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It is a popular belief that the working class forms a large proportion of the numbers who fill the houses of prostitution, and that "night-walkers" are made up largely from the same class. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the last statement, the falsity of which was demonstrated in the fifteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, its testimony being confirmed and repeated in the report we have under consideration. For the first, diligent investigation in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest number classed by occupations came from the lowest order of workers, those employed in housework and in hotels, and the next largest was found among seamstresses, employees of shirt factories, and cloak makers, both of these industries in which under-pay is proverbial. The great majority receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on this sum, but assist friends, contribute to general household expenses, dress so as to appear fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without. More than this. Since the deepening interest in their lives, and the formation of working-girls' societies and guilds of many orders, they contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent meeting rooms, pay for instruction in many classes, and provide a relief fund for sick and disabled members. Aids, alleviations, growing interest, all are to-day given to the worker. "Homes" of every order open their doors, some so hedged about by rules that self-respect revolts and refuses to live the life demanded by them. In all of these homes, even the best, lurks always the suspicion of charity, and even when this has no active formulation in the worker's mind, there is still the underlying sense of the essential injustice of withholding with one hand just pay, and with the other proffering a substitute in a charity, which is to reflect credit on the giver, and demand gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is recognized, and within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose name is associated with the work of charity organizations throughout the country,Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. I doubt if there is any one better fitted by long experience and almost matchless common sense to speak authoritatively. Within a short time she has written: "So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion

of society have discharged all their obligations to man and God by supporting charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of the prime causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst. I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as the insult which is added to the injury done to the mass of the people by insufficient payment for work."

Disguise this fact as we will; bear testimony to the inefficiency and incompetency of the workers; admit every trial and perplexity of employers, every effort to better conditions, yet there remains in the background always this shadow, in which the woman who elects to earn an honest living must walk. No more heroic battle has ever been fought than this daily one, waged silently and uncomplainingly in our midst by these workers. Their lot is all part of the general evolution from disorder, ignorance, and indifference, into the larger life, opening so slowly that impatient spirits demand dynamite to hasten the process, but as surely as the earth marches forever on its round toward that central sun that draws each smallest star of that system we call our universe.

It is certain that this is a transition period; that material conditions born of a phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress, and that the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago one of the wisest of modern French thinkers, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, wrote of women wage-earners: "From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain fair remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization- the principle and formula even of social progress, that mechanical engines are to accomplish every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task, but this general gain is a loss for the particular and for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble arms."

Untrained intelligence finds earning a more and more difficult task, and for all of us it has become plain, that in

the mighty problem given us by a civilization which at so many points fails to civilize, every force must be brought to bear upon its solution. These pale, anæmic, undeveloped girls swarming in factory and shop, are the mothers of a large part of the coming generation, defrauded before birth of all the elements that make strong bodies and teachable souls. It is not alone the present with which we deal. Out of the future comes a demand as instant, and justice to-day bears its fruit in larger life for other days to come. For this must be two awakenings. One for the looker-on in the struggle who has no eyes for what lies still in shadow. The other for the worker, who must join the army already aroused, realizing its limitations, reaching out for training and larger opportunity, and seeking with the eagerness born of hard conditions, some permanent way of escape. And for watcher and worker alike the word is the same:

"Light, light, and light! To break and melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind

Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder,
The hands are mighty were the head not blind."

THE INDEPENDENT PARTY AND MONEY

AT COST.

BY R. B. HASSELL.

A POLITICAL revolution is in progress and has attained such proportions as to command attention and repay study. The magnitude of the movement and the definiteness of its aims are not understood and appreciated by those who live far from its field of operation. The reader is asked to lay aside his preconceived notions of the subject, and consider observations made, at short range, by one whose information is gleaned not from partisan newspapers, but from the field of action.

Before passing to an analysis of the platform demands of the new party, let us adjust the perspective; consider the work already done, and the method, motive, and personnel of the party.

Scarcely twelve months have pased since the birth of the party, one political campaign. In that short period, an organization has been perfected which carries upon its rolls 1,200,000 voters; and an esprit de corps has been created which is worthy of comparison with the enthusiasm of the old parties. It has elected two United States senators and a respectable body of congressmen. It has won its victories in the strongholds of the hitherto dominant party, overcoming in one instance an adverse State majority of 80,000. An army of lecturers has been set at work, most of them well equipped. About a thousand newspapers have been established in the interest of the movement. A national bureau of information has been created which keeps a large force of clerks constantly busy. A committee has been appointed on organization. Under its direction, State after State is being organized, and the prophecy is freely made that, before the snow flies again, an efficient branch of the central body

will have been established in nearly every hamlet in the nation.

The surprising advance already made by the Independents would not need to concern us, were it not that the national conditions which made it possible, in the first instance, still exist to sustain and accelerate it. If asked to explain this advance, most partisans would say, at once, poor crops, extreme poverty and demagogism; or, as South Dakota campaign speakers were known to say, hot winds and Mr. Loucks. But these are mistaken ideas. Poverty of the people made many listeners and voters who, under other circumstances, would not have deemed it worth their while to leave the plow. An examination, however, of the vote in the counties of one State, from which a United States senator has been elected, shows that the heaviest majorities for the new party were cast in counties where farming is most diversified, and where the people have been blessed with a succession of good crops. In the counties where the people were poorest, they were more effectually under the thumb of money loaners and bankers, who held chattel mortgages over their heads. In such counties a corruption fund had a powerful influence toward keeping voters in line. Extreme poverty is always a menace to the purity of the ballot. In the well to do counties, or rather the counties where good crops had prevailed, and in which the people were reputed well-to-do, and where the heaviest vote was cast for the party, the writer has made a careful study of conditions and finds none that do not exist in most agricultural districts of the United States. The herds of cattle and bursting granaries, years ago, would have been sure indications of competence and contentment.

A little inquiry now, however, reveals discontent and a hand to hand struggle with adversity and against odds. Market values leave no margin for profit. Abundance at harvest time, disappointment on market day. Men can understand the connection between short crops and lean pocket-books, and are easily reconciled to such conditions. They may grumble but they are sensible enough to understand that they must sow again and wait for the heavens to smile. But when great heaps of corn lie in their fields. awaiting sale at twelve cents a bushel, when a mighty crop of wheat brings its possessor but fifty cents a bushel, when

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