Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/424

 402 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL fare provided for the American fac{ory girl in those days would seem to them like a feast for the gods, if it is half as appetizing in reality as it looks in print. One woman in 1872, who by overwork had earned $10 a week in Boston in the busy season, and $5 in the slack season, and who paid $5 a week for her board and lodging, afterwards went to a carpet mill at Lowell; there in one of the 'corporation' boarding- houses she paid $2 50c. a week. The fare was not bad, although in- ferior to that of Boston. ' For breakfast, we have raised biscuit, some- times pie, cold bread, white and graham, tea or coffee, meat very seldom, but never warm, nor warm potatoes. For dinner we have meat, potatoes, vegetables, pie or pudding. Tuesday, we have soup or boiled dinner; Wednesday, fried meat, ham or sausages; Friday, fish, oysters or clams; Sunday, baked beans and brown bread. For supper, we have bread and butter and cake, sauce and tea; Thursday, melted sugar instead of sauce. Sometimes pie. for supper.' In the accounts given in 1875 of the life in ' corporation ' boarding- houses in Lawrence, we find the bills of fare are all very much alike at the different houses: Breakfast: hot biscuit, butter, sometimes meat hash, sometimes cold meat, pie or cake, sauce and tea. Dinner: meat and potatoes with pudding, bread, butter, and tea. Supper about the same as breakfast In addition to the dyspepsia which must inevitably attend a nation with such ideas of breakfast, very strong evidence is given us in this report of special diseases and injuries to health brought about most probably by subjecting growing girls to long hours of work under unsanitary conditions. It is difficult to speak too strongly on this point; and it is impossible to rejoice at the wider field opened for women by the factory system if it inevitably involves such permanent injury to the individual and the race. The account of the working girls in Boston given in 1884 is far more valuable than the previous attempts in the same direction. Of the 20,000 employed in occupations other than domestic service, 1,03i2 were personally visited, and successfully questioned as to their life's history. There is no trace of the determination to make a grievance out of everything which characterizes the earlier reports, and in many respects this report furnishes an admirable model for similar investiga- tions. It would have been almost impossible for investigators without official authority to attempt such a task. results can here be given Of the 1,032 girls there were born in The United States. British America. Only a brief summary of the . 749 . 137 Europe, &c ...... 146 Of their parents there were born in The United States. . British America. . Europe, .&c ..... 501 200 1,363