when we begin! to survey the vast field of industry covered by different occupations we get the same sense of confusion that comes to us when we look at an ant-heap. the workers are going hither and thither, with apparently no ordered plan, with no unity or community of purpose that we can discover. but those who have given time and patience to the task have been able to read order even in the chaos of the ant-hill. and so may we, with our far more complex human ant-hill, if we will set to work. the material for such a study lies ready to our hand in bewildering abundance; but to make any practical studies which shall aid the workers and the thinking public to follow the line of least resistance in raising standards of wages and of status as well will be the work of many years and of many minds. even today there are some general indications of how the workers are going to settle their own problems.
some foreign critics and some critics at home are very severe upon the backwardness of the labor movement in the united states, and in these criticisms there is a large element of truth. yet there is one difficulty under which we labor on this continent, which these critics do not take into consideration. that is the primal one of the immense size of the country, along with all the secondary difficulties involved in this first one. there has never been any other country even attempting a task so stupendous as ours—to organize, to make one, to obtain good conditions for today, to insure as good and better conditions for tomorrow, for the wage-earning ones out of a population of over ninety millions spread over three million square miles. and with these millions of human beings of so many different races, with no common history and often no common language, this particular task has fallen to the lot of no other nation on the face of this earth. efforts at organization of the people and by the people, are perpetually being undermined. capitalism is nationally fairly well organized, so that there has been all the time more and more agreement among the great lords of finance, not to trespass on one another's preserves. but it is not so with the workers. even in trades where there exists a formal national organization, there will be towns and states where it will either be non-existent or extremely weak, so that workers, especially the unskilled, as they drift from town to town in search of work, tend to pass out of, rather than into, the union of their trade. and thus members of every trade organization live in dread of the inroad into their city or their state of crowds of unorganized competitors for their particular kind of employment. why, if it were great britain or germany, by the time we had organized one state, we should have organized a whole country.
but the big country is ours, and the big task must be shouldered.
it is only natural that trade-union organization should have progressed furthest in those occupations which, as industries, are the most highly developed. the handicrafts of old, the weaving and the carving and the pottery, have through a thousand inventions become specialized, and the work of the single operative has been divided up into a hundred processes. these are the conditions, and this the environment under which the workers most frequently organize. the operations have become more or less defined and standardized, and the operatives are more readily grouped and classified. also, even amid all the noise and clatter of the factory, they have opportunity for becoming acquainted, sometimes while working together, or at the noon hour, or when going to or coming from work. there are still few enough women engaged in factory work who have come into trade unions, but the path has at least been cleared, both by the numbers of men who have shown the way, and by the increasing independence of women themselves. similar reasoning applies to the workers in the culinary trades. these also are the modern, specialized forms of the old domestic arts of cooking and otherwise preparing and serving food. the workers, the cooks and the waitresses, have their separate, allotted tasks; they also have opportunities of even closer association than the factory operatives. these opportunities, which may be used among the young folks to exchange views on the latest nickel show, to compare the last boss with the present one, may also, among the older ones, mean talking over better wages and hours and how to get them, and here may spring up the beginnings of organization.
the number of women organized into trade unions is still insignificant, compared with those unreached by even a glimmering of knowledge as to what trade unionism means. the movement will not only have to become stronger numerically in the trades it already includes. it must extend in other directions, taking in the huge army of the unskilled and the semi-skilled, outside of those trades, so as to cover the fruit-pickers in the fields and the packers in the canneries, the paper-box-makers, the sorters of nuts and the knotters of feathers, those who pick the cotton from the plant, as well as those who make the cotten into cloth. another group yet to be enrolled are the hundreds of thousands of girls in stores, engaged in selling what the girls in factories have made, and still other large groups of girls in mercantile offices who are indirectly helping on the same business of exchange of goods for cash, and cash for goods, and who are just as truly part of the industrial world and of commercial life. but the pity is that the girl serving at the counter and the girl operating the typewriter do not know this.
take two other great classes of women, who have to be considered and reckoned with in any wide view of the wage-earning woman. these are nurses and teachers. the product of their toil is nothing that can be seen or handled, nothing that can be readily estimated in dollars and cents. but it must none the less be counted to their credit in any estimate of the national wealth, for it is to be read in terms of sound bodies and alert minds.
