in the beginning of the year, because they are less in earnest, less serious. The wand and dumb bell work of the gymnasium pupils, the running, dance steps, and games, are all light movements that serve in a measure to counteract the effects of long sitting or standing in one position. Besides the gymnasium, two other classes are offered with- out charge for tuition. Each class has two one-hour sessions a week and any girl may take two courses out of the three. The classes make no attempt to teach a trade, but rather to suggest a way by which the girls may enrich their own lives. The sewing class might more accurately be called a class in embroidering, for here different kinds of stitches are taught, buttonhole work, cross-stitch on scrim, Hardanger embroidery, * These figures are based on estimates made by the teachers. OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES and such simple line work as would be applicable to home decora- tion. In the art class, a similar principle is followed. The aim is to stimulate the imagination and the sense of beauty, not to turn out indiflFerent artists. Designs that suggest the possibility of making a living room or a garment beautiful, color combinations that develop the perception of harmony — these are the points toward which the class work is directed. In the beginning of the year, the room was bare. There were no decorations, no draperies; but the girls themselves stenciled draperies for the wall, and curtains for the windows. The best of their composi- tions in charcoal and water color, done always from life, are the pictures on the wall. The one or two prints set inconspicuously in a corner are frequently changed so that no girl has a chance to become indifferent to them before she has begun to love them. One cannot question the value of art teaching of this sort. Here, as in the other classes, the work of the Field House suggests not so much an adding to the interests of the girls, as a leading out to conscious perception the faculties, physical and spiritual, that had been stifled in the dark. The girls who came to the classes before the Christmas recess, the working girls, had begun to feel that the house was their own, to be used as a significant part of their lives. They themselves thought out the idea of engaging the gymnasium for a Christmas dance on a Saturday night. They invited their friends, planned and gave the dance without sugges- tion from the leaders. In this and other ways the house is building its influence as a vital outgrowth of neighborhood needs. This discussion of the different agencies that attempt to meet the social needs of working women has of necessity been scattered. Diversity of aim and of method makes it impossible to treat the agencies as one group. Varying as they do, they have by no means districted the city among them. The wide-spread system of home libraries and book stations of the Carnegie Library is a beginning in this direction; and there are five or six branch libraries, enough to make one eager to see many more such buildings, with cheery open rooms, with shelves of books and magazines, where the people of a neighborhood may meet for quiet study, if not for gayer relaxation. The homes of working women serve only the most prosaic uses, 33' WOMEN AND THE TRADES and as a rule, the social possibilities of factories and shops are not utilized. For the present, these outside agencies, exotic as they sometimes are, are the only forces that aim to give social definite- ness to leisure hours. It may perhaps explain them more clearly, if they are classified according to the means they use: TABLE 34. — RECREATION FACILITIES OFFERED BY TEN OUTSIDE AGENCIES No. of Recreation work agencies Classes in manual training ... .... 3 Classes in manual training and social clubs, with membership in semi-religious association obligatory .... 3 Social clubs, but no meeting room for non-members ... i Social clubs, gymnasium and reading room for the use of non- members . . . . 3 Of these ten agencies, only the last four meet a social need. Classes in trade training* and manual work further the efficiency of their students, but they have constantly to battle against weariness at the end of a working day, and they cannot be really recreative. In the four social clubs, social meeting is, of course, the point of emphasis. One of these agencies, a settlement, is hampered by lack of any room for the use of neighbors who are non-members. The last three have gone far toward meeting the girls' need. They have taken strategic positions at Wood's Run, in the Lawrence- ville district and on the Hill. They have friendship with 258 working girlsf recorded on roll-books. They can scarcely reach beyond that, however, to the great numbers among whom, except for profit, there is no social leaven working. There were then in Pittsburgh in 1907, 22,185 working women in factories and stores, besides many more in occupations un- counted in this census; yet of this number only 258, less than 2 per cent, were in touch with a centre for social development and recreation, either in the play or re-creating sense. Even a little leisure is a by-product of life too valuable to waste, and the com- munity is the loser if the free hour is spent only in weariness or * See Appendix C, pp. 410-41 1. The Margaret Morison Carnegie School for Women. t In the industrial groups studied. 332 OUTSIDE THE FACTORIES some undesirable form of entertainment. Nickelodeons and dance halls and skating rinks are in no sense inherently bad, but so long as those maintained for profit are the only relief for nervous weari- ness and the desire for stimulation, we may well reckon leisure a thing spent, not used. These amusements take a toll from the people's income, disproportionate to the pleasure gained. They divert, and to the work-weary girl, diversion is essential. Yet there should be possibility for constructive diversion. A diversion is needed which shall be a form of social expression, and with slighter toll from strength and income, be of lasting value to the body and spirit. I shall not soon forget a Saturday evening when 1 stood among the crowd of pleasure-seekers on Fifth Avenue, and watched the men and women packed thick at the entrance of every picture- show. My companion and I bought tickets for one of the five cent shows. Our way was barred by a sign, "Performance now going on." As we stood near the door, the crowd of people waiting to enter filled the long vestibule and even part of the sidewalk. They were determined to be amused, and this was one of the things labeled, "Amusement." They were hot and tired and irritable, but willing to wait until long after our enthusiasm was dampened, and we had left them standing in line for their chance to go in. It was an incident not without significance, this eagerness with which they turned toward leisure after a working week of unmeaning hours. Are we very sure that this eagerness is not as well worth conserving as any river fall that makes electricity or drives a mill? In large measure today, the working women of Pittsburgh are spending their leisure, not using it. The beginning whereby they may use it is already made. How rapidly this 1.16 per cent now influenced shall increase, depends in part on the choice of the working women and the character of their industrial life, and in part on the social foresight of the community. 333 SUMMARY OF INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS CHAPTER XXIII WAGES IN earlier chapters I have described the different factory indus- tries in Pittsburgh. It remains to summarize and in part to interpret the facts that have been presented. For clear understanding, let me gather compactly four separate strands that have been followed through trade after trade: (i) wages, (2) hours, (3) health, and (4) the economic foothold which women have gained in the Pittsburgh industries. The table (page 338) summarizes what has been learned about wages. It shows that of the 22,185 women workers in Pittsburgh, varying in age from fourteen years to fifty, something over three-fifths earn less than I7.00 a week; one-fifth are earning $7.00 to |8.oo, and the rest $8.00 or over. At the upper level are women who have familiarity with their tasks, a certain dexterity, or an inborn knack for the thing they do. They are copyists of model hats in wholesale millinery houses, or expert dippers of fine grade chocolates in candy fac- tories, or experienced and tactful saleswomen in a mercantile house. Others are to be found, not in these "white-handed" occupations, but where metals are molded for use, or in work- rooms gray-brown with the fine dust of heat-dried tobacco leaves. They have learned to speed in making sand cores for brass found- ers or winding coils for an electric motor, or with quick fingers to roll into shape more than a thousand strong-smelling stogies in a day. Some of them are expert bottlers of pickles and candied fruits ; others are section hands in a garment factory, who every year have pushed pace and output a notch ahead. Speed, and capacity to gain more speed, is the talisman which has opened the way to a higher wage rating for this more fortunate 17 per cent of the working women. 337 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 35. — NUMBER OF WOMEN IN EACH WAGE GROUP IN EACH TRADE Ttudt Unpaid $3.00 to 3f7.0D to 18.00 Total Apprentices $6.99 ?7-99 or over Crackers 900 28 928 Confectionery 697 203 66 966 Molasses 30 6 4 40 Canneries 458 167 157 782 Stogy . 1,182 441 988 2,6.1 Garments 103 285 480 868 Awnings 21 5 '5 41 Mattress II 12 48 7' Gloves 90 10 8 108 Millinery H 214 70 108 406 Laundries 203 ■-637 '3' 214 2,185 Dyeing and cleaning . 1 10 300 100 510 Metal trades 944 502 508 1,954 Lamps . 172 152 '47 47' Glass 241 33 79 353 Mirrors 32 3 5 40 Brooms and brushes '5 16 2 33 Paper boxes 190 32 16 238 Caskets . 44 25 5 74 Cork . 255 295 50 600 Paint 35 10 5 50 Soap 103 ■5 10 128 Trunks and suit-cases. 8 6 '4 Printing and bookbind- ing . 181 123 93 397 Telegraph 90 90 Telephone 312 201 '74 687 Mercantile . 5,5"o '.555 475 7.540 Total . 217 ■3.495 4,626 3.847 22,185 Percentage of total . ■97 60.83 20.85 '7-35 100 This threefold division of wages is largely arbitrary, but is based in part on the estimated cost of living in the Pittsburgh district, and in part on the groupings into which degrees of intelligence and of dexterity have naturally separated the earnings of the women employes in the different trades. No attempt was made to reduce to tabular form the wages of every working woman; but rather to learn the percentage which fell within each wage group in each mercantile and manu- facturing establishment. 338 WAGES For the workers in the middle group, who for the most part are in the same range of occupations, less speed has meant less pay. At the lowest level are found the majority of the women, some of them "casual laborers," some "temporarily permanent" at least, many under-nourished, unambitious, inefficient; many more in occupations which, for trade reasons already described, can secure workers at their own terms. They pack crackers to the pace of a traveling conveyor, or stogies, or metal pieces, or mirrors, or lamps, or glass. They make telephone connections in the central exchanges, sell goods without interest or proficiency, operate machines in stogy factories, laundries, and canneries. For the few who in time work their way to one of the upper groups, there are hundreds more who enter these industries yearly to take their places at a beginning wage. We may safely assume that percentages remain constant, for the personnel of the women workers is continually in process of change. This lowest wage group challenges further explanation. Why is it that 60 per cent of the working women earn no more than f .50 to |i.oo a day? For example: The girls who pack crackers are paid | .50 a day. Should we take as a basis of com- parison the wages of workingmen in the same district, we should find unskilled laborers, employed to fetch and carry in the mills, earning | .13 to | .16^ an hour, or I1.30 to I1.65 for the ten-hour day.* But many women, when entering upon their industrial life, are not adults but girls of fourteen and fifteen, just out of school. We can compare the beginning wage of such a girl only with the beginning wage of a boy of fourteen, working a 10- hour day. A boy is paid, as a rule, $ .10 an hour. Although some firms vary slightly from what might be called the market rates, the beginning wage of a working girl is generally | .50, or exactly one-half the beginning wage of a working boy, $1.00 a day. Maturity does not always mean possibility of advance- * According to the law of the state, women cannot be employed more than 60 hours a week; they cannot, therefore, be employed 1 2 hours a day every day in the week. In making our comparison, therefore, we can justly compare women's wages only with those of laborers working on a lo-hour basis. As a matter of fact, many laborers work 12 hours, and earn $1.80 to $i.q8. 339 WOMEN AND THE TRADES ment to working girls. There are firms which never pay their adult women more than I4.00 a week, although their men earn $1.60 a day; but usually the wage bears a certain correspondence to the term of service; and as the years pass the general ratio between the wages of men and of women undergoes no material change. Unskilled workmen who have not yet acquired a certain dexterity and familiarity with their tasks are paid I2.00 a day, or |i2 a week. Unskilled workingwomen, who have made them- selves valuable by length of service and by familiarity with a cer- tain operation, are paid |i.oo a day, |6.oo a week. That is,. the ratio between the wages of unskilled workmen and of unskilled workingwomen, is two to one. This ratio, which represents the wages generally accorded to men and women who are unskilled but have the dexterity gained by practice, is also the ratio between their wages when skill is gained by preliminary study or by trade apprenticeship. 1 have had fewer opportunities to make this latter comparison, for 1 have perforce dealt scarcely at all with skilled trades, and have even fewer examples of men and women whose skill is com- parable working at the same occupation. In the millinery trade, there is a two-season apprenticeship, but men are not employed. In telegraphy, although the apprenticeship, or period of prelimi- nary study, is shared by men and women operators, it does not leave them in entirely comparable positions. A man's wage is double that paid to a woman, for less strength keeps women at the lighter wires. A clearer instance is the situation in laundry checkrooms, where the standard wage of women checkers is |8.oo a week, as against a standard wage for men checkers of $17 a week. Another comparison is that between women and non- union core makers. A majority of the women receive $1.20 to $1.30 a day, but for similar work men receive I2.50. The ratio in a few of these instances confirms what has been said, that where skill and occupation are comparable, alike in skilled trade and in unskilled occupation, the man's wage is double the woman's. Here, then, lies the crude, economic force which has con- quered sex traditions and the resistance of domestic institu- tions, in reaching out and gathering women into the Pittsburgh industries, as into modern industries everywhere. Why they have 340 WAGES come is another matter. They have been wanted because women's work can be had cheap. The employer in the steel dis- trict seeks labor at the lowest price; if the Slav is cheaper than the German, he employs the Slav; if the Slavic woman is cheaper than the man, and can do the work or some part of it, he employs the Slavic woman. Because women are the cheapest laborers available, a large number of occupations have been given over to them. Men will not compete with them at all at these levels for work and wages. Here the competition between men and women may be vaguely potential; but it is no longer active, nor of practical consequence. Every year, the field of women's employment has been extended laterally into correspond- ing occupations in more and more trades, and with the develop- ment of machinery such occupations have increased. At the same time, the women have worked up in these industries to higher grade occupations which have brought them apparently, and in some cases actually, into competition with men as co-laborers on the same footing and in the same trades. Sixteen of the occupations studied are on this border line. A brief inquiry into the character and extent of competition between men and women in these occupations may throw light not only on why women are paid less than men, but on why they continue to accept what they do. Various reasons have been advanced by economic writers for the inequality of wages between men and women. Gonnard* holds that the wages of working women are less because their needs are less than those of the workingman. As further reasons he mentions the weakness of women's unions, the large number of unemployed, unskilled women, the limited demand for women workers, and finally, their alleged lower productivity. Dr. Alice Salomonf speaks of the temporary character of women's wage- earning life; of the unwillingness of young girls to undertake a long apprenticeship. Because of this unwillingness, in large part based on the presumption that the working life will be short, young girls tend to undertake unskilled work which brings them an immediate return, but gives no opportunity for advance- * Gonnard, Rdnfe: La Femme dans I'lndustrie, pp. io8 flf. t Salomon, Dr. Alice: Ursachen der ungleichen Entlohnung der Manner- und Frauen-Arbeit. WOMEN AND THE TRADES ment. She also holds that men and women do not actually compete ; that the apparent difference in wages is based on an actual differ- ence in proficiency. This latter point represents the stand taken by Sidney Webb.* He states that men and women do not really compete; that even when they tend similar machines, the cleaning and repairing of the machines must be done by men. J. Ramsay MacDonaldt holds that the wages of women are lower, because women (i) have less technical skill and are less useful all round; (2) have more broken time owing to bad health, and have less strength at work; (3) change positions frequently, and leave work entirely after a short term of employment. Such an inductive study of women's trades as I have made offers a practical test of this reasoning. In many instances the active competition between men and women is seen to be apparent but not real. In stogy factories, for example, it is not at skilled handwork that women are displacing men, but a machine-made product turned out by women is contesting with a hand-made product turned out by men, at a rate of pay to machine operators only a third as much as to skilled handworkers whom they are displacing. Similarly, in trunk and suit-case factories, women are apprenticed for a period half as long as men, and the product made by them is cheaper in quality. Women pressers in garment factories or in dyeing and cleaning works either have lighter irons than men, or work on garments of inferior quality. In mercantile houses, the most difficult articles (those which require experience in fabric) are usually given to men to sell. Women core makers are limited in their displacement of men to work that is simple, light and easily learned. In a broom factory, women compete with boys, but only for the simple and mechanical part of the work. Even where the occupations may in themselves be identical, men and women are often actually in different categories because of the capacity of men and boys to do subsidiary work, or to advance to a position requiring greater strength. Boys are often preferred to girls as press feeders, for instance, because they can * Webb, Sidney: Alleged Differences Between Wages of Men and of Women. Economic Journal, 11 : 173. f MacDonald, J. Ramsay: Women in the Printing Trades: pp. 50, 51. 