The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1917-08-18
O.. THAT WOMEN
WERE SELF-RELlANT
(From Los Angeles Citizen)


(From Los Angeles Citizen)
Last week the Minimum Wage Com
mission of California-or> whatever
it is called-after more than two years.
investigation" gravely announced
that the minimum wages of women in
this state will be fixed at ten dollars
a week.
Members of the commission stated
and no doubt truthfully-that this
is considerable increase over the
prevailing minimum wages received by
women.
How many men who read this an
nouncement gave it the thought it de-
serves?
Isn't it a singing Indictment against
employers as a class?
IT mans inhumanity to man makes
countless thousands MOURN" as the
poet tells us, what about mans in
humanity to woman?
Think of the tens of thousands of
women in California, and in every
other state in this nation, working for
wages barely sufficient to keep body
and soul together
In His infinite wisdom God Almigh-
ty made woman trustful being. If
man were just, woman's trustfulness
would be a virtue-but with man as
he is, pity the woman who looks to
him for justice.
Were women as wise as they are
gentle, they would look to themselves
instead of to men.
They would organize. And, once
organized, they would not beg men
or the state for Justice. They would
take it.
Instead of meekly and thankfully
accepting the paltry sum of $40 for
weeks wages, they would demand
land get the same wages that men re-
ceive for the same service.
Be it said to the verlasting credit of
the International Typographical union
it was the first organization to insist
that there should be no difference in
the wages paid to men and women
for similar service. AS result of this
wise and honorable policy, women
printers working on union morning
week, the same as men receive,
while women working on the non
union Times receive any sum Otis sees
fit to pay.
Isn't it a pity that the labor union
is the only agency in all the world
that demands economic justice for
women?
And isn't it strange that women, as
rule cannot see this?
Women, why do you look to your
employers and to the state and to
takers for help? Why don't you help
yourselves?
Why is it that one woman does not
trust another?
If you did, there would not be an
employer or politician in all this
land who would dare say that SO a
week is enough for YOU.
Nor would millionaire Mr.. Hunting
ton, who owns all thehstreet cars and
all the streets of Los Angeles, con-
template employing women as conduc-
tors because they are cheaper than
men.
If you are cheap-if your wages are
menace to decency and to health
it is because you refuse to stand to-
Gether.
Men are foolish creatures. All
women know this. Yet men have suffi-
cient sense to comprehend that unity
is the law Of nature-of life itself.
The women-that is, many women
of California could rot rest until
they got the ballot. What have they
done with it? Have they elected one
women to the legislature, in order to
have laws enacted in behalf of women?
On the contrary they helped defeat
a woman member of the Los. Angeles
City Council.
Eventually, it is to be hoped, women
will place at least as much faith in
each other as they place in men.
When they do, the world will be a
better place in which to live. Mans
brutality will be minimized. The
child will be taken from the workshop
and the aged will be crowned with
comfort.
Bad as man is, he is self-reliant.
Possessing this, woman would have
every virtue.