Document Working Author's Perspective Evidence and Explanation Evidence: Conditions for Women and Children Explanation:
Document Working Author's Perspective Evidence and Explanation Evidence: Conditions for Women and Children Explanation:
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Transcribed Image Text:Author's Perspective
Evidence and Explanation
Document
Working
Evidence:
Conditions
for Women
and Children
Explanation:
Transcribed Image Text:Working Conditions for Women and Children
The journalist Florence Lucas Sanville worked in a Pennsylvania silk mill to gather facts for
the following article that appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1910.
The length of a factory girl's work-day varies from a legal limit of eight hours in one or
two advanced states to ten, eleven or twelve in less enlightened states where the law still
fails to protect its women from industrial exploitation the hours are regulated only by the
needs of the industry.
In Pennsylvania...the law prescribes a limit of twelve hours daily and sixty hours weekly
for women over eighteen; for girls under that age the law since January 1,1910 restricts
this further to fifty-eight hours a week and an average of ten hours a day... But in the
factories scattered through the villages and small mining towns, in which great numbers
of young girls are employed-such as are established by the silk industry–I found in a
period of industrial expression that over a half of the mills were working ten and a half to
eleven hours a day.
.Lena R., a thin-shouldered, anemic looking girl with a sweet, bright face. She looked
so young that I asked her age. "I'll be fourteen in the winter," she replied, and added that
she had been doing night work since she was eleven.
One of the most striking evils in the physical environment of women in the factories is
the lack of seats...Very few mills provide the seats which are required by Pennsylvania
Law...The harmful effect of continuous standing upon young and growing girls is too
well established a fact to require any explanation... I could always detect the existence
of this rule but a glance at the stocking feet of the workers, and at the rows of discarded
shoes... For after a few hours the strain upon the swollen feet becomes intolerable, and
one girl after another discards her shoes.
Another harsh and very common practice of employers is to cover the lower sashes of
the windows with paint and to fasten them so that they cannot be raised in hot weather.
This is done so the girls “don't waste time looking out."
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