THE WORLD OF INDUSTRIAL WOMEN
Any one who reads history with his eyes open will be impressed with the
fact that this world has always been considered a man’s world. At one
period woman was denied every right; she was the slave of man. Rome
and Greece treated her as a child. Medieval ages found her working in
the fields and supporting large families, while her husband and son
fought for rights that could never be hers. The familiar figure of a
woman and an ox yoked together and driven by a man well represents the
spirit of the past. The Hebrew rabbis made many proverbs relating to
woman’s condition: “When Jehovah was angry, he made woman.” “Woman is
an afterthought of God.” “A man of straw is worth more than a woman of
gold.” The statement has been made and repeated times out of number
that woman’s sphere is the home. This statement is true, but not
unqualifiedly so; in fact, home is no more a woman’s place than it is a
man’s. Home is based upon mutual responsibility, consideration, and the
willingness to share mutual burdens. There is no sense in the old saw,
“Woman should leave her home but three times--when she is christened,
when she is married, and when she is buried.” This is on a par with
another old proverb: “Woman, the cat, and the chimney should never
leave the house.” We have outlived these archaic notions, and to-day,
while we recognize as never before that home is woman’s true sphere, we
realize that home is the man’s true sphere also.
The home is the foundation-stone of our civilization. It is the
strength and safety of society. Rome fell when her homes were
destroyed. Public morals are gaged by the morals of the home. In the
face of the divorce court, with its incessant grind of business, it
is time to raise a voice of protest against the spirit of careless
indifference which views the home as a mere boarding-house, and “a
place to stay away from.” Who is the chief offender, man or woman?
The woman’s club, the woman’s place in politics, woman’s interest in
industry and in reform have all been cited as being the potent forces
at work destroying the home. As a matter of fact it is the man who is
chiefly responsible. The strength, the vigor, and the purity of the
American home, which show to-day in the splendid type of soldiers that
are being sent across the seas to fight in the battle for democracy,
speak well for the work of woman. The average man knows where he lives,
the number of the house, and the name of the street on which it stands.
He is able to recognize his children usually when he meets them. He
pays the bills and takes a general interest in the appearance and
up-keep of the establishment; but when it comes to bearing his share of
the heavy burdens, he is a poor partner in the concern. The wife and
mother is the home-maker. We know how well she has done her part.
=Woman and Necessity.= Women have chosen their work because of
necessity as well as because of opportunity. A mother of two boys
was left a widow with no money. Her people were all poor. If she went
back home, the added burden would be an injustice to her parents and
would work hardship upon her brothers and sisters. She had too much
self-respect to take this course. She knew little about business and
had no trade, but she found work in a store and by hard study at night
and close application became an expert saleswoman. She sent her boys
through college. One of them to-day is a successful lawyer and has
served as senator in the state legislature. The other is a practising
physician in one of the large cities of the Middle West. Both of these
men are eminently successful. This woman contributed more than her
share to society and was cheerful and happy in her work. In speaking of
her one of the partners in the firm where she was employed said, “There
is no person connected with this firm who has created such a wholesome
atmosphere as she has done.”
A little black-eyed boy was arrested in the north end of Boston and
sent to the reform school. He was eleven years old and had become the
leader of a gang of boys who had been robbing show-windows. His mother
was a Jewess; his father had deserted her and left three children, one
just a baby in arms. This woman could find nothing to do that would
pay her enough to enable her to provide actual necessities for her
children. The baby died and in the distress of the hour the mother
appealed to a neighbor. She helped her financially and found a position
for her in one of the millinery shops of the city. This woman, in
reality a widow, had been able to struggle along but was not very
capable. She fought her battle as bravely as she could and was always
cheerful, but it was almost too much for her to do the earning that was
necessary. Her little boy, without proper guardianship, with no place
to play but the streets, got into trouble. It was not only because the
mother was at work and thus unable to train her boy, that this new
trouble came, but because there is no proper and adequate provision
made for women left in her position.
