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Title: Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator, with Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage

Author: Catharine E. Beecher

Release Date: November 30, 2017 [EBook #56090]

Language: English

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Transcriber's Notes: Words in italics in the original are surrounded
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complete list of corrections as well as other notes follows the text.
The following Table of Contents has been added for the convenience of
the reader.

    DEDICATION
    INTRODUCTION
    AN ADDRESS ON FEMALE SUFFRAGE
    AN ADDRESS TO LADIES OF HARTFORD, CONN.
    AN ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF AMERICA
    NOTE A
    NOTE B
    NOTE C
    NOTE D




    WOMAN'S PROFESSION

    AS

    MOTHER AND EDUCATOR,

    WITH VIEWS IN OPPOSITION TO

    WOMAN SUFFRAGE.


    BY

    CATHARINE E. BEECHER.


    PHILADELPHIA AND BOSTON:
    GEO. MACLEAN.
    NEW YORK: MACLEAN, GIBSON & CO.
    1872.




DEDICATION.

TO THE MINISTERS OF RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES.


FATHERS AND BRETHREN:

As the daughter and sister of nine ministers of Jesus Christ you will
allow me to address you by those endeared names; and also because there
is an emergency that demands unusual measures.

This _woman movement_ is one which is uniting by co-operating
influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state.
Spiritualism, free-love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences
consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts
men and women to avoid _large_ families, often by sinful methods,
thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling
majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor
health of women, causing them to dread maternity as—what it is fast
becoming—an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures.

Add to this, that extreme fastidiousness which not only excludes
needful instruction from the pulpit, but makes mothers shrink from
learning and teaching those dangers which their daughters most need to
know, and prevents medical men and even women physicians from uttering
needful warnings.

I once said to a lady physician with an enormous practice, in reply to
some of her statements, "why do you not call the mothers of this city
together and tell them all this?" She replied "it is impossible—they
would not hear me—I should have to nail the doors and windows to keep
them—and if they did hear, they would not believe."

It is the _women teachers of our common schools_ who must be instructed
to become lecturers on health in all our school districts and teach
mothers how to instruct children in all the laws of health and the
dreadful penalties which in certain directions are but little known and
now threaten the ruin of the rising generation. There is no duty more
difficult than this; for it is one which if done properly saves from
danger, and if improperly leads to it.

If the clergy of this nation will give their powerful influence to
promote the aims of this work in modes they will more wisely devise
than I can suggest, success will be ensured; and to them I appeal (as I
used to do to a beloved father and as I often do to dear brothers,) to
help me where my own strength and courage fail.

With christian love and respect,

                                    Yours truly,

                                            CATHARINE E. BEECHER.




INTRODUCTION.


The object of the following pages is to present the subject of woman's
profession as mother and chief educator of our race in connection with
the present demand that she shall also assume the responsibilities of
civil government.

However great or small may be the probabilities as to the imposition
of woman suffrage, it is certain that there is just cause for alarm
at organizations all over the land sending out women of talents and
benevolence to lecture, and scattering tracts and newspapers by
hundreds of thousands, advocating principles and measures destructive
both to the purity and the perpetuity of the family state.

This little volume consists of _unpublished_ addresses—all but the
first—to meetings of ladies only, and its design is to meet the false
principles and false reasonings on the subject of "woman's rights" now
working extensive evils that are little realized.

It is offered with the deep conviction that an important crisis in
our national history is impending, and that it is the intelligent and
conscientious women of our country who eventually will decide whether
the result shall be beneficial or most disastrous.




    AN ADDRESS

    ON

    FEMALE SUFFRAGE,

    DELIVERED IN THE MUSIC HALL OF BOSTON, IN

    DECEMBER, 1870.


I appear this evening to present the views of that large portion of my
sex who are opposed to such a change of our laws and customs as would
place the responsibility of civil government on woman.

This may be done without impugning the motives, or the character, or
the measures of that respectable party who hold the contrary position.
As in the physical universe the nicely-balanced _centripetal_ and
_centrifugal_ forces hold in steady curve every brilliant orbit,
so, in the moral world, the radical element, which would forsake
the beaten path of ages, is held in safe and steady course by the
conservative; while that, also, is preserved from dangerous torpor by
the antagonistic power.

