The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-09-22
sRLF-SUPPoRTING WOMEN.

The necessity that exists for some
women to be independent and self-sup-
porting is seen and acknowledged on
all hands. Owing to the mutability of
fortune, and the rapid and unlooked-fOr
revolutions which it's giant wheels so
frequently make, it is impossible to tell
whether those upon whom this neces-
city will be imposed will be the
daughters of the wealthy and arrogant,
or of the toiling and poor; hence, all
alike should be prepared for con-
tingency which may at any time
happen.
Five years ago, or thereabouts, we at
tempted to canvass for the NEW NORTH
WEST, then in the first few months of
its first year, when supercilious men
and narrow-minded women imagined
or thought they did-that the ballot for
woman would be death blow to NOR
ality, decency, and good order. We
had two objects in view; one, of course,
to extend the circulation of the paper,
and the other-and this was of vital
personal interest to ourself as we at
that time spent five days of each week
in a schoOl-room-was to receive, as a
premium for certain number of names,
sewing machine. When we go to
writing romances founded on fact, we
will embody our experience during two
or three days canvassing in a volume,
and give it to the world. Just now it
suits our purpose to refer to but one in
cident Going into the Office of we'll
known physician, we stated our errand,
and he, taking the paper with gingerly
touch, remarked, in patronizing way,
that he "didn't believe in .woman's
rights" that "women ought to be sup
ported by men,"
"But," we urged, "perhaps your wife
and daughters" three of the latter were
do-nothings in the. paternal home),
"might like to read it."
"They are more opposed to it than 1
am," was the reply. "I take care of
them"
"But suppose they are ever so situ-
ated as to be compelled to earn their
own living?"
"Oh, that isn't likely. Their mother
has always been provided for and I
guess they will be-"
OF course this was logical sequence,
so we added no more, but went our way.
But what of these five years? All
they have also gone their way, and
taken in their flight the strong, conf
dent man to the silent land, and the
aged wife and at least two of the daugh-
ters are thrown upon their own re-
sources for livelihood. One daughter,
herself a widow, must not now only be
self-supporting, but must earn living
for her child, and, forced out of the
"sphere" that she once thought her own,
is compelled to fight in the "worlds
broad field of battle" for her daily bread.
We but a few days since passed heI
shop window, where she bent her pale
face over some hat trimmings, and saw
beyond the bent form of the mother
who chad always been provided for,'
as she stitched away for means to sus
tain life, and saw that what was so ex.
tremely unlikely" in the estimation o
the husband and father but few shOr
years ago, had, by one swOOp of the
Death Angel, who waits with "raver
wing incumbent" over even the mos
sheltered households, been converted
into living reality.
Appropriate to the subject we find tht
following in the NelU Century foi
Women, and it contains about as mucl
good sense as could well be crowded
into so limited a space:
The common sense of Americans has lon
ago perceived the necessity for some women L
be self-suppoung. Feminine dignity and del
icacy, as sung by poets and vaunted by after
dinner orators, when the last toast is drunk
and the best gift to man is gushingly, if some
what incoherently cheered, is as pretty a
painted china. Until the State is prepared t
furnish elegant shelving for such porcelain, i
other words, shelter and maintenance befittin
its extreme fragility and preciousness, tn
financial crash, with its complicated probleI
of wreck, constantly repeats itself; and tn
question arises, what is to be done with chin;
for which there is no place in the world ?