The woman of the family is always the most overburdened member. She
has serious responsibilities and the heaviest tasks. When she is left
with the care of children, it is inevitable that she should turn to
industry for her own and her children’s support. Another group of
workers are the young girls who go into work for a few years until they
are married. Still another are the young women who feel that there is
no reason why women should not have the same chance to make a place
for themselves in the world of industry that is accorded to men. We
must come to believe in the independence of both men and women and
grant to each the right to choose his or her own place and work in
life. A newspaper woman in Cincinnati said: “I determined that I had
qualifications necessary for success as a writer. I went to school and
studied hard with the intention of becoming a reporter. When I received
my diploma, I was as proud as any member of the class, but not half
as happy on that day as I was a week later when I received my first
assignment from the city editor of a paper that had employed me ‘on
trial.’ I have succeeded and am happy in my work.” Why should any one
attempt to limit this woman in her vocation? She has chosen and chosen
well. She is making her contribution and it is just as important as
that made by thousands of the best men in similar positions.
=In War Time.= Since the war began nearly a million and a quarter
additional women have been brought into the industries of Great
Britain. This is an increase of nearly forty per cent. of the number
employed in July, 1914. Moreover, the percentage of the increase is
rising. In France we find the same situation. In the United States
as the war goes on larger numbers of women are taking places as
wage-earners. Women are replacing men in running elevators in all
public buildings, working in hotels, as conductors on street-car lines,
guards on subway trains, ticket sellers, baggage agents, and crossing
tenders in the railroad service. Thousands more are going into the
different forms of agricultural work. Besides these new pursuits, women
are running the lathes in the shops and factories, while thousands are
employed in the making of munitions. Probably it is safe to say that
for every man who has gone to the front at the present time there is a
woman in America who is doing the man’s work.
A study of the conditions shows that nearly all the work done by women
in the warring nations is unskilled or semi-skilled. There are not very
many opportunities for advancement and most of the women feel that
they are simply working in an emergency; hence there is not a chance
of their becoming efficient as skilled workers. The ability of these
workers is remarkable, especially when we take into consideration
the fact that most of the women had no training before the war. In
the working of automatic machines where technical skill is of less
value than carefulness, attention, and dexterity, women are much
more efficient than men. In a report made upon the conditions in the
employment of women in Great Britain during the war, is this statement
concerning the efficiency of women: “In regularity, application,
accuracy, and finish women have proved very satisfactory.”
=Quality of Work.= In the work that women are able to do, they learn
quickly, more so than the men employed in the same places; and they
increase the output above what was usual with the men workers. The
experience in the United States in pre-war times proves the efficiency
of the women workers. The treasury department employs women for the
detecting of counterfeits in paper money. After a bad bill has gone
through half a dozen banks, and has been subjected to the closest
scrutiny, and yet has not been detected, these experienced women can
detect it by its “feel.” According to statistics color-blindness is
much more prominent in men than in women. A noted educator is authority
for the statement that in the public schools four per cent. of all the
boys are color-blind, while only one tenth of one per cent. of the
girls are color-blind. It is now generally conceded that the sight is
the most intelligent of all the senses. The average woman, no matter
what she undertakes, will work harder to make herself proficient
than will the average man. One result of so many women entering into
industry is to raise the grade of employment and make the workers more
competent. It may not seem that this would be the result at first, but
that rather the reverse would be true. It was the entering of women
into the ranks of the physicians that changed the meager ten or eleven
months’ course of the medical college into the four years’ course that
is required to-day.
There never has been a time when women were not in industry. When the
loom left the home, women followed it into the factory. More than eight
million women and girls were employed in gainful occupations outside
the home in the United States just before the war began. This number
has been increased, yet it is not out of proportion to the number of
women in the country. It is logical that women should continue in
industry. A woman must live, and for her living a certain amount of
money is required. This money must be given to her or she must earn it;
not only that, but the women of to-day will demand the right to do some
constructive work in the midst of the new conditions under which we
live.
=The Field of Women’s Activity.= Certain vocations are closed to women.
