233. Women of America

Women of America

Pro_14:1 : ’93Every wise woman buildeth her house.’94

Woman a mere adjunct to man, an appendix to the masculine volume, an appendage, a sort of afterthought, something thrown in to make things even’97that is the heresy entertained and implied by some men. Woman’92s insignificance, as compared to man, is evident to them, because Adam was first created, and then Eve. They do not read the whole story, or they would find that the porpoise and the bear and the hawk were created before Adam, so that this argument, drawn from priority of creation, might prove that the sheep and the dog were greater than man. No. Woman was an independent creation, and was intended, if she chose, to live alone, to walk alone, act alone, think alone, and fight her battles alone. The Bible says it is not good for man to be alone, but never says it is not good for woman to be alone; and the simple fact is, that many women who are harnessed for life in the marriage relation would be a thousand-fold better off if they were alone.

Who are these men who, year after year, hang around hotels and engine-houses and theatre doors, and come in and out to bother busy clerks and merchants and mechanics, doing nothing, when there is plenty to do? They are men supported by their wives and mothers. If the statistics of any of our cities could be taken on this subject, you would find that a vast multitude of women not only support themselves, but support masculines too. A great legion of men amount to nothing, and a woman, manacled by marriage to one of these nonentities, needs condolence. A woman standing outside the marriage relation is several hundred thousand times better off than a woman badly married. Many a bride, instead of a wreath of orange blossoms, might more properly wear a bunch of nettles and nightshade, and, instead of the wedding march, a more appropriate tune would be the dead march in Saul, and, instead of a banquet of confectionery and ices, there might be more appropriately spread a table covered with apples of Sodom, which are outside fair and inside ashes.

Many an attractive woman, of good, sound sense in other things, has married one of these men to reform him. What was the result? Like when a dove, noticing that a vulture was rapacious and cruel, set about to reform it, and said: ’93I have a mild disposition, and I like peace, and was brought up in the quiet of a dove-cote, and I will bring the vulture to the same liking by marrying him.’94 So, one day, after the vulture declared he would give up his carnivorous habits and cease longing for blood of flock and herd, at an altar of rock covered with moss and lichen, the twain were married, a bald-headed eagle officiating, the vulture saying: ’93With all my dominion of earth and sky, I thee endow, and promise to love and cherish till death do us part.’94 But one day the dove in her fright, saw the vulture busy at a carcass, and cried: ’93Stop that! did you not promise me that you would quit your carnivorous and filthy habits if I married you?’94 ’93Yes,’94 said the vulture, ’93but if you do not like my way, you can leave,’94 and with one angry stroke of the beak, and another fierce clutch of claw, the vulture left the dove eyeless and wingless and lifeless. And a flock of robins flying past, cried to each other, and said: ’93See there! that comes from a dove’92s marrying a vulture to reform him.’94 Many a woman who has had the hand of a young inebriate offered, but declined it, or who was asked to chain her life to a man selfish or of bad temper, and refused the shackles, will bless God throughout all eternity that she escaped that earthly pandemonium.

Besides all this, in our country about one million men were sacrificed in our Civil War, and that decreed a million women to celibacy. Besides that, since the war, several armies of men as large as the Federal and Confederate armies put together, have fallen under malt liquors and distilled spirits, so full of poisoned ingredients that the work was done more rapidly, and the victims fell while yet young. And if fifty thousand men are destroyed every year by strong drink before marriage, that makes in the twenty-three years since the war one million one hundred and fifty thousand men slain, and decrees one million one hundred and fifty thousand women to celibacy. Take, then, the fact that so many women are unhappy in their marriage, and the fact that the slaughter of two million one hundred and fifty thousand men, by war and rum combined, decides that at least that number of women shall be unaffianced for life, my text comes in with a cheer and a potency and appropriateness that I never saw in it before when it says: ’93Every wise woman buildeth her house;’94 that is, let woman be her own architect, lay out her own plans, be her own supervisor, achieve her own destiny.

