The Condition of Packing House Employees. 



BV A. E. MOODV. 

 [Study ill the Armour Brothers" I'laiit. Jiitiuury 1st, IKSt').! 



The junction of the " L" Road and the Kaiisas State Line is a 

 locality teeming with gambling houses, policy shops, saloons, 

 restaurants, stores and shops of every description. An air of 

 cheapness and poverty pervades the neighborhood, the stores are 

 dirty, the streets are dirty, the children are dirty. A fringe of two 

 story buildings along the street hides, in some measure, the squalid 

 dwellings of the people who live in the rear. We are in the heart 

 of the "West Bottoms" of Kansas City — an area lying between 

 the bluffs on the Kansas and those on the Missouri sides of the 

 line, or we may define it as the area lying between the railroad 

 tracks and the Kaw river. This area contains over 10,000 people 

 and is the center of the packing-house industries of the two cities. 



General Superintendent Tourtellot of the Armour Packing Com- 

 pany gave permission to interview the foremen of departments and 

 ask all the questions desired concerning the men under them, and 

 tried in every way to make the visit a success. 



For the week ending December 2gth there were 2700 names on 

 the pay roll, but this number varies b}' a thousand according to the 

 demands of business. This thousand constitute the class known 

 as ffoaters, to which the majority of the common laborers belong. 



Work is now done on the basis of an 8 hour da}^ which went into 

 effect December 2gth, 1894, but this does not necessarily imply 

 that all the employees work 8 hours daily, on the contrary, some 

 are now working only 30 or 40 hours per week. A large number 

 of the employees are paid by the piece; others, working on the 

 basis of an 8 hour day, earn from 10 to 35 cents per hour — the 

 length of time a man works each day depending upon the amount 

 of work on hand; the foremen and some of the most skilled work- 

 men are paid by the month. This paper will not touch at any 

 length upon the condition of the several hundred office employees 

 but will deal almost entirely with the common laboring peo}>le. 

 The following is a summary of the condition of the different de- 

 partments: 



(41) KAN. T'.VIV. (^UAK.. vol,. IV. NO. 1. .U'l.V 1. IHil."). 



