The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-01-11
Women Toll Day and Night to Make One Cent ON Hour

Copyrighted. 1914, by Curtis Brown.)
o N d o N, January 10. = Especially
Down in the reeking West End of
- this richest city in the world, half
starved women and girls whose work.
rooms are squald dens in tenements
drive sewing machines as fast as their
strength will permit from $50 in the
morning until II o'clock at night, all for
the sake of. earning a cent and half,
and sometimes less than that for every
hour they toll In the millionaire city of
Birmingham, wretched mothers, with lit
tie children of three, four and five years
helping them, put hooks and eyes on
cards all day, and sometimes all night,
too, for a wage that averages 10 cents
a weel-3S4 hooks and as many eyes hav-
ing to be carded in order to earn 2 cents.
A woman brush maker from the London
slums recently told select committee
of the House of Commons that she was
paid 13 cents for filling 1000 holes in the
backs of hair brushes. Working hard.
she added. she can fill 200 holes in an
hour, and this woman. who now is 60,
declared that she had shaved at her trade
since her 10th year; that she never had
idled and never had had a single holiday.
Now her sight is falling and her hand is
losing it's cunning. Soon she will have to
go into the workhouse or else starve.
. The cases mentioned are samples of
the horrors of sweating in this country
horrors which committee under Lord
Dunraven, some ten years ago, declared
could hardly be exaggerated" and which
have grown worse in the intervening
time, but which one may hope to see Mt
least mitigated In the near future.
Women like Mary Macarthur, the fa-
nous secretary of the Womens Trade
Union League, whose name is so well
~ 1-r-
working for years to focus public opinion
upon the scandal and have succeeded late
ly in gaining powerful supporters. Per-
haps the most notable of these recruits.
on account of her great wealth, her en-
ergy and her brilliant social position, Is
the American Duchess of Marlborough.
who, now has espoused the cause of the
sweated women of this country whole
heartedly. and recently held at Sunder
land House, her splendid home in May
fair. the most representative and influen-
tial gathering ever got together in this
country. to consider the subject. At this
gathering cabinet ministers, peers and
peeresses, captains of industry and labor
members of Parliament listened to the
stories OF women workers from the lat
ter's own lips, and nearly $1,000 was raised
IN behalf of the organization which is
working tooth and nail to rid Great Bti-
tain of the evil which was described by
LORD Lytton, the grandson of the famous
victorian novelist, as "this dry-rot that
is sapping the strength of the nation
hardly less ardent fighter than the
american duchess in the new campaign
is John Galesworthy, the novelist and
dramatist whose plays. Justice" and
Strlfe. are as well known in the United
states as they are in this country and
VINO, besides inveghing against the new
slavery with as much ferver as did
Charles Dickens against the ..BumbIe
dom of Oliver Twists day and the abuses
or the private schools of the Squeers
type. has just contributed $500 to the funds
OF the National Anti-Sweating League.