New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-11-15
WOuEys PAY and WOMEYS WORK


The TRIBUNE aims to do its full duty in
demanding for women as well as men fair
days wages for fair days work. We count
it rather contemplate to send female clerks
from Washington TO New-IOrl to straghten
out the public accounts, and yet to pay them
less than the men whose hard knots they
uuravel. We view it as that celebrated boxing
master, the Game Chicken, viewed the conduct
of Mr.. Toots in refusing to carry off Florence
Dombey by main force. Its 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 he paid according to its merit Grant
that in the lighter kinds of labor, where no
great strength or skill is required, women
work as well as men, perhaps better, because
of their greater conscientiousness and hdeIlty.
Still the difficulty remains, that their sex thus
limits them TO a smaller range of empoyments.
They cannot furnish the strength for rougher
work. And for work requiring skill, the
trouble is that women, as a class, do not
Learn IL 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 a myriad
exceptions. But no woman expects to be an
exception, and therefore women do not, as
men do, train themselves for some lifewOrk
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 III America" we find
employer after employer pointing out this
as the chief drawback on the compensation OF
women. Nine 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 a family to support. Hence the supply
of unframed women is always being re-
newed; las a class they are in the position
of apprentices, and earn apprentices wages.
We see the same result in the one profession
in which women predominant, that of teaching.
No one doubts that women are by nature pc
cularly fitted for training the young; and for
this reason and because their labor is cheaper,
they arc very extensively employed. But these
teachers are usually very young girls, imper-
fectly educated, or else they are widows, the
prime of whose life has been otherwise spent.
The School Committees all complain that their
ablest teachers are soon transferred to homes
of their own. Did anybody ever know a
country clergyman 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 in
ferior to those Of Germany is from the far
lower grade of culture among the teachers,
who are inexperienced girls, instead of univer-
sity trained men. 1.-THE American preference of
women as teachers says Matthew Arnold,
in his report on European education, "g 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 main
Gaining schools, little or nothing is TO be
" learned from them as to teaching" The rea-
son is that, with women, teaching is q tempo
rary pursuit, and that, nevertheless, the Ameri-
can school-room is becoming 80 monopolized
by their cheaper labor that the abest men are
generally tempted to other fields.
All this we say with infinite regret and with
desire for light. Beyond the cruelty of em-
ployers, the unjust prejudces of society, and
the brutality of Philadelphia medical students,
there are obstacles in the very organization OF
woman to her learning the highest wages Tho
ballol can only affect other obstacles not these
particular ones. The ballot does not equalze
the pay Of men, though it may help to equal