American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1873-02-22
Can Women Work.

EVERY day more women demand more
and other work and better pay. Every
| day there is a little yielding to this demand
on the part of the inert body polite.
These women say, and truly, that the
shutting against them of many doors OF
employment, forces so many workers into
SO few occupations that wages are kept
down, and that there is also maintained a
monstrous inequality of pay between
work of equal value as done by man or
by woman. Therefore they reasonably
ask opportunity of apprenticeship to many
trades, and leave to offer skilled labor in
all markets.
But supposing that society were ready
to concetie their claim, there remains the
question whether women can take rank
with men in employments which require
either physical strength or long hours OF
continuous application. A woman with
Astounding physical health, to whom the
has become exceptional, not to saw phe-
nOmenal. Most women call themselves
well, if they are not ill enough to be driv-
en- to bed. And for every one woman
who coddles imaginary ailments and
thinks it interesting to be little delicate,
hundred women go through the weary
toll of daily housekeeping, who live and
labor through force OF muscles. We take
much credit to ourselves because we do
not permit our women to do field-labor,
but it is safe to assert that no field-labor
is so exhausting as the endless toll Of
s'smart'' American hOusekeeper who
is poor, but who, being American, must
be Qenteel. She is cook, maid-of-all-wOrk,
seamtress, tailorcss, ch;ld's nurse. She
feels it right that the girls should have
ruffied petticoats. and the boys plenty of
changes, and the sewing-society four
kinds of cake when it meets at her house
and her own gowns such trimming as ap-
pears in her fayorite monthly fashion mag
azine. What Dutch or Irish peasant wO-
man who easily tills her field could stand
this pitiless strain?
Many causes are assigned for the degen-
crate physique of modern American wo-
men, but this one folly of overstraining
nerves and muscles in this climate, which
itself over-strains all sensitive organisms,
is the chiefest cause, we think. COrsets
and a weight of skirt no doubt slay or
MAIN their thousands. But we should
rememt er that the corset of to-day is a
cobweb vest compared, let us say, to the
straight-jacket of buckram and iron which
is OIL view at Pilgrim Hall as a relic OF
that fair Puritan, Mistress Alice Bradford.
And the fashionable limpness of our peri
cd has notably reduced the load Of muslin
which the mode Of twenty years ago made
indispensable. While it must be remem-
bered that our grandmOthers, who are
held up as examples of rosy health, en-
dured both the busked stays and the
pounds of pendent drapery. Too many
hours of study in and out of school, and
neglect of out-of-door exercise, are doubt
less bleaching and desiccating their vic
Tins. Complex and badly cooked food,
too much sewing and too little shouting,
too much dancing and too little walking.
all have their evil part. But the very fact
that our girls can dance a whole night, or
sit at the machine and hem the measur-
less web of tarlatan in which they dance,
or live on the culinary stones that are Of
fered them in place of bread, or study ten
hours a day and practice three, and not
die, shows that women have tremendous
reserve of power, a tremendous resistance
to disease, which can easily be trans
formed into health.-Hearth and Home