WOMEN HEW TIES.

Mataura Ensign, 27 September 1913, Page 7

WOMEN HEW TIES.

"GOOD AS ANY MEN." CONTRACTOR'S OPINION. "Talking about strange occupations for women," said R. M. Ruthven, a tie contractor on the White .River Rond, Arkaiisa.s, "and about the different occupations they have entered. a,s,competitors to men, 1 think that the tie business is aWit the most hazardous and hardest they have broken into. "I have three women tiemakors working for mo now on jobs near Cedar Creek, in Taney County, Missouri, and they are about the best tiomakers that 1 have now employed. They .attend strictly to business, and whilo they cannot put out as many in a day as some or my .-men makers they are on the job every day, don't do any loafing, and at the end of the month their stack 0 f ties will average right around that of the men.

I-he women are Mrs W. A. Kelsoy and the two Kelsoy girls, sisters of Mrs Relsey's husband. They arc professional tie-makers, coming to the tipper White River tio camps from Miller Comity. Missouri. Tho men folk in the family are also tie-hackers, and it was from them that the. women learned tho art of tho broadaxo and became proficient m the work. Mrs Kelsoy is a woman between 30 and 40 years old, and turns out from 10 to 12 ties a day, for which she gets 14 cents each. She averages well around 1.75d01. a day and has never yet complained of the low wages of women.

Tho other two women do about the same thing. AH are .proficient in the use of an. axe and really make better ties and have fewer culls than the men. Mrs Kelsey is the pioneer woman in the tie- industry, having boon engaged in the work steadily for the. lust three years. Her muscles are, hardened and she can swing an axe all day untiringly. She fells her own timber and with one of the other women on the end of her crosscut saw makes her own euls. 'She runs her own job by herself, having her own timber allotted to her to work up by tho contractor. She also looks after her own inspection, and the cheque that is paid her is not made out to her husband or any of tho rest of the family. She earns it and looks after the spending of it herself. She runs her bank account individually, as she does her job. She is a hard-beaded bargainer and is an excellent judge of the timber.

She can toll just how many cuts she can get off of -10 acres of white oak and just how much labor it will tako in turn, the timber into a commercial commodity. She knows timber and knows the business as well as most women know dress goods and. silk, and she knows a bargain in a good job just as well as her more fortunate or unfortunate sisters in the city know a, bargain on the counter of a department store.

"Sho is about -as Jiard a person to make a deal with, as I ever made a trade with," commented Mr Kuthven. "She is an uncouth Suffragette but doesn't know it."

A times sho woos tlio goddess of hA too When the hot, days ,rf £; and tliewods TIT 6 ho t and sti tii„ K and tho WO] . K 0 f iln axe p. e t s irksome, the cold, swift waters of the White call her and. she goes into the river in search of pearls, digging the mussels from the sand hanks along the river's hank or from under the rocks and gravel, ami carries them to the bank, where she opens them and hunts eagerly for the hidden jewels within. That she is more or less successful in this work, which: is merely a gamble, is also a fact, for every fall she lias some pearls to put on the market which net her a tidy sum.