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HEARfiT'S SUNDAY AMERICAN. ATLANTA. QA., SUNDAY. MAY 25, IMS.
3 E
WOMEN’S WAGES SHOULD BE FIXED BY LAW
Only by Legislation and the Establishment of a
Minimum Wage Can Working Women and
Girls and the Generations to Come be Protect
ed Against Avaricious Compeling Employers.
A GOOD JOB FOR THE BABY, BY AND BY!
Copyright, 1813, IntorniUonal New* Mortice.
“Take good care of your baby,’’ says the kindly fat child-labor employer to the new mother. “Bring her up care
fully. I’ll need her by and by to run a loom for me.’’ And the mother wonders, as she holds her baby tightly to her breast,
if, after all her suffering and all her mother love, and all her hope for the little girl in her arms, the baby will be taken
away, when she is still a baby to the mother, and set before one of those great cruel machines, to stunt her mind and body,
and all that the fat child-labor emqloyer may profit.
T HE important thing on this earth is the
HUMAN RACE, not individual profits.
The women create the race, and the
welfare of women and girlM, their health, their
strength, their vitality, THEIR VIRTUE,
TRANSMITTED TO THEIR CHILDREN, sur
pass in importance* all other Questions.
Tc-day undef our methods of employment
and competition, the working woman is the
lower millstone in a grinding system of mean-
nesr, cupidity and heartless exploitation.
Many animals are used by man as beasts
of burden—from the Asiatic elephant, the
small llama of the Andes, animals of all kinds,
the horse, the ox, the mule, the ass. the camel,
even the ostrich and the reindeer, are made
6r,to working slaves for men. Cheapest of
all, among the animals that man harnesses
and drives in his money making schemes, IS
the human female.
Do you want a miserable slave to stand on
her feet all day long, with aching back, and
tired heart, and stretched nerve* for twelve
or more hours a day—hire a girl of sixteen.
You can hire her for less than it actually
costs to feed her if you are a good stave driver.
Do you want your office building scrubbed
right after night? Do you want a human
being hands and knees to spend the hours
of darkness every nighf, year in and year out,
trawling across the cold stone floor, in the
wet, scrubbing, cleaning, head bent, and face
white and worn—hire some gray-haired woman,
who has been left a widow with children, or
who is cursed with a sick or a drunken hus
band. Such a woman you can hire for $1
per night, if you know how to go about it.
and how to find the mother made
DESPERATE by HER CHILDREN’S NEEDS.
Do you want swiftly moving fingers, keen
eyesight, great agility, in your canning fac-
tcrien—or in your making of paper boxes or
artificial flowers?
HIRE LITTLE GIRLS—YOU CAN GET
THEM BY THE THOUSANDS FOR A FEW
CENTS A DAY.
By bribing Inspectors, or avoiding inspectors,
you can work these children from daylight un
til dark, working the mothers, too, through the
same hours. This is done; it PAYS, and the
affidavits and the photographs are on record,
showing the half-fed, half-grown children fall
ing alseep from exhaustion at their work, then
wakened and driven to give up the last ounce
of vitality by threats and blows.
Thlt' is a fine world for the man who wants
to make a fortune out of cheap female labor.
The little store and the big store, the little
tenement sweat shop, and the sweat shop in
the left, and the great sweating factory ALL
COMPETE, AND THEIR COMPETITION
TURNS UPON THE QUESTION HOW MUCH
LAEOR CAN WE EXTRACT FROM THE
BODIES OF WOMEN AND GIRLS, AND HOW
LITTLE MONEY, HOW LITTLE FOOD AND
REST CAN THEY BE COMPELLED TO AC
CEPT IN RETURN?
When merchants in the big city need extra
horses in their delivery department, they pay
usually $1.75 a day for the use of a horse—
and they must promise to take good care of it,
drive it slowly, and it must be driven only so
many miles and so many hours.
The man who pays $1.75 for the day's work
of a horse PAYS FIFTY CENTS AND OFTEN
LESS FOR THE DAY'S WORK OF A GIRL
OR A WOMAN.
And the horse needs only a bed of straw,
oats and hay, NO CLOTHING. You know
what the woman ought to have, although she
dees not get It.
Mere and more the women of the country
are drawn into the whirlpool of industry and
commerce, half paid and half fed.
More and more the vitality of the mothers
of the next generation is drained and dimin
ished for the sake of profits. NOW.
Every little child put to work beyond its
strength, every girl harnessed to a machine
run by electricity at high speed, every woman
overworked, underpaid and underfed, repre
sents a weak mother, and every weak mother
means weak children and a weaker generation
to succeed this one.
The story has been told in England, where
child labor and overworked underpaid female
labqi produced a generation so sickly and
stunted that it was difficult to find recruits
of the proper size even for as small an army
as the English army.
