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A WORD WITH THE WOMEN

Elia W. Peattie.

A committee from the Knights of Labor appointed to investigate the condition of women in the sweat shops of New York, brought out some interesting evidence the other day. Evidence was given that the Italians usually got their little children to make the coats for the clothing trade. Children only 5 years of age were taught to do certain parts of the work, and spent all of their time sewing on the heavy garments in the close room of a tenement sweat shop. Many of the older working girls work twelve and fourteen hours a day, but when the inspector comes around the girls, instructed by the contractors, swear that they work but ten. In some places the
girls work in cellars under the buildings, and very many of them never go to school
at all. Miss Lottie [Perpky?], the leader of the women in the recent strike among the cloak manufacturers, said that the coatmakers were on the piece work system and as a general rule "seldom take any time for their dinner, because they would lose time if they did. They generaly eat while they work. The contractors pay 4 cents a coat generally, and the highest price paid is 10 cents." She was asked how many coats an industrious woman could make in a day, and replied: "About seven coats a day by working very hard; that is 70 cents a day." There was much other evidence
as to the lack of all proper conveniences for women, and the absence of cleanliness
and sufficient room, the badness of the air and the relentless oppression of the contractors. The Italians do not belong to the union, and are so numerous that they force prices down to the lowest. The committee intends to continue its work.

Over in Germany the emperor is bending his kingly energies to opposing the new woman. He is of the opinion that the full duty of woman is to act as the
helpmeet of man and to defer to him in all things, and to confine herself exclusively to domestic duties and occupations. He abhors the development of
woman as he does anarchy. So he has caused the arrest of the leaders of the
woman's emancipation movement in Berlin, and, being brought before magistrates, the women were heavily fined for being members of an unlawful society. An ancient law was resurrected to fit the case- a law prohibiting minors and
women from belonging to any political society. Thus does his majesty endeavor to nip in the bud the suffrage movements of Germany. But he has really performed a tremendous service for sufferage. All great causes live upon persecution. The kaiser has made suffragists, by this act, in households where the idea would not else have entered. For even in Germany where maid and matron are full of domestic laws referring to the subserviency of woman to man, there is a growing understanding of the fact that it was the man who made these proverbs, they will not stand
investigation. Something more than proverbs will be needed in the twentieth century to convince women that they are happier without their full liberty.

The women who work in sweat shops for $1 a week- as one woman testified that she did in New York- and the women who are arrested because they assert that they are citizens, entitled to have a voice in the Laws which govern them, are not going to be quieted by proverbs, not affrighted by prejudices, no lulled by flattery. One says this is no spirit of hostility. For, indeed, these oppressions do not fill one with light anger.

They are the faggots which will presently be kindled into a great revolution. Or, more properly speaking, they are the rungs of the ladder up which evolution will mount.