For the Trade Union Educational League, leader of the New York Federation of Working Women Olga Gold gives an overview of the political, economic, and organizational situation of working class women in the late 1920s.

‘Problems Facing Working Class Women Today’ by Olga Gold from Labor Unity. Vol. 2 No. 6. July, 1928.

With the growth of Imperialism and the invention of labor saving machinery, a change takes place in the economic life of the working class.

Conquest and exploitation is the function of a capitalist system. Its purpose is to increase the wealth of the idlers and to increase the poverty and misery of the laboring masses. In a system where the life of the masses has to depend on the will of the few, (the oppressors) obviously the introduction of machinery with its simplification of the technique of production is not with intention to improve the material living conditions of laboring masses, securing shorter hours and higher wages, as in the U.S.S.R. where the workers, the producers are the rulers. All improvements in the U.S.S.R. are for the betterment of the masses where they receive full value for their work and not for parasite bosses who do nothing useful. In a profit system, machinery is used as a means to exploit the workers more, to compel the worker to accept less for the value of his production.

Not only is machinery used in a profit system as a factor to replace thousands of workers because it lessens the number of hours it takes to produce, but also the capitalists have discovered that woman is much cheaper and more willing labor. Statements below (from the Fall River and New Jersey Commissions” report) indicate why the bosses are delighted to have women toil.

Fall River—”We never employ men when we can get women who can do their work just as well; this is done not only on account of the reduced expenses, but because they cause less trouble by striking”.

New Jersey—”Woman and Child Labor is much lower priced than that of men. Women never agitate, they merely scrimp and bear.”

This proves clearly and plainly why the bosses prefer women and child labor to men.

Poverty, miserable exploitation, the meager earnings of the men, the daily struggle for bread, forces the women into industry; mothers are compelled to leave their little ones and to work in factories, mills or shops to support them. According to a report of the labor commission in 1920, there are 8,500,000 women wage earners in the U.S.A. of whom 2,000,000 are married. Without hesitation we may state that at present at least from ten to eleven million are working for maintenance. In a number of important manufacturing industries women predominate. The industries in which a great number of women are employed are the most oppressed and unorganized, such as the textile, canning, candy, paper-box, certain sections of the needle industry, etc. The employers are taking full advantage of the backwardness of development of women and seek to oppress and exploit them more and more. They make repeated attempts to cut wages, and to increase the hours, as for example in the textile industry, where about 50% to 60% of the workers are women.

The following table shows some of the important industries in which women are employed and the extent to which they are members of the trade unions.

A research investigation shows that the average wage worker produces between $4,000 or $5,000 worth of wealth a year. Their wages average $800 to $1,000 per year.

Today women are not only a reserve army to the bosses, to keep the wages down and to break the union (where one exists), to increase unemployment and become strikebreakers in times of struggle between workers and oppressors. But in the preparation for the next war, and during war, we must realize that women will not only be pressed into production for war purposes, but they will be called upon to take a direct part, to take the gun and to murder fellow workers of other nations, who are victims as we are of the sinister powers of the “Wall Streets,” of the imperialist nations, who ring the bell for war.

We, the working women, must open our eyes consciously in regard to our role in the new world war, especially in America, the most powerful capitalist country, which by its technical development, determined the issue of the last world war, and which will play a leading part in the coming war.

Patriotic Groups

Today the capitalists are not only mobilizing and training the men and the youth, but they have reached the stage where they are mobilising and training the women for military service. For instance, the Lotte Swiard organisation in Finland, has 45,000 women members, who are being trained for military service in the army during the war. The Lotte Swiard was created in the year 1918, the time when the Finnish bourgeoisie with the aid of the invading imperialist forces drowned the revolutionary movement of the Finnish working class in blood. In Latvia, military defense organizations include special women’s corps. In Poland, the Anti-Bolshevik League have attached to them the national women’s organizations and many other women’s organizations. The French military law in the Chamber during the latter part of 1927, reads as follows: “In time of war, all Frenchmen and those under French administration (no discrimination against allies getting killed, O.G.) regardless of age or sex, and all legal organizations must take part in the defense of the country or in the maintenance of its material and moral life.” Also it is not an accident that in America, the capitalists are systematically applying all sorts of schemes to capture and to mobilise the working women through such agencies as the National Women’s Party.

As an example, the Daughters of the American Revolution, which is one of the most reactionary women’s organizations, was recently exposed as maintaining a blacklist of prominent men and women, some of whom cannot be considered even as “progressives,” to prevent them from addressing any section of their organization. These “liberals” had merely expressed their dissatisfaction with the imperialistic policy of the State Department. Now, what is facing the real class conscious leaders of the toiling masses who do not merely limit themselves to resolutions and criticisms, but actually organize and mobilize the workers?

Are we working women not ashamed of the fact that bourgeoisie women are more consciously and energetically defending their own class interests?

Heroic Miners’ Wives

An article written today, pertaining to working women, can not however, be considered complete, without saying a word or two about the heroic women in the mine fields. These women, who suffer hunger, eviction and cold, and witness the slow dying of their little ones, and yet have shown by their deeds, unyielding militancy and devotion to their class. These courageous women act as a spur of inspiration to the awakening of working women.

Sisters, your struggle is our struggle. We are confronted with the same enemy. In the richest city of the world, we are confronted with hundreds of thousands of workers looking for work and shelter. We are engaged in a fight with such elements of labor betrayers as Sigman, Woll, McGrady, Beckerman who are backed by Tammany Hall and The Forward. We, the class-conscious working women will help you, not only morally but financially as well. Our slogan is “Every working woman join a relief committee for miners’ relief,” “Working Women, build militant labor unions,” “Working Women organize in a mighty campaign to defeat the Wall Street war and for the defense of the Soviet Union, the Bulwark of the International Proletariat.”

In 1924 Labor Herald was folded into Workers Monthly, an explicitly Party organ and in 1927 ‘Labor Unity’ became the organ of a now CP dominated TUEL. In 1929 and the turn towards Red Unions in the Third Period, TUEL was wound up and replaced by the Trade Union Unity League, a section of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profitern) and continued to publish Labor Unity until 1935. Labor Herald remains an important labor-orientated journal by revolutionaries in US left history and would be referenced by activists, along with TUEL, along after its heyday.

Link to a PDF: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labor-unity/v2n06-w25-jul-1928-TUUL-labor-unity.pdf