Ever has it been the very small proportion of men who could by their unaided effort support the entire family. At no time have all the men in a country been able to support all the women, regardless of whether that situation would be desirable. Always must the aid of womenfolk be called in as a matter of course. We have a national ideal of a living wage to the male head of the family which will allow him to support his family without forcing his wife and children into industry. Any man who earns less than that amount during the year must depend on the earnings of wife and children or else fall below the minimum necessary to subsistence, with all which that implies. In 1910, four-fifths of the heads of families in the United States earned under eight hundred dollars a year. At that same time, almost nine-tenths of the women workers living at home in New York City working in factories, mills, and such establishments, paid their entire earnings to the family. Of 13,686 women investigated in Wisconsin in 1914, only 2 per cent gave nothing to the family support. Of girls in retail stores living at home in New York City, 84 per cent paid their entire earnings to the family. Work, then, for the majority of women, is more apt to be cold economic necessity—not only for herself, but for her family.
Besides the fact that great numbers of women must work and many want to work, there are the reasons for women's work arising in modern industry itself. First, a hundred years ago, there was the need for hands in the new manufactures, and because of the even more pressing agricultural demands, men could not be spared. The greater the subdivisions of labor up to a certain point, the simpler the process, and the more women can be used, unskilled as they are ever apt to be. Also they will work at more monotonous, more disagreeable work than men, and for less wages. Again, women's entrance into new industries has often been as strike breakers, and once in, there was no way to get them out. Industrial depressions throw men out of work, and also women, and in the financial pressure following, women turn to any sort of work at any sort of pay, and perhaps open a new wedge for women's work in a heretofore untried field, desirable or undesirable.
The freedom from having to perform every and all domestic functions within the four walls of home is purchased at the expense of millions of toilers outside the home, the majority of whom do not to-day receive enough wages, where they are the menfolk, to support their own families; nor where they are single women, to support themselves. The fact that men cannot support their families forces women in large numbers into industry. There would be nothing harmful in that, if only industry were organized so that participation in it enriched human lives. Remembering always that where industry takes women from the care of young children, society and the nation pay dearly; for, inadequate and ignorant as mothers often are regarding child care, their substitutes to-day are apt to be even less efficient.
Pessimists marshal statistics to show that modern industrialism is going to rack and ruin. Maybe it is. But pessimism is more a matter of temperament than statistics. An optimist can assemble a most cheerful array of figures to show that everything is on the up. Temperament again. Industry is what industry does. If you are feeling gloomy to-day, you can visit factories where it is plain to see that no human being could have his lot improved by working there. Such factories certainly exist. If you would hug your pessimism to your soul, then there are many factories you must stay away from. Despite all the pessimists, there is a growing tendency to increase the welfare of human beings in industry.
It is but an infinitesimal drop any one individual can contribute to hasten a saner industrialism. Yet some of us would so fain contribute our mite! Where the greatest need of all lies is that the human beings in industry, the employer and the employees, shall better understand one another, and society at large better understand both. My own amateur and humble experiences here recorded have added much to my own understanding of the problems of both manager and worker.
Can they add even a fraction to the understanding of anyone else?
Cornelia Stratton Parker.
Woods Hole,
August, 1921.