have imagined that when a machine was operated by a steam engine or by an electric motor, the steam engine or the electric motor actually did all the work, and the people who were attending it while it operated were more or less negligible. As a consequence, we indulged in the very unfortunate and often fatal belief that unlimited hours of labor were possible because it was the machines which were doing the work. We overlooked the fact, which we have lately begun to appreciate, that the person who tends the power-driven machine is far more susceptible to exhaustion, is far more open to fatigue and to the poisons that affect the system and that come from over-exertion than ever before."
Mrs. Florence Kelley, the able General Secretary of the National Consumers' League, who studied woman's occupation in the sewing trade, states that of late years the speed of the sewing machines has been increased so that girls using these improved machines are now responsible for twenty times as many stitches as twenty years ago, and that many girls and women, not capable of the sustained speed involved in this improvement, are no longer eligible for this occupation. Those who continue in the trade are required to feed twice as many garments to the machine as were required five years ago. The strain upon their eyes is, however, far more than twice what it was before the improvement. In the case of machines carrying multiple needles this is obvious; but it is true of the single needle machines as well.
When a girl cannot keep the pace she is thrown out. A comment frequently made by the girls about such an unfortunate comrade is: "She got too slow. She couldn't keep up with her machine any longer." It amounts to this, that the girl can earn a living wage, if she is unusually gifted, until she is worn out."
The nerve strain caused by innumerable rapid-working machines of the present day has become obvious in many cases. As the compressed air-hammer has shattered the nerves of many robust men, so the latest machines used in the sewing and other trades have impaired the health of many women. "Such nerve strain," says Rheta Childe Dorr, "cannot be regulated. It is a Gordian knot that cannot be untied. The only thing to do is to cut it. The only solution of it is a shortened work-day. This is true for men as well as for women, but, in all probability, not to the same degree. Nerve strain affects men, certainly, and it demands, even in their case, a progressively shortened work-day as an alternative to a progressively shortened work-life. But with women the case becomes infinitely more urgent, infinitely more tragic, in exact proportion as woman's nervous system is more unstable than man's and more easily shaken from its equilibrium."
176
