Volume III Part 123 (1/2)
strong to the registrar's office, but were repulsed. They tried afterwards to vote, but were refused, whereupon Mrs. Spencer sued the inspectors, and Mrs. Webster sued the registrars, so testing their rights in two suits in the Supreme Court of the District.[528]
In 1866 Jane G. Swisshelm commenced the publication of a liberal sheet in the District of Columbia, known as _The Wasp_. This was the continuation of a paper formerly published by her in Pittsburg, Pa., and in St. Cloud, Minn., called _The Visitor_.
Many other papers by women have been since published in the District. Perhaps the most voluminous author in this country is Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, who has written a volume for each year of her life, and is now sixty-five years of age. Her authors.h.i.+p has been confined to romances, which have been very popular. A large proportion of the teachers of the public schools in the District are women, some of them of very marked culture.
Many of the most noted and successful private schools, some with collegiate courses, are conducted by women. Among these, Mrs.
Margaret Harover who taught in the District during the war, is worthy of mention, also Mrs. Ellen M. O'Connor, president of the Miner school. Mrs. Sarah J. Spencer, as a.s.sociate princ.i.p.al of the Spencerian business college whence large cla.s.ses of young women have been graduated for many years past, is deservedly popular. She was at one time prominent in the woman suffrage movement, acting as corresponding secretary of the National a.s.sociation. She is now engaged in one of the large charity organizations of the city. Many colored women who have been graduated from Howard University, have become quite successful as teachers, and some have studied medicine. All of the copyists in the office of registrar of deeds are women. A goodly number are short-hand reporters for the courts, among whom Miss Camp, daughter of the a.s.sistant clerk, is notably skillful.
The number of women who hold property in the District is large and rapidly increasing. A woman may now enter into almost any honorable profession that she chooses, and maintain her respectability. All of the professions are open to her, and the sphere of trades is rapidly widening. The progress made in this regard in the last quarter of a century amounts almost to a revolution. The first women ever admitted to the reporter's gallery of the Senate and House were Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), and Helen M. Barnard, both political writers of great power; the former as a reporter for the New York _Times_, and the latter for the New York _Herald_. Mrs. Barnard, during Grant's administration, was sent as commissioner of immigration to Liverpool, visiting England, Ireland and Scotland. Returning in the steerage of an ocean steamer, she gave one of the finest reports ever made upon this question. This resulted in the pa.s.sage by the legislature of New York of a bill for the better protection of emigrants on s.h.i.+pboard, and the appointment by the United States government of an inspector of immigration for every out-going steamer.
Women were first appointed as clerks in the government departments in 1861 by Secretary Chase, at the earnest solicitation of Treasurer Spinner. They were employed at temporary work at $50 a month--one-half the lowest price paid to any male clerk--until they were recognized by an act of congress in which their salary was fixed at $900 a year, in the general appropriation bill of July 23, 1866. The men doing the same work were of four cla.s.ses, receiving, respectively, $1,000, $1,400, $1,600, $1,800. Treasurer Spinner, in his report of October, 1866, said:
The experiment of employing females as clerks has been, so far as this office is concerned, a success. For many kinds of office-work, like the manipulation and counting of fractional currency, they excel, and in my opinion are to be preferred to males. There is, however, quite as much difference in point of ability between female clerks as there is between the several cla.s.ses of male clerks, whose equals some of them are. Some are able to accomplish twice as much as others, and with greater accuracy. So, too, some of them incur great risks, being responsible for making mistakes in count, and for counterfeits overlooked. Such should, by every consideration of justice and fair dealing, be paid according to their merits, and the risks and liabilities they incur.
And in 1868, Mr. Spinner urged the committee of which Mr.
Fessenden of Maine was the chairman, to so amend the bill providing for the reorganization of the treasury department as to increase the salary of the female clerks who have the handling of money, stating that cases had occurred in which women had lost more than half their monthly pay by reason of being short in count, or of allowing counterfeit notes to pa.s.s their hands.
Secretary M'Cullough a.s.serted that women performed their clerical duties as creditably as men, and stated that he had three ladies who performed as much labor, and did it as well as any three male clerks receiving $1,800 a year. It is now a quarter of a century that women have served the government in these responsible positions, and still, with but few exceptions, they receive only the allotted $900. Mrs. Fitzgerald, the expert in the redemption bureau of the treasury, who has for fifteen years deciphered defaced currency, in which no man has ever yet proved her equal, receives $1,400. In 1886 she subjected herself to an examination for an increase to $1,600, but, failing to answer some questions foreign to her art, she was compelled to content herself with the former salary.
II.--MARYLAND.
_The Revolution_ of February 26, 1868, shows an effort in the direction of progress on this question in Maryland. A correspondent says:
Notwithstanding the present ascendancy of conservatism in Maryland, the progressive element is not wholly annihilated; in proof of which, we send information of the working of this leaven, as developed in an a.s.sociation lately organized in the city of Baltimore, under the name of the ”Maryland Equal Rights Society.” For nearly a year past it has been in contemplation to form a society based upon the principle of equal chance to all human kind, irrespective of s.e.x or color, through the mediums.h.i.+p of the elective franchise. The first public meeting of the friends of the movement was held on the afternoon of November 12, 1867, at the Dougla.s.s Inst.i.tute, at which twelve persons, white and colored, were present. Some steps were taken towards organization in the framing and adopting of a const.i.tution based upon the principle afore-mentioned; but further business was deferred in hope of securing a larger attendance at a subsequent meeting. Two weeks later a second meeting was called, when the const.i.tution was signed by fourteen persons, ten of whom were white and four colored. Officers were chosen, consisting of a president, a vice-president, a secretary and a treasurer, together with eight other members to act as an executive committee. The last meeting, held January 29, was attended by Alfred H. Love and Rachel Love of Philadelphia. To Mr. Love the society is indebted for many valuable suggestions as to the best means of becoming an effective co-worker in the cause of human progress.
