The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1878-01-25
COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

We wish a few of the pompous mas
culine aristOcrats who sit in the coun-
ellis Of the nation and firt with silly
girls while their wives are at home
milking cows and digging potatoes
could be compelled to spend week at
the Helpers Home in this city. Per-
haps their pet theory about "wOmen
sitting comfortably at home while men
make the laws and the livingn would
thereby become exploded, as indeed it
should long since have been.
G Every week a large number Of women
seek temporary refuge in the Home,
while looking for employment Two
thirds Of these women are no longer
young, many Of them have dependent
families, and all of them are sick. In
quire into their past lives and you will
find that they all have, or have had
husbands, who swore at the marriage
altar to love, protect, and cherish them
through life, but who have utterly
failed to comply with their part of the
contract. As long as health and strength
lasted, these women endured the bonds
and toiled and suffered in poverty and
destitutiOn. But, when health was
gone. and they found themselves no
longer able to do the drudgery of life
and answer to the behests of the aris-
tocracy of sex, they started forth to
earn an independent livelihood. Al
most always these women are wholly
untaught regarding the requirements oi
city housekeeping. The plain cooking
and laundry work of their own poorly
supplied homes bounds the extent Of
their experience; they are as unused to
a three-cOurse dinner and its consequent
dish-washing, silver rubbing, aud many
napkins as they are to harmony and re-
spectful treatment at home; but they
are full to the brim of the bigOtry
that is born Of narrow surroundings
and they lily brook Interference witt
their own set ways. To get a place tina
will suit them is as difficult as tc get {
place where they will suit employers
AlAA AAE nEl|ooAAl ANA AnEAA sAD1A1AEAli
is all the same as though they ha,
never trusted the fallacy that they wer,
to be supported and protected by men
and sit comfortably at home and b
content while the husband made th,
living.n
Il is enough TO make angels weep Il
see the victims Of want and a wronl
education thus seeking, in the evening
of their days, for work for which the!
are not fitted. And yet the womel
who would fain elevate womanhood T.
the plane Of equality before the law
aud following the bent Of their awak
ened conviction, dare 60 forth to remed.
these evils by appropriate legislation
are remanded back to their ''eoinfOrta
BILE fire-sides," when many Of then
haven't any homes, except they ear
them with their own hands; and hav
ing earned them, they reach out in pit.
TO their less fortunate sisters, and pra.
the aristocracy Of sex to remove the po
litical disabilities Of the subiOgated, tha
the old despotism may be outgrown
and every woman, as well as ever.
man, be trained from the beginning int
a self-sustaining life.
We repeat, a week at the Helper
Home would go far to open the inne
vision Of masculine aristocrats who deny
women their liberties, aud we wish the
law Of compulsory education was il
force, to compel them to undergo thii
ordeal and fit them for their public duty
As matters are, they are 10 better quail
fed for legislating justly for womeI
than the sick and destitute ones unde
consideration are fitted for the occupa
tions they are compelled to seek.