0.1 The progressive era (part ii)  (Page 9/11)

Still, some reformers believed that women’s natural jobs in managing the household would necessarily prepare them for responsibilities in public life, as argued by Ellen Richards, a home economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Richards was an exception, however because after marrying a colleague at MIT, she did not resign her post. The reality for most American women was that marriage signaled the end of their professional life and the beginning of their life as a housewife and mother.

Of course women participated in the household income by working outside of the home. Factory work was relatively easy to secure, but the hours were long, the health and safety of the employees were typically not concerns of their employers, and the pay was low. Nevertheless, women (especially immigrants) easily found jobs in textile factories. In an era that lacked any sort of meaningful federal, state, or local regulation or oversight of industries, workers were occasionally injured and even killed. Possibly no better example of such was the fire that engulfed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1911.

Located in New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company employed women, men, and children. To ensure that the workers did not leave their shifts prematurely, duck out for unofficial breaks, or otherwise engage in activities that slowed down production, the owner of the factory nailed the windows shut. The doors were locked and many entrance ways were blocked by a steel security gate. Unable to safely escape when a fire broke out among the three floors of a ten-story building, many workers broke windows opened and took a leap of faith -only to meet their certain demise upon slamming into the sidewalks below. Not unlike those who jumped from the Twin Towers ninety years later, the New Yorkers were shocked as person after person jumped to their deaths. According to a New York Times eyewitness, "one poor little creature jumped. There was a plate glass protection over part of the sidewalk, but she crasjed through it, wrecking it and breaking her body nto a thousand piece."

Approximately 146 people perished -some from jumping to their death, others from being burned alive, while others died from smoke inhalation. One result of the fire and deaths was the creation of the New York State Factory Commission. Tasked with regulating the health and safety issues of factory workers, the Commission was chaired by Robert Wagner, co-chaired by Al Smith, and Frances Perkins was the chief Investigator. Wagner and Smith will play very important roles regarding labor during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the later will become the first female Cabinet member).

Finally, there was the “servant girl problem.” Young women (and overwhelming immigrants) took domestic housekeeping jobs for wealthy families throughout the U.S. These workers were typically the first ones up and the last ones to bed in their households. They worked at least six days a week and were typically given part of Sundays off to attend church. They cleaned the homes, cooked the families’ food, and watched over the children. They did the laundry and the shopping and served the family and guests. Upper-class families who typically hired these women tended not to embrace the notion that there existed any problem with these young girls working 16 hours a day, six days a week. Regardless of the physical, verbal and sexual abuse that these servant girls routinely experienced, middle-class reformers were unable to effect any relevant change partly due to the fact that these servant girls worked in private homes and usually out of the public eye. For some, the servant girl problem was more comical than serious. In 1905 a silent film entitled "The Servant Girl Problem” demonstrated how a bumbling servant girl caused havoc in an American household. One year later the Bostonian social reformer Edward Filene (owner of Filene’s department stores) published an article in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , arguing that servant girls’ working conditions were not as bad as women working in factories or even department stores. Filene argued that working conditions worsened in conjunction with jobs that lacked skills. Thus, as working in factories took the least amount of skill, working conditions for women were worse in factories. You had to be skillful, a la Christine Frederick, to work as a servant girl so the plight of “servant girls” would be passed over by Progressive reformers.