Tracey M. Wilson
The best way to learn what work was really like is to listen to the women describe their daily activities. After reading the interviews in this activity, lead a discussion which will allow the students to draw some conclusions about the conditions of the women. They should see that according to those interviewed:
-
1. Women worked due to economic necessity for the most part.
-
2. There was almost always more than one wage-earner in the household.
-
3. Wages were so low that few could save, or have extra money for leisure time.
-
4. Women felt afraid that they could easily lose a job by complaining to their employer, but were unafraid of complaining to the interviewer.
-
5. Not all women felt the same way about their job.
Then have students conjecture what results an interviewer would have taking a similar survey in 1981. Would the workers have the same reactions to working conditions, pay, employers, and family relations? What would be the similarities and differences?
(figure available in print form)
Many of these working women did much more than complain to the interviewer. A long period of economic uncertainty ended in 1914. With the coming of war contracts, all wage-earners became more confident as they found themselves in demand. In the U.S. during the World War I years more than a million workers struck, more than had ever struck in any years before 1915. The soaring cost of food and the unavailability of some goods led to a growing militancy among workers. The decade following 1910 was the decisive one in winning the eight hour day, something American workers had been fighting for since the 1860s. At the beginning of the decade only eight percent of the country’s workers had regular schedules of forty-eight hours or less. Almost seventy percent had the forty-eight hour week, and less than twenty-six percent worked more than fifty-four hours.
35
Women were the main participants in at least fifteen strikes in Hartford between 1913 and 1919. Their demands were for both improved pay and working conditions. In Hartford there was a total of eighty-two strikes. Fourteen percent were successful. An equal number were partially successful and a full sixty-six percent of the strikes ended with no gain at all.
NUMBER OF STRIKES IN HARTFORD AND CONNECTICUT*
YEARS
|
HARTFORD
|
CONNECTICUT
|
1913-1914
|
5
|
45
|
1915-1916
|
33
|
422
|
1917-1918
|
18
|
183
|
1919-1920
|
26
|
280
|
TOTAL
|
82
|
930
|
*Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics,
The Condition of Wage
Earners
. 1914, 1916, 1918, and 1920.
As early as 1913, 150 garment workers, mostly women, at the Davidson and Watts Company in Hartford went on strike for eight days, demanding shorter hours. They lost. On May 13, 1916, sixty shirtwaist makers at the Max Roth Company stayed out for twenty days demanding only a half day on Saturday, but with full pay. They were unsuccessful. Two days later, eleven women at the Elite Waist Company struck for the same reason and got the same result. Twenty-seven garment workers at Lippman Brothers and Sons struck for reinstatement of an employee in September, 1916. They also lost.
Cap makers striking the Hartford Cap and Hat Company were the first group of women during this period to be successful. The seventeen women who went on strike for six days in 1916 won reduced hours from fifty-three to forty-nine per week with a ten percent increase in pay. These same women struck Hartford Hat twenty months later and won another twenty percent increase in pay.
By January, 1919 the Armistice was signed and the government contracts were stopped. The economy began a slump that left many unemployed. However, in January, seventy-one waistmakers from four different companies struck for higher wages, fewer hours, and a closed shop. At the Connecticut Silk Waist Factory the women who were out for fifteen days won a reduction in hours from forty-nine to forty-seven a week. At the Frank Lamar Company where eight people went out in a sympathy strike, they were all replaced. Ten workers at the Herman Levy Company held out for fifty-nine days in sympathy and were replaced. These women were well organized enough to stay out for long periods and were able to show concern for others outside their own work place. They must have suffered extremely poor working conditions to take such a risk. Perhaps if the strikes had occurred six months earlier, it would not have been so easy for employers to find scabs to replace the workers.
Finally, in September of 1919, 100 seamstresses at all of the major department stores in Hartford went on strike. Those at G. Fox, Brown Thompson, and Sage Allen walked out with a demand for higher pay. Fifty garment workers at other department stores struck for a fifty percent increase in pay and a forty-four hour week. They followed the lead of 300 custom tailors (probably all male) in Hartford who went on strike earlier in the month and had been successful in winning higher wages. However, the women were unsuccessful.
It is interesting to note that it was the workers in the “women’s industries” who were much more apt to go on strike. They had a longer history in that line of work, found it easier to band together, and were in no conflict with male co-workers, or hostile unions. Many women in traditionally male munitions work were there temporarily, and others were earning so much more than they ever had that they saw no reason to strike. In these industries unskilled women were often at odds with the craftsmen they replaced. On the other hand strikes in Bridgeport in 1915 show a fascinating cooperative relationship between the unskilled females and the skilled males in the International Association of Machinists.
36