Men and Things

by Henry A. Atkinson

A study of the conditions shows that nearly all the work done by women in the warring nations is unskilled or semi-skilled. There are not very many opportunities for advancement and most of the women feel that they are simply working in an emergency; hence there is not a chance of their becoming efficient as skilled workers. The ability of these workers is remarkable, especially when we take into consideration the fact that most of the women had no training before the war. In the working of automatic machines where technical skill is of less value than carefulness, attention, and dexterity, women are much more efficient than men. In a report made upon the conditions in the employment of women in Great Britain during the war, is this statement concerning the efficiency of women: “In regularity, application, accuracy, and finish women have proved very satisfactory.”

Quality of Work. In the work that women are able to do, they learn quickly, more so than the men employed in the same places; and they increase the output above what was usual with the men workers. The experience in the United States in pre-war times proves the efficiency of the women workers. The treasury department employs women for the detecting of counterfeits in paper money. After a bad bill has gone through half a dozen banks, and has been subjected to the closest scrutiny, and yet has not been detected, these experienced women can detect it by its “feel.” According to statistics color-blindness is much more prominent in men than in women. A noted educator is authority for the statement that in the public schools four per cent. of all the boys are color-blind, while only one tenth of one per cent. of the girls are color-blind. It is now generally conceded that the sight is the most intelligent of all the senses. The average woman, no matter what she undertakes, will work harder to make herself proficient than will the average man. One result of so many women entering into industry is to raise the grade of employment and make the workers more competent. It may not seem that this would be the result at first, but that rather the reverse would be true. It was the entering of women into the ranks of the physicians that changed the meager ten or eleven months’ course of the medical college into the four years’ course that is required to-day.

There never has been a time when women were not in industry. When the loom left the home, women followed it into the factory. More than eight million women and girls were employed in gainful occupations outside the home in the United States just before the war began. This number has been increased, yet it is not out of proportion to the number of women in the country. It is logical that women should continue in industry. A woman must live, and for her living a certain amount of money is required. This money must be given to her or she must earn it; not only that, but the women of to-day will demand the right to do some constructive work in the midst of the new conditions under which we live.

The Field of Women’s Activity. Certain vocations are closed to women. All those occupations which demand great physical strength belong of right to man. The heavy work in the steel-mills, much of the work in constructural iron trades, wood-work, bridge-building, stone masonry, heavy carpentry, mining, smelting, refining minerals, and the heavy work of shoveling and lifting are men’s tasks. Many of the trades are also closed to women, because in these trades it takes at least five years’ apprenticeship before a man is able to earn a salary. Women do not care to enter into such a long apprenticeship. They will not give five years to non-productive work, for the great majority of women have not accepted industrial work in preference to married life. If the right man comes along, the average woman would feel that as a home-maker cooperating with her husband she could accomplish more than by continuing alone as an industrial unit. Of this attitude Miss Alice Henry says, “Give her fairer wages, shorten her hours of toil, let her have a chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent, normal woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. She will not be tempted to accept passively any man who offers himself, just in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony, and deprivation.”[4]

[4] Alice Henry, The Trade Union Woman.

Press Illustrating Service.

In the army of laborers the girl and the woman are drafted as well as the boy and the man.

A Woman’s Chances in a Man’s World. Woman is an organic part of society. This means that she is a part of every one of the organizations that enter into modern society. She has always had a part in literature. Julia Ward Howe in writing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” contributed not only to our wealth of song, but made a direct contribution toward the winning of the freedom of the slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe also gave her remarkable aid to the same cause. George Eliot was one of the great novelists. In the field of reform Frances E. Willard takes first place. Maud Ballington Booth, the “little mother” of thousands of prisoners, is making a new world for the men into which they may enter when they leave the penitentiary door. It is the Pilgrim mothers rather than the Pilgrim fathers who ought to be given the credit for New England’s contribution to national history. All other attempts to colonize failed because the adventurers in their quest for gold and fortunes did not bring their women with them. Anna the prophetess of old in the temple and Susan B. Anthony in the suffrage cause each represent an age and an enthusiasm and an ability to persist until results are achieved.

Now we have a new situation. Many people view with concern the increasing numbers of women that are employed in gainful occupations in the United States and Canada at the present time. The employment of women presents not one question but many. The problem that is familiar to nearly all housekeepers—that of securing domestic service—presses upon our attention the number of women employed in this kind of work. Domestic service engages the largest number of women outside of the home. Women are now doing everything that men have done, and in most cases are doing the work just as well, while in many occupations they show an efficiency that men have never achieved. Charles Kingsley’s phrase, “For men must work and women must weep,” did very well in that age, but under the economic conditions under which we are living to-day, the contrast he makes is absolutely inappropriate. The question of work and workers has been settled. In the army of laborers the girl and the woman are drafted as well as the boy and man.