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diff --git a/12226-0.txt b/12226-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2348140 --- /dev/null +++ b/12226-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6172 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12226 *** + +Images provided by: Million Book Project. + +Post-Processing : Wilelmina Mallière. + + + + + +WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT + + + +[Illustration: CONVENTION OF OUR WOMEN AT HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK] + +WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT + +BY RHETA CHILDE DORR + +1910. + + + +TO +THE AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVES +OF THE EIGHT MILLION-- +THE EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND MEMBERS +OF THE GENERAL FEDERATION OF +WOMEN'S CLUBS-- +THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED + + +Many of the chapters contained in this volume appeared as special +articles in _Hampton's Magazine_, to the editor of which the author's +thanks are due for permission to republish. + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + I INTRODUCTORY + II FROM CULTURE CLUBS TO SOCIAL SERVICE + III EUROPEAN WOMEN AND THE SALIC LAW + IV AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE COMMON LAW + V WOMAN'S DEMANDS ON THE RULERS OF INDUSTRY + VI MAKING OVER THE FACTORY FROM THE INSIDE + VII BREAKING THE GREAT TABOO + VIII WOMAN'S HELPING HAND FOR THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER + IX THE SERVANT IN HER HOUSE + X VOTES FOR WOMEN + XI IN CONCLUSION + INDEX + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + CONVENTION OF CLUB WOMEN AT HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK + + CARPENTER SHOP, VACATION SCHOOL, PITTSBURGH + + CAPTAIN BALL ON GIRL'S FIELD, WASHINGTON PARK, PITTSBURGH + + STORY HOUR AT VACATION PLAYGROUND, CASTELAR SCHOOL YARD, LOS + ANGELES, CAL. + + MRS. SARAH PLATT DECKER + + LADY ABERDEEN + + A "WOMEN'S RIGHTS" MAP OF THE UNITED STATES + + MISS EMILIE BULLOWA + + MRS. FREDERICK NATHAN + + MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN + + MISS ELIZABETH MALONEY + + A DEPARTMENT STORE REST-ROOM FOR WOMEN + + MISS MAUDE E. MINER + + IN THE NIGHT COURT, NEW YORK + + MISS SADIE AMERICAN + + A TYPICAL DANCE HALL + + AN UNTHOUGHT-OF PHASE OF THE SERVANT QUESTION + + ANOTHER SERIOUS CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOCIAL QUESTION + + THE SERVANT GIRL AND THE EMPLOYMENT AGENCY + + SUFFRAGETTES IN LONDON ADVERTISING A MEETING + + MRS. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH + + MEETING A RELEASED SUFFRAGETTE PRISONER + + THE WOMEN'S TRADES PROCESSION TO THE ALBERT HALL MEETING, APRIL 27, + 1909 + + HELEN HOY GREELEY + + SUFFRAGETTES IN MADISON SQUARE + + THE "QUIET WALK" OF THE NEW YORK SUFFRAGISTS, WHOM THE POLICE WOULD + NOT PERMIT TO PARADE + + SUFFRAGE DEMONSTRATION IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK + + + + +WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT + + + + +CHAPTER I + +INTRODUCTORY + + +For the audacity of the title of this book I offer no apology. I have +had it pointed out, not altogether facetiously, that it is impossible to +determine with accuracy what one woman, much less what any number of +women, wants. I sympathize with the first half of the tradition. The +desires, that is to say, the ideals, of an individual, man or woman, are +not always easy to determine. The individual is complex and exceedingly +prone to variation. The mass alone is consistent. The ideals of the mass +of women are wrapped in mystery simply because no one has cared enough +about them to inquire what they are. + +Men, ardently, eternally, interested in Woman--one woman at a time--are +almost never even faintly interested in women. Strangely, deliberately +ignorant of women, they argue that their ignorance is justified by an +innate unknowableness of the sex. + +I am persuaded that the time is at hand when this sentimental, half +contemptuous attitude of half the population towards the other half will +have to be abandoned. I believe that the time has arrived when +self-interest, if other motive be lacking, will compel society to +examine the ideals of women. In support of this opinion I ask you to +consider three facts, each one of which is so patent that it requires no +argument. + +The Census of 1900 reported nearly six million women in the United +States engaged in wage earning outside their homes. Between 1890 and +1900 the number of women in industry increased faster than the number of +men in industry. _It increased faster than the birth rate._ The number +of women wage earners at the present date can only be estimated. Nine +million would be a conservative guess. Nine million women who have +forsaken the traditions of the hearth and are competing with men in the +world of paid labor, means that women are rapidly passing from the +domestic control of their fathers and their husbands. Surely this is +the most important economic fact in the world to-day. + +Within the past twenty years no less than nine hundred and fifty-four +thousand divorces have been granted in the United States. Two thirds of +these divorces were granted to aggrieved wives. In spite of the +anathemas of the church, in the face of tradition and early precept, in +defiance of social ostracism, accepting, in the vast majority of cases, +the responsibility of self support, more than six hundred thousand +women, in the short space of twenty years, repudiated the burden of +uncongenial marriage. Without any doubt this is the most important +social fact we have had to face since the slavery question was settled. + +Not only in the United States, but in every constitutional country in +the world the movement towards admitting women to full political +equality with men is gathering strength. In half a dozen countries women +are already completely enfranchised. In England the opposition is +seeking terms of surrender. In the United States the stoutest enemy of +the movement acknowledges that woman suffrage is ultimately inevitable. +The voting strength of the world is about to be doubled, and the new +element is absolutely an unknown quantity. Does any one question that +this is the most important political fact the modern world has ever +faced? + +I have asked you to consider three facts, but in reality they are but +three manifestations of one fact, to my mind the most important human +fact society has yet encountered. Women have ceased to exist as a +subsidiary class in the community. They are no longer wholly dependent, +economically, intellectually, and spiritually, on a ruling class of men. +They look on life with the eyes of reasoning adults, where once they +regarded it as trusting children. Women now form a new social group, +separate, and to a degree homogeneous. Already they have evolved a group +opinion and a group ideal. + +And this brings me to my reason for believing that society will soon be +compelled to make a serious survey of the opinions and ideals of women. +As far as these have found collective expressions, it is evident that +they differ very radically from accepted opinions and ideals of men. As +a matter of fact, it is inevitable that this should be so. Back of the +differences between the masculine and the feminine ideal lie centuries +of different habits, different duties, different ambitions, different +opportunities, different rewards. + +I shall not here attempt to outline what the differences have been or +why they have existed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in _Women and +Economics_, did this before me,--did it so well that it need never be +done again. I merely wish to point out that different habits of action +necessarily result, after long centuries, in different habits of +thought. Men, accustomed to habits of strife, pursuit of material +gains, immediate and tangible rewards, have come to believe that strife +is not only inevitable but desirable; that material gain and visible +reward are alone worth coveting. In this commercial age strife means +business competition, reward means money. Man, in the aggregate, thinks +in terms of money profit and money loss, and try as he will, he cannot +yet think in any other terms. + +I have in mind a certain rich young man, who, when he is not +superintending the work of his cotton mills in Virginia, is giving his +time to settlement work in the city of Washington. The rich young man is +devoted to the settlement. One day he confided to a guest of the house, +a social worker of note, that he wished he might dedicate his entire +life to philanthropy. + +"There is much about a commercial career that is depressing to a +sympathetic nature," he declared. "For example, it constantly depresses +me to observe the effect of the cotton mills on the girls in my employ. +They come in from the country, fresh, blooming, and eager to work. +Within a few months perhaps they are pale, anaemic, listless. Not +infrequently a young girl contracts tuberculosis and dies before one +realizes that she is ill. It wrings the heart to see it." + +"I suspect," said the visitor, "that there is something wrong with your +mills. Are you sure that they are sufficiently well ventilated?" + +"They are as well ventilated as we can have them," said the rich young +man. "Of course we cannot keep the windows open." + +"Why not?" persisted the visitor. + +"Because in our mills we spin both black and white yarn, and if the +windows were kept open the lint from the black yarn would blow on the +white yarn and ruin it." + +A quick vision rose before the visitor's consciousness, of a mill room, +noisy with clacking machinery, reeking with the mingled odors of +perspiration and warm oil, obscure with flying cotton flakes which +covered the forms of the workers like snow and choked in their throats +like desert sand. + +"But," she exclaimed, "you can have two rooms, one for the white yarn +and the other for the black." + +The rich young man shook his head with the air of one who goes away +exceedingly sorrowful. + +"No," he replied, "we can't. The business won't stand it." + +This story presents in miniature the social attitude of the majority of +men. They cannot be held entirely responsible. Their minds automatically +function just that way. They have high and generous impulses, their +hearts are susceptible to tenderest pity, they often possess the vision +of brotherhood and human kinship, but habit, long habit, always +intervenes in time to save the business from loss of a few dollars +profit. + +Three years ago Chicago was on the eve of one of its periodical "vice +crusades," of which more later. Sensational stories had been published +in several newspapers, to the effect that no fewer than five thousand +Jewish girls were leading lives of shame in the city, a statement which +was received with horror by the Jewish population of Chicago. A meeting +of wealthy and influential men and women was called in the law library +of a well known jurist and philanthropist. Representatives from various +social settlements in Jewish quarters of the town were invited, and it +was as a guest of one of these settlements that I was privileged to be +present. + +Eloquent addresses were made and an elaborate plan for investigation and +relief was outlined. Finally it came to a point where ways and means had +to be considered. The presiding officer put this phase of the matter to +the conference with smiling frankness. "You must realize, ladies and +gentlemen," he said, "that we have entered upon an extensive and, I am +afraid, a very expensive campaign." + +At this a middle aged and notably dignified man arose and said with +emotion trembling in his voice: "Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen +of the conference, this surely is no time for us to think of economy of +expenditure. If the daughters of Israel are losing their ancient dower +of purity, the sons of Israel should be willing, nay, eager to ransom +them at any cost. Permit me, as a privileged honor which I value highly, +to offer, as a contribution towards the preliminary expenses of this +campaign, my check for ten thousand dollars." + +He sat down to that polite little murmur of applause which goes round +the room, and I whispered to the head resident of the settlement of +which I was a guest, an inquiry as to the identity of the generous +donor. + +"That gentleman," she whispered in reply, "is one of the owners of a +great mail order department store in Chicago." She sighed deeply, as +she added: "During the first week of the panic that store discharged, +without warning, five hundred girls." + +These typical examples of the reasoning processes of men are offered +without the slightest rancor. They had to be given in order that the +woman's habit of thought might be explained with clearness. + +Women, since society became an organized body, have been engaged in the +rearing, as well as the bearing of children. They have made the home, +they have cared for the sick, ministered to the aged, and given to the +poor. The universal destiny of the mass of women trained them to feed +and clothe, to invent, manufacture, build, repair, contrive, conserve, +economize. They lived lives of constant service, within the narrow +confines of a home. Their labor was given to those they loved, and the +reward they looked for was purely a spiritual reward. + +A thousand generations of service, unpaid, loving, intimate, must have +left the strongest kind of a mental habit in its wake. Women, when they +emerged from the seclusion of their homes and began to mingle in the +world procession, when they were thrown on their own financial +responsibility, found themselves willy nilly in the ranks of the +producers, the wage earners; when the enlightenment of education was no +longer denied them, when their responsibilities ceased to be entirely +domestic and became somewhat social, when, in a word, women began to +_think_, they naturally thought in human terms. They couldn't have +thought otherwise if they had tried. + +They might have learned, it is true. In certain circumstances women +might have been persuaded to adopt the commercial habit of thought. But +the circumstances were exactly propitious for the encouragement of the +old-time woman habit of service. The modern thinking, planning, +self-governing, educated woman came into a world which is losing faith +in the commercial ideal, and is endeavoring to substitute in its place a +social ideal. She came into a generation which is reaching passionate +hands towards democracy. She became one with a nation which is weary of +wars and hatreds, impatient with greed and privilege, sickened of +poverty, disease, and social injustice. The modern, free-functioning +woman accepted without the slightest difficulty these new ideals of +democracy and social service. Where men could do little more than +theorize in these matters, women were able easily and effectively to +act. + +I hope that I shall not be suspected of ascribing to women any ingrained +or fundamental moral superiority to men. Women are not better than men. +The mantle of moral superiority forced upon them as a substitute for +intellectual equality they accepted, because they could not help +themselves. They dropped it as soon as the substitute was no longer +necessary. + +That the mass of women are invariably found on the side of the new +ideals is no evidence of their moral superiority to men; it is merely +evidence of their intellectual youth. + +Visitors from western cities and towns are often amazed, and vastly +amused, to find in New York and other eastern cities little narrow-gauge +street car lines, where gaunt horses haul the shabbiest of cars over the +oldest and roughest of road beds. The Westerner declares that nowhere in +the East does he find surface cars that equal in comfort and elegance +the cars recently installed in his Michigan or Nebraska or Washington +home town. + +"Recently installed." There you have it. + +The eastern city retains its horse cars and its out-of-date electric +rolling stock because it has them, and because there are all sorts of +difficulties in the way of replacing them. Old franchises have to expire +or otherwise be got rid of; corporations have to be coaxed or coerced; +greed and corruption often have to be overcome; huge sums of money have +to be appropriated; a whole machinery of municipal government has to be +set in motion before the old and established city can change its +traction system. + +The new western town goes on foot until it attains to a certain size and +a sufficient prosperity. Then it installs electric railways, and of +course it purchases the newest and most modern of the available models. + + +New social ideals are difficult for men to acquire in a practical way +because their minds are filled with old traditions, inherited memories, +outworn theories of law, government, and social control. They cannot get +rid of these at once. They have used them so long, have found them so +convenient, so satisfactory, that even when you show them something +admittedly better; they are able only partially to comprehend and to +accept. + +Women, on the other hand, have very few antiques to get rid of. Until +recently their minds, scantily furnished with a few personal preferences +and personal prejudices, were entirely bare of community ideals or any +social theory. When they found themselves in need of a social theory it +was only natural that they should choose the most modern, the most +progressive, the most idealistic. They made their choice unconsciously, +and they began the application of their new-found theory almost +automatically. The machinery they employed was the long derided, +misconceived, and unappreciated Women's Club. + + + + + +CHAPTER II + +FROM CULTURE CLUBS TO SOCIAL SERVICE + + +Unless you have lived in a live town in the Middle West--say in +Michigan, or Indiana, or Nebraska--you cannot have a very adequate idea +of how ugly, and dirty, and neglected, and disreputable a town can be +when nobody loves it. The railway station is a long, low, rakish thing +of boards, painted a muddy maroon color. Around it is a stretch of bare +ground strewn with ashes. Beyond lies the main street, with some good +business blocks,--a First National Bank in imposing granite, and a +Masonic Temple in pressed brick. The high school occupies a treeless, +grassless, windswept block by itself. + +In the center of the residential section of the town is a big, +unsightly, hummocky vacant place, vaguely known as the park--or the +place where they are going to have a park, when the city gets around to +it. At present it is a convenient spot wherein to dump tin cans, empty +bottles, broken crockery, old shoes, and other residue. When the wind +blows, in the spring and fall, a fine assortment of desiccated rubbish +is wafted up and down, and into the neighbors' dooryards. + +Everybody is busy in these live towns. Everybody is prosperous, and +patriotic, and law-abiding, and respectable. The business of "getting +on" absorbs the entire time and attention of the men. They "get on" so +well, for the most part, that their wives have plenty of leisure on +their hands, and the latter occupy a portion of their leisure by +belonging to a club, organized for the study of the art of the +Renaissance, Chinese religions before Confucius, or the mystery of +Browning. The club meets every second Wednesday, and the members read +papers, after which there is tea and a social hour. The papers vary in +degree alone, as the writer happens to be a skimmer, a wader, or a +deep-sea diver in standard editions of the encyclopedias. The social +hour, however, occasionally develops in a direction quite away from the +realms of pure culture. + +Such a town, with such a woman's club, was Lake City, Minnesota, a few +years ago. Lake City had a busy and a prosperous male population, a +woman's club bent on intellectual uplift, and a place where there was +going to be a park. One windy second Wednesday the club members arrived +with their eyes full of dust, soot on their white gloves, and +indignation in their hearts. When tea and the social hour came around +culture went by the board and the conversation turned to the perfectly +disgraceful way in which the town's street cleaning was conducted. + +"The streets are bad enough," said one member, "but, after all, one +expects the streets to be dusty. What I object to is having a city +dump-heap at my front door. Have any of you crossed my corner of the +park since the snow melted?" + +She drew a lively picture of a state of things gravely menacing to the +health of her neighborhood, and that of all the people whose homes faced +the neglected square. + +"Why doesn't somebody complain to the authorities?" she concluded. "Why +don't we do something about it? The next time we meet we might at least +adopt resolutions, or, better still, have a committee appointed. What do +you think, Madam President?" + +Madam President tapped her teaspoon on the edge of her empty cup. "I +think," she said, "that we will come to order and do it now. Will you +put what you have just suggested in the form of a motion?" + +At the next meeting of the club the committee to investigate the park +made its report. The club members began a lively canvass among real +estate owners and business men, and before long an astonished city +council found itself on its feet, receiving a deputation from the +woman's club. The women came armed with a donation of fifteen hundred +dollars cash, and a polite, but firm, demand that the money be used to +clean up and plant the park. + +The council replied that it had always intended to get around to that +park, and would have done it long ago but for the fact that there was no +park board in existence, and could not be one, because the Solons who +drew up the city charter had forgotten to put in a provision for such a +board. + +The club held more meetings, and appointed more committees. One of +these unearthed a State law which seemed to cover the case, and make a +park board possible without the direct assistance of a city charter. The +city attorney was visited, and somehow was coaxed, or argued, or bullied +into giving a favorable opinion, after which the election of a park +board followed as a matter of course. The town suddenly became +interested in the park. The club women's fifteen hundred dollars was +doubled by popular subscription, and the work of turning a town rubbish +heap into a cool and shady garden spot was brief but durable. + +You wouldn't know the Lake City of those years if you saw it to-day. +They have an attractive railroad station, paved streets, cement +sidewalks, public playgrounds for children, a high school set in a +shaded square, and residence streets that look like parkways. And the +woman's club was the parent of them all. + +There is a theory which expresses itself somewhat obviously in the +phrase: "Whatever all the women of the country want they will get." The +theory is a convenient one, because it may be used to defer action on +any suggested reform, and it is harmless because of the seeming +impossibility of ascertaining what all the women of the country really +want. The women of the United States and the women of all the world have +discovered a means through which they may express their collective +opinions and desires: organization, and more organization. Lake City is +but one instance in a thousand. + +When American women began, a generation ago, to form themselves into +clubs, and later to join these clubs into state federations of clubs, +and finally the state federations into a national body, they did not +dream that they were going to express a collective opinion. Indeed, at +that time not very many had opinions worth expressing. The immediate +need of women's souls at the beginning of the club movement was for +education; the higher education they missed by not going to college, and +they formed their clubs with the sole object of self-culture. + +The study period did not last very long. In fact it was doomed from the +beginning, for it is not in the nature of women, or at least it is not +in the habit of women, to do things for themselves alone. They have +_served_ for so many generations that they have learned to like serving +better than anything else in the world, and they add service to the +pursuit of culture, just as some of them add the important postscript to +the unimportant letter. + +Thus Dallas, Texas, had a women's club of the culture caste. One spring +day, after the star member had read a paper on the "Lake Poets," and +another member had rendered a Chopin _étude_ on the piano, they began to +talk about the stegomyia mosquito, and what a pity it was that the +annual danger of contagion and death from the bite of that insect had to +be faced all over again. Pools of water all over town, simply swarming +with little wriggling things, soon to emerge as full-armed stegomyias, +merely because the city authorities hadn't the money, or said they +hadn't, to cover the pools with oil. + +"Why, oil isn't very expensive," said one of the club women. "Let's buy +a whole lot of it and do the work ourselves." + +So the work of saving hundreds of lives every year was added to the +study of "Lake Poets" and Chopin by the Women's Club of Dallas. The +members mapped the city, laid it out in districts, organized their +forces, bought oil and oil-cans and set forth. They visited the schools, +got teachers and pupils interested, and secured their co-operation. The +study of city sanitation was soon put into the school curriculum, and +oiling pools of standing water in every quarter of the town is now a +regular part of the school program in the upper grades. Every year the +club women renew the agitation, and every year the school children go +out with their teachers and cover the pools with oil. + +That story could be paralleled in almost any city in the United States. +Clubs everywhere organized for the intellectual advancement of the +members, for the culture of music, art, and crafts, soon added to the +original object a department of philanthropy, a department of public +school decoration, a department of child labor, a department of civics. +The day a women's club adopts civics as a side line to literature, that +day it ceases to be a private association and becomes a public +institution--and the public sometimes finds this out before the club +suspects it. + +An Eastern woman was visiting in San Francisco a short time before the +fire. In the complication of three streets with names almost identical, +she lost her way to the reception whither she was bound. The conductor +on the last car she tried before going home was deeply sympathetic. + +"'Tis a shame, ma'am, them streets," he declared. "I've always said +there was no sense at all in havin' them named like that. A stranger is +bound to go wrong. I'll tell you what you do, ma'am: you go straight to +Mrs. Lovell White, she that bosses the women's clubs, you know, ma'am. +You tell her about them streets, and she'll have 'em changed." + +The conductor's simple faith in the Women's Club of San Francisco did +not lack justification. In the intervals of studying Browning and +antique art, the club found time to discover to San Francisco all sorts +of things that the city wanted and needed without knowing that it did. + +"We ought to have a flower market," pronounced the club. + +"Nonsense," said the City Council. "Besides, where is the money to come +from?" + +"We'll establish the flower market and show you," returned the club. + +They did. They found a centrally located square, the place where people +would be likely to go for an early morning sale of potted plants and cut +flowers. Prices are moderate in outdoor markets, and nothing else so +stimulates in an entire community the gardening instinct, usually +confined to a few individuals. The city authorities discovered that the +flower market filled a long-felt want. So the city took the market over. + +These activities were more or less local. Others, begun as local +affairs, ultimately became national in scope. The movement which has +resulted in a national program in favor of public playgrounds for +children began as a women's club movement. For a dozen years before the +Playgrounds Association of America came into existence, women's clubs +all over the country had been establishing playgrounds, supporting them +out of their club treasuries, and using every power of persuasion to +educate boards of education and city councils in their favor. + +Pittsburg affords a typical instance. In 1896 there was a Civic Club of +Allegheny County, composed of women of the twin steel cities of +Pittsburg and Allegheny. At the head of its Education Department there +was a woman, Miss Beulah Kennard, who loved children; not beautifully +clean, well behaved, curled and polished children, but just children. +Children attracted Miss Kennard to such a degree that she couldn't bear +the sight of them wallowing in the grime and soot of Pittsburg streets +and alleys. Often she stopped in her walks to watch them, dodging wagons +and automobiles; throwing stones, tossing balls, fighting, and shooting +craps; stealing apples from push-carts, getting arrested and being +dragged through the farce of a trial at law for the crime of playing. + +"Those children," Miss Kennard told her club, "have got to have a +decent place to play this summer." And the club agreed with her. The +treasury yielded for a beginning the modest sum of one hundred and +twenty-five dollars, and with this money the women fitted out one +schoolyard, large enough for sixty children to play in. There was no +trouble about getting the sixty together. They came, a noisy, joyous, +turbulent, vacation set of children, and the anxious committee from the +club looked at them in great trepidation of spirit and said to one +another: "What on earth are we going to do with them, now that we've got +them here?" + +With hardly a ghost of precedent to guide them, the club undertook the +work, and as women have had considerable experience in taking care of +children at home, they soon discovered ways of taking care of them +successfully in the playground. + +The next summer the Civic Club invested six hundred dollars in +playgrounds. Two schoolyards were fitted up in Pittsburg and two in +Allegheny. After that, every summer, the work was extended. More money +each year was voted, and additional playgrounds were established. In the +summer of 1899, three years after the first experiment, Pittsburg +children had nine playgrounds and Allegheny children had three, all +gifts of the women. By another year the committee was handling thousands +of dollars and managing an enterprise of considerable magnitude. Also +their work was attracting the admiration of other club women, who asked +for an opportunity to co-operate. In 1900 practically all the clubs of +the two cities united, and formed a joint committee of the Women's Clubs +of Pittsburg and vicinity to take charge of playgrounds. + +[Illustration: CARPENTER SHOP, VACATION SCHOOL, PITTSBURGH. Established +by club women and for years supported by them.] + +All this time the work was entirely in the hands of the club women, who +bought the apparatus, organized the games, employed the trained +supervisors, and supplied from their own membership the volunteer +workers, without whom the enterprise would have been a failure from the +start. The Board of Education co-operated to the extent of lending +schoolyards. Finally the Board of Education decided to vote an annual +contribution of money. + +In 1902 the city of Pittsburg woke up and gave the women fifteen +hundred dollars, with which they established one more playground and a +recreation park. The original one hundred and twenty-five dollars had +now expanded to nearly eight thousand dollars, and Pittsburg and +Allegheny children were not only playing in a dozen schoolyards, but +they were attending vacation schools, under expert instructors in manual +training, cooking, sewing, art-crafts. Several recreation centers, +all-the-year-round playgrounds, have been added since then. For +Pittsburg has adopted the women's point of view in the matter of +playgrounds. This year the city voted fifty thousand, three hundred and +fifty dollars, and the Board of Education appropriated ten thousand +dollars for the vacation schools. + +In Detroit it was the Twentieth Century Club that began the playground +agitation. Mrs. Clara B. Arthur, some ten years ago, read a paper +before the Department of Philanthropy and Reform, and following it the +chairman of the meeting appointed a committee to consider the +possibility of playgrounds for Detroit children. The committee visited +the Board of Education, explained the need of playgrounds, and asked +that the Board conduct one trial playground in a schoolyard, during the +approaching vacation. The Board declined. The boards of education in +most cities declined at first. + +The club did not give up. It talked playgrounds to the other clubs, +until all the organizations of women were interested. Within a year or +two Detroit had a Council of Women, with a committee on playgrounds. The +committee went to the Common Council this time and asked permission to +erect a pavilion and establish a playground on a piece of city land. +This was a great, bare, neglected spot, the site of an abandoned +reservoir which had been of no use to anybody for twenty years. The +place had the advantage of being in a very forlorn neighborhood where +many children swarmed. + +The Common Council was mildly amused at the idea of putting public +property to such an absurd, such an unheard-of use. A few of the men +were indignant. One Germanic alderman exploded wrathfully: "Vot does +vimmens know about poys' play?--No!" And that settled it. + +The committee went to the Board of Education once more, this time with +better success. They received permission to open and conduct, during the +long vacation, one playground in a large schoolyard. For two summers the +women maintained that playground, holding their faith against the +opposition of the janitors, the jeers of the newspapers, and the +constant hostility of tax-payers, who protested against the "ruin of +school property." After two years the Board of Education took over the +work. The mayor became personally interested, and the Common Council +gracefully surrendered. They have plenty of playgrounds in Detroit now, +the latest development being winter sports. + +If the Germanic alderman who protested that "vimmins" did not know +anything about boys' play was in office at the time, one wonders what +his emotions were when the playgrounds committee first appeared before +the Council and asked to have vacant lots flooded to give children +skating ponds in winter. Of course the Council refused. Fire plugs were +for water in case of fire, not for children's enjoyment. In fact there +was a city ordinance forbidding the opening of a fire plug in winter, +except to extinguish fire. It took two years of constant work on the +part of the club women to remove that ordinance, but they did it, and +the children of Detroit have their winter as well as their summer +playgrounds. + +[Illustration: CAPTAIN BALL ON GIRL'S FIELD, WASHINGTON PARK, +PITTSBURGH. Out of the persistent work of club women more than three +hundred playgrounds for children have been established.] + +In Philadelphia are fourteen splendid playgrounds and vacation schools, +established in the beginning and maintained for many years by a civic +club of women, the largest women's civic club in the country. The +process of educating public opinion in their favor was slow, for it is +difficult to make men see that the children of a modern city have +different needs from the country or village children of a generation +ago. Men remember their own boyhood, and scoff at the idea of organized +and supervised play in a made playground. Women have no memories of the +old swimming-hole. They simply see the conditions before them, and they +instinctively know what must be done to meet them. The process of +educating the others is slow, but this year in Philadelphia sixty public +schoolyards were opened for public playgrounds, and the city +appropriated five thousand dollars towards their maintenance. In a +hundred cities East and West the women's clubs have been the original +movers or have co-operated in the playground movement. + +Out of this persistent work was born the Playground Association of +America, an organization of men and women, which in the three years of +its existence has established more than three hundred playgrounds for +children. In Massachusetts they have secured a referendum providing that +all cities of over ten thousand inhabitants shall vote upon the question +of providing adequate playgrounds. The act provides that every city and +town in the Commonwealth which accepts the act shall after July 1, 1910, +provide and maintain at least one public playground, and at least one +other playground for every additional twenty thousand inhabitants. +Something like twenty-five cities in the State have accepted the +playgrounds act. It is a good beginning. The slogan of the movement, +"The boy without a playground is the father of the man without a job," +has swept over the continent. + +[Illustration: STORY HOUR AT VACATION PLAYGROUND, CASTELAR SCHOOL YARD, +LOS ANGELES, CAL.] + +This surely is a not inconsiderable achievement for so humble an +instrument as women's clubs. It is true that in most communities they +have forgotten that the women's clubs ever had anything to do with the +movement. The Playgrounds Association has not forgotten, however. Its +president, Luther Halsey Gulick, of New York, declares that even now the +work would languish if it lost the co-operation of the women's clubs. + +The scope of woman's work for civic betterment is wider than the +interests that directly affect children. How much the women attempt, how +difficult they find their task, how much opposition they encounter, and +how certain their success in the end, is indicated in a modest report of +the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Women's Civic Club. That report says in +part: + +"It is no longer necessary for us to continue, at our own cost, the +practical experiment we began in street-cleaning, or to advocate the +paving of a single principal street, as a test of the value of improved +highways; nor is it necessary longer to strive for a pure water supply, +a healthier sewerage system, or the construction of playgrounds. _This +work is now being done by the City Council, by the Board of Public +Works, and by the Park Commission._" + +Not that the Harrisburg Women's Civic Club has gone out of business. It +still keeps fairly busy with schoolhouse decoration, traveling libraries +for factory employees, and inspecting the city dump. + +In Birmingham, Alabama, the women's work has been recognized officially. +The club Women have formed "block" clubs, composed of the women living +in each block, and the mayor has invested them with powers of +supervision, control of street cleaning, and disposal of waste and +garbage. They really act as overseers, and can remove lazy and +incompetent employees. + +Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has a ten-year-old Civic Club. The women have +succeeded in getting objectionable billboards removed, public dumps +removed from the town, in having all outside market stalls covered, and +have secured ordinances forbidding spitting in public places, and +against throwing litter into the streets. + +Cranford, New Jersey, is one of a dozen small cities where the women's +clubs hold regular town house-cleanings. One large town in the Middle +West adopted a vigorous method of educating public opinion in favor of +spring and fall municipal house-cleaning. The club women got a +photographer and went the rounds of streets and alleys and private +backyards. Wherever bad or neglected conditions were found the club sent +a note to the owner of the property asking him to co-operate with its +members in cleaning up and beautifying the town. Where no attention was +paid to the notes, the photographs were posted conspicuously in the +club's public exhibit. + +If the California women saved the big tree grove, the New Jersey women, +by years of persistent work, saved the Palisades of the Hudson from +destruction and inaugurated the movement to turn them into a public +park. As for the Colorado club women, they saved the Cliff Dwellers' +remains. You can no longer buy the pottery and other priceless relics of +those prehistoric people in the curio-shops of Denver. + +I am not attempting a catalogue; I am only giving a few crucial +instances. The activities of women if they appeared only sporadically in +Lake City, Dallas, San Francisco, and a dozen other cities, would not +necessarily carry much weight. They would possess an interest purely +local. But the club women of Lake City, Dallas, San Francisco, do not +keep their interests local. Once a year they travel, hundreds of them, +to a chosen city in the State, and there they hold a convention which +lasts a week. And every second year the club women of Minnesota and +Texas and California, and every other State in the Union, to say +nothing of Alaska, Porto Rico, and the Canal Zone, thousands of them, +journey to a chosen center, and there they hold a convention