And so, while claiming to represent the conservative element, I meet
with respect and kindness my centrifugal friend.

First, let me state the points in which we agree, that we may more
clearly appreciate those in which we differ.

We agree, then, on the general principle, that woman's happiness and
usefulness are equal in value to those of man's, and, consequently,
that she has a right to equal advantages for securing them.

We agree, also, that woman, even in our own age and country, has never
been allowed such equal advantages, and that multiplied wrongs and
suffering have resulted from this injustice.

Finally, we agree that it is the right and the duty of every woman to
employ the power of organization and agitation, in order to gain those
advantages which are given to the one sex, and unjustly withheld from
the other.

My object, in this address, is not to discuss the question of woman's
natural and abstract right to the ballot, nor to point out the evils
that might follow the exercise of this power, nor to controvert the
opinions of those advocating woman's suffrage in any particular point.

Instead of this, I propose, first, to present reasons for assuming
that it must be a very long time before woman suffrage can be gained;
so that the evils it is hoped to cure by the ballot would continue and
increase for a long period; and, secondly, to present another method
for gaining the advantages unjustly withheld; and thus to remedy wrongs
which both parties are seeking to redress.

The first reason for believing that the gift of the ballot must be long
delayed is, that it is contrary to the customs of Christian people, by
which the cares of civil life, and the outdoor and heavy labor which
take a man from home, are given to the stronger sex, and the lighter
labor and care of the family state, to woman.

The more society has advanced in civilization and in Christian
culture, the more perfectly have these _distinctive_ divisions of
responsibility for the two sexes been maintained; and in no age or
country more strictly than in our own.

Those of us who oppose woman suffrage concede that there are
occasions in which general laws and customs should yield to temporary
emergencies; as when, in the stress of family sickness, the husband
becomes nurse and cook; or, in the extremities of war, the women plow,
sow, and reap; and it were well if every boy and girl were so trained
that they could wisely meet such emergencies.

But while this is conceded, the main question is still open, namely,
Is there any such emergency in our national history as demands so
great a change in our laws and customs as would be involved in placing
the responsibilities of civil government on our whole sex? For, with
the gift of the ballot, comes the connected responsibility of framing
wise laws to regulate finance, war, agriculture, commerce, mining,
manufactures, and all the many fields of man's outdoor labor. And
the charge of these outdoor responsibilities would be assigned by the
ballot; and not alone to that class of women who are demanding woman
suffrage, but _to our whole sex_.

For, whenever the time comes that a single vote of one woman may decide
the most delicate, the most profound, and the most perilous measures of
the state and nation, it will be the duty of every woman, not only to
go to the polls, but to vote intelligently and conscientiously.

It is in view of such considerations that, at the present time, a large
majority of American women would regard the gift of the ballot, not
as a privilege conferred, but as an act of oppression, forcing them
to assume responsibilities belonging to man, for which they are not
and can not be qualified; and, consequently, withdrawing attention and
interest from the distinctive and more important duties of their sex.
For the question is not whether a class of women, who have no family
responsibilities, shall take charge of civil government; but it is
whether this duty shall be imposed on the whole of our sex. With the
chivalrous tenderness toward woman so prevalent in our nation, this
would never be done till at least a majority of women ask for it; and
the time must be afar off ere such a majority will be found.

I wish to verify this statement by an extract from one of the many
letters of sympathy and approbation received since it became known that
I am publicly to present my views on Woman Suffrage:

    "MY DEAR MADAM: Though personally a stranger, I feel
    strongly impelled to write and thank you for coming before the
    public in opposition to the advocates of woman suffrage.

    "I have no doubt that an exceedingly large majority of the
    educated and thoughtful women of the country feel a strong
    personal repugnance to becoming voters, as well as a conviction
    that this proposed innovation, far from working a beneficial
    change in the condition of the country, would actually lower
    the present standard of political morality. But they form a
    class but little accustomed to make their voices heard outside
    of their own social circle, and therefore in danger of being
    overlooked by those reformers who, with a thankworthy zeal for
    'woman's rights,' are, as I think, striving to perpetrate a
    great _woman's wrong_.

