The evening world., 1918-02-21

ssth Street, to ask her how far women ought to go in war work. As
the physician OF many New York women and the medical adviser for
me that DR.. Hston vas qualified TO discuss the possible physic,l strain
upon our women of the new industrial burdens which the var is
forcing them to assume.
NHANY Of the organizations of the City Federation OF women's Clubs
ll are protesting vehemenuy against the Brown bill, now pend
ing before the Legislature In Albany, which would suspend during
the war all the laws enacted for the protection OF women and children
Mrs Hnda Muhlhauser Richards, Chief of the Womens Division of the
Department of Labor, has questioned the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Com
panys policy of keeping women conductors OF ther zee ior Twelve
hours a day, and sometimes until or 2 o'clock in the morning
The womens Trade Union League of New York also Is exercised
about the conditions of employment. moral and physical or women On
street cars and in messenger service.
But Dr.. HaltOn believes women may do pretty much anything men
may do, provided hours and working conditions arr properly safe
guarded, and provided the women have not to do another days work
at home after leaving shop or field o r railroad yard.
u\yJoMEN should have ar eighthour day" she declared earnestly,
w "and yet so many women are working a sixteenhour day.
81 have had a great deal OF experience among the poor women OF
New York. women VINO. even before the war, were Iaborng in shops.
And I have come to the conclusion that the reason why the babies OF
so many of these women are poisoned before birth by fatigue toxins
1. sinplv because the mothers must cook, wash. clean aud la"or for
hours in the tenement before they go to work in the morning and
after they come home at night. 1t is the strain of their double job
which does the harm.
mother get dinner as soon as they get their things oil at night, while
their brothers nnger in the poOlrOom at the corner The working day
OF the woman employed outside the home can be shortened legally, but
what re We going to do about the household toll? The old adage Is
as true to-day as 1t ever was
Wsmsn work work * . ns,s ~ s ,S s?"'
q A RE women the physical equals OF mem" I asked Dr. Ia.ton.
- Women are superior to men, physically, in everything ex
cept tensile strength" she replied. Women should be exempted from
work which requires a great deal of heavy lifting and showing and
uCuhdHu1 oNltitg hhlh ANN'' A"H win -" H' '''''AhHF wv
example. and loading coal Is not suitable for women. But they work
more quickly, more dex@rously, than men, and their endurance and
nerves ar stronger
The noise and confusion of a munitions factory have no terrors
for the woman who has had to spend hours daily with three or four
small and noisy children. see no reason why women should not be
good conductors on railways. A healthy, normal woman can stand on
her feet for eight hours a day without hurting her. Through the ages
she has evolved, IS surely as man, into a twolegged animal.
Young women between twenty and thirty can operate elevators
without injuring themselves And surely acting as engine wipers or
even handling baggage is no harder work for a woman than scrubbing
the floors OF great Office buildings or doing a tenement house washing
"f course, the gallant AntiSunrage Senate Leader, Eon Brown.
and his friends, must be prevented from having abrogated all the in
dustrial safeguards women and children have won in this State. Girls
must not 90 to work too young. In a labor investigation in England
years ago women in the mines who had been BENDING over and push,
postursl defects that they could not stand upright and were almost
fourfooted animals again.
Farm work is fine Tor women, provided they do not keep the
awful hours imposed upon the average farmers wife, She works so
much harder than her husband
THEN had TO tell Or. Ialton OF the farmer in my own small Now
l Hampshire village who blandly used to tell his friends "Wou
I've buried three dear wives, and, praise the Lord, III bury a fourth"
She insisted that story must go in this one. For a last question
asked her II she thought the morals of our future wives and mo,bor.
we're going to be injured or subjected 70 undue strain in their new 10Th.
THAT cry is a piece OF male hysteria," she laughed at emsnates
from the men who have an individual or a group fear that somehow
they're going TO lose us. It was considered frightfuIIy immoral sIvt,
or course. women al do mems work Who named it that, ANYWAY,
The Lord didn't"