Litchfield enquirer., 1874-07-23
MOman'S Work.

We clip the following from an address delivered by Gen. F. A. Walker, of tho Sheffield Scientific school, before the Am
 herst social union. After speaking of the two conditions essential to just distri-
 button of the product of industry: 1st the freedom of movement and of making con- tracts on the part of the laborcr; and, 2d, the respect and sympathy for labor in the community where it is to be performed,- he says that these conditions arc wanting in the case of women
 But privileged as We of the United States arc ill the conditions of labor, there are three classes of our population re- spectlnS which VIC cannot assume full ln- dustrial self-snficiency. shall make no apology for mentioning these classes to- gether. They arc the blacks of the South, our foreign element, and that portion of our women who work for wages.
 It is the partial failure of the two con d1tions on which have dwelt SO much at length that we have the cause of the in- adequate wages of women.
 would not disparage the more fam1l- jar social and physiological reasons why the services of women, as a body, are, in a degree, less desirable than those of men, or the economical reasons usually cited for their receiving lower wages than men for for work of same quality. It is un- occasionally true that tho finer nervous organization of woman in degree dis qualities her for entire success in fields of industry which her strength enables her to enter; while her capability for effort and endurance, remarkable as it IS, does yet confine her in narrow limits. It is aI- so true that the education of girls has been less practically useful than that of boys, while the general expectation of domesticity which is inherent and inerad- icable in the constitution of woman inter- feres not only with her preparation for active pursuits but also with her prosecu- tlon of them, reducing the singleness of purpose and interest with which her du- ties are discharged, and depreeiating in the eyes of her employer, and justly so, the value of services which may be abruptly terminated by marriage. Just so long as girls grow up in the belief that their mission is to adorn home, their ed- ucation will take shape accordingly. Pa rents and school boards may lay out courses with never so much of utilitarian intention, the mind of tho girl will secrete sweetness and grace from whatever food IS offered it. And just so long as the same tender illusion lasts, and we know 1t will outlast much bitter experience, woman will serve, distraite though not unhappy, as one who has Q name she has not taken, a city to which she has not come. Yet, after all is said, it remains true that 1t IS mainly in the want of re- spect and sympathy for woman Ill her work and ill social restraints upon the freedom of her movements as laborer, that we find the explanation of her lower wa ges.
 Woman, from her sensitiveness and ti- midity, has special need of the support of public sentiment as she submits her self to the rude hustlings of the market place. Yet though the most chivalric of peoples in our treatment of women in what we are pleased to call their sphere, we have not yet learned adequately to realize the stern necessity that, in the de- cay of household manufactures, is crowd ing hundreds of thousands of them into the unfamiliar field of paid labor, or to appreciate the obligation this imposes upon us as men and gentlemen to follow them with our earnest, active sympathy, and protect and champion them, not less Tn their labor, than at dance or festival.
 And, secondly, while women as labor CTS have especial need to be disembar- rassed and free in following employment, inasmuch as tho peculiar industries for which they are qualified are found only here and there, not everywhere as are the industries III which mon engage, we have the fact of their extensive disqualifica- lion for free movement by the force of false opinions of society. Without say ing anything in idealizations of the sex, which in such 8 connection would be the sheerest impertinence, ot in disparage- ment of the actual migration of female labor, is 1t not just to assert that the sen timents of another age and of society where this necessity of paid public labor did not exist. do in great degree disable the women of to-day from that close pur- suit of employment, that urgency and per sistency in seeking occupation, that ex- posture to gaze and comment which, in the case of men, not only secure the suc- cess of the individual applicant, but re- ieve the pressure upon the market else- where, and oftentimes prevent painful or fatal congestion of labor
 And what is the remedy Agitation and the diffusion of correct ideas. Let gifted women continue, as in the past, to appeal for public respect and sympathy for their sisters in their work; let the schools teach that competition is not al- mighty and that nothing that depends on
 human violition is memorable. Let the sta tistics of woman's wages be carefully gath cred and consistently held up to view, end