WOMAN AND HER WORK.
For a whole generation the public has been hearing a great deal of
woman’s rights. Already, however, woman has secured one of the greatest
rights in the world. She has the right to labor in any capacity in which
men hitherto have been employed.
Some close observers have dignified this change by calling it the
liberation of woman. But closer observers realize that it is also the
liberation of man. Woman is doing a great deal of work which man used to
do and which it was supposed only man was competent to do, but woman has
stepped in and done it just as well as man ever did, and men, sometimes
with thanks and occasionally with curses, have retired to other kinds of
labor more fit for strong arms.
The opinion of men on this subject would probably receive no
consideration from the gentler sex, but a journal recently started
specially to advance the interests of women, declares that at the
present time there are over three hundred occupations in the United
States, aside from housekeeping, in which women find abundant and
remunerative employment. What woman has said, man would be a brute to
unsay.
There has been a decided gain to the world by this change, but the
greatest gain has been to the sex to which the world has been, if not
cruel, certainly indifferent. Woman has been the slave, the plaything,
the toy of man so long that it is hard to get out of the public mind the
idea that woman is simply an appendage to the ruder being, and that
whatever she is or is to have depends upon the generosity of man. The
generosity of man is no more to be depended upon by the gentler sex than
it is by men themselves. All men are generous when they are not likely
to lose anything by it. All men also are selfish, and woman would not
now have her present chance in the United States were it not that men
saw a gain for themselves in the change.
Woman may not be getting as much money for some kinds of work as man
would were he doing the same work himself. But the beginning counts for
a great deal in this world. Everybody knows the old saying that the
first step is half the battle, and woman has taken the first step.
According to the authority above quoted she has taken over three hundred
of them, which is more than man can say for himself during the same
period.
No matter what may be said by the men who have been displaced by women
in the various departments of business; no matter what may be said by
unpardonable gossips about women stepping aside from the family circle
to do work which has no appearance of domesticity about it, the truth is
that the appearance of women in the business world has been of immense
service to the gentler sex, and indirectly of great benefit to the lords
of creation. It is absolutely necessary to the civilization of the world
that the great mass of mankind should realize that woman is something
better than a mere dependent on man, and there is no quicker way of
teaching this lesson than that of demonstrating that woman is quite
competent to take care of herself if she has a fair chance.
A fair chance has been offered. It has been embraced, and some hundreds
of thousands of women in the United States are doing for themselves far
better than they would have been done for by the men into whose power
they would have fallen under the old custom of making a woman’s
maintenance and existence entirely dependent upon the male members of
her own family.
A large department of industry in which women are employed, outside of
household duties, is that of work at the government offices at
Washington. Irresponsible newspaper paragraphers used to write a great
many ugly things about treasury clerks and pension office clerks and
other feminine employés of the government. But that sort of writing has
gone entirely out of practice. Seeing is believing, and the hundreds of
thousands of American citizens who have yearly visited the national
capital are satisfied from their own observation and still more by their
personal acquaintance with attachés of the different departments that
woman not only knows how to work, but can prolong her efforts and
maintain regular hours quite as well as any man; and, to put it mildly,
that she is quite as respectable as man.
Still more important, woman has not yet found it necessary to go out to
drink. It is a severer joke and comment upon the stronger sex than any
man yet has been willing to admit that, while clerks in all departments
of the government service at the national capital may be found who deem
it necessary to stimulate themselves during business hours, women work
the customary hours prescribed, do their work well, and find no need of
artificial stimulation.
Does this mean that for sixty centuries the world has been mistaken as
to which of the two sexes is the stronger? This is a good conundrum to
think over when you have some spare time on your hands.
It has also been reported by the aforesaid irresponsible paragrapher
that women clerks at Washington have very little to do, and that the
work with which they are charged could be attended to by men with equal
celerity and accuracy; but the fact seems to be, according to Cabinet
officers of half a dozen successive administrations, that the men work
neither so fast nor so well, and cost a great deal more money.
More money probably will come in time. No slave can shake off all his
chains at a single blow. Old Samson himself, when he had broken the
manacles that bound him, was still blind and had to be led about by the
hand. And woman, perhaps, may yet need some instruction and friendly
counsel, but where in a single city a great many thousands of the
gentler sex are performing arduous labor and living up to exacting
restrictions, it is far too late to say anything whatever about the
incapacity of woman for persistent labor.
