Woman's Work and Wages. NELLIE E. BLACKMER, Springfield, Mass. "I stood up strait and worked My veritable work. And as the soul Which grows within the child makes the child grow, So life, in deepening with me, deepened all The course I took, the work I did." -ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. WEVER since "Adam delved and Eve span" has anyone questioned woman's right to work. N She has fed and clothed the world, she has given unremittingly of strength of body and of soul; but the wage-earning woman is distinctively a factor of the complex problem of our modern life. Rapidly woman has worked her way into the wage-earning world, with a remarkable facility and power of adaptation entering every industry which does not require the exercise of great physical strength. This is well. The outlook of woman has been widened, her dormant capacities quickened and developed, she has been removed from the humiliating position of a dependent, she is valued as never before; and, as an indirect result, both men and women have come to understand more clearly that the welfare of the human race depends as much upon the position and welfare of woman as upon that of man. Never yet has any great tidal wave of progress swept up the shore of time without carrying before it something of value that had been builded with patient care, destroying, only that more beautiful and enduring structures might be raised on firmer foundations. This change in the industrial world has taken place so quickly that the times have not kept pace with it. Equilibriums have been disturbed and complicated social prob lems arisen that will require time and patient thought to adjust. But it is plain that the advantages to woman and to the world at large of this change are inestimable, while the disadvantages may be overcome, not by yielding any of the ground gained, but by a steady pressing forward to a surer footing on heights beyond. Although this change in affairs has brought about evils and difficulties which did not before exist, it has set us free from dangers and difficulties still greater. The strong cords of tradition and custom by which woman was bound have been broken and she is free to do whatever she can do. With an unswerving purpose to exalt womanhood and secure its rights in the world of industry, never sacrificing principle nor yet arousing needless antagonism, the stronger helping the weaker, let every self-supporting woman stand in her place, proud to be a help, not a hindrance, a producer as well as a consumer, and glad to take her part in a forward movement involving the welfare of woman and so of the race. If any working woman to-day feels that her lot is a hard one she may well be thankful she was born no earlier. But little has been written about the common women of the early and middle ages. In every age there has been a class of women highly favored. Born to wealth and the heritage of a noble family, endowed with beauty and that indescribable power called "charm," men have been ready to serve them, to fight for them, and, if need be, die for them. Who has not been thrilled by the stories of the knights "without reproach or fear," who, bidding farewell to the ladies they left protected by castle walls, rode away "redressing human wrongs?" But what proportion of the women of those days, think you, were "ladies," and what proportion the slaves, not the queens, of men? Up to the opening of the present century there was small place for a woman forced to self-support. In colonial times wages in this country were about what they were in England, and a woman might earn a shilling a week by weeding or possibly two shillings by a week's work in the harvest field. Domestic servants received about $30 a year, but there was small demand for them. During the first quarter of this century women school teachers were paid $1.00 a week and "boarded 'round," teachers of especial skill receiving as high as $1.25, which was considered great wages for a woman. In those days every one was comparatively poor and both food and clothing coarse and plain. All manufacturing was of the simplest character and done in the homes. The farmer raised the sheep and the farmer's wife and daughters carded and spun the wool and made the garments the family wore. Linen cloth was made at home from the flax raised on the farm. Cotton cloth, being something they could not make themselves, was not used, and they alternately shivered in linen and perspired in woolen, both kinds of cloth being coarse and heavy compared with the machine-made goods of to-day. Coarse shoes were made at home by the men, the women "binding" them, and the women braided from coarse straw the hats then worn. With the building of the factory and the introduction of the manufacture of cotton cloth, a new era opened for the women of our land. To be sure, the days were unmercifully long and the pay small, but the girls who gladly thronged into the factories from the New England homes were inured to hardship and accustomed to long days of toil without pay. Small wonder they considered it a privilege to work but little harder and to receive in return that magic medium of exchange they had sometimes seen in the hands of their fathers, but rarely in the hands of their mothers, and of which few had ever possessed as much as a dollar. Lucy Larcom's charming book, "A New England Girlhood," describes perfectly the change in the life of the times brought about by the cotton factories. The average wages of the workers were about sixty cents for a day thirteen to fifteen hours long, while the most expert could earn from six to eight dollars a week. But they had good board at the corporation boarding house for $1.50 a week and saved. money. Following the establishment of the cotton mills came the shoe factories, the paper mills, the straw shops, and, as the country increased rapidly in wealth and industries of various kinds multiplied, women were employed more and more, as female help was more plenty as well as cheaper than male help. Whenever a new industry or calling has been opened to women the pioneers have had to bear more or less unpopularity and scorn; but they have made the way easy for those who have followed them until it is almost universally conceded that a woman's sphere is wherever she can render efficient service. The labor reports state that about four hundred kinds of manual labor are now done by women in the United States, and Miss Penny in her encyclopedia of occupations open to women mentions five hundred and thirty-one suitable employments for women in the arts, sciences, trades, professions, agricultural and mechanical pursuits, and these may be increased by subdivision. Statistics show that not less than seven per cent. of the population of the United States are women engaged in gainful occupations. It is found that the average age of the working woman is twenty-five years and that she begins work at the age of seventeen. The average wage paid to working women in this country is $5.75. The highest average is in Massachusetts, $6.68-the lowest in New Jersey, $5.00. These figures are perilously near the living point, $6.00 a week being the smallest sum on which any girl living in a city can feed and clothe herself respectably. Yet hundreds of women and girls are working for $2.50 or $3.00 a week. Occupations calling for education and some degree of mental work command about the same wages as skill and dexterity in manual labor-from eight to fourteen dollars a week-while positions calling for responsibility, business ability, and experience, yield correspondingly larger wages. The query is often raised why women receive less pay for their work than men. There are many reasons, the most obvious one perhaps, being, that they are in no position to make terms, self-support being a necessity, and the applicants more numerous than the places. They have here and there com 66 bined to keep up wages artificially, but this is a poor makeshift, assisting the few to the detriment of the many. In addition to every limitation that women have to meet they have the limitations of their sex, and to this we must add the resistance of men workers and, until recently, the loss of caste with their own sex. One writer states that the reason women receive less pay than men for the same work is because they are 'less selfreliant, less ready to cope with sudden emergencies, and more easily overcome by difficulties." Very likely. Suppose a wise, able man of affairs should be taken from his environments some summer day and placed in charge of a hot kitchen, with a baking in process and a dinner to be prepared. Put a crying child in his arms, and then watch for signs of his superiority. How would he compare with a woman in "self-reliance and the ability to cope with sudden emergencies"? By the changes of the times woman has been placed in a new environment and it is not strange that she does not at once rise to the level of man in what has always been his chosen field. Years ago it was argued that it would not answer to open the field of labor to women, as they would become so enamored with the pleasure of earning their own living and the independence it would give them, that they would not be willing to marry. While this argument shows slight knowledge of the human heart it suggests one of the greatest of the many advantages that have come to woman through her ability to be self-supporting. The average woman who has mingled with men and women in the working world a few years as a rule has too little sentimentality and too much common sense to marry, merely from fancy, a man who is unworthy of her or unable to support a family; and, being able to support herself, she is relieved of any temptation to marry "for convenience," for a home, for bread. As this tends to fewer marriages but more harmonious ones, and so to the elevation of the race, let us rejoice. A social condition which makes it easy for every woman to take the stand that she will marry no man she cannot love, honor, trust, and live with harmoniously, is an emancipation, |