Labor pain

“ Conduct of the Patient During the Second Stage of Labor.—She should remain up, out of bed, as long as she possibly can. The object of this is because experience shows that the labor pains are stronger, and more frequent, when in the upright position. Even though this procedure would seem to invite more constant suffering, it must be remember that labor is a physiological, natural process, that there is nothing to fear or dread; and if the patient is in good health, it is to her advantage to have it over soon, rather than to encourage a long drawn out, exhausting labor. ”

“ The pathetic burden of unfulfilled possibilities, he says, is the curse of labor, and only in sleep does man have temporary oblivion through which, for a time, he forgets his work and, as it were, uses sleep as an anæsthetic for the pain of labor, to rise therefrom each morning ready to carry his burdens for another day. ”

“ It is impossible to censure this dangerous practice too severely; it is always wrong; nor can there be any one period in labor, the most easy and natural, the most tedious and difficult, the most regular or preternatural in which it can be of the least use; in which it will not unavoidably do great mischief: it will render an easy labor painful ”

“ The symptoms that arise and that cause anxiety are the same as in a case of powerless labor, except that while in the latter kind the pains are feeble, in the case of obstructed labor the pains may be vigorous and severe but ineffective in consequence of obstacles. ”

“ Small wonder that with such parents and with such surroundings I am able to say that for fifty-eight years of married life I have never been sick in bed a single day, and that I can and have endured long hours of labor during my whole life, and what is particularly gratifying that I can truthfully say that I have always loved my work and that I never watched for the sun to go down to relieve me from the burden of labor.
"Burden of labor?" Why should any man call labor a burden? It's the sweetest pleasure of life, if we will but look aright. ”

“ Eat regularly and exercise freely, and there is scarce a limit to the work you may get out of the thinking organs. But if into the life of a man whose powers are fully taxed we bring the elements of great anxiety or worry, or excessive haste, the whole machinery begins at once to work, as it were, with a dangerous amount of friction. Add to this such constant fatigue of body as some forms of business bring about, and you have all the means needed to ruin the man's power of useful labor. ”

“ Gerome, for natures diseased like yours, the only remedy, the only cure, is earnest, vigorous labor; and the regimen you really require is mournfully at variance with your present habits and modes of thought.”
“I do labor incessantly; more indefatigably than any plowman, or mason, or carpenter. Your prescription has been thoroughly tested, and found worthless, as an antidote to my malady,—hopelessness.”
“Unfortunately the labor has all been mental; heart and soul have stood aloof, while the brain almost wore itself out. This canvas is destroying you ”

“ In spite of this in multiparae, labor has lost most of its terrors because real knowledge of its comparative ease has replaced the previous unfavorable suggestion, and instead there has come a proper appreciation of what will have to be borne, and of the positive pleasure of the relief when it has been borne successfully.
Healthy women of the lower classes have so little difficulty in labor that they are quite frank to confess that it means scarcely more than a few severe muscular pains during an hour or so. ”

“ For the first three weeks of my life as a factory girl I saw among my companions only one vast class of slaves, miserable drudges, doomed to dirt, ugliness and overwork from birth until death. My own physical sufferings were acute. My heart was torn with pity. I revolted against a society whose material demands were satisfied at the cost of minds and bodies. Labour appeared in the guise of a monster feeding itself on human lives. ”

“ Has the nineteenth century, with its progress and its boast, no possibility of such work from any hand of man, and if not, where has the spirit that made it vanished, and what hope may men share of its return? Not one, if the day's work must mean labor in its most exhausting form; for many women, fourteen to sixteen hours at the sewing machine, the nerve-force supplied by rank tea, and the bit of bread eaten with it, the exhausted bodies falling at last on whatever may do duty for bed, with no hope that the rising sun will [Pg 11] bring release from trial or any gleam of a better day. ”

“ To the long hours of the factory-worker, or the shopwoman, we must often add the irksome duties which to a weary wife must make the return home a pain rather than a pleasure. When the industrial work is carried on at home the worries and interruptions of family life must always contribute to the difficulty and intensity of the toil, and tell upon the nervous system and the general health of the women-workers. ”

“ All these men and those who depend on them, their wives, tutors, children, cooks, actors, jockeys, and so on, are living on the blood which by one means or another, through one set of blood-suckers or another, is drawn out of the working class, and every day their pleasures cost hundreds or thousands of days of labor. ”

“ There is a shallow optimism which, from the heights of prosperity, throws all the blame of labor's sufferings on labor's own broad shoulders; steels the heart of society against it because of these patent faults, and closes the hand against its help, while it sings the gospel of the Gradgrinds—"As it was and ever shall be. Amen."
Labor itself is not wholly responsible for its own faults. These faults spring largely out of the defective social conditions amid which the workingman finds himself placed. ”

“ It is not just to pay the laborer in field or factory or workshop his current wages and no more, the lowest market-value of his labor, for so long only as we need that labor and he is able to work; for when sickness or old age overtakes him, that is to leave him and his family to starve; and God will curse with calamity the people in which the children of the laborer out of work eat the boiled grass of the field, and mothers strangle their children, that they may buy food for themselves with the charitable pittance given for burial expenses. ”

“ The device of division of labor has created much wealth, but destroyed the normal balance of mental and physical work, recreation and rest. From this follow occupational diseases of overstrain, bad posture, industrial poisons, and a craving for narcotics. A com bination of conditions has lessened the opportunities for prompt discharge of the body waste, and so led to dulling of the reflex which promotes defecation. We are only just beginning to realize how serious are the consequences. ”

