Woman and the Republic Part 7

In case of a divorce, whether partial or absolute, obtained by the wife, the husband is required to pay _alimony_ for her support during the rest of her life, even if she should re-marry. A wife from whom a husband obtains a divorce cannot be required to contribute in any way to his support.

Although the law has opened wide the door for all women to engage in business, it still discriminates in their favor in many particulars. No woman can be arrested in a civil action, or held by an execution against the body, except in cases in which it is shown that she has committed "a wilful injury to person, character, or property," or has been guilty of such an evasion of duty as is equivalent to a contempt of court. Thus a woman engaged in business cannot be arrested in an action for a debt fraudulently contracted.

All women judgment debtors, whether married or single, enjoy certain exemptions from the sale of their property under execution, which, in the case of men, extend only to a householder; that is, a man who has, and provides for, a household or family.

Every married woman is the joint guardian of her children with her husband, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them with her husband. It is only the survivor, be it father or mother, who possesses the right to appoint a guardian by deed or by will. She has now equal rights with the father over her children.

As matter of practice, the courts when called upon to award the custody of minor children in cases of separation, determine the question with reference solely to the interests of the child, with a strong leaning in the mother's favor.

A husband's creditors have no claim upon the proceeds of a policy of insurance upon his life for the benefit of his wife, unless the annual premiums paid by him shall have exceeded five hundred dollars. The proceeds of such a policy are exempt from execution for any debt owed by the wife.

The statutes contain a large number of special provisions for the benefit of female employees in factories and mercantile houses. In the city of New York, if any man fails to pay the wages due a female employee up to fifty dollars, not only is none of his property exempt from execution, but he is liable to be imprisoned upon a body execution, and kept in close confinement without the privilege of bail. A similar rule is applicable in Brooklyn.

No woman can be called upon to perform military duty.

No woman can be required to serve upon any jury.

No woman can be called upon by the sheriff or any peace officer to a.s.sist in quelling a disturbance or making an arrest.

CHAPTER VI.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE TRADES.

The fifth count in the Suffrage Declaration of Sentiments reads as follows: "He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow she receives but scanty remuneration."

The women who wrote that in 1848, in common with the majority of American women, were presumably being well provided for in their own homes, by men whose boast it was that their wives and daughters did not need or care to seek employment elsewhere. It is true that at that time, because of this supposed advantage, as married women they could not have engaged in separate business that would involve the making of contracts or distinct bargain and sale. To the world the husband was the wife's financial manager. But at that time the wife could enter any of the employments as a paid clerk or worker. This count seems more surprising in view of the fact that, writing only three years later, to a Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio, Mrs. Stanton said: "The trades and professions are all open to us; let us quietly enter and make ourselves, if not rich and famous, at least independent and respectable." Two years later still, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson wrote to another Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio: "We complain of the industrial disadvantages of women, and indicate at the same time their capacities for a greater variety of pursuits. Why not obtain a statement on as large a scale as possible, first of what women are doing now, commercially and mechanically, throughout the Union, and secondly, of the embarra.s.sments which they meet, the inequality of their wages, and all the other peculiarities of their position." This would have been most valuable and interesting, and it would seem that something of the kind should have preceded the sweeping accusation made in the Declaration; but there appears in their "History" no evidence of its having been done. In 1859 Caroline H. Ball said, in addressing a Suffrage convention: "I honor women who act. That is the reason that I greet so gladly girls like Harriet Hosmer, Louisa Landor, and Margaret Foley.

