The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-08-27
GIRLS WILL TAKE
PART IN PARADE
Chicago Labor &c ebration VII
Be Great Event
HITTING AT THE ICE TRUST
Use of Cocaine is Condemned Heartily
and 1t is Said That Use of Stuff
Has Perceptibly Increased
in Chicago.
HITTING AT THE ICE TRUST

in Chicago.
Chicago, August 26-(SpeciaI) Five
hundred girls and women will particle
pate in the Labor Day parade on Sep
TENDER 6, as representatives of "a organ
lied bodies of Chicago women workers.
In occupations ranging from vaudeville
artists and corset-makers to teachers,
stenographers and horsenail makers, and
will embody a fesh-and-blood plea for
motherhood and homes, for babies, and
for the protection of women. Earnest
ness of purpose of these girls and women
finds no possible wet blanket in the Prob
able prospect of walking over the pur-
posed route of four miles because OF the
scarcity of union transfers and the diff
Guilty and expense in securing nutomo-
bles. Mrs Raymond Robins, president
of the Woman's National Trades Union
League and also president of the Wom-
ans Trades Union League of Chicago:
Miss Mary e. Mcdowell of the University
of Chicago Settlement House and the
vice president of the Chicago branch;
Miss Emma Steghagen, the secretary, and
Miss Agnes Nestor, the treasurer. will
direct the woman's section of a parade
that will comprise over $4,000 men and
Will add high light with its pennauts
OF white and gold and its bright-eyed
girls to the grim phalanxes Of the toilers.
Inc picturesque maypole of last year.
In which dozens of white CARRIED women
mounted in a tallyho held the ends of a
canopy of vari-colored streamers bearing
such notices as Equal Pay for Equal
Work." NO Child Labor" Educate, Agi-
tate. Organize" will be repeated with
an additional cry, Fellowship Is Life"
experimenting the eight aphorisms of last
year. The Chicago league founded in 1904
by Miss Jane Adams, Mrs. Charles Hen
rotin, Miss Mary e. Mcdowell and other
pioneer champions of the woman who
works, is but u months the Junior of the
National body, which made its debut in
1898 under the guidance of two delegates
from Great Britain. To the crusades
waged by this organization is largely
due the progress of Industrial emancipa-
ton for women in Illinois Fair wages,
decent working conditions and shorter
hours, above all the eght-hour day,
are the present demands of the league,
which even now is preparing for another
onslaught upon the Illinois state legis-
lature, arguing the 4S-hour week for wom-
en- workers Adequate protection of ma
chinery and the employment of steam
and electric power whenever possible are
further subjects for agitation with surgi-
cal statistics ably recruited as a forci5le
campaign lever. Examination of medi-
cal reports and summaries reveals an
appallingly high registration of girls and
women untitled for, wife and motherhood
and home-making and permanently
broken in health as Il consequence of
various criminally exhaustive industrial
occupations carried on under conditions
that should be judicially termed Illegal
Hitting the ice trust between the eyes |
with the brass knuckles of applied scien-
tific invention. and saving Chicagos slum
babies in the face of the unequalled adj
vances in the price of ice and the milk
rise this season, and the consequent
forced economies and uniced and soured
milk for many babies, has been sue
thermos or vacuum bottles as ice-elimin-
ators, in the day nursery of the Esther
Falkenstein Settlement House, located in
the pitiably poor Ghetto district This is
the section Of the city where p per cent
of the infantile deaths in July occurred
this year as against 81 per cent last year,
though but q per cent of the city's pop
ulation dwells there. During the second
week in August in this district the baby
the preceding week, an increase even
above the heavy mortality record of the
same period last year. individuals in
this quarter nave queer ideas of economy,
just like the municipal fathers" declares
Mrs. Esther Falkenstein, head resident of
the settlement "They appear to think it's
cheaper to buy collins than ice or refrig- |
orators or even milk-saving devices. In |
creased cost of living and stationary wage !
scales have cut off from many what are !
the sanitary comforts and common con-
veniences of lfe Destitution near our |
creche is as severe in the summer as in |
the winter. One poor girl barely 20, de-
serted by her husband before her babe |
was born, brings the child, now months |
young mother, deaf and famed from her |
husbands brutalities, goes out to clean by |
the day We have from 90 to 30 babies |
daily though the creche has been opened |
only a month, and our room is limited. |
The icing problem was a grievous tax |
upon us the first two weeks but by shaw |
ing down this expense we have more |
money for food; can spend more for the |
milk and less for the means to keep 1t |
sweet and that's an item with milk adj |
vancing cent quart! For every penny |
is precious here in the Ghetto where |
babies die like rats in pestilence, where |
the undertaken is as well known as the !
postman and death turks at half the |
meals the bottle babies SIP
Against the nightmare of cocaine more |
than all the growing drug addictions of |
the United States is indictment returned |
by the Currier commission in third re- |
port by Charles W. Collins and John Day |
in a Chicago magazine, Everyday Life" !
in which this statement is made: !
"Though the youngest and last born of |
the furies of dope cocaine is the most |
pernicious The early Spanish conquerers |
found that the natives of certain districts |
in Peru and Bolivia were addicted to |
chewing the leaves of a small shrub |
called coca or 'cuca,' in order to counter |
act hunger, fatigue and the difficulty of |
breathing in the high attitudes They |
were a degenerate race, but under the |
stimulation of coca-chewing they were |
capable of amazing feats of endurance |
But now ii would be boon to the world !
il the manufacture of cocaine could bs. |