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392 annals of needlewomen.
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.
.. Chapter V. " I Am The Woman That Work...
overcome them , requires a master mind / and such a mind is rarely if ever found save where education and culture have been brought
among to bear a in very earl large y training portion . But of our the female lack of children education owing that to exists their
, early application to labor , leaves their minds utterly unbraced against the struggles of life which almost all have to encounter .
Early placed out in the _^ rorld , they imbibe no mental resources in aid of the organization of their natural abilities to their best use .
The few years that succeed childhood are passed in mechanically following whatever industry is thrown in their way ; their strength
thus soon becomes early over-taxed , and in the hope of becoming independentand to escape from labor by securing in a home of
their own comfort , and freedom , early marriages are contracted . But here the neglect of mental training is fully tested : they are
ignorant of the commonest arrangements necessary either to make or keep the homes over which they preside ; they know neither how
to mend or wash their own clothes , of cooking and other domestic ; matters they are alike ignorantand when in time they become
, mothers , their children suffer from the same incapacity which clogs the wheels of household economy at every turn .
It is to these successive generations of uneducated mothers that a great part of the misery of the metropolis may be traced . If we
search them out , we find a mass of these helpless women among our sempstresses' community ; fitted for no single occupation save
common sewing , and that too of the coarsest kind , they swell the needle-market and depreciate the price of labor there .
Uninteresting as many of these poor women appear , they are nevertheless great objects of compassion , the error in their early
training is not to be ascribed to them but rather to those for whose benefit they were deprived of educationand if that society
ne-, glected to do its duty by them in youth , it must expect to bear the "burthen of their existence when they are past a teachable age .
Notwithstanding their deficiencies , many of these women are respectablewillingand well disposedcausing regreton becoming
better acquainted , , with them , that no , opportunity had , been afforded them of improving their minds and advancing in life . Their ideas
however , are generally , as one might expect , limited to the day's exigencies ; any forethoughteither for their own or their children's
benefit is totally ignored . One , day ' s deprivation of work , a temporary sickness , or any other casualty , throws them back in life
and they rarely recover their position , they are therefore continually in wantand a constant burthen to any benevolent person
who , in compassion , , has once befriended them . But the help afforded to this class of persons is like pouring water into a leaky
vessel—no permanent good can result from the temporary aid afforded them _*^ You visit such a caseand touched by the mother ' s
, need and depressed condition , relieve her—a week later you return
but the object of your charity is not a _^ Mt more independent than
392 Annals Of Needlewomen.
392 annals of needlewomen .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1862, page 392, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081862/page/32/
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