The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 1 March 1906

Chapter 9

Chapter 93,817 wordsPublic domain

Class 1--Where an expanse of snow is relieved only by delicate shadows, or where the picture is taken during a snowstorm, when all objects are rendered more or less indistinct and of a light tone by intervening particles of snow. For these, the exposure should be short, the rule being that short exposures increase contrasts, and in scenes of this description, contrast is what is needed. On a bright day, 1-100 of a second would be time enough. Very early in the morning or very late in the afternoon 1-25 of a second will give ample time.

The development for plates in this class may safely be rather vigorous--that is, with a normal developer and the plate carried to a fairly good printing destiny. This method gives character to the high lights, and a pleasing richness to the slight shadows that are present on the surface of the snow. A pyro developer is good.

Rodinal is a good developer for contrasts when used in these proportions: Rodinal, one-quarter ounce; water, five ounces; bromide potash; ten per cent solution, five drops. The temperature of the developer should be kept from sixty-five to seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

Class 2--When dark masses are in the foreground, with the middle distance fairly open, and snow broken up--also, when strong contrasts appear in the view between the snow and other objects--then a longer exposure is needed--from one-tenth to a full second, according to the light. Use No. 8 stop.

This class of pictures should be developed in a weak solution. A suitable metal hydroquinone developer is made as follows: Metal, thirty grains; hydroquinone, thirty grains; twenty ounces of water. Then add sulphide of soda (crystals) one ounce, and carbonate of soda (crystals) three-quarter ounce.

Take two ounces of this, and add four ounces of water when there are no very heavy masses of dark in the foreground, and eight ounces of water when there are such masses. Before using, add one drop of ten per cent solution of potassium bromide to each ounce of the solution.

Class 3 embraces snow pictures with figures, street scenes, skating and sleighing scenes, etc. Short exposure is required here because of the motion of the figures. The correction must be made in development.

The development of plates of this kind where there are dark objects and brightly lighted snow or ice in the view is practically the same as in No. 2.

TIME IN WHICH MONEY WILL DOUBLE AT SEVERAL RATES OF INTEREST.

THE PROGRESS OF WOMEN.

BY LYDIA KINGSMILL COMMANDER.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Nothing is more wonderful, in this age of wonders, than the progress of women in all the civilized countries of the world. Never before were the doors of opportunity so widely opened; never before were the barriers of sex so low.

The modern young woman does not face the one choice of her grandmother--marriage or the fate of the "old maid." Before her so many paths open that her only trouble is to choose.

Her grandmother's girlhood was spent at home. She was told that "the happy woman is the woman with no history"; and "a woman's name should be in the newspapers just three times--when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies."

This is dead doctrine to the girl who goes whirling across the continent or around the world, unchaperoned and alone, and returns to meet the admiration of her friends and the interest of the public.

As she sits on the deck of the incoming steamer, giving opinions on kings and countries, chatting of the book she is about to write and handing out her photographs to a group of reporters, she bears slight resemblance to the fainting Amandas and Clarissas who "raised their weeping eyes to heaven," or fell swooning every time a mysterious sound was heard or when even a stray cow crossed their path.

HOW TRAVEL IS MADE TO PAY.

If our traveler is practical and depends upon her own pocketbook instead of papa's she adopts a specialty and makes her trips pay for themselves. She may be attached to some paper or magazine; for the blue-stocking is as fashionable to-day as once she was disgraced. Some women make capital of their travels in extraordinary ways. One breaks records climbing mountain peaks at the risk of her life and then lectures to thousands upon the perils and pleasures of her feats.

Another is with her husband on the Congo searching for traces of ancient African civilizations for the British Museum. In Mexico and South America several women archeologists are at work digging out relics of the Aztecs, Peruvians, and the original tribes of the Amazon River. A recent book on Egyptian hieroglyphics was partly the work of a woman.

Then there are the women who take parties abroad, arranging for steamers, trains, boats and hotels; buying tickets; looking after baggage, and keeping everybody interested, instructed, and satisfied.

Such women--and there are many of them--must know half a dozen languages, be familiar with the history, customs, and attractions of the countries visited, be quick in an emergency, full of tact so as to keep the party harmonious, and clever enough business women to give every one bargain rates and come out with handsome profits at the end of each trip.

