laziness. Accordingly the girls in these mills were forced to stand from early morning till late at night, day after day, and month after month.
The secretary of the Consumers' League, who, under an assumed name, worked for some time in various mills, in order to study conditions, wrote:
"The harmful effect of continuous standing, upon young and growing girls, is too well established a fact to require any elaboration. In addition to the permanent ill effects, much immediate and unnecessary suffering, especially in hot weather, is inflicted by the prohibition of sitting. I could always detect the existence of this rule by a glance at the stocking-feet of the workers, and at the rows of discarded shoes beneath the frames. For after a few hours the strain upon the swollen feet becomes intolerable, and one girl after another discards her shoes."—
Another harsh and very common practice of employers is to cover the lower sashes of the windows with paint, and to fasten them so that they cannot be raised in hot weather. This is done "so that the girls don't waste time looking out."
The cruelty of these unnecessary rules is often aggravated by a most amazing lack of the common decencies and necessities of cleanliness.
One of the most difficult tasks of the Consumers' League was to overcome the absolute unwillingness of storekeepers to compensate their saleswomen for overtime. If it would be possible to compute the amount of such unpaid labor performed after the regular hours in many stores as well as in the bookkeeping and auditing departments, especially during the Christmas season, the sum would be startling indeed. A circular issued by the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago some years ago stated that the 3000 clerks in only one department store of that city had been required to work during the holiday season overtime to the total amount of 96,000 hours, without receiving any compensation. At the rate of only ten cents an hour these clerks suffered a loss of $9,600, at the rate of 25 cents an hour a loss of $24,000.
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The first "Women's Trade Union League" was organized in 1875 by Mrs. Emma Paterson, the wife of an English trade unionist. While travelling in America, she had observed that women workers of various trades had formed unions, among which the "Umbrella Makers' Union," the "Women's Typographical Union" and the "Women's Protective Union" were the most prominent. Convinced that the utility of such combinations could be still more increased, Mrs. Paterson, after her return to England, organized a federation of such women's unions, the "British Women's Trade Union League," which
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