Okolona messenger. (Okolona, Miss.) 1900-current, 1913-11-27
Heavy Manual Labor
Rarely Kills Women
By MRS. BARBARA CALPIN

ical condition of the person, her training and experience.
The great majority Of working women, high up or low down on the
ladder of fortune, choose their work, for no woman is drafted into any
special line 81 service. Her choice, Of course, is limited by her education,
her ambition and her good sense. Her strength and ability should deter
NINE the severity Of the labor. No employer should be allowed to give
a woman work who is physically unable to perform it.
The question would seem to indicate those who do manual labor in
manufactures Of various kinds. With all the careful restrictions which
the laws and the labor organizations place about the worlds workers it
would seem that none of them need injure themselves. In the days Of our
grandmothers the question of a woman working too hard scarcely entered
the mind of any human being, yet the mothers Of large families with small
means probably worked harder and for longer hours than the factory girl
OF today. The woman of the olden times worked in unheated homes,
except fer the kitchen fire, her lights were Of only one candle power and
her hours were from sunrise until after the chldrens bedtime. when she
did up the odd household matters.
Women who do manual labor. as a rule, ar not interested in their
work; it is a sort of "watch-the-clock" duty. Young women, especially,
look upon their daily routine as a grind, an injustice, and think only
of the closing hour, when they can go to some hall Of amusement, staying
late into the night, using up all their reserve energy and making them
selves unfit for the next days duties, and when illness follows the blame
is often placed on overwork and not on careless everyday.
Women by the state law re not allowed to work in establishments
more than ftty-four hours a week, but this is not nearly as long as the
same number of housewives in moderate circumstances are obliged to keep
at the round of household affairs. The latter does not even have her
noon hour without interruptions and her days work is not completed at
the strike Of six.
Women in manufactures choose to go there for various reasons, and
though the work may be hard, the buildings not pleasing, yet they have
no business care at the end Of the day, and as a rule are no. injured phys.
icany by what they do. Of course exceptions prov. the rule and a small
proportion of women are offered work suitable only for men because they
will do it for less pay and necessity may occasionally force them to
take such places.
One reason why women are placed in such seemingly unfit working
conditions is that they come from foreign countries, where the poorer
classes are used to manual labor of the most trying kind, and when they
seek for a means Of livelihood in the new country the pay offered is SO
much greater than that which they received previously they do not ques-
ton conditions, but eagerly accept them. Doubtless some women are
doing work which is too hard for them, but they are reluctant to give il
up. Some women are able to do heavier work than some men, yet we
do not hear much about men working too hard.
Work, even heavy manual labor, rarely kills, but worry improper food
and careless regard of health often lead to lingering illness and death.
If the laws we already have on our
statute books were rightly enforced n
we should hear little complaint of /La.Z N1Z[.<
overwork.