The following story was taken verbatim from the 1912 International Teamster magazine.

More Teamster stories relating to Women's History Month can be found here.

The Neglected Factor—Women

By Carrie W. Allen

Said a man to a woman textile worker with whom he was discussing the question of suffrage for women, “You should not mix up with politics. Your place is at home.”

The weaver measured the man with steady eyes, and replied, “Then why doesn’t the Harmony Mills pay my husband enough to keep me there?”

There was no answer. The man walked away.

A host of women are today asking the question the little weaver asked. From mills, stores, foundries and factories the question comes, “If woman’s place is in the home, why in the name of conscience haven’t we been kept there?”

Woman didn’t elect to leave the home. She didn’t just lay down her tools and walk out. Every woman loves a home. Glad indeed would millions of women be if they could stay there.

Industrial evolution has driven woman out. It has compelled her to stifle her instinctive love for home and motherhood. Modern conditions of industry have compelled woman to take her place by the side of man as part of the great industrial machine.

“Woman’s place is in the home!”

With every industry open to women, and six millions of them fighting life’s battles as wage earners, it is curious that men cling so tenaciously to this antiquated old tradition, and trot it out to do service on every possible occasion.

Whenever we hear this time-honored objection to suffrage for women, we are carried in fancy back to the long ago, back to the days of our grandmothers, to the days of the tallow dip and spinning wheel, the days when it might have been said with some degree of reason that woman’s place was in the home, because she found her work there.

Within the confines of the home, woman functioned as a producer, and there was an economic value to her work. Everything necessary for the family was manufactured there. With the coming of modern machines, woman’s work has been taken out of the home, out into the great world of industry. The cloth-making, garment and bread-making have been transferred to factory, sweatshop and mill.

Her means of livelihood taken from her, woman has naturally gone out from the home, and an army of machine-driven women and girls take up their daily march to factory, sweatshop and mill.

Daily these women are confronted by laws which they had no part in making, and are compelled to submit to conditions which they have no power to control. They literally have no weapon with which to fight.

Under these conditions the ballot is not a question of right. It is not a question of justice. It is a crying need—something that women must have here and now in order to protect themselves against the iniquitous industrial laws made for them by man.