The Labor enquirer., 1883-01-27
No Women Need Apply.

No Women Need Apply.
Correspondence San Francisco Truth
This is the motto which stares us in
the face in front Of the new democratic
shop. None but voters are wanted here,
they say. Give the boys chance. The
motto of the period is not the survival
of the fttest, but of the strongest.
Stand aside women; let the boys have
chance. Mr.. Byran, the chivalrous, new
democratic recorder, has gone so far as
to say that a woman in office is neces-
sarily an object of charity. Is not this
adding mendacious insult to injury?
Bear witness to this, ye trustworthy,
sober, patient toilers in the mint. Ye
o1erworked, underpaid school teacher
Ye efficient public librarians, working
day in and day out before the eyes of
this people. Ye house girls, what few Of
you there are left, often less kindly
treated than the moon faced celestial
So you, my sisters, are objects Of charity,
for you are all toilers and fill offices of
more or less responsibility.
If you are objects of charity, how
much more 50 the overfed, bloated thief,
who sits at the public crib, and draws a
salary for doing nothing but mischief
The voter and politician who never did
days useful work in his life, stands at
the corner of the street and bends no
look save that of contempt, or q glance
worse than contempt, on the sisterhood
Of toll that passes by him. What keeps
him from being an object Of charity, but
the money he is stealing daily from us
and such as US? You take our bread
from us and then mock us. Let me ask
you, Mr.. Dives, if there is any place to
be left for the working woman, and if
so, where it is to be found. Your houses
and factories are full of Cinnamon they
are like grasshoppers in the land. There
is little left where they pass by.
Mr.. Byran says, with tender care for
the morals of woman that is quite touch
ing, "that being in a public office, a
woman is thrown in contact with all
sorts of men, and must to a certain ex-
tent be civil and obeying, and some
times to the detriment of her reputa-
ton" Oh, most lame conclusion, as if
all the heavy-headed villains in the city
did not know that not employment, but
the want of it, is the greatest cause of
degradation, and if degraded women
filled city offices, the fault was in the
men who held the responsibility of the
appointments.
Is it possible that no other avenue of
employment shall be open to women but
the beer saloon or concert hall, and even
that last resource to be closed against
them after awhile, on the ground of i'm
morality and their places supplied by
moral celestial lepers?
Let me ask Mr.. Byran and his con-
lICICo IL VIC CACndl1Sc Vi Il ldlF Gay 81
wages for fair days work is liable to
taint any woman? No; it is the secret,
willy, hidden temptation that those 50
we'll understand who are sp very virtu-
GUS in public and so scrupulous to avoid
all appearance of evil. Of all the causes
of revolution at present seething at the
bottom of society there is none so
potent, SO deadly and dangerous as the
to women!
When woman was loved, cared for and
and when she was worthy of
that respect there was peace and home;
at present there is not home, but hell!
where peace, now slumbering, shall soon
wake as war.
Politics and social life, are about
equally corrupt, and they react on each
other. Woman is becoming desperate
and unSrrIlnujn1s Eu1rss ssssssi, II