Wage-Earning Woman and…
[Labor]. Addams, Jane, preface. Abbott, Edith and Sophonisba P. Breckinridge. The Wage-Earning Woman and the State. A reply to Miss Minnie Bronson. Directors of the Department of Social Investigation in the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. Boston: Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government, [1910].
8vo.; stapled wrappers; right-hand corner of upper panel missing, removing “the State” from the title; chip to bottom of lower panel, removing part of Owen Lowejoy’s endorsement; darkened; few closed tears.
First edition. With a preface by Jane Addams, in which she lists the credentials and achievements of Abbott and Breckenridge, and personally endorses their counter-argument written in response to a pamphlet put out by the anti-suffragist Minnie Bronson. Addams writes that both women are “well-qualified, not only by rather unusual academic training, but also experience, to speak authoritatively on questions relating to wage-earning women,” for they both possess “a keen and living interest in thousands of working women.”
Bronson’s pamphlet, also titled “The Wage-Earning Woman and the State,” was circulated by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. It argued that gaining suffrage would not improve working conditions for women or lead to legislation that would protect them in the workplace. After deeming Bronson unsuitable to make any claims regarding the relationship of suffrage to labor rights due to her limited experience as an employed female, Abbott and Breckinridge systematically address each of Bronson’s claims, finding that most misrepresent the suffragist agenda. Bronson also seems to have a poor understanding of the function of labor legislation as a whole, and even presents incorrect information as evidence. In one instance, Bronson references a Colorado law that was declared unconstitutional and removed from the books long before the publication of her pamphlet. According to Abbott and Breckinridge, Ms. Bronson’s knowledge of industrial conditions is “singularly at fault” (p. 14) and her statistics are at best misleading, at worst, simply false.
Abbott and Breckinridge conclude by stating what they feel to be self-evident: that women “will have more equal footing in the industrial struggle when they have the protection of the vote” (p. 21) and will benefit from the “enormous indirect consequences of the ballot—the gain in education, in independence, in self-reliance, and therefore the gain for workingwomen in the ability to organize” (p. 22).
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