Attempting to solve the crisis on the backs of the working class, the New Deal was a raw deal for women, especially Black women, as many women-dominated jobs were exempted from new rules.

‘Slavery for Women Under the National Recovery Act’ from Working Woman. Vol. 4 No. 6. August, 1933.

The National Industrial Recovery Act means new chains of slavery for the entire working class. Not since the last world war, and never before in so-called “peace times” has the U.S. bosses government attempted so vicious a drive against the workers.

The NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act) is intended to serve one outstanding purpose: to break the backbone of the rising resistance of the working class and to drive down the standards of living gained by the workers through bitter years of militant struggle. Every trade code proposed gives proof of this, Women who have always been discriminated against, are once more singled out to receive still less pay for the same work they perform working side by side with a few examples will serve to show how women, children, and men are affected under the NIRA, what is behind Roosevelt’s jingoism and his Liberty Loan tactics used in the last world war “to make, the world safe for democracy.”

1. UNEMPLOYMENT. Mr. Roosevelt declares the act will “spread” employment “absorbing” about six million workers. Can the 17 million unemployed and part-time workers and their families rely on such humbug? The answer is NO. Does Mr. Roosevelt consider the proposal of the National Unemployed Councils for UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE BOSSES AND THE GOVERNMENT. On the contrary, as the “new deal” goes into effect, RELIEF is being cut off, speed-up, the “stagger system” of a few days work or less a week, wage cuts and longer hours are the order of the day, under a smoke screen of false promises.

2. WAGES AND HOURS. The scales thus far adopted in practically all codes, set up a $12.00 to $14.00 minimum. This is really a maximum–a means of wholesale wage slashing to force the lowest pay on all workers. In all cases women are to receive less than men.

3. NIGHT WORK is the curse of all workers, especially so for women, destroying their vitality and health. Typical of the hypocrisy of the Roosevelt Slavery Act, night work is now re-established in Massachusetts, the state that is notorious for its exploitation of women and children and for its monstrous execution of two organizers of labor, Sacco and Vanzetti. The Boston Bureau Daily News for July 23rd announces that the ban is off the six o’clock closing law. WOMEN MAY NOW WORK FROM 2 to 10 P.M. up to 45 per cent of the working force.

This was done with the sanction of Frances Perkins and General Johnson who personally wired his approval to Gov. Ely, placing the official OK of the government on night work for women!

4. CHILD LABOR. Mr. Roosevelt poses as a humanitarian gentleman. Over the radio on Monday night, he declared: “This monstrous thing, CHILD LABOR (referring to the textile industry) which neither opinion nor law could reach through years of effort, went out in a flash.”

Mr. Roosevelt lies! The Daily News Record of July 25, 1933 states that President Roosevelt’s reemployment agreement will permit children under sixteen to work 3 hours daily! There isn’t a shirt factory boss or any other exploiter of children in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware or the South who will not grind the lifeblood out of the children under this act, working them furiously as before, all hours of the day and night!

5. CLASS STRUGGLES, UNIONS AND STRIKES. Roosevelt’s radio speech again gives the lie to Johnson’s assurances that workers may strike under the NIRA. Of course, workers will strike, law or no law But Roosevelt broadcasted the following

“The workers of this country have rights under this law which cannot be taken away from them…but ON THE OTHER HAND NO AGGRESSION IS NOW NECESSARY TO OBTAIN THOSE RIGHTS.”

“No employee and no one seeking employment, shall be required as a condition of employment to join any organization or to refrain from joining a labor organization of his own choosing.”

The greatest danger to workers lies in this section, which thus plainly legalizes the open shop, giving the bosses the right of way to organize an iron fist against workers who resist the slave codes.

Negro and white working women! Rally your forces–answer the call for united struggle issued by 80 unions against Roosevelt’s “New Deal” of hunger wage-cuts and starvation. Elect delegates from your local union, shops organized or unorganized to the Trade Union Conference which will be held on August 26-27 at Cleveland, Ohio.

For more information write to L. Weinstock, Sec’y Provisional Committee Trade Union Conference, 70 Fifth Avenue, Room 412, New York, N. Y.

The Working Woman, ‘A Paper for Working Women, Farm Women, and Working-Class Housewives,’ was first published monthly by the Communist Party USA Central Committee Women’s Department from 1929 to 1935, continuing until 1937. It was the first official English-language paper of a Socialist or Communist Party specifically for women (there had been many independent such papers). At first a newspaper and very much an exponent of ‘Third Period’ politics, it played particular attention to Black women, long invisible in the left press. In addition, the magazine covered home-life, women’s health and women’s history, trade union and unemployment struggles, Party activities, as well poems and short stories. The newspaper became a magazine in 1933, and in late 1935 it was folded into The Woman Today which sought to compete with bourgeois women’s magazines in the Popular Front era. The Woman today published until 1937. During its run editors included Isobel Walker Soule, Elinor Curtis, and Margaret Cowl among others.

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