Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1882-03-02
The Women and Railroads.

ana loves TO relate It's history.
The Women and Railroads.
Women appreciate the benefits of
railroads with a keener relish than men.
Railroads have brought to women and
to the family blessings of peculiar
and valuable character. Isolation is
the dreary lot and portion of the rural
women of America. The lives of far
mers' wives are dull and insipid; they
are without recreation and amusement;
they are distant from works and dis
plays of art and science; their lot and
that of their children is one of loneli-
ness. For this reason farmers wives
suffer from mental and moral weari-
ness; life looses its zest and freshness for
them, and their children flock to the
cities to seek new ways of industry, en-
terprise and enjoyment. Women feel
the need of society more than men.
while they have less opportunity for
social intercourse, and they appreciate
it because they have less of it, and have
a sharp sense of their need in this re-
spect. They are more aesthetic; they
covet personal and household adorn-
ment, and they have an Unsuitable
longing for the means by which their
tastes may be gratifed. All this would
be more and more as it is, this condi-
ton of things would increase and tensi-
fly, but for the civilizing and refining
influences created by railroads, and
but for the means and facilities for cul-
ture and social improvement which
they have created.
The railroads make the city and
country near neighbors. They break
up the rustic and fashioned habits
and ways of life which have prevailed
on the farms and in the remote vii
lagos; they are the direct agencies in
educating, refining. polishing and ele-
waiting the classes of people who have
been in the past without the possibili-
ties of culture and refinement. The
railroads carry books, magazines, fresh
newspapers, models of taste and labor,
patterns and knowledge of art, the
results of experiment and science, 70
the most distant communities and to
the scattered homes and fire-sides
throughout the vast areas of our COM
mon country They have removed
from the ways of rural life the curse of
isolation, and the shackles which
bound men women and children to a
sameness of scene, toll and effort during
their lifetime, and from generation to
generation.
The railroads have made the country
cosmopolitan, and they have brought
everybody within the radius and in
fuence of the highest sources of enjoy
ment. The greatest singer in the world
comes to the metropolis, and the rail
roads make it practicable for thousands
from near and far to listen to the mira
Giles OF her minstreisy. The great ora
tors, through the facilities created by
railroads, visit all the people of the
country at their local centers and places
of resort, or the people are enabled to
90 long distances to listen to their argu-
ments and eloquedce. Famous men
and women IN all professions are no
longer strangers to the masses of the
people. Travel has been cheapened
and made comfortable and convenient
by the railroads, end it has greatly en-
larged the field of everyone's vision.
The women to day are vastly priv
LEGGED beyond their mothers. The first
settlers In the West came in ox-teams,
and were six and eight weeks, or longer,
on the road cover the hills and far
away" and they left in the unap-
proachable distance behind them all
that was dear and delightful by associa-
ton and memory. The railroad has
opened a means of transit from the
past to the present, from the farthest
East to the ultimate West, and few
hours or a day or two by rail will carry
the men and women on the boarders of
civilization, to the scenes of their child
hood, to ''the old folks at home" to
the old homestead and fire-side. Rail-
roads enable friends and relatives to be
set down at the far distant bedside of
the sick and dying, and to minister to
the cherries and forlorn wherever thei
lot may be cast.
Men value railroads because they
facilitate business, enhance the price
of land, promote speculation, and aid
IN money getting. The dollar mark is
the mark of mans appreciation of rail
roads. Railroads are Of inestimable
value to women, because they add so
much to the possibilities and delights |
of social intercourse, because they
make rural life pleasant and diversity |
it by means of travel and recreation, |
and create a community of interest and
association between city and country, |
adding to the polish and urbanity of
one the natural truth and freshness of |
the other, and because they introduce
the modes and fashions of polite city |
society to the homes in the fields and |
villages remote from the noisy and busy
centers of population. For the women
railroads have been an unmixed bles- |
sing and benefit in all their relations to |
the daily life of the people.
The Graham County, Kas., farme |
are demoralizing the chinch bugs badl |
by burning the buffalo grass around |