Ohio History Journal

PATRICIA BRITO

Protective Legislation in Ohio:

The Inter-war Years

During the 1920s, protective legislation-legislation that applied only to

women and was intended to preserve the health and safety of the female

worker-made obvious the conflict between orthodox trade union theory

and the expeditious achievement of economic goals. The American

Federation of Labor and its Ohio affiliate, the Ohio State Federation of

Labor, subscribed to the doctrine of "voluntarism," the idea that labor's

best interests were served by voluntary organization and collective

bargaining. This implied that the state should play only a minimal role in

regulating economic conditions. Hence, on those issues that could be

resolved through the bargaining process, the union jealously guarded its

role as a spokesman for the laborer's interest.¹ The AF of L opposed

legislation to set a minimum wage or maximum hours for male workers

because, in its view, reliance on social welfare legislation would ultimately

weaken union organization. As the AF of L Executive Council warned in

1923: "The threat of state invasion of industrial life is real. . . . The

continuing clamor for extension of state regulatory powers under the guise

of reform and deliverance from evil can but lead into greater confusion and

hopeless entanglements."²

Labor's position on protective legislation for women suggests the

practical limits and hidden meaning of the Federation's voluntarist

ideology. As a group of largely unskilled, unorganized workers expected to

remain in the work force only a short time, women posed a considerable

threat to the wage level. Labor's voluntaristic philosophy suggested that

improvement in wages and hours, for both sexes, should come through

Patricia Brito is a graduate student at Rice University

1. For a more complete discussion of organized labor's voluntaristic philosophy, see

George Gilmary Higgins, Voluntarism in Organized Labor in the United States, 1930-1940,

The Catholic University of America, Studies in Economics, Vol. 13 (Washington, D.C.,

1944), 35-51; Max M. Kampelman, "Labor in Politics," Interpreting the Labor Movement,

eds. George W. Brooks, Milton Derber, David A. McCabe and Philip Taft (Champaign,

1952), 171-91; Louis S. Reed, The Labor Philosophy of Samuel Gompers (New York, 1930);

and Selig Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York, 1928; reprint ed., New

York, 1949).

2. American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings, Forty-third Annual Conven-

tion, 1923, 31.

174                                                     OHIO HISTORY

collective bargaining between the employer and the employee. At the same

time, union leaders believed that women were inherently difficult to

organize. Thus, for male union officials there was this contradiction:

women should organize and bargain for wages and working conditions,

but because they were difficult to organize this approach was already

doomed to failure. Complicating this, labor union officials and members

shared the common assumption that a woman's role in nurturing future

generations was sufficient reason that her health, safety, and morals should

receive special protection. For example, the AF of L convention approved

a resolution favoring restrictions on night work for women on the grounds

that "there is necessity for the protection of the health of women workers;

that unless this protection is given them the race cannot continue to

progress as it is desired that it should."³

The history of the Ohio State Federation of Labor and protective

legislation during the period between World Wars I and II suggests that

voluntarism, with its attendant anti-statism, was an abstraction invoked to

justify positions that served the interests of dominant elements within

organized labor.⁴ Two significant pieces of protective legislation were

passed in Ohio during the inter-war period. One-the legislative

prohibition of women from certain occupations-illustrates the

willingness of craft unions to resort to state regulation to protect men's jobs

and wages against competition from women. The second, and more

important, piece of legislation was the provision of a minimum wage for

women. This never received support from the Ohio State Federation of

Labor. Like the AF of L, the OSF of L opposed such social welfare

regulation as a violation of its voluntaristic philosophy. Those opposed to

the law felt that a legislatively determined minimum wage might usurp the

role of collective bargaining, especially if it were eventually extended to

cover male workers. Hence, when protective legislation was written to

make men's jobs secure against competition from less well-paid women,

predominantly male unions accepted it. However, when such legislation

threatened to interfere with what unions viewed as their self-interest, it was

rejected as a violation of trade unionism and voluntaristic union

philosophy.

3. AF of L.. Proceedings, 1919, 240, 450.

4. Michael Rogin's analysis of the voluntaristic ideology of the AF of L and its practical

effects reaches a similar conclusion about the national organization. See Michael Rogin,

"Voluntarism: The Political Functions of an Antipolitical Doctrine," Industrial and Labor

Relations Review, 15 (July, 1962), 521-35. In Rogin's view, Gompers' voluntaristic

philosophy legitimized craft union control within the organization.

Protective Legislation                                           175

OCCUPATIONAL PROHIBITIONS

During the 1919 legislative session, the Ohio State Federation of Labor

sponsored a statute in the state legislature prohibiting the employment of

women in a long list of occupations. Among the occupations prohibited to

women were such disparate pursuits as molding, work as baggage or freight

handlers, taxi-driving, reading electric meters, and work in blast furnaces,

smelters, mines, quarries, poolrooms, or establishments that catered to an

exclusively male clientele and sold "substitutes for intoxicating liquors."⁵

The passage of this law can be attributed to the coincidence of several

factors. During World War I, women moved into some previously male

occupations. This phenomenon created alarm among male workers, who

feared that women would lower prevailing wages, impede unionization,

and eventually displace men. At the same time, spurred by the needs of war

production, the government took an active role in coordinating and

overseeing industry. The government's announced policy was that

workers, especially women workers, should enjoy a reasonable working

day and safe and healthful workplace conditions. In the case of women, this

protection sometimes took the form of restrictions on the occupations in

which they were allowed to work. Such guidelines meshed neatly with the

interests of the International Molders' Union, which had long attempted to

bar women from foundry occupations. This union furnished the immediate

impetus for the passage of the Ohio law prohibiting women from selected

occupations.

During World War I, women moved out of the low-paying manufac-

turing industries that had traditionally employed them and into better paid

positions in defense factories. In defense-related manufacturing, the

absolute numbers of women workers increased dramatically over prewar

levels, and as men were drafted into the armed services, women increased as

a percentage of the total workforce in these industries. In the summer of

1914, they comprised 6.5 percent of the employees in defense-related

manufacturing; by the late fall of 1918, they constituted 13.9 percent.⁶ In

almost all manufacturing defense industries, a larger proportion of firms

hired at least some women during the war than had previously been the

case. Hence, the increase in female employment for these industries reflects

not only the addition of women in firms that had hired them before the war,

5. Ohio General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 83rd Gen. Assem.,

Reg. Sess., 1919 (Columbus, 1919); Ohio, General Code (Page's Compact Edition, 1920),

Sees. 1008 and 1008-1; Cleveland Citizen, Feb. 1, 1919; Ohio State Federation of Labor,

Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Convention, 1919, 31-32. Hereafter referred to as

OSFL, Proceedings.

6. U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, The New Position of Women in American

Industry, Bull. 12 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1920), 34-35, 89.

