The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-01-01

lIEI, LAey may nave dnOI0ef cup
of tea at noon. AS to the markets, meats,
with the exception of pork are exceedingly
cheap, bat other things are high.
Mutton brings almost nothing, and
beef costs about half it's value
in the United States. Very little
pork is used by the laboring classes.
Most families buy their bread, as the poor
have no facilities for baking. Licensed
baners supply the demands, and the bread
man ON horseback, with his panniers filled
with rolls, goes from house to house daily.
The bread sold in Buenos Ayres is as good
as that which is made in our cities. Corn
meal is not used. although hominy is com
mon. Onions are everywhere eaten, and
frequent sight upon the streets is the union
peddler, who goes along carrying strings of
onions, the bulbs being braided into straw so
that they can be thrown over the two ends
of pole and thus carried upon the shout
ders. Out in the country the laborers live
almost entirely upon meat, and although
they could if they would have garden
patches, they seldom care to undertake the
trouble of raising vegetables.
TRADES UNIONS AND WOMEN.
The different classes of laborers have
their own unions. have been told by rail-
road men that they seldom have a strike
variation in wages from year to year. and in
all branches strikes are almost unknown
The most OF the employers prefer to get
their work done as far as possible by con-
tract or by the piece. This is especially so
in railroad construction, where excavation
is done by the cubic yard, and other things
in the same way One man will hire a
gang of men to help him, and he will be
responsible to the contractors or their Of
fcials. Upon all the large estanciaS or
farms the proprietor has store and fur
nishes the goods to his hands, deducting a
certain amount from their wages to pay
for them The railroads often carry pro-
vision cars with them and sell at Il little
over cost price eatables and other goods TO
their workmen, furnishing wine and clothes
as well as all sorts Of provisions, from Lon
don jam to bareback. Neither in the coun-
try nor in the cities do the laboring classes
seem to care for comforts as our laborers
do. A galvanized iron shed forms the home
of the farmer, and room in a conven-
tillo that of the city workman. An Ameri-
can mechanic would not live in this way,
and I do not think he would make enough
money in the Argentine to enable him to
buy the comforts he has at home. The Ar
gentine laborer has to pay more for his
clothing, and he has nothing like the edu-
cational or social advantages of his North
American brother. There is in fact, no
chance in South America for North Ameri-
can laborers.
AS to the women, those of the poorer
classes have a much worse chance in the
Argentine than in the United States There
are but few female clerks in the stores.
Women are not generally employed in the
nd no
sional typewriter of the Argentine has yet
to be born. In the government telegraph
office there are few women operators, and
at the telephones there are girls to answer
the calls. They are not ''hello girls how
| ever. The Argentine man, when he calls up
central" yells out "oila" to get the young
ladys attention. and often talks to her mo-
ment before he begs her to have the gra-
| ciousness to connect him with his butcher,
baker or candlesticlk maker. I am told that
ii was first thought the girls would not serve
as telephone operators. The young Argentine
dandies who were among the patrons of the
| institution made love to them over the wires
so that severe restrictions had to be i'm
| posed before the service could go on without
| clogging.
FEMALE SCHOOL TEACHERS.
There are number of women employed
as school teachers in the Argentine Repub-
lie. This is perhaps the most respectable
| profession a young woman can have. A
! former President, named Sarmiento, intro
duced the first female school teacher. He
| had been minister to the United States, and
| had there met Horace Mann, and through
him became interested in our system of edu-
cation. 1T was through him that a number
| of American school teachers were imported
md NJ IA h ned o.
| the whole republic. There are no better
| equipped schools of the kind anywhere than
the Argentine now has. They have some
| OF the finest buildings of the republic. They
| are found to-day in nearly every province
and many young ArgentinS girls are being
! trained in them. The native Argentine
| women make excellent teachers, but there
| are not enough schools for them in the
| cities in which the normal colleges are To-
! Gated, and it is not considered just the
thing for a young lady to go away from her
| own town to teach The result is that most
| of them remain at home and stand in the
| doors or lean out of their windows day
after day gazing at the passers-by This is
| the chief occupation of the middle class girls
of the Argentine cities.
As to factories the Argentine Republic is
yet in its infancy a manufacturing nation
and the females employed are comparatively
few There are some glovemakers, cap
makers and umbrella sewers, who are paid
from so cents TO a dollar of our money per
day There are some good seamstresses and
| milliners In private families women are
Used as house servants, but about the hotels
and boarding houses all of the scrubbing
and cleaning and much of the chamber work
is done by men.
The washerwoman and the laundress has
not the chance in the Argentine that she
has in the United States All families have
their washing and ironing done out of the
house and it is customary for one set of
women to do the washing and another to
do the ironing. The washerwoman never
irons and the ironer never washes. The
corrugated zinc washboard is not known.
The clothes are usually taken to the banks
of a stream and rubbed with the hands on
fiat stones or upon boards in the public
wash houses, where for a small sum for the
week woman can get place at the trough
and use of hot and cold water. There are
many families who do nothing but iron, one
woman employing from five TO ten helpers
and paying each about 50 cents gold per day.
The ironer usually arranges with his or her
customers for both washing end ironing