There are honorable exceptions—a few men in Congress who, in the broadest and best sense, are the friends of woman. They form a small minority. The majority, after having made woman’s very existence as a Government-worker to depend on their own personal favoritism or caprice, stand up in Congress and cast stones at the very class which they have themselves created. In nine cases out of ten, these men staid at home while others fought their country’s battles. And now they reward the widows and orphans of soldiers and sailors by giving them a reluctant chance to earn their bread on half-pay. They do it under sufferance, while these legislators withhold just remuneration, sneer at their work, and defame their characters.
The Forty-second Congress, which, in its most hurried moments, could take time to vote to its members an increase of salary from five thousand to eight thousand a year, rejected without debate a proposition to give women-clerks in the departments equal compensation with men, for the same labor. What added proof is required to show that the law-making power of our land is fast becoming a monied monopoly—a legislature for the rich—an ignorer of the poor. “Eight thousand dollars every twelve months, by dint of close economy, will keep my wife and daughters in silks and velvets; will give them a phæton by the sea, and make beautiful their paths upon the mountain tops! What to me are the wives and daughters of the poor? What care of mine the widows and orphans of men who perished in their country’s service, if they do support themselves and their children by working for this just Government, which I help to make, for nine hundred dollars a year! while I pay at least twelve hundred to the laziest masculine lout who dawdles with papers across the Treasury floors?”
Yet there was scarcely[scarcely] a Member of that Congress that would not repel with jest or sneer the mere mention of woman’s demand, in the face of such injustice, to legislate for herself. If you would avert this catastrophe, gentlemen, show that you are capable of just legislation; prove that the power of franchise does not always beget oppression to the disfranchised. I point to the practical working of the new Civil-Service Rules, to your own greedy grasp of additional thousands, with the refusal to grant three meagre hundreds to working women, to prove that woman has no hope of justice in man’s representation. Represent her interests with half the eager avidity which marks your devotion to your own, and she will never ask to represent herself. But no matter what her individual distaste to public responsibility, nothing is more apparent to the wide-visioned, thoughtful woman than that, in a republic, the only possibility of obtaining personal justice lies in political equality.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL LIFE—HOW PLACE AND POWER ARE WON.
Government Official Life—Its Effects on Human Nature—Keeping his Eye Open—The Sweet and Winning Ways of Mr. Parasite—In Office—The Fault of “the People” and “my Friends”—Shrinking from Responsibilities—Pulling the Wool over the Eyes of the Innocent—Writing Letters in a Big Way—The “Dark Ways” of Wicked Mr. P——— —A Suspicious Yearning for Private Life—The Sweets of Office—A Little Change of Opinion—A Man Afflicted with Too Many Friends—Forgetting Things that Were—John Jones is not Encouraged—Post-offices as Plentiful as Blackberries—Receiving Office-seekers—“The Worst Thing in the World for You”—Dismissing John—Over-crowded Pastures—John’s Own Private Opinion—The “Mighty Messenger”—Government-Servants—Peculiar Impartiality of the Man in Office—What the Successful Man Said—I Change My Opinion of Him—A Certain Kind of Man, and Where He can be Found.
Governmental official life has one effect upon those whom it benefits, which is anything but creditable to human nature.
Mr. Parasite wants a high place in the governmental service, and circumstances favor his getting it. While there is any doubt about it, he does not disdain to use any influence within his reach to make it certain. How lovely he is to everybody whose good word or ill word may “tell” for or against him. How affable he is to every mortal, from the lowliest outspoken man in his home town, to the influential writer, whose powerful pen he wishes to propitiate. Mr. Parasite glides into his place with grace and resignation. “The people, the people, you know, and my friends—they forced it upon me. They quite overrate my fitness, quite. I shrink from such responsibilities, such arduous labors; but, if my country needs me, if my constituents demand my services, I feel that I have no right to refuse, no right to consult my personal ease, although the desire of my heart is for the peaceful quiet of private life.”
THE LOBBY OF THE SENATE.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
Strange to tell, when an accommodating people are about to grant him the desire of his heart, Mr. Parasite suddenly starts up alert, and touches the springs of a most powerful enginery. He writes personal letters by thousands; he has his friends—i. e. agents—at work for him everywhere, whispering with this one, arguing with that one, and urging his claims incessantly upon the appointing power. But who, that did not know it, could believe it.