The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-01-19


AS no BOY ought to be brought up
without learning some business at
which he could earn livelihood, so no
girl ought to be brought up without
learning the science of self-support.
The difficulty is that many family
goes sailing on the high tides of sue
cess, and the husband and father de-
pends on his own health and acumen
for the welfare of his own household,
but one day he gets his feet wet and
in three days pneumonia has closed his
life, and the daughters are turned out
on cold world to earn bread, and
there is nothing practical that they
can do. The friends come in and hold
consultation. "Give music lessons"
says an outsider. Yes, that is a useful
calling, and if you have great genius
for it, go in that direction. But there
are enough music teachers now starv-
ing to death in all our towns and cities
to occupy all the piano stools and sofas
and chairs and front door steps of the
city. Besides that, the daughter has
been playing only for amusement, and
is only at the foot of the ladder, to the
top of which great multitude of mas
ters on piano and harp and flute and
organ have climbed.
"Put the bereft daughters as sales
women in stores" says another adviser.
But there they must compete with
statesmen of long experience, or with
men who have served an apprentice
ship in commerce and who began as
shop boys at 10 years of age. Some
kind-hearted dry goods man, having
known the father now gone, says:
I'VE are not in need of any more help
just now, but send your daughters to
my store, and will do as well by them
as possible" Very soon the question
comes up, Why do not female employees
of that establishment get as much
wages as the male employees? For the
the simple reason, in many cases, the
females were suddenly flung by mis-
fortune behind that counter, while the
males have from the day they left the
public school been learning the bust
ness.
My advice to all girls and all un-
married women, whether in affluept
homes or in homes where most strih-
gent economies are grinding, is to learn
to do some kind of work that the world
must have while the world stands. l
am glad to see marvellous change for
the better, and that women have found
out that there are hundreds of practi-
cal things that woman can do for
living if she begins soon enough, and
that men have been compelled to admit
| it.
Among the occupations appropriate
for women | place the following, into
many of which she has already entered,
and all the others she will enter: Ste
biography, and you may find her at
nearly all the reportorial stands in our
educational, political and religious
meetings. Savings banks, the work
clean and honorable, and who so great
a right to toll there, for woman
founded the first savings bank-Mrs.
Priscilla Wakefield. Copyists, and there
is hardly professional man that does
not need the services of her penman-
I ship; and, as amanuenses, many of the
greatest books of our day have been
dictated for her writing. There they
are as florists and confectioners and
music teachers and bookkeepers, for
which they are specially qualified by
patience and accuracy; and wood en-
craving, in which the Cooper institute
has turned out so many qualified; and
telegraphy, for which she is specially
prepared, as thousands of the tele-
graphic Offices will testify. Photog-
raphy, and in nearly all our estab-
lishments they may be found there at
cheerful work. AS workers in ivory
and guttapercha and gum elastic and
tortoise shell and gliding, and in
chemicals, in porcelain, in terra-cotta.
AS postmistresses, and presidents have
given them appointments all over the
land.
AS proof readers, as translators, as
modelers, as designers, as draughtswo-
men, as photographers, as teachers in
schools and seminaries, for which they
are especially endowed, the first teach
er of every child, by divine arrange
ment, being woman. AS physicians,
having graduated after regular course
of study from the female colleges of
our large cities, where they get as sci
entifc preparations as any doctors ever
had, and &C. forth to work which no one
but women could so appropriately do.
On the lecturing platform; for you
know the brilliant success of Mrs. Liv-
ermore and Mrs. Hallowell and Miss
Willard and Mrs. Lathrop. AS physio-
logical lecturers to their own sex, for
which service there is demand ap-
palling and terrific. AS preachers of
the gospel, and all the protests of &C.
clesiastical courts cannot hinder them,
for they have pathos and power in
their religious utterances that men
can never reach. Witness all those who
have heard their mother pray.
Oh, young woman of America! as
many of you will have to fight your
own battles alone, do not wait until
you are flung of disaster, and your
father is dead, and all thefresources of
your family have been shattered; but
now, while in a good house and envir-
oned by all prosperities learn how to
do some kind of work that the world
must have as long as the world stands.
Turn your attention from the embroi-
derry of fine slippers, of which there is
a surplus and make a useful shoe. Ex-
pend the time in which you adorn
a cigar case in learning to make a
good, honest loaf of bread. Turn your
attention from the making of flimsv