Women Wage-Earners | Page 3

eyes to see the misery, degradation, and want seething in London slums, is but another putting of the words of the serious, scientific observer of facts, Huxley himself, who has described an East End parish in which he spent some of his earliest years. Over that parish, he says, might have been written Dante's inscription over the entrance to the Inferno: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." After speaking of its physical misery and its supernatural and perfectly astonishing deadness, he says that he embarked on a voyage round the world, and had the opportunity of seeing savage life in all conceivable conditions of savage degradation; and he writes:--
"I assure you I found nothing worse, nothing more degrading, nothing so hopeless, nothing nearly so intolerably dull and miserable as the life I left behind me in the East End of London. Were the alternative presented to me, I would deliberately prefer the life of the savage to that of those people in Christian London. Nothing would please me better--not even to discover a new truth--than to contribute toward the bettering of that state of things which, unless wise and benevolent men take it in hand, will tend to become worse, and to create something worse than savagery,--a great Serbonian bog, which in the long run will swallow up the surface crust of civilization."
In a year and more of continuous observation and study of working conditions in England and on the Continent, some of which will find place later, my own conclusion was the same. The young emperor of Germany, hotheaded, obstinate, and self-willed as he may be, is working it would seem from as radical a conviction of deep wrong in the distributive system. The Berlin Labor Conference, whose chief effort seems to have been against child-labor and in favor of excluding women from the mines, or at least reducing hours, and forbidding certain of the heavier forms of labor, is but an echo of the great dock-strikes of London and the cry of all workers the world over for a better chance. The capitalist seeks to hold his own, the laborer demands larger share of the product; and how to render unto each his due is the great politico-economic question,--the absorbing question of our time.
We have found, then, that the problem is economic, and concerns distribution only. There is no complaint that the capitalist fails to secure his share. On the contrary, even among the well-to-do, deep-seated alarm is evidenced at the rise and progress of innumerable trusts and syndicates, eliminating competition, which restricts production and raises prices. They make their own conditions; drive from the field small tradesmen and petty industries, or absorb them on their own terms.
Rings of every description in the political and the working world combine for general spoliation, and the honest worker's money jingles in every pocket but his own.
Granting all that may be urged as to the capitalists' investment of brain-power and acquired skill, as well as of money with all the risks involved, they are the inactive rather than the active factors in production. They give of their store, while labor gives of its life. Their view is to be reconstructed, and profit-sharing become as much a part of any industry as profit-making.
This is a growing conviction; nor can we wonder that realization of its justice and its possibilities has been a matter of very recent consideration. An often repeated formula becomes at last ingrained in the mental constitution, and any question as to its truth is a sharp shock to the whole structure. We have been so certain of the surpassing advantages of our own country, so certain that liberty and a chance were the portion of all, that to confront the real conditions in our great cities is to most as unreal as a nightmare.
We have conceded at last, forced to it by the concessions of all students of our economic problems, that the laborer does not yet receive his fair share of the world's wealth; and the economic thought of the whole world is now devoted to the devising of means by which he may receive his due. There is no longer much question as to facts; they are only too palpable. Distribution must be reorganized, and haste must be made to discover how.
It is the wages problem, then, with which we are to deal,--the wages of men and women; and we must look at it in its largest, most universal aspects. We must dismiss at once any prejudice born of the ignorance, incompetency, or untrustworthiness of many workers. Character is a plant of slow growth; and given the same conditions of birth, education, and general environment it is quite possible we should have made no better showing. We have to-day three questions to be answered:--
1. Why do