Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women / On the Various Duties of Life, Physical, Intellectual, And / Moral Development; Self-Culture, Improvement, Dress, Beauty, / Fashion, Employment, Education, The Home Relations, Their / Duties To Young Men, Marriage, Womanhood And Happiness.

by G. S. Weaver

Lecture Eight.

EMPLOYMENT.

_{Employment a Duty—Powers Developed by Labor—All Females are not Women—Dependence usually Ignoble—Adversity gives Strength—Girls should have Trades—Self-reliance necessary to Women—Do Something and Be Something—Riches no Excuse for Idleness—Employment gives Activity and Strength—Labor considered Vulgar—Life is given for Employment—Woman was Made for Usefulness.}

I take it that men and women were made for business, for activity, for employment. Activity is the life of us all. To do and to bear is the duty of life. We know that Employment makes the man in a very great measure. A man with no Employment, nothing to do, is scarcely a man. The secret of making men is to put them to work, and keep them at it. It is not study, not instruction, not careful moral training, not good parents, nor good society that makes men. These are means; but back of these lies the grand molding influence of men's life. It is Employment. A man's business does more to make him than every thing else. It hardens his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. No man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man without Employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a man. He can not act a man's part. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle is not a man. A good cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brain must know how to act a man's part, do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they constitute a man. A man is a body and soul in action. A statue if well dressed may appear to be a man; so may a human being. But to be a man and appear to be are two very different things. Human beings grow; men are made. The being that grows to the stature of a man is not a man till he is made one. The grand instrumentality of man-making is Employment. The world has long since learned that men can not be made without Employment. Hence it sets its boys to work—gives them trades, callings, professions—puts the instruments of man-making into their hands and tells them to work out their manhood. And the most of them do it somehow; not always very well. The men who fail to make themselves a respectable manhood are the boys who are put to no business, the young men who have nothing to do, the male beings that have no Employment. We have them about us—walking nuisances—pestilential gas-bags—fetid air-bubbles, who burst and are gone. Our men of wealth and character, of worth and power, have been early bound to some useful Employment. Many of them were unfortunate orphan boys, whom want compelled to work for bread—the children of penury and lowly birth. In their early boyhood they buckled on the armor of labor, took upon their little shoulders heavy burdens, assumed responsibilities, met fierce circumstances, contended with sharp opposition, chose the ruggedest paths of Employment because they yielded the best remuneration, and braved the storms of toil till they won great victories for themselves and stood before the world in the beauty and majesty of noble manhood. This is the way men are made. There is no other way. Their powers are developed in the field of Employment.

Men are not born; they are made. Genius, worth, power of mind are more made than born. Genius born may grovel in the dust; genius made will mount to the skies. Our great and good men that stand along the paths of history bright and shining lights are witnesses of these truths. They stand there as everlasting pleaders for Employment. Now what is true of men in this respect is equally true of women. If Employment is the instrumentality in making men, it is equally so in making women. A human female is not a woman till she makes herself so. There is something noble, glorious, in a woman. She is the impersonation of spiritual beauty. But all females are not women. There are scores of them who are only female humanities; and scores more who are only ladies. A lady and a woman are two very different things. One is made at the hands of fashion; the other is the handiwork of God through the instrumentality of useful Employment. A lady is a parlor ornament, a walking show-gallery, a mistress of tongue-tied etiquette. A woman is a consecrated intelligence—a love baptized—a hand employed in the work of good. To be a woman requires exertion and prudence. Women are not born; neither do they grow up of themselves; they are made. Their virtues blossom in the garden of industry. Their fruits ripen on the boughs of toil. Their treasures grow on the tree of labor. A woman with nothing to do can not develop a truthful womanhood. A woman with no Employment for her hands or mind can be only the shadow of a woman. What is noble in her will doff its nobility. What is strong will become weak, and she will soon be an imbecile dependent on some one else.

A dependent life is an ignoble one, unless compelled by misfortune; just as ignoble in woman as in man. No woman of health and sound mind should allow herself to be or feel dependent on any body for her living. The sick are always dependent, though they have wealth at their command. But the well should never be dependent. To eat and wear the fruits of another's labor, tends to degradation. To feel that one is shining in borrowed plumes and eating the bread of dependence, is degrading to a noble mind. A noble mind will not willingly do it. The want of Employment, and the dependence of many women, have ruined their characters and made them little else than nuisances to their fellow-men. Thousands of women have no Employment, and live through life in a state of abject dependence. What are they, what can they be, under such circumstances? It requires Employment to develop men, why should not it to develop women? Dependent men are ninnies, why should not dependent women be? Where is the difference between the male and female mind, that one should be expected to be noble and magnanimous under circumstances which would be ruinous to the other? We know that a young man thrown upon his own resources is more likely to be a great, good man than when cradled upon the lap of luxury or fortune. Why is it? Simply because he seeks Employment and depends upon himself for what he is to be and do. He leans not on another, and hence grows strong by standing alone. Plant an acorn in the crevice of a barren rock, and it will strike down its roots and send them out in search of fastening places till it will surround the rock with a net of clinging fibers; and as the winds grow fiercer and the storms howl wilder, the oak will strike deeper and wider its anchoring roots. It will brace itself to meet the emergencies of its life. It will nerve its energies to stand its ground. It will gather vigor from every storm, resolution from every wind, strength from every defiant bolt from heaven.

