The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-05-15

Copyright. 1904, by Frank G. Carpenter9
 Washington. D. c.
 What should women do to help their sex as to labor mattersr'
 Are trades unions Q good thing TOT women?''
 Do they not tend to uhsex them make them masculine?'
 VIII women stand by their union In strikes?"
 What should be done with the non union girl?''
 f'Do you believe in the closed shopT
 ~What has your union done for wo- men in your trader"
 "Win women ever have the same pay and hours as men?"
 How far will women's trades unions extend--to factories. to clerks. to type writers. servant girls?"
 In this letter I give you answers to the above questions which I have just received from some of the most promi- nent of the women labor leaders of the United States. Few people realize how rapidly the organized women worker Is invading our industrial life She con- trols twenty-six different trades in Chi cago, and in that city alone numbers B5.000 members. She Is to be found in all of our factory centers. and she will soon be as many as are the Russian sol- diers in Manchuria. There are now trade unions in nearly every branch of woman's work, and many of the mems unions are admitting women members. In Chicago even the scrubwomen have union.
 The sausage, girls, who work in the packing factories are organized, and there are unions of 1aundresses, candy work CTS, telephone girls. horseshoe nail mak- CTS. foundry girls. paper box makers and CTS. foundry girls, paper box makers and even schoI teachers. Indeed, the Women School Teachers Union of Chica- go embraces more than three thousand public school teachers. They have an organization which has fought the big corporations, which has carried its wrongs into the courts. and has made the city increase it's salaries. A leader of this union is Miss Margaret Haley, who gave as her excuse for not imme- diately answering my questions. that she was aiding in the conduct of the suit of the Chicago Teachers Federation in the courts
 The Lady Retail Clerks.
 One of the fast growing women's organ izations. of the United States Is the Union of Lady Retail Clerks. Its members are found in most of our big department stores. There are 1,50o of them in Chica- go alone, and they have locals in nearly all the large cities. I have letter be- fore me from Miss Emma Lamphere, the general organizer of this union. She has travelled all over the country and Is well-known everywhere in labor circles. She says:
 q believe that trade unions are a good thing for women, and that they are abso- lutely necessary to their business and Industrial success this is especially so as regards retail clerks. The female help In most stores is uncertain. There is so much floating help-here today and gone tomorrow-that 1t Is very annoying to the merchant and unsettling to the em- ployes. Many of our salesladies work only for pin money, thereby keeping out others who are compelled to depend upon their own resources for living. It Is necessary that a saleslady should have good. up-to-date clothes, and she must have a good salary to pay for them, otherwise. she must steal or secure money in other ways. Indeed. hundreds of young girls go to ruin yearly through the low salaries paid by the retail mer- chants of this city of Chicago. I there- fore say that every woman should help in the cause of organized labor. It is by this means that we can raise wages and secure fixed employment. and by these means only.
 You ask what the retail clerks have done. Through our union we have re- duced our hours of labor from fourteen and sixteen hours per day to ten hours and in some places to eight and nine. We have secured fixed legal holiadys. and in some cities a weekly half holiday during July and August. We have cared for our sick and buried our dead. i "As to wages. the lady retail clerk re- ceives from $2.5O to so5 per week. About go per cent of our salesladies' are getting |