Women Wage-Earners Part 14

A fair house is one in which humane and considerate behavior toward employees is the rule.

In which fidelity and length of service meet with the consideration which is their due.

In which no children under fourteen years of age are employed.

+Membership.+

The condition of membership shall be the approval by signature of the object of the Consumers' League; and all persons shall be eligible for membership excepting such as are engaged in the retail business in this city, either as employer or employee.

The members shall not be bound never to buy at other shops.

The names of the members of the Consumers' League shall not be made public.

Later, one of the ablest workers in this field, Mrs. Florence Kelley, formulated a basis for every society of working-women, as follows:

I. To bring out of the chaos of compet.i.tion the order of co-operation.

II. To organize all wages-earning women.

III. To disseminate the literature of labor and co-operation.

IV. To inst.i.tute a label which shall enable the purchaser to discriminate in favor of goods produced under healthful conditions.

V. 1. Abolition of child labor to the age of sixteen.

2. Compulsory education to the age of sixteen.

3. Prohibition of employment of minors more than eight hours daily.

4. Prohibition of employment of minors at dangerous occupations.

5. Appointment of women inspectors, one for every thousand women and children employed.

6. Healthful conditions of work for women and children.

The foregoing to be obtained by legislation.

The following to be obtained by organization:--

1. Equal pay for equal work with men.

2. A minimal rate which will enable the least paid to live upon her earnings.

A little later, the statement which follows, became necessary:--

"Certain abuses exist in the dry-goods houses affecting the well-being of the saleswomen and children employed, which we believe can be remedied. In fact, in different stores some of them have been remedied, which gives us courage to bring these matters to your attention.

"We find the hours are often excessive, and that these women and children are not paid for over-time.

"We find that in many houses the saleswomen work under unwholesome conditions; these comprise bad ventilation, unsanitary toilet arrangements, and an indifference to considerations of decency.

"The wages, which are low, we find are often reduced by excessive fines; that employers place a value on time lost that they fail to give for service rendered.

"We find that numbers of children under age are employed for excessive hours, and at work far beyond their strength.

"We find that long and faithful service does not meet with the consideration that is its due; on the contrary, having served a certain number of years is a reason for dismissal.

"Because of the foregoing low wages, the discouraging result of excessive fines, long hours, and unwholesome sanitary conditions, not only the physical system is injured, but--the result we most deplore, and of which we have incontrovertible proof--the tendency _is to injure the moral well-being_.

"We believe that to call attention to these evils is to go far toward remedying them, and that the power to do this lies largely in the hands of the purchasing cla.s.ses.

"We think that 'the payment and condition of those who work--through their employers--for us, is our affair, and that we have no right to remain in ignorance of the conditions that involve or may involve their misery.'"

Two points still remain untouched, both of them vital elements in the just working of the social scheme,--profit-sharing, and a board of conciliation and arbitration for the adjustment of all difficulties between employer and employed.

For every detail bearing upon the education bound up in even the attempt at profit-sharing, as well as for the actual and successful results in this direction, the reader is referred to an excellent little monograph on the subject, "Sharing the Profits," by Miss Mary Whiton Calkins, A.M., and for very full and elaborate treatment of the question, to the invaluable volume by N.P. Gilman, "Profit-Sharing between Employer and Employed." In all cases where the experiment has had fair trial, it has resulted in a marked increase of interest in the work itself; an actual lessening of the cost of production, and of general wear and tear, because of this increased interest; and a far more friendly feeling between employer and employed. It is certain that justice requires immediate attention to every phase of this question, and that its adoption is the first step in the right direction.

For the second point, we have as yet in this country only an occasional attempt at arbitration, yet its need becomes more and more apparent with every fresh difficulty in the field of labor. A little volume by Mrs.

Josephine Shaw Lowell, at the time of writing,[50] going through the press, who has given much time to a study of the question, contains the latest results of English and French legislation, and of special action in this direction. Any history of the movement as a whole, hardly has place in these pages. It is sufficient to say that the system had practically no consideration till 1850, when the first Board of Arbitration was formed in England, owing its existence to the determined efforts of two men. Mr. Rupert Kettle, lawyer and judge, approached it from the legal side; Mr. Murdella, a manufacturer, and himself sprung from the working-cla.s.ses, went straight "to the practical and moral end implied by the word 'conciliation,' ... both routes of this n.o.ble emulation converging, each affording strength to the common conclusions."

The Nottingham lace manufacture, in which numbers of women and children as well as men are employed, has, for thirty years and more, been governed by a Board of Arbitration, the result being an end of strikes and all difficulties of like nature. If no more were accomplished than the bringing about a better understanding between employer and employed, it would mean much, since mutual suspicion and distrust rule for both.

Organization among women, and the sense of mutual dependence given by it, lead naturally to the formation of a board able to judge dispa.s.sionately and disinterestedly of the questions naturally arising, many of which, however, are at once dissipated on the adoption of the system of profit-sharing.

The practical steps already taken sum up in the forms just given; and there remains only the question constantly asked as to the final effect upon wages of woman's entrance into public life, this question usually shaping itself under three heads:--

1. Why are they in the field?

2. How does their work compare in efficiency with that of men?

3. What is likely to be the final effect on wage of their entrance into active life?

The first phase has already had full answer in the general survey of trades and their rise and growth. As to the second, personal observation, long continued and minute, added to the very full knowledge to be obtained from the reports of the various State bureaus of labor, goes to prove beyond question that, given the same grade of intelligence, the work of women is fully equal to that of men.

Descending in the scale to untrained labor in all its forms, the woman is at times of less value than the man. The Knights of Labor, however, settled definitely that this was seldom the case, and in their const.i.tution demanded equal pay for equal work. For both s.e.xes machinery is more and more superseding the labor of each; and as women and children are quite capable of running much of it, this fact, of course, brings the general wage to their standard. This, added to various physiological and social reasons, makes woman often a less dependable worker than man, and tends to keep wages at a minimum.

As to the final effect on wages, I regard the whole aspect of things as purely transitional, and must answer from personal conviction in the matter.

The entire movement appears to me a part of the natural evolution from barbaric law and restriction, and a necessary demonstration of the spiritual equality of the s.e.xes. I regard it also as the nurse and developer of many small virtues in which women are especially deficient,--punctuality, unvarying quality of work, a sense of business honor and of personal fidelity, each to all and all to each. But I cannot feel that it is a permanent state, or that when the essential has been accomplished women will have the same need or the same desire that now rules. I believe that wages must necessarily fluctuate and tend to the mere point of subsistence when either child labor or the lowest grade of woman's labor exists, and that the only way out of the complications we face is in an alteration of ideals. Statistics and general reports show the demoralization of family life where such work goes on, and the fact that in the long run the workman loses rather than gains where his family share his labor.

The lowering of wage may be considered, then, as in one sense remedial, and the present state of things as in part the mere action of inevitable and inescapable law. But it is impossible to make this plain in present limits. Having pa.s.sed through every stage of feeling,--sick pity, burning indignation, and tempestuous desire for instant action,--I have come at last to regard all as our education in justice and a demand for training in such wise as shall render unskilled labor more and more impossible. So long as it exists, however, I see no outlook but the fluctuating and uncertain wage, the natural result of the existence of the lowest order of workers.

For them as for us it is the development of the individual from the ma.s.s that is the chief end of any real civilization. No Utopias of any past or present can bring this at once.

"Each man to himself and each woman to herself, such is the word of the past and the present, and the true word of immortality."

"No one can acquire for another, not one; No one can grow for another, not one."