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.
In Philadelphia, recently, a book-keeper in one of the large establishments, was discovered to be a woman in man’s attire. She had a pitiful tale to tell, which accounts for her strange dress. Her husband had been obliged to give up his employment on account of ill-health and it had become necessary for her to find work. Her father had been a merchant and had taught her to keep books, so naturally so sought employment as a book-keeper. She met with rebuff at every place, because they did not hire women as book-keepers. She, therefore, bought a cheap suit of men’s clothes and again sought work and this time with success. Whatever, may be said of the plan she adopted, it shows the cruel injustice to which the working-women of the large cities are subjected in the matter of employment and wages.
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Mrs. Livermore in a recent letter to Our Message, the organ of the Massachusetts W.C.T.U., says that in her winter’s travels she met an intelligent brewer and held much converse with him regarding the temperance reform. Among other things he said: “Let me tell you how thing are here in Nebraska. If to-morrow we were compelled to choose between a woman suffrage or prohibitory amendment to our Constitution, we should take the latter. For you can get around any prohibitory amendment that men can make. With the aid of good lawyers, you can pick flaws in the evidence and break down the witnesses, and all the while, if you are smart, you can do business on the sly, until you worry your prosecutors clear out and they’ll give up trying to enforce the law. But when you give women the right to vote, a prohibitory amendment is sure to follow, and women haven’t had a grain of sense on the temperance question. They are crazy fanatics on that subject and they wouldn’t stop till the whole liquor business was destroyed, root and branch. that is why we shall never give women the ballot in Nebraska.”
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The Weekly Magazine contains the following on the relations of women to money: “Times have greatly changed within the last ten years in general relation of women to money matters. The control of money is a power which is more and more coming into their hands, and for which they should feel a deep moral responsibility. An earnest observer of the progress of social organization has remarked that the increasing responsibility thrown upon women in pecuniary matters more than any other agency is educating them out of weakness, vacillation and unreliability, into strong, reasonable, reliable members of the social structure. It is the testimony of many bankers and business men that honorably disposed women are among their best and most desirable customers. This speaks volumes of encouragement and perhaps fully offsets the occasional woman upon whom business cares have fallen, who seem utterly incompetent to comprehend the nature of a business engagement or business transaction; who expect all sorts of immunities and privileges in business on the ground of being a woman. No more disagreeable customer to have any business transaction with can be found than such a person. Women of this character discredit not only themselves but their sex, upon which they bring the reproach of their own weakness and want of perception of the true relation of things. They are among the worst stumbling-blocks in the path of woman’s progress; and none feel this more keenly than good and honorable women whose ambition is to be just and generous in their business dealings and to have their word as good as their bond and their bond worth one hundred cents on the dollar.”
Notes About Women
Mrs. Huya, of New Orleans, for eight years has owned and managed a box factory.
Mary E. Tisdale, of Cedar Rapids, Ia., was granted a patent last week, for an egg-boiler and castor.
Mrs. E. J. Nicholson, editor and proprietor of the New Orleans Picayune, has organized a Band of Mercy among the children whose work belongs with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Miss Cleveland has received word from her New York publishers that the first edition of her book, now in press, has proved insufficient to meet the advance orders for the trade, and a second edition has been ordered.
The Queen of Madagascar, in a proclamation to her people, said: “I cannot consent, as your queen, to take a single cent of revenue from strong drink, for it destroys the souls and bodies of my subjects.”
Mrs. J. C. Pleasants, of California, began about ten years ago, with five or six colonies of bees; now she owns about 200 colonies, which annually yield about 400 pounds of honey each and from which last year she cleared $2,000. To her efforts, success and dissemination of knowledge, the development of the bee industry in her State is said to be largely due. When she began with the bees, she had three or four Angora goats; she now has about 500 head, which yield on an average seven-pound fleeces, worth in the market $3.50, making her annual income from that source over $1700, with but small outlay of expense or work, as the goats graze on the wild mountain lands with a boy to herd them.
A lady, who is in charge of one of the exhibits at the New Orleans Exposition has a very interesting history. She enlisted during the late war, in the 4th Ohio Cavalry, under Col. Kennett, in company with her husband, to whom at the time of enlistment, she had been married one week. She served with him about six months; then he was taken prisoner while performing picket duty, about forty miles from Washington. The wife then revealed her sex, and was transferred to hospital duty, where she served nearly two years at Louisville and Columbus. She was in many skirmishes, but still young and attractive, there is nothing in her appearance to indicate these unusual experiences, and she insists that it was much easier for her to do military service along with her husband than it would have been to have remained at home and have borne, as did so many, the suspense of anxious waiting.
Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, July 2.PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library