Working With the Working WomanParker, Cornelia Stratton
History
Working With the Working Woman
Parker, Cornelia Stratton
United States -- Social conditions; Women -- Employment -- United States; Working class -- United States
Here I sit in all the peace and stillness of the Cape Cod coast, days
filled with only such work as I love, and play aplenty, healthy
youngsters frolicky about me, the warmest of friends close by. The
larder is stocked with good food, good books are on the shelves, each
day starts and ends with a joyous feeling about the heart.
And I, this sunburnt, carefree person, pretend to have been as a
worker among workers. Again some one says, “The artificiality of it!”
Back in that hot New York the girls I labored among are still packing
chocolates, cutting wick holes for brass lamp cones, ironing “family,”
beading in the crowded dress factory. Up at the Falls they are hemming
sheets and ticketing pillow cases. In the basement of the hotel some
pantry girl, sweltering between the toaster and the egg boiler, is
watching the clock to see if rush time isn't almost by.
Granted at the start, if you remember, and granted through each
individual job, it was artificial—my part in it all. But what in the
world was there to do about that? I was determined that not forever
would I take the say-so of others on every phase of the labor problem.
Some things I would experience for myself. Certain it is I cannot know
any less than before I started. Could I help knowing at least a bit
more? I do know more—I know that I know more!
And yet again I feel constrained to call attention to the fact that
six jobs, even if the results of each experience were the very richest
possible, are but an infinitesimal drop in what must be a full bucket
of industrial education before a person should feel qualified to speak
with authority on the subject of labor. Certain lessons were learned,
certain tentative conclusions arrived at. They are given here for what
they may be worth and in a very humble spirit. Indeed, I am much more
humble in the matter of my ideas concerning labor than before I took
my first job.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson learned was that a deep distrust of
generalizations has been acquired, to last, I hope, the rest of life.
It is so easy, so comfortable, to make a statement of fact to cover
thousands of cases. Nowhere does the temptation seem to be greater
than in a discussion of labor. “Labor wants this and that!” “Labor
thinks thus and so!” “Labor does this and the other thing!” Thus
speaks the labor propagandist, feeling the thrill of solid millions
behind him; thus speaks the “capitalist,” feeling the antagonism of
solid millions against him.
And all this time, how many hearts really beat as one in the labor
world?
Indeed, the situation would clear up with more rapidity if we went to
the other extreme and thought of labor always as thirty million
separate individuals. We would be nearer the truth than to consider
them as this one great like-minded mass, all yearning for the same
spiritual freedom; all eager for the downfall of capitalism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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