The fifth count in the Suffrage Declaration of Sentiments reads as follows: "He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow she receives but scanty remuneration."
The women who wrote that in 1848, in common with the majority of American women, were presumably being well provided for in their own homes, by men whose boast it was that their wives and daughters did not need or care to seek employment elsewhere. It is true that at that time, because of this supposed advantage, as married women they could not have engaged in separate business that would involve the making of contracts or distinct bargain and sale. To the world the husband was the wife's financial manager. But at that time the wife could enter any of the employments as a paid clerk or worker. This count seems more surprising in view of the fact that, writing only three years later, to a Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio, Mrs. Stanton said: "The trades and professions are all open to us; let us quietly enter and make ourselves, if not rich and famous, at least independent and respectable." Two years later still, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson wrote to another Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio: "We complain of the industrial disadvantages of women, and indicate at the same time their capacities for a greater variety of pursuits. Why not obtain a statement on as large a scale as possible, first of what women are doing now, commercially and mechanically, throughout the Union, and secondly, of the embarrassments which they meet, the inequality of their wages, and all the other peculiarities of their position." This would have been most valuable and interesting, and it would seem that something of the kind should have preceded the sweeping accusation made in the Declaration; but there appears in their "History" no evidence of its having been done. In 1859 Caroline H. Ball said, in addressing a Suffrage convention: "I honor women who act. That is the reason that I greet so gladly girls like Harriet Hosmer, Louisa Landor, and Margaret Foley. Whatever they do, or do not do, for Art, they do a great deal for the cause of labor. I do not believe any one in this room has an idea of the avenues that are open to women already." Then follows a list of the trades then pursued by women in Great Britain. Of the United States she said: "Of factory operatives in 1845 there were 55,828 men and 75,710 women. Women are glue-makers, glove-makers, workers in gold and silver leaf, hair- weavers, hat and cap-makers, hose-weavers, workers in India-rubber, paper- hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and harness-makers, shoe-makers, soda-room keepers, snuff and cigar-makers, stock and suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers and stereotypers, umbrella-makers, upholsterers, card-makers, photographers, house and sign-painters, fruit- hawkers, button-makers, tobacco-packers, paper-box makers, embroiderers, and fur-sewers." She added: "In New Haven seven women work with seventy men in a clock factory (at half wages)." And in summing up she said: "The great evils that lie at the foundation of depressed wages are that want of respect for labor which prevents ladies from engaging in it, and that want of respect for women which prevents men from valuing properly the work they do. Make women equal with men before the law, and wages will adjust themselves."