Whatever they do, or do not do, for Art, they do a great deal for the cause of labor. I do not believe any one in this room has an idea of the avenues that are open to women already." Then follows a list of the trades then pursued by women in Great Britain. Of the United States she said: "Of factory operatives in 1845 there were 55,828 men and 75,710 women. Women are glue-makers, glove-makers, workers in gold and silver leaf, hair- weavers, hat and cap-makers, hose-weavers, workers in India-rubber, paper- hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and harness-makers, shoe-makers, soda-room keepers, snuff and cigar-makers, stock and suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers and stereotypers, umbrella-makers, upholsterers, card-makers, photographers, house and sign-painters, fruit- hawkers, b.u.t.ton-makers, tobacco-packers, paper-box makers, embroiderers, and fur-sewers." She added: "In New Haven seven women work with seventy men in a clock factory (at half wages)." And in summing up she said: "The great evils that lie at the foundation of depressed wages are that want of respect for labor which prevents ladies from engaging in it, and that want of respect for women which prevents men from valuing properly the work they do. Make women equal with men before the law, and wages will adjust themselves."

Women are equal with men legally and wages have not adjusted themselves, and the law has had no control over the feelings and opinions of men and women. Those who were large-minded enough to respect labor asked no warrant from legislation, and those who were small-minded enough to undervalue woman's work because it was woman's, do so still despite the statutes, and would if women voted at every election. Men were equal with each other before the law, but that did not compel the respect of foolish men, nor did their wages adjust themselves to equality on that account. If there were more men working in a trade in a given place than the demand for their products required, the wage would fall, and so it must with women. But reasons entered into the market value of woman's work that did not enter into that of men. Mrs. Dall mentions but one trade in which the wages were lower for women, and there they competed with men. Those seven women working with the seventy men in New Haven were not expected to be called upon to support a family by their earnings. If they were girls, in the natural course of things they were expected to leave the work whenever they were ready to marry. If one of them married one of the seventy men, the firm of employers would lose her services entirely; but the man who married her would be depended upon to work more steadily than before, and he would also have more incentive to do better work in order to command still higher wages. The long cry of Suffrage has not been able to bring about "equal pay for equal work," even where legislation to that effect has been introduced into Trades Unions and State laws. This has still rested, and must rest, with the employer, and his action must be governed by quality and demand and supply. The attempt to secure "equal wages"

among men has resulted in bringing down the wages of all to the point of the poorer workers. The general laws of trade, like those of government, are based on principles of universal equity, and however strenuously temporary deviations may be pressed, they return at last to the natural position. This is not saying that there is not great injustice toward labor by capital, and toward capital by labor, but that the foundation principles tend to govern the mutual relations, and forcing that is contrary to these cannot be permanently successful. If the work of women for any reason is unequal, the wages will be, and the mere fact that some particular women work for some particular time the same number of hours, and as well as do the men in the same establishments, does not do away with the fact that women's work in general is not as steady as men's, and is not expected to meet the same emergency of family support. No one can believe more fully than I in equal wages for work that is really equal; but it seems to me that private contract, and not public action, must regulate the matter of special wage.

Government reports show that the average age of the working-girl in this country is but twenty-two years, and that after twenty the number falls off rapidly. Unskilled labor must forever take the place of that which is withdrawn, which is another and most valid reason for lower wages. That lower wages are the result of natural causes, and not of unnatural feeling, is shown in many ways. Woman teachers at the West, where teachers were needed, received as good pay as did men. In New York I heard Superintendent Jasper, I think it was, say: "I am in favor of equal pay for equal work, for the two s.e.xes; but we cannot give it here. We can get twice as many good women teachers as men teachers, and when we need men we must pay at a higher rate." This does not extend to the highest grade of teachers, superintendents, and professors in colleges, where men compete with one another. There the compensation is the same for equal work. In the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive.

In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice.

Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and acrobats, alas! command the highest price.

There is, among others, this fundamental difference between the business life of men and women. For men who pursue occupations outside the home, there are women to manage that home. For women who pursue occupations outside the home, there are, not men, but other women, to manage the home.

The final domestic care of the world must come upon women. The final attention to social life must come upon women. In behalf of the women who are constrained, or who choose, to sacrifice their share in this part of the world's necessary work, some other women must do double duty. That this rule has seeming exceptions does not make it less the universal rule.