176                                                    OHIO HISTORY

but also their employment in companies where they had never before

worked. However, most women in defense-related manufacturing were not

new entrants into the work force. Even as defense factories added women

workers, employers in traditionally female industries, such as spinning,

weaving, and knitting plants, reported serious difficulty in retaining

employees.⁷

As with manufacturing industries, railways and streetcar lines also

employed more women. For example, in the railroad industry the number

of women tripled between 1917 and October, 1918.8 Likewise, intra-urban

lines hired women in the highly visible new job of streetcar conductor, and

by February 1918, 30 percent of the conductors employed by the New York

Railways Company were women^9. Again, most of the women entering these

new positions were not new to the labor force, but were experienced

workers who transferred from traditional women's industries into better

paid positions. For example, the majority of new clerks in the railroad

industry had previously been clerical workers elsewhere. Women employed

as common laborers for the railroads had usually been recruited out of

similarly unskilled work in traditional female industries such as laundries,

hotels, restaurants, and domestic service.

It is difficult to determine the extent to which women in war industries

were substitutes for men. Obviously, many were added to new positions,

manufacturing items not previously produced, or worked in occupations

already predominantly female. Statistics of the Women's Bureau show that

13 percent of all women employed in defense manufacturing in late 1918

were substituting on men's jobs. Although the Bureau felt that this figure

underestimated the substitution of women for men, this still suggests that

few women were directly in competition with men.10 Likewise, in the

railroad industry most women employees were in fields that had been

predominantly female even before World War I. In October 1918, 72

percent of the women in the industry were in clerical positions.

Traditionally female occupations such as car-cleaning, work as telephone

operators, and personal service in dining rooms or kitchens accounted for

most of the balance.11 Nonetheless, the list of occupations open to women

did expand, even though the numbers of women in these occupations

remained small. In transportation, in addition to work as conductors on

streetcar lines, new types of jobs were opened in railroads as ticket sellers,

7. Ibid., 20-25, 44-47.

8. Maurine Weiner Greenwald, "Women Workers and World War 1: The American

Railroad Industry, A Case Study," Journal of Social History, 9 (Winter, 1975), 156.

9. Benjamin M. Squires, "Women Street Railway Employees," U.S. Bureau of Labor

Statistics, Monthly Review, 6 (May, 1918), 1050.

10. Women's Bureau, New Position, 50, 54-55.

11. Greenwald, "Women Workers," 156-57.

Protective Legislation                                           177

telegraph operators, and electric welders. In jobs where they had already

worked before the war, women often took on more responsibility than

previously. For example, women had long worked as coremakers in

foundries, but during the war they moved into the production of cores that

were larger and more complex.¹²

Whatever the actual facts about women moving into men's occupations,

the perception of male workers in Ohio was that women were rapidly

displacing men. The Cleveland Citizen, the paper of the Cleveland Central

Labor Union, wrote in September of 1918:

What a queer world the boys in khaki will behold when they come home again!

Women running streetcars, taxicabs, elevators, fire engines, locomotives, and in

part also factories, mines, mills and farms! And what will the returned soldier boy

say when they [sic] begin looking around for their old jobs? That's the problem,

second now only to the war itself and will take first place later.13

The Toledo Union Leader, the publication of the Toledo Central Union,

also viewed the phenomenon with alarm. In December 1918 it wrote, "But

it is not mere questions of the shifting of labor that we face, puzzling as

those questions are. Wholly new situations have been created. What of the

women who by the thousands have taken places formerly occupied by

men?"14

The reaction of unionized male workers to women workers in new jobs

was not confined to mere editorial comment. At best, the unions tried to

keep women from undercutting their wages by assuring that women in their

craft got equal pay for equal work, a position that preserved men's wages as

well as benefitting women. In a more direct challenge, the Motorman and

Conductors Union in Cleveland struck the city's urban transport company

to force the dismissal of women hired as "conductorettes." The union

argued that there was no shortage of male workers for the job, and hence

women should be dismissed. In this case, the male conductors made it clear

that they saw the employment of women in these jobs as a threat by the

streetcar companies to lower wages and replace men with a more tractable

group of workers.¹⁵

Coinciding with this alarm among male workers that the war meant a

possible incursion of women into previously male trades, defense work

during World War I encouraged stricter government attention to the

12. Women's Bureau, New Position, 25-27, 107; Greenwald, "Women Workers," 157.

13. Cleveland Citizen, Sept. 14, 1918.

14. Toledo Union Leader, Dec. 18, 1918.

15. Cleveland Citizen, Aug. 31, 1918, Oct. 19, 1918; "Strike against Employment of

Women as Streetcar Conductors in Cleveland," Monthly Labor Review, 8 (Jan., 1919), 224-

30; and "Case of Woman Streetcar Conductors in Cleveland," Monthly Labor Review, 8

(May, 1919), 1456-58.

178                                                      OHIO HISTORY

conditions under which women worked. Those Progressive organizations

that had long advocated protective legislation provided the staff for many

of the government agencies designed to oversee the entrance of women into

defense-related jobs. Josephine Goldmark, research secretary of the

National Consumers' League, and Dr. Alice Hamilton, a pioneer in

industrial medicine, were both on the Committee on Labor of the Advisory

Council to the Council of National Defense. Mary Anderson, organizer for

the Women's Trade Union League and member of the Consumers' League

and American Association for Labor Legislation, was assistant director of

the Women in Industry Service in the Department of Labor.¹⁶ These

women had long histories as advocates of government regulation for the

protection of the worker, especially the woman worker. The war provided

new avenues of influence through the multiplying defense agencies and

was, in a sense, the culmination of the Progressive crusade for social

justice.17

In Ohio, the Consumers' League was the single most influential group in

formulating guidelines for the employment of women. The Consumers'

League of Ohio was a reform-minded organization of Cleveland women

that, prior to World War I, had worked with organized labor in Ohio to

secure passage of maximum hours laws for women.¹⁸ Hence, the League

brought to its wartime task a strong commitment to protectionist

legislation. The Committee on Women in Industry, the state's principal

defense agency designated to oversee the movement of women into new

industries, was for all practical purposes the Consumers' League of Ohio

under another name. The Committee's chairman was Myrta L. Jones,

executive committee member and later president of the League. The

membership list of the Committee was composed almost exclusively of

League members, and it operated from the offices of the League in

Cleveland.¹⁹ The Committee cooperated with the Industrial Commission

of Ohio in developing guidelines for the employment of women workers,

and the Consumers' League Bulletin gave great attention to publicizing

these policies. The guidelines suggested by the Committee on Women in

16. "Protection of Labor Standards," Monthly Review, 4 (May, 1917), 650; Durward

Howes ed. American Women: The Standard Biographical Dictionary of Notable Women, 3

(Los Angeles, 1939).

17. Allen F. Davis, "Welfare, Reform and World War I," American Quarterly, 19 (Fall,

967), 516-33.

18. Dennis Irven Harrison, "The Consumers' League of Ohio: Women and Reform 1909-

1937" (unpublished dissertation, Case Western University, 1975).

