The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1913-04-06

required for a worker to qualify as a
skillful chocolate dipper. Candy
making is an occupation that calls for
some exposure also, owing to the diff
fcrent temperatures in which various
kinds of candy must be handled. The
manufacturer of a high grade candy
in Philadelphia found himself almost
boycotted one winter because of the
death of a girl from exposure and cold
While at work in his supposedly first
class establishment. In order to Sc
cure the desired consistency in his
cream fondant, it was required to be
moulded by the girls in a refrigerator
like room where the temperature was
kept just above freezing. The girls
spent long hours in this cold room GO
ing to it directly from the overheated
chocolate dipping room. The death
of one girl and the ruined health of
several compelled him to change his
system. --s
More than half the employees, of the
great American cracker factories are
m and this, too, includes much
unpleasant work. The average cracker
factory is an interesting place to visit
and it's cleanliness is almost universal.
The work of the women requires little
special talent, only a monotonous rep
clifton of some process, which may be
passing the dough under the cutting
machine. icing the fancy crackers or
packing the finished crackers for dis
tribution. All the mixing of the dough
is done by men who know the formulate
of the combinations upon which that
particular factory bases it's hopes of
success. Two or three men can mix
the dough for several hundred work.
ers and they are the only skilled en-
ployes in the whole factory. The mix
ing is done in huge watts in which the
dough is manipulated by a large mixer
with great metal blades resembling a
windmill in appearance. The dough
is rolled and put into the cracker
making machine Which stretches al
most across the big room. The first
roller stamps the pattern upon it, the
second roller shakes flour upon it to
prevent the raw dough from sticking
and the third roller marks the lines
to be broken for the separate crackers.
A girl is in change of each of these
rollers. The heat in a cracker factory !
sometimes is o~ver-poWering and the
LIN VI tiS, bouSh liidhtS Vie girls letl 3
faint until they have become accus-
toned to it.
At least $4,000 women are engaged
in the tobacco industries. Some of
them work in factories and others
take work into tenement homes where
they roll cigarettes of high grade even
when suffering from illnesses which
would make it impossible for them to
go out to work. In Pittsburgh the man
ufacture of stogies is almost entirely
confined to m In a tobacco fac
tory the drying of tobacco is gener-
ally done by mln, many of them too
old and feeble to stand active work
but they have had wears of experience
which enable them to know the quail
ity Of Tobacco by the way it feels.
Women are employed in the stripping
which is the least skilled labor. They
also do the packing and the shaping !
and trimming of the cigars by ma
chinery. The rate of speed required
from the girl packers in a tobacco fac
is ruinous to their nervous sys-
tens.
In the tobacco stripping plants of
negro girls and women are
successfully employed. The use of
negro women labor in factories was
many times attempted and always
failed until the tobacco stripping fac
tories introduced music. The women
work in a huge room, eight or nine
hundred of them. A piano is Mount
I'd or a platform in the center of the
'oom. Players take turns of a half
playing, a quartet sings, and a
a ANTON from, TINA IN tin,n Lands fho
Whole chorus of nearly a thousand
'oices in singing plantation songs and
I'D slaVe chanties. AS these girls are.
by the amount of work done :,
heir wages We're greatly increased
Yhen the Introduction of music aug