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Henry, Alice, 1857-1943

"The Trade Union Woman"

Youth,
joy and the possibility of future happiness lost forever, in order
that we may have cheap (or dear), waists or shoes or watches.
Further, since the young girl is the future mother of the race, it is
she who chooses the father of her children. Every condition, either
economic or social, whether of training or of environment, which in
any degree tends to limit her power of choice, or to narrow its range,
or to lower her standards of selection, works out in a national and
racial deprivation. And surely no one will deny that the degrading
industrial conditions under which such a large number of our young
girls live and work do all of these, do limit and narrow the range of
selection and do lower the standards of the working-girl in making her
marriage choice.
Give her fairer wages, shorten her hours of toil, let her have the
chance of a good time, of a happy girlhood, and an independent, normal
woman will be free to make a real choice of the best man. She will not
be tempted to passively accept any man who offers himself, just
in order to escape from a life of unbearable toil, monotony and
deprivation.


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