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82 DOMESTIC LIFE.
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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Transcript
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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.
"In A Multitude Of Councillorsthere , Is...
it is because enquiry lias not been made with the same scrupulosity demanded by our special work . 1
It is our steady conviction that , so far from youngwomen now running the risk of being under-cultivated , there is greater danger of our most precious human material being injured hy a sedentary
studious life . They are eager to acquire ; they are not forced to think , or to work . It may be truly said that these things will right themselves ;
that so soon as women have drunk in all the knowledge which their new opportunities afford , they will , by the inherent mental spring of
human nature , begin to look about and see what they can do with it . Philosophically this is true ; but can we afford to be philosophical
while the health and mental efficiency of a generation of picked specimens is being injured . It may be one hundred , it may be two
hundred girls who suffer , ( we believe it to be many , many more , ) but remember that these are just the phalanx upon whom we
depend , our brightest and our best . We want all our women now , we cannot afford to lose any while so much work is to be done .
"We feel this matter to be of peculiar importance now that girls of what we call the lower class are fighting their way upwards .
They have often unhealthy homes in unhealthy localities ; and if they are induced by the fashion of those above them to give up all
stirring occupations in the house , they lose health which they know not how to restore .
It is not true that household labor is an " over-crowded" avocation . There is no strain upon the wages of the more respectable
class of female servants ; in fact , we are always hearing complaints that they are not to be had for love or money . And the domestic
management of the lower and middle classes is often so ill-conducted that it is evident much labor is required somewhere , before the
material life can be rendered a fit basis for the moral growth of the family .
We would have the innumerable women who are beginning to educate themselves , and who now for the first time possess the
inestimable advantages of colleges and good professors , to whom books are now the most attainable of luxuries , and who can feast
_from morning till night upon intellectual food , ask themselves , one and all , what they can do ; how best put their treasure out at
interest . Let them freely adopt professions , and enter into business , if they can see or make a way to do so . If notlet themas
, , they value their health of body and mind , accept freely and with a . willing heart , without any sense that they are incurring either loss
of time or degradation , their own share of the material work of
the world .
82 Domestic Life.
82 DOMESTIC LIFE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1858, page 82, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101858/page/10/
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