Market woman

“ But reasons entered into the market value of woman's work that did not enter into that of men. Mrs. Dall mentions but one trade in which the wages were lower for women, and there they competed with men. ”

“ Here and there a younger woman, dressed in the fashion of the best shop in the town, with a basket of rather more elegant shape, went about her marketing with equal decision, if more fashion: the wife of some tradesman who lived in one of the numerous new villas with small gardens increasing every year on the fringe of the old town, who still liked the stir of the market and a bargain, but whose chief reason for marketing herself would be given to a friend as, "you can't trust those girls. ”

“ We may divide market women into two classes—those that raise or have raised the products they sell, and those that buy to sell again. The articles of the first are generally genuine and of fair price. Vegetables, poultry, eggs, and butter, with fruit, both green and dried, are carried to market, and there the market women, placing them on stalls or retaining them in their wagons, wait for purchasers. ”

“ This kind of marriage, therefore, like all other sweated trades tends to lower the general market value of women's work. This is casting no reflection upon the hundreds of thousands of husbands who do their part fairly, who share and share alike whatever they have or earn with their wives. ”

“ If women were unwise managers of money,—a statement frequently made, but which we may safely deny,—it would be owing to the custom which has, through long ages, put the purse in the hands of "their master;" a custom so old, that to "husband" one's resources is a phrase which expresses man's pecuniary responsibility, and is always equivalent to locking one's money up. "It will be time enough," says Mrs. Kirkland, "to expect from woman a just economy when she is permitted to distribute a portion of the family resources. Witness those proud subscription-lists where one reads, 'Mr. ”

“ Quick perception and social tact, which are generally supposed to be feminine characteristics, often proved useful even to the craftsman, when his wife assumed the charge of the financial side of his business; it is therefore not surprising to find women taking a prominent part in every branch of Retail Trade. In fact the woman who was left without other 198resources turned naturally to keeping a shop, or to the sale of goods in the street, as the most likely means for maintaining her children, and thus the woman shopkeeper is no infrequent figure in contemporary writings. ”

“ All good and well-founded industries take care of themselves in time, but until the merchant finds them out, and interposes the wedge of personal profit between things and their market—inciting and encouraging both—it seems to be the business of women in every lot of life to help each other. ”

“ Weaving and Spinning as a Woman’s Trade.—The employments carried on by women in the household may have yielded money occasionally, as we have seen from some of the foregoing quotations, but the work appears in these excerpts to have been carried on rather as a bye-industry, as a means of utilising surplus produce, than as a recognised trade for gain or profit. Did women carry on the manufacture of woollen goods definitely as a craft or trade? ”

“ Nevertheless, from the woman’s point of view retailing deserves separate consideration, because, whether as a branch of Family Industry or as a trade in itself, the employment of selling was so singularly adapted to the circumstances of women, that among their resources it may almost take rank with agriculture and spinning. ”

“ Indeed, speaking broadly, it may be said that the retail trade of the country is in the hands of the women, and they nearly all trade on their own account. Just as the men farm their own land, the women own their businesses. They are not saleswomen for others, [Pg 220] but traders on their own account; and with the exception of the silk and cloth branches of the trade, it does not interfere with home-life. The bazaar lasts but three hours, and a woman has ample time for her home duties when her daily visit to the bazaar is over; she is never kept away all day in shops and factories. ”

“ Women know how to buy for women—or should know. How foolish indeed would be the merchant prince of the New York of this day who would not instantly say "yes" to the assertion that feminine taste in buying is the one thing with which his store absolutely could not dispense. So the woman buyer in our city stores is so much an accepted fact as to call today for little special comment, save possibly to add that in no store outside of Macy's has she come more completely into her own. The buyer's job covets her. And she covets the buyer's job. ”

“ The laws had been framed with the object of preventing a few persons buying up all the supplies in the market and selling them at exorbitant prices, but their application seems to have been chiefly directed in the interests of the shopkeepers, to whom the competition of women who hawked provisions from door to door was a serious matter, the women being contented with very small profits, and the housewives finding it so convenient to have goods brought to their very doorstep. ”

“ The modern bride, marrying out of Industry, leaves most of her economic value behind. And the greater that value was, the sharper is the shock of the contraction of resources.
Of course, the case of the department-store buyer and the teamster is irrelevantly extreme. But aren’t there thousands and thousands of cases which, while less advanced, are pointed in the same direction? The more a woman earns, the 18 fewer become the men who can support her. How can the clerk support the cloak saleswoman who has had eighteen dollars a week of her own? ”

“ Now single women are either hoarders or wasters; they rarely take the middle way and assume the prudence of the housewife, which generally develops into miserliness. This is best observable in the foolish{339} bargaining of women at markets, in their supposing that they have done great things by having reduced the price of their purchase a few cents. Every dealer confirms the fact that the first price he quotes a woman is increased in order to give her a chance to bargain. ”

“ She also knows whether she is receiving the proper quality and quantity; and yet so poorly have women discharged these obligations that dealers for years have been able to manipulate prices practically to please themselves, and as for quality and quantity we have the scandal of American woolen goods, of food adulteration, of false weights and measures. No one of these things could have come about in this country if woman had taken her business as a consumer with anything like the seriousness with which man takes his as a producer. ”

