this brief account of trade unionism in relation to the working-women of the united states has been written to furnish a handbook of the subject, and to supply in convenient form answers to the questions that are daily put to the writer and to all others who feel the organization of women to be a vital issue.
to treat the subject exhaustively would be impossible without years of research, but meanwhile it seemed well to furnish this short popular account of an important movement, in order to satisfy the eager desire for information regarding the working-woman, and her attitude towards the modern labor movement, and towards the national industries in regard to which she plays so essential a part. women are doing their share of their country's work under entirely novel conditions, and it therefore becomes a national responsibility to see that the human worker is not sacrificed to the material product.
many of the difficulties and dangers surrounding the working-woman affect the workingman also, but on the other hand, there are special reasons, springing out of the ancestral claims which life makes upon woman, arising also out of her domestic and social environment, and again out of her special function as mother, why the condition of the wage-earning woman should be the subject of separate consideration. it is impossible to discuss intelligently wages, hours and sanitation in reference to women workers unless these facts are borne in mind.
what makes the whole matter of overwhelming importance is the wasteful way in which the health, the lives, and the capacity for future motherhood of our young girls are squandered during the few brief years they spend as human machines in our factories and stores. youth, joy and the possibility of future happiness lost forever, in order that we may have cheap (or dear), waists or shoes or watches.
further, since the young girl is the future mother of the race, it is she who chooses the father of her children. every condition, either economic or social, whether of training or of environment, which in any degree tends to limit her power of choice, or to narrow its range, or to lower her standards of selection, works out in a national and racial deprivation. and surely no one will deny that the degrading industrial conditions under which such a large number of our young girls live and work do all of these, do limit and narrow the range of selection and do lower the standards of the working-girl in making her marriage choice.
give her fairer wages, shorten her hours of toil, let her have the chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent, normal woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. she will not be tempted to passively accept any man who offers himself, just in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony and deprivation.
so far, women and girls, exploited themselves, have been used as an instrument yet further to cheapen and exploit men. in this direction things could hardly reach a lower level than they have done.
now the national conscience has at length been touched regarding women, and we venture to hope that in proportion as women have been used to debase industrial standards, so in like degree as the nation insists upon better treatment being accorded her, the results may so react upon the whole field of industry that men too may be sharers in the benefits.
but there is a mightier force at work, a force more significant and more characteristic of our age than even the awakened civic conscience, showing itself in just and humane legislation. that is the spirit of independence expressed in many different forms, markedly in the new desire and therefore in the new capacity for collective action which women are discovering in themselves to a degree never known before.
as regards wage-earning working-women, the two main channels through which this new spirit is manifesting itself are first, their increasing efforts after industrial organization, and next in the more general realization by them of the need of the vote as a means of self-expression, whether individual or collective.
thus the trade union on the one hand, offering to the working-woman protection in the earning of her living, links up her interests with those of her working brother; while on the other hand, in the demand for the vote women of all classes are recognizing common disabilities, a common sisterhood and a common hope.
this book was almost completed when the sound of the war of the nations broke upon our ears. it would be vain to deny that to all idealists, of every shade of thought, the catastrophe came as a stupefying blow. "it is unbelievable, impossible," said one. "it can't last," added another. reaction from that extreme of incredulity led many to take refuge in hopeless, inactive despair and cynicism.
even the few months that have elapsed have enabled both the over-hopeful and the despairing to recover their lost balance, and to take up again their little share of the immemorial task of humanity, to struggle onward, ever onward and upward.
what had become of the movement of the workers, that they could have permitted a war of so many nations, in which the workers of every country involved must be the chief sufferers?
the labor movement, like every other idealist movement, contains a sprinkling of unpopular pessimistic souls, who drive home, in season and out of season, a few unpopular truths. one of these unwelcome truths is to the effect that the world is not following after the idealists half as fast as they think it is. reformers of every kind make an amount of noise in the world these days out of all proportion to their numbers. they deceive themselves, and to a certain extent they deceive others. the wish to see their splendid visions a reality leads to the belief that they are already on the point of being victors over the hard-to-move and well-intrenched powers that be. as to the quality of his thinking and the soundness of his reasoning, the idealist is ahead of the world all the time, and just as surely the world pays him the compliment of following in his trail. but only in its own time and at its own good pleasure. it is in quantity that he is short. there is never enough of him to do all the tasks, to be in every place at once. rarely has he converts enough to assure a majority of votes or voices on his side.
so the supreme crises of the world come, and he has for the time to step aside; to be a mere onlooker; to wait in awe-struck patience until the pessimist beholds the realization of his worst fears; until the optimist can take heart again, and reviving his crushed and withered hopes once more set their fulfillment forward in the future.
in spite of all, the idealist is ever justified. he is justified today in europe no less than in america; justified by the ruin and waste that have come in the train of following outworn political creeds, and yielding to animosities inherited from past centuries; justified by the disastrous results of unchecked national economic competition, when the age of international co?peration is already upon us; justified by the utter contempt shown by masculine rulers and statesmen for the constructive and the fostering side of life, typified and embodied in the woman half of society.
no! our ideals are not changed, nor are they in aught belittled by what has occurred. it is for us to cherish and guard them more faithfully, to serve them more devotedly than ever. even if we must from now on walk softly all the days of our life, and prepare to accept unresentfully disappointment and heart-sickening delay, we can still draw comfort from this:
hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.
meanwhile we sit, as it were, facing a vast stage, in front of us a dropped curtain. from behind that veil there reaches our strained ears now and then a cry of agony unspeakable, and again a faint whisper of hope.
but until that curtain is raised, after the hand of the war-fiend is stayed; until we can again communicate, each with the other as human beings and not as untamed, primitive savages, we can know in detail little that has happened, and foresee nothing that may hereafter happen.
that some of america's industrial and social problems will be affected radically by the results of the european war goes without saying; how, and in what degree, it is impossible to foretell.
meanwhile our work is here, and we have to pursue it. whatever will strengthen the labor movement, or the woman movement, goes to strengthen the world forces of peace. let us hold fast to that. and conversely, whatever economic or ethical changes will help to insure a permanent basis for world peace will grant to both the labor movement and the woman movement enlarged opportunity to come into their own.
alice henry,
chicago, july, 1915.