Our colored friends, who have control of the Dougla.s.s Inst.i.tute, have testified their good will toward the movement in giving the society the use of an apartment in the building, free of charge.
This is the one instance in which we have met with encouragement in our own community. We have sought it in high places, among those we supposed to be friends, and found it not. It appears to be the nature of fine linen to dread the mud splashes of the pioneer's spade and pick-ax, and for silk and broadcloth to shrink from contact with the briers of an uncleared thicket; hence our sole recourse is to appeal to those only who are dressed for the service. We are conscious that we have entered upon no easy task; but, ashamed of having so long left our Northern sisters to toil and endure alone in a cause which is not one of section but of humanity, we come forward at last to a.s.sume our share of the hards.h.i.+p, trusting that what we have lost in our tardiness may be made up in earnestness and activity.
From various papers we clip the following items:
At the election in Baltimore, January 20, 1870, there were three women who applied to be registered as voters at the third-ward registry office. Their names were Mrs. L. C. Dundore, Mrs. A. M.
Gardner and Miss E. M. Harris. Their cases were held under advis.e.m.e.nt by the register.----In 1871, a Maryland young lady, Miss Middlebrook, raised over 5,000 heads of cabbage. On Christmas, she sold in the Baltimore market 500 pounds of turkey at 20 cents per pound.----Mrs. H. B. Conway of Frederick county, has established a reputation as a contractor for ”fills” and ”cuts.” She has filled several contracts in Pennsylvania, been awarded a $100,000 job on the Western Maryland railroad, and now, 1885, is engaged in the work of excavating a tract in Baltimore for building-sites.
Miss R. Muller has for several years been engaged as subscription and general correspondence clerk for the Baltimore _Daily American_. She was the first woman to be employed in that city on newspaper work during the present century. In the chapter on newspapers it will be seen that Anna R. Green established the first newspaper in the Maryland colony one hundred and nineteen years ago, doing the colony printing; and that Mary R. G.o.ddard not only published a paper, writing able editorials, but was also the first postmaster after the revolution. And from the following item it would seem that the first woman to claim her right to vote must be credited to Maryland:
At the regular meeting of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, December, 1885, Hon. J. L. Thomas read a paper on ”Margaret Brent, the first woman in America to claim the right to vote.” She lived at St. Mary's city on the river of the same name two hundred and forty years ago, and was related to Lord Baltimore. She was the heir of Leonard Calvert, Lord Baltimore's brother and agent, and as such she claimed not only control of all rents, etc., of Lord Baltimore, but also the right to two votes in the a.s.sembly as the representative of both Calvert and Baltimore. The first claim the courts upheld, but the second was rejected.
On March 20, 1872, Hon. Stevenson Archer made an exhaustive speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, ent.i.tled, ”Woman Suffrage not to be tolerated, although advocated by the Republican candidate for vice-presidency.” The speech was against Senator Wilson's bill to enfranchise the women of the territories. The honorable representative from Maryland may have been moved to enter his protest against woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt by the fact that the women of his State had in convention a.s.sembled early in the same month made a public demand for their political rights:
The Havre de Grace _Republican_ says that the convention of the Maryland Equal Rights a.s.sociation, held in Raine's Hall, Baltimore, last week, was a grand success. Mrs. Lavina C.
Dundore, president of the a.s.sociation, presided over the convention with dignity and grace. Many prominent and able champions of the cause were present and delivered eloquent and telling addresses in favor of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, which were listened to with marked attention by the large audiences in attendance. The friends of the cause in Maryland feel much gratified at this exhibition of the rapidly increasing interest in the movement.
Meetings had been held in Baltimore during the years of 1870-71, and lectures given by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B.
Anthony, and others.
Charlotte Richmond of Baltimore writes the _Woman's Journal_, April 22, 1873:
The American _Journal of Dental Science_ makes the following statement: ”The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, having had the honor of conferring the first degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery in the world, has also graduated the first woman who ever received a diploma in medicine or dentistry in Baltimore, in the person of Miss Emilie Foeking of Prussia, who, after attending two full courses of lectures and demonstrations, pa.s.sed a very creditable final examination. Miss Foeking conformed to all the rules and regulations of the college during the two sessions that she was a student; no favor whatever as to requirement being asked for on her part, or extended to her by the faculty, on account of s.e.x. She has fairly earned her degree by proficiency and earnest application. After a short time Miss Foeking will return to Berlin, where she intends to locate. That she will succeed in establis.h.i.+ng a large and lucrative practice, there is no doubt, as she is well qualified professionally, and is in manner so perfect a lady as to command the respect of all who know her.”