In addressing these women who will have to fight the battle alone, I congratulate you on your happy escape. Rejoice forever that you will not have to navigate the faults of the other sex, when you have faults enough of your own. Think of the bereavements you avoid, of the risks of unassimilated temper which you will not have to run, of the cares you will never have to carry, and of the opportunity of outside usefulness from which marital life would have partially debarred you, and that you are free to go and come as one who has the responsibilities of a household can seldom be. God has not given you a hard lot, as compared with your sisters. When young women shall make up their minds at the start that masculine companionship is not a necessity in order to happiness, and that there is a strong probability that they will have to fight the battle of life alone, they will be getting the timber ready for their own fortune, and their saw and ax and plane sharpened for its construction, since ’93Every wise woman buildeth her house.’94

As no boy ought to be brought up without learning some business at which he could earn a livelihood, so no girl ought to be brought up without learning the science of self-support. The difficulty is that many a family goes sailing on the high tides of success, and the husband and father depends on his own health and acumen for the welfare of his household, but one day he gets his feet wet, and in three days pneumonia has closed his life, and the daughters are turned out on a cold world to earn bread, and there is nothing practical that they can do. The friends come in and hold consultation. ’93Give music lessons,’94 says an outsider. Yes; that is a useful calling, and if you have great genius for it, go on in that direction. But there are enough music teachers now starving to death in all our towns and cities to occupy all the piano stools and sofas and chairs and front-door steps of the city. Besides that, the daughter has been playing only for amusement, and is only at the foot of the ladder, to the top of which a great many masters on piano and harp and flute and organ have climbed. ’93Put the bereft daughters as saleswomen in stores,’94 says another adviser. But there they must compete with salesmen of long experience, or with men who have served an apprenticeship in commerce and who began as shop boys at ten years of age. Some kind-hearted drygoods man, having known the father, now gone, says: ’93We are not in need of any more help just now, but send your daughters to my store, and I will do as well by them as possible.’94 Very soon the question comes up, Why do not the female employees of that establishment get as much wages as the male employees? For the simple reason, in many cases, the females were suddenly flung by misfortune behind that counter, while the males have from the day they left the public school been learning the business.

How is this evil to be cured? Start clear back in the homestead and teach your daughters that life is an earnest thing, and that there is a possibility, if not a strong probability, that they will have to fight the battle of life alone. Let every father and mother say to their daughters: ’93Now, what would you do for a livelihood if what I now own were swept away by financial disaster, or old age, or death should end my career?’94 ’93Well, I could paint on pottery and do such decorative work.’94 Yes; that is beautiful, and if you have genius for it go on in that direction. But there are enough busy at that now to make a line of decorated hardware from here to the East River and across the bridge. ’93Well, I could make recitations in public and earn my living as a dramatist; I could render ’91King Lear’92 or ’91Macbeth’92 till your hair would rise on end, or give you ’91Sheridan’92s Ride’92 or Dickens’92s ’91Pickwick.’92’93 Yes; that is a beautiful art, but ever and anon, as now, there is an epidemic of dramatization that makes hundreds of households nervous with the cries and shrieks and groans of young tragediennes dying in the fifth act, and the trouble is that while your friends would like to hear you, and really think that you could surpass Ristori and Charlotte Cushman and Fanny Kemble of the past, to say nothing of the present, you could not, in the way of living, in ten years earn ten cents.

My advice to all girls and all unmarried women, whether in affluent homes or in homes where most stringent economies are grinding, is to learn to do some kind of work that the world must have while the world stands. I am glad to see a marvelous change for the better, and that women have found out that there are hundreds of practical things that a woman can do for a living if she begins soon enough, and that men have been compelled to admit it. You and I can remember when the majority of occupations were thought inappropriate for women; but our Civil War came, and the hosts of men went forth from North and South; and to conduct the business of our cities during the patriotic absence, women were demanded by the tens of thousands to take the vacant places; and multitudes of women, who had been hitherto supported by fathers and brothers and sons, were compelled from that time to take care of themselves. From that time a mighty change took place favorable to the employment of females.

Among the occupations appropriate for woman I place the following, into many of which she has already entered, and all the others she will enter: Stenography, and you may find her at nearly all the reportorial stands in your educational, political and religious meetings. Savings banks, the work clean and honorable, and who so great a right to toil there, for a woman founded the first savings bank’97Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield? Copyists, and there is hardly a professional man that does not need the service of her penmanship; and, as amanuensis, many of the greatest books of our day have been dictated for her writing. There they are as florists and confectioners and music teachers and bookkeepers, for which they are specially qualified by patience and accuracy; and wood-engraving, in which the Cooper Institute has turned out so many qualified; and telegraphy, for which she is specially prepared, as thousands of the telegraphic offices will testify. Photography, and in nearly all our establishments they may be found there at cheerful work. As workers in ivory and gutta percha and gum elastic and tortoise-shell and gilding, and in chemicals, in porcelain, in terra cotta, in embroidery. As postmistresses, and the President is giving them appointments all over the land. As keepers of lighthouses, many of them, if they had the chance, ready to do as brave a thing with oar and boat as did Ida Lewis and Grace Darling. As proofreaders, as translators, as modelers, as designers, as draughtswomen, as lithographers, as teachers in schools and seminaries, for which they are especially endowed, the first teacher of every child, by divine arrangement, being a woman. As physicians, having graduated after a regular course of study from the female colleges of our large cities, where they get as scientific and thorough preparation as any doctors ever had, and go forth to a work which no one but women could so appropriately and delicately do. On the lecturing platform; for you know the brilliant success of Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hallowell and Miss Willard and Mrs. Lathrop. As physiological lecturers to their own sex, for which service there is a demand appalling and terrific. As preachers of the Gospel, and all the protests of ecclesiastical courts cannot hinder them, for they have a pathos and a power in their religious utterances that men can never reach. Witness all those who have heard their mother pray.

