The Sunday Oregonian., August 21, 1921, Magazine Section, Page 7, Image 81

TTIE SUNDAY OREGOXIAX, PORTLAND, AUGUST 21, 1921
7
ALL WOMEN SHOULD WORK, SAYS MARY ANDERSON
Bureau Chief of the Department of Labor Asserts the Old-Fashioned Idea of Idleness Is Being Re
placed by the Progressive Theory of Production and Matrimony Is No Alibi From Wage Earning
BT WILLIAM ATHERTON DU PUT.
HE nation Is coming to
I realize, says Mary Anderson,
the government's premier
woman official, "that there is no
place in its make-up for an idler of
either sex. That women who are
capable of productive work should
remain Idle is industrial waste. They
owe it to themselves and to the com
munity to go to work. Steadily they
are doing so. The greatest develop
ment in the lives of women of this
generation is not that they have been
enfranchised, but that they are tak
ing their proper place in the work
ing world."
I realized that this was advanced
ground this woman was taking. I
realized that her utterances were im
portant because she is the chief of
the woman's bureau of the depart
ment of labor. The head of a bureau
at Washington is an official of high
place and great importance. Only
cabinet officers rank bureau chiefs.
There are but two bureau chiefs who
are women Miss Julia Lathrop and
Miss Mary Anderson, one of the
children's bureau and one of the
women's bureau. Of these Miss
Anderson has received an appoint
ment under President Harding. She
is the only woman, at the time of
writing, who has received a presi
dential appointment under the present
administration of such importance as
to require the Confirmation of the
senate.
"The old-fashioned idea was that
women should remain in idleness,"
Miss Anderson continued. "while the
bead of the family might be earning
a modest income for his wife and
three of four daughters. The wife
would, work adequately in keeping
the house going. It might not be
necessary for the girls to do much
work in the home and, therefore, they
would be practically in idleness year
after year. They might fail to marry
and continue throughout their lives
In virtual idleness.
"These girls received the benefits
of the civilization of which they are
a part, participated in the rewards
of the labors and contributions of
the mass, but their contributions to
their times were very email. From
the standpoint of the state Vhey have
been complete losses. The daughters
of the poor, of the laboring classes,
have, quite generally, gone in and
done their share, but many daughters
have Idled while waiting for matri
mony and. If it was not attained,
have contributed nothing tb the world
In payment for what they have re
ceived from it.
"I do not grant, either that matri
mony is a complete alibi from wage
earning. While the wife keeps the
home, does the work of the household,
takes care of the children, she is per
forming her full share. But a woman
without Children, whose home tasks
are light, owes it to the community
to perform some productive work.
"Then there is the very vital ques
tion of whether women should quit
work outside the home when thejr
get married. I have observed
and women who work in the
tories for two or three decade
have seed young men and
women working side by side i
tories, I have eeen them marry. I
have seen both the men and women
remain at their benches. I have seen
them combine their incomes. It h
meant that they might live better, get
more out of their lives .than in any
other way.
"I see no objection to working
people marrying and continuing at
their work. There may be years of
interruption to this scheme due to the
bringing up of children, but the
mother may go back to her trade
when the babies are out of the way.
Women make much of the excuse
that children keep them from work.
It is a good excuse when it is real,
but there is but a limited period in
the lives of most women when they
are held down by the care of children
and many women never have any."
"And do you think the family
circle Is as happy when both the man
and the woman work?" I asked.
"It seems to me that many irrita
tions are removed," Miss Anderson
answered. "In the first place the
woman ia no longer confronted with
the necessity of going to her hus
band for every penny. Doing so
brings much bitterness into the lives
of many women. The family has
much more money to spend, which
relieves the financial strain and
makes better living possible. The
man has more of his earnings. Where
he earned $30 a week and had to turn
over $25 of it on Saturday night to
run the house, he might look at the
remaining $5 ,as the total of the
earnings that really came to him. He
might think to himself of the better
times he might have had If he had
remained single to spend the entire
130. I think it is better for married
women to work whenever they can."
I wondered Just what experience
this frank, intelligent, wholesome,
middle-aged woman had back of her
to lend weight to her pronounce
ments that entitled her to sit at the
head, of the bureau whose province it
is "to formulate standards and poli
cies which shall promote the welfare
of working women . . . and re
port upon matters pertaining to the
welfare of women in industry."
So I asked Miss Anderson about
herself and discevered a romance.
