The Trade Union Woman Part 3

For four years Mrs. Barry did fine work. She combined in a remarkable degree qualities rarely found in the same individual. She followed in no one's tracks, but planned out her own methods, and carried out a campaign in which she fulfilled the duties of investigator, organizer and public lecturer. This at a time when the means of traveling were far more primitive than they are today; and not in one state alone, for she covered almost all the Eastern half of the country. We know that she went as far west as Leadville, Colorado, because of the touching little story that is told of her visit there. In that town she had founded the Martha Washington a.s.sembly of the Knights of Labor, and when she left she was given a small parcel with the request that she would not open it until she reached home. But, as she tells it herself,

My woman's curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the package, and found therein a purse which had been carried for fifteen years by Brother Horgan, who was with us last year, and inside of that a little souvenir in the shape of five twenty-dollar gold pieces. You say that I was the instrument through whose means the Martha Washington a.s.sembly was organized.

This is partially true, but it is also true that the good and true Knights of Leadville are as much the founder as I am.

She possessed a social vision, and saw the problems of the wrongs of women in relation to the general industrial question, so that in her organizing work she was many-sided. The disputes that she was forever settling, the apathy that she was forever encountering, she dealt with in the tolerant spirit of one to whom these were but incidents in the growth of the labor movement. In dealing with the "little ones" in that movement we hear of her as only patient and helpful and offering words of encouragement, however small the visible results of her efforts might be.

But towards those set in high places she could be intensely scornful, as for instance when she is found appealing to the order itself, asking that "more consideration be given, and more thorough educational measures be adopted on behalf of the working-women of our land, the majority of whom are entirely ignorant of the economic and industrial question, which is to them of vital importance, and they must ever remain so while the selfishness of their brothers in toil is carried to such an extent as I find it to be among those who have sworn to demand equal pay for equal work. Thus far in the history of our order that part of our platform has been but a mockery of the principle intended."

Mrs. Barry started out to make regular investigations of different trades in which women were employed, in order that she might accurately inform herself and others as to what actual conditions were. But here she received her first serious check. She had no legal authority to enter any establishment where the proprietor objected, and even in other cases, where permission had been given, she discovered afterwards to her dismay that her visits had led to the dismissal of those who had in all innocence given her information, as in the case quoted of Sister Annie Conboy, a worker in a mill, in Auburn, New York. But little was gained by shutting out such a bright and observant woman. Mrs. Barry's practical knowledge of factory conditions was already wide and her relations with workers of the poorest and most oppressed cla.s.s so intimate that little that she wanted to know seems to have escaped her, and she was often the channel through which information was furnished to the then newly established state bureaus of labor.

Baffled, however, in the further carrying out of her plans for a thorough, and for that day, nation-wide investigation, she turned her attention mainly to education and organizing, establishing new local unions, helping those already in existence, and trying everywhere to strengthen the spirit of the workers in striving to procure for themselves improved standards.

In her second year of work Mrs. Barry had the a.s.sistance of a most able headquarters secretary, Mary O'Reilly, a cotton mill hand from Providence, Rhode Island. During eleven months there were no fewer than three hundred and thirty-seven applications for the presence of the organizer. Out of these Mrs. Barry filled two hundred and thirteen, traveling to nearly a hundred cities and towns, and delivering one hundred public addresses. She was in great demand as a speaker before women's organizations outside the labor movement, for it was just about that time that women more fortunately placed were beginning to be generally aroused to a shamefaced sense of their responsibility for the hard lot of their poorer sisters. Thus she spoke before the aristocratic Century Club of Philadelphia, and attended the session of the International Women's Congress held in Washington, D.C., in March and April, 1887.

The wages of but two dollars and fifty cents or three dollars for a week of eighty-four hours; the intolerable sufferings of the women and child wage-earners recorded in her reports make heart-rending reading today, especially when we realize how great in amount and how continuous has been the suffering in all the intervening years.

So much publicity, however, and the undaunted spirit and unbroken determination of a certain number of the workers have a.s.suredly had their effect, and some improvements there have been.

