Bfflfflffi&jjH 
 

SEX IN INDUSTRY: 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE WORKING-GIRL. 
 
 AZEL AMES, JR., M.D., 
 
 MEMBER MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, HONORARY MEMBER 
 
 CALIFORNIA MEDICAL SOCIETY, SPECIAL COMMISSIONER 
 
 OF INVESTIGATION MASSACHUSETTS BUREAU 
 
 OF STATISTICS OF LABOR, ETC 
 
 BOSTON : 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 (LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & co.) 
 1875. 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1875, 
 BY AZEL AMES, JR. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 RAND, AVERY, & Co. 
 
PBEFACE. 
 
 SOME two years since, having been commis- 
 sioned by the chief of the Bureau of Statistics of 
 Labor of this Commonwealth, to make certain 
 inquiries as to the conditions of homes and 
 employments of working-people whereby their 
 health might be unfavorably affected, I had my 
 attention called, while visiting a factory near my 
 home, to the marvellous rapidity of the digital 
 manipulations required by the processes of a 
 light manufacture conducted by girls. A reflec- 
 tion upon the possible physiological tendencies 
 of such extreme celerity opened a wide door of 
 inquisitive thought ; and the interest thus awak- 
 ened, heightened by the immediately subsequent 
 appearance of Prof. Edward II . Clarke's " Sex 
 in Education," which contained much bearing 
 directly upon the subject, stimulated a wider study 
 of the true relations sex sustains to industry. 
 
 ivil6787 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 The very considerable effort involved in such 
 farther inquiry was undertaken, with many mis- 
 givings, for the Bureau referred to ; and its results 
 have appeared in part in its annuaJL report for the 
 current year. The earnest interest and encour- 
 agement of Hon. Carroll D. Wright, chief of the 
 Bureau, who from the first has manifested a deep 
 concern in the investigation of the subject, and 
 the more than generous co-operation of Prof. 
 Clarke, have prompted this attempt to place in a 
 form for more general consideration the facts 
 thus obtained on this subject of daily-increasing 
 importance. I have made free use of the wisdom 
 and experience of others throughout this little 
 monograph, believing that the testimony of 
 many strong ones is better than the assertion of 
 a single observer, which, , however careful and 
 veracious, taken alone, might be deemed the over- 
 expression of an enthusiast or specialist. I have 
 not hesitated to speak with directness, or to call 
 things by their right names, believing the cause 
 of truth to be best served thereby. That the 
 subject is full of difficulties, the most casual 
 thinker cannot but perceive. In approaching 
 them I have endeavored to keep both the present 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 and future in view, woman's material and spirit- 
 ual worth, her enforced position, an$ her true 
 intent. I shall be more than compensated for 
 whatever of time and labor I have expended, if 
 my rushlight shall have discovered any path that 
 shall lead into broader day. Of my inability to 
 deal with so broad a subject, except in the most 
 ephemeral way, and the many evidences of this 
 that this little volume contains, I am well aware. 
 I have made no attempt at assuming Saul's 
 armor, and shall be amply compensated if any 
 of "the smooth stones from the brook," I have 
 thrown from a novice's sling, may have found a 
 vulnerable point in a giant wrong. 
 
 WAKEFEELD, April, 1875. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAKE I. 
 INTRODUCTORY . . . . 
 
 PAKT H. 
 OBJECTIVE . 33 
 
 PAKE HI. 
 SUGGESTIVE 128 
 
" That all our knowledge begins with experience, there can be 
 no doubt." 
 
 KANT. 
 
 " The end of the state is not merely to live, but to live nobly." 
 
 ARISTOTLE : Politics, I., 2. 
 
 "It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only 
 by thought that labor can be made happy ; and the two cannot be 
 separated with impunity." 
 
 BUSKIN. 
 
 "Women will find their place; and it will neither be that in 
 which they have been held, nor that to which some of them as- 
 pire. Nature's old Salic law will not be repealed ; and no change 
 of dynasty will be effected." 
 
 HUXLEY. 
 
SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 "For this the worth of woman shows on every peopled 
 
 shore : 
 
 Ever as man in wisdom grows, he honors her the more." 
 
 ELLIOTT. 
 
 MAN, except in the savage state, is a work- 
 ing animal. Even the pre-historic intlivid- 
 ual erected unwittingly the monuments of 
 his industry, and fidelity to type. 
 
 Woman has been, in all time, man's com- 
 panion and helper ; his elation to intelligence 
 determining always the degree of hardship 
 in her toil. Degraded with the savage, 
 lightened in her burdens and raised to higher 
 dignities with each step of man's advance, 
 the lines of Elliott express an apothegm. 
 
'."tO 1 ***.; : ; ;S,E%'<IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 Always a collaborator, but assuming new 
 importance as the nature of her true value 
 unfolded, woman's promotion with each 
 added civilization has been toward equal, 
 and in some respects even special partner- 
 ship in the work of life. Dowered by God 
 with equality of mental scope with man, 
 unlimited like him in her possibilities of 
 attainment, the sole imperative difference in 
 woman, which insists on full and perpetual 
 recognition, is her peculiar sexual principle, 
 her physiological dissimilarity, at once 
 her title to complemental rights, her glory, 
 and her opportunity. 
 
 But woman, elevated by the advances of 
 civilization, could not escape participation in 
 its incident evils. These have assailed the 
 very citadel of her strength. Imaginary 
 wants have exacted from her an exhausting 
 tribute ; and delusions as wild as those of 
 
 " The crazy Queen of Lebanon " 
 
 have caused her to build from the pure gold 
 of her possessions and privileges an altar to 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 11 
 
 false gods. Seeking for her sex distinctive 
 honors, she has proposed to give up for them 
 that which alone could insure their pos- 
 session. Extremes meet. The demands of 
 savage barbarity held woman in an unsexing 
 servitude. The abnormities of our civiliza- 
 tion are demanding anew of woman a kind 
 and degree of labor similarly militant against 
 sex. 
 
 Whether it comes from barbarity, or has 
 its origin in false ambitions or disarranged 
 economy, the result is the same against 
 woman, and her highest work in the world, 
 the perpetuation and ennobling of her 
 race. 
 
 The errors of ambition, the ignoring of 
 sexual endowments in the search for attain- 
 ' ments and distinction, lie chiefly within the 
 realm of mental effort, the work of educa- 
 tion. The undue burdens imposed upon the 
 sex by the disarrangement of economic forces 
 in society deal mostly with bodily emplo} r , 
 the domain of industry. Both, however, call 
 with varying degrees upon the same organs ; 
 
12 SEX FN INDUSTRY. 
 
 both preying especially upon the sexual prin- 
 ciple and its designed results.* 
 
 The physiological characteristics and re- 
 quirements of the forming female have been 
 so adequately stated by recent writers f in 
 reference to mental hygiene, and are now so 
 generally familiar, that it is not necessary 
 that they should be re-stated here. 
 
 An inimical influence upon brain or lower 
 organ, that has its origin in education, is 
 equally inimical if it occur identically in 
 industry. That such identity does occur, 
 and that industry presents in addition its 
 own peculiar phases of sexual unfriendliness, 
 it will be my effort to show. 
 
 * " "Woman, in the interest of the race, is dowered with 
 a set of organs peculiar to herself, whose complexity, del- 
 icacy, sympathies, and force are among the marvels of 
 creation. If properly nurtured and cared for, they are a 
 source of strength and power to her : if neglected and mis- 
 managed, they retaliate upon their possessor with weak- 
 ness and disease, as well of the mind as of the body." 
 PROF. EDWARD H. CLARKE : Sex in Education, p. 33. 
 
 f Edward H. Clarke, M.D., Sex in Education; T. A. 
 Gorton, M.D., Principles of Mental Hygiene; Henry 
 Maiwlsley, M.D., Sex in Mind and Education; Ely Van 
 de "Worker; Popular Science Monthly, February, 1875. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 Prof. Clarke thus reviews the relation of 
 the menstrual function, the salient point of 
 the sexual system, to the health of both stu- 
 dent and operative : " The principal organs 
 of elimination, common to both sexes, are 
 the bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin. A 
 neglect of their functions is punished in each 
 alike. To woman is intrusted the exclusive 
 management of another process of elimina- 
 tion, viz., the catamenial function. This, 
 using the blood for its channel of operation, 
 performs, like the blood, double duty. It is 
 necessary to ovulation, and to the integrity 
 of every part of the reproductive apparatus ; 
 it also serves as a means of elimination for 
 the blood itself. A careless management of 
 this function, at any period of' life during 
 its existence, is apt to be followed by con- 
 sequences that may be serious ; but a neglect 
 of it during the epoch of development, that 
 is, from the age of fourteen to eighteen or 
 twenty, not only produces great evil at the 
 time of neglect, but leaves a large legacy of 
 evil to the future. The system is then 
 2 
 
14 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 peculiarly susceptible ; and disturbances of 
 the delicate mechanism we are considering, 
 induced during the catamenial weeks of that 
 critical age by constrained positions, muscu- 
 lar effort, brain work, and all forms of men- 
 tal and physical excitement, germinate a 
 host of ills. Sometimes these causes, which 
 pervade more or less the methods of instruc- 
 tion in our public and private schools, which 
 our social customs ignore, and to which 
 operatives of all sorts pay little heed, pro- 
 duce an excessive performance of the cata- 
 menial function; and this is equivalent to a 
 periodical hemorrhage. Sometimes they pro- 
 duce an insufficient performance of it ; and 
 this, by closing an avenue of elimination, 
 poisons the blood, and depraves the organi- 
 zation. The host of ills thus induced are 
 known to physicians and to the sufferers as 
 amenorrhea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhea, hys- 
 teria, anemia, chorea, and the like. Some 
 of these fasten themselves on their victim 
 for a lifetime, and some are shaken off. 
 Now and then they lead to an abortion 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 15 
 
 of the function, and consequent steril- 
 ity."* 
 
 While pointing out the commonality of 
 effect of u constrained positions, muscular 
 effort, brain- work, and all forms of mental 
 or physical excitement," upon students and 
 operatives in the direction indicated, the same 
 author urges two reasons why female opera- 
 tives of all sorts are likely to suffer less from 
 persistent work than female students. The 
 first is, that " the female operative of what- 
 ever sort has, as a rule, passed through the 
 first critical epoch of woman's life : she has 
 got fairly by it." The second is, " because 
 the operative works her brain less." Though 
 I believe statistics f will warrant the expres- 
 sion that this first Conclusion is too inclusive, 
 
 * Sex in Education, p. 47. 
 
 t The United-States census of 1870 gives the total num- 
 ber of females employed in industry between the ages of 
 ten and fifteen as 191,100 ; total number (of these ages) in 
 manufacturing and mechanical industries, 25,664, or about 
 13.4 percent of the whole ; total number females (all ages) 
 employed in all industries, 1,836,288 : showing that 10.4 
 per cent i.e. 191,000 of the whole number is under 
 the age of fifteen. 
 
16 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 the second reason may be debated on several 
 grounds. It is no. doubt true that the aggre- 
 gate of simple cerebration on the part of the 
 female operative is less than the aggregate 
 performed by the female student. But in 
 the intricacy of much modern machinery, the 
 intrinsic mental demands of many processes 
 of employ, and the special mental peculiari- 
 ties of others, it is obvious that no inconsid- 
 erable amount of brain exaction is involved. 
 Again : there are conditions connected with 
 the acts of cerebration in the operative that 
 in and of themselves are potent for evil ; as, 
 the monotony, depression, bodily fatigue, and 
 "constrained position," few of which find 
 their counterparts in ordinary student toil. 
 The statistics adduced clearly give a very 
 large per cent as certainly yet under the 
 usual age at which the menstrual function 
 asserts itself, who are employed in the indus- 
 tries of the nation. To this should be added 
 the indefinite, but surely considerable num- 
 ber so employed, who, though over fifteen, 
 cannot be presumed to be confirmed in the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 possession of the "periodic" habit. The 
 exception to a rule is certainly a broad one, 
 that is based on at least fifteen per cent of 
 all the cases involved. 
 
 The facts enumerated in regard to the 
 brain-labor of operatives (of which substan- 
 tial illustration will be given) would indicate, 
 if proven, that, if the labor is absolutely less 
 in the aggregate with the working-girl than 
 with the scholar, its amount is indeed great, 
 and, moreover, is performed under conditions 
 themselves most unfavorable. To these sta- 
 tistics and facts may be added certain other 
 data of kindred significance, bearing upon 
 the main proposition, that the operative suf- 
 fers less in the vital direction from her em- 
 ploy than the student girl from hers. Dr. 
 Beard, speaking of longevity,* adduces the 
 following reasons for the greater age of brain 
 than muscle workers : " Brain- workers have 
 less worry, and more comfort and happiness, 
 than muscle-workers. Brain-workers live 
 
 * George M. Beard, M.D. : Public Health, p. 57. 
 
 2* 
 
18 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 under better sanitary conditions than muscle- 
 workers. Brain-workers can adapt their 
 labor to their moods and hours, and periods 
 of greatest capacity for labor, better than 
 muscle-workers." The death-rate tables * of 
 three hundred inhabitants of Preston, Eng., 
 one hundred being taken from each of the 
 three classes, the gentry, tradesmen, and 
 operatives, give surprising results against 
 the operative class, both as to longevity and 
 youthful deaths. 
 
 These and similar observations seem to 
 stimulate at least a doubt whether the dan- 
 gers to forming woman, conversely of the 
 foregoing proposition, do not equally reside 
 in industry and education. That some of 
 the avenues of industry embrace processes 
 potent in their aggressions against the integ- 
 rity of female health, with even those of* 
 advanced years, has been frequently deter- 
 mined. 
 
 But, over and beyond the lines of simi- 
 
 * See Prin. Mental Hygiene, D. A. Gorton, M.D., p. 116. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 19 
 
 larity in the effects of the influences of the 
 worker and the student, there are clear 
 points of distinction between the relation 
 sex holds to education, and that which it 
 sustains to industry. 
 
 The most advanced apostle of a differen- 
 tial education for the sexes demands only, for 
 girls, a modification in method and time ; not 
 a substitution of ultimate ends, or rejection 
 of contemplated attainments. 
 
 On the contrary, the guardian of the 
 youthful female in her industrial pursuits 
 seeks not only to ameliorate her condition in 
 some, but would bar her altogether from 
 participation in many. 
 
 In education, u the question," as Prof. 
 Clarke admirably puts it, " is not, Shall 
 woman learn the alphabet ? but, Hoiv shall 
 she learn it ? " In industry, the questions, 
 in view of precisely the same physiological 
 facts, are, first, What shall she do, and what 
 not do? and, second, How shall she least 
 harmfully do that which she may under- 
 take? 
 
20 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 So far as purely economic and material 
 interests are concerned, it also appears, that 
 if, by the indiscretions of educational meth- 
 ods, the young female sacrifices life or 
 health, the loss, though great, is but that, so 
 far as the state is concerned, of an unpro- 
 ductive unit, and its capacities for increase. 
 If, however, the working-girl is destroyed by 
 her labors, the commonwealth loses both 
 herself as a present integer in the mainten- 
 ance of society, and her creative possibilities 
 and powers for the future of the race. The 
 student was as yet, in the strict sense, a 
 burden upon the community: the worker 
 was a productive and helpful member of it. 
 The one may have given promise of a life of 
 usefulness : the other had begun it. If an 
 account current, on a purely economic basis, 
 were to be opened between society and these 
 two girls, the student would stand debited 
 with continual outgo, and with nothing to 
 her credit in return: the worker's page 
 would exhibit the cost of maintenance and 
 development to the point when her earning 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 21 
 
 began, and then the credit side would begin 
 to bear figures. But homicidal and suicidal 
 characteristics in the vocations of each have 
 cut short their careers, and closed the ac- 
 count. The balances being struck, it will 
 of course be found, that as an investment, so 
 far as present material interests are con- 
 cerned, the student has been least profitable : 
 that which was invested is gone. But 
 if future possibilities and expectations could 
 be computed, as longevity is by " life-tables," 
 then the expenditure might stand in the 
 light of a venture whose every promise was 
 satisfactory, but which some unforeseen mis- 
 fortune rendered a dead loss. Of course it 
 is of paramount importance for the commu- 
 nity to prevent a loss, which, if it occur 
 now, is total, but which, averted, by further 
 expenditure and the alchemy of time is 
 transmuted into gain. It is equally clear, 
 that to lose in toto an investment that has 
 become a source of revenue, is, so far as 
 present time and economic forces are con- 
 cerned, a graver loss than the abstraction of 
 
22 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 that which is still depletory. The value 
 of the one is present and real, that of the 
 othf.r prospective and uncertain. 
 
 As our future must be built up out of our 
 present, as the animal must exist for the 
 mental and spiritual to build upon, so far as 
 purely political and social considerations go, 
 the present loss of the worker is greater. It 
 is only when we rise to a plane of higher 
 contemplation of life, and view it as more 
 than a social system constituted and ruled 
 only for terrestrial duration, that we obtain 
 a better conception of harmonious possibili- 
 ties and ends for both student and worker. 
 The power to originate and organize is 
 always greater and more valuable than that 
 of simple execution of details ; principles 
 being always higher than their adaptation. 
 A recognition of principles, and the posses- 
 sion of power, are evolved only from breadth 
 of knowledge. Hence there can be little 
 doubt, that were the student and worker 
 both to retain health, and enjoy the normal 
 progress of their several vocations, and 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 23 
 
 eventually find their true place* in the 
 world's work as perpetuators and moulders 
 of it, the student, as a mother and trainer of 
 men, would be most valuable. Carry for- 
 ward the student and worker to a condition 
 where other standards than those of earth 
 are dominant, and physical bonds are left 
 behind, and the intrinsic individuality of 
 each, being gauged by a supreme wisdom, 
 will find an exact recognition a finite mind 
 could not give. 
 
 But the dangers to female life and health 
 from the special ills incident to industrial 
 
 * "We have been studying woman, in her relation to 
 the subject of this paper (professions and skilled labor), 
 as a sexual being ; and, if we continue the study in the 
 same direction, we must arrive at the conclusion that 
 marriage is not an optional matter with her. On the con- 
 trary, it is a prime necessity to her normal physical and 
 intellectual life. There is an undercurrent of impulse 
 impelling every healthy woman to marry. That this is a 
 law of her sexual being, we know by the positive evidence 
 of medical men and others. We also know that the 
 married woman exerts a more marked influence upon 
 men, and society in general, than the celibate." ELY VAN 
 DE WARKER, M.D. : in Popular Science Monthly, February, 
 1875. 
 
24 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 pursuits, and their effect upon the public 
 weal, are the present concern. 
 
