The degradation of motherhood, the damnation of the next generation before it is born, is exposed in all its catastrophic misery, in the reports of the National Consumers’ League.  In her report of living conditions among night-working mothers in thirty-nine textile mills in Rhode Island, based on exhaustive studies, Mrs. Florence Kelley describes the “normal” life of these women: 

“When the worker, cruelly tired from ten hours’ work, comes home in the early morning, she usually scrambles together breakfast for the family.  Eating little or nothing herself, and that hastily, she tumbles into bed—­not the immaculate bed in an airy bed-room with dark shades, but one still warm from its night occupants, in a stuffy little bed-room, darkened imperfectly if at all.  After sleeping exhaustedly for an hour perhaps she bestirs herself to get the children off to school, or care for insistent little ones, too young to appreciate that mother is tired out and must sleep.  Perhaps later in the forenoon, she again drops into a fitful sleep, or she may have to wait until after dinner.  There is the midday meal to get, and, if her husband cannot come home, his dinner-pail to pack with a hot lunch to be sent or carried to him.  If he is not at home, the lunch is rather a makeshift.  The midday meal is scarcely over before supper must be thought of.  This has to be eaten hurriedly before the family are ready, for the mother must be in the mill at work, by 6, 6:30 or 7 P.M....  Many women in their inadequate English, summed up their daily routine by, ’Oh, me all time tired.  Too much work, too much baby, too little sleep!’”

“Only sixteen of the 166 married women were without children; thirty-two had three or more; twenty had children one year old or under.  There were 160 children under school-age, below six years, and 246 of school age.”

“A woman in ordinary circumstances,” adds this impartial investigator, “with a husband and three children, if she does her own work, feels that her hands are full.  How these mill-workers, many of them frail-looking, and many with confessedly poor health, can ever do two jobs is a mystery, when they are seen in their homes dragging about, pale, hollow-eyed and listless, often needlessly sharp and impatient with the children.  These children are not only not mothered, never cherished, they are nagged and buffeted.  The mothers are not superwomen, and like all human beings, they have a certain amount of strength and when that breaks, their nerves suffer.”

We are presented with a vivid picture of one of these slave-mothers:  a woman of thirty-eight who looks at least fifty with her worn, furrowed face.  Asked why she had been working at night for the past two years, she pointed to a six-months old baby she was carrying, to the five small children swarming about her, and answered laconically, “Too much children!” She volunteered the information that