large numbers of women and girls are musicians, actresses and other theatrical employés. the labor movement needs them all, and, although few of them realize it, they need the labor movement. these are professions with great prizes, but the average worker makes no big wage, has no assurance of steadiness of employment, of sick pay when out of work, or of such freedom while working as shall bring out the very best that is in her.
in almost all of these occupations are to be found the beginnings of organization on trade-union lines. the american federation of musicians is a large and powerful body, of such standing in the profession that the entire membership of the symphony orchestras in all the large cities of the united states and canada (with the single exception of the boston symphony orchestra) belongs to it. women, so far, although admitted to the federation, have had no prominent part in its activities.
nurses and attendants in several of the state institutions of illinois have during the last two years formed unions. already they have had hours shortened from the old irregular schedule of twelve, fourteen and even sixteen hours a day to an eight-hour workday for all, as far as practicable. the state board is also entirely favorable to concede higher wages, one day off in seven, and an annual vacation of two weeks on pay, but cannot carry these recommendations out without an increased appropriation from the legislature.
there are now eight small associations of stenographers and bookkeepers and other office employés, one as far west as san francisco, while there is at least one court reporters' union.
the various federations of school-teachers have worked to raise school and teaching standards as well as their own financial position. they have besides, owing to the preponderance of women in the teaching profession, made a strong point of the justice of equal pay for equal work. women teachers are perhaps in a better position to make this fight for all their sex than any other women.
the fact that so many bodies of teachers have one after another affiliated with the labor movement has had a secondary result in bringing home to teachers the needs of the children, the disadvantages under which so many of them grow up, and still more the handicap under which most children enter industry. so it has come about that the teaching body in several cities has been roused to plead the cause of the workers' children, and therefore of the workers, and has brought much practical knowledge and first-hand information before health departments, educational authorities, and legislators.
yet another angle from which the organization of teachers has to be considered is that they are actually, if not always technically, public employés. every objection that can be raised against the organization of public employés, if valid at all, is valid here. every reason that can be urged why public employés should be able to give collective expression to their ideas and their wishes has force here.
the domestic servant, as we know her, is but a survival in culture from an earlier time, and more primitive environment. as a personal attendant, with no limitation of hours, without defined and standardized duties, and taking out part of her wages in the form of board and lodging, also at no standardized valuation, she will have to be improved out of existence altogether.
on the other hand as a skilled worker, she fills an important function in the community, satisfying permanent human needs, preparing food to support our bodies, and making clean and beautiful the homes wherein we dwell. surely humanity is not so stupid that arrangements cannot be planned by which domestic workers can have their own homes, like other people, hours of leisure, like other workers, and organizations through which they may express themselves. the main difficulty in the immediate future is that the very reason why organization is so urgently needed by domestic workers is the reason why it is so difficult to form organizations, the individual isolation in which the girls live and work. the desire for common action assuredly is there; one little group after another are meeting and talking over their difficulties, and planning how they can overcome them. the obstacles in the way of forming unions of domestic workers are tremendous. what such groups need, above all, is a union headquarters, with comfortable and convenient rooms, in which girls could meet their friends during their times off, or in which they could just rest, if they wanted to, for many have no friend's house to go to during their precious free days. such a headquarters should conduct an employment agency. other activities would probably grow out of such a center, and the workers co?perating would help towards the solving of that domestic problem which is their concern even more intimately than it is that of those whom, as things are, they so unwillingly serve. that the finest type of women are already awake, and nearing the stage when they themselves recognize the need of organization, is evident from the fact that in chicago, buffalo and seattle, there lately sprang up almost simultaneously, small associations of household workers formed to secure regular hours and better living conditions.
there is no class of women or girls more urgently in need of a radical change in their economic condition than department-store clerks. to this need even the public has of late become somewhat awakened, thanks mainly to a troop of investigators and to the writers in the magazines, who on the one hand have roused nation-wide horror by means of revelations regarding the white-slave traffic, and on the other have brought to that same national audience painful enlightenment as to the chronic starvation of both soul and body endured by so many brave and patient young creatures, who on four, five or six dollars a week just manage to exist, but who in so doing, are cheated of all that makes life worth living in the present, and are disinherited of any prospect of home, health and happiness in the future.
