Routledge Revivals
The Story of an Epoch Making Movement
The Story of an Epoch Making Movement
Maud Nathan
First published in 1926 by Doubleday, Page and Company
This edition first published in 2019 by Routledge
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1926 by Taylor and Francis
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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN:
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-19478-9 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-429-20270-4 (ebk)
Give back to the women who work
The Spirit of Life
Designed by Daniel Chester French for the Trask Memorial at Saratoga, and through the courtesy of Mrs Katrina Trask, used for the leaflets of the Consumers League
THE STORY OF AN EPOCH-MAKING MOVEMENT
BY
MAUD NATHAN
Honorary President of the New York Consumers League, and Vice-President of the National Consumers League
With Brief Forewords by
HON. NEWTON D. BAKER
Former Secretary of War, and former President of the National Consumers League
MARY ANDERSON
Chief of Womens Bureau, Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
EDWARD A. FILENE
Senior member of the firm of William Filenes Sons, of Boston, Mass.
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS. GARDEN CITY, N. Y
FIRST EDITION
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND
JOSEPHINE SHAW LOWELL
THE LADY OF THE LAMP
WHOSE VISION, WISDOM, AND SYMPATHETIC UNDERSTANDING MADE POSSIBLE THIS EPOCH-MAKING MOVEMENT
And for success, I ask no more than thisto bear unflinching witness to the truth. All true, whole men succeed; for what is worth successs name, unless it be the thought, the inward surety, to have carried out a noble purpose to a noble end.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
To the friends who so kindly encouraged me by their helpful suggestions, I wish to extend my thanks.
MAUD NATHAN
I N THE following pages Mrs. Nathan tells the story of the Consumers League from the genesis of the idea through the days of its development to its present days of power.
The idea upon which the League is based is now an accepted part of our industrial philosophy while the League itself is relied upon by legislatures for accurate information as to industrial conditions and by executives for sympathy and support in the enforcement of regulations profoundly affecting the health and welfare of the republic.
We are a humane and just people. In recent decades, as science and invention have facilitated our exploitation of the boundless natural resources of our virgin continent, our wealth has increased in a sort of dizzy geometrical progression, but it is a happy circumstance that our disposition to benevolence has kept pace with our growing ability. I shall not multiply words in proof of this thesis, but I summon the four corners of the earth to testify how American effort has bound up the wounds of the world, pouring in oil and wine, until the advent of catastrophe has come to be but the herald of the approach of American sympathy and relief.
The industrial advance, however, has entailed problems all its own. In the surging, congested masses, notably of unorganized and inarticulate women and children workers, summoned to create wealth in mass production, it is increasingly hard for us to find our neighbours! The Providence which lay in the intimacy of small neighbourhoods is lost in the mazes of the tenement, and charity becomes unintelligent and futile as a mere casual grace between strangers. For such reasons the factory and workshop, as they grew, became more and more impersonal, conditions in them became nobodys business, and their social consequences eluded the knowledge of the consumers of the products until the exhaustion of long hours, the degradation of inadequate wages and the diseases of the sweatshop stood out as evils which not only deprived defenceless women and children of a fair chance in life, but menaced the vitality and morality of the race.
The attention of Miss Woodbridge was attracted to some of these problems through the Working Womens Society, an organization dictated, no doubt, rather by the consciousness of suffering on the part of the working women than by any appreciation of the social consequences of the condition in which they and other women found themselves.
However that may be, a Cause had finally found a Prophet. By the steps which Mrs. Nathan details, the Consumers League developed at first locally, then nationally. It assumed, and rightly, that the American consumer would not willingly profit by the cheapness of wares where that cheapness resulted from oppression and injustice. Happily, from the very beginning, however, the Consumers League has proceeded upon sound principles. Its motto has been Investigate, record, agitate. Accordingly, it has sought first-hand accurate information, subjected its data to scientific analysis and generalization, and laid before a thoughtful public the results of its inquiries, through the printed and spoken word, in such fashion that well-disposed people have been able to bring to bear the pressure of the consumers purchasing power to induce voluntary betterment of conditions on the part of employers. It has been able also to present before legislative committees conditions ripe for statutory remedies, and to hold up the hands of factory inspectors and sanitary authorities by surrounding their acts with an atmosphere of intelligent criticism.
The full story of the work of the Consumers League is not told in Mrs. Nathans pages, nor will it ever be told anywhere. Before local and general legislatures of every state, and committees of Congress, in the offices of mayors, governors, cabinet officers, and Presidents, the voice of the League has been lifted in the interest of better conditions of life and work, notably for women and children. The impression it has created has become a part of the elevation of the social conscience of America and far transcends even the great ethical gains which can be enumerated as embodied in legislation.
