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The Elevator Constructor

FRANK J. SCHNEIDER, Editor

Volume XIV

PERRY BUILDING, PHILADELPHIA 16th and Chestnut Streets

Entered as second-class matter April 8, 1907, at the Post Office at Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

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Women at Unusual Service

The United States and Canada alike have set their faces against the employment of women in any occupation that subjected them to long hours and unusual physical strain. We are of the same mind on both sides of the line in this regard, although in recent years immigration weakened the position of the United States to a greater degree than in Canada, due to greater population, greater industry, and the employment of foreign-born women in certain occupations that American women, until now, were not permitted to fill.

There has been a gradual employment of women in heavy industrial occupations within the past three years; they have sought the work, encouraged to do so by employers looking for cheaper labor, and as their mothers in the old country were used to performing heavy tasks they saw no reason why they should not do the same thing, particularly when wages were so much more than they could earn in other work.

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We have looked at pictures of women section hands, hodcarriers, farm workers and even coal miners, that have shown us how women in Europe earn their own living and contribute to the family income. The employers in the United States were slow to hire women where public sentiment was strongly against it, but gradually the younger women of foreign parentage have been getting into the lighter metal trades and now, under cover of war need, there is an open effort being made to employ women anywhere they can be put. There is no actual need for it, but the opportunity is offered to place women in jobs that have been regarded as too strenuous for them. It succeeds for the most part. The heavier service has not had time to show its effects on the health of the employes. Certain employers have

had to dismiss their women; the work was too heavy or too exacting for them but for the most part they retain their jobs and will offer one of the most difficult problems of industrial readjustment following the war.

One of our railroads announced that it employed 2,000 women to take the places vacated by men who went to war. Inquiry developed the fact that they were employed as clerks, carcleaners, car-repairers, shop workers and in track repair work. Press advices are to the effect that they have been taken out of track work. The office jobs did not impose any unusual service exactions on the women; there was an opportunity for them to work under favorable conditions and there was no chance for undue physical demand. There are some occupations wherein women can get along without impairing their health but there are too many others that demand their toll, and will take it. It is natural for women to want to be self-supporting, to desire their economic freedom, and anxious to work for it. But it is not natural for women to be willing to sacrifice their future to meet only the needs of the present. As a rule, women have little idea of their rights as employes. Too many of them believe they are working temporarily and will not go to the trouble to make their jobs as good as they would if they thought they were going to be their jobs all their lives. Very few women have given up the idea that they are going to be in homes of their own. They expect their jobs to pay enough to provide for these homes, but they do not look far enough into the future to realize that if they do not get enough money doing the work of a man to permit a man in whose place they temporarily work to maintain a home permanently that they never can share a home with him.

Statistics show that the average wage of a man now falls below the amounts fixed for family maintenance; that if the average income is above that amount, in part it comes from some outside source, such as taking boarders, doing extra work, or the wages of children, all of which add to the family income.

There is no denying the truth of the growing disposition to "hire a woman" in the place of a man. The woman must be protected against unfair wages, service conditions and the short-sightedness of both employers and employes who for immediate advantage are willing to sacrifice every hope for the future welfare of the nation and its people.-The Railroad Trainman.

FIGHTING UNIONISM

BELONGS TO PAST AGE. Fort Smith, Ark.-"The time to fight labor unions has passed," is the advice the Times-Record gives to employers in this city.

"There was a time," continues this paper, "when it might have been profitable, from an employment stand, to do so, but not now. The commercial world has accepted unionism and there is no use kicking against a stone wall. There is just one thing to do and that is to adjust to the new conditions. He is a wise business man who shapes his business to the new inventions and improvements in business.

"An employer who fights organizing is fighting against his time, against the trend of events. Unions sometimes do wrong things but unions are right because collective bargaining is right. But the point we desire to emphasize is that they have come to stay and must be used as a part of our commercial life. There is no use in taking any other stand. In individual cases this paper has no concern but it does desire to impress upon the employer the advantages of making the union a part of his business and having it work for development of the business."

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF

LABOR CONVENTION CALL. The American Federation of Labor has issued a convention call to all affiliated unions for the thirty-seventh annual convention, to be called to order at the Auditorium, Buffalo, N. Y., Monday morning, November 12, at 10 o'clock, and to continue in session until the business of the convention has been completed.

It is of course, entirely unnecessary to enumerate all the important subjects with which the convention will concern itself, but the reminder is not at all amiss that every effort must be made to broaden the field and means for the organization of the yet unorganized workers, to strive to bring about the lives and homes of the toilers, to defend and maintain by every honorable means in our power the right to organize for our common defense and advancement, for the exercise of our normal and constitutional activities to protect and promote the rights and interests of the workers; and to assert at any risk the freedom of speech and of the press and the equal rights before the law of every worker with every other citizen; to aid our fellow-workers against the effort to entangle the workers in the meshes of litigation before the courts in the several States; to arouse our fellow-workers and fellow-citizens to the danger which threatens to curb or take away their guaranteed rights and freedom; the tremendous world conflict now being waged and into which our republic was ruthlessly dragged; the maintenance of decent standards of life, work and home in war or in peace times; to help bring about an early yet desirable and permanent peace; how that peace can be secured with the establishment and maintenance of justice, freedom and brotherhood the world over. These and other great questions of equal importance will, of necessity, occupy the attention of the Buffalo convention. Headquarters of the Executive Council will be Statler Hotel.

ANTI-UNION EMPLOYERS

BLAMED FOR I. W. W. Washington.-In discussing the recent deportation of Arizona workers in the American Federationist President Gompers gives this logical answer to the question, "Why the I. W. W.?"

"The responsibility for the existence of the I. W. W. movement lies with those employers who have rejected and ruthlessly opposed collective bargaining and who have denied their employes the right to further their interests in a normal, constructive manner.

"It is impossible to kill in human beings the desire and the ambition to aspire to something better. Indeed, it would be deplorable if that desire could be killed. When employers seek to prevent a natural outlet for this desire they provoke violence and disruption. The I. W. W. movement is a creation of economic despots and financial anarchists who oppose con

structive organization of economic relations. After the copper kings of the Southwest have created and fostered the I. W. W. movement they now seek to use it as a cloak to disguise its attack upon the trade union movement.

"Approximately 12,000 miners are on strike in Arizona. The copper operators are making enormous profits on war contracts. To entrench their power they began a campaign of victimizing action union men, thus disrupting the labor movement. Economic action was necessary to maintain their rights. The men presented demands which included the right to organize and to obtain higher wages.

"The copper companies arbitrarily refused even to consider the demands of the men and at once prepared for the contest. The strikers were not permitted to exercise their normal, lawful rights-to do peaceful strike duty as pickets-and were arrested on all manner of pretexts."

JENKINS INTERLOCK MANUFACTURING CO.

926-28 Mountain Street, Philadelphia

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The finger A on fig. 1, extending downward from the door, as the door is opened it revolves wedge-cam B giving motion to A and B. Fig. 2, lever D is fulcrumed in bracket C, thereby giving it a reverse motion carrying plunger E and pad F in the direction of range-stop D in Fig. 1, moving the point out to allow the lug or cam B to pass under it and the door to be opened. G in fig. 2 carries end of rod H, which is connected to crank I, secured on end of shaft J, the other end carrying crank K, which gives lifting motion to rod L, engages in slotted disc M, thereby locking the controller until the door is closed.

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