Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/216

182 there employed, “ill-health and physical weakness cause a high average of absences among them, which interfere with the regular work.” I should be very glad, if you are willing to give it, of a brief answer, from recollection, to these two questions:

1. Is there a higher average of absence among the women so employed?

2. Is not any loss through physical weakness, as compared with men clerks, balanced by gain in the steadier habits of women in other ways? I had supposed so.

I only ask for a very brief answer and should like to use it publicly.

The inference drawn by the Tribune writer (April 1, 1883) is that the proportion of women “will have to be diminished.” (I think the writer is a male clerk.) 



According to my experience the correspondent of the Tribune is substantially right. I have no statistics at my disposal at present, but have frequently had occasion to observe the fact in question.

Neither can I say that “the loss through physical weakness as compared with male clerks is balanced by gain in the steadier habits of female clerks in other ways.” It is, I think, the experience of the Departments that the average is on the whole more favorable on the side of the male clerks. Many female clerks, perhaps a large majority of them, do excellent work. But there are some, not quite inconsiderable in number, who are irregular, pretentious, wayward and impatient of discipline, and they run down the general average. 