Nothing, not even "industrial emanc.i.p.ation," is gotten for nothing.

When the count cited above from the Suffrage indictment was written, the factory system had been established in this country twenty-six years. From the Revolution down to 1822, the women of the land had been busy in the homes making the household and personal wear. Sixteen years after the introduction of machinery into Lowell, Ma.s.s., 12,507 operatives were at work there, the majority of whom were women, American women and girls. New York State also had its mills. "f.a.n.n.y Forester" (afterward Mrs. Judson) worked in a mill near her home in that State. She went there, as did hosts of New England girls, Lucy Larcom and Harriet Robinson among the number, to relieve the home, but especially to gain the means of education, for themselves and for their brothers and sisters. The towns afforded better libraries, and there were evening cla.s.ses that they could attend, things not to be had in the farming districts. In 1850, in twenty-five States, the factory census reported 32,295 men and 62,661 women workers. In 1860 there were 46,859 men and 75,169 women. Hosiery machinery at this time was giving employment to three times as many women as men. But the emigrant, and not the American man, had been the means of turning out the native woman worker; it was the foreign-born woman who worked for "unequal pay."

In 1846, the sewing-machine had been invented. Previous to that time, 61,500 women were employed making boys' clothing by hand for the market, which was twice the number of men so employed, while the woman tailor was as familiar a figure as the dress-maker in every village, where she went from house to house.

In 1861 came our Civil War, with its awful sacrifice of young men. With that also came the heavy money loss, and consequent inability of many men, even where life and limb had been spared, to support their families in the homes. That great conflict, with its stern necessities, its lessons of mutual helpfulness, its military discipline, which taught the value of organization, did more than could ten thousand conventions, even had they been working with knowledge and system, to instruct women in love for work for others. It nerved them to labor for self-support and for the support of those who were now dependent upon them' because the strong arm had fallen and the willing heart had ceased to beat. Before the year 1861 had closed, there were a million women in this country earning their daily bread by honorable labor. As time went on, and the slaughter continued, and the nation's debt piled up, and prices became almost fabulous, more and more women asked through blinding tears, "What can I do?" Every trade was thrown open to women, and the laws had placed the married woman where she could compete on equal terms with her unmarried sister, even though she still had the advantage of a husband's support.

A great pother has lately been made by Suffrage workers in New York because a bill was proposed prohibiting married women from teaching in the public schools. This has been the unwritten law in many places for years.

The practice was adopted to offset the maintenance of married women.

Teachers should receive more pay, but so should poets and artists, and we all hope the time will come when brain work will have more tangible market value.

The sewing-machine had thrown women out of employment, as with it one woman could do the work of many. The number of work-seekers was enlarged by the influx, from the desolated South, of women whose entire living had been swept away. This army of uneducated workers from all sections were compelled not only to compete with men but with themselves as well. They sought, and could seek, only the lighter employments. Suffragists had their wish in regard to man's relinquishment of the "profitable employments," but not in the way they intended. The women for whose sake those profitable employments had been "monopolized" were now not only allowed by law but compelled by circ.u.mstance to toil from sun to sun at the best they could find to do; their frailer organizations were forced to bear "the double curse of work and pain." A n.o.bler army of martyrs never turned their sorrows into blessings by the spirit in which they met them, than the American women who put their shoulders to the wheels of business that were moving in a hundred ways.

In 1843 a humble beginning at industrial education for girls had been made by the Female Guardian Society. In 1854 Peter Cooper established the Cooper Union with its generous facilities for women in industry and the arts. The Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation was founded in Normal, Illinois, in 1872, and its work in the industrial branch spread, before many years, to every city and town in the land. Men originated for women the first "Woman's Protective Union." In twenty-five years it had reported legal suits won for 12,000 women, and $41,000 collected. In 1869 the great organization of the Knights of Labor was founded, and in its body of rules was one "to secure for both s.e.xes equal pay for equal work." Failure proves that labor cannot, any more than paper, be coined into money by the mere fiat of a government or an organization.

