Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/67

 kept coming back into the trade, and finally men accepted the situation as inevitable, and began to admit women into their organizations. This same course of events repeated itself in many places and in various trades.

The strike-breaking and wage lowering of women at first caused men to regard the women in industry as enemies. But when all attempts to keep women out of industry proved unsuccessful, when it became evident that the female wage-worker was as truly a factor of modern, socialized industry as the machine, workingmen gradually perceived that working women remained their enemies only so long as they were excluded from their organizations, and were compelled to accept lower wages and inferior conditions. To raise the woman's standards, to teach her the value of co-operation, to make her a trustworthy comrade, thereupon became the object of all enlightened, organized workingmen. At present it is the generally accepted policy of organized labor to organize women and to co-operate with them under all circumstances, to teach them the purpose and meaning of trade unionism, and either to bring them into existing unions or to encourage the formation of their own organizations.

Having recognized the woman's need for industrial equality, it was only the next, logical step to recognize her need for political equality. Therefore, we find labor organizations throughout the country indorsing woman suffrage and lending the suffrage movement their active support. Therefore, we find the Socialist Party, the great, political organization of the working class, setting forth woman suffrage as one of its chief, present-day demands, and conducting a nation-wide campaign in its behalf. While forty-five years ago a congress of workingmen passed a resolution, declaring that it would not commit itself to the "peculiar ideas" of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, present day congresses of workingmen everywhere are passing resolutions in support of those same ideas. Suffragists know that when they go before a body of workingmen they are sure to meet with far more understanding and sympathy than they usually meet with among men of other classes. Within recent years no labor leader has been known to express such antediluvian views on the