"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter."—Eccles. iv: 1.
Very long ago the needle was busy. It was considered honorable for women to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace showing garments made by his own mother. The finest tapestries at Bayeux were made by the queen of William the Conqueror. Augustus, the Emperor, would not wear any garments except those that were fashioned by some member of his royal family. So let the toiler everywhere be respected!
The needle has slain more than the sword. When the sewing-machine was invented some thought that invention would alleviate woman's toil and put an end to the despotism of the needle. But no; while the sewing-machine has been a great blessing to well-to-do families in many cases, it has added to the stab of the needle the crush of the wheel; and multitudes of women, notwithstanding the re-enforcement of the sewing-machines, can only make, work hard as they will, between two dollars and three dollars per week.
The greatest blessing that could have happened to our first parents was being turned out of Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along without work, or only such slight employment as a perfect garden with no weeds in it demanded. But as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said: "I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a large amount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousand prosperous and honorable men that you know, nine hundred and ninety-nine had to work vigorously at the beginning. But I am now to tell you that industry is just as important for a woman's safety and happiness. The most unhappy women in our communities to-day are those who have no engagements to call them up in the morning; who, once having risen and breakfasted, lounge through the dull forenoon in slippers down at the heel and with disheveled hair, reading Ouida's last novel, and who, having dragged through a wretched forenoon and taken their afternoon sleep, and having passed an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their card-case and go out to make calls, and who pass their evenings waiting for somebody to come in and break up the monotony. Arabella Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark a dungeon as that.
There is no happiness in an idle woman. It may be with hand, it may be with brain, it may be with foot; but work she must, or be wretched forever. The little girls of our families must be started with that idea.
The curse of American society is that our young women are taught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing in their life is to get somebody to take care of them. Instead of that, the first lesson should be how under God they may take care of themselves. The simple fact is that a majority of them do have to take care of themselves, and that, too, after having, through the false notions of their parents, wasted the years in which they ought to have learned how successfully to maintain themselves. We now and here declare the inhumanity, cruelty, and outrage of that father and mother who pass their daughters into womanhood, having given them no facility for earning their livelihood. Madame de Staël said: "It is not these writings that I am proud of, but the fact that I have facility in ten occupations, in any one of which I could make a livelihood." You say you have a fortune to leave them. Oh, man and woman, have you not learned that like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches have wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving a competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in a night? or some officials in our churches may get up a mining company and induce your orphans to put their money into a hole in Colorado, and if by the most skillful machinery the sunken money can not be brought up again, prove to them, that it was eternally decreed that that was the way they were to lose it, and that it went in the most orthodox and heavenly style. Oh, the damnable schemes that professed Christians will engage in until God puts His fingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe and strips it clear down to the bottom! You have no right, because you are well off, to conclude that your children are going to be as well off. A man died leaving a large fortune. His son fell dead in a Philadelphia grog-shop. His old comrades came in and said as they bent over his corpse: "What is the matter with you, Boggsey?" The surgeon standing over him said: "Hush ye! He is dead!" "Oh, he is dead," they said. "Come, boys; let us go and take a drink in memory of poor Boggsey!" Have you nothing better than money to leave your children? If you have not, but send your daughters into the world with empty brain and unskilled hand, you are guilty of assassination, homicide, regicide, infanticide.
There are women toiling in our cities for two and three dollars per week who were the daughters of merchant princes. These suffering ones now would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell from their fathers' table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which her mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of magnificent brocade that swept Broadway clean without any expense to the street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence and fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea prevalent in society that, though our young women may embroider slippers and crochet and make mats for lamps to stand on without disgrace, the idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a young woman belonging to a large family to be inefficient when the father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a daughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as honorable to sweep the house, make beds or trim hats as it is to twist a watch-chain.
As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the back of an arm-chair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy the chair. You may with a delicate brush beautify a mantel ornament, but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing "Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical if you would in the eyes of refined society preserve your respectability. I scout these fine notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man, has a right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for it.
In the course of a life-time you consume whole harvests and droves of cattle, and every day you live, breathe forty hogsheads of good, pure air. You must by some kind of usefulness pay for all this. Our race was the last thing created—the birds and fishes on the fourth day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth day. If geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the possession of the insects, beasts, and birds before our race came upon it. In one sense we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and the hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are to do with the lizards and summer insects, but what the lizards and summer insects are to do with us. If we want a place in this world, we must earn it. The partridge makes its own nest before it occupies it. The lark by its morning song earns its breakfast before it eats it, and the Bible gives an intimation that the first duty of an idler is to starve when it says: "If he will not work, neither shall he eat." Idleness ruins the health; and very soon nature says: "This man has refused to pay his rent, out with him!" Society is to be reconstructed on the subject of woman's toil. A vast majority of those who would have woman industrious shut her up to a few kinds of work. My judgment in this matter is that a woman has a right to do anything that she can do well. There should be no department of merchandise, mechanism, art, or science barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness for delineating animals, let her make "The Horse Fair." If Miss Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount the starry ladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach the Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly eloquence the Quaker meeting-house.