The Commonwealth. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1911-1914, 1912-08-09
$4,000 POOR WOMEN EN-
SHAVED IN NEW YORK.
Republican Tweedle-Dee and Democratic
Tweedle-Dum.
written for the Commonwealth by
r. A. Dague.)

WRITTEN Tor the commonwealth Dy
r. A. Dague)
CLYDE II. Tavenner, a well known news
paper correspondent and magazine writ
er of Washington, D. c., in a late pub
lished article, says:
"The Lawrence, Mass, strike revealed
that the men, women and children work
ers in the great wooden mills-the most
highly protected industry of all-receive
SIS, Sc and 81 a week wages for full
time. The Stanley committee showed
that the workers in the blast furnaces
of the steel mills-the second most high
ly protected industry-work II hours a
day, seven days a week and are miser-
ably treated and underpaid.
"And now comes the most damning
revelations of all in the report of the
New York state factory investigation
commission showing that there are $780,
900 women at work in the highly pro-
tected factories of New York cities and
that the average weekly wage of these
women toilers is S.. The proprietors of
the factories told the investigators time
and time again that they use women in
place of men wherever possible, as they
are cheaper and do not strike for better
wages or conditions
"The report of this commission has
been gone over and substantiated by in
dependent investigators paid by a big
New York newspaper Here are some of
the ways the factory and mill owners
protect American workmen':
Boys fingers when cut off by punch
machines in the Woodworking shops are
quoted at 5000 per pair; amputated
singly they are worth $3.50.
''Girls' fingers when crushed by the
machines in box factories are not paid
for, as the machines are run at the risk
of the girls.
"Women, some gray-haired, stand in
the slaughter houses for ten hours daily
stripping pork and making sausages.
'"Women, some young and others old,
Wolh dG COle-l manning III Ihe Steel anu
iron foundries while they breathe carbon
monoxide, poisonous gas, liberated by
the ovens in the same room.
women polish marble with corrosive
acids in many of the marble shops. This
work would tax the strength of ro-
bust man.
rttIa iTf,Tp lot alK "
before and two weeks after they give
birth to children that they may support
the little ones after they come into the
world; they cannot afford to lay off.
"Alany thousand children are legally
employed long hours doing the work of
adults; children can do some classes of
work as fast as men, and they work
cheaper, for So or "a a week; in one
factory the entire output is made by
children, the only adult in the place is
the owner
"Men, women and children are worked
to the injury of their health under the
paee-setting, speeding up and other fea-
lures of what is known as Scientific
shop method systems"
And now in the face Of these damning
facts the national disgrace of having two
millions of slave children in the mills,
and vast numbers of unemployed men,
and the cost of living going higher and
still higher, and strikes and labor
troubles increasing everywhere, with
poverty and insanity and crime multi
plying, what do the republican and dem
ocratic parties propose to do about it.?
Nothing absolutely nothing that they
have not been proposing to do for the
past fifty years. The republican party
again prescribes a tariff as a cure or
pauacea for an the troubles mentioned.
The democratic party owlishly declares
that the tariff is the mother Of trusts