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Newspaper Page Text
iPJPPPSSmt! STUPENDOUS FRAUD OF BOSSES' "WELFARE WORK" KEEPS WORKERS FROM ORGANIZING Yet this welfare work has effec tively stopped in the past any great By Jane Whitaker A ten per cent cut in wages and a hall on Milwaukee av. in which tired employes are directed to spend their evenings reading, playing cards and dancing that is the welfare work of the employers in the tailoring in dustry in Chicago. It is the welfare work in all indus tries, the sop employers throw to the workers to keep them quiet, and for which the employes themselves pay. Whoever originated welfare work should have a hall of fame erected by the bosses. It is the most stupen dous fraud ever foisted on labor, and labor is just awakening to the fact At the time of the O'Hara senate investigation into low wages I visited the heads of each department store in the loop to ascertain their feeling toward a minimum wage for women, and in every case after they had stalled or been insulting or threat ened what they would do if a mini mum wage should ever be put into effect, each and every one of them called my attention to their welfare work to prove what deep and abiding interest they had in their employes and how unnecessary it for the em ployes to get a living wage since they were permitted by their gracious em ployers to buy their lunches at cost, to dwaddle around for ten minutes on a small space of waxed floor and have a woman in charge of the de partment act in the capacity of spy on the girls and detective for the store. In the tailoring industry the same welfare work is carried on. The work is seasonal and the season is, at the longest and in the best of times, only of nine months' duration, which leaves. three idle months and some times five, during which these work ers must live on the memory of "wel fare work" since they cannot live on any money saved out of the wages paid them by the employers. attempt on the part of the workers to organize. They have been drugged by the bosses. "See what we have done for you," the bosses have said. "We have given you a place in which you may go each evening and where we shall expect you to go, and you can read nice books, and you can dance on a bit of waxed floor, and you can play card games, and in some of our shops we will even have an orchestra of your own numbers, if any have tal ent enough, to play while you eat your lunches. "Don't you see how much we care for your welfare? Why should you regard us as your oppressors? True, as you say, we have cut your wages, but we have made it up to you in the 'personal touch', in our great interest in your welfare. If you organize you will make of us your enemies, we will throw you out of employment, we will fight your attempt to get any increase, but if you refuse to or ganize we will go right on giving ypu welfare work" for which you more than pay. They stop there, but they might go further. The price they ask for that welfare work is the yielding of the individual to the system. That is just the beginning but it is the beginning of beggary. No man and no woman can be ob ligated for so-called charity, even when they pay for the charity them selves, without losing the feeling of manhood and of womanhood. There is something cringing in thanking the boss for the thing he has given-you, even though you know he made you pay for it, and more when you know he made you pay for it, because you are a hypocrite in your thanks and you dare hot do other,- than say thanks. And" so welfare work is not only