The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-01-29
SCHOOL TEACHERS AND THEIR
Personal AFFAIRS.

Some back-number citizens on the Chi
cago School Board having owlishly recon-
mended that married women shall no longer
be employed as teachers, but that all men
so employed must be married leads to the
publication of cartoon in a Chicago
paper representing an agonized sutton on
his knees before a sedate lady. She ex-
claims, But If 1 marry l shall lose my
position" and he responds, IT shall lose
mine if I dont! The board did not re-
gard with favor the suggestion as to the
marriage of the male teachers, but so much
pressure is being brought in regard to the
married women that they are likely to be
barred out of the schools. The argument
used is that married women, being pre-
sumed to have homes and families to look
after, must necessarily be unable to give
proper attention to the schools but back
of this, and the real reason for the opposi-
ton is the theory that such women should
be supported by their husbands and should
not be allowed to stand in the way Of I'M
married women. Involved in this is the
argument which invariably comes up in
such discussions among the self-constituted
guardians of private welfare that it is the
bounden duty of a wife to bury herself in
the bosom Of her family and to devote her
self solely to promoting the well-being of
her husband and children by the practice
Of housewifely arts. The home is spelled
by them in large capitals whenever the
unholy spectacle is presented of married
woman going outside of it's sacred portals
to earn money. They bemoan on such oc-
casions the degeneracy of the times and
point backward to a period, according to
dreamed of engaging in other than strictly
domestic pursuits. To hear them it might
be supposed that the women of an earlier
day gave all their time and thoughts to
the bringing up of their children, whereas,
as a matter of fact, their days were so
often taken up with the toll of cooking,
washing, sewing, mending, scrubbing, etc,
that the morals and manners of their off
spring got precious little attention. This is
also true of a very large class of stay-at-
home women of to-day-the women who do
their own work" Moreover, it is worth
while to notice, none of these seIf-appointed
regulators of domestic affairs is ever con-
cerned in the least over what, if their
reasoning in the other case is sound, must
be the equally demoralizing effect upon
families of taking in washing, ironing,
sewing and other more or less pecuniarily
profitable employments in which multitudes
of wives and mothers engage. With a
mother bent over the washtub or the sew
ing machine several hours in the day the
youngsters of the family are pretty sure to
lack the maternal endearments which the
ideal school-board mother is supposed to be
constantly occupied in administering, yet no
one hears Of any legislation forbidding these
mothers to earn money.
The masculine disposition to NEEDLE where
wage-earning women are involved dies hard
and is particularly tenacious of life in
school boards throughout the country. In
time, perhaps these bodies will learn that
precisely the rules which govern the en-
ployment of men should apply to women,
each teacher being judged by her individual
ability to perform the duties of the posi-
ton, and that beyond ascertaining her
moral repute they have no further concern
with her personal affairs.