I am sorry to conclude these attempts at statistics with one reliable estimate, which holds, like a nutshell, the kernel of this question of female labor.
In 1850, there were engaged in shoemaking, in the town of Lynn, 3,729 males and 6,412 females,—nearly twice as many women as men; yet, in the monthly payment of wages, only half as much money was paid to women as to men. The three thousand men received seventy-five thousand dollars a month; and the six thousand women, thirty-seven thousand dollars: that is, the women's wages were, on the average, only one-quarter as much as those of the men.
If we inquire into details, we may find many exceptional causes at work, not perceptible at first sight: still this remarkable fact remains essentially unchanged.
In my first lecture, I showed you that women were starving, and that vice is a better paymaster than labor. I showed you the awful falsity of the cry, "Do not let women work: we will work for them. They are too tender, too delicate, to bide the rough usage of the world." I showed you that they were not only working hard, but had been working at hard and unwholesome work, not merely in this century, but in all centuries since the world began. I showed you how man himself has turned them back, when they have entered a well-paid career. Practically, the command of society to the uneducated class is, "Marry, stitch, die, or do worse."
Plenty of employments are open to them; but all are underpaid. They will never be better paid till women of rank begin to work for money, and so create a respect for woman's labor; and women of rank will never do this till American men feel what all American men profess,—a proper respect for Labor, as God's own demand upon every human soul,—and so teach American women to feel it. How often have I heard that every woman willing to work may find employment! The terrible reverses of 1837 taught many men in this country that they were "out of luck:" how absurd, then, this statement with regard to women! One reason why so many young women are attracted to the Catholic Church is, that the Catholic Church is a good economist, and does not tolerate an idle member. In Catholic countries,—nay, in Protestant,—the gray hood of the Sister of Charity is as sacred as a crown.
When I think how happy human life might be, if men and women worked freely together, I lose patience. Such marriages as I can dream of,—where, household duties thriftily managed and speedily discharged, the wife assumes some honorable trust, or finds a noble task for her delicate hands; while the husband follows his under separate auspices! Occupied with real service to men and each other, how happily would they meet at night to discuss the hours they had lived apart, to help each other's work by each other's wit, and to draw vital refreshment from the caresses of their children! It is your distrust, O men! that prevents your having such homes as poets fancy. You will not help women to form them. The sturdy pine pushes through the tightest soil, and will grow, though nothing more genial than a November sky bid it welcome; but tender anemones—wind-flowers, as we call them—must be coaxed through the loose loam sifted from thousands of autumn leaves, and tremble to the faintest air. Yet are anemones fairer than the pine, and their lovely blossoming a fit reward for Nature's pains. Follow Nature, and offer the encouragement which those you love best daily need. Do it for your own sakes; for proper employment will diffuse serenity over the anxious faces you are too apt to see. Do not fancy that the conventions of society can ever prevail over the will, it may be the freak, of Nature. That stepdame is absolute. She set Hercules spinning, and sent Joan of Arc to Orleans. She taught Mrs. John Stuart Mill political economy, and Monsieur Malignon netting and lace-work. She enables women to bear immense burdens, heat, cold, and frost; she sets them in the thick of the battle even; while in South Carolina, and in the heart of Africa, or among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, old men croon over forsaken babes till the milk flows in to their withered breasts.[25]
Women want work for all the reasons that men want it. When they see this, and begin to do it faithfully, you will respect their work, and pay them for it. We are all taught that we are the children of God; only Mohammedans deny their women that rank: yet we are left without duties, as if such a thing were possible,—left without work that offers any adequate end as a stimulus to diligence or ambition; and, until "Work" becomes man's cry of inspiration, woman will never train herself to do her work well.
It was Margaret Fuller, I think, who wrote of the Polish heroine, the Countess Emily Plater, "She is the figure I want for my frontispiece. Short was her career. Like the Maid of Orleans, she only lived long enough to verify her credentials, and then passed from a scene on which she was probably a premature apparition." Ah! that is what all women should do,—verify their credentials! "Say what you please," said a young girl to her lover, as they passed out of a Woman's Convention; "a woman that can speak like Lucretia Mott, ought to speak." And men themselves cannot escape from this conviction. The duty of women, therefore, is to inspire it by doing whatever they undertake worthily and well; patient in waiting for opportunities, prompt to seize, conscientious to profit by them.
The Sorbonne, which still excludes woman from its courses and colleges, has formed a separate course, and now institutes examinations, and distributes diplomas for women. The Committee consists of three of the Inspectors of the University, two Catholic priests, one Protestant clergyman, and three ladies.