Women labor union members; Women labor union members -- United States
The two contrary views prevailing among men unionists: that of the
man who said, "Keep women out at all hazards--out of the union,
and therefore out of the best of the trade, but out of the trade,
altogether, if possible," and that of the man who resigned himself to
the inevitable and contented himself with urging equal pay, and with
insisting upon the women joining the union, were never more sharply
contrasted than in the cigar-making trade. We actually find the
International Union, which after 1867 by its constitution admitted
women, being openly defied in this vital matter by some of its own
largest city locals. These were the years during which the trade was
undergoing very radical changes. From being a home occupation, or an
occupation carried on in quite small establishments, requiring very
little capital, it was becoming more and more a factory trade. The
levying by the government of an internal revenue tax on cigars, and
the introduction of the molding machine, which could be operated by
unskilled girl labor, seem to have been the two principal influences
tending towards the creation of the big cigar-manufacturing plant.
The national leaders recognized the full gravity of the problem,
and met it in a tolerant, rational spirit. Not so many of the local
bodies. Baltimore and Cincinnati cigar-makers were particularly
bitter, and the "Cincinnati Cigar-makers' Protective Union was for a
time denied affiliation with the International Union on account of its
attitude of absolute exclusion towards women."
In 1887 the Cincinnati secretary (judging from his impatience we
wonder if he was a very young man) wrote: "We first used every
endeavor to get women into the union, but no one would join, therefore
we passed the resolution that if they would not work with us we would
work against them; but I think we have taught them a lesson that will
serve them another time." This unhappy spirit Cincinnati maintained
for several years. The men were but building up future difficulties
for themselves, as is evident from the fact that in Cincinnati itself
there were by 1880 several hundred women cigar-makers, and not one of
them in a union.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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