In the face of so many new professions of equality of chance in the public service for women, the astonishing fact is, that while women pass the highest examinations with honor, it is men, with scarcely an exception, who pass into the highest places. With a mocking outcry of “justice and equality,” uttered to appease the universal demand, selfishness and might still prevail in all departmental appointments. Political and personal influence appoint women to-day, just as they did before one woman was summoned to compete in intellectual examination with men. “You were fools to expect a twelve-hundred-dollar clerkship because you passed the examination of that class,” said a high appointing officer of the Treasury to two ladies, one who had come from a far Western, the other from a far Eastern State. Both ladies passed the highest competitive examination—both, after months of wearing anxiety and struggle, with the wolf at the door, received—a nine-hundred-dollar clerkship. Did they receive even that on the high merit of their competitive examination? Not at all; had their appointment depended on that, they would not have received one at all. Sick and worn out, they received it at last on the special plea of two men in office, each having political power in his respective State. With such results, I ask, what is a competitive examination to women but a shame to the power that treacherously offers it? The man who passes such an examination cannot receive less than a twelve-hundred-dollar clerkship; the woman who passes triumphantly the severest intellectual test offered by the Government, cannot receive more than a nine-hundred-dollar position. Why? So many women came to Washington and proved, by actual mental examination, that they were fully competent to fill the highest civil offices in the departments, its officials became alarmed. “Taken on their attainments, they will push out the men,” they exclaimed, in alarm. Then straightway they fell back, as men in power always do, to carry their own ends on unjust legislation. They based their decision on the Act of Congress of four years ago, which fixed the salary of all women employed in the Government Departments at nine hundred dollars per annum. The result of all the loud hypocritical outcry of civil equality to women is, that hereafter, no matter how high the competitive examination which she passes, no matter what the services which she renders, no woman is to receive more than nine hundred dollars per year for any appointment received after a certain date; and no man, no matter how low the labor which he performs, be it only as a messenger to run through the halls, is to receive less than twelve hundred dollars per annum.