A Word to Farmers’ Daughters.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 860, 24 August 1888, Page 19

A Word to Farmers’ Daughters.

AiVI-ELRICAST Agricultitkist. Last month we had a few words to say to our good friends * the boys,’ now we desire to hold brief commune with their sisters, and hope to be able to show to the fairer members of the family that for them, also, rural pursuits offer many attractions which promise more profit than can be found in or drawn from many of the occupations which are regarded as essentially feminine. While the farm-house presents to willing hands a varied round of duties, the garden, the orchard, the dairy, and the poultry-yard seem to us fields of remunerative enterprise awaiting those who enter them. Young girls just emancipated from school weary of what they regard as the dullness of country life, and according to their tastes and attainments seek occupation in offices or gravitate to factory life. Sfiops swallow up a few. and city and village stores engulf thousands and tens of thousands. The wages of sewing girls are proverbially small ; the hours m stores are long, and though the work is termed light it is dull and monotonous_ from year to year, Many are the Hardships of working girls, yet all of these are braved, cheerfully at first, by countless generations of young women who prefer an aimless life of unrestricted freedom to the fulfilment of home duties and the trammels ot family everyday intercourse. Long ago the baking and the manufacture of many necessities were one. and all home duties ; nowadays the baker is a man, who sells dyspeptic buus and oleomargarine pastries to his unhappy customers, and from his profits keeps fast horses. In the place of wholesome preserves the tables of the multitude are servad with canned fruits, put up in the cheapest manner in factories. Women of to-day have to contenl for existence under the” pressure of a severely restricted area of usefulness, tho confines of which grow narrower and narrower as yeais pass on. This condition of life, is due in part to the wider ambition and superior capacity of men, who little by little have taken to thema Ives tho ffl’ing of the places formerly occupied by women, not themselves as workers, but as employers ; and as women work cheaper than men, these unwise ones are to-day in the ranks of the great wageearning population of the world, when once they were tho honoured heads of home life. To go back to old methods is impossible, still a remnant can be saved, and young girls can be led to soe that preserving.apples in « mother’s ’ kitchen is not harder work than bottling pickles in a factory , that dairy work on their” father’s farm is not worse thah standing twelve hours a day in a store, to earn from three to seven dollars a week. There is a widespread want unsuppiied for tho luxuries of country life; tho two most sought for and most ..difficult to obtain are the products of the dairy and poultry-yard. Farmers aie said to be grasping ; wo think otherwise, as they, for lack of ambition sell their milk to dealers aud oreameries. It tfie farmers’ daughters made as good butter and cheese as their grandmothers did, there would be no need of protective milk associations ; if farmers’ daughters used incubators and raised and fattened poultry, the present dearth of plump chickens and fat capons would cease. Last March broiling chickens sold wholesale at thirty-eight cents per pound, and the same month capons reached twenty-eight cents per pound. These are remunerative prices, 'and better rates could be obtained by serving first*claßa hotels and

y. oa tanra.nta Dairy butter sold down to \ eighteen**cents per pound last March when more than one owner of dairy cows through , superior skill as a producer; and greater enterprise as a merchant received one dollar per pound for butter, and his eager customers nlfimoured for more* Farming is said not to pay; farmers are MwSs poor. Now just let the girls step in and see if they cannot make as good butter as the great creameries put on the market, and when they do, fathers, see to it that your daughters have their just share of your increased profit. It >3 ‘the ready penny, the actual possession of money, that we all desire, and this universal longing sends girls to the mill, the factory, and the store. Farmers’ daughters who remain at home Tre fed and clothed, but rarely paid for their service. This is what so frequently discourages them. Then again many girls lack manual skill, and at home receive no training which tends to dimmish this evil > They know nothing, therefore they go opt. The woman who would most benefit her sex would be the one who, having the means at her command, will place within the reach of farmers’ daughters an education which would enable them to gam a comfortable living in the area of country pursuits. bhe would be a benefactress-in two ways, as she would thin the ranks of wage-earners and open new fields of industry to worthily ambitious women.