342 WAGES be relied on to learn the trade, and women cannot; they can be asked to lift and carry and to clean the presses, but women cannot. In consequence, a boy's service, both in pressroom and in lamp and burner factories, is often worth to an employer the additional cost of his wages. Sometimes men and women do work of the same quality and kind, but competition between them is still apparent, not real, because of what might be called the recruiting necessities of the position. The majority of women telegraph operators earn half what men do in the same offices, even when both are employed on light wires. The reason for this is that men are needed for heavy wires, but must be trained on light wires and kept there for the heavier service when needed. They must pass up through women's positions, but they are paid partly for what they do and partly as a reserve force. The competition here again is apparent not real. In other industries it is clear that active competition is temporary, not permanent. In the stogy sweatshops, men and women, paid at the same rate, make bunches or roll stogies side by side. This industrial process, however, is being superseded by machine-made stogy rolling, and this group of workers by the trust factory. These men and women are temporarily com- peting for work of the same kind, but the work itself is in course of transition. In laundry checkrooms, too, men and women are still competing for work of the same kind, but the co-labor will not last. The women at their cheaper wage rate will displace the men entirely, eliminating all but potential compe- tition. In these cases the active competition is transitional. The coil-winding room of an electric manufacturing company affords another illuminative example. Ordinarily women wind light coils and men wind heavy coils, the men's rate of pay being double that of the women. During a rush order, men on the night shift were given some of the women's work to finish, and for some days women by day and men by night worked at the same thing for different pay. With approximately the same output, the men were paid double what the women received. At half the wages, women have easily displaced men in the cork- paper cutting department of the cork factory; and in the tin- 343 WOMEN AND THE TRADES cutting room of a cannery they have displaced boys for the time being, because of their greater reliability. In these cases, the experimental competition was fought to an end, and resulted in the employment of women. Analysis shows that in only a few cases are women permanent active competitors with men for identical work, within the limits of their working life. I found this true in Pittsburgh among press feeders and compositors in printing offices, and among "openers" in sheet steel mills. It seems, then, that women and men tend to separate into non-competing groups, the wages of women being approximately half those of men. They rarely work together on the same wage level, or at identical work. Such work as women can do they largely have a monopoly of, because they work for half pay. With a few exceptions, even in those trades where men and women are found in the same occupation, the latter are paid generally at this same ratio. As an explanation, we have noted that at times the superior strength of men makes their output greater, as among garment pressers, and their capacity for under- taking work makes them more valuable employes, as in lamp and burner factories; yet neither women's lower productivity, nor their incapacity to care for their own machines, is sufficient to account for the fundamental difference between the wages paid to them and the wages paid to men. Alike in cases where the quality of women's work is inferior, as in suit-case factories, and in cases where men and women do the same work, as in laundry checkrooms, the difference in wage rating is the same. The women come into each of these occupations not on its customary wage level, but at a level analogous to that paid women gen- erally in other occupations. These facts seem to suggest an explanation of why women work for low wages, in the special conditions attending the incidence of sex in the labor field. A first reason for the $3.00 or $4.00 wage, not universal, but characteristic of cities of Pittsburgh's industrial type, is the limited circle of industries in which women workers are used. In a city of mills and metal work, where arduous employments make a demand for men, and where dust from the mills checks 344 WAGES the growth of textile factories, it is inevitable that the lines of employment open to women should be relatively few. "Why don't you advertise in the papers when you want a girl?" I asked the forewoman of a candy factory. " It wouldn't be worth our while," she answered. " All we have to do when we want anybody is to put a sign out, and we have all the applicants we can possibly use." Advertisements for hands are so rare as to be noteworthy. This limitation to demand may be obscured by an era of unwonted prosperity, or by the untrained choices of women workers in the matter of trades; it is, however, a factor in keeping the wages of Pittsburgh women low. A second reason is that within this limited circle of industries women remain in the lower grade occupations and still further glut them. Women are sometimes prevented by inferior strength from competing for superior occupations in the industries in which they are engaged, but more generally they are prevented by inferior training and experience. They will not compete for the more exacting, better paid work if their ambition is lessened by the knowledge that they will probably be wage-earners for only five or six years. Hence their unwillingness to spend time in trade training, and their tendency to be apathetic as to trade associa- tions and other forms of unionism. These points will be de- veloped further in the final chapter. Of more direct economic as well as social bearing is the fact that they will neither compete for superior positions involving training, nor for higher wages at inferior positions, if their necessary living wage is less than men's, or if their cost of living is in part met by men. Although the lower wages of women may represent a lower standard of responsi- bilities to be met by earnings, I3.00 or $4.00 a week does not cover the individual cost of living, however extreme the de- gree of restraint and limitation. The difference between her wage and the cost of living, however met, represents the extent to which she is subsidized from some quarter. That women workers are thus usually subsidized tends to keep their wages Idw, not only in Pittsburgh, but wherever they enter the industrial field. Only here and there a powerful women's union, or the personality of an exceptional woman, has counteracted this tendency. Being in fact a recognition that wages 345 WOMEN AND THE TRADES must approximate cost of living, it affects the determination of rates paid by nearly every firm employing women. If the cost of living* is met in part by the woman's father or husband, or if she takes the way that is always open to her for self-support, her employer needs to pay only a supplementary wage fixed in part by custom, and in part by the purchasing power in the district of the wages paid to men. "We try to employ girls who are mem- bers of families," a box manufacturer said to me, "for we don't pay the girls a living wage in this trade." The social fact of woman's customary position in the household, the position of a dependent who receives no wages for her work, thus lies behind the economic fact of her insufficient wage in the industrial field. It is expected that she has men to support her. This discussion of what is the cost of living for women carries us beyond mere nominal wages, the amount they receive in dollars, to what is more significant, a consideration of wages estimated according to their purchasing power in the Pittsburgh district. To get approximately at what is a living wage for a working woman in Pittsburgh, I made inquiries among working girls themselves, forewomen in factories who had had long ex- perience with working girls, settlement workers, and club leaders who knew at first hand what rent, food and the other necessaries of life cost in different sections of the city. Among the opinions of these women, there was no majority. Some declared for I7.00 a week, others for |8.oo and others for $10. Not one was willing to consider |6.oo a living wage. They agreed that the minimum below which a working girl cannot live decently and be self-supporting in Pittsburgh is $7.00 a week. If the girl is not one of a family group, she is in all probability obliged to share a furnished room with another girl. Eight dollars to |io a month is the rate usually charged. By dividing expenses, the weekly outgo for food and lodging would be from $4.50 to $5.00 a week. If |2.oo a week were spent for clothing, there would at most be less than | .50 a week left for washing and ironing; for sundries, which make so formid- able an item in the budgets of most of us; for illness, for medicine and for medical care, or for recreation. *Gonnard, R^nfe: La Femme dans 1' Industrie, p. 108. 346 WAGES Yet I2.00 a week is the lowest estimate for clotliing made to me by girls who have themselves grappled with the problem at first hand in Pittsburgh, either by buying the material and making their own clothes, or buying the clothes ready-made. Such a girl meets almost insuperable obstacles in keeping to the standards set by her shopmates. In every sort of position, the clothing of the applicant is of increasing importance. I have seen poorly dressed girls "turned down," and well-dressed girls taken for subordinate work in a thread mill, a position where, if anywhere, one's appearance would seem to be a secondary matter. In choosing employes for positions which necessitate the use of working clothes, employers tend to give preference to girls whose street clothes are trim and well-made. Both in secur- ing and keeping a position, the street clothes of the working girl are part of her stock in trade. Not only cleanliness, but neatness and quality of material all count toward the sum of impressions. The girl who has neither the experience nor the time necessary to evolve "creations" out of odds and ends, and yet estimates truly the social and economic value of appearances, must spend money for clothes, although I2.00 per week allows for only a very moderate standard and crowds from her budget many sundries which seem essential. These are the possibilities for the girls who have what may be termed a living wage. From the introductory table (page 338) , it will be seen that they are 20 per cent of the whole number. Seventeen per cent more are earning slightly larger pay. The wages paid 60 per cent of the working women of Pittsburgh do not afford them even this meagre subsistence. It may be said that if, as has been stated, a girl's wages are supplemented by her family, her condition is really far from desperate. She is per- sonally comfortable, and living according to the standard of her associates. In many cases, this is true. How far it is true, we have no means of knowing until a more extended investigation is made of the individual cases, their budgets, and contribution to their families. Clearly, however, the tradition that a girl's father and brothers always help toward her support has become, in the Pittsburgh district at least, in many cases illusory. That a girl is one of a family group is quite as likely to indi- 347 WOMEN AND THE TRADES cate that she is chief breadwinner, as that her family is her chief bulwark against the world. One quick, pale-faced American girl is a decorator in a glass factory. She gets $8.00 a week. Her little brother is a messenger at $4.00. For five months in the winter of 1907-08, they were the only ones in the family of seven who were earning anything. One plump little German girl whose soft brown hair and pink cheeks contrast pleasantly with the less attractive types about her, is a salesgirl in a mercantile house. With a wage of |6.oo a week, she is responsible for the support of a mother and two younger sisters. Accidents to workmen in the mills have often thrown such heavy responsibilities on the young daughters. A girl whose father was killed by an electric crane was the only one of the family old enough to work. Forced. by financial needs to accept a wage fixed by custom at a point below her own cost of subsistence, much more below the cost of helping to maintain a family of dependents, she drifted into occasional prostitution. Another Pittsburgh girl was induced by the bitter need of her younger brothers and sisters to raise her wages from $6.00 a week to $10 by concessions to her employer, and finally to choose prostitution as a means of support. A comrade of hers came long ago from a country town to work in a cigar factory, but after an unsuccessful struggle with the city, drifted into this same way of life. Without a home to supplement her wages, she caught at what seemed to her the only way of making them meet her needs. In such cases, scarcely typical, but far from uncommon, cause and effect are glaring in their directness. Were women totally without means of supplementing their pay-envelopes, wages would of necessity be forced above a sub- sistence level in order to keep a sufficient labor supply in the local market. Otherwise the women would have to move away or slowly starve. That wages are not so forced up, indicates the widespread, though sometimes unconscious, reliance of merchants and manufacturers on the ability of women employes to find a source of support in their families or friends. The family may at times cease to give assistance; but the latter avenue for money making is never closed. It is a way of escape, both to the solitary working woman who earns less than it costs her 348 WAGES to live, and to the woman who is leading a barren existence on wages that just meet expenses. Few will hesitate to condemn the degradation that attends the woman who chooses unsocial means of self-support. Yet one form of subsidizing a wage-worker leads to another form of subsi- dizing, and so long as custom or fact renders the payment of a full living wage non-essential, economic needs impel many a girl toward a personally degrading life. It is not within our province to speculate as to what might be the social consequences of a general increase in women's wages in Pittsburgh. That would involve questions as to whether or not more girls would be induced to enter factory work, more men would be thrown out of work, or men would be given more work because women's work cost as much. The problem of women's work and wages cannot be adequately solved without reckoning with the family and the home. We may be sure, how- ever, that the practice of industries, whether in Pittsburgh or elsewhere, of not paying women employes enough to live on, is economically unsound. Every manufactured article in such case is paid for only in part by the consumer and in part by someone else who partially supports the women. And we may be sure that where women, thrown on their own resources, are paid less than subsistence wages, ill social consequences result. Beyond that, we may further question whether a community does well to have any of its workers, however supported, paid less than subsistence wages. For social strength, it would seem that the question ought to be: What wage must a girl have in order to live decently, maintain sound health, and have reasonable recreation? For decency's sake, a community cannot afford to permit five girls from an iron mill to diminish expenses by sharing one room with five men from the same workplace; neither can it afford to permit a girl to hire board and a couch in the kitchen of a crowded tenement flat for I3.00 a week. 1 question whether it can even afford the dimming of bright thoughts, the effacing of individuality, that tend to follow occupancy of one bed in the dormitory row of a working girls' home. For health's sake, the community cannot afi'ord to permit 349 WOMEN AND THE TRADES its girl members to receive a wage too low for nutrition, or for the refreshment of exhausted strength. It reacts ultimately to the harm of society when a garment worker has weak coffee for breakfast, goes without lunch altogether, and eats two or three sandwiches for dinner, as her habitual diet. She may keep up through her working life, but in her domestic relations she leaves a heritage of weakness and inefficiency. We all are the sufferers when a shop girl continues at her work after vitality has ebbed, because her wages are too low to permit treatment or rest. Moreover, the community cannot afford to deny any of its members reasonable recreation. Industrial success is of small value, if the contributors to that success lead lives void of spiritual meaning or spiritual impression. Among those girls who have sufficient imagination to grasp what is denied them, there is sure to be reaction, perhaps in ill-health, perhaps in indecency, to the cost in either case of the whole community. Recreation, richness of life in leisure hours, is equally a source of decency and of health. As things stand in an industrial district like Pittsburgh today there is scarcely a minimum to which women's wages may not be depressed. The situation is one which demands close study and close thinking. That it is possible to influence it in some degree is shown by the success of women's unions in some trades, by the work of Consumers' Leagues in some cities in demanding certain standards in women's wages, by the pro- posals for minimum wage legislation brought forward in certain countries, and by the action of progressive employers here and there in establishing rates that can be sanctioned from the standpoint of the public good. And can we reasonably be content if the standard of wages be raised merely to the level that makes ex- istence possible ? Shall we call sufficient a sum less than enough to make possible a life decent, healthy, colored and individual- ized by recreative leisure? 350 CHAPTER XXIV HOURS THE customary working day for women in Pittsburgh factories is ten hours. This may be shortened in some industries to five hours on Saturday, but in general, the working week is 60 hours long. In part, this customary limit to hours of work is due to the Pennsylvania law, which has for 12 years limited the working week to 60 hours ; in part it is due to the general tendency, both in Europe and in the United States, to re- gard 10 hours a day as a reasonable maximum for women's work. This tendency seems to be gathering strength, notwithstanding the attempts made by groups of manufacturers to nullify or to render unenforceable the laws of the more progressive states. Recent years have witnessed several of these judicial battles; most recently of all, the state of Oregon* has been sustained in its defence of the constitutionality of its law. Overtime work is held in check more or less effectively by the laws of 22 states. Where overtime is permitted "for the preservation of perishable goods " or " to make a shorter work- day on one day of the week," or where the sum of the legal working days exceeds the maximum of the legal working week, it is al- most impossible to prove a violation and the law is in conse- quence difficult to enforce. Pennsylvania is in the latter class. Twelve hours a day is permissible and no closing hour is fixed, although the total working hours must not exceed 60 per week. Overtime is possible; within these limits it is legal. Some of the difficulties in enforcing the Pennsylvania law against illegal overtime will be removed when the new law goes into effect January i, 1910, which for all girls under eighteen pro- vides a ten-hour dayf and prohibits night work after 9 p. m. The * Supreme Court of the United States, October term, 1Q07. Curt Muller, Plaintiff in Error, v. State of Oregon. t Tlie ten-hour day and the 58-hour week affect certain specified employ- ments. The law for adult women is unchanged. See Appendix D, pp. 412-417. 35« WOMEN AND THE TRADES working week for them is reduced from 60 to 58 hours. Yet the greatest difficulty in enforcing the law still remains, the proviso that the working day may be extended "for the sole purpose of making a shorter workday one day in the week," without any limit being set to the number of working hours in any given day. It would seem probable that violations of the law, frequent at the time of the investigation, would still be frequent in many industries, sometimes by extension of the legal working day, sometimes by extension of the legal working week, sometimes by both. Overtime may be irregular, as the volume of business changes, or it may be seasonal. Cracker factories, laundries, dyeing and cleaning establishments, metal works, casket factories, cork factories, trunk and suit-case factories, printing and book- binding establishments, telephone and telegraph offices, are Pittsburgh industries liable to irregular overtime. Overtime in steam laundries is characterized less by a lengthy working week than by a lengthy working day. On Mondays, though the regular work begins late in the morning, the employes are usually kept busy with such duties as cleaning the machines, cleaning the traveling conveyor or scrubbing the floors ; and it is customary for laundries to keep their employes until nine o'clock on Mondays, so that goods which are taken on short time may be returned the same day. Although they come at nine in the morning, instead of seven as they do on the other days of the week, their working day (when three-quarters of an hour or less is allowed for lunch and for supper) is therefore ten and a half hours long. On Fridays, the day begins at seven, but lasts late into the night; ten or eleven or twelve at night, as the case may be, whenever the week's work is finished, is the closing hour. Friday is a fifteen-hour day, and cases have been found where the working hours lasted through the whole of the night. These extreme hours are found, too, as we have seen, in the sewing departments of the casket factories when an order comes in for a casket lined with some color or with some material that is not kept in stock, or for a size not usually carried. Employes in this department who are on call may be sent for at one o'clock in the morning to work on an order that has just come in. Cork factory operatives nominally work ten hours 352 HOURS a day five days in a week, and half a day Saturday. Machinery is stopped at night; but during the busy season, from February until November, the sorters, who need no machinery, are often required to work after hours. This department keeps the weekly hours within the limit of the state factory law, but exceeds the legal limit to the length of the working day. "Customers must be satisfied," is the rule in too many of the trades, although an unexpected rush of orders may keep the employes at work for hours into the night. Yet "the tendency to put off giving orders to the last moment is easily checked when the customer can be met with a universal legal prohibition,"* and were there such a prohibition, overtime would in few instances prove unavoidable. The hurry of customers, habit, and the elasticity of the law, are in large measure responsible for the continuance of occasional long hours. Seasonal overtime presents a more diificult problem. Con- fectionery, stogy and paper box factories, as well as mercantile houses, are affected by the Christmas trade. In summer, on the other hand, summer fruits and berries keep the canneries busy through the warm months, and chewing-gum packers must work at night to supply the frequenters of circuses and picnic parks. Incoming orders from drummers on the road keep the garment workers busy at night during the fall, and the first warm days of spring bring congestion of work again, not only to them but to the awning makers who must work often 72 hours a week to enable tradesmen to put their shops promptly in summer trim. The wholesale millinery houses have overtime through almost the whole of their spring and fall seasons (January 15 until the middle of May, and August i until December i). The interdependence of many of these industries, the perishable nature of the goods, the financial importance of the season of heavy trade, thus present obstacles to the observance of a ten- hour working day throughout the year. Manufacturers complain that overtime is a loss to them. They say that their employes do poorer work at night, and that the cost in wasted material, in light and heating, is more than * Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, IQ03, p. 7. 