Press: Gleaners v. Employers

Accustomed as tabloid readers are to seeing Sunday magazine articles enriched by reproductions of classic paintings— often of Eves and Bathshebas nuder than Follies beauties—readers of last Sunday’s New York Mirror magazine section blinked in bewilderment at the fertile genius of the make-up man who had coupled Painter Jean Francois Millet’s famed ‘”Gleaners” with an article by Kathleen Norris. Substance of Author Norris’ article was a complaint that employers are unfair to married women, fill jobs with unmarried women. “Idleness,” pleaded the writer, ”and the lack of means of self-expression is one of the great evils of woman’s lot. The thought that she will have to content herself with arranging flowers, ordering meals, with bridge and beauty-parlor and matinee, is a serious deterrent to marriage. …” The Mirror editor inserted a reproduction of “The Gleaners,” showing three peasant women at the back-breaking task of gathering the grain left by the reapers. He captioned it: “… Masterpiece by Frangois Millet, depicts the kind of work that many employers seem to think women should confine themselves to, instead of taking men’s jobs ….”