Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1892-08-01
WOMEN AND UNIONS.
WORKERS WHO SADLY NEED THE
BENEFITS OF COMBINATION.
Some of the Reasons Why Women wage-
workers Are Slow to Organize-FaiIure
of Ameliorative Measures Chicago
Girls Will Form Unions.

of Ameliorative Measures - Chicago
Girls Will Form Unions.
Especial Correspondence
The working girls of Chicago are
awakening to anewenthusiasm for union
and organization. Four hundred tele-
phone girls are about to organize union
and as many stenographers have ex-
pressed willingness to unite in fraternal
fellowship for the good of each and all.
This is an important movement in the
right direction; hitherto the few unions
to which women belonged were of those
Grades in which men also work, and they
have been organized, carried on and led
by men, such as the cloakmakers, tailors,
shoemakers, etc. Aside from the wo-
mans branch of the Federation of
Labor, which is mixed assembly, l do
not know of a single trades union in the
city which is composed of, was instituted
and is kept in running order by women
alone.
Women would scarcely be in the
unions at all but that they are an ac-
cepted and inevitable factor in produc-
tion today, and being so men who work
in the same departments must in self
defense induce and encourage them to
organize. The only trade peculiar to
women is housework. and there has
never been serious attempt to organize
girls in domestic service. Aside from
few witticisms on the situation should
our hired girls happen to combine for
their own interests, the subject has
never received any consideration worth
mentioning, though why they would
not be benefited it is difficult to say.
This reluctancy on the part of women
to organize and unite is due to several
reasons. The first and principal one is
that no woman starts out in life intend
ing to work for wages all her days;
vaguely, perhaps, she waits for some
thing better to come. The something
BETTER" though she may not even to
herself acknowledge it, is generally
marriage and the great duties of wom-
anhood which do and ought to exempt
her from the obligation to toll at so
many pence day. While pursuing a
trade as makeshift it is not, she con-
siders, worth while to become interest
ed in her work as branch of the whole
industrial system, or in her sister work
women as class. Another reason is
that instructive feeling every woman
has of keeping her struggles, her pov-
erty, her little plans for making re-
spectacle appearance, to herself. She
believes in a misty way that no other
woman is so peculiarly placed as her.
self; she has no faith in the similarity
of circumstances that exists in thou
sands of cases or in the possible frater-
nifty that would soften and share her
burdens. Again-because of genera
tions of seclusion-woman has not at
tained much of that quality we call "a
business faculty." which leads men to
analyZe, organize, consult with each
other and pursue systematized course
in regard to their relations with each
other.
But the fact that every year fewer
and fewer women step from tho loom to
the household altar, that Nwer and few
er find themselves exempt from various
heavy burdens, has awakened in women
something of that spirit which inspires
workingmen who would be free and in
dependent. Women have not been rec
ognized as permanent element in the
labor field for more than twenty o.
twenty-five years. They have only be-
gun to get in touch with the rest of the
busy, working world. Once in the way
of organizing, and soon not an occupa-
ton which women follow will be with
out its union. Whatever tends to do
away with "cheap labor" in any form
cannot but benefit the laboring class as
whole, and miserably paid female and
child labor is as great threat to the
rights of skilled workers as convict,
cody or foreign labor.
But there is a certain class of working
women whom it seems impossible to
reach by organization, and yet which
needs the benefits of union more than
any other-the sewing women of the
sweaters dens. The trades assembly
of this city has made public many of
the abuses connected with this kind of
work, been instrumental in establishing
many improvements and in bringing to
the notice of the congressional commit
tee sent to investigate many startling
facts that otherwise would never have
been disclosed. Women make overalls,
coarse shirts, pants, blouses and coats
at rate that compels them to run ma
chimes from daylight until late bed
time at lightning speed to earn the pitt
able sum of fifty cents; the less expert
and young children work like slaves for
$l.50, 81 or even rs cents a week. They
have the wtsk in their own homes or in
the dirty basement shops near by. There
are not many strong, young, single wom
Ell among them; these usually find op-
portunities to do better grade of work.
The workers are generally middle
aged women with sick husbands, drunk
EN- husbands or no husbands at all and
numbers of small children to support,
or old women left destitute in their de-
clining years; women with feeble rela-
tives depending upon them whom they
cannot leave; women so poor that they
have no clothing fit to wear down town
to the larger establishments where they
might be better paid. These women