USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 59
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MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Miss Eliza M. Russell, Nevada.
4. Mrs. Daniel Hall, New Hampshire.
7. Mrs. George Wilson Kiader, North Carolina.
10. Mrs. W. B. McConnell, North Dakota.
2. Mrs. M. D. Foley, Nevada.
5. Miss Mary E. Busselle, New Jersey.
8. Mrs. Charles Price, North Carolina.
11. Mrs. Mary P. Hart, Ohio.
3. Mrs. Mira B. F. Ladd, New Hampshire. 6. Mrs. Ralph Trautmann, New York. 9. Mrs. S. W. Mclaughlin, North Dakota.
12. Mrs. Walter Hartpence, Ohio.
WOMAN IN JOURNALISM. By MRS. MARY TEMPLE BAYARD.
That it should have been left for me to discuss women in journalism, after all the weeks of speech-making from this platform, is surprising; and that I should so readily have committed myself to the subject has since been to me a matter of regret. I don't like the petticoat or trouser differentiation which my subject seems to imply. Women in journalism today in no way differ from men in journalism. Sex is neither a disqualifi- cation nor a recommendation. Much discussion of women in any particular line of usefulness, in these free and equal days, when they can hem ruffles or engineer locomotives equally without comment, is too much like discussing them as a species instead of a sex. There is no sex in brains, all difference in weight of the brains of the sexes to the contrary not- withstanding, and brains and journalism are synony- mous terms. Neither is there a royal road especially prepared or made smooth for either sex. A fair field and no favor must suffice for women in journalism. There is no claim to be set forward on the basis of sex. Women who have succeeded in journalism have suc- ceeded as journalists and not as women, and this along the same lines on which men have succeeded. We learn early in the work to expect nothing by MRS. MARY TEMPLE BAYARD. virtue of the accident of our personality. Because we are women we must not imagine we therefore have a right to an engagement simply for the asking. Especially would this deprive us of a niche in journalism. We must not presume upon an editor's chivalry and courtesy to judge our work more leniently than he would were it the work of a man. I regret to say these are weaknesses often charged to beginners, but which all who get on in journalism sooner or later out- grow. We must be proud that our work is received upon its merits alone, since any other plan would lower the standard of our efficiency, impair our earning capacity and spoil us both as women and as journalists. Women who come into journalism expect- ing to be excused any fault by reason of their sex lower by extent of that excuse the reputation and worth of women in the profession. We learn to trample under foot that most dishonoring conception of our work as mere woman's work, and to know that such kindness on the part of editors as the indulgence of these weaknesses would in the end prove most unkind. However, if there ever was a time when women in journalism were so favored to their undoing, that day has gone by. Editors may be compared to builders; they build daily and their contract with the public is to build
Mrs. Mary Temple Bayard is a native of Waynesburg, Greene county, Pa., and is the daughter of General and Mrs. J. F. Temple. She was educated at Waynesburg College. At the age of sixteen she married William J. Bayard, but, left a widow at twenty-four, returned to the same school and finished her education with her son, her last session in college being his first. She has traveled extensively both in her own country and Europe. Her literary work has been for magazines in the interest of Woman's Social reform and philanthropic movements. Her reputation as a writer was made under the nom de plume of "Meg." The first line written for publication was accepted, and after publishing her letters for one month the Pittsburg Dispatch advertised for " Meg " to make her real name known, and the result was a permanent engagement. Sheis at pres- ent on the staff of the Philadelphia Times. She is a Cumberland Presbyterian. Her permanent postoffice address is No. 8 Sherman Avenue, Alleghany, Pa.
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only of the best material. They care not so much which sex furnishes the timber, so it is of the best. If women supply material as good and suitable as that furnished by men they stand the same chance of making a sale as men do, and will receive the same price for it. Journalism is at least the profession where the sexes receive the same remuneration for the same work equally well done. Surely the whole duty to our sex has been discharged when this is true. We cannot expect editors, out of chiv- alry, or because their mothers were women, and we are women, to build their papers out of inferior timber simply because we furnish it. If we are so immature as to expect such indulgence, we are doomed to disappointment.
It is the common experience of women in journalism that there is less sentiment about a newspaper office than anywhere else of which they have personal knowledge. It is not putting it too strongly to say that though a contributor or reporter were upon the verge of starvation, such confession would hinder rather than help her to space or assignment. The editor would at once suspect money to be her inspiration and of her having nothing to say that would either entertain or benefit the reading public. Writ- ing only for the money there is in it is one of the unpardonable sins in journalism.
I have heard women in journalism refer to the stern reprimands, often unjust, with much the same pride men sometimes refer to jacketings received during apprentice days, and, like the men, attribute their ultimate success to such stern discipline, on the assumption that sparing the metaphorical rod would have the same effect upon the woman as upon the child.
