taught by christian men in regard to “woman’s curse,” and so earnestly
has this doctrine been proclaimed that man seems to have entirely
forgotten the “curse,” also pronounced upon himself or if he has not
forgotten, he has neglected to see its full import, and in his anxiety
to keep woman in subordination he has placed _his_ “curse” also upon
her thus thwarting the express command of God. It is therefore but just
to now devote a few pages to the consideration of man’s “curse” and
an investigation of the spirit in which he has accepted the penalty
imposed upon him for his share in the transgression which cost him
Paradise. At the commencement of this investigation, it will be well to
remember that Eve was not banished from the Garden of Eden. Adam alone
was cast out and to prohibit _his_ re-entrance, not hers, the angel
with the flaming sword was set as guardian at its gates.
We must also recall the opposition of the church through the ages
to all attempts made towards the amelioration of woman’s suffering
at time of her bringing forth children, upon the plea that such
mitigation was a direct interference with the mandate of the Almighty
and an inexcusable sin. It will be recalled that in the chapter
upon witchcraft, the bitter hostility of the church to the use of
anaesthetics by the women physicians of that period was shown, and its
opposing sermons, its charges of heresy, its burnings at the stake as
methods of enforcing that opposition. Man, ever unjust to woman, has
been no less so in the field of work. He has not taken upon himself the
entire work of the world, as commanded, but has ever imposed a large
portion of it upon woman. Neither do all men labor; but thousands in
idleness evade the “curse” of work pronounced upon all men alike. The
church in its teachings and through its non-preaching the duty of man
in this respect, is guilty of that defiance of the Lord God it has ever
been so ready to attribute to woman. The pulpit does not proclaim that
this curse of work rests upon any man; does not preach this command to
the idle, the profligate, the rich or the honored but on the contrary
shows less sympathy and less respect for the laborer, than for the
idle man. The influence of this neglect of its duty by the church has
permeated the christian world, we everywhere find contempt for the
man who amid thorns and thistles tills the ground, obeying his primal
“curse” of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow; and everywhere
see respect accorded to the man, who by whatever means of honest or of
dishonest capacity evades his curse, taking no share in the labors of
the field, nor earning his bread in the sweat of his brow.
Anaesthetics have justly been called the greatest boon ever conferred
by science upon mankind. But after the persecution of the witchcraft
period a knowledge of their use was lost to the world for many hundred
years, but when rediscovered during the present century, their
employment in mitigating the sufferings of the expectant mother, again
met with the same opposition as during the middle ages upon the same
ground of its interference with “the curse” pronounced by God upon
woman. The question of their use at such time was violently discussed
at ministerial gatherings, and when Sir James Simpson, physician to
Queen Victoria, employed them at the birth of the later princes and
princesses he was assailed by pulpit and press as having sacrilegiously
thwarted “the curse.” When the practice was introduced into the United
States, prominent New England clergymen preached against their use upon
the same ground, of its being an impious frustration of the curse of
the Almighty upon woman. But the history of christendom does not show
an instance in which the church or the pulpit ever opposed labor by
woman, upon the ground of its being an interference with the “curse”
pronounced upon man, but on the contrary her duty to labor has been
taught by church and state alike, having met no opposition, unless,
perchance she has entered upon some remunerative employment theretofore
monopolized by man, with the purpose of applying its proceeds to her
own individual use. Nor has objection then arisen because of the work,
but solely because of its money-earning qualities. An investigation of
the laws concerning woman, their origin, growth, and by whom chiefly
sustained, will enable us to judge how far they are founded upon the
eternal principles of justice and how far emanating from ignorance,
superstition and love of power which is the basis of all despotism.
Viewing her through the Christian Ages, we find woman has chiefly been
regarded as an element of wealth; the labor of wife[1] and daughters,
the sale of the latter in the prostitution of a loveless marriage,
having been an universally extended form of domestic slavery, one which
the latest court decisions recognize as still extant. It is the boast
of America and Europe that woman holds a higher position in the world
of work under christianity than under pagandom. Heathen treatment of
women in this respect often forms the subject of returned missionary
sermons from men apparently forgetful that servile labor of the
severest and most degrading character is performed by christian women,
is demanded from them in every christian country, Catholic, Greek, and
Protestant alike, many savage and barbarous races showing superiority
over christian lands in their general treatment of women.
