“The same difficulties in enforcing the law about protected machinery in laundries exist in the enforcing of the law requiring that adult women in laundries shall not work more than sixty hours in a week.  Just as in the case of protected machinery, these difficulties might be partly removed through trade organization.

“Nearly all laundry work is performed standing, and on heavy days, when the work is steady, except at lunch time, very few women get a chance to sit down during any part of the day.  The chief difference between laundry work and that of other factories is in the irregularity of the hours.  A manufacturer knows more or less at the beginning of the week how much work his factory will have to do, and can usually distribute overtime, or engage or lay off extra girls, according to his knowledge.  The laundryman can never estimate the amount of work to be done until the laundry bundles are actually on the premises.  He can never tell when the hotels, restaurants, steamboats, and all the small ‘hand’ laundries, whose family laundries he rough-dries, and whose collars and table and bed linen he finishes, will want their washing back.  Hard as this is for the employer, it is still harder for the workers.  The small hand laundry can seldom keep customers waiting longer than from Monday till Saturday.  On this account, the steam laundry will be obliged to rush all of its work for the ‘hand’ laundry through in one or two days.  I found some steam laundries in which no work at all is done on Monday or Saturday, but in the busy season the place keeps running regularly on the other four days from seven in the morning till half past eleven and twelve at night.  Very seldom is there any compensation for these long hours.  Few of the laundries pay overtime.  Of these, some dock the girls proportionately for every hour less than sixty a week they work.  No laundries in which I worked, except one, give supper money.  A piece-worker at least gets some advantage to counterbalance long hours.  But the week worker not only lacks recompense for actual labor, but is often put to greater expense.

“She does not know when her long day is coming, so she must buy her supper, when supper is waiting for her at home.  She is often so tired that she must spend 5 cents for carfare, instead of walking.  Seven cents is a fair average spent upon supper—­2 cents for bread and 5 cents for sausage, cheese, or meat.  If overtime is worked three nights a week, the girl is out of pocket 36 cents—­not a small item in wages of $4.50 and $5 a week, where every penny counts.  Often, also, she either has not extra money or she forgets to bring it.  Then she has to share some one else’s lunch.  The girls are always willing to divide, however slight their own provisions.  I once saw a 1-cent piece of cake shared by four girls.