Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-06-19

you breathe forty hogsheads of good pure
air. You must by some kind of usefulness
pay for all this. Our race was the last
.nlng created-the birds and fishes on the
tourtn day, the cattle and lizards on the
Nun DAY and man on. the sixth day. If
geoioglsts are right, the earth was a mill
.on o. years in possession of the insects,
oeasts and birds before our race came up.
on H. In one sense we were %innovators
Inc cattle, the lizards and the hawks had
pre-emptlon right. The question is not
"nae we are to do with the lizards and
summer insects, but what the lizards and
summer insects are to do with US.
NATURE SAYS "pAY."
IL we want a place in this world we must
earn it. The partridge makes it's own nest
before it occupies it. The lark. by its
morning song, earns it's breakfast before it
eats 1t, and the Bible gives an intimation
that the first duty of an idler is to starve
when it says that if he "will not work
neither shall he eat" Idleness ruins the
health, and very soon nature SAYS: .sThis
man mas refused to pay his rent; out with
nlm'" Society is to be reconstructed on
tne subject of woman's toll. A vast ma
9orlty of those who would have woman in
ous1rlous shut her up to q few kinds of
work. My judgment in this matter is that
a woman has a right to do anything she
can do well. There should be no DEPART
ment of merchandise, mechanism, art or
science barred against her. If Miss Hos
mer has genius for sculpture, give her a
chlsel. If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness
for delineating animals, let her make s'The
Horse Fair" If Miss Mitchell will study
astronomy, let her mount the starry lad
der. If Lydia will be a merchant, let her
sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach
the Gospel, let her.thrill with her womanly
eloquence the Quaker Westinghouse.
Ii IS said If woman is given such oppor-
tunities she will occupy places that might
be taken by man. SAY if she lave more
Skill and adaptedness for any position
than a man has, let her have it. She has
as much right to her bre ad, to her apparel
and to her home as men have. But it is
said that her nature is so delicate that she
IS untitled for ~exhausting toll. I ask, in
the name of all past history, what toll on
earth is more severe, exhausting and ire
mendous than that toll of the needle to
which for ages she has been subjected?
The ba~ttering-ram, the sword, the car
blne, the ba~ttle-axe, have made no such
v as the needle. 1 would that these
living sepulchers, in which women have
1or ages been buried, might be opened, and
That some resurrection trumpet might
BRING up these living corpses to the fresh
dir and sunlight. Go with me and 1 will
show you a woman who, by hardest toll,
supports her children, her drunken hus-
band, her old father and mother, pays her
house rent, always has wholesome food on
the table, n when she can get some
neighbor On the Sabbath to come in and
take care of her family, appears in church
with hat and cloak that are far from indi-
eating the toll to which she is subjected.
Such a woman as that has body and soul
enough to fit her for any position. She
could stand beside the majority of your
statesmen and dispose of more goods. She
could go into your wheelwright shops and
beat one-half OF your workmen at making
carriages. We talk about woman as though
we had resigned to her all the light work
and ourselves had shouldered the heavier.
But the day of Judgment, which will re-
veal the sufferings of the stake and inqui-
sition, will marshal before the throne Of
God and the hierarchs of Heaven the mar
tyrs of wash tub and needle. Now, 1 say
if there be any preference in occupation
let woman have it. God knows her trials
are the severest. By her acuter sensitive
ness to misfortune, by her hour of anguish,
l demand that no one hedge up her path
way to a livelihood: Oh, the meanness,
the despicability, of men who begrudge a
woman the right to work anywhere in my
honorable calling!
EQUAL A FOR EQUAL WORT
I go still further, and say that woman
should have equal compensation with
men. By what principle of justice is it
that women, in many of our cities, get
only two-thirds as much pay as men, and
in many cases only half? Here is the
gigantic injustice-that for work equally
well, if not better, done woman receives
far less compensation thar man. Start
with the National Governments: Women
clerks in Washington City get nine hun
dred dollars for doing that for which men
get one thousand eight hundred dollars.
The wheel of oppression is rolling over
the necks of thousands of women who are
at this moment in despair about what they
are to do. Many of the largest mercan-
tile establishments of our city are access
sorry to these denominations, and from their
large cSUaO1lSnneQCS GQef6 are scores or
souls being pitched off into death, and
their employers know it. Is there a God?
Will there be a judgment? I tell you, if
God rises up to redress women's wrongs
many of our large establishments will be
swallowed up quicker han a South
American earthquake ever took down a
city. God will catch these oppressors be-
tween the two millstones of His wrath
and grind them to powder.
Why is it that a female Principal in a
school gets only 1925 for doing work for
which a male Principal gets 81 ,650?I hear
from all this land the wall of womanhood
Man has nothing to answer to that wall but
batteries. He says she is all angel. She
is not. She knows she is not. She is a
human being, who gets hungry when she
has no food and cold when she has no fire.
Give her no more batteries; give her JUS
tice. There are sixty-five thousand sewing
girls in New York and Brooklyn. Across
the sunlight comes their death groan. 1t
is not such a cry as comes from those who
ara cnddenlv hur1ad ont of life. but n slow.