incalculable benefit to her. Of old the unmarried woman could do little
except sit by the fire and spin or make clothing for the South Sea
Islanders. Her limited activities caused a corresponding influence on
her character. People who have nothing to do will naturally find an
outlet for their superfluous energy in gossip and all the petty things
of life; if isolated from a share in what the world is doing, they will
no less naturally develop eccentricities of character and will grow old
prematurely. To-day, by being allowed a part in civic and national
movements, women can "get out of themselves"--a powerful therapeutic
agent. Mrs. Ella Young, a woman of sixty, was last year made
Superintendent of the great Public School System of Chicago. Fraeulein
Anna Heinrichsdorff is the first woman in Germany to get an engineer's
diploma, very recently bestowed upon her; an "excellent" mark was given
Fraeulein Heinrichsdorff in every part of her examination by the Berlin
Polytechnic Institute. Miss Jean Gordon, the only factory inspector in
Louisiana, is at present waging a strong fight against the attempt to
exempt "first-class" theatres from the child-labour law. Mrs. Nellie
Upham, of Colorado, is President and General Manager of the Gold Divide
Mining, Milling, and Tunnel Company of Colorado and directs 300 workmen.
These are a few examples out of some thousands of what woman is
doing.[427] And yet there are men who do not believe she should do
anything but wash dishes and scrub.

Much more serious is the glaring discrepancy in the wages paid to men
and to women. For doing precisely the same work as a man and often doing
it better, woman receives a much lower wage. The reasons are several
and specious. We are told that men have families to support, that women
do not have such expensive tastes as men, that they are incapable of
doing as much as men, that by granting them equal wages one of the
inducements to marry is removed. These arguments are generally used with
the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support,
women by the hundreds support brothers and sisters and weak parents.
That they are incapable of doing as much sounds unconvincing to one who
has seen the work of sweat-shops. The argument that men have more
expensive tastes to satisfy is too feeble to deserve attention. Finally,
when men argue that women should be forced to marry by giving them
smaller wages, they are simply reverting to the time-honou