The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-29
AMERICAN GIRLS.

From the N. Y. Tribune.
Our San Francisco correspondent some
time ago invited working women to emigrate
there promising them first, wages, and Sc
condly, husbands. Some Buffalo girl sends
to an intelligence Office in San Francisco and
accepts the challenge for herself and as many
of her companions as they will send tickets
for. "Well work and pay for our fare when
we get there" she says. 'We are no stran-
gers to the kitchen. We are neither Irish,
Dutch, nor Chinee; we are good American
girls, who know sauerkraut from ham. What
we want is the money, and not the men,"
''This writer" says the California paper,
'evidently means business" 1t is more
evident that she means business than work.
If she or her class of ''good American
girls, really wanted work and wages
there is no need to beg a passage to
California; they could find them both in
the numberless wealthy families in every East
ern city and still more in the West, where
the kitchens so long given up TO Irish and
Dutch await in dirt and disorder the avatar of
tho long-looked-for Cbinee. We know houses
within an hours distance of New York, into
which the highest wages, and every comfort
and CONVENIENCE which money or a conscien-
tious sympathy with the laborer could sug-
gest, have failed to tempt one of these Ame-
rcap girls who are SO ready to set off to
California in search of probable wages and a
mythical husband We are tired of hearing
and repeating the old story, on one hand, of
the absolute impossibility of finding among
these American women clean, intelligent
cooks fo On lhoqsekeepers who are willing
for even the highest pay to work in
pleasant we'll ordered homes, and to sleep
in large comfortable chambers, and on the
other of the thousands of starving women
in gArrets driven TO the street for support. +"
Nor need these women even go to domestic
service to obtain ga sufficient livelihood
Skilled workwomen are in as great demand as
skilled 'mechaEics.o While the great mass of
slopShopa women ARE, no doubt, underpaid,
there is not ladytof means in New York who
does not know the really high price which
skilful needlewo4ep. command and obtain.
woman who has .oenergy and intelligence
enohgh to write the letter which we quote has
no need of demanding charity to help her to
wander unprotected Ito San Francisco foI
either work or a hpsband,
To sum the whole matter up, we do not
deny that there is suffering among women in
our great cities; but the cause is precisely
that of the fsring apnong men-the want
of either the ability or the willingness tc
work. Our women, each and all, not unna
turally perhaps, in this period of tentative
essay and fermentation among them from the
highest to the lowest show a disposition Just
now to slight the plain prosaic duties under
their hands, and grope after Alhaschar visions
far:off, The leader of a political party shut
up her home and declines to bear children, il
order to be President, just as this Buffalo
wohian turns her back on theicolumns o
Advertisements for '"'help" of distracted house
keepers in her own town, and ,sighs for Cali
fornia kitchens; or -innumerable halt
grown n ,nSAliys .,h in ~ a. our M G back-court
sneer at the idea of being dishrwashers
as they esprsssttI and aspire to be salesladies
or else, go, tFoopjpg q into factories IL i
hardly worth whils 70 Treat the matter seri