down, and containing urgent pleas to
the women of the Consumers' League to help the women laundry workers.

After consulting some of the laundry women, the League determined to
secure through a special inquiry a well-ascertained statement of
conditions as a basis for State factory legislation for uniform
improvements. A few months before, the constitutionality of the present
New York legislation, as well as of almost all of the State legislation
concerning the hours of work of adult women in this country, had been
virtually determined by the decision of the Federal Supreme Court in
regard to the ten-hour law for women laundry workers in Oregon. The
opinion of the National Supreme Court, which practically confirmed the
passed New York laundry laws and made future laws for fair regulation for
the women workers seem practicable, will be given after the account of
women's work in laundries in New York.

Miss Carola Woerishofer conducted the inquiry, which was confined to
steam laundries, as hand laundries were more favorably described by many
reliable authorities. Among these, the large laundries were commercial
laundries, such as we all patronize, and hotel and hospital laundries.
The features chiefly observed in all these establishments were
sanitation, the danger of injury, and wages and hours of labor. For the
account of the hospital and hotel laundries the Consumers' League of the
city of New York obtained the services of Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood
of Smith College and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins of Wellesley College. As a
means of investigating commercial laundries, Miss Woerishofer, answering
advertisements as they came, worked in laundries in trade employed in
nearly every branch of the industry in which women are engaged throughout
the borough of Manhattan. Her report follows.

I

"Naturally, the first question which faced me was that of finding a job.
For this I turned to the laundry want 'ads' in the newspapers. To my
surprise, as my investigation was made in the summer, which is, curiously
enough, by far the slackest season in New York commercial laundries, I
was never without work for more than a day at a time, although I changed
continually, for the sake of experience, averaging about a week in a
place.

"The first establishment to which I went was known as a model laundry. It
was large and well ventilated and had a dry floor. These sanitary
conditions may be said to be fairly typical. In only one laun