The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-02-13
woMEN's STRUGGLE IN THE CITY.
What Some PluoSy Girls, in Spite of
Obstacles, Have Done.
lcopuignted, 1885,

four women who took the civil service eX-
animation for positions as inspec resses in
the customs service some few days
since was required as part of her ordeal &c
compose letter to Collector Magone giving
a concise history of her life These letters
some of which | have seen, give an inter
eSting glimpse of the labor movement of
women. Some of them we're pathetic in
their very matterof-factnesS. From twelve
to fifteen told story of married life followed
by widowhood and the consequent struggle
to support fatherlesS children Several were
from shop girS tired of the long hours and
poor pay of that occupation. Some of the
applicants had been dressmakers, some were
teachers, some were telegraph operators,
one was waiter in a ladies' restaurant, one or
two were college graduates. All wanted
work so badly that they applied for places
on staff on which there is no vacancy and
no present prospect of vacancy. No in
spectresses die, few marry or resign.
Nowhere among men, not even in the
mining regions or among the unemployed
poor OF London, is there anything like the
cut throat competition that one finds among
women in the city. New York is a magnet
to self-dependent women from every State
in the Union. Its asssmblage of work
ing girls, unless in London, could not be
paralleled in the world. The average age of
marriage which used to be % years went up
to % years and is on its road to % years
while the proportion of unmarried increases
every year.
The professions which have been looked to
to relieve the oyercrowding accommodate
very few, There is paying. employment in
New York for a handful Of women physi-
clans, and for only handful. The ministry
to all intents and purposes presents a locked
door; ditto as to the law. Newspaper edi-
tors keep stereotyped formulate of refusal to
present to women reporters, who, if they
persevere, must needs turn free lances and
act on the skirmish line, which is more pre-
carious than profitable. The city has one
woman dentist. 1t tells the whole tale to
say that of 2,619 graduates of twelve col
leges admitting girls, eleven have found a
living chance as doctors, nine as newspaper
women and five as lawyers.
The Normal College turns out so many
teachers that it is question of years. wait
ing to get place. The typewriting schools
send out so many beginners that wages are
crowded down to next to nothing. Art
work seldom pays l have seen twenty
women, by count, standing at the door of
the superintendent office of a dry goods
store, waiting to ask for shopgirls' place on
a day when no help had been advertised
for Clerks are thicker than mosquitoes in
Jersey.
1t follows as a matter of course that the
women who in spite of such obstacles sue
coed often present rare instances of brave
womanly determination and strength of
purpose. | have half a dozen such exam
pies in mind.
One of the most successful orchid growers
about the city is woman. She is a gradu-
ate of the public schools who began to teach
at 20. She worked her way through grade
i, 3 ~, H. i
was a splendid specimen of womanhood,
healthy, rosy, pleasant to look upon, in re-
ceipt of $1,000 salary and engaged. She
married at the end Of a school year, went
upon summer bridal tour and came home
in September a widow. Her husband had died
of sudden fever and her place was filed.
There was no vacancy that would give her
above half the wages she had resigned in
June. Her father had left her a little
scrubby pine land in Jersey and she had not
spent quite all her savings on her trousseau.
She thought out the situation and went into
Horticulture. Her greenhouses were small
upon the start, but she built up reputation
for rare flowers and for bringing them into
the city, done up in dainty ways. There is
nobody who originates more quaint conceits
in orchid baskets or rose punches or VIII C
seems more thoroughly at home and con-
tent in her work. She has taken two
younger sisters into partnership and on
her frequent trips to the city is one of
the pleasantest figures to meet on the
street.
A successful business woman who is known
I to many down town men is buyer for the
hardware and house furnishing department
of one of the great dry goods houses. Hers
has been an adventurous history. She be-
longs to family Scotch-Irish by lineage,
thrown out of house and home in her child
hood by an Irish eviction. The father was
i'll at the time and died of the hardship and
exposure no long time after landing in New
York. There we're two little people younger
than she, and the mother was not a capable
woman or had had the spirit crushed ont
of her by misfortune and bereavement. The
child became cash girl and learned tin and
iron pretty thoroughly. 1t was all she had
chance to learn. When she was IA she
was sales girl, and at 20 she had begun to
purchase for the house from the buyers
who came to the store. 1t was never
thought possible to send her outside to get
prices direct from the wholesalers She
married young and married a drunkard,
She went out by the day in housekeeping
time to scrub paint and wipe up floors to
keep from starving arid her married ex-
periences. She had two children and before
she was 80 she had only them and not them
and her husband to support. She went
back to the store and does, think, all the
hardware buying now, being almost the
only woman who was ever in that trade.
She has special Intuition what things will
prove attractive to housekeepers, earns q
large salary has educated her two sisters
and has her own two little ones, big,
chubby, red-headed creatures, safely housed
in the prettiest of little fats with windows
full of blooming plants, uptown. She has
developed under her years of discipline into
a shrewd kindly woman who is little
cynical in her views of men, but has lent a
hand to many a struggling girl.
Another woman VINO has found her profit
in business is jewelry buyer and in full
charge of that department for one of the
largest of the city houses. She began to
buy diamonds six years ago, she tells me,
and has the reputation of being except
ionally clever in her judgment of precious
stones.
have been thrown into somewhat init
mate relations with aslittle French woman
who controls the suit and costume rooms Of
a third big establishment. She was born
in the district of the Seine and with an I'M
usual spirit in one of her countrywomen ran
away from home TO avoid marriage with
the man to whom her father affianced her
How she drifted to New York | do not
know. Almost everybody comes here soon
or late. For the last five years, or ever
since have known her, she has been lady
high autocrat in the shrine of the graces
mentioned. She began AZ errand girl in the
sewing room and climbed above everybody
elses bead by sheer force Of executive abil-
~ gta aCfa TxuiN n UAn hn