Women Wage-Earners | Page 2

account of her valuable contributions to the literature of social science, and it gives the present writer great pleasure to have the privilege of introducing this book to the public with a word of commendation.
MADISON, WISCONSIN,
August 29, 1893.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
The pages which follow were prepared originally as a prize monograph for the American Economic Association, receiving an award from it in 1891. The restriction of the subject to a fixed number of words hampered the treatment, and it was thought best to enlarge many points which in the allotted space could have hardly more than mention. Acting on this wish, the monograph has been nearly doubled in size, but still must be counted only an imperfect summary, since facts in these lines are in most cases very nearly unobtainable, and, aside from the few reports of Labor Bureaus, there are as yet almost no sources of full information. But as there is no existing manual of reference on this topic, the student of social questions will accept this attempt to meet the need, till more facts enable a fuller and better presentation of the difficult subject.
NEW YORK, August, 1893.

CONTENTS.
PAGE INTRODUCTION 7
CHAPTER
I.
A LOOK BACKWARD 25
II. EMPLOYMENTS FOR WOMEN DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACTORY 57
III. EARLY ASPECTS OF FACTORY LABOR FOR WOMEN 77
IV. RISE AND GROWTH OF TRADES UP TO THE PRESENT TIME 95
V. LABOR BUREAUS AND THEIR WORK IN RELATION TO WOMEN 111
VI. PRESENT WAGE-RATES IN THE UNITED STATES 126
VII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR ENGLISH WORKERS 142
VIII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR CONTINENTAL WORKERS 161
IX. GENERAL CONDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES 188
X. GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN STATES 199
XI. SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE AND IN GENERAL TRADES 212
XII. REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS 249

APPENDIX.
FACTORY INSPECTION LAW 275
AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN PREPARING THIS BOOK 291
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WOMAN'S LABOR AND OF THE WOMAN QUESTION 294
INDEX 305

WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS;
THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE.
INTRODUCTION
The one great question that to-day agitates the whole civilized world is an economic question. It is not the production but the distribution of wealth; in other words, the wages question,--the wages of men and women. Nowhere do we find any suggestion that capital and the landlord do not receive a quid pro quo. Instead, the whole labor world cries out that the capitalist and the landlord are enslaving the rest of the world, and absorbing the lion's share of the joint production.
So long as it is a question of production only, there is perfect harmony. Both unite in agreeing that to produce as much as possible is for the interest of each. The conflict begins with distribution. It is no longer a war of one nation with another; it is internecine war, destroying the foundations of our own defences, and making enemies of those who should be brothers.
It is impossible for even the most dispassionate or indifferent observer to blink these facts. Proclaim as we may that there is no antagonism between capital and labor,--that their interests are one, and that conditions and opportunities for the worker are always better and better,--practical thinkers and workers deny this conclusion. Wealth has enormously increased, in a far greater ratio than population. Does the laborer receive his due proportion of this increase? One must unhesitatingly answer no. In a country whose life began in the search for freedom, and which professes to give equal opportunity to all, more startling inequality exists than in any other in the civilized world. One of our ablest lawyers, Thomas G. Shearman, has lately written:--
"Our old equality is gone. So far from being the most equal people on the face of the earth, as we once boasted that we were, ours is now the most unequal of civilized nations. We talk about the wealth of the British aristocracy and about the poverty of the British poor. There is not in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland so striking a contrast, so wide a chasm, between rich and poor as in these United States of America. There is no man in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland who is as wealthy as one of some half-a-dozen men who could be named in this country; and there are few there who could be poorer than some that could be found in this country. It is true that there is a larger number of the extremely poor in Great Britain and Ireland than there is in this country, but it is not true that there is any more desperate poverty in any civilized country than ours; and it is unquestionably not true that there is any greater mass of riches concentrated in a few hands in any country than this."
This for America. For England the tale is much the same. "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with its passionate demand that the rich open their