A Look Back In Traverse City Amidst Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month, and as women fought over the past century (or longer) for fair wages and the right to vote, those same issues took hold locally -- and some still do.

President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law on June 10, 1963. Yet nearly 60 years later, the wage gap still exists. An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data from 2018 shows women of all races earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, which typically translates to more than $10,000 per year in lost wages.

That discrepancy was far worse 100 years ago. Back in the first decades of the last century, women in the labor force were routinely paid significantly less than their male counterparts.

A letter in the Traverse City Press (a more liberal alternative to the then establishment-minded Record-Eagle) noted how the local Chamber of Commerce had induced manufacturers to move to Traverse City by playing up the cheap women’s labor force. 

“The Jackson Firm came in paying a fairly good wage.  When they found some of the women could make ten dollars a week, a new forelady came bringing a cut in wages.  At present another change of management and another cut in wages, but I hear nothing from you, no protest from your press or Chamber of Commerce.  Some of the girls are getting as low as $1.25 per week."

Its editor, Thomas Coxe, dared to publish letters from the publication’s working-class readers until it changed policies due to pressure and boycotts by the business community.

According to local historian Richard Fidler, writing in 2015 in the Grand Traverse Journal, the Traverse City Press “served as a place for women workers to vent their anger at low wages and lack of respect. Such a forum could not continue. Soon the Press began to complain of boycotts directed towards its advertisers. Abruptly, the radical tone of letters vanished. The paper itself underwent a name change to the Grand Traverse Press. Even in that form it did not publish long, disappearing some time around 1920.”

Fidler went on to say that Traverse City “had a dark side, too, with its factories that promised repetitive work for poor wages, a female workforce that was paid less than that of men for the same work, and the prospect of dismal room-and-board arrangements. A state report issued in 1917 lists Traverse City dead last in Michigan for average wages paid to workers.”  

An entire chapter of his book "Gateway to Grand Traverse Past" is devoted to “Women Workers and the Struggle for a Decent Wage.” In it, Fidler notes how many local manufacturers hired women because they were able to pay them significantly less than their male counterparts.

“The Straub Brothers and Amiotte Candy Factory, the Potato Implement Company, the great Oval Wood Dish Manufacturing Company, John C. Morgan Company fruit processors, and numerous cigar manufacturers in town all hired women in the early twentieth century, at least in part because they could pay them less than men.”

1919 was a year of labor unrest across the country and in Traverse City. Sixty women walked off their jobs at the Johnson Cigar Company over low pay, receiving $5 a week to start, though a few worked their way up to $15 to $20.

Further confirmation comes from an article Julie Schopieray wrote for the Grand Traverse Journal in 2016. While it focused on her efforts to identify the author of a diary written in 1918, she also noted other events that took place that year: “The local labor movement made news due to complaints of low wages paid to the girls who toiled long hours in cigar and other factories. The Straub Brothers & Amiotte Candy Company factory on the corner of Front and Hall Streets was producing candy, marshmallows, and other confectionery delights at a high rate, but at very low pay to the mostly young women who staffed the factory. One account stated the owners had claimed that the factory could ‘get all the girls they wanted for $4 per week’ when a living wage needed for the time was better than $15 a week.”

Coxe’s guardianship of the Traverse City Press was predated by his overseeing another local paper, Honest Opinion. On June 19, 1919, it published an article on the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.

It noted Michigan followed the lead of Illinois, the first state to pass the amendment. “Michigan adopted the national suffrage amendment Tuesday in a close race between house and senate to see which should get it across first. By requesting the chaplain to “make it snappy” and by making the vote unanimous without roll call, the house won by 50 feet. Michigan women apparently were not wrought up about it, for not a woman was in either room except half a dozen woman clerks.”

The struggles continue to reverberate today. Last year, Northwestern Michigan College premiered a new work, “The Lesson of the Lark,” a multi-movement concert piece written by Jeff Cobb. It featured members of the college’s faculty and musical groups and was based the book of the same name by his wife, author Laura Knight Cobb. She wrote it to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ratification of Women's Voting Rights.

The story is told through the characters of a girl, a lark, and a gardener. The book was targeted to students in 4th through 10th grade and was aligned to the Common Core State Standards. A portion of the proceeds from the book’s sales go to Equal Means Equal, an organization whose goal is to complete the ratification of the original Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution.

Laura Cobb says history is still being written today. “I think all women’s struggles are coming out to be discussed,” she says. “I think it (the issue) resonates even more today, with our new Vice President.”