All those occupations which demand great physical strength belong of
right to man. The heavy work in the steel-mills, much of the work in
constructural iron trades, wood-work, bridge-building, stone masonry,
heavy carpentry, mining, smelting, refining minerals, and the heavy
work of shoveling and lifting are men’s tasks. Many of the trades are
also closed to women, because in these trades it takes at least five
years’ apprenticeship before a man is able to earn a salary. Women do
not care to enter into such a long apprenticeship. They will not give
five years to non-productive work, for the great majority of women
have not accepted industrial work in preference to married life. If
the right man comes along, the average woman would feel that as a
home-maker cooperating with her husband she could accomplish more than
by continuing alone as an industrial unit. Of this attitude Miss Alice
Henry says, “Give her fairer wages, shorten her hours of toil, let her
have a chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent,
normal woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. She
will not be tempted to accept passively any man who offers himself,
just in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony, and
deprivation.”[4]
[4] Alice Henry, _The Trade Union Woman_.
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
In the army of laborers the girl and the woman are drafted as well as
the boy and the man.]
=A Woman’s Chances in a Man’s World.= Woman is an organic part
of society. This means that she is a part of every one of the
organizations that enter into modern society. She has always had a
part in literature. Julia Ward Howe in writing the “Battle Hymn of
the Republic,” contributed not only to our wealth of song, but made a
direct contribution toward the winning of the freedom of the slaves.
Harriet Beecher Stowe also gave her remarkable aid to the same cause.
George Eliot was one of the great novelists. In the field of reform
Frances E. Willard takes first place. Maud Ballington Booth, the
“little mother” of thousands of prisoners, is making a new world for
the men into which they may enter when they leave the penitentiary
door. It is the Pilgrim mothers rather than the Pilgrim fathers who
ought to be given the credit for New England’s contribution to national
history. All other attempts to colonize failed because the adventurers
in their quest for gold and fortunes did not bring their women with
them. Anna the prophetess of old in the temple and Susan B. Anthony in
the suffrage cause each represent an age and an enthusiasm and an
ability to persist until results are achieved.
Now we have a new situation. Many people view with concern the
increasing numbers of women that are employed in gainful occupations
in the United States and Canada at the present time. The employment of
women presents not one question but many. The problem that is familiar
to nearly all housekeepers--that of securing domestic service--presses
upon our attention the number of women employed in this kind of work.
Domestic service engages the largest number of women outside of the
home. Women are now doing everything that men have done, and in most
cases are doing the work just as well, while in many occupations they
show an efficiency that men have never achieved. Charles Kingsley’s
phrase, “For men must work and women must weep,” did very well in
that age, but under the economic conditions under which we are living
to-day, the contrast he makes is absolutely inappropriate. The question
of work and workers has been settled. In the army of laborers the girl
and the woman are drafted as well as the boy and man.
Before the great war began there was in the United States about
one woman worker for every five men. This number has been greatly
increased. Of the three hundred specific occupations the census of
1900 enumerated there were only two occupations in which women were
not engaged in some capacity. The census of 1910 gives a larger number
of occupations, and not one in which women are not employed. Women are
on the street-car lines and are line women and telegraphers, riveters,
blacksmiths, steam-boiler makers, brass workers, and foundry workers.
In fact, no work seems too hard or too heavy for some woman to make
a success of it. From the time of the invention of the cotton-gin,
which brought more women into the world of industry than any other one
machine, to the present day we have the story of women and men gaining
larger visions, receiving better wages, and together making the world a
more habitable place for us all.
=Justice to Women Workers.= It would be impossible for us to manage
business as we do to-day without the efficient help of secretaries,
stenographers, telegraph-operators, and other office assistants, nearly
all of whom are women. The question arises as to what treatment a woman
should receive. For some reason, when a woman does a piece of work, no
matter how well it is done, or howsoever efficient she becomes, we have
a feeling that she should receive less pay for the same work than a man
would receive. There are many reasons why women are suffering from this
injustice. One arises from the conditions which bring a large number of
women into industry.
