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
To those who from sympathy or antagonism would picture at least
organized labor as like-minded, it must be pointed out that for the
great part the several millions represented by Group 1 are perhaps
more often warring in their aims and desires than acting as one. Never
have they acted as one. Organized labor represents but a fraction of
labor as a whole. Some more or less spectacular action on the part of
capital against labor always tends to solidify the organized workers.
They are potentially like-minded in specific instances. Otherwise the
interests of the carpenters' union tends to overshadow the interests
of the A. F. of L. as a whole; the interests of the A. F. of L. tend
most decidedly to overshadow the interests of organized labor as a
whole. Socialists bark at communists. Charges of capitalist tendencies
are made against the four Brotherhoods. The women's unions feel
legislated against in the affairs of labor. Indeed, only utter
stupidity on the part of capital ever could weld organized labor into
enough solidarity to get society or anyone else agitated for long.
Much of the “open shop” fight borders on such stupidity.
Group 2 is at present but an infinitesimal fraction of labor. It
comprises those workers whose background has been fortunate enough, as
to both heredity and environment, to allow of their main industrial
interests centering around the doing of their particular job well for
the sake of their industry as a whole, to which a sentiment of loyalty
has been aroused and held. There is no feeling of class antagonism, no
assurance that the interests of labor are forever inimical to those of
the employer, and _vice versa_. Where such an attitude exists on the
part of workers it presupposes an employer of unusual breadth of
understanding or a deep love for his fellow-man. As co-operation in
industry can be shown to pay socially and financially, so may this
type of employer come more and more to supersede the old-fashioned
“boss.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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