The Hudson-Fulton celebration, or the automobile show, or a great charity
ball, or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are the
occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a lavish use of beautiful
table linen, to be dried and mangled and folded next day by the laundry
girls underground.
"All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is produced, not by
ill-willed persons who are consciously oppressive,--indeed, as will be
seen, much of it was produced by sheer social good will and persons of
most progessive intent,--but simply by the unregulated conditions of the
laundries."
IV
Such, then, is the account of what women workers give and what they
receive in their industry in the commercial, hotel, and hospital
laundries of New York.
It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of the laundry conditions
observed are due to the greed of employers. These features seem to be due
rather to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures in the New
York laundry business are frequent. Even in the short time elapsing
between the Department of Labor's inspection of laundry machinery, early
in February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six establishments that had
improperly guarded machinery, made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of
these twenty-six firms had collapsed.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233