No matter what your fight, don't be ladylike!
God Almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
-Mother Jones
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Monday March 8, 1915
New York, New York - The "Uplifters" of Working Women Are Roundly Scored
Rose Schneiderman
At a recent meeting on "women and wages" held at New York City's Cooper Union, Miss Rose Schneiderman, of the Women's Trade Union League, addressed those who seek to be the "uplifters" of working women:
Instead of making women workers dance when they do not want to dance, and showing them how to save money when the poor things have to make the pennies stretch to buy food, why don't the uplifters do something that really will help them?
Instead of preaching about why girls go wrong and telling them how to be saved, why not remedy the underlying cause of evil-wages?
Dorothy Miller, of the Retail Clerks Union, addressed those who amuse themselves by trying, as an experiment, to live on $6 a week:
Some people say they would like to try to live on $6 a week and show the girls how absurdly easy it is, but they only are experimenting, and not suffering the real thing with no square meal at the end of the experiment.
Prof. Howard Woolston, lead investigator of wages for the New York state factory commission, rounded out the program with facts and figures on
the wages of working women.
From the Indiana Fort Wayne News of March 3, 1915:
NEW YORK UPLIFTERS ARE ROUNDLY SCORED
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AT A MEETING OF THE WORKING WOMEN
HELD IN COOPERS UNION.
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NEW YORK, March 3.-"Instead of making women workers dance when they do not want to dance, and showing them how to save money when the poor things have to make the pennies stretch to buy food, why don't the uplifters do something that really will help them?
"Instead of preaching about why girls go wrong and telling them how to be saved, why not remedy the underlying cause of evil-wages?
"Some people say they would like to try to live on $6 a week and show the girls how absurdly easy it is, but they only are experimenting, and not suffering the real thing with no square meal at the end of the experiment."
Those were some of the outspoken sentiments at a "women-and wages" mass meeting held at Cooper Union. They showed the feelings of the working women, and had some of the "uplifters" been there, they might not have liked all they heard.
The opinion of the working women of New York, as expressed by themselves, is that they do not care a straw for the theories and platitudes of the "uplifters." They do not want to know how to prepare dainty 6-cent lunches; they do not care to be taught how to make their own clothes and hats. What they want is better wages, compensation more nearly what they think they earn. They want an organization recognized by the employers.
They are not greatly concerned with having their working conditions, their living rooms and their minds improved; if they can get more money for their work, they will do their own improving.
So said the speakers at the Cooper Union meeting. The first two of the foregoing questions was asked by Miss Rose Schneiderman and the last by Miss Dorothy Miller. Miss Schneiderman is a worker herself and Miss Miller is a department store clerk.
[Said Miss Miller:]
I started out at $5 a week myself...and I'm not rich yet. I lived in Brooklyn then, and my carfare to and from the store amounted to $1.20 a week. My lunches cost 90 cents a week and I gave $2.50 at home. That left me 40 cents a week for clothing and general expenses. But remember I only gave $2.50 at home, while most girls must pay at least $3.50 a week if they live with their parents or if they have to board elsewhere. If I had had to do that I would have had to walk to and from the Brooklyn bridge every day and cut my lunch money from 15 cents a day to 6 cents.
Finally I got $6 a week, but not before I spent a long time at $5, and then at $5.50. At the most a girl can't have but a few cents left over, for she has to clothe herself respectably and has to have some kind of diversion. And you can bet those six-cent lunches in the stores got tiresome-three cents for something they call coffee and three cents for rolls.
The average wages of a girl clerk is $6.00 a week. It doesn't matter what the reports say about it. I know, I was a cashier and I have handled in one day as much as $2,000, and sometimes we were so busy I couldn't get relief, and so I had to go without my six-cent lunch. I tell you it's a hard proposition to live that way. Why, the Retail Clerks' union isn't growing as fast as it should, because the poor girls can't spare twenty-five cents a month for dues.
After all the only ones who are going to help us are ourselves. It's easy for uplifters to say they could on $3.50 a week if they had to. But they don't have to, and if they try the experiment for a week they can keep a stiff upper lip thinking about that big square meal waiting for them when the experiment is over. It's no experiment with us. There's no square meal waiting at the end like a happy awakening after a bad dream.
Prof. Howard Woolston, head of the wage investigation made for the New York state factory commission, said:
The average wage of women who make candy is $3.75 a week, and if all the candy workers in New York state were raised to $8.00 a week it would mean an additional cost to the ultimate consumer of only eighteen cents for every one hundred pounds sold.
Out of 55,000 women workers investigated 1,500 get less than $3.00 a week, 11,000 less than $5. 19,000 less than $6, 27,000 less than $7, and 37,000 less than $8. Yet authorities say it requires from $8 to 13 a week for a worker to live like a human being.
It's not the work itself that causes low wages, but the mobs waiting outside the gate for jobs. That puts the level of wages down, for the employer can have his choice. He can recruit a new and more underpaid lot of workers from the grammar schools and tenement houses. Twice as many women are hired and fired than hold a job a full year, showing that many lose many weeks and months by having to drift from job to job.
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[photograph added]
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SOURCE
The Fort Wayne News
(Fort Wayne, Indiana)
-Mar 3, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Feb 24, 1915
(despite the the date given by the
Indiana paper, I believe this meeting
took place on Feb 23, 1915.)
http://query.nytimes.com/...
All for One
-by Rose Schneiderman
-with Lucy Goldthwaite
NY, 1967
See also:
"Hellraisers Journal: Starvation Stalks Unemployed Women of New York,
Reports Nixola Greeley-Smith" byJayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Industrial relations: final report and testimony, Volume 3
United States. Commission on Industrial Relations,
Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
https://books.google.com/...
2258-Testimony of Miss Dorothy Miller
(New York June 10, 1914 during afternoon session.
Present: Chairman Walsh and Commissioners Delano, O'Connell, Lennon, Harriman, Commons, and Garretson; also William O. Thompson, counsel.)
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Rose Schneiderman
http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/...
Retail Clerks Union Banner
https://books.google.com/...
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Working Girl Blues - Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard
Well, I’m tired of workin’ my life away
And givin’ somebody else all of my pay
While they get rich on the profits that I lose
And leavin’ me here with those workin’ girl blues
I-dee-o-lady, workin’ girl blues
And I can’t even afford a new pair of shoes
While they can live in any old penthouse they choose
And all that I’ve got is the workin’ girl blues
-Hazel Dickens
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