her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long
hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her
for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the
factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being
paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New
York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary,
pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the
economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of
slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally,
and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could
compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity
for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in
their hands.[220]
As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New
York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and
later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A
few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled
women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the
National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose
of federating all unions.
When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September
1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in
preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in _The
Revolution_ office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she
hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting,
the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the
newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and
clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in
publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the
Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they
feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced
they should not seek political rights until they had improved their
working conditions. She could not make them see that they were
putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form
Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the
National Labor Congress.
Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with
the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of
them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women
were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace
collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also
represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar
industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young
girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the
morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week.
"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan
told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome
discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better
wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and
again.... I will come and talk to you...."[221] They elected Mrs. Mary
Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress.
With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar
Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's
Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton,
representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan
knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed
but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and
whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public
that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women.
The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders'
Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress,
and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and
everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the
opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened
to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate
continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was
important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she
declared, "that makes men successful in their strikes."[222] She
recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing
out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced
men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York
_World_. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs.
Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress
to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage."
A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of
its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote
would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a
perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong,
well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York.
Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper
campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you
had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have
succeeded?"[223]
"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking
bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her
that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them
and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the
next election they would need the votes of all union men for their
candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you
too would have held the balance of political power in that little city
of Troy."
Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong
report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as
well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or
form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable
means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying
them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the
National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to
demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask
Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for
women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was
quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the
report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in
comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among
prominent labor leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney
of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor
Union and its national organizer of women.[224]
The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in _The Revolution_
as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which
would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the
women, the Negroes," _The Revolution_ declared, "are destined to form
a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government
from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the
politicians."[225]
* * * * *
One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of
the New York _World_, whose reporters covered the meetings of the
Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local
interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, _The
Revolution_ carried their import farther afield, bringing to the
attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work,
and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and
trade schools for them. _The Revolution_ continually spurred women on
to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal
work if they expected equal pay.
When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were
afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and
of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no
patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to
wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are
blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your
cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with
water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either
that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do
not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be
composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of
dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they
go into an office they would go through all that was required of them
and demand just as high wages as the men....
"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the
'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are. I
do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in
value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand
that you are in their service as workers, not as women."[226]
Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago,
San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts
at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged
ideas, and news of all of them was published in _The Revolution_. The
groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly
active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in
Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a
strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice
workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living
conditions.
Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed
a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected
president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and
practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself
picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she
talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in
all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and
baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old
shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With
friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes
stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest
brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward
to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a
committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in
tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of
Central Park.
This investigation revealed that more than half of the 1200 ragpickers
were women and that it was the one occupation in which women had equal
opportunity with men and received equal compensation for their day's
work. Average earnings ranged from forty cents a day to ten dollars a
week. The report, highly sentimental in the light of today's
scientific approach, was a promising beginning, a survey made by women
themselves in their own interest--the forerunner of the reports of the
Labor Department's Women's Bureau.
Cooperatives appealed to Susan as they did to many labor leaders as
the best means of freeing labor. When the Sewing Machine Operators
Union tried to establish a shop where their members could share the
profits of their labor, she did her best to help them, hoping to see
them gain economic independence in a light airy clean shop where
wealthy women, eager to help their sisters, would patronize them.
However, the wealthy women to whom she appealed to finance this
project did not respond, looking upon a cooperative as a first step
toward socialism and a threat to their own profits. She was able,
however, to arouse a glimmer of interest among the members of the
newly formed literary club, Sorosis, in the problems of working women.
She had the satisfaction of seeing women typesetters form their own
union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany _Daily
Knickerbocker_, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country
by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards
standing, intelligence, and manual ability."[227] _The Revolution_
encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging
all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out
how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more
Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45
cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together
say _Equal Pay for Equal Work_."[228]
Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were
higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for
them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women,
giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a
trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went
on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and
appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to
contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a
training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that
hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready
and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we
will soon give you competent women compositors."[229] Having learned
by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor
unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young
women to take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage
they could get.