19. Harrison, "Consumers' League," 57-58; Ohio Branch, Council of National Defense, A

History of the Activities of the Ohio Branch Council of National Defense (Columbus, 1919),

54-56. The Ohio Committee on Women and Children in Industry was a joint committee under

the Women's Committee, Ohio Branch Council of National Defense and the National

Committee on Women in Industry, Advisory Commission of the Council of National

Defense.

180                                                  OHIO HISTORY

we do not want to see women exploited for cheap labor, shunted wholesale

into industry without preliminary provisions for training and study of

suitable work and safeguards for women."²¹

Defense agencies not only emphasized the need to protect women from

exploitation for women's own good, but also stressed that the introduction

of large numbers of women might upset the status quo in the labor market.

According to the War Labor Board, one reason for the rigid application of

the equal wage principle was "to prevent more women being brought into

industry than the needs of the nation demand, in order that the American

home may be maintained as far as possible, as it is during the war."²²

Likewise, a War Labor Policy Board directive stipulated that "The

introduction of women into positions hitherto filled by men should not be

made a pretext for unnecessarily displacing men."²³ The Ohio Committee

on Women in Industry and the Consumers' League echoed the sentiment.

The Consumers' League remarked," . .. we do not want women to enter

industry until there is real need, we do not want them to upset the labor

market, to take men's work when men are still seeking employment."²⁴

The defense agencies concerned themselves not only with the protection

of women's physical safety, but their morals as well. The policy of the War

Labor Policies Board was that women should not replace men in

occupations or places of employment where the moral atmosphere was

unfit for them. Examples of such pursuits were work in barrooms or

poolrooms, and employment in streetcars or elevators for females less than

twenty-one years old.²⁵ In Ohio, the Consumers' League showed the same

concern that women not be exposed to morally questionable situations. In

its opinion, there were industries "which for women involve distinct moral

hazards, these chiefly of course for the young worker, and when they mean

night work." The seriousness which the League attached to determining

which occupations posed a moral threat is shown by the considerable

investigatory work which preceded the decision that work as an elevator

operator was suitable for women during the daytime, when it posed "no

more moral dangers . . . than other work in public places."²⁶

To shield women from economic exploitation or moral corruption, the

War Labor Administration and its Ohio counterpart advocated restric-

tions on their employment, although affected women workers did not

21. OCL, Bulletin, Feb. 1918, 3.

22. "Federal Policy in the Employment of Women," Monthly Labor Review, 7 (Nov.,

1918), 1337-38.

23. "Organization of the War Labor Administration Completed," Monthly Labor Review,

7 (Aug., 1918), 288.

24. OCL, Bulletin, Feb., 1918, 3.

25. "Labor Administration Completed," Monthly Labor Review, 288.

26. OCL, Bulletin, Nov., 1918, 1.

Protective Legislation                                       181

always appreciate such protection. For example, the government's official

policy was that women should not be allowed to work in jobs which were

deemed too exhausting. The Ohio Consumers' League conducted an

investigation of women working as section hands on railroads, and

concluded that the work was much too heavy.²⁷ The League's conclusion

was vindicated when the Women's Service Section of the Railway

Administration came to the same conclusion, and the Director General of

the Federal Railroad Administration ordered the railroads to discontinue

completely the employment of women in such work. This protective

measure was not welcomed by all women workers; a number of female

section hands protested vigorously for the right to retain their jobs.²⁸

Similarly, the Ohio Consumers' League, like the National Consumers'

League, advocated the prohibition of nightwork for women workers, even

though their own investigations showed that some women workers

preferred a night shift.²⁹

The attitude that women should, in their own interest, be barred from

some occupations that might be physically or morally dangerous is obvious

in the guidelines for hiring women developed by the Women in Industry

Committee of the Ohio Branch of the Council of National Defense and the

Ohio Industrial Commission. In addition to other protective measures,

these would have barred women from express driving, delivery services,

freight elevators, baggage and freight handling, trucking, poolrooms,

bowling alleys, and saloons, or work as bellboys, taxi drivers, or pinboys.

Women under twenty-one were not to be hired as elevator operators,

messengers, and street car conductors.³⁰ There was no effective mechanism

for enforcing such guidelines. Their importance arises from the fact that

they became law in 1919 when the Ohio State Federation of Labor, at the

behest of Ohio locals of the International Molders' Union, adapted them to

serve a much narrower purpose-the exclusion of women from work as

molders.

The Ohio law was not the first instance of unionized foundry workers

attempting to bar women from their crafts through legislation. The

Molders' Union had long been opposed to the employment of women as

coremakers or molders, since it felt that the manufacture of small, simple

cores-the task most commonly assigned to women-was properly part of

the training program for apprentices. Consequently, the union not only

forbade membership to women, but its constitution mandated the

expulsion of members who were guilty of teaching women the process of

27. OCL, Bulletin, Nov., 1918, 1, Feb., 1918, 2.

28. Greenwald, "Women's Work," 166-67.

29. OCL, Bulletin, Nov., 1918, 5-6, Oct. 1, 1920. 1-4.

30. Harrison, "Consumers' League," 57-58.

182                                                           OHIO HISTORY

coremaking or molding.³¹ Keeping women out of the union, however, was

no solution to the problem of lowered wages from competition with

women. The International Molders' Journal reported: "Not only has the

Molders' Union been opposed to female labor on humanitarian grounds,

but it has also fought it out of fear that it would result in the lowering of the

standards attained by men. It is a fact well known to the student of labor

problems that women can ordinarily be obtained at a less wage than

men."32

It is not surprising, then, that local unions would eventually want

legislation to prohibit women form foundry occupations. Union molders

had attempted to get an absolute legislative prohibition against women

coremakers in three eastern states prior to World War I. In 1910 a law to

that effect was introduced into the New York legislature; similar bills were

introduced in Massachusetts and New Jersey in 1911 and 1912,

respectively.³³ Although union coremakers were unsuccessfull in all these

states in eliminating women altogether, the State Factory Commission of

New York was sufficiently impressed by the possible dangers of female

employment in foundries to establish strict regulations governing the

conditions under which women could work at such employment. These

required the building of partitions between the core room and furnace

room and limited the weight of cores and core boxes women were allowed

to lift. The New York Commission that framed the legislation felt that the

regulations were sufficiently stringent to prevent the extension of women's

employment and would, in a few years, result in the complete elimination

of women in foundries.³⁴

In Ohio, a similar foundry safety code was instituted with hopes of

eliminating female coremakers. In 1914 the Molders' Union received OSF

of L convention approval of a bill to have the legislature establish a safety

code for foundries which would, among other provisions, prohibit women

31. Frank T. Stockton, "Women in the Foundry," International Molders' Journal, 52

(Jan., 1916), 45; Women's Bureau, New Position, 107-9.

