ring upon them, and marry him, after all.

"The shakers are the worst paid and the hardest worked employees. The
young girls expect to become folders and feeders. The older women are
widows with children, or women with husbands sick or out of work or in
some way incapacitated. Indeed, many of all these laundry workers,
probably a larger proportion than in any other trade, are widows with
children to support. 'The laundry is the place,' said one of the women,
'for women with bum husbands, sick, drunk, or lazy.' The lower the pay
and the damper and darker the laundry, the older and worse off these
women seem to be.

"The low wages and long hours of the great majority of the women workers,
the gradual breaking and loss of the normal health of many lives through
undernourishment and physical strain, are, in my judgment, the most
serious danger in the laundries. The loss of a finger, the maiming of a
hand, even the mutilation of the poor girl who lost the use of both of
her hands--the occasional casualties for a few girls in the
laundries--are, though so much more salient, far less grave than the
exhaustion and underpayment of the many.

"This, then, is the situation in general for women workers in the
commercial laundries. With respect to sanitation, the heat is excessive
wherever ironing is done by machinery. Many of the rooms are full of
steam. Some of the laundries have insanitary toilet and cloak rooms. With
respect to danger of injury, in a large proportion of places there is
unguarded or inadequately guarded machinery. In respect to hours of
labor, these often extend over the sixty-hour limit in rush seasons. The
hours are not only long, but irregular. A twelve to fourteen-hour
working-day is not infrequent. In a few places closing on Mondays and
Saturdays, or open for short hours on Mondays, the working-day runs up on
occasions to seventeen hours. Almost all the laundry work is done
standing. Wages for the majority of the workers are low."

The League's conclusions in regard to legislation will be placed at the
close of the following accounts of the laundries of the large New York
hospitals and hotels, the first report being written by Miss Elizabeth
Howard Westwood, the second report by Miss Mary Alden Hopkins.

II

"By a decision of the District Attorney, hotel and hospital laundries,
provided they do no outside work, do not come under the jurisdiction of
the Department of Labor. Women may work far beyond t