But the great impulse to industrial education came through the Centennial Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876. While the land was filled with the hum of preparation, as their contribution to that indication of peaceful progress, the Suffrage a.s.sociations were rolling up another pet.i.tion in which to set forth their wrongs. After General Hawley, manager of the Exposition, had courteously refused to receive it in a public meeting, it was "pressed upon the Nation's heart" by delegates who pushed their way into Independence Hall. Outside that historic building, under the broiling sun, with Matilda Joslyn Gage to hold an umbrella over her, Miss Anthony read aloud a "Declaration of Independence" that re-echoed the sentiments of their first Declaration. It began by saying: "While the nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are attuned to praise, it is with sorrow we come to strike the one discordant note"--a typical and prophetic sentence.

From 1876 girls, as well as boys, received manual training in the public schools, and when that proved impracticable, the way was found to open industrial schools that should include cla.s.ses for girls. Every State, and almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere mult.i.tudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women, without the ballot, have largely a.s.sisted in developing it.

John Graham Brooks, in a lecture delivered in New York in the winter of 1895-6, on "Some Economic Aspects of the Woman Question," said: "Woman who used to do her work in the house now does it in the factory, and the same work, doing her work under absolutely new and different conditions, a change so great that it closes finally one argument that I hear again and again by those opposed to woman suffrage--namely, that the place for woman is in the home."

One condition under which she works that is not "absolutely new and different" is that of s.e.x. Whatever as a woman she could not do in the home she cannot do abroad as a working-woman. She is in business as a business woman, not as a business man. Economic equality in such things as she can do is as unlike to a similarity in work which ignores s.e.x conditions as a business corporation is to the government under whose laws it exists and by which its rights are defended. But even the external conditions are not so changed as might at first appear. The statistical proof of the youth of the majority of workers, the comparatively small number out of the whole population who go into business, and the fact that the domestic work for these very workers must be done by women, all show this.

The United States Census of 1890 shows that not quite four million women are "engaged in gainful occupations." Of these more than one and a half million are in domestic service, and nearly half a million in professional service, mainly as teachers. The most striking gain has been made in the lighter forms of profitable labor--by stenographers, typewriters, telegraph and telephone operators, cashiers, bookkeepers, etc. In 1870 there were 19,828 of these; in 1890, there were 228,421. The invention of the type-writing machine appears to be the ballot that has mainly produced this result. Carrol D. Wright says that in twenty cities examined in the United States he found, among 17,000 working-women, that 15,887 were single, 1,038 were widows, and 745 were married. This tells the same story. The ma.s.s of these women, like the ma.s.s of men, are working, not for public influence or station, but for the owning and holding of a home. The latest effort in self-help for the working cla.s.s is the wise one of building them good homes. The best renting property has been found to be that which gives privacy and those distinctions that mark the family.

The latest report of the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor shows that of 8,040 persons who registered for employment in New York city, 6,458 were men, and 1,582 were women. Of these, the foreign-born numbered 4,804, of whom 3,674 were men and 1,140 were women. The native-born numbered 3,234, of whom 2,796 were men, and 442 were women. The list included every trade and profession, from that of day laborer to that of clergyman, from that of school teacher to that of domestic servant, and showed that in the city where more women are employed than in any other place, the proportion of women to men was less than one fifth, and of native American to foreign-born women two fifths.

