The morning call., 1891-08-28
A SOCIAL QUESTION.
The Views of One Who Believes in Bread
Winning Women.

The Views of One Who Believes in Bread
Winning Women.
Editor WTomda's Column, Morning Call:
In its issne of August 26th that usually
liberal paper, the Sacramento Record
Union, has most remarkable editorial
leader entitled "a Social Question"
Now l am not a strong minded woman,
nor an aggressive one-and l think more of
my home than of any other spot on earth
but do believe in bread-winuing women.
No one but a Rip Van Wrinkle or an old
backwoods grandmother of half a century
ago could give voice to such sentiments as
are set forth in that editorial, which is the
expression of an editor who pretendS TO be
foremost in the thought and action of the
day.
If there were men enough to win bread
and to make home a paradise for women,
it would not be long before pettcoats would
become strangely unfamiliar spectacle in
the business centers. Women are not born
to business lives; neither do they become
irrevocably weddej to such lives, except in
few instances. They enter into hot COM
petition with men as q necessity. Ask each
one of a hundred women workers why she
is working instead of housekeeping, and
with but few exceptions you will fn1 that
it is either because she is wholly alone in
the world and consequently dependent upon
her own efforts, or else she has some miser-
able wretch of man, dissipated, inefficient,
negligent or grossly selfish, to drag her
down and force her into alien channels of
labor in pure self-defense.
sometimes there are the hungry mouths
of wizened children TO feed; sometimes il is
an invalid mother; sometimes 1t is a diSS-
pated
BROTHER OR son OR FATHER.
rThera iS uaarlV n wnVs valid raasop for n
woman's entrance into business, and an in
efficient man Is usually at the root of the
evil.
l sometimes look sadly into the homes of
my women friendS-the women who sit by
lonely or desecrated hearths, who tend the
children; who give with generous measure
constant flow of comfort, helpfulnesS and
deep sweetness of symoathy to the guests
who come and 90. l often wish that such
women could be wrenched away from the
living death of facing always a horrible
family skeleton. and could be 81 STEPPED in
the vital interests of the time that all
that wealth Of noble character would 60 to
form the tone and honor of the public, in
stead of being dissipated in a useless strug-
gle beside desolate hearth.
WOman'S sphere! Make the same moral
law for men and for women; make them so
independent of each other that they will
only marry for love and not be plunged iuto
hasty and fatal mesallanceS by blind pas
slOU, AIN DlllOu lDE SOCIAL elevation or IOT
great wealth; bring about lasting marriages /;
make the divorce laws more binding; then
homes and hearts will take care Of them
selves.
As for the question of the same wages for
the same work, only fossil or else a selfish
man would advocate lower wages for a
woman who could do good work.
The man who is trained for his position,
who does his work faithfully and well, sell
dom resent5 the entrance of women into
business channels.
THE MAN WHO Is LAZY,
Inefficient, unskilled, because he wont take
the trouble to perfect himself in his trade.
will always be uneasy, sullen and aggressive
when he sees quick-wilted, faithful. apt
woman following too closely at his heels or
perhaps outstripping him in the race for
bread.
believe in the home life and in the
mother lie Tor women, but you cannot make
home woman unless you have home man
to help her. You cannot have a happy
home or even a bearable one unless botn
father and mother, husband and wife or
brother and sister contribute equally and
unselfshly to the general peace and comfort
of the home.
Men hate to have the bread winning
taken out of their hands, 40 they?
Well, have never yet seen the woman
who preferred winning her own bread if
decent man she could love offered to w in
that bread for her in an honorable way.
The trouble is there are too many men
who never wish to have the fact that they
are the bread winners forgotten or ignored
who always want the lustrous headlight of
grateful recognition kept blazing and who
fling the bread at their families in a way
that women would be fools not to resent.
You wise men of the world who so graveIy
nod your grizZled heads over certain eco
nomic questions, be very careful that you
weigh all the factors before you present the
results of your thought to the world, which,
by the way, is not the heavy clout that it
looks. VICTORIA REGIA.
San Francisco, Aug q, 1891