 The results upon the community of the loss 
 of the young female operative have already 
 been shown. Bad as these are,* if the evils 
 of employ break down the health, rather than 
 destroy life, as is the rule, a heavier 
 burden is thereby entailed than results from 
 actual death. Years of total invalidism in- 
 volve both the loss of the individual's pro- 
 duction, with its increase, and the production 
 and its increase of those who care for the dis- 
 abled. Proportionate degrees of dependence 
 
 * "In Massachusetts, during the seven years 18G5 to 
 1871, 72,727 died in their working period. In the fulness 
 of health and completeness of life, they would have 
 had opportunity of laboring for themselves, their fami- 
 lies, and the public, in all 3,606,350 years; but the total of 
 their labors amounted only to 1,681,125 years, leaving a 
 loss of 1,925,224 by their premature deaths. This was an 
 average annual loss of 276,461 years of service and co-oper- 
 ation. Thus it appears that in Massachusetts, one of the 
 most favored States of this country and of the world, those 
 who died within seven years had contributed to the public 
 support less than half 46.07 per cent of what is done 
 in the best conditions of life." EDWARD JARVIS, M.D. : 
 Polit. Econ. of Health, Fifth Rep. Mass. Board of Health. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 25 
 
 on others imply proportionate loss. Says Dr. 
 Jarvis, " Nor is the loss by early death all 
 that the commonwealth suffers in diminu- 
 tion of productive power in the period pre- 
 sumably devoted to profitable labor. Even 
 while men and women live they are subject 
 to sickness, which lays a heavy tax on their 
 strength and effectiveness. ... It is esti- 
 mated by the English observations and calcu- 
 lations that for every death there are two 
 constantly sick ; that is, 730 days' sickness 
 and disability for every death." Reckoning 
 on the basis of calculation furnished by the 
 data of the English"' 4 sick-clubs," it is found 
 that there was in the year 1870, among the 
 people of Massachusetts of the working pro- 
 ductive age, a total amount of twenty -four 
 thousand five hundred and fifty-four years 
 and eight months' sickness or disability, 
 equivalent to so much loss of labor to the 
 community. The bases on which the Eng- 
 lish results are made up do not include sick- 
 ness of less than a week's duration, or any 
 thing less than illness preventing labor: 
 
26 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 hence a large total of loss is annually expe- 
 rienced which the above estimates do not in- 
 clude. There are, moreover, certain forms 
 of disease, notably occasioned too by the 
 injurious effects of mental or physical de- 
 mands upon the sexual peculiarities of young 
 women, which occasion a larger expense for 
 their care than other forms. These are the 
 various types of insanity. Says the author 
 just quoted, * " Under the power of this 
 disease, the sufferers not only cease to be 
 workers, and to contribute to their own sup- 
 port, and that of their families and the state, 
 but are positive burdens for the cost of their 
 sustenance, and the care necessary for them 
 in their wayward impulsiveness, and uncer- 
 tainty of conduct. In the most favorable 
 condition, the cost of care and sustenance 
 of the insane is greater than that of the 
 sound in mind ; and, with most, the ex- 
 pense is very much greater." The cost of 
 efforts at the restoration of the insane is an 
 additional item, and a heavy one, beyond the 
 
 * Edward Jarvis, M.D., Op. cit. p. 382. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 27 
 
 cost of subsistence, and properly enters into 
 the sum total of the possible burden in- 
 volved by the loss to effective industry of 
 the working female. There is no lack of \ 
 evidence going to establish the special tend- i 
 ency of uterine and functional disturbance 
 to produce insanity, and of the predisposition i 
 of certain lines of female work to cause these f 
 disturbances. It is found that "laborers" 
 hold the second place in numbers among 
 the patients of the Massachusetts insane 
 asylums, and that a large preponderance of 
 these are females. Of these, it is believed 
 that fully five per cent have found the direct 
 or aggravating cause of their insanity * in 
 
 * " It is certain, however, that disease of them (the gen- 
 erative organs) may act as a powerful co-operating cause 
 in the production of insanity, without giving rise, so far 
 as we know, to a special group of symptoms. Thus, for 
 example, melancholia distinguishable by no feature from 
 melancholia otherwise caused may be the effect of dis- 
 ease of the uterus. Schroder van der Kolk mentions the 
 case of a woman profoundly melancholic who suffered 
 from prolapsus uteri, and in whom the melancholia disap- 
 peared when the uterus was returned to the proper place. 
 I have met with one case in which profound melancholia 
 
28 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 menstrual disorder or uterine disease (not 
 including the effects of the last climacteric 
 in woman) ; and it is more than conjec- 
 tured that a larger familiarity with the phe- 
 nomena of insanity, and care in examination 
 of insane patients committed to treatment, 
 would establish a considerably increased per 
 cent. As most of the female patients, who 
 find residence in the State institutions for 
 the insane, are those who have followed only 
 industrial pursuits, their disorders, when ref- 
 erable to their avocations, have clearly origin- 
 ated in those of labor. The special tendency 
 to uterine disorders of certain employments 
 will be manifest in their consideration in 
 future pages. 
 
 There is still another item iii the error 
 account against present customs of employ, 
 which, though not wholly related to physical 
 well-being, both by direct and reflex influ- 
 ence is powerfully operative upon sex, and 
 
 of ten years' standing disappeared after the removal of a 
 
 prolapsus uteri. Other diseases and displacements of the 
 
 
 uterus may act in the same way." HENRY MATJDSLEY, 
 
 M.D. : Body and Mind, p. 93. 
 
INT ROD UCTOR Y. 29 
 
 its part in the future welfare of society. It 
 has long been recognized, that, for the best 
 good of the individual and posterity, there 
 should be a sound development of body and 
 mind, requiring a pretty definite term for its 
 accomplishment, as a platform on which to 
 rightly pose the special function of sex. A 
 failure to secure this must inevitably militate 
 against physical integrity, and to a great 
 degree affect the moral status of the sufferer. 
 A youthful moral distortion involves 
 inseparable present enmity to right physical 
 and mental development. To this attaches 
 persistent injury of fabric ; and, even if the 
 train of physical and social evils incident to 
 prostitution and a life of misery do not fol- 
 low, there is sure to result a lessened vigor 
 and vitality. The influences that bring about 
 these interchangeable moral and functional 
 perversions are notably abundant in the 
 present " omissions and commissions " of in- 
 dustrial employments. Says Gaskell,* " The 
 
 * P. GASKELL : Tlie Manufacturing Population of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 8* 
 
30 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 crowding together numbers of the young of 
 both sexes in factories is a prolific source 
 of moral delinquency. The stimulus of a 
 heated atmosphere, the contact of opposite 
 sexes, the example of lasciviousness upon 
 the animal passions, all have conspired to 
 produce a very early development of sexual 
 appetencies. Indeed, in this respect, the 
 female population engaged in manufactures 
 approximates very closely to that found in 
 tropical climates ; puberty, or at least sex- 
 ual propensities, being attained almost coe- 
 val with girlhood. The early age at which 
 sexual development calls into play a crowd 
 of irrepressible sensations, which, when 
 properly tempered and directed, form the 
 basis of future character, and the unfavora- 
 ble circumstances under which this forced 
 development occurs, are in a great measure 
 destructive to the well-being, physical and 
 moral, of those who may well be called 
 its victims." The disregard paid the decen- 
 cies of life in the location and condition of 
 water-closets, etc. ; the laxity with which 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 31 
 
 clothing is worn, and postures are assumed, 
 in the processes of manufacture ; the 
 constant association of both sexes in the 
 shoe-shop, the factory, and the store ; the 
 temperature, excitement of emulation, etc., 
 are all actively operative for evil in this 
 direction, in our industrial system. It is an 
 influence whose dangers to society's best 
 interests are co-extensive with its operation. 
 I have thus reviewed, in an imperfect but 
 suggestive way, the relations of the health 
 of the young female worker, as affected by 
 her vocations, to the welfare of the com- 
 monwealth. This review would seem to 
 indicate, that large numbers of her class are 
 of an age at which unfavorable conditions 
 of employ act with dire results against her 
 especial sexual attributes ; that severe re- 
 quirements of brain-exercise, specially inimiy 
 cal to sexual function, are exacted by maiw 
 processes of industry in which the female 
 is engaged; that there are associate in- 
 fluences of brain-labor in industry of extreme 
 deleterious effect, not occurring with the 
 
32 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 mental exercises of education ; that while 
 with sex in education the effort of the 
 reformer will be to regulate, in industry it 
 will be to prohibit and banish, as well as con- 
 trol ; that, so far as purely economic forces 
 are concerned, the loss of the working girl 
 by the errors of employ is greater than that 
 of the student; that the maintenance of 
 broken-down workers is a greater drain 
 upon the community than their actual deaths 
 at an early period ; that insanity is a form of 
 disease entailing special burdens on society ; 
 and that the unlawful employment of young 
 girls, acting as a stimulant to premature 
 i development of the sexual principle, is pro- 
 ductive of physical deficiency and immoral 
 tendency, the latter acting reflectively upon 
 the physical forces to their greater detri- 
 ment. If I have argued correctly, there 
 exists such a sum of antagonism against the 
 foundation necessities of existence, as well 
 demands the earnest attention of state and 
 individual. 
 
PART II. 
 
 OBJECTIVE. 
 
 "Man is not a system-builder; his loftiest attainment 
 reaches no higher than this: through endeavor, 
 through discipline, through virtue, he may see what 
 is." PLATO. 
 
 RECOGNIZING the position of woman as a 
 chief factor in all political and social prob- 
 lems, and the necessity to their happiest 
 solution of her most healthful status, especial 
 regard has been had to the consideration of 
 employments, which, from their character, 
 might be presumed to affect deleteriously 
 the female operative, and more especially 
 the establishment and normal course of her 
 peculiar sexual functions. The field of in- 
 quiry as to the effect of over-mental exertion 
 on the special function of the sex, so vigor- 
 ously opened by Prof. Clarke, has found 
 
34 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 many laborers and an abundant harvest. 
 Few, however, have entered the correspond- 
 ing field of inquiry in industry. Strange as 
 it appears, widely and ably conducted as the 
 investigations of various governments have 
 been into the processes and influences bear- 
 ing unfavorably upon the health of working- 
 people, with frequent special attention to 
 their results upon child-bearing and nursing 
 women, and (in a general way) upon chil- 
 dren of tender years, there seems to have 
 been no effort made by authority, until that 
 \ of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of 
 | Labor in 1874, to determine the far more 
 important, the cardinal relation which labor 
 bears to this essential attribute of the form- 
 ing woman, on which so certainly hinge all 
 other vital results. 
 
 It is curious, in this connection, to note in 
 the otherwise admirable report* made last 
 year to the British Local Government Board 
 " on proposed changes in the hours and ages 
 
 * Messrs. Bridges and Holmes. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 35 
 
 of employment in textile factories," that 
 there is hardly more than a hint in the fol- 
 lowing questions put by these gentlemen to 
 the medical practitioners of factory districts, 
 of any possibility of injury to the young and 
 maturing female operatives in this most im- 
 portant direction : 
 
 " 1. Have you had experience of factory opera- 
 tives? If so, how long? 
 
 "2. Have you formed any opinion whether the 
 factory labor, as now carried on in your district, has 
 any deleterious influence on the health of the opera- 
 tives ? Are there any diseases which you have noticed 
 as being peculiarly prevalent amongst them ? 
 
 "3. Are there any processes in the manufactures 
 of your district which you believe to be specially injuri- 
 ous to women or children ? and, if so, in what way ? 
 
 "4. Has the labor any tendency to increase the 
 rate of infant mortality? If so, does this depend on 
 the mothers suckling their children imperfectly, or on 
 their working too near their confinement ? Do you 
 know how soon married women usually work at the 
 mill before and after delivery ? 
 
 4 '5. Do you think that ' short-timers ' commence 
 work at too early an age, or that their hours of work 
 are too long ? 
 
36 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 " 6. Do you. think the present age of thirteen years 
 too early for a child to commence working 'full 
 time ' ? 
 
 " 7. Do you think that the present day's work, ten 
 and a half hours, is too long for young persons or for 
 grown-up women ? " 
 
 With a careful and highly commendable 
 search for causes of maternal injury' and 
 infant mortality, there is here, as elsewhere 
 manifest, a singular neglect of direct and 
 inquisitive attention to the dangers to the 
 basis conditions, on which healthful mater- 
 nity and infant life depend, and which, more- 
 over, are incident to every one of the sex. 
 
 The influences that inhere in special pro- 
 cesses or forms of employment, and operate 
 injuriously upon the menstrual function of 
 young females engaged therein, are deserv- 
 ing of, and demand special attention, not 
 less by the gravity than by the extent of 
 their effects. 
 
 A process or condition of employ that 
 tends to the prevention or impairment of the 
 normal course of this vital principle in wo- 
 
OBJECTIVE. 37 
 
 man involves economic, sanitary, and moral 
 questions of the farthest reach; for, when- 
 ever successful in its aggressions, it brings, 
 
 1st. To individuals suffering thereby, 
 (a) Lessened productive labor, and hence lessened 
 
 comforts of life. 
 (5) Increased expense, and loss of vital force, time, 
 
 and money. 
 
 (c) A draft upon previous accumulations, or debt and 
 
 obligation. 
 
 (d) As a rule, lessened capacity for future production 
 
 by labor. 
 
 (e) Bodily and mental distress, sometimes tending to 
 
 intemperance and crime, thus far all results 
 that may be the legacies of several forms of 
 disease, but specially resultant on the disturb- 
 ances in review; while further we have, 
 (/) Lessened probabilities of maternity or vigorous 
 offspring, with possible resultant loss of social 
 and domestic happiness, and even a worse train 
 of sequelce, including secondary disease, insan- 
 ity,* and death. 
 
 * While the statistics of insanity have been hitherto too 
 loosely collected to give satisfactory and reliable data as to 
 the relation which uterine and menstrual disorders bear to 
 insanity, there is sufficient evidence to show a very close 
 and extensive connection between the two. Dr. Bartlett 
 4 
 
38 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 2d. To society it brings, 
 
 (a) Greater burdens, inasmuch as it lays on its mem- 
 bers extra care and labor, in the strict sense 
 unremunerative. 
 (5) Lessened production, present and prospective : 
 
 1. By the loss of as much as the disabled 
 
 laborer would have produced. 
 
 2. By the loss of the natural increase of that 
 
 which would have been produced. 
 
 3. By the loss of the production of those re- 
 
 quired to care for the sick, and its natural 
 increase. 
 
 4. By the incapacity to bear a proportionate 
 
 part, by maternity, in keeping good the 
 * strength of the race; or by the expense, 
 loss, and burden involved in the produc- 
 tion of non-vigorous and non-productive 
 offspring.* 
 (c) Loss to the general tone and work of society. 
 
 of the Minnesota Insane Hospital, in analyzing three 
 hundred and sixteen cases of insanity, whose causes he 
 gives, attributes sixty-two, or about twenty per cent, to 
 causes directly connected with uterine disorder. Dr. 
 Eastman of the "Worcester (Mass.) asylum, in a review of 
 a hundred and twenty-nine cases, attributes sixteen, or 
 about twelve per cent, to similar causes. 
 
 * Says Gail Hamilton, in "Woman's Wrongs," "To 
 give life to a sentient being without being able to make pro- 
 
OBJECTIVE. 39 
 
 It hardly seems credible, at first thought, 
 that the class through whom such an aggre- 
 gate of loss may be, and really is, inflicted 
 upon the state, is composed of the young 
 girls between the ages of eleven and twen- 
 ty-one, engaged in our industrial pursuits 
 by which their injury is effected. The mor- 
 tality tables of our cities and manufacturing 
 towns hint at the facts, but rarely include 
 this class under such " causes." Our hos- 
 pital wards do not often receive them until 
 special agencies of disease have become sec- 
 ondary or general-; but their out-patient 
 rooms and the " dispensaries " are familiar 
 
 vision to turn life to the best account, to give life, care- 
 Jess whether it will be bale or boon to its recipient, is 
 the sin of sins. Every other sin mars what it finds: this 
 makes what it mars." 
 
 "Physiological inquiries will serve to develop these 
 changes to some extent ; facts of observation are likewise 
 in abundance : and both prove that a body worn down and 
 debilitated, although the generative faculty may be unin- 
 jured as to intensity in either sex, cannot give the neces- 
 sary pabulum -for the production of a vigorous offspring, 
 endowed with active vitality." GASKELL: The Manufac- 
 turing Population of England, p. 169. 
 
40 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 to them, and the " corporation " physician 
 and general practitioner are acquainted with 
 their troubles. Profuse, difficult, deficient, 
 or retarded menstruation, anaemia, chlorosis, 
 anasarca and oedema of feet, dyspepsia, pains 
 of back and limbs, nervous headaches, hack- 
 ing coughs, by and by tubercular symptoms, 
 and more or less early decline, is the usual 
 list and order of complaints that our errors 
 of industrial employ are establishing with 
 this portion of our working-world, and with 
 their results are grafting upon our national- 
 ity to its steadily progressive decline and 
 decay. 
 
 In the report before quoted,* it is declared, 
 that, 
 
 " Amongst the women of factory operatives, much 
 more than among the general population, derangements 
 of the digestive organs are common; e.g., pyrosis, con- 
 stipation, vertigo, and headache, generated by neglect 
 of the calls of nature through the early hours of 
 work ; the short intervals at meals ; the eating and 
 
 * Report on Proposed Changes in Hours and Ages of 
 Employment in Textile Factories. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 41 
 
 drinking of easily prepared foods, as bread, tea, and 
 coffee ; and the neglect of meat and fresh-cooked 
 vegetables. Other deranged states of a still worse charac- 
 ter are present ; e.g., leucorrhoza, and too frequent and 
 profuse menstruation ; cases also of displacement, 
 flexions, and versions of the uterus, arising from the 
 constant standing, and the increased heat of and con- 
 finement in the mill." 
 
 That these ill effects are not confined to 
 factory-operatives alone, but affect the large 
 proportion of females of the industrial class, 
 the physician and the philanthropist have 
 long since discovered. The fact is, more- 
 over, now receiving a general recognition. 
 
 What, then, are the errors of employ that 
 entail upon the individual and the commu- 
 nity alike these serious results ? 
 
 I assume that, 
 
 First is the age at which we permit the 
 young girl to leave a life of animal growth, 
 and become a part of an occupation or a 
 machine. 
 
 Second is the disregard (even in defiance 
 of statute) which the managers of our indus- 
 
 4* 
 
42 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 tries exhibit for the cardinal principles of con- 
 tinued prosperity and individual happiness, 
 in the regular and prolonged employ of the 
 plastic and undeveloped forms and powers 
 of these girls of tender years, whose vital 
 functions are as yet incomplete. 
 
 Third is their employment in occupations 
 which cannot be undertaken without injury, 
 except by those confirmed in the possession 
 of full strength and capacity. 
 
 Fourth is in summoning these girls to a 
 long day of labor, and requiring their unre- 
 mitting attention to it, under conditions and 
 circumstances radically unfavorable to health. 
 
 An analysis of this grouping of causative 
 errors will show, under each division, a de- 
 mand for the simultaneous exercise of very 
 considerable, often intense, activity of bodily 
 and mental forces; and it is believed, that 
 just in proportion as these forces are co-ordi- 
 nated in occupations and maintained in ex- 
 treme activity, the impairment and overthrow 
 of the peculiar function of the sex will result. 
 Upon that impairment and overthrow I 
 
OBJECTIVE. 43 
 
 desire to fix the observation of all as a prime 
 factor in determining the decline and mor- 
 tality of young female life, and the multiplied 
 loss consequent thereon. Says Mr. Simon,* 
 medical officer of the Privy Council of Great 
 Britain, 
 
 u The death-rates of the young are, in my opinion, 
 among the most important studies in sanitary science. 
 In the first place, their tender young lives, as com- 
 pared with the more hardened and acclimatized lives 
 of the adult population, furnish a very sensitive test 
 of sanitary circumstances ; . . . and, secondly, 
 those places where they are most apt to die are, neces- 
 sarily, the places where survivors are most sickly, and 
 where, if they struggle through a scrofulous child- 
 hood to realize an abortive puberty, they beget a sick- 
 lier brood than themselves, even less capable of labor, 
 and even less susceptible of education. It cannot be 
 too distinctly recognized, that a high local mortality of 
 youth must almost necessarily denote a high local prevalence 
 of those causes which determine a degeneration of race. 9 ' 
 
 An inquiry undertaken some two years 
 since f left little room for doubt as to the 
 
 * Introduction to Greenhow's Report to General Board 
 of Health, 1858. 
 
 t Sanitary Condition Working Classes : Report Mass. 
 Bureau -Labor Statistics, 1874. 
 