A number of salesgirls, some stenographers, and a great many helpers
in different industrial firms live at home and work for what is known
as pin-money. They are not primarily dependent upon their wage. The
money comes in handy and they can use it to good advantage. They are
not forced to work, hence, they can and will accept a lower wage than
if they were absolutely dependent upon what they earn. “I receive $3.50
a week for clerking in this store,” said a bright girl in Chicago, “and
I don’t take anything from the floor-walkers. Whenever they try to
order me around, they have got another guess coming. I don’t have to
work, and I let them know it. They are mighty lucky to get me.” This
was all right for this girl, but the fact that she was situated so that
a salary of $3.50 a week satisfied her made it possible for the firm
to set that as a standard wage, and other girls who did have to take
bossing from the floor-walkers, and were dependent upon their wages,
were forced to accept what the firm offered. A friend of mine who has
an interest in a dry-goods store holds that the average girl is not
worth more than $6 a week because she works simply to tide her over
a few years until she gets married. He said, “I cannot afford to pay
more than $6 because my competitors pay this same rate to their clerks;
and if I am going to sell goods I have to take into consideration the
conditions in the trade.”
Another thing that enters into the situation is the fact that women
workers have never been as well organized as men. The points upon which
the trade-union movement concentrates are the raising of wages, the
shortening of hours, the diminution of seasonal work, the regulation
of piece-work (with its resultant speeding up), the maintaining of
sanitary conditions, the guarding of unsafe machinery, the making of
laws against child labor which can be enforced, the abolition of taxes
for power and for working materials (such as thread and needles),
and of unfair fines for petty or unproved offenses. Miss Henry tells
of a case in a non-union trade which suggests the reasons which make
organization a necessity. “Twenty-one years ago in the bag and hemp
factories of St. Louis, girl experts turned out 460 yards of material
in a twelve-hour day, the pay being 24 cents per bolt, measuring from
60 to 66 yards. These girls earned $1.84 per day. Four years ago a girl
could not hold her job under 1,000 yards in a ten-hour day. The fastest
possible worker can turn out only 1,200 yards, and the price has
dropped to 15 cents a hundred yards. The old rate of 24 cents per bolt
used to net $1.80 to a very quick worker. The new rate to one equally
competent is but $1.50.
“The workers have to fill a shuttle every minute and a half or two
minutes. This necessitates the strain of constant vigilance, as
the breaking of the thread causes unevenness, and for this mishap
operators are laid off for two or three days. The operators are at
such a tension that they not only stand all day, but may not even bend
their knees. The air is thick with lint which the workers inhale. The
throat and eyes are terribly affected, and it is necessary to work
with the head bound up, and to comb the lint from the eyebrows. The
proprietors have to retain a physician to attend the workers every
morning, and medicine is supplied free, as an accepted need for every
one so engaged. One year is spent in learning the trade; and the girls
last at it only from three to four years afterward. Some of them enter
marriage, but many of them are thrown on the human waste-heap. One
company employs nearly 1,000 women, so that a large number are affected
by these vile, inhuman conditions. The girls in the trade are mostly
Slovaks, Poles, and Bohemians, who have not been long in America. In
their inexperience they count $1.50 as good wages, although gained
at ever so great a physical cost.”[5] These wretched conditions are
not uncommon. Thousands of women who are forced to earn their living
and are contributing their full share toward making America the great
commercial power she is to-day are laboring under just such injustice.
[5] Alice Henry, _The Trade Union Woman_.
=Women and Unions.= Most of the union leaders have viewed with alarm
the increasing number of women that are being drafted into industry
each year. The reasons for this are clear to all who know the history
of trade unionism and know how the workmen greet the coming into
industry of any new group of available workers. The war has made
labor conditions chaotic; and the shortage in certain lines has given
opportunity for the employers to substitute women for men, because
women for the most part are economically defenseless and, therefore,
can be secured for a lower wage than men. Women are more easily
exploited than men because they have not been so long in the industrial
struggle with its keen competition. They are less able to appreciate
the value of cooperation for mutual protection. One union leader said,
“I look upon the large number of women who are being drafted into
industry as a real menace to the women themselves, to society, and to
labor.” The situation presents itself something like this: Organized
labor has a very close relation in its feeling to all labor and to
all the different groups of workingmen organized and unorganized; and
it regards an injustice to an unorganized worker as being indirectly
an injustice to itself. The reason for this sympathy is of course
primarily selfish, for the union man knows that if his fellow laborers
in another trade are unprotected, and an injustice is practised upon
them, it will be only a short time until the same thing will be
attempted upon the organized worker. If women go into competition with
men under present conditions they will be employed rather than men
because they can be secured for a lower wage. Look, for instance, at
some of the cotton-mills in the South, where the whole family, father,
mother, and two or three children all work, and the total wage of the
family group amounts to just about what is considered a living wage.
