54 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



manufacturing districts. But the natural effect of such employ 

 ment upon women is to render them negligent of their persons, 

 and squalid and dirty in their appearance j and with this neglect 

 of person, they cease to be treated with any deference by the 

 other sex, and lose all respect for themselves. Personal neglect 

 and uncleanliness are followed by their almost invariable con 

 comitants, mental and moral impurity and degradation. The 

 working likewise promiscuously with men, which is done con 

 tinually, must expose them to rude jests, and to language and 

 manners which, among the lower class of men, are too often 

 grossly indecent and immoral. In all other respects, many kinds 

 of out-door agricultural employment must be, and is, as it is 

 admitted, favorable to health and vigor. The general health and 

 vigor of such women, so many hours engaged in reasonable exer 

 cise in the open air, contrast most favorably with the effemi 

 nacy, debility, and early decay of those who are confined in 

 heated and close manufactories, or in sedentary employments 

 within doors. Nor, in point of moral conduct, as far as mere 

 occupation is concerned, is there any reason to suppose that the 

 agricultural classes would suffer in comparison with the manu 

 facturing classes, or with the host of young women in cities, 

 employed in various trades and in-door occupations. We have 

 few instances, in the free states, of women being employed in 

 field labor. The women in Wethersfield, Connecticut, have for 

 years been accustomed to the cultivation of onions, doing every 

 thing for the crop, excepting ploughing and manuring the land : 

 even to preparing it for the market. They certainly have 

 suffered no evil, but, on the contrary, have derived much benefit, 

 from the occupation. Nowhere, it is believed, can men, depend 

 ent upon their own exertions for support, find wives better able 

 to manage their household affairs, more frugal, more industrious, 

 or more tidy, than among the industrious young women of Weth 

 ersfield. It must seem strange to many persons if I also add, as 

 I know I may with truth, that many of these young women are 

 persons of good education, and to a degree, allowing for the 

 retired condition of society in which they have been brought up, 

 even of refined manners : so totally different, indeed, are the 

 conditions of the laboring classes in England and the United 

 States. In truth, no comparison can properly be instituted be 

 tween them. In general, among the laboring classes in England, 

 their low condition, their ignorance, and want of education, and 



