Meta Stern Lilienthal

“ THE EARLY WOMEN WORKERS
It is evident that glaring evils of factory life existed from the beginning, and that in many respects conditions were much worse than at present, especially for the women. The wage-earning woman, in the early days of the factories, stood unprotected by law, her problems ignored or disregarded by society. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, that she learn to protect herself, that she learn to employ those infallible weapons that have ever given strength to the weak: co-operation and organization. Yet the wage-earning woman was slow to learn. ”

“ The modern, enlightened working woman, deeply conscious of a bond of solidarity between herself and her fellow workers, keenly interested in the great, social problems of the hour, and fully aware of the connection between public life and her own personal needs, is the forerunner of a coming age, as the intelligent, ambitious, middle class mill girl of the early nineteenth century was a forerunner of present-day womanhood. ”

“ When the factory system, with its concomitant woman and child wage labor, and with all the crying evils of its early history, was already fully established in England, industry was still carried on under the old domestic system in the American colonies. This was due to the fact that England—eager to become mistress of the world in industry, as she was mistress of the world in discovery and conquest—jealously guarded her inventions, her machinery and her skilled artisans. ”

“ The mill owners were even regarded as public benefactors for giving employment to women who would otherwise have been idle, and Hannah was not snubbed by her well-to-do friends for being a factory girl. Only when women, under economic pressure, began to invade the skilled trades and learned professions that had formerly been the undisputed realm of man, and when men, also under economic pressure, were compelled to compete with women on the industrial field, only then was the cry raised that woman's place is home, and that to seek employment on the broader fields of life is unwomanly. ”

“ The machine, though enslaving millions of individual women, still was the liberator of womanhood. The factory door, though signifying hopeless drudgery in countless individual lives, nevertheless meant for woman the open gate-way to freedom. ”

“ It must be remembered that woman was immured within the four walls of home during almost the entire history of civilization. In the heroic age of Greece we find the women spinning and weaving in their homes, while the men produced a philosophy, a literature, an art at which we still marvel to-day. We find the Roman maids and matrons spinning and weaving in the Roman houses, while the men made Rome mistress of the world. ”

“ When the old, domestic spinning-wheel had become a mere toy beside the spinning-jenny, when the old-fashioned hand-loom was rendered useless and valueless by the power-loom, when one time-honored woman's work after another was transferred from the home to the factory, it was only natural and inevitable that woman should follow her work, that she, too, should accomplish the transition from her age-long work-shop, the family homestead, to the world's new work-shop, equipped with machinery and steam-power, the factory. ”

“ Historically, too, there is a powerful link between workingmen and women, because the women and the male workers of the world have borne a common lot through the ages. The women and the workers have always supplied the material wants of society, and have always been exploited and oppressed. Therefore, it is not mere chance, but an inevitable result of social and industrial evolution that the workers and the women awoke to a consciousness of their wrongs almost simultaneously, that the labor movement and the woman movement began at about the same time. ”

“ For to-day every article of clothing is produced outside the home, and if every woman would refrain from making clothes for herself and her family, the world would still be clothed. But it was not so in colonial days. If the old-time housekeeper had refused to spin and weave, to cut and sew, her family would have had no clothes. In the same way they would have had no food if she had refused to cook, pickle, preserve, milk, churn, bake and brew. Industry was a domestic function and rested mainly in the hands of women. The colonial housekeeper was not only a consumer, but also a producer. ”

“ While in colonial days every woman had sewed all the clothes for the members of her family, the rise of industry and commerce led to the establishment of the ready-made clothing business, and it was this particular line of development that made women wage-workers in this particular industry. When a young girl who was skillful with the needle could earn more by sewing shirts for a merchant than she could possibly save by making all the clothes for her father and brothers, she naturally ceased to be an individual producer for her family and became a social producer, a wage-worker. ”

“ In the evening, when her day's work is done, the modern housekeeper will light the gas or—better still—turn on the electric light, and settle down to read or sew in a cheerfully lighted room. The colonial housekeeper often contented herself with sitting by the fire in a room lighted only by the red glow from the hearth. ”

“ When the barrier between man's work and woman's work had once been broken down, when economic necessity compelled women to seek ever new fields of employment, woman's possibilities of achievement along any line of human work had become as boundless and unlimited as man's. ”

“ During the early period of settlement, women had often helped to build the rough log-cabins that became the first homesteads of their families. They had helped to manufacture the crude furnishings. They had even helped—most male occupation of all—to guard their homes, by armed force, against the attacks of the Indians. But when settled conditions prevailed, there was a clearly defined division of labor along sex lines. We must therefore look to the American farm of colonial days to obtain a true and vivid picture of man's work and woman's work before the rise of modern industry. ”

