HOW WOMEN ACHIEVED ECONOMIC EMANCIPATION THROUGH THE WRITING MACHINE
The greatest of all the triumphs of the typewriter, greater even
than its influence on business or education or language, is the
transformation it has wrought in our whole social order.
This is a phase of typewriter influence which even today is far too
little understood. The fact that the writing machine has freed the
world from pen slavery is itself a triumph so vast and palpable that
it rivets attention, almost to the exclusion of anything else. This is
not because the facts are obscure concerning other phases of typewriter
influence. That it was the writing machine which opened to women the
doors of business life is so well known that the mere mention of it
sounds like a commonplace. But few indeed have considered the real
importance of this fact in its relation to human society.
The movement that we know by the name of "feminism" is undoubtedly the
most significant and important social evolution of our time. The aims
and aspirations behind this great movement need not detain us. Suffice
it is to say that, like all great social movements, its cause and its
aim have been primarily economic. What is known as "sex-emancipation"
might almost be translated to read "economic emancipation"; at any rate
it could only be attained through one means, namely, equal economic
opportunity, and such opportunity could never have been won by mere
statute or enactment. Before the aims of "feminism" could be achieved
it was necessary that women should find and make this opportunity,
and they found it in the writing machine.
We have described the transformation of the whole business world
since the invention of the writing machine. Equally revolutionary,
and facilitated by the same agency, has been the transformation in
the economic status of women during the same period. The business
office of 1873 seems no more remote from the present than the
economic restrictions imposed on the women of fifty years ago. It
might almost be said that no real career was possible for her outside
of the home. Such opportunities for gainful occupation as did exist
were usually for the untrained and uneducated, in shops, factories,
domestic service and the like. In only two other callings had they
made themselves indispensable, that of school teaching and nursing,
and all the openings in this and a few minor occupations could do
little more than utilize a fraction of intelligent womanhood. They
furnished no adequate basis for true and general economic freedom.
Obviously it was the business world, and that alone, which could
furnish women with the opportunity for real emancipation, and so long
as this door remained closed, there could be no hope of its attainment.
The prejudice which existed fifty years ago against the employment
of women in a business office, or in clerical capacities of any kind,
is something which in our day is hard to understand. It was blind and
unreasoning, as prejudices usually are, but it was universal. How
strong it was, and how unreasoning, was clearly shown in the one
notable attempt to utilize the services of women in clerical work,
which came before the advent of the typewriter.
It is a singular fact that this attempt was made by a native and
life-long resident of Herkimer County, a forecast of the part that
other native sons of Herkimer County were yet to play in the great
work of sex emancipation.
This man was General Francis Elias Spinner, born in Mohawk, N.Y.,
a suburb of Ilion, and a close friend of Philo Remington. General
Spinner was appointed Treasurer of the United States by President
Lincoln on March 16, 1861, and continued to hold this office until
June 30, 1875. When he took up his official duties at Washington,
he found a condition similar to the one with which all of us were
recently familiar during the Great War. The men had gone to war in
such vast numbers that there was everywhere a scarcity of workers, and
General Spinner conceived the idea of employing women as government
clerks. This was a startling innovation in those days; nevertheless
several hundred women were appointed to government clerkships through
his agency.
The grateful women of the time afterwards remembered General Spinner's
efforts, and his statue, erected by the women of the Departments of
the Government, now stands in Herkimer, N.Y. On the pedestal of this
statue are General Spinner's words: "The fact that I was instrumental
in introducing women to employment in the offices of the Government
gives me more real satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life."
However, the unhappy experiences of many of these women showed how
strong were the prejudices of the time. Grace Greenwood, the authoress,
tells of a letter she received from one of them which says: "Would
you work for nothing, board yourself, and be lied about?"
Such was the world's attitude fifty years ago concerning women's
work. And then Herkimer County made another contribution to the cause
of sex emancipation. A new and strange machine appeared, and it went to
work, at first quietly and unobtrusively, but in the end triumphantly
to break down these barriers of conservatism and prejudice.
Even at this day, many of us, though recognizing the facts, are puzzled
to account for this amazing achievement of the writing machine. Yet
there is no mystery about it, for it was all due to the operation of
that law which is sure to break all barriers, the law of necessity
and fitness. We have shown that the typewriter did more than save
business time. It stimulated business activity, and in time this
activity reached the point where there were no longer men enough to
perform all of the clerical tasks. The girl stenographer and typist
came into business because she was needed, and with her coming the
ancient barriers fell. The typist blazed the path by which other women
entered every department of business. Economic emancipation was won
and from this great triumph has resulted every other development of
modern feminism. The suffrage, the winning of greater social freedom,
the wider participation of women in every phase of public life, all
these are children of the same parent. When economic freedom was won,
everything was won, and all else followed, naturally and inevitably.
The feminist movement has had its leaders, many and prominent ones,
but it is sometimes the one with no thought or consciousness of
leadership who renders the greatest service. In the choice of some
historic figure to symbolize this movement, who has a better claim
than the man whose life and work created the great opportunity through
which sex emancipation was achieved?
It is pleasing to know that the inventor of the typewriter lived to see
the beginnings of this great movement and the knowledge of it gladdened
his later years. Sholes died in Milwaukee on February 17, 1890, and
for some years before his death he never rose from his bed. But though
more dead than alive in body, his mind remained clear, unclouded and
active to the very end. Mr. C. E. Weller tells of a private letter
which relates the following incident which occurred shortly before
his death, when a daughter-in-law remarked to him, "Father Sholes,
what a wonderful thing you have done for the world." He replied, "I
don't know about the world, but I do feel that I have done something
for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable
them more easily to earn a living."
In one of the last letters he ever wrote, Sholes says, "Whatever I
may have felt in the early days of the value of the typewriter, it
is obviously a blessing to mankind, and especially to womankind. I
am glad I had something to do with it. I builded wiser than I knew,
and the world has the benefit of it."
These farewell words of Sholes form a suitable close to this story. He
rendered the world of womankind a great service, he lived long enough
to know it, and he died contented and happy in that knowledge. His
closing words show that he thought more of this achievement than of
any other service rendered by his invention.
In this anniversary year of the writing machine it is fitting that
our thoughts should turn to the simple, gentle, kindly, modest,
lovable man, who in his lifetime neither sought nor obtained rewards
or honors, and whose very name is little known today in the great
world of business which he transformed with his invention, or to the
millions of women who owe so much to his efforts.