The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-06-17

after so many years Of preparation and ex-
| perience enough to test her Fl nessp
About 500" was the answer.
IT she were to go to private school or
academy" replied second psrson inter
viewed, ''she would receive $500 or 5000 and
her board We reckon board at about $500
additional If she taught in high school
the wages would be 500 or $500"
II couldn't give you any average salary
| for college graduates, " was the reply in
third instance. ''If were to say 81 900, or
81 200, or 81 400, just because 1 have known
or young women'S receiving those sums, |
should have hundreds of women here ex-
pecting to do equally we'll Now, in point
OF fact, su b figures are exceptional l
have known a college graduate, with not
more than four or five years experience, to
get a y, 600 position, and I have known
another just as well qualified to be glad to
obtain a primary class in Chicago public
school at not above $500 salary. Some
women are fortunate enough to step at
once into good places, but should say that
ScOu was as much as young woman, after
some experience. could expect to command.
Inc number OF places paying above that
figure is limited
"You spoke of public school classes; there
are sixty or seventy principalships in the
New York public schools which pay women
from 81 200 to 81, 900"
OSs anu bucE0 nearly winch
pay less than 5000. Six hundred dollars is
an excellent public school figure, and pro-
motion comes not from scholarship but from
ability to run pupils through the sausage
mill u
And the college girls are supposed to be
getting the cream of the vacanciesl Is teach
ing failure! To spend seven years fitting
ones self to teach Greek and Latin and the
higher mathematics and to sing in choir
ha
earned by good type writer is not an en-
couraglng prospect, but there are other
difficulties in the would-be instructo s path.
1T IS one of my chief vexations,n said an
intelligent agent, that schools will persist
In debating the religion of a teacher of
geometry. OF course that sort of thing is
dying out, but there is good deal of it left
still. This tells in the strict church school
chiefly against Unitarians and Universal
lists. Eve known Vassar girl lose a 81 800
position because she had been brought up in
a liberal church.
ga thing that sometimes helps a girl is
beauty. Some principals of boys schools
won't engage teacher who is not pretty 1
have known the proprietor of Friends
school In Philadelphia who used to dictate
the kind of slippers his teachers should as
sumo in the classroom. He always advised
elbow Sleeves
II teachers wages are low goyernesses
fare worse. English travel has demoralized
US. We have grown used to advertisements
of this order;
WANTED, a good cook, wages $50 and a
w home; also a governess must come well
recommended; wages ZIG and home.
Resident governesses in New York receive
all the way from nothing-and a home-up
to $50 month. One governess receives
$50. Not one in hundred gets as high as
$50. Twenty dollars a month is not I'M
usual for woman of high educ ton, but
that sum does not commonly command full
time. As explained at the teachers agencies
it means that wealthy German family
may send its children to private school in
the morning to learn English and employ a
governess to live in the house and help with
the sewing and superintend the German
education In the afternoon. Such a COVER
erness, if she can get away from the sewing,
can take extra pupils in the forenoon and
earn perhaps $25 month additional, es-
pecially if her employers are society people,
so that to have lessons from "the same gov
erness who teaches the little -'s" is some
thing of a card. If she gets too prosperous
by this means, however, the family may cut
her down.
The teachers business is badly over
crowded, and by and by, perhaps, instead
of cutting one another's threats by COMPETE
tion and keeping wages so nearly down to
the level of the days when girl went to a
seminary for single term and then taught
at IL, the girls who now go to college and
then teach at % will experiment more freely
in direction other than pedagogics. If not,
no amount of Sanskrit or Hebrew or art
needlework, metaphysics or harp playing,
chemistry or pastel, calculus or elocution,
astronomy or soprano singing will materl-
ally raise wages in glutted market The
angel Gabriel would go cheap at auction If
all the hosts of heaven were put up for sale
the same morning.
ELIZA PUTNAM HEAToN,