Emily Blackwell

“ It is only too evident that we have not yet solved the most fundamental problems in regard to labor, when we see such glaring contradictions as produce spoiling in the fields because there is no market for it, and mills stopping work because the market is over-supplied, when at the same time thousands are suffering from want of food and clothes. So long as the relations between workers and work are so imperfect, the hardships thus entailed must fall upon women as well as upon men. ”

“ No one can work independently of others. The training that qualifies for any pursuit, the necessary relations to others engaged in it, the patronage which pays for it—all these are absolutely requisite for its successful prosecution, and these are given or withheld by the force of public opinion. The point at issue in this discussion is, How far can women advantageously take part in the great system of modern industry? Is the effort they are making to enter occupations from which they have hitherto been excluded justifiable? ”

“ On one side it is held that women urgently need greater facilities for work; a wider range of occupations, in order to give them greater power of self-support; that many grave social evils result from this want. It is maintained that the claims accompanying this effort, for equal general and special education, for participation in any kind of work which women feel that they can do, for employment in any occupation for which they have fitted themselves, are just; that the movement is in the direction of progress, and that it is the interest of society to support it. ”

“ Is not the cause of this dislike to be found in the servile nature of domestic service, which renders it necessary to bring in a constant succession of servile labor to fill it? Is it not just in proportion as women rise above the servile tone of feeling that they become restive in the position, and will sacrifice comfort and pecuniary advantage to escape from it? ”

“ Our organization of labor is exceedingly one-sided and imperfect. It is directed almost exclusively to the advancement of the work, without any reference to the welfare of the worker. We have a long way to go before we can be rid of the most crying evils of our present state. ”

“ Every woman instinctively feels that, in exchanging the position of an outside worker for that of domestic service, she descends one step in the social scale, and approaches one degree nearer to personal servitude. ”

“ It is not only, nor chiefly, our college graduates and industrial workers who crowd the offices of specialists, and the same department in our charities. The girls who stay at home and are subjected to no educational strain, the wives and mothers who are pursuing the most natural of avocations, are quite as fully represented. We must believe that it is the physical education, not the organization, of women that is at fault, unless we accept the conclusion that the special constitution that is supposed to disqualify them for other work disqualifies them also for its own ends. ”

“ AMONG all the questions affecting women, and society through women, there is none more vital than that of their industrial position. It is conceded that women should work, but there is a great difference of opinion as to what their work is, and how they should do it. This difference of public opinion is not merely a matter of theory; it leads to very positive practical results, for the support of public opinion is necessary to make work in any special direction possible. ”

“ There are two elements in the domestic position of women: first, their personal relation to the family as wives and mothers; secondly, the work which necessarily devolves upon them in the fulfillment of the duties of these relations. The first, the personal relation, is a fixed and constant element. It grows out of the constitution of human beings, and exists under every form of society. It attains its highest expression wherever the union of one man and one woman is the foundation of the family. ”

“ In the savage state, women built the wigwam, raised the corn, prepared the clothes, carried on in its rudest and most elementary form all the work which is to-day the object of modern industry. But since these simple forms of labor have developed into architecture and agriculture and manufactures, it is held that women can not follow their old occupations under their new forms, under penalty of personal deterioration and social disaster. It is the conditions under which work is done, apparently, which constitute it domestic work, rather than the nature of the work itself. ”

“ When American women do engage in domestic work out of their own families, it is not the easiest and best-paid positions which they prefer. They are not to be found as nurses, seamstresses, and chambermaids in wealthy families, but rather as the sole workers in small and simple country families, where they have the kitchen to themselves, and the contrast between the social position of themselves and their employers is not so great. ”

“ There is a general inclination to compare the results of work under unfavorable conditions with those of married life under favorable ones. If we compare the health of the same class of women, under equally favorable or unfavorable conditions of work or of married life, it is extremely doubtful if the result would be as much in favor of the latter as the opponents of non-domestic work for women take for granted. ”

“ So in other work, it is not necessary that women should do every part of it precisely as men do it. The question is, Is there not in most kinds of work a place which women can fill to advantage under suitable conditions?
Women are much more fettered than men by conventional requirements and prohibitions. They come to any new occupation hampered by the restraints and burdens so imposed. Their dress is modeled upon fashions adopted by women in society, to whom dress is a profession, occupying a great part of their time, strength, and intelligence ”

“ It would seem that there must be a fallacy in the view that would make the natural provision for honorable and satisfactory support depend upon a relation that does not cover the whole need in any case, and can not be certainly counted upon in any individual case. The same tendency toward complexity of conditions and relations, which makes equality in domestic service a thing of the past rather than of the future, would lead us to anticipate that the number of women workers must increase rather than diminish. ”

“ The proportion of persons who pass through life unmarried is comparatively small. The mass of working-women is composed not of middle-aged single women, to whom alone the criticism could refer that they have preferred other work to marriage. The great bulk is composed of young women under twenty-five, whose families can not afford to support them for the sake of their domestic work, and the majority of these will probably eventually marry. There is also a considerable number of married women who, by the death or inability of the husband, are thrown back upon the necessity of self-support. ”

