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CULTIVATION OF FEMALE INDUSTRY IN IRELAN...
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.
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4 Part Ii. Needuework V. Domestic Servic...
as well as in France and Italy , who cannot conform to the habits and manners of their Saxon neighbors ; but whonevertheless
, , attain a civilization and refinement of their own . Differences are not necessarily inferiorities . Our girls " don't feel it in their
bones to wash , cook , and polish ; and they do not readily yield to the popular urgency to employ them in this species of servitude .
For them the work in demand has no ascertained value . It gives no promise of social elevation . No labor is worse paid than this in
Ireland , or has done so little for its women . The Edinburgh _JReview _, April , 1862 , page 421 , gives a picture , which we regret to say is but
too lifelike . After describing the usual morning routine of Irish housekeepingthe writer says : " When we have once seen the open way
, in which they are treated as suspected persons , we can no longer wonder at any complaints of bad servants in Ireland . The wonder
is that any self-respecting man or woman should ever go to service . " The fact isthey have not this self-respect . Their want of educational
training , and , the absence of any choice of modes of gaining livelihoodsdrive them unwillingly to this work .
A scarcity , of this household labor would be a benefit , not only to the servantbut to the mistress ; and every industrial resource
, should be encouraged that would increase the number of means of earning bread . Under their operation , domestic circumstances would
have a fair chance of improving . Competition with other sorts of employment would compel advantages to be accorded in this ; and the
probability is , that in an independent class pushing up from lower rankswe should find better women to supply our social wants
able to , comprehend our requirements , and willing to engage in our , service on terms of mutual profit .
Ladies visiting workhouses , and selecting girls to train to household dutiesare doing a great good , but they must leave
behind a large bod , y of non-elect ; and what is to become of these ? The State provision for their instruction ought to afford some
teaching to enable them to fall into the ranks of the workers of any manufacture within , their reach ; and these would increase if skilled
hands were more readily procurable by employers . Commercial men who avail themselves of Irish female labor
are unanimous in complaining of its quality , and their grievance is as worthy to be entertained as that of housewives . Nothing but
its cheapness could compensate them for dealing with such unprepared hands , and the low rates of payments are not their illiberality ,
but the fault of the system of education which gives no special Information on the subject of the industrial employments likely to
be useful to those who have to work for daily bread . There is great ground of complaint for the way in which the
needlework manufactures of Ireland have been slighted . While they have been doing more than any other agency to elevate our
p depressed auperism female to indep population endent life , and which have has formed been , larg a e passage ly useful , from the
YOI .. X . _B
Cultivation Of Female Industry In Irelan...
CULTIVATION OF FEMALE INDUSTRY IN IRELAND . 33
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Sept. 1, 1862, page 33, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01091862/page/33/
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