Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1914 — WOMEN MILL SLAVES [ARTICLE]

WOMEN MILL SLAVES

Ute of Drudgery in English Factories Shown. Government Report on Nearly 90(M)00 Factoriee and Workshops la Which More Than 4000,000 Men, Women and Children Labor. ' London. —Some unhappy stories of factory life are contained In a blue-book-which gives the result of a year's work by the government's staff of 217 men and women factory inspectors. Nearly 300,000 factories and workshops in . which more than 5,000,000 men, women and boys and girls labor, were under inspection. It is stated that the number of fatal accidents increased from 1,260 to 1,309 last year, and other accidents increased from 154,972 to 176,352. Last year was a period of trade activity, and better trade means more accidents. Miss Tracey, one of the inspectors, Sfleacrlbes the effect on girls of the succession of long days in a factory. “A well-known man in a Lancashire town,” she says, “was telling me only the other day about how he would wake in the morning to the clatter of the girls’ and women’s clogs as they went past his house at half-past five in the dark on their way to the mills. “He had exceptional opportunity of judging of the effect of the long day's work, and he told me how bonny children known to him lost their color and their youthful energy in the hard drudgery of this daily toil, how the girls would fall asleep at their work, and how they grew worn and old before their time. “We see it for ourselves and the women tell us about it. Sometimes one feels that one dare not contemplate too closely the life of our working women, it is such a grave reproach.” Miss Tracey gives an account of a day in the life of one of these women: “She told me she left home at 5:15 a. m., walked two and a half miles to the 'work factory, stood the whole day at her work and at 6, sometimes later, started to walk home again, and then had to prepare her meal, mend, and do her housework. This case is only typical of thousands of women workers.” Some of the women and girls have to handle heavy weights. Miss Whitworth, another inspector, found a delicate woman helping another to carry 53-pound weights. “Is it right I should have to do this kind of work and only have eight shillings a week?” asked the woman. ▲ case of a woman who worked as a jute spinner until 6 p. m. on the night her baby was born is mentioned. Another woman returned to the factory 11 days after the birth of a child. Women in a laundry had to work from 6 a. m. until midnight on Friday and from 6 a. m. to 9 p. m. on the next day.. In a Midlands bakehouse a boy of seventeen was at work from 1 a. m. until 1 a. m. the next day, being allowed only an hour or two for sleep. In a jam factory women and girls were kept at work from 6 a. m. until 9 p. m. four or five days in the week.