32. Stockton, "Women in the Foundry," 45.

33. Ibid., 45-46; U.S. Dept. of Labor, Women's Bureau, History of Labor Legislation for

Women in Three States, Bull. 66 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1921), 2, 162-64, 114-17. The

support which the International gave such efforts fluctuated. For example, the Executive

Board voted to give Union No. 441 of Newark, N.J. $250 reimbursement against $475.50

expenses incurred "in furthering legislation which would prohibit the employment of females

in the production of cores in the state of New Jersey." Three years later when Union No.81 of

Elizabeth petitioned for financial assistance to secure passage of an act to regulate female core

makers, the motion was denied. "Officers' Reports and Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth

Session of the International Molders' Union of North America," published as supplement to

International Molders' Journal, 53 (1917), 38, 99.

34. D. W. O'Connor, "Foundry Legislation in New York State," International Molders'

Journal, 49 (April, 1913), 271-83; Women's Bureau, History of Labor legislation, 162-64,

114-17; John R. O'Leary, "New York State Foundry Rules Recently Adopted," International

Molders' Journal 51 (July, 1915), 495-511.

Protective Legislation                                           183

coremakers and foundry workers. Eventually the request was referred to

the Ohio Industrial Commission, the newly established state agency

responsible for drawing up safety codes for various industries. The foundry

regulations eventually developed for Ohio were almost identical to the New

York code. Women were not absolutely prohibited from coremaking, but

their employment was strictly regulated. For example, weightlifting

limitations for female coremakers were stricter in Ohio than in New York.³⁵

Union coremakers evidently hoped that these regulations would not only

provide safer working conditions for all foundry workers, but would

eliminate women from their craft. In a resolution introduced at the OSF of

L annual convention several years after the code's adoption, coremakers

endorsed such regulations for "governing the employment of men and

women in foundries, and if possible to eliminate the female molder and

coremaker."³⁶

The opposition of unionized molders to women in their craft clearly

predated World War I. However, the emphasis on replacing male with

female workers during the war probably created fears that there would be

an accelerated flow of women into foundries. At its 1917 national

convention, the International Molders' Union passed a resolution

vigorously condemning employers who were using the war as a pretext to

employ females in foundries and other factories where men had previously

worked. This was part of a resolution that instructed the incoming officers

to use their "every effort to cure the abuse now obtaining where female or

child labor is employed and every effort be made to prevent its extension,"

and that they "give their best thought and effort in opposing the

employment of females and child labor in jobs recognized distinctly as

men's employment."³⁷

Next fall, 1918, representatives of the Molders' Union in Ohio

introduced a resolution at the Ohio State Federation of Labor convention

asking the state organization to endorse legislation prohibiting female

molders. The molders argued that fumes, smoke, gases and the operation

of cranes and pouring of metals made the molding department especially

dangerous, and that the foundry was "the last place a woman should be

permitted to work." The resolution instructed the OSF of L to have the

Industrial Commission incorporate a law in the foundry code prohibiting

the employment of women in the molding department of the foundries in

35. Foundry regulations in Ohio prevented women from making cores where the combined

weight of core, corebox, and plate were more than fifteen pounds; New York set the limit at

twenty-five pounds. John O'Neill, "The Ohio Foundry Code," International Molders'

Journal, 52 (July 1916), 589-94; OSFL, Proceedings, 1914, 63-64, 84-85.

36. OSFL, Proceedings, 1920, 45.

37. "Officers' Reports and Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Session of the International

Molders' Union of North America," published as supplement to International Molders'

Journal, 53 (1917), 183, 221, 239.

184                                                    OHIO HISTORY

Ohio. The resolution received convention approval with no protests.³⁸

The Executive Board of the OSF of L decided to meet with the state's

Industrial Commission to determine the best way to carry out the intention

of the Molders' resolution. This consultation resulted in an expanded

measure that added molders to the list of prohibited occupations in the

wartime guidelines on acceptable employment for women that had been

suggested by the Industrial Commission and the Women in Industry

Committee of the Ohio Branch, Council of National Defense.³⁹ Additional

strictures against women employees in smelters, quarries, mines and blast

furnaces, which simply applied laws already in force for female minors to

adult women, were also included.⁴⁰ Finally, the Consumers' League of

Ohio asked the cooperation of the OSF of L in securing the extension of

legislation restricting hours to occupations not already covered by state

laws. The Federation was already pledged by a convention resolution to

support an extension of the maximum hours law which would cover

women on streetcars, and at the League's request added elevator operators

and ticket sellers to the list of people who should receive such protection.⁴¹

The final bill, therefore, showed the influence of at least three groups: the

Molders' Union, which had originally wanted a prohibition against women

molders, the Ohio Industrial Commission, and the Consumers' League,

which had suggested an extended list of proscribed occupations and

additional restrictions on hours. The bill was introduced into the Ohio

legislature in the spring of 1919 and was signed by Governor James Cox on

June 15 of that year. The OSF of L seemed pleased with the measure as

passed. At the 1919 convention, the President mentioned in his report that,

although the enforcement of protective legislation for women was still

inadequate, "In line with recommendations made in the last annual report

of this department [the Industrial Commission] the Legislature during the

last session made some very important amendments to the child and female

labor, and the compulsory education laws, which I am sure will assist very

materially in the enforcement of these laws in the future."⁴²

If the success of the Molders' Unions in bending protective legislation to

their own ends was, in part, a product of the fact that there were no

representatives of women molders to protest, similar efforts by unionized

waiters provided an interesting contrast. Unlike most occupations

prohibited to women by Ohio law, there were already large numbers of

waitresses at work. Unlike the molders, who simply wanted to bar future

38. OSFL, Proceedings, 1918, 51.

39. OSFL, Proceedings, 1919, 31-32; Ohio General Assembly, Journal, House of

Representatives, Reg. Sess., 1919.

40. Ohio, General Code (Page's Compact Edition, 1926), Sees. 1008, 1008-1.

41. OCL, Bulletin, June 1919, 5-6; OSFL, Proceedings, 1918, 65.

42. OSFL, Proceedings, 1919, 29.

Protective Legislation                                         185

entry of women into an occupation that was identifiably and

overwhelmingly male, waiters could not hope to dislodge the large

numbers of women already at work in restaurants. Furthermore,

waitresses and waiters belonged to the same international-the Hotel and

Restaurant Employees International Alliance and Bartenders' Inter-

national League of America-but to separate local unions. Nonetheless, by

"protecting" women from night work and immoral situations associated

with serving alcohol, waiters could retain or increase their share of jobs.

Waitresses within organized labor resisted such protection, and the

prohibitive legislation eventually sanctioned by the OSF of L was much

narrower than that originally requested by the waiters' unions.

