Elmore County Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1910-1915, 1912-04-20
From The Magazine Press.
Excerpts of Opinion from the Leading Writers of Today
Rev. John A. Peake.

riage is equivalent to a resigna-
ton.
The Board does not take up
I the issue as to whether mar
ried woman is incapacitated from
being a good teacher through the
fact that she is married. This is
not the question.
The idea seems to be that the
position of a school teacher is a
sort of sinecure for persons who
otherwise could not earn a living
an ecclesiastical benefice with
out the care of souls.
The Review of Reviews con-
tains an important article from
the pen of Jeanne Robert on
Woman and the Wage Cues
ton Miss Robert says:
They sang as they came down
the stairs, winding in narrow
procession through the doorway
into the street; they sang snatch
es of "Silver Threads Among The
Gold,' the song the barrel-organ
was grinding out round the cor
ner. They were young and flush
ed and eager, these factory girls
who came from the great loft Oh
the sky scraper at lunch hour.
Little wisps of lint chung to their
coats and dark skirts; their hair
was blowing about their faces.
They attracted me and | stepped
near to listen to their voices. They
were debating whether it WIS WI
ser to buy a five cent lunch at a
nearby restaurant, or to econo-
mise and save three cents by lun-
ching on a roll and a doughnut
purchased at bakery. | had just
paid sixty cents formy own lunch
and had not thought it an extra
VACANT outlay. Here were per-
haps twenty girls hesitating over
the expenditure of five cents for
necessary nourishment. How much
wage did these girls receive; how
did they manage to make ends
meet?
With these questions in mind,
| walked up the three flights OF
stairs to the loft where the girls
worked. 1t was spacious and well
lighted, but the atmosphere was
stuffy and devitalized. Long Ia
bles were set with sewing ma
chimes and piled high with shirt
waists in the process Of making ;
the floor was Uttered with an I'M
tidy mass of scraps and ravelllngs
The majority Of the workers had
gone out for their lunch; they
were sitting in groups here and
there talking listlessly and eating
4eir MONDAY meal from lunch
baskets or brown paper parcels.
They were not as young as the
girls | had seen coming down the
stairs. Many looked old and wea-
zened and all had the curious ex-
preston Of Indifference that the
monotony of factory labor i'm
prints upon the faces of women
Already the life In the factory
mad told on them; the grind had
produced a WEAKNESS that was
not merely fatigue, but a kind of
malady. 1t had robbed them of
their freshness; their eyes were
dull, their skins pallid anemic.
Had the work done this, or did
the trouble lie i'm lack of whole
some food and the simple COM
forts necessary to the mainte-
nance of good health? would these
factory girls become in the end
the miserable old women of the
great cities, the stoop-shouldered,
knotty handed old women who
struggle along the streets in old
rags with bundles of sweat-shop
work in their arms?
Is it work that robs the woman
in the factory of her womanliness
and health? No, for work is not
the spoiler of womanhood if pur-
sued under healthful conditions.
Is it vice? Again, no, for the fac
tory girl as rule right-minded
and vIrtuous. What, then, is the
cause of the rapid deterioration
of the women in industry
What is Living Wage?"
Is the next question asked and
answered, and the writer goes on
to show that the iniquitously low
wage is responsible for the dete-
rioration referred to.
"The Organization of the E.
lectorate" is very important ar
ticle, by William Watts Folwell,
professor Emeritus, University