    "It is sometimes said that all women ought at least to have a
    chance to vote, if they wish it; but none are obliged to do so
    unless they like. And when compliant men have said this, they
    consider themselves magnanimous and chivalrous, and think the
    whole question happily settled.

    "It might be so if we had _no conscience_. But wider privileges
    mean wider duties. From the bottom of my soul I hate the idea
    of meeting women at the polls; and yet, if woman suffrage
    ever becomes a fact, I can not stay away. For my fraction of
    power inevitably makes me thus much responsible for the civil
    government of my country. If I _may_ vote, I _must_ vote. I
    have no right, by withholding my vote, to throw its weight
    into the wrong scale. And yet, held back as I am, and must
    be, from the life of the street, the caucus, and the primary
    political meetings, and not more by my incapacity for man's
    work than by his incapacity for mine—living chiefly at home,
    because my work is home work—what can I know of the fitness of
    candidates for local offices, or of the machinery of political
    parties?"

This perspicuous statement expresses the present views of probably
nine tenths of the most intelligent and conscientious women of our
country. Were it the question whether the responsibilities of civil
government should be assumed by this class of women alone, the risks of
an affirmative decision would be small. But let us consider the other
classes that would be included in universal woman suffrage.

Next to the more intelligent class represented by this letter-writer,
would come a large body of those whose generous _impulses_ take the
lead, rather than the cool deductions of reason and experience.

It is this class of enthusiasts that would most confidently attempt to
conduct the affairs of the state.

Next to these would come the great body of busy and easy women, who,
from pliant kindness and confidence, would vote as fathers, brothers,
and husbands advised.

Next to these most respectable classes would come the superficial, the
unreflecting, and the frolicsome, to serve only as tools for political
wire-pullers.

Then would come the lovers of notoriety, the ambitious—the lovers of
power—the caterers for public offices, and the seekers for money.
Of these, the most unprincipled would employ the distinctive power
of their sex in caucuses, in jury-boxes, and in legislative and
congressional committees; thus adding another to the many deteriorating
influences of political life.

Next would come that vast mass of ignorant women whose consciences and
votes would be controlled by a foreign and domestic priesthood.

Lastly would come the most degraded and despised, who would like
nothing better than to insult and oppose those who look down upon them
with disgust and contempt.

Lead all these classes to the polls, and the result would be a vast
increase of the incompetent and dangerous voters. It would, to a
still greater extent, place the wealth and intelligence of the nation
under those without intelligence, who, for their own advantage, would
lavish wealth on useless schemes, and vote away the property of the
industrious to support the indolent and vicious. In many of our large
cities we are witnessing the beginning of this impending danger.

Still another reason for such a conclusion is the fact that, though
the Woman's Suffrage party at present is increasing in numbers, the
discussion it has produced is gradually changing the views of many
sensible persons who at first were its advocates. That has been the
case with myself. For, on the first consideration of the matter, it
seemed right and proper that women should have a voice in deciding
who should be their rulers and make their laws; and that the simple
dropping a vote into the ballot-box could be done without risk to
womanly delicacy, and without danger of any kind. This was before
discussion had revealed the more comprehensive bearings of the
question, which finally removed me, as it has many others, to the
opposite side of the question.

If, then, agitation increases the party seeking the ballot, and
yet discussion is constantly withdrawing large numbers of the more
intelligent and reflective, the time must be far distant when woman
suffrage will be secured.

Another reason for believing that woman suffrage is afar off is the
character of the men who appear to favor this change of our political
status, and also their modes of meeting the question. The estimate of
women by the other sex depends very greatly on the character of the
mothers, wives, and sisters with whom they have associated, or on the
character of the female society they most frequent. Those who associate
with superficial, weak, or unprincipled women, form a low opinion
of the whole sex which is false and unjust. On the contrary, those
associated with the highest class of women place a halo of purity,
strength, and honor on the brow of the whole sex, which is equally
exaggerated. It is this last class of men who are foremost advocates of
woman suffrage, and their estimate of woman's ability to manage civil
government is to be taken with considerable though honorable deductions.

Another class of amiable, unreflecting men, having had a chivalrous
training, are ready to give the "dear creatures" any thing they will
please to ask.

Still another class of kind-hearted men say, "Yes, oh! yes, let them
have the ballot and all the duties it involves, and they soon will wish
to relinquish such responsibilities."

