Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1890-07-08
OUR WEEKLY WOMAN'S LETTER.
A GastrOnOmic lnqulsitiOn Of News
paperdOm--A Halt Called in Sem
satIOnal journalism.


brilliant matrimonial ventures anC
the whole vast harvest of the GOSSIP
field are dished up in the most high
ly seasoned and tempting style, sci
out in weekly and oftimes daily col
lations, always with smack of the
unmentionable Nothing is toe
sacred, nothing too simple or too vii,
TO meet in the same companionablC
salad with the authors special pun
gent dressing and double dash ot
sarcastic salts. And all this is speci
ally prepared for the feminine diges
tive apparatus, so often the topic Of
capacious jesting.
1t is II question whether the press
has rightly summed up the appetite
of the woman mind, and is not
preparing in its literary cuisine
dishes that are partaken of but that
are spelling their custom. News.
papers are ever after the thing that
will sell and the man who will buy.
But the woman of the age and the
woman who reads has begun to
daintily pick her way out of the
field of public scandal and innocuous
sensation and is now browsing In
the meadows of reform, along the
highways of art and on the hilltops
of education. Reform is no innova-
ton but 1t has become fad, it is the
craze of the hour and the gateway
to the ballot box the long coveted
paDacea for much private wrong and
the instrument of every public right
of womaA. And though the NAV
of the press is cavernous and must
have enormous rations, it cannot af-
ford to overlook the sentiment OF
the hour, which is projecting itself
farther and farther into the feminine
mass and is the special topic "a
woman will buy the paper to read
about.
Affinities and soulmating, and
their natural sister divorce, are no
longer the problems to discuss if
yon want TO hold your feminine au-
dience. Nor "Is Marriage Fail
ure" with the housewife who has
stopped brooding over her own
wrongs and rights aud is seeing
how best she can help turn the big
stream without into the right chan
nel even though she must, along
with an army of sisters, put her
own white hands to the ground
work and masonry.
There is strong, cool, refreshing
breath sweeping thro' the woman
kingdom that the whole world has
felt, and it is too bad that our press
is so slow in making it the bugle
call of their special womau's depart
ments instead of the sickening, mi
asmatic, malarial scum we are now
requested TO partake of.
There is great need of pure
writers in the popular letter field.
Women with clear pens and clear
er ideas, who can give little food
in along with the entertainment,
interest and at the same time in
spire, are in demand in the news
paper work.
The daily of to-day with its
twenty.four "sheets TO the wind is
poor fodder for the family. Babs and |
Clara Bells are tiresome TRADERS on |
the frailties of feminiuity, and by |
this alone have they betrayed the
fact that they are men lacking, not !
brains, but manhood, which late dis
closures aud lawsuits have literally |
proven to be the case.
Their letters to the press have
pandered to every weakness of hui
man nature under guIse of combat
ting them and thereby airing them
all the more, and all under the
name of women.
Men and women eat at the same
table and partake of the same viands
in healthy state ofsociety. Then let
us have our literary dishes unseason-
ed with specialties, Let us look fear
lessly into the lacks and necessities
Of women rs well as of men, but
every time with the lamp of help
fulneSs in our hands.
The field is broad enough for
good writer even though we elimi-
nate the chit-chat, the scandal, the
vanity, and every false and affected
side path of the woman's world.
In my swing about Down East"
this summer intend TO prove that
even for n halting pen there is a
world crammed with the interest
ing, and that the vivacious side Of .
live questions are always uppermost,
where We can swim and skim 10
our hearts, content tid-bits Of rare .
flavor and nourishiug substance, I.
aEd even the butterfly is a honey
gather ii We but know how 10 prove
IL. BIRCH. .
From Aumsyille 10 Brownsville. I