The wageworker. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1904-????, 1906-02-09

only two classes that mutilate the dead-In-
dlans and women. J have in mind young
woman of my home town. Her father is a pro-
fessional man who draws splendid saalry
from a great corporation. The family lives in
one of the very finest homes in Lincoln And
yet this daughter is working as a stenographer
in Lincoln office for a wage of ST. a week,
merely to set pin money and an occasional
ticket to the theatre And while she is doing
that scores of girls are facing starvation be-
cause they cannot find work living wage.
hat young woman may not realize it, but she
, is responsible III measure for the downfall of
the unfortunate girl who, crazed by want and
seeing no hope for her, sells her soul for the
bread she could not honestly earn.
In another way, too women are responsible
for much OF the suffering endured by their Sis
ters who have been forced by vicious indus
trial system into the trades and industries 1
refer to the so-caled bargain sales so
often and SO extensively advertised
few years ago | spent several days in New
York City acquainting myself with sweat shop
conditions and tenement slavery. My good
friends, all of you women with tender hearts
and good impulses. | would not dare to tell
you face to face all that | and heard dur
ing that visit. The poverty, the degradation,
the filth the immortality. the disease and the
death that reeks and riots in those squalid dis
tricts no pen can tell or artist depict
in the midst of all that large share of the
bargains" in dainty lingerie offered to you is
made-nade in filthy dens by consumptves.
scrofulitcs and worse have seen twelve wo-
men, three Jour of them with nursing babies.
sewing on linen underwear for women in
room II feet by Is, having windows and
ventilated only by door leading into dark
hall and an opening into a shaft All the light
came from three gas jets. and in this room
where twelve women worked twelve and fif-
teen hours day, six people slept regularly.
And | was told by of the women that it
was an exceptionally good week when one
of them made ST. and that only by working
from s5 to 80 hours | have womens
cloaks made in tenement by women hollow
eyed and haf-Starved, and who were in the last
stages of diseases that would isolate
quarantine in any city i'll Nebraska. ! have
watched trembling women line up in front of
a sweat shop tyrant with their little bundles
of completed work that perhaps entitled them
to as much as So for a whole weeks work. and
seen the tyrant dock them half their Just due
God save the mark-because of some fancied
defect, and from the tyrants decision there
appeal. And these garments and goods
come west, put on display and sold as bar
gains to thoughtless women who never give
thought to their helpless and despairing sisters
whose very souls have been sown into the
seams and tucks and hounces. ! haven't the
least doubt in the world that there some
within easy distance of this meeting place who
sweetly conscious of dainty lingerie, little
thinking that into the ruftles and Hounces
thereof have been the tears and blood and
sweat and souls of their despairng sisters. And
although for years earnest men and women
have been crying out against these conditions,
millions of thoughtess men and women have
continued to stop their ears and rush and crush
to secure these so-called bargains. Bargains,
when purchased at the price of human life.
Bargains, when purchased a. the price OF
sisters immortal soul? God help America if
the cry of the oppressed is not soon needed
Six years ago | appeared before the Wo-
mans Club of Omaha to read few-l2tle
rhymes of my own composition. | was con-
fronted by audience of about thousand.
Today | come to tell of conditions that threat
our home life and republic. and l am
complimented-complim ndeed-by
audience of perhaps hundred. | say compli-
mented, because five or six years ago | doubt
if a dozen women would have shown enough
interest in this great problem to leave their
homes and attend. That many of you are
here is good sign. When the people
aroused thoroughly to the iniquities of
present system. comethng will happen.
The child labor problem is companion
problem to the one Just mentioned 1t is even
greater problem because it is greater. crime
against humanity. To deprive child of the
paything of it's youth, to dull its mentality and
dwarf its body, and send it to its grave without
ever having given it one ray of soul sunshine.
is worse than murder. And ! have seen hun
dreds and hundreds of children less than
years of age tending machines in the cotton
mills of Georgia All they knew was how to
tie broken strand, and their lack lustre eyes
stared vacanty at me when I tried TO talk to
them They never smile, because they are
never happy. They never cry because they are
without mental feelings Murdered, mind soul
and body for gold-and Puritan Massachu-
setts is to blame more than Cavalier Georgia.
African slavery at its worst clean and
Cody compared to the child slavery that
lists in this country today, and God Almighty is
severe accounting than He did when he bal
anced the books of His wrath and demanded
the best blood of the nation expiation for the
wrongs inflicted for three centuries upon the
black man. Owen Lovejoy, Wendell Phillips
and old John Brown were reviled and scorned
| Ll..x ! >ls<-s-~ -