23 353 WOMEN AND THE TRADES the profit gained by a lengthened day, but that they are forced to work overtime by customers who will not send in orders ahead. Night work, they say, is a means of holding their trade rather than of increasing their profits. Per-haps a universal legal pro- hibition would prove effective in overcoming the dilatoriness of customers in these seasonal trades, as well as in the trades where work pressure is irregular. Unquestionably much overtime has been eliminated in states that have stringent laws; much has been voluntarily avoided by manufacturers who have come to realize that night hours are in the long run a financial loss. It seems probable, too, that overtime means in the long run an economic loss to women employes as well as to their employers. Opponents of legal prohibition of excessive working hours for women have argued that as women work by the piece and need the extra money, they are glad to work overtime. Yet there is reason to think that because of women's weaker physique, long hours have led to more lost time and have more seriously reduced industrial productivity than in the case of men, and that reduction of hours might lead to increased productivity and consequent rapid recovery of wages. In reality the economic bearings of overtime work are bound up with the question of health. The specific evils attendant upon standing or sitting in a cramped position, operating heavy machinery, or continuously repeating a light but undiversified motion, are intensified with extension of the number of hours during which the operation is continued. As soon as these evils begin to manifest themselves in concrete physical results, the "point of diminishing returns" has been reached. Further work means greatly decreased productivity. It is by some physical standard that we must judge as to when hours are "long," and when extra hours, from the view- point of health, are overtime. At present, ten hours as the limit of the working day is far from universal; yet clearly in the occupations at which we have seen large numbers of Pitts- burgh workingwomen engaged, anything over ten hours may well be considered "long." Should ten hours, however, be set as a permissive standard? Or should we seek rather to work out, on the basis of health, a lower maximum beyond which 354 HOURS no employe may go, and below this maximum set others corre- sponding to the degree of strain in different industries? The fight of the unions has been for an eight-hour day, as the only fair maximum of working time. We may concede temporarily that ten hours may be tolerable at some occupations, but we cannot fail to recognize that ten hours at others is not tolerable. Considerations of social welfare, which adjudge hours "long" or the reverse, according to their effect on health, should prevent us from measuring all industries by the same standard. It has been pointed out that a factory law in which the provisions are general, applicable to all industries alike, fails to deal with the more serious evils which can be reached only by specific provisions. That any employer in any sort of establish- ment may legally keep his women employes at work for ten hours each day — such a law altogether ignores the difference in strain produced by different occupations. Speeding and pace making in most factories are an initial cause of strain. If, however, we assume that a girl can, without undue harm, work for ten hours in a candy factory where the pace required is high but where exter- nal conditions are good, have we, therefore, a right to assume that a girl can still, without undue harm, work ten hours at coil winding, where nerves are strained not only by the high pace but by excessive noise? If the former is all that a girl can well endure, and if ten hours be the legal maximum for work under the better conditions, is it reasonable to assume that under more trying conditions, she can stand the strain of work equally well? And how is it in the ironing room of a laundry, where there is often both noise and excessive heat? Can we justly permit ten hours to be the maximum for all industries, even for those in which strain-producing conditions are heaped one above another? Suppose a ten-hour day to be permissible for a chocolate dipper; suppose an eight-hour day to be permissible for a sales- woman ; can we therefore consider either a ten- or an eight-hour day permissible for a telephone operator, whose work is carried on under conditions of severe strain? Toronto physicians * con- curred in the recent dispute respecting hours of employment between the Bell Telephone Company and operators, in the opinion * Report of the Royal Commission, op. cit., pp. 65-78. 355 WOMEN AND THE TRADES that more than a five-hour day (and a five-hour day broken by rest periods) would be injurious to the telephone operators. Yet legally, telephone operators in Pennsylvania may be employed ten and occasionally twelve hours a day. They are regularly employed eight hours a day, with occasional overtime, in Pitts- burgh, and their rest periods, according to these same physicians, are too brief to be at all effectual. Hours are "long," whether the day is eight hours or ten, if the work is continued so long that it causes ill-health or interferes with the employes' capacity for recreation. From the standpoint of social welfare, the maximum working day must be limited to a number of hours in which in most industries no more energy is expended than may be regained by a night's rest. From the standpoint of social welfare again, occupations involving special strain must be provided for specifically. The relation between hours of work and capacity for health- ful enjoyment is a vital phase of the question. Not only strength but mental alertness must be renewed by the evening's leisure. In so far as hours of work tend to dull and stupefy the worker, they are longer than the community can afford. Dulled senses demand powerful stimuli; exhaustion of the vital forces leads to a desire for crude, for violent excitation. Little time is left for pleasure after a ten-hour day. In such circumstances, culture of hand or brain seems unattainable, and the sharing of our general heritage a remote dream. A consideration of even more immediate importance is that such circumstances impel undisciplined girls toward unsocial action, toward vicious or crim- inal behavior. Craving for excitement is the last symptom of a starved imagination. At this point, discrimination has become too great an effort; foresight and social judgment have become impossible. Any excitation, destructive or not, is acceptable, if only it be strong; the effect of it is to create a desire for stronger stimulation. Roller skating rinks, dance halls, ques- tionable cafes, may figure only temporarily in the worker's life, or by increasing the demand for excitement, may lead to sexual license. A life enriched by a reasonable amount of leisure among all its members is no less important to the community than moderate 356 HOURS health and moderate morality. Constructive enjoyment is a so- cial force. Destructive excitement is an unsocial force. Hours are "long" if they tend to sway the workers toward wasteful or unsocial employment of leisure, and this, jointly with our standard of health, must be taken into consideration in arriving at a reasonable standard for the length of the working day. 357 CHAPTER XXV HEALTH THE health of the workers is a social as well as an industrial asset . 1 1 is affected by social conditions and industrial en- vironment, wages paid, hours of work required, and the nature of the occupation itself. The Pittsburgh public has some- thing at stake in the conditions under which 22,000 Pittsburgh women spend 10 hours or more out of every 24. Foregoing chap- ters have indicated that low wages are likely to mean incomplete nutrition, and long hours a dulling of the sensibilities, a lowering of the nervous tone. It remains to speak of specific conditions in cer- tain groups of industries, and of types of workroom construction hardened into custom by demands of commercial convenience, which make for ill health among employes. How much, it is not easy to say; for inimical trade conditions are complicated by insufficient food, by improper cooking at home, by ignorance of fundamental hygiene, and by bad housing conditions. The majority of industries have yet to be studied exhaustively from the aspect of health. Yet there are many very simple and obvious elements in factory work which bear directly upon the physical well being of the people employed, and which lend themselves to ready adjustment.* The trades of Pittsburgh women may be grouped with reference to disease according as they involve standing for pro- longed periods of time, working in dust, in a steamy or gaseous atmosphere, carrying heavy weights, or operating machinery by treadle pressure. Employes are expected to stand continuously in most departments of cracker factories, laundries, dyeing and cleaning establishments, metal works, lamp and glass factories, mirror, broom, cork, paper box, soap and trunk factories, in some *The subject of industrial accidents and protective machinery is con- sidered in a companion volume in this series. 358 HEALTH pressrooms, and in mercantile houses. Two factories, one laundry, and two mercantile houses provide seats for their women employes, but with these exceptions, the state law in this matter is very generally ignored. Its recurrence on the statute books of different states implies almost universal recognition of its need. A woman may become mentally accustomed to constant standing, but she does not become physically accustomed to it. It involves injury, though the woman herself may not understand or relate cause and effect. "Long hours, and being obliged to stand all day, are very generally advanced as the principal reasons for any lack or loss of health occasioned by the work of the girls";* the majority of workingwomen who stand, have always at least a deficit in strength. The law of Pennsylvania places on the factory inspector the obligation to see that seats are provided for women employes in factories and stores.f Among dust-producing occupations examined in Pittsburgh are stogy making, garment and mattress making, mirror polishing, broom, cork and soap making. Most of these occupations are productive of vegetable dust. The high percentage of tuberculosis among tobacco workers, second only to that among stone cutters, has led to the supposition that there is something inherently dangerous in the trade itself. The amount of dust varies greatly, however, according as the tobacco is dried by air or by heat. In the latter case, the leaf is brittle, breaking readily into dust, and in the former, it becomes smooth and mellow. Where the air-drying process is used, there is reason to suppose that careful separation of workroom and drying room,t and provision for adequate ventilation, would go far toward eliminating danger. With reference to present conditions. Dr. Kober§ states that "Workers in tobacco suffer more or less from nasal, conjunctival, and bronchial catarrh, and digestive and nervous derangements, and although the mucous membranes gradually become accustomed to the irritation of the dust and fumes, the occupation appears to be dangerous." ♦Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1884, p. 5. t Act May 2, 1905, Sec. 7, P. L. No. 226. J See below, p. 363. § Kober, Dr. George M.: Industrial and Personal Hygiene, p. 23. 359 WOMEN AND THE TRADES The prevalence of dust and lint in garment factories, par- ticularly where cheap jeans are made, emphasizes the need for special ventilation. Women in mattress factories work for the most part in sewing rooms shut off from departments where the ticks are filled, but a few "close" or sew the ends of ticks amid drifting dust of cotton and felt. Cork factory girls wear caps to protect their hair, but neither they nor packers of soap powder have respirators to protect the lungs. In spite of the wet process used in buffmg mirrors, dust is always present in the mirror factory just as it is in the foundry where mica splitters scatter fine metal particles all day. Dr. Kober comments on dust-producing occupations as a whole: "It has long been known that dust-inhaling occupations predispose to diseases of the respiratory passages, which may result in consumption. The particles of mineral dust produce an irritation of the mucous membrane of the throat, nose, respiratory organs, and eyes ; . . . causing catarrhal conditions of the res- piratory organs, so common among persons engaged in dusty occupations. The chronic inflammatory conditions thus produced favor infection with the tubercle bacillus. At all events, Hirt's statistics show that men employed in dust-producing occupations suffer much more frequently from pneumonia and consumption than those not exposed to dust, and that there is practically no difference in frequency of disease of the digestive system." The steamy or gaseous atmosphere in laundries, and in dyeing and cleaning establishments, is likewise productive of ill health. "The cleaners of woolen goods, etc., with naphtha, not infrequently suffer from dizziness, nausea, vomiting, headache, sleeplessness, hysteria, and symptoms resembling alcoholic intoxication."* In casket, lamp, and japanning works, the lacquer girls are subject to headache from the irritating fumes. Laundry workers are statedf to be especially liable to rheumatism and to diseases of the respiratory organs, because of their long hours in an overheated, steamy atmosphere, and the abrupt exit at night to the outside air. * Kober, Dr. George M.: Industrial and Personal Hygiene, p. 46. t Oliver, Thomas, Medical Expert on Dangerous Trades, Committee of the Home Oifice. London, igo2. Dangerous Trades. Chapter LVH, p. 668. 360 HEALTH Most of the machinery operated by violent treadle pressure is found in three industries. The button-stamping machine in garment factories, the perforating press in binderies, and the laundry cuflf press, are the most conspicuous examples. Although the effect of these machines has yet to be closely studied, the testi- mony of physicians tends to confirm the lay observer's opinion, that operators are liable to pelvic disorders. Similar dangers beset women who push trucks from room to room in the larger canneries, and women who in machine shops carry the heavy trays of cores from benches to ovens. We have yet to learn, in many cases, how to eliminate or modify the share of industry in responsibility for disease. The substitution of a wet for a dry process, the use of respirators, or the attachment of exhaust machinery to grinding wheels, undoubtedly reduces the danger from vegetable or mineral dust- making processes. The Pennsylvania, law provides for exhaust machinery in connection with wheels where mineral dust is pro- duced, but in the Pittsburgh district this law is enforced only spasmodically and such protective devices are very generally absent. The law takes no cognizance of occupations in which the dust is due not to the kind of machinery but to the kind of material, and in which the amount of dust might be lessened by a change in process, or the operative might be protected by the use of a respirator. It is of importance to recognize that the whole plant in which an industry is lodged is a force for or against health. Plan- ning a building with reference to the needs of a particular industry is, if possible, more important than safeguarding the individual in the interest of health. Laundries oflFer a conspicuous example of undesirable building construction. Most of the ills from which laundry workers suffer are due either to gas-heated apparatus or to a steamy atmosphere. The British law* has met the problem of gas-heated apparatus by prohibiting the use of gas-heated ironing machines unless properly protected by exhaust pipes and vents so that the gas and excess heat shall be carried away from the operator. One source of illness is thereby minimized. More serious, however, than the ills caused by gas-heated ironing ♦Factory and Workshop Act: August 17, igoi, Ch. 22, sec. 103 (i. Edw. VII). 36, WOMEN AND THE TRADES machines, are the ills caused by ten or twelve hours of work in a hot, moist atmosphere, and a walk through the cold night air afterward. These ills can only in small part be met by the pro- tection of an individual machine. The hot, moist atmosphere is caused by clouds of rising steam ; yet save in two cases, the wash- room, the source of the steam, is on the lowest floor. Greatly increased comfort might be gained by extensive systems of forced ventilation, but so long as the washroom is below instead of above the other departments, the origin of the trouble is untouched. A primary move toward health for laundry workers would be the establishment of a standard for complete forced ventilation in laundries, and for the arrangement of laundry departments with reference to each other. If the washroom is properly built of concrete, separate from and placed above the other departments, comfort and health are possible on the lower floors; if it is placed below or with the other departments, all of the employes must suffer both discomfort and injury to health. The situation in the cracker industry is somewhat similar. Here the difficulty is not with steam, but with the intense heat of the cracker ovens. The heat rises; yet only one of the five cracker factories of Pittsburgh has its ovens on the upper floor. The result is that the hot dry air, together with the pace of the work, tends to drag down the strength of the workers and to lay the foundation for positive ill-health. Ventilation in a cracker factory must needs be of a different sort from ventilation in a laundry; but here, as in laundries, the arrangement of departments with reference to each other is as important as ventilation, from the standpoint of health. A well constructed cracker oven on the upper floor of a well ventilated factory can do the workers little harm. On a lower floor, a cracker oven, whether well con- structed or not, is certain to be a menace to health. Core rooms and stogy factories are instances of the need in some industries for a separation of departments. One Pitts- burgh core room is placed directly above a brass foundry in which there are no devices for carrying off brass dust and fumes. Al- though the girl core makers work not in brass but in sand, and have no necessary connection with unhealthful or dangerous foundry work, they are in much the same danger from dust and 362 A Workshop on "The Hill" The unswept floor, half-filled boxes of stock, closed windows, and shelves of drying tobacco are characteristic A Cellar Stripping Room Workrooms where Health Conditions are Bad HEALTH fumes as the men on the floor below. In other core rooms, the benches are ranged on either side of the ovens, and work is carried on at all times in an atmosphere of intolerable heat and much dust. Since cores are made without machinery at benches covered with moist sand, the drifting dust found in all the Pittsburgh core rooms save one plainly does not result from the work itself. One core room, clean, well ventilated, separate from the rest of the building, proves that there is no need inherent in the occupa- tion for the dangers and discomforts to which core makers are exposed. Much of the danger from working in tobacco results from a combination of drying room and workroom. Tobacco is placed on racks or spread out on the floor in little heaps to dry. As the leaves grow mellow and workable, the gathered dust of the fields and brittle bits of the tobacco itself are blown or scattered about the room. Fumes of nicotine from the drying tobacco are heavy. Sometimes the benches of the stogy makers are placed directly beneath the high heaps of leaves on brown canvas racks, and some- times wooden racks are built against the walls of the room. Sometimes there is just a little hill of tobacco in a dark corner. Although the danger from tobacco dust is greatest when the racks are overhead, it is always present when the drying process is carried on in the workroom. By complete separation of workrooms and drying rooms in stogy factories, one grave source of danger to the workers would be removed.* Garment factories and mercantile houses illustrate the need for a standard floor plan in certain groups of industrial plants. The ease with which ten to twenty machines, set up in an ill lighted, ill ventilated loft, can be made to produce profits for their owner, has resulted in Pittsburgh in an unhealthful type of garment factory. A long, narrow room, with windows at either end, insufficient light, many machines, and no forced ventilation, is the dominant type. It has been suggested that the bad air, the cramped position in which the girls sit at their machines, and lint from cheap goods made in quantity tend to induce diseases *The International Cigar Makers' Union has also emphasized the need to lessen the danger of infection, by placing work benches with one row behind the other, rather than facing each other. 