The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-10-23
WOMAN VS.. MAN.
In Almost All Professions They Can
Demand Equal Remuneration.


-
l remember well, more than thirty
years ago, when the principal OF one OF
the best academies in Massachusetts
boosted to me that he had just offered to
his first assistant a higher salary than
had ever before been paid to a woman as
teacher in that county. The amount thus
offered and gratefully accented was $500.
The salaries paid by endowed academies
have usually gone above those offered in
public schools, yet the newspapers have
lately recorded the fact that Two women
have just been awarded salaries liked re-
spectively at 81, 800 and $1,000 in Massa-
cnusetts as principals of public grammar
schools, and the one woman on the Board
OF School Supervisors in Boston has, IL l
mistake not, a much higher compensation
than this.
1t is safe to say that salaries of $1,000
for women's services as teachers, clerks
and bookkeepers are now much more
common than were salaries of half that
amount forty years ago, while the ex-
penses of living nave not increased in
anything like that proportion. On the
other hand, IL is also true that to gain
these higher salaries a far more expen-
sive education is necessary than was
needed for the lower ones, and that the
number of women competing for employ
ment is still much greater in these par
ticular directions thar is the case with
men.
Our public libraries. for instance, are
coming largely to be of1cered BY women,
simply from the fact that the salary
which would only secure the services OF
one efficient man will commonly provide
two equally we'll qualified women. Now
in most of these cases the law of demand
and supply governs. A school or a IL
brary can commonly only pay q certain
amount, and must get the best it can for
the money. II is only in especially diff
cult ~positions-as In The post OF grammar
school principal-that trustees are COM
ing to be willing to pay what the services
are intrinsically worth, without regard
to the number of competitors.
There are, as has before been pointed
out in these columns, but W. prominent
occupations III which there seems no dis
t~inction Of sex as REGARDS compensation.
One of these Is the stage (Includfng the
concert room) and the other is literature.
Accordingly 1t is said in the newspapers
that the two women of this generation
who have earned the largest incomes are
Ouidn n Patti. Even on the stage l
am told there is little difference in pay
ment at the outset, and a walking gem
tlaman'' receives little more h a
"walking lady" It is also true that the
expenses of an actress, in the direction
Of ostume are SO vastly greater than
those of an actor tina the equality of pay
ment is more apparent than real.
Here. as elsewhere, the path of litera-
ture has especial convenience for a wo-
man: pens, ink and paper cost her no
more than they would cost a man, nor
does she require very expensive toilet TO
meet her publisher or her readers. In the
first stages OF journalism her regular pay
NAV he less than ii she were 3 man, but
when she enters the domain OF magazines
ana copyrights there is absolutely no diff
f%erence. It is hard to say why the fact OF
sex constitutes no disadvantage in this
sphere Of industry, when II is otherwise
in so many directions, blu the fact Is un-
questionable. Nobody seems TO ask. so
lnng AS a book is readable or an article
available, whether it is written by a man
or q woman
Mrs. Burnett is said to stand at the
head of our authors just in her liter
ary earnings. The London Daily NelUs
saws that she has received for her Ameri-
can rights On the play of Little Lord
Fauntleroy'' no less than El7,0 900 (SS5, 600,
and that il we were to add her similar
profits in England and the proceeds of the
ssenormous sales" of this novel the
amour earned out of the o would be
quite startling" Almost as startling
are the successes of m less con5picu-
Gus in literature. know a lady who as
sures me that her first volume of poetry
yielded her s., 600, whereas most poets of
the other sex expect TO make money, If at
all. by their prose.
l know another lady who wrote, at a
venture, a story of watering place life; it
did not seem to me nor q am happy to
say to the author a great production; but
it went through twelve editions in six
months. No doubt some men have equalled
this success. The total sales of Mr.. E.. P.
Roe's novel has amounted, it is said, to