THE WOMAN LABOR PROBLEM

New Zealand Tablet, 22 July 1920, Page 17

THE WOMAN LABOR PROBLEM

(By Joseph Husslein, S.J. in America.)

The problem of woman labor has become of permanent interest and importance. 'Hie world war has but lent to it an added significance. It is a strictly modern problem. The industrial work of women in the Middle Ages was usually confined to assisting father or husband in the home, which was often likewise the workshop of the master tradesman. Yet this was a limited and casual occupation, since there was other work for woman’s hands to do.

It is true none the less that women often held a place in the trade-gilds, and there is mention even of a gild of women goldsmiths. It was a craft calling for delicate skill rather than strength, and woman’s nimble fingers might therefore ply it with special success. Gild regulations in general did not overlook the wives and daughters of the gildsmen. They were to uphold the honor and good repute of the organisation and in return to receive its fullest protection during the life of the gildsman, and particularly after his death. The only person who might conduct a trade by proxy was the widow who desired to continue her husband’s business. She was permitted to transfer the master-work which this implied" to a paid workman.

The first oppressive labor statutes against women that have come to the writer’s notice were those enacted by a woman. They are contained in the labor code of Queen Elizabeth, known as “5 Eliz. cap. 4,” and admirably illustrate the summary way in which labor difficulties were settled in the post-Reformation day. A servant problem had evidently arisen with the increase of wealth and luxury on the part of the rich, and the deep and hopeless depression of the laboring classes that followed upon the Reformation. To supply the desired number of domestic servants it was enacted by Queen Elizabeth that unmarried women between the ages of twelve and forty years could be assigned by the magistrates to service at such wages as these magistrates should determine. If a woman refused she was to be committed to ward until she consented. The delicate prison attention bestowed upon such recalcitrants in the days of “Good Queen Bess” did not encourage any hunger strikes. In practice women might thus be turned over as bondslaves to any employer, against both their own wish and the will of their parents or guardians, to labor for any wages the magistrate

might assign. There was no merciful limit set to the hours of labor or the nature of the work that might be imposed upon them. 4 -S&?

Woman’s more' general, entrance into the industrial field, outside of the home or apart : from domestic service, was to follow upon the invention of machinery. Not that the actual conditions which then came about were necessitated by this invention, but because labor had been handed over to the merciless greed of capital under a system that was no longer influenced by the saving- principles of the Catholic Church. Woman consequently was to exploited in common with man, and even her helpless little ones were not to be spared by “the greedy speculators,” as Pope Leo XIII wrote, “who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making.”

For generations .woman was to furnish the “cheap labor” of the world. She was to be placed in competition, not merely with men and with her own sex, but with the newly invented machinery itself. . It was often found less expensive to employ the deft hands -of woman labor than , to purchase the costly devices of the modern era of industry. In a- million sweat shops and a million homes the song of the shirt was repeated from early morning until late at night: “Work! work! work!” till the brain began to swim and the eyes grew heavy and dim. Far better had been the condition of woman even under the earlier serfdom which the Church had slowly worn away by the power of her doctrine, which, insists that man and woman should be equally free in Christ.

While the new form of sweated labor did not elevate woman, it degraded man through her. It brought about that other’ equally modern problem of unemployment, and clogged the labor market with starving men and women ready to slave for any pittance. Wages were accordingly depressed. Often an entire family—husband, wife, and little children —labored for a wage far less than was due to the father of the family alone. We need not go beyond the United States for illustrations. Thus in the summary of a New York State factory investigation some few years before the war we find the following statement in a clipping made at the time from an A. F. of L. News Letter : —- “Testimony has been adduced which shows that in many instances the children were compelled to work or the entire family would face starvation. It was shown that the price of the necessities of life are higher than ever before in the history of the United States, and the earnings of the tenement dwellers so low that, even with the entire family working, the average was only seven dollars a week. The stories related under oath are almost unbelievable in their recital of hunger and misery.

