The New York World, 23 July 1899.
"Women's Work"
The Fair Sex Ousting Men from Many Professions.
What is women's work? Cooking, darning, washing, mending? These things are done by men.
In revenge women are employed at men's jobs. One-third of all the professional wage earners of the United States are women and girls.
These are some of the queer trades they have taken up: Two hundred and seventy-nine women are detectives, 208 lawyers, 19 trappers and guides, 2 veterinary surgeons, 19 chemists and assayers, 3 blacksmiths: probably many more as occasional assistants.
There are women mail contractors, orchestras composed of women, profitable restaurants run by them. In Astoria and many other places several large hot-houses are managed by women; a St. Louis woman is a professional trunk-packer; women are "elevator boys" in the Young Women's Christian Association Building, Philadelphia; a Louisiana woman makes money raising mint, a New York one by salting almonds.
Women farmers and florists are everywhere. Jersey City has a woman sign-painter. Western railroads emply women to tend switches. Eastern ones to sell tickets.
In New England factory women make pianos. A St. Louis woman is a consulting fashion expert. Three hundred New York girls make harness. In the same city are women decorators and wall-paper hangers.
The professions, of course: women teachers are a quarter of a million: teachers of music, 34,519; teachers of art, 10,000. There are 1,143 women clergyman and 888 journalists and 2,725 authors. These figures are doubtless too small. No census can keep pace with the growth of the figures.
Women earn a living by serving writs, by upholstering, by writing love letters for people who can't write themselves, by reading to invalids.
Buffalo has a woman contractor and quarry owner. The woman manager of a California insurance company gets a salary of $10,000 a-year. Two women editors in New York have $5,000 a year each, and of course many women writers earn more than that.
In Boston are two advertising agencies owned and managed entirely by women.
