This revolt against factory monotony is sometimes closely allied to that “moral fatigue” which results from assuming responsibility prematurely.  I recall the experience of a Scotch girl of eighteen who, with her older sister, worked in a candy factory, their combined earnings supporting a paralytic father.  The older girl met with an accident involving the loss of both eyes, and the financial support of the whole family devolved upon the younger girl, who worked hard and conscientiously for three years, supplementing her insufficient factory wages by evening work at glove making.  In the midst of this devotion and monotonous existence she made the acquaintance of a girl who was a chorus singer in a cheap theater and the contrast between her monotonous drudgery and the glitter of the stage broke down her allegiance to her helpless family.  She left the city, absolutely abandoning the kindred to whom she had been so long devoted, and announced that if they all starved she would “never go into a factory again.”  Every effort failed to find her after the concert troupe left Milwaukee and although the pious Scotch father felt that “she had been ensnared by the Devil,” and had brought his “gray hairs in sorrow to the grave,” I could not quite dismiss the case with this simple explanation, but was haunted by all sorts of social implications.

The second line of revolt manifests itself in an attempt to make up for the monotony of the work by a constant change from one occupation to another.  This is an almost universal experience among thousands of young people in their first impact with the industrial world.

The startling results of the investigation undertaken in Massachusetts by the Douglas Commission showed how casual and demoralizing the first few years of factory life become to thousands of unprepared boys and girls; in their first restlessness and maladjustment they change from one factory to another, working only for a few weeks or months in each, and they exhibit no interest in any of them save for the amount of wages paid.  At the end of their second year of employment many of them are less capable than when they left school and are actually receiving less wages.  The report of the commission made clear that while the two years between fourteen and sixteen were most valuable for educational purposes, they were almost useless for industrial purposes, that no trade would receive as an apprentice a boy under sixteen, that no industry requiring skill and workmanship could utilize these untrained children and that they not only demoralized themselves, but in a sense industry itself.