mutually conscious type of family life that exists, that of humble
people. This old patriarchal family has a strength and an intensive
character that other families lack. Exceptions to the type in no way
alter the general rule. The father is an unremitting toiler but his
pleasures are centered in the home and the family. The mother is the
disburser of the weekly income handed to her intact in the Saturday
night envelope. Her power and influence are supreme as long as the
family holds together. The children early absorb the traditional ideas
of the parents undiluted by the variations presented to families of
larger income where tutors, dancing instructors and music teachers
share or supersede the parents’ care. There is thus built up a solid
structure of tradition, interdependence and loyalty with which the
family life of other economic groups cannot compare. This structure,
seemingly almost absolutely firm, is undergoing under modern city
conditions a strain never met before, and the family is not holding
its own. What cause is at work to alter the ancient type? Undoubtedly
the breakup is a byproduct of the industrial revolution. Many of the
old duties and opportunities of women have been taken from them. The
introduction of a greater variety of diet involving less cooking, the
greater simplicity in decoration involving less cleaning, the communal
care of garbage, the central system of heating and lighting, the
cheapness of ready-made clothing, all these changes have lessened the
burden of housework and to a certain extent have freed the housewife
from drudgery. The care of children is increasingly being taken over by
the community with its kindergartens, its public schools, its parks,
its recreation centers, its nurses and its hospitals. Thus while
the woman is still the dominating figure in the home, the center
of gravity of that home so to speak has shifted; and we find the
life that was once that of the home is now that of the community as
well. It is the old process of differentiation from the homogeneous
to the heterogeneous. It is because there is less to do at home that
the children must of economic necessity find their life outside. The
daughter who would once have stayed at home to help with the children
now becomes the public school teacher and helps many children. The
daughter who would once have made the clothes of her sister is now
making the clothes of other sisters at the dressmaker’s or in the
factory.
The entrance of women into industry is an act of necessity. Women
have in the beginning gone to work in factories and in shops and in
all occupations outside the home, not from choice but because the
industrial revolution has so altered the conditions of life that
such a departure from the home was rendered inevitable. Woman has
entered industry half-heartedly. She is not work-conscious as she is
home-conscious. The old home tradition remains with her as a powerful
sentiment. Her interest is the home. She expects to return to a home
life of her own. Industrial work is a mere interlude. It is this work
interlude that is so fraught with danger from the very fact that it
is a makeshift. It is still unrelated to the deepest conscious or
unconscious purpose of the girl.
When we say the New York working girl whom do we mean? We mean to a
certain extent the American girl, _i. e._, the girl who has drifted to
New York from up state or from other states. Such girls are homeless
here. The difficulty is not the inadequacy of home life, but its
absolute lack. For these girls some substitute must be provided. But
the great bulk of girls in industry in New York are not American, but
Irish, Jewish, and last of all, Italian. Taken as a whole, it cannot
be said that the Irish girl’s entrance into industry has corrupted her
as a woman. Surrounded by temptation, keenly enjoying pleasure, the
Irish girl yet possesses that combination of reserve, good taste and
self-possession that protects her more surely than any mere parental
inhibition. But in addition to the protection of the family, she enjoys
the aid of religion, which constantly inculcates the preservation of
purity. The Irish girl is a religious girl, a devoted Catholic. Ever
before her is a picture of the ideal woman, Mary the Mother of God.
“Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and in the hour of
death,” is said daily by thousands of Irish girls before they go to
work and before they lie down to sleep. Mechanical as this may often
be, it is a mental habit as strong as a physical habit. And habits
serve as a prop to the will when stress comes. It would be near the
truth to say that whatever the reason,--Catholic training, native
chastity, an inborn sense of restraint and good taste, or all these
together, Irish girls form but a small element of the group of women
workers in danger of corruption.
This danger is more intimately connected with Jewish and Italian girls.
The Jewish girl comes from a protected and highly developed family
life. She also has been brought up in a great traditional religion as
her spiritual environment. But the orthodox Jewish religion, though
fundamentally social in character, is often apperceived as merely a
racial custom. The Jewish ideas of the family and of religion are
so intimately connected that the child who is ceasing to be held by
one will not be held by the other. In this respect there is a great
difference between the Catholic and the Jew. The Catholic girl thinks
of her religion as greater than anything else, including the family;
the Jewish girl thinks of her religion as part of her family life, to
stand or fall together with it. Moreover, though in both religions man
is priest--in one as head of the church and in the other as head of
the family--yet in the Jewish religion there is nothing corresponding
to that devotion to the Virgin which naively and almost hypnotically
involves an unconscious idealism of womanhood. The Jewish girl also,
while perhaps not personally so proud as the Irish, is in many ways
more ambitious and purposive. She desires to have all that the world
offers. This purposive characteristic, so noble if devoted to high
ends, and so dangerous if directed to pleasure alone, is seen more
evidently in the Jewish girl than in any other.
