Part 16

More humanely and with higher logic the worn-out teacher in New York is retired upon a pension. It is known that old age gradually brings weariness and ossification, and the veteran, whose strength has been sucked by successive generations of youngsters, must yield the leadership, for the good of the service, to the younger generation that, in Ibsen’s phrase, is “knocking at the door”. One year the veteran is assumed to be worth the highest salary; the next year she is pensioned off, as if from one week to the next her efficiency had dropped from maximum near to minimum. Actually the powers may have been declining for some years before the teacher’s withdrawal and the strict logician would object, therefore, to the size of the salary received. But abstract logic is no guide. Teachers must be paid and pensioned on pragmatic principles; whatever system works out best for the schools is most desirable.

2. The agitation of the Interborough Association has forced part of the public to admit the need for a general increase of teachers’ salaries, an increase which shall be so distributed as to minimize the inequalities. After the legislature in 1907 had passed a law embodying the women teachers’ demands and repassed it over the veto of Mayor McClellan, Governor Hughes in turn vetoed it, but showed that he thought the schedules should be revised. In 1907 and again in 1908 a special committee of the board of education, after careful deliberation, recommended tentative new schedules, which were approved by the board. In 1908 and in 1909 the board included in the budget as presented to the board of estimate and apportionment requests for appropriations which would enable it to put the amended schedules into effect. Its request was denied.

Altogether the proposed schedules would entail salary increases for 1910 aggregating $2,639,762 to 14,751 women and aggregating $206,215 to 582 men, a total increment, for the first year of operation, of $2,845,977. Of all the men educators the salaries of 28 per cent would be raised. Of all the women educators the salaries of 98 per cent would be raised. The mass of the women teachers would have their salaries raised about twenty per cent.

This schedule, like all others, is vulnerable at points. Kindergarten teachers will complain because they are treated less generously than grade teachers, for hitherto they have been under the same schedule. But kindergartners have recently glutted the market and one way to persuade them to prepare for other work, where they are more needed, is to make their increases smaller.

The Interborough Association of Women Teachers criticizes the proposed schedules. The salaries of male teachers should not be raised, says the Association, “because these men are already receiving higher salaries than women occupying the same position.”

Since no men are employed in the lower five grades, the so-called principle does not affect the majority of the women teachers, those who teach these grades. The board, recognizing that their salaries are inadequate, proposes to enlarge the salaries generously. But the Interborough Association says in effect: “We will not approve an addition of $2,639,762 to the salaries of women, because at the same time you add $206,215 to the salaries of men. We demand that the women who, being in the majority and now receiving the smallest salaries, will receive under the board’s schedules all the increases which they expect, shall forego these increases until the board approves further increases exclusively for the better-paid women teachers, aggregating another three or four million dollars.”

So long as the majority of the women teachers, those in the lower grades, by their silence approve the assumption that they desire to sacrifice some two million dollars a year for the sake of the abstract doctrine which their richer sisters propound, so long the board of estimate, always vigilantly watched by the organized tax payers, will have a good excuse for keeping things as they are. Why should any guardians of the public purse incur the dislike of tax payers for the sake of teachers who show no eagerness for the attainable and promise neither gratitude nor contentment? The policy of all or nothing is heroic, but unbusinesslike.

Should the teachers, men and women in harmony, unite with the board of education in a campaign of enlightenment in favor of the tentative schedules, perhaps amended in spots, they might convince the tax payers that the proposed increases are necessary for the following reasons:

1. The cost of living has notoriously increased since the present schedules were established, increased by at least the fifteen to twenty per cent by which the new schedules would increase most salaries. Therefore, in reality, the teachers who secure increases would be getting no higher “purchasing power” than the old schedules were meant to give them. The 1500 men whose salaries would be unaltered, are peacefully accepting a reduced purchasing power.

2. While at one time teaching was the most desirable work open to well-educated women in large numbers, the occupations now open to them are happily increasing. The schools must now compete with commerce, law, medicine, literature and journalism, for women of the best type. Unless the schools offer a career as lucrative as the office, the bar and the desk, the quality of women entering the teaching profession will deteriorate and the children suffer.

3. For men and women of the same ability the standard of living, in all classes, is rising. Each year the nation, and especially New York City, grows richer, luxuries become comforts and comforts necessities. Everybody, from immigrant to millionaire, expects to live better today than he did two or three decades ago. Houses, food, clothing, holidays, culture, travel--the son demands all of better quality than satisfied the father. Teachers should share this general rise in the standard of living, or their profession will lose caste, and the rising generation will lose the influence of teachers who command public respect.

