employer as well as to the immediate advantage of the employee. It saves the employer rent and tools and procures him cheaper labor. Women can afford to work for less under their own roof when it is a question of working for less or not at all. These women do not often compete with men, for their work is the poorest paid and the least skilled. Few men compete with women in the lower grades of work unless they are physically unable to compete with men for the better kinds of employments. On the other hand women usually perform some branch of work which is wholly abandoned to them by the men and they refrain, whether willingly or not, from engag ing in the branches monopolized by their male rivals.

9911

The advantages of cheap production do not often fall to this. class of laboring women. Says Mrs. Campbell, "The emancipation of women is well under way, when all underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is possible to make it up at home, and simple suits of very good material make it hardly more difficult for women to clothe herself without thought or worry, than it has long been for men. This is the word heard at a woman's club not long ago, and reinforced within a week by two well-known journals edited in the interests of women at large.

The emancipation on the one side has meant no corresponding emancipation for the other; and as one woman selects, well pleased, garment after garment, daintily tucked and trimmed and finished beyond any capacity of home sewing, marveling a little that a few dollars can give such lavish return, there arises, from narrow attic and dark, foul basement, and crowded factory, the cry of the women whose life blood is on these garments. Through burning scorching days of summer; through marrow-piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags with white faced children at their knees, crying for more bread, or, silent from long weakness, looking with blank eyes at the flying needle, these women toil cn, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours even, before the fixed task is done.':2

After a careful study of one of the thickly populated work

11 Webb, Problems in Modern Industry, p 75.

12 Campbell, Prisoners of Poverty, pp. 30-1.

ing districts in New York, Mrs. More says, "As the children grow older and require less of her care at home, the mother takes in sewing or goes out washing, secures a janitor's place, cleans offices, and does whatever she can to increase the weekly income. She feels this to be her duty, and often it is necessary, but frequently it has a disastrous effect on the ambition. of the husband. As soon as he sees that the wife can help support the family, his interest and sense of responsibility are likely to lessen, and he works irregularly or spends more on himself. There are, of course, many families in which this united income is needed, when the man's illness or incapacity makes it imperative for the wife to help. Sometimes it is due to thrift and ambition to save money for the future, or for some definite purpose. Charitable societies generally deplore the prevalence of this custom because of its economic and moral results on the head of the family.

7 13

The British Board of Trade, in its report on French towns, says: "With regard to the wives' earnings it may be observed that their importance is not limited to the towns in which textile industries predominate. In 51 per cent of all the families from which budgets were obtained the wives were contributors; the proportion was highest at Rome (a town largely dependent on the cotton trade,) where it was no less than 82 per cent." Of Germany the report says, "A large proportion of the home workers are married women, who in this way seek to supplement the earnings of the chief bread-winner, and are only able to devote odd hours to the work. How largely the custom of home working is a result of poverty may be concluded from a statement made in a memorial lately addressed to the Berlin company by its employes. The tramway employee is unfortunately unable to dispense with the earnings of his wife, even in normal domestic conditions, if he would maintain his family properly. The wife has really no choice in the matter. So, too, of 2,051 municipal employees interrogated on the subject in 1905. 416 or 20.2 per cent replied that their wives worked

13 More, Wage Earners' Budgets, pp. 83, 87.

for money, 170 at charring, 161 as home workers, and 17 in factories, and 68 in other ways.

14

In spite of their economic independence the status of the women among the working poor is lower than the status of the women of any other social class. They suffer more from oppression, and their position is little higher than that of the women of the Australia aborigines among whom man has the power of life and death over his wife and children. It is true, the state restricts the power of the husband over the wife and secures for her certain personal rights the Australian savages are ignorant of, but she has a new master in modern industry which virtually exercises over her a power of life and death untempered by sympathy and mutual interest. Degeneracy and elimination such as was never known in primitive society would result if the more fortunately situated economic classes did not interfere.

14 Cost of Living in French Towns, 1909, p. XVI; Cost of Living in German Towns, 1908, p. 11.

CHAPTER IV

THE EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL CHANGES UPON THE HOMES OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS WORKERS

The middle class worker is a worker whose remuneration is sufficient to allow him to maintain a plane of living commonly considered adequate for his physical well being.

His employment is not necessarily in the skilled trades, for many of the skilled workers are kept on a margin of bare subsistence, while many unskilled workers are able to enjoy a considerable degree of comfort. So much depends upon the economic conditions of a country or section, and the demand for and supply of labor that a classification according to accupation or remuneration would not be feasible.

In congested cities where the cost of living is high, employment uncertain, and labor plentiful, the unskilled worker frequently finds it impossible to live and enjoy the simple comforts and decencies of life. On the other hand, in newly settled communities, where labor is scarce and, opportunities many, the unskilled worker is often able to accumulate property and to give his children advantages usually confined to the prosperous business class in a large city.

Hence, in discussing the middle class worker, he will be considered as a man having sufficient pay, irrespective of his occupation, or the occupation of his family to enjoy a plane of living generally accepted as necessary to a normal and healthful life.

Peoples that make any progress constantly press toward an ideal. This ideal is the standard-so to speak-accepted by all classes to a certain extent, reflected in the schools, churches and all other social institutions. It is a part of the spirit of the age. To judge a class by any other standard, to expect its members to embrace the ideals held by their ancestors be

66

cause we think it more in keeping with their financial circumstances, is as unfair as it is illogical. It is expecting of others what we feel no one has a right to expect of us. To share in the benefits of our social institutions and the advance they make from year to year is a right claimed by all irrespective of class, that a woman no longer contented with bare floors and tin dishes," or even ingrain carpets and porcelain, or a blue calico gown and white apron for an afternoon social function, does not signify she is losing her sense of the fitness of things but that she no longer lives in an age of bare floors and tin dishes and that she too has through imitation shared in the rise of material standards. When a class departs from a seemingly sensible course, it is more often a joining of the procession of imitators and if the example is not worthy of imitation, the fault is further up the line.

The middle class worker has as his goal the social class just ahead of him. He is following a standard he did not establish, but he must go with the current or drift back. One cannot leng stand still.

In the last chapter was discussed a class of workers who have little, if any, freedom in the choice of a plane of living. Their poverty is so great that outside of the civilizing forces afforded by the community, gratis to all, they merely exist. We now come to a class of workers who possess those qualities of character which determine the type of civilization of a country and from whom have come the progressive movements tending toward the general uplift of humanity. They are the real fighters. They stand on a side hill and fight both ways— fight to keep from being shoved down the hill and to gain an inch on the upgrade. They are neither exclusively the victims nor the benificiaries of the economic regime.

The home of the middle-class worker contains all the elements of change characteristic of the age, and the success or failure of the breadwinner in the economic struggle determines the degree to which these elements are developed. To apply a test to their respective values would be unfair unless the same test were applied to the families of the higher social classes. What will be attempted will be to trace the influence of economic