Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Trade Union Woman by Alice Henry
page 260 of 349 (74%)
instance, the housewife finds scope for a far higher range of
qualifications than the factory girl exercises in preparing tomatoes
in a cannery, or soldering the cans after they are filled with the
cooked fruit. The housewife has first of all to market and next to
prepare the food for cooking. She has to study the proper degree of
heat, watch the length of time needed for boiling or baking in their
several stages, perhaps make additions of flavorings, and serve
daintily or can securely. There is scarcely any division of housework
which does not call for resource and alertness. Unfortunately,
however, although these qualities are indeed called for, they are
not always called forth, because the houseworker is not permitted to
concentrate her whole attention and interest upon any one class of
work, but must be constantly going from one thing to another. Hence
women have indeed acquired marvelous versatility, but at what a heavy
cost! The houseworker only rarely acquires perfect skill and deftness
or any considerable speed in performing any one process. Her
versatility is attained at the price of having no standards of
comparison established, and worse than all, at the price of working
in isolation, and therefore gaining no training in team-work, and so
never having an inkling of what organized effort means.

Our factory systems, on the other hand, go to the other extreme, being
so arranged that the majority of workers gain marvelous dexterity, and
acquire a dizzying rate of speed, while they are apt to lose in both
resourcefulness and versatility. They do not, however, suffer, to
anything like the same degree, from isolation, and factory life, even
where the employers are opposed to organization, does open a way to
the recognition of common difficulties and common advantages, and
therefore leads eventually in the direction of organization. In the
factory trades the workers have to some extent learnt to be vocal. It
DigitalOcean Referral Badge