A high purpose saves. Among the prostitutes of this city, I doubt
if you can find one who is either a revolutionist, a socialist, a
Zionist, a good trade unionist, or an ardent suffragist. Most of
those poor girls are they who in their innocent natural desire for
pleasure, unchecked by high enthusiasm for anything else, are finally
dragged down to a terrible payment for the pleasures they so normally
demand. Why is it that among the Jewish girls who have gone wrong we
find no socialists, no revolutionists, no trade unionists? Obviously
because devotion to a cause gives rise to a consuming self-respect.
The compelling power of a great cause brings the same results as the
sanctions of religion. A cause that becomes a passion ennobles one.
Personal indulgence is obliterated and pleasure becomes identified
with devotion to this cause or is incidental to it. We cannot expect
that all working girls will be drawn to any of these particular
causes which I have enumerated, but some spiritual interest they must
have--something bigger than themselves and their own pleasures.
With the Italian girl just now beginning to enter industry in large
numbers the situation again is different. Though Catholic, she seems
not to have the purposive character in her religious life that marks
the Irish girl. Religion is not so full of conscious meaning for her.
In her home life she has thus far been and still is probably the most
carefully chaperoned girl in America. From the protection of her father
she goes straight to that of her husband. Never standing on her own
feet, she fails to develop that independence without which as mother
she loses control of her children, to their serious loss. They refuse
obedience to her authority. But now at last this charming girl who has
hitherto known only the controlled existence of the home is leaving
it for the uncontrolled life of that larger world which she enters as
industrial worker. How is she to learn to feel safe in this bigger
world when her parents and her brothers do not think her so? She can
never feel safe until she is safe, and she will not be safe until she
learns the self-reliance and independence that come from the double
security bestowed by some large spiritual enthusiasm and by economic
independence. The old-fashioned girl living and working exclusively in
the home was safe in a negative way. She was safe because she had no
opportunity for anything but safety. This negative safely breaks down
when one leaves the home. Safety in the larger world is secured only
by some positive force that enables a girl to prefer the higher to
the lower. These positive safeguards are, as we have seen, of various
kinds; they are religion, or socialism, or trade unionism, or any
compelling form of social or political development. They all involve
an individual direct relationship between the girl and her desire. She
is a person with her own hopes. She is freed from entanglements. She
attains a purity very different from that feeble inhibited negative
thing which comes from outward protection alone.
But there is another side to this question. It is nonsense to suppose
that any spiritual enthusiasm, no matter how powerful, will be adequate
to protect the girl whose wage it is impossible to live on. I take it
for granted that this economic aspect of the case is clear to everyone.
It is silly, not to say criminal, for us to suppose that girls are
going to starve or go without decent clothes or deprive themselves of
all pleasures because they cannot pay their own way. There will be
cases of heroism always. I think now of a poor little restaurant-worker
friend of mine, who with $4 a week with two meals a day pays for room
and clothing and yet keeps straight, though with never a penny for any
kind of pleasure. All honor to her, but no credit to us that we allow
such strain. Thousands of girls are living in New York, on less than a
living wage, not eating enough, not having proper room or clothing and
yet keeping straight. But others--and these too are doubtless in the
thousands--are too normal to deprive themselves of their rights in the
world. Their perfectly innocent love of pleasure becomes transmuted
through gradual corrupting relationships into a life of degradation.
Inextricably bound together in the life of the young girl are her
impulses and her ideals. Free play for both and training for both are
demanded for the flowering of her womanhood. To grow, to play, to have
friends, to make love, are all normal elements that go to make up the
life of the young. Not only is pleasure their right but it is a racial
necessity. In the old home the family life itself was the center of
all the social gatherings, or if social pleasures were to be found
elsewhere it was in other affiliated homes, so that in that network of
home life a sort of tribal pleasure was developed where free play to
all these youthful emotions could be granted. But in the life of the
great city the young girl can find little within the narrow confines
of her crowded home to hold her ardent attention. In the midst of the
ever-intensifying excitement with which she is surrounded she can
find nothing appealing enough to attract her interest except those
great congregate forms of enjoyment which center about the dance hall,
the theater and the brilliant amusement resort. These commercialized
pleasure places are far lighter, airier and more beautiful than any
small home can be. They represent roominess, freedom, grandeur, all of
which appeal to the blossoming passion of the young. There is something
almost terrible in the careless way in which society both indulges and
neglects the young girl. The over-stimulation of all this excitement
is dangerous enough in itself but when coupled with so little that
safeguards the ardor of youth it forms an appeal almost impossible of
resistance. And these pleasures cannot be had for nothing. Where the
girls cannot pay their cost, there are attendant circumstances which
turn the natural channels of joy into debasement. The young men of
the big cities today are not gallantly paying the way of these girls
for nothing. Though the price may not be that which leads to despair,
it often involves a lowering of the finer instinct and a gradual
deterioration of the appreciation of personal purity which is one of
the most beautiful flowers of civilization. The fathers and mothers
of this great army of girls in industry can no longer furnish the
pleasures the girls want. If then they seek them outside the home, the
community itself must become the foster father and mother.