Nationally, women comprised an increasing proportion of employees in

the restaurant industry. In 1910 women constituted 46 percent of all

waiters, but by 1930 they had increased to 59 percent. This figure was not

seriously affected by the repeal of prohibition; in 1940 women were still 56

percent of those classified in the census as waiters or bartenders.⁴³ Of

course, women worked for less than men, even when organized. In 1914,

although union wages for Cleveland waiters were only three cents more per

hour than those for waitresses, waiters received fifty cents per hour for

overtime and union waitresses only twenty-five cents. In Toledo, unionized

waiters were at even a greater advantage, with hourly union wage rates

showing as much as an eleven cent spread between organized waiters and

waitresses.⁴⁴

The ostensible reason for controlling women's employment in the

restaurant industry was that waitresses should not be exposed to the

questionable moral atmosphere of establishments that served alcohol.

However, the OSF of L convention discussion on a proposed regulation to

limit waitresses' hours shows that, given their declining position in the

industry, waiters also hoped such legislation would reserve at least certain

jobs for men. In 1928 delegates from Cleveland and Cincinnati locals

presented the annual OSF of L convention with a resolution to make it

illegal for women to work in restaurants between the hours of ten P.M. and

six A.M. In the discussion that followed, the attack on this restriction was

spearheaded by Kitty Donnelly, the outspoken Vice-president of the Hotel

and Restaurant Employee's International for the state. She claimed that,

should such a measure become law, many women would be unable to take

care of their families.45 On the opposite side of the question, spokesmen for

43. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Occupational Trends in the

United States 1900 to 1950, by David L. Kaplan and M. Claire Casey, Working Paper No. 5

(Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1958).

44. Ohio Industrial Commission, Department of Investigation and Statistics, Union Scale

of Wages and Hours of Labor in Ohio, May 15, 1914, Report no. 5 (Columbus, 1915), 78.

45. OSFL, Proceedings, 1928, 67, 119-21.

Protective Legislation                                       187

however, the prohibition of nightwork became a moral issue. It could then

be presented as an altruistic measure to shield women from a seamy

environment rather than merely a matter of men's selfish desire to retain

their jobs. Hence, a Cincinnati waiter cast the question thus:

The people in the Union now are mostly people working in road houses, where they

carry it [liquor] 'on the hip.' That isn't a place for the girls. I don't think any woman

ought to work in a place where a man pulls a bottle off his hip.⁴⁷

Because of the objections raised by women members of the Waitresses

Union, the Federation's Committee on legislation took the unusual step of

suggesting that the resolution to limit waitresses hours be referred back to

the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International to see if a bill

acceptable to the disputing interests could be constructed. There is no

evidence that the waiters returned with a bill sanctioned by the

International, and the matter died. However, with the repeal of prohibition

the question of regulating women in restaurant work returned in another

form. Ohio law forbade women from working where "substitutes for

intoxicating beverages" were sold. The exact nature of these substitutes

remained undefined throughout the prohibition era, but with the repeal of

prohibition the question of the propriety of women's serving alcoholic

beverages reemerged. In December, 1933, Kitty Donnelly charged that

"certain groups" were trying to mobilize public opinion against women

serving drinks and warned that, "All efforts to prevent waitresses from

serving alcoholic beverages in either public or private eating places will

meet with vigorous opposition by Waitresses Union Local 107." Although

she did not favor women as barmaids, Mrs. Donnelly argued that, "we are

unable to understand why a woman who must work to support herself, and

in many instances her family, should be prevented from serving beer, wine,

or any other alcoholic drink."⁴⁸

Unionized waiters were among those who were interested in keeping

women from serving alcoholic drinks in restaurants and public eating

places. At the 1935 annual convention of the Ohio State Federation of

Labor, the Cleveland Waiters' Union introduced a resolution that,

although not actually barring women from serving alcoholic beverages,

would have prohibited their working where alcoholic beverages were

served after ten P.M. Again, members of the Waitresses' Union campaigned

against the resolution and succeeded in bringing about its defeat in the

convention.⁴⁹ However, unionized waiters were undeterred in their

attempts to protect women form whatever dangers were inherent in a

47. Ibid.

48. Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 10, 1933.

49. OSFL, Proceedings, 1935, 91-92, 144.

188                                                       OHIO HISTORY

working association with alcohol. The next year, members of the

Cincinnati and Cleveland Waiters' Union introduced an even more

stringent resolution at the OSF of L convention. This would have

prohibited the employment of women in any place serving intoxicants.

Apparently, there was once again division between the affected parties,

since the convention requested that a bill "mutually agreed upon" be

drafted and later presented to the Executive Board.⁵⁰

A measure was eventually agreed upon and presented to the OSF of L

Executive Board, but its provisions were much narrower than the original

resolution. The bill brought to the OSF of L by the Hotel and Restaurant

Workers International prohibited the employment of women only as

barmaids and continued to allow their employment in establishments

serving liquor. This alternative was acceptable to unionized waitresses; the

previous year they had offered no objection to a similar resolution passed

by the OSF of L convention at the request of bartenders. Accordingly, the

Executive Board of the OSF of L voted its approval of the measure and it

was introduced into the Ohio Legislature in each of the next two sessions

(1937-38 and 1939-40).⁵1 The Federation's legislative agent reported

attending committee hearings in the latter session to speak in favor of the

bill. In both sessions, however, efforts to pass the bill were unsuccessful.⁵²

Several of the occupations from which women were legally barred in

Ohio did not employ many female workers even in states in which such

employment was legal. Even without a law, it is doubtful that there would

have been women workers in quarries, smelters, or blast furnaces. Most of

the legal prohibitions did little harm or good. Moreover, the first impetus

toward such legislation seems to have been furnished by a desire to protect

men's occupations. In contrast, the Ohio State Federation of Labor felt its

interests threatened by the possibility of a minimum wage for women and

refused to support such protective legislation.

MINIMUM WAGE

Beginning late in World War I and continuing until 1924, the

Consumers' League of Ohio and the Council on Women and Children in

50. OSFL, Proceedings, 1936, 79, 125.

51. OSFL, Proceedings, 1937, 28; Ohio General Assembly, House, A Bill to Amend

Section 1008-1 of the General Code, Relative to the Employment of Females, 92nd Gen.

Assem., Reg. Sess., 1937-38, H. B. 118and Am.H.B. 118; OSFL, Proceedings, 1938,41, 137;

Ohio General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 92nd Gen. Assem., Reg.

Sess., 1937-38 (Columbus, 1938), 109-676 passim; Ohio General Asembly, House, A Bill to

Amend Section 1008-1 of the General Code, Relative to Prohibiting the Employment of

Women in Certain Occupations or Capacities, 93rd Gen. Assem., Reg. Sess., 1939-40, H. B.

47.

52. OSFL, Report of the Legislative Agent, 1939, 85.

Protective Legislation                                        189

Industry campaigned vigorously but unsuccessfully for a minimum wage

for Ohio women workers.⁵³ Throughout, the OSF of L refused to support

minimum wage legislation for women. In 1918 the question was raised with

the Executive Board of the OSF of L when the legislative agent, Thomas J.

