Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1902-08-01
10 McDILL'S MUSINGS.
SOCIETY,".


A number of girls of Kewanee, glove-mak-
ers, struck for higher wages. They were
receiving the magnificent pay of 4 a cents per
dozen for making gloves. They wanted to be
plutocrats. They demanded raise OF three
quarters of a cent. Their employers, alive to
the dangers of paying high wages, refused the
demand. The girls are out of job. Judging
from their pictures, they are bright, clean and
handsome. They say that all they want is
chance to make an honest living.
The hicago American has given the girls
thorough hearing, and there is a movement TO
raise sufficient funds to enable the girls to start
glove factory of their own.
believe the girls-that all they want is an
honest living. think that an honest living is
all most working girls want. 1t is society that
don't want the girls to have an honest living.
Society is word that covers a good many
human beings. Merger, plugger, preacher,
politician and poodle-dog aris.ocrat all in
cluded. Society is too busy looking after each
of his or her affairs to care what becomes of the
poor girls who want an honest living.
Lots of livings can be had honestly. Society
offers premium dishonesty and poodle
doggery. Society says, in its silence and il
difference, that it cares not a whoop for what
becomes of the giils who want five cents ftr
making dozen pairs of gloves. If those girls
who are so eminently fit to become wives and
mothers and live happily in homes of their
own, were to become prostitutes, society would
hox with rage, and orthodoxy would pile on
m.re birthstone. Possibly, the employers of
those girls hoped to drive some of them to lives
of shame. There are such cases. Society has
not, as know, howed any man into the bot
tomless pit who forced women to make mer-
chandise of their chastity. When such things
occur, society turns its back and bretends to be
very busy. The politician more vigorously
prods the politician in the other party. The
preacher thunders against the errors of the
other preacher in the other church. Satan
smiles and the imps clap their hands in gee.
Does anybody care? They are only working
pi,ls, and not in society.
If WE we're to judge society by what it does,
it would take strong pull on our imagination
l., believe that there are tens of thousands of
temples erected to the worship Of the Father of
all humanity. There are SO many things that
society could easily do, and doesn't, that
would be true worship, that we are almost
tempted to take the advice offered the eminent
man of bois, viz, to "curse God and die"
Death is the refuge of despair.
Can society be reformed? That is the ques-
,on. If society cannot be reformed, we will
have to work outside of society. We will be-
pin with the factory girls, the teacher girls who
hover Oh the outskirts of society," and perhaps
we can use tn. kitchen girls. We will create a
new society, and in that new society, no girl,
HIGH or low, shall lack the means of making
an honest living. 1t is a great thing to do
ro greater. The girls are to be wives and
mo,hers. In the girls is inaissolubly bound
he future of the human race, for veal or woe.
All good, true meh will stand by the girls in
every struggle with the brutal outcropping of
the pagan spirit Of dying barbarism.
Up with the girls, and down with the men