Women’s Labor Organizations
By Ida Tarbell
(American contemporary. Author of “History of Standard Oil,” “The Business of Being a Woman,” etc.)
Already there are signs that the woman’s labor organizations are willing to recognize the inherent dignity of household service—and this is as it should be. The woman who labors should be the one to recognize that all labor is per se equally honorable—that there is no stigma in honestly performed, useful service.
If she is to bring to the labor world the regeneration she dreams, she must begin not by saying that the shop girl, the clerk, the teacher, are in a higher class than the cook, the waitress, the maid, but that we are all laborers alike, sisters by virtue of the service we are rendering society. That is, labor should be the last to recognize the canker in the caste.