HORTICULTURAL EDUCATION FOR WOMEN. J 05 



are better than wisdom, and it is better to dwell in the tents of 

 wickedness than to be a " doorkeeper in the house of the Lord." 



To meet the demands of fashion, children are sacrificed, health 

 destroyed, homes made wretched, useful knowledge neglected ; in 

 short, all that tends to the highest physical, moral, and mental 

 development is almost ignored. The dominant tendency' of city 

 life is to make poor wives and mothers, and it is axiomatic that 

 without good wives and mothers there cannot be happy homes ; 

 and thus the public virtue is sapped and eventually destroyed. 



Most of the avenues of self-supporting labor are closed by the 

 edict of Mrs. Grundy. Many women drag out a hand-to-mouth 

 existence in some employment called genteel, and are sore beset 

 by the temptation to accept the friendship and help of those enor- 

 mous brutes that lie in wait, devoting their time and energies and 

 finding their highest enjoyment in destroying those unfortunates 

 whose environments or whose lack of resisting power render them 

 victims to a fate far worse than immediate death. 



The present style of living in our cities and suburban towns is so 

 costly as to preclude marriage, in many cases ; an evil prolific in 

 most serious results. He had long felt that woman has a great 

 work and opportunity in floriculture and horticulture ; a work that 

 will aflTord excellent remuneration and is altogether better than 

 many occupations now over thronged with working women. In the 

 West, where customs and prejudices are less inveterate than in the 

 East, women have achieved great successes as keepers of green- 

 houses, cultivators of small fruits, poulterers, vineyardists, and in 

 many other fields of labor peculiarly adapted to their capacity. 

 When in California a few years ago, the speaker visited the Fresno 

 raisin vineyards, many of them owned and cultivated by women 

 who had entered upon this work in poor health but had found 

 health, competence, and happiness in this delightful occupation. 

 In several cases he found women whose net profits were more than 

 two thousand dollars per annum. 



He would be glad to see thousands of our women, now barely 

 able to earn enough to keep soul and bodj' together, whose only 

 "earthly future is incessant toil unsweetened by hope, unrelieved by 

 even a sight of the " divine face of mother Nature," delivered 

 from the house of bondage and " go forth under the open sky." 



Mrs. H. L. T. Wolcott had thought this Society ought to do 

 more for children by ofl^ering prizes for flowers grown by them. 



