Making Both Ends Meet | Page 2

Perovskaya, one of the shirt-waist
workers, a household tale of adventure repeated just as it was told to
the present writer and to her hostess' family and other visitors during a
call on the East Side on a warm summer evening. The sixth chapter is
almost entirely the contribution of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss
Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, three
young college-bred women from Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley,
respectively, who made an inquiry for the National Consumers' League
in the hospital, hotel, and commercial steam laundries of New York.
The fifth chapter is composed largely from a chronicle of the New

York cloak makers' strike written by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, one of the
most efficient leaders in attaining the final settlement last fall between
the employers and the seventy thousand members of the Cloak Makers'
Union. Mr. Frederick Winston Taylor gave the definition of "Scientific
Management" which prefaces the last chapter. It is a pleasure to
acknowledge help of several kinds received from Mrs. Florence Kelley,
Miss Perkins, and Miss Johnson of the Consumers' League; from Miss
Neumann, of the Woman's Trade-Union League; from Miss Pauline
and Josephine Goldmark, and Mr. Louis p. Brandeis; from Miss Willa
Siebert Cather of _McClure's Magazine_; and from Mr. S.S. McClure.
To record rightly any little corner of contemporary history is a
communal rather than an individual piece of work. While no title so
pompous as that of a cathedral could possibly be applied except with
great absurdity to any magazine article, least of all to these quiet,
journalistic records, yet the writing of any sincere journalistic article is
more comparable, perhaps, to cathedral work than to any sort of craft in
expression. If the account is to have any genuine social value as a
narrative of contemporary truth, it will be evolved as the product of
numerous human intelligences and responsibilities. Especially is this
true of any synthesis of facts which must be derived, so to speak, from
many authors, from many authentic sources.
Unstandardized conditions in women's work are so frequently
mentioned in the first six chapters that their connection with the last
chapter will be sufficiently clear. What is the way out of the
unstandardized and unsatisfactory conditions obtaining for multitudes
of women workers? Legislation is undoubtedly one way out. Trade
organization is undoubtedly one way out. But legislation is ineffectual
unless it is strongly backed by conscientious inspection and powerful
enforcement. In the great garment-trade strikes in New York, in spite of
their victories, the trade orders have gone in such numbers to other
cities that neither the spirit of the shirt-waist makers' strike nor the
wisdom of the Cloak Makers' Preferential Union Agreement have since
availed to provide sufficient employment for the workers. Further,
neither legislation nor trade organization are permanently valuable
unless they are informed by justice and understanding. In the same
manner, unless it is informed by these qualities, the new plan of
management outlined in the last chapter is incapable of any lasting and

far-reaching industrial deliverance. But it provides a way out, hitherto
untried. With an account of this way as it appears to-day our book ends,
as a testimony to living facts can only end, not with the hard-and-fast
wall of dogma, but with an open door.
EDITH WYATT.
CHICAGO, March 19, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK
SALESWOMEN

CHAPTER II
THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE

CHAPTER III
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY
WORKERS. (UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL WORK)

CHAPTER IV
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY
WORKERS. (MONOTONY AND FATIGUE IN SPEEDING)

CHAPTER V
THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL
UNION SHOP

CHAPTER VI
WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK

CHAPTER VII
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK

CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK
SALESWOMEN
I
One of the most significant features of the common history of this
generation is the fact that nearly six million women are now gainfully
employed in this country. From time immemorial, women have, indeed,
worked, so that it is not quite as if an entire sex, living at ease at home
heretofore, had suddenly been thrown into an unwonted activity, as
many quoters of the census seem to believe. For the domestic labor in
which women have always engaged may be as severe and prolonged as
commercial labor. But not until recently have women been employed in
multitudes for wages, under many of the same conditions as men,
irrespective of the fact that their powers are different by nature from
those of men, and should, in reason, for themselves, for their children,
and for every one, indeed, be conserved by different industrial
regulations.
What, then, are the fortunes of some of