Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1906-08-02
The Women Workers

rather privates in the ranks than lead
ers and commanders.
Naturally, the absorption of scores
of women in fields of employment out
side the home, tends in some places
to lessen interest in home life. Singu-
larly, however, in towns where women
are largely employed in mills and fac
tories, there is a large proportion of
early marriages.
Not infrequently a girl who has had
a very short childhood, stepping at the
earliest moment allowable by law from
the schoolroom to the shop or mill,
marries in her early teens a young man
with no prospects beyond his days
wages. Neither of the parties to this
hasty marriage has saved a penny for
the rainy day, and after the wedding
both 60 on working IS usual. By and
by a beby arrives, usually drifting into
the world to be cared for by a moth
err who has not the faintest notion of
what maternity means, and who has
no nourishment to give the little life.
When the mother is able she goes back
to the mill, leaving the infant to be
cared for by a relative, a mother or
an aunt who has grown too old to
work. Children born of such marriages
are seldom rosy and strong. The o
tally among them is large, and they
survive at all only by the law of the
survival of the fittest. This is the
gloomiest side of the picture, rivaled
only by that which is the burning
shame and disgrace of American life,
the ineffaceable stigma brought upon
us by the commercial greed in the toll
Grafton of child labor. Motherhood
and factory life should be divorced.
Whether women work by the day
or by the piece their earnings are very
seldom on so large a scale as the earn
ings of men. Why this should be is
accounted for by those who believe in
the ballot for women on the theory
that ome cannot vote, and that al
though they preponderate in the Ia
Dor market, they have no direct infu-
ence in politics.
Another explanation is that they are
somewhat less thorough and respon-
sible than men in carrying out what
they undertake. This is a slur on the
working woman which is undeserved
and mean. 1t must be admitted, | re-
gret e say, that women have less re-
gard for the validity of a contract
than men, and that they are much
mor likely to drop their work and
change a situation on impulse than
men are. Marriage, too, often takes
them, as it should, out of the ranks
of competition and places them in the
shelter of home life.
This is evident in the higher depart
ments, rather than in the lower. Sales
women and teachers are less likely to
desire continuance in their places as
wage-earners than are the girls who
paste labels, make boxes, stitch gloves
and stand at looms. AS we rise So
cially In the scale, have greater intelli-
gence and more liberal education, mar
riage is on a higher plane and is
founded on a basis Of nobler quail
ties.
Women are in the labor market to
stay. They cannot be eliminated.
They belong to the vanguard Of mod
ern civilization than which nothing is
so complex and nothing more interest
ing. They bring to their task the
subtle sympathy, the quick perception
and the enthusiasm that belong to
their sex. They earn every dollar Of
their wages or their salaries.
In the finer grades of commerce,
women do good service as buyers for
importing houses and the departments
of dressmaking, millinery, embroidery,
home decoration and kindred lines are
very largely in their hands. Mother
Eve is the first seamstress on record;
her daughters ever since have been
i busy in carrying out what she began,
the making of clothing for the race.
Copyright, 1905. by Joseph B. Bowles.)