Then there are the political wire-pullers, who perceive that by
catering to this, which they secretly deem a folly, they can make it
subserve their selfish plans.

Lastly, there is a large number of intelligent and patriotic men
who have not, as yet, so investigated the probable results of so
fundamental a change in civil matters as to feel prepared to make any
practical decision on the question, and so they give no decided answers.

These several classes of amiable and intelligent men are those who
finally will decide the question, and they are the last who would force
the responsibilities of the civil state on an unwilling minority of our
sex; much less would they force it on a majority who would regard it as
an unjust and unchivalrous exercise of power. For this reason it seems
almost certain that the ballot will not be given to American women till
it is clear that a majority are willing to take such responsibilities;
and the time when this assurance can be gained must be at a very remote
period.

Another reason for this conclusion is the powerful influences at the
command of those of my sex who are opposed to this measure. Multitudes
of women are now quiet and silent because they have little fear of
danger in this direction. But should a time come when the woman
suffrage party seem near achieving their aim, there would be measures
instituted the power of which, as yet, is little known or appreciated.
For _they too_ would organize all over the nation and summon to their
aid both the pulpit and the press. All the Catholic clergy, to a man,
would lend their influence against a measure so contrary to the tenets
and spirit of a church that enforces subordination and obedience as
prime virtues. Not less decided would be the influence of all the
Jewish rabbis.

The Protestant clergy, who have ever been like their Master, the
sympathizing friends of woman, would be the last to enforce new and
heavy responsibilities on our sex, contrary to the wishes even of a
small, intelligent, and conscientious minority.

Not less decided are the great majority of the conductors of the
press; and if an emergency calls for it, by the coöperation of such
powerful auxiliaries, we could bring such an array of petitions and
remonstrances in bulk and respectable names as never before entered
congressional halls.

The attempt to force woman suffrage on us by making it a political
question would also be met by a counter-influence that would convince
every demagogue that any man or party which forces us to the polls
will be ostracized by the votes of every woman who is thus dragged from
her appropriate sphere to bear the burdens of the state.

Another and the final reason for believing female suffrage at a distant
future is the proposed circuitous and indirect mode of remedying evils
which could be relieved by a much more direct and speedy method. As
things now are, men have the physical power that can force obedience;
in most cases they have the power of the purse, and in all cases, they
have the civil power. They can not be forced by the weaker sex to
resign this power. It must be sought, then, as the gift of justice and
benevolence. If, then, there are laws and customs that we deem unjust
and oppressive, the short and common sense mode would be to petition
the law-makers to change these laws according to the rules of justice
and mercy. Instead of this the plea is, "We can not trust you to make
laws; give us the ballot, and we will take better care of ourselves
than you have done or will do." Now, any class of men who, after such
an implication of their intelligence and justice, would give the
ballot to woman, would most surely be those most ready to redress any
wrongs for which the ballot is sought. Why should we not rather take
the shorter and surer mode and _ask for the thing needed_, instead of
the circuitous and uncertain mode involved in the ballot? Any man who
would grant the ballot would grant all for which the ballot is sought.

As one proof of this, we have the changes which have been made in
the laws of New-York State, as reported in a New-York paper. The
agitation for women's rights commenced in that State, and now its laws
give not only as many but more advantages to women than to men. For
in that State, the wife has unlimited control of her own property,
independently of her husband, while by law he must support her and her
children. What is _his_ is _hers_, but what is hers is _not_ his. She
may be rich and the husband poor, and yet he must pay all her debts.
Her creditors can seize his property to pay her debts, but must leave
hers untouched. He is obliged by law to support her; but however rich
she may be, she is not obliged to support him. She may turn her husband
out of the house she owns, but the law will not sustain the husband in
such an act. The husband can not compel his wife to follow him if he
changes residence. She may absent herself night and day, and, unless
criminality is proved, the law gives no redress. At the same time,
_divorce_ is more easily obtained by a woman than a man.

With such an example before us, will it not be wisest to ask for such
laws as we need before we seek the more uncertain ballot?

