Background Reading

At the beginning of the Progressive Era, one in every five females over the age of ten was employed, and over a million of these females worked in factories. By 1920, the number of working women increased to one in every four, with a significant number joining the ranks of industrial workers. These factory women were young and single, or women who had become widows, divorced, or abandoned. Seventy-five percent of them were foreign born or daughters of foreign-born parents (1). With their jobs varying as widely as their national origins, the only constant was their meager wages and poor working conditions. Paid less than men, women industrial workers were condemned to work long hours under sweatshop conditions, subjected to treatment that spoke of their inferior status in the workplace. In response to these hardships many industrial women acted collectively to challenge the conditions of their working lives.

Women toiled in many industries, the breadth of their bread-winning opportunities determined by their location and the availability of resources. They worked among the sickly sweet smells of the candy factory. They rolled cigars, suffering nicotine poisoning when their hands became stained. In the artificial flower-making industry they created flowers for homes and hats while receiving one of the lowest wages of all, in 1905 less than $6 a week. Other women worked within the hot and humid climate of the laundries, starching men’s collars and cuffs.

The ethnic backgrounds of women industrial workers varied. In the Northeast, factories were filled with immigrants. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, for example, over forty languages were spoken in the mills. In the New York City garment industry, Russian Jewish women helped organize thousands of workers and spearheaded many strikes for better working conditions. Cuban women dominated the Tampa cigar-making industry, while African-American women toiled in all seven laundries of Little Rock, Arkansas. Their distinctive experiences reflected their ethnic heritages and the particular nature of their factory jobs.

Most factory experiences did not begin to offer the workers a sustaining wage. In 1905, an annual salary of $800 was considered the minimum necessary for survival for a family of four. The average factory salary, however, amounted to $400 a year (2). Since women earned from 25 to 67 percent less than men because of their sex, their incomes could hardly be considered a living wage. In addition, deductions for factory supplies such as needles or for seconds (those items determined imperfect by the foreman or manager) further reduced the pittances received.

Over 40 percent of women industrial workers toiled in textile mills and the garment trade. Employer policies in this industry remained notorious throughout the Progressive Era. The practices of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory epitomized the frightening lack of conscience of many factory and building owners. Joseph J. Asch, owner of the Asch building in which the Triangle Factory was located, insisted that his building was fireproof and complied with all fire regulations. Yet on 25 March 1911, 146 workers, most of them young women, died when fire flew through the locked work space at Triangle. Those who managed to find the one rusted fire escape tumbled to their deaths when it collapsed beneath their weight. In the trial that followed this tragedy, an all-male jury acquitted the Triangle owners. The cavalier attitude about the loss of life was summed up by one juror who said, “I think that the girls, who undoubtedly have not as much intelligence as others might have in other walks of life, were inclined to fly into a panic” (3).

Death found women industrial workers in ways less dramatic than at Triangle. Women at the mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, suffered a variety of occupational illnesses, including tuberculosis and pneumonia. By 1911, one-third of Lawrence’s spinners died before they had worked ten years. One-half of these never reached the age of twenty-five (4). Dampness and poor ventilation contributed to their deaths, but the constant strain of production demands, together with sheer fatigue, also caused accidents and illnesses. The fact that the Lawrence mills produced more cloth per employee than any other textile town in the nation attests to the level of stress from meeting production quotas (5).

By the end of 1911, rumors spread of intended wage reductions at the Lawrence mills. The reductions, coupled with shorter working hours for women and children legislated by the State of Massachusetts, created fear among the already impoverished and exploited workers. As the new year began, the wage reductions became a reality, and women marched noisily from mill to mill shouting, “All Out. Short Pay.” This “Bread and Roses” strike, as it was called, was unique because of the twenty-four nationalities and over forty languages and dialects spoken by the strikers. To prevent worker organization, employers initially tried to capitalize on the cultural and language differences of their employees, mostly recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. In the end, the divisive tactics failed.

