USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 25
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comments from other than business circles. Economists sniffed at this procedure. But it had very clearly demonstrated the power of the consumer in a capitalistic regime, and as that was the power on which the League had laid hands, it was now organized for use.
I was somewhat divided in my mind, and at those preliminary gatherings we had difficulty in coming to a conclusion regarding the label which it was now proposed that the League should per- suade manufacturers to affix to goods made under proper condi- tions. The White List was not sufficiently far-reaching to be a sweep- ing force, and beside that it was in continual danger of suppression through the forces of competition, a power which has been de- fended by the constitution and the courts of our country through- out its legislative history. But labelled goods would go out all over the country and be a valuable advertisement for the firms who con- sented to earn them by reforming the conditions of their stores and factories.
There was already a Trade Union label, and some of us felt that the Consumers' League should act definitely in support of the unions, either by standing by them in some way or by backing their labels. The President of the Philadelphia League, Miss Watmough, and I both felt strongly that this would be the more helpful course. But Mrs. Nathan and Mrs. Kelley, infinitely better informed and ex- perienced, did not hold with us, and the latter, who was in keen sympathy with union labor, and knew its difficulties better than any of us, brought the meeting round to her point of view, which was that since workers were not then in a position to wage so in- tensive a battle against low living-standards as against long hours and insufficient pay, their label was not making great headway, and did not confine itself to women's work. So we were convinced as to the nature, as well as the magnitude, of our task, and I came back to Brooklyn with a mingled enthusiasm and terror, at the prospect of facing those twelve vice-presidents, any one of whom would be a far more thoroughly equipped leader for the new movement than myself.
Women were then taking up parliamentary procedure at all their clubs. It would never do for a novice to attempt an organizing
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job without preparation. Teachers gave courses in parliamentary law, but at the moment there was none available for me; I must study the thing out by myself. I procured three booklets, all with directions for the conduct of meetings. The dreaded gathering, althoughi large, proved less formidable than imagination had painted it, and went off very well; only once did a voice interrupt proceedings with the crisp correction, "Madam Chairman, there is already a motion before the House." The answer "Of course-I beg pardon" sounded more calm than the chairman actually felt, but I remembered Mrs. Lowell's occasional remonstrances at our New York conferences when we fell into discussions; "Ladies, ladies, would you please address the Chair?" and knew that there were worse difficulties to be met at times.
We started off well as a Long Island League, with many mem- bers but a tremendous task. There was no authorized mercantile inspection then, though we were working for it through repre- sentatives at Albany. So we had before us the whole field of investi- gation to cover, going to stores and factories and finding out for ourselves the conditions under which women and girls were work- ing. Few of our new executives could get out for the work needed; a half-dozen faithful members, giving all the time they could, were able to accomplish only a part of it. I managed to take most of my forenoons, for Nan was a collected little person of six, going to school every day at the Adelphi Academy, and our good friend Edith was with us. I could get off early, and be home by twelve o'clock.
We went from one store to another, interviewing managers, seeing the employees' dressing-rooms, where we found dampness, defective plumbing, lack of any provision for sudden illness, or space for lunch; sometimes a fainting girl laid out on a wooden bench or on a dirty floor. There were seats in some stores, but an employee found sitting lost her place at once; we dared not ask too many questions over the counter, however, for we were assiduously dogged by floor-walkers, and encouraged to move away. The great- est tact was needed in order to get satisfactory reports. As I hap- pened to be an associate of the Girls' Friendly Society, it was some- times possible to collect information outside from its younger
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members; but only girls in desperate need of money were able to maintain their positions in the stores. It was refreshing to find a small business, now and then, with better conditions; the larger ones were pretty hopeless. Still we possessed ourselves of plenty of sensational facts. And the factories, at which we made only a begin- ning in those years, were worse; the moral as well as physical wel- fare of the workers was at stake, and the pitifully low wages in both shops and stores were actually expected to be eked out by shameful means in many instances.