Reference has been made quite freely in this screed to the feminine
employés of the government at the national capital, but only because
this is the most prominent instance and illustration of the capacity of
women to work. Any observer, however, can satisfy himself, if he will,
on the subject by looking through prominent business houses in any large
city. Where once every desk had a man behind it and all the
sales-counters were lined with masculine salesmen, the word now in New
York and some other cities is that no man shall be employed at any work
for which a woman can be found. Woman has some qualities especially
attractive to the management of a large business. She never gets drunk,
she seldom goes into speculation, and still less frequently does she
look around for something else to do. Male clerks and salesmen are
continually on the lookout for something better. They are likely to put
their savings into Wall street or some other gambling den. They expect
to make a great career in business somewhere, somehow, some time; but
woman has the superior quality, or so it seems to her employer, of being
satisfied to do well what work she has in hand, and look for nothing
else. Consequently, marriage is almost the only influence that can ever
remove her from whatever may be her chosen sphere of duty.
But woman no longer is satisfied to work for poor wages. There are in
the United States thousands of feminine physicians. There are a few
female lawyers, and indeed two or three pulpits have been satisfactorily
filled for a number of years by women. Other women can be found as
principals of large business enterprises. Everybody in Wall street knows
Mrs. Hetty Green, one of the sharpest and most successful speculators in
railroad securities that Wall street ever has known. If she has made any
losses nobody knows of them. On the other side her gains may be counted
by millions by any broker on the street. She and her husband were
mutually interested in a large railroad enterprise. Her husband has
dropped out of sight. The wife remains, and no broker or operator who is
not very new at the business ever attempts to get the better of Mrs.
Green. Her fortune has been rolling up steadily until it is estimated
almost as high as that of any but the three most prominent men in Wall
street, and it continues to roll up. If she has any outside advisers,
nobody has ever been able to discover who they are. Her methods are so
quiet and straightforward that she mystifies the very elect among
railroad men.
The business of editing a newspaper is supposed to call for at least as
high a combination of intellectual qualities as that of being President
of the United States, and there are men who imagine that the first-class
editor would let himself down were he to accept the Presidency. Yet
several prominent newspapers in the United States are not only edited,
but managed in their business departments by women. They are not those
most talked about; nevertheless their stock is not in the market, and it
seldom changes hands.
Woman is said to be of quicker sensibilities than man. No one will doubt
it who has seen a woman count currency at the Treasury Department at
Washington, or handle a type-writing machine in an office in a large
city. Recently there have been some exciting contests between
type-writers, and most of the winners have been women. In the city of
Cincinnati, which contains more artistic furniture probably than the
city of London or Paris, the work has been done almost entirely by the
eyes and hands of women.
A few years ago Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” was quoted as frequently in
America as it once was in England, but nowadays only the stupidest of
women, or those caught most suddenly in embarrassments and without any
preparation for the battle of life, give themselves to the needle. Men
do that sort of work now. Reduced gentlewomen who support themselves by
sewing still exist, but they are not easy to find. Instead of making
shirts or other cheap clothing at starvation wages, the woman out of
employment nowadays turns herself to some specialty of needlework if she
knows no other tool or method, and there are “exchanges” at which her
work may be displayed and at which orders are given according to the
samples shown and at prices which would astonish the old-time slaves of
the needle. Women are in all the telegraph offices. They are clerks in
thousands of business houses. They are mechanics, artisans and artists
all over the country. It has become so much the fashion for women to
work that nowadays there are signs in London, Paris and New York of
common business enterprises presided over by women with titles. The
Princess de Sagan, one of the brilliant lights of the court of the last
Napoleon, manages a dress-making establishment in Paris and New York.
Other ladies, equally illustrious, are well known in trade circles in
London and on the Continent.
All this looks strongly like the emancipation of women, but it does not
at first sight convey its full meaning to the observer or reader. The
most important result of it all is that woman is thus made independent
of man. A woman of brains no longer needs to marry in order to have a
home. It would be difficult to suggest the proportion of unhappy
marriages which have been due to the fact that admirable women have been
utterly unable to care for themselves in the world, and consequently
have attached themselves for prudential reasons, although by a revered
form and sacrament, to some man. But no longer is this necessary. There
are all kinds of women as well as all kinds of men in business, but it
is far safer in society to attempt a romantic flirtation with a woman
than to make similar attempts in any business circles where women are
employed. There are a great many handsome and spirited women in the
departments at Washington, but no sentimental young man is fool enough
to lounge about these places with the hope of getting up a flirtation.