So it is with man. Place him on his feet in a hard place, where the suns of life strike hotly upon him, and the storms blow fiercely, where he must stand by his own strength or fall, and he will grow into strength by the very pressure of adverse circumstances. Every blow of his own will give it strength; every effort of his mind will give it vigor; every trial of his character will knit firmer its binding fibers. This is equally true of woman. Her character is formed and her power developed in a similar way. A woman can no more be a true woman than a man can be a true man without Employment and self-reliance. I would have every boy and girl in the whole country taught to make their own living at some useful Employment; to mark out for themselves a sphere of action and then fill that sphere; to be useful in some honorable pursuit. I would not put the boys to trades and professions to make them great and good, and fold up the girls' hands and lay them away in the drawer or shut them up in the parlor. I would not make the boys self-reliant and vigorous by generous Employment, and the girls weak, puny, and dependent by idleness or folly. I would not give the boys opportunities to develop their powers and become noble men, and deprive the girls of all these glorious privileges. I would not open a thousand avenues to distinction, wealth, and worth to the boys and comparatively none to the girls. I would not send the boys out into the field of life bravely to earn their own living, and grow strong in doing it, and the girls out to beg their living of the boys, and grow weak and worthless in their dependent beggary. I like the girls too well to have them thus mistreated. I would give them just as good a chance as the boys have. They should not be degraded with half-pay, and only two or three ways to get a living, just because they were made to be women. They should not be shut out from a thousand avenues of distinction and usefulness, for they are richly endowed, just because they are made to be women. They should not be made to feel that it is degrading to be a woman, to feel, as a man expressed it to me the other day, that "women are such good-for-nothing creatures." I love noble, "strong-minded," and strong-hearted women. I wish we had more of them. I know of no way to make them but to give our girls more active Employment. Every girl should have a trade, a business, a profession, or some honorable and useful way of gaining a livelihood—some Employment in which her powers of body and mind may be amply developed. If she has not, she will be dependent upon somebody, and her dependence will degrade her; and her want of Employment will keep her a half-developed specimen of humanity.

If I had half-a-dozen boys, and should let them grow up in play around my house and on the streets, in visiting, gossiping, dressing, riding, dancing, asking nothing of them only to bring me my slippers, or some occasional act of kindness now and then, my neighbors would all cry out against me, declaring that I was spoiling my boys. They would denounce my course as absolute unkindness to the boys; would declare that they never would be any thing with such a miserable training. And yet my neighbors treat their girls in just this way. Now if it will spoil the boys, why will it not spoil the girls? If it is unkindness to the boys, why is it not unkindness to the girls? If boys can not be any thing with such a training, how can the girls be?

If the present generation of boys should be reared just as we are rearing our girls, what a puny race of men we should have with which to commence the next century! Men complain that women are such weak, good-for-nothing creatures that they are only fit to be wives and mothers. Now it seems to me that no woman is fit to be a wife and mother until she is a strong, self-reliant woman, both bodily and mentally. I take it that the more vigorous a woman's body and mind are, the better she is qualified to fulfill the duties of wife and mother.

I take it that the more self-reliant and independent a woman is, the better she is qualified to be a helpmate for her husband, and a wise and judicious counselor for her children. I take it that dignity of character, power of action, resolute will, commanding judgment, steady temper of mind, strong inward resources, are as essential in a good wife and mother as in a good husband and father. In a word, I take it that all that is noble, dignified, useful, and beautiful in character and life, is as essential in women as in men. If so, then why not give woman opportunities such as are necessary to develop her powers and form her character? Those opportunities can not be given without Employment. We can not make men without Employment; how can we expect to make women? How can a woman who has no aim in life, who lives to no purpose, who has nothing to accomplish, whose hands are idle, whose mind has nothing on which to fix its energies—who, in a word, spends a listless, trifling life—how can such a woman possess weight of character, force of mind, or mental worth? When God calls for her stewardship, how can she answer with any honor to herself? When she comes to see her soul disrobed of mortality, how naked and undeveloped it will look!