The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-05
WHAT IS WOMEN'S WORK.
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION HELD
 ON THIS SUBJECT.


 A socioiogise who Would Give Wo- men the Ballot, hut Would Not Af- low Them Co Practice Medicine or
 the Law English lnoonsis,encies-- Women Held Co be Freer Under aon- archiss Than Repub,,cs-why wo. men wil Never Do Unsexing Work. Dr. Fernand Deckamps, secretary of Belgium, who visited the United States a year or two ago, expressed his amaze rnent at the inconsistency of Americans in refusing the ballot to women while permitting them to practise law and medicine, the latter being-in the opin- ion of the Belgian visitor-much more dangerous to femininity than merely casting vote.
 Socologists are often as inconsistent as common folk. Few minds are logical enough to perceive that women, as a class, will never do anything to destroy their feminity, or at least they will not continue to do it very long, for obvious reasons. If it were unwomanly to practise law, women would not do it, because they would not be able to make 1t pay. The same is true of medicine, and of any and all trades and profess ions. 5- Women have been admitted factors in the industrial world for long enough period to prove beyond question the truth of the statement just made, and yet all oyer the world society still wrangies over the question of the proper work for women. The next sim gular lines are drawn. Tn Prussia, for example, where women are jealously barred from most of the professions, where they are admitted to institutions of learning grudgingly, and where medi- cal degrees must be obtained, abroad, woman have been admitted to the Stock Exchange. In an English paper is an account of three sisters in the city of Krefeld who are large dealers in corn and provisions, one of them going re- gularly to the exchange and holding her own own with the men speculators. The same English paper published in another issues the following paragraph: 'Capel Court has not yet countenanced the petticoated dealer or jobber. Never theless she is in the city, and doggedly exercises stock-breeding functions, though, of course, she has to put herself righ by dealing through members on the exchange"
 England has many successful women physicians, and is proud of the fact, but she will have none of women lawyers. She allows them in the provinces, it is true, and the papers chronicle their pro- gress. Miss Cornelia sobraji of India was actually admitted to the Inns of Court for further study to prepare her. self for important legal work among the wealthy women of the Zenanas, widows and orphans, hitherto at the mercy of their agents, whom they were not per- Initted to see, and to whom they had to converse from behind curtain. Miss Sobraji's plan for trained women legal agents for these secluded woman met with the approval of the Indian Viceroy of the Indian courts, and of practically all the authorities. She was given every assistance in England, but the English bar drew the line at training women lawyers for the work. They must go to India for their legal studies.
 In Australia, where women have been given the full franchise, they have until very recently, been barred from the legal profession. The first woman lawyer had not only to struggle for : her education, but she had to get a bill passed in the Victoria Parliament re. moving the embargo on women.
 
 In the United States are many womer lawyers whose ability is unquestioned In New York the attorney for the Lega Aid Society is a woman, appointed tc the position after serving as assistan to man, and doing practically all the work as attorney for year or two be. fore he resigned. Then it was decided that she had better be given the posi-. tion and the salary. There was really nothing else to do, although the fact oi her sex caused some embarrassment The work of this woman lawyer ha. since commanded the highest respect O. her masculine colleagues, yet when he name was proposed for membership il the New York City Bar Association something like panic was caused Nothing was to be said against tht candidate except that she was woman but it was enough.
 It has long been considered tht natural and inafienable right of womer in this country to teach school, yet pre- judice bars them, in most localities from becoming school superintendents New York city is beginning to allow them this distinction and in severa Western States they have even beer elected State superintendents of public instruction. This has oftenest hap pened in the four suffrage States.
 The woman missionary, deaconess