The investigation, however, was not one's only business. I found I was expected to speak, the winter through, at meetings of the various bodies over which our vice-presidents presided. Both in and out of town, often at suburban clubs, sometimes at forenoon or again at afternoon meetings, one went to try and make women realize to how serious an undertaking the Consumers' League had pledged itself.
Could I ever forget those meetings? At that moment in the his- tory of feminine fashions, middle-aged dames did their hair à la Pompadour, and wore black satin gowns with colored vests of the same material, or of plush; the prevailing color that particular year was yellow. So I addressed myself to rows of rolling gray and white coiffures, and gold-colored corseted busts. Sometimes they met in pri- vate drawing-rooms, sometimes in club-house parlors, but the gen- eral effect was the same, formal and forbidding. One can talk to any sort of audience if a rapid survey of it discloses some promise, be it ever so slight, of a response to one's perorations; but I rarely found it possible to hope for that spark of encouragement. Middle age and conservatism made a more or less stubborn wall against which one battered one's conclusions futilely. Not that there were not indi- vidual sympathizers, but as a phalanx the line was impenetrable, it seemed. I made a point of reporting only what I had actually seen, and the tale was lurid enough; yet it seldom roused interest. After its completion there would almost always be some powerful dame who would arise majestically, saying, "Madam chairman, will Mrs. Sessions tell us why, if conditions in stores and factories are what she describes them to be, it is impossible to get maids to work in families,
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where they can have every comfort and a perfectly good wage be. side-six dollars a week and room and board?"
I would answer this question as gently as I could, knowing that to impugn the sanctity of the HOME by suggesting any possible ground for objection to it on the part of a working-girl would be more or less fatal. I usually turned the argument in another direction by assuming modestly that young girls were inclined to want to be with their families at night, and so forth; also that of course if there were no factory workers or salesladies to be had, in case all young women went into housework, the wheels of industry could not revolve. But this was always considered a weak defense, and the lady would sit down again with an injured air.
Once I made an utterly foolish break; my tact was worn down, and I admitted that girls had sometimes been subjected to disre- spect, if not immoral advances, by the young men in households where they had worked. I could have bitten my tongue the next moment, for it raised a storm. Another lady leaped to her fect declaring that it was a mother's duty to keep such horrible influ- ences out of her family, intimating that most general houseworkers were liable to demoralize virtuous sons, and of all things could not be trusted with young children. The meeting ended, as alas! it often did in spite of all one's efforts, in a heated discussion of the servant-girl and the working-class, with presumptuous trades- unions and persecuted employers thrown in. The pompadours moved about indignantly, and the poor chairman even had to apol- ogize for them now and then. But after the meeting, there were always a few really interested women who remained to ask intelli- gent questions of the speaker, and show their sympathy with the movement. One opened up gratefully when face-to-face with plain tailored suits or even shabby ulsters like one's own, and came away feeling a little less futile.
Then came a special exigency. There were two large stores, cheap stores, over in the east part of Brooklyn, which had insisted on keeping open every night in the week, and were paying their em- ployees shamefully low wages, without allowance for the long hours. Every sort of pressure had been put upon them-we had no early-
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closing law-and the whole community was in sympathy with the over-worked girls. Finally a big meeting was arranged, to take place within the district, and make a public demonstration. Mr. Edward King (a prominent labor-man and socialist), a member of the legis- lature, and one of the high city officials, were scheduled to address it, and I was asked to speak also as president of the Long Island League. My husband and I went over rather early and found the scene extremely lively; a huge rink, or something of the sort, a long wooden building, already half full of people, a crowd outside block- ing the narrow street, and two bands, one playing inside, the other out, with an impossible musical effect, also sellers of pop-corn balls and peanuts, and distributors of flyers. It was a typical proletarian crowd, good-natured, enthusiastic, full of boosters and boo-ers, the sort of audience with which I felt most at home. The platform was narrow, and so high above the crowd that it seemed a dizzy emi- nence to speak from. Archie got terribly nervous. "You can't pos- sibly throw your voice from that perch," he declared.
