After a careful study of one of the thickly populated working districts in New York, Mrs. More says, “As the children grow older and require less of her care at home, the mother takes in sewing or goes out washing, secures a janitor’s place, cleans offices, and does whatever she can to increase the weekly income. She feels this to be her duty, and often it is necessary, but frequently it has a disastrous effect on the ambition of the husband. As soon as he sees that the wife can help support the family, his interest and sense of responsibility are likely to lessen, and he works irregularly or spends more on himself. There are, of course, many families in which this united income is needed, when the man’s illness or incapacity makes it imperative for the wife to help. Sometimes it is due to thrift and ambition to save money for the future, or for some definite purpose. Charitable societies generally deplore the prevalence of this custom because of its economic and moral results on the head of the family.”[47]
The British Board of Trade, in its report on French towns, says: “With regard to the wives’ earnings it may be observed that their importance is not limited to the towns in which textile industries predominate. In 51 per cent of all the families from which budgets were obtained the wives were contributors; the proportion was highest at Rome (a town largely dependent on the cotton trade,) where it was no less than 82 per cent.” Of Germany the report says, “A large proportion of the home workers are married women, who in this way seek to supplement the earnings of the chief bread-winner, and are only able to devote odd hours to the work. How largely the custom of home working is a result of poverty may be concluded from a statement made in a memorial lately addressed to the Berlin Tramway Company by its employees. The tramway employee is unfortunately unable to dispense with the earnings of his wife, even in normal domestic conditions, if he would maintain his family properly. The wife has really no choice in the matter. So, too, of 2,051 municipal employees interrogated on the subject in 1905. 416 or 20.2 per cent replied that their wives worked for money, 170 at charring, 161 as home workers, and 17 in factories, and 68 in other ways.”[48]
In spite of their economic independence the status of the women among the working poor is lower than the status of the women of any other social class. They suffer more from oppression, and their position is little higher than that of the women of the Australia aborigines among whom man has the power of life and death over his wife and children. It is true, the state restricts the power of the husband over the wife and secures for her certain personal rights the Australian savages are ignorant of, but she has a new master in modern industry which virtually exercises over her a power of life and death untempered by sympathy and mutual interest. Degeneracy and elimination such as was never known in primitive society would result if the more fortunately situated economic classes did not interfere.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Dawson, German Life in Town and Country, p. 50.
[36] Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of England, p. 287.
[37] Orne, Eliza, Conditions of Women in the Nail, Chain and Bolt Making Industries.
[38] Ibid, p. 574.
[39] Gohre, Three Months in a Workshop, p. 190.
[40] Charities and Commons, Feb. 6, 1909, p. 916.