WOMEN CLERKS at WASHINGTON.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 542, 8 July 1869, Page 4

WOMEN CLERKS at WASHINGTON.

(From the Philadelphia Public Ledger.) Only three of the seven Executive Departments of the United States Government at Washington employ women clerks. Six thousand clerks, paid about 19,000,000 per annum, are attached to the seven departments, and of this large number only six hundred are women. In the Treasury Department over 3000 clerks are employed, 500 of whom are females. The clerkships of the men are divided into four classes. Tbe lowest class, styled the first, receive $1200 per annum ; the second, §1400 ; the third,. $1600 ; the fourth, $1800 ; while the salary of a chief clerk is $2000 and upwards. The women, however, only receive $900 per annum, the salary being fixed at one-half the average compensation paid tomale clerks, and complaints having been made that the pay is not sufficient, a short time ago a resolution was passed by the House of Representatives declaring that women in the departments who perform the: same work as men should receive the same pay. Soon after the passage of this resolution, it is reported that about 50 of tlie 100 women clerks who were discharged some months ago for want of work were reinstated and detailed for duty in the Third Auditor's Office, in the Quartermaster's Division, where they were employed on Quartermaster's accounts. The Patent Office of the Interior Department, at irregular intervals employs about fifty women, sending the work to their homes by messengers. These women are employed principally in copying drafts of patents, for which they are paid at the rate of ten cents per hundred words. This work is required to be performed with the greatest accuracy, and many of these copyists are reported to be very skillful with the! pen, and to execute the work in a superior style. The Post Office Department employs fifty women in the Dead Letter Office in re-directing the letters, which are first opened by men, who for this merely mechanical work receive salaries of the first, and some even of the second grade. The letters, it is alleged, must be opened by men, because the contents are frequently improper to be read by females. The War Department employs only about thirty women, widows of soldiers, iv copying accounts, the same grade of work which is performed by a majority of the men clerks iv all the departments. In addition to the female clerks there are about three hundred women engaged in the Government Printing Office in works of various kinds. Forty-five are employed in managing the small presses which print blanks and other forms. The others are engaged in folding, trimming, stitching, and similar processes. They are, most of them, paid according to the amount of work they perform, being allowed 40 per cent, more than is paid to women in similar establishments. A great pressure is exercised upon the Government printing office to furnish employment to meritorious but poor females. No women, however, are employed in the type-setting department ; but the superintendent has expressed his readiness to employ them in this work as fast as any good women typesetters shall apply, and has, it is said, announced that he would pay them the same for a thousand ems that he pays the men who now do the work. An opportunity, it is stated, will thereby be afforded good workwomen to make $24 per week. The superintendent, it is reported, declares that he will employ women in preference to men as fast as they apply.