and aches are not "woman's lot." She is under no curse in the twentieth
century. With eighteen dollars a week for ringing up fares, and a
possible thirty-five for "facing" fuse-parts, nothing can persuade her
to be poor-spirited. She radiates the atmosphere, "I am needed!" Doors
fly open to her. She is welcome everywhere. No one seems to be able to
get too many of her kind. Politicians compete for her favor, employers
quarrel over her. It makes her breathe deep to have the Secretary of the
Navy summon her to the United States arsenals, pay her for her work, and
call her a patriot.
[Illustration: In the well-lighted factory of the Briggs and Stratton
Company, Milwaukee, the girls are comfortably and becomingly garbed
for work.]
And with the pay envelope women remain clearly human. Their purchases
often reflect past denials, rather than present needs or even tastes.
When set free one always buys what the days of dependence deprived one
of. One of Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London
was selling more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was
part of John Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his
women folk dowdy. The Lancashire lass with head shawl and pattens, the
wearer of the universal sailor hat, in these days of independence and
pounds, shillings and pence, are taking note of the shop windows. And
John is not turning his eyes away from his women folk in their day of
self-determination.
But it is not to be concluded that it is all beer and skittles for Eve.
With a pay envelope and a vote come responsibilities. Public sympathy
has backed up laws cutting down long hours of work for women. The trade
unions, with a thought to possible competitors, have favored protecting
them from night work. Has Eve been a bit spoiled? Has she let herself
too easily be classed with children and allowed a line to be drawn
between men and women in industry? Is it a bit of woman's proverbial
logic to demand special protection, and at the same time insist upon
"equal pay for equal work"?
The hopelessness of attaining the promise of the slogan is well
illustrated in the case of a gray haired woman I once met in a London
printing shop. In her early days she had been one of the women taken on
by the famous printing firm of McCorquodale. That was before protective
legislation applied to women. She became a highly skilled printer,
earning more than any man in the shop. When there was pressure of work
she was always one of the group of experts chosen to carry through the
rush order. That meant on occasion overtime or night work. Then she went
on to tell me how her skill was checked in her very prime. Regulations
as to women's labor were gradually fixed in the law. All the printers in
the shop, she said, favored the laws limiting her freedom but not
theirs. Soon her wages reflected the contrast. Her employer called her
to his office one day and explained, "I cannot afford to pay you as much
as the men any longer. You are not worth as much to me, not being able
to work Saturday afternoon, at night, or overtime." She was put on lower
grade work and her pay envelope grew slight.
This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she
was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of
workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the
whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact.
Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal.
Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the
alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon,
overtime or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction.
The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he
did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept
to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the
unprotected worker.
What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of an
alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not
herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by
women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers,
women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial
women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask
no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as
hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that
sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors
and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their
professions.
It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide
their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There
was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and
file of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade
Union League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as
conductors. It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the
speaker on dangerous trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure
to fumes, acids and dust."
Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have
forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and
recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and
both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial
life can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored
ones just now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped
in cotton wool.
The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of
children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government
had Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of
Trade, make a special study of the influence of the employment of
married women on infant mortality. The object was to prove that there
was direct cause and effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study
covering many industrial centers, brought back the report, "Not proven."
But the statistics showed one most interesting relation. In districts
where the prevailing custom permitted the employment of children as
early as the law allowed, infant mortality was high, and in districts
where few children were employed, infant mortality was low. No
explanation of this striking revelation was made in the report, but many
who commented on the tables, pointed out that the wide-spread employment
of the population in its early years sapped the vitality of the
community to such an extent that its offspring were weakened. In other
words, the employment of the immature child, more than the employment of
that child when grown and married, works harm to the race.
The woman with a pay envelope must not, then, be willing to swell the
family budget by turning her children into the wage market. For if she
does, she creates a dangerous competitor for herself, and puts in
certain jeopardy the virility of her nation. But in this war time women
have secured more than new and larger pay envelopes, for each
belligerent has reckoned up the woman's worth as mother in coin of the
realm. It is enough to turn Eve's head--pay and pensions accorded her
all at once.
