“I mighter known he wouldn’t take you on. He wants girls he can chuck under the chin and poke in the ribs and call by their first name,” she told me. “He’s foxy, that red-head, he seen he couldn’t make free with you. You come with me. I’ll take you to the employment manager. He’ll give you a job in the office, real Gentile work.”
But I’d had enough office work, so I refused her offer.
When I applied at Store Beautiful the employment manager apologized for offering me seventeen dollars a week. He was not allowed to pay more for an inexperienced saleswoman, he explained. When I accepted the job he quickly told me that there were many better-paying positions in the store, and if I stayed he would try to fit me into one of them. Remember this happened after the war. Employment managers had learned the value of educated working women.
Now I’d as soon try to reason with a herd of jackasses as with a selfish woman. It is because I learned during my four years in the underbrush that American women are not, as a rule, selfish when they understand conditions that I have written this book. It is because I know by experience that American women are, as a rule, unselfishly patriotic that I am adding to the narrative of my experience an expression of my opinion on that condition known as our “labor troubles.”
The United States is to-day the most powerful nation in the world. We, its women, are the most powerful half of the nation. Again we, its educated women of native birth and lineage, are the most powerful group in that half.
It is up to us how our country is coming through its period of labor troubles. Are we going to remain human cooties, forcing our fathers and husbands to beat down and rob their employees for the sake of getting money to support us in idle luxury?
They, the men of the United States, have given us, their womenfolks, the ballot and Prohibition. Not because they wanted either, but because we, their adored womenfolks, clamored for them. Every profession is open to us, every line of work.
What are we going to do with all this wealth of opportunity?
Our sister, the working woman, believes in us. She ties her faith to us—her hope for her children and their future. Many, many times I had women of the slums assure me that “rich ladies” fought for suffrage that they might get shorter hours for working women. And even more often they told me that the fight for Prohibition was fought and won by “rich ladies” for the protection of working-people’s homes.
During the war we showed them that there was no work we couldn’t do, and wouldn’t do, when it was necessary. During the war through us they realized what work was with the stigma rubbed out—work was a badge of honor, idleness a disgrace.