363 WOMEN AND THE TRADES of the respiratory organs. In the garment industry as definite a standard as in school codes should be set, for seats and windows, distance of machines from windows, and for circulation of air. Mercantile houses need a standard floor plan in connection with the provision of seats for saleswomen behind the counters. Adequate space should be required between counter and case of stock. The economy which results in forcing more counters into the available floor space than the floor can comfortably hold, gives the merchants ground for saying that they have no room for seats and that girls do not use seats when provided. Of course, girls who must crowd by each other to reach down boxes of goods, cannot but turn back the seats at a busy counter. A wider minimum space between counter and case of goods would, by allowing room for seats, make it easier to enforce this regula- tion. The provisions of the factory law are general. Because they are applicable to all industries alike, of necessity they fail to cope with the trade danger which is not general, but characteristic of a particular occupation. For all industries alike, there must be a legal minimum in sanitation, ventilation, fire protection. Yet, as a prerequisite to health, each industry in this group has need of an especial standard of ventilation, based upon its par- ticular conditions. For example, the general factory law in requiring adequate ventilation, in general terms, must base its requirements on the conditions in the majority of manufacturing plants, where dust-producing elements are in no way excessive. "It has been found that the average adult requires 3,000 cubic feet of fresh air per hour, and this amount should be supplied without discomfort to the occupants. Experience has shown that the air of a room cannot be changed of tener than three times in one hour in winter, without causing a disagreeable draft; hence every occupant should have a cubic air space of i ,000 feet. Such a standard, however, is not always attain- able in workshops, and it is believed that for practical purposes an air space of from 400 to 500 feet per capita will suffice."* Suppose this to be taken as the standard in the general factory law. This law extends and is adapted to the vast number of industrial plants * Kober, Dr. George M.: Industrial and Personal Hygiene, pp. 74, 75. 364 HEALTH where the work is not dust-producing. Is it reasonable, however, from considerations of health, to accept the same standard of ventilation for plants in which excessive dust is produced? In- dustrial plants of the latter type should plainly come under a special and separate standard. Equally it would seem that the standard building plan should be worked out in dust-producing or otherwise dangerous industries, according to the particular conditions of the industry. Not only ventilation adapted to the disposal of dust or steam, but a rearrangement of departments with reference to each other, as in cracker factories and laundries; a separation of departments, as in core rooms and stogy factories; a change in floor plan, as in garment factories and mercantile houses, would seem to be fundamental in a concerted effort against trade disease. A third factor affecting health, besides essential trade disease and unhealthful building construction, enters into the industrial environment. This is speeding. In the different industries, we have seen how the pace of many workers is kept high by the speed of machinery. A traveling chain carries cans of beans past a row of cannery operatives. They must slip a bit of pork into each can as it passes, and the chain is set at a pace which keeps each girl rigid in her place, with every nerve at a tension, fixed on the one motion required of her. In a cracker factory girls lift hot crackers from a traveling conveyor, packing them in oblong boxes with one quick motion, as the conveyor passes; each girl is responsible for all the crackers on a certain section of the conveyor, which is set at a pace requiring her utmost physical and nervous effort. Among hand workers, and workers who control their ma- chines, systems of pace setting are combined, as we have seen, with piece-rate payments to keep up the speed. Four stogy fac- tories, for example, stimulate their girl rollers by a sliding scale which provides | .13^ a 100 when 400 stogies are rolled from a pound, but only | .10 when 300 are rolled. To earn the pay customary in the district (| .12 a 100) girls must cut close, and at the same time work at an almost impossible rate of speed. In another factory, rollers receive only $ .09 a 100 if they make less than 6000 stogies a week, and $.11 a 100 (the market rate in 365 WOMEN AND THE TRADES one district) if they make 6000 or over. The foreman of a printing establishment paid his girls I7.00 a week for an average output (in register folding) of 300 an hour. A system of piece payments was introduced, and in two days the rate went up to 500 an hour; week work was then resumed at the old price, and the girls were required to keep the new pace. A lamp factory pays $ .14 an hour for punching 600 pieces, and | .01 for every 100 pieces finished within the same time. This list of examples could be extended indefinitely. Thus the speed of machinery, when pay is by the week, or a piece-payment system, impels the worker to increase the quantity of her output, and repeated rate-cutting in some industries seems not only to keep weekly earnings down to a customary level, but to spur the workers to a fiercer pace. The nervous strain inevitable under these conditions has no inconsiderable share in causing the positive breakdown which so frequently follows a girl into her home after she has left the factory. It is the final exaction that the trade makes of her. Industrial work and environment must induce health and not disease if the future shall justify us in employing women in factories. Processes can be made harmless if we work at the problem long enough; workrooms can be made wholesome, speed cut short before the point of depletion. In such an industrial city as Pittsburgh, either the medical profession or the department of factory inspectors might take the initial steps toward overcoming the tendency to trade disease by giving employers and legislators more facts about industrial hygiene, exact knowledge of what and how a trade contributes to ill health. The progressive manu- facturer who rearranges his old building or builds his new on the basis of what we already know of safeguarding against trade dangers, sets a standard for his industry and for allied industries, which should be incorporated in the law of the state. A manu- facturer who keeps a health record of his employes and seeks to eradicate the causes of disease which it may indicate, is a signal contributor to industrial science. The opportunity of the employer goes farther. Positive good health, which must ultimately be our national physical standard, can perhaps be shadowed forth in factory conditions 366 HEALTH first of all. More hours are spent at work than are spent sleeping, and a well ventilated, well built factory may in large measure oifset the deteriorating effect of an ill ventilated, ill built home. Employes may grow discontented with confused, overcrowded living rooms if their workplace is roomy and harmonious. Factory planning, both of the building and of the system of work, may make one of the most valuable present day contributions, not only to the mere avoidance of pathological conditions, but to the de- velopment of effective health and high vitality among the working people of America. 367 CHAPTER XXVI ECONOMIC FOOTHOLD WAGES, hours, and factory conditions which aflFect health concern the public well-being too closely to be utterly neglected by a community whose women go out at labor. This much our survey of employments in Pittsburgh makes clear. Bound up in these considerations is the question of workmanship — the processes assigned to women, their skill, and the economic foothold which they have gained. In interpreting these employments, I have discussed them as parts of the different industries. Yet while I have called them for convenience by the name of their products, as candy making and lamp making, these are not really the women's occupations. A closer analysis shows that very nearly identical processes run through many of these employments. Women are pasting labels not only in canneries, but in paper box, cigar and paint factories. They are tending machines no less in cracker making and cork cutting than in the metal works. Here we have a basis for recapitulating our employments in a way that will afford a fairer index of how far women have actually come into the indus- trial life of the district as factors in production. They may be grouped according to the nature of their occupations as skilled workers, workers at a handicraft, hand workers at a process which requires speed or dexterity, machine operators, machine tenders, wrappers and labelers, and hand workers at a process which re- quires no intelligence. The following table gives the number of workers in each of these groups :* ♦The 6534 saleswomen in mercantile houses are not included in this enumeration. 368 ECONOMIC FOOTHOLD TABLE 36. — NUMBER OF WOMEN WORKERS IN VARIOUS OCCUPATION GROUPS Kind of Work No. of Women Percentage Skilled work Handicraft Hand work requiring dexterity . Machine operating . Machine tending .... Wrapping and labeling Hand work requiring no dexterity ■39 305 I 3641 23 4885 31 2188 13 2118 13 2475 ■? 15,651 The only women in the trades considered who can be called skilled in any true sense are the millinery trimmers and telegraph operators. Both these must serve an apprenticeship until they have learned the routine work of their occupation; and having learned the work they must serve a still longer time to gain a mastery of its details. They must have intelligence and an apti- tude for what they do; beyond that they must have training. The group of women who possess a handicraft is also con- spicuously small. Makers of hand stogies, expert makers in millinery houses, and fine ironers in laundries, have occupations for which they must spend time in training. They do the whole of the thing. Although speed in execution counts in these occupa- tions as in all others, quality of product is emphasized. The workers must think of the workmanship first, and of the quantity second. Added together, however, the women of these two groups make less than 3 per cent of the 22, 1 85 under consideration in Pitts- burgh; and from their work we can scarcely judge of the nature of women's work as a whole. That work is, as a rule, of a nature to require neither strength, endurance, intelligence nor training. As we take up hand work which in contrast requires speed or dexterity and only that, we find that the percentage of women has jumped to nearly one-fourth of the total. The women in this group are bottling pickles, dipping chocolates, icing cakes, rolling stogies, making bandeaux for hats, shaping sand cores, winding wire, pasting paper boxes, sorting corks. They learn what they have to do sometimes in a week, sometimes in two or three months. In six months they work rapidly; in a year they 24 369 WOMEN AND THE TRADES have often reached their maximum output. They work by hand, it is true, but at the kind of hand work in which they repeat continuously a simple, undiversified motion. The machine operators are the largest group of all. Many of them run sewing machines by power; they press the treadle and hold the cloth in place. Others cut tin, or bunch stogies, or run ironing machinery or wind coils. As more and more machines have been equipped with power, thus making muscular strength unnecessary, the increasing employment of women has become possible. Even when an additional man is employed to keep the machines in repair, the total outlay for wages and power is less than the total outlay for the wages of hand workers and the material which they use. To increase the automatic efficiency of the machine so that not an operator but merely a machine tender is necessary, is the next step. Labor cost to the manufacturer is saved not only by the employment of fewer people, but by the payment of lower wages to those who remain. One Pittsburgh paper box factory has reduced its force one-half by the introduction of new covering machines, and by the introduction of still other machines it might reduce its force a third more; yet the output of the factory has steadily increased. The marking machine has dispensed with from one-half to three-fourths of the checkers in four laundries. In the cork factory, new tapering machines are being put in. For each of the old machines, one operator was necessary, but four of the new machines can be tended by one girl. Instances without number from Pittsburgh's industrial experience could be cited affirming how machinery is labor-saving both of human strength and of the numbers of employes. By thus cheapening the cost of the product, it stimulates demand and ultimately results in an actual increase both of machines and employes. But it should also be borne in mind that machinery is wage-saving. Not only fewer people relative to output are employed, but those few are paid the wages, not of skilled, but of unskilled labor. One woman puts fifty hinges a minute through a ma- chine. Each second a hinge is lifted out and slipped into place, the hand drawn back as the machine moves, another hinge lifted and slipped into place — this for ten hours each working day. 370 ECONOMIC FOOTHOLD Other women spread out a tobacco leaf on the suction plate, put the half made bunch in the leaf, press the treadle and push the rolled stogy aside; spread out another leaf, cut, put the bunch in place, press the treadle and push aside. Still others steady the paper in a box-covering machine, guide it according to the gauge, replace it when the strip runs out, guide it according to the gauge, and so on. Such work not only requires no thought ; it is stupe- fying. The operative who has become in truth an adjunct of the machine, works with a machine-like precision, and with machine- like absence of thought. Work which demands nothing of the intelligence, costs the intelligence more than work which demands too much. There are 2000 machine tenders in Pittsburgh. Closely akin to them, and of equal numbers, are the women who wrap and label. They pack crackers, candy, glass, lamps, with quick, ma- chine-taught, unvarying motions, lifting, wrapping, putting in place, for ten hours a day. Lowest of all, perhaps, in grade of intelligence are the hand workers of whom neither training nor dexterity is required. They are the preparation hands in canneries, the strippers in stogy factories, the hand-washers and starchers in laundries, the miscellaneous hands in printing establishments, and the women day laborers in the metal works. These women can be set at their jobs without preliminary explanation and can do these jobs adequately, for the occupations are of a sort, whether slicing pickles, stemming tobacco, or screwing nuts on bolts, at which they soon gain their maximum speed. With the development of machinery, then, which has dis- integrated many of the skilled men's trades, and along with that subdivision of labor which, in districts like this about Pittsburgh, has put ten immigrants at the machines for every all-around mechanic set to work, women are called into factories in large numbers, but they are called to simple, unskilled, and unstim- ulating labor. In discussing wages paid in the Pittsburgh dis- trict it was clear that women had displaced men altogether in many of these occupations; that they had been hired because they would work for less ; that they could work for less when their living expenses were met by family or by outsiders ; and that they 37' WOMEN AND THE TRADES were often forced to work for less, because, through lack of strength or training, they were limited in their chance for work to a small group of industries, and to certain restricted levels in most of those industries, where the labor market has naturally become glutted. It remains to discuss here more in detail the reasons which have kept women in this limited range of occupations. Some of these occupations require greater dexterity than others, and some emphasize speed, but the overwhelmingly large proportion re- quire in their women employes neither training, nor stability, nor intelligence. Skill, judgment, the way of a machine, and the relation of one machine to another cannot be learned in three to six months. The understanding of these things belongs to men who have years of working time before them. But to a woman who hopes to be out and away from her employment in factory or shop before the end of six or eight years, knowledge of several different processes in the same shop and training in the organization of a department, have no apparent utility. Women are a shifting body of workers, first, because they give up their industrial work at marriage, and second, because of their consequent lack of ambition. Together these facts produce among them an unprofessional attitude, a conscious instability. For these reasons, women are undesirable apprentices, and since it does not pay to take them for the greater part of a year step by step through the intricacies of a trade, they can be employed profitably only at such occupations as are quickly learned. They may be allowed from three to six months in which to gain the requisite speed, but in most cases the actual operation is learned in a few weeks. Their opportunities for employment are still further cir- cumscribed by the opposition of men's unions.* Telegraph operators and press feeders admit women on the same terms as men, but neither union has succeeded in enforcing the closed shop, or in gaining a large following among Pittsburgh women workers. *An exception to this is the United Garment Workers of America, which has many women members, and in Pittsburgh has been notably suc- cessful. 372 ECONOMIC FOOTHOLD \ The National Stogy Makers have barred women from their union. The broom makers do not include in their union the subsidiary employment at which women are engaged. The core makers have not only kept women out of their union, but are attempting to close all shops against them. The bookbinders' union admits only men. All these are unions of skilled workmen. Either they include only such parts of the trade as are really skilled (as among the bookbinders who admit finishers, forwarders and rulers), or they include all the workmen at a single process (as among stogy makers and core makers), but specifically prohibit the ad- mission of women to their union. Three conditions then — the more obvious lack of physical strength which interferes to some extent with a woman's operation of heavy machinery, opposition from men's unions, and, most important of all, industrial instability — have combined to leave to women the subsidiary processes, and the mechanical operations which demand little of the intelligence. Cause and effect in their case work in a circle. Expectation of marriage, as a customary means of support, stunts professional ambition among women. This lack of ambition can have no other effect than to limit efficiency, and restricts them to subsidiary, uninteresting, and monotonous occupations. The very character of their work in turn lessens their interest in it. Without interest, they least of all feel themselves integral parts of the industry and in consequence assume no responsibility, affect no loyalty. They do not care to learn; opportunity to learn is not given them; both are causes and both are effects. Women see only a fight for place, and very uncertain advantage if they gain it; wages are low, again both cause and effect of their dependence in part on others for their support. They shift about on lower levels of industry from packing room to metal work, from metal work to laundry work; a very few through unwonted good fortune, unwonted determination, break through the circle and rise. The physical effect of long hours under high speed pressure is comparable to the mental effect of continuous unstimulating work. We cannot afford that the work which women do should leave them with a deficit in health; nor can we afford that it should leave them with a deficit in mental alertness. Suggestions 373 WOMEN AND THE TRADES have been made for possible checks and safeguards against trade dangers in order to standardize the health of the workers. To standardize intelligence is a far more subtle problem, but one which there is reason to hope will be met in part by the newer educational ideals. The experiments which have been made in trade training, for women as well as for men, suggest one fairly defined way of advance and improvement. By trade training is not meant the sort of training often most in demand, class work in amateur cooking, dressmaking, and millinery. The training meant is class work comparable to that of trade-trained men, which reacts to the benefit both of industry and of customer, by improving the quality of the product. This should develop in women industrial intelli- gence by teaching them the practice and the significance of allied industrial processes. To be concrete: Pittsburgh women are largely employed in printing and bookbinding establishments, but as feeders, not as rulers. Why not teach them to mix inks, to fill pens, to manage the ruling machines, as well as to slip into place one piece of ledger paper after another in rhythmic succession? Women are employed for sorting and sizing in broom factories. Why should they not be taught to dye and wash and stack the corn, so that they could rise, if they had op- portunity, to positions of responsibility in the sorting department? Women are employed in machine shops and foundries. Why are they not taught the principles on which sand cores are made, the combinations of sand, the kinds of sand for difl^erent sorts of work, the necessary allowance for shrinkage, and the combinations of simple into complex cores? Women are employed in garment factories. Why should they