Laundry worker

“ Of this indoor labor a part is sedentary, such as sewing, and a part is light labor, such as dish-washing, cooking, sweeping, dusting, and general care of the house. The laundry gives the hardest woman’s work; but this is not daily, nor so severe as the outdoor employments of men, while it can be so divided among several women, or be so regulated in various ways, as never to involve excessive labor. Young women wash and iron, as a daily business, six and eight hours a day, and yet continue healthful and cheerful. ”

“ Nearly all laundry work is performed standing, and on heavy days, when the work is steady, except at lunch time, very few women get a chance to sit down during any part of the day. The chief difference between laundry work and that of other factories is in the irregularity of the hours. ”

“ The work is not done with gentleness, and a few trips to the laundry generally wear out garments made of ordinary material. Some of the lavanderas undertake to wash, starch, and iron the clothes, while others attend only to the washing, and leave the other work as a separate contract with the planchadora. The employer is generally expected to furnish soap for washing clothes, and very often the servants are supplied with it for their own use, in addition to their wages. ”

“ The laundry-maid is charged with the duty of washing and getting-up the family linen,—a situation of great importance where the washing is all done at home; but in large towns, where there is little convenience for bleaching and drying, it is chiefly done by professional laundresses and companies, who apply mechanical and chemical processes to the purpose. ”

“ Necessary laundry work may be greatly minimized by providing silk or cotton crepon for underwear and dresses, seersucker for children’s rompers, dresses, and aprons, with doilies or paper napkins in place of tablecloth, at least for breakfast and lunch, and paper towels for kitchen and bathroom.
The physical and mental condition of the worker is a very considerable factor in time and energy cost. Work attempted when one is fatigued, nervous, or tense consumes vastly more energy and time. Learn to relax at intervals; especially lie down for a few minutes about midday. ”

“ Let laundry workers understand fully what their hours of work shall be, and that they are expected to be in their places promptly at the hour. Explain the importance of having the supplies for the wards and operating rooms constantly kept up to the mark, and also the linen for the trays. Prohibit visitors during working hours. It is always better to make such prohibitions when engaging help rather than wait for some occasion to call it forth. ”

“ A manufacturer knows more or less at the beginning of the week how much work his factory will have to do, and can usually distribute overtime, or engage or lay off extra girls, according to his knowledge. The laundryman can never estimate the amount of work to be done until the laundry bundles are actually on the premises. He can never tell when the hotels, restaurants, steamboats, and all the small 'hand' laundries, whose family laundries he rough-dries, and whose collars and table and bed linen he finishes, will want their washing back. ”

“ By giving the washing into the care of the second girl, we think one may escape most of the terrors of “washing-day.”
Early rising should be one of the well-understood rules of the house, for the servants at least. As soon as up, on Monday morning, the laundress’s first work is to light the fire, if the laundry is separate from the kitchen; if not, the cook, of course, attends to that. The furnace is then to be well shaken and cleaned out, fresh coal added, and the ashes sifted and removed; which, if done every day, as it should be, is but a small item comparatively. ”

“ WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK
(This article is composed of the reports of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, supplemented with an account of the Federal Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of the Oregon Ten-Hour Law for laundry workers.) ”

“ To stand over a wash-tub rubbing each article by hand; to strain every muscle emptying that tub; to dry garments on a rail across a kitchen and iron them near a blazing fire is not intelligent, and can only be followed by women driven by custom to wash clothes at all. Perhaps in no section of household work are scientific methods within reach as in the laundry; the existence of the public laundry and the rivalry of different firms has produced an open market for appliances of all kinds, and the exhibition of laundry utensils, machines, &c., has become an annual event. ”

“ The general public laundry, where arrangements are made to do the entire family washing at a low cost, is a complete solution of the Blue-Monday problem; but until the laundry is an accomplished fact, such work will be done at home, and a family laundry must be considered in house-building. ”

“ The wash itself and the drying and ironing all took place up there with the help of a hired laundress. In most German cities this custom of washing at home still prevails, but in these days it is usually done once a month. The large attics that serve as laundries are engaged for certain days by the families living in the house, and one servant assisted for one day by a laundry woman washes and irons all the house and body linen used by her employers and herself in four weeks. It sounds impossible, but in Germany nothing involving hard work is impossible. ”

“ Saxon said quickly.
Mercedes sneered scornfully.
“Steam laundry. That's business, and it's stupid. Only common things should go to a steam laundry. That is their punishment for being common. But the pretties! the dainties! the flimsies!—la la, my dear, their washing is an art. It requires wisdom, genius, and discretion fine as the clothes are fine. I will give you a recipe for homemade soap. It will not harden the texture. It will give whiteness, and softness, and life. You can wear them long, and fine white clothes are to be loved a long time. Oh, fine washing is a refinement, an art. ”

“ Many a house-wife without a maid has found ironing good sport with a good ironer and the labor saving devices have often made marriage possible—where a servant was too much of a luxury.
Roughly, the ordinary laundry takes about half a day—one [25] hour for eight pieces for the average family of five, including all things from table linen to handkerchiefs. ”

“ The vast army of persons who board are compelled to send out articles to be laundried, and this is apparently done without serious results. A beginning has been made in many families where a competent laundress cannot be secured by sending to public laundries all starched clothing, especially all collars and cuffs. The laundries of Troy, New York, have branches for the reception and delivery of goods in all parts of the country, and laundry many articles better and more cheaply than can be done at home. ”

