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    WHAT ; CAN EDUCATED WOMEN DO? 291 I

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    *& M Number I Consrciitjded Of This My J...

    and many a woman lives to middle age tinder her parents' roof with _, no more in her purse at one given time than ten pounds .

    But every money respectable tradesman manages to start his son ; it is an item in his life's expenditure for which he has all along

    calculated . He knew he must do it when _^ the boy was born , and whether .-he pays to bind him as an apprenticeor helps him to a share in some

    , business , or supports him during the first unproductive professional years , it comes home to him in the shape of money disbursed from

    his accumulated earnings , —strictly capital , —or set aside possibly in the latter case from his own regular income . As a little child , I

    used to hear of a certain legend of the last century , in which a thriving tradesman , finding no vacancy for his son in his native

    place , took him on a good horse with three hundred pounds of money to a fair town thirty miles distant , and there set him up as a

    mercer , to the great ultimate success of that youth . The substantial father , equipped after the fashion of 1750 , trotting along with his

    boy and his bag of gold , is a picturesque type of what fathers do daythough they brailway nowand do not carry their

    cap every ital in , a leather bag . go But y I am very much , afraid that that tradesman did not spend three pounds on his daughter ; nor , as slie could

    probably , in those days , bake , and wash , and brew , and make all her own garmentswas her case a lamentable one as it might be

    now . Probably the , going out as a governess was the very last thing that would have entered ker head in 1750 , and she either married

    some comfortable tradesman in her native place , and entered into all his household necessities , or she lived actively at home , very little

    arrangements troubled by ideas of societ of gentility y answered and pretty the deprivations well for her they then entail ; but . discre The

    pancies have grown up and they do not answer now . She will suffer cruell make y if she witho cannot ut make a little a little ital money to start to live with upon : and , and therefore she cannot her

    chances wages money as of teacher marriage or shop being -woman cap really with dimini , no hope shed , of she setting must , up work on , her for

    own account . It seems , therefore , as if no extensive relief of our suffering class of

    educated women could be achieved until fathers are won over to see the matter in its true liht . Bnt it may be said that fathers cannot

    afford to ive italof g however small an amountto their sons and daughters g too , cap But , I submit that they are equally , bound to their

    children of either sex , and that in very many cases where they bring their sons to professions and leave their daughters portionless ,

    they ought up in justice to give tjie sons a lower and less expensive start in life , and keep some money laid by for their girls .

    Moreover , fathers would then gain greatly in the relief of part of often their suffer present greatl anxiety from , for fears they for certainl their future y love thoug their h daug they hters , and not

    have the courage to y break throug , h the social chains , -which cause may those , . fears . If a _g-irl were taught how to make capital reproductive ,

    vox , iv . x 2

    What ; Can Educated Women Do? 291 I

    WHAT ; CAN EDUCATED WOMEN DO ? 291 I

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1860, page 291, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011860/page/3/