The suburban citizen., 1902-08-02
WOMEN AND MACHINERY.
Not Few Feminine Minds in America
OF a Mechanical Turn.

Not "A Few Feminine Minds in America
OF a Mechanical Turn.
Looking at a small engine in n win
dow Of downtown machinery estab-
lishment was a woman; and seemingly
she was regarding the engine not with
a merely idle curiosity. but with an
intelligent interest
1t seemed odd to see a woman thus
looking over a piece of machinery;
but man who ought to know whether
women are interested in mechanical
things or not said in response to an
inquiry on the subject that undoubted-
ly they were.
Mechanics, he said, were born, not
made, and there were some women
who had a mechanical bent or inclina-
ton, and took to machines kindly and
naturally, and easily learned to run
them.
He had known, for instance, of a
woman who could run an automobile
with ease and skill and bring 1t in
always in perfect condition, while her
husband could never run the same
machine without getting something out
of kilter about it. Evidently here the
woman was the better mechanic Of
the two.
He had known likewise the wife of
man owning a power launch to be
able to handle the boat better than
her husband. In America, at least,
there were plenty Of women Of more or
less mechanical talent.
In this country, whatever mechanical
instinct women might have was fos-
tered by the presence in almost every
household Of labor-saving mechanical
COntrivances Of some sort or other, per-
haps of many sorts. There is the sew
ing machine for one thing, to be found
in every home; and there are washing
machines.
Women beat eggs in these days with
machines and so on; so that in this
country, at least, women have long
been familiar with machinery in some
form, and they are by no means so ig-
norant Of it, or so helpless in the face
of it as might be imagined, and they
even come to have a hardness with
tools. This man knew Of no reason
why they could not be trained in that
way.
So far, indeed, he said, as the house
hold kit Of tools was concerned, it
might be that the implements in it
would be brought to use by the women
of the household as often as by the
man. 1t would be she who would take
up the slack Of the sewing machine
belt, for instance, or do whatever
minor tinkering needed to be done
about the machine
AnG she would keep the carpet
sweeper in order; and there are many
households in which the woman looks
after the clocks and keeps them going.
And he would venture to say that
there was at least one household which
would instantly suggest itself to the
mind in which it was the mother and
not the father who always got the
nails out of the children's shoes, an
operation easy as it might seem till
tried, involving no mean skill in the
use of tools.
But leaving out of view these sim
pier, narrower, domestic channels, in
which she might nevertheless get more
or less training, there were other and
wider fields in which the woman of
mechanical bent could exercise her
talent or skill; as in these days in the
operating Of power driven vehicles or
boats. And to come back 10 the
woman looking at that engine in the
window, it might be that that was
a motor engine Of some sort, Of a kind
with which she was familiar, this one
showing some novel feature or some
improvement that had fixed her atten-
tion.
But whatever there was about It
that had caught her eye, it was alto
gether probable that she was looking
this engine over precisely as she
seemed to be, not with a mere idle Gu
rioslty, but with the eyes OF one hav-
ing an intelligent interest in such
things.-New York Sun.