Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-03-03
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE
There's No Union Day for the Woman
Who Takes Care of Home and
Family

There's No Union Day for the Woman
Who Takes Care of Home and
Family
A LADY politician is agitating
~ for an eight hour day for
housewives. She says she
doesn't see why carpenters, and
bricklayers, and plumbers should
have union working hours. while
their wives and mothers have to
toll overtime. So she proposes to
organize the women of the country
and have them strike for their
rights for union day, il they can't
get it any other way.
Fine theory, but the trouble with
most of our rights is that we cannot
enforce them. OF course there is no
reason why a frail, little woman
should have to work from fourteen
to sixteen hours a day, with not even
Sunday or holidays off, while a big,
husky, able bodied man flirts with
a job for eight hours and calls it
a day, but before you can bring
about an equitablef adjustment of
the labor proposition in a family
and give the wife as easy hours as
the husband, you've got to make
over life.
You've got to invent an automatic
breakfast that cooks and serves it.
self, and baby silencer, and self
washing and dressing kiddies, and
armorplated stockings, and trousers
that never wear out, and you've got
to substitute cherubs for children,
and make family prefer com
pressed food tablets to mothers pies.
Unfortunately, no Edison has yet
arisen 20 perform these miracles,
and devise a household in which a
woman has only to press a button
and some magic does all the rest.
So far the stupendous job of run
ming a family and keeping it healthy
and comfortable, and clean, and
happy, and prayed for, and spanked,
is up to mother, and 1t is a task that
no human being can accomplish in
eight hours.
That's why mother has to get up
before the balance of the family in
the morning, and why she is still
working long after they are slumber-
ing in their beds, or gadding around
after pleasure. A mans work con-
sists of some definite thing to do,
a woman's work consists of all that
there is to do, and it's never done,
because as soon as it is accomplished
she must do it all over again.
She is forever cooking meals that
are gobbled up, and that call for
more food to be cooked. She is for
ever making beds and sweeping
floors that must be made up again
and swept again. She is forever
mending clothes that wear out and
must be mended again, washing lit
tie hands and faces that are dirty
again the next minute, picking up
coats, and caps, and papers that are
carelessly flung down again. e..
No one notices that she does
these things. No one suspects them
of being labor, or thinks of life
being one eternal, neYer-ending
grind of work to her. 1t is only
when mother. gets sick or dies and
chaos descends upon a household
that those who owned the slave
that served them so faithfully real
ize the never ending work that it
took to make them comfortable.
Not only is the housewife worked
hours, but she is the
only laborer in the world who never
has day off, not even Sundays.
Holidays for the balance of the
family only bring extra work for
her. Saturdays and vacations, when
the children are at home from
school, mean extra cluttering, of
the house, the upsetting of her
daily routine, an added strain of
to keep restless little hands
out of mischief, more work to pro-
vide amusements for those who are
always crying, What will we do
next, mo-o-ther"
Sunday is the day of rest: for the
beasts Of burden, but it is mothers
busy day. The balance of the fam
lily sleep late, but mother must be
up betimes to get the breakfast and
see that all the best clothes are
laid out and to scrub behind Johns
ears and curl Mary's hair, and find
fathers handkerchief and cane, and
brush his hat, and see that every
body gets off spick and span for
Sunday school and church. And
Sunday being the day of gorging
she must do extra cooking to get
up big dinner, so it is no wonder
that she is too tired after all the
dishes are washed to join in the
family stroll from which all come
back with renewed appeties for sup
per.
Oh, if you have tears to shed over
the poor working woman, don't
waste them on the factory hand,
Or the sweat-shop worker or the
shop girl, with their union hours.
Save them for home consumption
and bedew mother with a, few of
them,
But can you imagine mother
Can you imagine mother
walking out and leaving her job
because the hours are too long and
the pay too small?
Can you imagine mother letting
father go to his work. and the
children off to school without any
breakfast because she doesn't have
to punch the time clock until eight
o'clock?
Can you imagine mother tucking
the pillow into her ear, and turn
ing over, and taking another snooze
while the baby howls with the collie,
and little Tommy begs for a drink
of water, or cries out that he's
cold, because she isn't supposed to
do night work?
Can you imagine mother putting
on her hat, when her eight-hour
day is UP, and walking out, leav-
ing the dinner half-c cooked on the
stove. the house untidy, and her
husband and children to shift for
themselves as best they can because
her day is over, and she won't work
overtime without extra pay?
No. There is no eight-hour day
for mother. Hers is perpetual
motion job that never ends, and the
most wonderful thing on earth is
that somehow God gives her the
strength to perform this herculean
labor and carry on to the end.
When the roll of earth's heroes
iS called tho greatest Of all will