Speeding up is, in all probability, worse today than ever. It is difficult to compare wages without making a close investigation in different localities and in many trades, and testing, by a comparison with the cost of living, the real and not merely the money value of wages, but there is a general agreement among authorities that wages on the whole have not kept pace with the workers' necessary expenditures. But in one respect the worker today is much better off.

At the time we are speaking of, the facts of the wrong conditions, the low wages, the long hours, and the many irritating tyrannies the workers had to bear, only rarely reached the public ear. Let us thank G.o.d for our muck-rakers. Their stories and their pictures are all the while making people realize that there is such a thing as a common responsibility for the wrongs of individuals.

Here is a managerial economy for you. The girls in a corset factory in Newark, New Jersey, if not inside when the whistle stopped blowing (at seven o'clock apparently) were locked out till half-past seven, and then they were docked two hours for waste power.

In a linen mill in Paterson, New Jersey, we are told how in one branch the women stood on a stone floor with water from a revolving cylinder flying constantly against the breast. They had in the coldest weather to go home with underclothing dripping because they were allowed neither s.p.a.ce nor a few moments of time in which to change their clothing.

Mrs. Barry's work, educating, organizing, and latterly pushing forward protective legislation continued up till her marriage with O.R. Lake, a union printer, in 1890, when she finally withdrew from active partic.i.p.ation in the labor movement.

Mrs. Barry could never have been afforded the opportunity even to set out on her mission, had it not been for the support and cooperation of other women delegates. The leaders in the Knights of Labor were ahead of their time in so freely inviting women to take part in their deliberations. It was at the seventh convention, in 1883, that the first woman delegate appeared. She was Miss Mary Stirling, a shoe-worker from Philadelphia. Miss Kate Dowling, of Rochester, New York, had also been elected, but did not attend. Next year saw two women, Miss Mary Hannafin, saleswoman, also from Philadelphia, and Miss Louisa M. Eaton, of Lynn, probably a shoe-worker. During the preceding year Miss Hannafin had taken an active part in protecting the girls discharged in a lock-out in a Philadelphia shoe factory, not only against the employer, but even against the weakness of some of the men of her own a.s.sembly who were practically taking the side of the strike-breakers, by organizing them into a rival a.s.sembly. The question came up in the convention for settlement, and the delegates voted for Miss Hannafin in the stand she had taken.

It was upon her initiative, likewise, at the convention in the following year, that the committee was formed to collect statistics of women's work, and in the year after (1886), it was again Miss Hannafin, the indefatigable, backed by the splendid force of sixteen women delegates, who succeeded in having Mrs. Barry appointed general investigator.

One of the most active and devoted women in the Knights of Labor was Mrs. George Rodgers, then and still of Chicago. For a good many years she had been in a quiet way educating and organizing among the girls in her own neighborhood, and had organized a working-women's union there. For seven years she attended the state a.s.sembly of the Knights of Labor, and was judge of the district court of the organization.

But it is by her attendance as one of the sixteen women at the 1886 National Convention, which was held in Richmond, Virginia, that she is best remembered. She registered as "housekeeper" and a housekeeper she must indeed have been, with all her outside interests a busy housemother. There accompanied her to the gathering her baby of two weeks old, the youngest of her twelve children. To this youthful trade unionist, a little girl, the convention voted the highest numbered badge (800), and also presented her with a valuable watch and chain, for use in future years.

One cannot help suspecting that such an unusual representation of women must have been the reward of some special effort, for it was never repeated. Subsequent conventions saw but two or three seated to plead women's cause. At the 1890 convention, the occasion on which Mrs. Barry sent in her letter of resignation, there was but one woman delegate. She was the remarkable Alzina P. Stevens, originally a mill hand, but at this time a journalist of Toledo, Ohio. The men offered the now vacant post of general investigator to her, but she declined.

However, between this period and her too early death, Mrs. Stevens was yet to do notable work for the labor movement.

