The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-03-02

working day begins at seven in the
morning and lasts until five in the
afternoon with only half-hour
for lunch. For nine hours labor,
in a shop without windows, with
air permeated with dust, acid and
fur, working with dangerous ma
chimes and tools, with no lunch
rooms, and no toilet accommoda-
tions, women receive seventeen dol
lars a week. The twenty per cent
cut introduced by the bosses low
ers it to $13.
Starvation Wages
Can anyone exist on thirteen dol
lars a week, when the rent for an
apartment without bath in Dam
bury is as high as twenty-five or
twenty-eight dollars a month?
When the cost of electricity and
gas, owned by Mr.. Lee, the car
of the town and the boss of most
of the fur shops, can go up when
ever he pleases? When women
workers who must leave their ba-
bies in care of neighbors, have to
pay five dollars a week and sup
ply their own milk?
Women get up at 4:30 in the
morning to get their homework
done before the factory whistle
blows. They get home after a
whole days work on their feet.
All day long they work under the
strain and hurry with dangerous
tools, heavy baskets, etc., with their
mouths tied with handkerchiefs to
keep from choking over fur dust.
And they have to get the dinner
ready and finish whatever house,
work had been neglected from the
morning.
Family life is nonresident. The
shop swallows the whole family,
one by one as soon as each menu
Der is old enough to handle the
machine. Workers children do not
go to school for long. IL they are
not sent to the fur shops, they stay
home to take care of the babies,
who have been robbed of care by
| the profit makers of the hat shops.
A fine militant striker, whose
husband and two sons all worked
in hattesS' shops, had their lungs
already poisoned by the bleaching
acids. Another woman worker told
how her husband, in order to make
a living wage, worked from $3.50
| in the morning until midnight
without rest, filling up bags
with dust fur.
Working Conditions Destroy
Health sE
On, account of acids, workers
consume great deal of water.
Special drinking water has to be
brought in, since the water in the
pipes is also polluted by bleach
ling acids. For this drinking wa
ter, women have to pay fifteen
cents a week. If they do not bring
the money on time, the forelady
calls them "cheap sports"
The suction machines do not
function properly, and the air is
always full of dust and fur. Nose
Ibleeds are very common. Tremors
and loss of teeth ard serious dis
eases prevail in appalling proper
lions. But the government inspec-
tor, well paid by the bosses, never
even sets her foot into shop.
Women Militant
| When the strike was called, wo-
men workers responded in wonder
full solidarity. They poured out
into the picket line, fighting the
scabs. They carried placards with
militant slogans over the town, in
defiance of public opinion. Some
women workers, whose shops had
settled with the union, came to the
picket line before work, helping the
other workers.
A woman worker who had never
spoken in public before, got up at
a meeting and made a half hour
speech in the support of the union.
The Needle Trades Workers Indus
trial Union has become firmly es-