The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-06-25
THE FAILURES OF WOMEN
SOME PLAIN TALK ON WOMEN
WHO DO NOT SUCCEED.

Faithful as the Average Man?-Many
Lines in Which Her Record is Poor
a Woman's Successes are Measured
With Yard Stick not More Than
Half as Long as the Standard for
Men.
NEW YORK, June 23.-This is an age of
woman worship. We bow down and pour
out adulation before successful women.
More than that we are not exacting as TO
the measures or standard of success. The
same achievement which for man is reck-
oned an ordinary, perhaps less than ordin-
airy, business accomplishment, if told of
woman, is quoted from Maine to California.
The woman who runs farm, who opens
summer resort, who gets a franchise to
operate village street railway, or CON
tract to clean the streets of a town. who rs
paid S2,OOOfor experimenting a department
OF Big dry goods store. who writes his
tory that ought to be written better, or
sets up salon and achieves literary repu-
tation on the strength Of fashion correspond
ence or personal gossip for out-of-town
papers, who writes the erotic poetry of
pretty little humbug or tho erotic prose of
morbid schoolgirl, who is a graduate of
three medical colleges and lectures on the
antiquities of the Chinese besides, who
makes money on Wall street, or has the
sense to keep on making the money which
her husband put into patent medicine or
newspaper for her. who iDheritS publishing
house and doesn't run it who can do any
thing or say anything or stand for anything,
in any direction as well or even three-fourths
as well, as the ordinarily intelligent man,
is famous, possibly for years, certainly for
a day
1t is much easier, up to a certain point,
for woman to make a name than for a
man. 1t doesn't smack so much of adver-
Using to puff her. Everybody takes it as
the correct thing to give her a laudatory
word. As old DR.. johnson used to put it,
it's not that the dog dances well but that he
dances at all. If women expect to get any
honest estimate of their actual accomplish
ments, free from this canine element, it is
time they discouraged double standard of
measurement for mons and women's dOings
at least in those lines in which they make a
pretence of claiming only fair field and no
favor. Whom every oody is praising wOmen's
successes, it Is plain truth sometimes to
speak Of their failures.
MISS IDA NJ. VAN ETTEN THE ORGANIZER
Of the Working Women's society
of New York, tells me that
on visit to Washington the
foreman of the national printing office az
sured her that the women compositors in
his employ were the best typesetters he had,
and that their superiority was so we'll estab-
lished that he seldom refused work to
woman. This is contrary to all experience
in the east. Typesetting has been cited as
an employment especially adapted to women
by reason Of their dizziness and quickness of
hand The establishment of industrial
classes to teach typesetting TO women is fire.
quently urged In New York and Brook
Ign, it is safe to say, women compositors
never average as well as men,. 1t is not that
the work Injuries the health. They are
regular as clockwork at the case and make
up for some Of their other deficiencies by
their reliability on Monday morning. They
are quick Many of the women set up a
take" faster than the men. Some of them
are very intelligent, but it would be a wild
goose chase If one attempted to find a news
paper Office where the best woman was
equal to the best man, or where the general
run of the women compared favorabIy with
the men. They are nervous and get Hurried
in rush hours They are not clever in set
ting up displayed advertisements. They
arc mechanical and repeat the same mis-
take a dozen times. This applies to women
who have been twenty years at the work as
well as to young girls. Some of the New
York papers which used to employ them
have discarded them altogether The
morning papers, although not all of their
matter 10y any means is set up at night,
wouldn't have them at any price. Ask any
author who has had tho proof of a book
come home from the Lothrops, Of Boston,
or from any large publishing house which
employs many women, for his opinion of
girl typesetters. 1t will not be a compli-
mentary one.
Typewriting is coming to be looked upon
more and more as a woman's occupation.
1t is nice, dainty work, fit for small hands.
Miss Mary l.. Seymour, who manages three
or four big typewriting agencies and knows
as much about it probably as any one in
New York, says that the best women in it
are trife better than the best men. But,
she adds, that the bane of the business is
the incompetent woman. She might say
the idiotic girl, if she were less polite.
Typewrlting is a business in which the best
work commands better wages all the time.
There are women who can get $50 a week
out of it, but they are very few. Like all
other work, it is recompensed according to
the grade of service called for. The bust
ness man who wants SIS service has hard
task to find it, He is overrun with appli-
cations from pretty numskuils with peach
yellow compilations, who can't spell Osh-
kosh or Kamtschatka, broken down school
ma'ams, so fidgetty that they turn the in
strument back every seventh word to make
sure they haven't left out something, or
dashing widows who can't write thirty
q
a good place to got into on general princi-
| pies The girl with common sense and
| business head whom he is looking for is
white crow in the flock. If there are more
| girls typewriting for less than $40 week
than above that figure, and enough girls in
the business at s., So or even 81 a week to
seriously affect the average prices, it is not
because all cheap work is poor work, neces-
| sarily, but because there is a large proper
ton of poor mixed with the good. Business
mon who have been fortunate with their
| typewriters are never tired of praising them
| but it would be an easy matter to collect
| brigade of business men who would gallan-
| try aside, march down Broadway with ban
ners flying pledged to the determination of
the typewriter girl
| IT Is THE SAME WITH THE STENoGRAPHERs,
except that the best stenographers are
nearly all men. There are few women, and
| only few, who take first class rank A
clever woman, whoisa typewriter and steno-
grapher combined, can make wages which
will enable her to spend year in Europe
studying languages to increase her value is
a correspondent before she has been at it
very long. But the stenographer who can
take the Lords prayer or something pre-
sumably familiar with tolerable case but
who can't read her own notes if a business
letter is dictated, is much more common
than she ought to be. If you could get at
| the average opinion of the average en-