femininity she is quite as pretty and modest a young woman as any to be
found in the most sheltered circle, has yet a most exceptional talent
for public speaking, which draws crowds to hear her, and makes lecturing
for her a lucrative profession, as well as a means of advocating just
and generous sentiments, and of stimulating her own sex to nobler
purposes; and the same law which relates to Siddons and Kemble and
Ristori relates also to her.
"The doctrine of _vocations_ is a good one and a safe one. If a woman
mistakes her vocation, so much the worse for her; the world does not
suffer, but she does, and the suffering speedily puts her where she
belongs. There is not near so much danger from attempts to imitate Anna
Dickinson, as there is from the more common feminine attempts to rival
the _demi-monde_ of Paris in fantastic extravagance and luxury.
"As to how a woman may determine whether she has any such vocation,
there is a story quite in point. A good Methodist elder was listening to
an ardent young mechanic, who thought he had a call to throw up his shop
and go to preaching.
"'I feel,' said the young ardent, 'that I have a call to preach.'
"'Hast thou noticed whether people seem to have a call to hear thee?'
said the shrewd old man. 'I have always noticed that a true call of the
Lord may be known by this, that people have a _call_ to hear.'"
"Well," said Bob, "the most interesting question still remains: What are
to be the employments of woman? What ways are there for her to use her
talents, to earn her livelihood and support those who are dear to her,
when Providence throws that necessity upon her? This is becoming more
than ever one of the pressing questions of our age. The war has deprived
so many thousands of women of their natural protectors, that everything
must be thought of that may possibly open a way for their self-support."
"Well, let us look over the field," said my wife. "What is there for
woman?"
"In the first place," said I, "come the professions requiring natural
genius,--authorship, painting, sculpture, with the subordinate arts of
photographing, coloring, and finishing; but when all is told, these
furnish employment to a very limited number,--almost as nothing to the
whole. Then there is teaching, which is profitable in its higher
branches, and perhaps the very pleasantest of all the callings open to
woman; but teaching is at present an overcrowded profession, the
applicants everywhere outnumbering the places. Architecture and
landscape-gardening are arts every way suited to the genius of woman,
and there are enough who have the requisite mechanical skill and
mathematical education; and though never yet thought of for the sex,
that I know of, I do not despair of seeing those who shall find in this
field a profession at once useful and elegant. When women plan
dwelling-houses, the vast body of tenements to be let in our cities
will wear a more domestic and comfortable air, and will be built more
with reference to the real wants of their inmates."
"I have thought," said Bob, "that _agencies_ of various sorts, as
canvassing the country for the sale of books, maps, and engravings,
might properly employ a great many women. There is a large class whose
health suffers from confinement and sedentary occupations, who might, I
think, be both usefully and agreeably employed in business of this sort,
and be recruiting their health at the same time."
"Then," said my wife, "there is the medical profession."
"Yes," said I. "The world is greatly obliged to Miss Blackwell and other
noble pioneers who faced and overcame the obstacles to the attainment of
a thorough medical education by females. Thanks to them, a new and
lucrative profession is now open to educated women in relieving the
distresses of their own sex; and we may hope that in time, through their
intervention, the care of the sick may also become the vocation of
cultivated, refined, intelligent women, instead of being left, as
heretofore, to the ignorant and vulgar. The experience of our late war
has shown us what women of a high class morally and intellectually can
do in this capacity. Why should not this experience inaugurate a new and
sacred calling for refined and educated women? Why should not NURSING
become a vocation equal in dignity and in general esteem to the medical
profession, of which it is the right hand? Why should our dearest hopes,
in the hour of their greatest peril, be committed into the hands of
Sairey Gamps, when the world has seen Florence Nightingales?"
"Yes, indeed," said my wife; "I can testify, from my own experience,
that the sufferings and dangers of the sick-bed, for the want of
intelligent, educated nursing, have been dreadful. A prejudiced,
pig-headed, snuff-taking old woman, narrow-minded and vulgar, and more
confident in her own way than seven men that can render a reason, enters
your house at just the hour and moment when all your dearest earthly
hopes are brought to a crisis. She becomes absolute dictator over your
delicate, helpless wife and your frail babe,--the absolute dictator of
all in the house. If it be her sovereign will and pleasure to enact all
sorts of physiological absurdities in the premises, who shall say her
nay? 'She knows her business, she hopes!' And if it be her edict, as it
was of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her babies shall eat
four baked beans the day it is four days old, eat them it must; and if
the baby die in convulsions four days after, it is set down as the
mysterious will of an overruling Providence.
