Montana labor news., 1933-01-19


american Wooden Co.
Might.
According to this paper, wage de-
creases during the crisis have ranged
from 80 per cent to over so per cent.
This is in line with the report turned
in by a group of 80 college students
of the Boston District of the Nation
al Student League who recently made
an investigation of conditions of Law
renee workers. The mill owners, re-
calling that this same group had once
sent a wire to the Lawrence authori-
ties protesting against the suppression
of free speech in that city, refused to
admit the students to the mills. One
small group, however, IA able to get
into the M. T. Stevens & Sons Com
pany mill at North Andover, near
Lawrence and were able to talk to a
few workers. The report: an good
time, they said, the maximum weekly
wage was only 1913, while now, what
with the part-time and 'stretch-out'
and all, they were receiving at most,
only $40 to SIS a week. The lesser
| skilled workers on full time and in
| prosperous days never earned more
than $12 to $14 weekly. Today they
were making from 81 to SIS and rarely
So a week on the stagger system"
Later at a meeting with workers
from various mills they were able to
learn more facts such as the follow
ing: "Where formerly men were get
ting $33 a week in some mills, the
maximum wage today was $12 and in
the majority of cases $4 and Sc week
ly." The low wages were largely the
result of the "share-work" or stagger
system. Conditions of women work
ers were particularly bad. "In the
knot department, where the girls do
the strenuous work Of pulling knots
from woven cloth, they work in poor
light at the starvation wage of SO a
week."
Connecticut:
"Sixty-five cents for a weeks work
is not wages. Not in America. But
that is what one girl in New Haven
received. And there are thousands
like her-victims of a new and vicious
racket, the fly-by-night sweat shop"
Connecticut permits a ~fifty-five
hour week, and until recently, was
notorious for lax enforcement of its
rather low legal standards of employ
ment. For this reason, Connecticut
provides a haven for the INSCRIPTIONS
and low grade employer.
The sweat shop owner, however,
still works out of and for New York.
From the New York manufacturer he
receives shirts, underwear or dresses
all cut ready for sewing. He brings
them to some low rent loft or aban-
doned factory in which he has install
ed a few sewing machines and there
hires women and girls at pitifully low
wages to do the sewing. He has no
capital invested in raw material, lit
tie in anything. His entire equip
ment can be moved overnight when
he decides to skip town without pay
ing his wages or other bills. Some of
these employers literally pay no wages
at all. Under p~retense of hiring
learners they get girls to work for
nothing for two or three weeks till
they learn the business. At the end
of this period, the girls are %discharg-
ed and replaced with another group OF
deluded learners" The employer
thus gets his labor for nothing.
Others not quite so brazen, pay
unimaginably low rates. These are
some of the actual earnings: The
! Yale Dress Shop paid $1.80 for eighty
! hours work, sixty-five cents for Sc
hours work, $500 for a weeks work
The Middletown Coal Company went
so far as to pay one woma two cents
at the end of a day and another forty
- T.. ION l,xr~ct vuovL
The State Labor Department woult
like to see the sweat shops driven en-
tirely out of the state. To effect THU
the law will have to be changed. Il
should include a heavy penalty fol-