The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1881-02-09
Letter from the Capital
THE BILL TO PROVIDE WORK FOR WOMEN
THE AGE OF REASON AND JUSTICE.
mo. I'll
mo. Ell
Correspondence of the lerAld.

Correspondence of the herald.
AUSTIN, February 6, 1881.
The bill offered by Senator Houston in the
senate yesterday, in the interest Of women as
employees in the state department, e!cp no.
only does credit to one of the clearest- headed
and most liberal minded of our legislators,
but is an honor in its passage, to the body
within which il emanated. 1t is to be hoped
hat the house will be as true to liberty as
the senate has proven. The HERALD is one
of the first papers in the state that espoused
the cause of these rights and 1t
has uniformly urged them; and 1t
is only little time yet when the
triumph of its course will be completed.
The argument that to do "the work hitherto
done by man is not woman's sphere" is
rapidly passing into the category of tossilsed
ideas, of mistaken philanthropy, just as has
been laid away the older one akin to it that
slavery was the best possible condition for
colored man, whom even Montesquieu used
to tell us credulons, sis without soul, be-
cause his skin is so black, his lips so thick
and his foot so fiat that God would never
have put soul into such body" Now,
who shall say what "womsn's sphere is?'
shall man Then why shall woman not say
what mans sphere is? Equity
knows 10 difference in sex, any more
than IT does Of eolor of skin, or eyes or share
of limb. Surely this novel sense of woman is
as acute as that of man, and who shall assert
that her intellectual is inferior as a bar to her
claim to equal rights to earn living by
similar means with man? In sciences, in
literature and in sculpture, in philanthropy,
in politics and in business, sagacious queens
and noble women not only dispute such ag
absurd proposition but fatty contradict it.
For this, attest the names of Elizabeth and
Mary, Catherine aud Maria Theresa, Mrs.
Somervile, Miss Martinesu and Madame
DeStael, Madame Roland, Sarah Bern
hardt anu George Eliot, the Brownings, the
Landons, the Bremers, the Hemanses, Hy-
pasid, and the myrads of other shining
lights. In view of these and scores Of others
now to-day, by law deferred, their equals,
who will insist that they shall be kept in
such subsection by iliterate drunkards who
vote and make the laws? Who shall urge
that the spendthrift and debauchee alone
shall occupy the soft, fat places of the COM
mon land, and deny to woman the right TO
earn also daily bread therein for herself and
little ones =? Who shall announce that the
colored man, without learning, the foreigner,
with short residence, the fast young man,
with the hair part in the middle, covered by
No. 6 hat, shall vote away and legislate
upon the prosperity of the widow or the sub
sistence of the orphan? And this, too, when
such woman or orphan might double-dis-
count the Intelligence and patriotism Of any
OF those? Surely the bare statements of these
few suggestions is enough to make manly
man shudder at the thought of the slavery
heretofore imposed on woman. TO her the
chivalry of manhood has,only too often said,
"You may take in sewing at fifty cents day,
or take eoarders and run in DEBT at the end
Of the moAth, or teach school to be worried
into skeleton by obstreperous pupils; but
you must go no further, for you will then
be out of your sphere" This is the lucid
argument Of the Pawnee and the Sioux who
make of woman beast of burden to carry
the baggage and drag home the fuel from the
woods. This is first cousin german to the
argument ofthe Turk aud the Egyptian lord
who will not permit, 10 his suspicious
chivalry, his lady to go afoot beyond the
walls of the harem or to be seen unveiled of
man. This is the parallel of the argument
of the Russian whose females are not allowed
to sing the praises of kingly maH in the pres
ence of the "lord Of creation" And all I'm
der the same plea that such an advance
would be indecent, repugnant to our (msn's)
sense of propriety and ideas OF feminine char.
acter. Who constituted man theiudge of all
these things? Who made him the final srbi.
tor of sense, morality, taste, propriety, de-
cency? Himself, the very one who in the ar
9ogsnce and presumption Of his nature, as.
berts himself the best handiwork of the Crea-
! tor when there are millions of worlds which
he does not know if peopled or not, and by
what order Of beings. Himself, the very one
who says that he, man, is made in the very
image of that Creator, and then sits down
and models the painting Of the latter in the
image of himself. Himself, the very one
who most outrages in daily social life, above
all others, those very things of sense, moral
it's, taste, propriety, deoency. And not
only this, but pulls down woman with him
and then kicks her into tho gutter.
This is of 'the haudiwork of the great
jehovah" "the image of his Maker" that
would shut out from woman-from the
mother that bore him, the sister that played
and was educated with him, the wife that he
has selected for the grandest of all RESPONSE
bilities, the rearing of his children, the
daughter he processes to love, the avenues of
honest avocations beyond his selfshly pre-
sc.ibed dictaton. If this be chivalry then
make the most oft, tit be not downright
injustice, and transparent confession of
jealousy, then burn the dictionary.
J.FE.