Workmen's advocate., 1889-11-02

HcdltH anu DIlHB pIeIlotuIe uedtu, udFo obtained both higher wages and shorter hours, and the list might be indefinitely added to. In almost every trade new unions'of the workers have been formed, and the men, hitherto indifferent, have hastened to jon societies previously in existence. But general, however. as the movement has been, and amidst the extraordinary awakening of the masses from the long period of apathy, one phase of the great labor question has scarcely received the attention which it merits. AS yet, with some few excep- tions, this remarkable upheaval has not extended to the great mass of women employed in industrial work.
 The economic history of the past cen tury has demonstrated only too clearly that capital, in its scramble for wealth, has known neither distinction of sex nor age. When the labor of women could be purchased more cheaply, men have been supplanted, and for exactly the same reason women have often had to make way for child labor. The attroci- ties of the capitalistic system have been brought to light by those few who so nobly worked on behalf of the down.
 
 women and children whose lives were crushed out by ceaseless overwork, and whose efforts on their behalf were crowned with partial success by the passing of the Factory Acts. Capital, solely employed in amassing wealth, has with some few happy exceptions been completely oblivious of all moral considerations as to the welfare of its employees. The physical health, the mental culture, and the moral well-being of the producers of wealth have been entirely unheeded, and except when compelled by legisla- ton, or under the external com pulsion exerted by labor organizations, it has given no thought to the suffering, disease and early deaths which it's rapa- cious greed has entailed upon its vast army of wage slaves The cynical bru- tality of the threats to starve the dock ers-and remember it would include their wives and children-into submis- sion, publicly uttered by the dock dl- rectors at the outset of the great strike, shows that capital still wears it's famll- jar garb, and we can only hope for its mor- alization through forces external to itself.
 There are two chief sets of forces which can be brought to bear to coerce capital. The first are those ethic and economic generalizations arrived at by some few earnest students of ethic and economic science, whose sole aims have been to arrive at equity and truth. These ideas which are now fast perme- ating the masses, and which may be summed up in one word, Socialism," are, however, but the motive power, the lever with which to act, and can only become effective when another set of forces is ready to utilize them. These other forces may also be included Tn the word Organism" It is by the union or the workers themselves, when feder- ated into organizations and determined to make use of the power with which united action will give them, that the encroachments of capital can be success fully resisted. And it is only when SO organized that labor can hope to obtain its equitable share, ultimately the whole, of the wealth which it produces. The vast monopoly of capital will never be permanently overthrown until the work. CTS make use of their one truly power ful weapon - complete union of all classes. To be then really effective this organization must include all labor, un- skilled equally with skilled, and women as well as men, entirely irrespective of sex or age. From neglect of this car dinal principal in the past, the trade unions of skilled labor had all but de- generated into a selfish aristocracy, to their own ultimate detriment as well as to that of the workers generally. The continued invention of labor-saving ma chinery is consistently obliterating the lines which separate skilled from un- skilled labor, and the places of the for mer are being one by one taken by the latter, and wages thereby reduced. Capital has successively replaced the labor of skilled hands by unskilled, of men by women and of women by chi- dren, and by so doing has reaped an ever increasing share, the surplus value of labor, of the wealth produced. It is time the workers should fully compre- bend this and reverse the process, but this can only be done by universal or ganization; this is their only power of resistance.
 Last year Mrs. Besant, H. Burrows, and others of our comrades were suc- cessful in forming the Match Girls Union, and by so doing have somewhat bettered their position. A few weeks back our Wandsworth Branch inaugu- rated the Union of Laundresses and General Women Workers, and we trust that some amelioration to this hard. worked and ill-paid class of women will ensue. Since then Lady Dilke has been addressing the mill workers and factory hands in Scotland, showing clearly how absolutely necessary the organization of women is. So long as women remain unorganized their labor will be always utilized to underbid men, and the wages