Mr. Brooks would favor suffrage because "in this new career there are reasons for every whit of protection." He mentions, as proof of woman's changed att.i.tude as an industrial unit, that the Supreme Courts of Illinois and California have decided against special legislation for women. They did so on the ground that "they were now earning their livelihood under men's conditions, and should not have special legislation in business relations." If Mr. Brooks thinks that women wish the ballot to restore the special legislation, he does not know the Suffrage demand for equality. In England, when the laws were under discussion that forbid the employment of women more than a certain number of hours, and of children under certain ages, the Woman Suffrage leaders protested against the former as an infringement of personal rights and the ability to make contracts. But the special legislation for business women goes on, because, after all, the State knows that they are business women, and not business men, and the Suffrage quarrel in regard to privilege _versus_ right goes on also.

Before the Committee of the Const.i.tutional Convention, Mrs. Ecob, of Albany, said: "You speak of chivalry. We scorn the word! What has your chivalry done for the weaker s.e.x? Women are the unpaid laborers of the world--outcasts in government." Mrs. Hood, of Brooklyn, on the same occasion said: "Who dares insult our American manhood by declaring that men will be less courteous to mother, wife, and sister, because they are political equals? Woman's equality in the industrial world has to-day produced a n.o.bler, better chivalry than was ever conceived by the knights of old."

These two Suffrage leaders will have to settle between themselves the question which they have placed in dispute. It serves to point the moral of dilemma that attends an attempted adjustment of unnatural claims.

Meantime government is caring for the weak, and chivalry is doing justice.

The Labor Law that went into effect in this State on September 1st provided that children be cla.s.sified so that those under fourteen years should not be employed in mercantile pursuits. Children between the ages of twelve and fourteen will be permitted to work in vacation, if they can show that they have attended school through the year. The girls between fourteen and twenty-one are not to be allowed to work more than ten hours a day. Their employment before 7 A.M. and after 10 P.M. is forbidden.

Women and children are not allowed to work in bas.e.m.e.nts, without permits from the Health Board as to the condition of the bas.e.m.e.nt. Seats are to be provided for woman employees, forty-five minutes given them for luncheon, and proper lunch and toilet rooms to be secured. Penalties, ranging from a fine of $20 for the first offence to imprisonment, are prescribed for violation of the law. In his last report, published in January 1897, the New York Commissioner of Labor considers the low wages and petty wrongs of working women and girls in New York City. He advises the formation of unions among themselves for their better protection.

Mr. Brooks does not agree with those who claim that possession of the ballot would raise wages. Mrs. Ames and Dr. Jacobi think it would only raise them through the indirect influence of the greater respect in which the worker would be held. This is safe ground again, because it is debatable; but the domestic servants of those who hold the former opinion might give them an object-lesson. Unfranchised as the servants are, they have only to make a threat of leaving to secure better wages.

Harriette A. Keyser, who was the special Suffrage champion of the working- woman before the Committee of the Const.i.tutional Convention, gave not one fact or figure to show that the working-woman, where she had the ballot, had already been helped by it, or that it was likely to help her, or how and why it might help her. Among the generalities she uttered was the following; "But the greatest value of the working-woman, to my mind, is that without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage could never be made. Indeed, the suffrage of the world is due to her. Do I mean by this that every working-woman in the country sees her own value so clearly that she demands enfranchis.e.m.e.nt? I could not say this with truth.

I make this statement irrespective of what any individual working-woman may think. It is based upon what she is. As through the last half century the contention for equal rights has continued, the working-woman has been the great object-lesson. It was not from women of leisure, having all the rights they want, that inspiration has been received. It has been caught from the patient worker, healing the sick, writing the book, painting the picture, teaching the children, tilling the soil, working in the factory, serving in the household. Every stroke of these workers has been a protest against a disfranchised individuality." Miss Keyser has mentioned most of the cla.s.ses in this country, for, so far as my experience goes, there is no such thing as a leisure cla.s.s, in the sense of an idle cla.s.s, of women.

Women are almost universally industrious, and it is a mistake to suppose that their early industry in the house was not as much appreciated and counted in the general fund of work as their more public activity now. It is well for Miss Keyser to make her estimate of the Suffrage value of the working-woman one that shall have no reference to the expressed views of the working-woman herself; because the working-woman seems almost universally not only unconscious of but indifferent to her att.i.tude as a great object-lesson in favor of the ballot. But here is something new.

