Making Both Ends Meet | Page 2

call on the East Side on a warm summer evening. The sixth chapter is almost entirely the contribution of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, three young college-bred women from Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley, respectively, who made an inquiry for the National Consumers' League in the hospital, hotel, and commercial steam laundries of New York. The fifth chapter is composed largely from a chronicle of the New York cloak makers' strike written by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, one of the most efficient leaders in attaining the final settlement last fall between the employers and the seventy thousand members of the Cloak Makers' Union. Mr. Frederick Winston Taylor gave the definition of "Scientific Management" which prefaces the last chapter. It is a pleasure to acknowledge help of several kinds received from Mrs. Florence Kelley, Miss Perkins, and Miss Johnson of the Consumers' League; from Miss Neumann, of the Woman's Trade-Union League; from Miss Pauline and Josephine Goldmark, and Mr. Louis p. Brandeis; from Miss Willa Siebert Cather of _McClure's Magazine_; and from Mr. S.S. McClure.
To record rightly any little corner of contemporary history is a communal rather than an individual piece of work. While no title so pompous as that of a cathedral could possibly be applied except with great absurdity to any magazine article, least of all to these quiet, journalistic records, yet the writing of any sincere journalistic article is more comparable, perhaps, to cathedral work than to any sort of craft in expression. If the account is to have any genuine social value as a narrative of contemporary truth, it will be evolved as the product of numerous human intelligences and responsibilities. Especially is this true of any synthesis of facts which must be derived, so to speak, from many authors, from many authentic sources.
Unstandardized conditions in women's work are so frequently mentioned in the first six chapters that their connection with the last chapter will be sufficiently clear. What is the way out of the unstandardized and unsatisfactory conditions obtaining for multitudes of women workers? Legislation is undoubtedly one way out. Trade organization is undoubtedly one way out. But legislation is ineffectual unless it is strongly backed by conscientious inspection and powerful enforcement. In the great garment-trade strikes in New York, in spite of their victories, the trade orders have gone in such numbers to other cities that neither the spirit of the shirt-waist makers' strike nor the wisdom of the Cloak Makers' Preferential Union Agreement have since availed to provide sufficient employment for the workers. Further, neither legislation nor trade organization are permanently valuable unless they are informed by justice and understanding. In the same manner, unless it is informed by these qualities, the new plan of management outlined in the last chapter is incapable of any lasting and far-reaching industrial deliverance. But it provides a way out, hitherto untried. With an account of this way as it appears to-day our book ends, as a testimony to living facts can only end, not with the hard-and-fast wall of dogma, but with an open door.
EDITH WYATT.
CHICAGO, March 19, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN

CHAPTER II
THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE

CHAPTER III
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS. (UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL WORK)

CHAPTER IV
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS. (MONOTONY AND FATIGUE IN SPEEDING)

CHAPTER V
THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL UNION SHOP

CHAPTER VI
WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK

CHAPTER VII
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK

CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN
I
One of the most significant features of the common history of this generation is the fact that nearly six million women are now gainfully employed in this country. From time immemorial, women have, indeed, worked, so that it is not quite as if an entire sex, living at ease at home heretofore, had suddenly been thrown into an unwonted activity, as many quoters of the census seem to believe. For the domestic labor in which women have always engaged may be as severe and prolonged as commercial labor. But not until recently have women been employed in multitudes for wages, under many of the same conditions as men, irrespective of the fact that their powers are different by nature from those of men, and should, in reason, for themselves, for their children, and for every one, indeed, be conserved by different industrial regulations.
What, then, are the fortunes of some of these multitudes of women gainfully employed? What do they give in their work? What do they get from it? Clearly ascertained information on those points has been meagre.
About two years ago the National Consumers' League, through the initiative of its Secretary, Mrs. Florence Kelley, started an inquiry on the subject of the standard of living among self-supporting women workers in