During the years that the Knights of Labor were active, the women members were not only to be found in the mixed a.s.semblies, but between 1881 and 1886 there are recorded the chartering of no fewer than one hundred and ninety local a.s.semblies composed entirely of women. Even distant centers like Memphis, Little Rock and San Francisco were drawn upon, as well as the manufacturing towns in Ontario, Canada. Besides those formed of workers in separate trades, such as shoe-workers, mill operatives, and garment-workers, there were locals, like the federal labor unions of today, in which those engaged in various occupations would unite together. Some of the women's locals existed for a good many years, but a large proportion are recorded as having lapsed or suspended after one or two years. Apart from the usual difficulties in holding women's organizations together, there is no doubt that many locals, both of men and of women, were organized far too hastily, without the members having the least understanding of the first principles of trade unionism, or indeed of any side of the industrial question.

The organizers attempted far too much, and neglected the slow, solid work of preparation, and the no less important follow-up work; this had much to do with the early decline of the entire organization. The women's end of the movement suffered first and most quickly. From 1890 on, the women's membership became smaller and smaller, until practical interest by women and for women in the body wholly died out.

But the genuine workers had sown seed of which another movement was to reap the results. The year 1886 was the year of the first meeting of the American Federation of Labor as we know it. With its gradual development, the growth of the modern trade-union movement among women is inextricably bound up.

III

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ORGANIZATION

As the Knights of Labor declined, the American Federation of Labor was rising to power and influence. It was at first known as the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, and organized under its present name in 1886. For some time the Knights of Labor and the younger organization exchanged greetings and counsel, and some of the leaders cherished the expectation that the field of effort was large enough to give scope to both. The American Federation of Labor, being a federation of trade unions, kept well in view the strengthening of strictly trade organizations. The Knights, as we have seen, were on the other hand, far more loosely organized, containing many members, both men and women, and even whole a.s.semblies, outside of any trade, and they were therefore inclined to give a large share of their attention to matters of general reform, outside of purely trade-union or labor questions. It was the very largeness of their program which proved in the end a source of weakness, while latterly the activities of the organization became clogged by the burden of a membership with no intelligent understanding of the platform and aims.

But although the absence of adequate restrictions on admission to membership, and the ease of affiliation, not to speak of other reasons, had led to the acceptance of numbers of those who were only nominally interested in trade unionism, it had also permitted the entry of a band of women, not all qualified as wage-workers, but in faith and deed devoted trade unionists, and keenly alive to the necessity of bringing the wage-earning woman into the labor movement.

The energies of this group were evidently sadly missed during the early years of the American Federation of Labor.

The present national organization came into existence in 1881, under the style and t.i.tle of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada. It reorganized at the convention of 1886, and adopted the present name, the American Federation of Labor.

It was built up by trade-union members of the skilled trades, and to them trade qualifications and trade autonomy were essential articles of faith. This was a much more solid groundwork upon which to raise a labor movement. But at first it worked none too well for the women, although as the national organizations with women members joined the Federation the women were necessarily taken in, too. Likewise they shared in some, at least, of the benefits and advantages accruing from the linking together of the organized workers in one strong body. But the unions of which the new organization was composed in these early days were princ.i.p.ally unions in what were exclusively men's trades, such as the building and iron trades, mining and so on. In the trades, again, in which women were engaged, they were not in any great numbers to be found in the union of the trade. So the inferior position held by women in the industrial world was therefore inevitably reflected in the Federation. It is true that time after time, in the very earliest conventions, resolutions would be pa.s.sed recommending the organization of women. But matters went no further.

In 1882 Mrs. Charlotte Smith, president and representative of an organization styled variously the Women's National Labor League, and the Women's National Industrial League, presented a memorial to the Convention of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (the Federation's name at that time), asking for the advice, a.s.sistance and cooperation of labor organizations. She mentioned that in 1880, there were recorded 2,647,157 women as employed in gainful occupations. A favorable resolution followed. At the convention of 1885, she was again present, and was accorded a seat without a vote. On her request again the delegates committed themselves to a resolution favoring the organization of women.

