The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1885-01-10
WOMAN GOSSIP.
Castle Garden as a Matrimonial Agency
Women rs Nurses and Help.
Rev. DIR. Eaton of Louisville, KY. Discourse.
on Womans Usefulness.
WIVES FOR THE WEST.

York SIN, that the officials at Castle
Garden receive so many applications
for wives TO be selected from among
the immigrants, because for years past
our own correspondents have asked us
to assist them to find conjugal partners.
I'm all the communities of the West
there is great excess OF men. Very
many of these unhappy bachelors are
farmers with no near neighbors, and
they find that they can make little
Roadway without wives to superintend
their household and supplement their
efforts. But the circumstances which
bring them so many hardships are also
very unattractive to women, who know
that such farm life involves loneliness
and endless toll; that it is monotonous
and altogether unlovely, and especial
IL wearisomc for women. When, there
fore, people find fault with girls for
flying from farms TO the shops and fac
tories of the city, they show how ig-
norant they are of the hardships of the
average farm life, and do not under
stand how heavily they bear on women
particularly Daughters who see the
haggard and prematurely aged faces OF
their mothers cannot be blamed if they
hate the existence which has done the
terrible work No wonder that OPP
pressed by the loneliness of the farm,
they demand better field for the salts
faction of their social instincts, and
look with aversion on the farmer lads
of the neighborhood. They are likely
to prefer for husband anybody rather
than farmer.
Accordingly, many farmers, at the
West especially, are at their wits ends
to get wives and helpmeets, and some
of them have written to us bitterly com
planning that the girls of their neigh
borhoodS turn up their noses at them,
and have approving glances for city
bred youths only. If, therefore, the
Castle Garden officials show DISPOSE
sition to help them out of their difficult
ty, we have no doubt that Western
farmers will hasten to avail themselves
of such a matrimonial agency and that
fair immigrant maidens will lind hus-
bands immediately upon their arrival
at this port
But experience seems to show that
such attempts to artiicially stimulate
matrimony are pretty sure to be unsuc-
cessful or to produce unhappy results.
When women are sent from MasSachu-
sets to Oregon to become wives for the
pioneers of that thriving State, it was
hoped that new and happier sphere
had been found for maidenS of the pur-
itan commonwealth who had no chance
of getting a husband at home. But the
experiment did not work we'll and
after brief trial the project was aban-
doned. The women shipped to the Pa
citic coast did not take kindly to their
novel surroundings, and the business
like character of the enterprise offend
ed the sensbilities of such as were best
fitted for matrimony. They could not
overcome their prejudice in favor of
old-fashioned courtship, andAccording-
ly the attempt to relieve Massachusetts,
of its surplus of maidens was brought
to rather ridiculous conclusion. If
women are few in region the reasona-
BILE interference is that it is not ready
for them, and that they are not adapt
ed to the circumstances of the life
there. In due time Oregon became at
tractive to them, and now we hear no
more complaint about the scarcity of
women in the State. In this city there
are more women than men, because the
demand for female labor is so great
that a working girl gets employment
more easily than boy, and the social
advantages and excitement of city
are even more priced by the poor than
by the rich.
The Western farmers, therefore,
are likely to continue to suffer un-
der great disadvantages in the matri-
monal race, and we doubt very much
whether they can get much help from
Castle Garden. In Europe noless than
in this country the preference for the
crowded and bustling towns grows
more and more general and more and
more marked, And yet, poor fellows,
the farmers must have wives. If they
cannot get them the occupation of the
farmer is likely to fall into disrepute.
Already we see that the character OF
the men engaged in it 10 gradually
changing, especially in the Eastern
States.