"I know and have seen women lying upon laced pillows under silken
curtains, who have been bullied and dominated over in the hour of their
greatest helplessness by ignorant and vulgar tyrants, in a way that
would scarce be thought possible in civilized society, and children that
have been injured or done to death by the same means. A celebrated
physician told me of a babe whose eyesight was nearly ruined by its
nurse taking a fancy to wash its eyes with camphor, 'to keep it from
catching cold,' she said. I knew another infant that was poisoned by the
nurse giving it laudanum in some of those patent nostrums which these
ignorant creatures carry secretly in their pockets, to secure quiet in
their little charges. I knew one delicate woman who never recovered from
the effects of being left at her first confinement in the hands of an
ill-tempered, drinking nurse, and whose feeble infant was neglected and
abused by this woman in a way to cause lasting injury. In the first four
weeks of infancy the constitution is peculiarly impressible; and infants
of a delicate organization may, if frightened and ill-treated, be the
subjects of just such a shock to the nervous system as in mature age
comes from the sudden stroke of a great affliction or terror. A bad
nurse may affect nerves predisposed to weakness in a manner they never
will recover from. I solemnly believe that the constitutions of more
women are broken up by bad nursing in their first confinement than by
any other cause whatever. And yet there are at the same time hundreds
and thousands of women wanting the means of support, whose presence in a
sick-room would be a benediction. I do trust that Miss Blackwell's band
of educated nurses will not be long in coming, and that the number of
such may increase till they effect a complete revolution in this
vocation. A class of cultivated, well-trained, intelligent nurses would
soon elevate the employment of attending on the sick into the noble
calling it ought to be, and secure for it its appropriate rewards."
"There is another opening for woman," said I,--"in the world of
business. The system of commercial colleges now spreading over our land
is a new and a most important development of our times. There that large
class of young men who have either no time or no inclination for an
extended classical education can learn what will fit them for that
active material life which in our broad country needs so many workers.
But the most pleasing feature of these institutions is, that the
complete course is open to women no less than to men, and women there
may acquire that knowledge of book-keeping and accounts, and of the
forms and principles of business transactions, which will qualify them
for some of the lucrative situations hitherto monopolized by the other
sex. And the expenses of the course of instruction are so arranged as
to come within the scope of very moderate means. A fee of fifty dollars
entitles a woman to the benefit of the whole course, and she has the
privilege of attending at any hours that may suit her own engagements
and convenience."
"Then, again," said my wife, "there are the departments of millinery and
dressmaking, and the various branches of needle-work, which afford
employment to thousands of women; there is type-setting, by which many
are beginning to get a living; there are the manufactures of cotton,
woollen, silk, and the numberless useful articles which employ female
hands in their fabrication,--all of them opening avenues by which, with
more or less success, a subsistence can be gained."
"Well, really," said Bob, "it would appear, after all, that there are
abundance of openings for women. What is the cause of the outcry and
distress? How is it that we hear of women starving, driven to vice and
crime by want, when so many doors of useful and profitable employment
stand open to them?"
"The question would easily be solved," said my wife, "if you could once
see the kind and class of women who thus suffer and starve. There may be
exceptions, but too large a portion of them are girls and women who _can
or will do no earthly thing well_,--and what is worse, are not willing
to take the pains to be taught to do anything well. I will describe to
you one girl, and you will find in every intelligence-office a hundred
of her kind to five thoroughly trained ones.
"Imprimis: she is rather delicate and genteel-looking, and you may know
from the arrangement of her hair just what the last mode is of disposing
of rats or waterfalls. She has a lace bonnet with roses, a silk
mantilla, a silk dress trimmed with velvet, a white skirt with sixteen
tucks and an embroidered edge, a pair of cloth gaiters, underneath which
are a pair of stockings without feet, the only pair in her possession.
She has no under-linen, and sleeps at night in the working-clothes she
wears in the day. She never seems to have in her outfit either comb,
brush, or tooth-brush of her own,--neither needles, thread, scissors,
nor pins; her money, when she has any, being spent on more important
articles, such as the lace bonnet or silk mantilla, or the rats and
waterfalls that glorify her head. When she wishes to sew, she borrows
what is needful of a convenient next neighbor; and if she gets a place
in a family as second girl, she expects to subsist in these respects by
borrowing of the better-appointed servants, or helping herself from the
family stores.
