a part.  In especial it does not serve to shield her from the injurious effects of cruel overwork.  In no class of our city population do we find more of this atrocious evil, misnamed homework than among Italian families, and whether it is sewing, artificial-flower-or feather-making or nut-picking, neither grown daughters nor little children are spared here.  Along with the mother and under her eye, the whole group work day after day, and often far into the night at occupations in themselves harmless enough under proper conditions, but ruinous to health and happiness when permitted to intrude under the family roof.  For the wrong of home-work is not to be measured even by the injury suffered by the workers themselves.  All parasitic trades, such as these, lower wages in the open market.  The manufacturer is continually impelled to cut down wages in his shops to keep pace with the competition of the ill-remunerated home-worker.

As I have said above, I believe that every race that has settled down here in this America has some special contribution to bestow, which will work for good to the whole labor movement.  I have instanced the case of the Slavic Jewess as one who has certainly arrived.  From others the gift has still to come.  From the Italian girl it will come in good time, for they are beginning to enter the unions now, and from the lips of their own fellow-countrywomen even Italian mothers will learn to accept for their daughters the gospel they will not listen to from foreigners like ourselves.  The most severely handicapped of all the nationalities so far, to my thinking, is the Polish.  They are what is called pure Slavs, that is, with no Jewish blood.  They are peasant girls and cannot be better described than they are in a pamphlet on “The Girl Employed in Hotels and Restaurants,” published by the Juvenile Protective League to Chicago.

In these places Polish girls are chosen for the following reasons: 

1.  Because they come of strong peasant stock, and accomplish a large amount of work.

2.  They are very thorough in what they do.

3.  They are willing to take low wages.

4.  They are very submissive, that is, they never protest.

5.  They are ignorant of the laws of this country, and are easily imposed upon.

6.  They never betray their superiors, no matter what they see.

What a scathing indictment of the American people is set forth in this brief summing up!

The trades that swallow up these strong, patient, long-enduring creatures are work in the meat-canning plants, and dish-washing and scrubbing in restaurants and hotels.  These really valuable qualities of physical strength and teachableness, unbalanced by any sense of what is due to themselves, let alone their fellow-workers, prove their industrial ruin.