The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1881-05-05
Work for Women.

A bright, sensible farmers wife living
near Connecticut city, writes to Good
Company all about the hard work de-
volving upon her which she can find no
servant to share, although she offers a
good home and handsome wages to any
of the thousands of women constantly
reported as pining and stitching away
their lives in city attics and tenements.
The one drop too much was, when she
read in a June Harper the article on
working Women in New York"
Then she was SO mad she sat right down
on the kitchen floor and cried, and
(when her tears permitted) she dashed
off these suggestive words:
"To read of all of those thousands of
women, stifled, poisoned, choked and
starved in New York, and not one could
l get to be head-lady in my kitchen! 1
don't suppose you have any idea of the
humble Difference we farmers wives
pay to our help. How 1 envy them! If
there is any hard or dirty drudgery, the
mistress is expected to do it, and leave
the light and pleasant work for the
girl. She not only sits in the parlor
and eats at the table, but if the table is
to be waited on she is not the one to do
1t. The mistress gets up and gets the
breakfast and does the early work and
the girl (you must never say servant)
comes down in time to eat it and wash
up the dishes. If there is a Fourth of
July or a Sunday school picnic, or any
making, it is the girl who goes
as a matter of course and her employer
stays at home.
Sin the face of all these things who
can expect me to feel very badly, when
L read these dreadful descriptions OF
the workingwomen in New York? All
over the land there are pleasant coun-
try homes, with plenty of good food
and fresh air, and good wages for COM
paratively light work, that are suffer-
ing for the want of these women; and
yet there they stay and starve and die
and suffer abuse and privation and per-
haps insult, and cant 60 into the
country
:" Will undertake to specify exactly
what are the homes Imean, and provide
places for poor women, if some one will
let me know of them? No, won't! |
have about all l can attend to without
opening an intelligence office. But if
some OF these benevolent people of
wealth, opportunity and leisure, who
get up decorative art-rooms and help
women to paint candles, or protective
reunions, that brow-beat ninety cents
a week, or whatever it is, from rascallv
employers some of these active peo-
pie will only set themselves to work to
coax these women out of lingering star
walton in the city, to health and plenty
IN the country, thousands of oyerworked
wives and mothers will thank them.
The thing that made me the maddest in
that article in Harper'S was where the
writer said there were only three in
dustries open to working women. and
left out entirely the department of
household service. in which there is al
ways abundant food and air, wholesome
exercise, good and sure return in money.
and demand that is eager, ANXIOUS
and far exceeding the supply; and did
not like the omission any better because
it just reflects the existing state of
things. What is the bar that shuts out
thousands of starving, suffering women
from this abundant pasture? Is there
some hidden Ier non Scripta Eyes! 1 stud
led Latin and French too, and a dozen
other useless things when was school
girD which has decreed that this rich
harvest shall be reaped by foreigners
alone, and that American women shall
sew themselves to death before thew
will be servants?
u" Ii that last word is the secret bar
rler, If women like tyranny and brutal
lty from shopmen and foremen better
than the anxious Difference of mistress
if they choose to suffer insult, starya-
ton. disease and death before beipg
called servants, then Tin the name Of |
Him who took upon Him the form of
seryant) let them starve. can give
them only such pity as we bestow on
those who wilfully destroy themselves"