Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1888-08-18
Woman'S Work in the South.

world was narrow world, and women who stepped
beyond the sweet security of their homes and
brayely placed themselves at desk or in shop
or in an office were pioneers One always spelled
working woman with capital letters, and by some
she was regarded as heroine, by others sort of
nineteenth century amazon, or necessary evil.
From the pulpit came the title for her of the tex
lied QUEEN" the newspapers cheered her. but
society looked somewhat obviously upon her. But,
pushed on by noble duty, the little army of cru
saders swelled to many, and in the college and
factory, in the printing office and bank, in the shop
and commission house, women with families to
support, with dear mothers and children DEEPEN
dent on them, or with lazy husbands and loutish
brothers, made their appearance. Modest and
sensible and faithful, they sank sex out of sight
and became only workers in the world. They
brought into the busy world no evil influences
nor bad habits, and they became the fashion, the
fad of two winters ago They were first pitied,
then endured and then embraced, and the world
at large seemed disposed to regard them as sort
of peculiar species of heroines to be onized,
patronzed and "enthused" over.
Every woman wished for profession or trade.
Wives bought bread, as they had no time to make
biscuits or curl the baby's hair, because they must
60 to the telegraphic or telephone class. Rich
young ladies, who would not admit that it is bet
ter to spend than to save, and that spending
money may really be earning good and doing the
task God alots, fell to making fancy work for the
exchange and preserves for the confectioners and
yeast cakes for the grocers.
1t was hardly safe to ask young woman if she
would sing you a song in her own parlor for fear
she would say, elbow much will you pay me? If
my song is worth hearing it is worth paying for.
Every other person was writing for the press, for
the magazines; and editors, north, south, east
and west, were literally showed under by darkey
sketches and dialect stories and Creole novels and
''gumbo' chansons written without any motive
or any preparation, simply because it was the
fashion to be, in some sort and in some way,
heroine in the world of the working woman.
Meanwhile, the quiet school teachers and patient
clerks and the singers and seamstresses and
writer's, went on working because they had to
work, living brave sweet, cheerful lives getting
all they could out of life, being helped by each
other, by the confidence of employers, the respect
of the public, and feeling that the day would
come when woman might take naturally her
place in the working world, and make no more
stir than if she were any young man entering on
the profession by winch ne noped TO support HIS
family and take care of himself.
And the day has come. There is nothing SEN
sational in Eliza j. Nicholson managing news
paper, in Mrs. p A. Murray being great cistern
builder in Mrs. G. H. Young being stove and
oil merchant, in Mrs Hye running box factory,
or Mrs. Care building log cabins. Woman's
work and woman's world is anywhere and every
where that God and duty to her family and her
neghbor may call her. The working world is bet
ter for the women who are in it. They have add
ed honor to it, not taken honor from it. The
working woman has learned not to mistake her
duty in life, nor to usurp the duty of Others nor
to bettle the task that is really hers and the
place that is really hers; and having learned
this years of toll cannot crush her spirit nor dull
her ambition, nor debase her SOUL Catherine
Cole in New Orleans Picayune.