Women Wage-Earners: Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future

by Helen Campbell

As to conditions of the work itself, many trades and occupations require for their proper carrying on methods and surroundings absolutely destructive to health. In all preparation of hemp and oakum dust is excessive; far beyond that of the cotton-mill, which itself breeds consumption. In the spinning of flax great heat and water are both necessities. "Nothing is more wretched," writes Jules Simon, "than a linen-spinner's surroundings. Water covers the brick floor. The odor of the linen and a temperature often exceeding twenty-five Reaumur fill the workroom with an intolerable stench. The majority of the workwomen, obliged to put off most of their garments, are huddled together in this pestilential atmosphere, imprisoned in the machines, pressed one against the other, their bodies streaming with sweat, their feet bare to the ankle; and when a day, nominally of twelve hours but really of thirteen and a half, is over, they quit the workroom for home, the rags they wear barely protecting them from cold and damp."

Details of the same order abound in the work of the political economist M. Leroy-Beaulieu,[36] who seeks at all points to give the most favorable impression possible. In each and every case the great authorities appear to be of one mind as to the disastrous effects upon the children born to these mothers. That the crèche is now practically a part of every factory makes little or no difference.

"The crèche," writes Jules Simon, "abolishes maternity in all save its pains. The working mother is defrauded of her own means of growth, bound up in the training of the child; and the child loses its right to be loved and guarded by love." In short, for all continental countries, as well as for England and our women, the question of child labor and the destiny of the child are inextricably bound up in that of the working mother, and are vital factors in working out the problem of woman as a wage-earner. What proportion of wage-earning women recruit the ranks of prostitution, is a question often asked. In Paris, which is in one sense the focus of French labor, its many opportunities drawing to it a large contingent from the provinces, it is popularly supposed that the ranks of the sewing-women give large proportion to houses of prostitution. This opinion is the prevailing one for all large cities, whether in Europe or America, yet is disproved on all sides. For Paris Parent-Duchalet states that in the statistics given by the prefecture of police, in a table including forty-one categories, women with no occupation had first rank as prostitutes, domestic service giving the second, and sewing-women the smallest proportion. This is the more surprising when one considers that their wage is often below the point of subsistence, and that temptation of every order waits upon them. At the best the wage falls far below that of men, even when both engage in the same work. The present movement toward organization is the first step toward a general bettering of all trades and their wage; and for fullest details of this, and work in connection with the admirable Bourse du Travail, one of its most important features of working life to-day in Paris, the reader must turn to the reports themselves, beginning with the first one, issued in 1887-88.[37] The same facts may be said to form the story of labor in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Italy, and at all points where women or children are at work, whether in factory or mine or workshop. For Belgium the situation is summed up in a very important and minute report of the government inquiry commission into the labor of women and children,—the first made in 1867 and followed by one in 1874, the latest having been made in 1891.[38]

A comprehensive law, promulgated Nov. 2, 1892, and regulating the labor of women and children in factories and mines, was amended in May, 1893, by the addition of very specific regulations as to all employments affecting health and morals. The Presidential decree consists of two parts,—the first dealing with the employment of women and children in connection with machinery when in motion, or in which the dangerous parts are not fully protected, in glass-blowing and in carrying weights. The second part of the decree consists of three tables, of which A enumerates certain industries, chiefly the manufacture of acids, dyes, chemicals, etc., also manures and glass, crystal, and metal polishing, in which female and child labor are prohibited; B those in which children under eighteen must not work, chiefly the manufacture of explosives; and C, a large variety of other industries in which female and child labor is only allowed conditionally. The great majority of these are industries involving special risk through the disengagement of dust-particles or vapors; while a few are ranked as dangerous, owing to risk of fire and the contraction of special diseases, etc.

Belgium, French in feeling and in methods, has known some of the worst abuses discoverable on continental soil, thousands of women and children in her mines having toiled from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with often no Sunday rest, for a wage at bare subsistence point. In "Germinal," Zola, who spent months observing every phase of their life, has given a picture, unsurpassed in any literature, of the misery and degradation of the worker. An investigation in 1874, and indignation at some of the conditions then discovered, brought about modifications of the law. That of the general congress of 1891 accomplished much more; but work must still be done before any very marked advance becomes discernible.