"Yes I can; I never mind speaking to a crowd. Don't worry at all." But he was so worried that he went out and walked restlessły up and down the sidewalk, just looking in now and then to see if I had begun. As a matter of fact the acoustics were not so bad; why, I don't know. At all events I found myself warming up easily when it came my turn, for my predecessor was rather perfunctory and weary. And the crowd applauded with delightful abandon, having themselves warmed up by that time. My husband glanced in at the back, found he could hear perfectly, and was relieved. The meeting went off very well, but whether it did any good I don't know.
The stores did finally agree to close on all but two nights of the week. And mercantile inspection came about, though not satisfac- torily. It was put under the direction of the Board of Health-not a strong arm to lean upon in those days, for the head thereof was in- variably a politician. Mrs. Nathan was at one time appointed a special inspector, with authority; but the appointment was fought with bitterness by heads of large stores and other industrial institu- tions; her influence was by that time actually feared. A fairly good bill was passed in 1896, but even then there were never enough in-
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spectors to do the necessary work. There was one year when a man was appointed as Health Commissioner who, though he had the reputation of being a philanthropist, and certainly was extremely generous, had a connection with the management of two or more large dry-goods stores. He remained in office only twelve months, I believe and during that time managed to dismiss the mercantile inspectors, an action which put us back just where we were before.
I have often felt that it is difficult to place the activities of the Consumers' League in line with other forward movements of the time. Its accomplishment was greater than all of them; action, and direct action, rather than theory, was its motive power, and its schene corrective rather than progressive, although some of the legislation backed by its influence contributed largely to enlighten- ment of the people and better knowledge of conditions. Fought as it was, and bitterly, by powerful interests, it was carried even as far west as Oregon, where the struggle for reasonable working-hours and wages was assisted by the League; there, later on, an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States was ably advocated by Felix Frankfurter, in connection with the famous case of the laundry- workers. The Supreme Court eventually annulled the minimum wage law in the District of Columbia, but in other states useful legislation was carried successfully through. But the battle is not yet wholly won, as the Supreme Court's 1936 nullification of the New York law shows.
The record of the League's achievements in America and its extension of the work in Europe is imposing to a degree. But, to borrow an expression of Vincent Sheehan's in describing some present-day forces, it was "the old, jerky rhythm of capitalism" and philanthropy; capital, keeping up with the strides of discovery and industrial prosperity, forced to turn and repair its own ravages and rehabilitate a crushed humanity left in their wake, by the aid of such adjustment as could be obtained through courts and statutes- a process that has been going on and on in the history of America, and shows little sign of abatement for all the sharp penalties.
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THE SOCIAL REFORM CLUB
But there was much to take up our attention in the city during the last years of the century beside the Consumers' League or the politics of Greater New York. In 1893 the Social Reform Club had been founded by Felix Adler. It was an association of men and women who hoped for a reconstruction of society and a progressive study of ills and remedies. Mornay Williams and his brother Ernest Crosby, a fine commanding figure whose handsome head stood out above his fellows in any assembly, and who had the faculty of mak- ing an audience enthusiastic for whatever cause he represented; Edward King, a Labor man who had educated himself, and taken courses at Columbia, and was one of the inner circle of reformers; Miss Jean Fine, who afterward became the wife of Charles Spahr; James Reynolds, Mary Kingsbury, who later married Professor Simkhovitch, and many others well known as students and workers in settlements or social reform-a membership of some two hun- dred. Mrs. Annie Winsor Allen was for seven years its secretary be- fore her marriage. Leonora O'Reilly, I think, was responsible for our membership in the association. She had by that time gone on from her position as forelady in the shirt-shop to a cooperative shirt- factory at the Nurses' Settlement, in Henry Street, under Lillian Wald, one of the early S. R. C. members.