Donnelley, reported that the Committee on Women and Children in

Industry was advocating the creation of minimum wage boards in Ohio,

and that two labor members of the committee, Nida Pangle and Kathryn

Nordman, had asked whether the AF of L and OSF of L were in favor of

such boards.⁵⁴ After investigation showed that the national organization

had taken no official stand upon the subject, the Executive Board argued

that it could not support such legislation because the membership of

neither the AF of L nor the OSF of L had approved such action in a

convention resolution. In taking this position, the Executive Board was

either unaware of or chose to ignore a resolution approved by the 1912

OSF of L convention that instructed the Executive Board to draft and have

introduced into the General Assembly a bill "for the establishment of a

minimum wage commission for the determination of minimum wages in

the unskilled and 'sweated' industries that employ women and that element

among the toilers whose wages are below the living line."⁵⁵ The Board

instructed its legislative agent to take no position on minimum wage

legislation, except to assure labor a position on any minimum wage

commissions which might result.

In 1921 and 1923, the Consumers' League and the Council on Women

and Children in Industry sponsored bills to create the necessary state

agency to set and administer a minimum wage. In both instances the

proposed legislation would have established a commission composed of

both employers and employees to set minimum wages for female workers

by industry and occupation. Both measures failed to pass the legislature.

The 1921 minimum wage bill passed the House, but the Senate committee

to which it was referred, the Committee on Manufactures and Commerce,

reported a substitute bill which was completely unacceptable to the

sponsors of the original proposal. A decision on the 1923 bill was avoided

when the General Assembly voted to appoint an investigating commission

to study the matter further. Only a few days after the Commission was

53. In December 1920, the wartime Committee on Women and Children in Industry

became the Council on Women and Children in Industry. This was later called the Council on

Women in Industry. The campaigns for a minimum wage law in Ohio are discussed briefly in

Elizabeth Brandeis, "Labor Legislation," History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932,

Vol. III, ed. John R. Commons (New York, 1935), 519-22. For a more complete account, see

Harrison, "The Consumers' League," chaps. IV, V, 90-164.

54. OSFL, Proceedings, 1918, 42.

55. OSFL, Proceedings, 1912, 103.

190                                                    OHIO HISTORY

appointed, the Supreme Court's decision in Adkins vs. Children's Hospital

invalidated the minimum wage law of the District of Columbia.

Despite these setbacks, the meetings of the Minimum Wage Commission

continued, and the Consumers' League and the Ohio Council on Women

and Children in Industry prepared an extensive brief for presentation to

that Commission. The briefs few allusions to the Adkins decision leave the

impression that the constitutionality of the state minimum wage laws was

still open to question. However, as the Bulletin of the Council had already

reported, other state minimum wage laws would undoubtedly be held

invalid, and thus it seemed that the only remaining possibility was for a

nonmandatory law similar to that of Massachusetts.56 The League's efforts

in behalf of such a law were to no avail; as expected, the Commission

returned to the General Assembly with a report unfavorable to any

minimum wage legislation. After this defeat, the issue lay dormant until

depression conditions of the 1930s revived interest.

The Executive Board of the OSF of L refused to support either bill, since

there had been no vote to do so either in its own convention or in the AF of

L. Attempts in 1921 and 1924 to pass resolutions at OSF of L conventions

that would have put it on record in favor of such legislation were defeated

by the substitution of resolutions for further study.⁵⁷ Therefore, the

Executive Board felt that it still lacked the authorization to support such

legislation, and its refusal to do so was a simple procedural matter.

However, a 1921 reply to proponents of the measure suggested that its

reservations may have gone deeper. In 1921 the Executive Board of the

OSF of L wrote that "as the Trade Union Movement is pledged to the

principle of Collective bargaining as against wages fixed by law, the Board

could not co-operate at this time in advocating Minimum Wage

Legislation."⁵⁸ This reduced the question to a clear conflict between

voluntaristic trade union orthodoxy and state regulation.

This formulation of the controversy was echoed on the convention floor

during the debate on the 1924 resolution to support the mimimum wage

bill. John Frey, elected president of the OSF of L at this convention, was a

strong opponent of mimimum wage laws both on the convention floor and

in his position as editor of the International Molders' Journal. He spoke in

behalf of voluntaristic orthodoxy by asserting:

56. Consumers' League of Ohio and The Council on Women in Industry, Operation of

Minimum Wage Laws: California, Wisconsin, Massachusetts. (Brief submitted to the Ohio

Legislative Committee to Investigate Minimum Wage Legislation), 1924, 47, 77, 147; Ohio

Council on Women in Industry, Bulletin, June,1923, 1.

57. OSFL, Proceedings, 1921, 77, 132; OSFL, Proceedings, 1924, 21-22, 103-111.

58. OSFL, Proceedings, 1921, 21.

Protective Legislation                                         191

.. .such a measure would not only work eventually to their [women's]

disadvantage, but that in addition it will create another handicap to those of us who

have placed our faith, as Trade Unionists, in collective bargaining, as the only

method by which we will agree to have our terms of employment established.59

Although representatives of organized labor focused on the argument

that a minimum wage for women would violate the principles of

voluntarism and the role of collective bargaining, behind this was a more

serious apprehension about the effects of a minimum wage for men. The

AF of L was unalterably opposed to a legislatively determined minimum

wage for men because it felt that such a measure would usurp the function

of the union organization. The possibility that a minimum wage law for

women would eventually include men had often been stressed by Samuel

Gompers and the national AF of L. The Executive Council of the AF of L

had reported to the 1915 convention that "The trade union movement has

opposed the regulation of working conditions, hours of work, and wages

for men in private industry by law or by political agents. Where equality

between men and women is established the endorsement of this principle

for women becomes also a very serious menace to the liberty of the men

wage-earners."⁶⁰ Gompers expressed a similar opinion that a minimum

wage law could be enacted safely only if women were, in a sense, wards of

the state-a status inconsistent with trade union support of women's

suffrage.⁶¹

This same fear was evident almost a decade later in 1924, when the Ohio

State Federation of Labor debated a resolution to endorse a minimum

wage for women. One delegate, for example, held that

. . I realize that if this convention goes on record to concede that right to the

Legislature to establish a minimum rate-minimum wage for women-that the

Labor Movement of this country has lost its right for collective bargaining, as it will

be easy to establish the same conditions for men.62

The issue was then changed from a question of the benefits or liabilities

inherent in a minimum wage law for women to the effects of such a law for

men. Hence, the endorsement of a law for women was tantamount to

agreeing to the loss of collective bargaining power for men. One male

spokesman justified his opposition to a minimum wage law for women

because "I want to remain a free man as a wage earner, and not become a

subject of the State."⁶³

59. OSFL, Proceedings, 1924, 104-105.

60. AF of L, Proceedings, 1915, 63.

61. Samuel Gompers letter to John I. Nolan, reprinted in "Gompers on Minimum Wage

Law," International Molders' Journal, 49 (April, 1913), 294-95.

