New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-11-14
women Car Conductors.

Women are so fond of proving their power
to excel in cmployments hitherto supposed to
be peculiar to men, that it is wonder no wo-
man has yet essayed to be a car conductor.
1t must be admitted that our women show
good taste in the selections they make from
masculine pursuits. Wehave feminine Judges
and lawyers, but no feminine policemen !;
feminine clergymen, but no feminine colpor-
teurs saleswOmcn by the hundred, but no
female porters, though it is indisputable that
there are plenty of women more fit for that
position than some of the men are who now
hold it. In like manner, it would not be
difficult to find score of women who dcvout-
~ believe that they arc fit to be presidents
and directors of railway companies, but who
have no aspiration to the post of conductor.
To be candid, VIC suspect that the constitu-
tiOnal nervousness of the sex would be an in
superable bar to success in this field.
The petty humors which six women out of
ten display toward their own sex in emcrgen-
cies which demand good temper and forbear-
ance, would be enough to destroy the patron
age of any railroad company, so far as that of
| female passengers was concerned. Mans in
humanity to man is equaled by woman's dis
courtesy to woman, and we know ofnO position
in which that discourtesy would be called into
moro constant operation than that of car con-
ductor on city railroad. Depend upon it, if
men in that position are as testy and unaccom-
modating as they are often said to be, women
would be ten times worse. Fancy the stop
ping-places that would be forgotten, the
change that would be unreturned, the fares
that would be either uncollcctcd or demanded
twice, the lady passengers that would be snub-
bed and the gentlemen passengers that would
be browbeaten! Fancy the "spotters" that
would be ''spotted," the directors that would
cajoled, the policemen that would be whceded
and the general Generalization that would
reign from muddy morn to dusty eve! We
hear great deal from poets and preachers
concerning wOmen's benevOlence and angel
hood. Ifman is little lower than the angels,
woman, according to them, is every inch as
all. Verywell. Then let some woman prove
her kinship to the stars by conducting a
street car as it should be conducted,
according to that ideal standard which so
many women, judging by their complaints,
appear to have erected in their own minds
Let her, in position of this kind, be kind
and gentle to women with big baskets and
small children let her bear in mind the fifty
different places at which she is requested to
stop; let her good-tcmperedly change or re-
fuse to change, as the case may be, the ag-
gravating ten-dollar note which is always
offered for fare when the car is at its fullest
and the difficulty of making change the great
est; let her, for fourteen hours out of the
twenty-fOur, be calm in manner and polite in
word, amid the dirt, and the perspiratiOn,
and the vulgar crowd, and the thousand an
nOyanccs that beset the male conductor
let her do all this, and we will acknowledge
not only that she has the moral height of the
angels, but that she is even head and shout
ders tallcr.-Arcadian.