The proprietors have to retain a physician to attend the
workers every morning, and medicine is supplied free, as an accepted
need for everyone so engaged. One year is spent in learning the trade,
and the girls last at it only from three to four years afterwards.
Some of them enter marriage, but many of them are thrown on the human
waste-heap. One company employs nearly 1,000 women, so that a large
number are affected by these vile and inhuman conditions. The girls in
the trade are mostly Slovaks, Poles and Bohemians, who have not long
been in this country. In their inexperience they count $1.50 as good
wages, although gained at ever so great a physical cost."
These are intolerable conditions, and that tens of thousands are
enduring similar hardships in the course of earning a living and
contributing their share towards the commercial output of the country
only aggravates the cruelty and the injustice to the helpless and
defrauded girls. It is not an individual problem merely. It is a
national responsibility shared by every citizen to see that such
cruelty and such injustice shall cease.
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