But once a woman always a woman, and it is a matter of doubt whether any of us ever overcome the natural weakness, if weakness it be, of love of the approving pat. I can even see how mistaken kindness and undue consideration might encourage the timid woman to do her best, when being " treated exactly like a man," which would be license to swear at her, might frighten her out of the wits she would stand most in necd of.
The story is told of one of our pioncer women in journalism that she was first refused a place on the staff because it would not do to swear at her. "What!" said the editor, "petticoats on this staff? Never while I am in control. Why, you could not swear at a woman!" That, in his opinion, settled the matter. Anyone that could not be sworn at when they deserved it had no business around a newspaper office. This same editor subsequently found out there were other ways to admonish women and develop genius besides swearing at them, for he lived to have several women on his staff.
It may be that the sharp edge of the employer's reproof docs keep the apprentice up to the work, but there are reproofs and reproofs, and while an editor need not over- praise or give space to woman's work simply because it is the work of a woman, neither need he condemn it with words that cause her to have a "good cry " over the brutality of men in general and her editor in particular. Tears are not a factor in journalism. While we may believe it possible to cry and cry and be a journalist still, yet let us rejoice that tears have so nearly gone out of fashion. It is noticeable that even hero- ines in novels do not cry as much as they used to, and perhaps the reason for this may be found in the fact that the heroine in present day fiction, like the heroine in real life, is so commonly a bread-winner.
The great rough work-a-day world is a place to dry up the tear glands, and that part of the world occupied by journalism may be as rough as any other. Especially will it be rough for the conventional woman. It is said among editors that the giant foc with which women have to contend in journalistic work is their own convention- ality, and we find this quite truc.
Particularly is it true of that conventionality which causes us to rebel against dis- agreeable assignments for no better reason than because we are women, or, to make our case stronger, because we are ladies; that such and such a duty is not the thing to ask of a "lady"-sending her to the police court, or about late at night, for instance, or that she must not be told of it if she has done her work unsatisfactorily. It is not
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likely she would be sent out late or to the police court if there were a man available who could be relied upon to do the work equally well, therefore the assignment is in the nature of a compliment. But for whatever motive sent she should go, and the old adage about women carrying chips on their shoulders is applicable here.
It would be a good deal more humiliating to the aspiring woman to be kept in the office cutting out fashion pictures for the woman's page than to be given a man's assignment. Human prejudice nowhere counts for more than in journalism, and there are editors still to be found, who, other things being equal, will give a journal- istic commission to a man rather than to a woman. That good friend to all deserving woman, Mr. W. T. Stead, of the " Review of Reviews," is the only editor I have ever heard plead guilty to the opposite prejudice. He declares it his policy to never employ a man when he can employ a woman to do the work as well.
The most successful writer is the one who is never caught napping concerning any topic of immediate public interest. As women in journalism we must not be behind the times in current matters of art, religion and politics unless we would be ranked veritable stupids, and though we have all the great authors and poets at our pen's end, such culture will not insure success in journalism. Likewise the natural gifts of sympathy, tact and originality of expression, while they all tend to stamp the writer with characteristics peculiarly her own and add to the charm of her work, yet natural gifts alone will not make a good journalist.
Knowledge precise and sound may be said to be the grand fundamental principle of journalistic work. First to know something to write, and then to know how to write it, is the never-failing advice from editors. We are enjoined to be original, and this according to Carlyle meant simply to be sincere.
The most cruel, as it seemed to me then in my " salad days," the most senseless advice I ever received from an editor was this: "After you have finished your copy take a blue pencil and go over it from beginning to end, killing off every adverb and adjective and quotation there is in it. Read it over twice without them and you will probably never put them in again."
I wondered then why he should have recommended a blue pencil in preference to any other for the killing off process. Alas! I have since learned that of all weapons used in journalistic warfare, the blue pencil is the most deadly. And I have learned the method in the madness of killing off adjectives and adverbs was to break up all tendency to the " composition style of writing, which we unconsciously bring from school with us and which is such " bad form" in journalism.
But after all cut-and-dried rules and regulations have been observed, still will the manuscript sometimes be returned, as often without thanks as with, or, worse yet, basketed. But this need discourage no one. It may mean anything rather than that the writer can not write. It may only mean that the subject was a week too late or too early for the paper to which it was sent. It may be just in time for some other paper. What one editor refuses another will accept. This return of manuscript as unavailable is one of the trials of women in journalism, and if the truth be told, only one of many.
But in the end, those who have weathered the discouragements readily declare the game to be well worth the candle. The newspaper is the educator of the pub- lic, and men and women who write in newspapers have the best opportunities for cre- ating public opinion. Earnest workers among women journalists realize they are always on trial before the public, and that they have the honor of their sex, which means the regulation of one half the human race, more in their keeping than any other women of equal numbers. They have asked the public to take them at their own higher appraisement, and to judge of their work as work, and not merely as the work of women. They know their colleagues of the other sex watch them with an attention naturally critical, but not always sympathetic; therefore, for the sake of all they hold dear, they are endeavoring to give the enemy no occasion to blaspheme by pointing to either their work or their behavior as conclusive reasons why there should be no women in journalism.
