Our Girls Part 10

I have no doubt that, finally, the medical profession will fall almost exclusively into the hands of women, as its most important part, nursing, already has.

A very large part of our medical business grows out of the diseases of women, as such, and I shall not insult my readers by gravely considering the question whether men or women should examine, manipulate, and treat such affections. When I hear men protesting that women cannot understand and manage these affections, I declare, some very ugly suspicions occur to me. Women and children are the sick ones. Very few men have occasion to seek the doctor.

If those who read these words understood as I do, how little brain is used in the selection of drugs, how simple a routine is followed by the doctor in selecting his medicines from day to day,--if those who read this, knew as I do, how infinitely more important and difficult are the duties devolving upon the nurse, who stands by, and watches day and night, from moment to moment, the changes in the condition of the patient, and who, without having been trained to the profession, is entrusted with the responsibility of determining, throughout all those trying hours, exactly what is to be done upon the occurrence of this or that change; if those who read this, understood, as I do, about these things, they would smile when asked to consider the propriety or possibility of educating women for the medical profession, so that, in addition to performing all the most important services, they should be entrusted with the selection of the drugs, if drugs must be given.

PREACHERS.

Female preachers have appeared among the most enlightened peoples, and have risen to distinction and influence. In America, among the Quakers, women have ill.u.s.trated the finest pulpit oratory.

It has always seemed to me that women were especially adapted to the pulpit. Their natural eloquence, their sweet persuasive voices, their characteristic unselfishness, purity and piety const.i.tute their unanswerable claim to a place in the pulpit.

It is strange, how rapidly the prejudices of men against women lecturers and women preachers have disappeared. These prejudices lie on the surface; they do not rest upon organic instinct. So completely has this prejudice disappeared from Boston, that a woman is heard by many because she is a woman. If to-day one of our churches should invite to its pulpit a woman of good capacity, of fine pulpit manners, of a n.o.ble, sweet spirit, and of fine personnel, its very aisles would be crowded. I should much prefer to go there.

A few hundred educated women would find employment, and good compensation, in New England pulpits.

PROOF-READING.

This has become a distinct profession, and employs a great number of persons. It is a profession to which women are perfectly adapted, and in which a very considerable number could at once find remunerative occupation.

PUBLISHERS.

I know of no good reason why women should not become publishers. Of course they can do the work of a publishing house,--I mean the correspondence, book-keeping, counting, making-up orders, and packing books. But I know of no good reason why they should not conduct the business, and receive the profits. Many authors, myself among the number, would be especially gratified to have our works placed before the public by women, because, when trained to business, they have shown a singular exactness and honor; and, secondly, because it would give a.s.surance to the world that the new book was fit to be read.

TEACHERS.

It seems unnecessary even to allude to the propriety of teaching as a profession for women. It is, however, a modern notion.

At present, in New England, an immense majority of the teachers are women.

I have had a good deal to do with schools during the last twenty- five years. I was a member of the Boston School Board for some time, was at the head of the Seminary at Lexington during four years, an have always been interested in the question of woman as a teacher.

I have interrogated, perhaps a hundred school committee men, in different parts of the country. Their testimony, and my own, after all this observation, is, that woman is a better teacher than man. I think this is true even in the department of mathematics. I am sure it is true in all those studies, in the teaching of which, the social, moral or religious element is brought into play.

The proportion of female teachers in American schools is very rapidly increasing, and it is noteworthy that they are constantly rising into schools of a higher grade.

The state authorities in Ma.s.sachusetts have recently placed a woman at the head of one of our princ.i.p.al Normal schools. It is safe to prophesy that, within fifty years, teaching, in the common schools, High schools, and in the Normal schools, will be almost exclusively in the hands of women. I think, within that time, a considerable proportion of the professors in our colleges will be women. Already several are doing themselves, and their s.e.x, great honor, as professors in colleges.

The only dark spot in this bright picture is, that women are starved while performing this valuable labor.

I know a beautiful, bright young woman, in this city, who is regarded as one of the best teachers in the city, who presides in one of the most beautiful rooms in one of the grandest buildings in Boston, but who, when out of the school palace, is obliged to crawl away with her mother into a dingy, miserable garret, where they spend their time in contriving how to make their pennies last through the year.

The schools known as Kindergarten have already become quite numerous. They will rapidly multiply. Within a few years, children three years old will be sent to these beautiful Kindergarten schools, where, in each others society, and under the management of bright, cheery, loving teachers, they will engage in a great variety of pleasant games and infantile studies.

The physical exercises which const.i.tute a prominent feature of these baby schools, are very fascinating and profitable to these little ones.

In these schools children of from three to five years of age will not only be brighter and happier, but they will be much healthier, than when left to the chances of the average home, without system, times or seasons.

It need hardly be said that such schools will fall into the hands of women, and will, within a quarter of a century, employ a great number of them. The hours will be short, the occupation perfectly adapted to the finest girls, and, as these little ones are objects of the tenderest love, the compensation for such persons as can successfully manage them, will always be large.

Lord Brougham gave it as his opinion, that a child learns more during the first eighteen months of its life, than at any other period, and that it settles, in fact, at this early age, its mental capacity, and future well-being.

TEACHERS OF GYMNASTICS AND DANCING.

Here is a field, at once healthful, respectable and immense. In this field women have already displayed a remarkable capacity, and I have no doubt, as in the progress of civilization special physical training and amus.e.m.e.nts come to occupy a larger place in our life, that women will find in this service employment for a large number of the intelligent and ambitious.

I have known young women, neither beautiful nor educated, but with devotion to their duties, to earn more than a thousand dollars a year, in teaching gymnastics. Instructions in dancing have long been given by ladies. So far as I have learned, they have been quite successful.

TEACHERS IN DRAWING AND PAINTING.

The instruction of girls in drawing and painting has now so generally fallen into the hands of female teachers that one need hardly speak of it further than to say that it is an employment entirely fit and proper for women, and one which usually affords a generous remuneration.

WATCHES.

Let us speak first of watch-cleaning. What are the qualifications of a good watch-cleaner? Nimble, sensitive fingers, neatness, and carefulness.

Now put your finger there, and let me show you a watch-cleaner. He works in a window only two squares from my Boston residence. He weighs about two hundred and twenty pounds, and has a fist big enough to knock down an ox. The whole thing looked so comical to me, I thought one day I would go in and plague him a little. So, after a little chat about watches in general, I said:--

"By the way, it has occurred to me that women might work at watch- cleaning.

"Women," said he, "why, they couldn't clean watches. They haven't the skill, they haven't the mechanical genius for it, sir. I don't go in for none of your 'woman's rights,' sir; I think women should attend to their own business."

"And, pray, what do you regard as their business?"

"Why, staying at home in their own sphere, and attending to their domestic concerns; taking care of their children, and keeping their husband's clothes mended."

I saw at once that the case was altogether too deep for me, and so I simply remarked:--

"Yes, to be sure, of course; and is it not strange, that they should not be willing to stay at home, and rock their babies, especially the seventy thousand in the state of Ma.s.sachusetts who can never expect to have husbands?"

Cleaning watches is a business that should at once pa.s.s into the hands of women. The opinion that they have not the requisite mechanical capacity to take a watch to pieces and put it together again, is the opinion of a goose. They can do the work quicker and better than men. It is an employment that naturally belongs to them.

In the watch-making establishment at Waltham, several hundred bright, intelligent young women find employment and good pay.

"There is a manufactory in England, where five hundred women are employed in making the interior chains for chronometers. They are preferred to men on account of their being naturally more dexterous with their fingers, and, therefore, being found to require less training."