The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-09-23
By ROSE WORTIS

With the approach OF the elections we see
the familiar spectacle of the capitalist parties
modelling their various women's organlza-
tons; the League For Women Voters, Daugh-
tiers of the American Revolution, and all other
reactionary vote-catching organizations to
line up the support of the working women
for the parties of their class enemies.
The fake investigation campaigns into the
food racketeering instituted by the same poll
ticians who are the main beneficiaries of the
graft and corruption are intended to mislead
the working women and to create the Illusion
that by supporting one the other of these
parties their problems will be solved The
graft Investigations however, prove that both
Republicans and Democratic parties have
shared equally in the graft.
The Democratic politician, Healy, and the
Republican politician, Keller, both received
handsome sums from the publishing
panies for selecting trash text books on which
to feed the children of the working class.
The Democratic and Republican inspectors
alike close their eyes to the violation of the
4S-hour laws, tenement inspection, ETC., for
a few dollars graft. The Socialist Party
gretfully looks on to see the other parties
getting the lions share of the graft while it
must limit itself to graft in the Labor or
CARNATIONS.
AS the campaign develops we read in the
en- voters Women politicians are sent down
to the poor neighborhoods to show their
concern and seeming sympathy for the well
fare of the working women. The fake slogan
of the Hoover campaign, "a chicken in every
pot" which has actually meant unemployment
and starvation or the workers is now being
repeated in another form. The capitalist
slogans of 1880 hold no greater promise for
working women than the slogans of the 1928
campaign.
What are the actual problems facing the
working women and which of the parties can
help the working women to solve these
problems?
How Hard Times Burden Working Women.
This is the question that every woman must
ask herself.
The United States census of 1880 shows
that thirty-three million women have to do
some sort of work in order to earn lveli-
hood. Ten million are engaged in various in
dustries and twenty-three million as house
wives. The miserable conditions under which
the women in industry are compelled to work
are shown in the report of the U. S. Labor
Department of 1928. According to this report
the wages of women workers are half to one
fourth lower than men workers. Sixty per-
cent of women workers in all industries
receive less than $14 a week and 45 percent
exists on the statute books is practically abol-
ished. Women are working ten and twelve
hours a day, overtime, and night work. They
work in dirty workrooms nder nsanitary
conditions. Cellars, which are cold and damp
in the spring and excessively hot from boilers
"A the winter, are used as work rooms. They
work with artificial light under a terrific
.peed-up system. Working under such condi-
lions we find ever greater increase of ac-
cidents, disease, and permanent disability
amongst working women. Fifteen percent of
all cases that went before the Compensation
Board in 1929 were women workers, large
number of them were permanently disabled.
These were the conditions of working women
during the years of 1928-29. With the shar-
pening of the crisis the conditions of the
working women become even worse. Since
most women are concentrated in the irregular,
unskilled, and highly seasonal industries and
the percentage of women on the reserve army
of unemployed is larger than that of men
workers, the increase of unemployment gen.