SUMMARY OF STUDY.
The law has declared illegal the employment of women in mercantile establishments longer than fifty-four hours or six days in any one week, on the ground that a working day of more than nine hours, or a working week of more than six days, is prejudicial to the health of the worker and therefore to the welfare of society. It has also declared illegal the employment of these women at night and it safeguards their interests further by insisting upon a definite period for the mid-day meal. Fifty-eight per cent. (58%) of the women employed in restaurants exceed the fifty-four hour limit, twenty per cent. (20%) work twelve hours a day and four per cent. (4%) are employed at night. One-third do not have one day of rest in seven, and the majority are not allowed time off for their meals. Do not these women also need the protection of the law?
Restaurant work has much in common with work in mercantile establishments. Continuous standing and walking and the nervous strain entailed in serving many customers are features of both occupations. Besides this, restaurant work necessitates the lifting and carrying of heavy weights which may easily be disastrous not only to the worker herself, but to her children. Dr. Harris has expressly stated his belief that such work will injure the reproductive organs of a women unless she is guarded from overstrain. The larger proportion of restaurant workers are girls and young women, who are peculiarly susceptible to overstrain because of their youth.
There is abundant evidence from the testimony of the girls themselves that restaurant work is a severe tax and that the need for limiting hours of labor is strongly felt among them. Here are quoted a few of the remarks made by them, which could be duplicated many times:
“I think it’s a shame to let a woman work twelve hours a day. I’m so tired at night I can’t do anything but go to bed.”
“I can’t keep a job longer than four months because I get so nervous.”
“This is my second week and I’m nearly dead, the hours are so long.”
“It would be the grandest thing in the world if they could do away with the twelve-hour day.”
To resist the unavoidable strain of the work, the restaurant worker must be in a normal, healthy state of mind and body. Our responsibility lies in seeing to it that conditions are such as to make this possible.
The results of fatigue do not end with the individual. It is common knowledge that health depends upon the power to resist disease. The person who has overworked is not only subject to the devastating action of fatigue poisons, but is a prey to any infections to which he may be exposed because he cannot throw them off. Working conditions which render large numbers of men and women susceptible to disease, and hence capable of spreading it, are a public menace. To allow such conditions to continue unchecked is inexcusable negligence.
These facts point directly to the crying need for the limitation of hours for women in restaurants, that the individual worker may be protected from overstrain, that the community may be guarded from the spread of contagious disease by people predisposed to infection through fatigue, and that the children of these women may be strong and capable of becoming useful citizens.
It must be conceded that the difficulty of regulating hours in restaurants is much greater than in mercantile establishments. Restaurants must be open for a longer period each day than any store needs to be or is likely to be. But the difficulties are not insuperable. By working the employees in shifts of nine consecutive hours a day and six days a week, and by replacing women by men for night duty, the most undesirable features of restaurant work would be abolished. Such a plan has already been tried successfully in a number of New York restaurants, proving that it is possible and feasible to regulate hours.
To limit by law the hours of labor for women employed in restaurants cannot be considered a new or revolutionary step. New York is already far behind the majority of other states in this respect. At the present time, twenty-seven states regulate the number of hours that women may work in restaurants, five having the eight-hour day.[13]Clearly, therefore, the establishment of a normal working day for this class of workers is not only reasonable, but, in the opinion of the greater number of states, it is essential to the best welfare of their people as a whole.