which lasts +a week. And at these state and national conventions the club women +compare their work and criticise it, and confer on public questions, and +decide which movements they shall promote. They summon experts in all +lines of work to lecture and advise. Increasingly their work is national +in its scope. + +In round numbers, eight hundred thousand women are now enrolled in the +clubs belonging to the General Federation of Women's Clubs, holding in +common certain definite opinions, and working harmoniously towards +certain definite social ends. Remember that these eight hundred +thousand women are the educated, intelligent, socially powerful. + +Long ago these eight hundred thousand women ceased to confine their +studies to printed pages. They began to study life. Leaders developed, +women of intellect and experience, who could foresee the immense power +an organized womanhood might some time wield, and who had courage to +direct the forces under them towards vital objects. + +When, in 1904, Mrs. Sarah Platt Decker, of Denver, was elected President +of the General Federation, she found a number of old-fashioned clubs +still devoting themselves to Shakespeare and the classic writers. Mrs. +Decker, a voter, a full citizen, and a public worker of prominence in +her State, simply laughed the musty study clubs out of existence. + +"Ladies," she said to the delegates at the biennial meeting of 1904, +"Dante is dead. He died several centuries ago, and a great many things +have happened since his time. Let us drop the study of his 'Inferno' and +proceed in earnest to contemplate our own social order." + +[Illustration: MRS. SARAH PLATT DECKER] + +Mostly they took her advice. A few clubs still devote themselves to the +pursuit of pure culture, a few others exist with little motive beyond +congenial association. The great majority of women's clubs are organized +for social service. A glance at their national program shows the +modernity, the liberal character of organized women's ideals. The +General Federation has twelve committees, among them being those on +Industrial Conditions of Women and Children, Civil Service Reform, +Forestry, Pure Food and Public Health, Education, Civics, Legislation, +Arts and Crafts, and Household Economics. Every state federation has +adopted, in the main, the same departments; and the individual clubs +follow as many lines of the work as their strength warrants. + +The contribution of the women's clubs to education has been enormous. +There is hardly a State in the Union the public schools of which have +not been beautified, inside and outside; hardly a State where +kindergartens and manual training, domestic science, medical inspection, +stamp savings banks, or other improvements have not been introduced by +the clubs. In almost every case the clubs have purchased the equipment +and paid the salaries until the boards of education and the school +superintendents have been convinced of the value of the innovations. In +the South, where opportunities for the higher education of women are +restricted, the clubs support dozens of scholarships in colleges and +institutes. Many western State federations, notable among which is that +of Colorado, have strong committees on education which are active in the +entire school system. + +Thomas M. Balliett, Dean of Pedagogy in the New York University, paid a +deserved tribute to the Massachusetts club women when he said: + + In Massachusetts the various women's organizations have, within the + past few years, made a study of schools and school conditions + throughout the State with a thoroughness that has never been + attempted before. + +Dean Balliett says of women's clubs in general that the most +important reform movements in elementary education within the past +twenty years have been due, in large measure, to the efforts of +organized women. And he is right. + +The women's clubs have founded more libraries than Mr. Carnegie. Early +in the movement the women began the circulation among the clubs of +traveling reference libraries. Soon this work was extended, but the +object of the libraries was diverted. Instead of collections of books on +special subjects to assist the club women in their studies, the +traveling cases were arranged in miscellaneous groups, and were sent to +schools, to factories, to lonely farms, mining camps, lumber camps, and +to isolated towns and villages. + +Iowa now has more than twelve thousand volumes, half of them reference +books, in circulation. Eighty-one permanent libraries have grown out of +the traveling libraries in Iowa alone. After the traveling cases have +been coming to a town for a year or two, people wake up and agree that +they want a permanent place in which to read and study. Ohio has over a +thousand libraries in circulation, having succeeded, a few years ago, in +getting a substantial appropriation from the legislature to supplement +their work. Western States--Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho--have supplied +reading matter to ranches and mining camps for many years. + +One interesting special library is circulated in Massachusetts and Rhode +Island in behalf of the anti-tuberculosis movement. Something like forty +of the best books on health, and on the prevention and cure of +tuberculosis, are included. This library, with a pretty complete +tuberculosis exhibit, is sent around, and is shown by the local clubs +of each town. Usually the women try to have a mass-meeting, at which +local health problems are discussed. The Health Department of the +General Federation is working to establish these health libraries and +exhibits in every State. + +Not only in the United States, but in every civilized country, have +women associated themselves together with the object of reforming what +seems to them social chaos. In practically every civilized country in +the world to-day there exists a Council of Women, a central organization +to which clubs and societies of women with all sorts of opinions and +objects send delegates. In the United States the council is made up of +the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Woman's Christian +Temperance Union, and innumerable smaller organizations, like the +National Congress of Mothers, and the Daughters of the American +Revolution. More than a million and a half American women are +affiliated. + +Four hundred and twenty-six women's organizations belong to the council +in Great Britain. In Switzerland the council has sixty-four allied +societies; in Austria it has fifty; in the Netherlands it has +thirty-five. Seventy-five thousand women belong to the French council. +In all, the International Council of Women, to which all the councils +send delegates, represents more than eight million women, in countries +as far apart as Australia, Argentine, Iceland, Persia, South Africa, and +every country in Europe. The council, indeed, has no formal organization +in Russia, because organizations of every kind are illegal in Russia. +But Russian women attend every meeting of the International Council. +Turkish women sent word to the last meeting that they hoped soon to ask +for admission. The President of the International Council of Women is +the Countess of Aberdeen. Titled women in every European country belong +to their councils. The Queen of Greece is president of the Greek +council. + +The object of this great world organization of women is to provide a +common center for women of every country, race, creed, or party who are +associating themselves together in altruistic work. Once every five +years the International Council holds a great world congress of women. + +What eight million of the most intelligent, the most thoughtful, the +most altruistic women in the world believe, what they think the world +needs, what they wish and desire for the good of humanity, must be of +interest. It must count. + +[Illustration: LADY ABERDEEN President of the International Council of +Women.] + +The International Council of Women discusses every important question +presented, but makes no decision until the opinion of the delegates is +practically unanimous. It commits itself to no opinion, lends itself to +no movement, until the movement has passed the controversial stage. + +Those who cling to the old notion that women are perpetually at war with +one another will learn with astonishment that eight million women of all +nationalities, religions, and temperaments are agreed on at least four +questions. In the course of its twenty years of existence the +International Council has agreed to support four movements: Peace and +arbitration, social purity, removing legal disabilities of women, woman +suffrage. + +The American reader will be inclined to cavil at the last-mentioned +object. Woman suffrage, it will be claimed, has not passed the +controversial stage, even with women themselves. That is true in the +United States and in England. It is true, in a sense, in most countries +of the world. But in European countries not _woman_ suffrage, but +_universal_ suffrage is being struggled for. + +I had this explained to me in Russia, in the course of a conversation +with Alexis Aladyn, the brilliant leader of the Social Democratic party. +I said to him that I had been informed that the conservative reformers, +as well as the radicals, included woman suffrage in their programs. +Aladyn looked puzzled for a moment, and then he replied: "All parties +desire universal suffrage. Naturally that includes women." + +Finland at that time, 1906, had recently won its independence from the +autocracy and was preparing for its first general election. Talking with +one of the nineteen women returned to Parliament a few months later, I +asked: "How did you Finnish women persuade the makers of the new +constitution to give you the franchise?" + +"Persuade?" she repeated; "we did not have to persuade them. There was +simply no opposition. One of the demands made on the Russian Government +was for universal suffrage." + +The movement for universal suffrage, that is the movement for free +government, with the consent of the governed, is considered by the +International Council of Women to have passed the controversial stage. + +The whole club movement, as a matter of fact, is a part of the great +democratic movement which is sweeping over the whole world. Individual +clubs may be exclusive, even aristocratic in their tendencies, but the +large organization is absolutely democratic. If the President of the +International Council is an English peeress, one of the vice-presidents +is the wife of a German music teacher, and one of the secretaries is a +self-supporting woman. The General Federation in the United States is +made up of women of various stations in life, from millionaires' wives +to factory girls. + +The democracy of women's organizations was shown at the meeting in +London a year ago of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, where +delegates from twenty-one countries assembled. One of the great features +of the meeting was a wonderful pageant of women's trades and +professions. An immense procession of women, bearing banners and emblems +of their work, marched through streets lined with spectators to Albert +Hall, where the entire orchestra of this largest auditorium in the world +was reserved for them. A published account of the pageant, after +describing the delegations of teachers, nurses, doctors, journalists, +artists, authors, house workers, factory women, stenographers, and +others well known here, says: + + Then the ranks opened, and down the long aisle came the chain + makers who work at the forge, and the pit-brow women from the + mines,--women whose faces have been blackened by smoke and coal + dust until they can never be washed white.... To these women, the + hardest workers in the land, were given the seats of honor, while + behind them, gladly taking a subordinate place, were many women + wearing gowns with scarlet and purple hoods, indicating their + university degrees. + +Every public movement--reform, philanthropic, sanitary, educational--now +asks the co-operation of women's organizations. The United States +Government asked the co-operation of the women's clubs to save the +precarious Panama situation. At a moment when social discontent +threatened literally to stop the building of the canal, the Department +of Commerce and Labor employed Miss Helen Varick Boswell, of New York, +to go to the Isthmus and organize the wives and daughters of Government +employees into clubs. The Department knew that the clubs, once +organized, would do the rest. Nor was it disappointed. + +The Government asks the co-operation of women in its latest work of +conserving natural resources. At the biennial of the Federation of +Women's Clubs in 1906 Mr. Enos Mills delivered an address on forestry, a +movement which was beginning to engage the attention of the clubs. +Within an hour after he left the platform Mr. Mills had been engaged by +a dozen state presidents to lecture to clubs and federations. As soon +as it reached the Government that the women's clubs were paying fifty +dollars a lecture to learn about forestry work, the Government arranged +that the clubs should have the best authorities in the nation to lecture +on forestry free of all expense. + +But the Government is not alone in recognizing the power of women's +organizations. If the Government approves their interest in public +questions, vested interests are beginning to fear it. The president of +the Manufacturers' Association, in his inaugural address, told his +colleagues that their wives and daughters invited some very dangerous +and revolutionary speakers to address their clubs. He warned them that +the women were becoming too friendly toward reforms that the association +frowned upon. + +This is indeed true, and women display, in their new-found enthusiasm, +a singularly obstinate spirit. All the legislatures south of the Mason +and Dixon Line cannot make the Southern women believe that Southern +prosperity is dependent upon young children laboring in mills. The women +go on working for child labor and compulsory education laws, unconvinced +by the arguments of the mill owners and the votes of the legislators. +The highest court in the State of New York was powerless to persuade New +York club women that the United States Constitution stands in the way of +a law prohibiting the night work of women. The Court of Appeals declared +the law unconstitutional, and many women at present are toiling at +night. But the club women immediately began fighting for a new law. + +The women of every State in the Union are able to work harmoniously +together because they are unhampered with traditions of what the +founders of the Republic intended,--the sacredness of state rights, or +the protective paternalism of Wall Street. The gloriously illogical +sincerity of women is concerned only about the thing itself. + +I have left for future consideration women who having definite social +theories have organized themselves for definite objects. This chapter +has purposely been confined to the activities of average women--good +wives and mothers, the eight hundred thousand American women whose +collective opinion is expressed through the General Federation of +Women's Clubs. For the most part they are mature in years, these club +women. Their children are grown. Some are in college and some are +married. I have heard more than one presiding officer at a State +Federation meeting proudly announce from the platform that she had +become a grandmother since the last convention. + +The present president of the General Federation, Mrs. Philip N. Moore +of St. Louis, Missouri, is a graduate of Vassar College, and served for +a time as president of the National Society of Collegiate Alumnae. There +are not wanting in the club movement many women who have taken college +and university honors. Club women taken the country over, however, are +not college products. If they had been, the club movement might have +taken on a more cultural and a less practical form. As it was, the women +formed their groups with the direct object of educating themselves and, +being practical women used to work, they readily turned their new +knowledge to practical ends. As quickly as they found out, through +education, what their local communities needed they were filled with a +generous desire to supply those needs. In reality they simply learned +from books and study how to apply their housekeeping lore to municipal +government and the public school system. Nine-tenths of the work they +have undertaken relates to children, the school, and the home. Some of +it seemed radical in the beginning, but none of it has failed, in the +long run, to win the warmest approval of the people. + +The eight million women who form the International Council of Women, and +express the collective opinion of women the world over, are not +exceptional types, although they may possess exceptional intelligence. +They are merely good citizens, wives, and mothers. Their program +contains nothing especially radical. And yet, what a revolution would +the world witness were that program carried out? Peace and arbitration; +social purity; public health; woman suffrage; removal of all legal +disabilities of women. This last-named object is perhaps more +revolutionary in its character than the others, because its fulfillment +will disturb the basic theories on which the nations have established +their different forms of government. + + + + + +CHAPTER III + +EUROPEAN WOMEN AND THE SALIC LAW + + +Several years ago a woman of wealth and social prominence in Kentucky, +after pondering some time on the inferior position of women in the +United States, wrote a book. In this volume the United States was +compared most unfavorably with the countries of Europe, where the +dignity and importance of women received some measure of recognition. +Women, this author protested, enjoy a larger measure of political power +in England than in America. In England and throughout Europe their +social power is greater. If a man becomes lord mayor of an English city +his wife becomes lady mayoress, and she shares all her husband's +official honors. On the Continent women are often made honorary colonels +of regiments, and take part with the men in military reviews. Women +frequently hold high offices at court, acting as chamberlains, +constables, and the like. The writer closed her last chapter with the +announcement that she meant henceforth to make her home in England, +where women had more than once occupied the throne as absolute monarch +and constitutional ruler. + +It is true that in some particulars American women do seem to be at a +disadvantage with European women. With what looks like a higher regard +for women's intelligence, England has bestowed upon them every measure +of suffrage except the Parliamentary franchise. In England, throughout +the Middle Ages, and even down to the present century, women held the +office of sheriff of the county, clerk of the crown, high constable, +chamberlain, and even champion at a coronation,--the champion being a +picturesque figure who rides into the hall and flings his glove to the +nobles, in defense of the king's crown. + +In the royal pageants of European history behold the powerful figures of +Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth, Mary of +Scotland, Christina of Sweden, rulers in fact as well as in name; to say +nothing of the long line of women regents in whose hands the state +intrusted its affairs, during the minority of its kings. In the United +States a woman candidate for mayor of a small town would be considered +a joke. + +These and other inconsistencies have puzzled many ardent upholders of +American chivalry. In order to understand the position of women in the +United States it is necessary to make a brief survey of the laws under +which European women are governed, and the social theory on which their +apparent advantages are based. + +In the first place, the statement that in European countries a woman may +succeed to the throne must be qualified. In three countries only, +England, Spain, and Portugal, are women counted in the line of +succession on terms approaching equality with men. In these three +countries when a monarch dies leaving no sons his eldest daughter +becomes the sovereign. If the ruling monarch die, leaving no children at +all, the oldest daughter--failing sons--of the man who was in his +lifetime in direct line of succession is given preference to male heirs +more remote. Thus Queen Victoria succeeded William IV, she being the +only child of the late king's deceased brother and heir, the Duke of +Kent. + +Similar laws govern the succession in Portugal and Spain, although +dispute on this point has more than once caused civil war in Spain. + +In Holland, Greece, Russia, Austria, and a few German states a woman may +succeed to the throne, provided every single male heir to the crown is +dead. Queen Wilhelmina became sovereign in Holland only because the +House of Orange was extinct in the male line, and Holland lost, on +account of the accession of Wilhelmina, the rich and important Duchy of +Luxemburg. + +Luxemburg, in common with the rest of Europe, except the countries +described, lives under what is known as the Salic Law, according to +which a woman may not, in any circumstances, become sovereign. + +A word about this Salic Law is necessary, because the tradition of it +permeates the whole atmosphere in which the women of Europe live, move, +and have their legal and social being. + +The Salic Law was the code of a barbarous people, so far extinct and +forgotten that it is uncertain just what territory in ancient Gaul they +occupied at the time the code was formulated. Later the Salian Franks, +as the tribe was designated, built on the left bank of the Seine rude +fortresses and a collection of wattled huts which became the ancestor of +the present-day city of Paris. + +The Salic Law was a complete code. It governed all matters, civil and +military. It prescribed rules of war; it fixed the salaries of +officials; it designated the exact amount of blood money the family of a +slain man might collect from the family of the slayer; it regu lated +conditions under which individuals might travel from one village to +another; it governed matters of property transfer and inheritance. + +The Salian Franks are dust; their might has perished, their annals are +forgotten, their cities are leveled, their mightiest kings sleep in +unmarked graves, their code has passed out of existence, almost indeed +out of the memory of man,--all except one paragraph of one division of +one law. The law related to inheritance of property; the special +division distinguished between real and personal property, and the +paragraph ruled that a woman might inherit movable property, but that +she might not inherit land. + +There was not a syllable in the law relating to the inheritance of a +throne. Nevertheless, centuries after the last Salian king was laid in +his barbarous grave a French prince successfully contested with an +English prince the crown of France, his claim resting on that obscure +paragraph in the Salic code. The Hundred Years' War was fought on this +issue, and the final outcome of the war established the Salic Law +permanently in France, and with more or less rigor in most of the +European states. + +At the time of the French Revolution, when the "Rights of Man" were +being declared with so much fervor and enthusiasm, when the old laws +were being revised in favor of greater freedom of the individual, the +"Rights of Woman" were actually revised downward. Up to this time the +application of the Salic Law was based on tradition and precedent. Now a +special statute was enacted forever barring women from the sovereignty +of France. "Founded on the pride of the French, who could not bear to be +ruled by their own women folk," as the records are careful to state. + +The interpretation of the Salic Law did more, a great deal more, than +exclude women from the throne. It established the principle of the +inherent inferiority of women. The system of laws erected on that +principle were necessarily deeply tinged with contempt for women, and +with fear lest their influence in any way might affect the conduct of +state affairs. That explains why, at the present time, although in most +European countries women are allowed to practice medicine, they are not +allowed to practice law. Medicine may be as learned a profession, but it +affects only human beings. The law, on the other hand, affects the +state. A woman advocate, you can readily imagine, might so influence a +court of justice that the laws of the land might suffer feminization. +From the European point of view this would be most undesirable. + +The apparently superior rights possessed by English women were also +bestowed upon them by a vanished system of laws. They have descended +from Feudalism, in which social order the _person_ did not exist. The +social order consisted of _property_ alone, and the claims of property, +that is to say, land, were paramount over the claims of the individual. +Those historic women sheriffs of counties, clerks of crown, +chamberlains, and high constables held their high offices because the +offices were hereditary property in certain titled families, and they +had to belong to the entail, even when a woman was in possession. The +offices were purely titular. No English woman ever acted as high +constable. No English woman ever attended a coronation as king's +champion. The rights and duties of these offices were delegated to a +male relative. Every once in a while, during the Middle Ages, some +strong-minded lady of title demanded the right to administer her office +in person, but she was always sternly put down by a rebuking House of +Lords, sometimes even by the king's majesty himself. + +In the same way the voting powers of the women of England are a result +of hereditary privilege. Local affairs in England, until a very recent +period, were administered through the parish, and the only persons +qualified to vote were the property owners of the parish. It was really +property interests and not people who voted. Those women who owned +property, or who were administering property for their minor children, +were entitled to vote, to serve on boards of guardians, and to dispense +the Poor Laws. Out of their right of parish vote has grown their right +of municipal franchise. It carries with it a property qualification, and +the proposed Parliamentary franchise, for which the women of England are +making such a magnificent fight, will also have a property +qualification. + +The real position, legal and social, which women in England and +continental Europe have for centuries occupied, may be gauged from an +examination of the feminist movement in a very enlightened country, say +Germany. The laws of Germany were founded on the Corpus Juris of the +Romans, a stern code which relegates women to the position of chattels. +And chattels they have been in Germany, until very recent years, when +through the intelligent persistence of strong women the chains have +somewhat been loosened. + +A generation ago, in 1865, to be exact, a group of women in Leipzig +formed an association which they called the Allgemeinen Deutschen +Frauenbund, which may be Anglicized into General Association of German +Women. The stated objects of the association give a pretty clear idea of +the position of women at that time. The women demanded as their rights, +Education, the Right to Work, Free Choice of Profession. Nothing more, +but these three demands were so revolutionary that all masculine +Germany, and most of feminine Germany, uttered horrified protests. +Needless to say nothing came of the women's demand. + +After the Franco-Prussian War the center of the women's revolt naturally +moved to the capital of the new empire, Berlin. From that city, during +the years that followed, so much feminine unrest was radiated that in +1887 the German Woman Suffrage Association was formed, with the demand +for absolute equality with men. Two remarkable women, Minna Cauer and +Anita Augsberg, the latter unmarried and a doctor of laws, were the +moving spirits in the first woman suffrage agitation, which has since +extended throughout the empire until there is hardly a small town +without its suffrage club. + +Now the woman suffragist in Germany differs from the American suffragist +in that she is always a member of a political party. She is a silent +member to be sure, but she adheres to her party, because, through +tradition or conviction, she believes in its policies. Usually the +suffragist is a member of the Social Democratic Party, allied to the +International Socialist Party. She is a suffragist because she is a +Socialist, because woman suffrage, and, indeed, the full equalization of +the laws governing men and women are a part of the Socialist platform in +every country in the world. The woman member of the Social Democratic +party is not working primarily for woman suffrage. She is working for a +complete overturning of the present economic system, and she advocates +_universal adult suffrage_ as a means of bringing about the social and +economic changes demanded by the Socialists. + +These German Socialist women are often very advanced spirits, who hold +university degrees, who have entered the professions, and are generally +emancipated from strictly conventional lives. Others, in large numbers, +belong to the intellectual proletarian classes. Their American +prototypes are to be found in the Women's Trade Union League, described +in a later chapter. + +The other German suffragists are members of the radical, the moderate +(we should say conservative), and the clerical parties. These women are +middle class, average, intelligent wives and mothers. They correspond +fairly well with the women of the General Federation of Clubs in the +United States, and like the American club women they are affiliated with +the International Council of Women. Locally they are working for the +social reforms demanded by the first American suffrage convention, held +in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. They are demanding the higher +education, married women's property rights, free speech, and the right +to choose a trade or profession. They are demanding other rights, from +lack of which the American woman never suffered. The right to attend a +political meeting was until recently denied to German women. Although +they take a far keener and more intelligent interest in national and +local politics than American women as a rule have ever taken, their +presence at political meetings has but yesterday been sanctioned. + +The civil responsibility of the father and mother in many European +countries is barbarously unequal. If a marriage exists between the +parents the father is the only parent recognized. He is sole guardian +and authority. When divorce dissolves a marriage the rights of the +father are generally paramount, even when he is the party accused. + +On the other hand, if no marriage exists between the parents, if the +child is what is called illegitimate, the mother is alone responsible +for its maintenance. Not only is the father free from all +responsibility, his status as a father is denied by law. Inquiry into +the paternity of the child is in some countries forbidden. The unhappy +mother may have documentary proof that she was betrayed under promise of +marriage, but she is not allowed to produce her proof. + +Under the French Code, the substance of which governs all Europe, it is +distinctly a principle that the woman's honor is and ought to be of less +value than a man's honor. Napoleon personally insisted on this +principle, and more than once emphasized his belief that no importance +should be attached to men's share in illegitimacy. + +These and other degrading laws the European progressive women are trying +to remove from the Codes. They have their origin in the belief in "The +imprudence, the frailty, and the imbecility" of women, to quote from +this Code Napoleon. + +Whatever women's legal disabilities in the United States, their laws +were never based on the principle that women were imprudent, frail, or +imbecile. They placed women at a distinct disadvantage, it is true, but +it was the disadvantage of the minor child and not of the inferior, the +chattel, the property of man, as in Europe. + +Laws in the United States were founded on the assumption that women +stood in perpetual need of protection. The law makers carried this to +the absurd extent of assuming that protection was all the right a woman +needed or all she ought to claim. They even pretended that when a woman +entered the complete protection of the married state she no longer stood +in need of an identity apart from her husband. The working out of this +theory in a democracy was far from ideal, as we shall see. + + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE COMMON LAW + + +A little girl sat in a corner of her father's law library watching, with +wide, serious eyes, a scene the like of which was common enough a +generation or two ago. The weeping old woman told a halting story of a +dissipated son, a shrewish daughter-in-law, and a state of servitude on +her own part,--a story pitifully sordid in its details. The farm had +come to her from her father's estate. For forty years she had toiled +side by side with her husband, getting a simple, but comfortable, +living from the soil. Then the husband died. Under the will the son +inherited the farm, and everything on it,--house, furniture, barns, +cattle, tools. Even the money in the bank was his. A clause in the will +provided that the son should give his mother a home during her lifetime. + +So here she was, after a life of hard work and loving service, shorn of +everything; a pauper, an unpaid servant in the house of another +woman,--her son's wife. Was it true that the law took her home away from +her,--the farm that descended to her from her father, the house she had +lived in since childhood? Could nothing, _nothing_ be done? + +The aged judge shook his head, sadly. "You see, Mrs. Grant," he +explained, "the farm has never really been yours since your marriage, +for then it became by law your husband's property, precisely as if he +had bought it. He had a right to leave it to whom he would. No doubt he +did what he thought was for your good. I wish I could help you, but I +cannot. The law is inexorable in these matters." + +After the forlorn old woman had gone the lawyer's child went and stood +by her father's chair. "Why couldn't you help her?" she asked. "Why do +you let them take her home away from her?" + +Judge Cady opened the sheep-bound book at his elbow and showed the +little girl a paragraph. Turning the pages, he pointed out others for +her to read. Spelling through the ponderous legal phraseology the little +girl learned that a married woman had no existence, in the eyes of the +law, apart from her husband. She could own no property; she could +neither buy nor sell; she could not receive a gift, even from her own +husband. She was, in fact, her husband's chattel. If he beat her she had +no means of punishing, or even restraining him, unless, indeed, she +could prove that her life was endangered. If she ran away from him the +law forced her to return. + +Paragraph after paragraph the child read through, and, unseen by her +father, marked faintly with a pencil. So far as she was aware, father, +and father's library of sheep-bound books, were the beginning and the +end of the law, and to her mind the way to get rid of measures which +took women's homes away from them was perfectly simple. That night when +the house was quiet she stole downstairs, scissors in hand, determined +_to cut every one of those laws out of the book_. + +The young reformer was restrained, but only temporarily. As Elizabeth +Cady Stanton she lived to do her part toward revising many of the laws +under which women, in her day, suffered, and her successors, the +organized women of the United States, are busy with their scissors, +revising the rest. + +Not alone in Russia, Germany, France, and England do the laws governing +men and women need equalizing. In America, paradise of women, the +generally accepted theory that women have "all the rights they want" +does not stand the test of impartial examination. + +In America some women have all the rights they want. Your wife and the +wives of the men you associate with every day usually have all the +rights they want, sometimes a few that they do not need at all. Is the +house yours? The furniture yours? The motor yours? The income yours? Are +the children yours? If you are the average fond American husband, you +will return the proud answer: "No, indeed, they are _ours_." + +This is quite as it should be, assuming that all wives are as tenderly +cherished, and as well protected as the women who live on your block. +For a whole big army of women there are often serious disadvantages +connected with that word "ours." + +In Boston there lived a family of McEwans,--a man, his wife, and several +half-grown children. McEwan was not a very steady man. He drank +sometimes, and his earning capacity was uncertain. Mrs. McEwan was an +energetic, capable, intelligent woman, tolerant of her husband's +failings, ambitious for her children. She took a large house, furnished +it on the installment plan, and filled it with boarders. The boarders +gave the family an income larger than they had ever possessed before, +and McEwan's contributions fell off. He became an unpaying guest +himself. All his earnings, he explained, were going into investments. +The man was, in fact, speculating in mining stocks. + +One day McEwan came home with a face of despair. His creditors, he told +his wife, had descended on him, seized his business, and threatened to +take possession of the boarding house. + +"But it is mine," protested the woman, with spirit. "I bought every bit +of furniture with the money my boarders paid me. Nobody can touch my +property or my earnings to satisfy a claim on you. I am not liable for +your debts." + +One of the boarders was a lawyer, and to him that night she took the +case. "A woman's earnings are her own in Massachusetts, are they not?" +she demanded. + +"You are what the law calls a free trader," replied the lawyer, "and +whatever you earn is yours, certainly. That is--of course you are +recorded at the city clerk's office?" + +"Why no. Why should I be?" + +"The law requires it. Otherwise this property, and even the money your +boarders pay you, are liable to attachment for your husband's debts. +Unless you make a specific declaration that you are in business for +yourself, the law assumes that the business is your husband's." + +"If I went to work for a salary, should I have to be recorded in order +to keep my own money?" Mrs. McEwan was growing angry. + +"No," replied the lawyer, "not if you were careful to keep your income +and your husband's absolutely separate. If you both paid installments on +a piano the piano would be your husband's, not yours. If you bought a +house together, the house could be seized for his debts. Everything you +buy with your money is yours. Everything you buy with money he gives you +is his. Everything you buy together is his. You could not protect such +property from your husband's creditors, or from his heirs." + +Mrs. McEwan's case is mild, her wrongs faint beside those of a woman in +Los Angeles, California. Her husband was a doctor, and she had been, +before her marriage, a trained nurse. The young woman had saved several +hundred dollars, and she put the money into a first payment on a pretty +little cottage. During the first two or three years of the marriage the +doctor's wife, from time to time, attended cases of illness, usually +contributing her earnings toward the payment for the house or into +furniture for the house. In all she paid about a thousand dollars, or +something like one-third of the cost of the house. Then children came, +and her earning days were over. + +Unfortunately the domestic affairs of this household became disturbed. +The doctor contracted a drug habit. He became irregular in his conduct +and ended by running away with a dissolute woman. After he had gone his +wife found that the house she lived in, and which she had helped to buy, +had been sold, without her knowledge or consent. The transaction was +perfectly legal. Community property, that is, property held jointly by +husband and wife, is absolutely controlled by the husband in California. +In that State community property may even be given away, without the +wife's knowledge or consent. + +It happened not many years ago that one of the most powerful +millionaires in California, in a moment of generosity, conveyed to one +of his sons a very valuable property. Some time afterwards the father +and son quarreled, and the father attempted to get back his property. +His plea in court was that his wife's consent to the transaction had +never been sought; but the court ruled that since the property was owned +in community, the wife's consent did not have to be obtained. + +This particular woman happened to be rich enough to stand the experience +of having a large slice of property given away without her knowledge, +but the same law would have applied to the case of a woman who could +not afford it at all. + +It is in the case of women