The San Francisco call., 1898-04-03

looking up, as if each were engaged in a neck and neck race. I saw no one lettering. AS the hours went by and the shadows CT -pt farther out into the washroom the faces became more and more tired and drawn. The whole room was alive with machinery, and the whirling wheels and belts and the deafening noise made me dizzy as I walked between the machines to where I was to help shake out bedspreads, pile after pile. as fast as I could. Wet bedspreads are heavy. My head ached. It was as if time had forgotten to go on and I was a machine. An old man came in, walked about and looked sharply at everything. AS he stood rubbing his hands, glOating over the piles of linen and noisy machines, and men and women, counting his profits, a feeling of rage came over me that he could hold us there in slavery-that weak old man. To him went the profits, to us the deadening toll. I wondered that no one hurt him, but none seemed even to notice him as he stood there.
 The white, unhealthy faces of the girls told their own tale of working from a. m. to g or 9:30 at night, as they were doing until some weeks ago. Then the girls sent word to the Com missioner of Labor. The hours have been shortened since but 1t has been a
 
 increase the amount to be got out and then? Only in the mangle-room, how ever have tie hours been improved. There unremitting vigilance keeps the girls at the highest tension for sixty two hours a week at the rate of about cents an hour, and at work which makes them worn-out, old women at 20 years.
 In other departments we found eirls working seventy-one hours a week. Ev- erythingis arranged with a view of profit to the corporation from the artesian wells to the regulation whereby one who earns 35 cents per day receives 15 cents if she work half a day and loses 20 cents irrespective of which half she may work or lose. The sick list is an eloquent commentary on the system. Girls are always absent for sickness, losing their pay Those who work after hours receive no extra pay.
 The room allotted to me as my sleep ing room received it's entire supply of air for three through a transom over the door into the hall. Two beds nearly filled the room. No springs under the filthy mattresses, no pillowcase on the dirty straw pillow, and the bedding in a condition indescribable, made me de- eide that I would go home to sleep, as very many of the employees do. There are not rooms enough for all.
 
 cluded in the wages.
 The room was furnished with two chairs, no tables, no bureau, no closet. An old man has charge of the oil with which to fill the lamps, but his ire quent absences are so many cents on the right side for the company. So nothing is said, and the employees either buy their own oil or sit in the dark. Men and women take care of their own rooms and even make their own bed linen when they can get it, which is not always.
 asked MT. Biggy of the United States Laundry what they counted as the cost per capita to board the em- ployes. He told me s5 a month, and at the United States it is optional whether the employe has or has not board. If he boards himself difference of $5 is made in his wages. Not so at the San Francisco. Nearly all of the girls have homes which they help support out of their slender wages, and this $5 or a third of their entire wages would be a great help at home.
 The quarters of the men are adja- cent to those for the girls. There is no discipline, no restriction put upon either; and such an atmosphere can not but be deteriorating to a young girl whose sole home is an airless room during the Sunday hours when she Is not at work.
 In not one instance did I see any pro- vision whatever for the comfort or con- venience of the employees In the en. tire laundry there Is not chair, though in other .laundries we found girls sit. ting at their work and doing 1t quite