The attitude of organized labor toward women workers is about the
same as its attitude toward cheap foreign labor, and the reason for
the feeling is due wholly to the fear that the women brought into the
industry will lower wages and bring down the standard of living of the
entire group. The attitude is dictated as a defense measure in behalf
of the standard of living for all. The attitude of union labor is
indefensible except as a measure of self-defense. It should be said,
however, that union labor is not a unit in this attitude. There are a
large number of broad-minded men in the ranks of the organized workers
who recognize present conditions, and see that it is inevitable that
larger numbers of women shall be employed in gainful occupations in the
future. Instead of putting up the bars and attempting to keep women
out, those who have given the matter most thought are putting forth
their efforts to organize the workers. The Women’s National Trade Union
League, of which Mrs. Raymond Robbins is the president, has rendered
great service for the women workers of the nation. Legislation has
been secured and minimum wages established in some places. But best of
all this movement has been teaching the women workers the necessity
of organization in order that they and other women may be protected,
and that the women drafted into industry may not become a menace to
the American standard of living which has been built up at such great
pains and through such toilsome efforts. This league voices the protest
of American working women against the notoriously bad conditions
surrounding the work of women and children.
Women have always been taken into some of the men’s unions, but the
growth of certain trades--such as glove-making, coat- and suit-making,
shirt, collar, and shirt-waist manufacturing--employing women almost
exclusively made such cooperation impossible. These trades were
organized after much effort on the part of the leaders of the Women’s
National Trade Union League. This organization has conducted several
strikes in big cities in the last ten years, and in nearly every case
has won. Girls strike just as hard as men. They have more persistence;
are more willing to sacrifice and suffer and generally show more
intelligence in conducting their affairs. They make good pickets
and because of their aggressive, earnest work are successful. Their
resources are not so great and when they are out of work they have more
difficulty in getting temporary jobs. Another important feature of
their problems is that the supply of non-union workers to take their
places is almost unlimited.
=Women and the Church.= Women in all the Christian ages have recognized
the church as their friend and in appreciation of what it has done they
have worked unceasingly for its success. There is a big task before
the church in behalf of women, and especially in the interests of the
women laborers in industry. There is the opportunity for the church
groups to influence the individual employer to improve conditions
pending regulation by the community. In addition to the question of
wages and hours the demands of the churches must involve the abolition
of the speeding-up process by which, under the piece-work system, the
amount of work required for a specified task is constantly increased.
The fastest worker is used as the pace-maker, so that the wage of the
slower worker continually drops, and the amount of work done by the
fastest workers continually increases. The law may specify a minimum
wage, but it cannot specify the amount of work to be done in each
particular trade.
Here is where the church groups must cooperate with the working women
themselves, and must assist them to secure some voice in determining
the conditions under which they shall work. Legislation alone can never
achieve the standards now demanded in common by the church and social
workers; nor can they be realized by the benevolence of employers.
If the health and morals of the community are not to suffer from the
employment of women in industry, it can be accomplished only by the
cooperation of working women to this end. The church must educate
its community to think in terms of the greatest good to the greatest
number. And this means that we must come to realize more than ever
that the strength of the childhood of the nation is dependent upon
the home; and that the strength of the home is dependent upon the
physical, intellectual, and moral welfare of the women of the nation.
It is possible for the church to accomplish much by arousing purchasers
to the necessity of using their conscience in their shopping. Local
white-lists of stores and factories which meet the Consumers’ League
conditions can be made by representative groups. The Consumers’ League
label and the labels of the organizations affiliated in the Women’s
Trade Union League should be demanded. They will protect the conscience
of the buyer and assure him that his comfort is not being secured at
the cost of strain upon the health and morals of the women of his city
or nation. It is for the churches to make this fight for the working
women a community issue. It is a religious issue, and the pulpit may
help to realize these religious values in the lives of the working
women.
When we pray “God save the people,” it would be well for us to use our
heads in our prayers, and to remember that the people will perish if we
do not protect the womanhood which is the foundation of the home. God
cannot save the people if we destroy the mothers of men.