The Virginia enterprise., 1906-08-10

Reasons Why She Is Paid. Less
Than Man. ~
BY MARGARET E. sANGSTER
Women are to be taken into account
as important factors in the labor mar
kets of the world. Wherever there is
an important commercial industry, let
its nature be what it may, women are
employed in its production, it's buying
and it's selling. Women bind shoes,
stitch gloves, make corsets, stand be-
side the loom day after day, in
cotton mills, woolen mills, silk mills
and paper mills; women make ar
tif1cial flowers and feathers, paper
boxes and safety pins Women are
employed in tobacco factories, candy
factories, soap and perfume factories,
and, i'll reality, very few things that we
eat, drink'or wear have, not passed un-
Ger tue shaping hand or the finishing
touch OF woman.
The labors of wage-earning women
are confined to no locality Thousands
of women work in shops and factories
in Bombay and Calcutta, just as they
do in New England and the south and
the middle west. Everywhere around
the globe women work hard and long,
support families and take their share
In the worlds work. Although there
are labor unions of. women, they ap-
strikes and less friction than their
brother-wOrkmen.
In some localities at morning and
evening, the streets are filled with
long professions of women, young and
old, going to and from their places of
daily toll. In the great department
stores saleswomen outnumber sales
men. They are equally as gifted in
selling goods as their fellow clerks of
the other sex. Notwithstanding the dis
abilities of the feminine organization,
they lose little time and make no fuss
about the hardships incidental to
standing behind counter.
, Women set type,, read, proof, go
about as reporters to gather news, and
sell newspapers on the street. In
very few cases, women occupy i'm
portant editorial positions, and In a
great number of cases they fulfil every
possible requirement as sub-editors
or managers of fashion departments.
Women are prison inspectors and ma
irons at police stations. The trained
nurse is familiar figure. An army of
stenographers and typewriters finds its
way into the great thoroughfares and
brightens business Offices by its cheer
full presence every day. 1t may al
most he said that woman's opportunity
to earn money is limited only by her
ambition, her skill, her industry and
her needs.
-
Young girls, it would seem, might
find all appropriate avenue for wage
earning in domestic service, but this
field OF labor is still left to our foreign
population. At one time the Irish mo-
nopolized it, and they were followed by
Germans, Danes, Norwegians and
Swedes. At the moment the competi-
tion has veered from these toward the
increasing number of colored women
who accept the kitchen as their sphere,
and the constantly augmented immi-
grafton from Russia and Poland.
Women of Slavonic origin, for the
most part ignorant and totally un-
trained, are becoming a recognizable
feature in the labor market as it af-
fects our homes,
It used to be said that women crowd
ed men out of the ranks. This need
not much be feared. There still re-
mains plenty of work that women are
not likely to undertake in very large
numbers. The great railway system
throughout the country employs men
as engineers, firemen, brakemen, por-
ters and conductors; the motormen on
the electric cars and the more or less
civil conductors and guards are men.
Although house decoration enlists many
women, particularly, in lines where
brains are required, yet the actua!
building, the work that taxes muscles
and back, legs and arms, is done by
men,
ates a ripple Of astonishment by her
audacity, pluck and success. But the
great f1nanciers of the modern world,
the great railway kings, and the man
ayers generally of big affairs, are men.
Broadly speaking, women bring to the
labor market patience, dexterity, quick
ness ard perseverance; they have an
eye for4 details, and they are learning
how to obey orders. But they are