The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1875-06-30
WOmam'S Work.

The Christian Register of June 18th,
says: AS to the increase of woman's
work we must call to mind the great
change made in the style of living
throughout the land. Fifty or hundred
years ago there were no carpets in the
sitting room in many farmers houses, and
no sitting-room but the kitchen ; no din
ing-rCOm but the kitchen, and often no
sleeping apartment for the old folks, but
the kitchen also. There was no carved and
upholstered furniture to be busted there
were no napkins to be washed there were
few to be made. The sewing machine,
sent by some of the genii of Aladdin, or
by Divine Providence, for woman's relief
and blessing, she has turned into her
curse, making as some one has said,
/" forty tucks in her petticoat instead of
one as BEFORE" and covering herself and
her babies all over with fripperies of en-
broidery, and frills and fiounces, and po-
lonaises, until her fussy dress looks as if
she had robbed the rag-bag. The de-
mands of fashion and Of style are severe.
1t is difficult to deny them. The men
expect their wives to look like other wO-
men, and not like &" rights" And only
really extraordinarily high-minded people
know how to live and dress in such a way
as to maintain their personal dignity, and
at the same time save themselves from
unnecessary work.
There has not been enough ofinvention
used to enlighten the labors of the house
hold. No woman ought to knead the
bread she makes, or do the work Of wash
ing or of ironing, or wash dishes, or scrape
pots, or lift them off the stove, or pump
water; and every one ought TO refuse
much other work woman is always doing.
She ought to buy not dumb-betty, but
an iron-betty, set on the table with a
lamp under it, or on the kitchen stove,
and when the steam begins to rise set 1t
to turn the crank that should knead the
bread, scrape the pot, rub and wiring the
clothes and iron them at the mangle, and
wash the dishes, and draw the water, and
perhaps do much beside. We haven't
the machinery, do you say? 1t is easier
to make it than it was to invent a watch
or a sewing machine; and if men had
universally to do the house work, they
would have their iron-betties as much as
mowers and tedders, and would no more
do the work of the kitchen with their
hands alone than they would discard the
plough and scratch up burrows with their
finger nails. Why don't we have the
machinery We shall have it as soon as
the Sorosis care more for the household
work than they do for criticising the poe
try of the last magazine or as soon as,
by woman's meetings and woman's lee
lures, the wants of the kitchen get to be as
publicly known as the demands of the
mechanic in his shop and the farmer in
his field.
Yet we must not make the mistake OF
thinking that women, relieved from much
of exhausting toll, will all go to reading
and writing, to lecturiDg and printing.
| Some, perhaps, will read Greek thai
never read it before, and some who ought
to give the benefits of their genius to the
public, will appear in the pulpit or al
/ the bar, with books that the public will
| not willingly let die, or make discoveries
/ in science of the highest value but the
| literary and learned class of men or wo
men is small, and always will be. And
there is still an immense attraction in
manual labor, much more than the read
ing and writing class or people of bust
ness suppose Let us have more leisure
more ease, more quietude of life; but
| thank Heaven bread must be got by
the sweat of the brow, and there is M
kingdom of God on earth from which
| hard work is excluded.