The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-01

reason why girls should not be taught scien-
tiio agriculture as well as boys, and made fit
to transact the head-work of farm. Not
withstanding the inertness of the Southern
women, it has long been no uncommon
thing to find them intelligent and
skilful planters. Some of the largest estates
in Virginia before the war were under
the management of women; and in Ken
lucky, among the most successful stock
raisers, who amassed large fortunes by sales
to Government, were some half-d of the
fair but shrewd SEX These women obtained
their knowledge insensibly by yhome-training
but it is certainly as easily acquired by stu dy
as that of medicine or theology, and is surely
q more wholesome and safer work. A woman
NAV have a message from God to the world
to deliver or not She may or may not have
the peculiar mental and physical skill to fit
her for a surgeon; but the ground is always
waiting to be titled and seed to be planted
Besides, If her crops fail, she alone is the
loser; she has tampered with the bodies and
souls only of turnips and potatoes.
The very lowest grades of farm work ought
to be open to women. There is sort of
chivalric horror in this country of a woman
doing field work, whereas the fact is that half
of the stout Irish and German women who
come here have been used to it at home, and,
with our own negro field hands, are among
the few healthy women in the country. The
soil is light; the instruments for tightening
labor are in general use. If half the women
starving in New York to-day over needle and
wash-tub were put at outdoor work in the
spring, they would find themsel yes better paid
for less actually exhausting labor, and in
stronger health than ever before in their lives.
Our social structure is crowded, stifed we
might say, with educated, idle young girls,
without work, or lovers, or enough
to eat, crying out, What shall
l. o
betake themselves to lecturing or writing, on
the hypothesis that because they want bread
and butter they are qualified to be the worlds
teachers. A young man of their calibre, not
fancying that idleness or discomfort could
anoint him with holy chrism, would go to
trade and become a respectable carpenter or
blacksmith. These women, who fancy suf-
frage will give them healthier souls in
sounder bodies, could find both if they chose
in the skill, the head and hand-craft, the open
air, the softening contact with Nature of this
sighted farm-work. Many branches of it
seem only suitable for a woman's nicer eye
and DIETER fingers; the whole nursery bust
ness, from the care of seedlings, budding,
grating, to the final labelling and sales; the
cultivation of the smaller fruits-especially
the berries-seed-farms the planting and
sorting of herbs, all of which are the most
rapidly profitable divisions of agriculture,
fully worked by them.
We especially urge this matter on women
with small capital of two or three hundred
dollars, and family often of boys depending
on them. Such women crowd the cities; they
all invariably choose the same method of
starving, viz, penny shops, where they will
sell groceries or trimmings" and come on
the town every winter as beggars, while their
children find the quickest road to perdition in
DnttprS for
such woman is to go West, take the quarter
section of land waiting for her, and put the
common sense which teaches her to buy soap
and tape into the raising of corn and pota
toes. Next best to that is the purchase of an
acre or two, say in New Jersey, where land
may be had on the railroads running into
New York for $50 and 1915 per acre, and the
raising of truck for the city market. She may
not make q fortune, but she will fill her
hungry children's mouths, keep them in pure
air and pure influences, and give them trade
for life without expense.