It is the married women with
young children who work on the inferno-like shifts. They are driven to
it by the low wages of their husbands. They choose night work in order
to be with their children in the daytime. They are afraid of the neglect
and ill-treatment the children might receive at the hands of paid
caretakers. Thus they condemn themselves to eighteen or twenty hours of
daily toil. Surely no mother with three, four, five or six children can
secure much rest by day.
"Take almost any house"--we read in the report of conditions in New
Jersey--"knock at almost any door and you will find a weary, tousled
woman, half-dressed, doing her housework, or trying to snatch an hour or
two of sleep after her long night of work in the mill. ... The facts
are there for any one to see; the hopeless and exhausted woman, her
cluttered three or four rooms, the swarm of sickly and neglected
children."
These women claimed that night work was unavoidable, as their husbands
received so little pay. This in spite of all our vaunted "high wages."
Only three women were found who went into the drudgery of night work
without being obliged to do so. Two had no children, and their husbands'
earnings were sufficient for their needs. One of these was saving for
a trip to Europe, and chose the night shift because she found it less
strenuous than the day. Only four of the hundred women reported upon
were unmarried, and ninety-two of the married women had children. Of the
four childless married women, one had lost two children, and another
was recovering from a recent miscarriage.
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