such men that a sturdy
thinker wrote last year, "Man is a self-damnable animal," and it is on
such men that the curse of the worker lies heaviest. That they exist at
all is hardly credited by the multitude who believe that, for this
country at least, oppression and outrage are only names. That they
exist in numbers will be instantly denied; yet to one who has heard the
testimony given by weeping women, and confirmed by the reluctant
admissions of employers themselves, there comes belief that no words can
fully tell what wrong is still possible from man to man in this America,
the hope of nations.

Is this a digression hardly to be pardoned in a paper on the trades and
lives of women,--a deliberate turning toward an issue which has neither
place nor right in such limits? On the contrary, it is all part of the
same wretched story. The chain that binds humanity in one has not one
set of links for men and another for women; and the blow aimed at one is
felt also not only by those nearest, but by successive ranks to whom the
shock, though only by indirect transmission, is none the less deadly in
effect. And thus the wrong done on the huge scale appropriate to a great
corporation finds its counterpart in a lesser but quite as well
organized a wrong, born also of the spirit of greed, and working its
will as pitilessly.

"If you employed on a large scale you would soon find that you ceased to
look at your men as men," said an impatient iron-worker not long ago.
"They are simply so much producing power. I don't propose to abuse them,
but I've no time even to remember their faces, much less their names."

Precisely on this principle reasons the employer of women, who are even
less to be regarded as personalities than men. For the latter, once a
year at least the employer becomes conscious of the fact that these
masses of "so much producing power" are resolvable into votes, and on
election day, if on no other, worthy of analysis. There is no such
necessity in the case of women. The swarming crowd of applicants are
absolutely at the mercy of the manager or foreman, who, unless there is
a sudden pressure of work, makes the selections according to fancy,
youth and any gleam of prettiness being unfailing recommendations. There
are many firms of which this could not be said with any justice. There
are many more in which it is the law, tacitly laid down, but none the
less a fact. With such methods of selection go other methods suppos