62. OSFL, Proceedings, 1924, 107.

63. Ibid., 106.

192                                                 OHIO HISTORY

The only remedy allowed for women was organization: "They should

establish these minimum wage rates in the same Trade Union manner in

which the men do."⁶⁴ The argument that women were difficult to organize

was not seen as sufficient reason to pass special legislation, since this might

imply that unorganized male workers also should be protected by state

minimum wage laws. Furthermore, a minimum wage law was held to be

dangerous because it might actually retard the organization of women.

John Frey first raised this point and argued that while a number of states

had enacted laws creating minimum wage commissions, no trade union

records showed an increase of organization among women and, in fact, in

two states organization had decreased. This argument appears particularly

self-serving, since Frey's own union, the International Molders, refused

admission to women. Nida Pangle, a delegate from the Waitresses' Union

and long an advocate of a minimum wage law, reminded the convention

that trade unions had been negligent in organizing women and that

delegates were thereby advocating a remedy which they were not willing to

support with funds or sustained effort.⁶⁵

Thus, even when opponents of a minimum wage for women posed the

problem as one of clear-cut theoretical objections to state intervention,

most delegates felt that more concrete issues were at stake. As long as there

was a chance that such a law might be extended to men, it was a threat to

what many predominantly male unions perceived as their own ability to

bargain. Secondarily, if legal remedies discouraged unionization among

women, such remedies were counter to the interests of the OSF of L.

Although the state organization refused to endorse a minimum wage for

women, it never went on record specifically in opposition. Thus labor

leaders and publications were free to support the measure. Max Hayes, a

long-time leader of the Socialist opposition within the AF of L and editor

of the Cleveland Citizen, favored such legislation. As previously

mentioned, Nida Pangle, a member of the Toledo Central Labor Union

and of the Waitresses' Union, was an active supporter of the bill. In March

1921, she and the legislative agent of the OSF of L travelled to Cincinnati to

speak before that city's Central Labor Union on the minimum wage bill

and to dissuade them from the view that legislation for women only was a

form of discrimination.⁶⁶

Several labor publications also endorsed the minimum wage. For

example, the Cincinnati Labor Advocate, the publication of the local

Building Trades Council, gave support to the minimum wage in a number

of ways. First, it made considerable space available to the Consumers'

64. Ibid., 105

65. Ibid., 106-110.

66. Harrison, "The Consumers' League," 102-114; Toledo Union Leader, March 18,1921.

Protective Legislation                                       193

League of Cincinnati and the Catholic Women of Columbia, two local

groups working for the minimum wage. In 1921 it published a statement

and appeal by the Catholic Women of Columbia asking for help in the

campaign for the minimum wage. In addition, considerable material

provided by the Consumers' League in support of this legislation was

published, as well as the annual report of that organization for 1922.67

In addition to giving interested organizations free space to present

arguments in favor of minimum wage legislation, the Labor Advocate gave

some editorial support to the measure. Although saying that the minimum

wage was not a union measure because "the unions make their own

minimum wage and fight to get it," the paper continued that such a measure

was "only supported by union labor because it is a just cause."⁶⁸ When Mrs.

Nettie B. Loughead, a Senator on the Minimum Wage Commission of the

General Assembly and known to be opposed to the minimum wage,

addressed the Lecture Club in Cincinnati, she was roundly criticized by the

Labor Advocate. The paper suggested that "The women of Hamilton

County should elect a woman in Senator Loughead's place with a woman's

desire to help her unfortunate sisters to secure wages that will protect their

virtue."⁶⁹

The Toledo Union Leader, the voice of that city's Central Labor Union,

also gave the minimum wage measure at least favorable mention. This

paper seemed unlikely to champion the measure; in 1920 it had run several

short items about the failure of minimum wage commissions in other states

under headlines such as "Trade Union Theory is Again Vindicated" or

"Girls Must Organize to Gain Recognition." These articles featured

quotations from other labor papers, the general tenor of which was to point

out that "Women ought not to be obliged to rely on a political or legal

mandate for their protection. Men have found that political agencies

oftimes prove broken reeds when leaned upon."⁷⁰ However, in a 1921

broadside to supplement the newspaper, the Union Leader referred to

minimum wage laws as union sponsored measures "of incalcuable worth

to those to whom they relate."⁷1 In reporting on the 1921 minimum wage

bill, it further noted that "The trade union and other progressive women of

Ohio were bitterly disappointed when the Schrimper bill to establish a

minimum wage commission was defeated in the state legislature last

week."⁷²

Nevertheless, in the 1920's the Ohio State Federation of Labor refused to

67. Cincinnati Labor Advocate, Feb. 26, 1921; Ibid., March 5, 1921, April 14, 1923.

68. Ibid., April 21, 1923.

69. Ibid., April 28, 1923.

70. Toledo Union Leader, Oct. 22, 1920, Dec. 17, 1920.

71. Ibid., Feb. 13, 1921.

72. Ibid., May 20, 1921.

194                                                    OHIO HISTORY

endorse a minimum wage bill for women workers, since male craft unions

in the organization felt that such legislation was dangerous to the interests

of organized labor. However, labor opinion was by no means unanimous.

Several leaders within the state organization favored such legislation;

moreover, some labor publications in Ohio gave space and support to its

proponents. Such a division of opinion was even more apparent in the early

1930s, when the issue was raised again and Ohio did pass its minimum wage

law.

After the campaign of 1923 through 1924, the Consumers' League of

Ohio dropped its efforts to pass a minimum wage bill, wishing to

concentrate instead on legislation for the abolition of child labor. The issue

of a minimum wage commission lay dormant until the depression

conditions of the 1930s revived interest. As early as 1931, the Ohio

Consumers' League began publicizing the rapid drop in women's wages

which had occurred since the beginning of the Great Depression.⁷³ In

December 1932, the National Consumers' League established state

minimum wage laws as one of its goals. Initially, the Ohio Consumers'

League deferred work on such legislation, preferring to concentrate instead

on child labor restrictions and unemployment insurance.⁷⁴ However,

sentiment for such a measure increased in Ohio as falling women's wages

attracted public attention. A series of articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer

in early 1933 exposed the deplorable conditions and low wages for women

workers in northeastern Ohio. Coinciding with this, the Roosevelt

administration began to pressure Ohio. In March 1933, Secretary of Labor

Frances Perkins called for a minimum wage bill as a necessary piece of

legislation. In April, the New York Legislature passed a minimum wage for

female workers in that state. Following the passage of the New York bill,

President Roosevelt sent a telegram to the governors of Ohio and twelve

other industrial states, commending the New York measure and

recommending that they take similar action.⁷⁵

The Ohio minimum wage bill was endorsed by William Green, president

of the AF of L, even before it was introduced into the General Assembly.