Labeled as foreign extremists and members of the radical left, strikers counteracted this image by linking their struggle in the mills with basic American ideals of justice and patriotism. Children draped in red, white, and blue marched alongside mothers carrying huge American flags. The workers’ struggle now assumed a respectable appearance of law-abiding American citizens fighting for their rights.

The impressive sight of red, white, and blue colors trooping down streets and alleys was joined with a poignant image, the children’s exodus. Winter gripped the city, and there was little food. Anguished mothers chose to send their children by train to well-to-do sympathizers outside of town. These working mothers refused to allow the hunger of their children to determine the future of the strike.

Though certainly not the only exploited workers, nor the only ones who picked up the strike banner, women garment and mill workers are significant because of their ability to organize and create networks within their female communities. They accomplished this despite their lack of common language, union experience, female role models, or education. Frequently, wealthy, educated women provided financial assistance and backing, but it was the workers themselves who jeopardized jobs and incomes when they took to the streets.

Differing greatly from mill and garment work, cigar-making had its own set of difficulties. “What manufacturers require,” noted a 1902 issue of Tobacco Leaf, a cigar industry trade journal, “is female labor—cheap hire, which responds so favorably to the cost of production in modern competition.” In 1900, 33 to 36 percent of cigar makers were women, while by 1920 that number had increased to 58 percent (6). Along with suppressed wages, more women workers meant less influence for the Cigar Makers International Union of America, a male-only union.

Cigar-making was dirty, dusty, and gritty work. The odor of the tobacco leaves lingered on bodies and clothing. The pressure of the piece work, the rigid schedule and system of fines for failing to meet quotas and quality standards, intensified the work environment. Women workers produced the inexpensive five-cent cigars, which earned them a low piece-rate wage. They had to work longer hours in order to earn adequate incomes. Their male counterparts manufactured the more expensive and higher quality cigars and, through union negotiation, earned a higher wage while working shorter hours.

In Tampa, Florida, one of the premier production areas for cigars, the factories were filled with Cuban workers. Unable to penetrate the Cigar Makers International Union of America, Cuban women in Tampa’s cigar-making industry embraced La Resistencia, a powerful, turn-of-the-century industrial union with a membership of two to three thousand males and females. Latin women continued to organize and, in 1910 and 1911, attempted to establish a Woman’s Union Label League. The league would insure that their products were labeled and advertised as union manufactured, thus set apart from non-union goods. During a wildcat strike five years later, female cigar workers taunted their male counterparts, who refused to walk out. Through continued organizing efforts, women asserted their importance in the Latin cigar-making community.

The influence of race and gender on working conditions is exemplified in the case of the black laundresses of Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite their being considered the least valued employees, these women belonged to their own union, Local #36 of the Laundry Workers Union. As early as 1913, the local government of Little Rock expressed concern about the laundresses’ salaries, which at that time was $4 a week for a ten-hour working day. By 1917, the union successfully negotiated a $7.50 per week minimum wage. A year later, when the union demanded $9 per week, the seven Little Rock laundries refused. The union prepared for a strike. Six National Army camps and thirteen National Guard camps depended on the laundries. As these were war years, everyone from the commanding officers of the camps to local city officials appealed to the patriotism of both workers and owners, but sympathies appeared to favor the laundry workers when army officials accused owners of unpatriotic behavior.

The workers’ demands included union recognition, an increased minimum wage, and better sanitary conditions. The cost of food in Little Rock had soared 64 percent, clothing 50 percent, and shelter 25 percent (7). Even the prices charged to customers of the laundries had increased 30 percent. In 1918, the National War Labor Board (NWLB) stated that all workers were entitled to a “living wage...to insure the subsistence of the worker and his family in health and reasonable comfort” (8).

Laundresses earned an average of $5 to $10 less than men laundry workers. Black women fared even worse. While a few white women might be paid up to $12 a week for special jobs, no black laundresses received more than $7.50 a week, even though they completed the more strenuous jobs at the steam presses, where the temperature ranged from 95 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. According to one employer, white girls were not able to handle those jobs because of the physical exertion needed. When asked why blacks were paid less than whites, another owner rationalized the discrimination by responding, “Because they can live on a whole lot less than a white girl. They live in a little old shack house and they don’t care what they eat, anyhow” (9).

