The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-10-08
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 greater ratio than the wages of the men, but they will stand a 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-
 ductive 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 to the intelligent organization of the work
 ingmen. It is an error to regard the
 labor unions ns the machinery for pro- ducing strikes and boycotts. Properly and sagaciously conducted, these Organi- zations are preventive. of labor contro:.
 verscs, 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 of wages they have been effective in seeur. ing q proper recognition of what is due to labor as its share in the compensation of production.
 The wages of women workers have, indeed, advanced along with those of men, though not to a corresponding fig ure, and the labor unions have regard in some degree for the wages of female operatives as well; but the lack of or ganizatiOns of their own will leave the thousands of women workers in our manufacturing industries at a marked 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 a 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. It is not a pleasant prospect for the thousands of women who today work for wages in our mercantile and manu- facturing establishments. They are an industrious, self-suppOrting class, many of them contributing to the family fund from their weekly earnings and having just pride in their own independence and their ability to aid others. Any public policy which cuts off their re- sources is a 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 if they are doing so well as to be able to give her a home after the death of the husband and father, she looks forward to the time when she will be left alone with n dread of the less 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 it is that the nrudent man insures his life for the bene- fiji 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 suiferings of destf- tuition.
 In many cases, the insurance policy is the only thing of value the husband and father can leave to the wife and chil- | dren. He may have been able to laS by | m money in the savings bank, he may dia suddenly in a period of hard times | una a.o business reverses. which have strip. | nn ,,nS him of the savings of better days,