ts agitation told, and prepared
the way for the Women's Trade Union League, which, a decade later,
took up the very same task.

In the year 1900, the status of the steam-laundry-workers of San
Francisco was about as low as could possibly be imagined. White men
and girls had come into the trade about 1888, taking the place of
the Chinese, who had been the first laundrymen on the West Coast.
Regarding their treatment, Miss Lillian Ruth Matthews writes:

The conditions surrounding the employment of these first white
workers were among those survivals from the eighteenth century,
which still linger incongruously in our modern industrial
organization. The "living-in" system was the order, each laundry
providing board and lodging for its employes. The dormitories were
wretched places, with four beds in each small room. The food was
poor and scanty, and even though the girls worked till midnight or
after, no food was allowed after the evening meal at six o'clock.
Half-an-hour only was allowed for lunch. Early in the morning, the
women were routed out in no gentle manner and by six o'clock the
unwholesome breakfast was over, and every one hard at work....
The girls were physically depleted from their hard work and poor
nourishment. Their hands were "blistered and puffed, their feet
swollen, calloused, and sore." One girl said, "Many a time I've
been so tired that I hadn't the courage to take my clothes off.
I've thrown myself on the bed and slept like dead until I got so
cold and cramped that at two or three in the morning I'd rouse
up and undress and crawl into bed, only to crawl out again at
half-past five."

As to wages, under the wretched "living-in" system the girls received
but eight dollars and ten dollars a month in money. But even those who
lived at home in no instance received more than twenty-five dollars
a month, and in many cases widows with children to support would be
trying to do their duty by their little ones on seventeen dollars and
fifty cents a month.

In the summer of 1900, letters many of them anonymous, were received
both by the State Labor Commissioner and by the newspapers. A reporter
from the _San Francisco Examiner_ took a job as a laundry-worker, and
published appalling accounts of miserable wages, utter slavery as to
hours and degrading conditions generally. Even the city ordinance
forbidding work after ten at night (!