Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-02-01
IS IT FoR WoMAN,s BENEFIT9


woman, and perfect freedom for her to take
any place for which she proves her COM
potency. But a very large measure of the
thought of thinking men to-day is devoted
to the question whether the advent of
woman into commercial trade and all
manner of industrial followings is for her
benefit There is open ground for debate
of this question, and we confess to dis
position to concur with those who hold
that the drift of woman from purely do
nestle employments into the field of labor
heretofore exclusively occupied by men, is
destructive of the feminine individuality;
tends to unfit woman for the highest offices
of her being-wifehood and motherhood
and directly accounts for the demonstrated
assertion that matrimony is declining
that is to say, it is not sought by young
men, and that the resultant evil is apollo
gized for on the ground that an extremely
large class of women have crowded men
from employment, lessened their capacity
to found and maintain homes, and that the
women themselves are by this growing
custom untitled for home life and are culti-
waited in distaste for domesticity.
There is to-day scarcely any vocation,
outside of the heavier mechanical trades.
that women have not invaded. In seven
tenths of such cases they have displaced
men who have been employed in such po-
sitions at salaries sufficient for the support
of family by each. But if, for the sake
of argument, it is granted that this is
defensible competition that is not to be
condemned so long as we admit the doc
trine of the largest liberty and the abso-
lutte equality of woman with man in the
race of life, and that the system simply
relegates men to the labors Of the field
and the tilling of the soil, and to those
vacations for which his stronger frame pc
culiarly fits HIM, does it not remain that
this business competition by women is
breaking down the ehivalrous respect that
man has hitherto had for the weaker sex !?
It is matter of common observation,
notably in larger cities, that men very
much less frequently than before extend to
women in public those courtesies which a
few years ago their simple presence made
a law of the road. Young men are quite
agreed in their testimony that they seek
for wives last among women who have
abandoned domestic vocations for those of
the Office, the counter and the shop. They
know that, with rare exceptions, these are
not fitted for home life, that rarely indeed
are they skilled in housewifely arts, and
that their tastes and desires are cultivated
away from and into distaste for the posi-
ton Of the wife and the mother.
The tens of thousands of young women
who have qualified themselves as stenog-
raphers typewriters, clerks, bookkeepers,
saleswomen, Office service and the like,
displace just SO many men, who, at salaries
the woman cannot command and never
does receive, would have been able to
marry and found homes over which the
same number of women would have pre-
sided. That the consumer public is more
cheaply served by reason of this reduction
of wages that has been brought about by
the entry of women into the non-domestic
employments, is not probably true; that
the profits of the commercial men have
been enhanced by the change, is probably
true.
But all these last considerations may be
waived in the face of that greater and far
more important one already referred to,
the decay Of domestic taste. We are
frank to say that the young woman who
serves as a domestic for her board and
lodging and for half the cash wages re-
ceived by the young woman who serves
her weary hours behind the counter or the
desk, is the better fitted for home life, and
has the chances OF happiness and content
ment largely in her favor as compared to
the opportunities of the latter. We are
equally frank to say that the young
woman who goes out to service in home
and fits herself in housewifely arts, occu-
pies as good position in our esteem as
the young woman who measures tape or
displaces a man capable OF twice the
work and of earning enough to support
them both. In saying that,..we believe we
reflect the honest sentiment of seven out
of every ten men who nave given the sub
iect any thought.
Yet in all these considerations we would