The Factory Worker and Motherhood
By Kate Richards O’Hare
(American contemporary. Well-known Socialist speaker and writer. From “The Sorrows of Cupid.”)
I spent six months one winter in the various factories of New York in order to get information by actual experience. I can truthfully and conservatively say that not more than one out of two girls employed in the factory trades for a year or more are physically fitted to be wives and mothers, not considering their fitness mentally, morally or spiritually. There are six million women workers in the United States. If fifty per cent., not ninety, are made physically, mentally and morally unfit for wife and motherhood by doing work unsuited to their strength, then the wage-system must be weighed and “found wanting” indeed. Economic conditions which force women to work in unsuitable industrial occupations are not only a fruitful cause for divorce, but an outrage against humanity as well.