when the
general vague impression that the new system was more exhausting than the
other was sifted down, the grist of fact remaining was small, and
consisted of the instances mentioned. About forty young women told me
their experience of the work. Sometimes their mothers and their fathers
talked with me about it. Every one whose health had suffered under the
new task had been exhausted by some old difficulty which had remained
unremedied. This point will be considered in relation to the industry of
the other women workers in the other houses after the accounts of their
experience of Scientific Management.

IV

There are over 600 workers in the New Jersey cotton mill. Of these 188
are women. One hundred and ten of the women workers are at present
engaged under the bonus and task system, though the management expects to
employ eventually under this system all of its workers, and is in this
establishment markedly in sympathy with Scientific Management. The mill
is a large, well-lighted brick structure, with fields around it, and
another factory on one side, on the outskirts of a factory town. The
establishment is composed of a larger and newer well-ventilated building,
with washed air blown through the work-rooms; and an older building,
where the part of the work is carried on which necessitates both heat and
dampness to prevent the threads from breaking.

The cotton, which is of extremely fine quality, comes into the picker
building in great bales from our Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is
fed into the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it
issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes of carding,
combing, drawing, and making into roving. The carding product consists of
a very delicate web, which, after being run through a trumpet and between
rollers, forms a "sliver" of the size of two of one's fingers, from which
it issues in a long strand. This strand or sliver Is threaded into a
machine with other ends of slivers and rolled out again in one stronger
strand; and this doubling and drawing process is innumerably repeated,
till the final roving is fed into a machine that gives it a twist once in
an inch and winds it on a bobbin. There are three kinds or stages of
twisting and winding roving on these machines, and at the last, the
"speeders," women are employed.

Up to this point all the workers have been men. These speeders are in the
carding rooms, which are large and high, fi