WOMEN’S HANDS

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XXII, 28 November 1896, Page 111

WOMEN’S HANDS

Miss Edith A Barnett, writing in The Womans Signa/, says Strong. large, well-developed, muscular hands are an excellent possession fora woman who wants to earn her living. It is an old idea, but a mistaken one. that small hands are more delicate in their work You must have strength to restrain as well as to employ. And muscles do not develop without use. It is a fault of our school system that the girls do nothing with their hands except write and sew after a fashion devised to meet the requirements of examiners rather than the needs of life. Girls ought to be taught while thev are young to use their hands in all manner of ways—togrip, to touch, to discriminate. It cannot be too often repeated that exercise of the hands develops not only the hands, but the brain likewise ; but writing for writing’s sake is perhaps the most useless of all hand exercises . and the stupid niggling kind of needlework that is done by many children seems to me only calculated to produce a docile and stupid unreason. I repeat that very fine needlework is not educational in any true sense of the word. As a means of livelihood it is inadequate. It is not a healthy employment And it is worthless for home use among the wage-earuers. where there is a perpetual demand for garments intelligently shaped, quickly produced, and strongly but roughlv sewn.

’ Helpless hands are a characteristic of feeble brains, and we do our girls an injury when we teach them to admire such hands, or the possessors of such hands Want of accuracy in work comes often from clumsiness of hand—from fingers that won’t move here or there, but only thereabouts. Among the causes that train helpless hands nowadays is the immense amount of reading done —often reading of no improving sort. Whatever branch of industry we go in for, the first thing is to be able to work accurately. To cut or to fit, to copy or to plan quite accurately, with no gaps ami no waste and no bungling ; that lies at the bottom of all successful work In needlework there is all the difference in the world between a woman who is accurate and makes the two sides fit, and one whose corners are badly finished off. In cookery, the gap that divides comfort from misery, divides the cook who is accurate from the one who can never do a thing twice alike. And in keeping accounts the one thing is to lie accurate.’