Part 18 (2/2)
That the women printers of New York were between the devil and the deep sea is evidenced by the whole story told in Chapter XXI of ”New York Typographical Union No. 6,” by George Stevens. In that is related how about this time was formed a women printers' union, styled ”Women's Typographical No. 1,” through the exertions of a number of women compositors with Augusta Lewis at their head. Miss Lewis voiced the enthusiastic thanks of the women when, a few months later, the union received its charter from the International Typographical Union at its next convention in June, 1869. A different, and a sadder note runs through Miss Lewis's report to the convention in Baltimore in 1871, in describing the difficulties the women labored under.
”A year ago last January, Typographical Union No. 6 pa.s.sed a resolution admitting union girls in offices under the control of No.
6. Since that time we have never obtained a situation that we could not have obtained if we had never heard of a union. We refuse to take the men's situations when they are on strike, and when there is no strike, if we ask for work in union offices we are told by union foremen 'that there are no conveniences for us.' We are ostracized in many offices because we are members of the union; and though the principle is right, the disadvantages are so many that we cannot much longer hold together.... No. 1 is indebted to No. 6 for great a.s.sistance, but as long as we are refused work because of s.e.x we are at the mercy of our employers, and I can see no way out of our difficulties.”
In 1878 the International enacted a law that no further charter be granted to women's unions, although it was not supposed to take effect against any already in existence. Women's Typographical No. 1, already on the downward grade, on this dissolved. But not till 1883 did the women printers in New York begin to join the men's union, and there have been a few women members in it ever since. But how few in proportion may be judged from the figures on September 30, 1911. Total members.h.i.+p 6,969, of whom 192 were women. I believe this to be typical of the position of the woman compositor in other cities.]
I have given large s.p.a.ce to this incident, because it is the only one of the kind I have come across in Miss Anthony's long career. Page after page of the _Revolution_ is full of long reports of workingmen's conventions which she or Mrs. Stanton attended.[A] At these they were either received as delegates or heard as speakers, advocating the cause of labor and showing how closely the success of that cause was bound up with juster treatment towards the working-woman. Many indeed must have been the labor men, who gained a broader outlook upon their own problems and difficulties through listening to such unwearied champions of their all but voiceless s.e.x.
[Footnote A: Mrs. Stanton's first speech before the New York legislature, made in 1854, was a demand that married working-women should have the right to collect their own wages. She and the workers with her succeeded in having the law amended. Up till then a married woman might wash all day at the washtub, and at night the law required that her employer should, upon demand, hand over her hard-earned money to her husband, however dissolute he might be.]
To the more conservative among the workingmen the uncompromising views of these women's advocates must have been very upsetting sometimes, and always very unconventional. We find that in a workingmen's a.s.sembly in Albany, New York, when one radical delegate moved to insert the words ”and working-women” into the first article of the Const.i.tution, he felt bound to explain to his fellow-delegates that it was not his intention to offer anything that would reflect discredit upon the body. He simply wanted the females to have the benefit of their trades and he thought by denying them this right a great injustice was done to them. The speaker who followed opposed the discussion of the question. ”Let the women organize for themselves.”
The radicals, however, rose to the occasion.
Mr. Graham in a long speech said it was a shame and a disgrace for this body, pretending to ask the elevation of labor to neglect or refuse to help this large, deserving, but down-trodden cla.s.s.
Mr. Topp said he would be ashamed to go home and say he had attended this a.s.sembly if it overlooked the claims of the female organizations.
The resolution to include the women was carried with applause.
At the National Labor Congress held in Germania Hall, New York, the _Revolution_ of October 1, 1868, had noted the admission of four women delegates as marking a new era in workingmen's conventions. These were: Katherine Mullaney, president of the Collar Laundry Union of Troy, N.Y.; Mrs. Mary Kellogg Putnam, representing Working Women's a.s.sociation No. 2 of New York City; Miss Anthony herself, delegate from Working Women's a.s.sociation No. 1, New York City; and Mary A.
Macdonald, from the Working Women's Protective Labor Union, Mount Vernon, New York.
Mrs. Stanton, after a long and exciting debate, was declared a delegate, but the next day, to please the malcontents, the National Labor Congress made clear by resolution that it did not regard itself as endorsing her peculiar ideas or committing itself to the question of female suffrage, but simply regarded her as a representative from an organization having for its object ”the amelioration of the condition of those who labor for a living.” ”Worthy of Talleyrand” is Miss Anthony's sole comment.
The connection between the woman movement and the labor movement is indeed close and fundamental, but that must not be taken to imply that the workingman and the woman of whatever cla.s.s have not their own separate problems to handle and to solve as each sees best. The marriage relation between two individuals has often been wrecked by a.s.suming as the basis of their common life that man and wife are one and that the husband is that one. And so the parallel a.s.sumption that all the working-woman's wrongs will naturally be righted by redress if their righting is left in the hands of her working brother for many years led to a very curious and unfortunate neglect of suffrage propaganda among working-women, and on the part of working-women and to a no less unfortunate ignorance of industrial problems, also, on the part of many suffragists, whether those affecting workingmen and women alike or the women only.
