The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-10-22

PAY0F WOMEN ANDMEN.
UNEQUAL REMUNERATION OF IN
TELLECTUAL PURSUITS.
Tow the Wages of Educated People Have
Increased in Forty Years-Difference In
Salaries of Men and Women Who Are
Doing the Same Work.

Increased in Forty Years-Dinerence in
Salaries of Men and Women Who Are
Doing the Same Work.
1 remember we'll, 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 assist
ant a higher salary than had ever before
been paid to a woman as teacher in that
county. The amount thus offered and
gratefully accepted 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 fixed respectively at s., 800 and
81 COO in Massachusetts as principals OF
public grammar schools; and the one
woman on the board of school supervisors
in Boston has, if | mistake not, a much
higher compensation than this.
1t is safe to say that salaries Of s., 900 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 expenses of liv-
ing have not increased in anything like
that proportion. On the other hand, it is
also true that to gain these higher salaries
far more expensive education is necessary
than was needed for the lower ones, and
that the number Of women competing for
employment is still much greater in these
particular directions than is the case with
men.
Our public libraries, for instance, are
coming largely to be differed by women,
simply from the fact that the salary which
o,1, -, IA
Gent man will commonly provide two
equally well qualified women. Now in
most of these cases the law of demand and
supply governs. A school or library can
commonly only pay a certain amount, and
must get the best it can for the money It
is only in especially difficult positions-as
In the post of grammar school principal
that trustees are coming to be willing to
pay what the services are intrinsically
worth, without regard to the number of
competitors.
OCCUPATIONS IN WHICH BOTH ARE EQUAL.
There are, as has before been pointed out
in these columns, but two prominent oc-
equations in which there seems no dis
tinction Of sex as regards compensation.
One of these is the stage Including the
concert ROOM and the other is literature.
Accordingly it is said in the newspapers
that the two women of this generation who
have earned the largest incomes are Ouida
and Patti. Even on the stage ! an told
there is little difference in payment at the
outset, and walking gentleman" re-
ceives little more than walking lady,"
1t is also true that the expenses of an &C
tress, in the direction of costumes, are so
vastly greater than those of an actor that
the equality of payment is more apparent
than real.
Here, as elsewhere, the path Of literature
has especial convenience for a woman;
pens, ink and paper cost her no more than
they would cost a man. nor does she re-
qulre very expensive toilet to meet her
publisher or her readers In the first stages
of Journalism her regular pay may be less
than If she were a man; but when she en-
ters the domain Of magazines and copy
rights there is absolutely no difference 1t
is hard to say why the fact of sex consti-
tutes no disadvantage in this sphere of in
duStry, when it is otherwise in so many
directions. but the fact is unquestionable.
Nobody seems to ask. so long as a book is
readable or an article available, whether it
Is written by man or a woman.
Mrs. Burnett is said TO stand at the head
Of our authors just now in her literary
earnings. The London Daily News says
that she has received for her American
rights on the play Of Little Lord Fauntle-
roy" no less than Gl7,OOO 1855, 0OO), and that
if we were TO add her similar profits in Eng
land and the proceeds of the enormous
sales" of this novel the amount earned
out of the book would be quite startling"
Almost as startling are the successes of
women less conspicuous in literature. l
know a lady who assures me that her first
volume of poems yielded her 81, 600, whereas
most poets of the otlrer sex expect to make
money, if at all, by their prose.
PROFITS OF SEVERAL MEN.
] 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 great production; but
it went through twelve editions in six
months. No doubt some men have equaled
this success. The total sales of Mr.. F. p.
Roe's novels has amounted, it is said, to
2,027, 900 copies Mr.. J. w. Buel's four
teen books have sold to still greater ex-
tent, or 2, 500 900 copies; one of them alone
reaching more than half million in two
years. During 1883 his copyrights yielded
$50, 900, and during 1889 $50,OOO
Mr. Albert Ross tells us that his first
three novels sold to the extent of 100000
copies in a year and IA half These sue
cesses were attained, it may be said, by
men; but their being men had nothing to
do with it; the successes, such as they
were, lay in the books, such as they were;
had these been written by women the re-
suit would have been the same.
II the point is now raised that these sue
ccssful books are not necessarily of the
highest grade we must simply answer
that women, like men, must often make
their choice between q cheaper success and
one higher or more permanent. If they
love literary work-and that person is TO
be pitied who engages in it while finding
1t unattractive-they viii perhaps be will
ing TO have the income little less and the
work little higher.-Harper's Bazaar.