44 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 results of co-ordinated mental and physical 
 activity on the menstrual function. A more 
 recent and extended investigation has con- 
 firmed the conviction that the train of evils 
 herein before given as the direct results and 
 sequelae of such functional disturbance are 
 producible in the immature female, and to 
 some extent in the further advanced, 
 
 First, By severe overwork alone. 
 " Second, By severe overwork coupled with 
 innutrition and non-hygienic surroundings, 
 more rapidly. 
 
 Third, By labor requiring great celerity 
 of manipulation coupled with intense con- 
 centration and activity of mental forces, 
 most rapidly, and especially if under poor 
 nutrition and bad sanitary conditions. 
 
 Fourth, Probably, by the secondary effects 
 of diseases engendered or promoted by non- 
 hygienic conditions of labor, as phthisis 
 (consumption), etc. 
 
 These causes, then, are direct and second- 
 ary, and as ranged under the four divisions 
 or " errors," before declared, may be consid- 
 ered seriatim. The first of these is 
 
OBJECTIVE.. 45 
 
 The age at which we permit the young 
 girl to leave a life of animal growth, and 
 become a part of an occupation or a machine. 
 
 1 ' The establishment of the sexual power at puber- 
 ty, and its extinction with advancing age, both exert 
 important influence on the constitution. At both of 
 these epochs there is an increased liability to disease, 
 and, at the former, a marked increase in the rate of 
 mortality."* 
 
 It is evident, that to maintain that con- 
 dition of life which shall best promote the 
 normal establishment and course of a func- 
 "tion so beset with danger, and on whose due 
 exercise so much depends, should be a first 
 concern of all who have any interest in the 
 future welfare of the community. * It is 
 
 * Dr. West on Diseases of Women, p. 18. "It is not 
 enough," says the same author, " to take precautions till 
 menstruation has for the first time occurred : the period 
 for its return should, even in the healthiest girl, be watched 
 for, and all previous precautions should be ouce more re- 
 peated ; and this should be done again and again, until at 
 length the habit of regular, healthy menstruation is estab- 
 lished. If this be not accomplished during the first few 
 years of womanhood, it will in all probability never be 
 attained." 
 
46 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 equally evident, that large numbers of the 
 very class by whom, and toward whom, this 
 care should be exercised, are engaged in em- 
 ployments whose demands and conditions 
 are such as to render them the reverse 
 of favorable circumstances for the true bal- 
 ance of health in this regard. Until this 
 faculty shall have been established and con- 
 firmed in its completeness, there can be no 
 moral there should be no legal right of 
 a parent or guardian to permit, or of an em- 
 ployer to secure, the labor of the immature 
 
 
 
 frame in occupations that in themselves or 
 their surroundings are inimical to the due 
 development of the individual. If em- 
 ployed, it should be in pursuits free from 
 tendencies to the repression of the sexual 
 principle and the almost purely animal 
 growth which the early years of life seem 
 intended to expressly accomplish. Labors 
 that demand full measures of strength and 
 activity, physical or mental, must properly 
 seek them in those who have passed this 
 climacteric. Dr. Barnes, in his excellent 
 
OBJECTIVE. 47 
 
 work,* thus clearly states the relation of 
 influence and condition : 
 
 * l Many of the factors which account for primitive 
 amenorrhoea (or absence of menstruation) will also 
 induce secondary or accidental amenorrhoea. Thus 
 defective nutrition, unhealthy occupations in crowded 
 ill- ventilated rooms, blood-tainting from exposure to 
 sewage emanations, want of exercise in the open air, 
 which implies privation of the wholesome influences 
 of the sun, will all prevent the advent of menstrua- 
 tion. It is a matter of observation that girls verging 
 on puberty, sent to boarding-school or into business 
 in large town establishments, commonly fail to men- 
 struate, whilst the function is often accomplished on 
 the return to free life in the holidays, or on return to 
 the country. What is wanted is outdoor exercise, 
 and less rigorous strain upon the mind and body." 
 
 In all factory employments, and, indeed, in 
 many others of the lighter and more com- 
 mercial order, the labors and attention of 
 the employee must be incessant, as well as 
 arduous ; and not infrequently the concen- 
 trated thought and action of the individual 
 must supplement and be the essential com- 
 
 * Barnes on Diseases of Women. 
 
48 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 plement of the motions of the machine 
 which the operative tends. Even in many 
 of the higher grades of labor in which num- 
 bers of young workwomen are engaged, as 
 type-setting, telegraphing, money-changing, 
 etc., the individual becomes almost or 
 wholly subservient to, and absorbed by, the 
 occupation or process to which she is de- 
 voted. 
 
 Mr. Robinson of Dukinfield, in his report 
 to Messrs. Bridges and Holmes,* says, 
 
 " The injurious element in factory labor is the 
 incessant and increased action of machinery, pre- 
 venting the body having those brief periods of repose 
 which, if left to itself, it instinctively would have. I 
 attribute the difference in healthy vigor between 
 colliers and mechanics on the one hand, and factory- 
 workers on the other, to the constant demand upon 
 muscular and mental activity made by constant 
 action of the swift machinery. 
 
 ' ' Though the thing done is so monotonous and 
 uninteresting, any negligence is fatal to the work, 
 and the attention must be unremitting ; and this call 
 for unremitting attention is increased by the increased 
 
 * Op. cit. p. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 49 
 
 speed of machinery, and the constant demand for 
 increased production. 
 
 ' ' The depressing agents upon the physical strength 
 of the operatives are not those which exhaust from 
 the wear and tear of muscular fibre simply, but from 
 loss of nervous energy by perpetual excitement, and 
 from long continuance in overcrowded, ill- ventilated 
 rooms."* 
 
 Thousands of children, more than half of 
 them girls, are to-day employed in the 
 various industries of this State, undermining, 
 in a great proportion of cases, that physical 
 vigor which alone will serve as a sound basis 
 for the moral, mental, and material prosper- 
 ity of a nation. 
 
 I have said that the second causative error 
 affecting our growing girls in their employ- 
 ments is 
 
 The disregard (even in defiance of the 
 statute) which our managers of industries 
 exhibit for the cardinal principles of contin- 
 ued prosperity and individual happiness, in 
 the regular and prolonged employ of the 
 
 * Report Sanitary Condition of Leeds, 1842. 
 4 
 
50 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 plastic and undeveloped forms and powers 
 of these girls of tender years whose vital 
 functions are as yet incomplete. 
 
 By far the greater majority of those who 
 are engaged in the lighter labors of manu- 
 facturing and commercial interests in our 
 larger cities and towns have not arrived at 
 the age when the law governing such em- 
 ployment releases them from its control ; and 
 yet the provisions of the statute in this re- 
 gard are in large measure utterly ignored, and 
 every section of the State supports industries 
 in the processes of which the law is daily and 
 with unconcern infracted. Probably the 
 first requirement of the law that " no child 
 under the age of ten years shall be em- 
 ployed in any manufacturing or mechanical 
 establishment within this Commonwealth" 
 is violated with comparative rarity ; but its 
 second and quite as important proviso 
 " that no child between the ages of ten and 
 fifteen shall be so employed unless he or she 
 has attended some public or private school, 
 under teachers approved by the school com- 
 
OBJECTIVE. 51 
 
 mittee of the place in which, such school is 
 kept, at least three months during the year 
 next preceding such employment, . . . nor 
 shall such employment continue unless such 
 child shall attend school at least three 
 months in each and every year" is most 
 wilfully disregarded. " No child," says the 
 law, " under the age of fifteen years shall be 
 employed in any manufacturing establish- 
 ment more than sixty hours in one week. 
 Any owner, agent, superintendent, or over- 
 seer of any manufacturing or mechanical 
 establishment who shall knowingly employ, 
 or permit to be employed, any child in 
 violation of this law, and any parent or guar- 
 dian who allows or consents to such em- 
 ployment, shall, for such offence, forfeit the 
 sum of fifty dollars." There can be no 
 doubt that these latter clauses of the law 
 are most frequently and criminally thrust 
 aside. It is gravely to be regretted that our 
 law has not recognized the established dis- 
 tinction now so generally, as properly and 
 necessarily admitted, as required by the 
 
52 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 difference in sex, whether in mental or phys- 
 ical labor ; has not defined with precision 
 in the law itself, what shall be the interpre- 
 tation of " knowingly employ ; " and has not 
 made definite provision for its rigorous en- 
 forcement in every city and town in the 
 Commonwealth. Not that the law is fully 
 adequate to meet the evils pointed out, but 
 that it would, if rightly enforced, go a long 
 way toward the remedy of those evils. 
 While the original error of the law is in 
 admitting to employ at all, in such establish- 
 ments, girls of such ages, and, as a rule, 
 boys even, and while the change to school 
 occupations though an undoubted advan- 
 tage over the hard grind of the factory or 
 even shop life is but a stepping from one 
 form of concentrated effort to another, even 
 the provisions that do exist in law would 
 lessen, by much, the existing ills if duly 
 recognized or enforced. 
 
 It is the disregard manifested for the 
 future physical, mental, and moral condition 
 of these important factors in the upbuilding 
 
OBJECT1 VE. 53 
 
 and work of society, and in their individual 
 belongings, that is so unfortunate a feature 
 of the methods of managers ; for while want 
 presses, and the " wolf is at the door," pres- 
 ent needs will have little thought of future 
 results, and those who employ, or the law- 
 making and enforcing power, must be at 
 such time the governing mind. 
 
 At the mills in Fall River, Danvers, Fitch- 
 burg, Wakefield, Braintree, and other places, 
 there have been employed for years, large 
 numbers of girls and boys, " knowingly," 
 who have not reached the age of fifteen 
 years, and have not a day's or an hour's 
 schooling in the year; and this with the 
 consent of parents and guardians. A fur- 
 ther grave defect of the existing law is in 
 its exclusiveness, in that it provides for 
 factory-operatives only. While in certain 
 regards, as in better ventilation and hygienic 
 conditions generally, the lot of the girls and 
 boys of tender years engaged as " cash " car- 
 riers, etc., in our large salesrooms and simi- 
 lar establishments, is better than that of 
 
54 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 factory youth, it is one whose special influ- 
 ences upon young girls can but be injurious 
 in grave measure ; for, as I have pointed 
 out, it is the regular and prolonged employ, 
 engaging bodily and mental activity at ten- 
 sion through so long periods of time, that 
 draws upon the energies that should be 
 chiefly employed in maturing and upbuilding 
 the youthful economy. What wonder, that, 
 with these energies sapped by the steady 
 drain of exhausting employment, she should 
 realize the assertion of West,* that " the 
 frail child never passes completely into 
 womanhood, but fades and droops in the 
 transition stage, through which she has not 
 the strength to pass " ? 
 
 I heartily agree with the prominent Phila- 
 delphia physician, who writes as follows of 
 the practice of compelling shop-girls to stand 
 behind the counter during all their hours of 
 service : 
 
 " The custom is selfish, cruel, and useless, selfish 
 on the part of the proprietor, requiring the women to 
 
 * Op. cit. p. 42. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 55 
 
 stand all the time, whether serving customers or not, 
 and this merely that they may appear to be always on 
 the alert to wait on those who call. To stand from 
 seven or eight in the morning to six, eight, or ten 
 o'clock at night, as is the custom at certain stores, 
 with a short time at mid-day for dinner, would weary 
 any man ; but to exact such service from girls and j 
 women is damnable. Their physical powers are, it f 
 is well known, much weaker than those of men, at 
 any rate ; and, by their anatomical and physiological 
 peculiarities, they are entirely unfit for bearing this 
 especially severe toil, namely, standing all day long. \ 
 My professional brethren who practise largely among 
 women are constantly witnessing the evil conse- 
 quences of this most cruel l rule of the establish- 
 ment.'" 
 
 My attention was directed, not long since, 
 to a shop on one of the principal thorough- 
 fares of Boston, in whose exceedingly nar- 
 row dimensions of only eighteen by forty 
 feet, by eleven in height, heated by a fur- 
 nace, no less than fourteen young ladies, 
 ranging in age from seventeen to twenty- 
 four, are employed ; obliged by the "rule of 
 the establishment " " always to stand, to dress 
 neatly, and to be absent only half an hour 
 
56 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 at dinner." Poisoned hourly by the pol- 
 luted air, suffering from the enforced stand- 
 ing, obliged to dress " neatly " (which was 
 found to mean " showily "), deprived of any 
 opportunity for recuperation in the fresh air 
 (for half an hour barely suffices for dinner), 
 poorly paid, and any loss of time rigorously^ 
 deducted, it is not to be counted strange if 
 these girls, partaking so continually of phys- 
 ical and moral poison, become both physi- 
 cally and morally unsound. A morality that 
 robs and oppresses does not inculcate a mo- 
 rality to resist temptations to illicit pleasures 
 or deceit, doubtless in some instances im- 
 pelled to by the deprivations and conditions 
 imposed. 
 
 In connection with these errors of stand- 
 ing, etc., Dr. Van de Warker * says, , 
 
 " The fact that those employments are chosen by 
 women which permit a sitting position is significant 
 in this relation. Woman is badly constructed for 
 the purposes of standing eight or ten hours upon 
 her feet. I do not intend to bring into evidence 
 
 * Ely Van de Warker, M.D., op. cit. p. 461. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 57 
 
 the peculiar position and nature of the organs con- 
 tained in the pelvis ; but to call attention to the 
 peculiar structure of the knftft r and the shallowness 
 of the^ pelvis, and the delicate nature of the foot as 
 jpart of a sustaining column. The knee-joint jrf wo^_ 
 man is a sexual characteristic t Viewed in front and 
 extended, the joint in but a slight degree interrupts 
 the gradual taper of the thigh into the leg. Viewed 
 in a semiflexed position, the joint forms a smooth 
 ovate spheroid. The reason of this lies in the small- 
 ness of the patella in front, and the narrowness of the 
 articular surfaces of the tibia and femur, and which 
 in man form the lateral prominences, and thus is 
 much more perfect as part of a sustaining column 
 than that of woman. The muscles which keep the 
 body fixed upon the thighs in the erect position labor 
 under the disadvantage of shortness of purchase, 
 owing to the short distance, compared to that of man, 
 between the crest of the ilium and the great trochanter 
 of the femur, thus giving to man a much larger pur- 
 chase in the leverage existing between the trunk and 
 the extremities. Comparatively the foot is less able 
 to sustain weight than that of man, owing to its 
 shortness, and the more delicate structure of the tarsus 
 and metatarsus. I do not think there can be any 
 doubt that women have instinctively avoided some of 
 the skilled labors on anatomical peculiarities." 
 
58 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 It will readily be recognized, that the 
 abnormal requirement of prolonged standing 
 is one to which a very large proportion of our 
 working-girls are subject, in a wide range of 
 employment. Both physiological and ana- 
 tomical considerations cry out against it, and 
 common humanity should prohibit it. 
 
 The following illustration, taken from Prof. 
 Clarke,* notes in a marked manner the ill 
 effects of standing, and general error in the 
 conduct of industrial pursuits by our young 
 women : 
 
 " Miss C was a bookkeeper in a mercantile 
 
 house. The length of time she remained in the em- 
 ploy of the house, and its character, are a sufficient 
 guaranty that she did her work well. Like the other 
 clerks, she was at her post, standing during business 
 hours, from Monday morning till Saturday night. 
 The female pelvis being wider than that of the male, 
 the weight of the body in the upright posture tends 
 to press the upper extremities out laterally in females 
 more than in males. Hence the former can stand less 
 long with comfort than the latter. Miss C , how- 
 ever, believed in doing her work in a man's way, in- 
 fected by the not uncommon notion that womanliness 
 
 * Op. cit. p. 77. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 59 
 
 means manliness. Moreover, she would not, or could 
 not, make any more allowance for the periodicity of 
 her organization than for the shape of her skeleton. 
 When about twenty years of age, perhaps a year or 
 so older, she applied to me for advice in consequence 
 of neuralgia, backache, menorrhagia, leucorrhoea, and 
 general debility. She was anemic, and looked pale, 
 care-worn, and anxious. 
 
 1 ' There was no evidence of any local organic affection 
 of the pelvic organs. i Get a woman's periodical 
 remission from labor, if intermission is impossible, 
 and do your work in a woman's way, not copying a 
 man's fashion, and you will need very little apothe- 
 cary's stuff,' was the advice she received. i I must go 
 on as I am doing,' was her answer. She tried iron, 
 sitz-baths, and the like : of course they were of no 
 avail. Latterly I have lost sight ^of her, and, from 
 her appearance at her last visit to me, presume she 
 has gone to a world where backache, and male and 
 female skeletons, are unknown." 
 
 NOTE. "Female clerks in stores strive to emulate the 
 males by unremitting labor, seeking to develop feminine 
 force by masculine methods. 
 
 "Female operatives of all sorts, in factories and else- 
 where, labor in the same way; and, when the day is done, 
 are as likely to dance half the night, regardless of any 
 pressure upon them of a peculiar function, as their fash- 
 ionable sisters in the polite world." PROF. CLARKE, op. 
 tit., p. 130. 
 
60 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 The third of causative errors we have 
 stated to be 
 
 Their employment in occupations which 
 cannot be undertaken without injury, except 
 by those confirmed in the possession of full 
 strength and capacity. 
 
 The consideration of this error, while it 
 embraces the more youthful class to which I 
 have just referred, brings into the foreground 
 those of more advanced years, who, though 
 in part accomplishing the evolutions designed 
 by nature, are as yet insecure in such attri- 
 butes, and are hence liable to the added dan- 
 gers incident to their advance. It is not to 
 be hoped for, in this work-a-day world, that 
 we are to be freed from all employments that 
 will fail with all the alleviations that may 
 be devised to be divorced from severe 
 mental and bodily energy ; neither is it ex- 
 pected, or desirable, that the larger proportion 
 of the class whom we have in consideration 
 the girls and young women from eleven to 
 twenty-one should be exempted at once 
 from some form of industrial occupation. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 61 
 
 The effort will of necessity be, to establish 
 the right adjustment of forces, all the require- 
 ments being considered. The occupations 
 that demand maturity of strength and full 
 possession of functional power for their 
 harmless or least injurious pursuit, are not 
 readily designated ; but from investigation it 
 is warrantable to conclude, that those employ- 
 ments which demand extreme mental activity 
 with celerity of movement long continued, 
 involving unremitting attention, condensed 
 thought, and nervous alertness, cannot long 
 be participated in by those whose powers of 
 life are unconfirmed. 
 
