1851, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania all passed ten-hour
laws.[A] But they were not passed simultaneously, which gave the
employers in the particular state dealt with, the excuse that under
such legislation they could not face interstate competition in their
business, and since every law contained a saving clause permitting
contracting out by individual employers and employés, all these
beneficial acts were so much waste paper. The manufacturers expressed
themselves as willing enough to stand for the shorter work-day, but
absolutely declined to risk the loss of their business in competing
with those rival manufacturers who might take advantage of the "saving
clause."
[Footnote A: In the same year, 1847, a ten-hour law was passed in New
Hampshire and in Great Britain, with, however, very different outcome,
for in Great Britain the law was enforced, there being no complication
of state and national control there.]
For nearly fifty years after this period, the right to overwork
and the "right" to be overworked remained untouched by legislative
interference. And yet the need for labor legislation, restricting
hours, and for uniform federal legislation was as clearly evident then
as it is to us today, to meet the industrial needs and to satisfy the
undoubted rights of the working folk of the twentieth century.
1860-1880
The organization of labor upon a national basis really began during
this period. During the ten years from 1863 to 1873 there existed more
than thirty national trade unions. Of these only two, the printers and
the cigar-makers, admitted women to their membership. But in addition
the women shoemakers had their own national union, the Daughters of
St. Crispin. Women's unions of all sorts were represented in the
National Labor Union.
From this body women's local unions received every possible
encouragement. As far as I can understand, the National Labor Union
carried on little active work between conventions, but at these
gatherings it stood for equal pay for equal work, although, as it
appears to us, inconsistently and short-sightedly the delegates
refused to incorporate into their resolutions the demand for the
ballot as a needful weapon in the hands of women in their strivings
after industrial equality. The need for industrial equality had
been forced upon the apprehension of men unionists after they had
themselves suffered for long years from the undercutting competition
of women. That women needed to be strong politically in order that
they might be strong industrially was a step beyond these good
brothers.
There were also two state labor unions, composed solely of women, the
Massachusetts Working-Women's League, and the Working-Women's Labor
Union for the state of New York.
But most of the organization work among women was still local in
character. The New England girl was now practically out of the
business, driven out by the still more hardly pushed immigrant. With
her departure were lost to the trades she had practiced the remnants
of the experience and the education several generations of workers had
acquired in trade unionism and trade-union policy and methods.
Still, at intervals and under sore disadvantages the poor newcomers
did some fighting on their own account. Although they were immigrants
they were of flesh and blood like their predecessors, and they
naturally rebelled against the ever-increasing amount of work that
was demanded of them. The two looms, formerly complained of, had now
increased to six and seven. The piece of cloth that used to be thirty
yards long was now forty-two yards, though the price per piece
remained the same. But strike after strike was lost. A notable
exception was the strike of the Fall River weavers in 1875. It was led
by the women weavers, who refused to accept a ten per cent. cut in
wages to which the men of the organization (for they were organized)
had agreed. The women went out in strike in the bitter month of
January, taking the men with them. The leaders selected three mills,
and struck against those, keeping the rest of their members at work,
in order to have sufficient funds for their purposes. Even so, 3,500
looms and 156,000 spindles were thrown idle, and 3,125 strikers were
out. The strike lasted more than two months and was successful.
Progress must have seemed at the time, may even seem to us looking
back, to be tantalizingly slow, but far oftener than in earlier days
do the annals of trade unionism report, "The strikers won." Another
feature is the ever-increasing interest and sympathy shown in such
industrial risings of the oppressed by a certain few among the more
fortunate members of society. One strike of cap-makers (men and
women), was helped to a successful issue by rich German bankers and
German societies.
The account of the condition of women in the sewing trades during
the sixties makes appalling reading. The wonder is not that
the organizations of seamstresses during those years were few,
short-lived, and attended with little success, but that among women so
crushed and working at starvation wages any attempt at organization
should have been possible at all. A number of circumstances combined
to bring their earnings below, far below, the margin of subsistence.
It was still the day of pocket-money wages, when girls living at home
would take in sewing at prices which afforded them small luxuries, but
which cut the remuneration of the woman who had to live by her needle
to starvation point.
It was still the period of transition in the introduction of the
sewing-machine. The wages earned under these circumstances were
incredibly low. The true sweating system with all its dire effects
upon the health of the worker, and threatening the very existence of
the home, was in full force. The enormous amount of work which was
given out in army contracts to supply the needs of the soldiers then
on active service in the Civil War, was sublet by contractors at the
following rates. The price paid by the Government for the making of
a shirt might be eighteen cents. Out of that all the worker would
receive would be seven cents. And cases are cited of old women,
presumably slow workers, who at these rates could earn but a dollar
and a half per week. Even young and strong workers were but little
better off. From innumerable cases brought to light $2 and $3 a week
seem to have been a common income for a woman. Some even "supported"
(Heaven save the mark!) others out of such wretched pittances.
