"Working Girls" (1914)
A blistering Debs polemic.
Miss Anne Morgan, daughter of her deceased distinguished dad, John Pierpont [JP] Morgan, who plundered and looted to the extent of his power and was washed pure in the blood of the lamb, is a great friend to working girls. At least so we are led to believe. She is one of the patronizing, philanthropic bunch of parasites who feel that if they spit on the poor they should receive it as a baptism.
Recently Miss Morgan was interviewed in regard to the problem of working girls in the present system, and in answer to the first question put to her, she broke out with:
Please don’t make me use the expression “working girl” in this interview. If there is one phrase that should be eliminated from the English language, it is that one. All women work, always have worked, always will work.”
Isn’t this truly delicious? All women certainly do work, but the work some of them do it to work the workers, dress and gorge themselves, and undress and disport themselves at Seeley dinners, and of course they are in the same class, according to Miss Morgan, with the factory girls and department store drudges that for a pittance work like slaves and are never ahead enough to allow themselves a square meal or a decent garment.
It is easy to understand why Miss Morgan gets riled when reference is made to “working girls.” She doesn’t want these girls to realize that they are in a class of their own, that they are slaves, and that they have to unite and make common cause against the parasites that are sucking their life-blood while looking down upon them with a lofty contempt as if they were so many animals.
The worst enemies of these working girls, these wage-slaves, are such pretended friends as Miss Anne Morgan, who patronizingly drop them a bone now and then to quiet their discontent and elicit their grateful homage.
Working girls, don’t be deceived by the Anne Morgans of capitalist society! They are the heirs of the millions wrung from the blood of your class, and they will never do anything more for you than to absorb your earnings and hold you in cheap contempt for allowing them to pose as your benefactors. Get together, rely on yourselves, stand up with and for your class, and fight the thieving, degrading capitalist system to a finish. That is your only salvation.