In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Wartime, Protest, and New Industries “I AM R EAD Y TO WO R K” In the midst of 1919’s citywide labor unrest, Los Angeles’s Friday Morning Club invited representatives from several female trade unions to address its members. The meeting’s results exemplified the lack of understanding that remained between elite club women and working-class women. Frances Nacke Noel served as presiding chairperson of the evening. Lettie Howard of the Waitress’ Union, Hilda Weinburg of the Laundry Workers’ Union, Mrs. E. H. Wright of the Journeyman Tailors’ Union, Miss Borg from the Telephone Operators’ Union, and Daisy Houck all took turns speaking to club members about the challenges facing women workers and the opportunities presented by unionization. Borg told the audience how young college girls on vacation worked as scab operators, thus unknowingly undermining women striking for improved conditions in telephone exchanges. Borg urged mothers to take more interest in the cause of female strikers. The most heated moment of the evening came when Dora Hale of the newly organized Domestic Workers’ Union spoke to the audience. Hale complained that employers called their stenographers by their surnames, but domestic workers continued to be known by their first name. Then, the Los Angeles Citizen reported, “a woman in the rear of the house challenged the right of an ‘uneducated’ maid to be called by her surname. Quick as a flash the chairman [Noel] challenged back: ‘Is education necessary before respect is due a worker?’” Clearly, the two groups of women still had a long way to go to appreciate each other’s point of view. Los Angeles had suffered through a business slump in 1914–1915 that had hit women particularly hard. The U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 encour- 150 E A R N I N G P O W E R aged more women than ever to enter the workforce. However, many Angelenos ’ growing fear and distrust of radical politics made it again difficult for female workers to unionize in the city. After the war, however, Los Angeles’s long-standing feud between capital and labor flared once more, and female union members took to their pickets to hold on to prewar gains. In Los Angeles women workers played an active role in both the strikes and settlements that followed, often in the face of resistance from both employers and male trade unionists. Women also entered new jobs, most notably in the communications and entertainment industries, where their identity as respectable white women— what Nan Enstad has called “the cultural practices of ladyhood”—played a critical role. The trope of “lady,” however, was not interchangeable with that of “woman.” Prostitutes and, as we shall see, some working women did not get to claim the status of “lady.” But as white skin increasingly became associated with “ladyhood,” even respectable women of color were excluded from these professions on the grounds they were not, and never could be, “ladies.” Ideals of proper behavior for women had their roots in transformations of gender systems in the early nineteenth century. A “lady” was expected to be the moral guardian of her husband, children, and society at large, as well as pious, obedient, and virtuous. The public visibility of striking women and women in the film industry raised questions about these women’s social and sexual respectability. Unions, reformers, and social critics all focused on the need to protect such women rather than on the economic systems that exploited them. But the women themselves, worried about the day-to-day reality of making a living, did not mindlessly internalize this image of “the lady” as passive and docile. This chapter considers how World War I sparked a new wave of labor unrest. While many American cities had similar experiences immediately after the war, I argue that Los Angeles’s unrest was largely the result of old problems left too long unresolved. In this chapter special attention is also given to the newest sector of the regional economy, the film industry, and how it gendered work. Its female employees tried to exert at least some control over their social and economic lives by articulating their rights both as women and as workers. Bending the Rules: Women and World War I World War I offered some women a socially acceptable reason to step out of established divisions of labor and into new professions. Likewise, government agencies also found in the war a patriotic reason to grant female war [18.188...

Share