The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1906-05-26
COUNT T0[sT0Y Tells
OF RUSSIAN FACTORIES.
Awful Conditions Lead 5000
Women to Lead Incorporate
and Immoral Lives.
Men, Too, Are Obliged to Ere
quently Indulge in Drink
to Keep Up Energy.

To oblige men to work for thirty
seven hours continuously without
sleep, besides being cruel, is also un-. !.
economical. And yet such unecono-
mical expenditure of human lives
continually goes on around us.
Opposite my sons house in Mos
COW, where I have often spent part
of the winter, is a silk factory, built
with the latest technical improve
ments.> About three thousand wo-
men and seven hunCred men work
and live there.
AS l was sitting in my room there
I could plainly hear the unceasing
din of the machinery and from per-
sonal experience-for I have been
there-I know what that din means.
Three thousand women stand for
twelve hours day at the looms amid
deafening roar, winding, unwind-
ing, arranging the silk threads to
make silk stuffs.
, All the women, except those who
have just come from the country,
have an unhealthy appearance. Most
of them lead an Incorporate and m-
moral life.
Almost all, whether married or
unmarried, as soon as a child is born
to them, send it off either to the vii
lage, or to the founding hospital,
where 80 per cent of these children /.
die. For fear Of losing their places
these mothers resume work the next
day or the third day after their con-
finement.
So that during twenty years, to
my knowledge, tens of thousands OF
young, healthy women-mothers-
have ruined and are now running
their lives and the lives of their
children in order to produce velvet
and silk. 80
Cripple Beggar-Once Strong.
1 met beggar one day, a. young
man, on crutches, sturdily built, but
crippled. He used to work as a
laborer, with a wheel-barrow,. but
slipped and injured himself intern
ally. He spent all he had on peasant
women healers and on doctors. ani
has now for eight years been home
less, begging his bread ana complain
ing that God does not send him death.
,z.4aH 6. How many such if1css nlifa-
there are that We neither Know of Of
hardly notice, considering them in-
evitable.
I know men working at the blast
furnace of the Tula foundries who,
to have one Sunday free each too
weeks, will work for twenty-tour
hours-that is, after working all day
they will 60 on working all night.
have seen these men. They all
drink vodka to keep up their energy.
and are thus expending not the in
terest but the capital of their lives.
And what of the waste of lives
among those who are employed on
admittedly harmful work-in cook
ing glass, cartridge, match, sugar,
tobacco and glass factories, in mines
or as gilders?
There are statistics showing that
the average length of life among the
people of the upper classes is fifty
Ave years, while it is twec,y-nine
yearc among the wo7kingmcn.
knowing this. we who take advan-S
tage of labor that cost human lives
should, one would think, not be able
to enjoy a moments peace. But
the fact is that we well-to-do people,
liberals and humanitarians, very sem
sitive to the sufferings not of. people
only hut also of animals, unceasing-
ly make use of such labor and try
to become more and more rich, and
We remain perfectly tranquil.
''Shrug Our Shoulders
Having learned that the women
and girls at the silk factory, living
far from their families, ruin their
own lives and those of their children,
and that the majority of washerwo
men who iron our starched shirts
and of the typesetters who print the
books and papers that while away
our time, get consumption, we only
shrug our shoulders and say that we
are very sorry things should be SO,
but that we can do nothing to alter
it, and we continue with tranquil
consciences to buy silk stuffs, to-
wear starched shirts and to read our
morning paper s.:
We are much. concerned about the
hours of the shopgirls. and still more
about the long hours of our own
children at school. We strictly for
bid teamsters to make their horses
drag heavy loads, and we even orr
ganize the killing of cattle In slaugh-
ter houses so that they may suffer /
as little as possible.
= But how wonderfully blind we be-
come as soon as the question con-
Germs those millions of workingmen,
women and children who perish slow
ly all around us at labor, the fruits q
of which We use for our convenience
and pleasure.
PARoI.ED
FROM STATES PRISON
I LANSING, Mich. May 2s--Thomas
3. McGarry, q former prominent at