Year: 1873

way Hail. will be not more full of picturesque
and wOmanly grace than of timely thought
and suggestion. The question Of wOmant
work and wages cannot be too often nor toe
thoroughly discussed. To its consideration
Miss Dickinson brings much careful study OF
facts, and the insight of a sincere and generous
nature. What she says will be worth present
hearing and future discussion. Nevertheless
we dissent from some Of her positions, rs we
find them reported from other cities.


1t is only a partial truth. for example, as it
seems to u.s. that men get good pay because
they do good work, and women bad pay be-
cause they do bad work. Among the hundreds
of statesmen in the employ of such house as
Stewards, there are very varying degrees OF
capacity and clvility. But the salesman's pay
is fixed rate, and the suave and nimble A.
receives no more shillings per week than the
grim and numbering b. AS chance of promo
ton may be better, but that is not the ques-
tion. Among the hundreds of saleswOmen III the
same establishment there are equal differences
of readiness and cOmplaisance. But pay III
the same grade of work is uniformly the same,
and uniformly lower than that of the men.
The real difficulty, as we have more than once
said, is not one of sex nor of capacity. 1t Is
the enormous competition. When a new ballet
was lately announced at the Grand Opera
House, demanding twenty-five additional
female dancers, six hundred girls applied for
positions. They did not claim any genius, nor
even any ambition for dancing but had, most
of them an unsatisfed appetite for bread and
meat


of
amount runs through almost all departments
of women's work. And, if it be true, as Miss
Dickinson is informed, that there are eighty
thousand seamstresses in the United States
who get wretched pay, it is probably much


less because, as she AYERS, they do wretched
work than because forty thousand of them
ought to be doing something else for which
there is q large demand and of which there
is a small supply. We happen to know of
a very good seamstress who earned a difficult
livelihood in one of our large cities, and who,
falling unexpected heir to fortune of nine
hundred dollars, straightway bought out
small greenhouse and garden in New-Jersey.
She did well from the start, gradually en-
larged her borders, and clears now from three
to four thousand dollars a year. Why Be-
cause she had exceptional capacity Not III
the least. When she began she hardly knew
bachelors button from a poinsetter, and she


is becoming a skilled botanist only by hard
and constant study. 1t is because hers is the
only greenhouse of consequence in circle
of twelve miles among rich suburban VIII
lagos. In one month of this Winter she sold
eleven thousand tea-rose buds, and, as we all
know who buy flowers in January, tea-rOses
set no mean value on themselves.


We demur also to Miss DickinsOn's charge
that girls will not fit themselves for higher
emplOyments while they despise the lower as
uninteresting. First, girls have not. as boys
have. that best of stimuIants to success, the
hope of becoming employers in the business
they serve as apprentices, because they will
not for many years be able to command cap
ital, as enterprising young men do. And 1t is
not in human nature to work for another
for wages with the enthusiasm with which
one works for ones self, for advancement.
Second, it is not proven that girls are not
eager to qualify themselves for better posi-
tiOns until they have had the same chance
with boys and ihave refused to avail them
selves of it. These hasty generalizations are
unfair and dangerous 1t is true that the Uni
versity course of Lectures opened to women
at Harvard was a total failure, almost no
women appearing to avail themselves of it.
But only this very Winter a course of lectures
was opened to women at the great hall of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Boston, through the generous kindness of
Mr.. James Z. Fields The lecturers
were such men as Lowell, Holmes, Cnrtis,
and HgginsOn, and it will be readily inferred
that what they said presupposed thought and
alertness in their hearers. To these Saturday
afternoon discourses came women not from
the city only but from twenty miles round
about. They waited for an hour on the icy
pavement for the opening of the doors, and i'll
five minutes from that opening there was not
standing-rOOm left in the hall, as many being
turned away as found admittance. No mat
inee crush was ever more hopeless-and this
happened not once but on twelve successive
Saturdays, every phase of social life being
represented in the crowd of the Institute, from
the grand dame of Beacon-st. to the shoe
binder of the North End.


TO the other indictment that shOp-girls and
other female artisans are not interested in their
work, we might reply-guilty, but recommended
to mercy. We have yet to hear of that ex-
alted (or degraded) human being who is absorb
ingly interested in what is not interesting.
The absence of interest is not, of course, an
excuse for doing 9ae's work badly, whether it
be tape-selling or legislating. But the remedy
is to supply the presence Of interest, and so
we get back after all to the fundamental
question of common school instruction. 1t is
our deliberate conviction that no employ
ment is hopelessly duh or empty if we
bring to it, not eyes alone, but vision. The
scavenger would find his a delightful occupa-
ton were he a chemist as well And IL is the