HARMONIOUS CULTURE. By MISS IDA K. HINDS.
I hold that woman, including man, is the supreme being on this carth. For a long time the human race was spoken of only as man. Woman was not considered; later, as man, sometimes including woman; and still later, women were usually included as an important part of the human race; but now, when the wave of woman's advancement has grown large enough to wear a white cap of its own, I think we can, in many cases, say woman, particularly when we refer to the higher development of the race. 1 believe, then, that the human race, the last and best creation of God, is the supreme race, and should at least be composed of the most perfect physical beings; but it is not. A race made in the likeness of God, capable of being " gods in the germ," and yet in many cases sinking so low that we insult the animal kingdom by calling them brutes. Furthermore, we have not only this physical nature to perfect, but we have in our being two other distinct and higher parts. Browning says, "What is, what knows, what does, three souls, one man." I say one soul, one mind, one body, and when each of these parts are developed to their full capacity, we have a highly developed and perfected man or woman. The person whom I consider has the most perfect culture MISS IDA K. HINDS. can use to advantage the greatest number of faculties; that is, the education which makes a man or woman better and more useful to him- self and to the world.
The first part of our being that is manifested, is the physical or animal. The young child moves and cries, it is a young animal; then the soul nature begins to show itself, expressed through the body, and the child laughs, smiles, puts out its hands, puckers up its lip in fear; the cry is changed to Ah-g-goo, and last the mind awakes, the child thinks, speaks, and from that time the mind is taken in charge, and the child's education begins, but this education is usually directed to the one part of the being, the mind, to the neglect of the other parts, and these other parts have been so long neglected, that all those who are interested in the welfare of the human race are becoming alarmed at this degradation and deformity of the physical, and are real- izing that the accumulation of a lot of facts in the mind, with no knowledge of how to use them, is not education.
I also hold that a man or woman, taking his or her own being and working out each part to its full perfection, or taking the pliable material of childhood and mold- ing this material into a perfect being-perfect body, perfect mind and perfect soul - is a greater artist, and has donc a greater artistic work, and should have as immor- tal fame as one who chisels from marble the most beautiful form, or paints on
Miss Ida K. Hinds is a native of New York City. Her early school-life was spent in Brooklyn. She was graduated from Pacher Collegiate Institute, and has traveled all over the United States and Canada. Her profession, reading, lectur- ing and teaching, all pertaining to harmonious culture, particularly voice and physical culture. Miss Hinds has given lectures in courses, " Harmonious Culture," "Trinity of Color " and "The Art of Decorating." She is preparing a course of readings from Lew Wallace, "The Prince of India." Her postoffice address is No. 55 Franklin St., New York City.
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canvas the most beautiful conception of an inspired, artistic imagination. I have been led to consider this subject, because, while traveling through the length and breadth of the country, I have not only been pained by the undeveloped and deformed boys and girls, but I have heard the cry everywhere for more physi- cal strength to do the work that has to be done. The pressure in all directions is a hundred-fold greater than it was fifty years ago, but the strength to meet it is not as great. So I am striving to awaken an interest in this work -- the salvation of bodies -- and, through the bodies, of the soul. We know that those things that degrade the body-intemperance, immorality, etc., likewise degrade the soul, and, as truly those things that elevate, strengthen and purify the body, must have a like influence on the soul. By the soul I do not mean the spiritual part of the being, but that part that we elevate and build in this world-the seat of order, affection, character and all the vir- tues, the part into which was breathed the breath of life, and out of which must grow the immortal; but the seed here planted, unless nourished by sunshine and proper food, can not grow, and must perish. As the body is the soil in which the brain and soul live, and which could exist without either, but neither of these can exist with- out the body. Therefore I say the body should receive the first attention. It is the foundation on which we must build. What would you think of an architect who built a beautiful palace, and before he had finished the interior decorations he found it was settling, because he had paid no attention to the foundation, and when it should have stood completed in its beauty it was only a heap of ruins?
When the cathedrals of Europe were built the greatest artists and architects in the world were sought, first to design and build them strong enough to last through the ages, and then to decorate them; and when they were then built as strong and as beautiful as human skill could make them, they were consecrated. They did not consecrate a heap of stones. So should we build, and decorate with soul and mind, our temple.
