The Day Book

IF A DAUGHTER SHOULD ASK THIS QUESTION
BY N. D. COCHRAN

I have believed for some time that as the people were growing more progressive the time would come when the sons and daughters of some of our rich and influential citizens would commence to ask their fond parent how he got rich and what wages he was paying his employes.

It has become something of a fad for daughters of the rich to engage in social uplift work; and many of them are entirely serious and really want to do what good they can.

But it often happens that they don't know that the clothes and jewels they wear, the autos they ride in and the mansions they live in were bought with money their generous fathers had piled up by paying starvation wages to men, women and children.

I am inclined to believe that humanity may expect more from the daughters of the rich than from the sons: for the sons are more familiar with conditions under which the family fortune was made, and often help make matters worse by preying upon the poorly-paid girls, the daughters of poorly-paid men.

The agitation for woman's suffrage is leading many young women who have been leading lives of luxurious idleness to inquire deeper into social conditions; and now that the lid has been taken off, exposing the rottenness of merchant princes and the low-wage connection with white slavery, it never can be clamped down again tight enough to be unseen by prying eyes.

I can imagine a high-spirited girl of naturally noble impulses getting her eyes open, and going to her rich and prominent father with some such query as this:

"Dad, you've been a generous father. You have denied me nothing that money could buy. We live in a beautiful home. We have automobiles, fine gowns, many servants and everything in a material way any of us might want. You are a rich man. You are known as one of the leading citizens, and all of us have been proud of you.

"But, Dad. I've been finding out something about how the other half lives. I find that thousands of girls in Chicago are paid less than $5 a week for their labor. I am told that low wages of men, women and children have a direct bearing on vice and crime. I know there is much poverty, much vice and much crime.

"I am beginning to wonder what I have to do with it, and what you have to do with it. I wonder if many poor girls have too little because I have more than I need.

"I am beginning to wonder just where the money comes from that I have been spending for all my beautiful luxury. How it is that by the accident of birth I have all the comforts and luxuries of life, and so many girls, just as good in the sight of God as I am, have to struggle for a bare existence and too often fall because they can't get enough to live decent lives on.

"So I want to know what wages you pay your employes?"

What reply would the father make, if he happens to be one of the large employers of labor who has piled up his wealth by taking it out of the mouths of women and babes?