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Bread and Roses cont'd from p. 7

In reality, few women posed any threat to men's jobs. Women were not employed in the heavy industries, such as steel, railroads and mining, and jobs in factories were sex-segregated. Women were hired only for. the least-skilled, lowest-paying jobs, the jobs marked "Female Only". Some working men understood this situation, but failed to realize the importance of organizing the lowest level of workers. Only a few far-sighted working men realized their total strength depended on "strengthening the weakest part of the labor force, for the main strength of the capitalist class consisted in the divisions in labor's ranks. "

Unfortunately, the women's rights movement was equally blind to the problems of working women. In 1848, when the Female Labor Reform Association was dying, the women's rights movement was being born. In her Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke out for the rights of working women. However, none of the founding feminists made contact with the women in the mills and Bagley and her followers did not get in touch with the feminists. The interests of feminists and working women were different. Feminists wanted rights the men already had, while the central issue for working women was one

Harrisburg

Area Women's News

they already share with men--eocnomic inequity.

The myth of the healthy, comfortable life led by women who worked in the mills survived for twenty years. By the late 1840's, no one believed factory work was a blessing. The population of the factories was changing and conditions in the mills were deteriorating even further.

Millions of new immigrants were arriving in America, many of them Irish who were driven here by the potato famine of 1846. The availability of poor Irish women enabled

October, 19

1979

the mill owners to turn out the Yankee workers who had begun to assert themselves.

In time, the Irish women fought for improved working conditions, just as the native-born women had, facing the same difficulties.

As women's traditional work moved from the homes to the factories, the women moved with it. Women became workers in a variety of industries besides textile manufacture-garment trades; cigar, shoe, and glass factories; and the metal trades. Within all of these industries, women were the lowest paid, most oppressed and least organized of all workers. Because they were both women and workers, they had special problems and few allies.

By the late 1800's, working men, male unions, and middle class women's organizations began to acknowledge the problems faced by women workers. In turn, working women, supported by women reformers and feminists, gained strength enough to support and sustain militant organizing drives. Eventually their efforts instilled new life into both the labor and women's movements.

Working Women's Music/LNS

NEXT TIME: THE TRUTH ABOUT SCARLETT O'HARA

WOMEN MARCH

con't from Page 2

moral issues which this unique situation presents; and to become better equipped to help adequately those who are faced with a decision about abortion. In any decision about abortion, there are several central goals that are desirable to society: (a) affirming the quality of life; (b) enabling women to live with dignity and equality and to be responsible participants in determining the course of their lives; (c) making possible a healthful and happy pregnancy; and (d) providing a supportive climate for children in their developing years so that they may begin to realize their fullest potentialities. Because of conditions in our society today, there are times when a crisis produces conflict of these goals and raises the possibility of abortion. The failure to achieve the abovementioned goals and the possibility of conflict among them, must be kept clearly in mind in every effort to achieve a responsible position on abortion.

Historically, in the Western world it has been men who have made the decision whether or not abortion is to be sanctioned. Early in history men were assumed to be the only legal parent. Even in the nineteenth century it was believed by many that the sperm was a miniature baby that was placed in the woman to be nourished. The man's rights were su-

preme. The woman was subject first. to father and then to husband. Her life was circumscribed by sexual and procreative purposes. According to this view, her sexuality was essentially locked into child-bearing and child-rearing. Even today most of society considers every child primarily the responsiblity of a woman for seventeen to twenty years in terms of personal care and commitment of time, energy and emotional involvement. While the churches and society may impose sanctions on a woman and require her to carry through an unintended or problem pregnancy, they provide her with little continuing support for the seventeen to twenty years of child-rearing. In fact, women and children are more likely to face a strong set of obstacles which are detrimental to them. Such obstacles include: lack of quality medical care of women and children, inadequate child care services, job and pay discrimination for women, minimal care for malformed children or children with special needs, the stigma of illegitimacy on children of unwed parents, unresolved adoption and foster care problems, punitive welfare rules and denial of family services, contraceptives unavailable to young and unmarried women, and potent commercial advertising promoting sexual activity at an early age. And to make it even harder to work for societal changes our sexist society often thinks of women today,

consciously or unconsciously, as temptresses who seduce men into sexual relationships which may eventuate in pregnancy, and who are, therefore, deserving of punishment. In fact, women are often the victims deserving support and help.

The eloquent words of U.S. Supreme Court Justic Stewart issued in the historic Jane Roe v. Henry Wade decision of January 22, 1973, expressed NOW's sentiments: "...the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child. necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

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Pennsylvania NOW is calling for support from all residents of the state to let legislators know how the majority of voters feel on this issue. If the residents of Pennsylvania who have pro-choice feelings don't let their legislators know that reproductive freedom is important, then the anti-choice lobby will appear much stronger than the small, vocal minority it really is. Write your legislator today!

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MY MOTHER TOLD ME ALL ABOUT LOVE-

IT LEADS TO

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