Opening Address by Miss Phelps

Opening Address by Miss Phelps

Miss Phelps said: the subject of this meeting is to bring out the purpose of the peti- tion just read, and the facts whereon it is based. We do not think the men of Mas- sachusetts know how the women live. We do not think if they did they would allow such a state of things to exist. Some of us who signed the petition have had to work for less than twenty-five cents a day, and we know that many others have had to do the same. True, many get good wages comparatively for women. There are girls that get from $1 to $1.50 per day, either because they are superior laborers or have had unusual opportunities. But many of these poor girls among whom it has been my fortune to live and work, are not skilled laborers. They are incapable of going into business for themselves, or carrying on for themselves, and inca- pable of combination; they are uneducated, and have no resource but the system that employs them. There are before me now women who I know to be working at the present time for less than twenty-five cents a day. Some of the work they do at these rates from the charitable institutions of the city. These institutions give out work to the women with the professed object of helping them, at which they can scarcely earn enough to keep them from starving; work at which two persons, with their utmost exertions cannot earn more than forty-five cents a day. These things, I repeat, should be known to the public. . . .

Source: Barbara M. Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 212–213.

Source: Rosalyn Baxandall et al., America’s Working Women: A Documentary History–1600 to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), pp. 105–106; originally from Workingman’s Advocate 5, No. 41 (May 8, 1869), p. 3.

8 Summary of Conditions Among Women Workers Found by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor (1887) Feather-sorters, fur-workers, cotton-sorters, all workers on any material that gives off dust are subject to lung and bronchial troubles. In soap-factories the girls’ hands are eaten by the caustic soda, and by the end of the day the fingers are often raw and bleeding. In making buttons, pins, and other manufactures . . . there is always liability of getting the fingers jammed or caught. For the first three times the wounds are dressed without charge. After that the person injured must pay expenses. . . .

In food preparation girls who clean and pack fish get blistered hands and fingers from the saltpetre. . . . Others in “working stalls” stand in cold water all day. . . .

In match-factories . . . necrosis often attacks the worker, and the jaw is eaten away. . . .

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