this story has been told again and again. yet the public has not yet learned to relate it to any effectual remedy. undoubtedly organization has done a great deal for this class in other countries, notably in england and in germany, and in this country also, in the few cities where it has been brought about. but meanwhile their numbers are increasing, and it hardly seems human for us to wait while all these young lives are being ruined in the hope that a few years hence the department-store clerks succeeding them may be able to save themselves through organization, when there is another remedy at hand. that remedy is legislation to cover thoroughly hours, wages and conditions of work. no one suggests depending exclusively on laws. one reason, probably, why the freeing of the negro slave has been so often merely a nominal freeing is because he was able to play so small a part himself in the gaining of his freedom. it was a gift, truly, from the master race. but no one, surely, would use that argument in reference to children, and an immense proportion of the department-store employés are but children, children between fourteen and eighteen, and in some states much younger. one hears of occasional instances in which even children have banded together and gone on strike. school-children have done it. the little button-sewers of muscatine, iowa, formed a juvenile union during the long strike of 1911. but these are such exceptional instances that they can hardly count in normal times. and that such a large body of children and very young girls are included among department-store employés adds immensely to the difficulty of gaining over the grown-up women to organization.
[illustration: a bindery
hand folders on platform. machine folder and hand gatherers below.]
[illustration: interior of one of the largest and best equipped waist
and cloak factories in new york city]
perhaps at some future time children may mature mentally earlier. if along with this, education is more efficient, and the civic duty of a common responsibility for the good of all is taught universally in our schools, even the child at fourteen may become class-conscious, and willing to fight and struggle for a common aim. but if that day ever comes, it will be in the far future, and let us hope that then childish energies may be free to find other channels of expression and childish co?peration be exerted for happier aims. the child of today is often temporarily willful and disobedient, but on the whole he (and more often she) is pathetically patient and long-suffering under all sorts of hardships and injustices, and has no idea of anything like an industrial rebellion. indeed overwork and ill-usage have upon children the markedly demoralizing effect of cowing them permanently, so that in oppressing a child you do more than deprive him of his childhood, you weaken what ought to be the backbone of his maturity. but improve conditions, whether by law or otherwise, and you will have a more independent "spunky" child, a better prospect of having him, when grown up, a more wholesomely natural rebel. indeed more or less, this applies to human beings of any age.
as regards the minimum wage, the objection raised by certain among the conservative labor leaders has been that it will retard organization and check independence of spirit. this reasoning seems quite academic, in view of the fact that it is the most oppressed workers who are usually the least able and willing to assert themselves. give them shorter hours or better wages, and they will soon be pleading for still shorter hours and yet higher wages. wherever the regulation of wages, through that most democratic method, that of wages boards composed of representatives of workers and employers, has been attempted, organization has been encouraged, and this plan of legalized collective bargaining has been applied to trade after trade. in victoria, australia, the birthplace of the system, and the state where it has been longest in force, and more fully developed than anywhere else, the number of trades covered has grown in less than twenty years from the four experimental trades of shoemaking, baking, various departments of the clothing trades and furniture-making to 141 occupations, including such varied employments as engravers, plumbers, miners and clerical workers.
it is hardly necessary to say that minimum wages boards in australia control the wages of men as well as of women. this question, however, does not enter into practical labor statesmanship in the united states today, but the minimum wage for women is a very live issue, and its introduction in state after state is supported by the working-women, both speaking as individuals and through their organizations.
the objections of employers to any regulation of wages is partly economic, as they fear injury to trade, a fear not sustained by australian experience, or by the experience of employers in trades in this country, in which wages have been raised and are largely controlled by strong labor organizations. in especial, employers object to an unequal burden imposed upon the state or states first experimenting with wages boards. this has no more validity than a similar objection raised against any and all interference between employer and employé, whether it be limitation of hours, workmen's compensation acts or any other industrial legislation. it is only that another adjustment has to be made, one of the many that any trade and any employer has always to be making to suit slightly changing circumstances. and often the adjustment is much less, and the advantage to the employer arising from having more efficient and contented employés greater than anticipated. competition is then not for the cheapest worker, but for the most efficient.
public responsibility for social and economic justice is likely to be quickened and maintained by the very existence of these permanent boards created not so much to remedy acute evils as to establish in the industry conditions more nearly equitable.
