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they tlnd it the chances are that they will be physically unfit to shoulder it. Theirs is nearly always the battle of the weak against the strong; not that men assail them, even in defense ot their own advantage in the race for living, but their pursuit of the prize is all-absorbing. Thererore those women who stand without and knock are unheard or unheeded. Many fields in which they might reap good harvests are fenced in and they are forbidden to enter. Their sickles rust, though the reapers already in tread underfoot golden grain enough to feed all the unwilling idlers “who only stand and wait/’ yet who would also serve were the gates swung back a little.I can not speak too emphatically on this point. There are large numbers of women in nearly every man’s acquaintance shut out from opportunity for self-support by congenial work. Many of them are forced to resort to the over-crowded sewing ranks in which the hardest and coarsest living is all that they can hope for as their reward for more hours of killing toil than are laid upon the hewers and drawers in any country under Heaven.The profession of teaching is equally overcrowded, though I do not lay so much stress on that, believing that most young women who enter it do so with the intention to ex- I change it for the first desirable man who offers himself in marriage. They are right, from the .woman’s point of view, and while I do not and can not blame them, I must not forget that a noble calling suffers by being diverted from its high object and made a mere stepping stone to marriage.The avenues of commerce which, in France, for instance, are throbged with with women (no more apt and capable, naturally, than, our own), are in America nearly all closed to women. The women of France are educated in business methods, and they manage commercial interests small and great, with admirable tact and judgment—better, in fact, than men.Is not this an example worth emulating in a country that, has given woman certain exclusive property rights and yet practically denied her the right to help herself or anybody else?There is abroad much pretty and poetical sentiment respecting .woman. From the birth of art man has made her the symbol of the beautiful. The loftiest regions have revealed her as the virgin mother of God. ..Esthetic instinct has found in her a thousand forms of exquisite thought. In sculpture we find her soft and flowing outlines the tangible and enduring expression of man’s puresti avirl luniruti/iiw lrnt* url
Newspaper Details
Indianapolis Journal of Freedom and Right
Indianapolis, Indiana, US
Thu, Jan 15, 1880
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Badgerlink
WI, USA 04 May 2018
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