Women Wage-Earners eBook

Helen Stuart Campbell
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 208 pages of information about Women Wage-Earners.

Women Wage-Earners eBook

Helen Stuart Campbell
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 208 pages of information about Women Wage-Earners.
in the morning until seven in the evening, or a total of fourteen hours, out of which there are twelve hours of ’effective labor.’  But the same authority also states that ‘effective’ time often extends to thirteen and fourteen hours in many weaving-establishments.  Finally, we are told that, as a rule, it may be taken that Frenchmen employed in factories are present in the shops at least fourteen hours out of every twenty four.
“Among the countries having no laws affecting the hours of adult labor, Germany is conspicuous.  Employers, however, cannot force their servants to work on Sundays and feast-days.  Employment of youthful or female labor in certain kinds of factories, which is attended with special danger to health or morals, is forbidden, or made conditional on certain regulations, by which night labor for female work-people is especially forbidden.  In Germany, as in other countries also, women may not be employed in factories for a certain time after childbirth.  In Hesse-Darmstadt the medium duration of labor is from ten to twelve hours,—­the cases in which the latter time is exceeded being, however, more frequent than those in which the former is not exceeded.  The normal work-day throughout Saxony in all the principal branches of industry is from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M., with half an hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and half an hour for supper.  In the manufacturing industry there are departures from these hours, the period of work in spinning and weaving mills not infrequently being twelve hours.
“In Austria the law provides that the duration of work for factory hands shall not exceed eleven hours out of the twenty-four, ‘exclusive’ of the periods of rest.  These are not to be less in the aggregate than an hour and a half.  The rule can be modified by the minister of commerce, in conjunction with the minister of the interior, allowing longer hours.  The hours have been so extended to twelve hours in certain industries, such as spinning-mills, and even to thirteen in silk manufactories.  Sunday rest is enforced.  In Hungary there is no limit laid down by law, but the hours are not generally longer than in Austria.
“Concerning the actual hours of adult labor in Belgium, some difficulty is said to be experienced in getting at the facts.  The evidence given before a Belgian royal commission showed that railway guards are sometimes on duty for fifteen and even nineteen and a half hours at a stretch; and the Brussels tram-way-drivers are at work from fifteen to seventeen hours daily, with a rest of only an hour and a half at noon.  Brick-makers work during the summer months sixteen hours a day.  In the sugar refineries the average hours are from twelve to thirteen for men and from nine to ten for women.  The cabinetmakers, both at Ghent and Brussels, assert that they have often to work seventeen hours a day.
“In Switzerland the law provides
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Women Wage-Earners from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.