A survey of the whole situation, then, indicates that the cry “Equal pay for equal work” is as misleading to the teachers, who understand its import, as to the casual hearer, who takes it literally. In the latter it arouses false ideas; in the former false hopes. Like a will o’ the wisp it lures into a morass. Only those who, ignoring its gleam and earnest to make whatever advance is practicable, march steadily along the beaten highway, each year come nearer their goal.

WOMEN AND THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

ALICE HENRY

Editor Woman’s Department, Union Labor Advocate of Chicago.

The story of woman in the labor movement has yet to be written. In its completeness no one knows the story, and those who know sections of it most intimately are too busy living their own parts in that story to be able to pause long enough to play at being its chroniclers. For to be part of a movement is more absorbing than to write about it. Whom then shall we ask? To whom shall we turn for even an imperfect knowledge of the story, at once great and sordid, tragic and commonplace, of woman’s side of the labor movement? To whom, you would say, but the worker herself? And where does the worker speak with such clearness, such unfaltering steadiness, as through her union, the organization of her trade?

In the industrial maze the individual worker cannot interpret her own life story from her knowledge of the little patch of life which is all her hurried fingers ever touch. Only an organization can be the interpreter here. Fortunately for the student the organization can act as interpreter, both for the organized women who have been drawn into the labor movement and for those less fortunate who are struggling on single-handed. Organized and unorganized workers almost always come into pretty close relations in one way and another. Besides, the movement in its modern developments is still so young among us that there is scarcely a woman worker in the organizations who has not begun her trade life as an unorganized toiler.

Speaking broadly, the points upon which the trade-union movement concentrates are the raising of wages, the shortening of hours, the diminution of seasonal work, the abolition or reduction of piece work, with its resultant of speeding-up, the maintaining of sanitary conditions, the enforcement of laws against child labor and other industrial abuses, the abolition of taxes for power, thread and needles, and of unfair fines for petty or unproved offenses. A single case taken from a non-union trade must serve to suggest the conditions that make organization a necessity. Seventeen years ago in the bag and hemp factories of St. Louis, girl experts turned out 460 yards of material in a twelve-hour day, the pay being 24 cents per bolt (of from 60 to 66 yards). These girls earned $1.84 per day (on the 60-yard bolt). Now a girl cannot hold her job under a thousand yards in a ten-hour day. The fastest possible worker can turn out only 1200 yards, and the price has dropped to 15 cents per 100 yards as against the old rate of 24 cents per bolt of from 60 to 66 yards. The workers have to fill the shuttle every two or three minutes, so that the strain of vigilance is never relaxed. One year is spent in learning the trade, and operators last only three years after that.

How successful organization has been is well shown by numerous examples. In the instances which follow, taken from the convention handbook of the National Woman’s Trade Union League, the advantages gained in some of the trades apply to all establishments working under agreement with any and every local union of the national organization. In other cases the diminution of hours, the increase of wages and the improvement of conditions are limited to the factories or shops in certain cities only. Even bearing this qualification in mind, these gains, following in the train of collective bargaining, are sufficiently impressive.

SEWING TRADES

In the sewing trades there are many sub-divisions, including such varied groups of workers as these: home finishers, coat makers, pants makers, vest makers, shirt, collar and cuff makers, overall makers, white goods workers, corset makers, shirtwaist makers, skirt makers, cloak and suit tailors, button-hole makers, lace makers and embroiderers. All employed in these occupations can belong to one of the two great national unions, the United Garment Workers of America and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers. Wherever these unions control the trade they have abolished child labor, have established the eight-hour day and in some cities the forty-four-hour week, have insisted upon sanitary conditions, and have obtained time and a half in wages for overtime work. The general wage has been increased over fifty %.

GLOVE WORKERS

In this trade the union has abolished the practice of compelling a girl to pay for her sewing machine (perhaps $60 for a $35 machine) or else to rent it at 50 cents a week. Under non-union conditions she has to buy her own needles and oil, pay 40 cents a week for power, and stand the cost of all breakages. The organization has abolished all these causes of complaint, has reduced hours from twelve to nine and eight and a half, and has established a Saturday half holiday. This union has been very successful in eliminating the pacemaker as a factor in controlling the price of piece work, for the price is now determined by the speed of the average worker, not the fastest one.

BOOT AND SHOE WORKERS

Here the union has increased wages by 40%. Unionized women shoe workers are entitled when sick to $5 a week benefit for thirteen weeks in one year. There is also a death benefit of $50, after six months’ membership, and $100 after a two years’ membership. All members are entitled to $4 a week strike pay.

LAUNDRY WORKERS

In one city organization has reduced the hours of work from eighteen and twelve (in the rush season) to nine, and has increased wages 50%. In another city the union has reduced the hours of work from eighteen and twelve to nine, and has increased wages from $15 a month to $9 a week minimum and $15 a week average.

BEER BOTTLERS