Are we going to have in rhe United States
and in the big cities a oopulation like that of
the East End of London, a White Chapel dis
trict, where 'he women bear babies that aro
called "wasters” children, that no skill can
save from the grave In Infancy?
Are we to have duplicates here of the mis
erable half-starved and often degraded Eng
lish working girls, living on a few shillings a
week, keeping their bodies and nervous energy
going with tea, OR WITH GIN?
For WHAT was this Republic established?
Was it to enrich a few merchants and man
ufacturers, or was It to create a nation free,
strong and healthy, with the women powerful,
gcoo mothers, the children healthy and at
play, and the men able to protect the women,
and safeguard the children in their youth?
SUPPLY AND DEMAND? What have sup
ply and demand to do with questions affecting
the welfare of a race?
When w f e say here THAT THE LAW
SHOULD AND WILL COMPEL THE PAY
MENT OF'DECENT WAGES TO WOMEN we
are y>ld that we ignore the law of "supply and
demand" and that these things must regulate
themselves.
NOTHING regulates Itself. Man has his in
telligence in order that.HE may regulate con
ditions and rfbolish brutality, and compel jus
tice.
We make -thousands of laws to protect the
merchant and the manufacturer in their money
making.
Our Government attacks and punishes com
binations and conspiracies in restraint of trade,
because they hurt the individual business man.
We forbid the railroads to practice extortion
and oppress the money-making shipper of goods
through rebates.
Wc say that the passenger shall be carried at
so much per mile, that the thousand feet of gas
shall be sold for so many cents.
In every direction, when money is involved,
we make laws forbidding oppression, compell
ing fair prices, protecting industrial, commer
cial and personal rights.
Shall we not also make law’s protecting
women and girls against the sharks and the
shark-like selfishness by which they are exploit
ed and ground down?
No man denies that women and girls are
hired, FORCED BY THEIR POVERTY AND
HELPLESSNESS, to work for wages upon
which they cannot live.
Upon such wages, paid to hundreds of thou
sands of women, normal health and strength
cannot be maintained.
The law would not permit a man to under
feed a horse and gradually wear him out. This
would be prevented regardless of any argu
ment as to competition. CRUELTY BEING
DEMONSTRATED, THE HALF FED ANIMAL
WOULD BE PROTECTED AND THE OWNER
PUNISHED.
Cruelty exists, and heartless brutality ex
ists, wherever a woman or girl is put to work,
paid less than it costs her to live, or worked
beyond her strength.
To overwork or starve a woman, to drive
giris to immoral lives, is crime, AND THE LAW
SHOULD PREVENT CRIME REGARDLESS
OF “ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS AND LAWS.”
For years th' matter has been left hap-haz-
ard to accident, to competition, to individual
M-lfishness, and for years conditions have been
getting worse.
It lv time for the public intelligence, the
public conscience and the public power to pro
tect women by law.
Every Legislature in every State should pun-
isl; as a felony th*' criminal underpaying and
overworking of women employees.
Careful investigation, intelligent and honest
consideration of conditions and cost of living,
Mioud underlie such legislation, of couse.
In the cities, where rents and living expenses
are highest, the minimum, that is to say the
lowest, legal wage should be higher than in
the smaller towns and villages, where life's cost
is Uss.
This would discourage the dreadful crowd
ing in great cities, the criminal building of
factories and sweat shops in narrow, sunless
city streets. It would scatter population and
counteract a great evil of our day.
Dc not imagine that any capable or honest
man, any useful Industry or business, would
be Injured by laws giving Just protection to
v. omen.
That which is GOOD FOR THE WHOLE
NATION IS GOOD FOR EVERY HONEST
CITIZEN IN IT.
Establish by law’ a minimum wage for women,
protect the children by law* against deadly child
labor, and you protect the well meaning em
ployer, the man with a conscience and a heart.
Forbid the exploitation of women, the starv
ing and underpaying of girls, by miserable and
heartless employers, and you protect the good
employer. SINCE YOU PROTECT THE FAIR
MAN AGAINST HEARTLESS COMPETITION.
Many a man conducting a great business is
filled with shame as he contemplates his pay
roll He has, perhaps, one thousand women
and girls working for him, and ho knows that
at best three-quarters of them are shamefully
underpaid, BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR AND
DISORGANIZED.
But, he must PAY WHAT THE OTHERS
PAY OR GO OUT OF BUSINESS.
He competes with other employers in his
ability to buy goods, in *his knowledge of pub
lic taste, in his power of organization. HE
COMPETES ALSO IN HIS POWER TO BUY
THE LIFE BLOOD OF WORKING WOMEN
AT THE LOWEST POSSIBLE PRICE.
Laws, that will protect the working women
against starvation wages will protect honest
employers. And, what is far more important,
such laws will protect the coming generations
and tht future of this country.
