The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1895-09-27
WOMEN JOURNALISTS
HOW the ENGLISH NEWSPAPER WoM-
AN CAME TO EXIST.

Nscsssity Introducsd Her 90 the World.
She Wa Gsuchs end Angular q First.
It Co Perfection.
Miss Grace Ben edicta Stuart read pa
per before the Press league congress at
Antwerp in 1894. 1t was copied In full
into the official report of the congress.
The subject was English Women In Jour
nalism." Miss Stuart's account Of how
the woman journalist came to DO and
what she Is at the present time In Eng
land Is full OF interest for women on this
side OF the Atlantic Miss Stuart says
that. among the widely differing causes to
which the newspaper woman in the United
Kingdom owes her existence, the financial
depression Of % years ago. which. to q
great extent. closed the one legitimate
profession open TO women-viz. private
teaching-is chiefly responsible.
Women found themselves in possession
of a stock in trade Of knowledge, unsala-
BILE In the old markets. But the necessity
OF living by their own exertions pressed
nearer and harder upon them.
Necessity gave an important final push
to the womans movement, but she had
long been preparing for that liberty OF
thought and action which have been so
rapidly accorded her during the last five
and twenty years. Necessity, then-using
the term In its widest sense-necessity,
that mighty mother of invention, intro
duced To the world young, and, at first,
IL must DO confessed, not altogether at
tractive daughter in the person of the
woman journalist.
Like other debutantes, she was gauche
and angular, shy and audacious In one
and painfully in earnest. She looked upon
her profession as q vocation and posed as
Minerva on q very small allowance of that
lady's leading attribute.
"How the world laughed at her and her
newspapers, her inky fingers and mis-
quoted Latin 1t was hard, but the laugh
ter stung her to enterprise, touched some-
thing which caught fire in her brain and
lighted up hundred possibilities. She
took her poor little timid ladies' newspa-
per, with its recipes for reorganiZing polo
naise or recovering sick parrot wide the
woman's page of current dailies) and en-
larged 1t step by step. broadened its inter
est, opened it's pages to able writer's and
worldwide questions-made 1t, in fact,
what it Is today, q power, a pleasure. a
standby in millions Of English speaking
households, all over the world.
Having created the ladies' paper, the
woman journalist took further step and
began, very cautiously, and with the ut
most secrecy, to invade the columns Of the
weeklies and dailies.
1--WE laugh nowadays to hear Of the strict
incognito which was preserved by the first
women leader writers, no less for their
own sake than for the liberal minded and
adventurous editors who employed them.
But we are, man and women alike a news
paper reading nation, and editors have
been quick to discover that women possess
many journalistic gifts. Consequently
now there Is not a single paper Of any
standing in the United Kingdom which
does not count women on its staff and
which does not rely for much of It's home
and foreign matter on women correspond
ents
Women special writer's are sent to the
colonies and the continent for descriptive
work, and they ever note thousand lit
tie points that escape the male eye"
Miss Stuart says OF women's newspaper
work:
while I concede that, as writer's they
are neither accurate nor so impartial as
men, l claim for them a delicacy Of per-
ception and observation and an infinite
carefulness Of execution which give them
a wonderful mastery over certain subjects
and appeal warmly TO certain minds.
With one or two exceptions they make
poor politicians, because they are such
grand partisans. Yet the paradoxical fact
remains that they are less generally preju-
diced than their brothers. Paradoxically
again, they have q knack-all their own
of reconciling realism with romanticism
in one manner. For instance, the realistic
petty details which man would catalogue
as uncompromising adjuncts TO facts of his
case become, under a woman's hand,
the trimming-I may be permitted such an
expression-by which she adds to her
main statement n localization, q personal
flavor, a subtle touch of literary grace.
Women writer's are-I hazard the sug-
gestion under correction-more literary
than men, because more imaginative and
more diffuse.
After giving some of these characteristics
Of English women In journalism the
speaker presented figures, showing their
numerical strength, as follows:
Under the heading of journalist, or lit
erary writer's. the census Of ls4i gave the
names of but 15 women; that of 1891 gives
as editors. journalists, reporters, etc., 500.
"We all know the witty Frenchman' 8
estimate of the value of statistics, and I
would rather draw your attention to the
generous recognition of equality which
brings me before you here today, and
which, beyond doubt, Is more convinc-
ing than any figures and more eloquent
than any speech. and, in conclusion,
would very emphatically repeat that the
woman journalist has usurped no hitherto
occupied place. She has created for her.
self a position and a power which 80 years
ago were absolutely nonexistent! She has
cut a path through waste ground where
no roads ran, and on this path, cleared,
widened, beautifed, now marches, not
counter to, but side by side with that OF
her brothers of the pen. Nay, may / not
claim that the two tracks are merged to-
gether In the one magnificent kings high.
way OF modern journalism"