You know that such a thing is never done. The men always receive the high salaries and the women always receive the low salaries; no one ever asks who does the work or who supports the families. It is only a feeble excuse to hide men’s selfish greed. They are the lions, and they take the lion’s share. They can give themselves plenty and women a pittance, and they do it, and they mean to do it, and they will do it. It matters not that the ten or twelve or fourteen hundred dollars divided among the man’s family of himself, his wife, and his one or two or no children, gives to each, even to the little baby playing on the floor, as much money for support as the female teacher receives who devotes her whole time and strength to the school. It matters not that his children are growing up to be the staff of his declining years, while the unmarried female assistant has only her own self for reliance. Man is a thief and holds the bag, and if women do not like to teach for what they can get, so much the better. They will be all the more willing to become household drudges.
Again, read the following paragraph from a prominent newspaper printed in Massachusetts.
“The custom of employing ladies as clerks in the public departments at Washington is meeting with increased favor. It is said that, generally speaking, they write more correctly than the men, and as they receive much smaller salaries, the gain to the government is considerable.”
Could six lines better express the wickedness of the relations which exist between man and woman under the “best government in the world”? The shabby chivalry of “ladies”; the matter-of-fact manner in which not only a wrong, but an absurdity, is mentioned, as if it were as evident as a syllogism, and had no more to do with morality than the multiplication-table; and then the neat little patriotico-economical chuckle at the end! Women do the work better than men, and receive much smaller salaries. A logical sequence, and an excellent example of the reasoning which is brought to bear on women. Especially dignified and commanding is the attitude assumed for our government. The Great Republic, stretching its arms across a continent, vexing every land for its treasures, and whitening every sea with its sails, yet stoops over a poor woman’s pocket to take toll of the few pennies which her labor has fairly earned. “The wise save it call.”
But there is a lower deep than this. The very same paper that so naively blazoned forth its own shame, made another brilliant essay at about the same time. I quote the paragraph from memory, but it is substantially correct.
“Miss Anna Dickinson demanded three [or six, or whatever it was] hundred dollars for two lectures delivered for the benefit of the Sanitary Fair in Chicago. Miss Charlotte Cushman gave eight thousand dollars, the entire proceeds of her theatrical tour, to the Sanitary Commission. Comment is unnecessary.”
For all that, we will have a little comment. Here is one woman in a million rising by the sheer force of her God-given genius above the miserable necessities of women. She needs not to endure or to beg. She is sovereign in her own right and can dictate her own terms. Men cannot grind her face, for she is stronger than they. What do they do? They hold her up to odium because they cannot extort from her the money which they cannot prevent her from earning. Most women they can prevent from earning it. Most working-women they can keep down to what prices they choose to pay. But here is one to whom they cannot dole out pennies: “with one white arm-sweep” she gathers in a golden harvest. But they will at least force her Pactolian stream into a channel of their own choosing. Not at all.
“If she will, she will, you may depend on ’t;
If she won’t, she won’t, and there’s an end on ’t.”
Nothing, therefore, is left to these high-minded gentry, but to stand at a distance and “make faces”!