wage earners that these laws bear the +peculiar asperity. Down in the cotton-mill districts of the South are +scores of men who never, from one year to the next, do a stroke of work. +They are supposed to be "weakly." Their wives and children work eleven +hours a day (or night) and every pay day the men go to the mills and +collect their wages. The money belongs to them under the law. Even if +the women had the spirit to protest, the protest would be useless. The +right of a man to collect and to spend his wife's earnings is protected +in many States in the chivalric South. In Texas, for example, a husband +is entitled to his wife's earnings even _though he has deserted her_. + +I do not know that this occurs very often in Texas. Probably not, unless +among low-class Negroes. In all likelihood if a Texas woman should +appeal to her employer, and tell him that her husband had abandoned her, +he would refuse to give the man her wages. Should the husband be in a +position to invoke the law, he could claim his wife's earnings, +nevertheless. + +The Kentucky lady who chose England for her future home, had she known +it, selected the country to which most American women owe their legal +disabilities. American law, except in Louisiana and Florida, is founded +on English common law, and English common law was developed at a period +when men were of much greater importance in the state than women. The +state was a military organization, and every man was a fighter, a +king's defender. Women were valuable only because defenders of kings +had to have mothers. + +English common law provided that every married woman must be supported +in as much comfort as her husband's estate warranted. The mothers of the +nation must be fed, clothed, and sheltered. What more could they +possibly ask? In return for permanent board and clothes, the woman was +required to give her husband all of her property, real and personal. +What use had she for property? Did she need it to support herself? In +case of war and pillage could she defend it? + +Husband and wife were one--and that one was the man. He was so much the +one that the woman had literally no existence in the eyes of the law. +She not only did not possess any property; she could possess none. Her +husband could not give her any, because there could be no contract +between a married pair. A contract implies at least two people, and +husband and wife were one. The husband could, if he chose, establish a +trusteeship, and thus give his wife the free use of her own. But you can +easily imagine that he did not very often do it. + +A man could, also, devise property to his wife by will. Often this was +done, but too often the sons were made heirs, and the wife was left to +what tender mercies they owned. If a man died intestate the wife merely +shared with other heirs. She had no preference. + +Under the old English common law, moreover, not only the property, but +also the services of a married woman belonged to her husband. If he +chose to rent out her services, or if she offered to work outside the +home, it followed logically that her wages belonged to him. What use had +she for wages? + +On the other hand, every man was held responsible for the support of his +wife. He was responsible for her debts, as long as they were the +necessities of life. He was also responsible for her conduct. Being +propertyless, she could not be held to account for wrongs committed. If +she stole, or destroyed property, or injured the person of another, if +she committed any kind of a misdemeanor in the presence of her husband, +and that also meant if he were in her neighborhood at the time, the law +held him responsible. He should have restrained her. + +This was supposed to be a decided advantage to the woman. Whenever a +rebellious woman or group of women voiced their objection to the system +which robbed them of every shred of independence they were always +reminded that the system at the same time relieved them of every shred +of responsibility, even, to an extent, of moral responsibility. "So +great a favorite," comments Blackstone, "is the female sex under the +laws of England." + +You may well imagine that, in these circumstances, husbands were +interested that their wives should be very good. The law supported them +by permitting "moderate correction." A married woman might be kept in +what Blackstone calls "reasonable restraint" by her husband. But only +with a stick no larger than his thumb. + +The husbandly stick was never imported into the United States. Even the +dour Puritans forbade its use. The very first modification of the +English common law, in its application to American women, was made in +1650, when the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony decreed that a +husband beating his wife, or, for that matter, a wife beating her +husband, should be fined ten pounds, or endure a public whipping. + +The Pilgrim Fathers and the other early colonists in America brought +with them the system of English common law under which they and their +ancestors had for centuries been governed. From time to time, as +conditions made them necessary, new laws were enacted and put into +force. In all cases not specifically covered by these new laws, the old +English common law was applied. It did not occur to any one that women +would ever need special laws. The Pilgrim Fathers and their successors, +the Puritans, simply assumed that here, as in the England they had left +behind, woman's place was in the home, where she was protected, +supported, and controlled. + +But in the new world woman's place in the home assumed an importance +much greater than it had formerly possessed. Labor was scarce, +manufacturing and trading were undeveloped. Woman's special activities +were urgently needed. Woman's hands helped to raise the roof-tree, her +skill and industry, to a very large extent, furnished the house. She +spun and wove, cured meat, dried corn, tanned skins, made shoes, dipped +candles, and was, in a word, almost the only manufacturer in the +country. But this did not raise her from her position as an inferior. +Woman owned neither her tools nor her raw materials. These her husband +provided. In consequence, husband and wife being one, that one, in +America, as in England, was the husband. + +This explanation is necessary in order to understand why the legal +position of most American women to-day is that of inferiors, or, at +best, of minor children. + +It is necessary also, in order to understand why, except in matters of +law, American women are treated with such extraordinary consideration +and indulgence. As long as pioneer conditions lasted women were valuable +because of the need of their labor, their special activities. Also, for +a very long period, women were scarce, and they were highly prized not +alone for their labor, but because their society was so desirable. In +other words, pioneer conditions gave woman a better standing in the new +world than she had in the old, and she was treated with an altogether +new consideration and regard. + +In England no one thought very badly of a man who was moderately abusive +of his wife. In America, violence against women was, from the first, an +unbearable idea. Laws protecting maid servants, dependent women, and, as +we have seen, even wives, were very early enacted in New England. + +But although woman was more dearly prized in the new country than in the +old, no new legislation was made for her benefit. Her legal status, or +rather her absence of legal status apart from her husband, remained +exactly as it had been under the English common law. + +No legislature in the United States has deliberately made laws placing +women at a disadvantage with men. Whatever laws are unfair and +oppressive to women have just happened--just grown up like weeds out of +neglected soil. + +Let me illustrate. No lawmaker in New Mexico ever introduced a bill into +the legislature making men liable for their wives' torts or petty +misdemeanors. Yet in New Mexico, at this very minute, a wife is so +completely her husband's property that he is responsible for her +behavior. If she should rob her neighbor's clothesline, or wreck a +chicken yard, her unfortunate husband would have to stand trial. Simply +because in New Mexico married women are still living under laws that +were evolved in another civilization, long before New Mexico was dreamed +of as a State. + +Nowhere else in the United States are women allowed to shelter their +weak moral natures behind the stern morality of their husbands, but in +more than one State the husband's responsibility for his wife's acts is +assumed. In Massachusetts, for one State, if a woman owned a saloon and +sold beer on Sunday, she would be liable to arrest, and so also would +her husband, provided he were in the house when the beer was sold. Both +would probably be fined. Simply because it was once the law that a +married woman had no separate existence apart from her husband, this +absurd law, or others as absurd, remain on the statute books of almost +every State in the Union. + +The ascent of woman, which began with the abolishment of corporeal +punishment of wives, proceeded very slowly. Most American women married, +and most American wives were kindly treated. At least public opinion +demanded that they be treated with kindness. Long before any other +modification of her legal status was gained, a woman subjected to +cruelty at the hands of her lawful spouse was at liberty to seek police +protection. + +The reason why police protection was so seldom sought is plain enough. +Imagine a woman complaining of a husband who would be certain to beat +her again for revenge, and to whom she was bound irrevocably by laws +stronger even than the laws on the statute books. Remember that the only +right she had was the right to be supported, and if she left her +husband's house she left her only means of living. She could hardly +support herself, for few avenues of industry were open to women. She was +literally a pauper, and when there is nowhere else to lay his head, even +the most miserable pauper thinks twice before he runs away from the +poorhouse. Besides, the woman who left her husband had to give up her +children. They too were the husband's property. + +There were some women who hesitated before they consented to pauperize +themselves by marrying. Widows were especially wary, if old stories are +to be trusted. A story is told in the New York University Law School of +a woman in Connecticut who took with her, as a part of her wedding +outfit, a very handsome mahogany bureau, bequeathed her by her +grandfather. After a few years of marriage the husband suddenly died, +leaving no will. The home and all it contained were sold at auction. The +widow was permitted to buy certain objects of furniture, and among them +was her cherished bureau. Where the poor woman found the money with +which to buy is not revealed. In time this woman married again, and +again her husband died without a will. Again there was an auction, and +again the widow purchased her beloved heirloom. It seems possible that +this time she had saved money in anticipation of the necessity. + +A little later, for she was still young and attractive, a suitor +appeared, offering his heart and "all his worldly goods." "No, I thank +you," replied the sorely tried creature, "I prefer to keep my bureau." + +The first struggle made by women in their own behalf was against this +condition of marital slavery. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, +Lydia Maria Child, and others of that brave band of rebellious women, +were active for years, addressing legislative committees in New York and +Massachusetts, circulating petitions, writing to newspapers, agitating +everywhere in favor of married women's property rights. Finally it began +to dawn on the minds of men that there might be a certain public +advantage, as well as private justice, attaching to separate ownership +by married women of their own property. + +In 1839 the Massachusetts State Legislature passed a cautious measure +giving married women qualified property rights. It was not until 1848 +that a really effective Married Women's Property Law was secured, by +action of the New York State Assembly. The law served as a model in many +of the new Western States just then framing their laws. + +These New York legislators, and the Western legislators who first +granted property rights to married women, were actuated less by a sense +of justice towards women than by enlightened selfishness. The effect of +so much freedom on women themselves was a matter for grave conjecture. +It was not suggested by any of the American debaters, as it was later on +the floors of the English Parliament, that women, if they controlled +their own property, would undoubtedly squander it on men whom they +preferred to their husbands. But it was prophesied that women once in +possession of money would desert their husbands by regiments,--which +speaks none too flatteringly of the husbands of that day. + +Men of property stood for the Married Women's Property Act, because they +perceived plainly that their own wealth, devised to daughters who could +not control it, might easily be gambled away, or wasted through +improvidence, or diverted to the use of strangers. In other words, they +knew that their property, when daughters inherited it, became the +property of their sons-in-law. They had no guarantee that their own +grandchildren would ever have the use of it, unless it was controlled by +their mothers. + +It was the women's clubs and women's organizations in America, as it was +the Women's Councils in Europe, that actively began the agitation +against women's legal disabilities. The National Woman Suffrage +Association, oldest of all women's organizations in the United States, +has been calling attention to the unequal laws, and demanding their +abolishment, for two generations. + +Practically all of the state federations of women's clubs have +legislative committees, and it is usually the business of these +committees to codify the laws of their respective States which apply +directly to women. In some cases a woman lawyer is made chairman, and +the work is done under her direction. Sometimes, as in Texas, a well +known and friendly man lawyer is retained for the task. Almost +invariably the report of the legislative committee contains disagreeable +surprises. American women have been so accustomed to their privileges +that they have taken their rights for granted, and are usually +astonished when they find how limited their rights actually are. + +There are some States in the Union where women are on terms of something +like equality with men. There is one State to which all intelligent +women look with a sort of envious, admiring, questioning curiosity, +Colorado, which is literally the woman's paradise. In Colorado it would +be difficult to find even the smallest inequality between men and women. +They vote on equal terms, and if any woman deserves to go to the +legislature, and succeeds in convincing a large enough public of the +fact, nothing stands in the way of her election. One woman, Mrs. Alma +Lafferty, is a member of the present legislature, and she has had +several predecessors. + +But Colorado women have a larger influence still in legislative +matters. To guard their interests they have a Legislative Committee of +the State Federation of Women's Clubs, consisting of thirty to forty +carefully chosen women. + +This committee has permanent headquarters in Denver during every session +of the legislature, and every bill which directly affects women and +children, before reaching the floor of either house, is submitted for +approval to the committee. + +Miss Jane Addams has declared, and Miss Addams is pretty good authority, +that the laws governing women and children in Colorado are superior to +those of any other State. Women receive equal pay for equal work in +Colorado. They are permitted to hold any office. They are co-guardians +of their children, and the education of children has been placed almost +entirely in the hands of women. This does not mean that Colorado has +weakened its schools by barring men from the teaching profession. It +means that women are superintendents of schools in many counties, and +that one woman was, for more than ten years, State superintendent of +schools. + +Contrast Colorado with Louisiana, possibly the last State in the Union a +well-informed woman would choose for a residence. The laws of Louisiana +were based, not on the English common law, but on the Code Napoleon, +which regards women merely as a working, breeding, domestic animal. + +"There is one thing that is not _French_," thundered the great Napoleon, +closing a conference on his famous code, "and that is that a woman can +do as she pleases." + +[Illustration: A "WOMEN'S RIGHTS" MAP OF THE UNITED STATES] + +The framers of Louisiana's laws were particular to guard against too +great a freedom of action on the part of its women. Toward the end of +Mrs. Jefferson Davis's life she added a codicil to her will, giving to a +certain chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy a number of very +valuable relics of her husband, and of the short-lived Confederate +Government. Her action was made public, and it was then revealed that +two women had signed the document as witnesses. Instantly Mrs. Davis's +attention was called to the fact that in Louisiana, where she was then +living, no woman may witness a document. Women's signatures are +worthless. + +In Louisiana your disabilities actually begin when you become an engaged +girl. From that happy moment on you are under the dominance of a man. +Your wedding presents are not yours, but his. If you felt like giving a +duplicate pickle-fork to your mother, you could not legally do so, and +after you were married, if your husband wanted that pickle-fork, he +could get it. Your clothing, your dowry, become community property as +soon as the marriage ceremony is over, and community property in +Louisiana is controlled absolutely by the husband. Every dollar a woman +earns there is at her husband's disposal. Without her husband's consent +a Louisiana woman may not go into a court of law, even though she may be +in business for herself and the action sought is in defense of her +business. + +Nor does the Louisiana woman fare any better as a mother. Then, in fact, +her position is nothing short of humiliating. During her husband's +lifetime he is sole guardian of their children. At his death she may +become their guardian, but if she marries a second time--and the law +permits her to remarry, provided she waits ten months--she retains her +children only by the formal consent of her first husband's family. If +they dislike her, or disapprove of her second marriage, they may demand +the custody of the children. + +It is true that many of these absurd laws in Louisiana are not now often +enforced. It is also true that in Louisiana and other states few men are +so unjust to their wives as to take advantage of unequal property +rights. Laws always lag behind the sense of justice which lives in man. +But the point is that unequal laws still remain on our statute books, +and they may be, and sometimes are, enforced. + +Between these two extremes, Colorado and Louisiana, women have the other +forty-six States to choose. None of them offers perfect equality. Even +in Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah--the three States besides Colorado where +women vote--women are in such a minority that their votes are powerless +to remove all their disabilities. Very rarely have club women even so +much felicity as the New York State Federation, whose legislative +chairman, Miss Emilie Bullowa, reported that she was unable to find a +single unimportant inequality in the New York laws governing the +property rights of women. + +In most of the older States the property rights of married women are now +fairly guaranteed, but the proud boast that in America no woman is the +slave of her husband will have to be modified when it is known that in +at least seventeen States these rights are still denied. + +The husband absolutely controls his wife's property and her earnings in +Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, California, Arizona, North Dakota, and +Idaho. He has virtual control--that is to say, the wife's rights are +merely provisional--in Alabama, New Mexico, and Missouri. + +Women to control their own business property must be registered as +traders on their own account in these States: Georgia, Montana, Nevada, +Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia. + +Nor are women everywhere permitted to work on equal terms with men. + +[Illustration: MISS EMILIE BULLOWA.] + +There is a current belief, often expressed, that in the United States +every avenue of industry is open to women on equal terms with men. This +is not quite true. In some States a married woman may not engage in any +business without permission from the courts. In Texas, Louisiana, and +Georgia this is the case. In Wyoming, where women vote, but where they +are in such minority that their votes count for little, a married woman +must satisfy the court that she is under the necessity of earning her +living. + +If you are a woman, married or unmarried, and wish to practice law, you +are barred from seven of the United States. The legal profession is +closed to women in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Delaware, +Tennessee, and South Carolina. + +In some States they discourage women from aspiring to the learned +professions by refusing them the advantages of higher education which +they provide for their brothers. + +Four state universities close their doors to women, in spite of the +fact that women's taxes help support the universities. These States are +Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. The last-named admits +women to post-graduate courses. + +You can hold no kind of an elective office, you cannot be even a county +superintendent of schools in Alabama or Arkansas, if you are a woman. In +Alabama, indeed, you may not be a minister of the gospel, a doctor of +medicine, or a notary public. Florida likewise will have nothing to do +with a woman doctor. + +Only a few women want to hold office or engage in professional work. +Every woman hopes to be a mother. What then is the legal status of the +American mother? When the club women began the study of their position +before the law they were amazed to find, in all but ten of the States +and territories, that they had absolutely no control over the destinies +of their own children. In ten States only, and in the District of +Columbia, are women co-guardians with their husbands of their children. + +In Pennsylvania if a woman supports her children, or has money to +contribute to their support, she has joint guardianship. Under somewhat +similar circumstances Rhode Island women have the same right. + +In all the other States and territories children belong to their +fathers. They can be given away, or willed away, from the mother. That +this almost never happens is due largely to the fact that, as a rule, no +one except the mother of a child is especially keen to possess it. + +It is due also in large measure to the fact that courts of justice are +growing reluctant to administer such archaic laws. + +The famous Tillman case is an example. Senator Ben Tillman of South +Carolina has one son,--a dissipated, ill-tempered, and altogether +disreputable man, whose wife, after several miserable years of married +life, left him, taking with her their two little girls. South Carolina +allows no divorce for any cause. The sanctity of the marriage tie is +held so lightly in South Carolina that the law permits it to be abused +at will by the veriest brute or libertine. Mrs. Tillman could not +divorce her husband, so she took her children and went to live quietly +at her parent's home in the city of Washington. + +One day the father of the children, young Tillman, appeared at that +home, and in a fit of drunken resentment against his wife, kidnapped the +children. He could not care for the children, probably had no wish to +have them near him, but he took them back to South Carolina, and _gave_ +them to his parents, made a present of a woman's flesh and blood and +heart to people who hated her and whom she hated in return. + +Under the laws of South Carolina, under the printed statutes, young +Tillman had a perfect right to do this thing, and his father, a United +States Senator, upheld him in his act. Young Mrs. Tillman, however, +showed so little respect for the statutes that she sued her husband and +his parents to recover her babies. The judge before whom the suit was +brought was in a dilemma. There was the law--but also there was justice +and common sense. To the everlasting honor of that South Carolina judge, +justice and common sense triumphed, and he ruled that _the law was +unconstitutional._ + +There are other hardships in this law denying to mothers the right of +co-guardianship of their children. Two names signed to a child's working +papers is a pretty good thing sometimes, for it often happens that +selfish and lazy fathers are anxious to put their children to work, +when the mothers know they are far too young. A woman in Scranton, +Pennsylvania, told me, with tears filling her eyes, that her children +had been taken by their father to the silk mills as soon as they were +tall enough to suit a not too exacting foreman. "What could I say about +it, when he went and got the papers?" she sighed. + +The father--not the mother--controls the services of his children. He +can collect their wages, and he does. Very, very often he squanders the +money they earn, and no one may interfere. + +A family of girls in Fall River, Massachusetts, were met every pay day +at the doors of the mill by their father, who exacted of each one her +pay envelope, unopened. It was his regular day for getting drunk and +indulging in an orgy of gambling. Often more than half of the girls' +wages would have vanished before night. Twice the entire amount was +wasted in an hour. This kept on until the girls passed their childhood +and were mature enough to rebel successfully. + +It is the father and not the mother that may claim the potential +services of a child. + +Many times have these unjust laws been protested against. In every State +in the Union where they exist they have been protested against by +organized groups of intelligent women. But their protests have been +received with apathy, and, in some instances, with contempt by +legislators. Only last year a determined fight was made by the women of +California for a law giving them equal guardianship of their children. +The women's bill was lost in the California Legislature, and lost by a +large majority. + +What arguments did the California legislators use against the proposed +measure? Identically the same that were made in Massachusetts and New +York a quarter of a century ago. If women had the guardianship of their +children, would anything prevent them from taking the children and +leaving home? What would become of the sanctity of the home, with its +lawful head shorn of his paternal dignity? In California a husband is +head of the family in very fact, or at least a law of the State says so. + +At one time the law which made the husband the head of the home +guaranteed to the family support by the husband. It does not do that +now. There are laws on the statute books of many States obliging the +wife to support her husband if he is disabled, and the children, if the +husband defaults. There are no laws compelling the husband to support +his wife. The husband is under an assumed obligation to support his +family, but there exists no means of forcing him to do his duty. Family +desertion has become one of the commonest and one of the most baffling +of modern social problems. Everybody is appalled by its prevalence, but +nobody seems to know what to do about it. The Legal Aid Society of New +York City reports about three new cases of family desertion for every +day in the year. Other agencies in other cities report a state of +affairs quite as serious. + +Laws have been passed in most States making family desertion a +misdemeanor, and in New York a recent law has made it a felony. +Unfortunately there has been devised no machinery to enforce these laws, +so they are practically non-existent. It is true that if the deserting +husband is arrested he may be sent to jail or to the rock pile. + +But that does not cure him nor support his family. Mostly he is not +arrested. He has only to take himself out of the reach of the local +authorities. In New York a deserting husband, though he is counted a +felon, needs only to cross the river to New Jersey to be reasonably +safe. Imagine the State of New York spending good money to chase a man +whom it does not want as a citizen, and whom it can only punish by +sending to jail for a short period. The State is better off without such +a man. To bring him back would not even benefit his deserted family. + +Women, far more law abiding than men, insist that a system which evolved +out of feudal conditions, and has for its very basis the assumption of +the weakness, ignorance, and dependence of women, has no place in +twentieth century civilization. + +American women are no longer weak, ignorant, dependent. The present +social order, in which military force is subordinated to industry and +commerce, narrows the gulf between them, and places men and women +physically on much the same plane. As for women's intellectual ability +to decide their own legal status, they are, taken the country over, +rather better educated than men. There are more girls than boys in the +high schools of the United States; more girls than boys in the higher +grammar grades. Fewer women than men are numbered among illiterate. As +for the great middle class of women, it is obvious that they are better +read than their men. Their specific knowledge of affairs may be less, +but their general intelligence is not less than men's. + +Increasingly women are ceasing to depend on men for physical support. +Increasingly even married women are beginning to think of themselves as +independent human beings. Their work of bearing and rearing children, of +managing the household, begins to assume a new dignity, a real value, +in their eyes. + +In New Zealand at the present time statutes are proposed which shall +determine exactly the share a wife may legally claim in her husband's +income. American women may not need such a law, but they insist that +they need something to take the place of that one which in eleven States +makes it possible for a husband to claim all of his wife's income. + + + + + +CHAPTER V + +WOMEN'S DEMANDS ON THE RULERS OF INDUSTRY + + +The big elevator, crowded with shoppers to the point of actual +discomfort, contained only one man. He wore a white-duck uniform, and +recited rapidly and monotonously, as the car shot upward: "Corsets, +millinery, muslin underwear, shirt-waists, coats and suits, infants' +wear, and ladies' shoes, second floor; no ma'am, carpets and rugs on the +third floor; this car don't go to the restaurant; take the other side; +groceries, harness, sporting goods, musical instruments, phonographs, +men's shoes, trunks, traveling bags, and toys, fifth floor." + +Buying and selling, serving and being served--women. On every floor, in +every aisle, at every counter, women. In the vast restaurant, which +covers several acres, women. Waiting their turn at the long line of +telephone booths, women. Capably busy at the switch boards, women. Down +in the basement buying and selling bargains in marked-down summer +frocks, women. Up under the roof, posting ledgers, auditing accounts, +attending to all the complex bookkeeping of a great metropolitan +department store, women. Behind most of the counters on all the floors +between, women. At every cashier's desk, at the wrappers' desks, running +back and forth with parcels and change, short-skirted women. Filling the +aisles, passing and repassing, a constantly arriving and departing +throng of shoppers, women. Simply a moving, seeking, hurrying mass of +femininity, in the midst of which the occasional man shopper, man clerk, +and man supervisor, looks lost and out of place. + +To you, perhaps, the statement that six million women in the United +States are working outside of the home for wages is a simple, unanalyzed +fact. You grasp it as an intellectual abstraction, without much +appreciation of its human significance. The mere reading of statistics +does not help you to realize the changed status of women, and of +society. You need to see the thing with your own eyes. + +Standing on the corner of the Bowery and Grand Street, in New York, when +the Third Avenue trains overhead are roaring their way uptown packed +with homeward-bound humanity, or on the corner of State and Madison +streets, in Chicago, or on the corner of Front and Lehigh streets, in +Philadelphia; pausing at the hour of six at the junction of any city's +great industrial arteries, you get a full realization of the change. Of +the pushing, jostling, clamoring mob, which the sidewalks are much too +narrow to contain, observe the preponderance of girls. From factory, +office, and department store they come, thousands and tens of thousands +of girls. Above the roar of the elevated, the harsh clang of the +electric cars, the clatter of drays and wagons, the shouting of +hucksters, the laughter and oaths of men, their voices float, a shrill, +triumphant treble in the orchestra of toil. + +You may get another vivid, yet subtle, realization of the +interdependence of women and modern industry if you manage to penetrate +into the operating-room of a telephone exchange. Any hour will do. Any +day in the week. There are no nights, nor Sundays, nor holidays in a +telephone exchange. The city could not get along for one single minute +in one single hour of the twenty-four without the telephone girl. Her +hands move quickly over the face of the switch board, picking up long, +silk-wound wires, reaching high, plugging one after another the holes of +the switch board. The wires cross and recross, until the switch board is +like a spider web, and in the tangle of lines under the hands of the +telephone girl are enmeshed the business affairs of a city. + +What would happen if this army of women was suddenly withdrawn from the +telephone exchanges? Men could not take their places. That experiment +has been tried more than once, and it has always failed. + +Having seen how well women serve industry, go back to the department +store and see how they dominate it also. + +The department store apparently exists for women. The architect who +designed the building studied her necessities. The makers of store +furniture planned counters, shelves, and seats to suit her stature. +Buyers of goods know that their jobs are forfeit unless they can guess +what her taste in gowns and hats is going to be six months hence. + +WOMEN'S DEMAND ON INDUSTRY Woman dominates the department store for the +plain reason that she supports it. Whoever earns the income, and that +point has been somewhat in question lately, there is no doubt at all as +to who spends it. She does. Hence, she is able to control the conditions +under which this business is conducted. + +You can see for yourself that this is so. Walk through any large +department store and observe how much valuable space is devoted to +making women customers comfortable. There is always a drawing-room with +easy-chairs and couches; plenty of little desks with handsome stationery +where the customer may write notes; here, and in the retiring-room +adjoining, are uniformed maids to offer service. But these things are +not all that the women who support industry demand of the men in power. +They demand that industry be carried on under conditions favorable to +the health and comfort of the workers. + +Not until the development of the department store were women able to +observe at close range the conduct of modern business. Not unnaturally +it was in the department store that they began one of the most ambitious +of their present-day activities,--that of humanizing industry. + +It was just twenty years ago that New York City was treated to a huge +joke. It was such a joke that even the miserable ones with whom it was +concerned were obliged to smile. An obscure group of women, calling +themselves the Working Women's Society, came out with the announcement +that they proposed to form the women clerks of the city into a labor +union. + +These women said that the girls in the department stores were receiving +wages lower than the sweat-shop standard. They said that a foreign woman +in a downtown garment shop could earn seven dollars a week, whereas an +American girl in a fashionable store received about four dollars and a +half. + +They also charged that the city ordinance providing seats for saleswomen +was habitually violated, and that the girls were forced to stand from +ten to fourteen hours a day. They said that sanitary conditions in the +cloak rooms and lunch rooms of some of the stores were such as to +endanger health and life. They said that the whole situation was so bad +that no clerk endured it for a longer period than five years. Mostly +they were used up in two years. They proposed a labor union of retail +clerks as the only possible resource. Their effort failed. + +The trades union idea at that time had not reached the girl behind the +counter. As a matter of fact it has not reached her yet, and it probably +never will. The department-store clerk considers herself a higher social +being than the ordinary working-girl, and in a way she is justified. The +exceptionally intelligent department-store clerk has one chance in a +thousand of rising to the well-paid, semi-professional post of buyer. +Also the exceptionally attractive girl has possibly one chance in five +thousand of marrying a millionaire. It is a long chance now, and it was +a longer chance a dozen years ago, because there were fewer millionaires +then than now, but it served well enough to cause the failure of the +trades union plan. + +There is one thing that never fails, however, and that is a righteous +protest. Out of the protest of that little, obscure group of working +women in New York City was born a movement which has spread beyond the +Atlantic Ocean, which has effected legislation in many States of the +Union, which has even determined an extremely important legal decision +in the Supreme Court of the United States. + +A group of rich and influential women, prominent in many philanthropic +efforts, became interested in the Working Women's Society. They +investigated the charges brought against the department stores, and what +they discovered made them resolve that conditions must be changed. + +In May, 1890, the late Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Frederick +Nathan, and others, called a large mass meeting in Chickering Hall. Mrs. +Nathan had a constructive plan for raising the standard in shop +conditions, especially those affecting women employees. + +If women would simply withdraw their patronage from the stores where, +during the Christmas season, women and children toiled long hours at +night without any extra compensation, sooner or later the night work +would cease. A few stores, said Mrs. Nathan, maintained a standard +above the average. It was within the power of the women of New York to +raise all the others to that standard, and afterwards it might be +possible to go farther and establish a standard higher than the present +highest. + +"We do not desire to blacklist any firm," declared Mrs. Nathan, "but we +can _whitelist_ those firms which treat their employees humanely. We can +make and publish a list of all the shops where employees receive fair +treatment, and we can agree to patronize only those shops. By acting +openly and publishing our White List we shall be able to create an +immense public opinion in favor of just employers." + +Thus was the Consumers' League of New York ushered into existence. Eight +months after the Chickering Hall meeting the committee appointed to +co-operate with the Working Women's Society in preparing its list of +fair firms had finished its work and made its report. The new League was +formally organized on January 1, 1891. + + +[Illustration: Mrs. Frederick Nathan] + + + +THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE "WHITE LIST" + +The first White List issued in New York contained only eight firm names. +The number was disappointingly small, even to those who knew the +conditions. Still more disappointing was the indifference of the other +firms to their outcast position. Far from evincing a desire to earn a +place on the White List, they cast aspersions on a "parcel of women" who +were trying to "undermine business credit," and scouted the very idea of +an organized feminine conscience. + +"Wait until the women want Easter bonnets," sneered one merchant. "Do +you think they will pass up anything good because the store is not on +their White List?" + +Clearly something stronger than moral suasion was called for. Even as +far back as 1891 a few women had begun to doubt the efficacy of that +indirect influence, supposed to be woman's strongest weapon. What was +the astonishment of the merchants when the League framed, and caused to +be