Part 3 (2/2)

The hearings on the law relative to mercantile establishments are held in Albany in a small room in the Capitol before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and the a.s.sembly Commission on Labor. These hearings are very fiery. The Support is represented by Attorney Mornay Williams, and Mrs.

Nathan, Mrs. Kelley, Miss Stokes, Miss Sanford, and Miss Goldmark of the New York and National Consumers' Leagues, and delegates from the Child Labor Committee, the Working-Girls' Clubs, and the Woman's Trade-Union League. Both men and women speak fox the amendment.[11] The Support's effort for legislation limiting hours has regularly been opposed by the Retail Dry-Goods Merchants' a.s.sociation, which yearly sends an influential delegation to Albany.

”These ladies have been coming here for sixteen years,” said one of the merchants, resentfully, last spring. Looking around, and observing changes in the faces watching him among adherents of the Support, he added: ”Well, perhaps not the _same_ ladies. But they have come.”

”These ladies are professional agitators,” said another merchant at another hearing. ”Why, they even misled Mr. Roosevelt, when he was Governor, into recommending the pa.s.sage of their bill.”

Such are some of the reasons offered by the opposition for not limiting women's hours of labor in mercantile establishments.

Among the several common features of the experiences of these New York saleswomen, low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training, absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of seasonal work, the consideration of this last common condition is placed last because its consequences seem the most far-reaching.

Looking back at these common features in the lives of these average American working girls, one has a sudden sense that the phenomenon of the New York department stores represents a painful failure in democracy.

What will the aspect of the New York department stores be in the future?

For New York doubtless will long remain a port of merchandise, one of the most picturesque and most frequented harbors of the Seven Seas. Doubtless many women still will work in its markets. What will their chances in life be?

First, it may be trusted that the State law will not forever refuse to protect these women and their future, which is also the future of the community, from the danger of unlimited hours of labor. Then, the fact that in a store in Cincinnati the efficiency of the saleswomen has been standardized and their wages raised, the fact that in a store in Boston the employees have become responsible factors in the business, and the fact that a school of salesmans.h.i.+p has been opened in New York seem to indicate the possibility of a day when salesmans.h.i.+p will become standardized and professional, as nursing has within the last century.

Further, it may be believed that saleswomen will not forever acquiesce in pursuing their trade in utterly machinal activity, without any common expression of their common position.

Very arresting is the fact that, year after year, the Union women go to Albany to struggle for better chances in life for the shop-women who cannot at present wisely make this struggle for themselves. The fact that the Union women fail is of less moment than that they continue to go.

But what have the organized women workers, the factory girls who so steadfastly make this stand for justice for the shop-girls, attained for themselves in their fortunes by their Union? It was for an answer to this question that we turned to the New York s.h.i.+rt-waist makers, whose income and outlay will be next considered in this little chronicle of women's wages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In the last six months further accounts from working women in the trades mentioned in New York have been received by Miss Edith Wyatt, Vice-President of the Consumers' League of Illinois. Aside from the facts ascertained through the schedules filled by the workers, and through Mrs. Clark's and Miss Wyatt's visits to them, information has been obtained through Miss Helen Marot, Secretary of the New York Woman's Trade-Union League, Miss Marion MacLean, Director of the Sociological Investigation Committee of the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation of the United States, Miss May Matthews, Head Worker of Hartley House, Miss Hall, Head Worker of the Riverside a.s.sociation, Miss Rosenfeld, Head Worker of the Clara de Hirsch Home, the Clinton Street Headquarters of the Union, the St. George Working Girls' Clubs, the Consumers' League of the City of New York, and the offices or files of the _Survey_, the _Independent_, the _Call_, and the _International Socialist Review_.]

[Footnote 2: It remains to be said that there are both among saleswomen and among women in business for the department stores, buyers, a.s.sistant buyers, receivers of special orders, advertisers, and heads of departments, earning salaries of from twenty dollars to two hundred dollars a week. But this experience does not represent the average fortune the League was interested in learning.]

[Footnote 3: Here are the estimates made by the St. George's Working Girls' Club of the smallest practicable expenditure for self-supporting girls in New York: General expense per week: room, $2; meals, $3; clothes, $1.25; was.h.i.+ng, 75 cents; carfare, 60 cents; pleasures, 25 cents; church, 10 cents; club, 5 cents: total $8. Itemized account of clothing for the year at $1.25 a week, or $65 a year: 2 pair of shoes at $2, and mending at $1.50, $5.50; 2 hats at $2.50, $5; 8 pair of stockings at 12-1/2 cents, $1; 2 combination suits at 50 cents, $1; 4 s.h.i.+rts at 12-1/2 cents, 50 cents; 4 pairs of drawers at 25 cents, $1; 4 corset covers at 25 cents, $1; 1 flannel petticoat, 25 cents; 2 white petticoats at 75 cents, $1.50; 5 s.h.i.+rt-waists at $1.20, $6; 1 net waist, $2.50; 2 corsets at $1, $2; gloves, $2; 2 pairs rubbers at 65 cents, $1.30; 1 dozen handkerchiefs at 5 cents, 60 cents; 3 nightgowns at 50 cents, $1.50; 1 sweater, $2; 2 suits at $15, $30: total, $65.65.]

[Footnote 4: This worker later, however, in the winter of 1911, considered she had been paid and promoted fairly.]

[Footnote 5: Macy and Company of New York give to those of their permanent women employees who desire it a monthly day of rest with pay.

The Daniels and Fisher Company of Denver refund to any woman employee who requests it the amount deducted for a monthly day of absence for illness.

This excellent rule is, however, said to represent here rather a privilege than a practice, and not to be generally taken advantage of, because not generally understood. The present writer has not been able to learn of other exceptions.]

[Footnote 6: Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 127.]

[Footnote 7: See page 16 (foot-note), ”Scientific Management as applied to Women's Work.”]

[Footnote 8: This statement does not include the excellent New York Child Labor Law for children under sixteen, which allows of no exception at Christmas time.]

[Footnote 9: Italics ours.]

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