But traveling for business takes other forms. In the United States there are nearly a thousand feminine commercial travelers, selling everything from perfumery to men's shoes and babies' soothing syrup. There are women factory inspectors who travel constantly from place to place. The United States government employs a woman as Superintendent of Indian schools. She covers thousands of miles every year and wields absolute power over the institutions under her care.

The woman who does not travel no longer need stay at home in the old sense. Indeed she has little to keep her there. The spinning, weaving, sewing, and knitting which formerly were the home industries have been swept off into great factories. In consequence the woman who does not want to be idle follows the work outside of the home and down-town.

IN AMERICA SEVENTY YEARS AGO.

In 1834, when Harriet Martineau visited this country, she found only seven occupations open to women--housekeeping, keeping boarders, needlework, teaching, working in cotton factories, bookbinding, and typesetting.

Only the last four could really be counted as out-of-home occupations, for keeping boarders and sewing called for no new knowledge or skill apart from the training in housekeeping which all girls received.

It is safe to say that of those seven occupations, six at least were not overcrowded. The work of the world was done in the homes and housekeeping was the occupation of women. There were few spinning-mills, but the old-fashioned wheel was in every house. It was not kept in a drawing-room alcove to prove its long ancestry, but steadily, busily hummed all day long as the soft rolls of wool changed into skeins and balls of yarn or thread.

After the work of the spinning-wheel came the loom and the knitting-needles. Cloth and stockings, blankets, mittens, and mufflers were fashioned by the hands of the housewife and her daughters.

There were no factories for canned fruits, pickles, or preserves. All these had to be made and stored up for winter use.

Now the stores furnish everything from a handkerchief to a ball-gown, and from bread to canned roast beef. The washing and ironing can go to the laundry and the family supplies can be bought.

THE RUSH INTO BUSINESS LIFE.

Since women had been working since work began, they could not consent to remain at home idle. The result is seen in the rush of the modern woman into business life.

The last census shows that in the United States women are following every trade and profession except the army and the navy. Even the army has a woman physician, Dr. Anita McGee, who wears a uniform. In Europe, the uniformed woman is by no means a rarity. Almost every royal woman wears military honors.

It will be remembered that Queen Victoria was carried to her grave on a gun-carriage like an officer, because as Queen of England and Empress of India she was head of the British army and of the greatest navy in the world.

To have an occupation is almost as natural to the American girl of to-day as to her brother. For a woman to go into business used to be like climbing a mountain; now it is almost like going down a toboggan slide. When she leaves school she expects to work.

Sometimes she finishes her education in a public school and goes into a shop, factory, or mill. She may become one of the 75,000 milliners, the 100,000 saleswomen, the 120,000 cotton workers, the 275,000 laundresses, or the 340,000 dressmakers.

If she can stay longer in school, she may become one of the 320,000 school teachers. Or she may go to a college, which sternly closed its doors in the face of her grandmother, and carry off the prizes and the honors from the men. She can enter a university, come out B.A., M.A., or Ph.D., and join the thousand women who are already college professors.

IN THE LAST STRONGHOLDS OF MAN.

If she fancies law, medicine, or the church, her way is clear. All three professions number their women members by the thousand, though a generation ago the pioneers in each line were struggling against ridicule and opposition.

Painting and sculpture were once considered masculine accomplishments, but to-day 15,000 women have studios. The musicians are three times as numerous.

Even the more unusual occupations are well represented. There are 261 wholesale merchants, 1,271 officials in banks, 1,932 stock raisers, 378 butchers, and 193 blacksmiths. There are 200 women to mix cocktails or serve gin-fizzes behind the bar. If they sell after hours or to minors, there are 879 policemen and detectives to watch them.

The traveling public depends for its safety and its accidents principally upon men. But women already claim 2 motor-men, 13 conductors, 4 station-agents, 2 pilots, 1 lighthouse keeper, 127 engineers, and 153 boatmen among their number.

Almost every paper one picks up tells of women's successes in some line of work. A dozen women in Chicago, and probably three times as many in New York, are making ten thousand dollars a year or more, either as salaries or profits from business.

The property owned by actresses and singers must pay a handsome sum in taxes. It is said that Hetty Green, the shrewdest business woman in the world, can stand in City Hall Square, New York, and see five million dollars' worth of her own property; and every one knows she owes her millions to her own cleverness, not to either husband or father.