It was not so in the early days. The instances given above show how close and friendly were the relations between labor leaders and suffrage pioneers. What has been said of Miss Anthony applied equally to the other great women who carried the suffrage banner amid opprobrium and difficulty.
The change came that comes so often in the development of a great movement. One of the main objects which the pioneers had had in view somehow slipped out of the sight of their successors. The earliest move of the advanced women of America had been for equal rights of education, and there success has been greatest and most complete and thorough. But it was almost exclusively the women who were able to enter the professions who gained the benefits of this campaign for equal educational and consequently equal professional opportunities.
The next aim of the leaders in the woman movement of the last century had been to accord to woman equality before the law. This affecting primarily and chiefly woman in her s.e.x relations, had its permanent results in reference to the legal status of the married woman and the mother, bearing at the same time secondarily upon the safety and welfare of the child; hence in the different states a long series of married women's property acts, equal guardians.h.i.+p acts, modifications of the gross inequalities of the divorce law, and the steady raising of the age of protection for girls.
At least that was the position ten years ago. But today the tide has turned. Partly is this due to the growth of industrial organization among women, a development that has followed the ever-increasing need of mutual protection. Trade unionism has helped to train the working-woman to listen to the suffrage gospel, though therein she has often been slower than the workingman, her better educated brother. On the other hand a great many influences have combined to wake up the suffragist of our day to the true meaning and value of what she was asking. Especially has the work of the National Women's Trade Union League and the campaign of publicity it has conducted on behalf of the working-woman, both within and without its members.h.i.+p, focused attention upon the woman in industry as a national responsibility.
Then again the tremendous strikes in which such large numbers of women and girls have been involved were an education to others than the strikers--to none more than to the suffrage workers who cooperated with the ill-used girl strikers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.
An influence of even more universal appeal, if of less personal intensity, has been the suffrage movement in Great Britain. That movement has educated the public of this country, as they never would have been educated by any movement confined to this country alone.
Inside the ranks of enrolled suffragists it has been an inspiration, showering upon their cause a new baptism of mingled tears and rejoicing. In calmer mood we have learned from our British sisters much regarding policies adapted to modern situations, and they have a.s.suredly shown us all sorts of new and original methods of organization and education. The immense and nation-wide publicity given by the press of the United States to the more striking and sensational aspects of the British movement and all the subsequent talk and writing in other quarters has roused to s.e.x-consciousness thousands of American women of all cla.s.ses who had not been previously interested in the movement for obtaining full citizens.h.i.+p for themselves and their daughters. These women also aroused, and men, too, have furnished the huge audiences which have everywhere greeted such speakers as Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Philip Snowden, when in person they have presented the mighty story of the transatlantic struggle. There is no difficulty nowadays in gathering suffrage audiences anywhere, for the man and the woman walking along the street supply them to the open-air speaker in the large city and the little country town as one by one city and town take up the new methods.
Even more close to lasting work for all the issues that affect the community through placing upon women an ordered civic responsibility are the plans for the organizing under different names of woman suffrage parties and civic leagues which blend the handling of local activities everywhere with a demand for the ballot in keeping with the needs of the modern community. No clear-eyed woman can work long in this sort of atmosphere without realizing how unequally social burdens press, how unequally social advantages are allotted, whether the burdens come through hours of work, inadequate remuneration, sanitary conditions, whether in home or in factory, and whether the advantages are obtainable through public education, vocational training, medical care, or in the large field of recreation.
So important does work through organization, appear to me that, remembering always that tendencies are more important than conditions, it would seem in some respects a more wholesome and hopeful situation for women to be organized and working for one of their common aims, even though that aim be for the time being merely winning of the vote, rather than to have the vote, and with it working merely as isolated individuals, and with neither the power that organization insures nor the training that it affords.
But with what we know nowadays there should be no need for any such unsatisfactory alternative. It would be much more in keeping with the modern situation if the object of suffrage organizations were to read, not ”to obtain the vote” but ”to obtain political, legal and social equality for women.”
Then as each state, or as the whole country (we hope by and by) obtains the ballot, so might the organizations go on in a sense as if nothing had happened. And nothing would have happened, save that a great body of organized women would be more effective than ever. The members would individually be equipped with the most modern instrument of economic and social expression. The organizations themselves would have risen in public importance and esteem and therefore in influence.
Moreover, and this is the most important point of all, they would be enrolled among those bodies, whose declared policy would naturally help in guiding the great bulk of new and untrained feminine voters.
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