Allowances to dependents are more, however, than financial expedients.
They are part of the psychological stage-setting of the Great War. The
fighting man must be more than well-fed, well-clothed, well-equipped,
more than assured of care if ill or wounded; he must have his mind
undisturbed by conditions at home. Governments now know that there must
be no just cause for complaint in the family at the rear, if the man at
the front is to be fully effective. In the interest of the fighting
line, governments dare not leave the home to the haphazard care
of charity.
And so the great belligerents have adopted systems for an uninterrupted
flow of money aid to the hearthstone. The wife feels dependence on the
nation for which she and her man are making sacrifices, the soldier has
a sense of closer relationship with the country's cause for which he
fights. Content at home and sense of gratitude in the trenches build up
loyalty everywhere. The state allowance answers an economic want and a
psychological necessity.
It is part of our national lack of technique that we were slow to make
provision for the dependents of enlisted men, and even then were not
whole hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript
that led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a
precious antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To
protect his individualism from taint, the United States soldier must
bear part of the financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working
on a basis of reciprocity. The nation exacts service from the man and
gives complete service to his dependents. In America the man is bound to
serve the community, but the community is not bound to serve him. And
yet in our case there is peculiar need of this even exchange of
obligations. The care of parents in the United States falls directly
upon their children, while some of our allies had, even before the war,
carefully devised laws regulating pensions to the aged.
But first let us get the simple skeleton of the various allowance laws
in mind. The scale of the allowance in different countries adapts itself
to national standards and varying cost of living. The Canadian allowance
seems the most generous. At least one-half of the soldier's pay is
given directly to his dependents. The government gives an additional
twenty dollars and the donations of the Patriotic Fund bring up the
monthly allowance of a wife with three children to sixty dollars. The
allowance, as might be expected, is low in Italy. The soldier's wife
gets eight-tenths of a lira a day, each child four-tenths lira, and
either a father or mother alone eight-tenths lira, or if both are
living, one and three-tenths lire together. The British allowance is
much higher, the wife getting twelve shillings and sixpence a week. If
she has one child, the weekly allowance rises to nineteen and sixpence;
if two children, to twenty-four and sixpence; if three, to twenty-eight
shillings; and if there are four or more children, the mother receives
three shillings a week for each extra child.
Between the extremes of Italy and England stands France, the wife
receiving one franc twenty-five centimes a day, each child under sixteen
years of age twenty-five centimes, and a dependent parent seventy-five
centimes. Japan grants no government allowance. A Japanese official, in
response to my inquiry, wrote, "Relations the first and friends the next
try to help the dependents as far as possible, but if they have neither
relatives nor friends who have sufficient means to help them, then the
association consisting of ladies or the municipal officials afford
subvention to them."
Under the law passed by Congress in October, 1917, an American private
receiving thirty-three dollars a month when on service abroad must allot
fifteen dollars a month to his wife, and the government adds to this
twenty-five dollars, and if there is one child, an additional ten
dollars, with five dollars for each additional child. A man can secure
an allowance from the government of ten dollars a month to a dependent
parent, if he allots five dollars a month. Such are the bare bones of
the allowance schemes of the Allies on the western front.
In the United States the general policy of exemption boards, as
suggested by the central authorities, is most disciplinary as regards
women. Their capacity for self-support is rigidly inquired into. Our men
are definitely urging women to a position of economic independence. The
aim is, while securing soldiers for the army, to relieve the government
of the expense of dependency on the part of women. There is no doubt
that our men at least are faced toward the future. No less indicative
is it of a new world that the allowance laws of all the western
belligerents recognize common-law marriages. In our own law, marriage is
"presumed if the man and woman have lived together in the openly
acknowledged relation of husband and wife during two years immediately
preceding the date of the declaration of war." And the illegitimate
child stands equal with the legitimate provided the father acknowledges
the child or has been "judicially ordered or decreed to contribute" to
the child's support.
Men are feminists. Their hearts have softened even towards the wife's
relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the
father, mother, grandparents or stepfather and mother of the man, but
"of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law.
