Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1891 — Woman's Work in Pittsburg. [ARTICLE]

Woman's Work in Pittsburg.

One of the piteous tales that protected manufacturers often tell before the committees of Congress is that in Europe women are often employed to do the work of men. They are quite sure that free-born American workingmen cannot compete with Europe’s pauper women. But it appears that Europe is not the only part of the world where, in the sharp struggle for existence, the manufacturers put women to doing men’s work. Our own Pittsburg, where, perhaps, more protected industries to the square mile are concentrated than anywhere else in America, has a little tale of its own, which can match those which our manufacturers can tell about Europe. According to a recent report to the Workingmen’s Society in New York, about five hundred women are employed in the great iron foundries in Pittsburg in “capping” bolts and nails. For this work the men have been receiving from sl4 to sl6 a week. The women are paid from $4 to $5 a week, and are glad to get it. This is one of the features of protection to American industry, in driving men out of employment for which their strength fits them and substituting the cheap labor of weak and delicate women. Pittsburg has more millionaire lpanufacturers than any other city of its size in *the country; but that fact does not prevent the very thing which the protectionists claim as the special achievement of protection. To prevent degradation of American labor. Americaii manhood and womanhood, is the worthy object they say they have in view. Does protection accomplish that object in highly protected Pittsburg?