3 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tory mother sees her infant once in six or ten hours only. Drugs are 

 given to children only two weeks old to keep them quiet while the 

 mother is away from home. Interference with lactation is injurious to 

 the mother and fatal to the haby. The survivors of this heroic treat- 

 ment grow up never having had sufficient nourishment. When it comes 

 their turn to go to work, they do so not equipped with full vigor to 

 meet the increasing stress of such work, but in a weakened condition, 

 and are susceptible to all the ills before mentioned. Lifelong malnu- 

 trition added to pelvic deformities acquired by work is a serious draw- 

 back to the motherhood of working women. 



Because children are a handicap, in calling for time and attention 

 that is needed for other work, they are unwelcome or impossible to cer- 

 tain groups of women workers. A woman reporter or school teacher 

 can not afford to have the demands of a child interfere with the require- 

 ments of her work, so in some branches of industry it can not be stated 

 whether the women engaged in it are physically incapacitated for bear- 

 ing children, or whether they have none because they do not wish them. 

 All the social and economic factors which are causing a world-wide 

 decline in the birth-rate operate in the various groups of working women 

 and complicate any general conclusions that might be drawn as to the 

 injury done by the work itself. 



A hundred and fifty years ago the man who ventured to predict that 

 no women would be allowed to work in mines, bar rooms, buffing or 

 polishing metals or as public messengers would have been laughed at in 

 scorn, but we to-day look upon such occupations for women with horror. 

 May not our children's children think of a time when women worked 

 in factories as a barbarous age ? Lawmakers may some day forbid such 

 labor on the grounds of the injury to the future race. We may not 

 have to wait for such laws, however. Working conditions are usually 

 the worst in the smaller concerns. The country is tending toward 

 large-scale production, therefore conditions are slowly improving. But 

 with large-scale production machines are larger, work heavier, speed 

 and number of machines greater, so much so that men must be em- 

 ployed to do the work formerly done by women. The task a woman 

 performs is largely of a mechanical nature, hence with large-scale 

 production unreliable labor is replaced by a reliable automatic machine. 

 The development of the loom from hand power to power driven, and 

 from female to male attendance, and to final automatic action is an 

 illustration in point. The more efficient machine may drive the less 

 efficient woman out of the shop. In stores, offices and schools they 

 must be more adequately protected by law, for it is evident that work- 

 ing, sooner or later, is reflected in fecundity. 