Though the NWLB increased minimum wages to $11 and declared that wage differentials were not to be based on race or sex, the laundry owners ignored the rulings. One laundry even used the union label while refusing to recognize Local #36. After years of failed negotiation and unfulfilled agreements, Local #36 took the unusual step of opening the Citizens Co-Operative Laundry. Operated primarily by black women, the co-op advertised itself as the only laundry which was strictly union from “top to bottom.” Its creation meant better wages and improved working conditions for a group of people who were traditionally undervalued and clearly exploited because of their gender and race.

In 1906, a New York Times editorial stated, “A nice girl...is not thinking about spending her life in commercial employment” (10). Yet the fact was that millions of “nice girls” spent their lives in industries. Whether it was in textile mills, cigar factories, laundries, or other industries, “nice girls” endured poverty and the hardship of long hours and dangerous conditions at their workplaces. Many of these women also chose to risk what little income they had in the struggle to establish women’s rights in the workplace.

Endnotes

1. Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (New York: Facts on File, 1993), 49-56.

2. Ibid., 59.

3. Doris Weatherford, Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America, 1840-1930 (New York: Facts on File, 1995), 235.

4. Ardis Cameron, Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 99.

5. Ibid., 118.

6. Patricia A. Cooper, “Women Workers, Work Culture and Collective Action in the American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919,” in Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-Class History, ed. Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), 190.

7. Elizabeth Haiken, “The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves: Black Laundresses in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1917-1921,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 49 (1990): 29.

8. Ibid., 30.

9. Ibid., 33.

10. Schneider and Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era.

Bibliography

Cameron, Ardis. Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Cooper, Patricia A. Once a Cigar Maker: Men, Women and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

———. “Women Workers, Work Culture, and Collective Action in the American Cigar Industry, 1900-1919.” In Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-Class History, edited by Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher. New York: State University of New York Press, 1986.

Haiken, Elizabeth. “The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves: Black Laundresses in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1917-1921.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 49 (1990): 20-50.

Hewitt, Nancy A. “Politicizing Domesticity: Anglo, Black and Latin Women in Tampa’s Progressive Movements.” In Gender, Class, Race and Reform in the Progressive Era, edited by Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1991.

Ross, Andrew, ed. No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers. New York: Verso, 1997.

Schneider, Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider. American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920. New York: Facts On File, 1993.

Stein, Leon. The Triangle Fire. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1962.

Weatherford, Doris. Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America, 1840-1930. New York: Facts on File, 1995.

Objectives

Please note that all printed material needed for these lessons is included with this article.

Lesson #1
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Lesson #2
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Lesson #3
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Remind students that political cartoons are editorials meant to be read at a glance. Each cartoon should use symbols, caricature, and possibly a few well chosen words to provide a definite message.

Lesson #4
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Wages Paid Foreign-Born Adult Operatives in Lawrence Worsted Mills, 1909

Nationality	Number	Average Weekly Wage	Percentage Earning More than $7.50 per Week
Males:
English	1,563	$11.39	95.8%
German	538	11.17	95.0
French	234	11.07	96.6
Irish	551	10.21	94.9
Russian	170	8.59	77.1
Polish	375	8.01	50.7
Lithuanian	550	7.82	58.2
Syrian	334	7.33	31.1
Southern Italian	1,371	6.84	27.9
Females:
German	211	$9.53	82.0%
French	165	9.32	67.9
Scottish	115	9.06	90.4
Canadian	523	8.64	72.5
English	687	8.39	57.1
Irish	495	8.24	52.7
Russian	123	7.24	25.2
Lithuanian	263	7.14	31.6
Polish	182	7.10	29.1
Southern Italian	902	6.39	6.9

Nancy J. Barrett has received two National Endowment for the Humanities grants, one of them in United States women’s history. She is currently the Social Studies Department Chair at Holy Names High School in Oakland, California, where she teaches U.S. history.