The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-17

| thew never so persistently, will hardly inter.
rupt this wholesome, subtle, and irresistible
process. Let no man, then, be alarmed at
their cooling. The theme they treat of is in
nowise sulphurous or volcanic, like the ques-
| ton of slavery. Even when the more ruffied
of their number deal with us men and with
our infrmities as mercilessly as the Phillipses
and Pillsburys of old were wont to deal with
| the Southern stakeholder, no mans blood is
| thereby made to boil; nor need we fear that
the fifteen millions of our better halves will
be thereby reused into rushing upon us,
scissors and bodkin in hand, to snip and bore
away our little lives. Incidentally, indeed,
the palombine crusade may very well help on
q good many really needed reforms, throw
light on forms of suffering to be relieved,
reveal social wrongs to be redressed, while
it certainly must provide a more or less
considerable number of comparatively
intelligent and warm-hearted women
both with occupation and amusement. To
be ''harmless dove" and COO for votes is by
no means the worst thing that can befall
woman. We are not of the mind of famous
woman, Madame de Stael, who declared that
women had only one use in the world; and,
though we are not prepared point blank to
question the dogma Of another of the sex that
the first duty of every woman is to be beau
tiful, we cannot religiously doubt that Provi-
dence must have meant to provide other lower
and yet respectable callings for women to
whom its dispensations may have rendered
the performance of this first duty either mate
rally difficult or morally Indifferent. Who
could find it in his heart, for example, to
quarrel with one of the thirty thousand sur
plus spinsters of Massachusetts, for choosing
10 lace the air of metropolitan platforms with
twittering tropes and to ply far and wide
over the land the delusive bobbin of sexual
politics, rather than NOPE in sterile inspec-
o.~f
and sour into predestinarian desperation be-
tween her sewing g-circle and her choir?
Let the 'female-suffrage movement, then,
| fulfil itself in foam. We may be sure that it
will neither subvert the foundations Of the
State nor reverse the genetic conditions of
humanity. At the worst, it may chance to
some of the too Jealous among the fair vota-
resses as Montaigne tells us it did to Marie
German in his days, who, overlapping her
self, fell from ths high feminine estate into
the deplorable and pendulous condition of a
man. But, as men will doubtless be gradu-
ally improved under the discussions attendant
upon this movement, even such calamity
would not be absolute. 1t might possibly
prove, indeed blessing in disguise, and con-
vert a rather unsatisfactory woman into quite
tolerable man.
OUR SHIPPING INTERESTS AND COM
MERGE - HOW CAN WE REVIVE
THEM
! From the NJ Y. Herald.
There is but one opinion as to the necessity
of doing something to restore the shipping
and commerce of the country. Every Ameri-
| can mourns over the departed glory of our
former maritime greatness Ten years ago
the tonnage of the United States exceeded that
| of any other nation. We had over five and
half millions of tons inclusive of registered,
enrolled, and licensed steam and sailing ves-
sells Now we have less than four millions.
This is a decline of over a million and half
tons in less than ten years. The groatast
falling off has been in the tonnage employed
in foreign trade. The cause of this is we'll
known The terrible civil war which we
lately passed through drove our shipping
from the oceans, and transferred both the
ownership and the carrying trade to for
eigners. But that is not the worst. We
have been going behind relatively to other
maritime nations, and particularly to Eng
land, ever since. Our great maritime and
commercial rival has got long way ahead
in the race. She has not been slow to i'm
prove the advantages given to her by the
war, and considering her resources and
facilities for ship-building she will maintain
her supremacy, unless extraordinary and wise
measures be taken to revive our shipping
interests.
What can be done, then, to restore our ship
and no easy one to solve. But our shipping
interests can be resuscitated and we may
again take the first rank among maritime
nations if proper measures be adopted. We
are told it is true, that the wages of labor
being so much higher here than in Great
Britain and other parts of Europe and the
interest of money so much greater, that we
cannot compete with foreign shipbuilders.
Then they have the materials for building
and all the things that enter into fitting up
and navigating vessels far cheaper. Nor can
it be denied that in Great Britain, and par
ticularly on the Clyde, they have attained q
high degree of skill in shipbuilding, as well
as having superior advantages in the abun-
dance and cheapness of materials and labor. In
the matter of skill in modelling and construct
ing vessels we are equal to the British, if not
superior, and there could be no doubt about
finding within short time all the skilled
labor necessary for any amount of work. Nor
can Great Britain beat us in the quality OF
timber and iron used for shipbuilding, while
we have thousand times over more in guam
tity. 1t is, then, simply question of com
parative cost in the price of materials and
labor. This we cannot overcome. We cannot
bring the wages of American labor, either in
preparing the materials or in putting them
together, to the level of British labor MOI
|, can we bring the interest of money or capital
, down to what it is in Europe. There are sc
many opportunities of employing proftably
here, and such a demand for it in the deve.
| lopment of this new country, that money
, must continue to be more valuable than
abroad. 1t is evident, therefore, that we
cannot compete, under such unequal condi-
{ tions, with Great Britain in shipbuilding