The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-07-08
Women and Business.

SAOS ". "oAAOu 1Ho T0pOIUeO, OIeCtly
traceable to despair at want of work.
Business of every kind is dull during the
summer months in town; the retail
shops discharge one-third of their sales
women, all kinds of mechanical work.
women are left without employment,
economical families turn their seam
stresses and servants adrift while their
houses are closed and they take their
ease in the country. In two of the cases
the women had been able to earn only
$3.50 per week all winter, out of which
they had to board and clothe themselves.
In all of the cases the women were de-
cent, virtuous creatures, preferring
death to dishonorable life.
This statement seems hard enough.
ls it fact that women have no resource
from slow starvation in this great over
fed country but sudden death? The
statement covers but one side of the case.
In the farming districts throughout the
whole of the United States, from the
peach farms in Delaware to the new
settlements in Arizona, house-servarts
can command everywhere fair living
wages, and in districts adjacent to large
cities their labor is at high premium
during the summer months. From the
rich farms of Pennsylvania and Mary
land there is year after year a constant
complaint of the impossibility of secur-
ing efficien: female servants; and during
the cranberry and whortleberry picking
season in New Jersey and the peach gath
erlng months in Delaware the whole
OF that class betake themselves to the
hills, orchards or great canning houses,
where exceptional prices are paid. while
the mistress of the farmhouse is left to
struggle with her work as she can.
Three or four dollars per week with
board would be given to efficient cooks
in these houses if they could be found,
at the very time when women in the
cities are drowning themselves to keep
from starving.
There seems to be peculiar defect in
woman's business capacity which
hinders her from bringing her skill and
energy to bear at the right point. She
has the skill, she has the energy, but she
very seldom knows how to get them in
to the right groove. In the cities you
find hundreds of thousands of women
struggling for work as shop-girls, clerks,
hair-dressers, milliners, ETC., etc., and
failing, simply because they stay where
there are thousands of the same trade
in competition. If they would 90 to
some village or inland town, where taste
or fashion are beginning to create de-
mand Tor their work, and where living
is cheap, they could be sure in the end
of competency, if not fortune. On the
other hand, in these very inland towns
and farms you find hundreds of thou
sands of other women, anxious to make
a living, sending poems, novels, pic
lures and high art embroidery literally
by the ton for sale into the cities, which
are already swarming with unsuccessful
authors and artists; and blind to the
fact that their nei ghbors really want
first-class milliner, embroiderer, sales
woman or hair-dresser.
The same singular defect in what we
may call the business organization of
women is shown in their difficulty with
the management of household servants.
About every six months this venerable
topic comes up again for fresh and fierce
discussion in the newspapers, and is ar
gued and theorized about until it appears
as insoluble a problem as the creation of
evil. But why is there any difficulty?
A contractor or manufacturer controls
hundreds or thousands of employees,
every 'boss" mechanic has his jour-
neymen, and nobody hears any COM
plant. Why must woman call on all
the world to hear of her single Biddy's
ignorance or Betty's insolence? The
reason is that women do not realize that
in labor, as in everything else, money
will bring its W. rth. The contractor
who hires hundred men. or the car
penter who hires one, knows precisely
what labor they ought to give and how
much money they should be paid. If
the workman is unskillful, lazy or drunk
en-, he loses his job or is paid less. It is
precisely the same case with domestic
servants. Skillful, intelligent, respect
full cooks, chambermaids and mattresses
are now to be had in this and every city,
and are employed in houses where in
Biddy or Betty would not be
admitted. 1t is true they command
high wages. But it is because the sup
ply of such servants is not yet equal to
the demand. The complaints against
as class come generally
from mistresses who employ but
one overworked and poorly paid
maid of all work, and who, too
conscious of the vast social gulf
between the parlor and kitchen of their
establishments, exact from her profound
Difference and as much skill as the chef
of a royal cuisine would pay to royalty
itself. The mistress of the little house |
who helps with the washing and stands |
at the ironing board side by side with
the frowsy m aid, may deserve respect
and service as much as the grand dame
with her liveried retinue. But if she has |
not the money to pay for the higher class
of servants who could appreciate her
real worth, and can not keep apart from
them, she will not get either respect or
service. There is no use in complain
ing. T
Women become respondent at their
lack of success both as employers and
1t arises not from any in
com potency in themselves, but from their
lack of recognition of several hard, mex.
orable business truths, such as these
which we have tried to illustrate.
Women are apt to boast. perhaps Justly,
hat thew have the same Intellect. tact.