[Footnote A:  “The social and educational need for vocational training is equally urgent.  Widespread vocational training will democratize the education of the country:  (1) by recognizing different tastes and abilities, and by giving an equal opportunity to all to prepare for their lifework; (2) by extending education through part-time and evening instruction to those who are at work in the shop or on the farm.”  Report of the Commission on National Aid to Vocational Instruction, 1914, page 12.]

XI

THE WORKING WOMAN AND MARRIAGE

It is a lamentable fact that the wholesome and normal tendency towards organization which is now increasingly noticeable among working-women has so far remained unrelated to that equally normal and far more deeply rooted and universal tendency towards marriage.

As long as the control of trade unionism among women remained with men, no link between the two was likely to be forged; the problem is so entirely apart from any that men unionists ever have to face themselves.  It is true that with a man the question of adhering to a union alike in times of prosperity or times of stress may be complicated by a wife having a “say-so,” through her enthusiasm or her indifference when it means keeping up dues or attending meetings; yet more, when belonging to a union may mean being thrown out of work or ordered on strike, just when there has been a long spell of sickness or a death with all the attendant expenses, or when perhaps a new baby is expected or when the hard winter months are at hand and the children are lacking shoes and clothes.  Still, roughly speaking, a man worker is a unionist or a non-unionist just the same, be he single or married.

But how different it is with a girl!  The counter influence exerted by marriage upon organization is not confined to those girls who leave the trade, and of course the union, if they have belonged to one, after they have married.  The possibility of marriage and especially the exaggerated expectations girls entertain as to the improvement in their lot which marriage will bring them is one of the chief adverse influences that any organization composed of women or containing many women members has to reckon with, an influence acting all the time on the side of those employers who oppose organization among their girls.

It has been the wont of many men unionists in the past and is the custom of not a few today, to accept at its face value the girl’s own argument:  “What’s the use of our joining the union?  We’ll be getting married presently.”  It is much the same feeling, although unspoken, that underlies the ordinary workingman’s unwillingness to see women enter his trade and his indifference to their status in the trade once they have entered it.  The man realizes that this rival of his is but a temporary worker, and he often, too often, excuses himself tacitly, if not in words, from making any