The toiler. [volume] (Cleveland, Ohio) 1919-1922, 1920-07-30
TIL F AMILY

time The wife, the mother, who is worker, sweats
blood to fill three tasks at the same time: to give the
necessary working hours as her husband does in some
industry commercial establishment then to devote
herself well she to her household and then also
to take care OF her children Capitalism has placed
the shoulders OF the woman burden which crushes
her: it has made of her wageworker without having
lessened her cares as housekeeper and mother. We
therefore find the woman crushed under her triple
nsupportabe burden forcing from her often swiftly
smothered cry of pan and than once causing the
tears to mount to her eyes, Care has always been the
lot OF woman but never has woman's lot been
fortunate desperate than that of millions of work
ing women under the capitalist yoke today, while in
dustry is in its period of greatest expansion
Workers Learn to Exist Without the Family Life
The more widespread becomes the wage labor of
woman the further progresses the decomposition of the
family. What family life, in which the man and wife
work In the factory in different departments: in which
the Wlfe mad not even the time to prepare decent
meal for her offspring What family life when father
and mother out of the twenty hours of the dav most
OF which are spent at hard labor cannot even spend
few minutes with their children! It was quite different
formery the mother, mistress of the house. remained
at home occupied with her household duties and her
children, whom she did not cease to watch with her
attentive eye = today, from early in the morning until
the FACTORY Whistles blow the working woman hastens
to her work and when evening has come again. at the
sound OF the whistle, she hurres home to prepare the
famys soup and to do the most pressing of her house
hold dutes after all too scant Sleep she begins on
the next day her regular grind 1t is real workhouse
this Life OF the married working woman. There is
nothing sprinsing, therefore, in the fact that under
these conditions the family ties loosen and the family it.
self disintegrates and more. Little by little all
that formerly made the family solid whole is disap
pearng, together with it's stable foundation The family
is ceasing to be necessity for it's members as well as
for the State The ancient forms of the family are be-
coming merely hindrance.
What is it that made the family strong in the days
Of old? In the first place, the fact that it was the
husband and father who supported the family; in the
second place. that the home was thing equally neces
sary to all the members Of the family; and in the third
and last place. that the children were brought up by the
parents What is left Of all this todaya The husband
we have just seen has ceased to be the sole support
Of the family. The wife, who goes to work. has become
the equal of her husband in this respect She has learn
ed to her living and often also that of her
children and her husband This still leaves us as the
function of the family the bringing up and the support
of the children while very young Let whether
the family is not about to be relieved also even of
this task just mentioned.