The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1894-05-17
a Louisiana Lectures Thinks So and
Gives Interesting Reasons.

Louisiana Lectures Thinks So and
Gives Interesting Reasons.
The title of lecture by a Mrs. Field of
New Orleans recently was Come South,
Young Woman" She said she was q
writer on the only great daily in the
world chat is owned by woman, refer
ring to The Picayune and its chief owner,
Mrs. L. j. Nicholson OF Louisiana she
said that twas waiting to be cut up into
small holdings by young Corydons and
Phyllises, who will grow cotton for the
central factories, have market gardens,
orchards, dairy farms and poultry yards,
and who will also grow flowers and
make honey. She spoke of Louisiana as
already possessing woman steamboat
aptain-Mary Miller-and as "a state
that builds monument to the memory
of a woman who never had on a kid
glove in all her life, who could not write
her name, who was only great in her
goodness. That was Margaret Haughey,
the baker woman whose loaves built asy-
lums and yet feed thousands of hungry
ones"
Mrs. Field said that she had seen
kitchen garden whose products equaled
any shown at the Chicago fair, and yet
they We're raised by two young girls.
Near by, in the same parish of Cameron,
a young Iowa girl squatter, with her 16-
yearold brother, took up government
claim of 100 acres and went to planting
rice, the first crop of which paid her
81 200. She lives in q three room cot
tage and has few fruit trees, plenty Of
good fence and sea of waving rice
blades. Her nearest neighbor is another
girl farmer, who also settled govern
ment claim and is bossing an orchard
that is already giving her comfortable
living. The lecturess also told story Of
a woman who is dressmaking in Chicago
and who bought 20 acres of Louisiana
land out Of her savings and sent her
mother and brother down there to start
poultry farm. They have been so sue
cessful that she is about to join them and
add small fruits and vegetables to the
crops on her land, being assured of be-
coming Independent thereby.
Mrs. Field said that all along the Hi
nois Central in the river bottom land of
Mississippi and Louisiana ARE fruit and
vegetable farms managed by women
most of them newcomers" They man
age the farms and pack the berries and
vegetables for the Chicago market. On
an old plantation near New Orleans is an
old woman who grows camellias and has
been to Europe twice on the profits. In
Grant parish, in the Red river country,
there is an lS-year- girl who runs her
fathers cotton gin and gins 800 bales
a year. "She handles that snorting ma
chine as if it We're a baby; oils it, feeds
it, fools over it, scolds it, tides it up, and
when it is working as good as gold she
sits beside it-dear, dainty and only 49,
crocheting lace for her petticoats."
Katherine l.. Minor of the board of
lady managers Of the Columbian ex-
position is a Louisiana planter, and, ac-
cording to this lecturess, in every parish
are women farmers, stock raisers and
planters. Mrs. Field herself wears q
media that was the gift of the women of
90 different trades and professions fol-
lowed by the working women of New
Orleans. women are a power in the
SOUTH" she says-though that is not
new idea-"of fearful force when they
organize. | claim it was the women of
Louisiana who killed the Louisiana state
lottery. When the Womens Antilottery
league was formed, the lottery leaders
practically admitted that they had got
their Waterloo" AS for the question
whether women are safe in the south,
she answers boldly that "every man is
her guard of honor" Accompanied only
by 12-year-old lad she says she Travelled
1900 miles in private vehicle in Louisi-
ana safe and unframed. She says that
every mans hat is off to the working
woman, and she holds securely whatever
position her virtues, her brains and her
blood demand. Come south, young
woman" she says, land you will flower
there, fragrancing all the air There you
will learn what it is to be free, and there
woman may be as she wills-an ant in
the morning, bee at noon, and but
terhy at night. New York Sun.