If low wages, by actually starving women and those dependent upon them,
force many into vicious courses, so does the want of employment lower
the whole moral tone, and destroy even the domestic efficiency of those
whose minds seek variety and freedom. More than once have I been to
insane asylums with young girls whom active and acceptable employment
would have saved from mania; and scores of times have young women of
fortune asked me, "What can you give me to do?"
And to this question there is, in the present state of the public mind,
no possible answer. No woman of rank can find work, if she do not happen
to be philanthropic, literary, or artistic in her taste, without braving
the influence of home, or, what is next dearest, the social circle, and
earning for herself a position so conspicuous as to be painful to the
most energetic. The woman who is prepared for all this will not ask
anybody what she is to do: she will take her work into her own hands,
and do it.
That was a pleasant time in the history of the world, when every woman
found, in spinning, weaving, and sewing, in the active labor of a small
or the skilful management of a large household, full employment for time
and thought, under the cheering shelter of a husband's or father's
smile. That was a pleasant time also, when, in the middle English
classes, women worked freely by a husband's side, with more regard to
his interest than heed of the world's talk. But with the wide
intellectual culture that America has been the first country in the
world to offer to women, individual tastes and wishes must develop in
single women; and all men who value the moral health of society must aid
this development.
There is no greater enemy to body and soul than idleness, unless it be
the absurd public sentiment which compels to idleness. Thousands and
tens of thousands have fallen victims to it. The woman who will not
labor, rich or honored though she be, bends her head to the inevitable
curse of Heaven.
This curse works in failing health, fading beauty, broken temper, and
weary days. Let her never fancy, that, being neither wife nor mother,
she is exempt from the law: she cannot balance that decree of God by the
foolish customs of society or the weak objections of her kindred. Never
let her say she does not need to labor. Disease, depression, moral
idiocy, or inertia, follow on an idle life. He who never rests has made
woman in His image; and health, beauty, force, and influence follow on
the steps of labor alone.
I shall not pursue this subject; for it is far easier for you to think
it out, than to gather the facts I wish to bring before you. Read
"Shirley," and let the saddest hours of Caroline Helstone's life bear
witness for thousands who never find a vocation. Read the "Professor,"
and let its sweet stimulus kindle in you some appreciation of the joy
which mutual labor can bring to a happy husband and wife.
Sad, indeed, then, is it when man himself represses a woman's longing
for work, whether from false tenderness, from a dread of public opinion,
a shrinking from her ultimate independence, or a small personal
jealousy. That he does, in the aggregate and as an individual, so
repress it, is unfortunately matter of history: it is no invention of an
outraged inferior. I could offer you many private examples of this; but
those that carry proofs of their reality with them will, I fear, seem
very familiar. The first consists in the opposition shown to the attempt
of Mr. Bennett to establish young women as watchmakers. Honorary
Secretary to the Horological Department of the great Exhibition, he
could not help observing the superiority of the Genevese watches, in
cheapness and convenience of carriage. In England, watches are so dear
that only the privileged classes can carry them. It would be for the
interests of the manufacturers, of course, to be able to compete with
the Swiss; but they were too short-sighted to see it. Finding that
twenty thousand women and girls were employed in Switzerland in the
manufacture of watches and watchmakers' tools, Mr. Bennett undertook to
deliver a public lecture on the subject. It was interrupted by hisses,
and broken up like a New-York convention. Three well-educated women then
applied to him to be taught; but no Englishman could be found to take
them. A Swiss, settled in London, did. They made more progress in six
months than ordinary boys in six years; but they, as well as their
teacher, were so cruelly persecuted, that it was found necessary to
relinquish the attempt. My impression is, though I cannot find the
account in print, that a further effort was made on a more extended
scale, something like a school; and this was resisted by such combined
effort on the part of the trade, that Mr. Bennett and his friends began
to make a stir through the press. The "Edinburgh Review" mentions a
watchmaker's wife who wished to work with her husband in his special
department. Finding that it could not be done with the consent of the
trade, she undertook, instead, the engraving of the brass work; but,
though working in her own house, she was at last successful only under
the plea that she had been regularly apprenticed by her father, also in
the business. She persevered, and taught her two daughters; and so will
many others.
Women in England must certainly make watches; and the time is not far
distant when the men of Coventry will yield to this demand, as they have
already yielded to others. A few years ago, winding silk, weaving
ribbon, and pasting patterns of floss upon cards, excited the same
opposition; but now thousands of women pursue these employments, and
the men look on as quietly as the grazing cattle in the fields.
"The first steam factory in Coventry," says the "Edinburgh Review" for
October, 1859,--"a very small factory,--was burned down during a quarrel
about wages. Then there was an opposition to the employment of women at
the looms. To this day, one of the lightest and easiest processes in the
manufacture, which a child might manage, is engrossed by the men, under
heavy penalties."
Fancy a strong man winding silk for a whole day, or sorting colors in
floss! How has he ever degraded himself to such girls' work?
I need only remind you of the formal petition sent in at the time of the
opening of the School of Design at Marlborough House, to entreat the
Government not to instruct and aid women, lest the poor, helpless men
should starve! A similar prejudice, much more active than any in
America, prevents English women from qualifying themselves as
physicians. Dr. Spencer, of Bristol, really educated his daughter as an
accoucheuse; but the prejudice was so strong that she was not allowed to
practise, and became a governess instead. The same prejudice kept the
English Army suffering for months, while it delayed the departure of
female nurses to the Crimea.
In Staffordshire, women are employed to paint crockery and china, which
they can do with more taste and grace than men. It seems hardly
credible, that the desire of the men to keep down their wages should
deprive the females of the customary hand-rest; which would, of course,
diminish the fatigue, and make the pencil-stroke more certain. I am
happy to believe that not an employer in the United States would submit
to this absurd demand; and the result of any such attempt on the part of
workmen would probably be a general permission to leave. We are, in this
country, much more free from the control of guilds and unions of various
sorts than the people of England; yet the conduct of our printers
furnishes a fair parallel to these foreign facts. Within a few years,
there have been more than twenty strikes in printing-offices, consequent
upon the employment of a few women; and the result has generally been an
entire change of hands, masters in America not enduring dictation.
In August of 1854, the journeymen employed in the office of the
"Philadelphia Daily Register" left the office, in high dudgeon, because
the publisher had employed two women as type-setters in a separate
office. They acted in conformity to a resolve of the Printers' Union,
and were permitted to depart. But this was not all. Threats of personal
violence followed all who sought the waiting work, and an attempt was
made to cut the rope by which the forms are raised. The result would
have been to break up the type, prevent the issue of the paper, and run
the risk of endangering life. Complaints were lodged against the
printers; and, after a hearing, they were each held to bail in six
hundred dollars, to answer to the charge of conspiracy, at the Court of
Quarter Sessions.
About the same time, a printer in the same establishment with the
"Lily," but working on the "Home Visitor," refused to give some
necessary instruction to a girl employed on the first paper. It was
found that all the hands had signed an agreement never to work with or
instruct a woman! The men, after proper remonstrance, were dismissed,
and their places supplied by four women and three men, who worked
harmoniously together. That was only five years ago, and now there are
hundreds of female printers in Ohio; and one orphan girl has risen from
type-setting to an editor's chair and a handsome competence.
Jealousy in America sometimes takes a more comical form. Coming home
lately from a Female School of Design in another city, I expressed some
disappointment at the character of the work and management. A young man
in the room spoke of the impossibility of a woman's ever learning to
design, in terms so contemptuous that I did not think it worth while to
answer him. Making some inquiries, however, in private, I found that his
master had often reproached him with _falling behind the women_ at the
school; so that personal pique had more to do with the whole thing than
any real experience.[22]
But, having made these remarks, I must recur to my previous
statement,--that, in the main, no jealousy of cliques, no legal
restrictions, prevent women from taking their proper place. A want of
respect for woman, and a want of respect for labor, latent and
unacknowledged in the public mind, must be overcome before she can do
it. The overworked and ill-paid woman has seized every chance to slight
her work; and an idea has gone abroad, that no slop-work will be fit for
sale unless a man inspects it. So New York and Paris have man-tailors
and man-milliners; and the poor, tempted, stricken girls are brought
into contact, in the pursuit of bread, with the very men most likely to
take advantage of every failure. Very sad stories could be told of work
rejected day after day, on account of pretended faults, till the
starving victim drops at the feet of the treacherous overseer, only to
be trampled, in the end, under those of the whole town. Educated,
respectable women should have the giving-out and the inspection of
woman's work; but educated and respectable women will never stand in
such a position till public opinion teaches them that all _labor_ is
honorable, and that no lady will ever sit with folded hands. How we rate
an idle boy! how we bear with a dawdling girl! That father grows
impatient whose son does not rise early, or show some desire for
employment; but the same man keeps his daughters in Berlin wool and
yellow novels, and looks to marriage as their salvation, even when he
blushes to be told of it.
To prove this, let me show you that many employments have been open to a
degree not generally acknowledged; and a safe foundation for this
assertion will be found in the census of the United Kingdom and that of
the United States.
It is a singular fact, that there are a great many more women in
England in business for themselves than employed as tenders or clerks;
while, in America, the fact, at the present day, is directly the
reverse.
It was not so in the time of the Revolution. Then, as in France, the men
went to the war. Women of shrewdness and ability managed their husbands'
affairs,--the shops and trades of the nation,--and grew so independent
thereby, that even Mrs. John Adams had to rebuke her husband for the
absurd inequalities of privilege which his new government sustained. In
England, the deficient education of the lower classes makes it almost
impossible for the women to make change quickly, or keep accounts; and
we smile as we find the "Edinburgh Review" gravely contending that woman
may master the rule of three; that, at least, they ought to have a
chance to _try_: and we can afford to smile; for our public schools have
taught us how much quicker most women can count than most men. While,
therefore, the want of education has prevented a certain class of
English women from becoming clerks or book-keepers, the national habits
of thrift, and a certain respectable pride in a family shop or trade,
have induced thousands of a superior class to assume, upon a father's or
husband's death, the charge of his establishment, and so secure a
competence for the heirs. This is what we could wish our women to do. We
all know how frequently the whole social position of a family here
changes with the death of its head. Let our women prevent this for the
future, by cherishing a natural ambition to do for their children what
the fathers of those children would have done.
The last census of the United Kingdom shows, that, while the female
population has increased in such proportion that there are now _eight
women_ where there were _seven_, there are _eight working_ women where
there were only _six_; that is, there are more new workers than new
women. There are 1,250,000 women earning their own bread as
independently as any men. Of these, there are--
385,000 employed in Textile manufactures,
40,000 in Metal-works, and
128,418 in Agriculture.