Making Both Ends Meet Part 16

In looking back on this past week, it seems impossible it could have been true. Watching these women has been like seeing animals tortured.

"Such a day of long hours as this generally follows some large festivity.

The Hudson-Fulton celebration, or the automobile show, or a great charity ball, or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are the occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a lavish use of beautiful table linen, to be dried and mangled and folded next day by the laundry girls underground.

"All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is produced, not by ill-willed persons who are consciously oppressive,--indeed, as will be seen, much of it was produced by sheer social good will and persons of most progessive intent,--but simply by the unregulated conditions of the laundries."

IV

Such, then, is the account of what women workers give and what they receive in their industry in the commercial, hotel, and hospital laundries of New York.

It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of the laundry conditions observed are due to the greed of employers. These features seem to be due rather to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures in the New York laundry business are frequent. Even in the short time elapsing between the Department of Labor's inspection of laundry machinery, early in February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six establishments that had improperly guarded machinery, made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of these twenty-six firms had collapsed. Miss Westwood found some of the same unfortunate features that characterized commercial and hotel laundries in existence in hospital laundries, which are quite outside trade.

After the New York City Consumers' League had received the inquirers'

report, it determined that the wisest and most effective course it could take for securing fairer terms for the laundry workers would be an effort for the pa.s.sage of the following legislation:[37]--

First: That an appropriation be made for additional factory inspectors.

Second: That no woman be employed in any mechanical establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State for more than ten hours during any one day.

Third: That the laundries of hotels and hospitals be placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor.

A New York State law now exists providing for proper sanitation and plumbing and clean drinking water for employees in factories and laundries.[38] A law exists requiring that work-rooms where steam is generated be so ventilated as to render the steam harmless, so far as is practicable.[39]

A law exists requiring the provision of suitable seats for the use of female employees in factories and laundries; and this law should cover the installation of seats for great numbers of workers now standing.[40]

The establishment of juster wages, as well as the observance of all these laws, and of the sixty-hour-a-week law, might be most practically furthered by the existence of a trade-union in the laundries, backed by stronger governmental provision for inspection.

V

It has been said that the unfortunate features observed in the laundry business in New York seemed to be due primarily to lack of general regulation. In February 1911, the Laundrymen's a.s.sociation of New York State (President, Mr. J.A. Beatty), the Manhattan Laundrymen's a.s.sociation (President, Mr. J.A. Wallach), and the Brooklyn Laundrymen's a.s.sociation (President, Mr. Thomas Locken) conferred with the Consumers'

League, and asked to cooperate with it in obtaining additional factory inspection, the legal establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, and the placing of hotel and hospital laundries under the jurisdiction of the State Labor laws.

The League agreed to print on a published white list the names of the laundries conforming within a year to a common standard determined on at the conference. These are the main points agreed upon and endorsed.

WHITE LIST STANDARD FOR LAUNDRIES

Physical Conditions

1. Wash rooms are either separated from other work-rooms or else adequately ventilated so that the presence of steam throughout the laundry is prevented.

2. Work, lunch, and retiring rooms are apart from each other and conform in all respects to the present sanitary laws.

3. All machinery is guarded.

4. Proper drains under was.h.i.+ng and starching machines, so that there are no wet floors.

5. Seats adjusted to the machines are provided for at the

a. Collar ironer feeder.

b. Collar ironer catcher.

c. Collar dampener feeder.

d. Collar dampener catcher.

e. Collar straightener.

f. Collar starcher feeder.

g. Collar starcher catcher.

h. Handkerchief flat-work feeder and catcher.

i. Folders on small work.

j. Collar shaper.

k. Collar seam-dampener.

l. Straight collar shaper.

6. The ordinances of the city and laws of the State are obeyed in all particulars.

Wages

1. Equal pay is given for equal work irrespective of s.e.x, and no woman who is eighteen years of age or over and who has had one year's experience receives less than $6 a week. This standard includes piece-workers.

Hours

1. The normal working week does not exceed 54 hours, and on no day shall work continue after 9 P.M.

2. When work is continued after 7 P.M. 20 minutes is allowed for supper and supper money is given.

3. Half holidays in each week during two summer months.

4. A vacation of not less than one week with pay is given during the summer season.

5. All overtime work, beyond the 54 hours a week standard, is paid for.

6. Wages paid and premises closed on the six legal holidays, viz: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year's Day, the Fourth of July, Decoration Day and Labor Day.

The Laundrymen's a.s.sociation of New York State appeared with the Consumers' League at Albany at the last legislative session, and repeatedly sent counsel to the capitol in support of a bill defining as a factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power. The a.s.sociation's support was able and determined. The bill has now pa.s.sed both houses.

Such responsible action as this on the part of the commercial laundry employers of the State of New York, Brooklyn, and Manhattan is in striking contrast with the stand taken by the Oregon commercial laundry employers in the matter of laundry employees' legal hours of industry.

VI

The const.i.tutionality of the present New York law concerning the hours of labor of adult women in factories, laundries, and mechanical establishments was virtually determined by the Federal decision in regard to the Oregon Ten-Hour Day Law for working-women.

About three years ago the State of Oregon enacted a law of practically the same bearing as the New York law on the same subject, though superior in that it limited the hours of labor of adult women in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries to ten hours during the twenty-four hours of any one day, where the New York law, of the same provision in other respects, limits the hours of labor of adult women to sixty in a week.

The laundries and the State of Oregon agreed to carry a test case to the Federal Supreme Court to determine the new law's const.i.tutionality.