not be taught to cut out garments as well as to run the machines; to plan and direct as well as to execute? Women are employed to sell goods. Why should they not be taught the plan of store organization, differences in fabric, the psychology of meeting a customer's needs? Such an educational program implies building on the present occu- pations of women to increase the efficiency of women at present employed. It would not mean merely manual training; nor would it mean a feminizing of trade courses. It would mean co- operation between trade schools and manufacturers, which should 374 ECONOMIC FOOTHOLD result, through the success of a few women, in wider opportunity for the many. Were such trade training general, the depressive mental effect of much factory work might in part be overcome. The worker would understand the relation of her occupation to others and the relation of her industry to others; she would cease to be an altogether unintelligent cog in the wheel. An occupation that calls for a little knowledge as well as for dexterity becomes immediately a stimulus to the intelligence. It is not my purpose to suggest that all women would profit by trade training. Many, no doubt, under any circumstances, would tend to move from unskilled work to unskilled work, and out to uncared-for homes. Nor would I, in looking for economic as well as psychological effects, claim that were all workers trained in their trades, wages would magically rise. The wages of trained workers are relatively high today because the trained are few; were they many, their payment might be on a different basis. My belief is simply that, were trade training general, one reason for the present low wages of working women would be removed. The advocates of equal pay for equal work would have more instances of equal work to show, and could with justice demand for skilled workers what for unskilled workers they cannot. These skilled workers would be equipped to demand with justice more for themselves, and with larger show of success. A girl's well grounded self-reliance, even in a semi-skilled trade, such as garment making, is enough to extend her six possible working years to ten, and to lead her ambition far. The tendency toward lengthening the term of woman's working life seems likely to be strengthened among trained and skilful workers. The result- ing conflict between trade opportunities and domestic responsi- bilities must be met by further adjustment. Yet pending such adjustment, we shall do well to remember that inferior and monotonous work processes are no preparation for intelligent home making. Higher earnings and increased industrial efficiency go far toward developing in working women a sense of responsi- bility, personal and social, toward whichever group they choose to become a part. 375 APPENDICES APPENDIX A PLAN AND METHODS OF STUDY WE chose for this study from among the groups of indus- tries fostered by the city. In marking out a field for investigation, it was not practicable to draw a circle wide enough to include all the wage-earning women of every class. Some industries, such as domestic service, are so scattered, with each woman in a separate workplace, that limits of time alone were sufficient to forbid a sally into this field. Agricul- tural pursuits are not, it would seem, extensive within the city limits, and professional service presents problems of a different sort from those faced by uneducated and untrained workers. In the year which was given to the investigation, an at- tempt was made to study in the cities of Pittsburgh and Alle- gheny all the women-employing industries in which the units are organized on factory lines. Within this definition are in- cluded all industrial plants wherein the women workers are, in general, grouped under one management in one building for work which is subdivided and specialized, so that each operation or fraction of an operation is a contributing part to a single whole. Clerical service was logically excluded from considera- tion, on the ground that the typical clerk or stenographer is employed either alone or with one or two others in an office; that the employment of a large office force under a single manage- ment, while possibly the type of the future, is not the dominant type of to-day. On the other hand, the work of telephone and telegraph operators is included because the characteristic forms of these industries are the telephone exchange and the main office, rather than the private branch wire or the private exchange. Steam laundries are to all intents and purposes factories, but the solitary laundress is of a different genus. Saleswomen in mercan- 379 WOMEN AND THE TRADES tile houses come within the definition of workers under a factory organization; but although an attempt was made to include all cases where more than five women were working, limitation of time made it impossible to include the innumerable small stores with their quota of one or two saleswomen each. It was felt that these latter presented a different problem, were affected by a different set of circumstances, and might logically be excluded. Yet the single stogy maker in a sweatshop was studied together with the factory worker, because the industry is so knit together that one phase of it would be incomprehensible without the other. The waitress in a restaurant is on debatable ground. From one point of view, it would seem necessary to include service of this sort, because the girls work usually in groups under one management. In Pittsburgh, however, there are few dining rooms of any size where the serving is done by women ; the type is either the large dining room with waiters in attendance, or the small restaurant with one or two women behind the counter. The conditions of the work in Pittsburgh seemed so closely akin to those of domestic service that logically both should be ex- cluded from consideration here. Where less than ten women were employed at a trade, as for instance the manufacture of caps and hats, which engages only five women, that trade has been excluded. With these limitations, the field of manufacturing and mechanical pursuits has been covered, and in addition to this, the work of laundry employes, saleswomen, press feeders, bookbinders and telephone and telegraph operators. In considering each trade, an attempt was made to show primarily what the conditions of work were at the time of the investigation, what wages and hours are characteristic, and what the relation of the women is to the several trade processes and to the trade as a whole. The summary of conditions in all the trades in a measure should indicate the economic and social significance of the work of women in Pittsburgh today. A word should be said about the method of investigation. Each of the 448 shops and factories under consideration was visited, and with the exception of twenty where special circum- 380 PLAN AND METHODS OF STUDY stances made it impossible, all were inspected. In each case a statement was obtained from the management of the number of men and women employed, of the hours, and of the wages paid. In several cases the payrolls were opened to the visitor. Each statement made by the management was tested by inter- views with employes and by interviews with people familiar with the trade, who stood on neutral ground. Conversely, statements made by employes were tested by interviews with employers. In consequence, the discussion of each trade may justly be regarded not as a reflection of either the employer's or the employe's point of view, but as description resulting from consideration of the several viewpoints and the neutral truths concerned. Little prominence has been given to individual cases of exploitation and injustice, unless these cases were characteristic of a trade group rather than of individual method. Meanness is a personal trait. Night work may be the result of meanness in a single firm, or it may be the result of a commercial mal- adjustment. In the former case it deserves passing mention, but in the latter case it must be commented upon as, temporarily at least, characteristic of the industry. My effort has been to study the conditions growing out of the trade itself, not out of the foibles or the unkindness of any individual, and to present a sketch of the trade process in terms of the life of the workers and of its place in present day industrial methods. The study of each firm in the trades under consideration and of the workers in each trade, was supplemented by talks with union men, with settlement and club leaders, and with many social workers and manufacturers whose work lies on the fringe of that undertaken here. It is through the courtesy and kindness of men in each industry that I have been able to under- stand something of the work and of the problems, racial and educational, that they have to meet in dealing with the workers. It is through the kindness of many a factory girl that I have been able to understand something of her problem, and through the splendid courage of a handful of women workers that I caught a glimpse of the industrial power they are to be in the day that lies ahead. 381 APPENDIX B TABLES ILLUSTRATIVE OF WAGES, HOURS AND CONDITIONS IN THE INDUSTRIES THE figures here given, both of the number of employes in each factory and in each trade, and of the range of wages of these employes, were obtained by a factory-to-factory investigation during the winter of 1907-08. The actual number of persons on the payrolls at the time of the investigation is given. In no trade does this number coincide with the number of extras taken on casually and irregularly during some sudden press of business, as in the canneries in summer, or in wholesale millinery houses in August. Neither does this number coincide with the shrunken payroll of a season when trade is at lowest ebb, as in January in the stogy factories. While investigation of all the trades was more or less con- tinuous during the year, visits to the factories were so timed as to cover a normal busy season, avoiding both periods of excessive dullness, and of excessive pressure of work. For instance, the investigation of the stogy factories was made during the months of September and October, when the factories were running steadily, but were not yet at the height of their Christmas trade. Mercantile houses were investigated, in part during the month of September, in part during the month of May. Laundries were visited during February, when trade was at the normal mid-year point, and only regular hands ' were in employment. Candy factories were visited in March, when business was steady, but before any extra hands had been taken on for the Easter trade. The industrial depression following the panic in October, 1907, interfered with the accuracy of this census less than might at first be imagined. Factories and shops very generally laid 382 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES off their hands for half the time each week, or dismissed a part of the force for a week at a time. The relation of the number actually working at the time the factory was visited, to the total number on the payrolls, was thus not a matter of guess-work, but sufficiently definite to be stated in exact figures. If half the force in a factory had temporarily been laid off at the time the visit was made, this fact was ascertained, and the total number of employes noted in the census, notwithstanding the extraordinary circumstance which prevented some of them at that time from working. In this way it was possible to note both the number of persons in regular employment, and the extent to which the depression had affected a given trade. The number of regular employes in all these industries is fairly constant, in spite of reductions in an off season, or accretions in a season of heavy work. It is this normal level, generally coinciding directly with the time of the investigation, which is given in the tables that follow. Wages. — ^The method pursued in obtaining figures with reference to wages was to question the forewoman, or other person in close contact with the girls, and to compare her statements with the testimony of the employes themselves. Direct inspection of the payrolls was in some cases possible. It was found, however, that women workers who have acquired a certain dexterity in their occupation tend, in their earnings, to approximate a certain fixed level, determined by the local market, and by various social cross currents. When the investi- gator has ascertained this fixed level, it becomes possible in each factory to discover what percentage of the total employes have reached this level, how many are still below it, how many have passed beyond it, and how far. The sum of these figures, which are not based on a statistical study of the wages of each individual, does not pretend to represent actual wages. Yet both totals and percentages, built up as they are for each factory upon testimony based on intimate knowledge of the employes involved, may fairly be considered representative of the wage groups, indicating the limits within which the wages of an occupation may range. No trade employing less than ten women has been included in this study. 383 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 37. — CANNERIES. NUMBER OF EMPLOYES IN EACH PITTS- BURGH CANNERY No. of Plant Men IVomen rotez I 2 2 4 2 50 100 150 3 400 600 1000 4 6 4 10 5 '5' 54 205 6 4 2 6 7 5 20 25 Total 618 782 1400 TABLE 38. — CONFECTIONERY. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES PAID TO WRAPPERS, LABELERS, CHOCOLATE AND CREAM DIPPERS, IN EACH FACTORY Packing (Including Labeling Dipping (Including BOTH ChOC- AND Miscellaneous Work) OLATE and Cream) No. of Plant Minimum Maximum Majority{\) Minimum Maximum Majority(^) I ?6.oo (flat rate) 2 $2.50 8.00* $5.00 3 4.00 5.00 4.00 ?7.oo $6.00 4 1.98 6.00 4.00 5 5.00 (flat rate) 7.00 6 3.00 5.00 5.00 $3.00 6.50 5.00 7 4.00 7.oo(?) 5.00 8 7.00 8.00 9 4.00 7.00 5.50 4.00 Q.OO 5.50 10 3.50 7.00 5.00 4.00 9.00 9.00 1 1 4.00 6.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 12 4.20 8.00* 5.00 13 4.00 7.00 6.00 4.00 7.00 6.00 '4 3.00 7.00 6.00 3.50 9.00 7.00 >5 4.00 7.00 6.00 4.00 8.00 7.00 16 7.oot '7 5.00 7.00 6.00 6.00 9.00 7.00 * Forewoman, •j- Only one girl employed. 384 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 39. — CRACKER FACTORIES. NUMBER OF MEN AND OF WOMEN IN EACH FACTORY No. of Plant Men ^^^omen Total , ■3 25 38 2 44 53 97 3 75 100 •75 4 650 450 1 100 5 100 300 400 Total 882 928 1810 TABLE 40. — CRACKER FACTORIES. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES PAID WOMEN IN EACH FACTORY No. of Plant MlMlWIMW Maximum Majority Time or Piece Work 1 2 3 4 5 f3-oo 4.00 3.00 3.00 3.50 $7.00 7.00 7.00* 6.60* 5.50 $5.50, $6.00 5-5° ^ 5.00, 0.00 4.00, 5.00 5.00, 5.50 Time Time Time Piece Time * Head girl only. TABLE 41. — ^THE STOGY INDUSTRY. LOCATION OF FACTORIES AND SWEATSHOPS AND DISTRIBUTION OF WORKERS A. Factories District Number of Shops Number of Workers Men IVomen Hill District . South Side Downtown East End North Side . 9 9 4 9 162 12 '47 29 ■'3 264 4 1027 845 Total 32 463 221 1 25 385 WOMEN AND THE TRADES B. Sweatshops District Number of Stops Number of Workers Men ^o»ie» Hill District . South Side Downtown East End North Side 124 23 3 23 30 297 56 4 45 5' 323 22 3 19 33 Total 203 453 400 TABLE 42. — THE STOGY INDUSTRY. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HILL SWEATSHOPS Grade Ventilation A Good . ... B Fair ... C Gas jets exhausting air . D None Sanitation A Sanitary . C Unsanitary; damp; dark D Unsanitary Crowding C Crowded . D Very much crowded (7 ft. ceiling) Cleanliness B Fairly clean .... C Dirty (tobacco heaped on floor) D Very dirty . ... S S s 109 28 5 91 29 4 39 77 It should be said that shops are not arbitrarily grouped in these categories, but are arranged according to a definite standard. There is, for instance, no means of ventilation in any of these tenement shops, except through windows or doors. When windows and doors are habitually closed, so that the air is difficult to breathe, the heading under "ventilation" is "none." If the air is further vitiated by gas burning, the heading is "very bad." If windows are open, even if air is not good, heading is "fair." 386 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES Shops are judged to be unsanitary if there is no other toilet provision than a privy vault in the yard, or if the inside plumbing is not properly connected with the sewer. A room is judged to be crowded when there is less than 200 cubic feet of air space per person. When tobacco waste and refuse, the accumulation of weeks, is heaped under benches, a room is considered "dirty." If the whole floor space is so covered, it is considered "very dirty." When there are evidences that the room is swept, it is adjudged "clean." TABLE 43. -THE STOGY INDUSTRY. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SWEATSHOPS OUTSIDE THE HILL DISTRICT East End South Side Downtown Nortb Side Crowding Overcrowded I I 4 Sanitation Sanitary Unsanitary 'I 16 7 3 16 '4 Ventilation Good .... Very bad; gas burning . None . . . . 22 6 2 >5 3 2 4 24 Cleanliness Clean . . Dirty '3 10 '4 9 I 2 22 8 Location of Workroom Rear of store . Shed . . . Cellar . . ... All others 1 1 3 9 '5 I 6 I I 16 2 2 10 Drying of Tobacco Racksinroom{^ide^^^^^ ; Floor of workroom . 3 2 3 7 6 I 7 Cellar .... Attic .... All others 3 8 4 7 10 3 3 387 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 44. — THE STOGY INDUSTRY. LOCATION OF WORKROOM AND OF DRYING ROOM IN HILL SWEATSHOPS Location of workroom : Rear of cigar store . Second floor Cellar Attic . . Small shed . All others Location of drying room : Racks in workroom i Floor of workroom . Cellar .... Attic .... All others . Side . Overhead 9 24 34 10 9 28 14 29 TABLE 45. — THE STOGY INDUSTRY. DISTRIBUTION OF WORK AMONG MEN AND WOMEN IN SWEATSHOPS AND FACTORIES. — BY DISTRICT U) 3 •& (A in z s 2 z ^ 1- □ ^ ^ <; §3: P z X CJ a. S s District z < X Qi PQ «E >- oi Q H if S^ (5 s jj s s 8 g s S ? •al p s» ff s 7 4' 58 389 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 48. — AWNINGS. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES IN EACH FACTORY No. of Plant Minimum Maximum Majority , $6.00 I10.50 ?7-50 2 6.00 10.00 7.00 3 5.00 ? 6.00 4 6.00 6.00 6.00 5 5.00 Q.OO 6.00 6 6.00 10.00 Q.OO 7 6.00 6.00 6.00 TABLE 49. — AWNINGS. HOURS OF WORK, OVERTIME SEASONS IN EACH PLANT AND SLACK No. of Plant Regular No. of Hours Daily Hours Dur- ing Over- time Season Duration of Overtime Season Duration of Slack Season No. Laid Off in Slack Season 2 3 4 I 7 9 8 ? 10 9 8i 8 '4 8 12-14 12-14 12-14 12 8 May and June Apr. through June Apr. through June 5 days Mar. through July Winter Sept.-Mar. Sept.-Mar. Sept.-Mar. Sept.-Mar. Sept.-Mar. Sept.-Mar. 2 t . .* 10 5 3 * Only I woman employed. TABLE 50. — MATTRESSES AND BEDDING. NUMBER OF WOMEN AND DIVISION OF WORK No. of Plant No. of IVomen Single- Needle Springbed Making Closing Knotting JVire Springs 2 3 4 6 23 10 32 6 '3 9 1 2 4 Total 7' 34 28 4 5 * Two of these single needle operators use binder attachment. 390 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 51. — MATTRESSES AND BEDDING. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES IN EACH FACTORY No. of Plant Minimum Maximum Majority I 2 3 4 I7.00 4.20 0.00 4.50 1 1 0.00 12.00 18.00 14.00 18.00 Q.OO 8.00-1 10.00 7.00- 9.00 TABLE 52. — MILLINERY. DIVISION OF WORK AMONG WOMEN No. of Plant Apprentices Copyists Trimmers Sewers on Straw Foundations Makers and Preparers Total 2 3 4 5 3 3 6 5 30 3 3 37 3 3 40 30 24 19 60 84 42 76 25 100 100 105 Total >7 4' 49 70 229 406 TABLE 53. — MILLINERY. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES BY DIVISIONS OF WORK Division of IVork Unpaid $3.00-16.99 $7.00-17.99 18.00-10.00 Total Apprentices . Copyists . Expert Makers Inexpert Makers and Preparers Straw Hat Makers Trimmers >4 3 .61 50 8 12 33 "8 49 16. 70 49 •4 214 70 108 406 39' WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 54. — LAUNDRIES. NUMBER OF MEN AND OF WOMEN IN EACH LAUNDRY No. oj Plant 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 1 12 ■3 '4 '5 16 '7 18 ■9 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Men 3 10 5 40 10 5 I 3 6 5 2 12 5 I 5 30 2 6 5 4 2 6 2 35 2 9 IVomen 40 .65 55 120 165 2 40 29 42 '34 100 28 33 20 20 90 220 20 74 80 56 18 ■5 32 33 .65 39 65 43 160 43 39 Total 43 •75 60 160 ■75 3 45 30 45 140 105 30 45 25 21 95 250 22 80 85 60 20 15 38 35 200 4' 74 43 160 43 39 Total 217 2185 2402 392 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 55. — LAUNDRIES. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CELLAR AND BASEMENT WASHROOMS* Grade Drainage A Gutters; drainage good; floor convex .... B Gutters; drainage good . C Gutters; drainage imperfect . . . . D Floor . .... Escape for Steam A Windows B Windows, small and low (3x3) . . C Shaft to roof .... D No escape . . Forced Ventilation A Fan in wall .... B Iron pipe admitting outside air C Shaft to roof .... . ... D No forced ventilation ... * See note to Table 21, p. 166. TABLE 56. — LAUNDRIES PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MANGLE ROOMS * Location with Reference to Washroom wholly separated Third floor: Second floor; wholly separated Second floor; directly above Second floor; not separated First floor; wholly separated First floor; partly separatedf First floor; not separated First floor; directly above Cellar; not separated^ . Adequate provision for escape Slight . . . Very noticeable . Steam Forced Ventilation Exhausts over mangle Open skylights . Fans in wall Shaft to roof and fan . Opening in floor above§ None 3 7 9 3 3 5 19 2 I 4 18 Guards Upright bar, 4 inch ... . ... 3 Upright bar, 2 inch; wide space|| . 2 Small roll, 2J inches in diameter . . .21 Large roll, 4 inches in diameter ... .1 * One laundry has no mangle, hence only twenty-seven are tabulated. f " Partly separated "; wooden partition part way to ceiling, or other inadequate partitioning. X Not separated from washroom. § No forced expulsion of steam; ventilation unsatisfactory. 