the law. She appeared to me not as the equal of
man either physically or legally. It remained
to study her socially. In the factory where I
worked men and women were employed for ten-hour days.
The women’s highest wages were lower than the
man’s lowest. Both were working as hard
as they possibly could. The women were doing menial
work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do.
The men were properly fed at noon; the women satisfied
themselves with cake and pickles. Why was this?
It is of course impossible to generalize on a single
factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew
from what I saw myself. The wages paid by employers,
economists tell us, are fixed at the level of bare
subsistence. This level and its accompanying
conditions are determined by competition, by the nature
and number of labourers taking part in the competition.
In the masculine category I met but one class of competitor:
the bread-winner. In the feminine category I
found a variety of classes: the bread-winner,
the semi-bread-winner, the woman who works for luxuries.
This inevitably drags the wage level. The self-supporting
girl is in competition with the child, with the girl
who lives at home and makes a small contribution to
the household expenses, and with the girl who is supported
and who spends all her money on her clothes. It
is this division of purpose which takes the “spirit”
out of them as a class. There will be no strikes
among them so long as the question of wages is not
equally vital to them all. It is not only nature
and the law which demand protection for women, but
society as well. In every case of the number
I investigated, if there were sons, daughters or a
husband in the family, the mother was not allowed
to work. She was wholly protected. In the
families where the father and brothers were making
enough for bread and butter, the daughters were protected
partially or entirely. There is no law which
regulates this social protection: it is voluntary,
and it would seem to indicate that civilized woman
is meant to be an economic dependent. Yet, on
the other hand, what is the new force which impels
girls from their homes into the factories to work when
they do not actually need the money paid them for
their effort and sacrifice? Is it a move toward
some far distant civilization when women shall have
become man’s physical equal, a “free,
economic, social factor, making possible the full
social combination of individuals in collective industry”?
This is a matter for speculation only. What occurred
to me as a possible remedy both for the oppression
of the woman bread-winner and also as a betterment
for the girl who wants to work though she does not
need the money, was this: the establishment of
schools where the esthetic branches of industrial
art might be taught to the girls who by their material
independence could give some leisure to acquiring a
profession useful to themselves and to society in
general. The whole country would be benefited