Women's labor

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore we still find that hard and unfair industrial conditions are far more readily accepted by women than by men. This natural meekness of the subjected sex was, of course, even more in evidence when women first came into industry. The early women workers had been so accustomed to obedience at home, that obedience to the rules of their employers seemed natural. If the conditions of their toil were hard, if long hours of incessant labor and insanitary workrooms left them pale and weak, they did not complain. ”

“ For instance, the subject of the organization of wage-earning women is indeed bound up with the industrial history of the United States, with the legal and social position of women, with the handicaps under which the colored races suffer, and with the entire labor problem. ”

“ This effort of woman to invade all the higher forms of labor is a force battling with the established order of sexual relation. The inertia which it encounters is the universal attendant of established facts in society. If this effort of woman is continued into coming generations, I have no doubt but her relations to society and labor will be in many respects modified. But I believe a long series of generations must pass before women can equal the labor value of men in the professions. ”

“ If, in the coming social order, three or four women will perform the labor that is performed by twenty women to-day, there will be a tremendous release of labor power that is being wasted under the present unorganized, antiquated system of keeping house. ”

“ Thus recognizing the truth that as long as women continue to be stolen or bought, their human individualities are ignored, let us observe the division of labor that results between the sexes; determined partly by this unqualified despotism of men and partly by the limitations which certain incapacities of women entail.
The slave-class in a primitive society consists of the women; and the earliest division of labor is that which arises between them and their masters. For a long time no other division of labor exists. ”

“ So the era of Feminine Reconstruction resulted in the working woman and the thinking woman; and on these lies much of the hope of our country's future. Thus the Civil War at the last brought us a blessing instead of a curse, and in the halls of labor American womanhood once more joined hands in amity and became a unit in its aims and influence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Women in Industry.—The period of this ferment was also the age of the industrial revolution in America, the rise of the factory system, and the growth of mill towns. The labor of women was transferred from the homes to the factories. Then arose many questions: the hours of labor, the sanitary conditions of the mills, the pressure of foreign immigration on native labor, the wages of women as compared with those of men, and the right of married women to their own earnings. Labor organizations sprang up among working women. ”

“ Resolved, That the inadequate compensation which the labor of women now commands, is the source of inexpressible individual misery and social demoralization; that inasmuch as the law of supply and demand will always regulate the remuneration of labor, the diversity of female employments and her free access to every branch of business, are indispensable to the virtue, happiness, and well-being of society. ”

“ So asked the feminists. The factory called for women as labor; they became the clerks, the teachers, the typists, the nurses. Medicine and the law opened their doors, at least in part. And now we are on the verge of universal suffrage, with women entering into the affairs of the world, theoretically at least the equals of man.
But with the entrance of woman into many varied professions and occupations, with a wider access to experience and knowledge, arose what may be called the era of the "individualization of woman." ”

“ In the first place, woman’s twofold function apparently necessitates a double preparation and a divided interest and life; in the second place, our industry demands a standardized worker for the whole of his time. In consequence of this situation, women throughout the period of factory labor have been among the greatest sufferers from low wages, long hours, and unsanitary conditions. ”

“ Woman in Industry. 1.—Development and Extension of Female Labor.
The endeavor of women to earn their own living and to attain personal independence is, to some extent at least, regarded as a just one by bourgeois society. ”

“ Again, when some of them were complaining of unjust wages, and some of places where they had been unable to collect the amount due them after working, I spoke of the mission of the Knights of Labor, and the newly organized society for women. They were all surprised to hear that there were any means to aid women in having justice. ”

“ In the woman question then we find two contending parties, just as in the labor question, which relates to the position of the workingman in human society. Those who wish to maintain everything as it is, are quick to relegate woman to her so-called “natural profession,” believing that they have thereby settled the whole matter. They do not recognize that millions of women are not placed in a position enabling them to fulfill their natural function of wifehood and motherhood, owing to reasons that we shall discuss at length later on. ”

“ The activity on the part of the bourgeois associations of women for the abolition of female labor and for the admission of women to the higher professions, at present mainly, if not exclusively, appropriated by men, aims principally at procuring a position in life for women from the social circles just sketched. ”

“ But when the connection was lost between work and marriage, when girls were forced by machinery and division of labor to undertake tasks which had no vital interest to them, there grew up a hybrid class of women workers in whose lives there is contradiction and internal if not external discord. ”

“ The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses. ”