“ There may be abundance of linen to meet the needs of the hospital, and yet if constant supervision over the work of the laundry is not exercised, three-fourths of the linen supply may at times be found piled in the laundry, the linen room shelves empty, and the nurses flying hither and thither on borrowing expeditions when a clean towel is called for.
A wise philosopher has said, “Every man is as lazy as he dares to be,” and the average laundry employee is like the rest of the world in that respect. ”

“ Here the girls learn laundry-work, from the clean washing and ironing of a coarse towel to the careful goffering and ironing of a lady's ruffle or a gentleman's shirt. They all take their turn in every department of the work, not doing a set piece and then leaving it because the task is done, but taking an interest in the part assigned to them, and each one vying with the other in quickness and thoroughness. The pride with which they exhibited their ironing shewed plainly that it was no forced task, but a labour of genuine pleasure. ”

“ Much time could be saved in the laundry if whenever it were possible a chute could be built into which clothes can be thrown and go directly to the laundry where is situated a basket or a terminal closet to receive them. ”

“ In France, for example, no house-keeper counts either washing, ironing, or bread-making as part of her domestic cares. All the family washing goes out to a laundry; and being attended to by those who make that department of labor a specialty, it comes home in refreshingly beautiful order. ”

“ I am the client of a "model" laundry which sends our linen back a delicate pearl-grey. We call it affectionately the "muddle" laundry, and it costs us one pound a week to keep up to the pearl-grey standard. I wish we could go back to the days of chain-armour! What remedy? There is none, except country laundries for the rich and great, and starch for the poor! The only result of soft coal and dire necessity is the excellence and cheapness of the cleansing establishments, without which the long-suffering householder would indeed sit in sackcloth and ashes! ”

“ It would be a very easy matter to arrange a laundry which would meet all the desired conditions, if we were to operate independent of cost, but the large majority of people are not independent in this way. If it were not a matter of cost, we would have an independent room for the laundry work, with porcelain tubs, and hot and cold water running into all of them; we could have a steam-drier, and many other things, which it is useless to mention here. It is the laundry of the moderate-cost house which interests the largest number of people. ”

“ In France no washing is done in the house. This, no doubt, is one of the reasons why one's laundry bills, even on a brief visit, are among the major items, for les blanchisseuses are a power in the land. When I was leaving Paris the directrice of the École [Pg 32] Feminine in Passy, which had been my home for three months, suggested delicately that I leave a tip for the laundress, for, said this practical person, herself a sufferer from many forms of imposition, "she has been extremely complaisante in coming every week for Madame's wash." ”

“ Knowledge on the part of the housekeeper or mistress of the laundry procedure in order to oversee more intelligently the work done. Women seem to think a knowledge of cookery necessary but give little heed to the importance of the laundry. ”

“ If a laundress is employed, the cleaning of the kitchen floor and the laundry and the ironing should be about accomplished by night, unless it seems best to have her clean and do other extra work after the washing is finished. If the housewife is her own laundress, she must acquire the gentle art of letting things go on the hard days, for she cannot possibly be laundress, maid, and house-mother all in one, and her health and well-being are of prime importance. ”

“ The steam and odor from the washing, which not only fill the kitchen but permeate the house, are enough to render whatever food there is in the kitchen [Pg 41] unfit for use. It is altogether possible to arrange in the cellar of any house that is being built, and in many that are already built, at a trifling cost, a laundry in which the washing and ironing may be comfortably done. ”

“ If all the money that each separate family spends on the outfit and accommodations for washing and ironing, on fuel, soap, starch, and the other et ceteras, were united in a fund to create a laundry for every dozen families, one or two good women could do in firstrate style what now is very indifferently done by the disturbance and disarrangement of all other domestic processes in these families. Whoever sets neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to solve the American housekeeper’s hardest problem. ”

“ Whenever possible, the laundry should be located in a separate building, where plenty of light and air and sunshine can penetrate, and where there is room to separate the clothing while in its different processes and proper work can be done. All clothing should be well aired and thoroughly dry before it leaves the laundry, so that it may immediately be placed on the shelves for use. ”

“ In no place can an example of unsuitable clothing be more clearly seen than in the laundry industry. Much of the work done in the typical laundry is done while standing, and the women who form a majority of the workers wear clothes, and particularly shoes that make the work far more fatiguing than it need be. ”

“ Already the sewing-machine has wrought a revolution in the clothing department, which leaves scarcely a trace of its former wearisome tasks. The washing-machine and wringer, aided by various detergent preparations, have in like manner greatly lightened the work of the laundry, making the destructive and exhausting labor of rubbing a useless waste of power. ”

“ Here we are in Notting Dale and in the heart of Laundry-Land. In every house in street after street the blinds of the ground floor are down as though someone lay dead within. But if you look from the opposite side of the street you will see that in every room above the blinds lines are stretched from wall to wall, and from these lines wrung out details of the washing-tub are hanging. If you cross to the dilapidated railings of the sorry little patch that was once a front garden and peer into the basement you will see that laundry work is in full swing. ”

“ The girl who has been spotted as a desirable and unprotected victim is properly approached by a man who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment at good wages, with all expenses to the destination to [Pg 58] be paid by the man. Most frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes housework or employment in a candy shop or factory. ”