“Instead of having the machine guarded, after this mutilation, the owner had employed a man to take chances here, instead of a girl.

“This and all the illegal defects discovered were ordered remedied by the factory inspectors.  But New York labor legislation, no matter how excellent, cannot be enforced, with the present number of inspectors.  An inspector will arrive on one day; will discover that rules are violated; will impose a fine; will return in the next week and discover that rules are not violated; will, perforce, return to another part of the field; and after that the violation will continue as if he had never observed it.

“Further, it is difficult for the inspector to discover, through employees, violations of the State laws enacted in their interest, as they risk being discharged for complaints.  In addition, moreover, to this danger, bringing a charge means that the complainant must go to court, thus losing both time and money.  A union organization would be the only possible means of settling the matter.  Made up of the workers themselves, it is always present to observe violations; and it offers to the workers the advantage of reporting to the State, not as individuals, but as a body.  The cooeperative spirit present among almost all of the laundry workers should make organization entirely feasible.[35]

“On entering a new situation I found, as a rule, cordiality and friendly interest.  On several occasions it was expressed by this social form:—­

“‘Say, you got a feller?’

“‘Sure.  Ain’t you got one?’

“‘Sure.’

“The girls are really very kind to one another, helping one another in their work, and by loans of lunch and money.

“In one place a woman with a baby to support—­a shaker earning $4.50 a week, and heavily in debt—­used to borrow weekly a few pennies apiece from all the girls around her to pay her rent.  And the pennies were always forthcoming, although the girls had hardly more than she had, and knew quite well that they were seldom returned.  There was a great deal of swearing among the women in almost all of the laundries, but it was of an entirely good-natured character.

“While there was a natural division of labor, there was also an artificial one, created during lunch hours.  A deep-rooted feeling of antagonism and suspicion exists between the Irish and the Italians, each race clubbing together from the different departments in separate bands.

“Aside from this distinction, there is another social cleavage—­the high-wage earners sitting apart from the low-wage earners, through natural snobbishness.  In one laundry, the high-wage earners, though they often treated the $5 girls to stray sardines, cake, etc., were in the habit of sending young girls to the delicatessen shop to get their lunches, and also to the saloon for beer.  Then the girl had to hurry out on the street in her petticoat and little light dressing-sack that she wore for work, for they gave her no time to change.  For this service the girl would get 10 cents a week from each of the women she did errands for.  They did not—­the boss starcher explained to me with quiet elegance—­think of such a thing as drinking beer behind the boss’s back, but they ‘just didn’t want him to know.’