coming, although the girls had hardly more than she had, and
knew quite well that they were seldom returned. There was a great deal of
swearing among the women in almost all of the laundries, but it was of an
entirely good-natured character.

"While there was a natural division of labor, there was also an
artificial one, created during lunch hours. A deep-rooted feeling of
antagonism and suspicion exists between the Irish and the Italians, each
race clubbing together from the different departments in separate bands.

"Aside from this distinction, there is another social cleavage--the
high-wage earners sitting apart from the low-wage earners, through
natural snobbishness. In one laundry, the high-wage earners, though they
often treated the $5 girls to stray sardines, cake, etc., were in the
habit of sending young girls to the delicatessen shop to get their
lunches, and also to the saloon for beer. Then the girl had to hurry out
on the street in her petticoat and little light dressing-sack that she
wore for work, for they gave her no time to change. For this service the
girl would get 10 cents a week from each of the women she did errands
for. They did not--the boss starcher explained to me with quiet
elegance--think of such a thing as drinking beer behind the boss's back,
but they 'just didn't want him to know.'

"The same difficulties in enforcing the law about protected machinery in
laundries exist in the enforcing of the law requiring that adult women in
laundries shall not work more than sixty hours in a week. Just as in the
case of protected machinery, these difficulties might be partly removed
through trade organization.

"Nearly all laundry work is performed standing, and on heavy days, when
the work is steady, except at lunch time, very few women get a chance to
sit down during any part of the day. The chief difference between laundry
work and that of other factories is in the irregularity of the hours. A
manufacturer knows more or less at the beginning of the week how much
work his factory will have to do, and can usually distribute overtime,
or engage or lay off extra girls, according to his knowledge. The
laundryman can never estimate the amount of work to be done until the
laundry bundles are actually on the premises. He can never tell when the
hotels, restaurants, steamboats, and all the small 'hand' laundries,
whose family laundries he rough-dries, and whose collars and table and
bed linen he finishes, w