DEFYING GRAVITATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 14

DEFYING GRAVITATION

HAZARDS FOR NEW YORK WINDOW CLEANERS ROOM IN PROFESSION The increasing number of skyscrapers in New York during the past year has further elevated the craft of window cleaning from a quasidomestic pursuit to a career of daring and danger. In fact, one of the major demands that precipitated the strike of 2,000 union window cleaners last autumn was a request for the reduction of the mounting hazard. Officials of the labour organisation reported that almost 2 per cent, of the membership was lost through accident each year. They remarked, in effect, that if a modern Sir Isaac Newton wanted to take an advanced course in the laws of gravitation he need but observe a corps of window glass polishers for a few days in order to obtain a most enlightening: laboratory lesson. It was said that the window cleaners’ insurance rate was the highest for the journeyman of any vocation, the premium paid by the employer being about 7s 6d a day for each man. The premium indicates, so it is said, that actuaries regard window cleaning as only slightly safer than facade scaling or steeplejacking. The union has asked for bigger and better bolts upon which to fasten safety belts, particularly on the higher buildings. Veteran window cleaners say that the strain of a man’s weight upon belt and bolt, as he stands on a sill 500 or more feet above the street, makes it difficult for the novice to keep his mind entirely on his work. There is no record of a window cleaner’s resigning in the face of an especially lofty assignment, but the secretary of the union estimates that about 10 per cent, of the membership specialise in store windows exclusively. A fairly large percentage of the men who follow the calling are ex-seamen, who acquired ease in aerial stations in the course of years of scrambling up and down ice-coated masts on the sailing ships of some foreign and not yet modernised merchant marine, or so it would seem from some of the stories told. Having reefed topsails with only their grip to sustain them in perilous positions, the ex-sailors lean comfortably and casually from towering ledges as they ply their cleansing craft. Also surprisingly many window washers hail from the mining regions of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. After they have pecked away at tunnel walls with a pick at depths into which the timorous would not venture, scouring lofty windows has no depressing effect upon their nervous systems.

Many of the former sailors and miners, as well as the recruits from less strenuous callings, have graduated into window scrubbing after understudying as porters and janitors' assistants. There is no clearly defined apprenticeship through which the candidate for a union card must pass. The nature of the duties has, in itself, prevented the calling from becoming overcrowded. However, the applicant for membership in the union must satisfy the committee on admissions that he is no amateur either in regard to the handling of the tools of the trade or in his ability to pass in and out of window sashes as readily as if they were doors. He is also expected to solve quickly the puzzling mechanism of the window arrangements calculated to promote natural ventilation and illumination. The committee does not contend that window cleaning must be a birthright, but it does maintain that a touch of talent is essential to success.

“We can tell from the way a man gets out to the ledge whether or not he is fit for the job,” the secretary said recently, in discussing the admission requirements. “But even if he handies himself with confidence and without clumsiness, he must show that he knows how to make a shining sheet out of a grimy glass. “I’m afraid that a lot of laymen, including housewives, don’t realise that there is a real technique to our task. A man has to learn how to spread the soap and water around so that there won’t be any streaks or blotches when he starts to use the chamois. But it is in his manner of manipulating the ‘squeejee’ that we get a real line on his capability. If he drags it in long strokes across the pane, we are pretty sure that he doesn’t know his job. The expert uses the ‘squeejee’ with a quick, straight motion.”