The grateful women of the time afterwards remembered General Spinner’s efforts, and his statue, erected by the women of the Departments of the Government, now stands in Herkimer, N.Y. On the pedestal of this statue are General Spinner’s words: “The fact that I was instrumental in introducing women to employment in the offices of the Government gives me more real satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life.”
However, the unhappy experiences of many of these women showed how strong were the prejudices of the time. Grace Greenwood, the authoress, tells of a letter she received from one of them which says: “Would you work for nothing, board yourself, and be lied about?”
Such was the world’s attitude fifty years ago concerning women’s work. And then Herkimer County made another contribution to the cause of sex emancipation. A new and strange machine appeared, and it went to work, at first quietly and unobtrusively, but in the end triumphantly to break down these barriers of conservatism and prejudice.
Even at this day, many of us, though recognizing the facts, are puzzled to account for this amazing achievement of the writing machine. Yet there is no mystery about it, for it was all due to the operation of that law which is sure to break all barriers, the law of necessity and fitness. We have shown that the typewriter did more than save business time. It stimulated business activity, and in time this activity reached the point where there were no longer men enough to perform all of the clerical tasks. The girl stenographer and typist came into business because she was needed, and with her coming the ancient barriers fell. The typist blazed the path by which other women entered every department of business. Economic emancipation was won and from this great triumph has resulted every other development of modern feminism. The suffrage, the winning of greater social freedom, the wider participation of women in every phase of public life, all these are children of the same parent. When economic freedom was won, everything was won, and all else followed, naturally and inevitably.
The feminist movement has had its leaders, many and prominent ones, but it is sometimes the one with no thought or consciousness of leadership who renders the greatest service. In the choice of some historic figure to symbolize this movement, who has a better claim than the man whose life and work created the great opportunity through which sex emancipation was achieved?
PROPOSED MONUMENT TO CHRISTOPHER LATHAM SHOLES.
See Pages 44–45.
It is pleasing to know that the inventor of the typewriter lived to see the beginnings of this great movement and the knowledge of it gladdened his later years. Sholes died in Milwaukee on February 17, 1890, and for some years before his death he never rose from his bed. But though more dead than alive in body, his mind remained clear, unclouded and active to the very end. Mr. C. E. Weller tells of a private letter which relates the following incident which occurred shortly before his death, when a daughter-in-law remarked to him, “Father Sholes, what a wonderful thing you have done for the world.” He replied, “I don’t know about the world, but I do feel that I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable them more easily to earn a living.”
In one of the last letters he ever wrote, Sholes says, “Whatever I may have felt in the early days of the value of the typewriter, it is obviously a blessing to mankind, and especially to womankind. I am glad I had something to do with it. I builded wiser than I knew, and the world has the benefit of it.”