"She expects, of course, the very highest wages, if she condescends to
live out; and by help of a trim outside appearance and the many
vacancies that are continually occurring in households, she gets places,
where her object is to do just as little of any duty assigned to her as
possible, to hurry through her performances, put on her fine clothes,
and go a-gadding. She is on free and easy terms with all the men she
meets, and ready at jests and repartee, sometimes far from seemly. Her
time of service in any one place lasts indifferently from a fortnight to
two or three months, when she takes her wages, buys her a new parasol in
the latest style, and goes back to the intelligence-office. In the
different families where she has lived she has been told a hundred times
the proprieties of household life, how to make beds, arrange rooms, wash
china, glass, and silver, and set tables; but her habitual rule is to
try in each place how small and how poor services will be accepted. When
she finds less will not do, she gives more. When the mistress follows
her constantly, and shows an energetic determination to be well served,
she shows that she _can_ serve well; but the moment such attention
relaxes, she slides back again. She is as destructive to a house as a
fire; the very spirit of wastefulness is in her; she cracks the china,
dents the silver, stops the water-pipes with rubbish, and after she is
gone, there is generally a sum equal to half her wages to be expended in
repairing the effects of her carelessness. And yet there is one thing
to be said for her: she is quite as careful of her employer's things as
of her own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does not appear at
once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as
much alertness and as little thought of conscience as a blackbird
chatters. It is difficult for people who have been trained from
childhood in the school of verities,--who have been lectured for even
the shadow of a prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till
truth becomes a habit of their souls,--it is very difficult for people
so educated to understand how to get on with those who never speak the
truth except by mere accident, who assert any and everything that comes
into their heads with all the assurance and all the energy of perfect
verity.
"What becomes of this girl? She finds means, by begging, borrowing,
living out, to keep herself extremely trim and airy for a certain length
of time, till the rats and waterfalls, the lace hat and parasol, and the
glib tongue, have done their work in making a fool of some honest young
mechanic who earns three dollars a day. She marries him with no higher
object than to have somebody to earn money for her to spend. And what
comes of such marriages?
"That is _one_ ending of her career; the other is on the street, in
haunts of vice, in prison, in drunkenness, and death.
"Whence come these girls? They are as numerous as yellow butterflies in
autumn; they flutter up to cities from the country; they grow up from
mothers who ran the same sort of career before them; and the reason why
in the end they fall out of all reputable employment and starve on poor
wages is, that they become physically, mentally, and morally incapable
of rendering any service which society will think worth paying for."
"I remember," said I, "that the head of the most celebrated dress-making
establishment in New York, in reply to the appeals of the needle-women
of the city for sympathy and wages, came out with published statements
to this effect: that the difficulty lay not in unwillingness of
employers to pay what work was worth, but in finding any work worth
paying for; that she had many applicants, but among them few who could
be of real use to her; that she, in common with everybody in this
country who has any kind of serious responsibilities to carry, was
continually embarrassed for want of skilled work-people, who could take
and go on with the labor of her various departments without her constant
supervision; that out of a hundred girls, there would not be more than
five to whom she could give a dress to be made and dismiss it from her
mind as something certain to be properly done.
"Let people individually look around their own little sphere, and ask
themselves if they know any woman really excelling in any _valuable_
calling or accomplishment who is suffering for want of work. All of us
know seamstresses, dress-makers, nurses, and laundresses, who have made
themselves such a reputation, and are so beset and overcrowded with
work, that the whole neighborhood is constantly on its knees to them
with uplifted hands. The fine seamstress, who can cut and make
trousseaus and layettes in elegant perfection, is always engaged six
months in advance; the pet dress-maker of a neighborhood must be engaged
in May for September, and in September for May; a laundress who sends
your clothes home in nice order always has all the work that she can do.
Good work in any department is the rarest possible thing in our American
life; and it is a fact that the great majority of workers, both in the
family and out, do only tolerably well,--not so badly that it actually
cannot be borne, yet not so well as to be a source of real, thorough
satisfaction. The exceptional worker in every neighborhood, who does
things really _well_, can always set her own price, and is always having
more offering than she can possibly do.
"The trouble, then, in finding employment for women lies deeper than the
purses or consciences of the employers; it lies in the want of education
in women; the want of _education_, I say,--meaning by education that
which fits a woman for practical and profitable employment in life, and
not mere common school learning."
"Yes," said my wife; "for it is a fact that the most troublesome and
hopeless persons to provide for are often those who have a good medium
education, but no feminine habits, no industry, no practical
calculation, no muscular strength, and no knowledge of any one of
woman's peculiar duties. In the earlier days of New England, women, as a
class, had far fewer opportunities for acquiring learning, yet were far
better educated, physically and morally, than now. The high school did
not exist; at the common school they learned reading, writing, and
arithmetic, and practised spelling; while at home they did the work of
the household. They were cheerful, bright, active, ever on the alert,
able to do anything, from the harnessing and driving of a horse to the
finest embroidery. The daughters of New England in those days looked the
world in the face without a fear. They shunned no labor; they were
afraid of none; and they could always find their way to a living."
"But although less instructed in school learning," said I, "they showed
no deficiency in intellectual acumen. I see no such women, nowadays, as
some I remember of that olden time,--women whose strong minds and ever
active industry carried on reading and study side by side with
household toils.