 Hence the true "division of labor" will 
 be that which delegates processes or occupa- 
 tions requiring the fullest powers of mind 
 and body continuously, to those whose ma- 
 turity may bear its burdens with least oppres- 
 sion ; distributing to the weaker " to each 
 according to her several ability " the pur- 
 suits which a regard for future weal will not 
 interdict their prosecution of. The true 
 " hours of labor " will be based, so far as 
 
62 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 sex is concerned, on these considerations ; and 
 the true " work of reform " will be such in- 
 telligent arrangement of legislation, and its 
 enforcement, and such amelioration of the 
 present attendant ills, as can come only from 
 a just and proper comprehension of these 
 God-created demands of sexual peculiarity.* 
 To ascertain, as reliably as might be, the 
 effects of the varying characteristics of labor 
 upon the youthful female engaged therein, 
 study has been made of various industries, 
 considering them not as so man}- trades or 
 vocations simply, but rather as types and 
 expressions of different degrees and kinds of 
 influence exerted thereby ; the physical, men- 
 tal, mento-physical, reciprocal, etc. These 
 inquiries have been especially into the effects 
 of factory employments, type-setting, teleg- 
 raphy, sewing-machine operation, basket- 
 making, the counting of money, strands, etc., 
 with casual examination into other lines. 
 
 * " This effort of woman to invade all the higher forms 
 of labor, is a force battling with the established order 
 of sexual relation." DR. VAN DE WARKER, op. cit. p. 470. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 63 
 
 Minutes of the inquiry into each are herein- 
 after given in full. 
 
 The fourth of these causative errors enu- 
 merated is 
 
 In summoning these girls to a long day of 
 labor, and requiring their unremitting atten- 
 tion to it, un'der conditions and circumstances 
 radically unfavorable to health. 
 
 That the hours of labor are long, that the 
 attention to the work in hand must often be 
 most exacting, and that the attendant con- 
 ditions in which too many of our forms of 
 labor are prosecuted are " only evil, and 
 that continually," are perhaps the most 
 earnestly protested and readily patent of any 
 of the claims put forward by the advocates 
 of the improvement in the conditions of 
 Avorking-people. 
 
 The postulate of these advocates * in Eng- 
 land, the examination of which created the 
 commission before referred to, was, that 
 " ten hours arid a half of monotonous, un- 
 ceasing labor, even under the most healthy 
 
 * Bridges and Holmes. Hep. , p. 4. 
 
64 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 conditions, are said to be a longer time than 
 is consistent with the health of young per- 
 sons between the ages of thirteen and 
 eighteen, and of women generally, of what- 
 ever age." 
 
 To this, the rejoinder of the Employers' 
 Association was, ' that their bright and 
 healthy appearance is patent to all. Thou- 
 sands of women are now earning upward of 
 twenty shillings per week ; and those of 
 mature age, whose employment is suited to 
 their strength, supply no evidence that they 
 cannot with comfort and health work as 
 long hours as men." Even with the very 
 remarkable proviso embraced in this reply, 
 which I have Italicized, by investigation, 
 the commission was forced to a conclu- 
 sion quite the reverse of the assertion, that 
 " their bright and healthy appearance was 
 patent to all ; " nor did it conclude, that, in 
 such employment as seemed to be thought 
 " suited to their strength, there was no evi- 
 dence that women cannot with comfort and 
 health work as long as men," though at ma- 
 ture asre. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 65 
 
 The unremitting attention demanded by 
 certain lines of labor, and commented on as 
 especially deleterious in its influence, I shall 
 consider, together with the non-hygienic 
 surroundings and conditions, in connection 
 with special forms of employ. 
 
 An analysis of the four causative errors in 
 the management of industry, which I have 
 assumed to be the chief sources of disturb- 
 ances peculiar to the working-girl, show, 
 that, under the first, we have, 
 
 Youth unequal to the positions occupied 
 in judgment or ability ; impairment of animal 
 growth; a constrained condition, as a com- 
 plemental part of a process or machine. 
 Under the second, 
 
 Disregard of ultimate injurious effects on 
 laborers and the community ; unbroken appli- 
 cation, without vacations, for long terms; 
 depressing and disease-inviting demands on 
 immature vitality. Under the third, 
 
 Employ in unsuitable occupations for the 
 condition and strength existing. Under the 
 fourth, 
 
66 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 Unduly long hours ; concentration of vital 
 energies, involving extreme nerve-tension ; 
 unfavorable sanitary conditions in surround- 
 ings, and nature of processes. 
 
 It will be observed from this analysis, that 
 the various influences under different heads 
 are often exactly identical in their special 
 effects, although arrived at from different 
 initial pointy, and that each of these special 
 effects is potent in creating the condition 
 under consideration. 
 
 We have enumerated four methods where- 
 by the occupations of workwomen may 
 and do bring about the menstrual disturb- 
 ances and the results we have mentioned, 
 overwork; overwork, with innutrition and 
 non-sanitary associations ; labor conjoining 
 extreme activity of body and mind ; and the 
 effects of disease primarily produced by the 
 three foregoing causes. The last of these 
 unqestionably may stand either in the rela- 
 tion of cause or effect, it being beyond doubt 
 that consumption, which produces oftentimes 
 menstrual overthrow in its toil-broken vie- 
 
OBJECTIVE. 67 
 
 tim, may be and is itself produced by failure 
 of the function in the forming girl.* That 
 one has been the parent of the other, with 
 interchangeable priority, and that both have 
 proceeded from certain evils incident to a 
 life of labor, no observer of the working- 
 women of the land, can doubt. " " Amenor- 
 rhcea (retarded menstruation), especially if 
 attended with chloro-aiiaemia, is very liable 
 to merge into, to induce, pulmonary con- 
 sumption" f "Not uncommonly," says Dr. 
 Clapton, " phthisis appears to be developed 
 in consequence of emansio-mensium ; but 
 phthisis in nearly every case stops menstrua- 
 tion." "With suppressed menstruation," 
 
 * "Experience, our only sure guide in medical in- 
 quiries, instructs the physician that a diseased condition 
 of the body produces an alteration in the condition of the 
 mind; and that certain emotions of the soul, whether of 
 a pleasurable or painful nature, are universally attended 
 with reciprocal alteration in the bodily functions." 
 FORBES WINS LOW : Body and Mind, p. 153. "Functional 
 derangement and alteration necessarily result from this 
 state of things, leading to disease and change of structure 
 in the organs." GRAHAM'S Science of Life, sec. 305. 
 
 * Barnes, op. cit. 
 
68 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 says West,* " the one great danger to watch 
 against is the supervention of phthisis." 
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 The manufacture of textile fabrics, con- 
 sidered as an avenue of production of the 
 several causes of ill health already dwelt 
 upon, may be looked upon as including them 
 all, and hence becomes worthy the closest 
 attention ; not only as a source of results so 
 unfortunate, but also as being one of exceed- 
 ing magnitude, extending its deleterious in- 
 fluence to a wider range than any other 
 equally injurious employ. 
 
 While, with exceptions, it may be fairly 
 considered, in the average, as not an extreme- 
 ly laborious employ, either in this country 
 or abroad, for the younger portion of the 
 female operatives employed therein, and in 
 some of its processes in particular, there is 
 a degree of toil disproportionate to the con- 
 dition and capacity of those engaged ; while 
 
 * Op. cit. p, 45. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 69 
 
 the effects of the unremitting and monoto- 
 nous * character of most of the work can but 
 stand in a direct causative relation to the 
 disturbances and depressions I have pointed 
 out as especially deplorable. It will further 
 be seen, that, in this branch of industry in 
 particular, the special influences that operate 
 for the production and aggravation of pul- 
 monary complaints exist to a degree that 
 obtains in no other. Reviewing the unre- 
 mitting and monotonous character of factory 
 work, as productive of lessened vigor and 
 vitality, Messrs. Bridges and Holmes* state 
 that, 
 
 ' ' Light though factory labor in almost all its de- 
 partments unquestionably is, additional leisure of six 
 hours per week would tend to increase the vitality 
 and vigor of the women and children engaged in it. 
 We have already referred more than once to the unre- 
 mitting and monotonous character of all labor at a 
 machine driven by steam. If the day's work of a 
 
 * " So a functional disturbance of the cerebrum is often 
 induced by the irregular action of other parts of the nerv- 
 ous system, especially those connected Avith the repro- 
 ductive apparatus." W. B. CARPENTER, M.D: Mental 
 Physiology, p. 660. 
 
 t Op. cit. p. 60. 
 
70 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 housemaid, or even of a charwoman, be closely looked 
 at, and compared with that of an ordinary mill-hand in 
 a card-room or spinning-room, it will be seen that the 
 former, though making greater muscular efforts than 
 are ever exacted from the latter, is yet continually 
 changing both her occupation and her posture, and 
 has very frequent intervals of rest. Work at a ma- 
 chine has inevitably a treadmill character about it. 
 Each step may be easy, but it must be performed at 
 the exact moment, under pain of consequences. In 
 hand-w r ork and house-work there is a certain freedom 
 of doing or of leaving undone. Mill-work must be 
 done as if by clock-work." 
 
 The cotton-factory, as well as being the 
 most extensive, is, perhaps, as fair a repre- 
 sentative of textile factories as can be given, 
 all conditions considered. 
 
 In this department of textile manufac- 
 tories, it is not probable that purely muscular 
 " overwork," except in very young girls, or 
 in one or two special processes, e.g., " draw- 
 ing " and u weaving," is a source of any con- 
 siderable functional injury, ordinarily; but it 
 is interesting to note, that, when it does 
 become so, it is as a result of the grafting on 
 
OBJECTIVE. 71 
 
 of a species of mental activity, viz., the ex- 
 citement and spurring involved in the effort 
 of a " piece-worker " to accomplish a certain 
 result, and obtain a proportionate wage. 
 
 Contrary to the opinion expressed by 
 Judge Cowley,* that "it can hardly be said 
 that piece-workers' health is either better or 
 worse than the health of day-workers," in- 
 quiries the present year, both within the 
 mills and of physicians in factory localities, 
 lead to the conclusion, that the piece-workers 
 do suffer, both in general and special dis- 
 turbance, to a greater degree than day-work- 
 ers. Inquiry of a distinguished physician 
 who has enjoyed a large practice in one of 
 the principal cotton-factory cities of the 
 State, and who is noted for his exactness in 
 method and record, brought out the fact, as 
 established by his private and hospital 
 records, that nearly a third more came under 
 his professional observation from the piece- 
 workers than from the day-workers. An 
 inquiry after those who had been counted the 
 
 * Eep. Mass. Bureau Statistics of Labor, 1873, p. 282. 
 
72 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 ablest workers in the mills through a period 
 of years, and had made largest wages, estab- 
 lished the facts that they were piece-workers, 
 and that most of them had broken down in 
 health, and had been obliged to abandon the 
 work. 
 
 Nerved by the ambition to be accounted 
 u a smart girl,*' and with the incentive of 
 gain before her, it i easy to understand how 
 the female operative will attempt a degree of 
 effort that is inevitably "a note given on 
 time," to be paid at maturity, at an usurious 
 rate, from the vital forces of her economy. 
 
 " It would seem to be as easy to goad women, as it 
 would be difficult to goad men, into doing the greatest 
 amount of piece-work in a given time. The admira- 
 tion of their companions, and the approbation of the 
 overlooker, appear to be at least as powerful induce- 
 ments as the increase of their wages. A woman who 
 can mind four looms without an assistant has attained 
 a certain position, and is an object of attention. 
 ' Hoo's a four-loomer, hoo's like to be wed/ will be 
 commonly remarked of such a one."* 
 
 * Bridges and Holmes, Op. Cit. p. 20. I am glad to 
 believe that nowhere in this country does the wretched 
 
OBJECTIVE. 73 
 
 In the special processes alluded to, " draw- 
 ing " and " weaving," it may well be doubted 
 if a labor, which, as in the first, requires the 
 constant removal of the cans (or boxes) to 
 and from the machines, weighing when full 
 from sixteen to eighteen pounds (upward of 
 nine hundred cans passing through the hands 
 of each female in a day), is not a species 
 of overwork in itself, that, so continuously 
 plied, must result in injury. In " weaving " 
 and in " spinning" both, it has been a com- 
 mon mistake to employ girls whose ages 
 could but be associated with sexual insecurity 
 that should of itself class this employment 
 for them as overwork. 
 
 " Where labor is also prejudicial," says Dr. 
 Baker,* of Leeds, "there needs not miasm, 
 and want of ventilation, to accelerate its con- 
 
 and abusive custom exist of determining the pay of the 
 "overlooker," or foreman, of a room by the earnings of 
 those under him, a system which, wherever practised, is 
 accompanied by the most brutal goading to over-labor, 
 productive beyond escape of a host of evils to health. 
 
 * Report on Leeds, in Reports on Sanitary Condition 
 of Laborers, Population England and Wales, 1842. 
 7 
 
74 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 sequences ; and there is no doubt but that 
 atmospheric influences have a preponderating 
 effect on many occupations : tliey germinate 
 and ripen the seed which labor has sown." 
 
 Judge Cowley bears testimony that " the 
 special diseases incident to factory life are 
 lung diseases and 'female debility.' ' 
 
 Dr. H. Browne of Manchester, Eng., 
 states that " diseases of the digestive and 
 respiratory mucous membranes are not quite 
 twice as frequent in the factory-workers who 
 attend the infirmary as out-patients, as in the 
 remaining out-patients of all classes and both 
 sexes." 
 
 The Massachusetts State Board of Health 
 has undertaken an inquiry into the mortality 
 of factory-operatives within their jurisdiction. 
 An analysis of the replies received by this 
 board* to its queries establishes the fact 
 that the employes of cotton-factories suffer a 
 disproportionate death-rate. The registra- 
 
 * Second Annual Report Massachusetts State Board of 
 Health, p. 414. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 75 
 
 tion reports of Massachusetts for the last 
 nine years also show, that, in the large manu- 
 facturing towns, the death-rate from diseases 
 presumably incident to such employ exceeds 
 that of other towns of similar population. 
 We have, therefore, the testimony of our own 
 and foreign observations, to the existence 
 of results which we have come to recognize 
 as associated with special causes, more espe- 
 cially overwork coupled with innutrition and 
 non-sanitary surroundings. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great improvements 
 which the past few years have made in cotton- 
 machinery, and the processes of labor in 
 cotton-factories, the following comprehen- 
 sive statement of a German writer * still too 
 correctly depicts the effects of labor in the 
 dust, etc., of such factories. 
 
 " Soon after entrance into the workshop, the 
 workman perceives it (the dust) in a most unpleas- 
 ant way. In those who are unaccustomed to it, it- 
 causes continual tickling in the throat, which incites 
 
 * Dr. Ludwig von Hirt : Krankhirteu der Arbeiter, 
 Breslau, 1871. 
 
76 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 hard coughing and occasionally whitish expectoration. 
 In .the first year of work, the operative suffers con- 
 stantly from bronchial catarrh; and a considerable 
 proportion of those who come to this occupation from 
 rural districts abandon it, even though they may be 
 only sufferers from constant catarrh, without other 
 worse symptoms. 
 
 " If, however, they persevere in this occupation, 
 more important symptoms supervene, sometimes 
 soon, often after a year of work, such as cough with 
 pectoral pain, marked anaemia, obstinate debility, and 
 loss of appetite. White viscid sputa is now expecto- 
 rated with difficulty, and shows under the microscope 
 cotton-fibres for several hours after quitting the fac- 
 tory. Marked emaciation, sometimes but rarely 
 profuse diarrhoea, deprives the operator of his 
 strength, and compels him to leave his work, and be- 
 take himself to his home or to the hospital. 
 
 " These, of course, are the most unfavorable, and 
 happily not the most frequent cases. But people 
 very often go on coughing their whole life long, and 
 die at 'an advanced age. . . . Sickly people, especial- 
 ly those liable to pulmonary affections, do not bear up 
 , long. The most unfavorable cases are usually found 
 I among women; and in a factory of three hundred or 
 four hundred operatives, there will generally be found 
 two or three cases of this kind every year. Other 
 diseases of not infrequent occurrence are phthisis, 
 
OBJECTIVE. 77 
 
 acute pneumonia, and, as has been already remarked, 
 chronic catarrh." 
 
 The processes of " carding " and " strip- 
 ping," even since the introduction of Well- 
 man's patent stripper, etc., still fill the air with 
 innumerable particles of dust which pene- 
 trate everywhere, and, in some mills, in a 
 few minutes sufficiently coat a smooth plate 
 of metal to permit the finger to make marks 
 thereon ; while a sunbeam discloses the ex- 
 tent to which the atmosphere breathed by 
 operatives is charged with the foreign sub- 
 stances.* 
 
 A careful inspection of a very large num- 
 ber of factories has established as the chief 
 non-hygienic conditions, the excess of fly- 
 ing dust, or " fluff; " the extreme heat main- 
 tained in all departments; the uncomfortable 
 and unhealthful humidity, particularly of 
 
 * Dr. Horatio Bridge of New- York City, a classmate, 
 has recently published an admirable translation of tlie 
 work of Dr. Gottlieb Merkel of Nuremberg, on diseases 
 caused by the inhalation of dust. Ne w- York Medical Ilecord, 
 1874. 
 
 7* 
 
78 SEX TN INDUSTRY. 
 
 the weaving-rooms, from steam ; the special 
 irritations from the operation of " stripping," 
 and perhaps, to some extent, from that of 
 " grinding; " the irritation and noxious influ- 
 ence consequent on the " sizing " employed ; 
 and the specially evil effects of foul privies. 
 
 When to these are added the ills that 
 result from insufficient, unfit, and hastily 
 devoured food, and wet clothing, from the 
 long standing, reaching, and lifting (as of 
 heavy beams), and the depressing tendencies 
 of the monotony and unrelenting exactions 
 of the processes themselves, we have a sum 
 total of causes quite sufficient to wage suc- 
 cessful war upon the general health, and to 
 break down and overthrow the special forces 
 Nature would fain establish in those sub- 
 jected to these repressing agencies. 
 
 Of several of these agencies enumerated, 
 the English commission reported last year, 
 to Parliament, as follows : 
 
 "As to ventilation, in almost all cases it was ex- 
 tremely bad, and in a large number of instances there 
 was none whatever. . . . The heat is kept up by 
 
OBJECTIVE. 79 
 
 steam-pipes, and obvious motives of economy dictate 
 that as little as possible of it shall be lost by open 
 windows. ... In most of the spinning-rooms there 
 are one or more privies, usually of very rude con- 
 struction, and almost always opening directly into the 
 room, with very inadequate apertures to the outside 
 air. The soil falls down a large untrapped pipe, 
 which is flushed often or seldom, according to the 
 varying attention given it." 
 
 This is a picture that would be entirely 
 correct of many factories to-day in this Com- 
 monwealth, though I am glad to believe that 
 a marked improvement in these regards has 
 characterized nearly all larger factories, and 
 some of the smaller. 
 
 Wherever the manifestly injurious influ- 
 ences I have mentioned are present, there 
 cannot fail to be both physical and mental 
 impairment, ill suited to sustain or to resist 
 the further encroachments of the demand 
 made by certain of the processes of factory 
 labor for alert co-operation of mind and 
 body. 
 
