Academy of Political Science in the City of New York

“ Is it insane to hope that in the fulness of time industry will be so arranged as to advance human life by its process as well as by its produce; to hope that we shall have, as one might say, a maternal government acting on the principles of the mother of a great and busy household who makes education and work coöperate throughout, who cares for her family and economizes and develops their powers and makes their complete welfare her controlling object? ”

“ 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. ”

“ No other agency stands so little for efficient service as the employment bureau. Scorned by the scientific because of its unscientific methods; condemned by the honest and conscientious because of its unjust earnings and unscrupulous policies; despised by the employer because of its failure intelligently to meet his needs; ignored by the seeker for work because of its deceptive guarantees, the employment bureau is far from commanding the respect of the industrial world. ”

“ On another side, moreover, the woman trade unionist comes up against a dead wall. No matter what her standing in her union, no matter how justly and fairly she be treated by her men fellow workers in the labor movement, the fact remains that she is not a voter. One hand is tied. Till she has the vote she can not as a member of the union have the same influence upon its policies as if she were a man and a voter, nor outside can her services be of the same value to the union as if she were enfranchised. ”

“ She is, of course, the same sort of person as the society girl or the so-called middle-class girl, but her position at just this juncture is a more difficult one than that of any other young woman, for she is stepping out from the most old-fashioned type of family into the newest type of industry. This new social adjustment is just as inevitable as the economic adjustments that followed the industrial revolution.
The working girl is stepping out of the most intimate, the most mutually conscious type of family life that exists, that of humble people. ”

“ One scarcely dares accept the conclusion suggested by these facts, that the minimum wage should be not less than $9, there are so many modifying circumstances. Nor dares one assert that certain sums represent the “cost of living”, it is so hard to determine a standard of living. How can we fix the minimum or average of rent? How can we place a limit on expenditure for food and clothing? How can we tell how much of inefficiency is due to inadequacy of food, clothing and shelter, how much to lack of training, how much to youth? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Abandoning the fatuous attempt to keep women out of industrial life, we shall set about the task of humanizing industry by ridding it of the conditions that make wholesome life difficult for workers to attain. Realizing the greater needs of women, we may first set legal standards for them alone; and then, just as was the case in the early fight for a shorter workday, the advantage legally conceded to women may be extended to men as well. Slowly public opinion advances toward more enlightened views, and social and legal organization gradually improve with it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Even in industries which, like the textile and sewing trades, belong to women by long inheritance, machinery and division of labor have so transformed processes that both the individuality of their work and the original incentive to industry have been wholly lost in a standardized product. Moreover, in their traditional sphere of employment and especially in the sewing trade, competition has been so keen that the conditions under which they have worked have been, upon the whole, more degrading and more hopeless than in any other class of occupations. ”

“ It is a wearisome commonplace that the factory has taken over much of the industrial work of the home, and that women have followed their work into the factory; but the fundamental change thus introduced into their life has not always been clearly seen. Formerly home and industry were synonymous terms for them; training for industry was training in household management. To-day industrial work is sharply separated from the management of the home, and there has come into the occupation of women a dualism that finds no parallel in the life of men. ”

“ The school always looks impressively quiet and remote. Few windows are lighted and only one door is open. After picking her way through crowded streets, stepping around small children, narrowly avoiding collisions with innumerable boys and girls darting in and out among the crowds, the visitor finds the inside of the building quite deserted, and her footsteps echo in the great, gray, empty basement. She can find no one to direct her to the principal, but presently seeing a few girls straggling up the fireproof stairs she follows them to the assembly room, a waste of empty desks. ”

“ Others, at the opposite extreme, perform work that is unpaid and that could not be paid for, work that demands experimentation, initiative and devotion. The work of a man or woman who combines with the chance gift of economic freedom the chance gift of genius consecrated to service—the work of a Charles Darwin, a William Morris, a Josephine Shaw Lowell, or a Jane Addams—is a pearl beyond price, but probably common people (that is, most of us) work better under a reasonable degree of pressure. ”

“ If the trade union be the only audible voice of the worker in any trade, the association of women’s unions known as the National Women’s Trade Union League is the expression of the women’s side of the whole trade-union movement of the United States. It has taken up the special work of organization among women undistracted by the much larger mass of general field work that falls to men. ”

“ The routine and uniformity of modern production mean that the worker must work at the standard pace for the standard number of hours or drop out. This is less true of piece work, at least in theory; in practise the worker’s need of money is likely to force the pace and stretch the hours to the limit of possibility. As regards occupation it is all or nothing; the employer will not accept workers who cannot give themselves entire. This is, I think, the element of truth in the emphasis of socialists on their thesis that the worker sells not his labor, but his labor power. ”

“ If the Supreme Court should decide, as it probably would, that the prohibition of night work of women does not violate the fourteenth amendment, the court of appeals of New York, while it might revise and overrule its own decision to the effect that such prohibition is invalid, would not be bound to do so, but would have the right to insist that the constitution of New York protects individual right against legislative power more effectually than does the federal constitution. ”

“ Even though all restrictions on political, personal and contractual rights were taken away, and she stood, so far as statutes are concerned, upon an absolutely equal plane with him, it would still be true that she is so constituted that she will rest upon and look to him for protection; that her physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal functions—having in view not merely her own health, but the well-being of the race—justify legislation to protect her from the greed as well as the passion of man. ”