dry did I
find a girl who was compelled to stand in a wet place, though water
overflowed sometimes into the girls' quarters from the wash-rooms, where
the men worked. In some of these wash-rooms the water is at times
ankle-deep, a condition due only to bad drainage, as other wash-rooms are
absolutely dry. Whatever the condition of the work-rooms, the women's
dressing-rooms frequently had insanitary plumbing, and were verminous and
unhealthful. In one laundry the water supply was contaminated, smelling
and tasting offensively when it came from the faucet, and worse after it
had passed through the cooler. The women here at first kept bottles of
soda-water. Some old women had beer. But on a series of hot days, with
hours from half past seven to twelve, and from one till any time up to
ten at night, 10 cents' worth of beer or soda-water a day did not go far
to alleviate thirst, and soon drank a big hole in a wage of $5 a week. A
complaint was sent to the Board of Health. After nearly three weeks, the
Board of Health replied that the complaint must be sent to the Water
Department. From the Water Department no reply could possibly come for
several weeks more. And in the meantime, all the women workers in the
laundry, impelled by intolerable thirst, drank the contaminated water.

"The work-room where I was employed had, on the whole, plenty of windows.
These were left open. But when a room is large and full of machinery,
artificial light is needed all day, and the outside air does not come in
very far to drive away the heat and the dampness. On going out at noon
from a laundry where I had dipped shirts in hot starch all the morning at
a breakneck pace, I was struck by the coolness of the day. That night I
discovered that the thermometer had been registering 96 deg. in the shade.
A few fans should be put in each laundry. They could be run by the power
that runs the machines.

"In the 'model laundry,' I worked at first at a mangle, running spreads
and sheets and towels between two revolving cylinders. Here I found there
was danger of slipping my fingers too far under the cylinders in the
process of feeding. The mangle had a guard, to be sure,--a flexible metal
bar about three-quarters of an inch above the feeding-apron in front of
the cylinder. But I learned that this acted as a warning rather than a
protection. 'Once you get your fingers in, you never get them out,'
Jenny, the Italian girl beside me, said repeatedly. The Italia