I had not thought of her, for in
stance, being anything but a native
born. American woman, and yet she
told me that at the age of 15 she
srpoke not a word of English. In
fact, she lived In far away Sweden
upon a farm and had seen no more
of this big world than could be
gained by hiding away in her father's
farm wagon and coming down to the
town of Lidkoping, with its 7000
population,, situated on Lake Wener,
back in the interior of that far north
ern land, and meeting those early
risers who came to market at dawn.
Matilda Anderson, her mother, was
an ambitious woman, much given to
reading, and it was through her that
the family came to know of the op
portunities that lay in America. The
mother encouraged one of the elder
daughters to go overseas. Which she
did. There she prospered and, as is
the way with women, married. She
lived in Ludington. Mich.
So, when Mary Anderson was fif
teen. It was decided that she and
another sister Should go to the United
States. Thus it was that the daught
ers of the family emigrated, while
the sons remained at home. To be
sure the opportunities in agricultural
Sweden were greater for men than
for women.
Elaborate were the preparations,
for the Andersons were by no means
poor people, and the girls should be
provided with all things necessary.
Busy were the looms that produced'
the homespun that was to make
their dresses and great was the care
that was put Into the tanning of the
leather for their shoes. Then, upon
an appointed day, as is the custom in
rural Sweden, there arrived at the
Anderson farm a group .of those
traveling artisans who make seasonal
calls and convert the homespun and
the leather into rainment and shoes.
So were the adventures provided with
wardrobes for the New World,
r 1 il Sir " v
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And in all the Journey from Lid
koping, Sweden, to Ludington. Mich.,
not one word of English did these
girls speak, for they knew not not one
to help them fit into the new environ
ment. And no sooner had the Swedish girl
begun to pick up English in conver
sations In the household of her sister
than she hired herself out as a maid
in the pantry of a well-to-do Ameri
can family, there to get her first les
sons in the ways of these strange
people and to wrestle with the idio
syncracies of the new speech. It was
in this pantry. Miss Anderson says,
with an American newspaper as a
primer, that she learned the lan
guage. Link by link the basic slml-
V
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-
V-v''
larities between her own language
and English dawned Upon her. Day
by day the clouds .were dispelled that
kept her in the shadow world of half
understanding. By the end of the
year she was out in the full glow of
participation in the life Of the New
World about her. Not then nor since
did she take a single lesson in Eng
lish. She has never attended a school
wher English was taught. Upon her
primary education obtained in the
country in Sweden she has built by
incessant reading and today she
stands forth as a woman leader'in the
great new land to which she came as
an Immigrant girl and in which her
first service was that of a pantry
maid. The chronicles of successful
7TT f x
men offer many a parallel, but this
experience is new in the world of
women.
Mary Anderson was 17 when the
husband of her married sister got a
job in West Pullman, that growing
factory suburb of Chicago, and moved
to that industrial center, taking the
three Swedish girls along with him.
That move meant the development of
all their lives along entirely differ
ent lines and for Mary the evolution
of a career that was to be wrapped
up in the interests that revolve about
women who work.
In Chicago her first Work was In a
garment factory, where she stitched
the hems on the bottoms of the men's
trousers which were its product. This
i
Mary Anderson, chief of the woman's
bureau of the department of labor.
employment, however, did not work
out and at the end of a week she was
looking for another adventure in the
industrial world.
She applied at a shoe factory and
there was initiated into the mystery
of the operation of machinery in the
making of footwear. She was given
little scraps Of leather and instructed
to run lines Of stitches around them
at given distances from the margin.
This early stitching served no other
purpose than to familiarize her with
her machine, to give her sufficient
skill that aha would not spoil good
material. It was her schooling. It
lasted but a few hours, but it Was the
only schooling she ever recelvaji for
participation In that industrial life
Which was to be hers thereafter.
So Mary Anderson came to be the
operator of a stitching machine in a
Chicago shoe factory. She worked on
the tops of the shoes. She worked in
shops with many others of her kind.
She lived among these, the busy in
dustrials of America, for many years.
Some of them were Scandinavians,
people of origin similar to her own.
But more of them were Irish. Those
were the days when much of our im
migration was from West Europe,
before the beginning of the deluge
from the south. These Irish girls sat
all about her and sewed upon the tops
Of shoes. While at work and off
duty they were her companions. One
Sometimes catches a bit of an Irish
inflection in Miss Anderson's talk
that has come down from these Chi
cago days.