introduced into the New York Assembly, a bill known as the Mercantile +Employers' Bill, to regulate the employment of women and children in +mercantile establishments, and to place retail stores, from the +smallest to the largest, under the inspection of the State Factory +Department. + +The bill was promptly strangled, but the next year, and the next, and +still the next, it obstinately reappeared. Finally, in 1896, four years +after it was first introduced, the bill struggled through the lower +House. In spite of powerful commercial influences the bill was reported +in the Senate, and some of the senators became warmly interested in it. +A commission was appointed to make an official investigation into +conditions of working women in New York City. + +The findings of this Rheinhard Commission, published afterwards in two +large volumes, were sensational enough. Merchants reluctantly testified +to employing grown women at a salary of _thirty-three cents a day_. They +confessed to employing little girls of eleven and twelve years, in +defiance of the child-labor law. They declared that pasteboard and +wooden stock boxes were good enough seats for saleswomen; that they +should not expect to sit down in business hours anyhow. They defended, +on what they called economic grounds, their long hours and uncompensated +overtime. They defended their systems of fines, which sometimes took +away from a girl almost the entire amount of her weekly salary. They +threatened, if a ten-hour law for women under twenty-one years old were +passed, to employ older women. Thus thousands of young and helpless +girls would be thrown out of employment into the hands of charity. + +The Senate heard the report of the Rheinhard Commission, and in spite of +the merchants' protests the women's bill was passed without a dissenting +vote. + +The most important provision of the bill was the ten-hour limit which it +placed on the work of women under twenty-one. The overwhelming majority +of department-store clerks are girls under twenty-one. The bill also +provided seats for saleswomen, and specified the number of +seats,--one to every three clerks. It forbade the employment of +children, except those holding working certificates from the +authorities. These, and other minor provisions, affected all retail +stores, as far as the law was obeyed. + +As a matter of fact the Consumers' League's bill carried a "joker" which +made its full enforcement practically impossible. The matter of +inspection of stores was given over to the local boards of health, +supposedly experts in matters of health and sanitation, but, as it +proved, ignorant of industrial conditions. In New York City, after a +year of this inadequate inspection, political forces were brought to +bear, and then there were no store inspectors. + +Year after year, for twelve years, the Consumers' League tried to +persuade the legislature that department and other retail stores needed +inspection by the State Factory Department. A little more than a year +ago they succeeded. After the bill placing all retail stores under +factory inspection was passed, a committee from the Merchants' +Association went before Governor Hughes and appealed to him to veto what +they declared was a vicious and wholly superfluous measure. Governor +Hughes, however, signed the bill. + +In the first three months of its enforcement over twelve hundred +infractions of the Mercantile Law were reported in Greater New York. No +less than nine hundred and twenty-three under-age children were taken +out of their places as cash girls, stock girls, and wrappers, and were +sent back to their homes or to school. The contention of the Con sumers' +League that retail stores needed regulation seems to have been +justified. + +To the business man capital and labor are both abstractions. To women +capital may be an abstraction, but labor is a purely human proposition, +a thing of flesh and blood. The department-store owners who so bitterly +fought the Mercantile Law, and for years afterwards fought its +enforcement, were not monsters of cruelty. They were simply business +men, with the business man's contracted vision. They could think only +in terms of money profit and money loss. + +In spite of this radical difference in the point of view, women have +succeeded, in a measure, in controlling the business policy of the +stores supported by their patronage. + +The White List would be immensely larger if the Consumers' League would +concede the matter of uncompensated overtime at the Christmas season. +Hundreds of stores fill every condition of the standard except this one. +The League stands firm on the point, and up to the present so do the +stores. Only the long, slow process of public education will remove the +custom whereby _thousands of young girls and women are compelled every +holiday season to give their employers from thirty to forty hours of +uncompensated labor_. + +No one has ever tried to compute the amount of unpaid overtime extorted +in the business departments of nearly all city stores during three to +five months of every winter. The customer, by declining to purchase +after a certain hour, is able to release the weary saleswoman at six +o'clock. She is not able to release the equally weary girls who toil in +the bookkeeping and auditing departments. + +That, in these days of adding and tabulating machines, accounting in +most stores is still done by cheap hand labor, is a statement which +strains credulity. Merely from the standpoint of business economy it +seems absurd. But it is a fact easily verified. + +I tested it by obtaining employment in the auditing department of one of +the largest and most respectable stores in New York. In this store, and, +according to the best authorities, in most other stores, the accounting +force is made up of girls not long out of grammar school, ignorant and +incapable--but cheap. They work slowly, and as each day's sales are +posted and audited before the close of the day following, the business +force has to work until nine and ten o'clock several nights in the week. +In some cases they work every night. + +Only the enlightening power of education of employers, education of +public opinion, can be expected to overcome this blight, and the +Consumers' League, realizing this, is preparing the way for education. + +The Consumers' League began with a purely benevolent motive, and in +this early philanthropic stage it gained immediate popularity. City +after city, State after State, formed Consumers' Leagues, until, in +1899, a National League, with branches in twenty-two States, was +organized. The National League, far from being a philanthropic society, +has be come a scientific association for the study of industrial +economics. + +When the original Consumers' League undertook its first piece of +legislation in behalf of women workers the members knew that they were +right, but they had very few reasons to offer in defense of their +claim. The New York League and all of the others have been collecting +reasons ever since. To-day they have a comprehensive and systematized +collection of reasons why women should not work long hours; why they +should not work at night; why manufacturing should not be carried on in +tenements; why all home wage-earning should be forbidden; why the speed +of machines should be regulated by law; why pure-food laws should be +extended; why minimum wage rates should be established. + +In the headquarters of the National League in New York City a group of +trained experts work constantly, collecting and recording a vast body of +facts concerning the human side of industry. It is ammunition which +tells. One single blast of it, fired in the direction of a laundry in +Portland, Oregon, two years ago, performed the wonderful feat of blowing +a large hole through the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the +United States. + +There was a law in Oregon which decreed that the working day of women in +factories and laundries should be ten hours long. The law was constantly +violated, especially in the steam laundries of Portland. One night a +factory inspector walked into the laundry of one Curt Muller, and found +working there, long after closing time, one Mrs. Gotcher. The inspector +promptly sent Mrs. Gotcher home and arrested Mr. Muller. + +The next day in court Mr. Muller was fined ten dollars. Instead of +paying the fine he appealed, backed up in his action by the other +laundrymen of Portland, on the ground that the ten-hour law for women +workers was unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment to the +Constitution guarantees to every adult member of the community the right +freely to contract. A man or a woman may contract with an employer to +work as many hours a day, or a night, for whatever wages, in whatever +dangerous or unhealthful or menacing conditions, _unless_ "there is fair +ground to say that there is material danger to the public health or +safety, or to the health and safety of the employee, or to the general +welfare...." This is the legal decision on which most protective +legislation in the United States has been based. + +Several years ago, in Illinois, a law providing an eight-hour day for +women was declared unconstitutional because nobody's health or safety +was endangered; and on the same grounds the same fate met a New York +law forbidding all-night employment of women. + +So Mr. Curt Muller and the laundrymen of Portland, Oregon, had reason to +believe that they could attack the Oregon law. The case was appealed, +and appealed again, by the laundrymen, and finally reached the Supreme +Court of the United States. Then the Consumers' League took a hand. + +The brief for the State of Oregon, "defendant in error," was prepared by +Louis D. Brandeis, of Boston, assisted by Josephine Goldmark, one of the +most effective workers in the League's New York headquarters. This brief +is probably one of the most remarkable legal documents in existence. It +consists of one hundred and twelve printed pages, of which a few +paragraphs were written by the attorney for the State. All the rest was +contributed, under Miss Goldmark's direction, from the Consumers' +League's wonderful collection of reasons why women workers should be +protected. + +The League's reply to the Oregon laundrymen who asked leave to work +their women employees far into the night was, "The World's Experience +upon Which the Legislation Limiting the Hours of Labor for Women is +Based." It is simply a mass of testimony taken from hearings before the +English Parliament, before state legislatures, state labor boards; from +the reports of factory inspectors in many countries; from reports of +industrial commissions in the United States and elsewhere; from medical +books; from reports of boards of health. + +REASONS FOR PROTECTING WOMEN WORKERS The brief included a short and +interesting chapter, containing a number of things the League had +collected on the subject of laundries. Supreme Court judges cannot be +expected to know that laundry work is classed by experts among the +dangerous trades. That washing clothes, from a simple home or backyard +occupation, has been transformed into a highly-organized factory trade +full of complicated and often extremely dangerous machinery; that the +atmosphere of a steam laundry is more conducive to tuberculosis and the +other occupational diseases than cotton mills; that the work in +laundries, being irregular, is conducive to a general low state of +morals; that, on the whole, women should not be required to spend more +time than necessary in laundries; all this was set forth. + +Medical testimony showed the physical differences between men and +women; the lesser power of women to endure long hours of standing; the +heightened susceptibility of women to industrial poisons--lead, naphtha, +and the like. A long chapter of testimony on the effect of child-bearing +in communities where the women had toiled long hours before marriage, or +afterwards, was included. + +The testimony of factory inspectors, of industrial experts, of employers +in England, Germany, France, America, revealed the bad effect of long +hours on women's safety, both physical and moral. It revealed the good +effect, on the individual health, home life, and general welfare, of +short hours of labor. + +Nor was the business aspect of the case neglected. That people +accomplish as much in an eight-hour day as in a twelve-hour day has +actually been demonstrated. The brief stated, for one instance, the +experience of a bicycle factory in Massachusetts. + +In this place young women were employed to sort the ball bearings which +went into the machines. They did this by touch, and no girl was of use +to the firm unless her touch was very sensitive and very sure. The head +of this firm became convinced that the work done late in the afternoon +was of inferior quality, and he tried the experiment of cutting the +hours from ten to nine. The work was done on piece wages, and the girls +at first protested against the nine-hour day, fearing that their pay +envelopes would suffer. To their astonishment they earned as much in +nine hours as they had in ten. In time the employer cut the working day +down to eight hours and a half, and in addition gave the girls +ten-minute rests twice a day. Still they earned their full wages, and +they continued to earn full wages after the day became eight hours +long. The employer testified before the United States Industrial +Commission of 1900 that he believed he could successfully shorten the +day to seven hours and a half and get the same amount of work +accomplished. + +What can you do against testimony like that? The Consumers' League +convinced the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Oregon +ten-hour law was upheld. + +The importance of this decision cannot be overestimated. On it hangs the +validity of nearly all the laws which have been passed in the United +States for the protection of women workers. If the Oregon law had been +declared unconstitutional, laws in twenty States, or practically all +the States where women work in factories, would have been in perpetual +danger, and the United States might easily have sunk to a position +occupied now by no leading country in Europe. + +Great Britain has had protective legislation for women workers since +1844. In 1847 the labor of women in English textile mills was limited to +ten hours a day, the period we are now worrying about, as being possibly +contrary to our Constitution. France, within the past five years, has +established a ten-hour day, broken by one hour of rest. Switzerland, +Germany, Holland, Austria, Italy, limit the hours of women's labor. In +several countries there are special provisions giving extra time off to +women who have household responsibilities. What would our +Constitution-bound law makers say to such a proposition, if any one had +the hardihood to suggest it? + +If this law had not been upheld by the United States Supreme Court the +women of no State could have hoped to secure further legislation for +women workers. As it is, women in many States are preparing to establish +what is now known as "The Oregon Standard," that is, a ten-hour day for +all working women. + +Nothing in connection with the woman movement is more significant, +certainly nothing was more unexpected, than the voluntary abandonment, +on the part of women, of class prejudice and class distinctions. Where +formerly the interest of the leisured woman in her wage-earning sisters +was of a sentimental or philanthropic character, it has become practical +and democratic. + +The Young Women's Christian Association has had an industrial +department, which up to a recent period concerned itself merely with the +spiritual welfare of working girls. Prayer meetings in factories, clubs, +and classes in the Association headquarters, working-girls' boarding +homes, and other philanthropic efforts were the limits of the +Association's activities. The entire policy has changed of late, and +under the capable direction of Miss Annie Marian MacLean, of Brooklyn, +New York, the industrial department of the Association is doing +scientific investigation of labor conditions of women. + +In a cracker factory I once saw a paid worker in the Young Women's +Christian Association pause above a young girl lying on the floor, +crimson with fever, and apparently in the throes of a serious illness. +With angelic pity on her face the Association worker stooped and +slipped a tract into the sick girl's hand. The kind of industrial +secretary the Association now employs would send for an ambulance and +see that the girl had the best of hospital care. She would inquire +whether the girl's illness was caused by the conditions under which she +worked, and she would know if it were possible to have those conditions +changed. + +WOMEN'S CLUBS STUDYING LABOR PROBLEMS Nearly every state federation of +women's clubs has its industrial committee, and many large clubs have a +corresponding department. It is these industrial sections of the women's +clubs which are such a thorn in the flesh of Mr. John Kirby, Jr., the +new president of the National Manufacturers' Association. In his +inaugural address Mr. Kirby warned his colleagues that women's clubs +were not the ladylike, innocuous institutions that too-confiding man +supposed them to be. In those clubs, he declared, their own wives and +daughters were listening to addresses by the worst enemies of the +Manufacturers' Association, the labor leaders. By which he meant that +the club women were inviting trade-union men and women to present the +worker's side of industrial subjects. "Soon," exclaimed Mr. Kirby, "we +shall have to fight the women as well as the unions." + +The richest and most aristocratic woman's club in the country is the +Colony Club of New York. The Colony Club was organized by a number of +women from the exclusive circles of New York society, after the manner +of men's clubs. The women built a magnificent clubhouse on Madison +Avenue, furnished it with every luxury, including a wonderful +roof-garden. For a time the Colony Club appeared to be nothing more +than a beautiful toy which its members played with. But soon it began to +develop into a sort of a woman's forum, where all sorts of social topics +were discussed. Visiting women of distinction, artists, writers, +lecturers, were entertained there. + +Last year the club inaugurated a Wednesday afternoon course in +industrial economics. The women did not invite lecturers from Columbia +University to address them. They asked John Mitchell and many lesser +lights of the labor world. They wanted to learn, at first hand, the +facts concerning conditions of industry. Most of them are stockholders +in mills, factories, mines, or business establishments. Many own real +estate on which factories stand. + +"It is not fair," they have openly declared, "that we should enjoy +wealth and luxury at the cost of illness, suffering, and death. We do +not want wealth on such terms." + +The Colony Club members, and the women who form the Auxiliary to the +National Civic Federation, have for their object improvement in the +working and living conditions of wage earners in industries and in +governmental institutions. A few conscientious employers have spent a +part of their profits to make their employees comfortable. They have +given them the best sanitary conditions, good air, strong light, and +comfortable seats. They have provided rest rooms, lunch rooms, vacation +houses, and the like. + +No one should belittle such efforts on the part of employers. Equally, +no one should regard them as a solution of the industrial problem. Nor +should they be used as a substitute for justice. + +Too often this so-called welfare work has been clumsily managed, +untactfully administered. Too often it has been instituted, not to +benefit the workers, but to advertise the business. Too often its real +object was a desire to play the philanthropist's role, to exact +obsequience from the wage earner. + +[Illustration: MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN President of the Colony Club, New +York, the most exclusive Women's Club in the country] + +I know a corset factory which makes a feature in its advertising of the +perfect sanitary condition of its works; when visitors are expected, the +girls are required to stop work and clean the rooms. Since they work on +a piece-work scale, the "perfect sanitary conditions" exist at their +expense. In a department store I know, employees are required to sign a +printed expression of gratitude for overtime pay or an extra holiday. +This kind of welfare work simply alienates employees from their +employers. It always fails. + +It seems to the women who have studied these things that proper +sanitary conditions, lunch rooms, comfortable seats, provision for +rest, vacations with pay, and the like are no more than the wage +earner's due. They are a part of the laborer's hire, and should be +guaranteed by law, exactly as wages are guaranteed. An employer deserves +gratitude for overtime pay no more than for fire escapes. + +Testimony gathered from all sources by the Consumers' League, women's +clubs, and women's labor organizations has proved beyond doubt that good +working conditions, reasonable hours of work, and living wages vastly +increase the efficiency of the workers, and thus increase the profits of +the employers. + +The New York Telephone Company does not set itself up to be a +benevolent institution. Its directors know that its profits depend on +the excellence of its service. There is one exchange in the Borough of +Brooklyn which handles a large part of the Long Island traffic. This +traffic is very heavy in summer on account of the number of summer +resorts along the coast. In the fall and winter the traffic is very +light. Six months in the year the operators at this exchange work only +half the day, yet the company keeps them on full salary the year round. +"We cannot afford to do anything else," explains the traffic manager. +"We cannot afford operators who would be content with half wages." + + +[Illustration: MISS ELIZABETH MALONEY] + +The old-time dry-goods merchant sincerely believed that his business +would suffer if he provided seats for his saleswomen. He believed that +he would go into bankruptcy if he allowed his women clerks human +working conditions. Then came the Consumers' League and mercantile laws, +and a new pressure of public opinion, and the dry-goods merchant found +out that a clerk in good physical condition sells more goods than one +that is exhausted and uncomfortable. + +The fact is that welfare work, carefully shorn of its name, has proved +itself to be such good business policy that in future all intelligent +employers will advocate it; public opinion will demand it; laws will +provide for it. + +It used to be the invariable custom in stores--it is so still in a +few--to lay off many clerks during the dull seasons. Now the best stores +find that they can better afford to give all their employees vacations +with pay. A clerk coming home after a vacation can sell goods, even in +dull times. More and more employers are coming to appreciate the money +value of the Saturday half-holiday in summer. Hearn, in New York, closes +his department store all day Saturday during July and August. The store +sells more goods in five days than it previously sold in six. + +THE FILENE SYSTEM OF DEVELOPING EFFICIENT WORKERS There is one +department store which has demonstrated that it is profitable to pay +higher wages than its competitors, and that it pays to allow the +employees to fix the terms of their own employment. This is the Filene +store in Boston, which has developed within the past ten years from a +conservative, old-fashioned dry-goods business into an extremely +original and interesting experiment station in commercial economics. + +The entire policy of the Filene management is bent on developing to the +highest possible point the efficiency of each individual clerk. The best +possible material is sought. No girl under sixteen is employed, and no +girl of any age who has not graduated with credit from the grammar +schools. There are a number of college-bred men and women in the Filene +employ. + + +[Illustration: A DEPARTMENT STORE REST-ROOM FOR WOMEN] + +Good wages are paid, even to beginners, and experienced employees are +rewarded, not according to a fixed rate of payment, but according to +earning capacity. Taken throughout the store, wages, plus commissions, +which are allowed in all departments, average about two dollars a week +higher than in other department stores in Boston. + +No irresponsible, automatic employee can develop high efficiency. She +does not want to become efficient; she wants merely to receive a pay +envelope at the end of the week. In order to develop responsibility and +initiative in their employees the Filenes have put them on a +self-governing basis. The workers do not literally make their own rules, +but the vote of the majority can change any rule made by the firm. The +firm furnishes its employees with a printed book of rules, in which the +policy of the store is set forth. If the employees object to any of the +rules, or any part of the policy, they can vote a change. + +The medium through which the clerks express their opinions and desires +is the Filene Co-operative Association, of which every clerk and every +employee in the place is a member. No dues are exacted, as is the custom +in the usual employees' association. The executive body, called the +Store Council, and all other officers are elected by the members. All +matters of grievance, all subjects of controversy, are referred to the +Store Council, which, as often as occasion demands, calls a meeting of +the entire association after business hours. + +For example: Christmas happens on a Friday. The firm decides to keep the +store open on the following day--Saturday. There is an expression of +dissatisfaction from a number of clerks. A meeting of the association is +called, and a vote taken as to whether the majority want the extra +holiday or not; whether the majority are willing to lose the +commissions on a day's sales, for, of course, salaries continue. The +vote reveals that the majority want the holiday. The Store Council so +reports to the firm, and the firm must grant the holiday. + +All matters of difficulty arising between employers and employed, in the +Filene store, are settled not by the firm, but by the Arbitration Board +of Employees, also elected by popular vote. All disagreements as to +wages, position, promotion, all questions of personal issue between +saleswomen and aislemen, or others in authority, are referred to the +Board of Arbitration, and the board's decision is final. There is no +tyranny of the buyer, no arbitrary authority of the head of a +department. Every clerk knows that her tenure is secure as long as she +is an efficient saleswoman. + +Surely it is not too much to hope that, in a future not too far +distant, all women who earn their bread will serve a system of industry +adjusted by law to human standards. In enlightened America the courts, +presided over by men to whom manual labor is known only in theory, have +persistently ruled that the _Constitution forbade the State to make laws +protecting women workers_. It has seemed to most of our courts and most +of our judges that the State fulfilled its whole duty to its women +citizens when it guaranteed them the right freely to contract--even +though they consented, or their poverty consented, to contracts which +involved irreparable harm to themselves, the community, and future +generations. The women of this country have done nothing more important +than to educate the judiciary of the United States out of and beyond +this terrible delusion. + + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MAKING OVER THE FACTORY FROM THE INSIDE + + +The decision of the United States Supreme Court, establishing the +legality of restricted hours of labor for Oregon working women, was +received with especial satisfaction in the State of Illinois. The +Illinois working women, or that thriving minority of them organized in +labor unions, had been waiting sixteen years for a favorable opportunity +to get an eight-hour day for themselves. Sixteen years ago the Illinois +State Legislature gave the working women such a law, and two years later +the Illinois Supreme Court took it away from them, on the ground that it +was unconstitutional. + +The action of the Illinois Supreme Court was by no means without +precedent. Many similar decisions had been handed down in other States, +until it had become almost a principle of American law that protective +legislation for working women was invalid. + +The process of reasoning by which learned judges reach the conclusion +that an eight-hour day for men may be decreed without depriving anybody +of his constitutional rights, and at the same time rule that women would +be outrageously wronged by having their working hours limited, may +appear obscure. + +The explanation is, after all, simple. The learned judges are men, and +they know something--not much, but still something--about the men of the +working classes. They know, for example, something about the conditions +under which coal miners work, and they can see that it is contrary to +public interests that men should toil underground, at arduous labor, +twelve hours a day. Accidents result with painful frequency, and these +are bad things,--bad for miners and mine owners alike. They are bad for +the whole community. Therefore the regulation of miners' hours of labor +comes legitimately under the police powers of the law. + +The learned judges, I say this with all due respect, do not know +anything about working women. Their own words prove it. The texts of +their decisions, denying the constitutionality of protective measures, +are amazing in the ignorance they display,--ignorance of industrial +conditions surrounding women; ignorance of the physical effects of +certain kinds of labor on young girls; ignorance of the effect of +women's arduous toil on the birth rate; ignorance of moral conditions in +trades which involve night work; ignorance of the injury to the home +resulting from the sweated labor of tenement women. In brief, the +learned judges, when they write opinions involving the health, the +happiness, the very lives of women workers, might be writing about the +inhabitants of another planet, so little knowledge do they display of +the real facts. + +We have seen how the women of the Consumers' League taught the United +States Supreme Court something about working women; showed them a few of +the calamities resulting from the unrestricted labor of women and +immature girls. The Supreme Court's decision forever abolished the old +fallacy that the American Constitution _forbids_ protective legislation +for women workers. It remains for women's organizations in the various +States to educate local courts up to the knowledge that community +interest _demands_ protective legislation. + +Following the decision of the Supreme Court in the Oregon case, which +flatly contradicted the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, the +working women of Illinois began their educational campaign. They had +now, for the first time, a fighting chance to secure the restoration of +their shortened work day. The women of fifteen organized trades in the +city of Chicago determined to take that chance. + +The women first appealed to the Industrial Commission, appointed early +in 1908 by Governor Dineen, to investigate the need of protective +legislation for workers, men and women alike. + +The women were given a courteous hearing, but were told frankly that +limited hours of work for women was not one of protective measures to be +recommended by the Commission. + +The Waitresses' Union, Local No. 484, of Chicago, entered the lists, led +by a remarkable young woman, Elizabeth Maloney, financial secretary of +the union. Miss Maloney and her associates drafted and introduced into +the Illinois Legislature a bill providing an eight-hour working day for +every woman in the State, working in shop, factory, retail store, +laundry, hotel, or restaurant, and providing also ample machinery for +enforcing the measure. + +The "Girls' Bill," as it immediately became known, was the most hotly +contested measure passed by the Illinois Legislature during the +session. Over five hundred manufacturers appeared at the public hearing +on the bill to protest against it. One man brought a number of meek and +tired women employees, who, he declared, were opposed to having their +working day made shorter. Another presented a petition signed by his +women employees, appealing against being prevented from working eleven +hours a day! + +Nine working girls appeared in support of the bill, and after learned +counsel for the Manufacturers' Association had argued against the +measure, two of the girls were allowed to speak. The Manufacturers' +Association presented the business aspect of the question, the girls +confined themselves to the human side. Agnes Nestor, secretary of the +Glove Makers' Union of the United States and Canada, was one of the two +girls who spoke. Miss Nestor, whose eyes are blue, whose manners are +gentle, and whose best weight is ninety-five pounds, had to stand on a +chair that the law makers might see her when she made her plea: +Elizabeth Maloney, of the Waitresses' Union, was the other speaker. + +They described details in the daily lives of working women not generally +known except to the workers themselves. Among these was the piece-work +system, which too often means a system whereby the utmost possible speed +is extorted from the toiler, in order that she may earn a living wage. +The legislators were asked to imagine themselves operating a machine +whose speed was gauged up to nine thousand stitches a minute; to +consider how many stitches the operator's hand must guide in a week, a +month, a year, in order to earn a living; working thus eleven, twelve +hours a day, knowing that the end was nervous breakdown, and decrease +of earning power. + +"I am a waitress," said Miss Maloney, "and I work ten hours a day. In +that time a waitress who is tolerably busy _walks_ ten miles, and the +dishes she carries back and forth aggregate in weight fifteen hundred to +two thousand pounds. Don't you think eight hours a day is enough for a +girl to walk?" + +Only one thing stood in the way of the passage of the bill after that +day. The doubt of its constitutionality proved an obstacle too grave +for the friends of the workers to overcome. It was decided to +substitute a ten-hour bill, an exact duplicate of the "Oregon Standard" +established by the Supreme Court of the United States. The principle of +limitation upon the hours of women's work once established in Illinois, +the workers could proceed with their fight for an eight-hour day. + +The manufacturers lost their fight, and the ten-hour bill became a law +of the State of Illinois. The Manufacturers' Association, through the +W.C. Ritchie Paper Box Manufactory, of Chicago, immediately brought suit +to test the constitutionality of the law. Two Ritchie employees, Anna +Kusserow and Dora Windeguth, made appeal to the Illinois courts. Their +appeal declared that they could not make enough paper boxes in ten hours +to earn their bread, and that their constitutional rights freely to +contract, as well as their human rights, had been taken away from them +by the ten-hour law. + +There was a terrible confession, on the part of the employers, involved +in this protest against the ten-hour day, a confession of the wretched +state of women's wages in the State of Illinois. If women of mature +years--one of the petitioners had been an expert box maker for over +thirty years--are unable, in a day of ten hours, to earn enough to keep +body and soul together, is it not proved that women workers are in no +position freely to contract? For who, of her own free will, would +contract to work ten hours a day for less than the price of life? + +There was sitting in the Circuit Court of Illinois at that time Judge +R.S. Tuthill. When Judge Tuthill, in old age, reviews the events of his +career, I think he will not remember with pride that he was blind to the +real meaning of that petition of Anna Kusserow and Dora Windeguth. For +Judge Tuthill issued an injunction against the State Factory Department, +forbidding them to enforce the ten-hour law. + +Immediately a number of women's organizations joined hands with the +women's trade unions in the fight to save the bill. When it came up in +the December term of the Illinois Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis of +Boston, the same able jurist who had argued the Oregon case, was on +hand. This time his brief was a book of six hundred and ten printed +pages, over which Miss Pauline Goldmark, of the National Consumers' +League, and a large corps of trained investigators and students had +toiled for many months. The World's Experience Against the Illinois +Circuit Court, this document might well have been called. It was simply +a digest of the evidence of governmental commissions, laboratories, and +bodies of scientific research, on the effects of overwork, and +especially of overtime work, on girls and women, and through them on +the succeeding generation. Incidentally the brief contained three +pages of law. + +The most striking part of the argument contained in the brief was the +testimony of physicians on the toxin of fatigue. + +"Medical Science has demonstrated," says this most important paragraph, +"that while fatigue is a normal phenomenon ... excessive fatigue or +exhaustion is abnormal.... It has discovered that fatigue is due not +only to actual poisoning, but to a specific poison or toxin of fatigue, +entirely analogous in chemical and physical nature to other bacterial +toxins, such as the diphtheria toxin. It has been shown that when +artificially injected into animals in large amounts the fatigue toxin +causes death. The fatigue toxin in normal quantities is said to be +counteracted by an antidote or antitoxin, also generated in the body. +But as soon as fatigue becomes abnormal the antitoxin is not produced +fast enough to counteract the poison of the toxin." + +The Supreme Court of the State of Illinois decided that the American +Constitution was never intended to shield manufacturers in their +willingness to poison women under pretense of giving them work. The +ten-hour law was sustained. + +That the "Girls' Bill" passed, or that it was even introduced, was due +in large measure to an organization of women, more militant and more +democratic than any other in the United States. This is the Women's +Trade Union League. Formed in New York about seven years ago, the +League consists of women members of labor unions, a few men in organized +trades, and many women outside the ranks of wage earners. Some of these +latter are women of wealth, who are believers in the trade-union +principle, but more are women who work in the professional +ranks,--teachers, lawyers, physicians, writers, artists, settlement +workers. These are the first professional workers, men or women, who +ever asked for and were given affiliation with the American Federation +of Labor. They are the first people, outside the ranks of wage earners, +to appear in Labor Day parades. + +The object of the League, which now has branches in five cities,--New +York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland,--is to educate women +wage earners in the doctrine of trade unionism. The League trains and +supports organizers among all classes of workers. As quickly as a group +in any trade seems ready for organizing the League helps them. It +raises funds to assist women in their trade struggles. It acts as +arbitrator between employer and wage earners in case of shop disputes. + +The Women's Tracle Union League reaches not only women in factory +trades, but it has succeeded in organizing women who until lately +believed themselves to be a grade above this social level. One hundred +and fifty dressmakers in New York City belong to a union. Seventy +stenographers have organized in the same city. The Teachers' Federation +of Chicago is a labor union, and although it was formed before the +Women's Trade Union League came into existence, it is now affiliated. +The women telegraphers all over the United States are well organized. + +The businesslike, resourceful, and fearless policy of the League was +brilliantly demonstrated during the famous strike of the shirt-waist +makers in New York and Philadelphia in the winter of 1910. The story of +this strike will bear retelling. + +On the evening of November 22, 1909, there was a great mass meeting of +workers held at Cooper Union in New York. Samuel Gompers, President of +the American Federation of Labor, presided, and the stage was well +filled with members of the Women's Trade Union League. The meeting had +been called by the League in conjunction with Shirt-Waist Makers' Union, +Local 25, to consider the grievances of shirt-waist makers in general, +and especially of the shirt-waist makers in the Triangle factory, who +had been, for more than two months, on strike. + +The story of the strike, the causes that led up to it, and the bitter +injustice which followed it were rehearsed in a dozen speeches. It was +shown that for four