Southwest Washington labor press. [volume] (Hoquiam, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1924-12-12

ties, defeated the feminists on their
ewn ground Of social and economic
theory. -The common middle-class
objection to factory legislation that
It interferes with The individual lib
erty Of the operative Mrs. Sidney
Webb wrote, Springs from Ignorance
Of the economic position of the wage
Garner. Factory legislation positive
| " increases the individual liberty
and economic independence Of the
workers subject to it. No one who
knows what life is among the people
in Lancashire textile villages on the
one hand, and among the East End
or Black Country unregulated trades
on the other, can ever doubt this
And all these general considerations,
Mrs. Webb maintained, applied most
forcibly to women wage-earners who
are less able than men to enforce their
own common rules through trade
unionism--a weakness which exists,
though in less degree, until to-day.
Finally she showed that the fear of
women's exclusion from industrial
employment was wholly unfounded.
''The uniform effect Of factory legis-
lation in the past has been, by en-
couraging machinery, division of lab
our, and production on a large scale,
to increase the employment of women
and largely to raise their status in
the labour market"
Industrial Women and Politics
In the days bfeore women's politi1
cal enfranchisement the most substan-
tial argument to be advanced against
protective legislation was that the
women who were subject to it had
no share in framing it. The griev-
ance was undoubtedly a real one at
the time, but has since lost all its
substance. Older women to-day have
an equal voice with men in the MAX
ing laws, and a Bill is now before
Parliament which proposes to give
the vote to young women at the
same age as young men. Industrial
women are fully alive to their new
political responsibilities, and quite
capable of putting forward their own
case. The keen vitality of their po-
litical organizations has, indeed,
been one of the striking features of
recent general elections. Unfortu-
nately, the extreme feminist school
seems to remain quite untouched by
events, and the old. feeble Glamour
has once more been revived owing
to the International Labour Conven-
lions which prescribe special restric-
tions on women's labour. The attack
centres round the provisions prohibit
ing women's night-work, notwith-
standing the fact that these have
been accepted by industrial women's
organizations all over the world. The
die-hards have gone so far as to OPP
pose the International Maternity
Convention because, though providing
for the first time full maintenance
| for the mother before and after
childbirth, it would lengthen the per-
iod Of compulsory withdrawal from
industry.
Sound Theory and Practice
It is significant of modern tenden-
cies in industrial legislation that such
comparatively new acts as the Trade
Board Acts, regulating wages in un-
organized trades, the Shop Hours
Act, under which shop assistants are
entitled to one half-holiday a week,
or the National Insurance Acts, APP
ply to both men and women. Sim
ilarly, the international Hours Con-
vention, in prescribing the 48-hour
week, makes no distinction Of sex. It
is the Labour Party view that every
worker should be- assured the min
imum conditions of a civilized life,
and the law extends its protection to
all those in need of it, and not to one
sex alone. Industrial women are as
sound as middle-class feminists on
the question Of equal laws" but,
unlike these armchair philosophers,
they are far more concerned for the
practical results of legislation than
for its mere conformity with the abb
stract principle Of sex equality. Had
the feminists had their way in the
past, and all restrictions on hours Of
work being postponed until Parlia-
4
ment was prepared to extend the same
law to either sex, the whole Of ex-
perience suggests that in morgan
lied trades women would be working
to-day in factories 10 and 80 hours
week las indeed they may still be
found doing in unregulated shops and
refreshment pIaces), and the pros
poets of a universal eight-hour day
would be infinitely more remote than
they are now. Apart from the inn
mediate gain in health due to improv-
ed factory conditions, in which men
as well as women have shared, this
same Improvement has reacted so as
to assist women to organize, and the
effect of the unequal law has been
to make things actually more equal
as between men and women in in
dustry. Nor do industrial women
/ .o,,,,+ l.. n ,raflaetion on the indeDaD-