The ever increasing industrial occupation of married women also is
accompanied with fatal results. Especially is this the case in
connection with pregnancy and child-birth, as also during the early life
of the child when it depends upon the nourishment of the mother. A
number of ailments arise during pregnancy that affect destructively both
the fruit and the organism of the woman, and cause premature and
still-born births, upon all of which more later. After the child is
born, the mother is compelled to return as quickly as possible to the
factory, lest her place be taken by a competitor. The inevitable
results to the little ones are: neglected care, improper or total lack
of nourishment. They are drugged with opiates to keep them quiet. The
further results are: a vast mortality, or stunted development; in short,
the degeneration of the race. The children often grow up without having
enjoyed true motherly and fatherly love, or having on their part, felt
filial affection. Thus is the proletariat born, thus does it live and
die. And the "Christian" Government, this "Christian" society wonders
that rudeness, immorality and crime cumulate.
When, in the early sixties of last century, due to the American Civil
War for the emancipation of the negroes, many thousands of workingmen in
the English cotton industries were out of work, physicians made the
remarkable discovery that, despite great want among the population,
mortality among children had _declined_. The cause was simple. The
children now enjoyed the mother's nourishment and better care than they
had ever had during the best seasons of work. The same fact was attested
by physicians during the crisis of the seventies in the United States,
especially in New York and Massachusetts. The general lack of employment
compelled the women to rest from labor, and left them time for the care
of their children. Similar observations were also made by Dr. v.
Recherberg during the inquiry into the condition of the weavers of the
region of Zittau in Saxony, as shown by him in a work that he wrote
during the summer of 1890.
In the home-industries, which romantic economists love to represent as
idyllic, conditions are no better. Here the wife is chained to her
husband, at work early and late into the night, and the children are
from an early age hitched on. Crowded into the narrowest space
imaginable, husband, wife and family, boys and girls, live together,
along with the waste of materials, amidst the most disagreeable dusts
and odors, and without the necessary cleanliness. The bedrooms are of a
piece with the sitting and working rooms: generally dark holes and
without ventilation, they would be sufficiently unsanitary if they
housed but a part of the people huddled into them. In short, the
conditions of these places are such as to cause the skin to creep of
anyone accustomed to a life worthy of a human being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account