The Savannah morning news., 1901-11-10
MAN OUT or HIS SPHERE.
INSTEAD OF wOMAN's INVADING
MANS DOMAIN, HE HAS IN
TRUDED ON HERS.

ana she HAS Been FORCED out OF
It-She Accepts the Situation Phil
OsOphicaIIy and Is Trying to Make
Another for HerseIf-But the Men
Seem to Want Her to Get on the
Earth.
By Ida Hustled Harper.
The reproach continually made that
women are entering into competition
with men, naturally raises the ques-
ton; What is woman's legitimate oc.
+ cupation?" Is it nursing the sick, car
ing for the wounded, looking after the
unfortunate? 1t was only after strug-
gle of years that they were permitted
to enter our public institutions and
share with men in nursing the sick,
insane, the feeble minded; in but few
of these are they now permitted to
practice the healing art of the physi-
clan, even upon those of their own sex,
and they are almost universally ex-
cluded from boards of management,
even from those institutions for the
care of children. They have fought for
decades to secure the privilege of re-
ceiving and looking after women and
children in station houses and prisons
all of these positions, plainly within
woman's sphere, being monopolized by
men. The public has not forgotten the
bitter contest which was waged at the
beginning of our recent war with
Spain to obtain for trained and eff
Gent women the opportunity to minis
ter to sick and wounded soldiers, even
the position of nurse being claimed by
men as their right
If we are to divide the work of the
world into mans province and woman's
province shall we place the profession
Of teaching within the latter? But
even here she must divide with men.
In the universities and colleges the
latter have a practical monopoly. In
the public schools they fill a vast
majority of the highest salaried and
most influential positions and a con-
siderable proportion of all the others,
while there is a constant agitation to
give them a larger representation.
If, then, woman is not to come into
competition with man in the industrial
field we must decide what constitutes
her own undisputed, individual sphere.
Is it cooking, laundry work, scrubbing
washing windows and making beds?
In all the hotels, restaurants, hospi-
tails, asylums, prisons and institutions
of every kind we find the cooks and
most of their assistants to be men;
the chefs in the families of the wealthy
are men,, and the butler, who superin-
tends the dining room and waits on
the door, is a man. The laundrieS of
the country, which now do a large
part of the household washing, are al
most exclusively in the hands of men.
In offices and public buildings there are
quite as many men as women cleaning
the floors and windows. On the Pacific
Coast and in other Western states the
chamber work is almost entirely done
by male Chinese and Japanese.
Do dressmaking. millinery, tailoring.
knitting, quilt piecing, carding, spin
ming. weaving, bread, butter, cheese,
candle and soap making, canning.
picking and preserving-de these
come within the legitimate sphere of
| women's occupation? Formerly all of
these industries were carried on with
in the home by the women of the
household and furnished employment
to millions OF them. Now practically
all of them have been taken, without
leave or license, forever out of the
home-not by women, but by men. The
largest dressmaking, millinery and
tailoring establishments in all our
cities are owned and managed by men,
and thousands of men are employed
therein. Men now would not wear the
clothes made in the family. The great
concerns for the manufacture of even
women's and children's garments of all
kinds, wholly in the hands of men and
employing thousands of them, have
very nearly taken this work also out of
the household. The huge factories have
absorbed the industry of carding,
spinning and weaving, and more men
than women are employed in them.
They manufacture bed covering which
renders the piecing of quilts a waste
of time, and the knitting needles in
Women's hands can not compete with
the knitting machines in the hands
of men. Even the so-called fancy
work" the making of shawls, facina-
tors, tides, mats, embroidery and
needlework of every kind have been
transferred by men from the willing
fingers of women to machines managed
by themselves. The bakeries, the
creameries, the candle. soap and can
ming factories, all controlled by men
and giving employment to more men
than women, have completed the de-
struction of these industries in the
household and left millions of women
without any occupation.
What are these women doing about
it? Are they whining and fretting and
declaring from the housetops that men
nave entered into competition" with
women and they are going to be re-
venged? Not at all. They simply ac-
cept the situation as the inevitable re-
suit of changed economic conditions,
and since they have been arbitrarily
robbed of their work in the household
they simply follow it into the shops
and factories. as they have q nerfec4
right to do. When they find that men
, have very largely taken possession o.
it here, and. in addition have also
entered the homes and assumed the
duties there, they are forced to ac-
oept Whatever occupation they can
find which will yield an honest living
There is no desire to "enter into COM
petition there is no wish to under
bid" there is only the necessity to
earn their daily bread The time has
passed for limiting a woman's sphere
or mans sphere, and the struggle for
existence will be far less difficult for
both when they join hands and make
common c1usa