England claiming to represent the highest result of christian
civilization shows girls of the most tender years and married women
with infants at the breast working in the depths of coal mines nearly
naked, where harnessed to trucks they drag loads of coal on their
hands and knees through long low galleries to the pit mouth. Among
the pit-women in England are those to whom Christianity is not even a
name; one to whom the word Christ was spoken, asking “who’s him; be he
a hodman or a pitman?” It has been truthfully declared that England
protects its hunting dogs kept for their master’s pleasure, far better
than it protects the women and children of its working classes. It
takes about $2,500,000 annually to pay the maintenance of the 20,000
hounds owned in Great Britain, while women and children are left to
slowly die at starvation wages. A few years since a commission was
instituted by Parliament to inquire into the condition of women working
in the coal mines and the wages paid them. The facts ascertained were
of the most horrible character, no improvement being shown in the past
fifty years, men and women, boys and girls, still working together in
an almost naked condition.
In the Lancashire coal-fields lying to the north and west of
Manchester, females are regularly employed in underground
labor, and the brutal conduct of the men and the debasement of
the women are well described by some of the witnesses examined
by them. Betty Harris, (one of numerous persons examined),
aged thirty-seven, drawer in a coal pit, said: “I have a belt
around my waist and a chain between my legs to the truck, and
I go on my hands and feet; the road is very steep and we have
to hold by a rope, and when there is no rope, by anything we
can catch hold of. There are six women and about six boys or
girls in the pit I work in; it is very wet, and the water
comes over our clog-tops always, and I have seen it up to my
thighs; my clothes are always wet.” Patience Keershaw aged
seventeen, another examined, said: “I work in the clothes I
now have on (trousers and ragged jacket); the bald place upon
my head is made by thrusting the cones; the getters I work for
are naked, except their caps; they pull off their clothes;
all the men are naked.” Margaret Hibbs, aged eighteen, said:
“My employment after reaching the wall-face is to fill my
bagie or stype with two and a half or three hundred weight of
coal; I then hook it on to my chain and drag it through the
seam, which is from twenty-six to twenty-eight inches high,
till I get to the main road, a good distance, probably two
hundred to 400 yards; the pavement I drag over is wet, and I
am obliged at all times to crawl on my hands and feet with my
bagie hung to the chain and ropes. It is sad, sweating, sore
and fatiguing work, and frequently maims the women.” Robert
Bald, the government coal-viewer, states, that “In surveying
the workings of an extensive colliery under ground, a married
woman came forward groaning under an excessive weight of
coals, trembling in every nerve, and almost unable to keep
her knees from sinking under her. On coming up she said, in a
plaintive and melancholy voice, ‘Oh sir, this is sore, sore,
sore work’.” A sub-commissioner said: “it is almost incredible
that human beings can submit to such employment—crawling on
hands and knees harnessed like horses, over soft, slushy
floors, more difficult than dragging the same weight through
our lowest sewers.” Hundreds of pages are filled with
testimony of the same revolting character. These miserable
human beings are paid less than twenty cents per day. The
evidence shows almost as terrible a condition of the employees
of the workshops and large manufacturing establishments.
For the same kind of work men are paid three times more wages than are
paid to women.
Women in the iron trade of the Midlands are compelled,
according to a labor commission witness, to work in the sheds
scantily covered and in the summer have to divest themselves
of nearly all their clothing while hammering nuts and bolts.
They bring their children to the factories and cover them up
to prevent their being burnt by red-hot sparks. Often they
have to carry bundles of iron weighing half a hundred weight.
For such work they earn 4s. or 5s. a week, while the men make
about 14s.
As early as 1840 an inquiry into the mining affairs of Great Britain,
while showing a pitiable condition of the male laborers, exhibited that
of women and children in a much worse light. As the natural guardians
of children, well aware of their immaturity of body and mind, no
mother allows their employment in severe labor at a tender age unless
herself compelled to such work and unable to save her children. But
at this investigation, men, women and children were found working
together in the pits all either nude or nearly so, and according to the
Report, not seeing daylight for weeks at a time. Women soon to become
mothers were found yoked to carts in the pits; girls carried baskets
of coal on their backs up ladders; while mere children crawling like
dogs, on hands and feet, hauled carts along narrow rails, the system
in operation requiring these victims to remain underground for weeks
at a time, breathing foul air and deprived of the light of day. The
spirit of ambition is not dead among these wretched serfs, these women
working out man’s “curse”. The most degraded woman in the English
coal mine will fight for precedence. She has all the force of the man
by her side whose religious equal she is not; whose political equal
she is not; he possessing those elements of power, entrance to the
priesthood and use of the ballot, denied to her. Through the ballot
he receives higher wages for the same kind and amount of work, the
church having taught his superior rights upon every point; through the
ballot he influences the action of government in his own favor to the
injury of his fellow work-woman. A few years since the male miners
petitioned against the employment of women in the mines, when a clause
to that effect was immediately introduced to the Coal Mine Bill, then
before Parliament, although in the Lancashire districts where one
hundred and sixty-four women were employed, all but twenty-six were
widows or single women entirely dependent upon their own earnings.
