70
SEX IN INDUSTRY.
housemaid, or even of a charwoman, be closely looked at, and compared with that of an ordinary mill-hand in a card-room or spinning-room, it will be seen that the former, though making greater muscular efforts than are ever exacted from the latter, is yet continually changing both her occupation and her posture, and has very frequent intervals of rest. Work at a machine has inevitably a treadmill character about it. Each step may be easy, but it must be performed at the exact moment, under pain of consequences. In hand-work and house-work there is a certain freedom of doing or of leaving undone. Mill-work must be done as if by clock-work.”
The cotton-factory, as well as being the most extensive, is, perhaps, as fair a representative of textile factories as can be given, all conditions considered.
In this department of textile manufactories, it is not probable that purely muscular “ overwork,” except in very young girls, or in one or two special processes, e.g., “ drawing ” and “ weaving,” is a source of any considerable functional injury, ordinarily; but it is interesting to note, that, when it does become so, it is as a result of the grafting on