Woman's World Column - April 23,1885

In 1885, Catt (Carrie Lane) resigned from her position as superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa, and married Leo Chapman, editor of the Mason City Republican, a weekly newspaper. She became co-editor of the newspaper and started the column “Woman's World,” which she wrote would be “devoted to the discussion of such questions as purport to the welfare, the social, political and intellectual position of women.”

Rev. Dr. Dexter, editor of the Congregationalist, has been publishing a series of letters upon the subject of woman’s suffrage. The articles themselves are not particularly different from most others, written by a wholly conservative man, but he should have credit for having introduced two entirely new arguments. The powerful and reasonable are these that a sense of fairness will not allow them to be concealed from the public. His farseeing mind pictures the time when both mistress and servants shall go to the polls, and then propounds the overwhelming question, with an air of triumph, “Who, when the lady of the house and all her servants have gone out to vote, who I say, shall answer the door bell?” It is strange that during the many years in which this question has been agitated, no one has thought of this impregnable barrier to woman’s suffrage. To the great mind of Dr. Dexter belongs the honor of its discovery and perchance he will have the satisfaction of seeing all the work of the past years utterly demolished by his little question and the intelligent women of the land accept without a murmur this new “sphere” of “answering the door bell.”

But the logical mind of this extraordinary man is capable of more than one original idea, and what is most astonishing, the second is quite as profound as the first. He says he is confident that in case of woman’s suffrage many a man would repeat his vote under the disguise of a woman’s bonnet and veil. Ah, great mind! could you only have spoken a quarter of a century ago, what amounts of money, time and talent might have been saved for some nobler cause.

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The old principle of political economy, “Strikes are false in theory, and pernicious in practice,” has some exceptions. While the Utopian condition of things where capital and labor are united in harmony, is the desirable one, still as long as capital is exasperatingly exacting and labor careless and unthinking some outside power is necessary occasionally to bring both to their senses. Had strikes never been introduced there is little doubt but factory operatives and miners would have been obliged to submit to many indignities. Of late, women are learning to strike. Factories every where hire women to do men’s work but pay “women’s” wages, and although only able to sustain an existence open their wages and actually breaking down under “over-work and under pay” reductions are made from time to time.

One woman would have been obliged to submit, but not now.

One Smith, an owner of a carpet factory in Yonkers, New York, employes 2,500 women. Each has been doing a man’s work and receiving for it but a mere pittance. The proprietor has been gaining immense profits starved out of his hard working employees. Lately he made a reduction upon their wages so thoroughly without cause, his operatives made a united strike. The mill has been stopped of course, but the women are receiving assistance from outsiders to hold their own until Smith shall see fit to give them decent wages.

It is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when the same work will receive the same pay whether done by men or women. A factory owner was asked if he paid his female operatives as much as his male. He answered with a guffaw “What do you take me for? Why bless your heard that is one of the advantages of capital.”

Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, April 23.

PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library