"When the worker, cruelly tired from ten hours' work, comes home in the
early morning, she usually scrambles together breakfast for the family.
Eating little or nothing herself, and that hastily, she tumbles into
bed--not the immaculate bed in an airy bed-room with dark shades, but
one still warm from its night occupants, in a stuffy little bed-room,
darkened imperfectly if at all. After sleeping exhaustedly for an hour
perhaps she bestirs herself to get the children off to school, or care
for insistent little ones, too young to appreciate that mother is tired
out and must sleep. Perhaps later in the forenoon, she again drops into
a fitful sleep, or she may have to wait until after dinner. There is
the midday meal to get, and, if her husband cannot come home, his
dinner-pail to pack with a hot lunch to be sent or carried to him. If
he is not at home, the lunch is rather a makeshift. The midday meal is
scarcely over before supper must be thought of. This has to be eaten
hurriedly before the family are ready, for the mother must be in the
mill at work, by 6, 6:30 or 7 P.M.... Many women in their inadequate
English, summed up their daily routine by, 'Oh, me all time tired. TOO
MUCH WORK, TOO MUCH BABY, TOO LITTLE SLEEP!'"
"Only sixteen of the 166 married women were without children; thirty-two
had three or more; twenty had children one year old or under. There were
160 children under school-age, below six years, and 246 of school age."
"A woman in ordinary circumstances," adds this impartial investigator,
"with a husband and three children, if she does her own work, feels that
her hands are full. How these mill-workers, many of them frail-looking,
and many with confessedly poor health, can ever do two jobs is a
mystery, when they are seen in their homes dragging about, pale,
hollow-eyed and listless, often needlessly sharp and impatient with the
children. These children are not only not mothered, never cherished,
they are nagged and buffeted. The mothers are not superwomen, and like
all human beings, they have a certain amount of strength and when that
breaks, their nerves suffer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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