Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1878-02-22

WoAh, OIdWlHS, LHusiC, VI UOOhS, WHCIC
there is no occasion for more laborious
occupation. For we must acknowledge
that in rightfully improving their estate
in any intellectual direction they also
enrich the world, as their fathers and
brothers do, and enrich it much in the
degree in which they carry system and
order into their endeavor And wheth-
er their occupation be intellectual or
domestic, if they are ever thrown upon
their own resources, as the saying goes,
it will be all the easier to them for any
systematic, that is to say, Industrious
and precisely timed habits-in other
words, business habits-that they may
have thus early established at home.
The housekeeper who has no business
habits makes but poor appearance be-
side the one who has them. The latter
has a fixed hour and day for every do
mestic duty; the former has things done
when she thinks of it. The one replen-
ishes before an article is exhausted; the
other runs around and borrows. The
one knows just how long an article
ought to last; the other is robbed before
her face and eyes. The one makes her
rags pay for her tins" her grease pay
for her soap; the other has to give rea-
dy money for both commodities. The
one has her house-cleaning done in May;
with the other it always bangles along
into July. The one can see visitor at
almost any hour of the day;:the other
has to hurry and skurry to make herself
presentable The one always has some
thing toothsome in reserve if an unex-
pected guest must be asked to tea; the
other has nothing but an apology. With
the one all goes smoothly, noiselessly,
pleasantly, and with smiling face;
with the other the jar is always evident,
the house and its mistress and it's ser
wants are forever in snarl The one
has business habits; the other has no
habits at all.
| We have heard of lady whose hus-
band, obliged to leave the city, deposit
ed in her hands check book for some
$500 dollars, with which to make certain
purchases On his return he asked her
if she had had enough money, upon
which the charming little creature in
stantly answered that she had not had
great plenty, but that she had bought
multitude of things which she had not
expected to buy, and still had two or
three checks left, which she triumphant
ly produced, and which he filed away as
trophies of woman worth and worth
lessness,' in company with the letter
from friend in the bank informing him
that his wife had overdrawn her account
by double the amount originally depos-
{ tied, but that that friend had assumed
the responsibility, knowing it would be
all right. In the lady's ignorance of
business, she had supposed every check
stood with the bank for just as much as
she chose to write down on its face, and
considered herself a pattern of praise
worthy economy that she had two or
three specimens of this invaluable and
Fortunatus-like sort of check left
Every girl, we think, should be given
a knowledge of certain business matters
as much as every boy; she should have
a sufficient insight into banking to make
her independent of the kind services of
men. She soon learns naturally the ma
ture of bills and receipts, but she should
know also the nature and forms of
deeds and writs and leases, powers of
attorney, contracts, bills; she should
know what steps to take to get out of
business difficulties if she gets into
| them; she should be taught the manner
in which to maintain her rights with
frmness and without anger, so that in
extremity she may not be left at the
mercy of any with whom she deals, and
who may be disposed to cheat her. and,
as preliminary step, she should be
taught to file all of her papers alpha
betically, and her letters by date. If, in
addition to this, every father would give
his daughters in their early girlhoood
fixed allowance in so much money, rep
resenting what he can afford for their
expenditure, and demand that they
shall keep strict account of it all, sub
ject to his own or to their mothers in
spection, he will have established be-
ginning of business habits that may at
some after-day be of infinite service.
Nothing is more absurd than the custo-
mary accounts Of one of these young la
dies who undertake the matter without
assistance, and with no knowledge of
either double or single entry, but who
have plan of their own of Wultitudin-
Gus cntry-debts and credits in the
same column, and an indiscriminate hap
pening of the words amount brought
| forward, or amount carried up, with
out any specific sum against them, as if
they were like the cabalistic characters
with which every physician prefaces his
prescriptions, and the whole about as
undecipherable to anyone obliged to
scan it as if it were set down in Chinese
But very few lessons, very few hints
indeed, from father or brother compe-
tent to give them, will reform the whole
matter, and make the way of those ac-
counts so clear that she who runs them
up may read them-which she meyer
could before.
Yet it is not merely as matter of
money as matter of properly plain and
clear accounts, as a matter OF preserv
ing property, or of being ready at call
to earn her own livelihood, that it is i'm
portant for every woman to have busi-
ness habits. 1t is quite as valuable to
her as IA means of general comfort dur
ing every day of her life, be she rich or
poor. Without them she does nothing
ing decently or in order; with them she
is mistress of every situation: she con-
trolls the unknown, provides for the un-
expected, and lifts herself beyond the
need of the kindly contemptuous assist
ance of those who have been wiser than
she, and have made thempsclyes by
means Of business habits all that she
might be. Without them she is only
waif and drift, cared for and kept, in
fact, only by what may be described as
the business habits Of the great uni
verse, which, in its foresight, looks out
for the apparently useless atom as much
as for races and continents, while with
them she might, if only in6nitesimally,