 Exhibiting, as it does, so great a variety 
 and grave a degree of devitalizing power 
 
80 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 upon woman, in its concomitants otherwise, 
 it is fortunate that cotton-factory labor 
 necessitates so small an exercise, as it does, 
 of the expressly untoward influence which 
 arises from co-ordinate energy of mind and 
 body. 
 
 Whether we agree with Dr. Seguin, * or 
 not, in his view that " co-ordination is no fac- 
 ulty, but a function of every portion of the 
 motor tract of the spinal axis from the origin 
 of the third cerebral nerve down," it is cer- 
 tain, that, operating between mental and 
 physical forces, it has a power for exhaustion 
 not found in the fullest exercise of either 
 alone. 
 
 In cotton-manufacture, it is only in the 
 routine work of attendance on machinery 
 which requires the exact adaptation of mind 
 and hand at precise times, that this coeval 
 demand upon thought and its executing 
 power is made ; and here the speed is rarely 
 such, or the concentration so absorbing, as to 
 
 * An Outline of the Physiology of the Nervous System : 
 E. C. Seguin, M.D. N. Y. Medical Kecord, Dec. 1, 1874. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 81 
 
 prevent some degree of unconscious or 
 " mechanical " response and restful inatten- 
 tion. 
 
 The numerous causes proyocative of pul- 
 monary disease, which have been cited as 
 existing in factory labor, leave no room for 
 doubt, that the destruction of menstrual 
 power, which so certainly supervenes on the 
 development of phthisis, may readily receive 
 its origin here ; while it is equally evident 
 that these causes, if co-operating with those 
 acting directly upon the function itself, can 
 but hasten the result it should be the aim 
 of the employer and the legislator alike to 
 avert. 
 
 A searching analysis of the " examination 
 notes" of one hundred and twenty-four mills 
 in the Commonwealth shows to have been 
 specially noticeable for wretched ventilation, 
 sixty ; while there were " noted" as observ- 
 able for overheated rooms (particularly 
 weave-rooms), thirteen ; dusty and exceed- 
 ingly dirty condition, fifteen (from " size " 
 one) ; bad condition of privies, nearly all ; 
 
82 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 employment of girls under ten years, 
 eight.* 
 
 I pass now to the consideration of several 
 employments, in none of which purely mus- 
 cular overtaxing occurs, and in which the 
 innutrition and numerous non-hygienic influ- 
 ences inherent in mill-life are principally 
 absent, but in which the most potent of 
 causes of sexual derangement, simultaneous 
 activity and concentration of mind and body, 
 is noticeably present. It is observable, 
 moreover, that, in these, the distinctive fea- ' 
 ture of the corresponding activity in factory 
 labor, viz., monotony and its depression, is 
 lacking ; and inasmuch as, despite these ad- 
 vantages, it is found, that, as a whole, this 
 order of labor is far more rapidly and cer- 
 tainly destructive of the, normal balance of 
 the sexual principle in women, we must con- 
 
 * The United-States census of 1870 gives as the total 
 number of girls between the ages of ten and fifteen 
 employed in the industries of Massachusetts, 0,299; the 
 larger proportion of whom are, beyond doubt, subject to 
 the evils here enumerated. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 83 
 
 elude, that in the greater rapidity of effort, | 
 physical and mental, involved; in the great/ 
 increase of concentration required ; and in the 
 contemporary exercise of the forces brought 
 into play, the exceeding deterioration must 
 reside. 
 
 It is but fair, however, to observe that the 
 class of females engaging in these occupations 
 all of which require a higher degree of 
 intelligence than most mill-work is of a 
 more highly-organized character ; and, as 
 being of more sensitive fibre, might ration- 
 ally be expected to sooner exhibit the results 
 of the attrition and wear incident to these 
 pursuits. 
 
 TYPE-SETTING. 
 
 The setting of types, the labor of the 
 " compositor," as this servant of the public 
 is called, holds a peculiar position in the 
 class of physico-mental activities from the 
 facts that the employment 
 
 May become partially unconscious or 
 " mechanical " labor ; 
 
84 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 Is supposed to possess certain dangers of 
 poisoning from the nature of the metal com- 
 posing the types; and 
 
 Has in the postures necessary, its sedentary 
 character, and the heat at which " composing- 
 rooms " are unavoidably kept, its particular 
 non-hygienic conditions. 
 
 It will readily be seen, that a closely at- 
 tentive activity must be exercised to " follow 
 copy," and accomplish a paying amount of 
 work with sufficient correctness to satisfy em- 
 ployers. There can, of course, in this labor, 
 be no distracting influences ; for to " set " 
 type with a remunerative degree of rapidity 
 and correctness (and most type-setters are 
 'required to "correct" their own "proofs," 
 or errors), the eye must take in the words 
 of the copy, and their relations to each other, 
 their punctuation and character (whether 
 Italics or other type), and various other 
 details known only to the guild ; must trans- 
 mit the intelligence absorbed by the eye to 
 the hand, and direct it with celerity to that 
 particular one of the compartments in a type 
 
OBJECTIVE. 85 
 
 " case " which contains the particular type 
 called for, and deftly arrange it " wrong-end 
 first " in the proper relation to its fellows 
 contained in the " composing-stick." To read 
 the copy (often most illegible) ; to supply or 
 correct punctuation; to determine the type, 
 "spaces," " leads/' etc.; to observe the in- 
 tended sense of the writer ; to separate sticky 
 type, "keep them on their feet," place them 
 correctly, duly "spaced" and "leaded," as 
 well as punctuated ; keep the place in the 
 copy ; and do all these quickly, sometimes 
 with cold hands, and with various inter rap- 
 tions, it is obvious, is an employment that 
 is most exacting of mental concentration and 
 manipulative rapidity. A good female com- 
 positor can " set " and correct thirty thou- 
 sand ems per week, for which she would 
 receive thirty cents per thousand, although 
 many are employed at a set sum per week, 
 rarely exceeding ten dollars ; and at this 
 rate she would be expected to be able to set 
 nearly six thousand ems per day, to accom- 
 plish which it will be seen that there must 
 
86 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 be constant labor of a very rapid char- 
 acter. 
 
 As an offset, however, we have the fact, 
 that a considerable portion of the work be- 
 comes mechanical, a skilled compositor know- 
 ing, without looking, exactly where in her 
 case to find the type wanted ; while the 
 placing it in position in the composing-stick 
 correctly is accomplished by the aid of another 
 of those marvellous processes of mental 
 telegraphy with which our daily actions are 
 replete. The type has upon one side a series 
 of " nicks," which being felt by the finger, 
 the brain is informed, and, without the inter- 
 vention of the eye, the type is turned to the 
 correct position, and set by the re-instructed 
 finger. The wrong-end-first position of the 
 type is, moreover, no impediment to the 
 compositor, who reads " backwards" and 
 " upside-down " as well as other people regu- 
 larly read from left to right. Hence it is to 
 be considered, that, although an employment 
 of distinctly co-operative physico-mental ac- 
 tivity, it is lessened in degree as such by the 
 
OBJECTIVE. 87 
 
 facility with which its processes, in part, 
 become mechanical. It is a question not 
 readily determined, whether or not the per- 
 nicious effects of the depressing powers of 
 lead and antimonial poisoning (where they 
 are operative), and of the heat and unhealthy 
 postures mentioned, are the equivalents of 
 the gain derived to the compositor by her 
 power of making the work partially mechan- 
 ical ; and so advantage and disadvantage bal- 
 ance each other, and leave the employment 
 a pure type of its class. An exceedingly 
 interesting feature of type-setting is the fact, 
 that it is understood, by first-class composi- 
 tors, that the element of memory enters 
 largely into, in fact becomes a governing 
 power in, the occupation, thereby changing 
 the direction and character of the mental 
 concentration. Having read her copy, it is 
 asserted that the compositor, if of good 
 memory, retains the sentence read, in mind, 
 follows copy no more till a fresh sentence is 
 needed, and then concentrates all thought 
 upon retaining the sentence and the point 
 
88 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 in it, to which work has progressed, leaving 
 the eye free to go with the hand to the case, 
 aiding the correctness and celerity of the 
 latter. It is plain, that, if such is the 
 mental process, the greater the retentive 
 power of memory (largely, of course, a 
 matter of training), the more freely and rap- 
 idly the work may go on, the true concentra- 
 tion being upon the two points mentioned ; 
 viz., the general retention of the sentence, 
 and the place reached therein by the com- 
 positor. 
 
 It is proper to note, moreover, in this con- 
 nection, that a compositor who is quick of 
 perception, and is skilled in grammatical 
 construction, punctuation, etc., is able to 
 perform her work with much less fatigue 
 than one of slower comprehension and less 
 accomplishment. Finding that the fore- 
 going views, as to the part played by mem- 
 ory, and the degree of skill in perception, 
 grammar, etc., w r ere fully recognized, it 
 became a matter of much interest to confirm 
 them by actual experiment and inquiry. A 
 
OBJECTIVE. 89 
 
 well-established case was found to be famil- 
 iar to the older compositors, of a compositor 
 who had been an " expert," becoming totally 
 blind, but continuing his work by having a 
 boy to read long extracts of his copy to him, 
 his cultivated powers of retention being 
 remarkable ; and it was found that his proofs 
 were, in the main, as correct as those of his 
 fellows. Desirous of determining the real 
 force of this claim, a lady compositor was 
 carefully blindfolded ; and, the copy being 
 read to her, it was found that the work could 
 undoubtedly be thus performed, though with 
 not quite the same correctness as ordinarily, 
 but more rapidly, and resulting in greater 
 fatigue. The statement of the operator was 
 to the effect, that her whole concentration of 
 mind was upon the two points already men- 
 tioned, the retention of the copy, and her 
 place in it ; and this concentration she con- 
 sidered quite equivalent in demand to that 
 required by the slower process of setting 
 with the eyes open, stating that she missed 
 the aid in keeping the place, obtained by the 
 
 8* 
 
90 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 hurried glance upon the state of progress in 
 the composing-stick. Whatever ameliorating 
 circumstances it may possess, in any or all 
 of the ways mentioned, it is evident that, 
 type-setting is an employ exacting an un- 
 usual degree of mental concentration and 
 energy, with, great rapidity of manipulation ; 
 and, as such, if previous hypotheses have 
 been correct, cannot fail to have a markeiL 
 effect jipsaLJthaJifialtk^ opera- 
 
 tives. Let us see how these hypotheses are 
 borne out by the facts, as variously obtained. 
 
 Mr. M , brought up in the business 
 
 from a boy, now engaged in it for eighteen 
 years, having worked in offices with female 
 compositors ranging from one to twenty in 
 number, and including from two to three 
 hundred in his observation, states, 
 
 ' ' Few girls can continuously set more than five 
 thousand ems per day, while men will set from seven 
 to eight thousand ; not because the girl is not quicker 
 in movement and perception, for she is, but because 
 she cannot ' stand it,' she is not strong enough. It 
 seems to be the back that gives out. Girls cannot 
 
OBJECTIVE. 91 
 
 work more than eight hours, and keep it up : they 
 know it, and they rarely will ; and even this seems to 
 1 pull them down,' so that it is extremely rare that a 
 girl continues more than a few years at the business." 
 
 Mr. B , foreman of a large printing 
 
 establishment, says, 
 
 " Girls must sit at the * case.' I never knew but 
 one woman, and she a strong, vigorous Irishwoman 
 of unusual height, who could stand at the case like a 
 man. Female compositors, as a rule, are sickly, suf- j 
 fering much from backache, headache, weak limbs, / 
 and general * female weakness.' ' 
 
 Mr. D , the publisher of a well-known 
 
 periodical, says, - 
 
 '* I have had hundreds of lady compositors in my 
 employ ; and they all exhibited in a marked manner, 
 both in the way they performed their work and in its 
 results, the difference in physical ability between 
 themselves and men. They cannot endure the pro- 
 longed close attention and confinement which is a great 
 part of type-setting. I have few girls with me more 
 than two or three years at a time ; they must have 
 vacations, and they break down in health rapidly. I 
 know no reason why a girl could not set as much type 
 as a man, if she were as strong to endure the demand 
 on mind and body." 
 
92 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 Miss J , a lady compositor, says, 
 
 "We cannot stand at the * case.' It increases 
 back and head ache, and weakness of limbs, as well 
 as a dragging weight about the hips. I have been at 
 this work five years, but have been frequently obliged 
 to give up for vacations, from peculiar troubles and 
 general debility. I began to menstruate when four- 
 teen ; I am now twenty-two. I was well until I had 
 set type a year, when I began to be troubled with 
 difficult periods, and have been, more or less, ever 
 since. When I go away, I get better ; but, as often 
 as I return to my work, I am troubled again. Have 
 wholly lost color, and am not nearly as fleshy and 
 heavy as when I began work. I have now a good 
 deal of pain in my chest, and some cough, which 
 increases if I work harder than usual. I am well 
 acquainted with many other lady compositors who 
 suffer as I do." 
 
 Miss S , a lady long in charge of the 
 
 " composing-room " (female department) of 
 a large printing establishment, testifies, 
 
 ' ' I was myself a compositor, and have had scores 
 of girls under me and with me, many of whom I have 
 known intimately. I have no hesitation in saying 
 that I think I never knew a dozen lady compositors 
 who were ' well. ' Their principal troubles are those 
 
OBJECTIVE. 93 
 
 belonging to the sex, and great pain in back, limbs, 
 and head. Most of those I have known have preferred 
 going into other employments than to continue in the 
 business. Many seem to recover fully after leaving 
 the business ; but I have known several who have 
 sickened and died of ; consumption/ and some are 
 always troubled with l female complaints.' I know a 
 number who have married, and have children, most 
 of them seemingly bright and healthy. Girls can^ 
 not stand at the case like men, and ought not to try to_ 
 work, if it can be liplpp.fl, *4 fp.rf.n.in pp.rinfls. I think 
 the heat and ill- ventilation of our rooms is bad for us 
 all." 
 
 Dr. G , a physician in one of the sub- 
 urbs of Boston, gives his evidence as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 li I have had several cases of menorrhagia (profuse 
 menstruation), a few of retarded or difficult menstru- 
 ation, and a single case of type-poisoning, in female 
 compositors. They all tell me that the work produces 
 backache dud headache, with more or less trouble 
 periodically. The case of poison was an interesting 
 one, and proved itself such conclusively. As often 
 as the girl would leave her work for a time, her un- 
 favorable symptoms would entirely remove : just as 
 soon as she took up the types again, the trouble was 
 
94 8X IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 renewed. It is an employment requiring so close 
 confinement, and such careful attention, that I am at 
 no loss to understand its effects." 
 
 Mr. H , an employe of the govern- 
 ment printing office at Washington, informs 
 us, 
 
 " I have known a good many of our girls in the 
 composing-rooms here in the city; and quite a number 
 that I have known have come here into the work 
 strong and healthy-looking girls, and have gone away 
 in a few years, pale, thin, and. sick. I know, from 
 conversation with some of^thein^Jjhat the work upsets 
 them jas women, and they cannot continue the work 
 long without suffering. I should say, that perhaps 
 their pleasure-seeking after work as balls, parties, 
 etc. has a bad effect too ; but all do not follow that 
 course." 
 
 Dr. B , a physician to dispensary pa- 
 tients, says, 
 
 " I have seen quite a number of female type-set- 
 ters who were suffering from uterine troubles and dis- 
 turbed menstrual conditions. I think that these, with 
 obstinate constipation, and occasional cystitis (inflam- 
 mation of bladder), are their chief troubles, beside 
 
OBJECTIVE. 95 
 
 the ever-present l headache.' Mind and body are | 
 compelled to act so' quickly in that work, that I am j 
 not surprised at nervous effects, particularly in young j 
 women not fully developed." 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing, that 
 the female compositors themselves, their 
 employers and associates, those who superin- 
 tend them, and their physicians, all agree to 
 the effects of the labor, and the latter recog- 
 nize the cause. Although subject to modify- 
 ing, and to a certain degree puzzling, cir- 
 cumstances, there can, apparently, be no 
 doubt of th^relatioii existing between type- 
 setting, as an employment possessing the 
 physico-mental draft, and the conditions ' 
 found to exist in ..tko.s^devoted_toLifc*. Count- 
 ing it, therefore, as an 
 
 upon t.hft pp.o.n1in,r.^uiiction of W0_- 
 maiij_and leaving our suggestions concerning 
 it to a further consideration, we pass to the 
 review of an occupation still more closely a 
 type of concentrated mental and physical 
 co-operation. 
 
96 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 TELEGRAPHY. 
 
 Those at all familiar with, the demands 
 upon the nervous energy and manipulative 
 dexterity required by the processes of teleg- 
 raphy will not be surprised that the rapid- 
 ity, readiness of perception and response, 
 sensitiveness to " time," close attention to 
 the " delivery " of the instrument, manual 
 celerity, and often simultaneous action in 
 " receiving," counting, writing, and " check- 
 ing," are found to exert upon the general 
 and special health of the youthful J^ lady 
 
 .._. xr__.. , , "* ' * / 
 
 operator " almost positiyejind rapidly injxiri- 
 jp>us_effect. That it has not more widely 
 attained a reputation as a " non-salubrious " 
 employ, is due to the facts, that those en- 
 gaged in its most responsible, and therefore 
 most hurtful positions, are with very rare 
 exceptions safely past the forming period, 
 are confirmed in their possession of wo- 
 manly attributes; and those of impressible 
 years are usually employed in " branch 
 offices, " etc., places that do not exact that 
 continuity or concentration in their work 
 
OBJECTIVE. 97 
 
 that main offices, etc., must have. These 
 being the facts, it is doubly interesting to 
 find, that, so purely is the occupation one 
 of the physico-mental activity type, that 
 though in the one case the labor is inter- 
 mittent, and permissive of rest, and in the 
 other the operator has passed the climacteric, 
 the demands for concentration and co-opera- 
 tive alertness are so great, that both suffer in 
 health in a marked and universally recog- 
 nized manner. It is but fair that the con- 
 strained posture, sedentary habit, obstinate 
 and confirmed constipation, and over-heat of 
 the rooms, which very generally affect the 
 operator, should be given due place in the 
 causative effects of this recognized disturb- 
 ance of health ; but to the character of the 
 work itself is the great proportion of the 
 result due. 
 
 While, therefore, this particular avenue of 
 employ cannot be looked upon as one of those 
 affecting, to a wide extent, the peculiar sexual 
 function in forming girls, from the fact that 
 comparatively few such are employed therein, 
 
98 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 it is of great interest, as establishing in a 
 marked manner the soundness of the princi- 
 ple put forth, that, from a rapid exercise of 
 concentrated mental and ph} r sical energy, 
 there occurs the most emphatic effect upon 
 the function in consideration. Wherever 
 young girls are called upon to engage in the 
 full requirements of a busy office, or experi- 
 ence a sudden increase of labor and re- 
 sponsibility, the effect on the economy is 
 immediately apparent, and especially in the 
 direction of the menstrual result, if contem- 
 poraneous. 
 
