The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-16

Editorial Opinions OF the Lending Journals
Upon Current TODlcs-COmpiied Every
Day for the Evening telegraph.

1nandlng Tor women as we'll as men a 1alr
days wages for a fair day work. We count
it rather contemplate to send female clerks
from Washington to New York to straighten
out the public accounts, and yet to pay them
less than the men whose hard knots they un-
ravel. We view it rs that celebrated boxing
master the Game Chicken, viewed the con-
duct of Mr.. Toots in refusing to carry off
Florence Dombey by main force. cts mean,
you know. That's what it is It's mean"
The trouble is that this is not the whole of
the question of wages. Grant that all labor
should be paid according to its merit. Grant
that in the lighter kinds of labor, where no
great strength or skill is required, women
work as we'll as men, perhaps better, because
of their great conscentiousness and fidelity.
Still the difficulty remains, that their sex thus
limits them to smaller range of employ
ments. They cannot furnish the strength for
rougher work And for work requiring skill,
the trouble is that women, as a class, do not
learn it thoroughly enough to command
the highest wages. The reason they
do not learn it thoroughly is because the
prime of their lives is, or ought to be, given
to home duties. No doubt there are myriad
exceptions. But no woman expects to be an
exception, and therefore women do not, as
men do train themselves for some life-work
and become skilled laborers. Individuals
doubtless do, but they find to their cost that
the scale of wages is adapted to the habitual
condition of the whole class. In Virginia
Penny's invaluable encyclopaedia of the En-
ployments of Women in America we find
employer after employer pointing out this
as the chief drawback on the compensation of
women. mine out of ten get married as soon
as they are fairly initiated in work. "They are
very apt to marry Just as they become skill
full enough to be reliable" One china dealer
in New York ''thinks it best to get homely
girls, rather advanced in age, to attend store,
because the young and handsome ones will get
married. All agree that women are lost to
business pursuits by marriage, while men be-
come more attentive to business when they
have family to support. Hence the supply
of unframed women is always being re-
newed; as a class they are in the position
of apprentices, and earn apprentices wages.
We see the same result in the one profes-
sion in which women predominate, that of
teaching. No one doubts that women are by
nature peculiarly fitted for training the
young and for this reason, and because their
labor is cheaper, they are very extensively
employed. But these teachers are usually
very young girls, imperfectly educated, or
else they are widows, the prime of whose life
mas been otherwise spent. The School Com
mittees all complain that their ablest teachers
are soon transferred to homes of their own.
Did anybody ever know a country clergy
man whose wife had not taught school: The
parsonage gains, but the school-house loses,
and the whole profession loses. 1t is the
universal opinion Of foreign observers that
one great reason why our schools are inferior
to those of Germany is from the far
lower grade of culture among the teachers,
who are inexperienced girls, instead of uni
versity trained men. ''The American
preference of women as teachers, says Mat
thew Arnold, in his report on European edu-
cation, "gets no sanction from the practice of
the Continent. Competent foreign observers
who have studied the American schools report
that, as a general rule, though something is to
be learned from them as to providing and
maintaining schools, little or nothing is to be
learned from them as to teaching" The rea-
BON is that, With women teaching is tempo
Iary pursuit, and that, nevertheless, the
American schoolroom is becoming SO monopo-
ized by their cheaper labor that the ablest
men are generally tempted to other fields
All this we say with infinite regret and with
desire for light. Beyond the cruelty of en-
ployers, the unjust prejudices of society, and
the brutality of Philadelphia medical stu
dents there are obstacles in the very organi-
zation of woman to her earning the highest
wages The ballot can only affect other OBJ
stacles, not these particular ones The ballot
does not equalize the pay of men. though it
may help to equaliZe it. The wages of the
tailoress are not so far below the tailors as
5 y.
lawyer and tailor both have the ballot, and in
this city, at least, the tailor has the upper
hand. But the difference of wages between
the sex which works for wages continuously
and inevitably, and that which works excep-
tionally, is one which voting alone cannot
mend.
But one thing, at least, women can effect
They can train their daughters to do tho
roughly whatever their hands find to do. So
strongly does this habit of superticiality attach
to the work of women that even the leaders
of emancipation hardly get beyond it. 1t is
but few days since we heard two persons
prominent in the womans suffrage movement
admit with regret that there is not yet a
woman in the country who is fitted to preside
over a difficult convention. And this, not
for want of dignity. nor of presence, nor of
tact, but simply because not woman has as
yet taken the pains to master those simple
rules of parliamentary law which are to be
found in any small textbook on the subject
These rules are to a public meeting what
military drill is to an army-the only means of
keeping it from confusion. Jean Paul says that
no female general would ever give the plain
command. 'sHalt - but she would say, ''All
you people. as soon as L have done speaking.
/ command you all to stand still in your
places halt. | tell you" No person can
have read the reports of the stormy meetings
of the Equal Rights Association in this city,
last spring, without perceiving that nine
tenths of the trouble could have been pre-
vented by competent presiding officer. Yet
Mrs Fl. h. Stanton is woman of unques-
toned ability, and has been steadily attend
ing conventions for twenty years 1t is foI
the sake of women themselves that we wish