The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1877-10-06
Occupation for women.

In Sucn country Is 0uIB, Wnof0 uu.
told acres of land, full of the riches that
would load the harvests of lifetimes, lie
idle, vet near the markets, and capable
of being titled and lived upon in COM
fort, it is reproach to the men of the
nation that they are not taken up and
brought into use; and that while such
opportunities lie unemployed, all the
avenues of work in cities are crowded
with sleek and rosy men, and all the at
tics and purlieus of starvation are
crowded with pallid and emaciated
women.
OF course there has been already q
great deal said concerning the employ
ment of men in situations that could be
filed by women; but there is no reason
why the charge should not be again
and again resounded till reformation in
the matter is effected. Whenever q
mans superior physical strength ena-
bles him to do what woman can not
do, or when his superior intellectual
ability or scholarship gives him powers
of which she is destitute, then he can
occupy himself without any loss of man
illness; but wherever woman can do
the work as well, it BELTS a man to
look about him and see if he be not as
much out of place as he would feel him
self were he dandling babies. busting
trinkets, or darning lace for liveli-
hood.
We intend, however, no crusade
against the dry-goods" clerk, who is
almost invariably an honest, patient,
faithful, and in every way worthy citi-
zen, although we think he has mistaken
his place. Public opinion will one day
dispose him and all his brothers in
places better fitted to their natures and
abilities. We only intend to point out a
few opportunities, otherwise, that wom-
en- either have tried elsewhere or might
try here to advantage.
In England, so great has been the
emigration that many paths are left
open to women that they might never
have found had there been men to COM
mand them. To be sure, the drinking
shops there, which are tended by the
handsomest women in the three king
doms, are something which we do not
care to see more fully initiated on this
side of the sea, no matter how well con-
Quoted those women may be. But there
are countless other situations where the
English women have the start of us, and
from whose circumstances we might
gather some hints ourselves. In many
hotels there, they are clerks, book-keep-
ers, stewards, and general managers;
they form good proportion of the tele-
graph operators; and they do all the
floor business of theaters, selling the
tickets, checking the garments-for the
English wisely refuse a lady the right of
annoying every one behind her with her
lofty hat and ead-gear-ushering the
guests, and selling them refreshments
after they are seated.
Yet these are but few of the ways in
which women may find occupation as
modest and suitable as in the haber-
dashery or behind the candy counter,
and with pay tolerably equivalent to the
duties. There is no reason why a wom-
an should not sell the tickets of q rail-
way, sheltered in the little Office at
whose window they are exchanged;
should not altogether monopolize the
business of the florist and of the market
gardener, neither of which is at all too
heavy for her actual strength; should
not fill the desks of bank offices, tax
collectors, and other clerical places;
should not attend to all the lighter por-
tons of manufacturing. Into some of
these things women have already effect
ed an entrance that will make the way
wider, There are many women now at
work upon the telegraph, many are
compositors in printing houses, many
are book-keepers; and every woman
who does her duty well in one of these
places, makes it easier for the next
woman to take and to get and to keep
as much better ones as may be desired
each upward step being a hold-fast
for the next. The first woman who went
into printing office was an innovator;
she made it possible for one to 90 into
telegraph-office. And thus the book
keeper will doubtless make it possible
that the great merchant doing business
with foreign countries, having ships go
out and ships come in, shall be wom-
an too as often as man.
We do not think this matter trench
ing at all upon the disputed topics of
woman g rights, since all men have held,
from the time that any attention at all
began to be given to the status of wom-
en- as an integral part of the race and
not an accident of it, that she has a
right to work, q right to get her own
living in any honest way she can, and
the living of as many others as she will. |
There is no selfishness of class or sex
in this desire to increase the usefulness
of woman. The occupation of such
places as those we mention by women
will not drive men into places where |
they will be unhappy or taxed beyond
their strength; but they will cease to be
doing work where they not only are not
required, but are wasted, and their Ia
Dor will become productive, which the
labor of men in such situations can not
now be fifty termed. They will add,
too, by so much to all the opportunities
of civilization, will increase the wealth
of the country, and simply allow
women to assist in its distribution.
I. 1t is, however, rather idle to speak of
the affair as if women were to drive
men out of position voluntarily and de-