to five dollars a week the girl shirt-waist makers +worked from eight in the morning until half-past five in the evening +two days in the week; from eight in the morning until nine at night +four days in the week; and from eight in the morning until noon one day +in the week--Sunday. + +The shirt-waist makers in the Triangle factory, in hope of bettering +their conditions, had formed a union, and had informed their employers +of their action. The employers promptly locked them out of the shop, and +the girls declared a strike. + +The strike was more than two months old when the Cooper Union meeting +was held, and the employers showed no signs of giving in. It was agreed +that a general strike of shirt-waist makers ought to be declared. But +the union was weak, there were no funds, and most of the shirt-waist +makers were women and unused to the idea of solidarity in action. Could +they stand together in an industrial struggle which promised to be long +and bitter? + +President Gompers was plainly fearful that they could not. + +Suddenly a very small, very young, very intense Jewish girl, known to +her associates as Clara Lemlich, sprang to her feet, and, with the +assistance of two young men, climbed to the high platform. Flinging up +her arms with a dramatic gesture she poured out a flood of speech, +entirely unintelligible to the presiding Gompers, and to the members of +the Women's Trade Union League. The Yiddish-speaking majority in the +audience understood, however, and the others quickly caught the spirit +of her impassioned plea. + +The vast audience rose as one man, and a great roar arose. "Yes, we +will all strike!" + +"And will you keep the faith?" cried the girl on the platform. "Will you +swear by the old Jewish oath of our fathers?" + +Two thousand Jewish hands were thrust in air, and two thousand Jewish +throats uttered the oath: "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, +may this hand wither and drop off from this arm I now raise." + +Clara Lemlich's part in the work was accomplished. Within a few days +forty thousand shirt-waist makers were on strike. + +The Women's Trade Union League, under the direction of Miss Helen Marot, +secretary, at once took hold of the strike. + +There were two things to be done at once. The forty thousand had to be +enrolled in the union, and those manufacturers who were willing to +accept the terms of the strikers had to be "signed up." Clinton Hall, +one of the largest buildings on the lower East Side, was secured, and +for several weeks the rooms and hallways of the building and the street +outside were crowded almost to the limit of safety with men and women +strikers, anxious and perspiring "bosses," and busy, active associates +of the Women's Trade Union League. + +The immediate business needs of the organization being satisfied the +League members undertook the work of picketing the shops. Picketing, if +this activity has not been revealed to you, consists in patrolling the +neighborhood of the factories during the hours when the strike breakers +are going to and from their nefarious business, and importuning them to +join the strike. + +Peaceful picketing is legal. The law permits a striker to speak to the +girl who has taken her place, permits her to present her cause in her +most persuasive fashion, but if she lays her hand, ever so gently on the +other's arm or shoulder, this constitutes technical violence. + +Up to the time when the League began picketing there had been a little +of this technical, and possibly an occasional act of real, violence. +After the League took a hand there was none. Each group of union girls +who went forth to picket was accompanied by one or more League members. +Some of these amateur pickets were girls fresh from college, and among +these were Elsie Cole, the brilliant daughter of Albany's Superintendent +of Schools, Inez Milholland, the beautiful and cherished daughter of a +millionaire father, leader of her class, of 1909, in Vassar College, +Elizabeth Dutcher and Violet Pike, both prominent in the Association of +Collegiate Alumnae. These young women went out day after day with girl +strikers, endured the insults and threats of the police, suffered arrest +on more than one occasion, and faced the scorn and indignation of +magistrates who--well, who did not understand. + +The strike received an immense amount of publicity, and organizations of +women other than the Women's Trade Union League began to take an +interest in it. They sent for Miss Marot, Miss Cole, Miss Gertrude +Barnum, and other women known to be familiar with the industrial world +of women, and begged for enlightenment on the subject of the strike. +They particularly asked to hear the story from the striking women in +person. + +The exclusive Colony Club, to which only women of the highest social +eminence are eligible, was called together by Miss Anne Morgan and +several others, including Mrs. Egerton Winthrop, wife of the president +of the New York Board of Education, to hear the story from the strikers' +own lips. The Colony Club was swept into the shirt-waist strike. More +than thirteen hundred dollars was collected in a few minutes. A dozen +women promised influence and personal service in behalf of the strikers. + +A week later Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, mother of the Duchess of Marlborough, +leader of a large Woman Suffrage Association, engaged the Hippodrome, +and packed it to the roof with ten thousand interested spectators. +Something like five thousand dollars was donated by this meeting. + +At the beginning of the strike fully five hundred waist houses were +involved. Many of these settled within a few days on the basis of +increased pay, a fifty-two-hour working week, and recognition of the +union. Others settled later, and under the influence of the "uptown +scum," as the employers' association gallantly termed the Women's Trade +Union League, the Colony Club, and the Suffragists, still others +reluctantly gave in. Late in January all except about one hundred out of +the five hundred had settled with the union, and only about three +thousand of the workers were still out of work. + +Women have been called the scabs of the labor world. That they would +ever become trade unionists, ever evolve the class consciousness of the +intelligent proletarian men, was deemed an impossible dream. Above all, +that their progress towards industrial emancipation would ever be helped +along by the wives and daughters of the employing classes was +unthinkable. That the releasing of one class of women from household +labor by sending another class of women into the factory, there to +perform their historic tasks of cooking, sewing, and laundry work, was +to result in the humanizing of industry, no mind ever prophesied. + +Yet these things are coming. The scabs of the labor world are becoming +the co-workers instead of the competitors of men. The women of the +leisure classes, almost as fast as their eyes are opened to the +situation, espouse the cause of their working sisters. The woman in the +factory is preparing to make over that factory or to close it. + +The history of a recent strike, in a carpet mill in Roxbury, +Massachusetts, is a perfect history, in miniature, of the progress of +the working women. + +That particular mill is very old and very well known. When it was +established, more than a generation ago, the owner was a man who knew +every one of his employees by name, was especially considerate of the +women operatives, and was loved and respected by every one. Hours of +labor were long, but the work was done in a leisurely fashion, and wages +were good enough to compensate for the long day's labor. + +The original owner died, and in time the new firm changed to a +corporation. The manager knew only his office force and possibly a few +floor superintendents and foremen. The rest of the force were "hands." + +The whole state of the industry was altered. New and complicated +machinery was introduced. The shortened work day was a hundred times +more fatiguing to the workers because of the increased speed and +nerve-racking noise and jar of the machinery. Other grievances +developed. The quality of the yarn furnished the weavers was often so +bad that they spent hours of unpaid labor mending a broken warp or +manipulating a rotten shuttle full of yarn. Wages, fixed according to +the piece system, declined, it is said, at least one-fourth. Women who +had formerly earned thirteen dollars a week were reduced to seven and +eight dollars. + +The women formed a union and struck. Some of them had been in the mills +as long as forty years, but they walked out with the girls. + +There you have the story of women's realization of themselves as a +group. Next you encounter the realization of the sisterhood of women. +The Boston Branch of the Women's Trade Union League, through its +secretary, Mabel Gillespie, Radcliffe graduate, joined the strikers. +Backed up by the Boston Central Labor Union, and the United Textile +Workers of Fall River, the strikers fought their fight during ten weeks +of anxiety and deprivation. + +The employers were firm in their determination to go out of business +before treating with the strikers as a group. A hand, mind you, exists +as an individual, a very humble individual, but one to be received and +conferred with. Hands, considered collectively, have no just right to +exist. An employers' association is a necessity of business life. A +labor union is an insult to capital. + +This was the situation at the end of ten weeks. One day a motor car +stopped in front of the offices of the mills and a lady emerged. Mrs. +Glendower Evans, conservative, cultured, one might say Back Bay +personified, had come to Roxbury to see the carpet manufacturer. Her +powers of persuasion, plus her social position and her commercial +connections, were sufficient to wring consent from the firm to receive +John Golden, president of the United Textile Workers. + +John Golden, intelligent, honest, a fine type of workingman, educated +in the English school of unionism, held two conferences with the firm. +He was able to make the employers see the whole situation in an entirely +new light. They were men of probity; they wanted to be fair; and when +they saw the human side of the struggle they surrendered. When they +perceived the justice of the collective bargain, the advantages to both +sides of a labor organization honestly conducted, they consented to +recognize the union. And the women went back, their group unbroken. + +Thus are women working, women of all classes, to humanize the factory. +From the outside they are working to educate the legislatures and the +judiciary. They are lending moral and financial support to the women of +the toiling masses in their struggle to make over the factory from the +inside. Together they are impressing the men of the working world, law +makers and judges, with the justice of protecting the mothers of the +race. + +Now that the greatest stumbling block to industrial protective +legislation has been removed, we may hope to see a change in legal +decisions handed down in our courts. The educational process is not +yet complete. Not every judge possesses the prophetic mind of the +late Justice Brewer, who wrote the decision in the Oregon Case. Not +every court has learned that healthy men and women are infinitely more +valuable to a nation than mere property. But in time they will learn. + +In distant New Zealand, not long ago, there was a match factory in which +a number of women worked for low wages. After fruitless appeals to the +owner for better wages the workers resorted to force. They did not +strike. In New Zealand you do not have to strike, because in that +country a substitute for the strike is provided by law. To this +substitute, a Court of Arbitration, the women took their grievance. The +employer in his answer declared, just as employers in this country might +have done, that his business would not stand an increase in wages. He +explained that the match industry was newly established in New Zealand, +and that, until it was on a secure basis, factory owners could not +afford to pay high wages. + +The judge ordered an inquiry. In this country it would have been an +inquiry into the state of the match industry. There it was an inquiry +into the cost of living in the town where the match factory was located. +And then the judge summoned the factory owner to the Court of +Arbitration, and this is what he said to the man: + +"It is impossible for these girls to live decently or healthfully on the +wages you are now paying. It is of the utmost importance that they +should have wholesome and healthful conditions of life. The souls and +bodies of the young women of New Zealand are of more importance than +your profits, and if you cannot pay living wages it will be better for +the community for you to close your factory. _It would be better to +send the whole match industry to the bottom of the ocean, and go back to +flints and firesticks, than to drive young girls into the gutter._ My +award is that you pay what they ask." + +Does that sound like justice to you? It does to me; it does to the eight +million women in the world who have learned to think in human terms. + + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +BREAKING THE GREAT TABOO + + +At the threshold of that quarter of old New York called Greenwich +Village stands Jefferson Market Court. Almost concealed behind the +towering structure of the Sixth Avenue Elevated, the building by day is +rather inconspicuous. But when night falls, swallowing up the +neighborhood of tangled streets and obscure alleyways, Jefferson Market +assumes prominence. High up in the square brick tower an illuminated +clock seems perpetually to be hurrying its pointing hands toward +midnight. From many windows, barred for the most part, streams an +intense white light. Above an iron-guarded door at the side of the +building floats a great globe of light, and beneath its glare, through +the iron-guarded door, there passes, every week-day night in the year, a +long procession of prodigals. + +The guarded door seldom admits any one as important, so to speak, as a +criminal. The criminal's case waits for day. The Night Court in +Jefferson Market sits in judgment only on the small fry caught in the +dragnet of the police. Tramps, vagrants, drunkards, brawlers, disturbers +of the peace, speeding chauffeurs, licenseless peddlers, youths caught +red-handed shooting craps or playing ball in the streets,--these are the +men with whom the Night Court deals. But it is not the men we have come +to see. + +[Illustration: MISS MAUDE E. MINER] + +The women of the Night Court. Prodigal daughters! Between December, +1908, and December, 1909, no less than five thousand of them passed +through the guarded door, under the blaze of the electric lights. There +is never an hour, from nine at night until three in the morning, when +the prisoners' bench in Jefferson Market Court is without its full quota +of women. Old--prematurely old, and young--pitifully young; white and +brown; fair and faded; sad and cynical; starved and prosper ous; +rag-draped and satin-bedecked; together they wait their turn at +judgment. + +Quietly moving back and forth before the prisoners' bench you see a +woman, tall, graceful, black-gowned. She is the salaried probation +officer, modern substitute for the old-time volunteer mission worker. +The probation officer's serious blue eyes burn with no missionary zeal. +There is no spark of sentimental pity in the keen gaze she turns on each +new arrival. + +When the bench is full of women the judge turns to her to inquire: +"Anybody there you want, Miss Miner?" + +Miss Miner usually shakes her head. She diagnoses her cases like a +physician, and she wastes no time on incurables. + +Once in a while, perhaps several times in the course of a night, Miss +Miner touches a girl on the arm. At once the girl rises and follows the +probation officer into an adjoining room. If she is what she appears, +young in evil, if she has a story which rings true, a story of poverty +and misfortune, rather than of depravity, she goes not back to the +prisoners' bench. When her turn at judgment comes Miss Miner stands +beside her, and in a low voice meant only for the judge, she tells the +facts. The girl weeps as she listens. To hear one's troubles told is +sometimes more terrible than to endure them. + +Court adjourns at three in the morning, and this girl, with the +others--if others have been claimed by the probation officer--goes out +into the empty street, under the light of the tall tower, whose clock +has begun all over again its monotonous race toward midnight. No +policeman accompanies the group. The girls are under no manner of +duress. They have promised to go home with Miss Miner, and they go. The +night's adventure, entered into with dread, with callous indifference, +or with thoughtless mirth, ends in a quiet bedroom and a pillow wet with +tears. + +[Illustration: IN THE NIGHT COURT, NEW YORK.] + +Waverley House, as Miss Miner's home is known, has sheltered, during the +past year, over three hundred girls. Out of that number one hundred and +nineteen have returned to their homes, or are earning a living at useful +work. + +One hundred and nineteen saved out of five thousand prodigals! In point +of numbers this is a melancholy showing, but in comparison with other +efforts at rescue work it is decidedly encouraging. + +Nothing quite like Waverley House has appeared in other American cities, +but it is a type of detention home for girls which is developing +logically out of the probation system. Delinquent girls under sixteen +are now considered, in all enlightened communities, subjects for the +Juvenile Court. They are hardly ever associated with older delinquents. +But a girl over sixteen is likely to be committed to prison, and may be +locked in cells with criminal and abandoned women of the lowest order. +Waverley House is the first practical protest against this stupid and +evil-encouraging policy. + +The house, which stands a few blocks distant from the Night Court, was +established and is maintained by the Probation Association of New York, +consisting of the probation officers in many of the city courts, and of +men and women interested in philanthropy and social reform. The District +Attorney of New York County, Charles S. Whitman, is president of the +Association, Maude E. Miner is its secretary, Mrs. Russell Sage, Miss +Anne Morgan, Miss Mary Dreier, president of the New York Women's Trade +Union League, Mrs. Richard Aldrich, formerly president of the Women's +Municipal League, Andrew Carnegie, Edward T. Devine, head of New York's +organized charities, Homer Folks, and Fulton Cutting are among the +supporters of Waverley House. Miss Stella Miner is the capable and +sympathetic superintendent of the house. + +The place is in no sense a reformatory. It is an experiment station, a +laboratory where the gravest and most baffling of all the diseases which +beset society is being studied. Girls arrested for moral delinquency and +paroled to probation officers are taken to Waverley House, where they +remain, under closest study and searching inquiry, until the best means +of disposing of them is devised. Some are sent to their homes, some to +hospitals, some to institutions, some placed on long probation. + +Maude E. Miner, who declined a chair of mathematics in a woman's college +to work in the Night Court, is one of an increasing number of women who +are attempting a great task. They are trying to solve a problem which +has baffled the minds of the wisest since civilization dawned. They have +set themselves to combat an evil fate which every year overtakes +countless thousands of young girls, dragging them down to misery, +disease, and death. At the magnitude of the effort these women have +undertaken one stands appalled. Will they ever reach the heart of the +problem? Can they ever hope to do more than reclaim a few individuals? +This much did the missionaries before them. + +"We could reclaim fully seventy-five per cent," declares Miss Miner, "if +only we could find a way to begin nearer the beginning." + +To begin the reform of any evil at the beginning, or near the beginning, +instead of near the end is now regarded as an economy of effort. That is +what educators are trying to do with juvenile delinquency; what +physicians are doing with disease; what philanthropists are beginning to +do with poverty. + +Hardly any one has suggested that the social evil might have a cause, +and that it might be possible to attack it at its source. Yet that any +large number of girls enter upon such a horrible career, willingly, +voluntarily, is unbelievable to one who knows anything of the facts. +There must be strong forces at work on these girls, forces they find +themselves entirely powerless to resist. + +Miss Miner and her fellow probation officers are the visible signs of a +very important movement among women to discover what these forces are. +Meager, indeed, are the facts at hand. We have had, and we still have, +in cities east and west, committees and societies and law and order +leagues earnestly engaged in "stamping out" the evil. It is like trying +to stamp out a fire constantly fed with inflammables and fanned by a +strong gale. The protests of most of these leagues amount to little +more than vain clamor against a thing which is not even distantly +comprehended. + +The _personnel_ of these agencies organized to "stamp out" the evil +differs little in the various cities. It is largely if not wholly +masculine in character, and the evil is usually dealt with from the +point of view of religion and morals. Women, when they appear in the +matter at all, figure as missionaries, "prison angels," and the like. As +evangelists to sinners women have been permitted to associate with their +fallen sisters without losing caste. Likewise, when elderly enough, they +have been allowed to serve on governing boards of "homes" and +"refuges." Their activities were limited to rescue work. They might +extend a hand to a repentant Magdalene. A Phryne they must not even be +aware of. In other words, this evil as a subject of investigation and +intelligent discussion among women was absolutely prohibited. It has +ever been their Great Taboo. + +Nevertheless, when eight million women, in practically every civilized +country in the world, organized themselves into an International Council +of Women, and began their remarkable survey of the social order in which +they live, one of their first acts was to break the Great Taboo. + +[Illustration: MISS SADIE AMERICAN] + +At early congresses of the International Council Miss Sadie American, +Mrs. Kate Waller Barrett, Mrs. Elizabeth Grannis, among American +delegates, Miss Elizabeth Janes of England, Miss Elizabeth Gad of +Denmark, Dr. Agnes Bluhm of Germany, and others interested in the moral +welfare of girls, urged upon the Council action against the "White +Slave" traffic. No extensive argument was required to convince the +members of the Council that the "White Slave" traffic and the whole +subject of the moral degradation of women was a social phenomenon too +long neglected by women. + +These women declared with refreshing candor that it was about time that +the social evil was dealt with intelligently, and if it was to be dealt +with intelligently women must do the work. The fussy old gentlemen with +white side whiskers and silk-stocking reformers and the other well +meaning amateurs, who are engaged in "stamping out" the evil, deserve to +be set aside. In their places the women propose to install social +experts who shall deal scientifically with the problem. + +The double standard of morals, accepted in fact if not in principle, in +every community, and so rigidly applied that good women are actually +forbidden to have any knowledge of their fallen sisters, was for the +first time repudiated by a body of organized women. The arguments on +which the double standard of morals is based was, for the first time, +seriously scrutinized by women of intelligence and social importance. +The desirability of the descent of property in legal paternal line +seemed to these women a good enough reason for applying a rigid standard +of morals to women. But they found reasons infinitely greater why the +same rigid standard should be applied to men. + +The International Council of Women and women's organizations in every +country number among their members and delegates women physicians, and +through these physicians they have been able to consider the social evil +from an altogether new point of view. Certain very ugly facts, which +touch the home and which intimately concern motherhood and the welfare +of children, were brought forth--facts concerning infantile blindness, +almost one-third of which is caused by excesses on the part of the +fathers; facts concerning certain forms of ill health in married women, +and the increase of sterility due to the spread of specific diseases +among men. The horrible results to innocent women and children of these +maladies, and their frightful prevalence,--seventy-five per cent of city +men, according to reliable authority, being affected,--aroused in the +women a sentiment of indignation and revolt. The International Council +of Women put itself on record as protesting against the responsibility +laid upon women, the unassisted task of preserving the purity of the +race. + +In the United States, women's clubs, women's societies, women's medical +associations, special committees of women in many cities have +courageously undertaken the study of this problem, intending by means of +investigation and publicity to lay bare its sources and seek its remedy. + +The sources of the evil are about the only phase of the problem which +has never been adequately examined. It is true that we have suspected +that the unsteady and ill-adjusted economic position of women furnished +some explanation for its existence, but even now our information is +vague and unsatisfactory. + +A number of years ago, in 1888 to be exact, the Massachusetts Bureau of +Labor Statistics made an interesting investigation. This was an effort +to determine how far the entrance of women into the industrial world, +usually under the disadvantage of low wages, was contributing to +profligacy. The bureau gathered statistics of the previous occupations +of nearly four thousand fallen women in twenty-eight American cities. + +Of these unfortunates over eight hundred had worked in low-waged trades +such as paper-box making, millinery, laundry work, rope and cordage +making, cigar and cigarette making, candy packing, textile factory and +shoe factory work. + +About five hundred women had been garment workers, dressmakers, and +seamstresses, but how far these were skilled or unskilled was not +stated. + +The department store, at that time little more than a sweat shop so far +as wages and long hours of work were concerned, contributed one hundred +and sixteen recruits to the list. + +On the whole, these groups were what the investigators had expected to +find. + +There were two other large groups of prodigals, and these were entirely +unexpected by the investigators. Of the 3,866 girls examined 1,236, or +nearly thirty-two per cent, reported no previous occupation. The next +largest group, 1,115, or nearly thirty per cent, had been domestic +servants. The largest group of all had gone straight from their homes +into lives of evil. A group nearly as large had gone directly from that +occupation which is constantly urged upon women as the safest and most +suitable means of earning their living--housework. + +Now you may, if you want to drop the thing out of your mind as something +too disagreeable to think about, infer from this that at least sixty-two +per cent of those 3,866 women deserved their fate. Some of them were too +lazy to work, and the rest preferred a life of soiled luxury to one of +honest toil in somebody's nice kitchen. Apparently this was the view +taken by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, because it never +carried the investigation any farther. It never tried to find out _why_ +so many girls left their homes to enter evil lives. It never tried to +find out _why_ housework was a trade dangerous to morals. + +Fortunately it did occur to the women's organizations to examine the +facts a little more carefully. In this article I am going to take you +over some of the ground they have covered and show you where their +investigations have led them. + +South Chicago is a fairly good place to begin. Its ugliness and +forlornness can be matched in the factory section of almost any large +city. South Chicago is dominated by its steel mills,--enormous drab +structures, whose every crevice leaks quivering heat and whose towering +chimneys belch forth unceasingly a pall of ashes and black smoke. The +steel workers and their families live as a rule in two and three family +houses, built of wood, generally unpainted, and always dismally +utilitarian as to architectural details. + +In South Chicago, four years ago, there was not such a thing as a park, +or a playground, or a recreation center. One lone social settlement was +just seeking a home for itself. There were public schools, quite +imposing buildings. But these were closed and locked and shuttered for +the day as soon as the classes were dismissed. + +In a certain neighborhood of South Chicago there lived a number of young +girls, healthy, high-spirited, and full of that joy of life which always +must be fed--if not with wholesome food, then husks. For parents these +girls had fathers who worked twelve hours a day in the steel mills and +came home at night half dead from lack of rest and sleep; and mothers +who toiled equally long hours in the kitchen or over the washtub and +were too weary to know or care what the girls did after school. For +social opportunity the girls had "going downtown." Perhaps you know +what that means. It means trooping up and down the main street in lively +groups, lingering near a saloon where a phonograph is bawling forth a +cheerful air, visiting a nickel theater, or looking on at a street +accident or a fight. + +About this time the panic of 1907 descended suddenly on South Chicago +and turned out of the steel mills hundreds of boys and men. Some of +these were mere lads, sixteen to eighteen years old. They, too, went +"downtown." There was no other place for them to go. + +As a plain matter of cause and effect, what kind of a moral situation +would you expect to evolve out of these materials? + +Eventually a woman probation officer descended on the neighborhood. Many +of the girls whom she rescued from conditions not to be described in +these pages were so young that their cases were tried in the Juvenile +Court. Most of them went to rescue homes, reformatories, or hospitals. +Some slipped away permanently, in all human probability to join the +never-ceasing procession of prodigals. + +This is what "no previous occupation" really means in nine cases out of +ten. It means that the girl lived in a home which was no home at all, +according to the ideals of you who read these pages. + +Sometimes it was a cellar where the family slept on rags. Sometimes it +was an attic where ten or twelve people herded in a space not large +enough for four. Some of these homes were never warm in winter. In some +there was hardly any furniture. But we need not turn to these extreme +cases in order to show that in many thousands of American homes virtue +and innocence are lost because no facilities for preserving them are +possible. + +Annie Donnelly's case will serve as further illustration. Annie +Donnelly's father was a sober, decent man of forty, who drove a cab from +twelve to fifteen hours every day in the year, Sundays and holidays +included. Before the cab drivers' strike, a year or two ago, Donnelly's +wages were fifteen dollars a week, and the family lived in a four-room +tenement, for which they paid $5.50 a week. You pay rent weekly to a +tenement landlord. Since the strike wages are fourteen dollars a week +for cab drivers, and this fall the Donnelly rent went up fifty cents a +week. + +The Donnelly tenement was a very desirable one, having but a single +dark, windowless room, instead of two or three, like most New York +tenements. There were three children younger than Annie, who was +fourteen. The family of five made a fairly tight fit in four rooms. +Nevertheless, when the rent went up to six dollars Mrs. Donnelly took a +lodger. She had to or move and, remember, this was a desirable tenement +because it had only one dark room. + +One day the lodger asked Annie if she did not want to go to a dance. +Annie did want to, but she knew very well that her mother would not +allow her to go. Once a year the entire family, including the baby, +attended the annual ball of the Coachman's Union, but that was another +thing. Annie was too young for dances her mother declared. + +The Donnellys paid for and occupied three rooms, but they really lived +in one room, the others being too filled with beds to be habitable +except at night. The kitchen, the one living-room, was uncomfortably +crowded at meal times. At no time was there any privacy. It was +impossible for Annie to receive her girl friends in her home. Every bit +of her social life had to be lived out of the house. + +When the weather was warm she often stayed in the street, walking about +with the other girls or sitting on a friend's doorstep, until ten or +even eleven o'clock at night. Every one does the same in a crowded city +neighborhood. There comes a time in a girl's life when this sort of +thing becomes monotonous. The time came when Annie found sitting on the +doorstep and talking about nothing in particular entirely unbearable. So +one balmy, inviting spring night she slipped away and went with the +lodger to a dance. + +The dance hall occupied a big, low-ceiled basement room in a building +which was a combination of saloon and tenement house. In one of the +front windows of the basement room was hung a gaudy placard: "The Johnny +Sullivan Social Club." + +The lodger paid no admission, but he deposited ten cents for a hat +check, after which they went in. About thirty couples were swinging in a +waltz, their forms indistinctly seen through the clouds of dust which +followed them in broken swirls through air so thick that the electric +lights were dimmed. Somewhere in the obscurity a piano did its noisiest +best with a popular waltz tune. + +In a few minutes Annie forgot her timidity, forgot the dust and the heat +and the odor of stale beer, and was conscious only that the music was +piercing, sweet, and that she was swinging in blissful time to it. When +the waltz tune came to an end at last the dancers stopped, gasping with +the heat, and swaying with the giddiness of the dance. + +"Come along," said the lodger, "and have a beer." When Annie shook her +head he exclaimed: "Aw, yuh have to. The Sullivans gets the room rent +free, but the fellers upstairs has bar privileges, and yuh have to buy +a beer off of 'em oncet in a while. They've gotta get something out of +it." + +I do not know whether Annie yielded then or later. But ultimately she +learned to drink beer for the benefit of philanthropists who furnish +dance halls rent free, and also to quench a thirst rendered unbearable +by heat and dust. They seldom open the windows in these places. +Sometimes they even nail the windows down. A well-ventilated room means +poor business at the bar. + +Annie Donnelly became a dance-hall _habitué_. Not because she was +viciously inclined; not because she was abnormal; but because she was +decidedly normal in all her instincts and desires. + +Besides, it is easy to get the dance-hall habit. At almost every dance +invitations to other dances are distributed with a lavish hand. These +invitations, on cheap printed cards, are scattered broadcast over chairs +and benches, on the floors, and even on the bar itself. They are locally +known as "throw-aways." Here are a few specimens, from which you may +form an idea of the quality of dance halls, and the kind of +people--almost the only kind of people--who offer pleasure to the +starved hearts of girls like Annie Donnelly. These are actual +invitations picked up in an East Side dance hall by the head worker of +the New York College Settlement: + + "_Second annual reception and ball, given by Jibo and Jack, at New + Starlight Hall, 143 Suffolk Street, December 25. Music by our + favorite. Gents ticket 25 cents, Ladies 15 cents._" + + "_Don't miss the ball given by Joe the Greaser, and Sam Rosenstock, + at Odd Fellows' Hall, January 29th._" + + "_See the Devil Dance at the Reception and Ball given by Max Pascal + and Little Whity, at Tutonia Hall, Tuesday evening, November + 20th."