So much of life, so large a part of
all our social problems, moreover, remains untouched by political and
legislative action. This is an old truth too often ignored by those who
plan political campaigns upon the most superficial knowledge of human
nature.
My own eyes were opened to the limitations of political action when, as
an organizer for a political group in New York, I attended by chance
a meeting of women laundry-workers who were on strike. We believed
we could help these women with a legislative measure and asked their
support. "Oh! that stuff!" exclaimed one of these women. "Don't you know
that we women might be dead and buried if we waited for politicians and
lawmakers to right our wrongs?" This set me to thinking--not merely of
the immediate problem--but to asking myself how much any male politician
could understand of the wrongs inflicted upon poor working women.
I threw the weight of my study and activity into the economic and
industrial struggle. Here I discovered men and women fired with the
glorious vision of a new world, of a proletarian world emancipated, a
Utopian world,--it glowed in romantic colours for the majority of those
with whom I came in closest contact. The next step, the immediate step,
was another matter, less romantic and too often less encouraging. In
their ardor, some of the labor leaders of that period almost convinced
us that the millennium was just around the corner. Those were the
pre-war days of dramatic strikes.
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