New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-02-03
WOlfEN rs PRINTERS. ,.
We print the folIovfiss. tesssrafrcm Miss

Susan Is. Anthony;
"REvoLUrroN OFFICE. Jan %, 1869.
"GRSTLEMEN; Tho wOrkiDgwoman's Association APP
peal 70 you contribute literally TO It for the purpose Of
enabling establish training school for girls in the
art OF typesetng at There hundreds OF young
this city more than 0have made personal
application 10 mol who stand ready TO learn the trade
women stitching with their needles ut starving
prices because that is the only work they know how TO do
"Now gentlemen. II you will help TO money well
at once start school These must be helped to
board in part at least while learning the trade. Give us
the means and we will give you competent women
compositors. Respectfully yours.
SUSAN b. ANTHONY"
We like Miss Anthony's suggestion. One
trouble about "the Woman Question" is the
few methods by which dependent woman may
earn their living. There are many forms of
labor denied to the sex by their severity or
unsuitableness. 1t would be impossible for q
woman to become bricklayer, or a sailor, or
laborer upon the highway; and there are
many other departments which men have
absorbed to their own disadvantage and the
injury of the other sex. This is so much
the case that when q woman is thrown upon
the world, she finds herself compelled either to
teach school or to sew. If very fortunate, she
becomes an attendant in dry goods store. In
New-York, however, tho preponderance of
male clerks over female clerks in the delicate
millinery and dry-goods business is overwhelm-
ing Woman is virtually excluded from the
stores of the city.
There is no occupation which seems so pc
culiarly adapted to woman as setting type. 1t
Is In many respects a mental labor. 1t requires
little bodily effort. 1t is peculiarly sedentary,
and needs NO more exertion than the sewing
machine or the piano. The men who set type,
as q general class, possess q great degree of
intelligence. We presume that more men have
risen to distinction from the printing office than
from any single occupation and if nine -tenths
of the printers in New-York were thrown upon
their own resources and sent out from this
great city into tho now countries which
yearn for their industry and ability, it
would be better for them and better for tho
Republic. They are in many cases fitted to be
the leaders of men, to rise in the learned pro-
fessions to perform the highest duties of society.
Nothing but tho natural dislike toward taking
what seems to DO risk keeps so many men in
this dense and thankless city till they waste
their years over the printing case, and become
prematurely old aud poor.
We should like to see type-setting generally
abandoned to woman. 1t is her work, and in
this work she has succeeded. Women are
naturally as quick and intelligent as men, and
will make quite as good printers. We trust
that Miss Anthony will persist in this new
effort and that she will receive encourage
ment from those who hire printers labor.
There are some departments In printing in
which, perhaps, it would not be well for
woman TO assist. In morning newspapers,
where the work is thrown mainly into the
middle hours of the night, and is accompanied
by the unpleasant necessity OF being away
from homo at unwelcOme hours, we do not
think 1t would be an advantage for women to
be employed Still, 1t might be done We
trust to see a thorough trial made