“ With this growing economic importance, and with the increasing need of capitalism for more children to augment the labor and military supply, the power of women will probably increase marvelously during the next few years. Governments will reward the surrender of woman to man, while employers compete among themselves for her labor power. ”

“ They will desire the elevation of their sex, and do what they can to bring it about, regardless of the shafts of ridicule sent by selfish men and heartless women.
"By elevating the standard and augmenting the compensation of woman's labor," a complete revolution would be wrought in the social and political standing of woman. Let woman once surmount the difficulties that now oppose her, and take her stand with dignified [Pg vii] reserve, laboring and claiming what is her right as much as men—free labor and fair wages—and liberal men will applaud and admire her. ”

“ In the large cities of the North, most working women are acquainted with others engaged in different occupations, and so may learn of places to be filled in them. In the South, a smaller number of women have been dependent on their own exertions, owing to the existence of slave-labor, and the comparative smallness of immigration.
I strongly advocate the plan of every female having a practical knowledge of some occupation by which to earn a livelihood. How do men fare that are raised without being fitted for any trade or profession, particularly those in the humbler walks of life? ”

“ Further, that approximate equalization of the sexes in numbers which results from diminishing militancy and increasing industrialness, conduces to the elevation of women; since, in proportion as the supply of males available for carrying on social sustentation increases, the labor of social sustentation falls less heavily on the females. ”

“ I look about at the laundry workers and think: [97] Suppose we decide nothing shall be done for these girls until they demand it themselves and then have charge of it themselves. In other words, suppose we let welfare work and social legislation wait on organization. The people who talk that way are often college professors or the upper crust of labor. They have either had no touch or lost touch with the rank and file of women workers. It is going to be years and years and years, if ever, before women in this country organize by and large to a point where they can become permanently effective. ”

“ It is only civilization that has released woman from the tasks which she was accustomed to perform during the days when the chief sources of sustenance were found in the spoils of the chase, the duty of providing such sustenance naturally falling to the men of the community or household. This division of labor if so it can be called has been in all countries and among all peoples destructive to the claims of woman to high consideration. Among primitive peoples there has never been recognized that which is now known as chivalry toward the weaker sex ”

“ 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 [Pg 155] take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage they could get. ”

“ XII THE WORKING WOMAN AND THE VOTE Olive Schreiner, in "Woman and Labor," lays it down as almost axiomatic that "the women of no race or class will ever rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their relation to society, however intense their suffering, and however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of society requires their submission ”

“ Then, too, it is objected on the part of some that sex legislation is unwise of itself. The women themselves have not always looked with favor upon the passage of acts for the regulation of their labor, and often complain of such as an infringement of their personal privileges as adults. They complain that the competition of labor is already severe, and that by imposing upon [pg 373] them the limitations of certain acts the difficulty of making a subsistence is increased. ”

“ Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till female trades and callings are all overstocked. We are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed needlewomen, of the exactions and extortions practiced on the frail sex in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands ”

“ She went to work in a clothing factory, her wages being $2.50 a week. She had ample opportunities to see the degradations of our economic system, especially as it affects women. So it was not strange that she should be drawn into the American labor movement, which was then, with the Knights of Labor, the eight-hour agitation, and the propaganda of the Socialists and the Anarchists, at its height. ”

“ The demand for labor is good all through the country. There is no part of our business where women could be advantageously introduced, where not now employed. The women have all the facilities a city affords for mental and aesthetic culture. ”

“ But omitting those activities for which women are, during large parts of their lives, physically incapacitated, or into which they cannot enter in considerable numbers without fatally diminishing population, we cannot define the division of labor between the sexes, further than by saying that, before civilization begins, the stronger sex forces the weaker to do all the drudgery ”

“ But plans need to be devised, pursuits require to be opened, by which women can earn a respectable livelihood. It is the great want of the day. It is in order to meet that want that this work has been prepared. The few employments that have been open to women are more than full. To withdraw a number from the few markets of female labor already crowded to excess, by directing them to avenues where they are wanted, would thereby benefit both parties. ”

“ There were still recognized limitations to female effort, far straiter than those now laid down, if indeed any limitations, other than those drawn by physical conditions can be said now to exist. As formerly in educational circles, so now in those of affairs there was overcrowding among the women who sought work; and just in time to relieve the stress there was opened a new field of labor, peculiarly adapted to the feminine nature and need, in the manipulation of the novel instrument of record. ”