The woman who knows how to support herself is not going to be in haste
to marry. When she marries she is going to have a husband, in fact as
well as in name, as well as a home. She can afford to wait. She has
entire control of her own destiny and she cannot be taken at a
disadvantage. Instead of marrying for a home, the tables have been so
turned that nowadays a large number of men are on the lookout for women
who can give them a home. Plenty of men can be found who are desirous of
marrying in order to be supported, instead of marrying for the purpose
of supporting somebody else.
The gain to woman in this change of affairs is simply inestimable. It is
unnecessary to call any one’s attention to the comparative greatness of
risk which woman sustains in entering the marriage relation now, and the
helplessness in which she found herself under the old rule, when man was
the only wage-earner. Women are working for themselves, even married
women, all over the United States. In many of the New England
manufacturing towns there are hundreds, and in some of them thousands,
of women, already married, working at the same trades as their husbands,
but keeping their own separate bank accounts at the savings banks. A man
can no longer afford to abuse a woman because she is dependent upon him,
and dare not complain, for fear of losing her source of maintenance. A
woman of any brains in any industry can care for herself quite as well
as any husband is likely to care for her. The consequence is that
divorces are very infrequent in New England manufacturing towns. If
either member of a married couple is given to lounging and bad habits,
it is likely to be the man. It is only fair to say in man’s favor that
the temptations are principally on the masculine side. Women have not
yet to any extent taken to drink, billiards and politics. They do not
bet on horse-races or buy pools on sparring matches or go on excursions
to neighboring towns for the sake of indulging habits which are unsafe
to make public at home; so the woman of the house is far less likely to
be out of work or to be away from her post than her husband.
What the effect of this change in the industrial outlook may be upon
children is yet unknown. But it is a fair question, whether the woman
whose daily hours are employed at mechanical or clerical occupations is
likely to bring up her children worse than the woman whose leisure
moments are consumed in small talk and social dissipation. No child can
be less cared for than that of the society queen. The commonest
washer-woman, who leaves her home at early dawn and does not return
until dark, can give her offspring more attention than can be expected
by the children of many ladies whose names appear in the fashionable
columns of newspapers which give considerable space to that sort of
thing. Whether each family should not contain one member whose duties
and interests are entirely confined to the home circle, is also a
question upon which a great deal can be said upon both sides. But the
fact to be brought into prominence at the present time is that woman has
already acquired the right to earn her own living and is doing it, to
the extent of some hundreds of thousands of women, most admirably. Women
are presidents of large colleges in the United States; colleges, it is
true, intended solely for the education of members of their own sex;
nevertheless the course of study and the subsequent social and literary
standing of the graduates shows that the work done in these institutions
is well done. The best proof of this is in the better colleges for girls
in the United States. The demand for scholarships far exceeds the
supply, and there are millionaires in this country who have not yet been
able to put their daughters in any one of the three or four best
feminine colleges in the land.
In literature woman has made her way to an extent which every one knows,
if he reads at all. Our most popular novels are all written by women.
Women write a great deal of our poetry. It is impossible to find a
first-class magazine which does not contain a number of contributions by
women, and those contributions are quite as much talked about and quite
as
[Illustration: SEALS OF THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL STATES.
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DELAWARE
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SOUTH CAROLINA
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frequently read as anything written by the most prominent masculine
minds in the land. As a novelist, the young woman is immeasurably the
superior of the young man. No young man ever wrote a novel as famous as
“Charles Auchester” at as early an age (seventeen years) as that of the
young lady who is the author of this still much-read book; and our
publishers are flooding the market with other novels by women who have
not yet reached their majority. If quick perception, facility of
expression, and piquant comment are sufficient to make the novelist, our
future novels must be written principally by young women. That they make
some dreadful blunders is very true. Some of the most abominable books
that have been inflicted upon a much-suffering public during the past
year have been from the pens of young women who ought to have known
better, if they had known anything at all. Nevertheless, it is a great
deal easier in literature to tone down than to tone up, and somehow the
necessity for toning down has not been apparent to any great extent in
fiction and poetry written by young men.
The “restraining force,” to which social philosophers attribute the
sudden rise of some family, nation and tribe, may account for the sudden
prominence and brilliancy of women in many departments of life. There
may be such a thing as inheritance by sex, and a sex long suppressed,
as woman certainly has been, in all but the domestic virtues, may have a
great deal to give the world and then suddenly fade out of prominence.
But at present all odds are in favor of woman. She has made her way so
rapidly, though unobtrusively, and so pleasantly, that every man who has
the proper manly heart within him will be glad to see her go a great
deal further, and believe that she is quite competent to do it.