If she fancies law, medicine, or the church, her way is clear. All three
professions number their women members by the thousand, though a
generation ago the pioneers in each line were struggling against ridicule
and opposition.
Painting and sculpture were once considered masculine accomplishments, but
to-day 15,000 women have studios. The musicians are three times as
numerous.
Even the more unusual occupations are well represented. There are 261
wholesale merchants, 1,271 officials in banks, 1,932 stock raisers, 378
butchers, and 193 blacksmiths. There are 200 women to mix cocktails or
serve gin-fizzes behind the bar. If they sell after hours or to minors,
there are 879 policemen and detectives to watch them.
The traveling public depends for its safety and its accidents principally
upon men. But women already claim 2 motor-men, 13 conductors, 4
station-agents, 2 pilots, 1 lighthouse keeper, 127 engineers, and 153
boatmen among their number.
Almost every paper one picks up tells of women's successes in some line of
work. A dozen women in Chicago, and probably three times as many in New
York, are making ten thousand dollars a year or more, either as salaries
or profits from business.
The property owned by actresses and singers must pay a handsome sum in
taxes. It is said that Hetty Green, the shrewdest business woman in the
world, can stand in City Hall Square, New York, and see five million
dollars' worth of her own property; and every one knows she owes her
millions to her own cleverness, not to either husband or father.
A Woman's Building has been a feature of many of our great national
expositions. They have been filled with the products of women's labor; but
so far the structures, though designed by women, have been erected by men.
This can be remedied at any time it is necessary.
There are women builders of every sort: 167 are masons, 545 carpenters, 45
plasterers, 126 plumbers, 1,750 painters and glaziers, and 241
paper-hangers. It is true the roofing would be a long job, for only two
feminine roofers and slaters are to be found in the whole country. But the
1,775 tin-workers might help out. If a steel frame were called for, 3,370
iron and steel workers would stand ready; and the eight steam-boiler
makers would put in the heating and power plant.