THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS

[Unskilled and Seasonal Factory Work]

I


Besides the accounts of the waist makers, the National Consumers' League
received in its inquiry specific chronicles from skilled and from
unskilled factory workers, both hand workers and machine
operatives--among others, packers of drugs, biscuits, and olives,
cigarette rollers, box makers, umbrella makers, hat makers, glove makers,
fur sewers, hand embroiderers, white goods workers, skirt makers, workers
on men's coats, and workers on children's dresses.

As will be seen, the situation occupied and described by any individual
girl may in a year or five years be no longer hers, but that of some
other worker. So that the synthesis of these chronicles is presented, not
as a composite photograph of the industrial experiences in any one trade,
but rather as an accurate kinetoscope view of the yearly life of chance
passing factory workers.

For the purposes of record these annals may be loosely divided into those
of unskilled and seasonal factory workers, and those whose narratives
expressed the effects of monotony and fatigue, from speeding at their
tasks. This division must remain loose to convey a truthful impression.
For the same self-supporting girl has often been a skilled and an
unskilled worker, by hand, at a machine, and in several industries.

Discouragement at the lack of opportunity to advance was expressed by