it has ever been found that in regard to ordinary factory legislation, organized employés were the best inspectors to see that the law was enforced. this principle holds good in even a more marked degree, where the representatives of the workers have themselves a say in the decision, as is the case during the long sessions of a wages board, where all who take part in the discussions and in the final agreement are experts in the trade, and intimately acquainted with the practical details of the industry.
the very same misgivings as are felt and expressed by employers and by the public regarding the effect of legislation for the regulation of wages have been heard on every occasion when any legal check has been proposed upon the downward pressure upon the worker, inevitable under our system of competition for trade and markets. what a cry went up from the manufacturers of great britain when a bill to check the ruthless exploitation of babies in the cotton mills was introduced into the house of commons. the very same arguments of interference with trade, despotic control over the right of the employé to bargain as an individual, are urged today, no matter how often their futility and irrelevance have been exposed.
the question of organization and the white alien has been dealt with in another chapter, but organization cannot afford to stop even here. it will never accomplish all that trade unionists desire and what the workers need until those of every color, the negro, the indian, the chinese, the japanese, the hindoo are included. the southern states are very imperfectly organized, and trade unionism on any broad scale will never be achieved there until the colored workers are included. in this the white workers, neither in the north nor in the south, have yet recognized their plain duty. it is not the american federation itself which is directly responsible, but the national and local unions in the various trades, who place difficulties in the way of admitting colored members. "ordinarily," writes dr. f.e. wolfe in his "admission to labor unions," published by the johns hopkins university press, "the unimpeded admission of negroes can be had only where the local white unionists are favorable. consequently, racial antipathy and economic motive may, in any particular trade, nullify the policies of the national union." this applies even in those cases where the national union itself would raise no barrier. i think it may be safely added that there are practically no colored women trade unionists, the occasional exception but serving to emphasize our utter neglect, as regards organization, of the colored woman.
yet another world waiting to be conquered is the dominion of canada, canada with its vast area and its still small population, yet with its cities, from montreal to vancouver, facing the very same industrial problems as american cities, from new york to san francisco. the organization of women is, so far, hardly touched in any of the provinces.
one encouraging circumstance, and significant of the intimate connection between the two halves of north america, is the fact that the international union of each trade includes those dwelling both in the united states and in canada; these internationals are in their turn, for the most part affiliated with both the american federation of labor and the trades and labor congress of canada.
whenever, then, the women of canada seriously begin to unionize, advance will be made through these existing international organizations. as mentioned elsewhere, the canadian trades and labor congress of canada has endorsed the work of the national women's trade union league of america, and seats a fraternal delegate from the league at its conventions.
it can only be a question of time, and of increasing industrial
pressure, when an active trade-union movement will spring up among
canadian women. among those who advocate and are prepared to lead in
such a movement are the president of the trades and labor congress,
mr. j.c. watters, mr. james simpson of the toronto industrial
banner, mrs. rose henderson of montreal, mr. j.w. wilkinson,
president of the vancouver trades and labor council, and miss helena
gutteridge, also of vancouver.
the president of the national women's trade union league, in her opening address before the new york convention in june, 1915, summed up the situation as to the sweated trades tellingly:
for tens of thousands of girl and women workers the average wage in sweated industries still is five, eight and ten cents an hour, and these earnings represent, on the average, forty weeks' work out of a fifty-two week year. further, in the report of the new york state factory investigation commission we find that out of a total of 104,000 men and women 13,000 receive less than $5.00 a week, 34,000 less than $7.00 a week, 68,000 less than $10.00 a week and only 17,000 receive $15.00 a week or more. these low wages are not only paid to apprentices either in factories or stores but to large numbers of women who have been continuously in industry for years. again, the new york state factory investigating commission tells us that half of those who have five years' experience in stores are receiving less than $8.00 a week, and only half of those with ten years' experience receive $10.00 a week. dr. howard woolston of the commission has pointed out: "even for identical work in the same locality, striking differences in pay are found. in one wholesale candy factory in manhattan no male laborer and no female hand-dipper is paid as much as $8 a week, nor does any female packer receive as much as $5.50. in another establishment of the same class in the same borough every male laborer gets $8 or over, and more than half the female dippers and packers exceed the rates given in the former plant. again, one large department store in manhattan pays 86 per cent. of its saleswomen $10 or over; another pays 86 per cent. of them less. when a representative paper-box manufacturer learned that cutters in neighboring factories receive as little as $10 a week, he expressed surprise, because he always pays $15 or more. this indicates that there is no well-established standard at wages in certain trades. the amounts are fixed by individual bargain, and labor is 'worth' as much as the employer agrees to pay."