These shoe factories of Chicago
were open-shop factories. They em
ployed people who belonged to the
union and people who did not. Some
of the girls joined the union and
some of them did not. But the idea
of organization early fascinated
Mary Anderson. She liked public
meetings. Nearly every night of her
life she went up town to some sort
of meeting It was the method she
instinctively took for schooling her
selft into the life of America. Little
transpired in West Pullman of which
Mary Anderson was not cognizant.
She early Joined the union. So con
scientious was her attendance - at
meetings that before long she was
rewarded by being called upon for
service.. She became a member of the
shop committtee In the factory
where she worked. For years she
worked busily as the collector for her
local. She was one of the ' arbiters
who sat in on the differences between
the employers and the workers.
"I was down at the end of the work
room one day," she told me, "whea a
N
great commotion -broke out up at the
other end. Two of the Irish girls,
6isters. were coming down through
the floor crying out excitedly, 'Our
Kit's fired, our Kit's fired.' They
were urging their fellows to join
them in a protest. Kit was their
sister. Soon the whole floor was
thrown into commotion. All work
ceased.
'I Inquired into the situation and
found that the foreman had dismissed
the girl upon the claim that she was
doing bad work. I was assured that
the work was not bad. By this time
the superintendent had arrived and
we presented our protest to him.
Let's see the work,' he demanded. The
tops that Kit. bad been stitching were
produced and the stitching on them
was something awful. It was here
that I learned the lesson of procuring
all the facts before presenting a case.
But this was a typical case of the
sort of thing which I handled during
all those years in the factory."
Finally, Miss Anderson became
president of local No. 94, United Boot
and Shoe Workers. This was getting
ud in the industrial world. In this
not she became an executive. n
was often her business to meet witn
employers and bargain with them as
to the wages that tha members of
her union should receive or tha con
d'tions under which they should
work. It was wits matching wits
and the stake was often more vital
than mere money. She had become
a fighter in the ranks for better con
ditiona under which to labor. As a
representative of her union also she
made occasional trips to other cities,
there to observe other conditions and
tome in contact with other minds. J
So it came to pass that, after 18
years at her machine. Mary Anderson
was called into the national field as
an organizer for the National
Woman's Trade league and that she
should have worked eight years' In
trat fieid before the United States
found itself in war. Then it was but
natural that the government should
draft this woman of wide industrial
experience and should make her an
arbitrator who should stand between
the government and that army of
women who worked that the produc
tion of munitions might be main
tained. So she came Into government
service and so she came to head the
woman's bureau of the labor depart
ment, when in 1920 it finally came
to make up a place In the great gov
ernmental Organization. So wag the
long Journey made from the farm in
Sweden to leadership in the problems
vital to women in the greatest nation
under the sun.
"You have had many years of
factory work," I a"id to Miss Ander
son. -Now tell me this: is the
gruelling work of the factory injur
icus to the woman worker? Can
women stand work as can men? Are
tbey physically up to it?"
"Women stand, work as well aa
1
V : M -.' ' V, J
men," she replied. It is necessary,
of course, that the conditions under
which they labor should be favorable,
but this is also true of men. I did
not find my IS years at a machine
in a shoe factory in any way in
jurious to me. I emerged from it a
normal, healthy woman. I never tired
of it. It was highly specialized; of
course, and I did the same things
day after day and year after year.
Just enough skill was required, how
ever, to lend interest to the task and
it never-grew irksome t. me.
"I am very firm in my belief that
there is no acceptable excuse on the
part of women for not joining the
ranks of the productive workens of
the world. lam very firm In my be
lief that the woman who works is
happier and better contented than the
.die woman. If the idle, discontented
woman but knew if the road for her
to greater happiness lies through
getting a Job and going to work.
"With us in the woman's bureau
the task is getting better conditions
In the places where women work.
We want to lay down and get estab
lished the principle of the eight-hour
FOGS ARE OF TWO CLASSES,
RADIATION AND ADVECTION
Formation of Condensed Moisture With Each Individual Drop a Solid
Body of Water Enveloping a Particle of Dust.
BT S. K. PEARSON JR.
Co-operative OBervr, United States
We&tber Bureau.
w
HAT Is fog? Most people would
say it Is low clouds resting on
the earth's surface. Which Is
quite true, but the question Is usually
dropped at this point and little
thought is given to why these clouds
form so much nearer the ground at
some times than at others.
