The Arizona sentinel., 1886-10-30
FEMALE LABORERS.
European Women Engaged in Agriculture
 and Other Manual Labor.

European Women Engaged in Agriculture and Other Manual Labor.
 Whether it be the existence of enor- nous standing armies, the havoc of centuries of war, the absence of practi- cal educational facilities or the lowness of laborers' wages, that compels so many women on the continent of Eu- rope to seek to gain a living in occupa- tions which we deem fit only for the strongest and rudest of men, certain it is that one of the commonest and. to American eyes, the strangest sights there is the number of women engaged in agricultural and other severe manual labor. In France women are still oc- cupied in the mines, dragging or push ing the heavy trucks of coal through the narrow tunnels that run from the seams to the shaft. Of course, in such work they adopt the ordinary costume of the working miners, and at the first glance are not to be distinguished from the men by whose side they are work ing. Some of the entries in the French census as to the laboring population are strange enough. In Paris there arc nine female boat-builders, and 245 ''wheelwrights, farriers and saddlerS," eight sawyers, forty-six carpenters and joiners, eight masons and one plumber. It is however, in Austria that we find the greatest proportion of women en- gagged in heavy physical labor, notmere- ly in agriculture or the mines. but in paving and cleaning the streets or in carrying huge trays of mortar or hods of bricks up to the workmen on the scaffolding of buildings in the course of erection. These women do not seem to complain of their lot; they have been bred up to hard work from infancy and are used to nothing better; their language and manners are as course as those of the male laborers, whom in | figure they resemble -high-chested, road-shouldered, no trace of waist, and possessed of great strength. To such stout daughters of the plow'' tits an easy task to pull street-sprinkler or pull about hand-cart laden with milk. as may be seen any day in Antwerp, where the milk-woman, with her neat white cap and 'kerchiet and her assistant dog, is striking street pict- ure. In Prussia about 5000 women are workers in mines, quarries and foundries, and about 2,000 are classified as drivers, postillions and railway laborers," and about 1000 as ''ships' crews, sailors, boatmen and ferrYmen;" in this last category will come women employed in towing canal boats. It has been asked why do not women adopt callings more adapted to fem mine hands? The reason seems to be the industrial condition of great part of the European continent, which 'af- lords to them no better means of earn ing a living, and the fact that these oc- equations. which are so utter unfem- mine, are just those in which un- skilled labor can be employed. A change, however, is slowly com ing about by the growth of im- portant industries in every country. The factory system has been found in Germany to have strong tendency to improve the condition, not only of the women immediately employed in them, but of those working in the coun- try around. A large employer at Frei- burg, after thirty years experience, said: "The condition of the agricultural laborers is not satisfactory one. There is much misery among them, especially moral misery. When mothers apply to us for work for strong, healthy girls we tell them such girls are more fit for labor in the fields, but too frequently receive an account of the hard and inn moral life associated with such service. The scene changes when well-managed factory comes into the village. The poor girls must then either receive bet ter treatment and better wages or they go into the factory. The moral benefit of well-ordered factory is still greater; 1t affects the whole village. "-Harper'S | BnzHr