As severe as the work, the women were remarkable for their bright
and healthful appearance as contrasted with the woman workers in the
factories of Great Britain. Man, hereditarily unjust to woman under
the principles of the Patriarchate and the lessons of Christianity, is
even more unjust in the fields of work he has compelled her to enter,
than in those of education and the ballot which she is seeking for
herself. Organizations, strikes, the eight hour law demand, are largely
conducted by men for men. The grim humor originating the proverb “a
man’s work is from sun to sun, a woman’s work is never done,” still
clings with all its old force to women in most employments. To such
small extent has man made the woman worker’s cause his own, that
instances are to be found even in the United States, where men and
women working together and together going out upon a strike, the men
have been reinstated at the increase demanded, the women forced to
return at the old wages. Nor is our own country the chief sinner in
this respect. It was found imperative many years since, among the
women of England to organize leagues of their own sex alone, if they
desired their own interest in labor to be protected; the male Trades
Unions of that country excluding women from some of the best paid
branches of industry, as carpet making, cloth weaving, letter press
printing.[2] In self defense, the Woman’s Protective and Provident
League, and a _Woman’s Union Labor Journal_ were founded. The principle
of exclusion has not alone been shown against woman’s entrance into
well paid branches of work, but in those they have been permitted to
enter they have found themselves subjected to much petty annoyance.
Among the male painters of pottery a combination was formed to prevent
the use by woman of the arm-rests required in this work. Tram-way
trains carry London workmen at reduced rates, but a combination was
entered into by male laborers to prevent women workers from using the
low-priced trains. Nor in many instances are employers less the enemies
of women, unions having been found necessary for the purpose of moral
protection. A most deplorable evidence of the low respect in which
woman is held and the slavery that work and cheap wages mean for her,
is the suggestion often made by employers that she shall supplement her
wages by the sale of her body. The manager of an industrial league in
New York City a few years since found that no young girl escaped such
temptation. Neither extreme youth nor friendliness afforded security or
protection but were rather additional inducements for betrayal, most
of the victims numbering but fourteen short years. The late Jennie
Collins, of Boston, one of the earliest persons in the United States,
to devote herself to this branch of the “woman question,” said:
It is easy for a young girl to obtain employment but let her
go where she will, even in government positions at Washington,
she will find her innocence assailed if not made the price at
which she gets a chance to work. And that same government does
not pay its women employees the same amount of wages for the
same kind of work.
In the Scottish collieries women are compelled to work in mines filled
with gas and flooded with water,[3] little girls commencing work in
these collieries at four years of age, and at six carrying loads of
one hundred and fifty pounds upon their backs. Half clothed women work
by the side of entirely nude men, dragging ponderous loads of 16,000
yards a day by means of a chain fastened to a belt, the severe labor of
dragging this coal up inclined places to the mouth of the pit, testing
every muscle and straining every nerve. It is a work so destructive to
health that even the stoutest men shrink from it, women engaged in it
seldom living to be over thirty or forty years of age.
A gentleman traveling in Ireland blushed for his sex when he saw the
employments of women young and old. He described them as patient
drudges, staggering over the bogs with heavy creels of turf on their
backs or climbing the slopes from the sea-shore laden like beasts of
burden, with heavy sand-dripping sea-weed, or undertaking long journeys
on foot into the market towns bearing heavy hampers of farm produce.
Man in thrusting the enforcement of his “curse” upon woman in Christian
lands has made her the great unpaid laborer of the world. In European
countries and in the United States, we find her everywhere receiving
less pay than man for the same kind and quality of work. A recent
statement regarding women workers in the foundries of Pittsburgh,
Penn., where five hundred women are employed in putting heads on nails
and bolts, declared they received less than one-half the sum formerly
paid to men who did the same kind of work; women getting from but four
to five dollars a week while the wages of men ranged from fourteen to
sixteen dollars a week. But as evil as the experience of young women in
the world of work, that of old women is in some respects even greater.
While the young girl is almost certain to obtain work even if at small
wages, it is very difficult for the woman of mature years to obtain
work at all, either in households as seamstresses or in manufactories.
