The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1898-02-18
rich jewels and rustling silks and alt the
.furbelows specially permitted to lovely
woman.
Woman and Work,

"OmAn 0Au WORK.
Among the saddest sights in the world.
pathetic, Is the spectacle of the gentle
woman who is suddenly and unexpectedly
confronted with the necessity of earning
her own living. We meet her at every
turn, waging her feeble and Intellectual
struggle for existence, and indeed there
is scarcely day when every successful
man ana woman Is not appealed to by one
life for assistance or advice.
When it is mere question of giving
the matter is comparatively simple, but It
is only in the last extremity that the
gentiewoman will accept charity She
wants work and independence, and it is
When you confront the problem of her
Ignorance and ineXperience that you de-
spair of giving any counsel. or making
any suggestion of the slightest use. Gen
orally she is middle-aged, oftener than
not she is frail and delicate, always she
is gentle and refined, but alas! of what
use Is gentleness in an age that is push
ing and scrambling for the best places, or
finement?
What, you ask timidly and hopelessly
can you 40? What service have you to
offer that the world is willing to nav
for! Well, she says, she can paint a
little. Her flowers have been thought
sWeetly pretty. Or. perhaps, she used to
pay little on the piano. A little!
Good heavens, a little! in this day of pro-
fessionals in every line. Or she hope
fully believes there is market for
poetry, because she writes obituary vers-
es on all her friends who die, and SO she
goes through the little list of accomplish
ments that shrivel up and seem so uitiful
when they must be subjected to the
crucial test of bread-earning.
You say as gently as you know how,
that none of these things will bring her
III money. and make some f!ttile SUCCESS
tons, and she goes her failure doomed
way, because there is nothing under the
sun that she knows how to do thorough
~. And, then, it comes to you with re-
neWed truth, that for all our boosted
tenderness to our women, there is no
other civilized country that makes so lit
tie preparation for their protection as we
do IN America: We rear them in luxury,
we handicap them by habits of extraya
gance and enervate them by lives Of ;dle-
ness, and then, too often turn them adrift
to light their own battles of life.
The transitory nature Of fortune in this
country is proverbial. There is no mid
dle-aged person who has not seen the
wives and daughters of supposed million
aires reduced to want. Everyone of us
have known women reared to every imag-
death or failure of father or husband on
their own pitiful resources to live or die
by the work of their own hands. Some
times, after years of untold misery, they
succeed, oftener they die under conditions
for which they are 50 ill prepared, aud
one is left wondering at the lack of fore
thought that would leave a woman ex-
posed to such hardshps.
Money has wings. Scarcely an Ameri-
can fortune has lasted two generations.
These are truisms, with which we are all
familiar, and since no man may be GER
tain of beiIg able to retain fortunes COL
den smile, is it not a cruelty not to pre-
pare girls, as we'll as boys, for the evil
day that may possibly be in store for
them? 1t is the greatest injustice, nay,
more than that, it is crime not to give
every woman some trade, or profession in
which she shall be sufficiently skillful to
ariSe--NeW Orleans Picay1no