It never occurred to her in her eagerness to bring women into a new
occupation that she might be breaking the strike. She saw only women's
opportunity to prove to employers that they were able to do the work
and to show the Typographical Union that they should admit women as
members. Labor men, however, soon let her know how much they
disapproved of her strategy. She tried to explain her motives to them,
that she was trying to fit these women to earn equal wages with men.
She reminded these men of how hard it was for women to get into the
printing trade and how they had refused to admit women to their union;
and she called their attention to her whole-hearted support of the
lately formed Women's Typographical Union.
Some of the men were never convinced and never forgot this misstep,
bringing it up at the National Labor Union Congress in Philadelphia in
1869, which Susan attended as a delegate of the New York
Workingwomen's Association. Here she found herself facing an
unfriendly group without the support of William H. Sylvis, who had
recently died. For three days they debated her eligibility as a
delegate, first expressing fear that her admission would commit the
Labor Congress to woman suffrage. When she won 55 votes against 52 in
opposition, Typographical Union No. 6 of New York brought accusations
against her which aroused suspicion in the minds of many union
members. They pointed out that she belonged to no union, and they
called her an enemy of labor because she had encouraged women to take
men's jobs during the printers' strike. They could not or would not
understand that in urging women to take men's jobs, she had been
fighting for women just as they fought for their union, and they
completely overlooked how continuously and effectively she had
supported the Women's Typographical Union. Her _Revolution_, they
claimed, was printed at less than union rates in a "rat office" and
her explanation was not satisfactory. That it was printed on contract
outside her office was no answer to satisfy union men who could not
realize on what a scant margin her paper operated or how gladly she
would have set up a union shop had the funds been available.
Not only were these accusations repeated again and again, they were
also carried far and wide by the press, with the result that Susan was
not only kept out of the Labor Congress but was even sharply
criticized by some members of her Workingwomen's Association.
"As to the charges which were made by Typographical Union No. 6," she
reported to this Association, "no one believes them; and I don't think
they are worth answering. I admit that this Workingwomen's Association
is not a _trade_ organization; and while I join heart and hand with
the working people in their trades unions, and in everything else by
which they can protect themselves against the oppression of
capitalists and employers, I say that this organization of ours is
more upon the broad platform of philosophizing on the general
questions of labor, and to discuss what can be done to ameliorate the
condition of working people generally."[230]
She was not without friends in the ranks of labor, however, the New
England delegates giving her their support. The New York _World_, very
fair in its coverage of the heated debates, declared, "Of her devotion
to the cause of workingwomen, there can be no question."[231]
* * * * *
The activities of the Workingwomen's Association had by this time
begun to irk employers, and some of them threatened instant dismissal
of any employee who reported her wages or hours to these meddling
women. Fear of losing their jobs now hung over many while others were
forbidden by their fathers, husbands, and brothers to have anything to
do with strong-minded Susan B. Anthony.
To counteract this disintegrating influence and to bring all classes
of women together in their fight for equal rights, Susan persuaded the
popular lecturer, Anna E. Dickinson, to speak for the Workingwomen's
Association at Cooper Union. This, however, only added fuel to the
flames, for Anna, in an emotional speech, "A Struggle for Life," told
the tragic story of Hester Vaughn, a workingwoman who had been accused
of murdering her illegitimate child. Found in a critical condition
with her dead baby beside her, Hester Vaughn had been charged with
infanticide, tried without proper defense, and convicted by a
prejudiced court, although there was no proof that she had
deliberately killed her child. At Susan's instigation, the
Workingwomen's Association sent a woman physician, Dr. Clemence
Lozier, and the well-known author, Eleanor Kirk, to Philadelphia to
investigate the case. Both were convinced of Hester Vaughn's
innocence.
With the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's courageous editorials in _The
Revolution_, Susan made such an issue of the conviction of Hester
Vaughn that many newspapers accused her of obstructing justice and
advocating free love, and this provided a moral weapon for her critics
to use in their fight against the growing independence of women.
Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for
Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served
to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that
poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women
like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the
need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even
suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to women
so that a few of them might be able to understand their rights under
the law and bring aid to their less fortunate sisters.
* * * * *
Under Susan's guidance, the Workingwomen's Association continued to
hold meetings as long as she remained in New York. In its limited way,
it carried on much-needed educational work, building up self-respect
and confidence among workingwomen, stirring up "a wholesome
discontent," and preparing the way for women's unions. The public
responded. At Cooper Union, telegraphy courses were opened to women;
the New York Business School, at Susan's instigation, offered young
women scholarships in bookkeeping; and there were repeated requests
for the enrollment of women in the College of New York.
Living in the heart of this rapidly growing, sprawling city, Susan saw
much to distress her and pondered over the disturbing social
conditions, looking for a way to relieve poverty and wipe out crime
and corruption. She saw luxury, extravagance, and success for the few,
while half of the population lived in the slums in dilapidated houses
and in damp cellars, often four or five to a room. Immigrants,
continually pouring in from Europe, overtaxed the already inadequate
housing, and unfamiliar with our language and customs, were the easy
prey of corrupt politicians. Many were homeless, sleeping in the
streets and parks until the rain or cold drove them into police
stations for warmth and shelter. Susan longed to bring order and
cleanliness, good homes and good government to this overcrowded city,
and again and again she came to the conclusion that votes for women,
which meant a voice in the government, would be the most potent factor
for reform.
Yet she did not close her mind to other avenues of reform. Seeing
reflected in the life of the city the excesses, the injustice, and the
unsoundness of laissez-faire capitalism, she spoke out fearlessly in
_The Revolution_ against its abuses, such as the fortunes made out of
the low wages and long hours of labor, or the Wall Street speculation
to corner the gold market, or the efforts to take over the public
lands of the West through grants to the transcontinental railroads.
Her active mind also sought a solution of the complicated currency
problem. In fact there was no public question which she hesitated to
approach, to think out or attempt to solve. She did not keep her
struggle for woman suffrage aloof from the pressing problems of the
day. Instead she kept it abreast of the times, keenly alive to social,
political, and economic issues, and involved in current public
affairs.
FOOTNOTES:
[220] Feb. 18, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.
[221] _The Revolution_, II, Sept. 24, 1868, p. 198. L. A. Hines of
Cincinnati, publisher of Hine's Quarterly, assisted Miss Anthony in
organizing women in the sewing trades.
[222] _Ibid._, p. 204.
[223] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 999-1000.
[224] _The Revolution_, II, Oct. 1, 1868, p. 204.
[225] _Ibid._, p. 200.
[226] _Ibid._, Oct. 8, 1868, p. 214. A Woman's Exchange was also
initiated by the Workingwomen's Association.
[227] _Ibid._, June 24, 1869, p. 394.
[228] _Ibid._, March 18, 1869, p. 173.
[229] _Ibid._, Feb. 4, 1869, p. 73.
[230] _Ibid._, Sept. 9, 1869, p. 154.
[231] _Ibid._, Aug. 26, 1869, p. 120.
THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT
The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in July 1868, but
Republicans found it inadequate because it did not specifically
enfranchise Negroes. More than ever convinced that they needed the
Negro vote in order to continue in power, they prepared to supplement
it by a Fifteenth Amendment, which Susan hoped would be drafted to
enfranchise women as well as Negroes. Immediately through her Woman's
Suffrage Association of America, she petitioned Congress to make no
distinction between men and women in any amendment extending or
regulating suffrage.
She and Elizabeth Stanton also persuaded their good friends, Senator
Pomeroy of Kansas and Congressman Julian of Indiana, to introduce in
December 1868 resolutions providing that suffrage be based on
citizenship, be regulated by Congress, and that all citizens, native
or naturalized, enjoy this right without distinction of race, color,
or sex. Before the end of the month, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts
and Congressman Julian had introduced other resolutions to enfranchise
women in the District of Columbia and in the territories. Even the New
York _Herald_ could see no reason why "the experiment" of woman
suffrage should not be tried in the District of Columbia.[232]