One need not be endowed with the spirit of prophecy to foretell that
"allowances" in war time will broaden out into motherhood pensions in
peace times. It would be an ordinary human reaction should the woman
enjoying a pension refuse to give up, on the day peace is declared, her
quickly acquired habit of holding the purse strings. That would be
accepting international calm at the expense of domestic differences.
The social value of encouraging the mother's natural feeling of
responsibility toward her child by putting into her hands a state
pension is being, let us note, widely tested, and may demonstrate the
wisdom and economy of devoting public funds to mothers rather than to
crêches and juvenile asylums.
The allowance laws may prove the charter of woman's liberties;
her pay envelope may become her contract securing the right of
self-determination.
VIII
POOLING BRAINS
"Employ them." This was the advice given to a large conference of women
met to discuss business opportunities for their sex. The advice was
vouchsafed by a young lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields
to women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle,
only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase their
practice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to the
situation, "Employ them." Perhaps more self-accusation than
determination to mend their ways was roused by the short and
pointed remark.
The advice has wider application. Taking thirty names of women at
random, I learned in response to an inquiry that only four had women
physicians, two had women lawyers, and only one, a woman dentist.
Twenty-five women of large real estate holdings had never even for the
most unimportant work secured the services of an architect of their own
sex. Further inquiry brought out the fact that of a long list of
women's clubs and associations which have built or altered property for
their purposes, only one had engaged a woman architect.
Perhaps it is indicative of a lack of nothing more serious than a sense
of humor, that we women unite and, apparently without embarrassment,
demand that masculine presidents, governors, mayors and legislatures
shall appoint women to office. This unabashed faith in the good will of
men seems not misplaced, for not only do public men show some confidence
in the official capacity of women, but to my inquiry as to whom was due
their opportunities to "get on," business women invariably replied,
"To men."
However, the loyalty of women to women is increasing, and their
solidarity on sound lines of service is a thing of steady growth.
Thoughtful women, for instance, do not wish a woman put in a position of
responsibility simply because she is a woman, but they are even more
opposed to having a candidate of peculiar fitness overlooked merely
because she is not a man. While the conscientious and poised women are
not willing to urge any and every woman for a given office, they do
tenaciously hold that there are positions which cry aloud for women and
for which the right women should he found. In conquering a fair field,
women will have to pool their brains even more effectively than they
have in the past.
Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with the
generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains. War
and the chase gave them their first lessons in cooperation, nor has war
been a bad teacher for women.
Just as the Crimean War and our Civil War put Florence Nightingale and
Clara Barton and the trained nurse on the map, this war is bringing the
medical woman to the fore. Women surgeons and doctors, unlike many other
groups, offer themselves fully trained for service. They know they have
something to give, and they know the soldiers' need.
According to an official statement, the emergency call of the army for
men physicians and surgeons fell two thousand short of being answered.
The necessity of the soldier and the skill of the women will no doubt in
the end be brought effectively together; for although the government of
the United States, like Great Britain in the early days of the war, has
left to ever farseeing France the honor of extending hospitality to
American women doctors, their strong national organization, with a
membership of four thousand, will in time, no doubt, persuade Uncle Sam
to take his plucky women doctors over the top under the Stars and
Stripes! Organization crystallized about an unselfish desire and skilled
ability to serve is irresistible.
The pooling of the brains of women that has been going on on a
country-wide scale for more than a half-century bears analyzing. These
associations have almost invariably centered about a service to be
rendered. Even the first petition for political enfranchisement urged it
as the "duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the
elective franchise." Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel
filings. The spirit of service lying at the heart of the great national
organizations made possible quick response to new duties immediately
upon our entrance into the war. The suffragists said, We wish to serve
and we are ready for service. The government used their wide-spread net
of local centers for purposes of registrations and war appeals.
Naturally there were many efforts more foolish than effective in the
universal rush to help. America was not peculiar in this, nor for the
matter of that, were women. War!--it does make the blood course through
the veins. Every generous citizen cries aloud, "What can I do?" Perhaps
men are a little more voluble than women, their emotions not finding
such immediate and approved vent along clicking needles and tangled
skeins of wool. On the whole, the initiative and organizing ability of
women has stood out supremely.
