I have taken these demands in the order, in which, generally speaking,
the organizer can induce the young girl worker to consider them in her
own case. Better pay makes by far the easiest appeal, whether it be to
the very young girl with her eager desire for a good time or to her
older sister upon whom, quite surely, years have laid some of life's
increasing burdens.
Next in order of attractiveness came shorter hours, especially if the
wage-earners can be assured that wages will stay where they are.
But nothing short of both years and trade experience, apparently, will
impress upon the worker all that is implied in those words that we
write so easily and pronounce so glibly--sanitary conditions.
The young girls have all the blessed, happy-go-lucky care-free-ness
of children, the children they are in years. They start out on their
wage-earning career with the abounding high spirits and the stores of
vitality of extreme youth. They are proud of their new capacity to
earn, to begin to keep themselves and to help the mother and the
others, and at first it does not seem to them as if anything could
break them down or kill them.
Pages:
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268