“ But if the personal relations of woman to the family are thus fixed and enduring, her industrial relation to it is by no means so unchanging. The work which she must do for it varies according to external conditions. There is no one kind of work which absolutely belongs to domestic life; there is hardly any kind of work that has not in some phase of society been considered to belong to it. ”

“ The American girl, thrown upon her own resources, struggles miserably to keep soul and body together upon the scanty wages of the shop or the factory. Yet so decided is the disinclination to domestic service, the largest and most profitable field for women to work, that American women have virtually abandoned it. The Irish girls gradually absorb the same distaste, and are less available as they become Americanized. We already hear the suggestion in favor of the Chinese, that they are needed to supplant the Irish servants, as the Irish have taken the place of Americans. ”

“ Domestic work, therefore, is all work for the family which, under our present arrangements, must be done at home, upon a small scale, by individual workers, free from the organization and competition of business. ”

“ The dread of it arises from the same sort of feeling which has made it so difficult for geologists to accept the fact that the wonderful changes recorded upon the surface of the earth have been accomplished by the same agencies which are at work upon it to-day, so silently as to be imperceptible to the multitude. ”

“ Nothing is more frequently quoted as an exemplification of the brutalizing effect of masculine work upon women, than the results of field-labor as it is carried on by them in some parts of Germany and other places, where women are considered, and treated, as mere drudges. ”

“ The same is true of young men not in society. Their life is passed almost exclusively among men from their school-days upward. Their acquaintance with women of their own age is extremely limited and superficial. The more complete the separation of men and women in work, the more must this division in life be the result. The more numerous the common interests and occupations in which they meet in recognized and honorable companionship, the more numerous the chances for suitable and happy marriage. ”

“ It is generally assumed that the women who have broken down in outside work would not have done so in married life, but it is precisely the feeble health that fails in one that fails in the other also. ”

“ There is no reason why what is now done by domestic service should always continue to be so done. As weaving and tailoring have gone, so the making of women's and children's clothing is now going. There is no reason inherent in the nature of things why washing, cooking, mending, etc., should not go also, and be done by business organizations from outside, instead of by domestic service. ”

“ Precisely in the degree that outside occupations partake of any of these characteristics of domestic work, are they considered appropriate to women. On the other hand, how feminine soever the nature of a work, as soon as it is seized upon by the modern system of outside labor, begins to be carried on upon a large scale, and to be subject to the laws of business competition, it thenceforth ceases to belong to women. It has departed from the conditions of domestic work. ”

“ It should be considered more obligatory in the case of girls than of boys, thus to guarantee them the possibility of independence, both because they are less able to make opportunities for themselves when unexpectedly called upon to do so, and because of the greater dangers to which helplessness exposes them. There is no greater source of suffering and vice among women than the fallacy of taking for granted that they will not need to support themselves. ”

“ If the conditions of domestic work are those most favorable to the well-being of women, what is the reason of their growing distaste for domestic service? The answers to these two questions are very closely connected with each other, and with the main question of the industrial position of women. ”

“ The less complicated and extensive the work that necessarily devolves upon a woman in her household, the more chance for its successful accomplishment. The more she can call upon skillful help, the less likely the family will be to suffer from her deficiency in any direction. ”

“ The mother of a family, whether rich or poor, must be a sort of "Jack of all trades," and often goes through life with the discouraging sense that, in one or other of these important departments, her good intentions will never supply the lack of natural faculty. ”

“ Another great advantage that would come from a general recognition that the occupation of women in non-domestic work tends inevitably to increase, would be the impulse it would give to the industrial training of girls. Parents do not think it worth while to educate their daughters for any pursuit, because they consider industrial occupation for a girl an undesirable exception, not to be provided for. ”

“ There is no reason why bakers should necessarily supply inferior bread, or why cooking done on a large scale should always be inferior to that done at home. That the work which remains to be so dealt with is the most difficult to be thus treated is the reason it has remained to the last. ”

“ Numbers of girls educated at girls' schools, and afterward living at home in narrow circumstances, or going into work conducted by and among women, remain single because they pass the age for marriage without sufficient opportunity for meeting men of their own standing, or make unsatisfactory marriages, because they do not choose from knowledge, but accept the only opportunity that offers. ”

“ As a matter of fact, support through marriage can not he co-extensive with the need of support for women. It does not cover the whole period of working-life, and it fails to be a support in a considerable proportion of cases. ”

“ It is creditable to a man to refuse any domestic position that entails the wearing of a livery, while the uniform of even the lowest ranks of the public service—of the policeman or the postman—is assumed with satisfaction. The white cap and apron that become almost a uniform when worn by the graduates of the training-schools for nurses, as the mark of a superior class, are assumed with reluctance as an accompaniment of domestic service. ”

“ It may be objected that the failure to marry is the reason so many women are seeking employment; and that, were marriage sufficiently universal, the immense majority of women would be occupied in their own homes. ”