Of the two departments of the Red Cross which are still left in the
command of women, the Bureau of Nursing, with Miss Delano at its head,
mobilized immediately three thousand of the fourteen thousand nurses
enrolled. The first Red Cross Medical Unit with its full quota of
sixty-five nurses completely equipped stood on European soil before an
American soldier was there. Of the forty-nine units ready for service,
twelve, with from sixty-five to one hundred nurses each, are now in
France. Two of the five units organized for the navy, each with its
forty active nurses and twenty reserves, are established abroad, and two
hundred and thirty nurses are already in active naval service here. Miss
Delano holds constantly in reserve fifteen hundred nurses as emergency
detachments, a reservoir from which some eight hundred have been drawn
for cantonment hospitals. An inflow of nearly one thousand nurses each
month keeps the reservoir ready to meet the drain.
The Chapter work-rooms sprang up at a call in the night. No one can help
admiring their well-ordered functioning. There may be criticism,
grumbling, but the work-room is moving irresistibly, like a well-oiled
machine. And women are the motive power from start to finish. The
Chapters, with their five million members joined in three thousand units
over the United States, are so many monuments to the ability of women
for detail. Once mobilized, the women have thus far been able to serve
two thousand war hospitals with surgical dressings, and to send abroad
thirteen million separate articles packed carefully, boxed, labelled and
accounted for on their books.
Not only does this directing of manual work stand to the credit of the
Chapters, but they have given courses of lectures in home nursing and
dietetics to thirty-four thousand women, and in first aid; ten thousand
classes have been held and seventy-five thousand certificates issued to
the proficient. Certainly one object of the Red Cross, "to stimulate the
volunteer work of women," has been accomplished.
It is difficult to understand why, with such examples of women's
efficiency before it, the Red Cross, founded by Clara Barton, places
merely two bureaus in the hands of a woman, has chosen no woman as an
officer, has put but one woman on its central and executive committee,
and not a single woman on its present controlling body, the War Council.
It may be that the protest against the centralization of all volunteer
effort in the Red Cross, in spite of President Wilson's appeal, was due
to the fact that women feared that their energies, running to other
lines than nursing and surgical dressings, would be entirely
sidetracked.
The honor of the splendid war work of the Young Women's Christian
Association belongs to women. The War Work Council of the National Board
of Young Women's Christian Associations shows an example of how
immediately efficient an established organization can be in an
emergency. As one sees its great War Fund roll up, one exclaims, "What
money raisers women are!" The immediate demands upon the fund are for
Hostess Houses at cantonments where soldiers can meet their women
visitors, dormitories providing emergency housing for women employees at
certain army centers, the strengthening of club work among the younger
girls of the nation, profoundly affected by war conditions, and the
sending of experienced organizers to coöperate with the women leaders
of France and Russia and to install nurses' huts at the base hospitals
of France. It makes one's heart beat high to think of women spending
millions splendidly, they who have always been told to save pennies
frugally! Well, those hard days were times of training; women learned
not to waste.
A very worthy pooling of brains, because springing up with no tradition
behind it, was the National League for Woman's Service. In six months it
drew to itself two hundred thousand members and built organizations in
thirty-nine States, established classes to train women for the new work
opening to them, opened recreation centers and canteens at which were
entertained on a single Sunday, at one center, eighteen hundred soldiers
and sailors. So excellent was its Bureau of Registration and Information
for women workers that the United States Department of Labor took over
not only the files and methods of the Woman's League for Service, but
the entire staff with Miss Obenauer at its head. If imitation is the
sincerest flattery, what shall we say of complete adoption of work and
workers, with an honorable "by your leave" and outspoken praise! And
nothing could show a finer spirit of service than this yielding up of
work initiated by a civil society and the willing passing of it into
government hands.
Not only the Labor Department has established a special women's division
with a woman at its head, but the Ordnance Office of the War Department
has opened in its Industrial Service Section a woman's division, putting
Miss Mary Van Kleeck in charge.