THE STRAWBERRY 



A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS 

 OF STRAWBERRY PRODUCTION IN ALL ITS BRANCHES 



Volume I No. 10 



Three Rivers, Mich., October, 1906 



$1.00 a Year 



WHAT CAN A WOMAN DO? is the suggest- 

 ive title of a recent volume, and it is a question 

 that millions of bright and aspiring women are 

 today asking — women who seek independence 

 on the one hand, or who, by force of circumstances, are com- 

 pelled to self-support, perhaps, indeed, to be the support of 

 others. It is a grave question with many of them, and the cor- 

 rect answer to it would be to them such a blessing as none can 

 know who has not been placed in their situation. Modern 

 conditions and the modern outlook upon life, as it relates to the 

 social and economic position of woman, have worked extraor- 

 dinary changes and made necessary an entirely new departure 

 for her. Even the wife and mother finds herself surrounded 

 by quite different conditions fiom those her mother serenely 

 lived among. What 

 can a woman do.'' 

 then is become a 

 question of large im- 

 portance to herself 

 and to the world, 

 and he who answers 

 it correctly for one 

 honest and sincere 

 woman has per- 

 formed a service of 

 value to society in 

 general as well as to 

 the individual bene- 

 ficiary. 



And what can a 

 woman do? Think it 



over, and consider all the occupations women are now filling 

 with no greater variations as to success or failure than those 

 which obtain in the case of her brothers, and the question 

 would seem more apropos if stated thus: What is there that 

 a woman cannot do?" Yet when we go a little deeper into 

 the question and observe the conditions under which she labors, 

 we find that much of her work, as now performed, is repugnant 

 to her very nature, deadens interest in life, destroys that sweet 

 femininity which is woman's greatest charm and greatest bless- 

 ing to the world as well, and takes her out of her sphere. 



The question, then, is rather: "What can a woman do to 

 obtain a livelihood in work congenial to her nature, to her de- 

 sires, and the tendency of which is to inspire, encourage, de- 

 velop her along the lines of her own being?" Correctly to 

 answer this question would indeed be a great world-service. 

 As a primary postulate it may be laid down that whatever 

 comes nearest to the home life in its nature will be the occupa- 

 tion best calculated for woman. As she is the home-maker by 

 nature, it must be in the shadow of the home that her ideals 

 shall be achieved, her life lived out in its fullness. Therefore, 



we must place her in some occupation which, if it do not come 

 within the actual walls of the home, with husband and children 

 as objects of her first care and solicitude, yet shall be so con- 

 nected with a sheltering roof as to bring her directly within the 

 sphere of its influence and permit her to work out under its pro- 

 tecting beneficence her own ideals. 



The mind is brought insensibly to the garden, with its flowers 

 and plants and other growing things, when we reach this point 

 in our search for the answer to the question. And whose hand 

 is better shaped than woman's to give the touch that plant life 

 so much appreciates, and to which it so eagerly responds? And 

 whose mind enters with keener sympathy into the needs and 

 nature of these genile friends of humanity than woman's? It 

 is the world's experience that woman, whenever she has sought 



divertisement or gain 

 along these lines of 

 endeavor, has suc- 

 ceeded well, and has 

 found joy and pleas- 

 ure in her achieve- 

 ments. 



If the changes 

 wrought in the social 

 and economic life of 

 woman have been 

 revolutionary, other 

 revolutions have gone 

 forward synchron- 

 ously, and if her ne- 

 cessities have in- 

 creased, so have the 

 necessities of the world; and these she may help to supply. 

 Today the great cities are unable to secure needful supplies of 

 fruits and flowers — needful for their health, needful as offsets 

 to the mode of living in crowded streets, the breathing of pol- 

 luted atmospheres, the haste, the push, the scramble, the per- 

 petual struggle. Here, then, is a field lying fallow to the 

 hand of woman, and it is within the limits of this field that she 

 may with assurance look for ample and complete satisfaction. 

 What a woman can do in this direction is so large and so in- 

 spiring a possibility as to render anything like an adequate esti- 

 mate out of the question. 



Naturally, The Strawberry is inclined to consider in this 

 connection the particular field it was established to represent, 

 and yet it does so without undue bias, and whatever of en- 

 thusiasm it may display is founded upon actual results already 

 accomplished by women within that field. All over this great 

 land of ours, and among them are women by the score who 

 will read these lines with approval, earnest, intelligent women 

 are finding in their strawberry fields and "patches" sources of 

 revenue sufficient for their support and for the education of 