- Both tog and clouds are formed
when condensation of moisture takes
place in the atmosphere. Fog is com
posed of minute particles of visible
vapor. They were once believed to be
hollow spheres, but science now de
clares that each individual drop is a
solid body of water enveloping a par
ticle of dust in the air and supported
by the upward tendency of air cur
rents and the resistance of atmos
phere to the falling of minute spher
ical particles. The diameter of the
smallest visible particles of fog has
been estimated to be 1-180 of an inch.
Fogs of Two Classes.
In accordance with the conditions
under which fogs develop they are di
vided into two general classes, "ra
diation fogs" and "advection fogs."
The former kind, which may also be
designated as "land fogs" and "sum
mer fogs." are likely to occur along
streams and rivers and in mountain
valleys during any clear, still night in
summer and fall. In such regions
during a warm, calm day consider
able water becomes evaporated into
the lower atmosphere, where, if the
weather remains calm, a large portion
of it lingers after sundown. This
moist air, together with the heat from
the earth at night i cooled rapidly
by radiation into the clear sky, and
they often cool to a degree below the
dew point, which condenses the mois
ture into a visible vapor known as
1 fos. Like, dew, "radiation fogs" will
day. Eight hours is a long enough
period to work. The work of the
world can get itself done on the
eight-hour schedule. It gives work
ers a chance for health and happiness
and both of these benefit the em
ployer in the long run.
"Many employers have found that
where women work at monotonous
taks it increases their efficiency and
the output if the forenoon and after
noon is broken by a period of ten
minutes for relaxation. If it cost the
employer money to give them this
relaxation there might be some ex
cuse for his refusing. But he gets
rt'ore work done by giving it. It is
for such improvements as these in
working conditions that we are
striving.
"There are certain problems of
Industrial life that are very baffling.
I remember well the case of a woman
in Chicago who worked for 45 years
in the factory where I was employed.
As she grew old and could no longer
operate her machine, she had to leave,
it and work at some simple task like
sorting bundles. The new job paid
iier but half as much as the old. The
time will come when she cannot even
manage it. The eventide of life to
these aged working women is so
likely to be full of tragedy.
"The great need is not that women
should find a way to avoid work, but
ihat they should be able to earn
better money. During all those years
that I was in the "factory we did
o:ece work. The efficient worker
made more than the Inefficient, the
constant worker more than the
casual. But the skilled girls were
able to maintain incomes of $16 to
$1S a week. The same work today
brings twice as much, but the pendu
lum is swinging back. The wage is
not enough that women may properly
maintain themselves. There is no
possibility of preparing for the ap
proach of age."
"l"ou advise working people to
marry and continue at work. Miss
Anderson?" I suggested. "Will that
not lead logically to their bringing
fewer children into the world?"
"I think it will," she admitted. "I
think, further, that no harm will be
done if it does. It seems to me that
the working classes are contributing
their full share of responsibility in
perpetuating' the race. I do not be
lieve that the need of the world Is
for more children, particularly from
the working classes."
"Are there any men working for
the woman's bureau," I asked.
"Just one," Miss Anderson answered.
"He is the colored messenger."
not form on cloudy or windy nights.
Such fogs may continue well after
daybreak, but will vanish when the
sun's heat Induces evaporation and a
discontinuance of radiation.
We all understand the word "radia
tion" more readily than "advection,"
which ia a comparatively new scien
tific word, but when we are told that
this word relates to horizontal move
ments, or transporting of air, we im
mediately grasp the idea of the for
mation of this class of fog, which may
be caused by circumstances that justi
fy the terms "sea fog" and "winter
fog." Mild, humid air drifting over a
cold surface reduces .its temperature
in its lower turbulent strata by con
duction to that surface, and also
mixes with remaining portions of the
previous cold atmosphere. This in
duces condensation, and is evidenced
by fog.
Depths Kreatly Vary.
This same condition exists when air
flows from warm water to cold, as
from the Gulf stream to the Labrador
current, or when a sea breeze passes
over snow-covered land. The temper
ature of the North Atlantic in July is
45 degrees, while that of the gulf
stream is 78.
Fogs are seldom more than 1500
feet in depth, and sometimes they
only extend 20 or 30 feet above the
ground. They have been known to
form in a stratum to only the height
of a man.
Austrian AVonion Get Work.
VIENNA. The wives or widows of
47 former ministers of state are sup
plementing their pensions or other
income by sewing and embroidering
underwear. The plan was originated
by the relief organization for the
middle classes which has furnished
means of earning money to a very
large number of Austrian women.
to