it has been estimated by the commission that to raise the wages of two thousand girls in the candy factories from $5.75 to $8.00 a week, the confectioners in order to cover the cost will have to charge eighteen cents more per hundred pounds of candy. it is also estimated that if work shirts cost $3.00 a dozen, and the workers receive sixty cents for sewing them we can raise the wages ten per cent. and make the labor cost sixty-six cents. the price of those dozen shirts has been raised to $3.06. the cost of labor in the sweated industries is a small fraction of the manufacturing cost.
in the face of such evidence is there anyone who can still question that individual bargaining is a menace against the social order and that education and equipment in organization and citizenship become a social necessity?
women unionists, like men in the labor movement, are continually asked to support investigations into industrial conditions, investigations and yet more investigations. they are asked to give evidence before boards and commissions, they are asked to furnish journalists and writers of books with information. they have done so willingly, but there is a sense coming over many of us that we have had investigations a-plenty; and that the hour struck some time ago for at least beginning to put an end to the conditions of needless poverty and inexcusable oppression, which time after time have been unearthed.
no one who heard mrs. florence kelley at the charities and corrections conference in st. louis in 1910 can forget the powerful plea she made to social workers that they should not be satisfied with investigation. not an investigation has ever been made but has told the same story, monotonous in its lesson, only varying in details; workers, and especially women workers, are inadequately paid. further she considers that investigations would be even more thorough and drastic if the investigators, the workers and the public knew that something would come out of the inquiry beyond words, words, words.
investigation alone never remedied any evil, never righted any injustice. yet as far as the community are concerned, average men and women seem quite content when the investigation has been made, and stop there. what is wrong? will no real improvement take place till the workers are strong enough individually and collectively to manage their own affairs, and through organization, co?peration, and political action, or its equivalent insure adequate remuneration, and prevent overwork, speeding up, and dangerous and insanitary conditions?
in a degree investigation has prepared the way for legislation. legislation will undoubtedly play even a bigger part than it has done in the protection of the workers. almost all laws for which organized labor generally works affect women as well as men, whether they are anti-injunction statutes, or workmen's compensation acts, or factory laws. but there is another class of laws, specially favoring women, about which women have naturally more decided opinions than men. these are laws as to hours, and more recently as to wages, which are or are to be applicable to women alone. a just and common-sense argument extends special legislative protection to women, because of their generally exploited and handicapped position; but the one strong plea used in their behalf has been health and safety, the health and safety of the future mothers of society. at this point we pause. in all probability such protection will be found so beneficial to women that it will be eventually extended to men.
one group of laws in which labor is vitally interested is laws touching the right of the workers to organize. many of the most important judicial decisions in labor cases have turned upon this point. in this are involved the right to fold arms, and peacefully to suggest to others to do the same; the right to band together not to buy non-union goods, and peacefully to persuade others not to buy.
one angle from which labor views all law-making is that of administration. a law may be beneficial. it is in danger on two sides. the first the risk of being declared unconstitutional, a common fate for the most advanced legislation in this country; or, safe on that side, it may be so carelessly or inefficiently administered as to be almost useless. in both cases, strong unions have a great influence in deciding the fate and the practical usefulness of laws.
whether in the making, the confirming, or the administering of laws, the trade unions form the most important channel through which the wishes of the workers can be expressed. organized labor does not speak only for trade unionists; it necessarily, in almost every case, speaks for the unorganized as well, partly because the needs of both are usually the same, and partly because there is no possible method by which the wishes of the working people can be ascertained, save through the accepted representatives of the organized portion of the workers.
an excellent illustration of how business can and does adjust itself to meet changing legal demands is seen in what happened when the ten-hour law came in force in the state of illinois in july, 1909.
