In the summer of 1900, letters many of them anonymous, were received
both by the State Labor Commissioner and by the newspapers. A reporter
from the _San Francisco Examiner_ took a job as a laundry-worker, and
published appalling accounts of miserable wages, utter slavery as to
hours and degrading conditions generally. Even the city ordinance
forbidding work after ten at night (!) was found to be flagrantly
violated, the girls continually working till midnight, and sometimes
till two in the morning.
The first measure of improvement was the passing of a new ordinance,
forbidding work after seven in the evening. The workers, however,
promptly realized that the more humane regulation was likely to be as
ill enforced as the former one had been unless there was a union to
see that it was carried out.
About three hundred of the men organized, and applied to the Laundry
Workers' International Union for a charter. The men did not wish
to take the women in, but the executive board of the national
organization, to their everlasting credit, refused the charter unless
the women were taken in as well.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108