Factories Instead of Homes
By Mary E. McDowell
(Head of University Settlement House, Chicago. Writer and speaker for suffrage, organized labor, etc.)
However earnestly we may deplore the fact that women are in factories instead of homes, we must squarely face conditions as they exist. There are hundreds of thousands of helpless, untrained, unorganized women without the power of legislating for themselves, who are forced by the stress of circumstances to earn their livelihood, and it is of vital importance that they be given the chance to be decently self-supporting under conditions which will unfit them for wifehood and motherhood and the care of the homes.