_ + + _ "Reception and Ball given by two well known friends, Max Turk and + Sam Lande, better known as Mechuch, at Appollo Hall, Chrystmas + night. Floor manager, Young Louis. Ticket admit one 25 cents._" + +In addition to these private affairs which are arranged purely for the +profit of "Jibo and Jack" and their kind, men who make a living in this +and in yet more unspeakable ways, there are hundreds of saloon dance +halls, not only in New York, but in other cities. These are simply +annexes to drinking places, and people are not welcome there unless they +drink. No admission is charged. + +There are also numberless dancing academies. Dancing lessons are given +four nights in the week, as a rule, and the dancing public buys +admission the other three nights and on Sunday afternoons. Some dancing +academies, even in tenement house quarters, are reputable institutions, +but to most of them the lowest of the low, both men and women, resort. +There, as in the dance halls, the "White Slaver" plies his trade, and +the destroyer of womanliness lays his nets. + +Annie Donnelly soon learned the ways of all these places. She learned to +"spiel." You spiel by holding hands with your partner at arms' length, +and whirling round and round at the highest possible speed. The girl's +skirts are blown immodestly high, which is a detail. The effect of the +spiel is a species of drunkenness which creates an instant demand for +liquor, and a temporary recklessness of the possible results of strong +drink. + +Annie also learned to dance what is known as the "half time," or the +"part time" waltz. This is a dance accompanied by a swaying and +contorting of the hips, most indecent in its suggestion. It is really a +very primitive form of the dance, and probably goes back to the pagan +harvest and bacchic festivals. You may see traces of it in certain crude +peasant dances in out-of-the-way corners of Europe. Now they teach it to +immigrant girls in New York dancing academies and dance halls, and tell +the girls that it is the _American_ fashion of waltzing. + +Annie Donnelly's destruction was accomplished in less than a year. It +was the more rapid because of the really superior character of her home. +There was nothing the matter with that home except that it was too +crowded for the family to stay in it. Father and mother were +respectable, hard-working people, and after Annie's first real +misadventure, into which she fell almost unwittingly, she was afraid to +go home. + +The dance hall, as we have permitted it to exist, practically +unregulated, has become a veritable forcing house of vice and crime in +every city in the United States. It is a straight chute down which, +every year, thousands of girls descend to the way of the prodigal. No +one has counted their number. All we know of the unclassed is that they +exist, apparently in ever-increasing masses. + +It was estimated in Chicago, not long ago, that there were about six +thousand unfortunate women known to the police, and something like +twenty thousand who managed to avoid actual collision with the law. That +is, the latter lived quietly and plied their trade on the street so +unostentatiously that they were seldom arrested. How many of these +unfortunates reached the streets through the dance hall is impossible to +know--we only know that it constantly recruits the ranks of the +unclassed. + +[Illustration: A DANCE HALL] + +The dance hall may be in the rear of a saloon, or over a saloon; it may +occupy a vacant store building, or a large loft. Somewhere in its +immediate vicinity there is a saloon. A dance lasts about five minutes, +and the interval between dances is from ten to twenty minutes. Waiters +circle among the dancers, importuning them to drink. The dance hall +without a bar, or some source of liquid supply, does not often exist, +except as it has been established by social workers to offset the +influence of the commercial dance hall. + +Some dance halls are small and wretchedly lighted. Others are large and +pretentious. Some of them have direct connections with Raines Law hotels +and their prototypes. Of hardly a single dance hall can a good word be +said. They are almost entirely in the hands of the element lowest in +society, in business, and in politics. + +From the old-fashioned German family picnic park to Coney Island in New +York, Revere Beach in Boston, The White City in Chicago, Savin Rock in +New Haven, and their like, is a far cry. + +Some of these summer parks try to keep their amusements clean and +decent, and some, notably Euclid Park, Cleveland, succeed. But drink and +often worse evils are characteristic of most of them. There are parts +of Coney Island where no beer is sold, where the vaudeville and the +moving pictures are clean and wholesome, where dancing is orderly. But +the nearest side street has its "tough joint." The same thing is true of +the big summer resorts of other cities. + +The dance hall, both winter and summer types, have had a deteriorating +effect upon the old-fashioned dancing academy. Formerly these were +respectable establishments where people paid for dancing lessons. Now +they are a _mélange_ of dancing classes and public entertainments. The +dancing masters, unable to compete with the dance hall proprietors, have +been obliged to transfer many of the dance hall features to their +establishments. + +Oddly enough it is rather an unusual thing for a girl to be escorted to +a dance in any kind of a dance hall. The girls go alone, with a friend, +or with a group of girls. The exceptional girl, who is attended by a +man, must dance with him, or if she accepts another part ner, she must +ask his permission. An escort is deemed a somewhat doubtful advantage. +Those who go unattended are always sure of partners. Often they meet +"fellows" they know, or have seen on the streets. Introductions are not +necessary. Even if a girl is unacquainted with any "fellows," if she +possesses slight attractions, she is still sure of partners. + +The amount of money spent by working girls for dance-hall admissions is +considerable. A girl receiving six or seven dollars a week in wages +thinks nothing of reserving from fifty cents to a dollar for dancing. + +In going about among the dance halls one is struck with the number of +black-gowned girls. The black gown might almost be called the mark of +the dance-hall _habitué_, the girl who is dance mad and who spends all +her evenings going from one resort to another. She wears black because +light evening gowns soil too rapidly for a meager purse to renew. + +An indispensable feature of the dancing academy is the "spieler." This +is a young man whose strongest recommendation is that he is a skilled +and untiring dancer. The business of the spieler is to look after the +wall-flowers. He seeks the girl who sits alone against the wall; he +dances with her and brings other partners to her. It would not do for a +place to get the reputation of slowness. The girls go back to those +dance halls where they have had the best time. + +The spieler is not uncommonly a worthless fellow; sometimes he is a +sinister creature, who lives on the earnings of unfortunate girls. The +dance hall, and especially the dancing academy, because of the youth of +many of its patrons, is a rich harvest field for men of this type. + +Beginning with the saloon dance hall, unquestionably the most brutally +evil type, and ending with the dancing academy, where some pretense of +chaperonage is made, the dance hall is a vicious institution. It is +vicious because it takes the most natural of all human instincts, the +desire of men and women to associate together, and distorts that +instinct into evil. The boy and girl of the tenement-dwelling classes, +especially where the foreign element is strong, do not share their +pleasures in the normal, healthy fashion of other young people. The +position of the women of this class is not very high. Men do not treat +her as an equal. They woo her for a wife. In the same manner the boy +does not play with the girl. The relations between young people very +readily degenerate. The dance hall, with its curse of drink, its lack of +chaperonage and of reasonable discipline, helps this along its downward +course. + +Sadie Greenbaum, as I will call her, was an exceptionally attractive +young Jewish girl of fifteen when I first knew her. Although not +remarkably bright in school she was industrious, and aspired to be a +stenographer. She was not destined to realize her ambition. As soon as +she finished grammar school she was served, so to speak, with her +working papers. The family needed additional income, not to meet actual +living expenses, for the Greenbaums were not acutely poor, but in order +that the only son of the family might go to college. Max was seventeen, +a selfish, overbearing prig of a boy, fully persuaded of his superiority +over his mother and sisters, and entirely willing that the family should +toil unceasingly for his advancement. + +Sadie accepted the situation meekly, and sought work in a muslin +underwear factory. At eighteen she was earning seven dollars a week as a +skilled operator on a tucking machine. She sat down to her work every +morning at eight o'clock, and for four hours watched with straining eyes +a tucking foot which carried eight needles and gathered long strips of +muslin into eight fine tucks, at the rate of four thousand stitches a +minute. The needles, mere flickering flashes of white light above the +cloth, had to be watched incessantly lest a thread break and spoil the +continuity of a tuck. When you are on piece wages you do not relish +stopping the machine and doing over a yard or two of work. + +So Sadie watched the needle assiduously, and ignored the fact that her +head ached pretty regularly, and she was generally too weary when lunch +time came to enjoy the black bread and pickles which, with a cup of +strong tea, made her noon meal. After lunch she again sat down to her +machine and watched the needles gallop over the cloth. + +At the end of each year Sadie Greenbaum had produced for the good of the +community _four miles_ of tucked muslin. In return, the community had +rendered her back something less than three hundred dollars, for the +muslin underwear trade has its dull seasons, and you do not earn seven +dollars every week in the year. + +Each week Sadie handed her pay envelope unopened to her mother. The +mother bought all Sadie's clothes and gave her food and shelter. +Consequently, Sadie's unceasing vigil of the needle paid for her +existence and purchased also the proud consciousness of an older brother +who would one day own a doctor's buggy and a social position. + +The one joy of this girl's life, in fact all the real life she lived, +was dancing. Regularly every Saturday night Sadie and a girl friend, +Rosie by name, put on their best clothes and betook themselves to +Silver's Casino, a huge dance hall with small rooms adjoining, where +food and much drink were to be had. + +There was a good floor at Silver's and a brass band to dance to. It was +great! The girls never lacked partners, and they made some very +agreeable acquaintances. + +In the dressing room, between dances, all the girls exchanged +conversation, views on fashions, confidences about the young men and +other gossip. Some of the girls were nice and some, it must be admitted, +were "tough." What was the difference? The tough girls, with their +daring humor, their cigarettes, their easy manners, and their amazingly +smart clothes, furnished a sort of spice to the affair. + +Sadie and Rosie sometimes discussed the tough girls, and the +conversation nearly always ended with one remarking: "Well, if they +don't get anything else out of livin', look at the clothes they put on +their backs." + +Perhaps you can understand that longing for pretty gowns, perhaps you +can even sympathize with it. Of course, if you have a number of other +resources, you can keep the dress hunger in its proper place. But if you +have nothing in your existence but a machine--at which you toil for +others' benefit; + +Sadie and Rosie continued to spend their Saturday evenings and their +Sunday evenings at Silver's Casino. At first they went home together +promptly at midnight. After midnight these casino dance halls change +their character. Often professional "pace makers" are introduced, men +and women of the lowest class, who are paid to inspire the other dancers +to lewd conduct. These wretched people are immodestly clothed, and they +perform immodest or very tough dances. They are usually known as +"Twisters," a descriptive title. When they make their appearance the +self-respecting dancers go home, and a much looser element comes in. The +pace becomes a rapid one. Manners are free, talk is coarse, laughter is +incessant. The bar does a lively business. The dancing and the revels go +on until daylight. + +The first time Sadie and Rosie allowed themselves to be persuaded to +stay at Silver's after midnight they were rather horrified by the +abandoned character of the dancing, the reckless drinking, and the +fighting which resulted in several men being thrown out. The second time +they were not quite so horrified, but they decided not to stay so late +another time. Then came a great social event, the annual "mask and +shadow dance" of a local political organization. Sadie and Rosie +attended. + +A "mask and shadow dance" is as important a function to girls of Sadie's +and Rosie's class as a cotillion is to girls of your class. Such affairs +are possible only in large dance halls, and to do them impressively +costs the proprietor some money. The guests rent costumes and masks and +appear in very gala fashion indeed. They dance in the rays of all kinds +of colored lights thrown upon them from upper galleries. During part of +a waltz the dancers are bathed in rose-colored lights, which change +suddenly to purple, a blue, or a green. Some very weird effects are +made, the lights being so manipulated that the dancers' shadows are +thrown, greatly magnified, on walls and floor. At intervals a rain of +bright-colored confetti pours down from above. The scene becomes +bacchanalian. Color, light, music, confetti, the dance, together +combine to produce an intense and voluptuous intoxication which the +revelers deepen with drink. + +The events of the latter part of that night were very vague in Sadie's +memory when she awoke late the next morning. She remembered that she had +tolerated familiarities which had been foreign to her experience +heretofore, and that she had been led home by some friendly soul, at +daylight, almost helpless from liquor. + +Frightened, haunted by half-ashamed memories of that dance, Sadie +spoiled a good bit of her work on Monday morning. The forewoman +descended on her with a torrent of coarse abuse, whereupon Sadie rose +suddenly from her machine, and in a burst of hysterical profanity and +tears rushed out of the factory, vowing never to return. There was only +one course, she decided, for her to take, and she took it. + +"Sadie, why did you do it?" wailed Rosie the next time they met. + +"It's better than the factory," said Sadie. + +Tucking muslin underwear is dull work, but it is, in most ways, a more +agreeable task than icing cakes in a St. Louis biscuit factory. All day +Edna M---- stood over a tank filled with thick chocolate icing. The +table beside Edna's tank was kept constantly supplied with freshly baked +"lady-fingers," and these in delicate handfuls Edna seized and plunged +into the hot ooze of the chocolate. Her arms, up to the elbows, went +into the black stuff, over and over again all day. At noon, over their +lunch, the girls talked of their recreations, their clothes, their +"fellows." + +Edna had not very much to contribute to the girls' stories of gayety and +adventure. She led a quieter existence than most of the other girls, +although her leanings were toward lively pleasures. She was engaged to a +young man who worked in a foundry and who was steady and perhaps rather +too serious. He was very jealous of Edna and exacted a stern degree of +fidelity of her. + +Before her engagement Edna had gone to a decent dancing school and +dearly loved the dance. Now she was not permitted to dance with any one +but her prospective husband. The bright talk at the noon hour made Edna +feel that she was a very poor sport. + +The young man's work in the foundry alternated weekly between day and +night duty. It occurred to Edna that her young man could not possibly +know what she did with those evenings he remained in the foundry. If she +chose to go with a group of girls to a dance hall, what harm? The long +years of married life stretched themselves out somewhat drably to Edna. +She decided to have a good time beforehand. + +This girl from now on literally lived a double life. Evenings of the +weeks her young man was free from the foundry, she spent at home with +him, placidly playing cards, reading aloud, or talking. On the other +evenings she danced, madly, incessantly. Her mother thought she spent +the evenings with her girl friends. The dancing, plus the deceit, soon +had its effect on Edna. She began to visit livelier and livelier +resorts, curious to see all phases of pleasure. + +Suspicion entered into the mind of her affianced. He questioned her; +she lied, and he was unconvinced. A night or two later the young man +stayed away from the foundry and followed Edna to a suburban resort. She +went, as usual, with a group of girls, but their men were waiting for +them near the door of the open-air dancing pavilion. Standing just +outside, the angry lover watched the girl "spiel" round and round with a +man of doubtful respectability. Soon she joined a noisy, beer-drinking +group at one of the tables, and her behavior grew more and more +reckless. Finally, amid laughter, she and another girl performed a +suggestive dance together. + +Walking swiftly up to her, the outraged foundryman grasped her by the +shoulder, called her a name she did not yet deserve, and threw her +violently to the floor. A terrific fight followed, and the police soon +cleared the place. + +Edna did not dare go home. An over-rigid standard of morals, an +over-repressive policy, an over-righteous judgment, plus a mother +ignorant of the facts of life, plus a girl's longing for joy--the sum of +these equaled ruin in Edna's case. + + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +WOMAN'S HELPING HAND TO THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER + + +Annie, Sadie, Edna, thousands of girls like them, girls of whom almost +identical stories might be told, help to swell the long procession of +prodigals every succeeding year. They joined that procession ignorantly +because they thirsted for pleasure. Their days were without interest, +their minds were unfurnished with any resources. At fourteen most of +them left public school. Reading and writing are about as much +intellectual accomplishments as the school gives them, and the work +waiting for them in factory, mill, or department store is rarely of a +character to increase their intelligence. + +Ask a girl, "Why do you go to the dance hall? Why don't you stay home +evenings?" Nine times in ten her answer will be: "What should I do with +myself, sitting home and twirling my fingers?" + +If you suggest reading, she will reply: "You can't be reading all the +time." In other words, there is no intellectual impulse, but instead an +instinct for action. + +The crowded tenement, the city slum, an oppressive system of ill-paid +labor, these are evils which a gradually developing social conscience +must one day eliminate. Their tenure will not be disturbed to-day, +to-morrow, or next day. Their evil influence can be offset, in some +measure, by a recognition on the part of the community of a debt,--a +debt to youth. + +The joy of life, inherent in every young creature, including the young +human creature, seeks expression in play, in merriment, and will not be +denied. + +The oldest, the most persistent, the most attractive, the most +satisfying expression of the joy of life is the dance. Other forms of +recreation come in for brief periods, but their vogue is always +transitory. The roller skating craze, for example, waxed, waned, and +disappeared. Moving pictures and the nickelodeon have had their day, and +are now passing. The charm, the passion, the lure of the dance remains +perennial. It never wholly disappears. It always returns. + +In New York City alone there are three hundred saloon dance halls. Three +hundred dens of evil where every night in the year gallons of liquid +damnation are forced down the throats of unwilling drinkers! Where +the bodies and souls of thousands of girls are annually destroyed, +because the young are irresistibly drawn toward joy, and because we, all +of us, good people, busy people, indifferent people, unseeing people, +have permitted joy to become commercialized, have turned it into a +commodity to be used for money profit by the worst elements in society. +Could a more inverted scheme of things have been devised in a madhouse? + +New York is by no means unique. Every city has its dance hall problem; +every small town its girl and boy problem; every country-side its +tragedy of the girl who, for relief from monotony, goes to the city and +never returns. + +It is strange that nowhere, until lately, in city, town, or country, has +it occurred to any one that the community owed anything to this +insatiable thirst for joy. + +Consider, for instance, the age-long indifference of the oldest of all +guardians of virtue, the Christian Church. To the demand for joy the +evangelical church has returned the stern reply: "To play cards, to go +to the theater, above all, to dance, is wicked." The Methodist Church, +for one, has this baleful theory written in its book of discipline, and +persistent efforts on the part of enlightened clergy and lay members +have utterly failed to expurgate it. The Catholic, Episcopalian, and +Lutheran churches utter no such strictures, but in effect they defend +the theory that joy, if not in itself an evil, at least is no necessity +of life. + +To meet the growing social discontent, the increasing indifference to +old forms of religion, the open dissatisfaction with religious +organizations which had degenerated into clubs for rich men, there was +developed some years ago in America the "institutional church." This was +an honest effort to give to church members, and to those likely to +become church members, opportunity for social and intellectual +diversion. Parish houses and settlements were established, and these +were furnished with splendid gymnasiums, club rooms, committee rooms, +auditoriums for concerts and lectures, kitchens for cooking lessons, and +provision besides for basketry, sewing, and embroidery classes. These +are all good, and so are the numberless reading, debating, and study +clubs good, as far as they go. But what a pitifully short way they go! +They have built up congregations somewhat, but they have made not the +slightest impression on the big social problem. The reason is plain. The +appeal of the institutional church is too intellectual. It reaches only +that portion of the masses who stand least in need of social +opportunity. + +To this accusation the church, man instituted and man controlled since +the beginning of the Christian Era, replies that it does all that can +be done for the uplift of humanity. That the church seems to be losing +its hold on the masses of people is attributed to a general drift of +degenerate humanity towards atheism and unbelief. + +The people, the great world of people,--what a field for the church to +work in, if it only chose! The great obstacle is that the church +(leaving out the institutional church), on Sunday a vital, living force, +is content to exist all the other days in the week merely as a building. +Six days and more than half six evenings in the week the churches stand +empty and deserted. Simply from the point of view of material economy +this waste in church property, reduced to dollars and cents, would +appear deplorable. From the point of view of social economy, reduced to +terms of humanity, the waste is heartbreaking. + +What would happen if something should loose those churches, or, at any +rate, their big Sunday-school rooms and their ample basements from this +icy exclusiveness, this week-day aloofness from humanity? Can you +picture them at night, streaming with light, gay with music, filled with +dancing crowds? not crowds from homes of wealth and comfort, but crowds +from streets and byways; crowds for which, at present, the underworld +spreads its nets? The great mass of the people, packed in dreary +tenements, slaves of machinery by day, slaves of their own starved souls +by night, must go somewhere for relaxation and forgetfulness. What would +happen if the church should invite them, not to pray but to play? + +Some of the results might be a decrease in vice, in drinking, gambling, +and misery. At least we may infer as much from the success of the +occasional experiments which have been tried. We have a few examples to +prove that human nature is not the low, brutish thing it has too often +been described. It does not invariably choose wrong ways, but, on the +contrary, when a choice between right ways and wrong ways is presented, +the right is almost always preferred. + +A year ago in Chicago there was witnessed a spectacle which, for utter +brutality and blindness of heart, I hope never to see duplicated. +Chicago had for some time been in the midst of a vigorous crusade +against organized vice. Too long neglected by the authorities and the +public, the so-called levee districts of the city had fallen into the +hands of grafting police officials, who, working with the lowest of +degraded of men, had created an open and most brazen vice syndicate. +Without going into details, it is enough to say that conditions finally +became so scandalous that all Chicago rose in horror and rebellion. The +police department was thoroughly overhauled, and a new chief appointed +who undertook in all earnestness to suppress the worst features of the +system. He had no new weapons it is true, and he probably had no +notion that he could make any impression on the evil of prostitution. +But he might have restored external decency and order, and he might +possibly have prepared the way for some scientific examination of the +problem. But a thing happened: one of those shocking blunders we too +often let happen. The efforts of the chief of police were set back, +because of that blunder, no one can tell how far. A new hysteria of vice +and disorder dates from the hour the blunder was made. + +In October of 1909 "Gypsy" Smith, a noted evangelical preacher of the +itinerant order, was holding revival meetings in an armory on the South +Side of Chicago. With mistaken zeal this man announced that he was going +down into the South Side Levee and with one effort would reclaim every +one of the wretched inhabitants. He invited his immense congregation to +follow him there, and assist in the greatest crusade against vice the +world had ever seen. + +In Chicago, as in other cities, no procession or parade is allowed to +march without permission from police headquarters. To the sorrow of all +those who believed that reform had really begun, Chief of Police Steward +issued a permit to "Gypsy" Smith. It is probable that the chief feared +the effect of a refusal. To lift up the fallen has ever been one of the +functions of religious bodies. Before issuing the permit, it is said +that he used all his powers of persuasion against the parade. + +By orders from headquarters every house in the district was closed, +shuttered, and pitch dark on the night of the parade. Every door was +locked, and the most complete silence reigned within. It was into a +city of silence that the procession of nearly five thousand men, women, +and young people of both sexes marched on that October midnight. In the +glare of red fire and flaming torches, to the confused blare of many +Salvation Army brass bands, the quavering of hymn tunes, including the +classic, "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night," and the constant +explosion of photographers' flashlights, the long procession stumbled +and jostled its way through streets that gave back for answer darkness +and silence. + +But afterwards! The affair had been widely advertised, and it drew a +throng of spectators, not only from every quarter of the city, but from +every suburb and surrounding country town. Young men brought their +sweethearts, their sisters, to see the "show." As "Gypsy" Smith's +procession wound its noisy way out of the district, and back into the +armory, this great mob of people surged into the streets pruriently +eager to watch the awakening of the levee. It came. Lights flashed up in +almost every house. The women appeared at the windows and even in the +street. Saloon doors were flung open. The sound of pianos and +phonographs rose above the clamor of the mob. Pandemonium broke loose as +the crowds flung themselves into the saloons and other resorts. The +police had to beat people back from the doors with their clubs. A riot, +an orgy, impossible to describe, impossible to forget, ensued. Many of +those who took part in it had never been in such a district before. + +This horrible scene somehow typified to my mind the whole blind, +chaotic, senseless attitude which society has preserved toward the most +baffling of all its problems. Nothing done to prevent the evil, because +no one knew what to do. After the evil was an established fact, after +the hearts of the victims were thoroughly hardened, after the last hope +of return had perished, then a "vice crusade"--led by a man! + +Another scene witnessed about the same time seems to me to typify the +new attitude which society--led by women--is assuming towards its +problem. It was in the large kindergarten room of one of the oldest of +Chicago's social centers,--the Ely Bates Settlement. A group of little +Italian girls, peasant clad in the red and green colors of their native +land, swung around the room at a lively pace singing the familiar "Santa +Lucia." As the song ended the children suddenly broke into the maddest +of dances, a tarantella. Led by a graceful young girl, one of the +settlement workers, they danced with the joyous abandon of youthful +spirits untrammeled, ending the dance with a chorus of happy laughter. + +This was only one group of many hundreds in every quarter of +Chicago,--in schools, settlements, kindergartens, and other +centers,--who were rehearsing for the third of the annual play +festivals given out of doors each year in Chicago. The festivals are +held in the most spacious of the seventeen wonderful public gardens and +playgrounds established of late throughout the city. Lasting all day, +this annual carnival of play is shared by school children, working girls +and boys, and young men and women. In the morning the children play and +perform their costume dances. In the afternoon the fields are given up +to athletic sports of older children, and in the evening young men and +women, of all nationalities, many wearing their old-world peasant +dresses, revive the plays and the dances of their native lands. Tens of +thousands view the beautiful spectacle, which each year excites more +interest and assumes an added importance in the civic life of Chicago. + +Each of the large parks in Chicago's system is provided with a municipal +dance hall, spacious buildings with perfect floors, good light, and +ventilation. Any group of young people are at liberty to secure a hall, +rent free, for dancing parties. The city imposes only one +condition,--that the dances be chaperoned by park supervisors. +Beautifully decorated with growing plants from the park greenhouses +these municipal dance halls are scenes of gayety almost every night in +the year. Park restaurants in connection with the halls furnish good +food at low prices. Of course no liquor is sold. Nobody wants it. This +is proved by the fact that saloon dance halls in the neighborhood of the +parks have been deserted by their old patrons. + +Women have recognized the debt to youth and the joy of life, and they +are preparing to pay it. + +In this latest form of social service they have entered a battlefield +where the powers of righteousness have ever fought a losing fight. Men +have grappled with the social evil without success. They have labored +to discover a substitute for the saloon, and they have failed. They have +tried to suppress the dance hall and they have failed. They have made +laws against evil resorts, and they have sent agents of the police to +enforce their laws, but to no effect. + +The failure of the men does not dishearten or discourage the women who +have taken up the work. They believe that they have discovered an +altogether new way in which to fight the social evil. + +They propose to turn against it its own most powerful weapons. The joy +of life is to be fed with proper food instead of poison. Girls and young +men are to be offered a chance to escape the nets stretched for them by +the underworld. In many cities women's clubs and women's societies are +establishing on a small scale amusement and recreation centers for young +people. In New York Miss Virginia Potter, niece of the late Bishop +Potter, and Miss Potter's colleagues in the Association of Working +Girls' Clubs, have opened a public dance hall. The use of the large +gymnasium of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls was secured, and every +Saturday evening, from eight until eleven, young men and women come in +and dance to excellent music, under the instruction, if they need it, +of a skilled dancing-master. A small fee is charged, partly to defray +expenses, and partly to attract a class of people who disdain +philanthropy and settlements. The experiment is new, but it is +undoubtedly successful. As many as two hundred couples have been +admitted in an evening. In half a dozen cities women's clubs and women's +committees are at work on this matter of establishing amusement and +recreation centers for young people. In New York a Committee on +Amusement and Vacation Resources of Working Girls has for its president +a social worker of many years, Mrs. Charles M. Israels. Associated with +the committee are many other well-known social economists,--women of +wealth and influence who have given years to the service of working +girls. The committee began its work by a scientific investigation into +the dance halls of New York, the summer parks and picnic grounds in the +outlying districts, and of the summer excursion boats which ply up and +down the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. The revelations made by +this investigation, carried on under the supervision of Miss Julia +Schoenfeld, were terrible enough. They were made to appear still more +terrible when it was known that men of the highest social and commercial +standing were profiting hugely from the most vicious forms of +amusement. A state senator is one of the largest stockholders in Coney +Island resorts of bad character. An ex-governor of the State controls a +popular excursion boat, on which staterooms are rented by the hour, for +immoral purposes no one can possibly doubt. The women of the committee +submitted the findings of their investigators to the managers of these +amusement places and to the directors of the steamboat lines, and in +many instances reforms have been promised. The point is that a committee +of women had to finance an investigation to show these business men the +conditions which were adding to their wealth, and into which they had +never even inquired. + +Another investigation made by the committee revealed the meagerness of +the provision made by churches, settlements, and business establishments +for working girls' vacations. There are, in round numbers, four hundred +thousand working women in Greater New York. Of these, something like +three hundred thousand are unmarried girls between the ages of fourteen +and thirty. In all, only 6,874 of these young toilers, who earn on an +average six dollars a week, are provided with vacation outings. They are +usually given vacations, with or without pay, but they spend the idle +time at Coney Island, on excursion boats, or in the dance hall. + +Of the 1,257 churches and synagogues of New York, only six report +organized vacation work for girls and women. Of the twenty or more large +department stores, employing thousands of women, only three have +vacation houses in the country. Of the hundred or more social +settlements in New York only fifteen provide summer homes. There are +several vacation societies which do good work with limited resources, +but they are able to care for comparatively few. We have heard much of +fresh air work for children, and we can afford to hear more. But that +the fresh air work for young girls and women who toil long hours in +factory and shop must be extended, this committee's investigation +definitely establishes. + +The first practical work of the committee, after the investigation of +amusement and recreation places, was a bill introduced into the State +Legislature providing for the licensing and regulation of public dancing +academies, prohibiting the sale of liquor in such establishments, and +holding the proprietor responsible for indecent dancing and improper +behavior. + +Against the bitter opposition of the dancing academy proprietors the +bill became a law and went into effect in September, 1909. Almost +immediately it was challenged on constitutional grounds. The committee +promptly introduced another bill, this one to regulate dance halls. +This bill, which passed the legislature and is now a law, aims to wipe +out the saloon dance hall absolutely, and so to regulate the sale of +liquor in all dancing places that the drink evil will be cut down to a +minimum. The license fee of fifty dollars a year will eliminate the +lowest, cheapest resorts, and a rigid system of inspection will not only +go far towards preserving good order, but will do away with the +wretchedly dirty, ill-smelling, unsanitary fire traps in which many +halls are located. The dance-hall proprietor who encourages or even +tolerates "tough" dancing, or who admits to the floor "White Slavers," +procurers, or persons of open immorality, will be liable to forfeiture +of his license. + +The committee has done more than try to reform existing dance halls. It +has taken steps to establish, in neighborhoods where evil resorts +abound, attractive dance halls, where a decent standard of conduct is +combined with all the best features of the evil places--good floors, +lively music, bright lights. Two corporations have been organized for +the maintenance, in various parts of the city, of model dance halls, and +one hall has already been opened. The patrons of the model dance hall do +not know that it is a social experiment paid for by a committee of +women. It is run exactly like any public dancing place, only in an +orderly fashion. + +Every extension of use of public places, schools, parks, piers, as +recreation places for young people between fifteen and twenty is +encouraged and supported by the committee. Already two public schools +have organized dancing classes, and several settlements have thrown open +their dances to the public where formerly they were attended only by +settlement club members. + +By helping working girls to find cheap vacation homes in the country, +and by establishing vacation banks to help the girls save for their +summer outings, the committee hopes to discourage some of the haphazard +picnic park dissipation. In summer many trades are slack, girls are +idle, and out of sheer boredom they hang around the parks seeking +amusement. It is only a theory, perhaps, but Mrs. Israels and the others +on her committee believe that if many of these girls knew that a country +vacation were within the possibilities, they would gladly save money +towards it. At present the vacation facilities of working girls in large +cities are small. In New York, where at least three hundred thousand +girls and women earn their bread, only about six thousand are helped to +summer vacations in the country. What these women are doing now on a +small scale, experimentally, will soon be adopted, as their children's +playgrounds, their kindergartens, their vacation schools, and other +enterprises have been adopted, by the municipalities. Their probation +officers, long paid out of club treasuries, have already been +transferred to many cities, east and west. Soon municipal dance halls, +municipal athletic grounds, municipal amusement and recreation centers +for all ages and all classes will be provided. + +Already New York is preparing for such a campaign. The newly-appointed +Parks Commissioner, Charles B. Stover, looking over his office force, +dismissed one secretary whose function seemed largely ornamental, and +diverted his salary of four thousand dollars to recreation purposes for +young people. Commissioner Stover desires the appointment of a city +officer who shall be a Supervisor of Recreations, a man or a woman whose +entire time shall be devoted to discovering where recreation parks, +dancing pavilions, music, and other forms of pleasure are needed, and +how they may be made to do the most good. A neighborhood that thirsts +for concerts ought to have them. A community that desires to dance +deserves a dance hall. In the long run, how infinitely better, how much +more economical for the city to furnish these recreations, normally and +decently conducted, than to bear the consequences of an order of things +like the present one. The new order must come. It is the only way yet +pointed out by which we may hope to close those other avenues, where the +joy of youth is turned into a cup of trembling, and the dancing feet of +girlhood are led into mires of shame. + + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE SERVANT IN HER HOUSE + + +According to the findings of the Massachusetts State Bureau of Labor +Statistics, whose investigation into previous occupation of fallen women +was described in a former chapter, domestic service is a dangerous +trade. Of the 3,966 unfortunates who came under the examination of the +Bureau's investigators, 1,115, or nearly thirty per cent, had been in +domestic service. No other single industry furnished anything like this +proportion. + +From time to time reformatories and institutions dealing with delinquent +women and girls examine the industrial status of their charges, always +with results which agree with or even exceed the Massachusetts +statistics. Bedford Reformatory, one of the two New York State +institutions for delinquent women, in an examination of a group of one +thousand women, found four hundred and thirty general houseworkers, +twenty-four chamber-maids, thirteen nursemaids, eight cooks, and +thirty-six waitresses. As some of the waitresses may have been +restaurant workers, we will eliminate them. Even so, it will be seen +that four hundred and seventy-five--nearly half of the Bedford +women--had been servants. + +In 1908 the Albion House of Refuge, New York, admitted one hundred and +sixty-eight girls. Of these ninety-two were domestics, one was a lady's +maid, and nine were nursemaids. + +Of one hundred and twenty-seven girls in the Industrial School at +Rochester, New York, in 1909, only fifty-one were wage earners. Of that +number twenty-nine had worked in private homes as domestics. Bedford +Reformatory receives mostly city girls; Albion and Rochester are +supplied from small cities and country towns. It appears that domestic +service is a dangerous trade in small communities as well as in large +ones. + +On the face of it, the facts are wonderfully puzzling. Domestic service +is constantly urged upon women as the safest, healthiest, most normal +profession in which they can possibly engage. Assuredly it seems to +possess certain unique advantages. Domestic service is the only field of +industry where the demand for workers permanently exceeds the supply. +The nature of the work is essentially suited, by habit, tradition, and +long experiment, to women. It offers economic independence within the +shelter of the home. + +Lastly, housework pays extremely well. A girl totally ignorant of the +art of cooking, of any household art, one whose function is to clean, +scrub, and assist her employer to prepare meals, can readily command ten +dollars a month, with board. The same efficiency, or lack of efficiency, +in a factory or department store would be worth about ten dollars a +month, without board. The wages of a competent houseworker, in any part +of the country, average over eighteen dollars a month. Add to this about +thirty dollars a month represented by food, lodging, light, and fire, +and you will see that the competent houseworker's yearly income amounts +to five hundred and seventy-six dollars. This is a higher average than +the school-teacher or the stenographer receives; it is almost double the +average wage of the shop girl, or the factory girl. It is, in fact, +about as high as the usual income of the American workingman. + +It is true that the social position of the domestic worker is lower than +that of the teacher, stenographer, or factory worker. This undoubtedly +affects the attractiveness of domestic service as a profession. But the +lower social position is in itself no explanation of the high rate of +immorality. At least there are no figures to prove that the rate of +morality rises or falls with the social status of the individual. + +In the contemplation of what is known as the "servant problem," I think +we have been less scientific and more superficial than in any other +social or industrial problem. For the increasing dearth of domestic +workers, for the lowered standard of efficiency, for the startling +amount of immorality alleged to belong to the class, we have given every +explanation except the right one. + +At the bottom of the "servant problem" lies the fact that it exists in +the privacy of the home. Now, we have reached a point of social +consciousness where we allow that it is right to intrude some homes and +ask questions for the good of the community. "How many children have +you?" "Are they all in school?" "Does your husband drink?" We have not +yet reached the point of sending agents to inquire: "How many servants +do you keep; what are their hours of work, and what kind of sleeping +accommodations do you furnish them?" + +Some intelligent inquiry has been made into surface conditions. The +Sociological Department of Vassar College, under Professor Lucy Maynard +Salmon, during the years 1889 and 1890, made an exhaustive study of +wages, hours of work, difficulties, advantages, and disadvantages of +domestic service. Professor Salmon's book, "Domestic Service," giving +the results of the inquiry, is a classic on the subject. It deals, +however, almost entirely with the ethical side of the problem, the +social relation between mistress and maid. The relation between the +worker and the industry is hardly examined at all. + +A later inquiry into the servant problem was conducted in 1903, in half +a dozen cities, by organizations of women which associated themselves +for the purpose, under the name of the Intermunicipal Committee on +Household Research. + +The Woman's Municipal League of New York, the Educational and Industrial +Union of Boston, the Housekeepers' Alliance, and the Civic Club of +Philadelphia were the moving elements in the investigation. Co-operating +with them were the College Settlements Association and the +Association of Collegiate Alumnae, which together established a +scholar ship for the research. This research was most ably conducted by +Miss Frances Kellor, a Vassar graduate, and nine assistant workers, all +of whom were college women. The report of the investigation was +published a year later in the volume "Out of Work."