In 1890 Delegate T.J. Morgan, of Chicago, introduced, and the convention pa.s.sed, a resolution, favoring the submission to Congress of an amendment extending the right of suffrage to women. At this convention appeared the first fully accredited woman delegate, Mrs.

Mary Burke, of the Retail Clerks, from Findlay, Ohio. A resolution was introduced and received endors.e.m.e.nt, but no action followed. It asked for the placing in the field of a sufficient number of women organizers to labor in behalf of the emanc.i.p.ation of women of the wage-working cla.s.s.

In 1891 there were present at the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor Mrs. Eva McDonald Valesh and Miss Ida Van Etten.

A committee was appointed with Mrs. Valesh as chairman and Miss Van Etten as secretary. They brought in a report that the convention create the office of national organizer, the organizer to be a woman at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year and expenses, to be appointed the following January, and that the const.i.tution be so amended that the woman organizer have a seat on the Executive Board.

The latter suggestion was not acted upon. But Miss Mary E. Kenney of the Bindery Women (now Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan) was appointed organizer, and held the position for five months. She attended the 1892 convention as a fully accredited delegate. Naturally she could produce no very marked results in that brief period, and the remark is made that her work was of necessity of a pioneer and missionary character rather than one of immediate results--a self-evident commentary. Later women were organizers for brief periods, one being Miss Anna Fitzgerald, of the National Women's Label League.

As years pa.s.sed on, and the American Federation of Labor grew by the affiliation of almost all the national trade unions, it became the one acknowledged central national body. Along with the men, such women as were in the organizations came in, too. But it was only as a rare exception that we heard of women delegates, and no woman has ever yet had a seat upon the Executive Board, although women delegates have been appointed upon both special and standing committees.

The responsibility for this must be shared by all. It is partly an outgrowth of the backward state of the women themselves. They are at a disadvantage in their lack of training, their lower wages and their unconsciousness of the benefits of organization; also owing to the fact that such a large number of women are engaged in the unskilled trades that are hardest to organize. On the other hand, neither the national unions, the state and central bodies, nor the local unions have ever realized the value of the women membership they actually have, nor the urgent necessity that exists for organizing all working-women. To their own trade gatherings even, they have rarely admitted women delegates in proportion to the number of women workers.

Only now and then, even today, do we find a woman upon the executive board of a national trade union, and when it comes to electing delegates to labor's yearly national gathering, it is men who are chosen, even in a trade like the garment-workers, in which there is a great preponderance of women.

Of the important international unions with women members there are but two which have a continuous, unbroken history of over fifty years.

These are the Typographical Union, dating back to 1850, and the Cigar Makers' International Union, which was founded in 1864.

Other international bodies, founded since, are:

Boot and Shoe Workers' Union. 1889 Hotel and Restaurant Employes Union. 1890 Retail Clerks' International Protective a.s.sociation. 1890 United Garment Workers of America. 1891 International Brotherhood of Bookbinders. 1892 Tobacco Workers' International Union. 1895 International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. 1900 Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers International U'n. 1900 United Textile Workers' Union. 1901 International Glove Workers' Union of N. America. 1902

One group of unions, older than any of these, dating back to 1885, are the locals of the hat trimmers. These workers belong to no national organization, and it is only recently that they have been affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. They are not, as might be judged from the t.i.tle, milliners; they trim and bind men's hats. They cooperate with the Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers and Operators. In New York the hat trimmers and the workers in straw are combined into one organization, under the name of the United Felt, Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers' and Operators' Union of Greater New York. The Hat Trimmers are almost wholly a women's organization, and their affairs are controlled almost entirely by women. The various locals cooperate with and support one another. But in their stage of organization this group of unions closely resembles the local unions, whether of men or women, which existed in so many trades before the day of nation-wide organizations set in. Eventually it must come about that they join the national organization. Outside of New York there are locals in New Jersey, Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut. The parent union is that of Danbury, Connecticut.

