Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 220, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1912 — WHERE THE CASH IS COMING FROM [ARTICLE]

WHERE THE CASH IS COMING FROM

Women Work at Night to Finance Roosevelt Campaign. AWFUL FACTORY CONDITIONS Mew York State Investigating Committee Found Pale, Worn Women Work—ing—in Twine —Manufacturing Concern Owned by the International Harvester Company. Awful conditions haye been found jy the state factory investigating committee of New York in the mills of the □sborne Twine company, No. 3, at Aujurn, N. Y., owned by the International Harvester company, of which Jeorge W. Perkins, chief financial backer of Theodore Roosevelt in his scheme to ruin the Republican party. Is a director. “The appearance of the women workers in this plant,’’ said a member if the committee, “was very disheartening. They were worn and pale and their clothes, faces and bands-were covered with oil and hemp cloth. Many of these women, so called, are only children in age and they have to lug huge piles of hemp, weighing 150 pounds each, across the floor, the load in some cases being bigger than the women themselves. In the spinning room, where women are employed alone, to the exclusion of men, who would have to receive higher wages, the clatter of machinery is so frightful that a voice below a shriek cannot be heard. The rooms are dark, though tor no necessary cause, and no attempt is made to remove the dust, which is kept in constant motion by the line shaftings despite the requirements of the law. This dust is breathed continuously by the women, many of whom complain of chronic coughs and colds. The dust and dirt are so thick upon the clothes of the girls that at the noon hour—which in many cases consists of but a few minutes —and at the close of the day’s or night’s labor, the girls have to sweep each other clean with brooms.’’ It is further stated that the custom of working the women all night is permanent, married women being selected for night work, their hours being from sundown until 6:30 o’clock tn the morning. Of 400 women employed In the mills, 200 work all night. When George W. Perkins was asked by a New York Times reporter for an explanation of the conditions In an establishment of which he is one of the directors, he made, In part, the following remarkable reply: “This night work has been' rendered necessary largely because of the government’s perfectly unreasonable attitude toward large corporations, which has made it impossible for managers of large concerns to know whether they were on foot or horseback, whether they could expand their plans to keep up with increasing demands or not.” The late Mark Twain in his brightest moments never uttered anything more grimly humorous than the foregoing explanation by George W. Perkins of why the company of which he is a director Is working women all night under the frightful conditions disclosed by the New York state factory investigating committee. Meantime it ought to be of Interest to millions of Republicans throughout the United States to know where the money comes from to finance Theodore Roosevelt in his campaign of “rule or ruin.”