Societies in the City of New York, for the aid of the working women
find it impossible to secure employment for middle-aged women. The
report of one such society stated that some of these women managed to
procure commitment to the Island in order to obtain food and prevent
absolute starvation; others slowly died from want of sufficient food;
still others, like the poor hard working girls of Paris, sought the
river as an end to their sufferings. As in the witchcraft period when
the chief persecution for many years raged against old women, we still
find in our own country that the woman of middle life is the least
regarded in her efforts for a livelihood. The reason remains the
same. Looked upon during the Christian ages from a sensual standard,
the church teaching that woman was made for man still exerts its
poisonous influence, still destroys woman. Not alone employers and
male laborers oppress woman, but legislation is frequently invoked
to prevent her entering certain occupations. The Coal Miner’s Bill
was one of many instances in Great Britain. Women work there also at
making nails, spikes and chains. Not long since legislation prohibiting
their entering this branch of work was attempted, when a deputation of
women iron-workers waited upon the home secretary to protest against
government interference with their right to earn a livelihood. One of
these representative women had entered the work at seven years of age,
being then fifty-seven. Having spent nearly half a century in this
occupation she was practically incapacitated for any other form of
labor.
The terrible condition of working women in Paris, has attracted the
attention of the French government. In but three or four trades
are they even fairly well paid, and these few require a peculiar
adaptation, as well as an expensive training out of reach of most women
laborers. And even in these best paid kinds of work, a discrimination
in favor of man exists; at the China manufactory at Sevres where the
men employed receive a retiring pension, the women do not. From fifteen
to eighteen pence represents the daily earnings of the Parisian working
girl, upon which sum it is impossible for her to properly support
life. Many of these girls die of slow starvation, others are driven
into prostitution, still others seek relief in the Seine. French women
perform the most repulsive labors of the docks; they work in the mines
dragging or pushing heavy trucks of coal like their English sisters,
through narrow tunnels that run from the seams to the shaft; eating
food of such poor quality that the lessening stature of the population
daily shows the result. This decreasing size of Frenchmen especially
among the peasantry, the majority not coming up to the regulation army
height, has within the last fifteen or twenty years called attention of
the government during conscription, yet without seeming to teach its
cause as lying in the poor food and hard labor of women, the mothers of
these men. The heaviest burdens of porters, the most offensive sanitary
work, the severest agricultural labor in that country falls upon woman.
“I pity the women, the donkeys, and the boys,” wrote Mrs. Stanton
when traveling in the south of France. It is the poor nourishment and
excessive labor of woman which makes France today a country of rapidly
decreasing birth-rate, seriously affecting its population and calling
the earnest attention of statistical bureaus and physicians to this
vital question; a question which affects the standing of France among
the nations of the earth. According to the report of the chief of the
statistical bureau, 1890, there were fewer births than deaths that
year, the births amounting to 838,059, the deaths to 876,505, an excess
of 38,446 deaths. Commenting upon these returns, “Der Reichsbote”
of Berlin, attributed the cause to a wide-spread aversion to large
families; acknowledging, however, that the lower classes had become
weakened and dwarfed by the tasks imposed upon them. What neither the
statistical bureau, the press, or the church yet comprehend is the fact
that the work imposed upon its Christian women, the “curse” of man
thrust upon her, is the chief cause of the lessening size and lessening
population of that country. A French gentleman employing a large number
of women in a flax factory was appalled at the great amount of infant
mortality among the children of his employees. Believing the excessive
death rate to be in consequence of the continued labor of women, he
released expectant mothers for a month previous, and two months after
the birth of a child, with a marked diminution of the death rate. The
ordinary food of the peasantry is of poor quality and meager quantity.
Those employed in the manufacture of silk largely subsist upon a
species of black broth proverbial for its lack of nutritive qualities.
The absence of certain elements in food both creates specific diseases
and inability to combat disease. Vital stamina is closely dependent
upon the number of red corpuscles in the blood, the quality of food
possessing direct connection with these corpuscles. Dr. Blackwell, of
the London Anthropological Society, examined the blood of different
races as related to the food eaten by them, finding the number and
shape of the red corpuscles to be dependent upon the kind of food
eaten. Dr. Richardson, a Philadelphia microscopist, said: “Any cause
which interferes with perfect nutrition may diminish the red corpuscles
in number.” These corpuscles are recognized as “oxygen carriers,”
therefore any cause which tends to diminish the number of red
corpuscles also deprives the system of a portion of the oxygen required
for sanitary needs. Blood not fully oxygenated is poisonous to the
system. Among the causes recognized by physiologists as creating that
alteration in the functions of the body which materially changes the
character of the red corpuscles, are poor food, bad air and overwork.
These specifically produce blood poisoning, creating new substances in
the body that are injurious to the organism.