“ And yet, painful as the condition of the working woman is, it is relatively fortunate. Should work fail her for one day, two days, what then? Should sickness come—sickness almost always occasioned by unwholesome food, want of fresh air, necessary attention, and good rest; sickness, often so enervating as to render work impossible; though not so dangerous as to procure the sufferer a bed in an hospital—what becomes of the hapless wretches then? The mind hesitates, and shrinks from dwelling on such gloomy pictures. ”

“ Deformities arose now only in cases of weak constitution, and the effects of overwork became much less conspicuous. Nevertheless, enough testimony remains to be found in the Factory Report, that the lesser evils, swelling of the ankles, weakness and pain in the legs, hips, and back, varicose veins, ulcers on the lower extremities, general weakness, especially of the pelvic region, nausea, want of appetite alternating with unnatural hunger, indigestion, hypochondria, affections of the chest in consequence of the dust and foul atmosphere of the factories, etc. ”

“ Hast thou ever seen a lion carrying burthens, a stag gathering summer fruits, a fox selling merchandise, or a wolf selling oil, that they might thus gain their support? And yet they are fed without care or labor. Arguing therefore from the less to the greater, if they which were created that they might serve me, are nourished without labor and anxiety, how much more I, who have been created that I might serve my Maker! What therefore is the cause, why I should be obliged to labor in order to get my daily bread? ”

“ It is a serious cause of discomfiture and sorrow in work that so much of the brain-power expended is necessarily devoted to the removal of extraneous causes of worry. Labor is so fatal to life, because it is so difficult to live. ”

“ These testimonies are cited from the brief for the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, prepared by Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark.
Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss Factory Workers. Dr. Fridlion Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, and Dr. A.E. Burckhardt, Professor of Hygiene.
"Instead of becoming wearied by personal labor, as in earlier stages of industry, it is to-day the unremitting, tense concentration of watching the machine, the necessary rapidity of motion, that fatigues the worker." ”

“ The health in labor, considered in all of the relations attaching to it, further brings a comfort and satisfaction which cannot be too highly estimated. The surest remedy that can be applied, when men are suffering from defeat in business and the attendant consequences, is renewed and persistent labor. Who can measure the value of labor? It is a possession that cannot be stolen, and only ceases to serve when men, from exhausted energies or enfeebled age, can no longer command it. ”

“ Finally, is not much of the objection that work is destructive to the workers applicable to all work and all workers—to men as well as to women—to domestic as well as non-domestic work? Do we not hear on all sides the complaint that, from the highest forms of brain-work to the lowest forms of hand-work, the strain requisite for success breaks down prematurely those who follow them? Is not the choice, too often, virtually between immediate death from want, or a more gradual and protracted death from overwork, or the unhealthy conditions of work? ”

“ The hand-worker, the clerk and the small tradesman, generally insecure in the tenure of their occupations and homes, are anxious and restless, while many classes suffer special and grievous wrongs, such as exhaustion and premature old age, due to the nervous strain of certain kinds of work, death and mutilation from machinery, life in squalid tenements, and the debasement of children by bad surroundings and premature work. ”

“ And here, in their hour of sickness and suffering, lay those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited labour for us—those who, perhaps even yesterday, were being urged onto their unpaid task—those whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, were even at that hour sweating over the earth, whose produce was to buy for us all the luxuries which health can revel in, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. ”

“ An apprentice has been confined to the hospital with disease,--when he gets able to walk, tired of the filthy sick house, he hobbles to his hut, where he may have the attentions of his wife until he gets well. That is called absconding from labor! ”

“ But the dulled and tired worker released from eight or ten hours' drudgery in a factory is apt to be in a psychological state that demands variety, excitement, pleasure at any cost. It does not pay to repress human nature too much, or to try to make out of a red-blooded young man or woman a mere machine. Gambling, drunkenness, prostitution, and all sorts of pathological vices flourish largely as a reaction from the dullness and monotony of the day's work. We are paying this heavy penalty for our increase of material efficiency at the expense of normal human living. ”

“ People without employment very soon lose their bone and muscle, and the only thing that remains in vigor is a hungry stomach. Relieve the labour market, give sufficient employment and fair wages to working men, and good food to their growing children, and you will have plenty of bone and muscle: only give room, and young oaks will grow up to supply the place of those that are removed. ”

“ How these devoted labourers can pursue their work at all is a marvel, especially when it is remembered that the misery they actually see suggests to them the certain existence of so much more which no human eye discovers. Who can even imagine the suffering which lies behind a case like the following? A poor woman in an advanced stage of consumption, reduced almost to a skeleton, lives in a single room with a drunken husband and five children. ”

“ Many times, however, this is not absolutely necessary, or perhaps the family can not afford to have outside help, and the extra work caused by sickness usually falls upon the domestic employee whose hours of labor are more or less prolonged in consequence. ”

“ All human misfortunes, direct violence excepted, result on the one hand from hunger and privation of all sorts, and from discouragement in labor, and on the other from riches, idleness, and the vices they engender. ”

“ In short, this frightful disease follows this occupation universally: and that, too, to the greater pecuniary profit of the bourgeoisie! In the rooms in which the stoneware is scoured, the atmosphere is filled with pulverised flint, the breathing of which is as injurious as that of the steel dust among the Sheffield grinders. The workers lose breath, cannot lie down, suffer from sore throat and violent coughing, and come to have so feeble a voice that they can scarcely be heard. They, too, all die of consumption. ”