"For Working Women in Oregon": Caroline Gleason/Sister Miriam Theresa and Oregon's Minimum Wage Law

Abstract

JANICE DILG "For Working Women in Oregon" Caroline Gleason/Sister Miriam Theresa and OregonsMinimum Wage Law INTHE FALLOF 1912, CarolineGleason reportedtohernew job at the StettlerBox Factory on Portland's Glisan and Tenth streets.Gleason's job, and that of her female coworkers, involved gluing labels onto shoeboxes, using glue dipped from a huge, heated pot in the center of a largework table. The odors wafting up from the hot glue were "something less than pleasant."1 After affixing two or three labels, theworkers' hands became so stickywith glue they needed towash them in order to continue their task. Washing off the glue required hot water, which could only be obtained by hauling five gallon pails through the plant to an open steam pipe. The women held their pails under the steam until thewater was heated, then hefted them back to theirworkstations. Gluing labelswas piecework, so the time they spent haul ing pails and washing their hands meant fewer labels pasted on boxes, and thatmeant lesswages earned. After working three ten-hour days, Gleason quit her job having earned the total sum of $1.52. Her experience mirrored that of tens of thousands ofwomen laboring in manufacturing plants, steam laundries, and canneries in the early twentieth century,with one important exception ? Caroline Gleason was working undercover.2 Gleason was directing an organized investigation for the Consumer's League ofOregon (CLO) into thewages and working conditions forwomen wage workers throughout the state, and working at the box factory was one aspect of her job. The CLO was part of the fervent social reformmovement sweeping through theUnited States and all industrialized countries during the Progressive Era, generally defined as theyears from 1890 to 1920.Reform ers had grown increasingly alarmed by the essential ways industrialization OHQ vol. no, no. 1 ? 2009 Oregon Historical Society This portrait ofCaroline JohannaGleason (1886-1962) was createdaround 1910, just twoyears beforeshedirecteda surveyofwomen swork and wages that led to Oregon sfirstminimum wage law. was endangering the social order of the nation and by itseffectson working class men and women. The activists understood that all workers needed protective labor legislation but, forphilosophical and political reasons, soon narrowed their focus towomen workers. Shaped by amaternalist ideology that claimed a woman's main purpose in lifewas to be a mother, social reformers soon deemed protective legislation themost expedient way to Dilg, Caroline Gleason/SisterMiriam Theresa and Oregons Minimum Wage Law 97 OHS photo file1131-B, Org. Lot 256, OrHi 72538 Workers pose inside thePalace Laundry workroom locatedat East Tenth and Everett inPortland, Oregon, inabout 1915. Power laundries requiredwomen workers to stand atmachines and wrestle hot,wet clothesand linens for an average ofnine and a half hoursper day. "protect" women's futurematernal responsibilities. Without responding to the real issues confronting working women in the early twentieth century ? poverty-level wages, gender-segregated occupations, and unsafe working conditions ? protective labor legislation mitigated those conditions, at best, and inhibited genuine protection of women workers, atworst. All protec tive legislation, furthermore, was crafted and enforced within the context of rigid racial and ethnic classifications and divisions, which mainly limited protection towhite women born in theUnited States. Oregon played an important role in the development of protective legislation when its state legislature passed the first compulsory minimum wage law forwomen workers in the nation in 1913.Caroline Gleason, later known as SisterMiriam Theresa, was an integralmember ofOregon's social reform community and played a crucial role in passing the groundbreak ingminimum wage law. By legislating the nation's firstminimum wage forwomen workers, Oregon helped frame Progressive Era debates about 98 OHQ vol. no, no. 1 the changing status ofwomen, their relation towage work, and the role of the state in regulating workers in theworkplace. Exploring Gleason's life and work in the social reformmovement brings the dynamic political and cultural changes of the Progressive Era into sharp human relief.Gleason's complicated, and sometimes contradictory, endeavors on behalf ofworking women exemplify the broader struggle between conservative and radical approaches on how best tomaintain democratic principles and social order in the face of the fundamental changes that industrial capitalism wrought on the social fabric of Oregon and the nation.3 Caroline Johanna Gleason was born to John and...