It will be said that MEN are unerpald also,
that disorganized labor suffers, and that the
wives and children of the laborer suffer, in the
competition of low wages. That is true.
But one step at a time is man’s way of walk
ing And one step at a time is the Govern
ment's way of lawmaking.
Protect the women and girls, compel payment
of decent wages. JAIL THE MAN WHO HIRES
A GIRI OR WOMAN FOR LESS THAN IT
COSTS HER TO LIVE DECENTLY, OR WHO
WORKS HER SO HARD AS TO LEAVE NO
ENERGY IN HER BODY FOR THE DUTIES
OF MOTHERHOOD, AND YOU WILL HAVE
MADE A GOOD BEGINNING.
SHALL A WIFE OBEY ? -
tM alternately interested, pleased or
alarmed at the recurring efforts of the New
vo charge or abrogate the mar-
e laws and ceremonies.
he English suffragists, nuret militant and
t violent of all their Bex-in-captivlty, are
lng the movement and centralizing for the
lent their attacks upon the word "OBEY"
le marriage service of the Church,
r Anna Shaw, of New York, for whose char-
r and ability I have always entertained
respect and admiration, takes up the
jels in support of the English contention
stoutly belabors this irritating and offensive
J.
lOuld a wife "obey" her husband?
lis, then, is the domestic question of the
■. Dr. Shaw and the English militants natu-
- thunder "No!” .
rs Arthur Dodge, dauntless and unterrified
ment of the suffrage movement, as stoutly
vers, "Let the word remain!"
launch my frail canoe upon the surging
»rs between these two redoubtable battle-
s of thought, and put out for port.
Shaw, astute polemlst that she Is, seeks
arry the question by storm In the vigor of
first assault.
Iny clergyman w r ho compels a woman to
nise to obey a man," says Dr. Shaw, "com-
i that woman in advance to perjury For
voman ever has or ever will keep such a
nise if it’s made,”
lis would seem to settle the question,
it this major premise and the conclusion of
ic morality as founded on pnvate veracity
ear.
is true probably that multitudes of women
promise do not fulfil In obedience the
ge made at the altar. How many women,
be- — the majority of women do, neither
Dr, Shaw nor anyone else could say. But Dr.
Shaw cannot deny that multitudes of women
In ages past, and multitudes of women In the age
about us, and multitudes in the coming years,
have made and will make this promise and
keep it as faithful, loving and obedient wives,
and that domestic civilization has been worked
out fairly well South and North, East and West,
upon this basis, until this great age of assertion
and discontent has come to change the status
by a new and as yet unproved experiment. It
remains to be seen whether the new' Republic
of Marriage and Home Is going to be any bet
ter, any happier and any more effective for
children and law and order If the New Woman
shall prevail to rule It under the later Declara
tion of Independence. Beyond the present
status there is pure speculation which must
wait on time and trial. There are certainly
some fine and wholesome centuries of happi
ness and development and womanly Influence
to be credited to the old regime.
There Is nothing in Dr. Shaw's subsequent
bombardment so effective as this first twelve-
inch shell. Her continuing argument revolves
around the injustice which makes man unfit to
be obeyed.
It is likely that the restless women of the
new crusade believe that the "obey” in the
marriage ceremony is a relic of some foolish
and even barbarous laws and customs that out
lived the age of chivalry.
Time was when a man had every advantage
of woman In property and children. Wendell
Phillips used to tell the story of a man in
Massachusetts who married an heiress worth
fifty thousand dollars, and when he died he
bequeathed to her, under the Massachusetts
law, her own money upon condition that she
should never marry again!
Time was when the clothes a woman wore be
longed by statute law to the prententions biped-
in-breeches whose names she carried. Tima
was, and is now in one State, when a man was
allowed by law to whip his wife provided he
used a rod no larger in size than his little
finger. Time was when It tvas a greater crime
to steal a cow than to bring a virtuous woman
into shame. Time was when a little girl could
consent to her own ruin at the age of ten and
twelve—in Delaware, God save the mark, at
seven!
Time was when a married woman living with
her husband had no right to her children; and,
worse still, a bksband could by will bequeath
his children away from the mother that gave
them birth!
Monstrous laws, thpse—man-made laws, too—
made not so 'much because rBen deliberately
meant to be cruel or unjust, but because they
simply looked at things from their own point
of view. Still, they make a mighty plea for
woman’s suffrage and her equality In making
laws.
Suppose woman had made the laws alone.
They would just as surely have leaned like
Babel in the other way.
But these unjust laws have been all re
pealed. and man-made laws In this later day
give woman the advantage in a hundred ways.
Justice Timlin, of the Supreme Court of Wis
consin, gave to Marjorie Dorman the other day
a summary of these woman-partial man-made
laws which woman must doubtless forfeit when
her demand for “equal rights" Is legally de
creed :
Woman now enjoys, by man’s decree, exemp
tion from military duty and exemption from
jury duty.
