The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-06-04

/ heads of good, pure air. You must, BY
/ some kind of usefulness, pay for all this
. Our race was the last thing created-the
( birds and fishes on the fourth day, the
cattle and lizards on the fifth day. and
man on the sixth day. If biologists are
right, the earth was a million of years in
/ the possession of the insects, beasts and
/ birds. before our race came upon it. In
/ one sense, we were inuovatOrs. The cat
/ tie, the lizards and the hawks had pre-
/ emption right. The question is not what
we are to do with the lizards and sum
/ mer insects, but what the lizards and
/ summer insects are to do with us.
If we want place in this world we
/ must earn it. The partridge makes its
| own nest before it occupies it. The lark,
| by its morning song, earns its breakfast
/ before 1t eats it; the Bible gives an init
nation that the first duty of an idler is TO
| starve, when it says il he will not work,
neither shall ne eat" Idleness ruins the
health; and very soon nature says. This
man has refused to pay his rent out with
| him!'
Society is to be RECONSTRUCTED on the
subject of woman's toll. A vast majority
of those who would have woman indus
trious shut her<p to a few kinds of work
My judgment in this matter is that
woman has a right to do anything she can
do we'll. There should be no department
of merchandise, mechanism, art or
science barred against her. If Miss Hos
! mer has genius for sculpture, give her
chisel If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness
for delineating animals let her make
The Horse Fair" If Miss Mitchell will
study astronomy, let her mount the
starry ladder, If Lydia will be a mer-
chant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia
Mott will preach the gospel, let her thrill
with ner womanly eloquence the Quaker
meeting house.
1t is said, if woman is given such op-
portunities, she will occupy places that
might be taken by men. I say, if she
have more skill and adaptedness for any
position than man has, let her have il :!
She has as much right TO her bread, to
her apparel and to her home, as men
have.
But it is said that her nature is so deli
cate that she is untitled for exhausting
toll. I ask in the name of all past his
tory. what toll on earth is more severe.
exhausting and tremend Gus than
that toll of the needle to which
for ages she has been subjected
The battering-ram, the sword, the
carblne, the battle-ax have made no
such havoc as the needle. I would that
these living sepulchres in which women
have for ages been buried might be opened.
and that some resurrection trumpet might
bring up these living corpses to the fresh
air and sunlight.
Go with me, and | will show YOU a wo-
man who, by hardest toll. supports her
children, her drunken husband. her old
father and mother, pays her house rent
always has wholesome food on the table,
and, when she can get some neigh Der on
the Sabbath to come in and take care of
her family, appears in church, with hat
and cloak that are far from indicating the
toll to which she is subjected.
Such a'wOman as that has body and
soul enough to fit her for any position
She could stand beside the majority of
your statesmen and dispose of more goods.
She could go into your wheelwright shops
and beat one-half of your workmen at
making carriages. We talk about women
as though we had resigned to her all the
light work, and ourselves had shouldered
the heavier. But the day of Judgment.
which will reveal the sufferings of the
stake and inquisition, win marshal be-
fore the throne of God and the hirearchs
of heaven the martyrs Of wash tub and
needle.
Now, l say, if there be any preference
in occupation, let woman have il. God
KNOWS her trials are the severest BY
her acuter sensitiveness to misfortune by
her hour of anguish, demand that no one
hedge up her pathway to a livelihood. O.
the meanness, the despicability of men
who begrudge a woman the right to
work anywhere in any honorable call
ing,
go still further, and say that women
should have ample compensation with
men BY what principle of Justice is it
that woman in many of our cities get only
two-thirds as much pay as men, and in
many cases only halle Here is the gigan-
tic niustice-that for work equally we'll
if not better done, woman receives far
less compensation than man. Start with
the national government: for a long
while women got nine hundred dollars for
doing that for which men received eigh-
| teen hundred.
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 accessories to these abomi-
nations and from their large establish
ments there are scores of souls being
! pitched of into death and their employ
ers know it!
Is there a God VIII there be a iudg-
| 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 earth
| quake ever took down a city. God will
| catch these oppressors between the two
mill-stones of his wrath, and grind them
| TO powder!
| hear from all this land the wall of
/ WOAndnubONs AldH las lobullG 10 answer
| to that wall but batteries He says she
| is an angel. She is not. She knows she
is not. She is human being, 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 sewing
girls in New York and Brooklyon Across
| the darkness of this night | hear their
death groan. 1t is not such cry as
comes from those who are suddenly
hurled out of life, but a slow. grinding,
horrible wasting away. Gather them be.
fore you and look into their faces,
pinched, CHASTITY, hunger-struck! Look
at their fingers, needle-pricked and blood
| tipped. See that premature stoop in the
| shoulders Hear that dry, hacking.
merciless cough!
At large meeting of these women,
held in a hall in Philadelphia. grand
speeches were delivered. but needle
woman took the stand, threw aside her
faded shawl, and with her shriveled arm
hurled very thunderbolt of eloquence.
speaking out the horrors of her own ex-
perienee,
Stand at the corner of street in New
York.in the very early morning. as the
women go to their work Many of them
had no breakfast except the crumbs that
were left over from the night before, or a
crust they chew on their way through
the street Here they come! the working
10 81 l,s.