Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/50

 Government positions," she said, 'this was clearly due to their lack of a vote."

The Government departments at Washington are almost entirely governed by politics and women are greatly discriminated against, notwithstanding civil service rules. The report of A. R. Severn, chief examiner for the Civil Service Commission, shows that during the last ten years less than ten per cent. of the women who have passed the examinations have been appointed, while more than 25 per cent. of the men who passed obtained positions. To prevent the possibility of women obtaining high-class positions the examinations for these are not open to women. Of the 58 employments for which examinations were held, women were admitted to only 22. The per cent. of women employed of those who had passed was 13 in 1898; 6 per cent. in 1899, and lower in 1900, not a woman being appointed to a clerk's position from the waiting list. The Post Office Department in the last year sent out an order that women should not be made distributing clerks wherever it was possible to appoint men.Legislation for the protection of children has been defeated in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. In the factories of Birmingham, it is stated, children of six and seven are obliged to be at work by 5:30 a.m. and to work twelve hours daily, attending spindles for ten cents a day. Jane Addams says she knows from personal observations that in certain States the conditions of child labor are as bad as they were in England half a century ago. In the great cotton mills at Columbia, S. C., she found a little girl scarcely five years old doing night work thirteen hours at a stretch, for three days in the week.

Sunday afternoon the Rev. Olympia Brown gave the convention sermon—The Forward March—in the First Baptist Church, with scripture reading by Mrs. Catt, prayer by the Rev. Margaret T. Olmstead, hymns by the Rev. Kate Hughes and the Rev. Mrs. Woolley; responsive reading by the Rev. Alice Ball Loomis. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw preached in the Church of the Redeemer in the morning and Louis F. Post in the evening. Dr. Shaw preached in the evening at the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church; Miss Laura Clay spoke at the Central Baptist; Dr. Frances Woods at the first Unitarian; Miss Laura Gregg at Plymouth; Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford at the Wesley Methodist in the morning and the Rev. Olympia Brown in the evening; Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert in the Chicago Avenue Baptist; the Rev. Margaret F. Olmstead at All Souls; the Rev. Alice Ball Loomis at Tuttle Universalist; Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman at