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{518} 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{519} 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{520} 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{521} 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{522} 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{523} 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.
............