Household Papers and StoriesStowe, Harriet Beecher
General
Household Papers and Stories
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Didactic fiction; Home economics -- Fiction; Short stories
employment of attending on the sick into the noble calling it ought to
be, and secure for it its appropriate rewards."
"There is another opening for woman," said I,--"in the world of
business. The system of commercial colleges now spreading over our
land is a new and most important development of our times. There that
large class of young men who have either no time or no inclination for
an extended classical education can learn what will fit them for that
active material life which in our broad country needs so many workers.
But the most pleasing feature of these institutions is, that the
complete course is open to women no less than to men, and women there
may acquire that knowledge of bookkeeping and accounts, and of the
forms and principles of business transactions, which will qualify them
for some of the lucrative situations hitherto monopolized by the other
sex. And the expenses of the course of instruction are so arranged as
to come within the scope of very moderate means. A fee of fifty
dollars entitles a woman to the benefit of the whole course, and she
has the privilege of attending at any hours that may suit her own
engagements and convenience."
"Then, again," said my wife, "there are the departments of millinery
and dressmaking, and the various branches of needlework, which afford
employment to thousands of women; there is typesetting, by which many
are beginning to get a living; there are the manufactures of cotton,
woolen, silk, and the numberless useful articles which employ female
hands in their fabrication,--all of them opening avenues by which,
with more or less success, a subsistence can be gained."
"Well, really," said Bob, "it would appear, after all, that there are
abundance of openings for women. What is the cause of the outcry and
distress? How is it that we hear of women starving, driven to vice and
crime by want, when so many doors of useful and profitable employment
stand open to them?"
"The question would easily be solved," said my wife, "if you could
once see the kind and class of women who thus suffer and starve.
There may be exceptions, but too large a portion of them are girls
and women who can or will do no earthly thing well,--and, what is
worse, are not willing to take the pains to be taught to do anything
well. I will describe to you one girl, and you will find in every
intelligence-office a hundred of her kind to five thoroughly trained
ones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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