the women clerks on the elevated railroads of chicago, who had been in the habit of working twelve hours a day for seven days a week at $1.75 a day, were threatened with dismissal, and replacement by men. but what happened? at first they had to accept as a compromise a temporary arrangement under which they received eleven hours' pay for ten hours' work. their places were not, however, filled by men, and now, they are receiving for their ten-hour day $1.90 or 15 cents more than they had previously been paid for a twelve-hour day, and in addition they now are given every third sunday off duty. this showed the good results of the law, particularly when there was a strong organization behind the workers. mercantile establishments came in under the amended ten-hour law two years later.
the new law was, on the whole, wonderfully well observed in chicago, and as far as i have been able to learn, in the smaller towns as well. there were some violations discovered, and plenty more, doubtless, remained undiscovered. but the defaulting employers must have been very few compared with the great majority of those who met its requirement faithfully and intelligently. the proprietors and managers of the large chicago department stores, for instance, worked out beforehand a plan of shifts by which they were able to handle the christmas trade, satisfy their customers, and at the same time, dismiss each set of girls at the end of their ten-hour period. to meet the necessities of the case a staff of extra hands was engaged by each of the large department stores. this was a common arrangement. the regular girls worked from half-past eight till seven o'clock, with time off for lunch. the extra hands came on in the forenoon at eleven o'clock and worked till ten in the evening, with supper-time off. certain of the stores varied the plan somewhat, by giving two hours for lunch. these long recesses are not without their disadvantages. they mean still a very long day on the stretch, and besides, where is a girl to spend the two hours? she cannot go home, and it is against the law for her to be in the store, for in the eye of the law, if she remains on the premises, she is presumably at work, and if at work, therefore being kept longer than the legal ten hours.
that a law which had been so vigorously opposed should on the whole have been observed so faithfully in the second largest city in the united states, that it should in that city have stood the test, at its very initiation, of the rush season, is a fact full of hope and encouragement for all who are endeavoring to have our laws keep pace with ideals of common justice.
some time afterwards the constitutionality of the law was tested in the courts. since then, complaints have died away. there is no record of trading establishments having been compelled to remove to another state, and we no longer even hear of its being a ruinous handicap to resident manufacturers. even reactionary employers are now chiefly concerned in putting off the impending evil, as they regard it, of an eight-hour day, which they know cannot be very far off, as it has already arrived on the pacific coast.
if the acquiescence of illinois employers was satisfactory, the effect upon the girls was remarkable and exceeded expectations. during that christmas week, the clerks were tired, of course, but they were not in the state of exhaustion, collapse, and physical and nervous depletion, which they had experienced in previous years. this bodily salvation had been expected. it was what organized women had pleaded for and bargained for, what the defending lawyers, mr. louis d. brandeis and mr. william j. calhoun had urged upon the judges, when the supreme court of illinois had been earlier called upon to pass upon the validity of the original ten-hour law, although department-store employés had not been included within the scope of its protection.
but the girls were more than not merely worn-out to the point of exhaustion. most of them were more alive than they had ever been since first they started clerking. they were happy, and surprised beyond measure at their own good fortune. those juniors who could just remember how different last christmas had been, those seniors whose memories held such searing recollections of many preceding christmases, were one in their rejoicing and wonderment. they caught a dim vision of a common interest. here was something which all could share. that one was benefited did not mean another's loss.
from girl after girl i heard the same story. i would ask them how they were getting on through the hard time this year. "oh," a girl would answer, "it wasn't so bad at all. you see we've got the ten-hour law, and we can't work after the time is up. it's just wonderful. why, i'm going to enjoy christmas this year. i'm tired, but nothing like i've always been before. last christmas day i couldn't get out of bed, i ached so, and i couldn't eat, either."
and yet, while the girls, thanks to the new law, were having something like decent, though by no means ideal hours of work, the young elevator boys, in the same store were working fourteen hours and a half, day in, day out.
so imperfect yet are the results of much that is accomplished!
there are now two states, mississippi and oregon, which have ten-hour laws, applying to both men and women, and including the larger proportion of the workers. there are also federal statutes, state laws and municipal ordinances limiting the hours and granting the eight-hour day to whole groups of workers, either in public or semi-public employ, or affecting special occupations such as mining. thus it is clear, that for both sexes there is now abundant legal precedent for any shortening of hours, which has its place in a more advanced social and industrial development.