WOMAN'S EMPLOYMENT. 485 



Honest labor is only degrading when ill performed, and then the performer 

 is responsible for the degradation. 



With the present cheap price of wearing apparel, one can dress well and 

 lay away a balance on two dollars a week. An efficient housekeeper in one 

 of our best families has done all this, and put money at interest. 



We are too apt to be deceived by the glitter of appearances. 



The circuit court stenographer, who gets from ten to twenty-five dollars a 

 day, may seem to hold an enviable position, but the carpenter or farm laborer 

 is more to be envied, for the nerve destroying employment of the former^ can 

 never be compensated by any salary. 



You may envy the judge on his bench, but if he does not spend from two 

 to three hours a day in some vigorous manual labor, he will, in a few years, 

 be rather the object of your sympathy. 



Gladstone has preserved health and vitality to a vigorous old age, but the 

 ax to be seen in his hallway is a key to the mystery. Health is the vital 

 principle of happiness, and the one who would preserve it and pursue an 

 indoor or sedentary life must follow the example of the ''grand old man," 

 the advice of a Dr. Lewis or a Dr. Hall and take open-air exercise every day. 



Many an ex-school teacher, book-keeper or dress-maker whose nerves have 

 gone into bankruptcy have found the health which is wealth by taking up 

 out-door employment entirely. All the way from California to the Atlantic 

 coast it is being proven that these ventures are possible, healthful and profit- 

 able. A large capital of energy and stick-to-it-ive-ness, with a little ready 

 money are all that is needed. 



The reason so many fail in market gardening, small-fruit culture, bee-keep- 

 ing or poultry-raising is because they do not pay the price of success in the 

 way of preparation and application. The market gardening and small-fruit 

 culture in and about large cities is almost entirely monopolized by Germans, 

 a part of whose national inheritance is a habit of thorough preparation for 

 work. 



I would be glad to show, by examples, how women have shown themselves- 

 capable of this preparation, but time will not permit. In out-door work 

 success has crowned her efforts. In California one woman sends out forty- 

 tons of raisins a year; in Minnesota women are successful wheat growers: in 

 Iowa alone nine hundred and fifty-five women own or manage farms; in^ 

 Kansas and other Western States many unmarried women are taking advan- 

 tage of opportunities and locating farm lands. It is a fixed law in political 

 economy that wages fall whenever the supply of helpers exceeds the demand 

 for help, for no one will pay six dollars for work that some one else is eager 

 to do for five; this is in the nature of things and not because of the 

 oppressiveness of employers. The only remedy is for women to seek out 

 some employment where skilled lielp is in demand, and such places are plenty. 

 Gail Hamilton says, with her characteristic custom of sending causes of' 

 unhappy results home to the sufferer : " The two hundred thousand working 

 women in ISTew York City make machines of themselves and then wonder that 

 they are treated as machines. They do not choose to use their brams, and 

 then wonder that they are treated as if they had no brains. They choose the 

 narrowest possible path and wonder that they are crowded," and we feel the 

 wisdom of her words. From across the sea comes a more pitiful cry and the 

 suffering comes from the crowded ranks of these same " machine workers."' 



We are told upon good authority that it is poverty and not religion which. 