A Woman's Building has been a feature of many of our great national expositions. They have been filled with the products of women's labor; but so far the structures, though designed by women, have been erected by men. This can be remedied at any time it is necessary.

There are women builders of every sort: 167 are masons, 545 carpenters, 45 plasterers, 126 plumbers, 1,750 painters and glaziers, and 241 paper-hangers. It is true the roofing would be a long job, for only two feminine roofers and slaters are to be found in the whole country. But the 1,775 tin-workers might help out. If a steel frame were called for, 3,370 iron and steel workers would stand ready; and the eight steam-boiler makers would put in the heating and power plant.

CALLINGS PECULIAR TO THE SEX.

Not only have women conquered all the established callings, but they have invented some of their own. Professional shoppers were never heard of in the old days, though since the idea was started some men have adopted the business. The welfare secretary, who is "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the girls in factories or department stores, has recently come into existence. Then there is the shopping adviser, who pilots the uncertain Mrs. Newbride over one store or through many, helping her to furnish the new home harmoniously, fashionably, and for a given sum.

One woman owes her prosperity to her creation of the profession of "dramatists' agent." A Western woman raises animals for menageries and zoos. Another clears three thousand dollars a year by growing violets, while a third is getting rich out of the proceeds of her ostrich farm.

Altogether five and a quarter million American women--or one-fifth of all the workers in the country--are making their own money.

WOMAN'S STATUS IN EUROPE.

The women of the United States lead in this rush for education and for labor, but in other countries the same advance is being made, if more slowly.

Great Britain has thirty-five hundred university graduates. Fifteen hundred of these are from Girton, Newnham, and the Oxford Halls for Women, annexes of the historic universities, but with examinations just as stiff. It is a dozen years since Miss Fawcett carried off the highest mathematical honors an English university can bestow.

Germany looks askance at any education for woman that gives to her interests outside of the home. The Kaiser's four K's, which become C's in translation--Clothes, Cooking, Church, and Children--are popularly supposed to define the world of the German hausfrau. The American's joke about "woman's sphere" has long been obsolete; but that sphere is very real and very limited in most of the European countries.

Yet even in the more conservative lands women are progressing. The older dentists in Germany and Austria had to come to America for their diplomas. To-day professional schools, universities, and colleges can be found where a woman can follow any line of study and fit herself for the professions.

In Russia, although the struggle for democracy is barely begun, and representative government is as yet only a demand, the higher education of women has been an accomplished fact for a number of years. Russian women doctors, lawyers, and professors are not uncommon.

Norway and Sweden have experienced a feminine revolution in the last quarter-century. The laws have been overhauled and revised; the schools and colleges thrown open; the trades and professions have flung down their barriers; and work, once a disgrace, has become an honor to women. Sweden led in this movement, but Norway was quick to follow, and it is now a question as to which will first reach the goal of full equality between women and men.

In political rights English and Scandinavian women stand about on a level. Neither can vote for members of Parliament, but both have municipal and local suffrage, which gives them power to exercise their gifts for housekeeping and economical management in civic as well as home affairs.

A WOMAN'S LEGAL RIGHTS.

This growing liberty of women has affected her position as wife and mother. In the days when she had no sphere but the home and no career but marriage, she was a very insignificant creature even within those limits.

She could not own her home, could not choose its location, or have anything at all to say about it. The home, the children, and she herself belonged to the husband, who was "lord and master" in the sense of owner and dictator.

Now, in those countries where women have gained financial, industrial, and political standing, they hold a more dignified position in the home. Formerly a widow could be left penniless and her children willed away from her.

The present English law gives to the widow one-third of the property, and half the guardianship of the children. In case of divorce, the children under sixteen belong to the mother, unless she is notoriously unfit to have them.

Very similar to these are the laws in the British colonies, the United States, and Scandinavia. In these countries, too, with the exception of certain of our States, a married woman can own property, earn money, and collect her own wages, sue or be sued, make a contract with others, and in some places with her own husband.

She is also entitled to support for herself and her children, and to a divorce for various causes, including infidelity, brutality, intoxication, desertion, failure to provide, and felony.

In Germany the wife is legally entitled to a certain proportion of her husband's income, a right which women have in no other country. Everywhere else the vague term "support" is used, and even that is not granted in seven of our States.

