WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 379 



vibrations plus noise act on the nerves as a continual light tapping does 

 on steel. Both steel and nerves disintegrate. One girl said that when 

 her machine stopped at night she always felt like screaming, which 

 proved that her nervous energy was being too greatly sapped by the 

 day's work. 



The effect of the strain of industry then is to add mental to physical 

 fatigue, destroying the recuperative power of the body. Since the 

 sexual organs and the nervous system both take the same food ele- 

 ments from the blood and are delicately adjusted to each other, the 

 toll industry takes of the nerves is sooner or later reflected in organic 

 maladjustments. 



As with monotonous work, so with industrial diseases no direct 

 result on the fecundity of women can be pointed out. The harm comes 

 indirectly through a lowering of general vitality and nerve strain. 

 Lead poisoning seems to attack women more readily than men. It is 

 a most potent producer of abortion, for it is rare for a woman working 

 in lead fumes to give birth to a healthy child at term. Often the 

 poisoning results in sterility. At first, the odor of carbon bisulphide 

 in a rubber factory makes girls excitable, but it is followed by headache 

 and nervous lassitude, with a loathing for food. As with morphine 

 and cocaine, the cause has the semblance of a cure, a feeling of nor- 

 mality only when drugged. This produces the vicious circle, of pois- 

 oning, lassitude and repoisoning. The excitement causes undue fa- 

 tigue, while malnutrition culminates in poverty of the blood, general 

 debility and organic disturbances. The eating of the hands by acids in 

 pickling factories, bleacheries and soap works tortures the workers and 

 exhausts the nerves. Dust dries the throat. The effort to cough pro- 

 duces asthma or an inflammation which is a good seeding ground for 

 tuberculosis. A hot, damp workroom weakens the body by excessive 

 perspiration, and renders it liable to rheumatism, bronchitis and 

 tuberculosis. Lifting heavy weights or running foot-power machines 

 so injure the sex organs as to induce sterility. This list might be 

 lengthened, but enough has already been written to make the point. 



Malnutrition plays a part in lessening the vitality of working 

 women. When a mother has to prepare a breakfast for a family before 

 hurrying away to a shop, that breakfast is to be commended for the 

 speed of its preparation rather than for its adherence to principles of 

 proper diet. Bread and butter, coffee or tea and greasy meat, with the 

 addition of a pickle as a stimulant, is the usual bill of fare, varied but 

 little in the three meals of the day. There is not enough of cooked 

 food and vegetables are lacking. The mother's body is not suflBciently 

 nourished to withstand the double tax of factory work and house work 

 and if a child comes, the mother is sometimes too impoverished phys- 

 ically to nourish it. A baby should be fed every two hours, but a fac- 