If the husband owns real estate, even in New
York, he cannot sell or dispose of it by will In
such a way as to affect the wife’s dower, even
with her consent, but the wife can sell or dis
pose of her real estate by will without his con
sent to anyone she mav prefer.
A man may marry a woman and give her a
- - By John Temple Graves
house and the woman can give or bequeath
that house to her lover without her husband's
consent, the law reserving to him only the
right to occupy It during his own lifetime, if
the wife should die.
In case of divorce the man must by law
divide his property in degree with his wife,
but even If she is wealthy she cannot be com
pelled to provide alimony for him.
He is obliged to pay her bills, even for false
teeth, but she doe# not have to pay his bills,
although able to do so.
She may be worth a million and cut the
husband off without a penny by her will or con
veyance, but he cannot cut her off by either
without her consent.
If he dies leaving children, a widow and
an estate, no matter how large, consisting of
personal property, she not only gets her widow’s
allowance, but comes in equally with the chil
dren for a share of the personal estate, whllo
he, under the same circumstances, no matter
how wealthy she may he, gets nothing.
If the homestead is In his name he can
not sell or mortgage it without the signature
of his wife; If it Is In her name she may sell or
mortgage It without his signature.
The same as to exempt personal property.
The husband can be arrested and prose
cuted criminally If he fails to support his wife
needing such support, but no matter how
wealthy she is or how sick or poor he is, she is
not so liable.
The personal property of the wife Is as
sessed against the husband, and by the new
Income tax law he must report and pay tax on
the Income of his wife,
If she commits a crime while in his pres
ence It is presumed that he coerced her to do
so. and he will be presumed guilty and she not
guilty.
If she slanders her neighbor he must pay
the damages, hut if he slaudeta he must stand
the consequences himself.
Surely, these are mighty statutes to plead In
vindication of man’s chivalry and justice, and
must go far to offset the long years of selfish
injustice in which he oppressed the woman.
Nor can Dr. Shaw and her brilliant colleagues
plead that these man-made laws were made by
the fear and compulsion of woman's rapidly
approaching suffrage.
For be It remembered that these laws have
been for some years on the books, and that
ton years ago It would have been difficult
to find even a comparative handful of men in
this country who regarded woman's suffrage
as either probable or possible! There are
many who do not think so even now.
I am myself a long-time committed and
earnest suffragist. I wish woman to have her
ballot and all her rights, but I wish her, for
her own sake and for ours, to come Into her
rights without bitterness or injustice to men, or
In Ignorance of his later generous concessions
to her advantage.
If I were arguing with Tir. Shaw for the re
tention of "obey" in the marriage rite -as 1 am
not—I would remind her that in the beginning,
when the man and woman lived in Eden on
equal terms, the woman's influence in that
primal government was neither wise nor right,
and resulted in banishment and sorrow, which
may have forced Adam to assert the subsequent
authority for the benefit of both, and per
petuated it through succeeding generations of
rebellious and tempting Eves.
I would argue that in government. In business
and in law the wisdom of the years has found
It advisable to have some central authority
and head, for every working body of individ
uals who live and love and labor together.
1 would remind the accomplished woman that
In all the ages women of tact and talent have
nearly always gotten, without authority, every
thin# or nearly every lhin a they have per
sistently and unitedly desired.
I might even go so far as to repeat the
venerable view that women are only happy
with the men whom they respect and look up
to, and that what women love and respect in
man Is what Shakespeare loved in* Lear—
authority.
But I do not press these doctrines undulv
here. For my own part—and for most men t
do not care a bauble about this word “obey.”
I am myself so steeped and satisfied in lndl-
•vidual "sweet subordination" that the word is
of no moment to my Independence or my will.
And I think that the whole contention about
it is useless and unnecessary. It is not worth
while trying to reform.
Even under present customs, which are not
laws, there 13 no woman in all the world
who is under any compulsion to promise at
the altar to “obey" her husband. It is for her
to say. Woman Is no more compelled to prom
ise than she is compelled to marry. It is a
matter which can be agreed upon by the high
contracting parties before the ceremony.
If a woman does not love and trust and re
spect a man enough to promise to "obey” l.<r.-
she need not come before the altar. If the man
insists, it is even yet her perfect right and
privilege to refuse. If the difference is irrecon
cilable, the way to the door Is generally clear,
three-fourths of modern women have the word
omitted from the ceremony now.
Taken altogether, I believe I would leave the
word alone. Old customs ought to be slaugh
tered slowly, if at all.
And before the word "obey" is smitten from
these immemorial rites It might be just as well
for the consenting race of men to watt and
see what kind of wives the new woman move
ment will provide for opr patient and Impatient
race.
There are some symptoms that are not p;om-
ising. - — -