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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
men, that is, as animated machines, to be paid for according to our marketable value, we must fairly and squarely acknowledge that, on the whole (giving a large margin to the numerous exceptions that go to prove the rule) man is a more lusty and reliable piece of machinery than woman. During a recent discussion and investigation of the vexed subject of relative salaries in the case of government clefks in England, it was pointed out that female clerks required more frequent holidays. Upheld by a purpose, women workers do frequently succeed in walks that would be tough for men to follow, but sudden collapse has been known to be the aftermath of a rich harvest reaped by female enterprise; and, on the whole, permanent success and enjoyment of it will depend largely on our knowledge of what is familiarly termed “the length of our tether.”
Logical argument has hitherto been an exceptional power among us, and I am sure many of us have only fully realized the humiliating fact on perusing the combative newspaper tussles of a few of the women champions of our rights, many of whose barbed words are obviously doomed to miss their mark and recoil upon unintended victims. We have certainly often seen professional men come warmly forward and applaud those who have won laurels in domains hitherto deemed their exclusive hunting-grounds, and the frank “well done” that not long ago greeted Miss Fawcett, of England, who, in the mathematical triumphs, left all competitors far behind, had nothing of envy in its ring.
Some of us are still weak-minded or old-fashioned enough to believe that honor does come to whom honor is due, and that work honestly done for its own sake carries its own reward with it; and many of us have good reason to doubt the assertion of an Amazon of wordy warfare and platform celebrity, to the effect that, “chivalry is dead!”
No mawkish serenades under our window are likely to disturb our night’s rest, it is true; but many a noble woman finds gallant knight proud to buckle on his sword in her service, and ready to go forth on her quest, even in these apparently prosaic days of top hats and gaiters. I may safely venture to assert that many, even most women, had rather be fought for than fight, and do not at all care about proving the excellence of their intellect, having never realized that they belonged to an oppressed race.
The consumptive little tailor (alas! I have seen so many in the East End of London), toiling wearily and ceaselessly for his ill-fed family, is not a less pathetic spectacle than the hard working shirtmaker in her attic. The anxious workman, forced unwillingly into a strike by his companions, is as much to be pitied as the hardy char-woman or “scrub-lady,” as I hear they term themselves, who fights want single handed, tidies up her children every Sunday and sends them to Sunday-school and chapel, and sobs over her scrubbing brush for the sickly baby who kept her awake at nights, and whom a kind Providence has saved from the evil to come.
How many women have we met whose daily martyrdom was the fear of being crowded out of the work that earned their bread and cheese, are doomed to battle with their bete noire till they fall. Who has not met with them in England, all lonely and unfit for toil; trying, trying, trying, only to be jostled aside at last, and who has not longed at some time or other to help them by teaching them to help themselves?
Every suggestion that promises a reduction of the martyrdom of “ worry ” and lonely failure is generally welcome. Not long ago a lady gave a sketch of her practical experience of profitable gardening. The publication is valuable for its cheery common sense, and for the really encouraging account of the success in a field of effort as yet almost unexplored for lucrative purposes by educated women in England. The writer tells how, by co-operation and activity, a few ladies with very small capital succeeded in gaining their livelihood from the produce of Mother Earth; how they all improved in health, and to judge from the tone of the writer’s article, enjoyed their occupation in spite of its fatigue, disappointments and drawbacks.