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
It is a task so colossal that one would indeed prefer to lean heavily
on the shoulders of an all-wise Providence and let it go with the
consoling assurance that, as to a solution, “the Lord will provide.”
But the echoes of recriminations shouted by each side against the
other; the cries of foul play; the accusations of willful injustice;
the threats of complete annihilation of capital by organized labor, of
organized labor by capital—must reach to heaven itself, and
Providence might well pause in dismay. Constructive good will? Where
make a beginning?
The beginnings, however, are being made right on earth, and here and
now. It is a mistake to look for spectacular changes, reforms on a
large scale. Rather do the tendencies toward mutual understanding and
this all-necessary good will evince themselves only here and there, in
quiet experiments going on in individual plants and factories. The
seed will bear fruit but slowly. But the seed is planted.
Planted? Nay, the seed has been there forever, nor have the harshest
developments in the most bloodless of industries ever been able to
crush it out. It is part and parcel of human nature that we can love
more easily and comfortably than hate, that we can help more readily
than hinder. Flourishing broadcast through all human creation is
enough good will to revolutionize the world in a decade. It is not the
lack of good will. Rather the channels for its expression are
blocked—blocked by the haste and worry of modern life, by the
multiplicity of material possessions which so frequently choke our
sympathies; by the cruelties of competition, too often run to the
extremes of crushing out inborn human kindness. And most of all,
blocked by ignorance and misunderstanding of our fellow-beings.
It is a sound business deduction that the greatest stumbling blocks in
the difficulties between labor and capital to-day resolve themselves
down to just that lack of understanding of our fellow-beings. Yet
without that understanding, how build up a spirit of mutual
confidence, real justice, constructive good will? On what other
foundation can a saner industrialism be built?
The place to make the beginning is in each individual shop and
business and industry. The spark to start the blaze in each human
heart, be it beating on the side of capital or on that of labor, is
the sudden revelation that every worker is far more the exact
counterpart of his employer in the desires of his body and soul than
otherwise; that the employer is no other than the worker in body and
soul, except that his scope and range of problems to be met are on a
different level. True it is that we are all far more “sisters and
brothers under the skin” than strangers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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