“glaring inequalities” in the salary schedules. Since the schedules
embody the judgment of their builders on a variety of elements, some of
them, such as “personality”, quite impalpable, none of them measurable
with instruments of precision, the schedules can never satisfy every
critic. Always the critic’s judgment of the relative values of academic
scholarship, experience, technical skill and so on, may differ from the
judgment of the authorities. However, the women teachers have convinced
the board of education that the existing differentials between men
and women are generally too heavy. For example, of the teachers in
elementary schools women start at $600 a year and by yearly increments
of $40 go up to $1,240 and men start at $900 a year and by yearly
increments of $105 go up to $2,150. That difference is not demanded by
the circumstances.
But the differences between salaries of teachers of different ages,
which are conspicuous in the schedules framed by the Interborough
Association, are equally flagrant and open to attack. In fact any
schedules which assume that teachers of different ages who are doing
analogous work should receive pay for their years as well as for their
effort are vulnerable to a logician’s spear.
One teacher of two years’ experience may possibly do better than
another twelve years her senior. The younger may have the divine gift
of teaching which comes only by nature; the older be a mere drudge, a
hewer of wood and a drawer of water. Yet the older, under the schedules
of the Interborough Association, would continue to receive a much
higher salary than the younger. That may be proper, and is certainly
unavoidable, but it mocks at logic and at “equal pay for equal work.”
In a large system like New York’s there is always here and there an old
teacher, who though getting the maximum salary, is well known to be
doing the feeblest work. The logic of equal pay for equal work would
require that the salary of such a veteran be pared down to the bone as
is done in manual industries, where, under the piece-work system, no
account is taken of the age of the worker, but relentlessly the older
man or woman is challenged to keep the pace of colleagues in their
prime. When sorrow, sickness or old age weakens the powers nobody
proposes to increase the rates to make up for lessening speed, but the
worn-out worker is thrown aside.
More humanely and with higher logic the worn-out teacher in New York
is retired upon a pension. It is known that old age gradually brings
weariness and ossification, and the veteran, whose strength has
been sucked by successive generations of youngsters, must yield the
leadership, for the good of the service, to the younger generation
that, in Ibsen’s phrase, is “knocking at the door”. One year the
veteran is assumed to be worth the highest salary; the next year she
is pensioned off, as if from one week to the next her efficiency had
dropped from maximum near to minimum. Actually the powers may have been
declining for some years before the teacher’s withdrawal and the strict
logician would object, therefore, to the size of the salary received.
But abstract logic is no guide. Teachers must be paid and pensioned on
pragmatic principles; whatever system works out best for the schools is
most desirable.
2. The agitation of the Interborough Association has forced part of
the public to admit the need for a general increase of teachers’
salaries, an increase which shall be so distributed as to minimize
the inequalities. After the legislature in 1907 had passed a law
embodying the women teachers’ demands and repassed it over the veto
of Mayor McClellan, Governor Hughes in turn vetoed it, but showed
that he thought the schedules should be revised. In 1907 and again
in 1908 a special committee of the board of education, after careful
deliberation, recommended tentative new schedules, which were approved
by the board. In 1908 and in 1909 the board included in the budget
as presented to the board of estimate and apportionment requests for
appropriations which would enable it to put the amended schedules into
effect. Its request was denied.
Altogether the proposed schedules would entail salary increases for
1910 aggregating $2,639,762 to 14,751 women and aggregating $206,215
to 582 men, a total increment, for the first year of operation, of
$2,845,977. Of all the men educators the salaries of 28 per cent would
be raised. Of all the women educators the salaries of 98 per cent would
be raised. The mass of the women teachers would have their salaries
raised about twenty per cent.
This schedule, like all others, is vulnerable at points. Kindergarten
teachers will complain because they are treated less generously than
grade teachers, for hitherto they have been under the same schedule.
But kindergartners have recently glutted the market and one way to
persuade them to prepare for other work, where they are more needed, is
to make their increases smaller.
The Interborough Association of Women Teachers criticizes the proposed
schedules. The salaries of male teachers should not be raised, says the
Association, “because these men are already receiving higher salaries
than women occupying the same position.”
Since no men are employed in the lower five grades, the so-called
principle does not affect the majority of the women teachers, those
who teach these grades. The board, recognizing that their salaries
are inadequate, proposes to enlarge the salaries generously. But the
Interborough Association says in effect: “We will not approve an
addition of $2,639,762 to the salaries of women, because at the same
time you add $206,215 to the salaries of men. We demand that the women
who, being in the majority and now receiving the smallest salaries,
will receive under the board’s schedules all the increases which they
expect, shall forego these increases until the board approves further
increases exclusively for the better-paid women teachers, aggregating
another three or four million dollars.”