“ Everything a man wore was made in his own or some other home, from the straw-hat made of meadow grass, picked dried, bleached and braided by women of his family or of his neighborhood, to the socks knitted by his wife or mother, and the shoes made by the village cobbler in his little domestic shop. In all New England, industrially so important to-day, there was not one single manufacturing town. It was during the second half of the eighteenth century that the industrial revolution set in, first in the mother country, England, and later in America. ”

“ The making of commodities, particularly of food and clothing, was woman's domain, her undisputed task, the very purpose of her life in the economic scheme of society. But although the colonial woman was essentially and always a producer, and although her productive work was often gainful in character, she was not an independent wage-worker in the modern sense of the word. Not the individual, but the family, was the economic unit, and the husband and father, as recognized head of the family, disposed of the earnings of the women. ”

“ A larger social life, intellectual opportunities and economic independence, these were the three inestimable advantages factory labor gave to women. But hand in hand with its advantages came the evils, evils that have persisted throughout the development of modern industry, until to-day they are recognized to be among the greatest of our social problems. Long hours, poor ventilation, dangerous machinery, the handling of poisonous substances, continuous standing, the nervous strain of speeding and other evils of factory labor have affected both men and women. ”

“ What a difference the pay envelope made to the woman herself, how it gave her self-reliance and self-respect, cannot be understood by men unless they are able, mentally, to place themselves in the woman's position. Let a man work for an employer for just his board and lodging, and let him beg that employer for a few dollars every time he needs a new suit or a pair of new shoes, and he may be able to appreciate the difference the pay envelope has made to women. ”

“ The biennial national conventions, held in Boston, New York and St. Louis, aroused widespread interest in the condition of women workers among the general public and interest in trade-unionism among the workers themselves. It is a movement for and by working women, one that proves that working women have learned the lesson of co-operation and have evolved the social spirit to a marked degree. The main principles that the league stands for are: organization of all workers into trade unions; equal pay for equal work; the eight-hour day, a minimum wage scale, and woman suffrage. ”

“ She has fully adapted herself to woman's new environment, and stands prepared to take a leading part in coming struggles for justice and freedom, in behalf of her sex, as well as in behalf of her class. For the modern, enlightened working woman is representative of the two greatest movements of modern times, the labor movement and the woman movement. As a woman, she demands social and political equality. As a worker, she demands economic justice. ”

“ The strike-breaking and wage lowering of women at first caused men to regard the women in industry as enemies. But when all attempts to keep women out of industry proved unsuccessful, when it became evident that the female wage-worker was as truly a factor of modern, socialized industry as the machine, workingmen gradually perceived that working women remained their enemies only so long as they were excluded from their organizations, and were compelled to accept lower wages and inferior conditions. ”

“ They were working mainly at occupations not yet sought by men, as in the textile trades, or they were performing some simple part of a manufacturing process in which the skilled and well-paid parts were performed by men, as in the making of shoes. But when men and women began to compete for the same jobs in the same trades, when women began to displace men in some trades owing to the cheapness of their labor power, and began to enter others as strike breakers, the ire of the men was roused, not against industrial conditions but against the women. ”

“ Of course employers at once saw their advantage and before the laws went into effect compelled their employees to sign special contracts, pledging themselves to work twelve hours as before. Countless strikes were precipitated to enforce the ten-hour law, but labor was not yet prepared to take up the unequal fight with capital and so the cause was temporarily lost. But these great struggles in which women participated so prominently were a powerful factor in arousing them to class consciousness, and in educating them to an understanding of their own position. ”

“ But as the exception always proves the rule, so these exceptional women only emphasize the fact that during the period of domestic industry the woman's place was home. The colonial home was the work-shop of colonial society. It was the place where the most essential necessities of life were produced, and women were the producers of these necessities. In every home at least one woman—usually several—was engaged in socially necessary labor. In every home women were performing their full share of the world's work. ”

“ The over-crowding of those occupations that have always been regarded as woman's work brought about such deplorable conditions of endless working hours and v/retched pay that to the great mass of female breadwinners it meant a choice between starvation and the seeking of new means of self-support. Irresistible economic pressure was the force that opened to women this new, great field of employment: trade and transportation. To the more educated women of the middle class it opened that other great field of employment, classified in the census as professional service. ”

“ So working women came into the labor movement at a time when there was as yet no organized woman movement. Years before middle class women began to struggle for woman's right to a higher education, her right to learn and practice the liberal professions, her right to equality before the law and, finally, her right to political equality, working women were struggling for a living wage, a reasonable working day, and decent conditions of toil. ”

“ So the majority of women, obliged to be entirely or partly self-supporting, turned to one or another branch of the sewing trades as a means of earning their livelihood. Women and young girls who were prejudiced against factory labor took up sewing because it could be done at home. Married women and widows, who could not leave their homes and children, took in sewing to be done in the intervals of their housework, and ladies of aristocratic breeding, reduced to poor circumstances, did needle work at home to earn their pin money or to increase the family income. ”