A friend of mine who was getting up a class in painting in one of the New Eng- land villages, visited almost every house, and she told me she had not visited a house where the woman or her daughters were not "ailing." Think of that in New Eng- land, where there is the purest water, and where the people should be as healthy and rugged as the peasants of Europe. I visited a friend, a handsome and well-developed woman, and was introduced to her two daughters- girls twelve and fourteen years old- and when they came into the room I should not have been any more shocked if they had come in dressed in rags and dirty; they would not have shown any more neglect. They were thin, sallow, round-shouldered, had bad teeth and weak eyes, and were very nervous. When I saw the way they lived I did not wonder, for no attention was paid to diet, exercise or rest. I believe the time will come, as it has in some of our cities, when any mother will be as much ashamed to present such children as she now is to present them in rags. If the same time and care could be given to the bodies as is given to the clothing of the bodies, I think the result would be more satisfactory. It is just as easy to predict what will be the future of hundreds of half-starved, deli- cate children in well-to-do families as it would be to predict what must be the future of a crop of wheat sown in the sand along our ocean or lake shore; and if you saw a man sowing a crop there you would think he was crazy or a fool if he expected it to grow and mature there, or be worth gathering if it did come up. Almost every one would be able to tell him the reason why. You understand these things in regard to the vegetable or animal kingdom, but fail to understand them in the human being, and there is no excuse for such ignorance and indifference in these days of cheap books and intelligent magazine articles.
What would you think of a guardian who had the keeping of the fortune of a child, the money to be handed over when the child is of age, but who spends the money for himself, and thus defrauds the child? You would call him a criminal, and punish him by law; but I say his neglect is not as criminal as the neglect that defrauds the child of health, and starts him off in life with no moral or physical capi-
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tal. The first loss can be made up, but the last, never! Boys and girls are put into an open boat and pushed out to sca; their chart, a basket full of facts that they have never assorted or applied; their arms too weak to use the oars, and if their boat is not swamped, they will drift on to an unknown shore, and must make their way as best they can. But give a boy a pair of strong arms, and the simplest chart of the waters he has to navigate, and he will make his way to some objective point and make a suc- cess of his life. In reading the lives of our great self-made men, merchants, minis- ters, professional men, I find this statement in every case: they had only a common- school education, but a vigorous, healthy constitution and uprightness of character; and usually this added: they had good mothers; and I would say to all mothers who regret their inability to send their sons to college, give the boys a healthy, vigorous body and good moral training and their chances of success in life will be greater than with a college education, lacking these. Goethe's mother said she knew her son would be a great man, because she gave him so much of her young life, which she fol- lowed up with careful training, and her predictions were fulfilled. Her son was one of the greatest men of Germany. With all our improvements in science, in agriculture, and in many arts, we have left the human race to nature. But all persons who think know that we can leave nothing to nature, when we desire improvement. She shows us many examples of what can be done, but does not do the work for us. Everything that has life, or mind, or soul, left to nature, runs to weeds. We must work out our salvation, physically, mentally and morally. If you walk up the boulevards and through the parks of this city, you will see beautiful velvety lawns and bright flowers, and a street beyond you will see vacant lots filled with weeds; one is nature cultivated, the other nature uncultivated. Way up in New England you will find in the gardens, in autumn, a little, yellow blossom, prized because it is a late bloomer, and bright when everything else is going to decay; and last winter in New York I saw this same little chrysanthemum, developed into a hundred varieties of color and form, marvelously beautiful; one was nature cultivated, and the other nature uncultivated.
Last year we had a dog show in New York, and there were dogs there valued at $10,000, each one having an attendant who understood dog culture; they were not left to nature; if they had been they would not have been worth ten thousand cents. When you look around you and see the possibilities of development in the animal and veg- etable kingdom, do you ever think of the wonderful possibilities of human develop- ment? I believe artists only have conceived this possibility of the body. Some few persons have attained to this possibility in mind and soul, but how very few have reached the harmonious development of the whole being, and these few have been our greatest men and women. But painters and poets and novelists have been trying to do for us physically what others have been trying to do for us spiritually, revealing to us the beauties of perfection, until we all aspire to it, but are only now beginning to find out the way. We now have systems of exercise that will develop a healthy and graceful body. We are beginning to understand that to produce a healthy body we must give it fresh air, exercise, wholesome and well cooked food, and I particularly emphasize the last, for it is one of the rare things in life. I would like to work and travel hand in hand with the cooking teacher, and I think if I could, and form a sort of crusade, there would be fewer doctors, fewer prisons, and fewer missionaries needed.
There seems to be a general idea that city children are more feeble than country children, but I have not found this to be true among the same class of people. The idea that the children of society ladies are neglected is incorrect; there is no class of children so well brought up physically; their diet, rest and exercise are prescribed, and they follow a perfect system of development, and are as thoroughbred as the horses in their father's stable. The girls will be brought out into society, and their mothers would be ashamed to introduce sallow, misshapen young ladies, and therefore everything is done to make them as perfect, physically, as possible. The boys of many of the leading families will have the responsibility of large fortunes and large business
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