THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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some man is as likely to do as not. But what women fail to do in their own peculiar sphere, no man can possibly do. Did you ever think, Kate, that woman may be able to do anything that man does in his sphere, if she be trained, but it is inconceivable that man could do a woman’s work, essentially that which is most womanly? Before you answer this, let us look at your second point, where you generously and most prac­tically inquire about the maidens by choice and the maidens by necessity. What are they to do, and how are they to live in this world? Just here is where one of the rights of man should be emphasized. There is one hard fact which women are apt to shirk, but which they must after all—that is, that in the pitiless economies of nations, the question is not the worker, but the value of the work. When Rosa Bonheur or Jean Ingelow bring their wares to market, the question of sex does not intrude itself in the matter of payment. If a woman has taken a desk in a counting-room, let her do her duty like a man, expecting no favors because she is a woman. She has no right to stay at home when it rains, and no right to leave before her hour because she can not cross certain places after dark, no right not to expect to be ‘blown up’ (using the expression which suits us men best) when she makes wrong entries. It is one reason for less wages that woman will not submit to conditions that men have to submit to, because their uncertain future makes them careless and less interested in their work. Once let woman face fate, and not flirt with it, and this question of ‘ less wages ’ will emerge from its present muddle. In the matter of wages, as between husband and wife, the husband’s wages are not simply payment from the capitalist for his work, but for his wife’s also. The money he earns the wife applies to the house­hold and their common wants. The wife in the truest sense is her husband’s most important business partner, his partner in a more complete and comprehensive sense than any other he can have. The household is her department of the business of life, as her husband’s is the store, the manufactory or the office. If she fail to act con­stantly upon this principle she is an unfaithful and untrustworthy partner, and is as much to blame as if her husband were to neglect his stock, his shipping, his contract, his client. Why should the husband be expected to manage his part of the business upon sound and correct business principles while his wife-partner is letting hers go at loose ends, with a shiftlessness which, if he should imitate, would ruin them in a year? Now what is the principle upon which every good businessman manages his affairs? Why, simply that of sovereignty. He keeps, if he is a sensible man, his stock under lock and key, and exacts a rigid accountability in its use.”

“ But,” says Kate, “ we housekeepers would not dare lock up our butter, eggs or sugar. We could not keep a girl a day if we doled out our stores and held our serv­ants accountable for their use.”

“ Suppose a manufacturer of jewelry should reason as you do 1 , Kate. He says, ‘ I can not keep my help satisfied unless I give them free access to my stock of gold and diamonds. I must throw open my tool drawers, and I must not ask how much mate­rial this or that manufactured article has taken to make.’ You know that man would have to shut up shop in less than a year. Now I still ask, Kate, is it fair, is it right that while the husband superintends his business himself the wife partner surrenders her responsibility into the hands of ignorant and irresponsible subordinates? Thus conducting the household on purely business principles does not necessarily entail upon you the least participation in the labor of the family. It does not absolutely require your personal presence at the scene of those labors, although the woman who considers it beneath her dignity to go into her kitchen has no more business to under­take to keep house than the master mechanic who is too proud to enter his workshop has to try to carry on a shop. The absolutely essential thing is that yours should be the controlling and directing mind, and that to you everyone in your employ should be held rigorously responsible.”

‘‘I wish,” says Kate, “ that you would specialize a little. You men in laying down your instructions to us women do it in the most stupendously general way, which we are sometimes tempted to think betrays a condition of mind which lacks experi­mental knowledge.”