Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1886-12-23
FEMALE LABOR.
LARGE NUMBER OF WOMEN EARNING
AN INDEPENDENT LIVING.

Etudents From the Colleges and High
Scholastic European Women Slavery
Wanted in This Country.-What Women
Should Do.
The number of women who are earning an
independent living in this country is increas-
inc, year by year. During the last genera
ton the increase has been most surprising
one, and from present appearances the num-
Der of such women is to be largely increased
iii the near future. The colleges and high
schools of the country are sending out an
nually thousands of young women who are
not only welleducated, but self-reliant, and
who, as a class, are entirely unwilling to re-
turn to their homes even when they have
good ones, and take up a life of saui-idleness
and dependence. OF course, a very large
number are forced by circumstances to enter
upon some occupation for self support What
the final result of this pressure of female
labor upon the market is to be it is hard to
foretell There are those who fear that we
shall soon become like some of the countries
of Europe, where the women DO the greater
part of the work and the men are compar-
atively idle; or like Indian tribes, where the
squaws do all the mental labor. If the ten
dency is in that direction it is certainly de-
plorahe one and should in some way be ar
rested
MERE BEASTS OF BURDEN.
One does not desire to see American women
like the women Of northern Europe-mere
beasts of burden For instance in Stock
holIa woman is almost exclusively employed
as hod carrier and bricklayer's assistant. She
carries brick mikes mortar and does all the
hardest work about building. She is paid
for day work, which is fully twelve hours,
the sum of one kroner equivalent to one and
| three pence.l The women do all the street
| cleaning, haul the rubbish in hand carts over
the cobhlestones and out upon the hills, I'M
| load the boats at the quays, do the gardening
and run ferries They take the places of
horses and dogs in much of the carrying bust
ness, bringing in the large aud heavy milk
| cans from the diaries and distributing the
milk In many other portions of Europe it
Is scarcely better. You can see women in
highly civilized England employed day by
day in the coalpit, at the forge and in brick
yards.
In France she fills furnaces AMI tends great
| COKE OVENS anu feilh VI
market gardening, besides tending large
part Of the shops. In Germany she is often
| pitched with dog to draw heavy cart, and
tnis i, als1 done il other European countries.
| IN Germany she does more agricultural labor
than in almost any other land, bat this is not
quite so hard and dehaslng as work il mines
and coalpits, although sufficiently destructive
of all the finer qualities Of "omanhood. In
| Belgium Young women and even little girls
| work continuously III Coalpits, aud there are
| bent and crippled old wonea about these pits
who have worked In them since early child
hood. In Holland they work on the canals
with a rope over the shoulder, and do u large
part OF the work Upon the dikes which hold
the sea at bay In all the other laborious 90
equations they also take large part, and
their coarse and sunhurned faces retain hard
ly a trace OF womanly sofuness, nor their
bread ami muscular forms trace of womanly
Eghtness or grace.
IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
In some OF these countries the young men
are all III the army; in others they are almost
idle. doing only the lightest part of the work
and eongregating in vast numbers in beer
GA. lens and parks, or fishing in the little
S'lSssiilS Itfit tLlitl ALtlN LUCY pSANI4c7 a. q
band. to a fire company, or a club, and only
pretend to earn enough money to pay for
Their pastimes, while wives, or daughters, OF
mothers do the real work which supports the
family Where vast standing armies are
kept the evil is the greatest, but everywhere
in Europe upon woman falls a large share OF
the hard labor which we in America are &c
customed 10 see performed by men.
But already the European custom is gain.
in foothold In America The great influx
of foreigners has brought with it other idea:
than ours. German and Norwegian womer
NAV already be seen in great numbers in the
| harvest fields Of the west and driving loaded
teams upon western roads. We have not yet
Us far as | know, hitched them up with dogs
bat so rapidly are we passing under the sway
of foreigners that we may yet live to see thai
| eiifving sight think the American people
owe it to themselves to resist this tendency Il
the utmost. Every true citizen should frowr
Upon the man who puts his wife or daughter
r. such work rs this in this country, hecauS.
il Is both naedla-@s and huTtful There is nj
excuse III our favored land for putting
woman to work in the fields or at mans hare
work anywhere Let the men still CARRY til,
bods, and dig the canals, and sow, and ISaI
us they did in the better days of the republic
! In their eagarness to have all avenues of re
munerative labor thrown open to them the
have perhaps rather overdid their work, ans
may have more thrust upon them than the,
desired. Their right TO do certain things the,
have certainly established, and I should b
the last one to question such right Now
they should also establish their right not t.
do certain things Wives and daughters O
foreign farmers and laborers should have
declaration of independence of their own, AM
rise in open rebellion against field labor o
, other mans work demanded of them.-Hata
Tying Griswold in Chicago Tribune.