Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1868-12-09

| dens in the market place; they gather UP
the droppings of the streets, and often,
am assured, tend the hod. They are part
ners in business with their husbands The
hotels Gibbon and Richmont in Lausanne,
are kept by Ritter Rossel Ritter be-
ing the name of the husband. and Rossel
that of the wife-the landlord and the
landady. A celebrated pension school is
kept by IN Olivier de Speyr the two
names representing those of the husband
and wife respectively. Woman has here
all the variety of pursuit she can desire
| have not heard of her preaching or
practicing law or medicine, but really dc
not see what should hinder, if she desires
| it.
Well, what is the effect of this introduc.
tion of women into all the work and busi.
ness of men? Simply, the universal
degradation of men, and women too
! When | look around me here, and see men
working for franc day, simply because
women can be procured to do his work fol
half franc, it strikes me that, as man
1 have some interest in the settlement of
this question concerning woman's labor il
America The whole laboring population
of Switzerland are in the hands of the
capitalist. simply because the service oi
men and women is interchangeable.
Let the women of Switzerland be sub
tracted to-day from the laboring force Of
the country. in those fields never invaded
by women in America, and the number OF
laborers is reduced to a point where labor
can have word to say as to what shall
{ L i - - l,t,1 10
tracted from those fields and the wages of
men would be trebled at once, the laboring
class would receive third more for the
work done than it receives now and the
women would gradually make homes OF
those novels and chaiets, which are now the
indiscriminate shelters of chickens and
children-of creatures who have few diff
ferences greater than that which is ap-
parent in the number of their legs.
The laboring classes have gained nothing
and lost everything, by putting, indiscrimi-
nately, into every field of labor, the labor
of their women. They have lost an un.
told amount of money by it. They have
lost all their power by it. They cannot
! lift finger toward obtaining an advance
of wages. Labor is so plenty, and has
such immediate needs, that it must take
/ lust what is offered it, Ii the legislation
of Switzerland could, and would, pass a
| law shutting women out of those fields Of
employment always and alone occupied by
men in America, it would do more for in
creasing the power and prosperity Of the
work ing classes of Switzerland, and fol
the elevation of the women who are now
only drudges and slaves of physical toll
than they could possible do by any other
act
1t is proved here, beyond question
that the practical obliteration of what We
know in America as 4" woman's sphere i:
the practical obliteration of the power oi
/ both man and woman to fix the price o
their own labor. When only men do men,
work, then they can have a word to say
as to what shall be their compensation
/ Then their labor commands money because
it cannot be replaced by that which i.
cheaper. If strike among a certain elias
of laborers in Springfield should occur
and the places of the strikers could at
once be filed by laborers from Hartford
they would of course be without power
! The same would be the result if the labor
/ ing power of Springfield should be doubled
| The price of labor will go down alway;
and everywhere with the increased sup ply
and the greater the supply the more en-
tirely is the advantage In the hands OF the
buyer.
If there were not q natural sphere O.
labor for woman, 1t would be her true
policy to establish one arbitrarily. By hav
ing sphere and holding to it, she increase
her power to protect herself, and man
power to protect both himself and her. s,
soon as she makes her labor interchangeable
with that of man, she reduces herself ant
the man with whom she is associated t
helpless instruments of him who employ.
them. | believe this proposition is no
only demonstrabe, but is thoroughly dem
onstrated, not only in Switzerland, but i
nearly all of continental Europe.
The American laboring man, no matte
what department of labor may engag
him. is ten times the man that the Swis
laborer is. The Swiss works slowly, lazily
ineficiently. have never seen a Switze
here, at work for wages, who could not dc
under sufficient motives, twice the work h
was doing, and twice what he was expected
by his employer, to do. There is no nee
of woman here in those fields of industr
usually assigned in America to men. Tn
men of Switzerland can do the out-doo
| work of Switzerland. 1t is the occupatio
of their fields of labor by women, that ha
sent so many of them into the armies {
other nations, and made tn. " Swiss mel
, cenary" a reproach and byword. 1t
, the cheapening of their labor by womel
that has made them the helpless, hopele.
tools of their employers. As man fare
so fares woman. Though their sphere
. may be distinct, their lot is indivislble.