In Holland, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and Denmark the woman's movement is recent and slow. The Dutch Queen is the only woman there who is not ruled; and the Dutchman wanted her called "king," so as to lessen their dislike of being subject to a woman's commands.

Switzerland, though it boasts of its democracy, excludes its women from influence and political power. It does not deny them work, but like the German, French, and Russian peasants, the Swiss women carry the heavy burdens of field work and street-cleaning without any reason to believe that there is dignity in labor.

In Italy, Spain, and Portugal the upward movement of women has come mainly from the masses, not, as in Russia, from the aristocrats, or, as among the English-speaking races, from the middle class.

IN GREECE AND THE ORIENT.

In Greece the educated women are leading the crusade. The principal of a girls' college in Athens said recently: "It is true and beyond dispute that the Greece of to-day owes its rapid progress to its women."

While Greek women cannot vote, they take an active part in political life. During campaigns they make speeches for their husbands and brothers, and at other times traverse the country expounding the doctrines of the party they espouse. They resemble the English political woman of the style of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's "Marcella," a type scarcely to be found in any other country.

Even into slumbering Turkey, land of harems, Greek women are carrying modern ideas of education. There is a Greek girls' school in Constantinople; and, principally through Greek influence, Turkish women are studying European languages, reading foreign books, and looking toward the great world where women can be the comrades, friends, and equals of men, instead of their playthings and slaves.

All through the Orient the conditions of Turkey are practically reproduced. In spite of the abolition of the suttee, the poor widows of India have a mournful lot. It is only the most daring of Chinese mothers who would leave her little daughter's feet unbound. A few Japanese women rebel at giving up home and children simply because milord has tired of his wife; but to most the thought of opposing the customs of centuries is still remote.

Even Asiatic women, nevertheless, are progressing. Some come to America for the education their own continent cannot furnish. A Chinese woman doctor recently lectured on her country all through the United States; and Japanese women are found in our colleges.

THE LANDS OF EMANCIPATION.

In the Pacific Ocean, far beyond China and Japan, lie the only two countries in the world which fully acknowledge the equality of men and women by giving political rights to all citizens of twenty-one, regardless of sex. They are New Zealand and Australia.

New Zealand was the first by a dozen years to put her daughters on an equality with her sons. It was in 1867 that the cry was raised. "Shall our mothers, wives, and sisters be our equals or our subjects?"

The answer was given in 1893 by the full enfranchisement of women. In Australia the change came more gradually, province by province. But a few months ago the final concession was made and now Australian women, like their sisters of New Zealand, are the equals and not the subjects of their husbands, brothers, and sons.

More conservative than England's colonies of the Southern Seas is her great Northern possession, Canada. There widows and spinsters are held in high favor, for full municipal suffrage belongs to them. But the married woman is barred out. This is probably a survival of the subordination of the wife; but the Canadian woman is asking whether the acceptance of a husband should be considered unfailing proof of her inferior judgment.

PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES.

There are four States in the Union--Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah--where women have full political rights. They vote on every election from school trustee to President. They are eligible for every office from pound-keeper to Governor. They have sat in the different Legislatures and have filled many executive offices.

These four States do not, however, hold a monopoly of the women voters. Four more have some form of local suffrage, and in twenty-five women can vote on school elections. In New York, for instance, women taxpayers may vote on all propositions for the expenditure of public money. In addition, they have school suffrage and are eligible as trustees.

There are clubs and societies which enroll in this country about four million women. There are associations of different nations to forward the interests of all women regardless of country. Such is the International Council of Women, representing twenty lands. Its great congresses, meeting every five years, are the event of the year in the land where they convene.

There is the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, with its branches in every country. Indeed the boundaries of countries are disappearing before this new sisterhood of woman.

Of famous women it would be folly to attempt to speak. America is justly proud of her many clever daughters, but every nation has its brilliant women. Mme. Curie, who was awarded the Nobel prize for science, was born and reared in Poland and lives in France. This year the Nobel peace prize fell to the Austrian Baroness von Suttner.

Considering the progress of the past half-century, one can but wonder what the next one hundred years will bring.

RHYMES BY THE BARDS OF GRAFT.

SEVEN AGES OF GRAFT.