The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-28
WORKING GWOAIEN-THEIR WAGES AND
HOMES.
From the N. Y. Tribune.

hOMESo.
From the N. Y. Tribune.
The contributor who tells our readers
something of workingwomen and their wages,
has made so careful a study of her subject
and taken such wise means to inform herself
upon it, that her statements, much as they
differ from the staple assumptions of the
newspapers, must be received with respectful
consideration. The distress of working
women is not to be relieved by taking for
granted that they are uniformly underpaid,
and demanding that their wages shall be
raised. If it is true that while the capable
and industrious can earn as much as their
labor is worth, and with due care can live
decently upon their earnings if it is true that
women are sorely wanted in respectable avo-
cations which false pride bars them from en-
tering; if it is true that the effort to provide
them with cheap and comfortable homes is
partially failure because after the homes
are built the women will not live in
them, then for the relief of the present dis
tress we must try means far different from
those we have been trying. Observe, our
contributor does not question that misery
enough exists among the workingwomen.
There are the feeble, the naturally incapable,
the widows burdened with young children,
the girls upon whom disabled parents depend
for support, and there are finally hundreds of
that unfortunate class, found among both
sexes, who with all the will and the fitness to
work, are invariably pushed to the wall in the
scramble for place. How to relieve these
poor creatures is always a problem. but it is
one which does not belong to the woman
question alone, for there are thou
sands of men in distress through the
| same or analogous causes. We know
| moreover that there is a world of misery
which lies hidden from the light; there is
| starvation in dismal novels which the step of
| the social economist never approaches, and
| the Song of the Shirt is droned from weary
week to week in garrets which few of us know
anything about For all this it is true, as
the writer of our article asserts, that thou
sands of families are ready to give easy work
with good wages to respectable women, and
| the respectable women will starve on six
pence day rather than take it. 1t is true
| that great deal of the misery of the female
| working class is lowing to an absurd feeling
that domestic labor is degrading, and that
'social position" is one of the first necessities
of life. So while some departments of indus.
| try are overcrowded others are in absolute
| want of workers.
Whether anything can be done to disabuse
poor American women of these erroneous ideas
we are by no means certain. At any rate the
evil is likely to be exaggerated by eloquent
| reformers who decry the drudgery of house
hold labor, and believe that woman is never
SO much slave as when she is looking after
the kitchen and the nursery. But while they
are doing mischief in one way, we can per
haps do some good in another. The problem
of cheap homes for workingwomen is mo-
solved yet. The causes which have disturbed
the few experiments thus far made can bt
ascertained, and the difficulties can doubtless
be remedied. We can make these homes more
home-like; we can hide the features which
give them the hated aspect of charitable insti
tutions we can possibly modify irksome rule
and remove few unnecessary restraints. Th
rates of wages are pretty certain in the lonI
run to regulate themselves on the tOlerabl
Just basis of the law of supply and demand
in spite of anybody's interference. Blu
homes for the workers can be provided b.
benevolent enterprise, and provided in sue
form that no woman who accepts their benefit
need feel that she accepts an aims.