The Savannah morning news., 1902-10-05


those of US who are interested in the
i -u-baing of our sex, and who are
ling with tongue and pen, striving to
in for women the right to make an
sorest living. and to stand free and
nal before the law with man, read
;+b an aching heart the statement of
of the engineers of the St. Louis,
,,srDhis and Southeastern Railroad
lat he had three women employed in
/tsaIing dirt on his construction work
..1+ staggered me a bit when I first
n ..ssrved them" said the gentleman,
~but when I saw the relentless energy
NTH which they hiked overloaded
nhesiborrows up the dump. my pity
usnt out to the barrows. Instead of
+bem being objects of sympathy, one
Is rather inclined to envy their vigor-
ans health and strength. They work
,ust east of Merely, on the second bot
rom back of the Mississippi.
THE party is composed of a man,
his wife and two stalwart sisters
There is a difference in the ability of
of clods, and the comparison is all in
favor of the woman. The women say
4 railroad work pays them great deal
hotter and is much easier than the
roll they are accustomed to. They take
*their turn right alongside the men and
wheel full loads in their barrows every
&trip. They would laugh at you if you
/ we're to offer any concessions to their
sex in the way of reducing their
&freightage. Labor is pretty hard to
get this year, and it wouldn't surprise
me if the contractors didn't have to
fill out their gangs with quite num-
Der of women before the season is
over"
i one of the sights in Europe that
never fails to shock and horrify Ameri-
cans. says Dorothy Dix, in the New
orleans Picayune, is the spectacle OF
women made mere beasts of burden,
sometimes yoked by the side of a COW
or dog, pulling heavy loads, every par
tcle of beauty, grace and womanliA
ness crushed out of face and figure by
inherited centuries of toll. That such
H a condition CT affairs is coming to pass
in our own country is enough to strike
4 terror to our souls. That it's first man
Hesitation should be in the South-in
the South, that used to make chivalry
10 women & religion, and whose proud
est boast was that every man was a
knight who stood ready to defend every
woman, should make us hide our face
in shame before the world.
Such scene is searchlight turned
on the decadence of man. Where now
is the strength that once protected
woman? Where the tenderness that
kept her safe within the shelter of hel
home? Where the reverence that shield
ed her from contact with the rough
ness, the vulgarity, the profanity of
Il the common sweating, swearing ditch
digger?
There was a time when the poorest
and most ignorant white man in the
South would have died before he would
have seen his womenkind degraded to
such labor; there was a time when any
man, so employing women would have
been ostraciZed by every decent man,
and the pity of the thing is that these
days are gone.
For you cannot brutalize the women
of a land without degrading the whole
people. The stream OF race rises no
higher than its fountain of motherhood
The peasant women of Europe, de-
graded to the level of the beast, bring
forth the narrow-forehcaded, evil-pas-
stoned peasant-"brother to the OK
from the cabin of the poor American
mother have come the poets, painters,
soldiers, statesmen that have made
our country great, but they will
come no longer when, as the chivalrous
railroad builder prophesi9S, women are
familiar sight wheeling dirt on rail-
road entertainments.
This is not to contend that women
should not labor. No woman any more
than any man has a right to eat the
bread of idleness, and defraud the
world of the use of her brain and
hands. Taking things on a mere brute
basis, there is, perhaps, no reason why
the woman with physical strength
enough should not even wheel dirt, or
do any other eXhausting physical labor,
but the sum of human progress has
been the struggle away from brutal
ideals, and its croWning test the de-
ference with which women are treated
Civilization has made us relegate 20
woman the lighter forms of toil--the
work for which her physique fitted her
and which could be done safe from de-
grading conditions, and to change this
to send her to sweep the streets, to
throw up railroad entertainments, to
stand behind the pillow, is a distinct
step backward. 1t is mans to bear
the heavy burdens of life; woman's to
add grace and refinement to it; and it
speaks i'll for any community that per-
mits these conditions to be altered
1t will, of course, be claimed by the
prejudiced and the narrow-minded that
the woman with the wheelbarrow is
the result of woman's rights, that wo-
man demanded the privilege of work.
ing, and that she has gotten it with a
vengeance.
Nothing could be a greater mis-
statement of the case. No woman
bears such burdens unless they are
thrust upon her; no woman leaves her
home for such work unless her hearth
stone is cold and her cupboard bare.
When she must go out into the world
ana work, or else starVe, she goes, and
pushes a wheelbarrow or does any
thing else she can for bread.
One of the tatiously capable wo-
men came in on the train from Mont
clair the other day, says the New York
Times, according to the testimony of
a certain business man who had been
an invalid at home for some time and
was making his first trip to his Office
after siege of rheuma tism. To repeat
MS own words:
She was one Of the efficient, strong,
capable kind of women, and she took a
seat directly in front of me. had been
persuading myself that ] was a well
man, but she disabused my mind of
that delusion. The window was down,
and she wanted it put up. She tried
it, but it wouldn't bulge, and then she
appealed to me- 1 felt sure that /
couldn't raise the window, but. being
a man, had to demonstrate my will
lngness to oblige her / went through
the motion of attempting, but my