Aurora Phelps, of Boston, a born leader, in 1869, gave evidence that
there were then in Boston eight thousand sewing-women, who did not
earn over twenty-five cents a day, and that she herself had seen the
time when she could not afford to pay for soap and firing to wash her
own clothes. She said that she had known a girl to live for a week on
a five-cent loaf of bread a day, going from shop to shop in search of
the one bit of work she was able to do. For by this time division of
work had come in, and the average machine operator was paid as badly
as the hand needlewoman.
The circumstance that probably more than any other accentuated this
terrible state of affairs was the addition to the ranks of the
wage-earners of thousands of "war widows." With homes broken up and
the breadwinner gone, these untrained women took up sewing as the only
thing they could do, and so overstocked the labor market that a
new "Song of the Shirt" rose from attic to basement in the poorer
districts of all the larger cities.
As early as 1864 meetings were held in order to bring pressure upon
the officials who had the giving out of the army contracts, to have
the work given out direct, and therefore at advanced prices to the
worker. Only three months before his death, in January, 1865, these
facts reached President Lincoln, and were referred by him to the
quartermaster with a request that "he should hereafter manage the
supplies of contract work for the Government, made up by women, so as
to give them remunerative wages for labor."
During these years a number of small unions were formed, some as far
west as Detroit and Chicago, but in almost every case the union later
became a coöperative society. Some of them, we know, ceased to exist
after a few months. Of others the forming of the organization is
recorded in some labor paper, and after a while the name drops out,
and nothing more is heard of it.
Ten years later, in New York, there was formed a large, and for
several years very active association of umbrella-sewers. This
organization so impressed Mrs. Patterson, a visiting Englishwoman,
that when she returned home, she exerted herself to form unions among
working-women and encouraged others to do the same. It was through
her persistence that the British Women's Trade Union League came into
existence.
If the conditions in the sewing trades were at this period the very
worst that it is possible to imagine, so low that organization from
within was impossible, while as yet the public mind was unprepared to
accept the alternative of legislative interference with either hours
or wages, there were other trades wherein conditions were far more
satisfactory, and in which organization had made considerable
progress.
The Collar Laundry Workers of Troy, New York, had in 1866 about as bad
wages as the sewing-women everywhere, but they were spared the curse
of homework, as it was essentially a factory trade. The collars, cuffs
and shirts were made and laundered by workers of the same factories.
How early the workers organized is not known, but in the year 1866
they had a union so prosperous that they were able to give one
thousand dollars from their treasury towards the assistance of the
striking ironmolders of Troy, and later on five hundred dollars to
help the striking bricklayers of New York. They had in course of time
succeeded in raising their own wages from the very low average of
two dollars and three dollars per week to a scale ranging from eight
dollars to fourteen dollars for different classes of work, although
their hours appear to have been very long, from twelve to fourteen
hours per day. But the laundresses wanted still more pay, and in May,
1869, they went on strike to the number of four hundred, but after a
desperate struggle, in which they were supported by the sympathy of
the townspeople, they were beaten, and their splendid union put out of
existence.
Miss Kate Mullaney, their leader, was so highly thought of that in
1868 she had been made national organizer of women for the National
Labor Union, the first appointment of the kind of which there is any
record. She tried to save what she could out of the wreck of the
union by forming the Coöperative Linen, Collar and Cuff Factory, and
obtained for it the patronage of the great department store of A.T.
Stewart, in Broadway.
The experiences of the women printers have been typical of the
difficulties which women have had to face in what is called a man's
trade of the highly organized class. The tragic alternative that is
too often offered to women, just as it is offered to any race or class
placed at an economic disadvantage, of being kept outside a skilled
trade, through the short-sighted policy of the workers in possession,
or of entering it by some back door, whether as mere undersellers or
as actual strike-breakers, is illustrated in all its phases in the
printing trade.
As early as 1856 the Boston Typographical Union seriously considered
discharging any member found working with female compositors. This
feeling, though not always so bluntly expressed, lasted for many
years. It was not singular, therefore, that under these circumstances,
employers took advantage of such a situation, and whenever it suited
them, employed women. These were not even non-unionists, seeing that
as women they were by the men of their own trade judged ineligible for
admission to the union. It is believed that women were thus the means
of the printers losing many strikes. In 1864 the proprietor of one of
the Chicago daily papers boasted that he "placed materials in remote
rooms in the city and there secretly instructed girls to set type, and
kept them there till they were sufficiently proficient to enter the
office, and thus enabled the employer to take a 'snap judgment' on his
journeymen."