O young women of America! as many of you will have to fight your own battles alone, do not wait until you are flung of disaster, and your father is dead, and all the resources of your family have been scattered; but now, while in a good house and environed by all prosperities, learn how to do some kind of work that the world must have as long as the world stands. Turn your attention from the embroidery of fine slippers, of which there is a surplus, and make a useful shoe. Expend the time in which you adorn a cigar-case in learning how to make a good, honest loaf of bread. Turn your attention from the making of flimsy nothings to the manufacturing of important somethings.

Much of the time spent in young ladies’92 seminaries in studying what are called the ’93higher branches,’94 might better be expended in teaching them something by which they could support themselves. If you are going to be teachers, or if you have so much assured wealth that you can always dwell in those high regions, trigonometry of course, metaphysics of course, Latin and Greek and German and French and Italian of course, and a hundred other things of course; but if you are not expecting to teach, and your wealth is not established beyond misfortune, after you have learned the ordinary branches, take hold of that kind of study that will pay in dollars and cents in case you are thrown on your own resources. Learn to do something better than anybody else. Buy Virginia Penny’92s book, entitled The Employment of Women, and learn there are five hundred ways in which a woman may earn a living.

’93No, no!’94 says some young woman, ’93I will not undertake anything so unromantic and commonplace as that. An excellent author writes that after he had, in a book, argued for efficiency in womanly work in order to success, and positive apprenticeship by way of preparation, a prominent chemist advertised that he would teach a class of women to become druggists and apothecaries if they would go through an apprenticeship as men do; and a printer advertised that he would take a class of women to learn the printer’92s trade if they would go through an apprenticeship as men do: and how many, according to the account of the authoress, do you suppose applied to become skilled in the druggist business and printing business? Not one! One young woman said she would be willing to try the printing business for six months, but by that time her elder sister would be married and then her mother would want her at home. My sister, it will be skilled labor by which women will finally triumph.

’93But,’94 you ask, ’93what would my father and mother say if they saw I was doing such unfashionable work?’94 Throw the whole responsibility upon this preacher, who is constantly hearing of young women in all these cities, who, unqualified by their previous luxurious surroundings for the awful struggle of life into which they have been suddenly hurled, seemed to have nothing left them but a choice between starvation and moral ruin. There they go along the street at seven o’92clock in the wintry mornings, through the slush and storm, to the place where they shall earn only half enough for subsistence, the daughters of once-prosperous merchants, lawyers, clergymen, artists, bankers and capitalists, who brought up their children under the infernal delusion that it was not high-toned for women to learn a profitable calling. Young women! take this affair in your own hand, and let there be an insurrection in all prosperous families of Christendom on the part of the daughters of this day, demanding knowledge in occupations and styles of business by which they may be their own defense and their own support if all fatherly and husbandly and brotherly hands forever fail them. I have seen two sad sights’97the one a woman in all the glory of her young life, stricken by disease, and in a week lifeless in a home of which she had been the pride. As her hands were folded over the still heart and her eyes closed for the last slumber, and she was taken out amid the lamentations of kindred and friends, I thought that was a sadness immeasurable. But I have seen something compared with which that scene was bright and songful. It was a young woman who had been all her days amid wealthy surroundings, by the visit of death and bankruptcy to the household turned out on a cold world without one lesson about how to get food or shelter, and into the awful whirlpool of city life, where strong ships have gone down, and for twenty years not one word has been heard from her. Vessels last week went out on the Atlantic Ocean looking for a shipwrecked craft that was left alone and forsaken on the sea a few weeks ago, with the idea of bringing it into port. But who shall ever bring again into the harbor of peace and hope and heaven that lost immortal woman, driven in what tempest, aflame in what conflagration, sinking into what abyss? O God, help! O Christ, rescue!