 " It is the common thing," says the super- 
 intendent of a line, "for young beginners, 
 those prpmoted to larger offices, and those 
 placed suddenly upon responsible posts, to 
 suffer a degree of physical prostration imme- 
 diately thereafter ; and I have noticed this 
 to be proportionate to the age and nervous 
 habit of the individual." Numerous inqui- 
 ries of operators, in a score of offices, have 
 produced the unvarying answer to the ques- 
 tion, " How long can you stand this employ 
 
OBJECTIVE. 99 
 
 in a busy office ? " " Not over a year, with- 
 out a good vacation of at least a month." 
 Indeed, that this is so, the managers of the 
 principal lines seem to recognize, inasmuch 
 as a month's vacation is allowed their " oper- 
 ators " in each year ; though it is to be greatly 
 regretted, that, even for sickness, they will 
 make no further allowance, compelling the 
 operator to resign if even a day or two more, 
 however imperatively demanded by illness, 
 is taken. 
 
 On being interrogated as to the special 
 causes and effects of prostration in telegraph- 
 offices, the first reply of nearly all young 
 u lady operators," perhaps not unnaturally, 
 is to the effect, that the close confinement, 
 over-heat of rooms, and position, are princi- 
 pally operative ; but more direct inquiry, 
 calling out the more active and self-examin- 
 ing thought, invariably produces the reply, 
 
 that the " nervous debility," 
 
 " * 
 
 hot head^land dizzy headache, make up a 
 good part of the results ; while particular 
 inquiry, in a large proportion of cases, estab- 
 
100 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 lishes the fact, always, in the larger offices, 
 that menstruation occurs more frequently 
 than it ought. 
 
 When it is known, that, in the average 
 business of a large city office, a " lady opera- 
 tor " often receives a string of messages with 
 the ear, writes them as they come with her 
 right hand, counts them with her eye, checks 
 them with her left hand, and answers her 
 " O. K." to the sender, it will be readily 
 understood that the interplay of nervous 
 influences must be of the most rapid and ex- 
 haustive character ; because, however expert 
 the operator may become, she can never be- 
 come purely automatic : mental concentration 
 must be drawn upon to the full. A " lady 
 operator," many years in the business, said 
 to me, 
 
 "I have broken down several times, completely 
 worn out, suffering from sheer nervous debility. I 
 had ' turned of age ' safely, and was well in this and 
 every other particular when I entered the office : since 
 I broke down the first time, I have never been 
 4 right,' though much improved when out on my va- 
 
OBJECTIVE. 1-01 
 
 cations. I could not have continued as long as I 
 have, if it had not been that I have been changed 
 about in small offices, and have been part of the time 
 in charge of rooms." 
 
 Another said, 
 
 " Our girls all come to us looking bright, fresh, 
 and ruddy ; but it is not long before they lose color, 
 and strength seems to go with it. While I think it 
 a nice occupation, and better than standing in stores 
 or working in mills, it would be much better if vaca- 
 tions could be better arranged, and the confinement 
 lessened. " 
 
 Miss , for several years in charge of 
 
 the female department of one of the largest 
 offices in the country, testified, 
 
 "One year is as long as one can work in a busy office 
 without a good vacation. The confined position, con- 
 stipation, heat, and dizzy headache, I think, are the 
 most noticeable troubles of ' lady operators ' who are 
 4 grown up. ' The hours are too long for such strained 
 employment. From eight, A.M. , to six, P.M. , with only 
 an hour for dinner, makes too long a day for the kind 
 of work. I am sorry to say some of our girls eat 
 their lunch in the room, not going out at all. A wo- 
 9* 
 
&t IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 man can do as much as a man in this business, and 
 do it as well, but does not get the same pay for it. ^A 
 skilful ' lady operator^ here 'will sometimes have 
 from two hundred to two hundred and thirty mes- 
 sages a day ; but she could not stand that rate more than a 
 month. Most of our chief-office ' lady operators ' are 
 from twenty- three to twenty-four years old : our young- 
 est is twenty-three. They generally begin to learn 
 from sixteen to eighteen years of age, and the young- 
 est, of course, feel it most. I think, that, with those of 
 our age, the chief menstrual trouble is with its occur- 
 ring too often." 
 
 An inquiry of those among female opera- 
 tors who more properly came within the 
 designation of "forming" has developed 
 some curious and interesting results. 
 
 Miss C., a "lady operator " nineteen years 
 of age, located at an office in a quiet town 
 on one of our railroad lilies, owing to an 
 accident on the line, had her office suddenly 
 besieged for an entire day and into the night, 
 by an unprecedented business, taxing her to 
 the utmost. It occurred just at a " peculiar 
 period : " a complete suppression resulted, and 
 a general prostration ensued, from which 
 
OBJECTIVE. 103 
 
 she has slowly and imperfectly, as yet, re- 
 covered. 
 
 On "election night" the demand upon 
 operators is, of course, unusually heavy ; and 
 several of the female operators at large cen- 
 tres state, that, for some days after, their 
 sense of debility is great. In two cases the 
 periodicity was notably disturbed by this or 
 any other unusual requirement of the work, 
 just previous to the time of normal recurrence. 
 
 It not infrequently happens that sickness 
 of an operator, or other contingency, requires 
 the transfer of a young operator from her 
 usual post to one of greater responsibility 
 and more exacting duties ; and in such cases 
 the operators are quite liable to find that a 
 considerable disturbance of their periodical 
 function occurs. Whenever a young opera- 
 tor is transferred to one of the chief offices, 
 especially if a person of nervous tempera- 
 ment, the increased responsibility and ner- 
 vous agitation (unless a person of unusual 
 confidence and poise) will not infrequently 
 occasion a disturbance of this character more 
 
104 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 or less prolonged. The weight of evidence 
 would seem to indicate, that, with those of 
 the " forming-period," the result of such in- 
 fluences is to repress and retard ; while, with 
 those of maturer years, it is to render more 
 frequent and profuse. It is to be regretted 
 that it is not readily possible to more com- 
 pletely separate the other deleterious influ- 
 ences, as posture, confinement, etc., from the 
 distinct operation of the physico-mental con- 
 centration and activity. A review, however, 
 of the foregoing, indicates conclusively 
 that, 
 
 Though the extent of the employ of 
 " forming " girls is not wide, wherever occur- 
 ring, the results are those declared, and are 
 exactly such as we should expect from the 
 class of influence at work ; 
 
 That this type of influence exerts its spe- 
 cific effects, even upon those more advanced 
 in years ; and, 
 
 Its results are more quickly realized th/in 
 those of any other influences tending toward 
 the same channel of ill health. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 105 
 
 BASKET-MAKING. 
 
 An observation of females, varying in age 
 from sixteen to forty, engaged in basket-mak- 
 ing, a labor requiring wonderful rapidity 
 of manipulation, showed, that, in half a 
 dozen new operatives placed upon the work 
 in a well-ventilated, light, and cheerful 
 room, 
 
 1. Five lost in weight in the first week 
 appreciably ; the remaining one, a slower per- 
 son, apparently not at all. 
 
 2. The youngest lost the largest per cent 
 of weight. 
 
 3". Two, one sixteen and another eighteen, 
 experienced disturbance of the menstrual 
 function in the first month of employ, though 
 previously regular. 
 
 4. The slow person began to lose weight 
 appreciably on the fourth week, when her 
 motions had quickened. 
 
 5. The decrease in weight continued with 
 all (though there was no diminution of appe- 
 tite or general health specially noticeable) 
 for from four to six weeks ; when, the move- 
 
106 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 merits of the digits having become more 
 mechanical, it ceased, and the weight re- 
 mained essentially unchanged for a few weeks, 
 varying with individuals, from one to three, 
 when in four of the six it increased percepti- 
 bly, in the other two slightly. The operatives 
 of this department state, that a change in the 
 shape of their work, requiring for a time 
 more concentrated thought, will, if it occur 
 at that juncture, effect sometimes a disturb- 
 ance of the catamenial function. In all, 
 familiarity with the work tends to remove 
 the difficulty. 
 
 THE COUNTING OF MONEY, ETC. 
 
 The continuous counting of money or cer- 
 tain other articles, conducted as a regular em- 
 ployment, presents, perhaps, the purest type 
 of manipulative celerity, co-operative with 
 extreme mental concentration, known to in- 
 vestigators. It has, moreover, the especial 
 characteristic that only to a very slight 
 degree, if at all, can it be made " mechani- 
 cal." It cannot be performed unconsciously, 
 
OBJECTIVE. 107 
 
 but demands constant vigilance and alert 
 digital reciprocity. 
 
 Satisfied that a pursuit so entirely repre- 
 senting extreme mental concentration, with 
 most rapid physical manipulation, could not 
 fail of producing a marked effect upon such 
 girls of " forming" age as should be employed 
 therein, inquiry was made at the United 
 States Treasury at Washington, in the 
 " counting department" of which some 
 thirty ladies are constantly employed in 
 counting " currency." This counting is of 
 pieces of one denomination at a time only ; 
 i.e., a person counting " tens " counts tens 
 only for the time being ; and one upon 
 " fifties " handles only pieces of that designa- 
 tion : hence the pieces, and not the amount, 
 are counted, the number of pieces multi- 
 plied by the denomination, of course, giving 
 the result in dollars and cents. The skill 
 acquired in this department is truly wonder- 
 ful, some of those employed counting millions 
 of pieces per year. Let any one take a few 
 hundred pieces of currency, and attempt to 
 
108 SEX JN INDUSTRY. 
 
 count them as rapidly as possible, and it will 
 be found that not only is the manual move- 
 ment exceedingly rapid, but that the mental 
 concentration is most intense, monotonous, 
 and unremitting ; while the result attained, 
 even at the utmost endeavor, is not very 
 great. It will hence be readily understood, 
 that in the constant employ at this occupa- 
 tion there must of necessity be a most ex- 
 hausting draft upon the mental and physical 
 forces. Exactly such is found to be the 
 case ; and this pursuit, which, it will be 
 seen, combines, to a degree that no other we 
 have considered does, the several special 
 influences of mental depression, concentra- 
 tion, alertness, continued exercise, and 
 monotony, exercises its deleterious power 
 upon the periodicity of its followers in the 
 way and with the rapidity that we should 
 expect. 
 
 Miss , the lady longest in the employ 
 
 of the department, and in charge of the 
 " counting " (over thirteen years), states 
 that, 
 
OBJECTIVE. 109 
 
 * ' The girls usually come into the work looking 
 rosy and healthy; but they very soon grow pale- lipped 
 and pale-cheeked, and soon begin to require more or 
 less absence. When they first begin the work, they 
 all sit very straight, and count very fast, although I 
 always counsel them against the fast counting; for no 
 one has ever yet undertaken it that did not break 
 down, if young. Gradually they learn to count 
 faster, but they cannot continue in the work but a 
 short time. The sickness and absence become more 
 frequent, and by and by they are obliged to leave 
 altogether. We have those over fifty, and one of sixty 
 years of age employed; and they are the only ones, with 
 perhaps a single exception, who do not seem to feel the 
 effects." 
 
 Question. "What is the exception?" Answer. 
 " We have a young lady who counts easily, and looks 
 off her work more or less, and is not in general so 
 closely confined to her work as the others, and does 
 not seem to feel it as much as they." 
 
 Q. "Do you consider that she can do her work 
 1 mechanically,' then? " A. " She thinks she can." 
 
 Q. "Do you ? " A. " We do not find her work 
 as correct." 
 
 Q. " You would hardly be willing to trust it?" 
 A. "We do not." 
 
 Q. "Have you satisfied yourself of the way, the 
 
 direction, in which this steady and concentrated labor 
 10 
 
110 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 acts upon your young ladies ? " A . " They all 
 suffer more or less from headaches, severe backaches, 
 debility, and constipation, but all the younger ones, 
 particularly, from too frequent and profuse return of 
 their menses. I think this last the worst feature ; for, 
 as soon as that begins, they lose color, grow nervous 
 and feeble, are often absent, and suffer along till they 
 1 give up.' ' 
 
 Q. u Are there any influences connected with the 
 work other than those which, as we see, are part of 
 it, that act badly on the employees?" A. u Our 
 rooms are fearfully hot, most unhealthily so, I 
 think ; and of course the stoop which a girl soon 
 gets is bad, as well as her sitting so long in one posi- 
 tion. No other unhealthy ' influences.' ' 
 
 Q. " You consider, then, that the very character of 
 the work is surely and rapidly prejudicial to the 
 health of the young women engaged in it, and espe- 
 cially on account of their sex ? " A . " Yes, I do ; and 
 they camrot remain it but a very short time. It told 
 upon me severely when I began, and I was matured 
 when I began; and, if I had been at the counting, I 
 could not have remained." 
 
 The counting of " strands " of rattan, used 
 in " cane-seating " furniture, etc., is an em- 
 ployment which, as carried on at Wakefield 
 
OBJECTIVE. Ill 
 
 and Fitcliburg, Mass., employs a large 
 number of women and girls. The work 
 consists in each of those engaged drawing 
 rapidly and continuously from a large roll 
 of tangled strands, just as received from 
 the " hatcheling " machine, one or more 
 of these strips, and straightening it, placing 
 them on a peg upon the wall, so arranged 
 that the strand length can be measured 
 as it hangs ; and subsequently counting 
 them off into bundles, the latter part being 
 performed with great rapidity. There is 
 no aid to the counting except that each 
 operative learns, in time, about how many 
 her right hand will hold ; for, as she holds 
 the loose bundle of strands in her left, 
 she transfers them, with a swift, sliding 
 motion, under the thumb of the right, until 
 the hand is full,, thereby in time acquiring 
 a general idea* of about how many it would 
 usually contain. The allied mental and 
 physical demands of the process itself are 
 closely similar to those of money-counting, 
 but the labor has the additional exhaustive 
 
112 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 characteristic that it is performed stand- 
 ing.* 
 
 An inquiry among those engaged in this 
 department, and into the factory record of 
 those who have been so employed, establishes 
 the following : 
 
 Young girls of the forming period are 
 not now put upon the work at all, it having 
 been found that it was impossible for them 
 to continue it long. 
 
 With those of more advanced age, the 
 menopause is more or less affected, the gen- 
 
 * "The same causes of ill health, physical and mental, 
 which obtain in many schools, arid which to my mind are 
 very efficient in mischief to the developing woman, are 
 found, as we all know, in shops and factories, in constant 
 operation, and in the most aggravated form. I consider 
 those employments which require girls from twelve to 
 twenty to stand at the counter or loom from eight to 
 twelve hours a day, week in and week out, as little short 
 of suicidal, murderous perhaps I should say. Table and 
 nursery girls, in hotels and city houses, are notable sub- 
 jects of menorrhagia, ansemia, chlorosis, and often of hys- 
 terical excitement or melancholia. These things are mat- 
 ters of experience to every physician, though hard to 
 present in statistical form." THEO. W. FISHER, M. D. : 
 Letter to author. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 113 
 
 eral disturbance being in the direction of 
 menorrhagia, or profuse menstruation. 
 
 The more advanced toward matured adult 
 life the individual, the better she is able to 
 endure the hardship of the employ. 
 
 There is general suffering with those so 
 engaged, from persistent headache, dropsical 
 affections, and severe dyspepsia ; while not 
 infrequent "uterine inflammations and dis- 
 placement have come under my own knowl- 
 edge among the operatives in this depart- 
 ment. 
 
 Few have been able to follow it for any 
 length of time, and these not continuously ; 
 the duration of employ being closely * pro- 
 portionate to the maturity of the individual. 
 
 A casual inquiry among stenographers has 
 assured me, that, although a vocation ad- 
 mirably adapted in many of its features for 
 the exercise of female ability, and embracing 
 demands for the deft celerity, with the ready 
 perception and appreciation of women ; its 
 requirements of concentration and nervous 
 10* 
 
114 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 force are such, as well as considerable phys- 
 ical endurance, that women shrink from 
 it, although the demand for skilled stenog- 
 raphers is daily greater. The United States 
 census of 1870 shows that only three had thus 
 far established themselves as such. One of 
 the most expert of this class in the country 
 gives it as his opinion, that " constant em- 
 ploy therein would inevitably break a young 
 woman down in a short time." It certainly 
 is significant, that an employment whose 
 general characteristics, associations, and pe- 
 cuniary return may be said to be so enticing 
 to women should not have attracted to its 
 ranks larger numbers, when the field is so 
 wide. Were it not that its effects, and the 
 difficulty of securing success therein without 
 incurring them, have become recognized, it 
 certainly would seem that its labors would 
 have been far more widely adopted. 
 
 SEWING-MACHINE LABOR. 
 
 The several branches of industry hitherto 
 considered have all been such as have their 
 
OBJECTIVE. 115 
 
 physical requirements principally met by the 
 labor of the hands alone (except such in- 
 volvement of pedal power as was embraced 
 in standing, walking, etc.) ; but, in sewing- 
 machine use, we have an employ calling into 
 exercise the active service of the feet and 
 lower limbs, which, as more closely allied to 
 the organs involved in menstruation, and to a 
 certain extent enjoying the same vascular 
 system, may be considered as possessing a new 
 relay of interest. While all the pursuits dwelt 
 upon have been characterized by a greater or 
 less degree of disadvantage in posture, in 
 the use of the sewing-machine this disadvan- 
 tage is rather aggravated than otherwise. 
 There is no need to enlarge upon the extent 
 of its use, or to state that the use of power- 
 propelled machines does not fall under re- 
 view ; nor will it be necessary, in view of the 
 exhaustive examinations of the subject by 
 Guibout,* Decaisne,f Nichols, J and others, to 
 
 * Paper before "Soc. Medicale des Hopitaux." 
 
 t Ann.'d'Hyg. Pub. 1870, 2d ser. vol. xxxvi. 
 
 t Dr. A. H. Nichols, 3d Rep. Board of Health, Mass. 
 
116 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 do more than adapt their findings to the 
 place they properly hold in relation to the 
 results we are considering. 
 
 While the investigations of Guibout are 
 characterized, on the one hand, by an exagger- 
 ation of the injurious influences incident to 
 sewing-machine use, and those of Decaisne, 
 on the other hand, by a too slight regard for 
 these influences (though his inquiries were 
 extended), the more nearly trustworthy de- 
 ductions of Dr. Nichols * establish a series of 
 " conclusions " which expose a grave degree 
 of harm. The comprehensive question asked 
 by Dr. Nichols of his correspondents was, 
 u Have you observed any injury to health 
 from the use of sewing-machines used by 
 foot-power ? If so, please to send us all the 
 information you may have on the subject." 
 
 Replies were received from one hundred 
 and thirty-eight correspondents, representing 
 one hundred and twenty towns in Massachu- 
 setts, and several in other States. 
 
 * Dr. A. H. Nichols, 3d Eep. Board of Health, Mass. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 117 
 
 Eighty report more or less ill effects ob- 
 served by them ; the balance, giving negative 
 or doubtful answers, were mainly from towns 
 where the machines were used only in pri- 
 vate families, etc. My own analysis of the 
 published replies shows that sixty-nine phy- 
 sicians replied to the query. Of this num- 
 ber, forty-four answered in an emphatic 
 manner, declaring the results to be un- 
 doubted upon the organs of menstruation 
 and the function itself; four, only, held nega- 
 tive views ; while the remainder assigned to 
 the use other results indirectly operative to 
 the same end. 
 
 I quote a few only, taken at random from 
 the many unequivocal statements of these 
 physicians as to the pernicious effects of this 
 industry. 
 
 REPLIES FROM MASSACHUSETTS PHYSICIANS. 
 
 A. " Quite a number of cases, in which pain and 
 lameness in the back and thighs, dyspepsia, leucor- 
 rhoea, vaginitis, and menorrhagia existed, I have attrib- 
 uted to their use." 
 
