The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-02-07
THE WORKING
 WOMEN OF A CITY

OTHER LARGE COMMERCIAL CENTERS - RESULTS OF AN ELABORATE STUDY IN THE SMOKY CITY'' MADE PUBLIC Paul U. Kellogg, Director of the Pittsburg Survey.
 Exclusive Service The Survey Press Bureau.1
 | A study of 22000 in four hundred factories-the first general survey of the women employing trades ever con-
 ducted in an American city-has been
 made public. This elaborate investi- gation of the working women of the steel district resulted from the Pitts bug Survey of a year ago, and the findings of that survey are now be- ing collected into six volumes whose purpose ~is to gauge the trend of l modern industry.
 Elizabeth B. Butler who made the inquiry as to women and the trades, . lived in what is known as the ''hill dis tricts" of Pittsburg, but her investi- cations carried her everywhere from the candy factories of 'the PoiDt,' to the glass factories and metal works l in the outskirts, and to the homes of
 miners wives who do out work for the garment manufacturers. The major elements in the conditions described are probably true of every other com mercial center of the size of Pittsburg. She does not merely picture the worst swea tShOps or the model factories"
 which are so familiar in magazine articles, but presents general view
 of the possibilities which work at
 wages opens up to this generation of
 working girls in Pittsburg.
 These women range in years from IA to 50. Ten percent of them (2,300 women) live away from their homes. Less than two per cent are in touch
 with social agencies for recreation
 such agencies ss Jane Adams has pro- claimed indispens7 ble. English speak ing girls hold the positions for which a few months training and some in- telligence are needed. Italian girls, hindered by tradition scarcely figure, though in a limited circle of industries immigrant Jewesses hold positions be- side girls of native birth. Inferior and | unpleasant work is yielded to Slavic, immigra ntS, and these newcomers, l somestimes by sheer physical strength
 end sometimes by personal indiffer-
 ence and low standard, compete on
 a basis of lower wages for mems work
 which otherwise would never have
 been given girls to do. The place of i the Slav is that of the woman who is | fighting her way.
 i Women workers in Pittsburg fall | into great groups of occupations-food production, needle industries, stogy the metal trades. Little by little as 1 industries passed out from the home, | the women followed them. Others have gone farther into industries which had left the home so long that the line of descent seemed broken, if it ever existed. They have gone into cork and soap and paint factories.
 They have learned to grind and melt and paint the edges of glass ware, to bore and rivet metal, to sort the corn for brooms, to put the threads on screws and bolts on nuts. to wind coils for electric motors and to tear apart the sheets of tin still faint red from the furnace heat, Into these industries Miss Butler followed them.
 Tn an exclusive sense, these women make up new labor force such as employers of an earlier generation would not have hired for they had not l the instrum ents to use it economically | nor would they have had social sane tion for doing so. This report brings together for the first time the experi- ence of employers sin many Pittsburg industries. It supplies record of la bor adjustments and technique in fac | tory work such as neither mechanical nor business training affords the in- diyidual manager. It is a long step in adv9 nee in supplying the need for an interchange of such working knoWl- edge. For, if a conference were called
 of those who have dealings with work ing girls in Pittsburgh, there are in the city pickle canners. cracker mak- CTS, electrical manufacturers laundry owners, department store managers, a good company of them, who could con- | H,~s1~ 1o%1 n6c np1d IoVIn ny1o if combined into a standard, wou d put a new meaning into the days
 work-a standard which physicians, | educators and social economists no 1 less than the general public could set their seal upon; as today they cannot | in conscience nor in thrift.
 The report states that many of these
 women are put to work at wages be- | low the cost of subsistence, for hours | longer than the measure of their strength, at ill-constructed machines
 which cannot but injure their health, at processes which must handicap the development of both body and mind.
 Something over three-ffths earn less than ST a week; one-ffth are earning $7 to $8; and the remaining fifth $S or | over. From mid-August to the first of | December in the stogy trade. they work from two to three evenings a ! week; laundries customarily work Fri Qdy nlSnlS uIllli LGIl, GlcNGii dLu lWSlNS o'clock in order to return goods to customers Saturday, and overtime in | all departments before every holiday. l Cases of ironers are cited who worked ! until 1:30 and a. m. The Christmas
 trade involves night work in the paper box factories for three months; and in | the confectionery trades from Octo-
 Der 18th to December 18th; and the women are known to work 75 to 80 a week, which is in excess of the Penn sylvania legal limit. Such overtime not | only affects health, but lessens pro- | ductively.
 Again take the ma tier of insanitary | work rooms. Tn the rapid development of the factory trades in America. man | ufacturers have only begun to devise plants with reference to the health of | the workers as well as with reference 1 to output Tn but two of the 28 com- mercial laundries in Pittsburg, is the wash room on the upper floor. In 26, rising steam and excessive heat not
 only cause discomfort in the other de- partments, but tend to induce diseases of the respiratory organs. Tobacco dried Tn racks in many of the Stoey swea tshops. makes the air heavy with nicotine, fills the room with fine dust and increases the danger. always pres- ent in the tobacco trades, from tuber- culosis. In the core rooms of foundries and ma chine shops, the custom of placing annealing ovens in the rooms where the cores are made, causes ex- cessive heat in the work room and fills the air with black dust.
 The progressive manufacturer who