

WOMAN AND THE BALLOT. 249 



Thousands of women work in the mines of Belgium, England, 

 and Cornwall.* In the first-named country they formerly worked 

 from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with no Sunday rest.f The 

 linen-thread spinners of New Jersey, according to the report of 

 the Labor Commissioner, are "in one branch of the industry com- 

 pelled to stand on a stone floor in water the year round, most of 

 the time barefoot, with a spray of water from a revolving cylinder 

 flying constantly against the breast; and the coldest night in 

 winter, as well as the warmest in summer, these poor creatures 

 must go to their homes with water dripping from their under- 

 clothing along their path, because there could not be space or a 

 few moments allowed them wherein to change their clothing." \ 

 Yet women are " exempted" from labor attended by hardship ! 



Despite these washerwomen, miners, and linen-thread spinners, 

 we are told "it is woman's privilege generally to be exempted 

 from the care of earning her livelihood and that of her offspring." 



It would seem to be time that this libel upon woman should be 

 scorned by fair-minded men. From all antiquity the majority of 

 women have been faithful workers, rendering a full equivalent in 

 labor for their scanty share of the world's goods. The origin of 

 every industry bears testimony to this. In our own era, while 

 women were still homekeepers, did they not earn their livelihood ? 

 What was the weaving, the sewing, the cooking, the doctoring, 

 the nursing, the child-care, " the work that was never done," if it 

 was not earning a subsistence ? Even in these days, when woman 

 goes forth and receives the reward of her labor as publicly as 

 man, she is no more worthy of her hire.* Her ancestress sweet 

 and saintly soul ! did not dream of recompense. || But was it not 

 her due ; and shall we refuse to credit it because man was then a 

 self-sufficient ignoramus who deemed himself the only one fit to 

 acquire property ? 



One by one the old industries have been transplanted from the 

 home, and still man constructs new schemes of enterprise from 

 the little tasks that once rounded out woman's day of toil. In the 



* Census of England and Wales, 1891, vol. cvi, table 6. Miners, female coal, 3,267; 

 copper, lead, tin, and ironstone, 1,425. 



f Vide Report of Reichstag, 1889, forbidding women to work in the mines of Belgium 

 on Sunday and at night. 



\ Report of Bureau of Labor, State of New Jersey, 1888. 



* " The never ceasing industry of the women was the principal factor in the development 

 of a manufacture that was probably contributing more directly to the personal prosperity 

 and comfort of the people than any other then in existence in 1790" (Industrial Evolution 

 in the United States, p. 20). Carroll D. Wright. 



I Women colonists rarely worked for wages ; . . . they carded the wool, spun the yarn, 

 and wove the cloth for the male members of the family. In many instances they worked 

 on the land, and did their share in every way to enable the family not only to secure a live- 

 lihood but to build itself upon stable lines (Industrial Evolution in the United States, p. 112). 

 vol. xlix. 21 