My sisters, give not your time to learning fancy work which the world may dispense with in hard times, but connect your skill with the indispensables of life. The world will always want something to wear and something to eat, and shelter and fuel for the body, and knowledge for the mind, and religion for the soul. And all these things will continue to be the necessaries, and if you fasten your energies upon occupations and professions thus related, the world will be unable to do without you. Remember, that in proportion as you are skilful in anything, your rivalries become less. For unskilled toil, women by the million. But you may rise to where there are only a thousand; and still higher, till there are only a hundred; and still higher, till there are only ten; and still higher, in some particular department, till there is only a unit, and that yourself. For a while you may keep wages and a place through the kindly sympathies of an employer, but you will eventually get no more compensation than you can make yourself worth.

Let me say to all women who have already entered upon the battle of life, that the time is coming when woman shall not only get as much salary and wages as men get, but for certain styles of employment will have higher salary and more wages, for the reason that for some styles of work they have more adaptation. But this justice will come to woman, not through any sentiment of gallantry, not because woman is physically weaker than man, and, therefore, ought to have more consideration shown her, but because through her finer natural taste and more grace of manner and quicker perception, and more delicate touch and more educated adroitness, she will, in certain callings, be to her employer worth ten per cent. more or twenty per cent. more than the other sex. She will not get it by asking for it, but by earning it, and it shall be hers by lawful conquest.

Now, men of America, be fair, and give the women a chance. Are you afraid that they will do some of your work, and hence harm your prosperities? Remember that there are scores of thousands of men doing women’92s work. Do not be afraid! God knows the end from the beginning, and he knows how many people this world can feed and shelter, and when it gets too full he will end the world, and, if need be, start another. God will halt the inventive faculty, which, by producing a machine that will do the work of ten or twenty or a hundred men and women, will leave that number of people without work. I hope that there will not be invented another sewing machine or reaping machine or corn-thresher or any other new machine for the next five hundred years. We want no more wooden hands and iron hands and steel hands and electric hands substituted for men and women, who would otherwise do the work and get the pay and earn the livelihood. But God will arrange all, and all we have to do is to do our best and trust him for the rest.

Let me cheer all women fighting the battle of life alone with the fact of thousands of women who have won the day. Mary Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, fought the battle alone; Adelaide Newton, the tract distributor, alone; Fidelia Fisk, the consecrated missionary, alone; Dorothea Dix, the angel of the insane asylums, alone; Caro-line Herschel, the indispensable re-enforcement of her brother, alone; Maria Takrzewska, the heroine of the Berlin hospital, alone; Helen Chalmers, patron of sewing-schools for the poor of Edinburgh, alone. And thousands and tens of thousands of women, of whose bravery and self-sacrifice and glory of character the world has made no record, but whose deeds are in the heavenly archives of martyrs who fought the battle alone, and, though unrecognized for the short thirty or fifty or eighty years of their earthly existence, shall through the quintillion ages of the higher world be pointed out with the admiring cry: ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.’94

Let me also say, for the encouragement of all women fighting the battle of life alone, that their conflict will soon end. There is one word written on the faces of many of them, and that word is Despair. My sister, you need appeal to Christ, who comforted the sisters of Bethany in domestic trouble, and who in his last hours forgot all the pangs of his own hands and feet and heart, as he looked into the face of maternal anguish, and called a friend’92s attention to it, in substance, saying: ’93John, I cannot take care of her any longer. Do for her as I would have done, if I had lived. Behold thy mother!’94 If, under the pressure of unrewarded and unappreciated work, your hair is whitening and the wrinkles come, rejoice that you are nearing the hour of escape from your very last fatigue, and may your departure be as pleasant as that of Isabella Graham, who closed her life with a smile and the word ’93Peace.’94

The daughter of a regiment in any army is all surrounded by bayonets of defense, and, in the battle, whoever falls, she is kept safe. And you are the daughter of the regiment commanded by the Lord of Hosts. After all, you are not fighting the battle of life alone. All heaven is on your side. You will be wise to appropriate to yourself the words of sacred rhythm:

One who has known in storms to sail

I have on board;

Above the roaring of the gale

I hear my Lord.

He holds me; when the billows smite

I shall not fall.

If short, ’91tis sharp; if long, ’91tis light;

He tempers all.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage