Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/May 20, 1906

The Census Bureau has just issued a report which says that one out of every sixteen American women works for her own living.

There are, says the Census Bureau, only eight trades, avocations or kinds of business in which the American woman of today does not engage.

Women are horse jockeys, baseball umpires, insurance agents, postmen, blacksmiths, farmers, messenger boys, tenders of roulette wheels, horse breakers, dairymen, truck drivers and even mechanics.

Now, this isn’t a dream or a prophecy; it’s the plain, bald, matter of fact truth, as told in the dry-as-dust report which the Census Bureau makes to Congress in this, our month of April, in the year of 1906.

Good news, isn’t it? Fine news, splendid news, news to make the believers in woman’s suffrage throw up their bonnets and shriek aloud for joy. How dear old aunt Susan would have rejoiced to hear that news, and what a perfectly ebullient time our dear friend, the Rev. Anna Shaw, will have over it.

I wonder what fifteen out of that sixteen women think of that news, and of the conditions which are behind it.

Most of all, I’d like to hear the still, small voice of the one in sixteen who does the actual work. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know, now what she says when she writes to newspapers on “How to Save Money on $200 a Year,” or when she is interviewed on “Can a Woman Dig Ditches and Still be Beautiful?” but what she says to herself at night, when she gets home, so tired that her little old dingy hall bedroom seems a haven of rest to her.

What she says to herself when she has to get up in the gray dawn and make a dray horse of herself all day for a mere pittance, just so as to be able to say that she is independent?

I wonder what that one woman in sixteen thinks has happened to the men of this country when she begins to realize how hard the women have to work to earn the right to be alive?

I wonder what that one woman in sixteen thinks when she joins the crowds of factory girls whose very presence degrades our civilization every morning, except Sunday, the year round? I wonder how that one in sixteen feels when she has to leave her little baby at home, neglected and forlorn, to go out and earn enough money to feed that baby?

I wonder how she feels when she visits the old-fashioned woman in the next block some Sunday afternoon, and sees her, happy in her own home?

I wonder how the men of this great, rich, splendid country feel about this one-woman-in-sixteen business?

Can it be that a man who has carried his little daughter to bed and watched her fall asleep with such a clutch at his heart that he scarcely dared breathe for fear of a folly of unexplainable tears?

I wonder if such a man really likes to see his daughter go out to support herself when she grows up? I wonder if the one woman in sixteen who is doing the self-supporting now will educate her own daughters—poor things, if she is unfortunate enough to have any—to believe that there is just one place in the world to keep away from, and that that place is what we used to love to call home?

What’s the matter with our girls?

Are they so extravagant, so vain, so flaunting that they cannot be satisfied with the simple pleasures of a simple life, live in peace and quiet happiness?

What’s the matter with our boys?

Are they too lazy and too selfish and too stingy to take care of their sisters? Whisper.

How many young men between 20 and 25 do you know today who are earning as much money as their sisters and earning it as easily?

How many young men between 20 and 25 do you know today who have a bigger account at the bank than their sisters?

How many of them do you know who are as good physical specimens as their sisters?

Look at them now, the next time you think of it and see what you do see, and hot what you wish you could see, and if I am not greatly mistaken, you will make up your mind that the average American woman of 22 or 23 is the superior, morally, mentally and physically of the average American man of 22 or 23.

What are we going to do about it?

It would be all right if the Powers and rule the earth would only take this state of affairs into consideration and arrange it so that the young men could stay at home and bring up the babies, but somehow we have to keep the old rule about that and it doesn’t seem to fit in with the new rule at all.

Can’t we get up a petition and do something about it?

Miss Anna Shaw, now she’s a great believer in the rights of women, why doesn’t she step in and stir up Providence to do something about the wrongs of men?

One woman in every sixteen in this great, big, rich, powerful, growing young country of ours—a wage-earner.

I wonder if one man in every sixteen is a wage-spender and not an earner?

Who is to blame for this terrible thing, the men or women of this country?