Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/32

 30

In investigating the condition of woman there is one phenomenon that is striking and becomes more so as it is peculiar to modern society; that is, the growing frequency of the female cripple. We do not here have reference to the cripple by birth or from illness, but the industrial cripple, the otherwise healthy and able person maimed at her work. In a general way, the great recklessness of modern society as to its expenditure of human life on the industrial field has been referred to. But for that matter, human society has always been lavish in the expenditure of human life, if not upon one battlefield surely upon another. The marvel may well be that there are any human beings left to tell the tale of destruction, so vigorous have they been about it.

But in every previous society man has fought to protect the women and children of his own class or nation. On the industrial battle field, however, there is no protection afforded anybody. The strong cannot shield the weak. It is rather a scramble of all against all in a helpless jungle. Women have to take their share of the danger equally with men and often perish on the field. Whole factories have been blown up by combustible oils and gases and the corpses of women have been mingled with those of men. Dangerous conflagrations have broken out in workshops and both men and women have perished together or have jumped from upper stories together only to be maimed for life or killed.

Writers from the southern cotton mill districts tell us that it is a common thing to see little chlidren with their fingers and often their whole hands cut off. Women get arms and legs cut off by machinery of late with shocking frequency in every industrial state. The poets sing pretty airs to woman's finest adornment, her crown of luxuriant hair and the "equality" woman who cut it off to be like man did not stay in style very long and was never popular. But this very adornment has caused many women the most fearful torture It has caught in the machine at which they were working and they