The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1878-10-11
WOMEN TEACHERS.
How They have Superseded Men in the
Public Schools.

Public schools.
Woman has won her present position
in the public schools from beginnings as
/ small as a grain of mustard seed. In
Barnard's Rhode Island report for 1915,
he says that in all the schools he visited,
or from which returns were received, out
of Providence, (and excepting the pri-
mary departments of few central dis
tricts), he found only six female teach
eTs, and that, with the above exceptions,
there could not have been more than
twice the number employed in the whole
state His successor, who visited the
same schools in 1861, found more than
200 female teachers; but he thought two
thirds of those taught by men, even then,
would have been better taught and dis
ciplined by women. In 1887 there were
and in 1913 their number had swelled to
500. This increase Horace Mann con-
sidered great reform, believing women
much better adapted to the work. In
1860, according to the census, about IA
per cent. of all the teachers in the United
States were women. In New England
the excess of women teachers over men
is very great, but in most of the western
and also in the southern states there is a
smaller percentage. In Maine the pro-
portion in summer is about 81 per cent,
~ OAAy ~ Pei NOAO. III v OA-
mont nearly 80 per cent. of the teachers
are women throughout the year, and in
New York about 66 per cent. In New
York city more than 80 per cent. of the
teachers are women, and in other large
cities the preponderance of women over
men is very great. No doubt the econ
! omy of employing women as teachers
goes far to explain their rapid increase,
but their wages as well as their numbers
hEarr ole ctr Il -,
corded that Polly Hovey, one of the first
female teachers in Maine, was paid, in
1892, $3.50 per week. In Iowa, at one
time, two women taught for $4.29 a
month, though the average salary of wo-
men teachers in that state was 1874 per
month. Even men were not very liber-
ally paid in old times, for in Watertown,
Mass, in 1850, a schoolmaster was hired
for one year for $50, and allowed 'two
shillings a head for keeping the dry
herd.'' It is mentioned in one of the
Massachusetts, normal school reports
that one of the young men graduates re-
ceiyed, when he entered upon his career,
$13 a month, and "boarded round" By
the way the custom of boarding round is
generally supposed to have died out; but
1t is still in vogue in many places, and
in at least one district in Pennsylvania
all the teachers receive SIS month and
board in this manner. Who but the vic
tim himself can describe the miseries of
"bOarding round'' in rambling country
villages-of living for a week or month
on tea and pie, and then only exchang-
ing the bill of fare for pie and tea; of
sleeping under ieaky roofs, upon pillows
which the rains and SHOWS of heaven be-
dew; of shivering in breakfast rooms,
where, if drop of water fall upon the
table-cloth, though the stove be in close
proximity, it is instantly frozen? And
yet the physical discomfoTts are often
the least of the homeless teachers trials.
To return to wages, certain male gradu-
ates of the BrIdgewater Normal school,
who began with $25 or $50 month, in
Guiding board, now receive So, 200 year,
and few $4,000; and salaries of women
graduates have increased in the same
proportion. To be sure, there is too of
ten lamentable difference between the"
sexes in respect to wages, but women, at
least those employed in cities, undoubt-
eddy earn more than they could obtain in
other occupations. Probably few clerks
or operatives earn, as do 900 teachers in
Boston, $3.50 every week in the year,
| including ten weeks in vacation. In
Massachusetts the average salary per
month of men for 1875 was $SS.37; of
women, $685.. In Maine, men, $S7
women $lo. In pennsylvania, men,
$41 OF; women, $34O9 In Ohio, men,
| $50; women, $44 In Michigan, men,
SOL 80; women, $3.50. But in some
states, as in Iowa, the rule is becoming
general to pay men and women the same
salary for the same grade of work. In
the city of st. Louis no distinction is
made between the sexes in fixing the
teachers salaries; and the California
legislature in 1878 enacted that the fe-
male teachers in the public schools
should in all cases receive the same COM
pensatiOn as men for like services. A
few of the southern states, which employ
more men than women, pay the same
salary for the same work to both sexes :;
and Idaho, Nevada and Arizona report
the same custom.
| Nevada, which supports but few schools,
pays her teachers $100.56 per month, and
in Arizona, where the schools are all of
a primary grade, and the larger portion
of the children of Mexican birth, teach
ers are paid from 800 to 1925 per month.
OF late the hard times have caused a re-
ductiOn in teachers salaries, and this
seems to many unjust. One indignant
superintendent cries: 'Why should re-
trenchment begin at teachers salaries
when fashion laughs at panics ?''-Har-
per's Magazine.