The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-05-02
women a. Gamblers.
From the London Spectator.

parently. to provide regular accommo-
dation for those women who gain theil
/ livelihood by specializing on the rise OF
| fall in the cost of provisions. There, Il
we may trust the reporters, there Is q
regular place set aside for the resort OF
women so engaged. It is not stock ex-
change, but provision dealers exchange
| One lady is said to have made II 500 on
1.-The corn corner of January. Another
| has splanked her bottom dollar" on the
| May wheat; third is Specializing deeply
| in pork and futures in hog products. .
| The reporters say that this occupation
| has curious effect on the countenances
of the women who frequent this exchange.
| They lose the mobility of feature and ex-
preston which is one of the great charms
of women, and don the mask of impene-
| trability peculiar to the man of business,
| whose great object it is never to betray
| for moment how things are going with
him. Now, so far as We know, there is
no reason whatever, except the prepos-
sessions of the existing committees of
the various exchanges of Europe and the
| west. why women should not be admitted
| freely TO all these exchanges, and it is
pretty certain that, at a time when the
legal restrictions which exclude them
from other professions are being one by
one removed, no legal restrictions to ex-
elude them from this profession is likely
to be imposed.
The late Lord Beaconsfield has told us
what he thought of speculative women in
| the clever little sketch of Lady BERTHE
| and BellaiI. who pretends to wish to go
| on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but is really
plunged heart and soul in railroad specu-
lation, and who faints on hearing that
the narrow guage has Won" Lord
Beaconsfield's verdict delivered as usual
through his favorite oracle Sidonia, is:
''She posters me with her letters, but do
not like feminine finance" and perhaps
there was more reason for this judgment
than there was for most of Mr.. Disraeli's
epigrammatic and sententious decisions
Undoubtedly, of all careers which are
likely to unseX women, that of stalking
considerable stakes on the results of a
complicated series of dubious commercial
events seems to us the most likely to pro-
duce that effect. Impersonal excitements,
which depend for their interest on heavy
pecuniary risks, can hardly be really
good for any human being. But if they
must be undergone by any human being
at all, certainly they do least harm to
those who have the least susceptibility to
finer feelings, who are most impersonal
in the whole attitude of their mind, who
are nearest to intellectual engines and
furthest removed from the life of the af-
fections. We have known many men
who would run great pecuniary risks with
little or no disturbance of their best per
sonal life-and in deprecating these gam
bling commercial pursuits as NOR
ally dangerous, we must net be
that the equalization of prices
which results from calm and wise spec
ulation on a sound basis of capital in the
upward or downward movements of
stocks or commodities, is of great advan-
tage to the world-but the present writer,
at least, has never known woman to
whom it wonld have been reasonable to
attribute the same imperturbability.
Nor do we think that If such a woman
existed, she could be, in the best sense of
the term feminine A true woman is
utterly vulgarZed by having her highest
excitements and prescriptions not
merely removed from the personal to the
purely mpersonal world, but made de
pendent on doubtful events containing
large element of chance. That which
Is best and finest in women will not stand
the wear and tear of this kind of life; and
though that is true of most men also, it
is not so true, aud will never be so true,
in their case, as it is in that of women
The corruption of the higher type, as was
long ago observed, is almost always a
worse corruption than the corruption of the
lower Now, woman's sensitiveness of
perception and liveliness of affection and
that delicacy of tact which arises from
sensitive perceptions and lively affections.
form unquestionably much larger pro
portional part of their whole nature than
the same elements form of mems. And
as the excitcments of commercial gamb-
ling. G., of speculation on the risks and
and chances of rce-undoubtedly
blunt that sort Of constituencies and af-
fectionateness and tact: it does much more
harm to women than it does TO men.
And yet in unsexing them it bestows up
on them nothing of the better masculine
life, for we do not count a little addition
to the power of wearing mask through
ordinary chances and changes, one of the
better aspects of masculine life. Just
conceive what the turf would become if
women were the chief managers of a its
tricks and rascalitiesi Imagine what a
woman acting as Mr., Trollope made Maj
Tufto act in The Dukes Children must
beeomel The bare imagination is almost
enough TO demonstrate the hop eless ruin
which gambling must bring on what is
nobiest in women.