were frequently dirty and unshaved. In the fourteen meals I
had there, I sat down only once to a clean table. The coffee boilers
along the side of the room would be boiling over and sending streams of
water over the charwomen. The dirty dishes would be piled into large tin
tubs with a clatter, and pulled out rasping over the floor. The charwomen
would beg the waiters to clear the tables, which looked as if
garbage-cans had been emptied upon them. The steward could not enforce
his authority. There was constant noise and disorder in the room. In
another dining room, that of a pleasant, ramshackle old hotel near the
river, where a breeze came into our laundry through sixteen windows, the
employees were seated in one of the restaurant dining rooms after the
noon rush hour was over, served by the regular waiters, and given
attractive and varied fare and meat from the same cuts as the guests.
'They have respect for the help here,' said one of the women.

"The dormitories were, with one exception, on upper stories. One room in
an expensive modern hotel, where there were twenty-seven beds, in tiers,
was aired only by three windows on an inner court. The room looked fresh
and pleasant because of its white paint and blue bedspreads; but it was
badly ventilated, both by condition and because the girls would keep the
windows closed for warmth. This was a frequent cause of poor ventilation
in other dormitories and in work-rooms.

"The hours of work were irregular, and varied in different places. In one
large laundry I worked over ten hours for seven days in the week--more
than seventy-two hours. About nine and a half hours seemed to be the
usual day. Four hotels gave fifteen-minute rest pauses for tea, morning
and afternoon; two gave them once a day. These rests are of incalculable
relief. One hotel gave twenty-minute pauses, so that the hours were: 7.20
to 9; 9.20 to 11.25; 12.30 to 2; 2.20 to closing time. This arrangement
gave very short work periods, but during them the women were able to work
vigorously; and they accomplished an astounding amount.

"However, in most of the hotel laundries the women were tired all the
time. They dragged themselves out of bed at the last possible minute.
They lay in their beds at noon; they crawled into them again as soon as
the work was over in the evening. Some did not go out into the air for
days at a time. The greatest suffering from any one physical cause came
from feet. 'Feet' was the cons