Already our communities are seeing that girls like boys must be trained
for the industry which they are bound to enter. There is a pestilential
group among us composed of those people who are insistent that the
working classes should be taught “useful” things. All of us who live
in settlements know this kind of person only too well. “Do you teach
cooking? Do you teach sewing?” they ask. In these things perhaps they
will take an interest, but a class for dancing or preparation for a
play or an evening’s sing, such persons will regard as frills and not
“useful” work. As if there were anything more useful than helping to
create a social atmosphere congenial enough to hold a girl’s interest!
For it is from such a sympathetic background that enthusiasms spring.
Pleasures are necessary and the community must take the place of
the old home by protecting the young in their pleasures and by
offering them such pleasures as shall enrich rather than debase
the emotional and spiritual life. Dance halls properly controlled,
clean cheap theaters, amusement resorts freed from the harpies that
too frequently gather there--all these are necessary in a program
of social adjustment. A living wage is also essential. But beyond
these the girl at work, like all women of every class, must develop
a deep self-respect, a regard for herself as an industrial worker, a
conviction that she is responsible for the conditions under which she
works, a desire to control these conditions through such social or
political means as are adequate for that end. She must not take the
apologetic position, “I have to go to work,” but rather the proud point
of view, “As a worker I am a responsible person with a social purpose.”
The woman movement has sometimes been interpreted by rich women
as giving them the privilege of doing what they like and by the
respectable middle class as furnishing a means of dignifying leisure.
Among working women, however, it has made little headway. I say this
realizing that there are thousands of whom this is not true. But the
working woman in New York, as I have said, still retains the tradition
of home life as her most cherished sentiment, expecting to return from
industry to a home of her own. And the very beauty and power of this
old ideal obscures the fact that the home of the future must be strong
enough to stand all the strain to which in the nature of the case
it will be subjected. To stand its ground it needs not the negative
submission of dependents, but the co-operation of strong independent
individuals. The new working woman’s movement when under way will have
within it certain sounder elements than the movement among middle-class
and wealthy women. For in industry one learns promptness, order and
adaptation to ends--in other words, efficiency. Bringing back this
business sense into the home and enlarging it by those spiritual
enthusiasms which give a sense of roominess and freedom, no matter
what one’s daily task may be, the working woman, when once this new
social adjustment has been made, will be a new kind of new woman in
whose consciousness the destinies of home, industry and society will
be seen as fused into one. Her duties toward society and toward the
home will be seen to be indissolubly connected. And when her children
are born she will see to it that the old negative protection of the
home shall be supplemented by the positive elements of protection,
the chief of which is the flame of a positive enthusiasm. But this
desirable end, this real social adjustment, will not take place unless
society is prepared to adopt a practical program embodying these three
elements--proper opportunities for pleasure, a living wage and the
cultivation of independence, self-respect and idealism.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] A paper presented at the meeting of the Academy of Political
Science, December 4, 1909.
MARRIED WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
FLORENCE KELLEY
General Secretary, National Consumers’ League
Throughout all history married women have carried on productive
industry, feeding and clothing the race. And in that coöperative
commonwealth which some of us hope to see, they will undoubtedly again
participate largely and beneficently in the industrial work of the
community.
It is perfectly easy to conceive of a prosperous village in New England
or the state of Washington, with coöperative intensive culture of
gardens and orchards, with coöperative dairy, laundry, bakery, store
and workshops. In such a village the high school might well have as
its adjunct a nursery where the oldest girls could learn the art of
caring for babies and little children, as the normal school of today
has its kindergarten and primary classes for the benefit alike of the
children and the teachers in training. The citizens of such a village
would obviously be highly enlightened folk, and might be expected to
limit their working day to four, five, or six hours. Given these easily
conceivable conditions, the industrial work of mothers of children as
young as one year might perhaps be an asset for every one concerned.
