The wealth and material comfort produced for the fortunate classes by these segregated industries have blinded us to their effects on human life, and we have all been bribed to silence concerning everything which could discourage enterprise or frighten capital. Like most bribes, however, these have largely stopped in the pockets of the exploiters of public opinion.
In the opening years of this new century, public consciousness has had a wonderful awakening.[37] The popular mind, quickened by universal education, and freed from a burden of fixed beliefs, is turning restlessly to inquire about everything that affects human life. Work could not escape this inquisition, and so we are asking not only for a fairer division of the profits of work, but we are also inquiring what occupations are unfit for women, with their special limitations and obligations. When the work is reasonable, how long should a woman work daily? Should she work at night and overtime? Should she work with dangerous machinery? Should she handle substances that endanger health? Should she be required to stand through hours of continuous work? Should she work in bad air, due to dust, moisture, or excessive heat or cold? Should she have a decent retiring-room? Some daring inquirers are even asking whether industrial efficiency, gained through specialization and keying up, may not be purchased at too high a price of mental monotony and nervous strain. Most people are content to learn that the effects are not immediately destructive to the girls and women involved; but some day we shall demand that the barons of industry shall not be allowed to squander the heritage of the unborn generations.
[37] C. Hanford Henderson, Pay-Day, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1911.
Women have themselves done much to quicken this public consciousness. Enrolled in labor unions, they have shown power to stand together and make sacrifice, as in the shirt-waist makers' strike in New York in 1908, which commanded the admiration of all fair-minded observers. The more fortunately placed women have aided these movements toward self-betterment; and, through such organizations as the National Consumers' League, they have compelled manufacturers and shopkeepers to observe more reasonable hours, pay better wages, and furnish decent material conditions for their employees.[38]
[38] See the recent volume, based on investigations made by the National Consumers' League, Making Both Ends Meet, by Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt, The Macmillan Co., 1911. See, also, Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores, by Elizabeth Beardsley Butler, published by the Charities Publication Committee, for the Russell Sage Foundation, 1912.
The solution of woman's present industrial problem is not an easy task, but out of the present unsettlement certain facts are emerging with a good deal of clearness. The efficiency in production, secured by concentration and specialization, make it certain that the old-time home with its multiplied industries will not return, but that more and more even of its present lessened activities will be transferred to factories and to their equivalents. It is also certain that women are not going to be supported in indolence by men, because when deprived of the discipline which full participation in life gives, they must always degenerate. For themselves, and for the sake of their children, they will demand a chance to live abundantly. It is also clear that our present chaotic conditions are destructive of health, happy marriages, effective homes, and the strong line of descendants which must always be the chief care of an intelligent society.
In the first place, then, we must work to produce an entire change in our present mental attitude toward organized industries. Our present worship of industrial products, no matter how obtained, must give way to a recognition of the fact that the chief asset of a nation is its people; that a woman is more important than the clothes she makes in factories or sells in stores; and that to needlessly destroy or scrapheap a working woman is worse than to needlessly destroy or scrapheap the finest and most costly machine ever devised by man. Such a statement seems to carry conviction in its every phrase, but the fact is that we do not believe it, and until we do believe it, there will be little help for our present absurd and wretched conditions. Unregulated competition, backed by greed of individuals and groups, will go on wasting the wealth of women's lives until we cease to be fascinated and hypnotized by the display of products which they make possible. Better fine women and children, and few things, than stores and warehouses crowded with goods, and the women and children of our present factory towns. By fixing our attention on people instead of things, we should almost certainly secure more and better things; but, regardless of cost, we must change the focus of our attention.
In the second place, girls must get ready to be women. The education of the home and the school must be unified, and together they must give a training that will lead girls into the actualities of the life that lies before them. Our present elementary schools, and still more our high schools, lead girls neither to intelligent work nor to intelligent living as women and mothers. Up to at least the age of fourteen, the education should be general, looking to the development of all the powers of body, mind and sensibilities. But through all these eight or ten years of training, two factors should receive constant and intelligent attention. In the first place, we should realize that we are not fitting women for drawing-rooms nor for convents, but for a working world; therefore well graded and interesting manual training should run through all these years and should furnish a well-developed base for later special industrial preparation of some kind. In the second place, the girls should be taught by men and women, married and unmarried, and fine ideals of actual womanhood, not alone in shops and factories, in school-rooms, and in professions—but also in homes, should be constantly held before them. Our present education leaves this training mainly to the homes, and neither the parasitic rich nor our eight million wage-earning women, when mothers, can or will attend to it.
After the girl reaches the age of fourteen, she should have at least two years of further education in which she could master the details of some necessary work which would enable her to look the world in the face and offer fair payment for her living. With most girls, this work would be connected with children and the service of the home; for domestic service, no matter how organized, must always occupy a multitude of women. All girls should have at least rudimentary training in these matters.
During the period of transition from schools to their own family life, the girls might well give a half dozen years to work in factories and stores where the conditions should be as good, and as well guarded, as in our best school buildings—in factories, in a word, where the employers would be willing that their own daughters should work. This is surely a fair standard. Work which is not safe or fit for me to do, is not fit for me to hire done. If this principle fails, then democracy is but a dream.