A Woman's Building has been a feature of many of our great national expositions. They have been filled with the products of women's labor; but so far the structures, though designed by women, have been erected by men. This can be remedied at any time it is necessary.
There are women builders of every sort: 167 are masons, 545 carpenters, 45 plasterers, 126 plumbers, 1,750 painters and glaziers, and 241 paper-hangers. It is true the roofing would be a long job, for only two feminine roofers and slaters are to be found in the whole country. But the 1,775 tin-workers might help out. If a steel frame were called for, 3,370 iron and steel workers would stand ready; and the eight steam-boiler makers would put in the heating and power plant.
CALLINGS PECULIAR TO THE SEX.
Not only have women conquered all the established callings, but they have invented some of their own. Professional shoppers were never heard of in the old days, though since the idea was started some men have adopted the business. The welfare secretary, who is "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the girls in factories or department stores, has recently come into existence. Then there is the shopping adviser, who pilots the uncertain Mrs. Newbride over one store or through many, helping her to furnish the new home harmoniously, fashionably, and for a given sum.
One woman owes her prosperity to her creation of the profession of "dramatists' agent." A Western woman raises animals for menageries and zoos. Another clears three thousand dollars a year by growing violets, while a third is getting rich out of the proceeds of her ostrich farm.
Altogether five and a quarter million American women—or one-fifth of all the workers in the country—are making their own money.
WOMAN'S STATUS IN EUROPE.
The women of the United States lead in this rush for education and for labor, but in other countries the same advance is being made, if more slowly.
Great Britain has thirty-five hundred university graduates. Fifteen hundred of these are from Girton, Newnham, and the Oxford Halls for Women, annexes of the historic universities, but with examinations just as stiff. It is a dozen years since Miss Fawcett carried off the highest mathematical honors an English university can bestow.
Germany looks askance at any education for woman that gives to her interests outside of the home. The Kaiser's four K's, which become C's in translation—Clothes, Cooking, Church, and Children—are popularly supposed to define the world of the German hausfrau. The American's joke about "woman's sphere" has long been obsolete; but that sphere is very real and very limited in most of the European countries.