The deal with women working side by side with, men in iron foundries, performing tasks far beyond their strength, and subject to sudden changes in temperature which result in many instances in fatal diseases; of women working nine to fourteen hours nightly in factories and mills, and of. mere children working in canneries until long into the night. Babies of eighteen months are being trained to sort out artificial petals, and children of tender age, some less than five years, are being used to take advantage of the Christmas holidays to dress dolls, extract meat from nuts, etc.”

“It’s, oh, to be a slave along with ‘ the barbarous -Turk,” ‘ if this is Christian work. Child labor is closely connected with' oppressive woman labor, and is based .upon the same pagan philosophy which the Holy .Scripture : described as especially peculiar to the men of the generation in which Christ was to be born : “The things which are weak are found to be nothing worth. -■ I ■ ■■■■

With the mother forced to sweated labor, the child was soon obliged to help her. The poor mother entering the factory, the child was made to follow. It was the condition against, which Pope Leo raised his voice* and against which Cardinal Manning so strongly wrote long before our Child and Woman labor laws had in any effective way remedied this barbarism. Men complained, wrote the great Cardinal in his comment on the Labor Encyclical, that employers prefer the cheaper workof women, and women are finding that employers prefer the cheaper work of children. “It is the old formula of modern political economy, ‘Sell in the dearest market, and buy in the cheapest.’ What is cheaper than the work of women and half-timers?” A normal state of wage-earning should not merely put the wife back into the home into the midst of her children, as he says, but likewise protect the home itself against the encroachments of that greed to which nothing is sacred. Here is a picture of child labor as a modern social poet faithfully presents it. Facts such as these have helped much to make our Socialists mid anarchists :

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiamctta, Tercsina,

They arc winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one, Little children who have never learned to play; Tercsina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day; Tiny Fiamctta nodding when the twilight slips in, grey, High above tho clattering street, ambulance and fire-gun beat They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one. . . They have never seen a rose bush nor a dew drop in the sun.

Thus fur the sake of the unholy dollar were mothers and children alike oppressed and their souls and bodies left blighted and stunted. What rendered the problem doubly difficult was the fact that both women and children were often prepared to enter into conspiracy with their sweated-labor bosses to evade the provisions of the law when this had at last been enacted. But what were they to do ? They must live, and too often the law had failed to provide for this. It was still Jess possible to organise such women. The organisation of all woman labor has everywhere been extremely difficult and, unfortunately, radicalism often played a dominant part where such organisation was achieved.

Labor unionism has for its own self-protection earnestly worked at the total elimination of child-slavery and of the unnatural conditions and interminable hours of Woman labor, and with no slight success. It has particularly fought to secure for women the same wages that are accorded to men at the same labor. Here, too, its purpose has been self-protection. It has sought to reduce still further the existing competition and to guard the wages of male labor An equal wage should, however, imply an equal service. “The standard of wages hitherto prevailing for men,” says the U.S. war programme, “should not be lowered where women render equivalent services.”

As regards the enactment of minimum wage laws we must, however, clearly distinguish between the lowest wage that may be paid to the adult woman and that which may be paid to the adult male laborer. The former must receive no less than an individual wage which will suffice to support her independently of any external assistance. Though there are some girls who work for ‘‘pin money” or clothing, cumulative evidence shows that the vast majority are aiding in the .support of a family or are living alone, exclusively dependent on their earnings. But while the adult woman worker should receive at the least a living wage, the adult male laborer should receive no less than a full family wage. This will either enable him to marry or to support in Christian decency, the wife and children whom God ,h<js already given him. “The minimum wage,” says Cardinal Manning, “must be sufficient to maintain a man and his home. This does not mean a variable measure, or a sliding scale according to the number of children, but a fixed average sum.”

We have here dealt mainly with what may be regarded as the historical aspect of the question and have touched upon certain phases only of this great problem.