So long as the majority of the women teachers, those in the lower
grades, by their silence approve the assumption that they desire to
sacrifice some two million dollars a year for the sake of the abstract
doctrine which their richer sisters propound, so long the board of
estimate, always vigilantly watched by the organized tax payers, will
have a good excuse for keeping things as they are. Why should any
guardians of the public purse incur the dislike of tax payers for the
sake of teachers who show no eagerness for the attainable and promise
neither gratitude nor contentment? The policy of all or nothing is
heroic, but unbusinesslike.
Should the teachers, men and women in harmony, unite with the board
of education in a campaign of enlightenment in favor of the tentative
schedules, perhaps amended in spots, they might convince the tax
payers that the proposed increases are necessary for the following
reasons:
1. The cost of living has notoriously increased since the present
schedules were established, increased by at least the fifteen to twenty
per cent by which the new schedules would increase most salaries.
Therefore, in reality, the teachers who secure increases would be
getting no higher “purchasing power” than the old schedules were meant
to give them. The 1500 men whose salaries would be unaltered, are
peacefully accepting a reduced purchasing power.
2. While at one time teaching was the most desirable work open to
well-educated women in large numbers, the occupations now open to them
are happily increasing. The schools must now compete with commerce,
law, medicine, literature and journalism, for women of the best type.
Unless the schools offer a career as lucrative as the office, the bar
and the desk, the quality of women entering the teaching profession
will deteriorate and the children suffer.
3. For men and women of the same ability the standard of living, in
all classes, is rising. Each year the nation, and especially New York
City, grows richer, luxuries become comforts and comforts necessities.
Everybody, from immigrant to millionaire, expects to live better today
than he did two or three decades ago. Houses, food, clothing, holidays,
culture, travel--the son demands all of better quality than satisfied
the father. Teachers should share this general rise in the standard of
living, or their profession will lose caste, and the rising generation
will lose the influence of teachers who command public respect.
A survey of the whole situation, then, indicates that the cry “Equal
pay for equal work” is as misleading to the teachers, who understand
its import, as to the casual hearer, who takes it literally. In the
latter it arouses false ideas; in the former false hopes. Like a will
o’ the wisp it lures into a morass. Only those who, ignoring its gleam
and earnest to make whatever advance is practicable, march steadily
along the beaten highway, each year come nearer their goal.
WOMEN AND THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
ALICE HENRY
Editor Woman’s Department, _Union Labor Advocate_ of Chicago.
The story of woman in the labor movement has yet to be written. In its
completeness no one knows the story, and those who know sections of it
most intimately are too busy living their own parts in that story to be
able to pause long enough to play at being its chroniclers. For to be
part of a movement is more absorbing than to write about it. Whom then
shall we ask? To whom shall we turn for even an imperfect knowledge of
the story, at once great and sordid, tragic and commonplace, of woman’s
side of the labor movement? To whom, you would say, but the worker
herself? And where does the worker speak with such clearness, such
unfaltering steadiness, as through her union, the organization of her
trade?
In the industrial maze the individual worker cannot interpret her own
life story from her knowledge of the little patch of life which is
all her hurried fingers ever touch. Only an organization can be the
interpreter here. Fortunately for the student the organization can act
as interpreter, both for the organized women who have been drawn into
the labor movement and for those less fortunate who are struggling
on single-handed. Organized and unorganized workers almost always
come into pretty close relations in one way and another. Besides, the
movement in its modern developments is still so young among us that
there is scarcely a woman worker in the organizations who has not begun
her trade life as an unorganized toiler.
Speaking broadly, the points upon which the trade-union movement
concentrates are the raising of wages, the shortening of hours, the
diminution of seasonal work, the abolition or reduction of piece
work, with its resultant of speeding-up, the maintaining of sanitary
conditions, the enforcement of laws against child labor and other
industrial abuses, the abolition of taxes for power, thread and
needles, and of unfair fines for petty or unproved offenses. A single
case taken from a non-union trade must serve to suggest the conditions
that make organization a necessity. Seventeen 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 (of
from 60 to 66 yards). These girls earned $1.84 per day (on the 60-yard
bolt). Now a girl cannot hold her job under a thousand yards in a
ten-hour day. The fastest possible worker can turn out only 1200 yards,
and the price has dropped to 15 cents per 100 yards as against the old
rate of 24 cents per bolt of from 60 to 66 yards. The workers have to
fill the shuttle every two or three minutes, so that the strain of
vigilance is never relaxed. One year is spent in learning the trade,
and operators last only three years after that.
How successful organization has been is well shown by numerous
examples. In the instances which follow, taken from the convention
handbook of the National Woman’s Trade Union League, the advantages
gained in some of the trades apply to all establishments working under
agreement with any and every local union of the national organization.
