iNTKObUCflON. 23 



help as the cultivation and preservation of fruit could 

 offer; others have neither the money nor the desire for anj' 

 other -way of living than that of herding together iu mass- 

 es ; but a certain percentage of the strongest and ablest 

 could, once established in the country, support themselves 

 by such avocations. 



For instance, a thrifty woman rents or buytt half an 

 acre of land on which she plants half an acre of currants. 

 They would require after that to be ploughed once a year 

 and she would need help to pick tbem. If there is a 

 glut in.the market there is jelly or jam to be made and 

 pure currant jelly is always in demand. Later on, 

 spiced currants would find a ready sale. And this is only 

 one of tho.se small fruits which a woman can cultivate with 

 far less expenditure of vitality than she is forced to spend 

 in the use of the needle. 



To take care of fruit is fatiguing work but what work is 

 not? With 80,000 superfluous women in one state alone, 

 not aU, but many of them, self-supportiag, it is not to be 

 supposed they shall find work that is not laborious. That 

 is not the question. It is. How shall women be able to se- 

 cure the land and learn how to work it successfully? To 

 the thrifty and energetic alone will it be possible to find 

 the way, and their number will be so limited by the na- 

 ture of things that there can be no danger their ranks? 

 shall be overcrowded. 



Fruit culture by women is not a chimera. It has been 

 successfully tried again and again. It does not pre-suppose 

 that the culturist is compelled to do all the hard work with 

 her own hands any more than that the farmer must do 

 all his work without help. 



As an example of what has been accomplished by one 