“ In the early days of America, when the home was the economic unit, and almost all industry was performed in the home and on the farm, women were economically dependent on men. Then woman's place was undoubtedly in the home, since there was no place else where she could earn a living. Modern industry has changed all that.
Women compete for jobs with men today, force down wages to a lower level and demand more from men before they will marry. ”

“ To name the various kinds of business in which women are found making for themselves a sustenance would be to give a list of the many lines of retail trade; but the shopwoman of the earlier part of the nineteenth century is quite a different person from the tradeswoman of the latter half. Instead of a small, obscure shop, conducted in a hesitating, apologetic manner, to-day women are as aggressive advertisers, make as fine displays in their shops, and sustain the same business relations with the wholesale dealers, as do the retail dealers of the other sex. ”

“ Year by year there crops up in the daily newspapers a grumbling and sometimes acrid correspondence on the subject of the incursion of women into a paid labour market formerly monopolized by their brothers. ”

“ The average buyer is a good deal like the heiress to a million dollars who's been on the market for eight or ten years, not because there's no demand for her, but because there's too much. Most girls whose capital of good looks is only moderate, marry, and marry young, because they're like a fellow on 'Change who's scalping the market—not inclined to take chances, and always ready to make a quick turn. ”

“ What preparation have these new employés had for business?”
And it turns out, as a matter of fact, most of them haven’t had any. A large number of this quarter of a million women who came at the call of the London Board of Trade to take the places of men in the offices, are of the class who since they were “finished” at school, have been living quiet English lives in pleasant suburbs where the rose trees grow and everybody strives to be truly a lady who doesn’t descend to working for money. It is difficult for an American woman of any class to visualise such an ideal. ”

“ It was dark, the market-place was hot with kerosene flares, which threw a ruddy light on the grave faces of the purchasing wives, and on the pale abstract faces of the men. The air was full of the sound of criers and of people talking, thick streams of people moved on the pavements towards the solid crowd of the market. The shops were blazing and packed with women, in the streets were men, mostly men, miners of all ages. ”

“ This was the same with all contributors to the exchanges; by employing their own labor they accumulated the premiums which, under the old factory and store system, inured to the benefit of their employers. In establishing the woman’s exchanges, the difficulty was to secure enough women of intelligence to be their own employers and to interest enough women in woman’s work to become patrons of the exchanges instead of the stores. ”

“ Any decent woman who has saved a little money thinks herself qualified to open a shop and carry on business without preliminary training. The usual result of such experiments is that capital dwindles away before profits have begun to make their appearance. Women do not always realise that the management of even a small business requires knowledge, resource, and an unwearied attention to details.
Trade as a Career.—It is to be regretted that the daughters of shopkeepers, particularly of the wealthier sort, do not more often devote themselves to trade. ”

“ For the first time in this country woman’s labor had a money value. She had become not only an earner and a producer, but also a spender of money, a recognized factor in the political economy of her time. And thus a long upward step in our material civilization was taken; woman had begun to earn and hold her own money, and through its aid had learned to think and to act for herself. ”

“ The increasing specialization in industry, drawing more and more of the household arts out of the home and into factory, mill and shops, and the following of the jobs by women into the mills and factories, thus freeing woman from economic dependence on man, has already [Pg 55] colored every branch of our social fabric. ”

“ The fact remains, however, that as buyer of both raw materials and finished products the woman spends a very large percentage (some say nine-tenths) of the money taken in by the retail merchants of the country. This gives, or should give her, a commanding position in the producing world. If the women of America should definitely decide to-day that they would buy no more corn flakes, or mercerized crochet cotton, or silk elastic, the factories now so busy turning out these products would be shut down to-morrow until they could be converted to other uses. ”

“ Young girls that go shopping to whisper in the ears of clerks, would then find something else to do." Woman has a power of adaptedness that fits her admirably for the vocation of a merchant. A friend remarked to me that Mr. Stewart, of New York, she thought, would employ women in his store, if a large number of fashionable and influential ladies would petition him to do so. If the retail merchants of our [Pg 105] large cities and towns would combine and employ only saleswomen, how greatly would they promote the welfare of the nation! ”

“ Women who have hitherto engaged in speculation have not yet shown that they are capable of generalizing the causes which affect the market as these kings of finance have done, nor have they illustrated that they are possessed of the ability to foresee financial events in the same way. ”

“ It was said women could not be merchants. We thought they could; we saw nothing to prevent women from using the power of calculation, the knowledge of goods, and the industry necessary to make a successful trader. ”

“ The Frenchwoman works the machinery of her own house, goes into the market and fixes the market-price of what she decides upon as suitable to her purposes (she always has a purpose, this Frenchwoman) ; she dresses herself and her children with taste, and she glitters in society. ”

“ Conceive of men crowding the tailors’ and the haberdashers’ in like manner, and taking equal delight in ‘shopping!’ This last occupation, or rather pastime, of women is a certain sign of mental inferiority. A woman will spend a whole day ‘shopping’—that is to say, in the inspection of goods she does not want and has no intention of buying—and will return home when day is done and count her time well and profitably spent. ‘Shopping,’ as apart from any idea of purchasing, is a recognised form of feminine recreation, as tradesfolk know to their cost. ”

“ I contend that woman, broadly considered, makes half the money that is made. Go the world over, take either Europe or America, the first source of money is intelligence and thrift; it is not speculation.... Out of the twenty millions of American people that make money, woman does more than half of the work that insures the reward. I claim for that half of the race whose qualities garner up wealth, the right to dispose of it, and to control it by law. ”