The girl hat-trimmers, under the leadership of Melinda Scott, of Newark and New York, have during the last ten years improved both wages and conditions and have besides increased their numbers and aided in forming new locals in other centers. They are known in the annals of organized labor chiefly for the loyalty and devotion they showed during the strike of the Danbury hatters in 1909. They not only refused, to a girl, to go back to work, when that would have broken the strike, but time after time, when money was collected and sent to them, even as large a sum as one thousand dollars, they handed it over to the men's organizations, feeling that the men, with wives and children dependent upon them, were in even greater need than themselves. "Seeing the larger vision and recognizing the greater need, these young women gave to the mother and the child of their working brothers. Although a small group, there is none whose members have shown a more complete understanding of the inner meaning of trade unionism, or a finer spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of their fellows."

When we try to estimate the power of a movement, we judge it by its numbers, by its activities, and by its influence upon other movements.

As to the numbers of women trade unionists, we have very imperfect statistics upon which to base any finding. If the statistics kept by the Labor Bureau of the state of New York can be taken as typical of conditions in other parts of the country, and they probably can, the proportion of women unionists has not at all kept pace with the increasing numbers of men organized. In 1894 there were in that state 149,709 men trade unionists, and 7,488 women. In 1902 both had about doubled their numbers--these read: men, 313,592; women, 15,509. By 1908, however, while there were then of men, 363,761, the women had diminished to 10,698. Since then, we have to note a marked change, beginning with 1910, and continuing ever since. In 1913 the unionized men reached 568,726, and the women 78,522. The increase of men in the organized trades of the state during the twelvemonth preceding September 30, 1913, was twenty per cent., while of women it was one hundred and eleven per cent. This enormous increase, more than doubling the entire union strength among women, is mainly due to the successful organization in the garment trades in New York City.

So far there has been no adequate investigation covering the activities of women in the labor world during the last or modern period. We know that after the panic of 1893, which dealt a blow to trade unionism among men, the movement among women was almost at a standstill. We may feel that the international unions have failed to see the light, and have mostly fallen far short of what they might have done in promoting the organization of women workers; but we must acknowledge with thankfulness the fact that they have at least kept alive the tradition of trade unionism among women, and have thus prepared the way for the education and the organization of the women workers by the women workers themselves.

As to legislation, the steady improvement brought about through the limitation of hours, through modern sanitary regulations, and through child-labor laws, has all along been supported by a handful of trade-union women, working especially through the national organizations, in which, as members, they made their influence felt.

There were always brave souls among the women, and chivalrous souls, here and there among the men, and the struggles made to form and keep alive tiny local unions we shall probably never know, for no complete records exist. The only way in which the ground can be even partially covered is by a series of studies in each locality, such as the one made by Miss Lillian Matthews, through her work in San Francisco.

In this connection it must be remembered that those uprisings among women of the last century, were after all local and limited in their effects and range. Most of them bore no relation to national organization of even the trade involved, still less to an all-embracing, national labor organization, such as the American Federation of Labor. In these earlier stages, when organization of both men and women was mainly local, women's influence, when felt at all, was felt strongly within the locality affected, and it is therefore only there that we hear about it.

Still, twenty-five years ago, the day of national organization had already dawned. To organize a trade on a national scale is at best a slow process, and it naturally takes a much longer time for women to influence and enter into the administrative work of a national union, than of a separate local union, which perhaps they have helped to found. They are therefore too apt to lose touch with the big national union, and even with its local branch in their own city. It is almost like the difference between the small home kitchen, with whose possibilities a woman is familiar, and the great food-producing factory, run on a business scale, whose management seems to her something far-removed and unfamiliar. It was not until 1904, when the National Women's Trade Union League was formed out of unions with women members, that women workers, as women, can be said to have begun national organization at all. The account of that body is reserved for another chapter.

Meanwhile as instances of the many determined localized efforts among women to raise wages and better conditions, there follow here outlines of the formation of the Working Women's Society in New York, the successful organization of the Laundry Workers in San Francisco, and of the splendid but defeated struggle of the girls in the packing plants of Chicago.