Woman's World Column - May 21, 1885

Carrie Chapman Catt (Carrie Lane at the time) retired from teaching after the end of the 1884 school year and married Leo Chapman, publisher and editor of the Mason City Republican newspaper, in February 1885. In the March 5 issue of The Republican, Catt’s name appeared in the masthead as co-editor of the paper with Chapman, and on March 19, the first installment of her new column, “Woman’s World,” was published. The Mason City Public Library has microfilm of every issue of The Republican from 1885 except one, and Catt’s column appears nearly weekly through early November. The Chapmans sold the newspaper in April 1886, and there are no extant copies of the paper from that year.

Mrs. Scott, the commissioner of the Women’s Department at the New Orleans Exposition from Iowa, has supplemented the Iowa exhibit with the following valuable statistics, which will be published in her official report: Number of Iowa farms owned and directed by women, 955; number managed by woman, 18; stock farms owned and directed by women, 6; dairy farms, 20; green houses, 5; market gardens, 9; number of women serving at present as County School Superintendents, 13; number managing institutions of learning, 37; number of women physicians, 125; dentists, 3; attorneys at law, 5; ministers, 10; professional nurses, 110; civic engineer, 1.

**

Several hundred women are employed in New York City at shirt-making for which they receive $4 per week. They are obliged to keep their sewing machines running ten hours a day to earn this meager sum.

**

One great cause of early marriages is the pernicious habit of calling a girl who remains until twenty-five an “old maid.“ This is done by many well-meaning but thoughtless persons, who would be sorry if any act or expression of theirs had ever caused one an hour of misery; yet this very dread of being called an “old maid“ has driven more women into marriage and life-long misery than any other thing excepting perhaps poverty. A girl, young, sensitive, unused to the rough ways of the world, shrinks from having any stigma cast upon her. When she first hears herself called an “old maid“ it is a revelation, and she falls under it as if it were a blow. She feels as if it were an imputation upon her character in some way; and though she may try to laugh it off, the wound is there, and festers and corrodes till the life that was once happy as a bird’s has now a skeleton, which she thinks can only be removed by marriage. It is a mistake to think that single life is any less noble than marriage, especially if the spirit of discord is permitted to inflict its horrors upon a whole household.

Let mothers treasure their daughters more; seek to know their inmost feelings in a kind and sympathetic way; win their love and confidence by showing that they have hearts, and were once girls and often made mistakes. A girl who has her mother for a confidant is not so anxious to leave the shelter of her home to take “the leap in the dark.” For what is it but a leap in the dark?—a species of slavery to one-half the women who marry. How many women can truly say, “We must not expect too much in this life,” and with a little sigh let the question drop.

If it were not for the illusion that seems inseparable from the mind of youth, there would be few marriages comparatively. If they saw it as it is; saw it with rational eyes, with the glamour of romance brushed away, in all its naked truthfulness, they would be apt to say, “I would be worse off than I am now. It is better to bear my burden alone than to add another to it, or to add to another’s.

A very mischievous writer once said: “An offer of marriage is the highest compliment a man can pay a woman.“ It is in some few cases. A great many women have learned to their sorrow that it would have been nearer the truth if it had been written “injustice“ instead of compliment. Here is an instance: A young man decides he has reached an age when it would be well for him to take a wife and settle down. He has just started in life, and has enough to furnish a house plainly and comfortably. He and all his friends think the best thing he can do is to marry. He looks around for a wife. Does he look for one in the same station with himself? for one who is earning her own living, who has had experience in the school of economy, who has had a hard struggle and come off conqueror, and would be a true helpmate to him, and who wants a helpmate for herself? No. He goes into society and looks around for the best and most attractive girl he can find. He meets a beautiful young lady, fashionably educated, amiable, confiding, and helpless. He is charmed and decides she is the one he would like to marry. There his reason stops. He “makes love,“ of course, and “compliments” her with the offer of his hand.

But if he would look on the other side for a moment and ask himself why he wants that beautiful girl, graceful, intelligent and lovely, he would be forced to reply, “I want her to cook, make my beds, clean my house, darn my hose, watch longingly for my return, put up with my ill-humors, economize in every particular for my benefit, be the mother of my children, and bring them up properly, and in return for this I will support her, allow her to bear my name, and when she dies I'll give her a Christian burial.” Now, if he looked squarely at this side of the question, he would not be likely to feel that he was doing such a complimentary thing, nor go about it so complacently. And if the young lady saw the realistic side, without the gloss and roseate hue of poetry, she would not consider that she had been so very highly complimented by the offer.

Young ladies who happen to marry late should bear in mind that if they get a good husband they have done well by waiting; and if they get a bad one it is proof they did not wait long enough. If they never marry at all they may console themselves with the thought that they have escaped a world of trouble, and that there are always some married women who envy their lot.—Phrenological Journal.

Notes About Women

Dr. Giuseppina Catini has passed a brilliant examination in medicine at the University of Bologna, and goes upon record as “the first woman of Italy,” so run the account, “to become a brother of Hippocrates.”

Mrs. Mary A. Livermore is preparing a lecture on “Wendell Phillips and His Times.”

The first wheat brought to the Menoken (D. T.) elevator last year was by Miss Bell, who delivered one hundred and seventy-two bushels of “No. 1 hard,” the produces of seven acres put in by herself. Miss Bell formerly taught school, but believing farming more profitable, took a claim last year with this result.

Miss Grace Barb, of Maine, has gone to the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia, to lecture on chemistry, as an assistant to Dr. Rachel Bodley.

Mrs. Haynes, of the high school corps of teachers, completed in June her twenty-fifth year as teacher in the schools of St. Paul. She has seen the public school system grow from one school in 1860 to its present number of splendid buildings and thousands of pupils.

The women of France are discussing a project of erecting a monument at Paris to the memory of the late Dr. Sims, as the greatest surgical benefactor of their sex.

The Irish College of Surgeons recognized the London Medical School for Women, and decided to admit its students to examination for its diplomas.

Miss Kate Stephens, professor of Greek and literature in the Kansas State University, has been compelled to resign because she is a woman.

The wife of the Prince of Wales has been made a Doctor of Music by Dublin University.

The publication of Mrs. Custer’s book has revealed the fact, previously known to intimate friends of both, that the most perfect congeniality existed between the two. It is related that at one time the General returned home and said: “Let me get a book that I have been reading and which I have marked for you.” At the same moment Mrs. Custer produced a novel which had been the companion of her lonely hours, and it was found that the two books were identical and the two congenial readers had marked, almost without exception, the same passages.

Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth has just finished her seventy-first novel—ten more than one for every year of her life. Bonner has an iron-clad contract with her, binding her to write for him alone, and on demand, at $8,000 a year.

Mrs. Frederick Douglass, who is quite white, while Frederick is only approachably so, has considerable literary culture, and will accompany her husband abroad, note book in hand, to record their mutual impressions, with a view to a future book of travels.

Mrs. Nina Dobbin, of Montreal, Canada, who has long been a highly-valued contributor to Grip (the Canadian Puck) and other journals, is managing editor of Gossip, a clever society paper of her own projecting. The great success that has attended the undertaking within the first year shows that the judgement of the sprightly and intelligent editor was not at fault in supplying an empty place in the journalism of the Dominion.

One who has traveled over a large part of the West during the past year says that he has found no Unitarian societies more prosperous than those of our two Iowa women preachers, at Humboldt and Algona.

Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, May 21.

PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library