11 "Wide space" between base of bar and feeding apron; wider in this case than the thickness of the hand. 393 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 57. — LAUNDRIES. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES IN EACH MANGLE DEPARTMENT* ^a^«i Paiii to Shahers- No. of Plant No. 0/ GjV/j out. Feeders and Folders Head Girl 1 > 10 $3.50-4.00 $6.50 2 15 3.00-3.50 4.00 3 6 4.00 0.00 4 12 4.00-5.00 12.00i- 5 16 3.50-4.00 6t 6 3.50-5.00 6.00 8 4 5.00 9 38 4.00-6.00 8.00 10 20 4.00-5.00 1 1 12 4.00-5.00 12 6 4.50-5.00 '3 12 5.00 '4 4 4.50-5.00 '5 6 4.00-5.00 16 6 3.00-4.00 8.00 '7 20 3.50-4.00 5.00 18 6 3.00-4.00 19 6 4.00-5.00 20 12 3.50-4.00 21 8 4.50-5.00 6.00 22 5 4.00-5.00 23 5 3.00-4.00 5.00 24 6 6 3.00-4.00 5.00-6.00 6.00 8.00 26 18 4.00-5.00 7.00 ^? 6 4.00-5.00 5.50 28 18 4.00-5.00 *The four institutional laundries are not tabulated with the twenty-eight commercial laundries. j- Forewoman. J No mangle department. TABLE 58. — LAUNDRIES. SUMMARY OF NUMBER IN WEEKLY WAGE GROUPS IN MANGLE DEPARTMENTS Head Girl Employed No Head Girl Employed Wage Groups No. of Laundries No. of Girls No. of Laundries No. of Girls ?3.ooto$3.9Q . . . I4.00t0f4.99 . . . $5.00 to $5.99 • ■ • $4.00 to |6.oo 7 5 1 I 68 'I 38 2 34 394 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES In one laundry where few of the mangle girls were over fourteen, the foreman explained that it was his policy to hire these small girls at I3.50 a week, rather than older girls at I4.50 because this meant a saving of I15 weekly in running expenses. The mangle girls were too young to be required to pad the mangles, but a man, a washer, was hired for $15 a week, and given this duty, in addition to his regular work. In this way the firm saved money. The mangle room, however, is not usually a kinder- garten, and a $3.00 wage, when paid to girls sixteen or seventeen years old, is a serious matter. The employment of a head girl noticeably affects the pro- portion of employes in the lower and higher wage groups. We may leave out of consideration the wage group of ^4.00 to $6.00, for the one laundry* under this head is exceptional, both in wage rating, plan of organization and character of the work. In the other three wage groups, we find that where a head girl is employed, in only one case are the employes in the $5.00 to |6.oo group, but that in seven cases they are in the I3.00 to I4.00 group; whereas, when no head girl is employed, eight laundries pay their employes $4.00 to $5.60, and two laundries pay $5.00 to |6.oo. We find twice as many girls earning only I3.00 to I4.00, and half as many earning I5.00 to |6.oo, when a head girl is em- ployed, as when a head girl is not employed. In the I4.00 to $5.00 wage group we find the number of employes half as great again in the absence of a head girl, as when a head girl is part of the force. This evidence seems to show a tendency to pay higher wages to all the mangle girls when responsibility is divided, and lower wages to the subordinates, when one girl assumes the whole responsibility. Lower wages paid to the group, enable the firm to pay relatively high wages for higher capacity in one; while on the other hand, when relatively good wages are paid to the group, this is in recognition of a higher standard of group capacity. * Only wholesale mangle work is done in this laundry. 395 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 59. — LAUNDRIES. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES OF STARCH- ING ROOM EMPLOYES No. of Plant ^a^ei Paid to Collar Feeders, Shirt Bosom and Band Starcbers, and IViping Girls* No. of Plant IV ages Paid to Collar Feeders, Shirt Bosom and Band Siarchers, and IViping Girls I $3.00 to $4.00 '5 $6.00 2 3.50- 4.00 16 3.00- 4.00 3 4.00- 5.00' (piece work) '7 4.50- 6.00 4 4.00- 6.00 18 3.00- 4.00 5 4.00- 5.00' (piece work) 19 6.00- 7.00 6 No starching room 20 3.50- 4.00 7 3.50- 5.00 21 5.00- 6.00 8 4.00- 5.00 22 4.00- 5.00 9 No starching room 23 4.00- 6.00' 10 5.00- 6.00 24 5.00- 7.00" 1 1 4.00- 5.00 25 6,00- 7.00 12 4.00- 4.50 26 6.00- 9 00* ■3 7.00- 8.00' 27 4.00- 5.00 14 4.50- 5.00 28 5.00 * All wages are time wages, unless otherwise indicated. ' Rate for starching shirts, $.35 a 100. ' Wages of head girl. The table shows the range of wages in each starching de- partment from unskilled collar feeder to dexterous wiping girl. In laundries 5, 7, 17, and 28, collar starching is done by the newer machine process, which makes wiping girls unnecessary. Al- though by use of this machine, dexterity and judgment are no longer necessary in the starching room, the change is too recent to have affected wages, which are at about the same level in these four laundries as in the others. 396 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 60. — LAUNDRIES. PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHECK- ROOMS Location Second floor; wholly separated . 2 Second floor; above washroom . . 4 First floor; above washroom . . 4 First floor; wholly separated 4 First floor; partly separated . . 3 First floor; in washroom . 6 Cellar; partly separated . . . 2 Cellar; in washroom I Light Good* . . . .... 13 Fair-j- ' . . .2 Poor| electric lights used ... 11 Ventilation Good§ . . . . 6 Poor|| .... . , . . . . 4 None** . . . .... 16 * Large, clean windows; checking near windows. t Large room, well lighted, but checking department not near windows. X No daylight. Room dimly lighted with a few electric bulbs. I Large room; wholly shut oflf from steam elsewhere in laundry. II Fans, but inadequate to carry oflf steam. ** No fans or other forced ventilation. Room is full of steam. 397 8 aj4jaj4J4) *^- o ■^^ 3 • ■■H ■ .... w- ;!!.o. .--... ........ ^ 8.S o ' ' t^ ' ■ ■ ■ ■ ^ ■ ^ ¥ s ^ M J= Si Si — K Si 8 c O O & D S O s s s c c OJ ^ c E E "8 o o 5 = =^c : ^ ^ .1^ c c .CCC CCC"^ cccccccc c OJ * cx> _,_„-,_„_^ -. — firs I 21 10 4 3 402 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 66. — LAMPS. DIVISION OF WORK AMONG WOMEN IN EACH FACTORY. — (Continued.) No. of Plant Sewing Asbestos Capping Burning Shaping Dipping IVringers Labelling Drying Oven I 2 3° 10 10 3 8 2 3 2 2 I 4 1 1 3 5 2 9 5 6 7 8 9 6 lO II 49 '5 10 8 4 17 I No. of Plant Tapping Coil Wind- ing Inspect- ing Scraping Porcelains Assem- bling Winding Wire and Blowing Balises 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 1 4 5 10 5 26 247 •• 4 5 10 5 26 247 403 WOMEN AND THE TRADES TABLE 67. — LAMPS. NUMBER OF WOMEN IN EACH FACTORY, AND RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES No. of Women Range of Wages No. of Plant MmiOTMOT Maximum Majority I 12 I5.00 $6.00 (flat rate) $6.00 2 50 4.00 8.00 7.00 3 18 4.00 8.00 5.00 4 30 ^.20 6.00 6.00 5.40 5 3 9.00 8.00 6 5 6.00 8.40 7.00 7 300 6.00 9.00 8.00 8 2 6.00 10.00 9 40 6.00 9.00 7.80 10 6 4.00 0.00 7.00 5.00 II 5 9.00 7.00 No. OF Women in Each Wage Group Total $3.oo-$6.99 f7.oo-$7.99 $8.00-$ 1 0.00 .76 162 "47 47' TABLE 68. — GLASS MAKING. NUMBER OF WOMEN IN EACH FACTORY, AND DIVISION OF WORK No. of Plant No. of IVomen Grinding and Finishing Cutting Off Packing Decorat- ing Washing Cleaning Molds 1 2 3 4 I 9 30 100 20 20 70 25 40 10 38 3 6 8 6 22 58 10 20 25 10 4 5 20 30 40 27 20 7 5 Total 353 36 14 '49 122 27 5 404 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 69. — GLASS MAKING. RANGE OF WEEKLY WAGES IN EACH FACTORY No. of Plant Minimum Maximum Majority I $3.50 $7.00 15-00 3 4.00 9.00 6.00 3 4.00 Q.OO 6.00 4 5.00 14.00 7.00 5 3.50 12.00 6.00 6 3.00 3.50 ■• 7 4.00 7.00 6.00 8 3.00 3.50 5 20 6 4 2 21 150 100 50 22 35 35 23 75 75 24 10 10 Total 7540 5510 ■555 475 TABLE 76. — BOARDING HOMES. CENSUS AND CAPACITY OF THE SEVERAL BOARDING HOMES, AND THE NUMBERS OF WOMEN FROM THE GROUPS UNDER CONSIDERATION, REACHED No. of Home Cen5M5 Capacity Numbers Reached I 49 7' 2 2 '7 26 5 3 60 125 50 4 65 70 52* 5 24 36 21 6 40 40 3 7 20 28 ID Total 275 396 '43 * Forty-three of the girls in this home are employed in the convent laundry, being paid in board with a small additional weekly sum. They are included here, because in the chapter on laundry workers, they have been included in the general census of the industry. The other girls in this home, work outside, and pay board to the home. 408 ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES TABLE 77. — ^WAGES. PERCENTAGES OF WOMEN IN EACH WEEKLY WAGE GROUP, IN EACH TRADE Industry Unpaid ?3.00-$6.QQ $7.00-17.99 I8.00-? 10.00 Per cent Per cent Per cent Per cent Crackers . 96.9 3 Confectionery . 72 21 6.9 Molasses . 75 15 10 Canneries . 58.5 21.35 20.07 Stogy. 45 16.8 37-8 Garments . 1 1.8 32.8 55-3 Awnings . 5' 12 36.6 Mattresses 15 16.9 67.6 Gloves 83.3 g.26 Jel Millinery . 344 50.24 17.24 Laundries 9.28 75-56 5-99 9-79 Dyeing and cleaning 21.5 58.8 20 Metal trades . 48 25.6 25-9 Lamps t-^ 32.2 31.2 Glass . 68.4 9 22 Mirrors 80 7-5 '2-5 Brooms and brushes 45-4 48.4 6 Paper boxes 79.8 ■3-4 6.7 Caskets . 59-4 33-7, 6.75 Corks 42.5 49.16 8-33 Paint 70 20 10 Soap 80.4 1 1.7 7-8 Trunk 57 42.8 Printing and book- binding . 45-59 30.9 23-4 Telegraph 100 Telephone 45-41 29.25 25.32 Mercantile 73-07 20.62 6.3. 409 APPENDIX C THE MARGARET MORISON CARNEGIE SCHOOL FOR WOMEN NIGHT courses in the Margaret Morison Carnegie School (the woman's division of the Carnegie Technical Schools) are still in their beginnings, in a period of tentative reaching out for the best means of connecting with the local industries that need women employes. Certain obvious lines of instruction are sure to be in demand. The school has followed these first, starting classes in millinery, in sewing, in costume design, in stenography and book-keeping. Tuition is $5.00 per year, students being expected to buy their own textbooks and to furnish their own materials. Of the 175 night school students enrolled in the winter of 1 907- 1 908, only 19 come within the groups considered in this study. Some of the others were temporarily out of employment or busy at home during the day; some were employed in offices as stenographers and clerks. There were four factory girls, eight sales clerks, two milliners and five telephone girls. One of the milliners withdrew early in the year, because she was appren- ticed in a wholesale house down town, and found that her night hours interfered with her class work. The distance of the school from the business part of town has tended to attract girls who are living at home, and working girls of higher social grade, such as office clerks, rather than unskilled factory hands who live in the more congested districts and have neither carfare nor strength to go a journey at the close of the day. These facts possibly hinder the night classes from seriously attempting to teach their students a new trade, or to make them proficient in an old one. Of secretarial work, this is of course not true. The girls who study that can study it only 410 MARGARET MORISON CARNEGIE SCHOOL with a trade purpose. But the millinery, the sewing and cook- ing? The need for a kind of dexterity in these enters so largely into the life of every girl whose income is small, that it is difficult in any trade school to keep the class free from the imputation of serving as an adjunct, a convenience apart from the working life which has been developed along other lines. It is especially difficult when the students of the night school, as in this case, are in large measure either unemployed or engaged in clerical work. How to make connections with the actual millinery and sewing trades in the city of Pittsburgh, and with other trades in which the possibilities of women workers have hitherto been limited, is one of the problems ahead, if the night trade school is to be a strong force among the working women of the city. 411 APPENDIX D LEGAL RESTRICTION OF WORKING HOURS F TEXT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA LAW UP TO 1909 IRST enacted in 1897 (No. 26), and re-enacted in Laws of 1905, No. 226, as follows: Section i. That the term "establishment", where used for the purpose of this act, shall mean any place within this Com- monwealth other than where domestic, coal-mining, or farm labor is employed; where men, women, or children are engaged, and paid a salary or wages, by any person, firm, or corporation, and where such men, women, or children are employees, in the general acceptance of the term. Section 3. . . No minor under sixteen and no female shall be employed in any establishment for a longer period than sixty hours m any one week, nor for a longer period than twelve hours in any one day, and that retail mercantile establishments shall be exempt from the provisions of this section on Saturdays of each week and during a period of twenty days, beginning with the fifth day of December and ending with the twenty-fourth day of the same month: Provided that during the said twenty days preceding the twenty-fourth day of December, the working hours shall not exceed ten hours per day or sixty hours per week". Act May 2d, 1905, P. L. No. 226. Held constitutional in Comm. v. Beatty, 15 Pa. Superior Ct. 5. A provision of the law limiting the hours of labor of adult females is within the police power of the State, and does not interfere with their constitu- tional rights, nor is it class legislation. 412 LEGAL RESTRICTION OF WORKING HOURS COMPARATIVE LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES* Legal Maximum Hours Kind of Establishment State 8 hours per day Manufactories, workshops and other Wisconsin places used for mechanical or manu- facturing purposes. First enacted in 1867 (ch. 83, Sec. i) and amended by stat. 1883, ch. 135, now embodied in Wisconsin Statutes, Code of 1898, sec. 1728. 10 hours per day Manufacturing and mechanical estab- Massachusetts 58 bours per week f lishments. Exception: to make a shorter work-day one day in the week. First enacted in 1874 (Chap. 221), now embodied in R. L. Ch. 106, sec. 24, as amended by Stat. 1902, ch. 435. Held constitutional, Comra. v. Hamilton Mfg. Co., 120 Mass. 383. 10 hours per day Manufactories, workshops, and other N. Dakota places used for mechanical or manu- facturing purposes. First enacted in 1877 (Penal Code, sec. 739), now embodied in Rev. Code, 1905, sec. 9440. 10 hours per day Manufactories, workshops, and other S. Dakota places used for mechanical or manu- facturing purposes. First enacted in 1877 (Penal Code, sec. 739), now embodied in Rev. Code, 1903 (Penal Code, sec. 764). I o hours per day Manufacturing and mechanical estab- Rhode Island 58 hours per week lishments. Exception: to make repairs, or for a shorter work-day one day of the week. First enacted in 1885 (chap. 519, sec. i),now embodied in Stat. 1896, chap. 198, sec. 22. As amended by Stat. 1902, ch. 994- * This digest of legislation with reference to hours has been compiled in part from the Brief for the State of Oregon, prepared by Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine C. Goldmark, in the case of Curt Muller vs. State of Oregon, Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1907. f The number of hours per day or per week italicized indicates that the law recognizes no exceptions to the prohibition of a working day or week exceed- ing this number of hours. WOMEN AND THE TRADES 10 hours per day Factories, warehouses, workshops, Lxjuisiana (average) telephone and telegraph offices, 60 hours per week clothing, dressmaking and milli- nery establishments and all places where the manufacture of goods is carried on, or where any goods are prepared for manufacture. First enacted in 1886 (Act No. 43) and amended by Acts of 1902 (No. 49) : now embodied in Rev. Laws (1904, p. 989, sec. 4.). 10 hours per day Manufacturing, mechanical, or mer- Connecticut 60 hours per week cantile establishments. Exception: to make repairs, or to make a shorter work-day one day in the week. First enacted in 1887 (ch. 62, sec. i), now embodied in Gen. Stat., Rev. 1902, sec. 4691. 10 hours per day Manufacturing or mechanical estab- Maine 60 hours per week lishments. Exception: to make repairs, or to make a shorter work-day one day in the week. First enacted in 1887 (ch. 139, sec. i), now re-enacted in Rev. Stat., 1903, ch. 40, sec. 48. 9 hrs. 40 min. per Manufacturing and mechanical estab- New Hampshire day lishments. 58 hours per week Exception: to make up lost time, to make a shorter work- day, to make repairs. First enacted in 1887 (ch. 25, sec. i), now re-enacted by Stat. 1907, ch. 94. I o hours per day Manufactures of cotton and woolen Maryland yarns, fabrics and domestics of all kinds. First enacted in 1888 (ch. 455), now embodied in Pub. Gen. Laws, Code of 1903, Act 100, sec. i. ]o boArs per day Manufactories, workshops, and other Oklahoma places used for mechanical or manu- facturing purposes. First enacted in 1890 (Stat. 1890, ch. 25, article 58, sec. loi), now embodied in Rev. Stat. 1903 ch. 25, art. 58, sec. 729. 414 LEGAL RESTRICTION OF WORKING HOURS 10 hours per day Factories and manufacturing estab- Virginia lishments. First enacted in 1890 (ch. 193, sec. i), now embodied in Virginia Code (1904), cPi. 178 a, 3657 b. 1 o hours per day Factories. New York 60 hours per week Exception: to make a shorter work-day. First enacted in 1899 (ch. 192, sec. 77), now embodied in Stat. 1907, ch. 507, sec. 77. 10 hours per day Manufacturing, mechanical and mer- Nebraska 60 hours per week cantile establishments, hotels, and restaurants. First enacted in 1899 (ch. 107), now embodied in Compiled Statutes (1905, sec. 7955a). (Held constitutional in Wenham v. State, 65 Neb. 400.) 10 hours per day Mechanical and mercantile establish- Washington ments, laundries, hotels and res- taurants. Enacted in igoi, Stat. 1901, ch. 68, Sec. 1. (Held constitutional in State v-. Buchanan, 29 Wash. 603.) 8 hours per day Mills, factories, manufacturing estab- Colorado lishments, shops and stores, where the occupation by its nature re- quires women to be upon their feet. Enacted in 1903, Acts of 1903, ch. 138, sec. 3. 10 hours per day Operatives and employes (except cler- South Carolina 60 hours per week ical force) in cotton and woolen manufacturing establishments, en- gaged in the manufacture of yarns, cloth, hosiery, and other products of merchandise. Exception: to make up lost time caused by accident. Approved Feb. 19, 1907 (Acts of 1907, No. 223). 10 hours per day Manufacturing, mechanical, and mer- Oregon cantile establishments, laundries, hotels, and restaurants. Exception: The limit may be extended to 12 hours in any one day for one week immediately preceding Xmas. Acts of 1907, amended by ch. 200, p. 148. (Held constitutional 85 Pac. Rep. 855, 25 Sup. Ct., Ref. 324.) WOMEN AND THE TRADES THE LEGISLATION OF 1909 In the legislatures of 1909, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island have amended their existing laws; Illinois, Michigan and Missouri have enacted laws. The law of Pennsylvania is as follows: Section 5. That no male minor under the age of sixteen years, and no female under the age of eighteen years, shall be employed, permitted, or suffered to work, in or about or for any establishment, place of business, or industry, named in sections 3 and 4 * of this act, for a longer period than ten hours in any one day, except when a different apportionment of the hours of labor is made for the sole purpose of making a shorter work day for one day in the week; nor shall a less period than forty-five minutes be allowed for the midday meal; and in no case shall the hours of labor exceed 58 in any one week. No male or female minor under the age of eighteen years, shall be employed or permitted to work between the hours of nine post meridian and six ante meridian. It appears that the 1909 law does not annul the 1905 law because it applies only to females less than eighteen. This Act to take effect Jan. i, 1910. 29 April, 1909, Sec. 5, P. L. No. 182. The Oregon statute has been extended (Acts of 1909, ch. 1 38, sec. I , p. 204) to include employes engaged in transportation and communication. The Rhode Island Statute has been amended (Acts of 1909, chap. 384, sec. i) to make 56 hours the legal working week for all women employed in manufacturing and mechanical establish- ments. *The manufacture or preparation of white-lead, red-lead, paints, phosphorus, phosphorus matches, poisonous acids, or the manufacture or stripping of to- bacco or cigars; mercantile establishments, stores; telegraph, telephone, or other business offices; hotels, restaurants; or in any factory, workshop, rolling mills or other establishment having proper sanitation; or in any factory, workshop, rolling mills or other establishment having proper sanitation and proper ventila- tion, and in which power machinery is not used, or if used, that the same, and all dangerous appliances used, are kept securely and properly safeguarded; rules and regulations for the same to be prescribed and provided by the Chief Factory In- spector. 416 LEGAL RESTRICTION OF WORKING HOURS The Illinois statute (Acts of 1909, p. 212, sec. i) makes it illegal for any woman to be employed more than 10 hours per day in any mechanical establishment, factory or laundry. The Michigan statute (Acts of 1909, no. 285, sec. 9) makes it illegal for any woman to be employed in any place where the manufacture of any kind of goods is carried on, or in any laundry or mercantile establishment, for longer than an average of 9 hours in any day, nor for more than 54 hours per week. The Missouri statute (Acts of 1909, p. 616) makes it illegal for any woman to be employed in any manufacturing or mer- cantile establishment, laundry or restaurant in any city of over 5000 inhabitants for more than 54 hours per week. 27 4'7 BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY I. General Taylor, R. Whateley Cooke : The Modern Factory System, Chap. 1 , 2. London, Kegan Paul, French, Triibner and Company. 1891. Devine, Edward T. : Economic Function of Women. Amer. Acad, of Polit. and Soc. Science, Publication No. 133. Smart, Wm. : Studies in Economics. London, Macmillan Company, 1895. Pearson, Karl : Chances of Death and other Studies in Evo- lution, Chap. VII, Woman and Labour; Chap. IX, Woman as Witch. London, E. Arnold, 1897. 2. In Different Countries a. England Abbott, Edith: Municipal Employment of Unemployed Women in London. Jour. Pol. Econ., 15: 513. Women Workers : Papers read at the Manchester Conferences (Oct. 22-25, 1907) by Nat. Union of Women Workers of Gt. Brit, and Ire. Booth, Charles : Life and Labour of the People of London, Vol. IV, pp. 256-326. Women's Work. London, Mac- millan Company, 1902. Cadbury, Matheson, Shann : Women's Work and Wages. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1907. Collet, Clara E. : Women's Work in Leeds. Economic Journal, i : 460. b. Belgium Julin, Armand : Le travail des femmes beiges dans la grande et la petite Industrie. La Reforme Sociale, 16 Septembre, 1901. 421 BIBLIOGRAPHY Julin, Armand : La production decentralisee en Belgique. La R^forme Sociale, 16 Mai, 1905. c. France Gonnard, R6n€ : La femme dans I'industrie. Paris, Armand Colin, 1906. Julin, Armand: Les industries a domicile. La R6forme Sociale, 16 aodt, 1902. Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul: Le travail des femmes au XIX siecle. Paris, Charpentier et Cie., 1873. N€gre, Mile. A. : Le travail k domicile. Revue du Christian- isme Social, 15 Avril, 1907. Rochebillard, M. L. : Le travail de la femme a Lyon. La R^forme Sociale, lerjuillet, 1901. Vovard, Andrd : La soci6t^ pour I'assistance paternelle aux enfants employes dans les industries des fleurs et des plumes. La Reforme Sociale, ler Avril, 1907. d. Germany Praktische Ratschlaege zur Berufswahl. Bearbeitet von Josephine Levy-Rathenau und Lisbeth Wilbrandt. W. Nider, Berlin, 1906. Sombart, Werner: Der Moderne Kapitalismus. Siebenter Abschnitt: Handwerk und Handwerker in der Gegen- wart. e. United States Abbott, Edith : Harriet Martineau and the Employment of Women in 1836. Jour. Pol. Econ., 14:614. Abbott, Edith: Industrial Employment of Women in the United States. Jour. Pol. Econ., 14:461. Abbott, Edith; Breckinridge, S. P. Employment of Women in Industries. Twelfth Census Statistics. Jour. Pol. Econ., 14: 15. Adams, Jessie B. : The Working Girl from the Elementary School in New York. Charities and The Commons, Feb. 22, 1908. 422 BIBLIOGRAPHY Lepelletier, F. : Le travail des femmes aux Etats Unis. La R^forme Sociale, ler decembre, 1901. Mies, Frank P. : Statutory Regulation of Women's Employ- ment; Codification 01 Statutes. Jour. Pol. Econ., 14: 119. Odencrantz, Louise C. : The Irregularity of Employment of Women Factory Workers. The Survey, May i, 1909. Report of the Committee on Female Labor. New York State Legislature, Albany, 1906. Wisconsin Labor Bureau. Women employed in Factories. From the loth biennial report of the Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, pp. 641-759. Madison, 1902. 3. Wages Webb, Sidney and Beatrice: Industrial Democracy, pp. 749-755. London and New York, Longmans, Green and Company, 1897. Webb, Sidney : Alleged Differences in the Wages Paid to Men and to Women for Similar Work. Economic Journal, 1:6^^. Salomon, Dr. Alice : Ursachen der ungleichen Entlohnung von Maenner und Frauen-arbeit. Leipzig, Duncker v. Humbold, 1906. Hammond, M. B. : Women's Wages in Manual Work. Pol. Sci. Quar., Sept., 1900. 4. Hours Bauer, Etienne : Le travail de nuit des femmes dans I'in- dustrie. Publies au nom de 1' Association international pour la protecion ligale des travailleurs, at precedes d'une preface par Etienne Bauer. Jena, Gustave Fischer, 1903. Van Kleeck, Mary : Working Hours of Women in Factories. Charities, Oct. 6th, 1906. Webb, Mrs. Sidney : The Case for the Factory Acts. Lon- don, Richards, 1902. Hours of Labor of Women and Girls in Factories. N. Y. Lab. Bui., Mar., 1907. 423 BIBLIOGRAPHY Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1907. Curt Muller, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Oregon. 5. Health of Women Workers Jacobi, A. : Physical Cost of Women's Work. Charities, Feb. 2, 1907. Hamilton, Alice, M.D. : Industrial Diseases with especial reference to the trades in which women are employed. Charities and The Commons, Sept. 5, 1908. Oliver, Thomas : Dangerous Trades. Chaps. VII , X, XLVI I , XLIX, L, LIX. London, J. Murray, 1902. Kober, George M., M.D. : Industrial and Personal Hygiene. President's Homes Commission, Washington, 1908. 6. Legislation in the United States Goldmark, Josephine C. : The necessary sequel of child labor laws. Amer. Jour, of Soc, Nov., 1905. Goldmark, Josephine C. : Working Women and the Laws; A Record of Neglect. Annals Amer. Acad., Sept., 1906. Kelley, Florence : The Legal End of the Working Woman's Day. Charities, Dec. 29th, 1906. Legislation regulating and prohibiting employment of women and children in the U. S. Mass. Lab. Bui., 1905, pp. 24-44. Decisions of New York Courts. N. Y. Lab. Bui., Sept., 1906, and Dec, 1906. Simplified Statement of Laws Affecting the Employment of Women and Children in Mass., 1906. (Issued by In- dustrial Committee, 264 Boylston St., Boston.) Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1907. Curt Muller, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Oregon. 7. Special Employments * a. Garment Trades Davis, Philip : Women in the Cloak Trade. Amer. Federa- tionist, October, 1905. *Only such books and articles are noted here as refer to the special employments touched on in the text. 424 BIBLIOGRAPHY Galton, F. W.: Workers on Their Industries. Chap. II. Dressmakers and Tailoresses. London, E. Sonnenschein and Company, Ltd., 1895. Parton, Mabel : The Work of Women and Children in Cord- age and Twine Factories. Federation Bulletin, Boston, May and June, 1905. Willett, Mabel Hurd : The Employment of Women in the Clothing Trades. Columbia Univ. Studies, 16:234. Laundries Bosanquet, Creighton, Webb : Commercial Laundries. Nineteenth Century, 41 :224. Cavendish, Lucy C. F. : Laundries in Religious Houses. Nineteenth Century, 41:232. Couper, James L. : Laundry Machinery. Cassiers, 20:507. Greenwood, Madeleine : Small Laundries. Westminster Review, 147:698. Tebbutt, Sidney : Steam Laundry Machinery. Cassiers, 15:291. Over Steaming Washtubs. (Educational Work Toward Self-dependence carried on at the Laundry of the N. Y. C. O. S.) Charities, 10:562. Mercantile Houses Cranston, M. R. : The Girl Behind the Counter. The World To-day, Mar., 1906. MacLean, Annie Marion: Two Weeks in a Department Store. Amer. Jour. Soc, May, 1899. Price, Lucinda W. : Training for Saleswomen. Federation Bulletin, February, 1908. Report of the Committee on Female Labor. New York State Legislature, Albany, 1896. Miscellaneous Barnum, Gertrude : Fall River Mill Girls in Domestic Ser- vice. Charities, Mar. 4th, 1905. Occupations of Girl Graduates. Mass. Lab. Bui., May, 1906. 425 BIBLIOGRAPHY e. Printing Trades MacDonald, J. Ramsay : Women in the Printing Trades. London, P- S. King and Son, 1904. f. Sweatshops Butler, Elizabeth B. : Sweated Trades in Hudson County. Charities, Dec. i8th, 1907. Sanville, Florence L. : Women in the Sweated Trades of Philadelphia. Railroad Trainmen's Journal, May, 1907. Report of the Committee on Female Labor. New York State Legislature, Albany, 1896. g. Stogies and Cigars Abbott, Edith : Employment of Women in Industries. Cigar-making. Jour. Pol. Econ., 15:1-25. h. Telephone Exchanges Report of the Royal Commission on the Dispute Between the Bell Telephone Co. of Canada and the Telegraph Opera- tors of Toronto. Ottawa, 1907. 426 INDEX INDEX Accidents. See Dangerous occupa- tions; Machinery guards Advertising for employes, 345 Alteration room, mercantile houses, 297 Americans — In cable wrapping work, 223; in candy factories, 57; in canning in- dustries, 33, 43; in dyeing and clean- ing work, 206; in garment factories, 22-24, 124-125; in the glass industry, 240; in hinge factory, 223-224; in lamp factories, 232—233; in laundry work, 162, 182; in mercantile houses, 22-24, 307; in the metal trades, 229; in minor needle trades, 141 ; in paper box factories, 257; in the stogy in- dustry, 22-23, 79; ™ telegraph and telephone work, 26; neighborhoods, 32°. 33° Amusement places, 324, 333 Apprentices — In garment trades, 126; millinery, I4S, 369; in the stogy industry, 93; unpaid, 338 Armature winding, 217 Art classes, 331 Asbestos fibring, 231-232 Assyrians, neighborhoods, 319 Athalia Daly Home, 323-324 Awning factories, 150-154 Summary and interpretation, 338, 353 Basketry classes, 327 Bean canning, 37, 39, 365 Bible classes, 327 Bindery work, 277-279, 338 Boarding homes, 321-323 Boarding houses and tenants, 320- 324 Body ironers, 178-180 Bolt workers, 219-221 Bonuses. See Premiums and bonuses Bosom press. See Steam presses Bottling, in pickle factories, 35, 37, 38,41 Box making. See Paper box making Branch libraries, 331 Broom factories, 249-253 Summary and interpretation, 338, 358, 359. 373. 374 Brush factories, 253-256, 338 Buildings, conditions of, 32-33, 44- 49, 101-109, 151-152, 154, 165-170, 175, 178, 188-190, 193, 196-197, 210- 211, 298-300, 358-367 Bunching stogies, 78, 84, 88-89, 9^ Businesswoman's Club, 327-328 Buttonholing, 114, 115 Cable wrapping, 222-223 Calender. See Mangling Candy factories, 26, 44-57 Employes boarding away from home, 320; summary and interpre- tation, 338, 352, 355, 369 429 INDEX Canneries, 25, 31-43 Summary and interpretation, 338, 344, 3S3. 361. 365. 369 Cash girls, 296, 304 Casket factories, 262-265 Summary and interpretation, 338, 3S2. 360 Catliolic church, non-sectarian home, 323 Checking, in laundries, 188-192 Chewing-gum factory, 44, 58 Child labor- In canneries, 40; in cracker fac- tories, 62 Chocolate dipping, 46, 51 Christmas trade — Overtime work, in candy factories, 53-54; instogy factories, 90; in paper box factories, 259; in mercantile houses, 302-304; general, 353 Cigar industry. See Stogy industry Classwork, social and industrial, 325-332. 374 Cleaning industries, 19, 161-206 Clerking, 295-308, 338, 342, 358-359, 364, 374. See also Retail selling Clerks- Boarding away from home, 321 Closed shop, 372 Clothing expenses, 347 Clubs, 325-332 Coil winding— In electrical appliance factories, 216, 217; in making incandescent lights, 236 Columbian School and Settlement, 324 Commercial trades, 274-308 Competition with men — In the canning industry, 34, 344; in retail selling, 342; in core making, 213-214; 340-341; in cork making, 266, 343; dyeing and cleaning, 342; electrical appliance making, 343; in the garment trades, 109-111, 342; in lamp factories, 343; in laundry work, 161, 190-191, 340, 343; metal trades, 213-214, 340-341, 343, 344; in the printing trades, 276-277, 342-343, 344; in the stogy industry, 34, 44, 60- 61, 78, 91-92, 109-112, 342-343; summary and interpretation, 20-28, 339-346, 370-373; telegraph opera- ting, 292-294, 343; in trunk fac- tories, 342 Compositors. See Pressroom work Concerts, 330 Conditions of work — In awning factories, 150 ff., 338; in broom factories, 250 ff., 338; in brush factories, 253 ff., 338; in cable wrapping, 222; in candy factories, 44 If., 338; in canneries, 31 ff., 42, 338, 344; in casket factories, 262 ff., 338; in chewing-gum factories, 58; core making, 210 S., 340-341; in cork factories, 265 ff., 338, 343; in cracker factories, 60 ff., 338; dyeing and cleaning, 204 ff., 338, 342; electrical appliance making, 215 ff., 343; enam- eling and japanning, 226; in garment trades, loi ff., 127 ff., 338, 342; in glass factories, 240 ff., 246, 338; in glove factories, 148, 338; in hinge factory, 223; in lamp factories, 230 ff., 338, 343; in laundries, 161, 178, 193, 199, 338, 340, 343; in mattress fac- tories, 154, 338; in mercantile houses, 295 ff., 338, 342; in the metal trades, 210, 214, 215, 219, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228, 338, 340, 343, 344; in mica splitting, 214; in millinery houses, 141 ff., 338, 340; in paint factories, 268, 338; in paper box factories, 256 ff., 338; in the printing trades, 275 ff., 338, 342-343, 344; in screw and bolt works, 219 ff.; in soap factories, 268 ff., 338; social, 311-332; in sheet and tin plate mills, 227; in the stogy in- dustry, 75 ff., 338, 342, 343; sum- mary and interpretation, 28, 337- 375; telegraph operating, 292-294, 338, 343; telephone operating, 282, ff., 338; in trunk factories, 271-272, 338, 342 430 INDEX Confectionery. See Candy Consumers'.leagues, 350 Contract system, absence of, 23, 127 Convict labor and broom making, 250. 253 Cooking classes, 325-329 Copyists, in millinery establish- ments, 144 Core building for transformers, 217 Core making, 210-214 Summary and interpretation, 340- 341, 361-363, 369, 373. 374 Cork factories, 26, 263-268 Summary and interpretation, 338, 343. 352-353. 358, 359-360, 369-370 Cost of living, 320-323, 338, 345-347 Cracker factories, 60-71 Summary and interpretation, 338, 352. 358, 362, 365 Cream dipping, 5 1 Croatians — In canneries, ^3; in glass industry, 240; in metal trades, 228 Cuff press. See Treadle pressure mach- inery Custom tailoring, r3i-i32 Cutting— In garment factories, no; cork- paper, 266; gloves, 149; paper boxes, 257 Cylinder double needle machines. See Double-needle machines Dancing, 324, 325, 329 Dangerous occupations- Cork making, 265; garment trades, 107-109; hinge factory, 225; lacquer- ing, 235, 263, 360; lamp making, 233- 235; laundry work, 167-168,171-173, 176-177, 180-181; printing trades, 281 Decorating glass, 242-245 Department stores. See Mercantile houses Dexterity — Demand for, 369 Disease-producing industries, 358- 367 Distribution of work. See Occupa- tions Division of labor — In candy factories, 49 ; in canneries, 34-37; in chewing-gum factories, 58; in the cracker industry, 63-70; in the garment trades, 112-114; in glove factories, 149; in laundries, 164, 170, 175-178, 183, 187, 188; in millinery houses, 144; results on skilled labor, 371; in the stogy industry, 77-79, gi Docking. See Fining Double-needle machines — In garment factories, 113, 118; in glove factories, 149; in awning factories, 152 Dressmaking classes, 329 Drying rooms — In stogy factories, 76, 77 Duration of work. See Tenure of work Dust-producing occupations, 359-36r Dyeing and cleaning, 204-206 Summary and interpretation, 338, 342, 352, 358, 360 Economic foothold of women, 368- 375 Eight-hour day, 354-356 Electrical ajipliances, factory con- ditions, 215-219 Summary and interpretation, 343, 355 Embroidery classes, 330-331 Employers' associations — In the laundry business, 162-164 431 INDEX Employers' liability — In laundry work, 173 Enameling, 226, 360 Entertainment, 324, 332-333, 356-357 Environment. See Conditions of work Etching — In glass factories, 242, 243 Excitement, craving for, overwork cause of, 356 Exhaust machinery, 361 Extension work, Y.W. C. A., 316-317, 326-327 Extractors — In laundries, 167, 168 Factories — Effects on home, see Home lije; garment, ~i5i=i26; recreative possi- bilities of, 3 1 1-3 1 7 Factory buildings. See Buildings Factory defined, 80, 127-128 Factory inspection, inefficiency of, 53. io8> 200, 201, 351-352, 359 Factory laws — Effect on conditions in stogy fac- tories, 94; enforcing of, 53, 108, 200, 201, 351-352, 359. 364 Fancy ironers — In laundries, 186-187, 369 Fancy work classes, 328 Fibring asbestos, 231-232 Fine ironers — In laundries, 186-187, 3^9 Fining — In hinge factories, 224; in mercan- tile houses, 303; in the stogy indus- try, 86 Finishing — ■ Garments, 114-115; glassware, 241-242; in laundries, 186-187 First Presbyterian Church, classes, 327 Flat-bed double-needle machines See Double-needle machines Food production, 18, 25, 31-71 Foot-press work. See Treadle pres- sure machinery Foreigners in occupations. See Racial analysis and names of races Forewomen — Relations to workers, 1 19-120 Foundries, 210-215, 362-363 French — In dyeing and cleaning, 206 Garment trades, 18, 19, 24, 101-140 Employes boarding away from home, 320; summary and interpreta- tion, 338, 342, 353, 359-360, 361, 363-364, 374 Gas- and fume-producing occupa- tions, 360-363 Gas mantle making, 235-236 Germans — In canning industries, 33, 43; in garment trades, 21, 23, 24; in lamp work, 232—233; in paper box fac- tories, 257; in soap factories, 270; in stogy industry, 81, 84; neighbor- hoods, 325, 330 Glass decorators, 242-245 Glass workers, 19, 239-240, 338 Glove factories, 148-150, 338 Greeks, neighborhoods, 319 Guarding machinery. See Machin- ery guards Gymnasium classes, 325, 327, 329-330 Hand finishing on garments, 114-115 Handicrafts and handworkers, 249- 272, 369 Hand stogy making, 78, 91. See also Stogy industry] 432 INDEX Health, effects upon, of work in— Awning factories, 153, 156; candy factories, 41, S4""S7i canneries, 42; cracker factories, 61-66, 71; electrical appliance making, 216, 219; garment trades, 106-107, 119, 125; glass fac- tories, 242; hinge factory, 224-225; lacquering, 235, 263, 360; lamp fac- tories, 23s, 238; laundry work, 166- 167, 180, 182, 183, 202-203; l°"g hours, 354-359. 373-374; low wages, 3^5, 350-351. 358; mattress fac- tories, 156-157; mica splitting, 215, 360; printing trades, 279; recreative conditions, 311-317, 324; retail sell- ing, 299-300, 302; screw and bolt shops, 221; from speeding, see Speed- ing; stogy industry, 41, 77, 83, 86, 90, 94-97. 3S9. 362-363; telephone ex- change, 286-292; telegraph operating, 293; workroom conditions, 358-367; summary and interpretation, 358-367 Heat-producing industries, 361-363 Helping Hand Society, 327 Hill section, description, 21, 80-84, 319 Hinge factory, 223-226, 370-371 Home Industries — Characteristics of, 23-24; dyeing and cleaning, 204, 206; early stages in, 20, 21; garment trades, 131-140; gas mantle making, 235; mattress making, 156; stogy making, 81, 82 Home life and industrial conditions, 31, 56, 81, 125, 131-140. 203, 290, 305-307. 318-324, 340-350, 366-367, 375 Homes, hoarding, 321-323 Hours of work- in awning factories, 153, 353; in broom factories, 252; in brush fac- tories, 255; cable wrapping, 223; in candy factories, 53-55, 353; •" can- neries, 39-42, 43, 353; in casket fac- tories, 263-264, 352; core making, 211-212; in cork factories, 267, 352- 353; in cracker factories, 69-70; in dyeing and cleaning establishments, 205; in electrical appliance work, 218-219; in enameling and japanning rooms, 226; in the garment trades, 122-124, 130. 353; glass industry, 244, 246; in the hinge factory, 225; in lamp factories, 232-233, 237; in laundries, 199-203, 352; in mattress factories, 155; in mercantile houses, 297, 302—304; in the millinery trade, 145-147, 353; in paper box factories, 259, 353; in the printing trades, 280; in screw and bolt factories, 221; in sheet and tin plate industry, 227-228; of telegraph operators, 293; of tele- phone operators, 288-291; summary and interpretation, 339, 351-357; in trunk factories, 272 Household economics classes, 325- 331 Hungarians — In canneries, 33; in foundry work, 210; in laundries, 182; in metal trades, 228 Hunkies. See Slavs Hygiene. See Health Immigrants, proportion of women, 20-21 Incandescent lamp making, 236-238 Increasing output. See Speeding Industrial classwork, 325-332 Industrial conditions, summary of, 337-375 Inspection. See Factory inspection Inspectors — In garment factories, 115; in laun- dries, 184; in metal trades, 225 Institutional laundries, 193-199 Invoicing. See Stock-taking Irish — In cork factories, 267; in garment trades, 21, 23-24; in laundries, 162; in the stogy industry, 83; neighbor- hoods, 319, 325, 330 Ironing — In laundries, 178-187 28 433 INDEX Italians — In canning industries, 32-33; in cracker factories, 62; in garment trades, 124, 129; in the stogy indus- try, 21, 83 Japanning workers, 226, 360 Jews — In garment trades, 22-24, 124, 129; in paper box factories, 257; in the stogy industry, 22, 24, 79-83; in mer- cantile houses, 22; neighborhoods, 319, 325 Kingsley House, 324 Knowlton-Beach staying machine, 258 Labeling — In candy factories, 48-49; in can- neries, 35-36, 39, 41; demand for, 3691 371 ) in paint factories, 268 Labor unions among women, 345, 35°. 372-373 In broom factories, 254; in core rooms, 213, 373; in glove factories, 149; saleswomen, 303; in the stogy industry, 94; telegraphers', 294, 372 Labor unions, effect on, of women's work — In broom factories, 253, 373; in core rooms, 21 1-2 13; in the garment trades, in, 134-135; in printing , trades, 281, 372-373; in the stogy industry, 93-94, 373; of women's wages, 345, 350; telegraph operating, 292-294, 372 Lacquering, 226, 235, 263, 360 Lamp workers, 19, 230-238 Summary and interpretation, 338, 343, 358, 360, 366 Laundry work, 25-26, 161-203 Summary and interpretation, 338, 340, 343> 352. 355, 358, 360-362, 369- 370 Lawrence Field House, 329-331 Lawrenceville section, description, 319-320, 326, 329 Lectures and addresses, 325, 330 Libraries, 331 Lighting, artificial — In garment factories, 106-107 Linotype work. See Pressroom work Living expenses, boarding, 320-323, 345-347 Lodging places, 320-324 Ltmch rooms, 312-313, 326-328 Machinery and handwork, 368-371 In the garment trades, iig-120; in laundries, 176, 192; in paper box factories, 261; in the printing trades, 277-279, 342 Machinery guards — In awning factories, 152; in cork factories, 265; in garment factories, 107-109; in the hinge factory, 225; in lamp factories, 233-235; in laun- dries, 171-173, 177; in paper box factories, 258-259; in the printing trades, 281 Machine operators and tenders, 369- 371 McKeesport, sheet and tin plate mills, 227-228 I Makers, in millinery establish- ments, 144 Mangling in latmdries, 169-175 Mantles for gas lamps, 235-236 Manufactories, 19, 20, 26 Marking. See Checking Mattress factories, 154-157 Summary and interpretation, 338, 359 Mechanical trades, number em- ployed, 20 Mending in latmdries, 187 434 INDEX Mental effects upon workers, of monotonous occupations, 373-375 Mercantile houses, 295-308 Employes boarding away from home, 321; summary and interpreta- tion, 19. 33^, 342, 358-359. 364, 374 Metal trades, 25, 209-229 Summary and interpretation, 19, 338, 340, 343. 