Part 3 (1/2)

_British Sessional Papers_. Vol. XII, 1895. Report from the Select Committee on Shops. Early Closing Bill

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., of the University of Oxford, Fellow of the College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons, attached to London Hospital and Brompton, Hospital.

”Would this be a fair way of putting it: It is not the actual work of people in shops, but having to be there and standing about in bad air; it is the long hours which is the injurious part of it?”

”Quite so; the prolonged tension.”

_Official Information from the Reports of the [German] Factory Inspectors_. Berlin, Bruer, 1898

The inspector in Hesse regards a reduction of working hours to ten for women in textile mills as ”absolutely imperative,” as the continuous standing is very injurious to the female organism.

_Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography_.

Berlin, September, 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Fatigue Resulting from Occupation. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908

Doctor Emil Roth:

”My experience and observations do not permit me to feel any uncertainty in believing that the injury to health inflicted upon even fully capable workers by the special demands of a periodically heightened rush of work is never compensated for.

Under this head we may consider the demands of all seasonal work, ... as also the special rush season in shops before Christmas.”

_Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its Importance and Legal Regulation_. Preface by Etienne Bauer. Night Work of Women in Industry in Austria. Ilse Von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903

The suitable limits of working time vary with individuals, but it is acknowledged that not only is a regularly long day of work injurious, but also that a single isolated instance of overstrain may be harmful to a woman all the rest of her life.

_Proceedings of the French Senate_, July 7, 1891. Report on the Industrial Employment of Children, Young Girls, and Women.

When I ask, when we ask, for a lessening of the daily toil of women, it is not only of the women that we think, it is not princ.i.p.ally of the women, it is of the whole human race. It is of the father, it is of the child, it is of society, which we wish to reestablish on its foundation, from which we believe it has perhaps swerved a little.

In New York State, the hours of labor of adult women (women over twenty-one) in mercantile establishments are not limited in any way by law.

The law concerning seats in stores is as follows:--

Seats for Women in Mercantile Establishments

Chairs, stools, or other suitable seats shall be maintained in mercantile establishments for the use of female employees therein, to the number of at least one seat for every three females employed, and the use thereof by such employees shall be allowed at such times and to such extent as may be necessary for the preservation of their health.

The enforcement of this law is very difficult. The mercantile inspectors can compel the requisite number of seats. They have successfully issued one hundred and fourteen orders on this point[6] to the stores within the year 1909. But the use of these seats to such extent as may be necessary for the preservation of the health of the women employees is another matter. For fear of being blacklisted by the merchants, the saleswomen will not testify in court in those cases where employers practically forbid the use of seats, by requesting the employees to do something requiring a standing position whenever they sit down. So that in these cases the inspectors cannot bring prosecution successfully, on account of lack of sufficient evidence.

Further, in one store the management especially advises the saleswomen to be seated at every moment when the presence of a customer does not require her to stand. But the saleswoman's inability to attract possible customers while she is seated still keeps her standing, in order not to diminish her sales.

Curiously enough, it would seem that the shopping public of a nation professedly democratic will not buy so much as a spool of thread from a seated woman. There is, of course, much work for women[7]--such as ironing for instance--in which standing is generally considered absolutely necessary. Salesmans.h.i.+p is not work of this character. It is primarily custom that demands the constant standing seen in the stores; and, until shoppers establish a habit of buying of shop-girls who are seated, and the stores provide enough seats for all saleswomen and permit them to sell when seated, the present system of undermining the normal health of women clerks will continue unchecked.

The New York State law in regard to the work of the younger women (minors)--in mercantile establishments is as follows:--

Hours of Labor of Minors[8]

No female employee between sixteen and twenty-one years of age shall be required, permitted, or suffered to work in or in connection with any mercantile establishment more than sixty hours in any one week; or more than ten hours in any one day, unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day of some one day of the week; or before seven o'clock in the morning or after ten o'clock in the evening of any day. _This section does not apply to the employment of persons sixteen years of age or upward, between the eighteenth day of December and the following twenty-fourth day of December, both inclusive_.[9]

That is to say, that, for the holiday season, the time of all others when it might seem wise and natural to protect the health of the younger women working in the great metropolitan markets, for that season, of all others, the State specifically provides that the strength of its youth is to have no legal safeguard and may be subjected to labor without limit.

Substantially, all the present legal protection for workers in the stores was obtained in 1896, after the investigation of mercantile establishments conducted in 1895 by the Rinehart Commission.[10] Ever since, an annual attempt has been made to perfect the present law and to secure its enforcement, which had been left in the hands of the local Boards of Health, and was practically inoperative until 1908. Enforcement was then transferred to the Labor Commissioner, and has since that time been actively maintained.