The structure of the club was unique. Its membership must consist of one-half genuine wage-earners, said the charter, and one- half interested people from other walks of life. That gave an effec- tive combination, and worked during the earlier years of its his- torv. But not more than one-third could be women! I was thankful .
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The meetings were held in an old house on Fourth Street, once a residence, its two parlors barely large enough to accommodate the eager audience. I revive the impression of hard wooden chairs crowded together, of swarthy skins beside clean-shaven ones, and harsh voices raised in debate from time to time; lights dim and air smoky, feeling now and then high, but subdued by the sense of common interest which many of the members had not known in their solitary lives-workers, students and thinkers brought together for common ends and understanding. They came from every variety of background, but backgrounds were ignored in meetings, although there was no escaping the fact that they accounted for the many approaches to the question of liberty and solidarity. There was a genuine desire for enlightenment, a mutual distrust of the gradual tightening of restraints and accumulation of power through a capitalistic system.
We did not talk of the "profit motive" in those days, but we did make ourselves a part of the struggle for ownership of natural re- sources by the people, and deliverance through union of workers in all industries from party political rule and subjugation of the labor- ing masses.
Charles M. Spahr, the Club's second president bore out in his daily life the belief that every man should not only support, but serve himself in minor details like blacking his own shoes, and car- rying home his family supplies without accepting the help of the less privileged. Some people considered his ideas and practices fantastic, but he insisted that the only possible way of making his beliefs clear was to practice them with rigid sincerity, which was also neces- sary for self-discipline. Medieval or not, fanatic or pragmatist, that practice gave him power and leadership, and made him a gentle, perhaps too gentle, judge of others' methods.
I don't remember whether Henry George belonged to the Club or not; he may have doubted the wisdom of excluding specific re- forms from discussion at meetings; but he was admired and quoted, for Progress and Poverty stood unassailed as an exposition of exist- ing defects in our economic system. I had a little paper copy of it for lending, with the main argument underlined, a few sentences at
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a time, for the very busy or lazy people who could not or would not take trouble to read all its reasoning. Sometimes it arrested their attention, and made them look further; sometimes even the under- linings went unheeded; but more and more readers bought and perused it, and at least expressed a desire to see the Single Tax tried.
As to socialism, I think practically all the leading members of the club were in sympathy with its faith, if not actually committed to it. Most of my English friends were Fabians, and through them I had become interested in that organization and in its aims at spread- ing the socialist doctrines. The two Muirheads, of our former Leip- zig group, had both come to this country; James to marry my Boston cousin, Helen Quincy, and his sister Annie to teach music; she was often at our house. From them we heard personal reports of Sydney and Beatrice Webb, of Bernard Shaw, of Annie Besant. The Fabians were intellectuals, and their fellowship was enlivened by Shaw's potent wit, which flashed through the whole circle, and was brought across the water in repetition and writing.
We heard much, also, of the Independent Labor party under Keir Hardie's leadership, but not yet much of Marx. There was a tendency in England to find greater value in the associations of the more educated socialists, it seemed to us, than in this country; and while we were heartened and inspired by the Fabian group, we felt that the American Socialist party should be openly inclusive of Labor and its aims. None the less, while our Socialist Labor party it- self had broken sharply with any anarchistic connections, the whole movement had shifted from time to time, and split up into groups, which looked to energetic but vague leadership. There were west- ern leaders, like Eugene Debs and Victor Berger, with followings of their own; then there were castern sectional rivals. Hillqnit and Spargo published expositions of their philosophies; in those years at the end of the century there was no strong position held, but the desire for the ownership by the people of natural resources, the struggle of the working classes to overcome exploitation, and the hope of a socialized industrial world, waxed strong in spite of dis- parities among its supporters. We called it a class struggle, and per- haps there was more actual class-consciousness than there is at the
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present time; but more education was needed by the workers, and there was a bitter element of ignorant aristocracy, or rather plutoc- racy. Amalgamation of these antagonists seemed impossible.
