Part 7 (2/2)

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, cas.h.i.+ers, 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 hards.h.i.+p 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.

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