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Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 6046, 11 September 1894, Page 3

UNKNOWN

Woman's Voice, a new organ launched in Sydney to support " the cause that lacks assistance " from woman's point of view, refers (says an Australian contemporary) to the latest subject of the hour now being discussed in New Zealand, namely, farming as an occupation for females, and inferentially concurs in the opinion that it is a fit and proper thing to do. The Lands Department of New Zealand has issued a pamphlet on the subject, which urges young women to take up small farms and cultivate flax and hemp and other things that would find a ready market—bees, poultry, flowers, and so forth. And why not? asks Woman's "Voice. A word pic ture is given of Miss Annette Daisy's women's organisation on the Cherokee Slip, United States of America, where 22 women, strong-minded and lusty-limbed, are perfectly at home without a man to make or mar. They haul timber for house breaking, do their own ploughing and planting on a 4SO acre section, milk cuws. rear chickens, and other stock, and " clad itt short skirts that come just below the knee and are met by heavy woollen legsings that cover the legs from knees" to ankles, appear in tit condition to hold their own, and carry on their plucky plan." More power to them, says everybody, and as a woman writer uptly pots it, " When every woman can earn a living if she will, and none have to choose between shame and starvation, nine-tenths of the problem of women's independence will be finally solved." But will women—the threat bulk of womanhood —•work thus ? Will our colonial damsels and staid maids buckle to, and boldly venture into the wide field of labor, which until now they have been content to leave to the male sex as their natural providers Men are not likely to demur. Women have already planted their feet firmly, and in a multitude of places so long away past the line which at one time limited the field of men's and women's vocations, that they may just as well try their hands at the shovel and the hoe as with any other implements of industry. But what about ultimate results., the evolution of custom Mid circumstance 1 Women work afield in Germany. The farmer's frau cultivates the cabbages, takes them to market on tar broad shoulrlers, and on the homeward 'tip carries a pick-a-back her lord and faster, and she Lr quite content to do so.