Women labor union members; Women labor union members -- United States
When again we turn to that side, matters are not any more promising.
If the boy of the working classes is badly off for industrial
training, his sister is in far worse case. Some provision is already
made for the boy, and more is coming his way presently, but of
training for the girl, which shall be adequate to fit her for
self-support, we hear hardly anything. We have noted that women are
already in most of the trades followed by men, and that the number of
this army of working, wage-earning women is legion; that they are
not trained at all, and are so badly paid that as underbidders they
perpetually cut the wages of men. Nay, the young working-girl is even
"her own worst competitor--the competitor against her own future home,
and as wife and mother she may have to live on the wage she herself
has cheapened."
And to face a situation like this are we making any adequate
preparation? With how little we are satisfied, let me illustrate.
In the address of Mrs. Raymond Robins as president of the National
Women's Trade Union League of America before their Fourth Biennial
Convention in St. Louis, in June, 1913, she told how "in a curriculum
of industrial education we find that under the heading 'Science' boys
study elementary physics, mechanics and electricity, and girls the
action of alkalies, and the removal of stains. While under 'Drawing'
we read, 'For boys the drawing will consist of the practical
application of mechanical and free-hand work to parts of machinery,
house plans, and so forth. Emphasis will be placed upon the reading of
drawings, making sketches of machine parts quickly and accurately. For
the girls the drawing will attempt to apply the simple principles
of design and color to the work. The girls will design and stencil
curtains for the dining-and sewing-rooms and will make designs for
doilies for the table. They will plan attractive spacing for tucks,
ruffles and embroidery for underwear.' Women have entered nearly three
hundred different occupations and trades in America within the past
quarter of a century, three hundred trades and occupations, and they
are to qualify for these by learning to space tucks attractively."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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