STRIKE OF WET-NURSES.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 24, 28 July 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

STRIKE OF WET-NURSES.

Austria (writes the Vienna correspondent of a London paper), which is behind the age in so much else, bids fair to become the classic land of labour strikes. Not that they are more grandiose and imposing than in England or America, but they are, so to say, more striking by reason of the character of the persons who organise and execute them. But the most extraordinary strike of all, which, fortunately for the coming generation, has as yet not advanced beyond the preliminary stage of organisation, is that of Austrian wetnurses. The danger has been threatening ever since last February, but it is only three or four days since it assumed such a definite form as to attract the notice of the press. The grievances of Austrian wet-nurses are numerous and real, and their demands, on the whole fairly reasonable. Only the more radical among them insist on an eight hours labour day ; many consider themselves entitled to keep the Sabbath as a day of res from all work, during which the infant should be taught to master his feelings and content himself with occasional draughts from a feedingbottle ; and all of them, pern, con., ask for wages not less than 30s. a month and exemption from all kinds of work which lie outside the functions of wet-nurses. But their _ main grievance, which is also the origin of tho present agitation, is that they are systematically fleeced by professional agents who scour the country in search of wet-nurses, receive a large premium on each from those who need her services — sometimes £5 or £6 besides a percentage from the woman herself, and then send her to a family where she will be wretchedly paid, compelldil to work like a slave, and obliged to drink flat beer instead of the foaming, sparkling Pilsener. It appears that these agents, who wander from V'llage to village, earn as much as £30 a month merely by sending wet-nurses to Vienna and other large cities of Austria ; whereas the nurse herself seldom scrapes together more than £1 8 in the course of the whole year.