Katharine Susan Anthony Bibliography

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LectorRecitator
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KATHARINE SUSAN ANTHONY (1877–1965)

Mothers Who Must Earn (1914)

ℹ️ "Mothers Who Must Earn is a study of the work and wages of 370 mothers and the effect of their gainful employment upon family life. Addresses were obtained from schools and philanthropic societies doing work in the neighborhood and visits were made at the homes and places of employment of working mothers. The appendix contains the schedules used and the outlines for individual and family histories, quotations from which are generously interpolated throughout the text.

One third of the women forced to work outside the home were widows, but an even larger number (44.1 per cent) had husbands more or less regularly at work; and those with permanently idle husbands not incapacitated were also an important factor. The heaviest burdens were often borne by women whose husbands were living at home but were incapacitated for work through illness or accident. Work 'by the day at all kinds of household tasks, cleaning office buildings and theatres, and janitress and laundry work are the occupations which, in the order named, claimed the largest numbers of the women studied. In combination with heavy burdens at home all these occupations presented problems of bad working conditions with long hours and low wages. More than one half of the women earned less than six dollars a week. Scrub-women in department stores, who work eight or nine hours a day, make only a dollar a week more than office cleaners, who work only five or six hours a day; but the need of the extra dollar is so great in some households that women are forced to give the longer hours to secure it.

The difficult matter of annual incomes is fearlessly attacked by the writer and estimates are made from the statements of the mothers. By this method it was found that "in families where the mother alone was at work, her average earnings were 88 per cent of the average family income." The mother's earnings were lowest where the family income was highest. Perhaps the temptation to use statistical analysis is carried to the boundary for legitimate generalizations on so small a numerical basis. The numerous tables are, however, clear and well designed, and thirty illustrations contribute to the interest of the survey as a whole. The graphic portrayal of a community's needs is already awakening interest in a long neglected section of New York."
(Amy Hewes, The American Economic Review, 09/1915)

ℹ️ "Miss Anthony's intimate study of the lives of Mothers Who Must Earn is recommended to all persons of either sex, who have leisure enough either to worry or to complain, and particularly to all women who are contemplating nervous prostration in any of its forms. The record of the lives of these working women, often heroic and always strenuous, is wholesome reading. But quite apart from its tonic value, it throws much light upon certain aspects of the great and growing problem of women at work. The last census shows that the percentage of women employed at gainful occupations increased during the years 1900 to 1910 for every age group, and in every state of the Union with two unimportant exceptions. Thus out of every one hundred girls sixteen to twenty years old, forty were at work in 1910, while only thirty-two out of a hundred were at work in 1900. Similarly, out of every one hundred women twenty-one to forty-four years old, twenty-six were engaged in gainful work in 1910 as against twenty-one in 1900.

This study comprises 370 cases. "They were the wives and widows of underemployed and underpaid men and were compelled to contribute to the family whatever earning value their labor possessed." Racially, they were, to a considerable extent, English-speaking women of German or Irish antecedents. The principal occupations followed were: housework by the day, go; manufacturing and mechanical pursuits (including 33 laundry workers), 86; public cleaning (hotels, office buildings, etc.), 82; janitor work, 49. Occupations requiring a neat and attractive appearance, or a considerable degree of skill or adaptability, were pursued by only a few of these women, who, for the most part, had only strength or industry to offer in the labor market. The average earnings of the whole group were between five and six dollars a week. Some of the laundry workers received but $4.50 for a sixty-hour week!

From $8.00 to $10.00 a week may be regarded as a fair minimum wage for single women with no one dependent upon them, but 55 widows in this group supported families averaging 3. 2 persons, on an average weekly income of $7.60 or $353 a year. No wonder that "Even in the coldest weather a fire is made in the kitchen stove only mornings and evenings."

In a concluding note the author records her conviction that not one of these 370 mothers, 163 of whom had husbands at work, "could afford not to earn . . . . Their children would have suffered seriously had they failed or refused to earn." Thus on the Middle West Side, as in many and many another corner of the land, the comfortable American theory that a family looks for support to the husband and father has proved ominously at variance with the facts."
(Erville Bartlett Woods, American Journal Of Sociology, 09/1915)

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31175028926312&view=2up&seq=9

Feminism In Germany And Scandinavia (1915)

ℹ️ "This book is an attempt to bring some of the main aspects of German and Scandinavian feminism into closer touch with the woman movement of the English-speaking countries. For want of adequate accounts and specific reports of feminist activities abroad, there is a mistaken impression in this country that the German woman, for instance, still sleeps silently in a home-spun cocoon. The belief exists, even in enlightened suffrage circles, that the German women are a leaderless and hopelessly domesticated group and are content to remain so. This impression is due to our meager knowledge. English translations of the literature of continental feminism are few, and almost the only foreign echoes which have gained currency in this country are obviously misrepresentative ; such as, what the German Emperor regards as woman's sphere, what the German Empress thinks of woman suffrage, and what Schopenhauer has written against the sex. This is as if the American suffrage movement were to be represented abroad by quotations from Mr. Elihu Root and Senator Bowdle. It therefore seemed desirable that the opinions of these ex-officio anti-feminists should at least be balanced by some account of the feminist movement abroad according to representative sources.

