36 ChaPter^1
get the salary the men clerks do, although this day I am 600 sales ahead! Call
this justice? But I have to grin and bear it, because I am so unfortunate to be
a woman.” Work was also hazardous to women’s health. Long work days
on the job and at home caused physical distress; sexual exploitation and abuse
by bosses was not uncommon. The death rate of working women was two
times higher than non-working women. Class, quite clearly, could be a mat-
ter of life and death. Child Labor was also common. About 15 percent of kids
between the ages of 10-15 had jobs in the period 1870-1900, with about
25,000 boys in mining; 20,000 younger than 12 in southern cotton mills [with
12 hour shifts]; and large numbers in textile mills, tobacco processing plants,
and print shops. Children were paid no more than a dollar a day, less than
half of most adult workers. Worst off were those kids working in tenement
workshops, basically apartments in which families worked in clothing produc-
tion in which they were paid by the pieces produced (one family, for instance,
received 65 cents per dozen pair of pants made). Tenement production, in
fact, led to one of the greater tragedies of the early industrial era, the Triangle
Shirtwaist Fire, which will be discussed in the next chapter.FIGuRE 1-7 Child laborers in a canning factory