The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1870-03-31
What can Women do.
From the Chicago Courier.


no possible connection with female suf.
frage, or the common political phrase OF
the woman's rights doctrine. 1t is a
matter of bread and butter, of life and
death of virtue or abandonment, to thous-
ands of women throughout the country
Mr. Horace Greeley, whose prominent
positson makes him the centre OF inform
alton for almost all classes, complains that
he receives every day letters from women
from the Middle, and eventhe extreme
Western States, asking for employment
or advice. The story is precisely The
same in all, with the difference of name
and date. The woman is a widow, or
unmarried, and must find bread and but
ter for herself, and perhaps for her chill
dren. She is fitted for a teacher, copyist,
agent or companions; what "open door" is
there for her in the Eastern cities? Mr..
Greeley has answered these questions so
often that he has became we'll tired of
them. And we'll he may be, for he has
always answered them in the same way
His opinion is that the doors most widely
open for unemployed women in the sea-
board cities are those of ruin and starva-
ton. For every chance for employment
as teacher, agent or copyist, there are a
hundred lean and hungry applicants
town-bred women, too, who know the
vantage of the ground He discourages
the hope that they can in any number
find employment in the small manufac.
lures, and finally concludes with the
following advice: Stay at home, where
you are known, and where you will at
least be sure of that human Sympathy
that esprit du corps which forms part of
the atmosphere of country village.
You will find none of it waiting for
you in the streets of great city, however
laudible your endeaVor; and a woman
call herself by what unwomanly name she
will, dies without it, as surely as bird
in an exhausted receiver. Being at home
take up any work, mans or woman's, for
which you are fitted, and which pays
living prices. Do it as thoroughly as a
man, and you aeed not fear his competi-
ton. The very novelty of the attempt
will insure success
This is all very well, Mr. Greeley, bu4
you do not seem to take into considera-
ton the fact that the great majority of
the women who thus apply to you would
rather stay at home than not, if they had
a home. If they could earn respectable
greater part of their lives; if they could
thus bring up their children to compe-
tence and usefulness amid old associa-
tions: if there were not some pressing
necessity for them to better their condl-
ton, they would not develop DISPOSE
ton to seek strange household gods in a
great city, where they know that they
will be beset with dangers, trials and diff
ficulties. You do not meet the issue
With the great increase of
women over men, shown
by statistics of population with
the increasing demand that women shall
do something to earn livelihood ; with
the horrible drudgery and poor pay at
tendant upon such avocations as that of
the seamstress and other trades to which
alone women have been able to look in
the past,-there is necessity for some
other means of employment; and it is to
the large cities that women must come
for it, unless they can make up their
minds to till the grounds follow the plow-I
or endure the physical hardships of
men.
But it seems to us that male humanity
will accomplish more in the hard work,
or even the invention, of agriculture, in
dustry and manufacture THAI women; and
that the latter should begin to select that
work which they can do, and do WELL
with the same advantages that men have
Women must enlarge their sphere beyond
that which admits them as copyists, or
school-teachers and this enlargement can
obtained only by and through the advan-
tages of such commercial education as
men may enjoy. The Bryant &c Strattcn
system of business education was the first
to acknowledge this fact and this right
of women, and the first to throw open its
doors to women. This privilege has been
largely improved, and it's advantages are
becoming more and more widely known
with every year. But it is not until the
general principal is acknowledged, which
will give woman an equal position with
man as book-keeper, an accountant,
financier, correspondent. that she can
enjoy the full benefit of the commercial
system. Then the city will furnish abun-
dant and appropriate employment for wo-
men who have availed themselves of the
advantages of commercial education AS
to the means of obtaining this education,
which is at once so simple, speedy and
cheap, we have only to say that we have
never yet known case in which the man,
woman or child was in earnest about it
that did not succeed When there is
will, there is always way.
EATING WITH FoRKs.-Mr. W. Peters of