strial
Diseases_, Milan, 1906. Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to
Certain Forms of Labor. Professor Crisafuli.

"When only one brain-centre works, it becomes overfatigued much more
easily than if the functions were alternately performed by the various
centres.

"Here, then, is another factor in overfatigue due to the _monotony_ of
work, interrupted only at long intervals.

"This monotony is the determining cause of local disturbances and
endangers the entire organism."]

CHAPTER V

THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL UNION SHOP

Forty million dollars are invested in New York in the making of women's
cloaks, skirts, and suits. One hundred and eighty million dollars' worth
of these garments are produced in New York in a year.[23]

Between sixty and seventy thousand organized men and women in the city
are employed in these industries. The Union members constitute
ninety-five per cent of the workers engaged in the trade, and about ten
thousand of these members are women.[24]

It seems at first strange to find that the multitudinous fields of the
metropolitan needle trades,--industries traditionally occupied by sewing
women,--are, in fact, far more heavily crowded with sewing men. There is,
however, a division of labor, the men doing practically all the cutting,
machine sewing, and pressing, and in many cases working at
hand-finishing; the women practically never cutting, machine sewing, or
pressing, and in all cases working at hand-finishing.

A general strike involving all these men and women in the cloak making
trade was declared on the 8th of July, 1910. The industry had for years
burdened both its men and women workers with certain grave
difficulties--an unstandardized wage, the subcontracting system,
competition with home work, and long seasonal hours.

The subcontracting system bore most severely on the women in the trade,
as the greater proportion of the finishers were women, and before the
strike nearly every finisher was employed by a subcontractor.

The wages paid to finishers in the same shop, whether they were girls or
men, were the same. But as compared with cutters, basters, and operators
the finishers both before and since the strike had always been paid
relatively below their deserts.

Wages were lowered, not only by the unstandardized rates prevalent
through the sub-subcontracting system, but also by the practice of
sending hand-finishing out of the factories and shop