Thread by @jessa_z

In honor of #EqualPayDay I am going to share some quotes from the equal pay debates of the late 1860s & early 1870s. #ThisGrandExperiment

During these debates, Congress came shockingly close to passing an #EqualPay bill for federal employees. In fact, they did pass them, but multiple times the provision was lost in committee.

Congress was debating #EqualPay because women employed by the government began petitioning for higher (and sometimes equal) pay for doing the same or comporable jobs.

When women started working for the fed govt, they were paid 1/2 of what the lowest paid male clerk earned. Men constantly complained their salaries were too low.

So, for ex, in 1865, 42 women in the Treas petitioned Cong "for an increase of salary commensurate with the increased price of living in this City. The majority of us have Mothers and others dependent upon us, whilst others are widows with families to support and educate."

They cntd: Many of us are employed upon works such as commands for Gentlemen $1,200 and $1,400 per annum, & they complain of their inability to provide for their families, whilst Ladies are obliged to pay from $30 to 40 per month for board independent of fuel, washing," etc.

Then in 1866, 59 Treasury women petitioned Congress, asking for #EqualPay

"We would most respectfully present to your consideration the vast disproportion existing between the salaries of the Male and Female clerks of this department."

"When they by whose side we sit day after day, whose labors and duties are identical with our own and whose home responsibilities in most instances are not so great..."

"...whose salaries commence with $1200 per annum.–when they are promoted from first to second and from second to third class clerkships. The question forces itself upon us,–What makes us to differ from them?"

The women in 1866 asked: "If women can perform the same clerical duties as men, should not their salaries approximate in some degree to theirs?"

The Senate and House had 4 debates on #EqualPay in the late 1860s, early 1870s. There were 4 positions taken: 1) In favor of Equal Pay; 2) opposed to equal pay b/c it was too $$; 3) opposed to Equal Pay to protect women; 4) abolish the employment of women

In favor of Equal Pay: mostly Radical Republicans, but also some Dems who had been supporters of slavery, which creates some cognitive dissonance. Here are some examples:

1869 Sen Pomeroy: "where labor is performed the compensation should be according to the capacity and character of the labor; & if the same labor is performed by 1 person as by another, & the same amount of time in the day bestowed on it, why should not the compensation be same?"

"I can see no reason, in fact I have wondered what reason could exist, why we should discriminate against a female employee where she does the same work, where she works as many hours, where she accomplishes as much as a male employee of the same class," Pomeroy May 1870.

Sen Trumbull: "so eminently just & proper that females employed in the public service should have the same pay, the same compensation for doing the same work that males receive." Couldn't conceive how men could disagree "no reason given, none has been given, & none can be given."

Senator Stewart, a Republican from NV: "I cannot see why a female should not have the same compensation for the same labor as a male. I never could understand it." (1870) #EqualPayDay

Republican NE Senator Thayer- paying a woman less was "utterly indefensible on any rule of justice or right." Sen Conness of CA couldn't get how men could admit that "the value of the services of the female are equal to those of the male" and still propose to pay women less.

Republican FL Sen Welch 1869 unequal $ was "the sheerest prejudice, unfounded in any genuine philosophy." #EqualPayDay

"I believe the time is coming when all men & all women will have free access to higher walks of learning & literature & art & the higher professions, & it is an ignoble prejudice for men... to make any distinction in the payment of labor simply because the labor is a female"

"I would have all treated alike, and I am sorry that the word 'male' or 'female' has to be introduced into any bill whatever." 1869!! #EqualPayDay

Rep Voorhees, IN Dem, pro-slavery, 1870 "as honest men we should pay everybody that we employ according to the work they do for us...If we employ 2 hands and 1 head to do the work of any other 2 hands and 1 head we should pay the same wages" (former supporter of slavery?!)

1867 Sen Yates Congress should establish #EqualPay: "Let an example go out from the American Congress that labor performed by every one shall have its fair reward, & that there shall be perfect equality between all American citizens, without reference to color, race, or sex."

Position #2: We shouldn't pay women the same b/c we can get them cheaper (b/c they have so few other options). #EqualPayDay

1869 Rep WI Sen Howe: "the simple truth is that female labor, as society is constituted, does not command so high a price as male labor."

Sen Conkling, Rep NY pay question was a straightforward matter of supply & demand. Women were begging for government jobs: "is not true as a business proposition that more money to need be appropriated in order to command the services."

Third Position: Don't pay women equally with men b/c then supervisors won't hire women and men (who could vote-- women in the 19th century couldn't) will take their jobs. #EqualPayDay #Paternalism

1870 Senator Stewart: "There is not a head of a Department nor head of a bureau who would not rather have a male clerk in the bureau than a female clerk doing precisely the same work." #EqualPay will "drive the females from the Departments and substitute for them male clerks."

No evidence cited for this. Yet: 1868, the Director of the Bureau of Statistics, "there does not appear to me to be any sound reason why, as government clerks, if they prove capable of performing equally arduous and difficult services, they should not be equally remunerated."

4th and final position: fire them all b/c they are sexually immoral. 1870 House debate, Dem AR Rep Rogers "These ladies should go somewhere else they can gain a living in a manner better calculated to elevate them and the race to which they belong."

Rogers "would send these women home and give them husbands if I could, and let them go to doing something for their country… instead of being about the public buildings here."

Both House and Senate passed bills equalizing #EqualPay in the late 1860s, early 1870s only to see them die in com. Politicians, women, newspapers & supervisors were all confused. Enough $ was even allocated to pay equally, since provision fell out in com, unequal $ remained

I will leave you on this #EqualPayDay with the words of Treasury Clerk Gertrude, who wrote to the pro-women's suffrage newspaper The Revolution in December 1869:

"What is our work? Is it brain work? Does work have sex?" "What difference is there in value... b/w my work and that done by the pantaloons standing near me?" #EqualPayDay

"We have performed the same amount and the same kind in the same time, and who can discover the sex of the same after it shall have passed from our hands?" #EqualPayDay

"We do not want to be petted. We want simply justice…. We are not playthings. We are not dolls. We are human beings." Gertrude, 1869. #EqualPayDay