Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1869-08-04
Hints TO Women.

tress of a household is continually
buying, if not selling; that she is con-
tinually hiring and employing labor,
in the form ofservants; and very Otteni
into the bargain, keeping her hus-
bands accounts 1 cannot but think
her hard-worked brain might be clear
er and her hard-tried desire to do her
duty by every subject in her little
kingdom, might be more easily salts
fed, had she read something Of what
Mr.. John Stuart Mill has written, es-
pecially on the duties of employed
A capitalist, commercialist, an em-
ployer of labor and an accountant
every mistress of a household is all
these, whether she likes it or not and
it would be surely well for her, in so
very complicated a state of society as
this, not to trust merely to that wit,
that intuitive sagacity and innate
power of ruling her fellOw-creatures,
which carries women 50 OnObly through
their work in simpler and less civiliz-
ed societies.
And here stop tOanswer those who
may say, as have heard it said, that
a woman's intellect is not fit for busi-
ness; that when a woman takes to
business she is apt to do it i'll, and un-
pleasantly likewise; to be more suspi-
cious, more irritable, more grasping,
more unreasonable, than regular men
of business would be; that as 1 have
heard it put, ga woman does not fight
fair" The answer is simple. That
woman's intellect is eminently fitted
for business is proved by the enormous
amount of business she gets through
without any special training for it;
but those faults in q woman of which
some men complain are simply the re-
suits of her not having had a special
training. She does not know the laws
of business. She does not know the
rules of the game she is plying; and
therefore she is playing it in the dark,
in fear and suspicion; apt to judge of
questions on personal grounds often,
offending those with whom she has
to do, and oftener still making herself
miserable over matters of law or of
business, on which a little sound
knowledge would set her head and her
heart at reast.
A little knowledge of light for in
stance, would teach many women that
by shutting themselves up day after
day, week after week, in darkened
rooms, they are as certainly commit
ting a waste of health, destroying their
vital energy, and diseasing their
brains, as if they were taking so much
poison the whole time. A little knOwl-
edge of the laws of heat would teach
women not to clOthe themselves and
their children after foolish and insult
ficent fashions, which in this climate
sow the seeds of a dozen different
diseases, and have to be atOned for by
perpetual DOCTORS pills; and as for
little knowledge of the laws of electric
ity, one thrift, | am sure it would
produce-thrift to us men of having
to answer continual inquiries as to
what the weather is going to be, when
a slight knowledge of the barometer,
or of Ire form of the clouds and the
direction 4, the wind, would enable
many a lady to judge for herself, and
not after inquiry on inquiry, disregard
all warnings, go out on the first ap-
pearance of a strip of blue sky, and
come home wet through, with what
she calls "Only a chilli" but which
really means a nail driven into her
eoffin-a probable shortening, though
it may be very small one, of her
mortal life, because the food Ofthe next
twenty-hours, which should havegOne
to keep the vital heat at its normal
standard, will have to be wasted in
raising it up to that standard, from
which it has fallen by chill.
If be told that it is natual fault
of women-that they cannot take the
calm, judicial view of matters which
men boast most wrongly that they
can take-that under the influence of
hope, fear, delicate antipathy, honest
moral Indignation, they will let their
eyes and ears be governed by their
feelings, and see and hear only what
they wish to see and hear; 1 answer
that it is not for me as man to start
such theory; but that if it be true, it
is an additional argument for some ed
ucatiOn which will correct this sup
posed natural defect. And say delib-
erately that there is but one sort of ed
ueation which will correct it; one
which will teach young women to OBJ
serve facts accurately, judge them
calmly. describe them carefully with
out adding or distorting, and that is,
some training in natural science
Rev. Charles Kingsley.