In other cases the diminution of hours, the increase of wages and
the improvement of conditions are limited to the factories or shops
in certain cities only. Even bearing this qualification in mind,
these gains, following in the train of collective bargaining, are
sufficiently impressive.
SEWING TRADES
In the sewing trades there are many sub-divisions, including such
varied groups of workers as these: home finishers, coat makers,
pants makers, vest makers, shirt, collar and cuff makers, overall
makers, white goods workers, corset makers, shirtwaist makers, skirt
makers, cloak and suit tailors, button-hole makers, lace makers and
embroiderers. All employed in these occupations can belong to one of
the two great national unions, the United Garment Workers of America
and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers. Wherever these unions
control the trade they have abolished child labor, have established
the eight-hour day and in some cities the forty-four-hour week, have
insisted upon sanitary conditions, and have obtained time and a half in
wages for overtime work. The general wage has been increased over fifty
%.
GLOVE WORKERS
In this trade the union has abolished the practice of compelling a girl
to pay for her sewing machine (perhaps $60 for a $35 machine) or else
to rent it at 50 cents a week. Under non-union conditions she has to
buy her own needles and oil, pay 40 cents a week for power, and stand
the cost of all breakages. The organization has abolished all these
causes of complaint, has reduced hours from twelve to nine and eight
and a half, and has established a Saturday half holiday. This union
has been very successful in eliminating the pacemaker as a factor in
controlling the price of piece work, for the price is now determined by
the speed of the average worker, not the fastest one.
BOOT AND SHOE WORKERS
Here the union has increased wages by 40%. Unionized women shoe workers
are entitled when sick to $5 a week benefit for thirteen weeks in
one year. There is also a death benefit of $50, after six months’
membership, and $100 after a two years’ membership. All members are
entitled to $4 a week strike pay.
LAUNDRY WORKERS
In one city organization has reduced the hours of work from eighteen
and twelve (in the rush season) to nine, and has increased wages 50%.
In another city the union has reduced the hours of work from eighteen
and twelve to nine, and has increased wages from $15 a month to $9 a
week minimum and $15 a week average.
BEER BOTTLERS
The work done by women and girls in breweries involves standing all
day. If they are washers they cannot keep themselves dry, and in winter
the open doors keep the great bottling rooms very cold. Broken glass
and exploding bottles are constantly injuring the faces and cutting the
hands of both washers and labelers. In Chicago organization has reduced
the hours from nine to eight. The wages run from $3.50 to $5.50 in
non-unionized establishments. In one city where the girls are unionized
they are paid $7.20 a week and overtime at the rate of time and a half.
Among men this is a highly unionized trade; consequently girls ought
everywhere to have the protection of a common organization.
CIGAR MAKERS
There is a great contrast between union factories and some non-union
establishments. The union has successfully insisted upon good
ventilation, clean floors, walls and toilets, clean paste in little
individual jars (to fasten the ends of the cigars), an eight-hour
day and no child labor. Among all cigar makers the death rate from
tuberculosis is 61% of all deaths, according to government statistics.
Among union cigar makers according to the last obtainable report (1905)
the tuberculosis death rate was only 24%.
ELECTRICAL WORKERS
The electrical workers’ trade is one into which women are coming in
increasing numbers because, as one foreman said, they receive 40% less
wages than men and do 25% more work. This trade is a long way yet from
the ideal of equal pay for equal work, but the union established for
the girls a minimum wage scale of $5 a week at the very first, and
last year this was increased to $6. Hours have been cut from ten a day
to eight and a half on five days of the week and four and a half on
Saturday.
BINDERY WOMEN
It would be vain for an individual girl to go to the foreman or the
manager in a bindery and refuse to use bronze powder for lettering
because it is deadly to the lungs, or to explain that for a girl
to work on a numbering machine with her foot at the rate of 25,000
impressions a day is dangerous to her health. But this is just what
the locals of bindery women through their delegates are explaining
to employers the country over, and employers are heeding them. These
organized girls have an eight-hour day and wages have increased by 35
and even 50%. Sick members get a $3 benefit for thirteen weeks, and at
death a benefit of $50 is paid.
TEACHERS
The teachers of Chicago in the year 1902 could look forward to a
maximum salary in the primary grades of $800, in the grammar grades
of $825. The efforts of their organization, the Teachers’ Federation,
have raised the maximum salary in the primary grades to $1,075 and in
the grammar grades to $1,100, an increase of $275. The money to meet
this additional expense has been found for the board of education
through the successful tax suit promoted by the Teachers’ Federation
itself. Teachers’ pensions are now on a solid basis. The pension fund
is supported by contributions, with a small addition from the public
funds. The fact of having this small addition, whose validity has been
passed upon by the courts, establishes the right of the public school
teacher to a pension from public funds.
