The Bohemian girls dread going into the cigar factories. The hygiene is bad, the moral influences are often not of the best, and the work is exhausting. An occasional factory inspector, a little protection from the law, and even from the labor union is what the workers have to depend upon to help them gain the chance to earn their livelihood by healthy toil. The strippers and bookmakers who get the tobacco ready for the cigarmakers, work together—sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty of them—at the end of a room laden with tobacco dust and heavy with the odor of damp tobacco leaves. The windows are generally kept closed because the tobacco must not be allowed to become dry.
The strippers, who know little English and are therefore called "greeners," are paid by the day, and seldom earn more than five or six dollars a week. They are down at the bottom of the economic scale and are not admitted to the cigarmaker's union.
The fact that the strippers and bookmakers are pale and appear to be in poor physical condition, does not signify where "the making of dividends is the supreme end of man." Many of the factories are large and contain a thousand "hands"; the "greeners" are lost in the shuffle, even the officers of the law do not seem to notice that "the two hundred and fifty cubic feet of air-space to be allowed for each worker," is at the other end of the room, and is occupied by ill-smelling tobacco.
Many of the cigar-making girls brought up in this country learn their trade from regular teachers. They pay for their tuition, and are several weeks in learning to become bunchmakers or cigarmakers. The bunchmakers get the tobacco into the shape of a cigar, and the cigarmakers spread the leaves out on the suction-table and put the final coverings on. They are both paid by the thousand cigars, and their wages vary greatly. Some earn only four or five dollars a week, while others earn twelve dollars, and sometimes even higher wages. They are allowed a good deal of latitude as to hours, and often work through the greater part of their lunchtime and stop work at five o'clock. They work under a considerable nervous strain, as speed is a first consideration, if they are to make fair wages. In their hurry many of them bite off the small ends of the cigars (a pleasant thought for the smoker) and they sit all day holding bits of tobacco in their mouths.
The light must be good for their work and the heat of the nearby gas jet adds greatly to the discomfort from the bad air. The floor and walls of the factory are often dirty and the dressing rooms where clothing is hung, are simply large closets partly partitioned off from the main rooms.
The men and women employed in the higher grades of work, the men employed as packers and a small percentage of the women and girls who work at suction-tables belong to the different branches of the cigarmakers' union. This union, besides giving insurance against sickness and death, does much to protect its own memebers, and also in time of special struggle it offers some defense to even the most helpless of the cigarmakers.
An aroused public conscience could do much in the way of getting more protective legislation and improved factory inspection, and could perhaps reach those manufacturers, whose minds are overmastered by the financial interests, even to the point of neglecting the human welfare, on which their prosperity in the last analysis must depend.
II.
Home Life Among Them.Home life among the Bohemians exists under peculiar difficulties. The mothers work in cigar factories, and besides the factory work they have the bearing and rearing of children, and sewing, cooking, washing and cleaning to do in their homes.
The first result noticed is that everyone keeps early hours. At nine o'clock on a winter evening, a block occupied by Bohemian families, is wrapped in slumber, the windows of the houses are dark, and there is almost no one on the street. The working day begins at half-past five and the tired mothers must have their children at home and in bed at an early hour.
The most noticeable effect of having the mothers go to factory is that the or-
