Women and the Rail Strike

Women and the Rail Strike.

By Margaret Sanger

The most important thing about the April railroad strike to women is that it is not the last of the gigantic struggles, but only the beginning of a long series of them. Virtually every other organized trade in the country is in exactly the same position. There is and will be for some years to come a terrific battle between the employer and the employee. While these two are fighting it out and the employee is battling to get enough money to keep his family in comfort in the face of rising prices, there must of course be increasing industrial disorganization, and in the case of rail strikes, the period when millions of the people of the United States must lack sufficient food, will be immensely hastened.

The rail strike brought the prospect of famine nearer than most of us realize. Other and greater rail strikes are coming. Moreover, it came very close to precipitating a financial panic that would have plunged the entire industrial fabric of the nation into chaos. For, as explained in this magazine some time ago, the financial position of the world is today "faked" and unsound.

All that we have undergone thus far is but a faint foretaste of the disorganization that is to come. It now appears that no power on earth can prevent the money panic of which everyone is talking and if this comes, no power on earth can prevent idleness, want and starvation. And these things the United States seems to have earned--they are coming to us and apparently we are going to get the full benefit of them within the next few years.

It is probably that we must all, in one degree or other, pay the penalty for our failure to meet our social problems as they developed. Nevertheless, the present mess is a manmade muddle. It was created by man's brains--and by something else. That something else was our unchecked breeding capacity.

Life has become so cheap in the United States that it is not worth one man's while to give a thought to another man's health or general well being. This is particularly true of the exploiter of labor and the profiteer. And this is not the man's fault but ours. We have not made children scarce enough--we have not made them valuable enough.

This is the beginning of a great day of reckoning. Matters have gotten so bad that they must get worse and we must learn our lessons before we can make them better. But it is for women to make them better and to make eternally sure that this state of affairs will not occur again.

Labor's weakness has been its numbers, pitted one against another in competition for jobs. The exploiter weakness is that he does not understand that he and the profiteer cannot continue their course forever without labor striking back.

The great numbers of children we have brought into the world have made this situation possible. It is now our duty to begin to undo the evil we have done. We must make children scarce and valuable--to valuable to be mistreated, overworked, or starved. We must refuse to bring more children into the world until it is made safe for them-- until they are no longer exposed to the danger of want, are no longer turned teacherless away from schools, are no longer oppressed. When we do that, there will be no more such periods as we are now going through and must go through for some years.

Meanwhile, no woman with the feelings of a true mother, will bring a child into being at a time like this. There is no assurance that any child born now can have the care and the food to which a child is entitled. There is no assurance that it can be properly educated. The woman who comprehends the situation will wait five years before giving birth to another. She owes it to her children, herself, her husband and to society.