MUSICIANS
The American Federation of Musicians has greatly improved conditions
for its membership, which includes women. A non-union player at a
dance gets from $2 to $4 a night and may have to play until daylight.
Not so union players. They can ask $6 until 2 a. m. and $1 for every
hour thereafter. The Chicago and St. Louis locals have established
regulation uniforms for their members, which is a great economy.
VAUDEVILLE ARTISTS
Vaudeville actresses have to be grateful for the safer and more decent
conditions which their mixed union has brought to them. Separate and
sanitary dressing rooms are now to be found in the unionized five and
ten-cent theaters in Chicago. An act which formerly might have had to
be repeated fifteen times, cannot be asked for more than eight times on
a holiday and four times on other days.
WAITRESSES
Unorganized waitresses often have to work seven days a week and
sometimes fourteen hours a day; they have to provide their own uniform
and pay for its laundering. Organized waitresses have a ten-hour day
and a six-day week. Their wages have risen from $5 and $6 to $7 and $8
per week and meals. Their uniforms and laundry expenses are found for
them. They enjoy a $3 sick benefit for thirteen weeks and the union
pays a $50 death benefit.
There are some trades which have been organized and which yet record
thus far no marked improvement in the condition of the workers. This
may be either because the organization has been in existence too short
a time or because of other reasons. Among such trades are sheepskin
workers, badge, banner and regalia workers, human hair workers and
commercial telegraphers. Even in these trades steady educational and
organizing work is proceeding. Moreover the union may have been an
influence preventing further wage cutting, higher speeding up or the
imposition of more overtime.
The trade union is the great school for working girls. There they
are taught the principles of collective bargaining. They learn to
discuss difficulties with employers, free from the rasping sense of
personal grievance. They learn to give and take with equanimity, to
balance a greater advantage against a lesser one. In union meetings
and conferences where they meet on an equality with their brothers it
is the girl of sober judgment, good humor and ready wit who becomes a
leader, and influences her more inexperienced sister to follow her.
The trade union is educating the community as well as the girl. There
is a growing tendency among men and women of the teaching, clerical
and other non-manual occupations to recognize the common interest of
all workers, and to form under one name or another associations to
affiliate with the labor movement. One of the largest of these is
the Teachers’ Federation of Chicago which has now been many years in
existence. More recently stenographers’ and typists’ associations have
been formed in New York and Chicago. The formation of actors’ and
musicians’ associations is additional proof of the same spirit.
The influence upon the whole community of organized insistence upon
human conditions for the worker is marked. Trade-union standards
tend eventually to become the standards toward which all non-union
establishments that claim to treat their employees well voluntarily
approximate. Trade-union standards are the standards up to which decent
non-union employers keep steadily inching along in respect to hours
and conditions of work, and often even in respect to that most crucial
test of all, wages. Trade-union standards are, in short, always tending
to become in the eyes of the public the normal standards in the whole
world of industry. Indeed everywhere the paradox is to be noticed that
the non-union girl benefits remarkably as the result of the existence
of a union in her trade. Under pressure of competition employers
frequently state that their trade will not bear shorter hours or higher
wages. Curiously enough, such statements are much more frequently made
in unorganized than organized trades, and the employers more frequently
act up to their statements.
Unions, furthermore, have an important indirect influence on
legislation. In trade after trade, the benefits of shorter hours
have been gained through organization in states where there was no
legislation and no prospect of it. This is seen in many branches of
the garment-making industry, among waitresses, tobacco strippers,
printers and bindery women all over the United States. A ten-hour day,
a nine-hour day, an eight-hour day, even a forty-four-hour week, for
different bodies of these workers, have been for them the fruits of
organization. These advantages gained, the evidence of workers who
enjoy shorter hours and the experience of employers who conduct their
establishments under a system of shorter hours form the strongest and
most practical argument by which legislators are influenced to consider
the practicability and desirability of the shorter working day.
Trade unions, indeed, cannot beat back the ocean, though they have
been known to think they could. They cannot raise wages beyond certain
limits, though the obstacles that bar further upward movement in a
particular trade may be quite beyond the ken of the wisest in or out
of the labor movement. They cannot always prevent wages from falling,
whether that fall be expressed in actual cash or measured in purchasing
power. International competition, the introduction of machinery, or the
opening of fresh reservoirs of cheaper foreign labor may press wages
down with irresistible force.
But more and more unions ought to be able to lessen the cruel
abruptness with which such changes fall upon the worker. By no known
means can the action of economic forces be prevented, but their
incidence can and should be altered.