WORKING GIRLS.
Question. What is your opinion of the work undertaken by the World in behalf of the city slave girl?
Answer. I know of nothing better for a great journal to do. The average girl is so helpless, and the greed of the employer is such, that unless some newspaper or some person of great influence comes to her assistance, she is liable not simply to be imposed upon, but to be made a slave. Girls, as a rule, are so anxious to please, so willing to work, that they bear almost every hardship without complaint. Nothing is more terrible than to see the rich living on the work of the poor. One can hardly imagine the utter heartlessness of a man who stands between the wholesale manufacturer and the wretched women who make their living—or rather retard their death—by the needle. How a human being can consent to live on this profit, stolen from poverty, is beyond my imagination. These men, when known, will be regarded as hyenas and jackals. They are like the wild beasts which follow herds of cattle for the purpose of devouring those that are injured or those that have fallen by the wayside from weakness.
Question. What effect has unlimited immigration on the wages of women?
Answer. If our country were overpopulated, the effect of immigration would be to lessen wages, for the reason that the working people of Europe are used to lower wages, and have been in the habit of practicing an economy unknown to us. But this country is not overpopulated. There is plenty of room for several hundred millions more. Wages, however, are too low in the United States. The general tendency is to leave the question of labor to what is called the law of supply and demand. My hope is that in time we shall become civilized enough to know that there is a higher law, or rather a higher meaning in the law of supply and demand, than is now perceived. Year after year what are called the necessaries of life increase. Many things now regarded as necessaries were formerly looked upon as luxuries. So, as man becomes civilized, he increases what may be called the necessities of his life. When perfectly civilized, one of the necessities of his life will be that the lives of others shall be of some value to them. A good man is not happy so long as he knows that other good men and women suffer for raiment and for food, and have no roof but the sky, no home but the highway. Consequently what is called the law of supply and demand will then have a much larger meaning.
In nature everything lives upon something else. Life feeds upon life. Something is lying in wait for something else, and even the victim is weaving a web or crouching for some other victim, and the other victim is in the same business—watching for something else. The same is true in the human world—people are living on each other; the cunning obtain the property of the simple; wealth picks the pockets of poverty; success is a highwayman leaping from the hedge. The rich combine, the poor are unorganized, without the means to act in concert, and for that reason become the prey of combinations and trusts. The great questions are: Will man ever be sufficiently civilized to be honest? Will the time ever come when it can truthfully be said that right is might? The lives of millions of people are not worth living, because of their ignorance and poverty, and the lives of millions of others are not worth living, on account of their wealth and selfishness. The palace without justice, without charity, is as terrible as the hovel without food.
Question. What effect has the woman's suffrage movement had on the breadwinners of the country?
Answer. I think the women who have been engaged in the struggle for equal rights have done good for women in the direction of obtaining equal wages for equal work. There has also been for many years a tendency among women in our country to become independent —a desire to make their own living—to win their own bread. So many husbands are utterly useless, or worse, that many women hardly feel justified in depending entirely on a husband for the future. They feel somewhat safer to know how to do something and earn a little money themselves. If men were what they ought to be, few women would be allowed to labor—that is to say, to toil. It should be the ambition of every healthy and intelligent man to take care of, to support, to make happy, some woman. As long as women bear the burdens of the world, the human race can never attain anything like a splendid civilization. There will be no great generation of men until there has been a great generation of women. For my part, I am glad to hear this question discussed—glad to know that thousands of women take some interest in the fortunes and in the misfortunes of their sisters.
The question of wages for women is a thousand times more important than sending missionaries to China or to India. There is plenty for missionaries to do here. And by missionaries I do not mean gentlemen and ladies who distribute tracts or quote Scripture to people out of work. If we are to better the condition of men and women we must change their surroundings. The tenement house breeds a moral pestilence. There can be in these houses no home, no fireside, no family, for the reason that there is no privacy, no walls between them and the rest of the world. There is no sacredness, no feeling, "this is ours."
Question. Might not the rich do much?