Women Wage-Earners: Their Past, Their Present, and Their FutureCampbell, Helen
History
Women Wage-Earners: Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future
Campbell, Helen
Women -- Employment -- United States
"We cannot forget that some years ago certain trade-unionists in
the potteries imperatively insisted that a certain rest for the arm
which they found almost essential to their work should not be used
by women engaged in the same employment. Not long since, the London
tailors, when on a strike, having never admitted a woman to their
union, attempted to coerce women from availing themselves of the
remunerative employment which was offered them in consequence of
the strike. But this jealousy of woman's labor has not been
entirely confined to workmen. The same feeling has extended itself
through every class of society. Last autumn a large number of
post-office clerks objected to the employment of women in the
Post-Office."
Driven by want, they had pressed into agricultural labor as well, and
found equal opposition there also. Mr. Fawcett in the same speech calls
attention to the fact of the non-admission of women to the Agricultural
Laborers' Union, on the ground that "the agricultural laborers of the
country do not wish to recognize the labor of women."
There is more or less reason for such feeling. It arises in part from
the newness of the occasion, since in the story of labor as a whole,
soon to be considered by us in detail, it is only the last fifty years
that have seen women taking an active part. We have already seen that
mobility of labor is one of the first essentials, and that women are far
more limited in this respect than men.
This brings us to the final question,--Why do men receive a larger wage
than women? The conditions already outlined are in part responsible, but
with them is bound up another even more formidable.
Custom, the law of many centuries, has so ingrained its thought in the
constitution of men that it is naturally and inevitably taken for
granted that every woman who seeks work is the appendage of some man,
and therefore, partially at least, supported. Other facts bias the
employer against the payment of the same wage. The girl's education is
usually less practical than the boy's; and as most, at least among the
less intelligent class, regard a trade as a makeshift to be used as a
crutch till a husband appears, the work involved is often done
carelessly and with little or no interest. With unintelligent labor
wastage is greater, and wages proportionately lower; and here we have
one chief reason for the difference. Others will disclose themselves as
we go on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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