The Trade Union Woman

by Alice Henry

As regards wages, Miss Matthews estimates the average increase in the twelve years since the Steam Laundry Workers' Union was first formed at about thirty per cent. With the exception of the head marker, and the head washer at the one end, each at twenty-two dollars and fifty cents per week, and the little shaker girl on the mangle at seven dollars per week at the other, wages range from eighteen dollars down to eight dollars, more than the scale, however, being paid, it is said, to every worker with some skill and experience. Apprentices are allowed for in the union agreement.

The union does not permit its members to work at unguarded machinery, hence accidents are rare, and for such as do happen, usually slight ones, like burns, the union officials are inclined to hold the workers themselves responsible.

All of the steam laundries in San Francisco, now thirty-two in number, are unionized, including the laundries operated in one of the largest hotels. The union regards with just pride and satisfaction the fine conditions, short hours and comparatively high wages which its trade enjoys, as well as the improved social standards and the spirit of independence and coöperation which are the fruit of these many years of union activity.

But outside the labor organization, and at once a sad contrast and a possible menace, lie two groups of businesses, the French laundries and the Japanese laundries. The former are mostly conducted on the old, out-of-date lines of a passing domestic industry, housed in made-over washrooms and ironing rooms, equipped with little modern machinery, most of the work being done by hand, and the employés being often the family or at least the relatives of the proprietor. In their present stage it is quite difficult to unionize these establishments and they do cut prices for the proprietors of the steam laundries.

But both steam laundries and French laundries, both employers and workers, both unionists and non-unionists are at least found in agreement in their united opposition to the Japanese laundries, from whose competition all parties suffer, and in this they are backed by the whole of organized labor. The possibility of unionizing the Japanese laundries is not even considered.

The story of the Steam Laundry Workers' Union of San Francisco is an encouraging lesson to those toilers in any craft who go on strike. But it also holds for them a warning. A successful strike is a good thing, for the most part, but its gains can be made permanent only if, when the excitement of the strike is over, the workers act up to their principles and keep their union together. The leaders must remember that numbers alone do not make strength, that most of the rank and file, and not unfrequently the leaders too, need the apprenticeship of long experience before any union can be a strong organization. The union's choicest gift to its membership lies in the opportunity thus offered to the whole of the members to grow into the spirit of fellowship.

A few words should be said here of another strike among laundry-workers, this time almost entirely women, which although as bravely contested, ended in complete failure. This was the strike of the starchers in the Troy, New York, shirt and collar trade. In the Federal Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage Earners, Mr. W.P.D. Bliss gives a brief account of it. In 1905 the starchers had their wages cut, and at the same time some heavy machinery was introduced. The starchers went out, and organized a union, which over one thousand women joined. They kept up the struggle from June, 1905, throughout a whole summer, autumn and winter till March, 1906. It was up till that time, probably the largest women's strike that had ever taken place in this country and was conducted with uncommon persistence and steadiness of purpose. They were backed by the international union, and appointing a committee visited various cities, and obtained, it is said, about twenty-five thousand dollars in this way for the support of their members. Many meetings and street demonstrations were held in Troy, and much bitter feeling existed between the strikers and the non-union help brought in. The strike at length collapsed; the firms continued to introduce more machinery, and the girls had to submit. Mr. Bliss concludes: "The Troy union was broken up and since then has had little more than a nominal existence."

During the nineties there were a number of efforts made to organize working-women in Chicago. Some unions were organized at Hull House, where Mrs. Alzina P. Stevens and Mrs. Florence Kelley were then residents. Mrs. George Rodgers (K. of L.), Mrs. Robert Howe, Dr. Fannie Dickenson, Mrs. Corinne Brown, Mrs. T.J. Morgan, Mrs. Frank J. Pearson, Mrs. Fannie Kavanagh and Miss Lizzie Ford were active workers. Miss Mary E. Kenney (Mrs. O'Sullivan), afterwards the first woman organizer under the American Federation of Labor, was another. She was successful in reaching the girls in her own trade (book-binding), besides those in the garment trades and in the shoe factories, also in bringing the need for collective bargaining strongly before social and settlement workers.

Chicago has long been the largest and the most important among the centers of the meat-packing industry. None of the food trades have received more investigation and publicity, and the need for yet more publicity, and for stricter and yet stricter supervision is perpetually being emphasized. But most of the efforts that have been made to awake and keep alive a sense of public rights and responsibility in the conducting of huge institutions like the Chicago packing-plants, have centered on the danger to the health of the consumer through eating diseased or decomposed meat. The public cares little, and has not troubled to learn much about the conditions of the workers, without whom there could be no stockyards and no meat-packing industry. Not that some of the investigators have not tried to bring this point forward. It was the chief aim of Upton Sinclair, when he wrote "The Jungle," and yet even he discovered to his dismay that, as he bitterly phrased it, he had hoped to strike at the heart of the American people, and he had only hit them in their stomach.

But that is a story by itself. Let us go back to the brave struggle begun by the women in the packing-plants in the year 1902 to improve their conditions by organizing.