The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1875-12-03
The Uses Of Money.

kins, of Cooperstown. 1t will repay
careful perusal:
USES OF MONEY.
Dickens, in his inimitable way, tells
us of the story of little Paul Dombey,
who sat before the fire pondering
weighty questions in his childish brain,
and asking, "Papa, what is money!
There are many women in the world
almost as innocent as was poor Paul.
They know that it secures fine dresses,
and elegant carriages, and delightful
journeys; but as to making money, or
the real uses of it in the world, they are
profoundly ignorant. Their lives have
been so sheltered by the loving arms
around them, that they have hardly
felt any responsibility as accountable
beings.
On the other hand, there are thous-
ands of women who know full well the
worth and the use of money, because
their lives have been one long struggle
to earn it honestly and expend it care
fully in supporting themselves and the
children who are dependent on them.
Such women smile when they read so
many directions, written by men, OF
course, about being good mothers, good
hOuse-keepers, and good cooks. The
cooking of their dinners is but small
part of their work. They must earn the
dinner before it can be cooked. They
think of the old recipe for cooking a
hare, which is in the first place, "Catch
the hare" Women do not need any di-
rections about their maternal duties, or
about housekeeping. They take to these
things instinctively. 1t would be sad
waste of time to teach young ducks the
~ Nf aiY,rr fbaxv do r,aaI f,iC
training. Neither does an intelligent
woman need so many instructions about
the proper duties of her home life. Let
boys in their teens take the hint here
and be silent
There are an innumerable number of
women who would gladly earn an hon.
est livelihood if they could. They are
poor; the wheel of fortune, in its giddy
rounds, has left them stranded by the
way-side, penniless as they were born,
poor, and life to them means only one
long struggle for bread. How gladly
would they earn a little money in re-
spectacle way but there are so few
avenues of employment open to desti-
tute woman. If they go into a kitchen
they are scarcely treated as human be-
ings by their inhuman and often ignor-
ant mistresses, eat the coarsest food at a
lonely table, sleep on straw in the attic,
snubbed and scOlded till death seems
better than life.
If they go into a shop, it is work
work from early dawn to dewy eve,
and half-pay for their work. A tailor
ess told me, last winter, she received
two dollars and a half for making a
coat, the man for whom she worked re-
ceiving seven dollars for the making of
the same coat, or for having it pass
through his shop.
If a poor woman can manage, by
hook or by crook, to obtain little edu-
cation and teach a school, it is the same
old story about one-third the pay that
the men receive for doing the same
work. In the town of Morris, where I
spent the last winter, there are four
teachers employed in the graded school.
The man at the head received one thous-
and per year, the three women re-
ceived each three hundred per year.
Had they resigned on account of the
small pay, there were scores of other
girls who would have been glad of their
places.
Need we wonder so very much, with
these facts before us, that so many
women tire of this long struggle to keep
tie body and soul together honestly,
and when the gilded hand of vice is
stretched out to them so invitingly they
take this outstretched hand, and are lost
to honor, to virtue, and to decency?
In my childhood I used to wonder
that the pure Son of God was so merci-
full to fallen women, when I felt that they
should be loathed by heaven and earth.
But since have been older, and have
seen the deep, the cruel wrongs of So
ciety to woman, / have not been so
much surprised, and am glad that God
and not man will be her final Judge. /
am glad, too, of another thing-that the
publicans and harlots go into the king
dom before the hypocritical Pharisees.
But from this depression I return to
the question of the uses of money to a
woman.
Is it not just as useful to her as to a
man? Her clothing, her food, and heI
fuel, are equally expensive. If she
travels she must pay the same fare; lit.
tie children cling to her skirts crying
for bread in thousands of homes, anC
yet the world deals out its niggardly
sixpences, and makes wry faces at the
noble band of reformers who would
gladly make a change for the better
Men and women can never go hand-in.
hand toward the millennium till there
is more justice toward women in regard
to compensation for work. And this
never will come till woman is on a DO,
litical equality with man; till she has 6
little more power to say what shall be
as well as to talk so much about what
should be.
Women as class have not been good
financiers, because they have had so lit.
tie money to take care of or to use
Give a girl shilling for spending
money, and that shilling will soon be
gone. But give her ten dollars, and tel
her that she is to take care of thai
money, and it would be cared for prop
erly.
Many a woman has learned to be s
good finaneier in the bitter school of ex
perience. A friend told me bit of heI
experience in this regard.
She started on her married life will
such beautiful visions of happy home
She intended to show the world that i
was another Adam and Eve walking
amid the bowers of Paradise. She saw
that money made trouble in some fami
lies, so she was never, no, never, going
To have separate purse. "With al
my goods l thee endow," was enough
for her. What would she need of money
when her husband carried a purse Sc
well filled? The years came and went
ano tne mans gains increased while the
wife remained penniless. She toiled
often harder than a slave, to keep I
bright home and to educate the chill