made $10 a week, when times were slack, by
working once or twice a week, from seven in the morning until eleven at
night. In busy times they sometimes made $22 a week by working
occasionally from seven o'clock one morn till two o'clock the following
morning.[36]

"Although Italians, Russians, Irish, Polish, Germans, Americans, and
Swedes are employed in New York laundries, the greater part of the work
is done by Irish and Italians. The Irish receive the higher prices, the
Italians the lower prices. The best-paid work, the hand starching of
shirts and collars and the hand ironing, is done by Irish women, by
colored women, and by Italian and Jewish men. The actual process of hand
starching may be learned in less than one hour. Speed in the work may be
acquired in about ten days. On the other hand, to learn the nicer
processes of the ill-paid work of feeding and folding at the mangle--the
passing of towels and napkins through the machine without turning in or
wrinkling the edges, the passing of table-covers between cylinders in
such a way that the work will never come out in a shape other than
square--to learn these nicer processes requires from thirteen to fifteen
days. The reason for the low wages listed for mangle work seems to lie
only in nationality. Mangle work, as a rule, is done by Italians. In two
laundries I found, working side by side with American and Irish girls,
Italians, who were doing exactly the same work, and were paid less,
solely because they were Italians. The employer said he never paid the
Italians more than $4 a week.

"In the next best-paid work after hand starching, the work of hand
ironing, paying roughly from $8 to $18 a week, Italian women are
practically never employed.

"The worst part of mangle work, the shaking, is done by young girls and
by incapable older women of many nationalities. One of the ill-paid
girls, who had $4.50 a week, gave $3.50 a week board to an aunt, who
never let her delay payment a day. She had only $1 a week left for every
other expense. This girl was 'keeping company' with a longshoreman, who
had as much as $25 in good weeks. She had been engaged to him, and had
broken her engagement because he drank--'he got so terribly drunk.' But
when I saw her she was in such despair with her low wage, her hard hours
of standing, and only $5 a week ahead of her, that she was considering
whether she should not swallow her well-founded terror of the misery his
dissipation might b