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OUR FRENCH CORRESPONDENT. 53
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
_ Paris, February 17th, 1862. Ladies Wit...
M . Armand Levy , forgetting that but a very small fraction of the earth is properly cultivatedand that in comparison to its productive
, powers it is in a state of barrenness , so as to afford more employment than all the strong hands on its surface can execute for centuries to .
come , put the startling question to those generally "wishing to ; make the position of working women more comfortable than it is ,
by not practically ignoring that they are working women , " What _, motives have you for employing females ? Is it because men are
not to be found ? " He , then , evidently taking for granted that modern society is in its purest possible state , and incapable of
further amelioration , asserted that it would be dissolved , and the dwellers of the lanes and alleys , the barmaids , and the
innumerable females that gain some sous daily by their needle , and eventually fill prisonshospitalsand penitentiaries , would lose their
, , feminine delicacy were they encouraged , much less suffered to live comfortably by branches of trade and industry that are manifestly
best suited to delicate as "well as dexterous fingers , and quick , observant brains . But- the principal point , in an article abounding
with quotations from the writer ' s favorite work , _"La Feniine , " was that ouvriers could not suffer ouvrieres to infringe on the prescriptive
monopoly which the former possess of nearly every trade that is at all profitable , and requiring ingenuity rather than physical exertion .
"Were they to do so , he said , it would not be attended with any advantage to the intruders , as the masters and employers generaUir
would only make it a means of cutting wages down to a very lo _^ figure in consequence of the great competition that would bt
thereby occasioned . The idea never occurred to M . Levy , that were women admitted as working members of several trades , for which
they are by nature admirably adapted , separate ateliers could be organized for them . He therefore concluded that introducing
them into printing establishments would be the source of great immorality , even though we see at every party , ball , soiree , and
promenade , both sexes equally represented without anybody objecting to it . But work and pleasure are two very different things ,
were we to believe M . Levy . The first he doubtless thinks with many doctors is an accursed thing , and therefore demoralising ;
and the second , under the form of dissipation , and not recreation formed by variety of employmentsthe very reverse . But France
would not be worthy of the hig , h position which she occupies amongst the civilized nations of the worldwere Frenchmen
gene-, rally to hold such opinions . And that they do not was folly shown hy M . Paul Duponfca member of the corps legislatif , the State
, printer , and a man of rare intelligence even in Paris , as -well as one who is convinced that so long as society entertains its blind and
cruel prejudices that will not allow woman to work , and imprisons , her for begging-womanby the laws of retributive justice , will be
, , the bane of a society that treats her so unjustly . The respected
head of the _imprimerie de V administration is by early education a
Our French Correspondent. 53
OUR FRENCH CORRESPONDENT . 53
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1862, page 53, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031862/page/53/
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