The Bossier banner., 1894-07-19

get only two-thirds as much pay as
men, and in many cases only half?
Here is the gigantic injustice-that for
work equally well, if not better done,
woman receives far less compensation
than man. Start with the national gov
ernment; for long while women clerks
in Washington got nine hundred dol
lars for doing that for which men re-
ceived eighteen hundred dollars.
To thousands of young women in our
cities to-day there is only this alterna-
tive, starvation or dishonor. Many of
the largest mercantile establishments
of our cities are accessory to these
denominations; and from their large es-
Establishments there are scores of souls
being pitched off into death; and their
employers know it!
Is there God? VIII there be judg-
ment? tell you, if God rises up to re-
dress woman's wrongs many of our
large establishments Will be swallowed
up quicker than a South American
earthquake ever took down a city, and
will catch these oppressors between
the two millstones of His wrath and
Srinu Lnem TO powder!
1 hear from all this land the wall of
womanhood. Man has nothing to an
swer to that wall but batteries. He
says she is an angel. She is not. She
knows she is not. She is a human be-
ing who gets hungry when she has no
food, and cold when she has no fire.
Give her no more batteries; give her
justice!
There are about fifty thousand sew
ing girls in New York and Brooklyn.
| Across the darkness of this night l
hear their death groan. 1t is not such
cry as comes from those who are sud-
denly hurried out of life, but a slow,
grinding, horrible wasting away.
Gather them before you and look into
their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger
struck! Look at their fingers, needle
priclzed and blood-tipped! See that
premature stoop in the shoulders! Hear
that dry, hacking, merciless cough!
One Sabbath night, in the vestibule
of my church, after service, a woman
fell in convulsions. The doctor said
she needed medicine not so much as
something to eat. AS she began to
revive, in her delirium, she said, gasp
ingly: Eight cents! Eight cents!
Eight cents! 1 wish 1 could get it
done! l am so tired! wish l could
/ get some sleep, but 1 must get it done.
| Eight cents! Eight cents" We found
afterward that she was making gar
ments at eight cents apiece, and that
/. she could make but three of them in a
day. Hear it, Three times eight are
twentyfour! Hear it, men and women
who have comfortable homes!
How are these evils to be eradicated?
What have you to answer, you who sell
coats, and have shoes made, and con-
| tract for the southern and western mar
lzets? What help is there, what panacea,
what redemption? Some say: ''Give
women the ballot" What effect such
ballot might have on other questions !
am 1t here to discuss; but what would
be the effect of female suffrage upon
woman's wages? do not believe that
woman will ever get justice by woman s
ballot
Indeed, women oppress women as
much as men do. Do not women, as
much as men, beat down to the lowest
figure the woman who sews for them?
Are not women as sharp as men on
washerwomen, and milliners, and
mantua-1nakers? If a woman asks a
dollar for her work, does not her fe-
male employer ask her if she will not
take ninety cents? You say: "Only
ten cents difference;" but that is some
times the difference between Heaven
and hell. Women often have less com.
miseration for women than men. If a
woman steps aside from the path of viz.
tue, man may forgive-woman never
Woman will never get justice done her
from woman's ballot.
Never will she get it from mans bal.
lot. How, then? God will rise up fol
her. God has more resources than we
know of. The flaming sword that hung
at Eden's gate when woman was driven
out will cleave with it's terrible edge
her oppressors.
Start with the idea that work is hon
orable, and that you can do some one
thing better than anyone else. Re
solve that, God helping, you will take
care of yourself. If you are, after
|
will all the better be qualified for it by
your spirit of self-reliance; or if you
are called to stay as you are, you car
be happy and self-supporting.
The dying actress whose life had
been vicious said: THE scene closes.
Draw the curtain" Generally the
tragedy comes first, and the farce after
ward; but in her life it was first the
farce of a useless life, and then the
tragedy of q wretched eternity.
Compare the life and death o.
) such an one with that of some
Christian aunt that was once q
blessing to your household. I dc
not know that she was ever offered e
hand in marriage. She lived singly
that untrammeled she might be every
body's blessing. Whenever the sicl
were to be visited, or the poor to bt
provided with bread, she went with &
blessing. She could pray, or sing
Crock of Ages for any sick paupe1
who asked her. As she got older, there
were days when she was little sharp
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