[1] + +This investigation by organizations of educated and expert women was the +first survey ever made of domestic service _as an industry_, the first +scientific study of domestic workers _as an industrial group_. It was +the first intelligent attempt to review housework as if it were a trade. + +The most important conclusion of the investigators was that housework, +domestic service, although carried on as a trade, is really no trade at +all. The domestic worker is no more a part of modern industry than the +Italian woman who finishes "pants" in a tenement, or the child who stays +from school to fasten hooks and eyes on paper cards. + +Do not let us make a mistake concerning the underlying cause of the +servant problem. Let us face the truth that we have two institutions +which are back numbers in twentieth century civilization: two left-overs +from a past-and-gone domestic system of industry. One of these is the +tenement sweat shop, where women combine, or try to combine, +manufacturing and housekeeping. The other is the private kitchen--the +home--where the last stand of conservatism and tradition, the last +lingering remnant of hand labor, continues to exist. + +No woman who is free enough, strong enough, intelligent enough to seek +work in a factory or shop, is ever found in a sweat shop or seen +carrying bundles of coats to finish at home. + +Exactly for the same reason the average American working woman shuns +housework as a means of livelihood. You will find in every community a +few women of intelligence who are naturally so domestic in their tastes +and inclinations that they shrink from any work outside the home. Such +women do adhere to domestic service, but, broadly speaking, you behold +in the servant group merely the siftings of the real industrial class. + +In a tentative, halting sort of fashion we are learning to humanize the +factory and shop. Factory workers, mill hands, department store clerks, +have been granted legislation in almost every State of the Union, +regulating hours of work, sanitary conditions, ventilation, and in some +cases they have been given protection from dangerous machinery. In +department stores they have been granted even certain special comforts, +such as seats on which to rest while not actually working. + +Of course, we have done no more than make a beginning in this matter of +humanizing the factory and the shop. But we have made a beginning, and +the movement toward securing better and juster and healthier conditions +for workers in all the industries is bound to continue. So long as +manufacturing was carried on in the home, no such protective legislation +as workers now enjoy was dreamed of. We had to wait until the workers +came together in large groups before we could see their conditions and +understand their needs. + +Housework, because it is performed in isolation, because it is purely +individual labor, has never been classed among the industries. It has +rather been looked upon as a normal feminine function, a form of healthy +exercise. No one has ever suggested to legislators that sweeping and +beating rugs might be included among the dusty trades; that bending over +steaming washtubs, and almost immediately afterwards going out into +frosty air to hang the clothes, might be harmful to throat and lungs; +that remaining within doors days at a time, as houseworkers almost +invariably do, reacts on nerves and the entire physical structure; that +steady service, if not actual labor, from six in the morning until nine +and ten at night makes excessive demands on mind and body. + +Such conditions exist because the workers are too weak, too inefficient, +too unintelligent to change them. Yet the demand for servants so far +exceeds the supply that they are in a position, theoretically, to +dictate the terms of their own employment. If they elected to demand +pianos and private baths they could get them; that is, if instead of +remaining isolated individuals they could form themselves into an +industrial class, like plumbers, or bricklayers, or carpenters. Even as +isolated individuals they are able to command a better money wage than +more efficient workers, which proves how great is the need for their +services. + +The housekeeper clings to her archaic kitchen, firmly believing that if +she gave it up, tried to replace it by any form of co-operative living, +the pillars of society would crumble and the home pass out of existence. +Yet so strong is her instinctive repugnance to the medieval system on +which her household is conducted, that she shuns it, runs away from it +whenever she can. Housekeeping as a business is a dark mystery to her. +The mass of women in the United States probably hold, almost as an +article of religion, the theory that woman's place is in the home. But +the woman who can organize and manage a home as her husband manages his +business, systematically, profitably, professionally--well, how many +such women do you know? + +It would seem as if in the newer generations, the average housekeeper is +not in the professional class at all. Usually she lacks professional +training. If she was brought up in a well-to-do home where there were +several servants, she knows literally nothing of cooking, or of any +department of housekeeping. Even when she has had some instruction in +household tasks, she almost never connects cooking with chemistry, food +with dietetics, cleanliness with sanitation, buying with bookkeeping. +She is an amateur. And she takes into her household to do work she +herself is incapable of doing, another amateur, a woman who might, in +many cases, do well under a capable commander, but who is hopelessly at +sea when expected to evolve a system of housekeeping all by herself. + +This irregular state of affairs in what should be a carefully studied, +well-organized industry is reflected in the conditions commonly meted +out to domestics. Take housing conditions, for example. Some +housekeepers provide their servants with good beds; of course, not quite +as good as other members of the household enjoy, but good enough. Some +set aside pleasant, warm, well-furnished rooms for the servants. But +Miss Kellor's investigators reported that it was common to find the only +unheated room in a house or apartment set aside for the servant. They +found great numbers of servants' rooms in basements, having no sunlight +or heat. + +At one home, where an investigator applied for a "place," the +housekeeper complained that her last maid was untidy. Then she showed +the applicant to the servant's room. This was a little den partitioned +off from the coal bin! + +In another place, the maid was required to sleep on an ironing board +placed over the bathtub. In still another, the maid spent her night of +rest on a mattress laid over the wash tubs in a basement. A bed for two +servants, consisting of a thin mattress on the dining-room table, was +also found. + +Unventilated closets, rooms opening off from the kitchen, small and +windowless, are very commonly provided in city flats. Even in spacious +country homes the servants' rooms are considered matters of little +importance. + +"One woman," writes Miss Kellor, "planned her new three-story house with +the attic windows so high that no one could see out of them. When the +architect remonstrated she said: 'Oh, those are for the maids; I don't +expect them to spend their time looking out.'" + +I remember a young girl who waited on table at a woman's hotel where I +made my home. One morning I sent this girl for more cream for my coffee. +She was gone some time and I spoke to her a little impatiently when she +returned. She was silent for a moment, then she said: "Do you know that +every time you send me to the pantry it means a walk of three and a half +blocks? This dining-room and the kitchens and pantries are a block +apart, and are separated by three flights of stairs. I have counted the +distance there and back, and it is more than three blocks." + +"But, Kittie," I said to her, "why do you work in a hotel, if it's like +that? Why don't you take a place in a private family?" + +"I've tried that," said the girl. "I had a place with the ----family," +mentioning an historic name. "They had sickness in the family, and they +stopped in town all summer. My room was up in the attic, with only a +skylight for ventilation. During the day, except for the time I spent +sitting on the area steps after nine o'clock, I was waiting on the cook +in a hot kitchen. They let me out of the house once every two weeks. +Here I have some freedom, at least." + +I have told this story to dozens of domestics, many of them from homes +of wealth, and they agree that it is a common case. It is very rare, +these girls say, to find a mistress who is willing to allow her maids to +leave the house except on their days out. They concede certain hours of +rest, it is true, but those hours must be spent within doors. "Why, if +you went out I should be sure to need you," is the usual explanation. + +Imagine a factory girl or a stenographer being required to remain after +hours on the chance of being needed for extra work. + +There is an aspect to this phase of the servant question which is +generally overlooked by employers. This is an isolation from human +intercourse to be found in no other industry. When the household employs +only one servant the isolation is absolute. The girl is marooned, within +full sight of others' happy life. Even when kindness is her portion she +is an outsider from the family circle. Important as her function is in +the life of the household, she is socially the lowest unit in it. + +During the course of a great strike of mill operatives in Fall River, +Massachusetts, a few years ago, a considerable group of weaver and +spinner girls were induced, by members of the Women's Trade Union +League, to take up domestic service until the close of the strike. As +the girls were in acute financial distress they agreed to try the +experiment. These were mostly American or English girls, some of them +above the average of intelligence and good sense. + +Housework with its great variety of tasks made severe draughts on the +strength of girls accustomed to using one set of muscles. The long hours +and the confinement of domestic service affected nerves adjusted to a +legal fifty-eight-hour week. + +But the girls' real objection to housework was its loneliness. Hardly a +single house in Boston, or the surrounding suburbs, where the girls +found places, was provided with a servants' sitting room. There was +absolutely no provision made for callers. For a servant is supposed not +to have friends except on her days out. On those occasions she is +assumed to meet her friends on the street. + +In England people recognize the fact that they have a servant class. +Every house of any pretentions provides a servants' hall. + +In the United States a sitting room for servants, even in millionaires' +homes, is a rarity. + +More than this, in many city households, especially in apartment +households, the servants are prohibited from receiving their friends +even in the kitchen. "Are we allowed to receive men visitors in the +house?" chorused a group of girls, questioned in a fashionable +employment agency. "Mostly our friends are not allowed to step inside +the areaway while we are putting on our hats to go out." + +There is no escaping the conclusion that a large part of the social +evil, or that branch of it recruited every year from domestic service, +is traceable to American methods of dealing with servants. The domestic, +belonging, as a rule, to a weak and inefficient class, is literally +driven into paths where only strength and efficiency could possibly +protect her from evil. + +Servants share, in common with all other human beings, the necessity for +human intercourse. They must have associates, friends, companions. If +they cannot meet them in their homes they must seek them outside. + +Walk through the large parks in any city, late in the evening, and +observe the couples who occupy obscurely placed benches. You pity them +for their immodest behavior in a public place. But most of them have no +other place to meet. And it is not difficult to comprehend that +clandestine appointments in dark corners as a rule do not conduce to +proper behavior. Most of the women you see on park benches are domestic +servants. Some of them, it is safe to assume, work in New York's +Fifth Avenue, or in mansions on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. + +[Illustration: AN UNTHOUGHT-OF PHASE OF THE SERVANT QUESTION] + +The social opportunity of the domestic worker is limited to the park +bench, the cheap theater, the summer excursion boat, and the dance hall. +Hardly ever does a settlement club admit a domestic to membership; +rarely does a working girls' society or a Young Women's Christian +Association circle bid her welcome. The Girls' Friendly Association of +the Protestant Episcopal Church is a notable exception to this rule. + +In a large New England city, not long ago, a member of the Woman's Club +proposed to establish a club especially for domestics, since no other +class of women seemed willing to associate with them. The proposal was +voted down. "For," said the women, "if they had a clubroom they would be +sure to invite men, and immorality might result." + +But there is no direct connection between a clubroom and immorality, +whereas the park bench after dark and the dance hall and its almost +invariable accompaniment of strong drink are positive dangers. + +The housekeeper simply does not realize that her domestics are _girls_, +exactly like other girls. They need social intercourse, they need +laughter and dancing and healthy pleasure just as other girls need them, +as much as the young ladies of the household need them. + +Perhaps they need them even more. The girl upstairs has mental resources +which the girl downstairs lacks. The girl upstairs has the protection +of family, friends, social position. The last is of greatest importance, +because the woman without a social position has ever been regarded by a +large class of men as fair game. The domestic worker sometimes finds +this out within the shelter, the supposed shelter, of her employer's +home. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER SERIOUS CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOCIAL QUESTION] + +Tolstoy's terrible story "Resurrection" has for its central anecdote in +the opening chapter a court-room scene in which a judge is called upon +to sentence to prison a woman for whose downfall he had, years before, +been responsible. A somewhat similar story in real life, with a happier +ending, was told me by the head of a woman's reformatory. This official +received a visit from a lawyer, who told her with much emotion that he +had, several days before, been present when a young girl was sentenced +to a term in a reformatory. + +"She lived in my home," said the man. "I believe that she was a good +girl up to that time. My wife died, my home was given up, and of course +I forgot that poor girl. She never made any claim on me. When I saw her +there in court, among the dregs of humanity, her face showing what her +life had become, I wanted to shoot myself. Now she is here, with a +chance to get back her health and a right state of mind. Will you help +me to make amends?" + +The head of the reformatory rather doubted the man's sincerity at first. +She feared that his repentance was superficial. She refused to allow +him to see or to communicate with the girl, but she wrote him regularly +of her progress. Several times in the course of the year the man visited +the reformatory, and at the end of that period he was allowed to see the +girl. This institution happens to be one of the few where a rational and +a humane system of outdoor work is in vogue. The girl, who a year back +had been almost a physical wreck from drugs and the life of the streets, +was again strong, healthy, and sane. The two forgave each other and were +married. + +If the position of the domestic, while living in the shelter of a +family, is sometimes precarious, her situation, when out of a job, is +often actually perilous. + +If a girl has a home she goes to that home, and regards her temporary +period of unemployment as a pleasant vacation. But in most cases, in +cities, at any rate, few girls have homes of which they can avail +themselves. + +"In no city," says Miss Kellor's report, "are adequate provisions made +for such homeless women, and their predicament is peculiarly acute, for +their friends are often household workers who cannot extend the +hospitality of their rooms." + +I think I hear a chorus of protesting voices: "We don't have anything +to do with the servant class you are describing. Our girls are +respectable. They meet their friends at church. They come to us from +reputable employment offices, which would not deal with them if they +were not all right." + +Are you sure you know this? What, after all, do you really know about +your servants? What do you know about the employment office that sent +her to you? What do you know of the world inhabited by servants and the +people who deal in servants? Can you not imagine that it might be +different from the one you live in so safely and comfortably? + +Are you willing to know the facts about the world, the underworld, from +which the girl who cooks your food and takes care of your children is +drawn? Do you care to know how a domestic spends the time between +places, how she gets to your kitchen or nursery, the kind of homes she +may have been in before she came to you? Make a little descent into that +underworld with a girl whose experience is matched with those of many +others. + +Nellie B---- was an Irish girl, strong, pretty of face, and joyful of +temperament. The quiet Indiana town where she earned her living as a +cook offered Nellie so little diversion that she determined to go to +Chicago to live. She gave up her place, and with a month's wages in her +pocket went to the city. + +It was late in the afternoon when her train reached the station. Nellie +alighted, bewildered and lonely. She had the address of an employment +agency, furnished her by an acquaintance. Nellie slept that night, or +rather tossed sleepless in the agency lodging house, on a dirty bed +occupied by two women besides herself. In all her life she had never +been inside such a filthy room, or heard such frightful conversation. +Therefore next morning she gladly paid her exorbitant bill of one dollar +and seventy-five cents, besides a fee of two dollars and a half for +obtaining employment, and accepted the first place offered her. + +The house she was taken to seemed to be conducted rather strangely. +Meals were at unusual hours, and the household consisted largely of +young women who received many men callers. For about a week Nellie did +her work unmolested. At the end of the week her mistress presented her +with a low-necked satin dress and asked her if she would not like to +assist in entertaining the men. Simple-minded Nellie had to have the +nature of the entertaining explained to her, and she had great +difficulty in leaving the house after she had declined the offer. She +had hardly any money left, and the woman refused to pay her for her +week's work. + +Nellie knew of no other employment agency, so she was obliged to return +to the one she left. When she reproached the agent for sending her to a +disreputable house he shrugged his shoulders and replied: "Well, I send +girls where they're wanted. If they don't like the place they can +leave." + +The fact is, they cannot always leave when they want to. Miss Kellor's +investigators found an office in Chicago which sent girls to a resort in +Wisconsin which was represented as a summer hotel. This notorious place +was surrounded by a high stockade which rendered escape impossible. + +The investigators found offices in other cities which operate +disreputable houses in summer places. To these the proprietors send the +handsomest of their applicants for honest work. + +Three girls sent to a house of this kind found themselves prisoners. One +girl made such a disturbance by screaming and crying that the proprietor +literally kicked her out of the house. The investigators for the +Intermunicipal Committee on Household Research saw this girl in a +hospital, insane and dying from the treatment she had received. Another +of the three escaped from the place. She, too, was discovered in a state +of dementia. The fate of the third girl is obscure. + +[Illustration: THE SERVANT GIRL AND THE EMPLOYMENT AGENCY] + +Not all employment agencies cater to this trade. Not all would consent +to be accessory to women's degradation. But the employment agency +business, taken by and large, is disorganized, haphazard, out of date. +It is operated on a system founded in lies and extortion. The offices +want fees--fees from servants and fees from employers. They encourage +servants to change their employment as often as possible. Often a firm +will send a girl to a place, and a week or two later will send her word +that they have a better job for her. Sometimes they arrange with her to +leave her place after a certain period, promising her an easier position +or a better wage. They favor the girl who changes often. "You're a nice +kind of a customer!" jeered one proprietor to a girl who boasted that +she had been in a family for five years. The girl was a _customer_ to +him, and she was nothing more. + +To his profitable customer the agent is often very accommodating. If she +lacks references he writes her flattering ones, or loans her a reference +written by some woman of prominence. References, indeed, are often +handed around like passports among Russian revolutionists. + +Many of these unpleasant facts were brought to light in the course of +the investigation made by the Intermunicipal Committee on Household +Research. The result of their report was a model employment agency law, +passed by the New York State Legislature, providing for a strict +licensing system, rigid forms of contract, regulation of fees, and +inspection by special officers of the Bureau of Licenses. The law +applies only to cities of the first class, and unfortunately has never +been very well enforced. Perhaps it has not been possible to enforce it. + +In all the cities examined by the Intermunicipal Committee on Household +Research the investigators found the majority of employment agencies in +close connection with the homes of the agents. In New York, of three +hundred and thirteen offices visited, one hundred and twenty were in +tenements, one hundred and seven in apartment houses, thirty-nine in +residences and only forty-nine in business buildings. In +Philadelphia, only three per cent of employment agencies were found +in business buildings. Chicago made a little better showing, with +nineteen per cent in business houses. The difficulty of properly +regulating a business which is carried on in the privacy of a home is +apparent. When an agency is in a business building it usually has +conspicuous signs, and often the rooms are well equipped with desks, +comfortable chairs, and other office furnishings. But the majority of +agencies are of another description. Those dealing with immigrant girls +are sometimes filthy rooms in some rear tenement, reached through a +saloon or a barber shop facing the street. Often the other tenants of +the building are fortune tellers, palmists, "trance mediums," and like +undesirables. + +A large number of these agencies operate lodging houses for their +patrons. There is hardly a good word to say for most of these, except +that they are absolutely necessary. Dirty, unsanitary, miserable as they +usually are, if they were closed by law, hundreds, perhaps thousands of +domestics temporarily out of work, would be turned into the streets. +Many are unfamiliar with the cities they live in. Many more are barred +from hotels on account of small means. Often a girl finding it +impossible to bring herself to lie down on the wretched beds provided by +these lodging houses, leaves her luggage and goes out, not to return +until morning. She spends the night in dance halls and other resorts. + +According to Miss Kellor's report this description of employment +agencies and lodging houses attached to them applies to about +seventy-five per cent of all offices in the four cities examined. For +greater accuracy the investigators made a brief survey of conditions in +cities, such as St. Louis, New Haven, and Columbus, Ohio. The +differences were slight, showing that the employment agency problem is +much the same east and west. + +Domestic servants have their industrial ups and downs like other +workers. Sometimes they are able to pay the fees required in a +high-class employment office, while at other times they are obliged to +have recourse to the cheaper places, where standards of honesty, and +perhaps also, of propriety, are low. Domestic workers are the nomads of +industry. Their lives are like their work,--impermanent, detached from +others', unobserved. + +It is for the housekeepers of America to consider the plain facts +concerning domestic service. Some of the conditions they can change. +Others they cannot. No one can alter the economic status of the kitchen. +Like the sweat shop, it must ultimately disappear. + +What system of housekeeping will take the place of the present system +cannot precisely be foretold. We know that the whole trend of things +everywhere is toward co-operation. Within the past ten years think how +much cooking has gone into the factory, how much washing into the steam +laundry, how much sewing into the shop. As the cost of living increases, +more and more co-operation will be necessary, especially for those of +moderate income. At the present time millions of city dwellers have +given up living in their own houses, or even in rented houses. They +cannot afford to maintain individual homes, but must live in apartment +houses, where the expenses of heat, and other expenses, notably water, +hall, and janitor service, are reduced to a minimum because shared by +all the tenants. There may come a time when the private kitchen will be +a luxury of the very rich. + +For a time, however, the private kitchen and the servant in the kitchen +will remain. That is one servant problem. But the housekeeper still has +another "servant problem," and I have tried to make it clear that this +problem pretty closely involves the morals of the community. + +Now this matter of community morals has begun to interest women +profoundly. In many of their organizations women are studying and +endeavoring to understand the causes of evil. They are securing the +appointment of educated women as probation officers in the courts which +deal with delinquent women and girls. Sincerely they are working toward +a better understanding of the problem of the prodigal daughter. + +Since about one-third of all these prodigals are recruited from the +ranks of domestic workers it is possible for the housekeepers of the +country to play an important part in this work. Every woman in the +United States who employs one servant has a contribution to make to the +movement. The power to humanize domestic service in her own household is +in every woman's hand. + +Loneliness, social isolation, the ban of social inferiority,--these +cruel and unreasonable restrictions placed upon an entire class of +working women are out of tune with democracy. The right of the domestic +worker to regular hours of labor, to freedom after her work is done, to +a place to receive her friends, must be recognized. The self-respect of +the servant must in all ways be encouraged. + +Above all, the right of the domestic worker to social opportunity must +be admitted. It must be provided for. + +Yonkers, New York, a large town on the Hudson River, points out one way +toward this end. In Yonkers there has been established a Women's +Institute for the exclusive use of domestics. It has an employment +agency and supports classes in domestic science for those girls who wish +to become more expert workers. There are club rooms and recreation +parlors where the girls receive and meet their friends--including their +men friends. A group of liberal-minded women established this unique +institution, which is well patronized by the superior class of domestic +workers in Yonkers. The dues are small, and members are allowed to share +club privileges with friends. It is not unusual for employers to present +their domestics with membership cards. It cannot be said that the +Women's Institute has solved the servant problem for Yonkers, but many +women testify to its happy effects on their own individual problems. + +The Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls in +New York is collecting a long list of farmhouses and village homes in +the mountains and near the sea where working girls, and this includes +domestics, may spend their vacations for very little money. + +Every summer, as families leave the city for country and seaside, +domestics are thrown out of employment. A department in the Women's Club +can examine vacation possibilities for domestics. The clubs can also +deal with the employment agency. Some women's organizations have already +taken hold of this department. The Women's Educational and Industrial +Union of Boston conducts a very large and flourishing employment agency. +Women's clubs can study the laws of their own community in regard to +public employment agencies. They can investigate homes for immigrant +girls and boarding-houses for working women. + +Preventive work is better than reform measures, but both are necessary +in dealing with this problem. Women have still much work to do in +securing reformatories for women. New York is the first State to +establish such reformatories for adult women. Private philanthropy has +offered refuges and semipenal institutions. The State stands aloof. + +Even in New York public officials are strangely skeptical of the +possibilities of reform. Last year the courts of New York City sent +three thousand delinquent women to the workhouse on Blackwell's +Island,--a place notorious for the low state of its _morale_. They sent +only seventeen women to Bedford Reformatory, where a healthy routine of +outdoor work, and a most effective system administered by a scientific +penologist does wonders with its inmates. Nothing but the will and the +organized effort of women will ever solve the most terrible of all +problems, or remove from society the reproach of ruined womanhood which +blackens it now. + +NOTES: + +Note 1: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904. + + + + + +CHAPTER X + +VOTES FOR WOMEN + + +Although Woman Suffrage has been for a number of years a part of the +program of the International Council of Women, the American Branch, +represented by the General Federation of Women's Clubs, at first +displayed little interest in the subject. Although many of the club +women were strong suffragists, there were many others, notably women +from the Southern States, who were violently opposed to suffrage. Early +in the club movement it was agreed that suffrage, being a subject on +which there was an apparently hopeless difference of opinion, was not a +proper subject for club consideration. + +The position of the women in regard to suffrage was precisely that of +the early labor unions toward politics. The unions, fearing that the +labor leaders would use the men for their own political advancement, +resolved that no question of politics should ever enter into their +deliberations. + +In the same way the club women feared that even a discussion of Woman +Suffrage in their state and national federation meetings would result in +their movement becoming purely political. They wanted to keep it a +non-partisan benevolent and social affair. + +[Illustration: SUFFRAGETTES IN LONDON ADVERTISING A MEETING] + +Somehow, in what mysterious manner no one can precisely tell, the +reserve of the club women towards the suffrage question began some years +ago to break down. At the St. Louis Biennial of 1904 part of a morning +session was given up to the suffrage organizations. Several remarkable +speeches in favor of the suffrage were made, and there is no doubt that +a very deep impression was made, even upon those women openly opposed to +the movement. Six years later, at the biennial meeting held in +Cincinnati, Ohio, in June, 1910, an entire evening was given up to an +exhaustive discussion of both sides of the question. + +Dating from that evening a stranger visiting the convention might almost +have thought that the sole object of the gathering was a discussion of +the right of women to the ballot. Women floated through the corridors of +the hotel talking suffrage. They talked suffrage in little groups in the +dining-room, they discussed it in the street cars going to and from the +convention. + +The local suffrage clubs had planned a banquet to the visiting +suffragists and had calculated a maximum of one hundred and fifty +applications for tickets. + +Three days before the banquet they had had nearly three hundred +applications, and when the hour for the banquet arrived every available +seat, the room's limit of three hundred and seventy-five, was occupied. +Outside were women offering ten dollars a plate and clamoring for the +privilege of merely listening to the after-dinner speakers. Something +must have happened in the course of those eight years to make such an +astounding change in the attitude of the club women. + +The fact is that until the club women had been at work at practical +things for a long period of years, they did not realize the social value +of their own activities. They thought of their work as benevolent and +philanthropic. That they were performing community service, _citizens_' +service, they did not remotely dream. There is nothing surprising in +their _naïveté_. It is a fact that in this country, although every one +knows that women own property, pay taxes, successfully manage their own +business affairs, and do an astonishing amount of community work as +well, no one ever thinks of them as citizens. + +American men are accustomed to women in almost all trades and +professions. It doesn't astonish a New Yorker to see a hospital +ambulance tearing down the street with a white-clad woman surgeon on the +back seat. A woman lawyer, architect, editor, manufacturer, excites no +particular notice. In the Western States men are beginning to elect +women county treasurers, county superintendents of schools, and in +Chicago, second largest city in the country, a Board of Education, +overwhelmingly masculine, recently appointed a woman City Superintendent +of Schools. + +Yet to the vast majority of American men women do not look like +citizens. + +As for the majority of American women they have always until recently +thought of themselves as a class,--a favored and protected class. They +cherished a sentimental kind of delusion that the American man was only +too anxious to give them everything that their hearts desired. When they +got out into the world of action, when they began to ask for something +more substantial than bonbons, the club women found that the American +man was not so very generous after all. + +A typical instance occurred down in Georgia. A few years ago the women +of Georgia found a way to introduce into the legislature a child-labor +law. It was really a very modest little bill and it protected only a +fraction of the pitiful army of cotton-mill children, but still it was +worth having. The women worked hard and they got some very powerful +backing and a barrel or two of petitions. Nevertheless, the bill was +defeated. One legislative orator rose to explain his vote. + +"Mr. Speaker," he said eloquently, "I am devoted to the good women of my +State. If I thought that the women of my State wanted this bill passed +I would vote for it; but, sir, I have every reason to believe that the +good women of my State are opposed to this bill, and therefore;" + +At this juncture another member handed to the orator a petition bearing +the name of five thousand of the best known women in Georgia. The orator +stammered, turned red, felt for his handkerchief, mopped his brow, and +continued: "Mr. Speaker, I deeply regret that I did not see this +petition yesterday. As it is, my vote is pledged." + +Incidents of this kind have occurred too frequently for the women of the +United States to escape their meaning. They have learned that they +cannot have everything they want merely by asking for it. Also they have +learned, or a large number of them have learned that the old theory of +women being represented at the polls by their husbands is very largely a +delusion. + +The entrance of women in large numbers into labor unions, and into +membership in the Women's Trade Union League is another factor in the +increasing interest of American women in suffrage. After a decision of +the New York Court of Appeals that the law prohibiting night work of +women was unconstitutional, nearly one thousand women book-binders in +New York City made a public announcement that they would thenceforth +work for the ballot. They had been indifferent before, but this close +application of politics to their industrial situation--bookbinding is +one of the night trades--made them alive to their own helplessness. + +The shirt-waist strike and the garment workers' strike in New York and +Philadelphia, waged so bitterly in 1910, brought great numbers of women +into the suffrage ranks. Not only were the women strikers convinced that +the magistrates and the police treated them with more contempt than they +did the voting men, but they perceived the need of securing better labor +laws for themselves. The conviction that women of the wealthier classes +would stand by them in securing favorable laws, as they stood by the +strikers in the industrial struggle, was a strong lever to turn them +towards the suffrage ranks. + +[Illustration: MRS. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH] + +The Women's Trade Union League building, used as strike headquarters in +all strikes involving women workers, is a veritable center of suffrage +sentiment in New York! One floor houses the offices of the Equality +League of Self Supporting Women, of which Harriot Stanton Blatch is +founder and president. This society, which is entirely made up of trade +and professional workers, claims an approximate membership of twenty-two +thousand. A number of unions belong to the League, and there is also a +very large individual membership. + +In Chicago the suffrage movement and the labor movement is more closely +associated than in any other American city. In Chicago, it will be +remembered, the Teachers' Federation is a trade union and is allied to +the Central Labor Union. Teachers, almost everywhere denied equal pay +with men for equal work, are eager seekers for political power. When, as +in Chicago, they are associated with labor, they become convinced +suffragists. + +Organized labor has always been friendly to woman suffrage, but in +Chicago not only the union women but the union men are actively friendly +towards the cause. The original moving spirit in the Chicago +organization was a remarkable young working girl, Josephine Casey. Miss +Casey sold tickets at one of the stations of the Chicago Elevated, and +she formed her first woman suffrage club among the women members of the +Union of Street and Elevated Railway Employees. Later she organized on a +larger scale the Women's Political Equality Union, with membership open +to men and women alike. The interest shown in the union by workingmen, +many of whom had never before given the matter a moment's thought, was, +from the first, extraordinary. During the first winter of the society's +existence, union after union called for Woman Suffrage speakers. +Addresses were made before fifty or more. Some of the more popular +speakers often made four addresses in an evening. Mrs. Raymond Robins, +president of the National Women's Trade Union League, and Miss Alice +Henry, secretary of the Chicago branch of the League, won many converts +by their expositions of the exceedingly favorable labor laws of +Australia and New Zealand, where women vote. + +[Illustration: MEETING A RELEASED SUFFRAGETTE PRISONER.] + +Unquestionably the mighty battle which is waging in England made a deep +impression on American women of all classes. The visits made in this +country by Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Borrman Wells, Mrs. Philip +Snowden, and, most of all, Mrs. Pankhurst, leader of the militant +English Suffragists, aroused tremendous enthusiasm from one end of the +country to the other. Never, until these women appeared, telling, with +rare eloquence, their stories of struggle, of arrest and imprisonment, +had the vote appeared such an incomparable treasure. Never before, +except among a few enthusiasts, had there existed any feeling that the +suffrage was a thing to fight for, suffer for, even to die for. + +Up to this time the suffrage was a theory, an academic question of right +and justice. After the visits of the English women, American suffragists +everywhere began to view their cause in the light of a political +movement. They began to adopt political methods. Instead of private +meetings where suffrage was discussed before a select audience of the +already convinced, the women began to mount soap boxes on street corners +and to talk suffrage to the man in the street. + +The first suffrage demonstration was held in New York in February, 1908. +The members of a small but enthusiastic Equal Suffrage Club announced +their intention of having a parade. Most of the women being wage earners +they planned to have their parade on a Sunday. When they applied at +Police Headquarters for the necessary permit they found to their disgust +that Sunday parades were forbidden by law. + +"Not unless you are a funeral procession," said the stern captain of the +police. + +The woman replied that they were anything but a funeral procession, and +threatened darkly to hold their parade in spite of police regulations. +They got plenty of newspaper publicity in the succeeding days, and on +the following Sunday a huge crowd of men, a sprinkling of women, a +generous number of plain clothes men, and New York's famous "camera +squad" assembled in Union Square, where all incendiary things happen. +The dauntless seven who made up the suffrage club were there, and at the +psychological moment one of the women ran up the steps of a park +pavilion and spoke in a ringing voice, yet so quietly that the police +made no move to stop her. + +"Friends," she said, "we are not allowed to have our parade, so we are +going to hold a meeting of protest at No. 209 East 23d Street. We invite +you to go over there with us." She and the others walked calmly out of +the square, and the crowd followed. They turned into Fifth Avenue, and +the crowd grew larger. Before three blocks were passed there were +literally thousands of people marching in the wake of ingenious +suffragists. + +The sight aroused the indignation of many respectable citizens. + +"Officer," exclaimed one of these, addressing an attendant policeman, "I +thought you had orders that those females were not to parade." + +"That ain't no parade," said the policeman, serenely; "them folks is +just takin' a quiet walk." + +The suffragists have taken more than one quiet walk since then. Street +speaking has become an almost daily occurrence. At first there was some +rioting, or, rather, some display of rowdyism on the part of the +spectators and some show of interference from the police. The crowds +listen respectfully now, and the police are friendly. + +The most practical move the New York Suffragists have made was the +organization, early in 1910, of the Woman Suffrage Party, a fusion of +nearly all the suffrage clubs in the greater city into an association +exactly along the lines of a regular political party. At the head of the +party as president is Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the +International Woman Suffrage Association. Each of the five boroughs of +the city has a chairman, and each senatorial and assembly district is +either organized or is in process of organization. + +[Illustration: THE WOMEN'S TRADES PROCESSION TO THE ALBERT HALL MEETING, +APRIL 27, 1909] + +Absolutely democratic in its spirit and its organization, the party +leaders are drawn from every rank of society. The chairman of the +borough of Manhattan is Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, wife of a prominent +Wall Street banker. Mrs. Frederick Nathan, president of the New York +State Consumers' League, is chairman of the assembly district in which +she lives. Mrs. Melvil Dewey, whose husband is head of a department at +Columbia University, is chairman of her own district. Other chairmen are +Helen Hoy Greeley, lawyer; Lavinia Dock, trained nurse; Anna Mercy, an +East Side physician; Maud Flowerton, buyer in a department store; +Gertrude Barnum, sociologist and writer. Practically every trade and +profession are represented in the party's ranks. + +The object of the Woman Suffrage Party is organization for political +work. Last winter the party made the first aggressive move towards +forcing the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly to report on the bill to +give women votes by constitutional amendment. They succeeded in getting +a motion made for the discharge of the committee, sixteen legislators +voting for the women. + +New York is the present center of the progressive suffrage movement, +with Chicago not very far behind. + +In rather amazing fashion are women in many American communities +beginning to realize that politics are as much their business as men's. +In Salt Lake City when a city council undertakes to give away a valuable +water franchise, or extend gamblers' privileges, or otherwise follow the +example of many another city council in bending before the god of greed, +the women of Salt Lake send the word around. When the council meets the +women are in the room. They don't say anything. They don't have to say +anything. They can vote, these women. More than once the deep-laid plans +of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely +frustrated by a silent warning from the women. The city council has not +dared to pass grafting measures with a roomful of women looking on. + +[Illustration: HELEN HOY GREELEY] + +Even the non-voting woman has discovered the power which attaches to her +presence, in certain circumstances. In San Francisco during the second +Ruef trial, when the decent element of the city was fighting to down one +of the worst bosses that ever cursed a community, the women, under the +leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth Gerberding, performed this new kind of +picket duty. The courtroom where the trial was held was, by order of the +boss's attorney, packed with hired toughs whose duty it was to make a +mockery of the prosecution. Every point against the Ruef side was +received by these toughs with jeers and hootings. The district attorney +was insulted, badgered, and openly threatened with violence. + +Mrs. Gerberding, whose husband is editor of a newspaper opposed to boss +rule, attended several sessions, and induced a large number of women of +social importance to attend with her. These women went daily to the +courtroom, occupying seats to the exclusion of many of the tough +characters, and by their presence doing much to preserve order and to +assist the efforts of the district attorney. When the assassin's bullet +was fired at the district attorney a number of the women were present. + +Out of the horror and detestation of this crime was organized the +Women's League of Justice, which soon had a membership of five hundred. +The league fought stoutly for the reelection of Heney as district +attorney. Heney was defeated, and the league became the Women's Civic +Club of San Francisco, pledged to work for political betterment and a +clean city government. + +In four States of the Union, Washington, Oregon, South Dakota, and +Oklahoma, the voters will this autumn vote for or against constitutional +amendments giving women the right to vote. It is not very probable that +the Suffragists will win in any of these States, not because the voters +are opposed to suffrage, but because they are, for the most part, +uninformed. The suffrage advocates have not yet learned enough political +wisdom to further their cause through education of the voters. + +Although enormous sums of money have been spent in suffrage campaigns, +in no one has enough money been available to do the work thoroughly. In +the four States where the question is at present before the voters, +complaint is made that there is not enough money in the treasuries +properly to circulate literature. + +Many of the wisest leaders in the National Woman Suffrage Association, +including Dr. Anna Shaw, Ida Husted Harper, and others, are advising an +altogether new method of conducting the struggle for the ballot. They +advocate selecting a State, possibly Nebraska, where conditions seem +uncommonly favorable, and concentrating the entire strength of the +national organization, every dollar of money in the national treasury, +all the speakers and organizers, all the literature, in a mighty effort +to give the women of that one State the ballot. The vote won in +Nebraska, the national association should pass on to the next most +favorable State and win a victory there. The moral effect of such +campaigns would no doubt be very great. + +One of the principal reasons why men hesitate in this country to give +the voting power to women is that they do not know, and they rather fear +to guess, how far women would unite in forcing their own policies on the +country. If an Irish vote, or a German vote, or a Catholic vote, or a +Hebrew vote is to be dreaded, say the men, how much more of a menace +would a woman vote be. I heard a man, a delegate from an anti-suffrage +association, solemnly warn the New York State Legislature, at a suffrage +hearing, against this danger of a woman vote. "When the majority of +women and the minority of men vote together," he declared, "there will +be no such thing as personal liberty left in the United States." + +[Illustration: SUFFRAGETTES IN MADISON SQUARE.] + +Under certain conditions a woman vote is not an unthinkable contingency. +It has even occurred. + +For the edification of the possible reader who is entirely uninformed, +it may be explained that women are not entirely disenfranchised in the +United States. Women vote on equal terms with men, in four States. They +have voted in Wyoming since 1869; in Colorado since 1894; in Utah and +Idaho since 1896. They vote at school elections and on certain questions +of taxation in twenty-eight States. + +While it is true that in the States which have a small measure of +suffrage the women show little interest in voting, in the four so-called +suffrage States, they vote conscientiously and in about the same +proportion as men. + +But here is a notable thing. The women of the suffrage States differ so +little from the women of other States, and women in general, that the +chief concerns of their lives are the home, the school, and the +baby,--the Kaiser's "Kirche, Küche, und Kinder" over again. They vote +with enthusiasm on all questions which relate to domestic interests, +that is, which directly relate to them and their children. Aside from +this, the woman vote has made a deep impression on the moral character +of candidates and that is about all it has meant. In general politics +women have counted scarcely more than have the women of other States. + +But the new interest in suffrage, the new realization of themselves as +citizens that has been aroused all over the United States within the +past two years have seriously affected the women voters of at least one +suffrage State, Colorado. + +The women of Colorado, especially the women of Denver, have for several +years taken an active part in legislation directly affecting themselves +and their children. The legislative committee of the Colorado State +Federation of Clubs has held regular meetings during the sessions of the +State Legislature, and it has been a regular custom to submit to that +committee for approval all bills relating to women and children. This +never seemed to the politicians to be anything very dangerous to their +interests. It was, in a manner of speaking, a chivalric acknowledgment +of women's virtue as wives and mothers. + +But lately the women of Colorado have begun to wake up to the fact that +not only special legislation, but all legislation, is of direct interest +to them. It has lately dawned upon them that the matter of street +railway franchise affects the home as directly as a proposition to erect +a high school. Also it has dawned on them that without organization, and +more organization, the woman vote was more or less powerless. So, about +a year ago they formed in Denver an association of women which they +called the Public Service League. Nothing quite like it ever existed +before. It is a political but non-partisan association of women, pledged +to work for the civic betterment of Denver, pledged to fight the corrupt +politicians, determined that the city government shall be well +administered even if the women have to take over the offices themselves. +The League is, in effect, a secret society of women. It has an +inflexible rule that its proceedings are to be kept inviolable. There is +a perfect understanding that any woman who divulges one syllable of what +occurs at a meeting of the League will be instantly dropped from +membership. No woman has yet been dropped. + +It may well be understood that this secret society of women, this +non-partisan league of voters, is a thing to strike terror into the +heart of a ward boss. As a matter of fact, the corrupt politicians and +the equally corrupt heads of corporations who had long held Denver in +bondage regard the Public Service League in mingled dread and +detestation. Equally as a matter of fact politicians of a better class +are anxious to enlist the good will of the League. Last summer a Denver +election involved a question of granting a twenty years' franchise to a +street railway company. Opposed to the granting of the franchise was a +newly formed citizens' party. Opposed also was the Women's Public +Service League. In gratitude for the co-operation of the League the +Citizens' Party offered a place on the electoral ticket to any woman +chosen by the League. + +It was the first time in the history of Colorado that a municipal office +had been offered to a woman, and the League promptly took advantage of +it. They named as a candidate for Election Commissioner Miss Ellis +Meredith, one of the best known, best loved women in the State. As +journalist and author and club woman Miss Meredith is known far beyond +her own State, and her nomination created intense interest not only +among the women of her own city and State, but among club women +everywhere. + +On the evening of May 3, 1910, there was a meeting held in the Broadway +Theater, Denver, the like of which no American city ever before +witnessed. It was a women's political mass meeting to endorse the +candidacy of a woman municipal official. The meeting was entirely in the +hands of women. Presiding over the immense throng was Mrs. Sarah Platt +Decker, formerly president, and still leader of the General Federation +of Women's Clubs. Beside her sat Mrs. Helen Grenfell, for thirteen years +county and State superintendent of schools, Mrs. Helen Ring Robinson, +Mrs. Martha A.B. Conine, and Miss Gail Laughlin, all women of note in +their community. The enthusiasm aroused by that meeting did not subside, +and on the day of the election Miss Meredith ran so far ahead of her +ticket that it seemed as if every woman in Denver, as well as most of +the men, had voted for her. She took her place in the Board of Election +Commissioners, and was promptly elected Chairman of the Board. + +There is nothing especially attractive about the office of Election +Commissioner. In accepting the nomination Miss Meredith said frankly +that she was influenced mainly by two things: first a desire to test the +loyalty of the women voters, and second, because, while women had been +held accountable for elections which have disgraced the city of Denver, +they have never before been given a chance to manage the elections. + +Nothing is more certain that women, when they become enfranchised, will +never, in any large numbers, appear as office seekers. It is probable +that office will be thrust upon the ablest of them. Mrs. Sarah Platt +Decker has been spoken of as a possible future Mayor of Denver, and it +is certain that she could be elected to Congress if she would allow +herself to be placed in nomination. + +A few women have been elected to the legislatures in the suffrage +States, and they have held high office in educational departments. In +suffrage and nonsuffrage States they have been elected to many county +offices. Miss Gertrude Jordan is Treasurer of Cherry County, Nebraska. +In Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, and several other States women have filled +the same position. The State of Kansas is a true believer in women +office-holders, even though it refuses its women complete suffrage. +Women can vote in Kansas only at municipal elections, but in forty +counties men have elected women school superintendents. They are clerks +of four counties, treasurers of three, and commissioners of one. In one +county of Kansas a woman is probate judge. The good and faithful work +done by these women ought to go a long way towards educating men of +their community to the idea of political association with women. + +The attitude of men towards suffrage has undergone an enormous change +within the past two years. A large number of the thinking men of the +country have openly enlisted in the Suffrage ranks. It is said that +almost every member of the faculty of Columbia University signed the +Suffrage petition presented to the Congress of 1909. Well-known +professors of many Western universities and colleges have spoken and +written in favor of equal suffrage. In New York City a flourishing +Voters' League for Equal Suffrage has been formed, with a membership +running into the hundreds. + +[Illustration: THE "QUIET WALK" OF THE NEW YORK SUFFRAGISTS, WHOM THE +POLICE WOULD NOT PERMIT TO PARADE] + +To the average unprejudiced man the old arguments against political +equality have almost entirely lost weight. The theory that women should +not vote because they cannot fight is now rarely argued. Municipal +governments certainly no longer rest on physical force. The same is true +of state governments, and it is probably true of national governments. +At all events we are sincerely trying to make it true. For the rest it +would be extremely difficult to prove that women would make undesirable +citizens. To the anxious inquiry, What will women do with their votes? +the answer is simple. They will do with their votes precisely what they +do, or try to do, without votes. This has been proven in every country +in the world where they have received the franchise. In Australia, New +Zealand, Finland, and in the English municipalities the ideal of the +common good has been reflected in the woman vote. Social legislation +alone interests women, and so far they have confined their efforts to +matters of education, child labor, pure food, sanitation, control of +liquor traffic, and public morals. The organized non-voting women of +this country have devoted themselves for years to precisely these +objects. Without votes, without precedents, and without very much money +they instituted the playground movement, and the juvenile court +movement, two of the greatest reforms this country has contributed to +civilization. They have instituted a dozen reforms in our educational +system. They practically invented the town and village improvement idea. +They have co-operated with every social reform advocated by men, and it +is to be noted that wherever their judgment has been in error they have +conscientiously erred in favor of a wider democracy, a more exalted +social ideal. + +[Illustration: SUFFRAGE DEMONSTRATION IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK] + +However long-deferred Woman Suffrage may prove to be, it is pretty +generally conceded that women will inevitably vote some day. The +evolution of society will bring them into political equality with men +just as it has brought them into intellectual and industrial equality. +The first woman who followed her spinning-wheel out of her home into the +factory was the natural ancestress of the first woman who demanded the +ballot. + +The application of steam to machinery took women's trades out of the +home and placed them in the factory. The effect of this was that men +were confronted with a singular dilemma. They had to choose between two +courses; they had to support their women in idleness, or else they had +to allow them to leave the home and go where their trades had gone. The +first course involving the intolerable burden of doing their own and +their women's work, they were obliged to choose the second. The +jealously-guarded doors of the home were opened, and little by little, +grudgingly, the men admitted women to full industrial freedom. + +Women's housekeeping, or most of it, has gradually been withdrawn from +the home and transferred to the municipality. There was a time when +women could ensure their families pure food, good milk, clean ice, +proper sanitation. They cannot do that now. The City Hall governs all +such matters. Again the men find themselves facing the old dilemma. They +must either support their women in idleness--do all their own as well as +the women's housekeeping--or they must allow their women to leave the +home and follow their housekeeping to the place where it is now being +done,--the polls. + +Women are beginning to understand the situation. They are even beginning +to understand how badly the men are providing for the municipal family. +They are demanding their old housekeeping tasks back again. To this +point has the Suffrage movement, begun in 1848 by a band of women called +fanatics, arrived. + + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN CONCLUSION + + +I have tried to set down in these pages the collective opinion of women, +as far as it has expressed itself through deeds. I have not succeeded if +any reader lays down the book with the impression that he has merely +been reading the story of the American club woman. I have not succeeded +at all if my readers imagine that I have been writing only about a +selected group of women. What I have meant to do is to show the +instinctive bent of the universal woman mind in all ages, reflected in +the actions of the freest group of women the world has ever seen. + +I might have reanimated ages of stone and of bronze; might have shown +you women, through slow centuries, inventing the arts of spinning and +weaving, and pottery molding; learning to build, to till the earth, to +grind and to cook grains, to tan skins for clothing against the cold. No +one taught them these things. Out of their brains, as undeveloped and as +primitive as the brains of men, they would never have conceived so much +wisdom. The vague mind of the savage woman never sent her to the spider, +the nesting bird, and the burrowing squirrel to learn to weave and to +build and to store. When we find exactly what it was that taught +primitive woman how to lay the first stones of civilization, we have a +perfect philosophical understanding of all women. + +I chose to interpret the woman mind through the modern American woman, +partly because she has learned the great lesson of organization, and has +thus been able to work more effectively, and to impress her will on the +community more strikingly than other women in other ages. What she has +done is apparent and easy to prove. + +Also, I chose the American club woman because she represents, not an +unusually gifted type, but the average intelligent, well-educated, +energetic, wife-and-mother type of woman. The club woman is not radical, +or at least not consciously radical. She has not, like the progressive +German and Russian woman, theories of political regeneration or of +family reconstruction. What she desires, what ideals she has formed, I +think must fairly represent the desires and ideals of the great mass of +women of the twentieth century. + +When we survey the activities the club women have engaged in, when we +discover why they chose exactly these activities, we have a perfect +philosophical understanding, not only of the modern woman mind, but of +the cave woman mind and all the woman mind in between. + +The woman mind is the most unchangeable thing in the world. It has +turned on identically the same pivot since the present race began. +Perhaps before. + +Turn back and count over the club women's achievements, the things they +have chosen to do, the things they want. Observe first of all that they +want very little for themselves. Even their political liberty they want +only because it will enable them to get other things--things needed, +directly or indirectly, by children. Most of the things are directly +needed,--playgrounds, school gardens, child-labor laws, juvenile courts, +kindergartens, pure food laws, and other visible tokens of child +concern. Many of the other things are indirectly needed by +children,--ten-hour working days, seats for shop girls, protection from +dangerous machinery, living wages, opportunities for safe and wholesome +pleasures, peace and arbitration, social purity, legal equality with +men, all objects which tend to conserve the future mothers of children. +These are the things women want. + +In my introductory chapter I cited three extremely grave and significant +facts which confront modern civilization. The first was the fact of +women's growing economic freedom, their emancipation from domestic +slavery. I believe that women would not wish to be economically free if +their instinct gave them any warning that freedom for them meant danger +to their children. But no observer of social conditions can have failed +to observe the oceans of misery endured by women and children because of +their economic dependence on the fortunes of husbands and fathers. + +Whatever may be the solution of poverty, whatever be the future status +of the family, it seems certain to me that some way will be devised +whereby motherhood will cease to be a privately supported profession. In +some way society will pay its own account. If producing citizens to the +State be the greatest service a woman citizen can perform, the State +will ultimately recognize the right of the woman citizen to protection +during her time of service. The first step towards solving the problem +is for women to learn to support themselves before the time comes for +them to serve the State. Through the educating process of productive +labor the woman mind may devise a means of protecting the future mothers +of the race. + +The second fact, the growing prevalence of divorce, on the face of it +seems to menace the security of the home and of children. So deeply +overlain with prejudice, conventionalities, and theological traditions +is the average woman as well as the average man that it is difficult to +argue in favor of a temporary tolerance of divorce that a permanent high +standard of marriage may be established. But to my mind any state of +affairs, even a Reno state of affairs, looks more encouraging than the +old conditions under which innocent girls married to rakes and drunkards +were forbidden to escape their chains. It is not for the good of +children to be born of disease and misery and hatred. It is not for +their good to be brought up in an atmosphere of hopeless inharmony. What +is happening in this country is not a weakening of the marriage bond, +but a strengthening of it. For soon there will grow up in the American +man's mind a desire for a marriage which will be at least as equitable +as a business partnership; as fair to one party as to the other. He will +cease to regard marriage as a state of bondage for the wife and a state +of license for the husband. He will not venture to suggest to a bright +woman that cooking in his kitchen is a more honorable career than +teaching, or painting, or writing, or manufacturing. Marriage will not +mean extinction to any woman. It will mean to the well-to-do wife +freedom to do community service. It will mean to the industrial woman an +economic burden shared. When that time comes there will be no divorce +problem. There will be no longer a class of women who avoid the risk of +divorce by refusing to marry. + +The third fact, the increasing popularity of woman suffrage, I disposed +of in the preceding chapter. Nothing that the women who vote have ever +done indicates, in the remotest degree, that they are not just as +mindful of children's interests at the polls as other women are in their +nurseries and kitchens. + +On the contrary, wherever women have left their kitchens and nurseries, +whenever they have gone out into the world of action and of affairs, +they have increased their effectiveness as mothers. I do not mean by +this that the girl who enters a factory at fourteen and works there ten +hours a day until she marries increases her effectiveness as a mother. +Industrial slavery unfits a woman for motherhood as certainly as +intellectual and moral slavery unfits her. + +Women who are free, who look on life through their own eyes, who think +their own thoughts, who live in the real world of striving, struggling, +suffering humanity, are the most effective mothers that ever lived. They +know how to care for their own children, and more than that, they know +how to care for the community's children. + +The child at his mother's knee, spelling out the words of a psalm, +stands for the moral education of the race--or it used to. A group of +Chicago club women walking boldly into the city Bridewell and the Cook +County Jail and demanding that children of ten and twelve should no +longer be locked up with criminals; these same women, after the children +were segregated, establishing a school for them, and finally these same +women achieving a juvenile court, is the modern edition of the old +ideal. + +Woman's place is in the home. This is a platitude which no woman will +ever dissent from, provided two words are dropped out of it. Woman's +place is Home. Her task is homemaking. Her talents, as a rule, are +mainly for homemaking. But Home is not contained within the four walls +of an individual home. Home is the community. The city full of people is +the Family. The public school is the real Nursery. And badly do the Home +and the Family and the Nursery need their mother. + +I dream of a community where men and women divide the work of governing +and administering, each according to his special capacities and natural +abilities. The division of labor between them will be on natural and not +conventional lines. No one will be rewarded according to sex, but +according to work performed. The city will be like a great, +well-ordered, comfortable, sanitary household. Everything will be as +clean as in a good home. Every one, as in a family, will have enough to +eat, clothes to wear, and a good bed to sleep on. There will be no +slums, no sweat shops, no sad women and children toiling in tenement +rooms. There will be no babies dying because of an impure milk supply. +There will be no "lung blocks" poisoning human beings that landlords may +pile up sordid profits. No painted girls, with hunger gnawing at their +empty stomachs, will walk in the shadows. All the family will be taken +care of, taught to take care of themselves, protected in their daily +tasks, sheltered in their homes. + +The evil things in society are simply the result of half the human race, +with only half the wisdom, and not even half the moral power contained +in the race, trying to rule the world alone. Men's government rests on +force, on violence. Everything evil, everything bad, everything selfish, +is a form of violence. Poverty itself is a form of violence. + +Women will not tolerate violence. They loathe waste. They cannot bear to +see illness and suffering and starvation. Alone, they are no more +capable of coping with these evils than men are. But they have the very +resources that men lack. Working with men they could accomplish +miracles. + +Note the inventiveness of women, most of which goes to waste because +they lack the wonderful constructive ability of men. Women invented +spinning. They could never have harnessed the lightning to their wheels. +Women established the first public playgrounds. Men extended the public +playgrounds across the country. + +Women established the juvenile court. Men took it over and worked out a +new system of criminal jurisprudence for children. Women have cleaned up +a hundred cities. Men are rebuilding them. Slowly men and women are +learning to live and work together. Reluctantly men are coming to accept +women as their co-workers. + +Woman's place is Home, and she must not be forbidden to dwell there. Who +would be so selfish, so blind, so reactionary, as to forbid her her +fullest freedom to do her work, must surrender opposition in the end. +For woman's work is race preservation, race improvement, and who opposes +her, or interferes with her, simply fights nature, and nature never +loses her battles. + + +INDEX + +Aberdeen, Countess of, +Addams, Jane, +Alabama, +Aladyn, Alexis, +Albert Hall, London, +Albion House of Refuge, N.Y., +Aldrich, Mrs. Richard, +Allegheny, Pa., +Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenbund, +American, Sadie, +American Federation of Labor +American women and common law +Arbitration, +Argentine, +Arizona, +Arkansas +Arthur, Mrs. Clara B., +Association of Collegiate Alumnae, +Association of Working Girls' Clubs, +Augsberg, Anita, +Australia, +Austria + +Balliett, Thomas M., +Barnum, Gertrude +Barrett, Mrs. Kate Waller, +Bedford Reformatory, N.Y., +Belmont, Mrs. O.H.P., +Berlin, +Birmingham, Ala., +Blackstone +Blackwell's Island, +Blatch, Harriot Stanton, +Bluhm, Agnes, +Boston, Mass +Boston Central Labor Union, +Boswell, Helen V., +Brandeis, Louis D. +Brewer, Justice, +Brooklyn, N.Y., +Bullowa, Emilie, + +California +Carlisle, Pa., +Carnegie, Andrew, +Casey, Josephine, +Catt, Mrs. Carrie Chapman, +Cauer, Minna, +Chicago +Child, Lydia Maria, +Church, the Christian, its relation to social problems, +Civic Club of Allegheny County +Civic Club of Philadelphia, +Cleveland, O. +Cliff Dwellers' remains, +Cobden Sanderson, Mrs., +Code Napoleon +Cole, Elsie +College Settlements Association, +Colony Club, +Colorado, +Colorado State Federation of Clubs, +Columbia University, +Columbus, Ohio, +Common law, +Coney Island +Conine, Mrs. Martha A.B., +Consumers' League of N.Y., +Consumers' Leagues +Conventions of women's clubs, +Corpus Juris, +Cotton mills, women and girls in +Council of Women +Cranford, N.J., +Cutting, Fulton, + +Dallas, Tex., +Dance halls, +Daughters of the American Revolution, +Daughters of the Confederacy, +Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, +Decker, Mrs. Sarah Platt, +Delaware, +Denver, Colo., +Department stores, +Detroit, +Devine, Edward T., +Dewey, Mrs. Melvil, +Dineen, Governor, +District of Columbia, +Divorce +Dock, Lavinia, +Domestic service, +_Domestic Service_, Professor +Salmon's, +Donnelly, Annie, +Dreier, Mary, +Dutcher, Elizabeth, + +Eight-hour day, +Ely Bates Settlement, +Employment agencies, +England +Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, +Europe, +European women, +Evans, Mrs. Glendower, + +Factories, +Fall River, Mass. +Festivals, play, +Feudalism +Filene system, +Finland +Florida +Flowerton, Maud, +Folks, Homer, +France, +Franks, Salian +French Code, + +Gad, Elizabeth, +General Federation of Women's Clubs, +Georgia +Gerberding, Mrs. Elizabeth, +German Woman Suffrage Association, +Germany, +Gillespie, Mabel, +Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, her _Women and Economics_, +"Girls' Bill," +Girls' Friendly Association, +Golden, John, +Goldmark, Josephine, +Goldmark, Pauline, +Gompers, Samuel +Grannis, Mrs. Elizabeth, +Greece, +Greece, Queen of, +Greeley, Helen Hoy, +Greenbaum, Sadie, +Grenfell, Mrs. Helen, +Gulick, Luther H., + +Harper, Ida Husted, +Harrisburg, Pa., +Hearn, +Henry, Alice, +Holland, + +Housekeepers' Alliance, +Hughes, Governor, +Hundred Years' War, + +Iceland, +Idaho, +Illinois, +Inheritance, +Intermunicipal Committee on Household Research, +International Council of Women, +International Woman Suffrage Alliance +Iowa, +Israels, Mrs. Charles M. +Italy, +Janes, Elizabeth, +Jefferson Market Court, +Jordan, Gertrude, + +Kansas +Kellor, Frances, +Kennard, Beulah, +Kirby, John, Jr., +Kusserow, Anna + +Lafferty, Mrs. Alma, +Laidlaw, Mrs. James Lees, +Lake City, Minn., +Laughlin, Gail, +Laundries, +Law, American +Legal Aid Society of N.Y. City, +Legal disabilities of women +Leipzig, +Lemlich, Clara, +Libraries, +Los Angeles, Cal., +Louisiana +Lowell, Mrs. Josephine Shaw, +Luxemburg, + +MacLean, Annie Marian, +Maloney, Elizabeth, +Marot, Helen +Massachusetts +Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics +McEwans, the, +Men, their attitude toward women +Mercantile Employers' Bill +Merchants' Association of N.Y., +Mercy, Anna, +Meredith, Ellis +Milholland, Inez, +Mills, +Mills, Enos, +Miner, Maude E., +Miner, Stella, +Missouri, +Mitchell, John, +Montana, +Moore, Mrs. Philip N., +Morgan, Anne +Mott, Lucretia, +Muller, Curt + +Napoleon, +Napoleon Code +Nathan, Mrs. Frederick +National Civic Federation, +National Congress of Mothers, +National Manufacturers' Association +National Society of Collegiate Alumnae, +National Woman Suffrage Association +Nebraska +Nestor, Agnes, +Nevada, +New England, +New Haven, Conn. +New Jersey, +New Mexico, +New York, +New York, N.Y., +New York Telephone Co., +New Zealand, +Night Court. See _Jefferson Market Court_ +Night work of women, +North Carolina +North Dakota, + +Ohio, +Oklahoma, +Orange, House of, +Oregon, +Oregon case, +Oregon Standard,_Out of Work_, Miss Kellor's + +Palisades of the Hudson, +Panama Canal, +Pankhurst, Mrs., +Paris, +Peace +Pennsylvania, +Persia, +Philadelphia, +Pike, Violet, +Pittsburg, +Playgrounds, +Playgrounds Association of America +Portland, Ore., +Portugal +Potter, Virginia, +Probation Association of N.Y., +Property Law, Married Women's, +Public Service League of Denver, Colo. +Puritans + +_Resurrection_, Tolstoy's, +Revere Beach, +Rheinhard Commission, +Rhode Island +"Rights of Man," +Ritchie Paper Box Manufactory, +Robins, Mrs. Raymond, +Robinson, Mrs. Helen Ring, +Rochester, N.Y., Industrial School, +Roxbury, Mass., carpet mill strike, +Russia, + +Sage, Mrs. Russell, +St. Louis, Mo. +Salic Law, +Salmon, Prof. Lucy Maynard +Salt Lake City, +San Francisco, +Schoenfeld, Julia, +Scranton, Pa., +Seneca Falls convention, +Servant problem. See _Domestic Service_ +Shaw, Dr. Anna, +Shirt-waist makers' strike, +Smith, "Gypsy," +Snowden, Mrs. Philip, +Social evil, +Social purity +Socialist party +South Africa, +South Carolina, +South Chicago, +South Dakota, +Spain +Stanton, Elizabeth Cady +Stover, Charles B., +Succession to throne by women, +Sweat shop, the +Switzerland + +Teacher's Federation of Chicago +Ten-hour day, +Tennessee +Texas, +Tillman case, +Turkey, +Tuthill, Judge R.S., +Twentieth Century Club of Detroit, + +United States Government +United States Industrial Commission, +United Textile Workers +Utah + +Vassar College, +Victoria, Queen, +Virginia, +Voters' League for Equal Suffrage, + +Wage earning, women in, +Washington (state), +Waverley House, +White, Mrs. Lovell, +"White Slave" traffic +Whitman, Charles S., +Wilhelmina, Queen, +Windeguth, Dora +Winthrop, Mrs. Egerton, +_Woman and Economics_, Gilman's, +Woman suffrage, +Woman Suffrage Party +Woman's Christian Temperance Union, +Woman's Municipal League of N.Y., +Women, their ideals, + in Europe, + in America, + in industry, + their fight against the social evil, + in domestic service, + collective opinion of, +Women's Civic Club of San Francisco, +Women's Club, of Lake City, Minn., + of Dallas, Tex., + of San Francisco, + of Pittsburg + of Detroit, + of Philadelphia, + of Harrisburg, Pa., + of Birmingham, Ala., + of Carlisle, Pa., + of Cranford, N.J., +Women's Clubs +Women's Educational and Industrial Union of BostonWomen's League of Justice, +Women's Political Equality Union, +Women's Property Act, +Women's Trade Union League +Working Women's Society +Wyoming, + +Yonkers, N.Y., +Young Women's Christian Association + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's What eight million women want, by Rheta Childe Dorr + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12226 *** |