"
Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have
forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and
recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and
both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial
life can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored
ones just now. They are few, they are precious, they should be wrapped
in cotton wool.
The industrial woman should stand unqualifiedly for the exclusion of
children from gainful pursuits. Many years ago the British government
had Miss Collett, one of the Labor Correspondents of the Board of
Trade, make a special study of the influence of the employment of
married women on infant mortality. The object was to prove that there
was direct cause and effect. The investigator, after an exhaustive study
covering many industrial centers, brought back the report, "Not proven."
But the statistics showed one most interesting relation. In districts
where the prevailing custom permitted the employment of children as
early as the law allowed, infant mortality was high, and in districts
where few children were employed, infant mortality was low. No
explanation of this striking revelation was made in the report, but many
who commented on the tables, pointed out that the wide-spread employment
of the population in its early years sapped the vitality of the
community to such an extent that its offspring were weakened.
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