WOMEN IN PROFESSIONS.
"Mrs. Winifred Harper Cooley of
New York is president of the Allied
Clubs of Domestic Science; a member and officer of the Domestic
Science club, of the Society for the
Promotion of Pure Foods and many
other women's organizations and a
recognized leader in all women's
movements in the east.
Mrs. Cooley was born in Indiana,
and is the daughter of Mrs. Ida
Husted Harper, one of the leading
woman suffragists in United States.
She is the author of "The
New Womanhood" and numerous
magazine articles on food preparation and the servant problem.
By Mrs. Winifred Harper Cooley
Are women taking men's jobs away
from them? Well, who said they were
mens, anyway? Men say so, to be
tsure, but one never wants to give up
what he has. There are several laws
recognized throughout the world. One
of them is the law of supply and demand. Another is that there is always
plenty of room at the top.
Girls are athletic nowadays, and can
climb trees pretty well; so we find them
holding big salaried positions "at the
top" (for no earthly reason except that
they are so absolutely capable of filling
them).
Folks say that it is eccentric for a
woman to be a hodcarrier or a dentist
or a photographer. Of course I must seem eccentric to the
pride of the harem when she looks out over her barred windows
and sees a woman civil engineer
measuring space or a woman architect planning to erect a library building.
But why take the viewpoint of the harem?
Living by sex is an ancient occupation, sometimes remunerative, sometimes not. But it is scarcely a very respectable one, and a good many women prefer living by their brain or their handiwork.
In 1807 there were only seven professions open to American women.
Today there are 371 trades
and professions. Teaching is almost monopolized by them, although in the early days paid
four dollars a week. There
are some 6,000 women physicians, some of them house surgeons, heads of insane asylums and medical examiners for public school children. There are several hundred women dentists, the first dentist to enter the Philippines having been Dr. Anna Sawyer. There are 400 women pharmacists in the United States. In New York city twenty women own and manage drug stores.
... United States of America, who may raise no voice for or against any measure of government are children,
aliens, idiots, lunatics, criminals and women. We, the last named item, desire to be removed from this catalogue, where we should never have been placed.
