The Washington herald., 1920-01-31
New York City
BY o. o. Merntyre

New York. Jan. se.--somk high
domed professor with hoot-owl
glasses is continually coming along
with some invention that throws
East Side factory girls out of em-
ployment. No sooner do these chill
dren of the tenemcnts learn Q trade
than along comes some machine
that can do the work In less time
with a single operator.
| For years hundreds of girls have
bcea employed In the pharmaceu-
ticaI trade, tying strings on various
medicinal and drug bottles, 1t took
them some time to become pro-
fcieut, as the work Is difficult and
they were paid by the amount of
work done.
Now 1t Is announced that a ma
chine has been invented to tie
strings-not only tying them in q
knot but securing them with .
metal seal-and as a result scores
of factory girls are to be thrown
out of employment. II Is esti-
mated that in the pharmaceutical
trade alone. more than 100000. 900
medicinal bottles are used annually.
One of the machines does the
work of fifty girls, and when the
factory making them catches up
with its orders hundreds Of more
girls will be trodding the factory
districts scanning for the Girl
Wanted" signs. -s
But the factory girl. in her own
parlance. should worry" She
seems always to go gayiy from one
job to another and by patronizing
the Essex and Grand street shops.
looks as well dressed as her coun-
terpart on Fifth avenue.
1t used to be that the yellow
journals depicted the factory girl
as pallid little creature with
spindly legs picking crusts of
bread out of a garbage pail. But
that is old stuff.
The factory girl today makes
sometimes as much as the chorus
girl. and she works the whole year.
She reads zippy stories and knows
boudoir and drawing room patter
just as well as her sisters born in
the purple. In fact. there Is a rec
ord of factory girls in Brooklyn
going to work In little town cars.
SO, while the inventors are try
ing to drive them out of business
with their new notions, the factory
girls seem to be able to fit to new
and better jobs. and the demand
increases daily.
New York is city of magnif-
cent distances. The commuters are
persons to whom time and space
have no terrors. provided trains
are running regularly.
There are those who sleep in
Poughkeepsie or on the banks of
the Delaware River who earn their
money in New York and spend the
rest of the twenty-four hours of
every day of the week but Sunday
going back and forth from home to
office and from Office to home.
They are habitues of the smok-
ing car and morning and evening
bridge game. And they truly
think they are leading the only
life. Perhaps they are. Who
knows? 1t is a curious thing that
there were men living not so long
ago who had vivid recollections of
the time when most New York
brokers. bankers. lawyers and
business men in general could walk
downtown and uptown without the
slightest exertion.
The period is not so remote when
everybody who was anybody was
sure to see everybody else who
was anybody promenading on the
broad pavement on the west side
OF broadway of a pleasant Sunday
afternoon between Trinity Church
and st. Paul's. That was the time
when young men-so centralized
was the town-were able to call on
every girl they had danced with
the night before and to make the
rounds afoot.
A famous dining club at the orig
maj Deimonico's was formed by
the leading business men who
could not find time to "go away
uptown to the homes north of
chambers street" on packet days.