Newspaper Page Text
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Worth Woman s While
Dream Boats.
The dream boats sail away at night,
And the Lullaby Lady waves her hand;
Over the s<ea of sleep they sail,
“Outward bound with a favoring gale,”
From the shores of Drowsy-Land.
The Lullaby Lady waits on shore
As the boats push off the sand.
The fare is a kiss, or maybe more,
And change she gives from a generous store,
To each of the mariner band.
And always the Lullaby Lady waits
Each voyager dear to greet;
With welcome warm to morning strand,
As sunrise breaks of Daytime-land;
For mother’s the Lady, you understand,
The Lullaby Lady sweet!
Grace Stone Field.
Different Occupations of Women.
We have recently been looking over a table of
statistics made some time back showing the num
bers of women employed in the occupations where
they compete with men, and it is calculated to
make one stop and think. We wish every woman
who is dissatisfied with the restrictions of home
life, and so less useful in her home, every wom
an who sighs to be out in the business world, earn
ing money and rubbing elbows with men, could read
these statistics and comprehend the situation as it
exists today and what we are surely and rapidly
coming to.
We prefer to believe that women first enterd the
field of business from necessity. The few excep
tional cases where the prompting was from taste
and inclination were never sufficient in number to
have resulted in the present wholesale custom which
threatens to upset the social system, if it does not
disrupt us altogether. Necessity drove more and
more women to work until, growing so accustomed
to see it, other women and more particularly girls,
who might have lived comfortably if modestly at
home, were led to enter the lists. They worked
that they may have things that otherwise they did
without, better dressing, pleasure, little indul
gences, and sometimes to escape what they regard
ed the limitations of domestic life.
And so it has gone on, seeing each year swell
the number of professional as well as working wom
en. We heard last week of a woman who married
a professional man and worked alongside of him,
shoulder to shoulder, keeping a house and rearing a
family. In time her husband besought her to
leave off the business side of her work and devote
her failing strength to home and children—she was
not now strong enough to keep up with all. But
no. She had too long experienced the independ
ence of her own monthly income; she got rid of
her children, one by one, sending the youngest
to live with her parents, gave up her home, and with
her husband is boarding and pursuing her vocation
—preferring to earn money rather than be mother
and home-maker.
It is only one instance, there arc numberless
others, hut this came recently under our own ob
servation. and without doubt every other woman in
the land knows of one or more just such cases.
We hear of women who look after their husband’s
comfort, oversee their houses and servants, or—
more capable still—keep their own houses and
make their own breakfasts, and then go forth to
regular business hours at the office just as the men
do. But we are not misled into believing all we
hear. For instance: The most successful business
woman we know—and besides making an income of
several thousand a year, she is a fine woman—told
ns in a letter shortly after her marriage how beau
tifully she was managing. First, being accustomed,
she and her husband, to black coffee before rising,
The Golden Age for December 13, 1906.
By FLORENCE L. TUCKER.
she had her alcohol arrangement, the coffee and
water all placed ready by their bedside on retiring,
and on waking all she had to do was to raise her
self on her elbow, and, still in bed, make and serve
the coffee. Capital! Yes, but think of drinking
coffee made from water that has stood all night
in the bedroom of two persons! And coffee itself
absorbs impurities.
After the coffee, while her husband had his bath,
she prepared breakfast. And after breakfast when
he had gone to his office she did up her work, got
herself ready and was off to her desk. Toward
five o’clock she came home shortly before he was
due. slipped into a wrapper, and had dinner ready
in good season. Most excellent wife! Independent
of servants, capable and economical! But what
man wishes to sit down to six o’clock dinner with
a wife tired and flushed and wearing a wrapper!
And what man likes a sickly wife? For she had
the doctor, the dentist, the hair specialist, all unit
ed, trying to mend up the ravages of her ailments.
When we read that letter we groaned in the spirit.
Inwardly we cried, “My dear, what a fatal mistake
you are making! Stay at home; dress yourself,
have a servant, be calm and restful, look wes,
make yourself attractive to your husband, even
‘do the rose act,’ as Josiah Allen’s wife did—
and don’t wear a wrapper at dinner!”
She made money, she had her name recognized
in business circles—undoubtedly she had been a
success up to the time of her marriage. But can
the business woman conduct a home as it should
be conducted? Not that she is not as capable, or
more capable as some, think, but the proper mak
ing of a home calls for all the time and strength
one woman can possess.
