enty-one years ago in the bag and hemp factories of St. Louis, girl
experts turned out 460 yards of material in a twelve-hour day, the pay
being 24 cents per bolt (of from 60 to 66 yards). These girls earned
$1.84 per day (on the bolt of from 60 to 66 yards). Four years ago a
girl could not hold her job under 1,000 yards in a ten-hour day. "The
fastest possible worker can turn out only 1,200 yards, and the price
has dropped to 15 cents per hundred yards. The old rate of 24 cents
per bolt used to net $1.80 to a very quick worker. The new rate to one
equally competent is but $1.50. Workers have to fill a shuttle every
minute and a half or two minutes. This necessitates the strain of
constant vigilance, as the breaking of the thread causes unevenness,
and for this operators are laid off for two or three days. The
operators are at such a tension that they not only stand all day, but
may not even bend their knees. The air is thick with lint, which the
workers inhale. The throat and eyes are terribly affected, and it is
necessary to work with the head bound up, and to comb the lint from
the eyebrows. The proprietors have to retain a physician to attend the
workers every morning, and medicine is supplied free, as an accepted
need for everyone so engaged. One year is spent in learning the trade,
and the girls last at it only from three to four years afterwards.
Some of them enter marriage, but many of them are thrown on the human
waste-heap. One company employs nearly 1,000 women, so that a large
number are affected by these vile and inhuman conditions. The girls in
the trade are mostly Slovaks, Poles and Bohemians, who have not long
been in this country. In their inexperience they count $1.50 as good
wages, although gained at ever so great a physical cost."

These are intolerable conditions, and that tens of thousands are
enduring similar hardships in the course of earning a living and
contributing their share towards the commercial output of the country
only aggravates the cruelty and the injustice to the helpless and
defrauded girls. It is not an individual problem merely. It is a
national responsibility shared by every citizen to see that such
cruelty and such injustice shall cease. No system of commercial
production can be permanently maintained which ignores the primitive
rights of the human workers to such returns for labor as shall provide
decent food, clothing, shelter, education and recreation for the
worker and for t