The inability of workingwomen to exercise political rights makes minors of them when compared with workingmen, and this decreases their importance as human beings. Women cannot protect themselves against injustice, and these things put them at a great disadvantage.
The American women became involved in a lively conflict with President Roosevelt (otherwise favoring woman’s rights) concerning his gift to a father and mother for bringing twenty children into the world. The women declared in the Woman’s Journal that it is wrong to encourage an immoderate procreation of children among a population 70 per cent of which possesses no property.[23] Above all, this encouragement is not only a menace to the overworked and oppressed workingwomen, but it is inhuman, and really lowers woman to the position of a machine for bearing children.
The institution of factory inspection does not as yet exist in the whole Union. According to the report of Mrs. v. Vorst[24] the factories and the homes of laborers in the Southern States are extremely unsatisfactory. Child labor is exploited there, a matter which is now being dealt with by the National Child Labor Committee. According to this same work (the inquiry of Mrs. v. Vorst) the living conditions in the North and Central States are better, and the moral menaces to the young girl are inconsiderable. The women of the property-holding classes are attempting to do their duty toward the women of the factories and stores by founding clubs, vacation colonies, and homes for them. Within recent years the great department stores have appointed “social secretaries,” who look after the weal and woe of the employees. It would be well to have such secretaries in the factories and mills also. Since 1874 the working week of sixty hours for women in industry and commerce has spread from Massachusetts to almost the entire Union. Since 1890, night labor has been prohibited by law. The working girls have been provided with seats while at work, partly as a result of legislation and partly by the voluntary act of the employers.
In agriculture women find a profitable field of activity. Of course they are never field hands, but are employers and laborers in the dairy business, in poultry farming, and in the raising of vegetables and fruit. Women have introduced the growing of cress, cranberries, and cucumbers in various regions, and have cultivated the famous asparagus of Oyster Bay and the “Improved New York Strawberries.” In 1900, there were 980,025 women engaged in agriculture (as compared with 9,458,194 men). The number of women domestic servants in the United States amounts to 2,099,165; fifty per cent of the families dispense with servants, since they cannot afford to pay $15 to $20 a month for a servant, or $30 for a cook. Educated women, called visiting housekeepers, undertake the supervision of some of the households of the better class, aided, of course, by help in the house.
The legal status of the American women is regulated by 52 sets of laws, corresponding to the number of states and territories. The civil code is unfavorable to woman in most of the states. In the National Trade Union League (New York) the Reverend Anna Shaw declared recently that in 38 states the property laws made “joint property holding” legal, as a result of which the wife has no independent control of her personal earnings or her personal effects, e.g. her clothes. In 38 states the wife also has no legal authority over her children. For full particulars the reader is referred to Volume IV of the History of Woman’s Suffrage. To an increasing extent the women are using their right to administer their property independently, and the men are usually proud of the business ability and success of their wives.
A legal regulation of prostitution (such as prevailed formerly in England and as prevails now in Germany) does not exist in the United States. Cincinnati is the only city which in the European sense has police control of prostitution. Public opinion has successfully resisted all similar attempts. (Woman’s Journal, July, 1904.) The American Commission, which went to Europe to study the regulation of prostitution, declared that the American woman cannot be expected to sanction such an arrangement, and that, moreover, the system had not stood the test. In the police stations, police matrons are employed. The law protects the woman in the street against the man and not, as in Europe, the man against the woman.
In order to combat the double standard of morals the “Social Purity League” was formed. The membership is composed of those men and women who are thoroughly convinced that there is only one standard of morality for both sexes, since they have the same obligations to their offspring. Founded in 1886, this organization has spread since 1889 throughout the entire Union.
The “World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,” the second largest international woman’s organization, originated in America. It was founded in 1883 by Frances E. Willard (her father was Hilgard, from the Palatinate). The Union has 300,000 members in the United States at the present time, and 450,000 members in the whole world. In 1906 it met in Boston. It is the determined enemy of alcohol, and gives proof of its convictions through the work of its soldier’s and sailor’s department, its committees on railroads, tramways, police stations, cab drivers, etc. This Union, as well as the “Social Purity League,” is a firm advocate of woman’s suffrage.
The emancipation of the American women is promoted through sports. If on the one hand they appreciate an elaborate toilette, on the other hand they recognize the advantages of bloomers, the walking skirt, and the divided skirt. In these costumes they play basketball, polo, tennis, and take gymnastic exercise, fence, and row. The woman’s colleges are centers of athletic life. There the girls now play football in male costume, the public being excluded. In all large cities there are athletic clubs for women, some extremely sumptuous (with a hundred-dollar fee) as well as very simple clubs for workingwomen of sedentary life.
We have seen that the legal status of women in many states is still in need of reform. All the more instructive is the survey of laws concerning women and children in the woman’s suffrage states, published by Mrs. C. Waugh McCullock, a woman lawyer, of Chicago. The wife disposes of her wages and her dowry (in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho). Men and women receive equal pay for the same work. All professions and public offices are open to women. Women act as jurors. They have the same right of inheritance as men. Divorce is granted to either party under the same circumstances. The claims of the wife and the children under age are given a decided preference over those of creditors. Education from the kindergarten to the university is free and is open to women. The labor of women in mines is prohibited. The maximum working-day for women is eight hours. All houses of correction and institutions for the protection of women and children must have women physicians and overseers. The age of consent is 18 years. Gambling and prostitution are prohibited. Both father and mother exercise parental authority. The surviving husband is guardian of the children. The sale of alcoholic liquors and tobacco to children is prohibited. No child under 14 years of age may work in the mines. Pornographic literature and pictures are prohibited.