The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1883-04-26
Woman as an Inventor.

called such in the years gone by.
Woman an Inventor.
Whatever may be the inherent weak
nesses of woman, inability to fight her own
battles is certainly not one of them, and
should all that is now demanded for the sex
in the way of larger opportunities for the
acquisition of a university education,
greater liberty in the choice of an occupa-
ton, and fuller recognition under the law
OF Individual rights, ever be secured to it
as should and must be the ultimate result of
the present agitation of the questionable
will have the satisfaction of knowing that
the victory is of her own winning Nothing
Is doing so much. indeed, towards breaking
down the barriers Of public prejudice and
Ignorance which have so long limited the
range of her genius and ambition as the
practical evidence which the more highly
favored of her sisters are giving of their
ability to hold their own in the field of in
telleetual controversy, and the statistics
the hard, unanswerabIe facts-which they
are at such pains to gather in support of
their arguments, are certain to wear their
way finally through the crust Of public
doubt and incredulity. Mere dogmatic asser-
tons of woman's unftness for employments
and pursuits which men have hitherto mo-
nopolized must give way when proof is
furnished that she has already distinguished
herself in these very occupations, and doubts
as to her ability to bear her full share of
public and private responsibility must dis
appear ON the evidence being presented that
in effect she is already doing SO. We are
prompted to these reflections by very
matter-of-fact article in the May num-
Der of the North american Reuieg, by
Matilda Joslyn Gage, on woman as
an Inventor" in which she undertakes to
dispel, by means of formidable array of
facts, the popular fallacy that woman pos
sesses no inventive or mechanical genius.
Leaving out of consideration the discoveries
ascribed to women in ancient times-among
which were the invention and ornamental
ton of pottery, the fabrication of silk, guaze,
lace ard the cashmere shawl, the extraction
of that delicious perfume, the ottar of roses,
and engraving on wood-which Mrs. Gage
describes in a charmingly erudite way, it is
certainly significant that woman invented
the first cotton gin-although man OBJ
tanned the credit of it-and the first straw
bonnet, while in the list of more complex
mechanisms she is represented by the Bur-
den horseshoe machine-which saved $780,
100000 in the first fourteen years of its use
"a mower and reaper, the paper pail, the
gimlet-pointed screw, an improved spinning
machine, rotary loom, voltaic smelling
furnace, wood-sawing machine, chain
elevator, d deep-sea telescope, machine for
making satchel-bottom paper bags, the
inventor was offered $4,000 for the patent.
and many other equally valuable and novel
appliances. Indeed, the achievements of
woman in the line of invention, as cited by
Mrs. Gage from the official records, are fairly
astounding, and the more especially as our
laws do not protect her, if she be married,
in the right to dispose of the products of
her genius as she pleases. Considering that
there is thus lacking one of the most power
full inducements to invention, the wonder is,
as Mrs Gage points out, not that woman
has been an inventor to an equal extent
with man, but that she should have invented
at all. With equal opportunity for the
development of her natural ingenuity and
the same pecuniary incentives to thought
and study, what might she not accomplish in
the field of invention-a field to which, more
than to any other, perhaps, the United States
owes its phenomenal industrial progress?