Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1896-10-13
WOULD AFFECT WOMEN
Free Silver Issue of Vital Import
to Wives and Mothers of
Wage-Earners.
HIGH PRICES AND LOW WAGES.
Working Women will Also be Far
Worse Off Than the
Men.

While the value of the wages earned
by everyone who works for living will
be greatly reduced by the free coinage
of silver, the working women will be far
worse off in this respect than the men.
Their wages will not probably be re-
duced in q greater ratio than the wages
of the men, but they will stand poorer
chance of securing an advance to meet
the increased cost of living. They will
have to submit to the hardship of high
prices and low wages with less hope OF
remedying their condition.
One principal cause of this disadvant-
age is that the women employed in pro-
ductiye industries have not the organized
unions with which to sustain their inter-
ests. The great advance in the wages
of labor, especially of skilled labor,
which has been made during the past
twenty years, is due in large measure 10
the intelligent organization OF the WORK
ingmen. 1t is an error to regard the
labor unions as the machinery for pro-
ducing strikes and boycotts. Properly
and sagaciously conducted, these organi-
cations are preventive of labor contro-
yersies, for they provide the means OF
conference and adjustment of questions
on which there is disagreement between
EMPLOYERS and workmen; and especially
when the question is that of increase Oh
wages they have been effective IN seenr'
ing proper recognition of what Is que
to labor as it's share in the compensation
of production.
The wages of women workers have,
indeed. advanced along with those OF
men, though not to corresponding ns-
ure. and the labor unions have regard
in some degree for the wages OF female
operatives as well: but the lack CT Or
carnations of their own will leave the
thousands of women workers in our
disadvantage If their wages should be
cut down in value by the free coinage
of silver and the consequent depreciation
of the money in which they are paid.
In this respect, as always, IT is the
weaker that must bear the greater share
of the burden; and the struggle to bring
wages up TO living rate after free coin
age has reduced them by perhaps one
half of their purchasing value would be
long and weary for the working wom-
en-. 1t is not a pleasant prospect for
the thousands of women who today work
for wages in our mercantile and manu-
Featuring establishments. They are an
industrious, self-supporting class many
of them contributing TO the family fund
from their weekly earnings and having
a lust pride in their own Independence
anu tutlT duhiey W "iu ossNi' S
public policy which cuts off their re-
sources is n cruel wrong by which the
whole community must suffer.
Every mother of a family has ever be-
fore her the dread possibility of the
death of the one whose labor provides the
means of living before the day comes
when the sons will be able to take up
the burden of support and the daughters
be comfortably settled in homes of their
own. Even if the children are grown up
and taking care Of themselves, and even
IL they are doing so well as to be able to
give her home after the death of the
husband and father, she looks forward to
the time when she will be left alone with
a dread of the loss of independence in
case the accumulations of her husbands
working years have not been great
enough to provide her means of subsist-
ence after he Is gone. So 1t Is that the
prudent man insures his life for the bene-
ft of his wife and his children, paying
from year to year during his active life
the cost of assurance that at his death
his family will receive sum of money
sufficient to avert the sufferings of desti-
tuition.
In many cases, the insurance policy Is
the only thing of value the husband and
father can leave to the wife and chill
| dren. He may have been able to lay by
no money in the savings bank, he may
die suddenly in a period Of hard times
and business reverses, which have strip
ned him Of the savings Of better days,