344, 352, 358 Mica splitting, 214-215, 360 Milliners — In wholesale establishments, 26, 141-148; in mercantile houses, 297; boarding away from home, 320; sum- mary and interpretation, 338, 340, 353, 369 Millinery classes, 326-329 Minimum wage legislation, effect of proposals for, 350 Minor needle trades, 141-157 Mirror mailing, 245-246 Summary and interpretation, 338, 358, 359-360 Molasses canning, 42-43, 338 Mold cleaning in glass factories, 241 Mothers' clubs, 325, 330 Moving picture shows, 333 National Biscuit Company, 60 Needle trades, 101-157 Negroes, in stogy industry, 83 Neighborhoods, 318-332 Night worli. See Overtime work Noon hour, 311-313 North Side, description, 325 Number of women employed — In awning factories, 151, 338; broom factories, 249, 338; brush factories, 249, 254, 338; cable wrap- ping, 222; candy factories, 44, 48- 49, 338; canneries, 33-34, 37, 42, 338; casket factories, 249, 262, 338; core making, 211, 229; cork factories, 249, 265, 338; cracker factories, 60- 61, 70, 338; dyeing and cleaning, 204, 338; electrical appliance factories, 215, 229, 338; enameling and japan- ning, 226; in the garment trades, 109, 112, 114, 117-121, 131, 338; glass factories, 239-240, 245, 338; glove factories, 148, 338; hinge factory, 223; lamp factories, 231, 232, 235, 236, 338; laundries, 161, 190-igi, 338; mattress factories, 338; mercantile houses, 295, 297-298, 338; metal trades, 210-211, 214, 215, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228-229, 338; mica splitting, 214; millinery houses, 144, 338; minor needle trades, 141; molasses canning, 338; paint factories, 249, 268, 338; paper box factories, 249, 256, 261, 338; printing trades, 276, 338; screw and bolt works, 219, 229; soap factories, 249, 270, 338; sheet and tin plate mills, 227; stogy industry, 76, 91, 338; summary and interpretation, 28, 332, 338; telegraph operators, 292, 338; telephone opera- tors, 287, 338; tinware factory, 221; trunk factories, 249, 271, 338 Occupations — Among club members, 328; in awning factories, 150, 338; in bind- eries, 277, 338; in broom factories, 250-252,, 338; in brush factories, 253 ff., 338; caljle wrapping, 222; in candy factories, 46-49, 338; in can- neries, 34-37, 42, 338, 344; in casket factories, 262 ff., 338; in chewing-gum factories, 58; core making, 210, 213, 340-341 ; in cork factories, 265 ff., 338, 343; in cracker factories, 61, 70, 338; dyeing and cleaning, 204-205, 338, 342 ; electrical appliance making, 216- 217, 343; enameling and japanning, 226; in the garment trades, 109-115, 117-120, 131, 338, 342; in glass fac- tories, 239-240, 245, 338; in glove factories, 149, 338; in the hinge fac- tory, 223; in lamp factories, 231 ff., 338, 343; in laundries, 164, 169, 175, 178, 186, 187, 188, 191, 338, 340, 343; in mattress factories, 154, 338; in metal trades, 209-210, 213, 214, 215, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 229, 338, 435 INDEX 34°. 343. 344; mica splitting, 214; in millinery houses, 142, 144, 338, 340; in paint factories, 268, 338; paper box making, 256 ff., 338; pressroom work, 276; in the printing trades, 27s ff-, 338, 342-343, 344; retail selling, 295-308, 338, 342 ; in screw and bolt works, 219-221; in soap factories, 268 ff., 338; sheet steel mills, 227-228; in the stogy industry, 75, 91, 338, 342, 343; summary and interpretation, 318-324, 332-333, 338- 344, 368-375; telegraph operating, 292-294, 338, 343; telephone operat- ing, 282, 287, 338; tinware factory, 221; in trunk factories, 271, 338, 342 Outdoor clubs, 326 Outwork system, garment trades, 23, 133-140 Overtime work — In asbestos fibring, 232; awning factories, 153-154, 353; brush fac- tories, 255; cable wrapping, 223; candy factories, 46, 53-55, 353; canneries, 39-42, 353; casket fac- tories, 263-264, 352; core making, 212; cork factories, 267, 352-353; cracker factories, 69-70; electrical appliance making, 219; enameling and japanning, 226; garment trades, 122-124, 353; glass decorating, 244; hinge factory, 225; lamp factories, 232-233; laundries, 198, 200-202, 352; legislation against, 53, 200, 201, 351- 352; mercantile houses, 297, 302-304; millinery trade, 145-146, 353; paint factories, 268; paper box factories, 259, 353; printing trades, 280; screw and bolt factories, 221; stogy industry, 9°, 3S3; summary and interpreta- tion, 351-357; telegraph operating, 293; telephone operating, 285, 287, 289; tinware factories, 222 Pace setting. See Speeding Packing — Candy, 47, 48-50; chewing gum, 58; crackers, 64, 66, 70-71; glassware, 240-241; soap, 269, 270; tobacco, 79, 91 Paint factories, 268, 338 Paper box factories, 256-261 Summary and interpretation, 338, 353, 358, 369-370 Parents' clubs and classes, 330 Pennsylvania laws on overtime work, difficulty of enforcing, 351- 352 Philanthropic work. See Welfare work Philodora club, 326-327 Pickling. See Canneries Picture shows, 333 Piece work — In awning factories, 153; in candy factories, 46-47; in canneries, 38-39, 42; in core making, 212; in cork fac- tories, 267; in cracker factories, 63- 64; on electrical appliances, 218; in garment trades, 108, 11 6-122; in glass decorating, 243; in glove fac- tories, 148-149; in hinge factories, 224; involves loss to manufacturers, 354; in lamp factories, 235-237; in laundries, 184—186; in mattress fac- tories, 155; in popcorn factory, 59; in printing trades, 279; in screw and bolt making, 221; in the stogy in- dustry, 84-gi Pittsburgh trades, range and selec- tive forces of, 18 Play clubs, 325, 326, 329-333 Playgrotmd Association, field house, 324, 329-331 Poles — In canning industries, 33; in cork factories, 267; in cracker factories, 62; in foundry work, 210; in the glass industry, 240; in the hinge fac- tory, 223; in lamp factories, 232-233; in laundry work, 162; in the metal trades, 228; in soap factories, 270; in sheet and tin plate work, 227; neighborhoods, 319-320 Polishing steel plates, 227-228 Popcorn factories, work and wages, 58-59 Population in Pittsburgh, male, 20 436, INDEX Premiums and bonuses, 6$, 85-91, 3°3 Preparation work in canneries, 36- 37. 39. 41. 42. 371 Preparers, in millinery establish- ments, 144 Pressing in garment factories, m Pressroom work, 276-277, 279 Printing trades, 18, 19, 26, 268, 275- 281 Employes boarding away from home, 320; summary and interpreta- tion, 338, 342-343. 344. 352, 358-359, 361, 366, 372-373, 374 Prostitution and wage rates, 305-307, 348-349 Pullman Company, in laimdry busi- ness, 173 Punching presses — In lamp factories, 232-235, 361; in cork factories, 265 Racial analysis, 20-26, 33, 43, 62, 77, 83-84, 124, 129, 141, 162, 206, 210, 219, 223-224, 226, 227-229, 232-233, 240, 257, 267, 270, 319-320, 326, 330 Racial vitality, depletion of — By low wages, 350; in the stogy industry, 95-96, 219; in telephone operating, 290-292 Rate cutting, 366 In casket factories, 263-264; in core making, 212; in cork factories, 267; in electrical appliance making, 218; in garment trades, 120; in lamp factories, 236; in laundries, 185-186; in printing trades, 366 Recreation, 311-333, 350, 356-357 Reliefs, in telephone exchanges, 289-291, 311-313, 356 Respirators, 360, 361 Riveting, in lamp factories, 232-235 Rolling stogies, 78, 84-86, 89, 91, 371 Roll ironing machines, 179-180 Roman Catholic church, non-sec- tarian home, 323 Ruling, in printing work, 278-279 Salesmanship instruction, 307-308, 374 Saleswomen, 18, 19, 22, 26, 298-308, 321. 342, 358-359, 364, 374 Sanitary conditions. See Buildings; Health Screw and bolt workers, 219-221 Seamstresses — In casket factories, 263-264, 352; in dyeing and cleaning works, 205; in laundries, 187 Seasonal rush. See Overtime work Seats for employes, 300-301, 358-359 Section system, in garment fac- tories, 112 Selective forces — Drawing women into various oc- cupations, 17-27, 340-375; awning making, 150; broom making, 250; canning industry, 35-37, 43; retail selling, 295-296, 298, 305-307; core making, 213; cracker industry, 61- 62; dyeing and cleaning work, 206; food production, 18; garment trades, loi, 125, 134-135; glove making, 148; lamp manufacture, 230; laun- dry work, 161, 164-165, 168, 173, 178, 182, 188, 190, 194, 202-203; mattress industry, 1 50-151, 156-157; metal trades, 228-229; millinery work, r42, 147; neighborhood surround- ings, 318-324, 320; paper box mak- ing, 256; printing trades, 279; screw and bolt workers, 219-220; soap fac- tories, 269, 271; stogy industry, 75, 77, 79-80, 91-92, 97; telephone op- erating, 285 Settlements, Social, 324-332 Sewing classes, 325-331 Sewing trades. See Alteration room; Bindery work; Garment trades; Seam- stresses 437 INDEX Sheet steel work, 227-228 Shirtwaist sewing classes, 325, 329 Single-needle machines — In awning factories, 152; in gar- ment factories, 112, 113; in glove fac- tories, 149; in mattress factories, 155; in millinery establishments, 144 Sizing in broom factories, 252 Skilled workers, demand for, 369, 373 Skirt making classes, 329 Slack season, in various industries — Awning factories, 150-153; cable wrapping, 223; candy factories, 55- 57; canneries, 38; cork factories, 267; dyeing and cleaning, 205; garment trades, 123; lamp factories, 232; laundry work, 186-187; mattress fac- tories, 155; mercantile houses, 297, 304; millinery trade, 146-147; paint factories, 268; printing trades, 280- 281; stogy industry, 91 Slavs— Bistribution in trade groups, 22, 24-27; in canning industries, 33, 43; in enameling work, 226; in the glass industry, 240; in the hinge factory, 224; in laundry work, 165; in metal trades, 228; in paper box factories, 257; in screw and bolt works, 219; in the stogy industry, 77, 83; neigh- borhoods, 320 Sliding scale — In the stogy industry, 85-91; for telegraph operators, 293-294 Slovaks, neighborhoods, 325 Small shops. See Workshops Soap factories, 268-271 Summary and interpretation, 338, 358, 359-360 Social evils of low wages, 347-350 Social life of workers, 139-140, 305- 307, 310-332, 350, 356-357 Social secretaries, 315-316 Social settlements, 324-332 137, 245, 290-292. Social wastes, 96, 332-333 Soho Baths Settlement, 325-326 Soldering, 36, 43, 226 Sorting- Corks, 266, 369; com for brooms, 251, 252; laundry, 188-192; pickles, 35. 37. 39; steel plates, 227-228 South Side section, description, 320, 326 Speed, demand for, 369 Speeding — Effects of, 42, 61-64, 79. 95-97. 119, 219, 235, 236-237, 270, 271, 279, 314-316, 355, 365-366, 373-374; in- ducements for, 65, 85-91, 116, 184- 186, 218, 260, 337, 339, 365-366 Standards of living, 349-350 Standing at work. See Seats for em- ployes Starching, 175-178, 371 Staying machines. See KnowUon- Beach staying machine Steam presses, in laundries, 181-182 Steam-producing occupations, 360- 361 Steel plate workers, 227-228 Stimulation, excessive craving for, 356 Stock-taking, 302 Stogy industry, 18, 19, 24, 41, 75-97 Summary and interpretation, 338, 342, 343. 353. 359. 362-363, 365-366, 369. 373 Stores. See Mercantile houses Strikes, telegraphers', 292-294 Stripping — Tobacco, 77, 83-84, 87-88, 91, 371; in paper box factories, 257 Study clubs, 325 Subsidizing women workers, 305- 307. 314-315. 345-346 Suitcase factories, 271-272 438 INDEX Sunday work — Coil winders, 218; telegraph opera- tors, 293; telephone operators, 289 Sweating system — Characteristics, 23-24; in garment trades, 128-140; in the stogy indus- try. 75-76, 80-84 Sweatshop, defined, 80. See Home industries Tailoring. See Custom tailoring; Gar- ment trades Telegraph operators, 19, 20, 26, 292- 294 Summary and interpretation, 338, 343, ZS^, 369, 372 Telephone operators, 19, 20, 26, 282- 292 Summary and interpretation, 338, 352. 355-356 Ten-hour day, 354-356 Tenure of work, and industrial effi- ciency, 34S, 372-373. 375 Cable wrapping, 223; in candy factories, 57; in canneries, 42; in cracker factories, 61-62; dyeing and cleaning, 205, 206; effects on wages, 345 ; electrical appliance making, 219; in garment trades, 124; in laundries, 167, 182, 187, 189, 193; in mattress factories, 156; in pressrooms, 277; telephone operators, 291-292 Tin-can cutting in canneries, 36, 37, 39 Tin-plate workers, 227-228 Tinware factories, 221-222 Tobacco trades. See Stogy industry Tobacco trust, influence on factory conditions, 92-93 Trade groups — Summary and interpretation, ig, 338-375 Trade schools, 374-375 Trade training. See Training for trades Trade unions. See Labor unions Training for trades and occupations, 307-308, 332, 345, 372-375 Transportation industries, number employed, 20 Treadle pressure machinery — In garment factories, 113; in laun- dries, 182—183; in the printing trades, 278. See also Foot-press work Trimmers — Of bolts, 220; in garment fac- tories, 115; in millinery establish- ments, 144, 145 Trunk factories, 271-272 Summary and interpretation, 338, 342, 352, 358 Trusts. See Tobacco trust Tuberculosis, in dust-producing oc- cupations, 359-360 Tjrpographers. See Printing trades. Unemployment, effects of, 56 Unions. See Labor unions Vacation trips, 326-327 Ventilation standards, 166, 179, 298- 299, 364-365 Wages in various occupations — 314- 315 Awning factories, 153, 338; broom factories, 252, 338; brush factories, 255,338; cable wrapping, 222; candy factories, 46-47. 48-52, 5S-S6. 338; canneries, 38-39, 43, 338; casket fac- tories, 263, 338; core making, 212- 213, 340-341; cork factories, 266- 267, 338; cracker factories, 63, 65, 69-70, 338; dyeing and cleaning, 205, 338; electrical appliance making, 218- 2ig, 343; enameling and japanning, 226; garment trades, iio-iii, 115- 122, 130, 134-138, 338; glass work- ers, 241-246, 338; glove factories, 148-150, 338; hinge factory, 224; 439 INDEX lamp factories, 231-232, 234-238, . 33S> 366; laundry work, 163, t68, ' 170, 173, 174. 177. 183-187, 190, 194, 197, 201-202, 338, 340; mattress fac- ■ tories, 155, 338; mercantile houses, 297, 303-307, 338; metal trades, 229, 338; mica splitting, 214; millinery workers, 143-144, 338; paint fac- tories, 268, 338; paper box factories, 260-261, 338; printing trades, 279- 280, 338, 366; screw and bolt works, 220-221; soap factories, 269-270, 338; sheet and tin plate works, 228; stogy industry, 35-60, 84-91, 338; summary and interpretation, 337— 35°. 375; telegraph operators, 294, 338; telephone operators, 285, 338; tinware factories, 222; trunk fac- tories, 272, 338 Washing — Glassware, 240-241, 371; in laun- dries, 164-168 Welfare work, 312-316 Wire stitching — In paper box factories, 258; in printing trades, 278 Women in trades. See Competition; Conditions oj work; Occupations; Number employed; Dangerous occu- pations; Health; Social Wastes; Racial analysis; Selective forces; Wages Wood's Run Industrial House, 325 Workmanship, demand for, 369, 372-373 Workroom construction. See Build- ings Workshops, in garment trades, 127- 132 Wrapping — Cables, 222-223; candy, 48-50; demand for, 369, 371; merchandise, 296. See also Packing Y. W. C. A. extension work, 316-317, 326-327 440 RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY A CLOSE RANGE INVESTIGATION OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND LABOR IN AN AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT Findings in Six Volumes Edited by PAUL UNDERWOOD KELLOGG COLLEAGUES IN THE FIELD WORK Robert A. Woods, head worker, South End House, Boston, author of '^Americans in Process," "The City Wilderness," etc. John R. Commons, professor. University of Wisconsin, Secretary American Association for Labor Legislation; author of "Trade Union and Labor Problems," Florence K-ELLey, Secretary National Consumers' League, former chief factory inspector, Illinois; author of "Ethical Gains Through Legislation." Lawrence Vehxer, former secretary New York State Tenement House Commission; editor of "The Tenement House Problem." Peter Roberts, secretary for immigration, International Y. M^ C. A.; author of "Anthracite Coai Industry," "Anthracite Coal Com- munities." Alois B. Koukol, secretary Slavonic Immigrant Society. Richard R, Wright, Jr., former head of Trinity Mission in the Black Belt, Chicago. Charles Mulpord Robinson, civic advertiser for Denver, Columbus, Honolulu, etc., author of "Modem Civic Art," "Improvement of Towns and Cities." LiLA Verplanck North, member of faculty. College for Women, Baltimore. Florence Larrabee Lattimore, formerly of Children's Bureau, Seybert Institution, Philadelphia. Elizabeth Beardsley Butler, former secretary, New Jersey Con- sumers* League. John A. Fitch, Fellow, University of Wisconsin; expert New York State Department of Labor. Crystal Eastman, attomey-at-Iaw, secretary New York State Com- mission on Employers' Lia.bi]ity. Margaret F. Byington, formerly of Boston Associated Charities, Red Cross Representative at Monongah Mine Disaster, And Others, SAID OF THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY _' 'The most careful and detailed study of life and labor ever made in this country." — Review of Reviews. "The Pittsburgh Survey is no superficial comment. It dives deep into the lives of common men." — Collier's Weekly. Address CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE lOS EAST 22D STREET, NEW YORK 158 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PU BLICATIONS MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS BY GULICK AND AYRES THE first American work on a subject of the first im- portance to educators, physicians, parents, social workers and members of boards of education. The only source of information as to what medical in- spection is and does, its history, its status abroad and at home, and the means and methods employed. The present status of medical inspection in America is portrayed in detail, and forms and blanks which have proved most valuable in practice are reproduced. Such practical considerations as the number of pupils who may properly be cared for by one medical inspector, the per capita cost of the work, and the most successful forms of administration are here presented in convenient form. Nearly 300 pages dealing with historical, ad- ministrative, financial and statistical phases of the work. The most complete bibliography of the sub- ject yet compiled. Six charts. Reproduction of 64 forms in use in Ameri- can and foreign systems. 31 tables. A thorough discussion of the legal aspects of the movement in England and in each state of the United States. Price, Postpaid, $i.22 CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 105 EAST 22D STREET, NEW YORK 158 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS LAGGARDS IN OUR SCHOOLS A STUDY OF RETARDATION AND ELIMINATION IN CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS BY LEONARD P. AYRES, A. M. FORMERLY GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS FOR PORTO RICO AND CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF STATISTICS OF THE INSULAR DEPART- MENT OF EDUCATION. SECRETARY OF THE BACKWARD CHILD- REN INVESTIGATION OF THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, CO-AUTHOR OF MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS, ETC. A SIXTH of all the children in American city school systems are repeating grades, at an expense to the taxpayers of $27,000,000; large foreign populations do not produce the highest percentage of this "retardation"; physical defects account for only 9 per cent of it; irregular attendance is one of the largest factors; the child who starts youngest makes slowest progress, but on the other hand stays longer in school — these are some of the striking points brought out by Mr. Ayres's study. Laggards In Our Schools is a statistical study of the problems of over-age children, but at the same time it is a readable book, vitally important to school teacher and principal, and of real interest and concern to every parent and taxpayer. In some respects our vaunted public schools are shown to be ineffective. This book puts a finger on one weak point and discusses it so clearly that there is no further excuse for ignoring the weakness or the sensible remedies proposed. ' 'A frank and unprejudiced discussion." — The Survey. ' 'Everyone interested in the welfare of children ought to possess this book." — New York Times. "Mr. Ayres has given life to his figures and character to his dia- grams." — American Industries. "Your bookj 'Laggards in Our Schools,* has rendered a most real service to pubhc education in America." — Wm. H. Maxwell, Supt. of Schools, New York City, Price, Postpaid, $1.55 CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 105 EAST 22D STREET, NEW YORK 158 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO THE SURVEY A JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE PHILANTHROPY THE SURVEY is a weekly magazine for all those who believe that progress in this country hinges on social service: that legislation, city government, the care of the unfortunate, the cure of the sick, the edu- cation of children, the work of men and the homes of wonien, must pass muster in their relation to the com- mon welfare. As Critic, The Survey examines conditions of life and labor, and points where they fail: how long hours, low pay, insanitary housing, disease, intemperance, in- discriminate charity, and lack of recreation, break down character and efTiciency. As Student, The Survey examines immigration, in- dustry, congestion, unemployment, to furnish a solid basis of fact for intelligent and permanent betterment. As Program, The Survey stands for Prevention: Pre- vention of Poverty through wider opportunity and ade- quate charity; Prevention of Disease through long-range systems of sanitation, of hospitals and sanatoriums, of good homes, pure food and water, a chance for play out-of-doors; Prevention of Crime through fair laws, juvenile courts, real reformatories, indeterminate sen- tence, segregation, discipline and probation; Preven- tion of Inefficiency, both industrial and civic, through practice in democracy, restriction of child labor, fair hours, fair wages, enough leisure for reading and recrea- tion, compulsory school laws and schools that fit for life and labor, for the earning of income and for rational spending. EDWARD T. DEVINE - - - EDITOR GRAHAM TAYLOR - ASSOCIATE EDITOR 105 EAST 22D (B-r* on \/r-AOI\/ 158 ADAMS STREET f2.— YEARLY ""=" NEW YORK ^ ■" ll^ilivi^l CHICAGO li ii!'i!ii!!'HPl!iPfflfil'i