It is, indeed, one serious charge in the indictment against the present
competitive organization of industry that the industrial employment
of married women to-day does harm and only harm. With the increasing
industrial work of married women in our competitive industry comes
increase in the number of children who are never born. In industrial
centers, the world over, wherever records are kept, the decreasing
birth rate manifests itself. Where this is due to drugs or surgery it
is of the gravest social significance. Childless working wives are a
permanently demoralizing influence for husbands. If these are inclined
to idleness they can idle the more because the wives work. However
disposed to hard work the men may be, the presence in the market of a
throng of unorganized and irregular workers (and married women are
both more unorganized and more irregular than others) presses upon the
wage rate of men. Whether the wife leaves home to work in cotton mill
or laundry, or whether she stays at home working under the sweating
system, she suffers the disadvantage of carrying the double burden and
enduring the twofold strain of home maker and wage earner. And she
presses upon the wage scale of her competitors as the subsidized or
presumably subsidized worker must always do.
Aside from childless wives, married women wage earners consist of
deserted mothers, widowed mothers and women who have both children and
husband. All these are ordinarily subsidized workers, the deserted
and widowed receiving charitable relief, and the women with husbands
having, at least in the theory which underlies their wages, some
support from them.
The heaviest strain of all falls upon the wife who has husband and
children and is still herself a wage earner; for she has usually
child-bearing as well as wage-earning duties. Even where her wage
earning is due to the husband’s tuberculosis, or epilepsy, or other
disability, this does not ordinarily end the growth in number of mouths
for which the industrially working mother attempts to provide.
Here and there, even in the great cities, an exceptional woman may
be found who has endured to middle life, or even longer, this double
strain, and has brought up children creditable in every way. Such rare
women are usually immigrants of peasant stock, fresh from rural life in
the old country, and merely serve, exceptions as they are, to prove the
rule.
Whether the wage-earning mother leaves home, or brings her work into
the home, her children pay the penalty. If she is away, they are upon
the street or locked into their rooms. From the street to the court
is but a short step. From the locked room to the grave has been for
unknown thousands of children a step almost as short, many having
been burned and others reduced by the long intervals between feedings
to that exhaustion in which any disease is fatal. Most dangerous of
all to the young victims of their mothers’ absence, are the unskilled
ministrations of older sisters, those hapless little girls ironically
known as “little mothers.” These keep neither the babies nor the
nursing bottles clean; nor do they keep the milk cool and shielded from
flies. They have no regular hours for feeding or naps. They let the
baby fall, or tumble down stairs with it. And in all the cruel process
their own backs grow crooked and they are robbed of school life and of
the care-free hours of play. Even where the mother does her industrial
work at home, the older girl suffers from the delegated care of the
younger children, and there is a strong tendency for the dwelling to
be dirty and neglected, and for all the children to be pressed into
service at the earliest possible moment, at cost of school attendance
and of play.
Homework, which is peculiarly the domain of married women, forces
rents up, because the worker must be near the factory. This promotes
congestion of population, to the advantage of no one but the landowner.
Even the employer is injured by the presence in the market of a body of
homeworking women. By their cheapness he is tempted to defer installing
the newest machines and most up-to-date methods. Enlightened employers
who do make such provision have competing against them the parasite
employers who drag out an incompetent existence because they can extort
from their homeworking employes the contribution to their running
expenses of rent, heat, light and cleaning.
In the employment of married women, as in all other industrial evils,
it is ultimately the whole community which pays. Whether the children
die before or after birth, the moral tone of the population suffers
and hearts are hardened by acquiescence in cruelty and law breaking.
Whether the surviving children (by reason of their mother’s absence or
her neglect in her overwrought and harassed presence) become invalids
or criminals, they do not suffer without sending in their bill to the
community which tolerates their sufferings. In the growth of vice,
crime and inefficiency, and in the spread of communicable disease,
consciously or unconsciously, the whole community pays its bill to the
children whom it has deprived of their mothers.
In this country we do not know the number of wage-earning mothers
either at home or elsewhere. Our records, official and unofficial,
are as defective in this regard as in all others. We cherish a general
impression, as pleasing as it is erroneous, that the old usage persists
under which, in the early days of the republic, the father commonly
maintained his family until the children had had some share of school
life, and thereafter father and children supported the mother.
In the textile and needle trades, however, even this tradition never
prevailed, and of late a contingent of the washerwomen of yore seem to
have moved bodily into the steam laundries of today.
Now cities which are centers of the textile industry are, and for sixty
years notoriously have been, the centers also of the labor of women
and children, of infant mortality, tuberculosis, immorality and drink.
This was the thesis of Friedrich Engels’ volume on _The Condition of
the Working Class in England in 1844_. Even today in Saxon Chemnitz and
in New England Fall River, wage-earning mothers away from their homes
and children are a characteristic and sorrowful feature of the dominant
local industry.
A perverse element in the problem, which would be humorous if it were
not tragic, is the encouragement persistently given by philanthropists
to the wage-earning labor of married women. Day nurseries, charity
kindergartens, charity sewing rooms, doles of home sewing, cash relief
contingent upon the recipient’s taking whatever work she may be
offered, are all still in vogue in the year 1910.