The figures simply show that in the employments in which the very lowest wages are paid, women constitute over 70 per cent of the workers, while in the employments where as high as $20 a week are paid, they constitute hardly over 3 per cent. In addition to all this is the humiliating fact that in some occupations, standing side by side with men, the females are paid less wages for the same work; or, what amounts to the same thing, a woman of 20 years or upwards is made to work side by side with a boy often at the same wages. Women are compelled, then, to fill most of the cheap places, and paid less wages for the same work at that.
In this report the shameful fact is proven through governmental statistics that the wages paid to a girl of twenty years are no more than those paid a boy of ten, women constituting over seventy per cent of the workers to whom the very lowest wages are paid. Underlying all other results are those upon woman herself. Before every question of population, is that of woman as an individual. Overwork and the under nourishment of muscle, nerve, brain, render her own proper evolution either as a physical or as a moral being impossible. To just the extent that such pressure comes upon her, does she cease to be a morally responsible being. Thousands to whom life and comforts are sweet, throw aside all scruples, entering that one avenue of escape always open to a young woman or a girl. For the statement that the majority of women entering upon immorality have been driven by actual want to this mode of life, we are again indebted to rigorous investigation and statistics for information, but the moral deterioration of the race arising from these wrongs to women can not be estimated by figures. In teaching, the only absolute equality of wages between man and woman is found in the Cherokee nation of Indians. The civilization of the Indian tribes is a question of woman’s education and freedom. The world still holds a mistaken idea of force and power, those questions not so fully pertaining to the physical as to the intellectual and spiritual parts of the being. The New York Nation recently said, “It is absolutely essential to the preservation of the dignity and independence of women that they should be on a par with men as regards property and education, the two things that in modern times have supplanted physical force as elements of power.”
Real estate possesses more power as property than either money or jewels. The real strength of American civilization lies in the fact that almost every family owns its home. Permanent national strength lies in the division of realty. In England women are more rapidly becoming part of the governing class than in the United States, and in that country one-seventh of the landed property owners are women. These facts should be borne in mind in regard to the civilization of the native races of America. It is through the Indian women that the problem of their civilization must be answered; the title in fee simple to lands should be in the hands of the women.
The union of the state with the church in the enforcement of man’s “curse” upon woman is most forcibly shown by a decision of the New York Court of Appeals rendered early in 1892 which held that the services of a wife belong to the husband and that she cannot recover wages from him even if holding his written promise to pay. This decision like that of the Agar-Ellis case in England, was upon the principle that the wife is so fully under subjection to her husband as to incapacitate her from making a contract even with that husband. In all the wife’s relations to the husband she is regarded as a being without responsibility. The case upon which this decision rested is this: A woman fell down a coal-hole and sued for damages, recovering $500. The defendant asked for a new trial upon the ground that the woman was working for her husband and the court had taken into account her loss of wages. The services of the wife belonging to the husband, her claim for lost wages was a fraud. But this decision of the Court of Appeals doubtless will not interfere with the power of the husband to recover damages for loss of her time by reason of this injury which deprived him of her services. The decision of the Court recognized the right of the husband to compel the wife to perform household duties for him. When in England, 1880, the married woman’s property rights bill was before parliament, a commission of inquiry was sent to New York to learn the effect of securing the control of their own property to married women. Under various amendments since the first passage of this act in 1848, the legislature of New York has farther secured to married women the right of making wills, of collecting wages for work, and of entering business outside of the household, the proceeds belonging entirely to herself. But under this decision of the Court of Appeals, the ground was taken that the wife cannot collect wages from the husband, and that household work for him is compulsory upon her.[4] This decision as to compulsory housework controverts that other right recognized by legislation, of entering into business, doing work outside of the home, the proceeds to belong solely to herself. Under this decision of the Court of Appeals, a wife can be compelled to work for the husband in the house without wages, and is debarred from all outside business.
St. Augustine in his “City of God,” taunts Rome with having caused her own downfall by her treatment of her slaves. He speaks of the slaves as miserable beings put to labor only fit for the beasts of the field and even degraded below them; their condition had brought Rome to its own destruction. But Roman wives were not forced to labor. The peace made by the Sabines with the Romans after the forcible abduction of the Sabine maidens, had for one of its provisions that no labor except spinning should be required from wives. Among both the ancient Greeks and Romans, the woman about to become a mother, as heretofore shown, was held sacred; she was exempt from hard labor and no one was allowed under penalty of punishment, to vex or disturb her mind.
If degrading their slaves below the beasts of the field led to the destruction of Rome, as declared by Augustine, what may not be predicted of that Christian civilization which in the twentieth century of its existence degrades women and children to such labors as he declared unfit for the slaves of ancient Rome, suitable only for the beasts of the field; which harnesses them by side of cows, asses and dogs to do the most menial work, which robs them in wages and stints them in food in the name of “religion”?
Chapter Nine
The Church of Today