The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-11-24
WAsH1NG-DAY.
70 THE EDITOR OF THE NEW NORTHWEST
"If skies should lower


"If skies should lower
From that last evil o, preserve us, Heaven"
Quoted a woman as she drew from the
closet basket heaped high with soiIed
family linen and gazed ruefully at the
leaden and streaming skies.
Washing-day in the winter; washing
day in the country, where the well is
rod from the door, the wood exposed to
the pelting storm, the clOthes-line
stretched over a potato-patch, clothes
pins non est, the hired man sitting in
the corner because of the rain, the mas
ter looking as though he were mentally
trying to solve the problem of 'why
washings were," the baby fretful, the
older children noisy, and, to crown all,
the rain pouring down as though the
windows of heaven were opened for an
other flood. The pen of Mrs. Barbauld
would utterly fail to delineate, or her
muse to inspire a recital of the adveu-
lures and trials of such day. What
though she sings of
'Sad disasters,
Dirt and gravel stains hard to efface,
And loaded lines at once snapped short,
And linen horse by dog thrown down,
And all the petty miseries of life"
Every woman's experience can sup
plement these with discomforts not to
be expressed. The history of one such
day is almost appalling, yet there are
hundreds of women who experience one
such in every seven and still live; live
to bring up fretful, nervous children; tc
pass sleepless nights with aching teeth
to suffer tortures with neuralgia; live
and grow irritable and prematurely old
and altogether unlovely.
Did you ever notice that mans rem
edy for the discomforts of washing-da!
was to ''put the washing off until an
other day?" and this in the face of tn
fact that the baby had on her last cleal
bib and the last clean towel was on tn
roller?
You say there is no remedy for thes
discomforts? "that the washing must b
done and there is no one else to do it,
But did it never occur to you that tn
wood might be housed; the waite
brought into the kitchen or wash-room
and the clothes-line stretched under
shed built for that purpose? The hard
ships that wait upon wash-days is no
so much in the labor of extracting th
dirt from the clothes as from strugglin
with the thriftless inconvenience {
the average kitchen. Poverty is no ex
cuse for these; they cost but little an
return payment in ten-fold ratio in CON
fort, health and cheerfulness.
1 do not believe that washing shoul
be done at all by mothers of young chi
dren, yet in the present state of thing
it is regarded as "women's work." al
it seems in many instances to be nece
sary for women to do it, or they thin
it is, which results in the same thin
Full half its labor can be taken ava
by the use of proper appliances for IL
7 work and by eonvenienees prepared e,
= pressly for it. A washer and wiring
S should be as indispensable to farmer
wife, as a reaper and mower is to hin
4 self. Every man who, from though
/, Iessness, parsimony, or neglect, ALLOW
# his wife to rub, rub, on the old-fashiont
# wash-board and to wiring clothes Wi
o her hands should be given sickle al
r put to work through harvest when, pc
g haps, he would be in favor of labor-sa
y ing machines and be willing to furni
: them for his wife's use as well as for /
d own. Iadmit that wash-day is seas
e of discomfort at best, but insist that
t, can be shorn of half its terrOrs by t
i use of proper appliances for the labc
and proper conveniences for its perforl
ance. MATRON,
IL Portland, November Is, 1876.