Green voiced his approval in an address before the Cleveland City Club in

late April and afterward in a letter to the sponsor of the Ohio bill. The

Cleveland Plain Dealer suggested that "This action of the national leader of

organized labor undoubtedly will carry great weight with the Ohio and

Cleveland Federations of Labor in any stand they may take on the

73. Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 6, 1931.

74. Harrison, "The Consumers' League," 282.

75. Cleveland Citizen, March 25, 1933; Robert P. Ingalls, "New Y ork and the Minimum-

Wage Movement, 1933-1937." Labor History, 15 (Spring, 1974), 179-198; The Public Papers

and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. II, The Year of Crisis 1933, comp. Samuel 1,

Rosenman (New York, 1938), 133-34.

Protective Legislation                                          195

measure."⁷⁶ Some important representatives of organized labor in Ohio

followed suit. On April 12, the Summit County Central Labor Union

(Akron) wrote Governor George White to urge that he consider a

minimum wage law for women. It was joined in its support by the

Cleveland Federation of Labor, which voted unanimously to endorse the

minimum wage bill and also agreed to join the Ohio Labor Standards

committee, which was working for the bill's enactment. Harry

McLaughlin, who was president of the OSF of L as well as the Cleveland

Federation, pledged that the state federation "would be on the job at

Columbus and aid in every way to push over the proposed legislation." He

added, "We would like to see women and children entirely out of industry,

but, since that does not seem possible at present, we do want to see them

have the best working conditions that can be secured, for we are not

selfish."⁷⁷

Despite McLaughlin's pledge, the legislative agent of the OSF of L was

not "on the job at Columbus" when hearings were held on the bill. The

Executive Board of the OSF of L decided that, in view of the failure of

either the AF of L or the OSF of L to go on record in convention for

minimum wage legislation, the organization's legislative agent should take

no position on the bill.⁷⁸ Thus, the OSF of L officially maintained the same

uncommitted stance it had assumed in the 1920s, despite the drastically

changed conditions of the 1930s and the endorsement of such legislation by

the presidents of both the state and national organizations.

The final passage of a minimum wage measure for women workers was

the fruition of years of effort by organizations such as the Consumers'

League interested in the protection of the working woman. At the critical

juncture in its passage, however, the deciding influence was brought to bear

by Washington rather than by any organization within Ohio. A minimum

wage bill for women was introduced into the Ohio House on May 18, 1933.

The bill passed the House on June 8, 1933, but the House's delay in

considering the bill seemed to doom its chances of passage, for June 8 was

the deadline for consideration of regular legislation.79 However, as was so

often the case in the progress of this measure, the national government

intervened. A telegram from Secretary of Labor Perkins to Governor

White urging the bill's passage resulted in its being placed on the Senate

76. Toledo Union Leader, April 28, 1933, May 5, 1933, Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 1,

1933.

77. Summit County Central Labor Union, letter to Gov. George White, April 14, 1933,

George White Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Cleveland Plain Dealer,

May 4, 1933; Cleveland Citizen, May 6, 1933.

78. OSFL, Proceedings, 1934, 42-43.

79. Ohio General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 90th Gen. Assem.,

Reg. Sess., 1933-34 (Columbus, 1934), 822-1100, passim; Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 8,

1933.

196                                                  OHIO HISTORY

calendar. Through the strategem of stopping the clock at a quarter until

midnight, the Senate officially passed the bill on June 8, the last day of the

session, and it was signed by the governor on June 30.80

Despite some union support, Ohio's minimum wage for women was

never a measure of primary importance to unions. The Cleveland press and

the Consumers' League of Ohio took the initiative in again bringing the

question to the public's attention in the early 1930s; the Roosevelt

administration was principally responsible for its ultimate passage. The

measure received almost no mention in state union publications, and the

legislative agent of the OSF of L was instructed not to appear at hearings in

behalf of the measure. Yet, once in effect, organized labor in Ohio was

quick to assure that its interests were protected under the new minihum

wage law for women. Part of its political program for the next year was a

request for union representation on the minimum wage board. In 1935 the

OSF of L convention at last officially endorsed a minimum wage law by

passing a resolution asking that the law be made more stringent. Thus, the

Ohio State Federation of Labor gave its official approval to a minimum

wage for women only after it was already an established fact.

Throughout the 1930s, unions continued attempts to exclude women

workers when they might threaten men's jobs. As previously mentioned,

waiters worked throughout the decade to curb increased employment of

women in restaurants. Furthermore, in 1932 the OSF of L agreed to

support the Polishers and Buffers Unions in defending against a suit that

challenged the legislative exclusion of women from that occupation. As

competition for jobs became more severe, married women were singled out

as a particular threat to men's jobs, and the annual convention of the OSF

of L approved a resolution asking the legislature to consider legal

restrictions on the employment of both husband and wife.⁸¹ Organized

labor was most interested in women when they threatened men's jobs, and

then its interest resulted in attempts to exclude them from occupations in

which they might compete with men.

While Ohio unions finally acquiesced in a minimum wage law for

women, they did not initiate the measure. This was true even though

throughout the Great Depression officials of the Women's Bureau and

other interested observers suggested that extremely low wages for women

encouraged employers to replace male workers with females. Presumably,

a minimum wage for women that narrowed the wage difference between

men and women would decrease the advantage employers could hope to

80. Frances Perkins, telegram to Gov. George White, June 8, 1933, George White Papers;

Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 9, 1933, June 10, 1933.

81. OSFL, Proceedings, 1932, 13, 102-104; OSFL, Proceedings, 1938, 80, 124.

Protective Legislation                                               197

gain by such a substitution.82 Therefore, higher wage standards for women

might protect men's jobs and wages. In the face of low-wage competition

from female labor, and given the recognized necessity of raising purchasing

power to combat unemployment, it is surprising that Ohio unions were not

more active advocates of minimum wage bills for women. Ohio union

publications did not discuss a minimum wage for women as a possible

method to discourage employers from hiring female labor. This was

certainly not because Ohio unions did not care about the incursion of

women into occupations previously held by men. Rather, it seems probable

that Ohio unions did not see a minimum wage for women as effective

protection against such low-wage competition, or that the predominant

craft unions did not feel particularly threatened by the largely unskilled

female labor force. In those few occupations where women were seen as a

threat to men's jobs, organized labor preferred specific legislative

prohibitions to restrict their further entry. Whatever support Ohio labor

finally gave to assuring female labor a reasonable wage did not extend to

assuring women an equal opportunity in the labor market.

82. For example, see statements by Mary Anderson, Director of the Women's Bureau,

New York Times, Jan. 25, 1937, and New York Times, Feb. 21, 1938. Also, column by Dale

Cox, Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 22, 1931. For an analysis that concludes that minimum

wage laws did discourage women's employment, see John M. Peterson, "Employment Effects

of State Minimum Wages for Women: Three Historical Cases Re-examined," Industrial and

Labor Relations Review, 12 (April, 1959), 406-22.