Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-06-22
OUTDOOR WORK.
1t Is Infinitely Healthier Than Factory
Seamstress Work.

1t i Infinitely Healthier Than Factory
or Seamstress Work.
Ouida, in the Wom-n's World for June,
advocates out-of-door life for women, as
productive of both health and beauty.
She says
1t is difficult to understand why there
exists such prejudice against women
working in the fields. 1t is spoken of usu-
ally in terms of violent censure; as a
thing degrading, cruel, demoralizing and
barbarous. Why should it be so? 1t is
infinitely healthier than factory work,
than seamstress' work, than any of the
work done under what is called the sweat
ing system; and it allows the free enjoy
ment of the open air, and the preservation
OF all natural ties 1t may be hard work
it no doubt is but women accustomed to
it from childhood have their frames in
ured, and their muscles and sinews adapted
to it. 1t is strange that any idea of degra-
dalton in field work should ever have
arisen. 1t is the oldest, the most print
tive, and the most poetic of all forms of
labor. Even a line of women hoeing or
gathering tubers on fiat expanse of earth,
and standing dark against the skyline has
great nobility and beauty in it compared
to line of similar women standing before
a row of tables, of looms, or of machines.
Field work does not necessarily either age
or injure the woman.
/ know woman-one out of number like
her-who is 80 years old; she is very
handsome in feature and clear of COM
plexion, her stature is firm, and her form
1.-the and active; she has been the mother
of twelve sons and daughters; she is now
at the head of the family, being widow;
she still works early and late in the fields,
as she has done ever since she was small
child employed to cut grass for the calves
or weed the rows of lettuce or endive; her
strength is vast, she can lift immense
weights with no effort; she rises at to
send her family off to their various labors;
she rules them with patriarchal severity,
and, with the exception of two or three
hours rest at midday in summer, she is
out of doors all day in the fields. or bv the
edge of the river washing, or on the road
with her eggs and fowls and fruit; in
,eisure nome his she is always plating
straws, a bundle of which always hangs
from her waist ready to occupy any spare
idle instant. On her country side she is
not in any way an exceptional figure
there are many like her; her food is of
rude and simple kind, chiefly of herbs and
unleavened bread, and her drink is a weak
wine largely watered, a wine made from
the lees of what is left in the watts where
the grapes have been pressed.
This is an absolutely true, unexaggerated
and exact picture of peasant who has
done hard work in the fields all her life,
and has clear, smooth skin and fine form,
which a duchess might envy her 1t may
be said that this is woman of unusually
admirable physique and no doubt she is
so; but she has toiled in the fields and
woods, in summer droughts and winter
transforms all her days, and she has
thriven magnifcently upon it. She is
like matron of old stepped out from
the eclogues of Virgil or the pastrols of
Theocritus. This woman has led wholly
natural life; obeying natural instincts,
ENJOYING natural affections, and fed by the
pure. fresh, sweet air of sunny hillside. Is
not this an incomparahly higher, wiser
more enjoyable and useful life than life
spent in the streets of city, in the reek
of a work-room
Where women work in gangs the labor
in the fields may become degrading and
brutalizing; but where they work on land
either temporarily their own by rental or
by the metayer system, the occupation is
the healthieSt that can be found. To
drive the sheep afeld, to take the ducks to
the pond, to fodder and feed the cattle, to
lead the cart-horse to water, to thrash the
nut trees, to cut the grass with reaping
hook, to weed and hoe and sow, to dig up
and gather potatoes, turnips or mangolds,
all these are labors which eountrywomen
have fully strength to perform, and which
are infinitely preferable as pursuits to the
foul and CHASTITY occupations offered in
cities to the mill hand, the factory girl,
the piece worker, or the miserable seam
stress. Open-air work is considered to
age women prematurely, but it does not do
so one-half so quickly and so hideously as
the indoor work in close dens and cham
bers, in vitiated air and monotonous en-
ployment.
A MEDICINE Endorsed and used by ply
sicians and druggists-SimmonsL LIVER Reg
ulaf0r