After this a wiser policy was adopted by the typographical unions. The
keener-sighted among their members began not only to adopt a softer
tone towards their hardly pressed sisters in toil, but made it clear
that what they were really objecting to was the low wage for which
women worked.
The first sign of the great change of heart was the action of the
"Big Six," of New York, which undertook all the initial expenses
of starting a women's union. On October 12, 1868, the Women's
Typographical Union No. 1 was organized, with Miss Augusta Lewis as
president. Within the next three years women were admitted into the
printers' unions of Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
and Boston. Meantime, the Women's Typographical No. 1 was growing in
numbers and influence, and was evidently backed by the New York men's
union. It obtained national recognition on June 11, 1869, by receiving
a charter from the International Typographical Union of North America.
It was represented by two delegates at the International Convention
held in Cincinnati in 1870. One of these delegates was Miss Lewis
herself. She was elected corresponding secretary of the International
Union, and served, we are told, with unusual ability and tact. It is
less encouraging to have to add, that since her day, no woman has held
an international office.
The two contrary views prevailing among men unionists: that of the
man who said, "Keep women out at all hazards--out of the union,
and therefore out of the best of the trade, but out of the trade,
altogether, if possible," and that of the man who resigned himself to
the inevitable and contented himself with urging equal pay, and with
insisting upon the women joining the union, were never more sharply
contrasted than in the cigar-making trade. We actually find the
International Union, which after 1867 by its constitution admitted
women, being openly defied in this vital matter by some of its own
largest city locals. These were the years during which the trade was
undergoing very radical changes. From being a home occupation, or an
occupation carried on in quite small establishments, requiring very
little capital, it was becoming more and more a factory trade. The
levying by the government of an internal revenue tax on cigars, and
the introduction of the molding machine, which could be operated by
unskilled girl labor, seem to have been the two principal influences
tending towards the creation of the big cigar-manufacturing plant.
The national leaders recognized the full gravity of the problem,
and met it in a tolerant, rational spirit. Not so many of the local
bodies. Baltimore and Cincinnati cigar-makers were particularly
bitter, and the "Cincinnati Cigar-makers' Protective Union was for a
time denied affiliation with the International Union on account of its
attitude of absolute exclusion towards women."
In 1887 the Cincinnati secretary (judging from his impatience we
wonder if he was a very young man) wrote: "We first used every
endeavor to get women into the union, but no one would join, therefore
we passed the resolution that if they would not work with us we would
work against them; but I think we have taught them a lesson that will
serve them another time." This unhappy spirit Cincinnati maintained
for several years. The men were but building up future difficulties
for themselves, as is evident from the fact that in Cincinnati itself
there were by 1880 several hundred women cigar-makers, and not one of
them in a union.
As the Civil War had so profoundly affected the sewing trades, so
it was war, although not upon this continent, that added to the
difficulties of American cigar-makers. In the Austro-Prussian War,
the invading army entered Bohemia and destroyed the Bohemian cigar
factories. The workers, who, as far as we know, were mostly women, and
skilled women at that, emigrated in thousands to the United States,
and landing in New York either took up their trade there or went
further afield to other Eastern cities. This happened just about the
time that the processes of cigar-making were being subdivided and
specialized, so presently a very complicated situation resulted.
Finding the control of their trade slipping away from them, the
skilled men workers in the New York factories went out on strike, and
many of the Bohemian women, being also skilled, followed them, and so
it came about that it was American girls upon whom the manufacturers
had to depend as strike-breakers. Their reliance was justified. With
the aid of these girls, as well as that of men strike-breakers, the
employers gained the day.
To what extent even the more intelligent trade-union leaders felt true
comradeship for their women co-workers it is difficult to say. The
underlying thought may often have been that safety for the man lay in
his insisting upon just and even favorable conditions for women.
Even under conditions of nominal equality the woman was so often
handicapped by her physique, by the difficulty she experienced in
obtaining thorough training, and by the additional claims of her home,
that the men must have felt they were likely to keep their hold on the
best positions anyhow, and perhaps all the more readily with the union
exacting identical standards of accomplishment from all workers, while
at the same time claiming for all identical standards of wages.
There is certainly something of this idea in the plan outlined
by President Strasser of the International Cigar-makers, and he
represented the advance guard of his generation, in his annual report
in the year 1879.
