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Injustice to Woman.

"Sewing girls appear to meet with but poor success in their efforts to secure an increase of wages. The umbrella sewers of this city recently struck for an advance of two cents per umbrella, but they met with so little encouragement and so much abuse from their employers that they endeavored to effect a compromise by reducing their demand to one cent. But even in this they did not succeed, and all were obliged to return to their work, except a few who still hold out." — N. Y. Tribune.

While men "strikers" have their demands promptly complied with by employers, the laboring women, getting the merest pittance for their toil, are obliged to submit, in these high-priced times, to the low wages of former years. It is so in New York, in Chicago, and all over the country.

There is a degree of wrong and injustice done to laboring women in this country that is reproach to us, and a good reason for which we have even been at a loss to find. For example, a sewing girl, who does more difficult work, and more of it, than a man sewing in a tailor's shop, receives hardly one-quarter as much for her toil as a man does for his. A lady teacher even, perforforming precisely the same duties and quite as efficiently as a male teacher, receives scarcely half as large a salary. And so in every department of labor where woman seeks employment — she is obliged to do as much work as her male colaborer, and generally does it just as well, but is obliged to submit to much less remuneration.

Is it just? Is it not grossly unjust, and does it not have the effect of disheartening those poor women in our land who are dependent upon their earnings for a livelihood, and of discouraging woman's ambition for industrious usefulness? Does it not have the effect of driving many a poor girl to desperate and fearful alternatives — of reducing those who, by their efforts in the industrial or professional avocations of life, might raise themselves to high positions in society, to be ornaments in social life, to the lowest scale of dependency and of moral and social degradation?

Society relies more upon the purity, refinement and intelligence of woman, for its elevated tone, than upon any other element — and man never more conclusively proves his manhood than when he accords to woman the respect that is due her, and manifest towards her a magnanimous generosity and a manly sympathy. It should be his aim to help her up — not drag her down; to make her an ornament, not a slave; to accept her services for what they are worth, and encourage her in every laudable ambition. A woman is a woman, be she ever so poor, and that man is mean who will treat her unjustly, or wrong her, by his selfish avarice or lusts. — Chicago Journal.