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Helen Marot 1865 ~ 1940
Helen Marot
Is an industrial reformer and worker in
social economics. Miss Marot has been engaged in the work of
social economics for the past sixteen years. Her first efforts
in this direction was the forming of a small center for the use
of all sorts and conditions of people interested in economic
problems in Philadelphia, her native city. In this work she was
assisted by Dr. David G. Brinton. Books and pamphlets were
collected and a reading-room and gathering place for the
discussion of these problems was opened. While this center was
in active operation, lectures were delivered by Sidney Webb, of
England, Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., and men from the Pennsylvania
University.
During the existence of this circle Miss
Marot compiled a handbook of labor literature which was most
favorably received by bibliographers as well as sociologists.
This was a selected and classified bibliography of the more
important books and pamphlets in the English language at the
time of its publication of 1897. In 1900 Miss Marot, in
connection with Miss Caroline L. Piatt, made an investigation
and report of the manufacture of men's clothing in Philadelphia.
The part referring to readymade clothing was published by the
United States Industrial Commission. The part relating to the
manufacture of custom made clothes was published by the
Pennsylvania Consumers' League and the Journeyman Tailors'
Union. This was the first exposure of conditions under which the
latter class of clothing is made. After this Miss Marot made
some investigations in New York and in 1903 was asked to
investigate conditions under which children worked for the New
York Child Labor Committee which was just then being formed. The
investigation led to the enactment of laws formulated by her
associates and herself which placed New York in the lead in
child labor reform.
This was the beginning of the child
labor campaign throughout the country now led by the National
Child Labor Committee. At this time Miss Marot's health broke
down and she was forced to lay aside her work for over a year;
she was then called to Philadelphia to take the secretary ship
of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee. This committee made
an extensive investigation of child labor and began a
legislative campaign which resulted in the passing of a fine
piece of legislation but which was declared unconstitutional on
a slight technicality raised by those interested in vitiating
the law. Miss Marot realized that the only method of eventually
destroying this evil was in better educational facilities and
new economic conditions. She left the Pennsylvania Committee and
returned to New York to work with the New York Public Education
Association. She was urged to accept the secretary ship of the
Woman's Trade Union League of New York City, and gave up her
educational work to accept this responsible office and today
there is a membership of over fifty-two thousand in this league.
Miss Marot and her associates, who are
largely college girls and students of social questions in
sympathy with the cause of organized labor, aided and managed
the strike of woman shirt-makers in New York last year, when
forty thousand of these women united, formed a union and
declared a strike. This was settled by their employers
ultimately coming to a recognition of their claims and it was
settled on a basis of increased pay and a recognition of their
union. Miss Anna Morgan, the daughter of J. P. Morgan, was one
of the moving spirits in aiding these women to obtain their
rights. After the strike was over, about three thousand of the
workers were still out of employment. It remained for the
practical mind of Miss Morgan to make provision for these girls.
Miss Morgan proposed to establish by subscription a shirtwaist
factory which should be a model in every sanitary and
architectural respect and operated under strictly union
conditions and finally to have a profit-sharing system. Their
first order was from Wellesley College, a thousand waists to be
made by their special pattern.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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