Passing to Germany, a good two-thirds of the women are at work in field or shop or home, the proportion of women in agriculture being larger than in any other country of Europe. Her schools furnish better training than those of any other nation. In all these points Prussia leads, though till recently legislation has been in behalf of child-workers, and women have been practically ignored. But factory regulations are minute and extended; and the questions involved in the labor of women, and its bearing on health, longevity, etc., are now coming under consideration. In Silesia, as early as 1868, women were excluded from the salt-mines; and the Labor Congress of 1889 brought about many changes of the laws on this point for Belgium and Germany. In Italy, in which country industrial education is now receiving much attention, the labor of women, continuous, severe, and underpaid, as it is known to be, finds small mention, save among special students of social questions. Russia has practically no data from which judgment can be formed. In short, it is only in English-speaking countries that really efficient action as to the labor of women has taken place; while even for them the work has but begun, and new and more radical forms will be necessary for any real progress toward final betterment. Toward such end the labor bureaus of our own country are working diligently; and it is with them that we have next to do, the investigations already made and incorporated in their reports being full of suggestion for future workers.

The census of 1882 gave for Germany, in a population of 45,222,113 persons, 23,071,364 women, of whom 1,109,530 were widows, and 5,467,730 unmarried, a large proportion of both these classes being self-supporting. An immense number of these were agricultural laborers. In Prussia in 1867 the census gave the number of women agricultural laborers as 1,054,213. Woman's wage for a day's labor, always twelve and often fourteen hours, is from twenty to twenty-five cents, about a third of that received by men doing the same work. Brassey, the great railroad contractor, found throughout Germany that her wage was always a third and often a quarter less than that of men.

For united Germany the description given by Villermé in 1836 is still true for many points. "The misery in which the cotton spinners and weavers of the upper Rhine live," he writes, "is so profound that it produces the saddest results. In the families of manufacturers, drapers, merchants, etc., half the children born attain their nineteenth year, this same half ceasing to exist before the age of two years in the families of weavers and workers at cotton-spinning."

As to numbers employed in trades and industries, it is difficult to secure them with exactness. The census of 1871 reported three tenths of the population as agricultural, the males employed in agriculture being 2,338,174, and the females 4,426,573. Household service had 840,000 women on its rolls. In 1875 the cotton-mills employed in weaving and spinning 95,934 women; the woollen manufacture, nearly 193,000; linen, hemp, and jute, 190,000. The labor of women and children was hardly recognized, and statistics had to be disentangled as best they might be from general tables of occupations. Through the persistent efforts of the Centre in the German Reichstag, a gradual betterment of the working-classes has been brought about, and thus indirectly that of women and children,—the first combined and determined effort being made in 1889, when three bills were brought up for discussion. The first made the working-day not to exceed eleven hours; the second demanded the suspension of industrial labor on Sunday, save in exceptional cases, when five hours' labor was to be allowed; the third concerned the labor of women and children, and with some modifications is practically the law to-day. Night and Sunday labor in mines, smelting-works, rolling-mills, and dockyards is entirely forbidden, nor can married women work more than ten hours a day. The Federal Council has the right also to forbid the employment of women and children in all factories and establishments where health and morals are exposed to exceptional dangers.

At the period at which the investigations which brought about the agitation of the question were made, the number of child laborers had increased in two years from 155,000 to 192,000, children hardly more than babies being in the factories. At present the law forbids the employment of any child under twelve, and not less than three hours' schooling daily is compulsory. Abuses exist at all points, women workers in mines faring, even with shortened day, in very evil case,—the wage at or below subsistence point and the general conditions of the most hopeless order. Constant agitation goes on in the Reichstag, and organization among the women themselves will in time bring about needed reforms; but as a whole the German woman is in many points less considered than the women of any other civilized nation.