For the historical aspects, I have drawn largely upon the comprehensive "Handbuch" of the international woman's movement, edited by Helene Lange and Gertrud Baumer. Developments since 1901 were traced through periodicals and monographs of recent date. As interpretation, rather than criticism, was my aim, it may sometimes seem as if I have given too much praise to the German and Scandinavian women and their way of doing things. Perhaps so ; but they have, for many years, set the bad example of giving us more praise than we deserve.

Certainly we have as much to learn from the European feminists as they have to learn from us. The suffrage movement in this country is approaching a successful climax; the hourglass must be turned promptly. Otherwise the continuity of the feminist advance will be broken and the acquired momentum squandered. These chapters from the work of the other feminists may offer some suggestions as to the activities which should engage the collective attention of the American woman movement when it has at last been released from the long struggle for political rights."
(Preface)

https://archive.org/details/feminismingerma00anthgoog/page/n6/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_u0zaAAAAMAAJ/page/n1/mode/2up

Labor Laws Of New York (1917)

ℹ️ "The purpose of this handbook is to give a summary, relatively complete and comparatively brief, of the Industrial Laws of New York State. In the process of condensation, many lesser details have been necessarily omitted, but it is believed that all essentials have been retained. The full text of most of the laws summarized may be found in the Consolidated Laws of 1909 and the Session Laws of the succeeding years. These volumes are easily accessible for anyone who wishes to study in detail the laws which are summarized in this handbook.

The basis of the summary is the Labor Law, including the Mercantile Law. But statutes concerning labor have also been drawn from the Compulsory Education Law, the Domestic Rela- tions Law, the Penal Code, and other related statutes.

The reader is asked to bear in mind, wherever Mercantile Laws are quoted, that they apply only to villages and cities with a population of three thousand or more.

This study has been made as a survey of the existing stage of development of labor legislation in this State. It does not seek to point out changes and suggest reforms, except such changes as are obviously desirable and visibly approaching.

This handbook is intended primarily to help the consumer in the enforcement of better industrial conditions."
(Preface)

https://archive.org/details/cu31924002405946/page/n5/mode/2up

Margaret Fuller: A Psychological Biography (1920)

ℹ️ "Miss Anthony’s life of Margaret Fuller is characteristic of a new type of biography which will undoubtedly become more and more popular. It is not a mere chronological account of the surface events of a life, it is an attempt to probe into the underlying motives which shape the individual personality and determine the nature of the response to the external situation.

In order to attain this deeper knowledge, Miss Anthony has made use of psychoanalytic principles in the interpretation of Margaret Fuller’s personal history. Her method brings fruitful results. We are shown that Margaret’s early life was shaped by a fixation on her father, an influence which dominated her destiny until the end.

While this explanation of Margaret Fuller’s career might prove entirely satisfactory to the lay reader, the psychologist is curious to know why Miss Anthony is satisfied with the discovery of this one unconscious motive. There are points in Margaret Fuller’s history which suggest that she was motivated not only by a “father complex ” but also by a “will to power.” Surely the complex reactions of the human organism can be conditioned by more than one unconscious motive. To the reader particularly interested in psychology it would also seem possible to have developed the theme of the father complex still more convincingly than Miss Anthony has done. Dr. Dooley, in her analysis of Charlotte Brontë, suggested that Miss Brontë never quite freed herself from the complexes of her early life so that she never found complete satisfaction in marriage and motherhood. In Margaret Fuller’s preference for a liaison to marriage, and in her resignation to death, on which Miss Anthony dwells without going into the psychology, there might well be psychological motives analogous to those which Dr. Dooley analyzed in the case of Charlotte Brontë.

But since Miss Anthony intends her book for general consumption, it may be that she felt it wiser not to plunge her readers too deeply into the new psychology. However that may be, she has at least succeeded in writing a suggestive and exceedingly interesting biography, and it is to be hoped that other writers in this field will follow her example."
(Phyllis Blanchard, American Journal Of Sociology, 07/1921)

https://archive.org/details/cu31924022147619

https://archive.org/details/margaretfuller00anthrich/page/n5/mode/2up

The Endowment Of Motherhood (1920)

📖 84 pages long. Divided into short chapters.

https://archive.org/details/cu31924013933563/page/n3/mode/2up

Catherine The Great (1925)

ℹ️ "Miss Athony has woven the portrait of a real woman into the intricate pattern of Eighteenth Century politics. We are introduced to Catherine the statesman, who unites Russia, destroys Poland and even participates in the American Revolutionary War; we also see Catherine, the jealous mistress of men, who at sixty has a lover of twenty-five.

"Miss Anthony's biography derives much of its value from the fact that she secured access to Catherine' s own voluminous diaries and letters. The material is here for the first time, so far as the reviewer knows, made available in English. It has peculiar interest, naturally, in its bearing on Catherine's celebrated love life. . . . To Miss Anthony's great credit, she presents Catherine in her true proportions. . . . There is no more fascinating story in history, and Miss Anthony has squeezed from it every drop of its dramatic and human quality."
(New York Times)

https://archive.org/details/catherinegreat00anth/page/n5/mode/2up
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