Tacoma Postmaster Fires Women to Hire Men
Local postmaster justifies replacing female clerks with men and his own son by citing efficiency and gossip concerns.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Postmaster Hogue of Tacoma has decided to remove all women clerks from the post office. Hogue claimed that men are easier to manage and can be 'ordered about with more economy.' By replacing three women with two men, Hogue argues he can save money, even though he admits the female clerks were 'proficient and reliable.' One of the new male clerks will be Hogue's own son. The displaced women clerks contend their firing is politically motivated, noting they were fired because they lacked the vote, and dismissed the accusations of gossip.
“The women clerks say they must go because they can't vote, that politics is the cause of it, and that they don't gossip.”
This blatant case of gender-based employment discrimination from 1892 captures the era's civic instability, where women's lack of suffrage directly left them vulnerable to arbitrary firing in public offices.
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