WINE-MAKING IN CALIFORNIA. 247 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



WOMAN IN THE VINEYARD. 



I have already taken occasion to allude in the preface, to 

 the warm interest some ladies have taken in our industry, and 

 that some of the best managed vineyards and wine cellars are 

 under the control and personal supervision or women. Miss 

 Austin, at Fresno, planted and managed for years one of the 

 .largest and finest raisin vineyards, gained enviable notoriety 

 for the excellence of her" products, and although now she has 

 taken a male partner of her joys and sorrows, I do not doubt 

 that her interest and influence is as prominent and beneficial 

 as before. What I now wish to place before my readers is 

 the wide field of pleasant labor for women which our beloved 

 industry opens Co them ; a field in which I have no doubt 

 that many will find pleasant change and relief; while to 

 thousands of industrious women it would offer a more healthy 

 means of gaining an honorable living, than the work in fac- 

 tories, the scanty pittance they can earn with their needle at 

 sewing and embroidering, or the still more unhealthy work of 

 washing and ironing. 



Let me not be understood as advising that our fair friends 

 should take the hoe and the plow, or drive the stakes, and do 

 the hard work in the vineyard. These are not for them, and 

 every true man and American citizen will rejoice with me 

 that we live in a country where woman is spared them. But 

 there are many of the lighter and more pleasant operations, 

 which they can do as well and better even than men, as their 

 fingers are more nimble and quick than our more clumsy 

 appendages. Let us consider them in succession; and I 