 B. "The most common disease I have seen is a 
 
118 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 chronic form of ovaritis, which it is impossible to 
 cure while the girl is at work." 
 
 C. u The use of the machine during menstruation 
 is especially injurious. I have even known a case 
 where a severe attack of ovaritis and retroflexion of 
 the uterus followed its use during a single menstrual 
 period." 
 
 D. u I think I have observed a greater tendency to 
 dysmenorrhoea and other uterine troubles among 
 those who use the sewing-machine for a living than 
 among others." 
 
 E. " Cases of unmistakable injury, very frequent a 
 few years ago^ causing marked irregularities of the 
 menstrual function,* and their usual sequelce. The 
 almost universal introduction of steam-power has 
 greatly diminished this class of cases." 
 
 F. " Constant and long-continued use of sewing- 
 machines, moved by foot-power, tends to induce func- 
 tional diseases of the uterus. Three girls working in 
 the same shop ten hours daily, for two or three years, 
 now suffer from dysmenorrhoea, from which they were 
 formerly free. " 
 
 Says a Boston physician * who for many 
 years has given special attention to the 
 gynaecological affections of women, 
 
 * Horatio R. Storer, M.D., Lecture on Female Hygiene, 
 before State Board of Health of California, p. 13. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 119 
 
 " The sewing-machine, that compound of blessing 
 and curse to woman, adds to the list of influences 
 causative of disease, not only acting in several of 
 the ways suggested, by the long-continued and con- 
 strained position and fatiguing of the pelvic muscles ; 
 but in another, not generally sufficiently appreciated, 
 by which a mental and dangerous disquietude is origin- 
 ated and enhanced by the unintentional auto-stupra- 
 tion." 
 
 t 
 
 Another well-known physician * of Boston 
 writes : 
 
 4 i I once observed many cases of debility, and pain 
 in spine and side, with now and then menstrual dis- 
 orders, in a shopful of sewing-machine girls, which 
 ceased to exist when steam was applied. " 
 
 OTHER PHYSICIANS. 
 
 A. u I have investigated quite a number of cases 
 where diseases were produced by running sewing-ma- 
 chines by foot-power. Among these diseases, I have 
 noticed' several cases of lameness of limbs and back, 
 menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, amenorrhcea, leucor- 
 rhcea, and displacements." 
 
 B. " I have no doubt whatever that this employ- 
 
 * Theo. W. Fisher, M.D. : Letter to the author. 
 
120 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 ment among females is more powerful and efficient in 
 the production of disease of various kinds in that 
 sex than almost all other causes combined." 
 
 To these expressions of physicians, pre- 
 sumably as safe a criterion of the real results 
 produced by the occupation as can be ob- 
 tained, Dr. Nichols has added numerous 
 varying experiences of the workwomen 
 themselves, which, though not as harmoni- 
 ous or positive in their findings, are suffi- 
 ciently so to make it certain that a grave 
 degree of peculiar disturbance is recognized 
 by them. The " conclusions " given by Dr. 
 Nichols are : 
 
 ' * That the illnesses which most frequently prevail 
 among professional operatives (as distinguished from 
 home operatives) making use of the treadle (foot- 
 power) are, 
 
 " (a) Indigestion, attributable to the unhealthy 
 conditions in which they pursue their occupation, 
 particularly the impure atmosphere of the workrooms, 
 the sedentary employment, and want of open-air ex- 
 ercise. 
 
 " (6) Muscular pains, affecting the lower limbs 
 and trunk, produced by the long-continued, frequent 
 use of the muscles. 
 
OBJECTIVE. 121 
 
 " (c) Diseases peculiar to women, aggravated by, 
 rather than caused by, the plethoric condition of the 
 pelvic organs, induced by this exercise. 
 
 1 ' (d) General debility. By this is meant a state 
 of physical deterioration - and nervous prostration 
 brought on by overwork." 
 
 Adding to these conclusions the single re- 
 mark, that my own observations and review 
 of the data given would indicate a classifica- 
 tion of these influences upon female ill health 
 as more decidedly " causative " than " ag- 
 gravating," the belief may fairly be educed 
 therefrom, that in the continued use of the 
 sewing-machine by' foot-power, there resides 
 a source of special functional disturbance in 
 women, which is extensive in its reach, arid 
 embraces overwork, often under bad sani- 
 tary surroundings, labor to which much of 
 the monotony and unremitting character in- 
 cident to most machine-work attaches, and 
 muscular activity coupled with a considera- 
 ble degree of mental concentration ; this 
 last being in an intermediate degree to that 
 required by factory machinery, and that 
 11 
 
122 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 required by the telegraph instrument. The 
 evidence of the direct influence of this spe- 
 cies of employ upon the catamenial function 
 is notably abundant, and raises the query, if 
 the fact of pedal rather than manual muscu- 
 lar power as here involved is the real cause 
 of a greater effect ; or, whether the simpler 
 methods of argument cause those affected 
 (by localizing the energy in closer relation 
 to the parts seen to be most influenced) to 
 infer an injury that they would be slow to 
 recognize when remote agents, as the hand, 
 are active, and the brain must be summoned 
 to greater participation to produce the effect. 
 As an employment still enlisting the labors 
 of large numbers of young women of the 
 ages we are considering, notwithstanding the 
 very considerable introduction of steam- 
 power to its uses, it is well worthy the con- 
 sideration of the economist and legislator ; 
 for from its ranks the offices of wife and 
 mother are filled to no mean degree, few of 
 the class continuing many years in the work, 
 while those engaged therein are, as a rule, 
 
OBJECTIVE. 123 
 
 of different fibre from those of factory labor, 
 and do not like them raise' up and perpetu- 
 ate succeeding generations of employees for 
 the same work. 
 
 We may fairly conclude, from the fore- 
 going testimony and data from the various 
 channels of industry, 
 
 First, That a sure and swift result must 
 follow to the immature female whenever she 
 engages in an employ requiring mental and 
 physical concentration and celerity. 
 
 Second, That the disturbance will be pro- 
 portionate, in the rapidity of its advance and 
 degree, to the degree of concentration, celer- 
 ity, and continuity of employ. 
 
 Third, That its most active and most bale- 
 ful effects will be upon the functions peculiar 
 to the sex. 
 
 Whatsoever, therefore, in industry, exerts 
 these influences (whose present and prospec- 
 tive and almost unending results we have 
 pointed out), demands the exercise of all 
 ingenuity, wisdom, and care, to secure its 
 alleviation and removal. Certain of the em- 
 
124 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 ployments of women include these evils from 
 seeming present necessity ; but it becomes 
 the duty of all to direct their studious atten- 
 tion thereto, if perchance a relief may be 
 found ; while for other forms of employ only 
 the false notions that exist need to be over- 
 thrown, to banish at least some of their at- 
 tendant evils. 
 
PART III. 
 
 SUGGESTIVE. 
 
 " The commonwealth is to take necessary measures for 
 the protection of public health, and to secure society 
 against whatever may be a public nuisance or a 
 public peril." MULFOKD : The Nation, p. 286. 
 
 I HAVE intimated that the exactions of * 
 distorted views of life, the consequent dis- 
 arrangement of economic adjustments, and 
 woman's own mistaken ambitions, have in- 
 flicted upon her a position in industrial toil 
 foreign to the true intent of her being. In 
 brief, she must now labor for bread in the 
 same field with men, and, so doing, falls 
 short of, is outside, her true and highest 
 possibilities and privileges. What, then, are 
 these ? and how may the designed condition, 
 
 11* 125 
 
126 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 so far as industry is concerned, be brought 
 about ? Says Maudsley : * 
 
 " Could we in imagination trace mankind back- 
 ward along the path stretching through the ages, on 
 which it has gone forward to its present height 
 and complexity of emotion, and suppose each new 
 emotional element to be given off at the spot where it 
 was acquired, we should view a road along which the 
 fragments of our high, special, and complex feeling 
 were scattered, and should reach a starting-point of 
 the primitive instincts of self -preservation and propa- 
 gation. 
 
 1 ' In the first place, a proper regard to the physical 
 nature of women means attention given, in their 
 training, to their peculiar functions, and to their 
 fore-ordained work as mothers and nurses of children. 
 Whatever aspirations of an intellectual kind they may 
 have, they cannot be relieved from the performance 
 of those offices so long as it is thought necessary that 
 mankind should continue on earth. 9 ' 
 
 For woman is reserved, therefore, the dis- 
 tinctive glory and honor of the chief agency 
 in the perpetuity, development, and training 
 of her race. To a distinction so dignified, a 
 
 * Sex in Mind and Education, Henry Maudsley, M.D. 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 127 
 
 position so ennobling, the highest enthrone- 
 ment is fittingly to be accorded. 
 
 " Nothing/' says Gaskell, * " would tend more to 
 elevate the moral Condition of the population than the 
 restoration of woman to her proper social rank ; noth- 
 ing would exercise greater influence upon the form 
 and growth of her offspring than her devotion to 
 those womanly occupations which would render her a 
 denizen of home. No great step can be made till she 
 is snatched from unremitting toil, and made what 
 nature meant she should be, the centre of a system 
 of -social delights. Domestic avocations are those of 
 her peculiar lot. The poor man who suffers his wife 
 to work, separated from him and from home, is a bad 
 calculator. ' ' 
 
 To bring woman to the position she should 
 hold in the world's work, is hence but to 
 recognize, her, in the fullest sense, as the 
 custodian and exponent of powers and prin- 
 ciples of paramount importance, not only 
 to the well-being, but to the very existence 
 of the race. Sex, God-implanted, imperative 
 for the very possibility of being, claims for 
 
 * Op. cit. p. 160. 
 
 ftpiitaho.*f I 
 
128 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 itself more than ordinary recognition : it 
 demands tlie most enlarged consideration. 
 Woman, as we have seen, holds in industry 
 a position inconsistent and. incompatible 
 with the coeval possession of her true plane. 
 
 To take things as they are, and without 
 creating disaster in the machinery of society, 
 to bring the female worker to the higher level 
 of her intended vocation, is a problem not 
 easy of solution, and yet is the one that it is 
 all essential, if we are to retain our place 
 and nation, should receive a not tardy dem- 
 onstration. In the adaptation of educational 
 systems to the physiological needs of the 
 forming girl, the measures to be taken are 
 few and obvious. To re-adjust industry on 
 the same basis, and to the same ends, involves 
 such an intricacy of detail, such an innova- 
 tion of existing customs, and so entire an 
 overthrow of the established order of things, 
 that any movement in this direction must be 
 exceedingly gradual, and attack only the 
 edges of the great mass of error. 
 
 I may presume, therefore, only to offer a 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 129 
 
 few suggestions which aim at improvement 
 of existing conditions in industry ; hoping 
 that in some degree I may have made bare, 
 for the steel of more stalwart axemen, the 
 roots and fibres that bind us to degeneracy 
 and decay. 
 
 That for years to come, our girls of form- 
 ing age will continue from necessity to enter 
 the various lines of industry, there can be no 
 doubt. And, so long as it is a necessity im- 
 posed by the duty of bearing the burden of 
 self-support that else must fall unduly on 
 others, the toil becomes a dignity ; and, so 
 long as it be honest, ennobles the laborer. 
 Hence the dignity of labor is universal ; and 
 there is no rightful pride of superiority 
 which one form may exercise over another, 
 so long as the one engaged in is the best for 
 which the individual is fitted, for the result 
 to herself and society. The book-keeper 
 trained to that employ has no right of supe- 
 riority over the sewing-machine girl trained 
 to that work, by virtue of the more distinct- 
 ively mental character of her pursuit. But 
 
130 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 there is a comparison that may rightfully be, 
 and should be drawn, between these employ- 
 ments of women ; and it is based solely 
 on their respective effects on the health of 
 the operative. It is to such a distinction, as 
 affecting wages, hours, and the persistence 
 of labor of employees, that we look for a 
 measure of good to the working-girl. A 
 scientific gradation of pursuits as to their 
 salubrity or non-salubrity, their physiological 
 effects, will sooner or later be effected, and 
 govern, to a great degree, the participation 
 therein of the forming female. The influ- 
 ences * affecting moral conditions in various 
 
 * While these last pages have been going through the 
 press, I have received a letter from a widely-known 
 physician in one of the large manufacturing cities of this 
 State; in which, speaking of the evil effects of moral and 
 phj^sical disregard in the want of privies, or the bad loca- 
 tion thereof, he says, "A trip to L to examine the 
 
 water-closets of the workshops of this place would pay, 
 or, rather, to see the general lack of all convenience in 
 the shops for women and girls. I am satisfied that a very 
 
 large proportion of disease in our L female population 
 
 is due to the fact that so few facilities are afforded women 
 to attend to calls of nature. 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 131 
 
 classes of employ, as inseparable from definite 
 physical and physico-moral effects on those 
 employed therein, will, also, undoubtedly 
 come in for a much-needed share of con- 
 sideration. 
 
 It has not been difficult to discover and 
 point out the errors and evils that attend 
 upon the several forms of employ, and that 
 operate against the health, happiness, and 
 usefulness of women. To suggest the reme- 
 dies for these is obviously a matter of no 
 small moment, and not easy of accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 As there are basis principles of health, 
 which are affected, as we have seen, by these 
 conditions of employ, so are there basis prin- 
 
 "I am equally satisfied, from the fact, that in shops 
 where a water-closet is so exposed that women must be 
 seen by all the men when they enter, that that alone has 
 a bad moral influence upon them. I know it; and in a 
 conversation I had in my office to-day, with a girl of 
 eighteen, who suffered severely from constipation, and 
 inflammation of the bladder (that being her usual habit), 
 she gave as a cause, that, in her shop, the men could see 
 every girl that visited the closet, and that therefore none 
 but the lad girls would go." 
 
132 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 ciples of error which lie at the root of all 
 branches of wrong. 
 
 I believe that the grave mistakes of our 
 labor system, as affecting the class of females 
 considered, are, 
 
 First, That we employ those therein 
 whose years absolutely prohibit their being 
 employed at labor at all. 
 
 Second, That their hours of labor are too 
 long; and, 
 
 Third, That we sadly neglect the meas- 
 ures that are adaptable to insure a correct 
 sanitary condition of our operatives during 
 their labor. 
 
 Under one or the other of these cardinal 
 forms of error, all the specific evils of differ- 
 ent occupations or circumstances will ar- 
 range themselves. 
 
 No child or young person of either sex, 
 under the age of fifteen years, should ever 
 be engaged in any form of industrial employ 
 necessitating absence from school, or a draft 
 on vital energy. The normal position of 
 those of that age is in the work of educa- 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 133 
 
 tion ; and, until this is recognized, the nation 
 and individuals must suffer present and 
 future loss, loss of bodily vigor, without 
 which a nation must die ; loss of knowl- 
 edge, which is power to upbuild, to keep, 
 to develop ; loss in the higher values that 
 belong to the nobler parts of our being, and 
 that cannot expand in a soul or body 
 dwarfed and exhausted by the gross de- 
 mands of purely animal existence. 
 
 But it is objected, it can be clearly shown 
 in this Commonwealth, that while it is true, 
 that the money in savings banks, to a con- 
 siderable extent, belongs to laboring people, 
 little of it would be there if it were not for 
 the labor of women and children, the wives 
 and offspring of laboring men ; indeed, that, 
 without their assisting labor, it is proved 
 that the average laborer could not make the 
 ends of the year meet. Granted ; and yet 
 my proposition is nevertheless of full force, 
 and for two reasons : 
 
 First, Because it is plain that there is an 
 error in that price and form of labor that will 
 12 
 
134 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 not permit a man to support his family in 
 comfort without drawing on the vital powers 
 of those to whom we must look to make his 
 place good, and to not only carry on, but im- 
 prove upon, the work of society. 
 
 Second, Because we can never afford to 
 set a price upon body and soul ; and any bar- 
 ter of strength, happiness, and knowledge, 
 for mere money-return, is an exchange that 
 will surely rob us in the long-run. 
 
 Is it true, as scientists * tell us, that there 
 is a progressive decline and deterioration in 
 the mental vigor and physical stability of our 
 people ? We have to thank for it these er- 
 rors that exhaust the life of the fathers and 
 mothers of coming generations, to convert it 
 
 * " That there has been a decided change in female 
 organization in New England within fifty or a hundred 
 years, there can be no question. Formerly there was 
 more muscle, a larger frame, greater fulness of form, and 
 a better development of all those organs that are classed 
 under the sanguine and lymphatic temperaments. The 
 brain and nervous system relatively were not especially 
 predominant ; neither were they taxed continuously or 
 excessively above any other class of organs." NATHAN 
 ALLEN, M.D. : Medical Problems of the Day, p. 78. 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 135 
 
 by a base alchemy into present gold, a 
 gold that by and by, like that of the Phry- 
 gian king, will be all there is to offer as 
 bread, as homes, as armies, as thought-power, 
 and as happiness. 
 
 The hours of labor are too long, not too 
 long to earn a living in, for they barely suf- 
 fice, as things now stand, for the purpose ; 
 but too long for the proper physical good, 
 mental culture, and moral growth of those 
 involved. The proper physical good is es- 
 pecially our concern. If the co-operative 
 system of labor ever reaches a general result 
 as favorable as that its individual successes 
 would warrant a hope of, I believe there 
 may then be both time and an inclination 
 (not -existing at its best in a worn body and 
 tired mind) to regard those questions of per- 
 sonal cleanliness, diet, clothing, hygienic sur- 
 roundings, and physical development, now so 
 sadly disregarded by the working-classes, 
 wherever found. An hour more in the 
 morning for the young and forming female 
 (and that is where it may be most advanta- 
 
136 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 geously gained, as all labor investigators 
 agree) would save the necessity of ill- 
 cooked, hurriedly - eaten, badly - digested 
 breakfasts (made on hurriedly-prepared food, 
 in which tea holds a prominent place), un- 
 washed faces, neglect of nature's calls, hur- 
 ried passage to the place of employ, and a 
 disturbed, dissatisfied, and fermenting body 
 and mind, stomach and brain. Get a right 
 conception and adoption of the true relation 
 of these things into the mind and lives of 
 working-people, and half the complaints that 
 now arise, like those from the Israelites in 
 the desert, will cease, as did theirs, with the 
 right appreciation of the manna from 
 heaven. 
 
 Remedy these ills, and thereby elevate the 
 intrinsic character of working-girls, and a 
 large part of the invidious social distinction 
 made between brain-labor and hand-labor, 
 against the latter, will die a natural death. 
 
 An advanced intelligence and humanity is 
 yet to recognize, moreover, the adaptation 
 not only of the right strength, but the right 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 137 
 
 hours of employ, at the various processes of 
 labor. There are occupations at which a 
 Hercules has no right to labor a full day, 
 and they should be graded as such, and 
 others in proportion ; the hours of labor 
 being adjusted for the labor, just as the 
 strength of the individual should be adapted 
 to it. 
 
 It is not sought to raise a nation of effem- 
 inates or dilettanti ; nor do we wish, on the 
 other hand, to make the land a hospital for 
 worn-out, debilitated, dyspeptic, chlorotic, 
 anaemic, unsexed men and women. Shorter 
 hours of labor, better improved, on better 
 systems of the divisions of profits, may be, 
 to some degree at least, an antidote. 
 
