The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-09-23
evening stats Sollrnat
SATURDAY EVENING. SEPT. %. 1871.


The Duty of the Farmer TO his Wife.
noticed the other day in one of our
Chester County PENN papers an essay
read by afarmer's wife, at a Farmers Club,
on the overworhed condition of women IN
country homes. know not how it may
be elsewhere; but in Pennsylvania there
seems to be general awakening on this
subject among the women, and some SYM
pathy in Their behalf among the more
thoughtful men. This is an encouraging
change from The playful irony with which
it has been the time-honored custom for
good tempered husbands TO treat the COM
plants of their wives and yet, if you can
believe 1t, there are few women of the
e-them-an-inch- d-they 'll-take-an-ell
sort, who are not even yet quite satisfied.
Whatever may be the relations between
man and wife in cities, it is certain that on
every well-managed farm which is culti-
waited for livelihood, the woman takes her
full share of responsibility and toll. The
business on our average sized Eastern
farms is but half described in counting the
growing of crops and the raising of stock.
1t must include the boarding Of laborers,
care of poultry, dairy work, laundry work,
garden work, tailoring work. lard and sau-
sage making for market, preparing Of truck
and poultry for ditto, not TO speak of the
unceasing round of making, mending, and
cleaning necessary to keep home habitable,
either for women or men.
For man must soil and woman must sweep,
And its early to rise and seldom to sleep,
Tho the farmers wife be groaning
We also refrain from mentioning, as not
strictly farm work, that most important
field Of toll and care, the bearing and rails
ing of the farmers children.
These things being undeniable, how does
it happen that one OF the partners in each
farming establishment, one fulfilling at least
her full half the business of the partner
ship, exercises none of its rights? That
she can undertake nothing in her own de-
partment at her own discretion, that the
means by which she accomplishes her
work, be it a washing machine, a new floor
to her spring-house, girl in the kitchen, is
bought or dispensed with, hired or dis
missed, according to her partners judgment;
that the money both helped to earn all goes
into her partners pocket; that, occupying
large and varied sphere TO which he would
be as incompetent as she to his, she moves
forever in tether, the other end of which
is in her partners right hand?
AS | remarked, we feel much encouraged
by the sympathy expressed in our behalf
BY the more enlightened of our farmers,
and the disposition eyinced by few to see
if they can manage to do anything for us
and yet at the bottom of all there is grand
misiake--a mistake which mere age has
made so respectable that it is difficult to eX-
pose it, but one which all the more, for that
reason, needs.our attention.
The Just view Of the matter is this: not
that the man is Intentionally selfish in de-
Gliding that his wife does not need, i'll her
department, the sort of facilities for which
he readily invests money in his own, but
that her department is exactly what, in the
nature of things, he is incompetent to de
eide upon at all. Suppose my nelghbol
Mary should say to her good man John:
My dear, think it unnecessary for you
TO have the new reaper, it Is too compll-
Gated might manage to buy it for you
but can't afford to keep it i'll order" Or
"What can you possibly want with {
patenth hay fork ? My father never saw .
patent fork, and if you make as good far
iner as he was,' Nc, &c.
If Mary said this, we know that JOIN
would reply:
"My dear, you are out Of your sphere
if you'll be good enough TO attend to you
business, I'll attend to mine"
And serve her right, say we. But, OF
the other hand, is it not strange, is it no
ptiful, to hear grown-up woman explain
ing, apologzing, arguing with her husband
- perhaps even petitioning as persona
favor, that he will take some Of their none.
out Of his pocket and get her sewing ma
chine, or wringer, or hired girl-mat
tiers over which he has no more right I
assume the jurisdiction than she to limi
Che number of his farm hands, or den
him the use of artificial fertilizers on hi
fields. ELIZA 3. TURNER.