OBJECTIVE.
73
In the special processes alluded to, “ drawing” and “ weaving,” it may well be doubted if a labor, which, as in the first, requires the constant removal of the cans (or boxes) to and from the machines, weighing when full from sixteen to eighteen pounds (upward of nine hundred cans passing through the hands of each female in a day), is not a species of overwork in itself, that, so continuously plied, must result in injury. In “ weaving ” and in “ spinning” both, it has been a common mistake to employ girls whose ages could but be associated with sexual insecurity that should of itself class this employment for them as overwork.
“ Where labor is also prejudicial,” sa} r s Dr. Baker,* * of Leeds, “there needs not miasm, and want of ventilation, to accelerate its con-
and abusive custom exist of determining the pay of the “overlooker,” or foreman, of a room by the earnings of those under him, —a system which, wherever practised, is accompanied by the most brutal goading to over-labor, productive beyond escape of a host of evils to health.
* Report on Leeds, in Reports on Sanitary Condition of Laborers, Population England and Wales, 1842.
7