Just as we cannot serve God and mammon, so
can no one make and keep a home, a. kingdom in
itself, and give attention that is demanded to busi
ness. Our friend had undertaken more than she
could possibly keep up, and in failing was likely
to lose not only health and confidence in herself,
but her husband’s interest. She did not take into
consideration that the male man demands that
not only his appetite be appeased, but his eye pleas
ed at the same time.
And what is the making of money compared to
the loss of the most that goes in the end to satisfy
the heart? The instinct of home-making and home
keeping is inherent in every woman, and though
she may stifle it, put it aside, even silence the voice
for a while, life without the indulgence and devel
opment of this instinct is buit half life, a disappoint
ment and a failure. This is what makes enforced
going into business so pitiful—the necessity that is
put on women who realize what they are giving up,
and must suffer the cruel pangs of homesickness.
And even sadder is it to see young girls, fresh
from school, who have never even learned, perhaps,
the joy and pride there may be in a perfect pud
ding or well-baked loaf, or been taught the first
lessons in the ordering of a home, thrust into
stenographers’ or bookkeepers’ or clerks’ places,
there to fade their lives out in routine and treadmill.
What though they put themselves there? The lot
is no whit different—the only difference is the way
the money goes; the earnings of one are for her
own pleasure; of the other, for her maintenance, and,
too often that of some one else. The warping, nar
rowing effect on the two is just the same. Each is
cheated of her right and of the best that might
come to her, whether by stern need or her own mis
guided will.
And the world is cheated. For every woman
forced to be unwomanly the world is robbed of
just that much good; it lacks just that much
of being the good place it might be. To have to
.spend her existence outside of home and removed
from its influences, is foreign to all nature intended
and develops another creature from that she had in
view, making her, in truth, unwomanly.
Home is the sacredest institution known to man;
worn an is the maker, and "without woman there is
no home. It just amounts to this: shall we do
away with homes and all go into business, sleeping
and getting our meals in lodging-houses and hotels
and restaurants —shall we bring up our girls with
the idea that they must earn their own livelihood,
and give them business courses, and then see them
go into shops and offices like the boys and men:
or shall we call a halt, and teach them that home
is the place for them, and the highest vocation op
en to them, that of home-making?
Nature fashioned the man for battling and for
accumulating; woman was meant to stay by the
stuff, and when she deserts her post and goes out
to battle with her lord, there is none left to stay
by and where were the use of accumulating? Man
does his 'work pretty well, left alone; but when
woman insists on helping him, or even taking in
away from him, he sometimes becomes indifferent
and leaves it to her.
We need not be reminded of the cases where men
absolutely refuse to get bread for their own
children, even taking away the scant earnings of
the wife; or those apparently more respectable,
who can never get anything to do, and so are de
pendent on wife or daughter for subsistence. There
are exceptions always, there are cases where women
have to work because there are no men in the family
to look to. But we speak of men in general, and we
maintain, as we have always done, that the men
would do more, would work more and earn more,
would support their families better, if women would
keep out of the business world.
Women would not in instances have so much—ex
travagant dressing "would not be so general, the
pleasures of theatre and concert and ice cream par
lor, but who would mind, so long as all fared alike?
We live by comparison, and are unhappy only when
coveting our neghbor’s pleasure or goods. That
the standards of fashion and other things are wihat
they are, women have only themselves to blame.
Denial in one direction were only gain, and greater
in proportion, in another, the pleasures so dearly
bought with the hard-earned dollars in business
were not to be compared with the pure joys of home,
the indestructible happiness found in that safe
guard of all that is truly good and beautiful.
We append here the statistics which have caused
us so much thought, and we wish every woman
who has seen or will see them might feel as we
do:
Journalists .. 2,193
Lawyers 1,010
Literary and scientific persons 5,984
Chemists, assayists, etc 248
Musicians and teachers of music 52,359
Physicians and surgeons .. 7,357
Teachers and professors327,6l4
Laundresses .. ..335,282
Stenographers and typewritersß6,llß
Telegraph and telephone operators .. .. 22,556
Cotton mi 115120,216
Woolen mills 30,684
Silk mills .. • • 32,434
A Pennsylvania woman who had to write a pa
per on Victor Hugo for her literary club collated
her facts from encylopedias. Having a little space
left at the bottom of the last sheet, she hazarded
a thought of her own: “Whatever we and suc
ceeding generations may think of Victor Hugo, we
must agree on one thing—that he wrote good Eng
lish. ’ ’ —Exchange.
True hope is based on energy of character. A
strong mind always hopes, knowing as it does,
how slight a circumstance may change the course
of events. —Von Koeler.
Whom God loveth and propeseth to make a
blessing, upon him he early layeth the cross and
in that school who patiently endure learn much.
—Schonberg Cotta Family.