One of the worst instances is that of the large laundries, where women
work enormously long hours during the season, and are often engaged for
fifteen or sixteen hours on Fridays and Saturdays. The whole class of
shop-assistants are worked excessive hours. Twelve and fourteen hours
are a common shop day, and frequently the figure rises to sixteen hours.
Restaurants and public-houses are perhaps the greatest offenders. The
case of shop-assistants is most aggravated, for these excessive hours of
labour are wholly waste time; a reduction of 25 or even of 50 per cent
in the shopping-day, reasonably adjusted to the requirements of classes
and localities, would cause no diminution in the quantity of sales
effected, nor would it cause any appreciable inconvenience to the
consuming public.
Sec. 5. Sanitary Conditions.--Seeing that a larger proportion of women
workers are occupied in the small workshops or in their own overcrowded
homes, it is obvious that the fourth count of the "sweating" charge,
that of unsanitary conditions of work, applies more cruelly to them than
to men. Their more sedentary occupations, and the longer hours they work
in many cases outside the operation of the Factory Act, makes the evils
of overcrowding, bad ventilation, bad drainage, etc., more detrimental
to the health of women than of men workers.
Sec. 6. Special Burdens incident on Women.--We have now applied the four
chief heads of the "sweating" disease--low wages, long hours, irregular
employment, unsanitary conditions--to women's work, and have seen that
the absolute pressure in each case is heavier on the weaker sex.
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