Norwich bulletin., 1913-03-12
PLEABY STATE HOSPITAL WORKERS
Made Before Legislative Committee by Norwich Committee Shorter Hours Would be Simple Justice They Say Work More Arduous Than That of Mill Operatives

A committee from the employees of the Norwich State hospital appointed at a mass meeting on Monday even ing. and consisting of Messrs. Allison and Arnold. Misses Gilbert and Whalen, appeared in Hartford on Tuesday afternoon before the 1egis- lature committee to present their re- quest for shorter hours of employ ment- Feeling that hospital employees occupy at present an altogether un- just and anomalous position and that more is exacted from them than from any other class of public ser wants and, at smaller pay. the meet ing gave instructions to it's delegates which were embodied in the address they presented to the committed Their statements were not meant to apply only to the Norwich hospital, but ap- piled equally they claimed to the SO,- 900 employees in insane hospitals in the United States.
 The following was the text of their plea before the committee: Gentlemen of the Committee:
 The employees of the Norwich state hospital respectfully urge upon you the following reasons for shorter hours, believing that when you once have your attention called to the present situation, you will see that what we ask for is simply fair treatment, sound business policy, plain justice.
 In almost all other employments the short -sightedness and injustice of long hours has been recognized. We know that long hours have driven boys from the farm, and degraded the status or farm help We know that servant girls have been unjustly treated in this respect-with great injury to them and also to their employers. No factory is now allowed to work its help for any such time as is exacted from us. We are kept in the rear of the procession of human progress-the belated suf-. ferers from old time ideas as to work ing hours-almost the last victims of +I,-A t-%-r ff0o1 Ivy abandoned.
 Need of Relaxation.
 No man or woman can do justice to himself or herself without a proper amount of time for relaxation self culture. pleasure What time is left after fourteen hours of steady duty? We are not machines that can grind along stolidly and unfeeIingly. The wisdom of English and American law makers has laid it down as a fixed principle that it is an economic and social blunder to permit that any per- son shall work in a mill for fourteen hours. Yet what is the strain on-<a mill operative, tending his machine, compared with the strain on a hospi- tai attendant trying to serve the pit iful needs of those unhappy fellow beings whom God has deprived of their reason?
 Trials of Hospital Work.
 To do our work ideally well would tax the head and heart or the pest or human kind. We must feed the help less and clean the filthy; restrain the violent, cheer the Respondent, lay out the dead. We must be patient under torrents of profane and obscene abuse, observant in watching the sick, ready at any moment to be investigated, suspected cross examined, often for accidents in which we are wholly blameless. We must be locked in, for fourteen hours out of every twen- ty-four, with idiots who are Helpless babies, cranks who would drag Job down from his pedestal of patience. human beasts with whom our lives under certain conditions would not be worth a moments purchase. We are asked to combine the courage of the soldier or policeman, the skill of the physician, the gentleness of the nurse, the self control of the philosopher and the self devotion of the saint-all for the wages of a day laborer.
 The fact is that society, through you, gentlemen, asks us to take on our shoulders burdens that belong to the community as whole. greater calamity than insanity can hardly be-