"I remember a young lady friend of mine, attending a celebrated
boarding-school, boarded in the family of a woman who had never been to
school longer than was necessary to learn to read and write, yet who was
a perfect cyclopedia of general information. The young scholar used to
take her Chemistry and Natural Philosophy into the kitchen, where her
friend was busy with her household work, and read her lessons to her,
that she might have the benefit of her explanations; and so, while the
good lady scoured her andirons or kneaded her bread, she lectured to her
_protégée_ on mysteries of science far beyond the limits of the
text-book. Many of the graduates of our modern high schools would find
it hard to shine in conversation on the subjects they had studied, in
the searching presence of some of these vigorous matrons of the olden
time, whose only school had been the leisure hours gained by energy and
method from their family cares."
"And in those days," said my wife, "there lived in our families a class
of American domestics, women of good sense and good powers of
reflection, who applied this sense and power of reflection to household
matters. In the early part of my married life, I myself had American
'help'; and they were not only excellent servants, but trusty and
invaluable friends. But now, all this class of applicants for domestic
service have disappeared, I scarce know why or how. All I know is, there
is no more a Betsey or a Lois, such as used to take domestic cares off
my shoulders so completely."
"Good heavens! where are they?" cried Bob. "Where do they hide? I would
search through the world after such a prodigy!"
"The fact is," said I, "there has been a slow and gradual reaction
against household labor in America. Mothers began to feel that it was a
sort of _curse_, to be spared, if possible, to their daughters; women
began to feel that they were fortunate in proportion as they were able
to be entirely clear of family responsibilities. Then Irish labor began
to come in, simultaneously with a great advance in female education.
"For a long while nothing was talked of, written of, thought of, in
teachers' meetings, conventions, and assemblies, but the neglected state
of female education; and the whole circle of the arts and sciences was
suddenly introduced into our free-school system, from which needle-work
as gradually and quietly was suffered to drop out. The girl who attended
the primary and high school had so much study imposed on her that she
had no time for sewing or housework; and the delighted mother was only
too happy to darn her stockings and do the housework alone, that her
daughter might rise to a higher plane than she herself had attained to.
The daughter, thus educated, had, on coming to womanhood, no solidity of
muscle, no manual dexterity, no practice or experience in domestic life;
and if she were to seek a livelihood, there remained only teaching, or
some feminine trade, or the factory."
"These factories," said my wife, "have been the ruin of hundreds and
hundreds of our once healthy farmers' daughters and others from the
country. They go there young and unprotected; they live there in great
boarding-houses, and associate with a promiscuous crowd, without even
such restraints of maternal supervision as they would have in great
boarding-schools; their bodies are enfeebled by labor often necessarily
carried on in a foul and heated atmosphere; and at the hours when off
duty, they are exposed to all the dangers of unwatched intimacy with the
other sex.
"Moreover, the factory-girl learns and practises but one thing,--some
one mechanical movement, which gives no scope for invention, ingenuity,
or any other of the powers called into play by domestic labor; so that
she is in reality unfitted in every way for family duties.
"Many times it has been my lot to try, in my family service, girls who
have left factories; and I have found them wholly useless for any of the
things which a woman ought to be good for. They knew nothing of a house,
or what ought to be done in it; they had imbibed a thorough contempt of
household labor, and looked upon it but as a _dernier ressort_; and it
was only the very lightest of its tasks that they could even begin to
think of. I remember I tried to persuade one of these girls, the pretty
daughter of a fisherman, to take some lessons in washing and ironing.
She was at that time engaged to be married to a young mechanic, who
earned something like two or three dollars a day.
"'My child,' said I, 'you will need to understand all kinds of
housework, if you are going to be married.'
"She tossed her little head,--
"'Indeed, she wasn't going to trouble herself about that.'
"'But who will get up your husband's shirts?'
"'O, he must put them out. I'm not going to be married to make a slave
of myself!'
"Another young factory-girl, who came for table and parlor work, was so
full of airs and fine notions, that it seemed as difficult to treat with
her as with a princess. She could not sweep, because it blistered her
hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate; she could not think of
putting them into hot dish-water, and for that reason preferred washing
the dishes in cold water; she required a full hour in the morning to
make her toilet; she was laced so tightly that she could not stoop
without vertigo, and her hoops were of dimensions which seemed to render
it impossible for her to wait upon table; she was quite exhausted with
the effort of ironing the table-napkins and chamber-towels;--yet she
could not think of 'living out' under two dollars a week.
"Both these girls had had a good free-school education, and could read
any amount of novels, write a tolerable letter, but had not learned
anything with sufficient accuracy to fit them for teachers. They were
pretty, and their destiny was to marry and lie a dead weight on the
hands of some honest man, and to increase, in their children, the number
of incapables."
"Well," said Bob, "what would you have? What is to be done?"