In Many Branches Of Work Women Are Less Employed Than In
England.
They are not so frequent behind counters in the shops,
and are rarely seen as servants in hotels.
The fires in such
houses are lighted and the rooms swept by men. But the American
girls may say they do not desire to light fires and sweep rooms.
They are ambitious of the higher classes of work. But those higher
branches of work require study, apprenticeship, a devotion of
youth; and that they will not give. It is very well for a young
man to bind himself for four years, and to think of marrying four
years after that apprenticeship be over. But such a prospectus
will not do for a girl. While the sun shines the hay must be made,
and her sun shines earlier in the day than that of him who is to be
her husband. Let him go through the apprenticeship and the work,
and she will have sufficient on her hands if she looks well after
his household. Under nature's teaching she is aware of this, and
will not bind herself to any other apprenticeship, let Mrs. Dall
preach as she may.
I remember seeing, either at New York or Boston, a wooden figure of
a neat young woman, as large as life, standing at a desk with a
ledger before her, and looking as though the beau ideal of human
bliss were realized in her employment. Under the figure there was
some notice respecting female accountants. Nothing could be nicer
than the lady's figure, more flowing than the broad lines of her
drapery, or more attractive than her auburn ringlets. There she
stood at work, earning her bread without any impediment to the
natural operation of her female charms, and adjusting the accounts
of some great firm with as much facility as grace. I wonder
whether he who designed that figure had ever sat or stood at a desk
for six hours; whether he knew the dull hum of the brain which
comes from long attention to another man's figures; whether he had
ever soiled his own fingers with the everlasting work of office
hours, or worn his sleeves threadbare as he leaned, weary in body
and mind, upon his desk? Work is a grand thing - the grandest thing
we have; but work is not picturesque, graceful, and in itself
alluring. It sucks the sap out of men's bones, and bends their
backs, and sometimes breaks their hearts; but though it be so, I
for one would not wish to throw any heavier share of it on to a
woman's shoulders. It was pretty to see those young women with
spectacles at the Boston library; but when I heard that they were
there from eight in the morning till nine at night, I pitied them
their loss of all the softness of home, and felt that they would
not willingly be there, if necessity were less stern.
Say that by advocating the rights of women, philanthropists succeed
in apportioning more work to their share, will they eat more, wear
better clothes, lie softer, and have altogether more of the fruits
of work than they do now? That some would do so there can be no
doubt; but as little that some would have less. If on the whole
they would not have more, for what good result is the movement
made? The first question is, whether at the present time they have
less than their proper share. There are, unquestionably, terrible
cases of female want; and so there are also of want among men.
Alas! do we not all feel that it must be so, let the
philanthropists be ever so energetic? And if a woman be left
destitute, without the assistance of father, brother, or husband,
it would be hard if no means of earning subsistence were open to
her. But the object now sought is not that of relieving such
distress. It has a much wider tendency, or at any rate a wider
desire. The idea is that women will ennoble themselves by making
themselves independent, by working for their own bread instead of
eating bread earned by men. It is in that that these new
philosophers seem to me to err so greatly. Humanity and chivalry
have succeeded, after a long struggle, in teaching the man to work
for the woman; and now the woman rebels against such teaching - not
because she likes the work, but because she desires the influence
which attends it. But in this I wrong the woman - even the American
woman. It is not she who desires it, but her philanthropical
philosophical friends who desire it for her.
If work were more equally divided between the sexes, some women
would, of course, receive more of the good things of the world.
But women generally would not do so. The tendency, then, would be
to force young women out upon their own exertions. Fathers would
soon learn to think that their daughters should be no more
dependent on them than their sons; men would expect their wives to
work at their own trades; brothers would be taught to think it hard
that their sisters should lean on them, and thus women, driven upon
their own resources, would hardly fare better than they do at
present.
After all it is a question of money, and a contest for that power
and influence which money gives. At present, men have the position
of the Lower House of Parliament - they have to do the harder work,
but they hold the purse. Even in England there has grown up a
feeling that the old law of the land gives a married man too much
power over the joint pecuniary resources of him and his wife, and
in America this feeling is much stronger, and the old law has been
modified. Why should a married woman be able to possess nothing?
And if such be the law of the land, is it worth a woman's while to
marry and put herself in such a position?
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