MARGARET DREIER ROBINS
The work of Margaret Dreier Robins has been done in the National Women's Trade Union League. It might be supposed that the aim of such an organization is sufficiently explicit in its title: to get higher wages and shorter hours. But I fancy that it would be a truer thing to say that its aim is to bring into being that ideal of American womanhood which Walt Whitman described:
They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, well-possessed of themselves.
When Whitman made this magnificent prophecy for American womanhood the Civil War had not been fought and its economic consequences were unguessed at. The factory system, which had come into England in the last century, bringing with it the most unspeakable exploitation of women and children, had hardly gained a foothold in this country. In 1840, of the seven employments open to women (teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in cotton mills, in bookbinderies, typesetting and household service) only one was representative of the new industrial condition which today affects so profoundly the feminine physique. And to the daughters of a nation that was still imbued with the pioneer spirit, work in cotton mills appealed so little that they undertook it only for unusually high pay. Anyone of that period seeing the red-cheeked, robust, intelligent, happy girl operatives of Lowell might have dismissed his fears of the factory as a sinister influence in the development of American womanhood and gone on to dream, with Walt Whitman, of a race of "fierce, athletic girls."
But two things happened. With the growing flood of immigration, the factories were abandoned more and more to the "foreigners," the native-born citizens losing their pride in the excellence of working conditions and the character of the operatives. And all the while the factory was becoming more and more an integral part of our civilization, demanding larger and larger multitudes of girls and women to attend its machinery. So that, with the enormous development of industry since the Civil War, the factory has become the chief field of feminine endeavor in America. In spite of the great opening up of all sorts of work to women, in spite of the store, the office, the studio, the professions, still the factory remains most important in any consideration of the health and strength of women.
If the greatest part of our womankind spends its life in factories, and if it further appears that this is no temporary situation, but (practically speaking) a permanent one, then it becomes necessary to inquire how far the factory is hindering the creation of that ideal womanhood which Walt Whitman predicted for us.
As opposed to the old-fashioned method of manufacture in the home (or the sweatshop, which is the modern equivalent), the factory often shows a gain in light and air, a decrease of effort, an added leisure; while, on the other hand, there is a considerable loss of individual freedom and an increase in monotony. But child labor, a too long working day, bad working conditions, lack of protection from fire, personal exploitation by foremen, inhumanly low wages, and all sorts of petty injustice, though not essential to the system, are prominent features of factory work as it generally exists.
People who consider every factory an Inferno, however, and have only pity for its workers, are far from understanding the situation. Here is a field of work which is capable of competing successfully with domestic service, and even of attracting girls from homes where there exists no absolute necessity for women's wages. Yet at its contemporary best, with a ten-hour law in operation, efficient factory inspection, decent working conditions and a just and humane management, the factory remains an institution extremely perilous to the Whitmanic ideal of womanhood.
But there are women who, undaunted by the new conditions brought about by a changing economic system, seize upon those very conditions to use them as the means to their end: such a woman is Mrs. Robins. Has a new world, bounded by factory walls and noisy with the roar of machinery, grown up about us, to keep women from their heritage? She will help them to use those very walls and that very machinery to achieve their destiny, a destiny of which a physical well-being is, as Walt Whitman knew it to be, the most certain symbol.