Suffragists have first claimed that there could be no working-woman unless there was a ballot in woman's hand; then they claimed that, although there was a working-woman despite the fact that she had not been enfranchised, she was made by the agitation for the ballot; and now comes Miss Keyser to say that, not only is the working-woman not due to the ballot, or to ballot-seeking, but "the suffrage of the world is due to her," for "without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage could never have been made!" Tar baby ain't sayin' nuthin'.

Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "Whatever may be the personal privileges of their lot, whatever the legal protection accorded to their earnings, the public status of such a cla.s.s remains strictly that of aliens. At the present moment this vast and constantly growing army of women industrials const.i.tutes an alien cla.s.s. The privation for that cla.s.s of political right to defend its interests is only masked, but not compensated, by its numerous inter-relations with those who have rights."

So they are conceded to have personal privileges, and legal protection for earnings. The alienism is then purely political, and works no hardship but what Suffragists conceive to be in the mental att.i.tude of the worker.

Foreign capitalists who own land or plant in the United States are unfranchised. We have large numbers of men working in trades and professions who never have been naturalized, but we do not dream that all these const.i.tute an alien cla.s.s of industrials. No distinction is made in business opportunity between the voter and non-voter. Neither is any social distinction made regarding worker or employer on account of the relations of either to the ballot. Market value is not measured by suffrage, except in dishonorable transactions, and the women "with ballots in their hands" are not the Government's preferred creditors. The men in the District of Columbia are not conscious of lower wages and industrial ostracism. Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "The share of women in political rights and life--imperfect and deferred during the predominance of militarism-- has become natural, has become inevitable, with the advent of industrialism, in which they so largely share."

Industrialism has no more power to change the basis of government than the abolition movement had when certain advocates of it shouted that it was "sinful to vote or hold office, because the government was founded upon physical force and maintained itself by muskets." Industrialism is bringing into this country some of the gravest problems it has ever met.

The sympathy of the people is on the side of labor that uses honorable means; but Cleveland and Leadville are among the places that suggest afresh the fact that industrialism must be kept in order for its own sake, for the sake of general peace, and for the sake of its increasing ranks of "alien" women who look to it for "every whit of protection," save that which their own self-respect and that of public opinion can win them.

Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "Notwithstanding the repression of women's civil rights, and their absolute exclusion from even the dream of a political sphere, the women of France engage more freely than anywhere else in business and industry." There is a moral here deeper than can be read at a glance. The first thought suggested is, that industrial success for woman is not in the least dependent upon the vote. The second is, that industrial progress does not command the vote. The third is, that American freedom has worked in the opposite direction from French unstable republicanism. And the fourth is, that industrious France stands appalled at the lack of increase of its population. There are many forces that sap its national life, but perhaps the most conspicuous is the socialistic and anarchistic tendency of its labor organizations. The woman-suffrage idea was first openly proclaimed during the French Revolution. In 1851 the annual Suffrage Convention in this country was called by Paulina Wright Davis, to meet in Worcester, Ma.s.s. Ernestine Rose read to the convention two letters addressed to that body through her, written by Jeanne Deroine and Pauline Roland, from a Paris prison. During the revolutionary movements of 1848, these women had played conspicuous roles. One of them had attempted to nominate the mayor in her native city, the other to be a candidate for the Legislative a.s.sembly. They wrote: "Sisters of America!

Your socialist sisters of France are united with you in the vindication of the right of woman to civil and political equality. We have, moreover, the profound conviction that only by the power of a.s.sociation based on solidarity--by the union of the working-cla.s.ses of both s.e.xes in organized labor, can be acquired, completely and pacifically, the civil and political equality of woman, and the social right for all."

I know the feud, and the grounds for it, between socialism and anarchy.