Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: “Women Workers of the World” -Fight for Emancipation

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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 2, 1909
“True respect for women is mostly confined to the working class.”

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 29, 1909:

THE WOMEN WORKERS OF THE WORLD

True respect for women is mostly confined to the working class. Strange as it may sound to the unthinking, and the unobserving, a woman or girl is safer from insult in any crowd of workingmen, however plain and rough, than in any crowd of idlers, however well-dressed and worthless. To take the modern miniature of Sodom, Spokane for example: decent women may pass up and down Stevens street-even among the spiritless slaves who are saying mass to the job signs of the employment sharks, and not a man who would breathe a word of offense.

How many women do not look down and feel nervous and apprehensive as they pass the crowd of loafers at the corner of Howard and Riverside streets, and these loafers are the very cream of Spokane society-yes, more, they are the refined cream, the Limburger cheese of the town. The same thing is true in all cities; it is the workingmen who are chivalrous, and the loafers who are curs.

The sharpest quote in the battle hymns of all nations has been the call to defend “wife, home and children,” but how could this affect our modern American employing class? What a task! “To defend wife?” Which wife? Which one of the modern employing class concubines could stir the spirit of bravery in the breast of a spaniel? The task is too great; too much responsibility! Love of home and wife may do well enough for a plain workingmen, but our advanced employers, with their plural marriages, have not bravery and “love” enough to go ’round.

In all ages, women, from their comparative bodily weakness, have been treated as inferiors. St. Paul says that “It is a shame for a woman to speak in the church.” Paul was right. It is a shame not only for women, but for men to speak in the church, which has been and is, one of the chief influences used to keep the female sex in submission. “Let her ask her husband at home”-for information, says Paul. Fancy a woman asking an A. F. of L. scab, with a broken back, for “information!” Men have fought and bled for religious liberty for themselves, and have thought to win real freedom by gaining the baubles of suffrage and theoretical “political” rights. The modern suffragette agitation among women may cause some of the men to smile, but they are following where the political “socialist” saints have trod-the ballot is the way, the truth and the life!

But even the struggle for the ballot, empty in itself, shows that the spirit of discontent is influencing the women workers of the world. Women long for independence and liberty. The more intelligent and pure the woman, the more her mind revolts from the thought of marriage as an economic necessity-means of getting a supporter, a living. The ancient joke about the “old maid” has not its origin in any natural reproach against a woman who prefers to live single, but the unmarried woman is supposed to be in a worse position materially, than her married sister, and this notwithstanding that marriage for money and social position alone, is legalized prostitution.

Great boasts have been made about the refining influence of Christianity on the lives of women, and the noble example of the early women Christians who were martyrs. But what can be said of the church, which in all ages has canonized the rich women of the world who have built shrines to the virgin, and which church has burned the Joans of Arc?

To those scientists, who would compare the human species to the other animals, it were well to point out that modern thought, culture and custom has reversed the order of nature. In Nature, it is the male who attracts, and the female who chooses. The gaudy and beautiful plumage of the birds is best developed in the male. The lion has the mane, the lioness none. The economic relations of the birds, and of the animals are natural, and the female tiger’s claws will hold the prey as well as the male’s. But in modern life, the woman is not on an equality with the man in the struggle for existence. A thousand rules, laws and customs prevent. What then, the outcome? The woman is forced to depend, more or less, on the support of the man who has her at an advantage in the struggle for bread.

Books have been written; sermons have been preached on “women’s rights,” as if women’s rights were a thing distinct and apart from the rights of humanity. The ground of controversy has been trampled hard in the discussion of just how many crumbs of liberty should fall to our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives, and even today, any attempt at liberty and equality for women is mostly met with a smile-or a frown-from the “lords of creation.” Napoleon once asked Madame De Stael why she, as a women, took so much interest in the law. She replied: “because the law hangs us!” Sensible woman: No wonder she was banished.

Now, while we regard the struggle after the ballot-the attempt to take part in the class government of the employers-as a chase after the wind, on the part of the women, any movement which stimulates the natural and long depressed desires of women for equality shows a healthful tendency. After the brilliant results obtained by the “ballot,” on the part of the modern workingman, the wonder is that any one should value such a worthless toy. But experience teaches all of us-except the politicians who never learn anything, and never forget anything.

The unrest of society is due to industrial causes. Only economic freedom will elevate women. Even a moderate, instead of the present wage-scale in the shops, and the department stores, would largely obliterate the “restricted” district and the house of prostitution. If it is true, that men generally are drunkards through poverty, it is even more true that women sell themselves for the same reason.

Not until the mothers of the race are economically independent of the fathers, can there be general equality and mutual respect in the relations of the sexes. Not by pinning the scarlet letter on the breast of the poor victim of lust and avarice, but by unfurling the scarlet flag of working class emancipation, can women as well as men be regenerated and ennobled. The unhampered association of the sexes, and the abolition of the conditions which herd men like cattle from the refining influences of women and which segregate the women in the mills and the factories, will be a social purification. The monastery and the convent of the middle ages were the feeders of the brothel, and the same causes produce like results today.

The independence of women from trying to rely on the bread-getting powers of men, may be the cause of fewer marriages for convenience, but the marriages of mutual love and respect will starve the divorce lawyers and courts.

The I. W. W. includes women as well as men who work for wages. It is customary to require no initiation fee for women, and the dues are one half of the dues from men. Every woman member has an equal voice and vote in the union. If it is a “shame for a woman to speak in the church,” it is an honor for a woman to speak in the meetings of the only organization which stands for true freedom for women-the Industrial Workers of the World.

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[Emphasis added. Newsclip added is from page 4 of this issue of Industrial Worker.]

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SOURCE & IMAGE
Industrial Worker
(Spokane, Washington)
-July 29, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n20-jul-29-1909-IW.pdf

See also:

“Celebrating A Rich Tradition Of Women In The IWW:
They Weren’t Kept At The Back, So They Went To The Front”
-by Autumn Gonzalez, Nicholas DeFilippis and Donal Fallon
This story originally appeared in the Industrial Worker – Issue #1733, March 2011.
https://www.iww.org/node/5372

“Würde der Frauen” by Friedrich Schiller
https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Würde_der_Frauen

“Would the Women” by Friedrich Schiller
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/W%25C3%25BCrde_der_Frauen&prev=search

Friedrich Schiller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schiller

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Women in the IWW