It was the rule that no panacea or'ism could be urged at meet- ings. Any speaker might discuss the problem in hand from his own point of view, but might not advocate special schemes or groups nor try to proselyte in connection with the meetings. This brought together a marked variety of thinkers. There was also a long list of causes to which the contemplation of the assembly was directed, and some of the changes which in the course of years have come to fruition were conceived and furthered during the years of the Club's activity. Mrs. Allen, whose children have grown into leader- ship along its lines, writes most interestingly of its incipient years; she says in one of her letters:
It started not long after the publication of How the Other Half Lives, and attracted people who had become used to the surprising facts in that book. Trade Unions, strikes and all the rest were anathema to most of one's acquaintance. When I had begun to be a little important in the Club, my Brearly head (she was teaching in the Brearly School) approached me one day and asked gently if it was perhaps not a club to which a lady should not belong. I answered by naming some of the people in it and then said; "Anyway, I have never thought of myself as a lady. I am not sure I am one." That amused him and he never sug- gested any opposition to my activities in it. Most people of one's ac- quaintance held definite views on all the points which the Club treated as moot, at the very least. When I went back for my vacations to Boston, I knew I should not meet one single person who thought the subjects seething in the Club were interesting.
From my own experience I can attest the truth of these state- ments. Trade unions and strikes, socialistic theories, public owner- ship, representations of the workers in government, and movers for better wages, were indeed anathema to the privileged. Those of us who had personal familiarity with the laboring classes (we all strug- gled to eliminate that particular expression, but had not yet sub- stituted the more explicit proletariat) were looked upon as cranks or renegades.
The Social Reform Club was thus a centre where many eager reform-hopes were brought into the open. Propaganda, however, a
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word which is now nearly ready for decent burial, was unrecog- nized in argument.
We all remember how well our tactful chairman steered discus- sion. It was an arena in which cranks and long-winded orators were bound to seize chances to advertise their specialties, and his courtesy was strained alnost to breaking at times, but never failed.
A weird old gentleman secured the floor and held it, one night, by a long speech, setting forth the consumption of brown bread as a panacea for all human ills, and a specific for the maintenance of peace and economic security. It was quite impossible to suppress him without open rudeness, and Mr. Spahr listened so politely that the audience became restive. Finally the speaker, who was deaf in addition to his other limitations, was prevailed upon to stop talk- ing. It was the only occasion I can remember when interest really weakened; there were too many burning questions to let the meet- ings drag. The club was not destined to have a long life nor a con- spicuous career; but through its members it made a distinct con- tribution to reform. I think it established the legal aid association to which my husband belonged for years, for helping the unprivi- leged by voluntary legal action and hastening delayed cases to a solution.
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My husband's specifically political activities ended, as we had expected with the incoming of a new party in 1894, and he was obliged to return to his law practice. He longed for an opening in literary work, for he had never really loved his chosen vocation. His father was an old man with many ideals shattered; the necessary diplomacy and what he considered chicanery in legal procedure, the political rivalry and the legislative complications, had embit- tered his later years, and his attitude toward the profession was no longer one of such reverence and confidence as it had been when he had urged a legal career upon his son. But Fate seemed to ordain that Archie should return to it after all.
A college friend, a young fellow whose talent and cleverness were unquestioned, but whose inherited fortune had been a handi- cap to solid work, was about to open a law-office, and wanted a part- ner who would shoulder the court-work as his share of the business. It was a tempting offer, with good pecuniary returns, and taking it up meant assurance of comfortable living conditions for ourselves. We had looked down from our third-story windows in Washington Avenue at a quaint little house which had just enough antiquity for our idea of homeliness; a good back yard, a grand old peach-tree at one side, a sturdy maple between porch and sidewalk, and a roomy nursery in the ell with a step down into it and a fireplace. Neigh- bors called it the "Bird House," and its latest occupants had been artistic and had restored it inside without overlooking its claim to antiquity, taking account of low ceilings and broad-boarded floors. They were moving now to a new house and were glad to rent it for a sum which did not exceed the price of our apartment, though
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