 We sadly neglect the measures that are 
 adaptable to insure a correct sanitary con- 
 dition of our operatives during their labor. 
 Of this the proof is in every workshop, 
 salesroom, and office in the land. Every 
 occupation proves it, and the diseases and 
 mortality registers make it indisputable. 
 What can be done to remedy this general 
 
138 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 neglect, and what to meet, with special pre- 
 ventives, the specific dangers of definite 
 occupations ? There can be but two ways 
 in which either the general or the detailed 
 ills of this nature can be met. They are, 
 the diffusion of sound intelligence bearing 
 thereon, and the enactment and enforcement 
 of efficient repressing law. The dissemina- 
 tion of intelligence to a degree that shall 
 cause sex to be recognized in labor ; a fitness 
 of things in the apportionment of occupa- 
 tions, both as to strength and time ; that 
 shall convince legislators of the necessity of 
 laws, and their enforcement in these direc- 
 tions ; that shall demonstrate to the employer 
 the certainty that every draft he makes upon 
 the vital forces of by and by, must be paid 
 out of his children's pockets and their lives, 
 such a dissemination is at once the most 
 powerful and the slowest-growing of influ- 
 ences. Much of it, however, must exist 
 before the second influence legislation and 
 its execution can be established. So long 
 as men are prone to consult their own selfish 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 139 
 
 interests, so long as the present is a greater 
 reality than the future in the eyes of men ; 
 the simple existence, in partial recognition, of 
 principles which, however vital they may 
 be, are found to be at variance with men's 
 interests, or to deal largely with the future, 
 will not be sufficient to command the respect 
 they intrinsically demand. It becomes ne- 
 cessary that the minds that do recognize 
 what other minds would recognize but for 
 their blinds of self-interest and distance, 
 must bring into operative force the princi- 
 ples that should prevail ; and this can be 
 
 only through the medium of law. * 
 
 % 
 
 % 
 
 * Says Dr. Jarvis, "Can government aid in improving 
 human life? Is there room here in the field of human 
 life for governmental co-operation, as well as in the agri- 
 cultural field of vegetable and animal life? It is power- 
 ful there : it is not powerless, and need not be ineffective, 
 here. The power of government is threefold, and is exe- 
 cuted in a triple way. It is mandatory, and says, Thou 
 shalt, and thou shalt not. It is permissive, and grants 
 privileges. It is advisory, instructive, and encouraging. 
 It teaches the people their best interests, and points the 
 way of gaining them." Polit. Econ. of Health, Op. cit. p. 
 363. 
 
140 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 It is hence essential, that such enactments 
 should be made and prosecuted as shall best 
 establish the condition of things that should 
 be ; and it is to such well-considered and 
 efficient enactments that we must look for 
 the prevention of much that now affects 
 most unfavorably the condition of working- 
 people, and especially women and children. 
 Provision for the due inspection of, and in- 
 quiry into, the real conditions of labor, is 
 naturally indicated as the initial desideratum 
 of such law, and in this Commonwealth is 
 especially necessary. 
 
 What is needed is the existence of inspec- 
 tors of labor concomitants, with laws suffi- 
 ciently regulative of those conditions, and 
 power in the inspectors acting under those 
 laws to maintain them as they should be. 
 But inasmuch as the inspector, without law 
 to establish what is evil and what good, is 
 useless, though with it most potent, the law 
 becomes the chief agent in the work of re- 
 form ; and it is to the wise creation and the 
 subsequent execution of these laws that we 
 must look for an improvement. 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 141 
 
 Says Dr. Jarvis,* 
 
 " In as far as human life is more important than 
 all financial interests, and, even in the financial view, 
 the creative power of human force is more valuable 
 than all created capital, this cardinal interest of the 
 people, individually and collectively, should take pre- 
 cedence of all other provisions in all legislation. 
 Every law, grant, or privilege from the legislature 
 should have this invariable condition : that human 
 health, strength, or comfort should in no manner or 
 degree be impaired or vitiated thereby. 
 
 To frame laws to meet the demands of the 
 principles I have recognized, under all their 
 varying conditions, is not a task for this 
 space, or one to be readily accomplished ; but 
 we may fairly consider, in brief, some of the 
 ends it is specially desirable should receive 
 the appreciation of the public in general, 
 and the employer in particular, and, it is to 
 be hoped, will eventually find their recogni- 
 tion in law. It is believed, 
 
 That the employment at labor of any girl 
 
 * Op. cit. p. 371. 
 
142 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 under fifteen years of age should not be al- 
 lowed.* 
 
 That the employment of girls of other ages 
 and women generally at employments 
 unsuited to their sex should not be suffered 
 (such employments being determined by a 
 council of salubrity, in France, composed of 
 those most eminently fit for their high com- 
 mission).! 
 
 That, in siich employments as women 
 should be admitted to, they should be per- 
 mitted a " periodical absence," without pe- 
 cuniary loss, for such time as might be just 
 and necessary. 
 
 That in employments where women should 
 be admitted, and which require high de- 
 grees of mental concentration, with physical 
 energy, additional vacations of sufficient ex- 
 tent should be the right of the employee. 
 
 * Prof. Clarke has summed it up tersely when he says, 
 "If excessive labor, either mental or physical, is imposed 
 upon children, male or female, their development will in 
 some way be checked." Op. cit. p, 41. 
 
 t See appendix. 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 143 
 
 That, in all employments, it should be ob- 
 ligatory upon the employer to conduct the 
 processes of the occupation under the most 
 advantageous conditions to health, and to 
 secure all improvements in this regard that 
 may become approved. 
 
 That in all larger manufactories (of over 
 certain numbers of employees) there should 
 be special sanitary supervision at the ex- 
 pense of the proprietors. 
 
 That there should be a well-established 
 examination and certification of all employes, 
 male and female, proposing to engage in any 
 deleterious or burdensome employ, only 
 those being certified who are found in the 
 possession of health not to be unduly im- 
 paired thereby, and only such to be em- 
 ployed as are certified. 
 
 To the clause which provides, that in all 
 employments it should be obligatory upon 
 the employer to conduct the processes of the 
 occupation under the most advantageous 
 conditions to health, etc., I desire to direct 
 attention. To improve is the possibility of 
 
144 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 the present; to re-establish may be the 
 work* of centuries. We may and should, 
 therefore, prosecute the improvement at 
 once and assiduously. Dr. Clarke has sug- 
 gested, that " the keen eye and rapid hand of 
 gain, of what Jouffroy calls self-interest 
 well understood, is sometimes quicker than 
 the brain and will of philanthropy to discern 
 and inaugurate reform." He says, 
 
 " There is an establishment in Boston, owned and 
 carried on by a man, in which ten or a dozen girls 
 are constantly employed. Each of them is given, 
 and is required to take, a vacation of three days 
 every fourth week. It is sdarcely necessary to say, 
 that their sanitary condition is exceptionally good, 
 and that the aggregate yearly amount of work which 
 the owner obtains is greater than when persistent 
 attendance and labor was required." 
 
 Unfortunately for woman and the race, 
 few such cases of wise regard exist with 
 employers ; but it is" precisely this condition 
 of things that ought to exist, and become 
 not the exception, but the unvarying custom. 
 If the same consideration for employees were 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 145 
 
 everywhere exhibited as that shown by the 
 Blackstone Mill at Blackstone, which has 
 provided bath-rooms for its operatives, or the 
 Hamilton Mills at Lowell, which have put 
 in operation a new form of shuttle, by 
 which the dangers incident to the old way 
 of sucking the thread through in filling 
 the shuttle gre removed, the employers, 
 woman, and the race, would be greatly the 
 gainers. 
 
 Improved apparatus and less injurious 
 processes, ventilation, the instant removal of 
 dust from dust-producing machinery, the util- 
 ization of steam (now injuriously wasted in 
 " weave-rooms ") in heating water for baths, 
 proper kinds, conditions, and seclusion of priv- 
 ies, warm dressing-rooms for girls at mills, 
 etc., where wet clothing, may be changed, 
 alternation of labors when processes are 
 specially exacting, seats for girls in stores, 
 and better opportunities for food, such as 
 are to be obtained through " cooking-de- 
 pots," " Holly-tree inns," etc., all are 
 agencies, which, with many others that 
 
 13 
 
146 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 might yet be enumerated, will powerfully 
 act for the amelioration of the condition of 
 the working female of whatever age, but 
 have especial powers of good for the forming 
 girl. 
 
 The walls of the factories at Wakefield 
 and other places, blackened by the foul va- 
 pors escaping from their privies, attest the 
 character of the atmosphere the operatives 
 breathe. The foul condition and exposed 
 location of these privies have been already 
 shown. Wet floors, draughty rooms, and 
 severe toil, so widely the rule in manufactur- 
 ing establishments, have forced upon many a 
 working girl an overthrow of her special 
 forces, that ended in clouded intellect, brok- 
 en health, and early death. 
 
 It behooves the state, therefore, to stand, 
 first, as the legal protector of its most 
 weighty interests, its perpetuity and prog- 
 ress : and, second, as the patron and pro- 
 moter of whatever will aid therein. It has 
 been deemed wise to stimulate, from time to 
 time, special thought and inventive genius in 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 141 
 
 aid of agricultural * or commercial interests, 
 by the promise of large pecuniary rewards. 
 What more legimate, or more desirable, than 
 that the commonwealth should use every spur 
 to bring to the lives and health of its inhabit- 
 ants every device by which they may be 
 additionally secured or promoted ? If it be 
 advisable to offer large rewards to him who 
 shall discover the prevention of rot in the 
 potato (an article of food of comparatively 
 small value, physiologically considered), and 
 to bestow a prize of due proportion for " the 
 
 * "It is shown by the statistical tables of Continental 
 Europe, that the annual human increase depends upon 
 the agricultural product of it; and so well is this estab- 
 lished, that, in countries where the army is made up 
 by the conscription of a certain proportion of the popula- 
 tion, it has been found, that not only the number to be 
 had can, with a fair chance of accuracy, be estimated 
 from the state of the market eighteen to twenty years 
 previously, but even the average standard height of the 
 men furnished." KREPP: The Sewage Question, p. 9. 
 
 If this be so, is it not a rational thing, that powers fully 
 as depletory and devitalizing as scarcity of food, viz., the 
 inimical forces against the health of woman, should have 
 an equally untoward effect against the vigor and num- 
 bers of a nation ? 
 
148 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 r 
 
 best essay on the building of roads," how 
 much more so for the creation of agencies 
 that shall lessen the dangers of dust in facto- 
 ries, of injury from machinery, of fatiguing 
 labor at the sewing-machine, the telegraph- 
 instrument, and the type-case, and free from 
 their baleful force the foul vapors of our 
 noxious trades ! In nothing can the state 
 more surely seek its riches; for he who 
 thinks must accept the precept of Emerson, 
 that " the first wealth is health." 
 
 That the worker herself may, by the ex- 
 ercise of recognized precautions, by personal 
 attention to, or avoidance of, conditions 
 unfavorable to health, and the cultivation of 
 personal habits that aid the promotion there- 
 of, do much to lessen the evil influences of 
 labor, there can be no doubt. 
 
 So far as she sympathizes in, and gives 
 aid to, the effort that a comparatively few of 
 her sex have for some years persistently 
 urged with a zeal worthy of a better cause, 
 for the competitive relation as between her 
 and man in industry, she countenances an 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 149 
 
 error. It is an error whose one certain effect 
 is, to keep her in an abnormal condition, 
 beneath her rights, and under her opportu- 
 nities. The thoughtful ones of her sex 
 recognize this. Says Dr. Frances Emily 
 White,* 
 
 " When we look around upon the great industries 
 of life, mining, engineering, manufacturing, com- 
 merce, and the rest, and consider how little direct 
 agency woman has had in bringing them to their 
 present stage of progress, we are compelled to believe, 
 that she must not look toward direct competition with 
 man for the best unfolding of her powers ; but rather, 
 while continuing to supplement him, as he does her, 
 in the varied interests of their common life, that her 
 future progress, as in the past, will consist mainly in 
 the development of a higher character of womanhood, 
 through the selection and consequent intension of 
 those traits peculiar to her own sex." 
 
 Says Van de Warker,f 
 
 " This effort of woman to invade all the higher 
 forms of labor is a force battling with the established 
 order of sexual relation. " 
 
 * FRANCES E. WHITE, M.D. : Woman's Place in Nature, 
 Popular Science Monthly, January, 1875, p. 301. 
 t Op. cit. p. 470. 
 13* 
 
 , 
 
150 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 Dr. Allen has said,* * 
 
 "In all the situations and pursuits of life, the 
 Almighty has established bounds or limitations beyond 
 which woman cannot go without defeating the primary 
 objects of her creation : maternity is the primary law 
 of her creation." 
 
 Says Dr. Maudsley,f 
 
 "When we thus look the matter honestly in the 
 face, it would seem plain, that women are marked out 
 by nature for very different offices in life from those 
 of men, and that the healthy performance of her 
 special functions renders it improbable she will suc- 
 ceed, and unwise for her to persevere, in running over 
 the same course at the same pace with him. For 
 such a race she is certainly weighted unfairly. Nor is 
 it a sufficient reply to this argument, to allege, as is 
 sometimes done, that there are many women who 
 have not the opportunity of getting married, or who 
 do not aspire to bear children ; for whether they care 
 to be mothers, or not, they cannot dispense with those 
 physiological functions of their nature that have 
 reference to that aim, however much they might wish 
 it; and they cannot disregard them in the labor of life 
 without injury to their health.'* 
 
 * Nathan Allen, M.D., op. cit. p. 41. 
 t Sex in Mind and Education, p. 30. 
 
SUGGESTIVE. 151 
 
 The weight of evidence that may be pre- 
 sumed to be worthy of confidence and con- 
 sideration would seem to leave no doubt 
 that the normal, the God-appointed work of 
 woman, wherein lie her full equality, her 
 peerage, her glory, and her power, is that of 
 the home and the mother, tlie rearer, the 
 trainer, the blessing of man. 
 
 To the " noble army of martyrs," the tens 
 of thousands of working-women, of all ages, 
 in America to-day, who patiently and hope- 
 fully toil on year by year, under the abnormal 
 burdens a disjointed and unreflective society 
 imposes, I pay the tribute of my earnest 
 sympathy, my admiration, and my humble 
 effort. I am assured, that, out of the laby- 
 rinth of perplexity that has entangled the 
 question of woman's rights, there will sooner 
 or later be evolved this certainty : that the 
 highest moral and physical well-being of a 
 race demands that there shall be nothing 
 in its conditions of life and labor that shall 
 injure the richness and purity of the chief 
 source whence its existence and its best 
 influences come. 
 
152 SEX IN INDUSTRY. 
 
 When a senator of one of the most rugged 
 States of our cold north-east was asked the 
 most valuable product of his section, he 
 replied with unction, " Men, sir, men ! " 
 Cornelia's jewels are still the wealth of a 
 woman and a state. The significance of 
 Penelope's virtue is yet vital. For her right 
 to rise from the ills that assail her sex in 
 industry, her right to retain, through present 
 enforced toil, her titles to future dignity and 
 happiness, I make this plea for the working- 
 girl. 
 
 For woman's best is unbegun, her advent yet to 
 come. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 I. 
 
 THE following are the views of the celebrated 
 M. Parent Duchalet of Paris as to the require- 
 ment of such a Council of Salubrity as I have re- 
 ferred to. 
 
 u It is generally thought in the world, that the medi- 
 cal knowledge acquired in the schools is ah 1 that is 
 necessary to become a useful member of the council. 
 The greater part of medical men themselves share this 
 opinion ; and, on the strength of some precepts they 
 have collected from books on health and professions, 
 they think themselves sufficiently instructed to decide 
 on the instant the gravest questions, which can only 
 be resolved by special studies. 
 
 " A man may have exhausted medical literature ; he 
 may be an excellent practitioner at the sick-bed, a 
 learned physician, a clever and eloquent professor; but 
 all these acquirements, taken in themselves, are nearly 
 useless in a 'Conseil de Salubrite' like that of 
 
 Paris ; and, if an occasion presents itself to make use 
 
 155 
 
156 APPENDIX. 
 
 of them, a very small number of persons suffice to 
 apply them. To be really useful in the council, it is 
 necessary to have an extended knowledge of natural 
 philosophy, of the constitution of the soil on which 
 the state or city stands, and of the geology of neigh- 
 boring regions; it is necessary, above all, to know 
 with exactness the action which trades may have on 
 the health of those who exercise them, and the much 
 more important action of manufactories of every spe- 
 cies on plants, on men congregated in towns, and on 
 animals. This knowledge, so important, of the action 
 of trades and manufactories, is not to be acquired by 
 ordinary study, or in the silence of the cabinet. It is 
 not to be obtained without positive notions on the 
 arts, and on the greater part of the processes peculiar 
 to each trade. It requires habit, and the frequenting 
 of the places of work. In this particular, more even 
 than in medicine, books are not a substitute for prac- 
 tice ; and, if there exist works on this subject, they 
 are more likely to mislead than enlighten. 
 
 "From what has been said, the necessity will be 
 evident, to introduce into the council those physicians 
 who have made health, and particularly the public 
 health, a special study ; and to join with them chem- 
 ists, and, above all, manufacturing chemists : because 
 what would many of those persons, whose life has 
 been passed in hospitals and the exclusive study of 
 medicine, be before a steam-engine ? It is clear that 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 they would often be deceived by those adroit and skil- 
 ful manufacturers who would have an interest in con- 
 cealing the truth." 
 
 II. 
 
 Since putting these sheets to press I have re- 
 ceived the following from a lady operator with 
 whom I had held conversation as to the special 
 effects of telegraphy : 
 
 BOSTON, Feb. 28, 1875. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Pardon my delay, but I was obliged 
 to wait some time to hear from the friend I men- 
 tioned. I find her views are similar to my own, and 
 have nothing new to offer.. 
 
 I made inquiries of the ladies employed in my 
 room, as you requested; and all, with one exception, 
 declared the business had no damaging effect upon 
 the menstrual function : in that respect they have ex- 
 perienced no change since they entered the business. 
 Take it as a whole, I believe telegraphy exerts no 
 unfavorable influence in that direction, although it 
 would seem to be a natural result on account of the 
 nervousness inseparable from the business. Those I 
 have consulted say every other function will be af- 
 fected except the menstrual. 
 
 It is certainly true, that the business impairs the 
 health of operators who work steadily, and they 
 
158 APPENDIX. 
 
 begin to run down in a year or so. Constipation is 
 one great evil, and a general weariness. There is a 
 constant strain upon the nerves and brain that -is not 
 required in other business; and yet our work has 
 many advantages over other branches. Sitting so 
 much is bad, but preferable to standing in a store from 
 morning to night. 
 
 With a little rest now and then, or, at least, a Long 
 vacation once a year, I think the ladies would get 
 along very well. Of course every one would prefer to 
 rest at certain times ; but, if women must work, I don't 
 know but telegraphy is as healthy as any other busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Respectfully Yours, 
 
 It is to be said, in comment on the above, that 
 in the office in question there is no operator 
 under twenty, and that a careful inquiry has 
 established the fact, that though this is the case, 
 besides the disturbances spoken of above, two at 
 least are sufferers from dysmenorrhea, and two 
 from occasional menorrhagia which always im- 
 proves on taking a vacation. 
 
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