The Osceola times., 1882-04-08
The Women and Railroads
Milwaukee sunday Telegraph.

I
Railroads have brought 20 women and
to the family blessings of peculiar and
valuable charactel Isolation is the
dreary lot and portion of the rural wo-
men of America. The lives of farmers
wives are dull and psipid; they are with
out recreation and snusement; they are
distant from works and displays OF art
and science; their ID and that of their
children is one~of bneliness. For this
reason farmers wive suffer from men,
tai and moral wearbess; life loses its
zest and freshness ff them, and their
children flock to the cities to seek new
ways of industry, enterprise and enjoy
ment. Women feel the need of society
more than men, whik they have less op.
portunities for socib intercourse, and
they appreciate it more because they
have less of it, and have sharp sense
of their need in that respect. They are
more aesthetic; they covet personal and
household adoinment and they have an
Unsuitable longing for the means by
which their tastes may be gratitied. All
this would be more and more as it is,
this condition of things would increase
and intensity, but for the civilizing and
renning influences created by railroads,
and but for the means and facilities for
culture and social improvement which
| they have created.
| The railroads make the city and coup-
| try near neighbors. They break up the
rustic and old fashioned habits and ways
of life which have prevailed on the
| farms and in the remote villages; they
are the direct agencies in educating, re-
| fining, polishing and elevating the classes
of people who have been in the past
without the possibilities of culture and
refinement. The railroads carry books
magazines, fresh newspapers, models oI
taste and labor, patterns, and knowl
edge of art, the results of experiment
and science, to the most distant com.
munities, and to the scattered homes and
firesides throughout the vast areas of oul
common 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 life
time, and from generation to genera
ton.
The railroads have made the country
cosmopolitan, and they have brought
everybody within the radius and intiu-
ence of the highest sources of enjoy
ment. The greatest singer in the world
comes to the metropolis, and the railroads
make it practicable for thousands from
near and far TO listen to the miracles of
her minstrelsy. The great orators,
through the facilities created by railroads,
visit all the people of the country at
their local centres and places of resort,
or the people are enabled to go long
distances TO listen to their arguments
and eloquence. Famous men and wom-
en- in all professions are no longer
strangers to the masses of the people.
Travel has been cheapened and made
comfortable and convenient by railroads,
and it has greatly enlarged the field Of
every ones vision.
The women of to-day are vastly pri-
vileged beyond their mothers. The first
settlers in the West came in ox-teams,
and we're six or ght weeks longer, on
the road "over the bills and far away"
and they left in the unapproachable dis.
tance behind them all that was dear and
delightful by association and memory.
The railroad has opened means of
transit from the past TO the present,
from the tarthest East to the ultimate
West, and few hours or day or two
by rail will carry the men and women
on the borders of civilization to the
scenes of their childhood, to "the old
folks at home," to the old homestead
and freside. Railroads 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 for
lorn wherever their 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 Gre
ate a community of interest and associa.
ton 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 centres of popu'
letion. For the women, railroads have
been an unmixed blessing and benefit in
all their relations to the daily life of the
people.