842 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



WOMEN IN BUSINESS. 

 Editor Popidar Science Montlily : 



I NOTICE a communication, in your July 

 number, from Mrs. L. D. Morgan, of Bal- 

 timore, and, as it is on a subject in which all 

 women are more or less interested, I beg the 

 kindness of space in your columns for a 

 reply. Mrs. Morgan opens her letter with the 

 assertion, referring to the Women's Parlia- 

 ment recently held in Washington, that "one 

 point seems to have been clearly developed, 

 viz., that women are no nearer the ballot-box 

 than they were fifty years ago." Fifty years 

 ago such a gathering of women from all 

 parts of the world as was seen at the Women's 

 Parliament would have been utterly impos- 

 sible, and had such a state of things been 

 predicted it would have been received with 

 as much incredulity as a prediction of the 

 electric light or the telephone. Not only 

 does the fact that such a gathering is now 

 possible demonstrate that women are nearer 

 the ballot-box than they were fifty years ago, 

 but there is another fact which Mrs. Morgan 

 seems to have entirely overlooked or forgot- 

 ten, which is that in some of the States and 

 Territories women are not only nearer but 

 have actually reachqd the ballot-box, and are 

 voting on State and'municipal questions. 



In the next paragraph of her letter Mrs. 

 Morgan says : " The ladies who are acting in 

 behalf of their sex are decidedly hasty and 

 incautious in demanding, without limitations, 

 equal pay for equal work. At first sight, in- 

 deed, the proposition seems a fair one," etc. 

 Wherein or how these ladies are hasty and 

 incautious, or wherein or how the propo- 

 sition differs in appearance at second sight 

 from what it was at first, Mrs. Morgan fails 

 to show. Men, competing with men, demand 

 equal pay for equal work, and why the same 

 demand can not logically be made by women 

 competing with men I fail to see. A little 

 further on Mrs. Morgan says : " That a wom- 

 an can acquire the routine of almost any 

 mercantile pursuit may be admitted beyond 

 a doubt ; in fact, the quickness of her mind 

 and her rapid if superficial grasp of a sub- 

 ject will give her the advantage, in many 

 branches, over her brother workers." I re- 

 spectfully ask. What is the routine of mer- 

 cantile pursuits ? If there is any special part 

 or division of mercantile pursuits to which 

 tlie word routine can be applied to distin- 

 guish it from any other part or division, then 

 Mrs. Morgan may be correct, and women may 

 have business capacity superior to men; but, 

 until that fact is established, I will adhere to 

 my conviction, produced by a life of work 

 with both business men and women, that 

 women are in no respect superior to men. 



Despite of this pathetic description of 

 "life as it is — the rough, every-day work of 

 the world, where weakness means failure, 

 strength success, where sentiment counts for 

 nothing, and money is the paramount object" 

 — I think Mrs. Morgan's knowledge of busi- 

 ness life and business men is rather fanciful 

 and theoretical than real. Is there not a 

 contradiction between her assertion here that 

 sentiment counts for nothing, and the one 

 made a little further on in the same para- 

 graph that "no man, who is worthy of the 

 name, can quite bring himself to treat a 

 woman clerk as he would a man, even in this 

 ungallant age " ? What but sentiment should 

 prevent him from treating a woman clerk as 

 he would a man? — the sentiment that women 

 are made to be protected by men, and he will 

 protect his, and those who have no protector 

 must go unprotected. Had Mrs. Morgan's 

 experience of business men been real instead 

 of fanciful and theoretical, she would have 

 known that " the employer who has ex- 

 pressed his disapprobation or impatience, 

 without much regard to his p's and q's, 

 would be much more dismayed to find he had 

 insulted a male than he would to find he 

 had insulted a female, as the male would in 

 all probability resent the insult with a blow, 

 to be followed, where the employer is any- 

 thing of a politician, by his adverse ballot at 

 the next election, while the female would 

 have no resort except in the employer's sen- 

 timent, which, as Mrs. Morgan truly says, 

 " counts for nothing." To discuss this part 

 of the question, however, is mere waste of 

 words, as the vast majority of business men, 

 being gentlemen (a fact of which Mrs. Mor- 

 gan does not seem to be aware), pay the 

 strictest regard to their p's and q's in ex- 

 pressing impatience or disapprobation cither 

 to men or women. 



For fear of infringing too much on your 

 space, I will notice only one other point 

 which Mrs. Morgan makes, on what she 

 terms the "transitory nature of woman's 

 work." She makes the old and oft-repeated 

 but never proved assertion that women never 

 remain long in any one business, for the 

 reason that they marry, after which they re- 

 tire to strictly domestic life. We have no 

 statistics on this subject that I know of, but 

 my personal experience goes to disprove this 

 view of the matter. Five years ago I ob- 

 tained work in an establishment where at 

 the time were employed, besides myself, and 

 in the same room, six men, two boys, and five 

 women. Of these six men and two boys 

 only one man remains, their places having 

 in some instances been filled by men who 

 are also gone, and have been succeeded by 



