The Gendered Panic of the 1890s Labor Market

The letter printed recently in the Sun by the bookkeeper who left his desk for a few days on account of illness and returned to find his place filled by a woman at one-third his salary, opens up a new phase of economics sometimes quite overlooked in the general excitement and hullabaloo over the great things women are doing in all lines of work. A still more startling story might be told of how three brothers, employed respectively as cashier, bookkeeper and stenographer, and earning fair salaries, were discharged and their work given to their own sisters at one-third the price. While the great cry has been going up for the protection of the American laborer against cheap foreign workmen, the army of women invaders have quietly gone in from every side and possessed themselves of man's dominion. The feminine bookkeeper does not bring a confused head to business in the morning because she doesn't drink; and men say, who know whereof they speak, that she is accurate, is more neat and conscientious, and is satisfied with much less wages than her brother. Of course now men are greatly alarmed lest the old and honorable institution of marriage fall into innocuous desuetude because men will not be able to marry and support wives on the wages they can earn. If men had had more respect for this old and honored institution, more eagerness to avail themselves of its opportunities, and had lived more fully up to its principles, there would not be so many women fearful of entering into its bonds, or eager for release from its indignities.