Woman's World Column - June 25, 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.”

Miss Matilda Hindman, in the Pittsburg Commercial Gazette, makes a strong argument in favor of trusting women in business relations, as follows:

“Do women embezzle?”

This question was recently put to one of the heaviest dry goods merchants of Buffalo, who always employs women as cashiers.

“Do women embezzle? No, they don’t. I never knew a woman who handled other people’s money to steal a cent. I have employed women as cashiers for years. They are quicker at making change than men; they detect counterfeit money quicker; they keep their accounts clearer, and don’t want to run the store, as men do; have I known of a single case of embezzlement by women, never have I heard one. I cannot say the same of men. I have employed four young men at different times as cashiers. One left me, one was not quick enough and the third robbed me.”

This is the testimony of but one business man of the many whose evidence could be given proving the honesty of women when handling the money of other people. The statement of others, who have informed themselves on the subject is that women seldom fail to pay their debts, and even when they might take advantage of the bankrupt act they prefer to hold themselves legally liable for the debt.

While the newspapers are full of wicked embezzlements of bank presidents running away with fortunes, wrecking homes, impoverishing families, destroying reputations, disgracing friends, and ruining themselves; while trusted men are robbing public institutions, speculating, gambling, and stealing, caring not whom they rob, wrong or ruin, women are seldom guilty of such dishonesty or crimes.

The general belief is that women are honest. Yet in the face of these facts and the almost universal belief in their honesty, women are not trusted in a business way by men. Men refuse to lend them a sum of money to start in business, to invest in real estate, or to help them save their property upon which they have paid a certain amount and which can only be secured by prompt payment of the remainder. Women often find it hard to secure even a small loan on good security. Men as a rule prefer to say they have not the money at hand. Some will prevaricate, giving almost any reason for refusing to lend rather than the correct one, while a few are manly enough to state the truth, saying, “We do not do business with women.” But very few treat them as they do men, and give them a chance to make an honest living.

Why is this? It is not that men consider them dishonest. It is because they have no confidence in the business capacity of women or in their judgment as to investing or taking care of money. Some men cling to the old idea that it is not becoming in a woman to engage in business outside of home, however needy she may be. Hundreds of wealthy men will give, and give liberally, to establish “home for women” who have failed to secure homes for themselves. Yet if a few hundred would have enabled them to provide for themselves, these good men would not have loaned them the small amount, because they believed they did not understand business. The greatest kindness and modest act is to help the needy help themselves. If women do not understand business, how are they to overcome this deficiency if prevented by such circumstances from acquiring the proper knowledge? With honest principles and proper opportunities, supplied with some means and trusted by the public, they cannot fail to become as trusted in business and as proficient bread-winners as their brothers. Give them an opportunity to become self-supporters rather than genteel paupers. Save them this terrible humiliation added to their other trials.

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A writer in the New York Ledger takes up a much mooted question in the cities and treats it sensible as follows: They tell me that there is an effort being made to exclude women from factories, on the ground that there is not work enough for both sexes.

If this is true, more is the pity. But why should the whole burden fall on the weakest shoulders?

Why should John feel more deeply wronged because Jane has work he would like to have than because James has it?

It is utterly absurd to say that women only buy finery with their wages while men support families. It is a manifest fact to every observer that no woman ever earned a dollar by working hard without finding somebody—often a man—who wanted at least half of it as soon as she got it in her hand.

There are widows with children, daughters with aged parents, wives with invalid or unlucky husbands, and little girls who “help mother” feed the others, at work in all the factories. A man with a large family has a hard time, of course; but so has a woman with a large family. And if there are some girls wo, having homes, can do as they please with their earnings, there are many men, unmarried, and not living with parents, who spend the greater part of their wages in the most selfish way entirely on themselves, and others who drink and smoke their money away.

Take work from women, and do you suppose every honest young factory employee will instantly marry a respectable ex-working girl out of pure philanthropy? Kissing will always go by favor, as it always has, and men will always marry girls they fall in love with, or live single lives, if they like, until they die. On the whole, a single women, being naturally more unselfish, and more apt to have a local habitation, than a single man, will have ten chances to his one of spreading her money over the bread and butter of several people. If too many poor cousins turn up, he can take refuge afar; she stays where her home is, and helps keep the family together.

It does not seem to me possible that there are many men who approve of driving women from fields of labor which they have always occupied, and I do not think the few who wish it can succeed. There are vast numbers of women who must work or starve to death, and it occurs to me that men who can at least by ashamed to wrench the hands of women from the work that they can do in factories.

Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, June 25.

PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library