It would be fatal to our prospects of reaching the women with the message of socialism if we were to give the millions of wage-earning women to understand that we did not intend to let them continue earning their own living, but proposed to compel them to become dependent upon men.  They price what little independence they have, and they want more of it.

It would be equally fatal to our prospects of reaching the women with the message of socialism if we were to give the married women to understand that they must remain dependent upon men.  It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times that they are chafing under the galling chains of dependence.

* * * * *

Far from shutting women out of the industries, socialism will do
just the opposite.

It will open up to every woman a full and free opportunity to earn
her own living and receive her full earnings.

This means the total cessation of marrying for a home.

The degree of irritation that so many men show when expressing themselves on the subject of women in the trades is the measure of their own sense of incompetence to handle it.  The mingled apathy and impatience with which numbers of union men listen to any proposal to organize the girls with whom they work arises from the same mental attitude.  “These girls have come into our shop.  We can’t help it.  We didn’t ask them.  They should be at home.  Let them take care of themselves.”

The inconsistency of such a view is seen when we consider that in the cities at least an American father (let alone a foreign-born father) is rarely found nowadays objecting to his own girls going out to work for wages.  He expects it, unless one or more are needed by their mother at home to help with little ones or to assist in a small family store or home business.  He takes it as a matter of course that his girls go to work as soon as they leave school, just as his boys do.  And yet the workman in a printing office, we will say, whose own daughter is earning her living as a stenographer or teacher, will resent the competition of women type-setters, and will both resent and despise those daughters of poorer fathers, who have found their way into the press or binding-rooms.  Unionists or non-unionists, such men ignore the fact that all these girls have just as much right to earn an honest living at setting type, or folding or tipping and in so doing to receive the support and protection of any organization there is, as their own daughters have to take wages for the hours they spend in schoolroom or in office.  The single men but echo the views of the older ones when such unfortunately is the shop tone, and may be even more indifferent to the girls’ welfare and to the bad economic results to all workers of our happy-go-lucky system or no-system.