Wage Inequity between the sexes — still an issue being fought today — has likely been with us since the invention of money, though it is eye-brow raising to see that a century ago, when most women had yet to achieve even the right to vote, and when most men were receiving barely a subsistence wage from their robber baron employers, that side-by-side with those, exploitation of women in the workplace was being given attention. As seen in cartoons reprinted in issues of Cartoons Magazine, a major argument being used at that time, was how factory work paid so much less than sex-work, that women were being driven towards prostitution to provide for themselves and their families.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.

Above, from March 1913, cartoonists Burt Thomas and William Charles Morris, on striking women garment industry workers.

Below — from May 1913 — Robert Minor, Jr. and Will Dyson, on how poor wages encourages prostitution.

From February 1913 above, we have Barnett and William Charles Morris striking the same theme.

While Robert Minor, Jr. below (from the February 1913 issue as well), shows another reason “Why Women Want to Vote”…

You can find previous Women’s History Month postings, by clicking here.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History Financial Reforms Wall Street Frauds