The Labor enquirer., 1884-06-21
WORKING WOMEN II
The Disinherited Daughters Q
America Who Slave and
Suffer in Silence.
One Woman Who Will Labor for Right
and Justice With Her
Last Breath.

Last Breath.
San Francisco Truth. iissa5si tffa
/ believe it's generally admitted b.
those who have given the subject an
thought W whateEer, that the condition Q
working women is not an enviablc one
not even anenViable one in view of tn
actual services they render society. YET
| it would be amusing, were not the traged'
of worn and wasted lives being enacted
under our very eyes every day, to not
the various causes and remedies pre-
lscribed by the best intentioned people
Some will say, eThey are not savini
enough !" others, while they Justify thu
employer in paying small Wages because
he has to run the risk of finding {
market, ask him out of pity-not justice
Ito be little easler'on the girls; to Lift
their burdens Just enough that they may
exist a little longer. Others, again
wonder why working women complain
when employers declare thay are paying
all they can and not fail. -H.%f. ="
Once aprosperous business man met
poor, forlorn, halfclothed woman, or
the street at midnight, looking so unut
terably wretched that he was startled.
"Why-woman p he exclaimed, "what
is the matter with you? How in
Heavens name came you here?"
A brave advocate of justice, whose
whole life is q protest against wrong, and
whose death in after years was almost
martyrdom, happened to be passing.
whats the matter with her? Why
damn it, man, she is disinherited !! That's
| ALL" ~
always think of that brief, true
answer when good people try to tell us
what is wrong with the working
classes"
II Is fact that women IN all ordinary
fields of labor, are worse off than men.
They are paid less, driven little harder,
have less chance to cry out, are more
really slaves of slaves.
The opposers of woman's rights tell us
woman is not fit to enter into politics,
she must be protected and supported, so
they "protect" her by getting more work
out of her for less return than they can
out of any other living being. They
"support" her by "giving her employ
ment," in which transaction they make
dollars where she gets cents. They say,
too, that women are weak and vascil-
lating, unstatesman like, incapable of ex-
ercising executive powers. But they
give her a greater problem, in the way of
planning and execution, than any states.
man with an eye to position has to solve
that of making sixteen hours day
keep herself, and several children per
haps, in anything like comfort. We are
| told, too, that women are to angelic, too
tender and fair, to mix in politics or say
a word about the laws she must live
under.
She is not too angelic to make shirts
at so cents dozen to scrub and wash
till body and soul are deformed and
shnveled to carry bundles of shop-work
fit for a pack-horse; to climb six or
seven flights of stairs right beside a
smoothly gliding elevator, made for her
well-dressed protectors; )" not too tender
and fair to be knocked down, kicked and
beaten, as too many of them are, by the
brutalized slaves of pernicious system
Don't talk of "woman's tenderness" and
need of protection" when the majority
of women are thus enduring the effects
of their society-made happiness! don't
believe in protection" in any sense o1
the word.
It is also claimed that women are
creatures of feeling rather than reason
and that it would never do to let them
get hold the helm oSstate ; so they pro
ceed to crush out all feeling, by immur
ling her children in factories, and work
ing her till she has no time or strength
to feel, even if her children grow ny
worse than little brutes around her.
Bear in mind 1 am not citing exeep
tional cases. l am simply telling how
by far the greater number ofpeople live
There are degrees lower than this, which
you may call exceptionable if you will
as the majority of women do not live so
4, Tender, weak, fair I can look from
my window to the coal yards of a rail
road. I can see old, old women stagger
ing under loads of coal and sticks 0
wood bigger than themselves. They ar
bent and Drowned and wrinkled AM
scarcely semblance Of soul looks ou
| from their eyes. In the alley back
the house are two haggard old wome
with big brown sacks on their back
> hunting for bits of rags and paper
: Imagine what their lives are and hay
been | 1t won't do to say they are dt
| graded creatures, who are to blame 70