"The workingmen have perceived that women are in the field of industry to stay; and they see, too, that there can not be two standards of work and wages for any trade without constant menace to the higher standard"
About this Quote
Kelley’s sentence is a pressure-point disguised as a calm observation: accept women’s permanent presence in industry, or brace for the wage floor to collapse. She’s not making a sentimental case for equality; she’s making a hard argument about leverage. “The workingmen have perceived” flatters male labor into thinking it has arrived at enlightenment on its own, but the real move is strategic: she frames women’s employment as settled fact, not a debate. That rhetorical lock-in forces the audience to argue about terms, not existence.
The subtext is blunt. If women are treated as a cheaper, lesser standard of labor, employers will use them as a tool to discipline everyone’s wages. Kelley pulls working-class men toward solidarity by appealing to self-preservation, not altruism. Her warning about “constant menace” reads like an early map of what we now call a race to the bottom: divided workers create a discount workforce that management can always threaten to substitute.
Context matters. Kelley came out of the Progressive Era’s bruising fights over sweatshops, child labor, and protective legislation, where women were both essential workers and politically excluded actors. Labor movements often wavered between allyship and exclusion, seeing women as competitors rather than comrades. Kelley answers that anxiety with a policy-minded logic: one trade can’t sustain two wage systems without the lower one becoming the employers’ favorite weapon. The intent is to recruit men to a single standard - and to make women’s rights not a moral add-on, but the keystone of labor’s bargaining power.
The subtext is blunt. If women are treated as a cheaper, lesser standard of labor, employers will use them as a tool to discipline everyone’s wages. Kelley pulls working-class men toward solidarity by appealing to self-preservation, not altruism. Her warning about “constant menace” reads like an early map of what we now call a race to the bottom: divided workers create a discount workforce that management can always threaten to substitute.
Context matters. Kelley came out of the Progressive Era’s bruising fights over sweatshops, child labor, and protective legislation, where women were both essential workers and politically excluded actors. Labor movements often wavered between allyship and exclusion, seeing women as competitors rather than comrades. Kelley answers that anxiety with a policy-minded logic: one trade can’t sustain two wage systems without the lower one becoming the employers’ favorite weapon. The intent is to recruit men to a single standard - and to make women’s rights not a moral add-on, but the keystone of labor’s bargaining power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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