Volume 15 , Issue 10

One Hundred Years Ago - 11 March 1913

It was about one hundred years ago today, Tuesday, March 11, 1913, that Mrs. Anna Ross Weeks sent a letter to Mayor Gaynor, concerning white slave labor, demanding something be done about the meager pay that a woman received in 1913, and having to supplement their incomes with "white slavery." Other headlines on that page were stating that $8 per day was ample pay for woman.

In the New-York Tribune, dated 11 March 1913, out of New York, NY, page 2 was this headline: "Woman On White Slavery Suppress Demand, She Writes Mayor, and It will Die."

Mrs. Anna Ross Weeks was the chairman of the Woman Suffrage party of the 27th Assembly District, said after she sent the letter that it was futile to talk about low wages or lack of wholesome amusements or any other of the much discussed causes.

Mrs. Weeks wrote, "The cause is the demand. If we could suppress that, the starving working girl would be safe and her employer would pay her more, knowing she could not supplement her wages on the street."

Mrs. Weeks also wrote, "How unfair to brand girls with disgrace by sending them to hospitals and institutions, when the men who are equally guilty go about respected members of the community! Send the men off to institutions upstate. Let their friends ask why they aren't in their regular places of business. Let commerce and finance and high society be embarrassed. When that happened white slavery would die a natural death."   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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