"We cannot drive the females out of the trade but we can restrict this
daily quota of labor through factory laws. No girl under eighteen
should be employed more than eight hours per day; all overwork should
be prohibited; while married women should be kept out of factories at
least six weeks before and six weeks after confinement."
But it is a man's way out, after all, and it is the man's way still.
There is the same readiness shown today to save the woman from
overwork before and after confinement, although she may be thereby at
the same time deprived of the means of support, while there is no hint
of any provision for either herself or the baby, not to speak of other
children who may be dependent upon her. In many quarters today there
is the same willingness to stand for equal pay, but very little
anxiety to see that the young girl worker be as well trained as the
boy, in order that the girl may be able with reason and justice to
demand the same wage from an employer.
II
WOMEN IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR
So little trace is left in the world of organized labor today of that
short-lived body, the Knights of Labor, that it might be thought
worthy of but slight notice in any general review.
But women have peculiar reason to remember the Knights, and to be
grateful to them, for they were the first large national organization
to which women were admitted on terms of equality with men, and in the
work of the organization itself, they played an active and a notable
part.
From the year 1869 till 1878 the Knights of Labor existed as a secret
order, having for its aim the improvement of living conditions. Its
philosophy and its policy were well expressed in the motto, taken from
the maxims of Solon, the Greek lawgiver: "That is the most perfect
government in which an injury to one is the concern of all."
The career of the Knights of Labor, however, as an active force in the
community, began with the National Convention of 1878, from which time
it made efforts to cover the wage-earning and farming classes, which
had to constitute three-fourths of the membership. The organization
was formed distinctly upon the industrial and not upon the craft plan.
That is, instead of a local branch being confined to members of one
trade, the plan was to include representatives of different trades and
callings. That the fundamental interests of the wage-earner and the
farmer were identical, was not so much stated as taken for granted.
In defining eligibility for membership there were certain significant
exceptions made; the following, being considered as pursuing
distinctly antisocial occupations, were pointedly excluded: dealers
in intoxicants, lawyers, bankers, stock-brokers and professional
gamblers.
Women were first formally admitted to the order in September, 1881. It
is said that Mrs. Terence V. Powderly, wife of the then Grand Master
Workman, was the first to join. It is not known that any figures
exist showing the number of women who at any one time belonged to the
Knights of Labor, but Dr. Andrews estimates the number, about the year
1886, when the order was most influential, at about 50,000. Among this
50,000 were a great variety of trades, but shoe-workers must have
predominated, and many of these had received their training in trade
unionism among the Daughters of St. Crispin.
The Knights evidently took the view that the woman's industrial
problem must to a certain extent be handled apart from that of the
men, and more important still, that it must be handled as a whole.
This broad treatment of the subject was shown when at the convention
of 1885 it was voted, on the motion of Miss Mary Hannafin, a
saleswoman of Philadelphia, that a committee to collect statistics on
women's work be appointed. This committee consisted of Miss Hannafin
and Miss Mary Stirling, also of Philadelphia, and Mrs. Lizzie H.
Shute, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, who were the only women delegates
to the Convention.
At the next convention, held in 1886 in Richmond, Virginia, there were
sixteen women delegates, out of a total of six hundred. Mr. Terence
V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman, appointed the sixteen women as
a committee to receive and consider the report of this previously
appointed special committee of three. The result of their
deliberations was sufficiently remarkable. They set an example to
their sex in taking the free and independent stand they did. For they
announced that they had "formed a permanent organization, the object
of which will be to investigate the abuses to which our sex is
subjected by unscrupulous employers, to agitate the principle which
our order teaches of equal pay for equal work and abolition of child
labor." They also recommended that the expenses of this new woman's
department and the expenses of a woman investigator should be borne by
the order. The report was adopted and the memorable Woman's Department
of the Knights of Labor was created. Memorable for the purpose and
the plan that underlay its foundation, it was also memorable for the
character and achievements of the brilliant, able and devoted woman
who was chosen as general investigator.
Mrs. Leonora Barry was a young widow with three children. She had
tried to earn a living for them in a hosiery mill at Amsterdam, New
York. For herself her endeavor to work as a mill hand was singularly
unfortunate, for during her first week she earned but sixty-five
cents. But if she did not during that week master any of the processes
concerned in the making of machine-made stockings, she learned a good
deal more than this, a good deal more than she set out to learn. She
learned of the insults young girls were obliged to submit to on pain
of losing their jobs, and a righteous wrath grew within her at the
knowledge. During this hard time also she heard first of the Knights
of Labor, and having heard of them, she promptly joined. As she was
classified at the 1886 convention as a "machine hand," it is probable
that she had by this time taken up her original trade.