The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-06-10
WOMEN WHO WORK.
Rev. MIR. Talmage Speaks ElOquently
In Their Behalf.

From Report of Lecture.
Society is to be reconstructed on the SUBJ
ject of woman's toll. A vast majority of
those who would have woman industrious
shut her up to few kinds of work. My
judgment in this matter is that a woman
has right to do anything she can do we'll.
There should be no department of mer-
chandise. mechanism, art. or science bar
red against her. If Miss Hosmer has gen.
Jus for sculpture, give her a chisel. If
Rosa Bonheur has fondness for delineat-
ing animals, let her make THE Horse
Fair If Miss Mitchell will study as
tronomy, let her mount the starry ladder.
If Lydia will be a merchant, let her sell
purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach the
gospel, let her thrill with her wonmanly
eloquence the Quaker meeting house.
1T is said, If woman is given such OPP
portunities, she will occupy places that
might be taken by men. l say, If she
have more skill and adaptedness for any
position than a man has let her have it,
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
delicate that she is untitled for exhausting
toll. | ask, in the name of all past his
tory, what toll earth is more severe,
exhausting. and tremendous than that toll
of the needle to which for ages she has
been subjected? The battering-ram. the
sword, the carbine, the battle-ax have
made no such havoc as the needle. would
that these living sepulchers in which
women have for ages been buried might be
pet might bring up these living corpses to
the fresh air and sunlight.
Go with me and / will show you
woman who by hardest toll supports her
children, her drunken husband, her old
father and mother, pays her house rent,
always has wholesome food on her table.
and when she can get some neighbor 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 sales
men and dispose of more goods. She
could go into your wheelwright shops and
beat on-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 shoudered
the heavier. But the day of judgment,
which will reveal the sufferings of the
stake and Inquisition, will marshal before
the throne of God and the hierarchs of
heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and
needle Now, / say, if there be any pref
erence in occupation, let woman have it.
God knows her trials are the severest.
BY her acuter senstiveness to misfortune
by her hour of anguish, / demand that
no one hedge UP her pathway to liveli-
hood. On the meanneSS, the deSpica bility
of men who begrudge a woman the right
to work anywhere in any honorable call
ing!
81 go still further and say that women
By what principle of justice is it that
women in many of our cities get only two
thirds as much pay as men, and IN many
case only half? Here is the gigantic injus-
tice-that for work equally we'll, if not bet
ter done, woman receives far less compen-
sation than man. Start with the national
government at Washington. Unless ii has
been recently changed, women clerks in
the capital get nine hundred dollars for
doing that for which men receive eighteen
hundred dollars. The wheel of oppression
is rolling over the necks of thousands of
women who are at this moment in despair
about what they are to do. Many of the
largest mercantile establishments of our
cities are accessory to these denominations.
and from these large establishments there
are scores of souls being pitched off into
death. and their employers know it. Is
there God? Will there be a Judgment?
tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's
wrongs, many of our large establishments
will be swallowed up quicker than a South
American earthquake ever took down a
city. God will catch these oppressors be-
tween the two millstones of his wrath and
grind them to powder