At the commencement of this discussion, it was stated that the parties
at issue agree in these general principles, namely, that woman's
usefulness and happiness are equal in value to man's, and consequently
that she has a right to equal advantages for gaining them; that she is
unjustly deprived of such equal advantages, and that organization and
agitation to gain them is her privilege and duty.

The points of difference are as to the nature of the advantages
of which she is deprived, the consequent evils, and the mode of
remedy. One party regard woman's exclusion from the professions, the
universities, and the civil offices of men as the leading injustice
from which most of the evils complained of are the result, and that the
gift of the ballot will prove the panacea for all these wrongs. The
other party believe the chief cause of evils which both are striving to
remedy is the want of a just appreciation of woman's profession, and
the want of such a liberal and practical training for its duties as men
secure for their most honored professions.

Here we again may refer to a patent maxim of common sense, which is
this: that the more difficult and important are any duties, the more
scientific care and training should be bestowed on those who are to
perform them. It has been in obedience to this maxim that, in Christian
countries, the highest advantages have been given to those men who have
charge of the spiritual and eternal interests of our race. Most of the
universities of Europe and of this country were founded to educate the
clergy. Next came the training of those who administer laws, and then
of those who cure the sick. These are named the _liberal professions_,
because society has most liberally provided for the scientific training
of those who perform these duties.

That women need as much and even more scientific and practical training
for their appropriate business than men, arises from the fact that
they must perform duties quite as difficult and important, and a much
greater variety of them. A man usually selects one branch of business
for a son, and, after his school education, secures an apprenticeship
of years to perfect his practical skill; and thus a success is attained
which would be impossible were he to practice various trades and
professions.

Now let us notice the various and difficult duties that are demanded of
woman in her ordinary relations as wife, mother, housekeeper, and the
mistress of servants.

First, she has charge of the economies of the family state; for, as the
general rule, men are to earn the support and women administer these
earnings. In this must be included the style in which a house shall
be prepared and furnished, so as best to secure pure air, sunlight,
and the best arrangement and conveniences for labor. If women were
scientifically trained in this particular, their influence would have
saved much labor and much expense. But let the graduates of our female
colleges be questioned as to the position and swing of doors to avoid
draughts; or of windows, to secure sunlight where most needed; or of
chimneys, to secure ventilation and economize fuel; or on the most
successful modes of ventilation; or on the most economical arrangement
of closets, store-room, and pantry, to save time and steps; and it will
be found, ordinarily, that nothing at all has been done to prepare them
to answer intelligently such important practical questions.

There is no department of domestic economy where there is more enormous
waste than in the selection and management of fuel. Much science is
involved in learning what fuel is made of; what kinds best furnish
warmth without waste; what methods waste heat; what methods preserve
it; what spreads it equally; what creates draughts and thus colds and
headaches, and many other connected subjects. Having devoted more than
usual attention to this topic, and especially to the proper selection
and management of furnaces and cook-stoves, it is my firm belief that
if I could impart to the housekeepers of our country the knowledge I
have gained, (and that without any help from scientific schools,) it
would enable them to save millions of money and an enormous amount of
ill health and discomfort.

Again, a housekeeper has charge of the selection and preparation of the
food on which family health and enjoyment so much depend. To prepare
her for this duty she should be taught what kinds of food are most
healthful and nutritious; what kinds are best for the young and what
for the aged; how each should be cooked to secure most nutriment and
least waste; the relative value of buying wholesale or retail; the
best modes of storing food and of preserving it from vermin or decay;
what dishes are at once economical, comely, and inviting and how a
husband's earnings can secure the most comfort and enjoyment with the
most economical outlay. A woman needs training and instruction in this
department of her duties as much as her sons need similar instruction
and training in agriculture or watch-making, when that is to be their
profession.

Again, the mistress of a family controls the selection and making of
the clothing and furniture, and will be called to decide what is most
suitable and economical; what stuffs wear longest; what hold colors
best; what parts wear out soonest, and how they can be made to last the
longest; how much is needed for each garment; and what is the proper
way to cut and fit each article; what is the proper way of mending;
what is the most economical and easiest mode of washing and ironing;
and so on through a long list of duties that demand judgment, science,
and care.

Again, the health of a family is especially a responsibility that
rests upon woman. There is no such wise and needed physician as a
well-instructed mother and housekeeper; not to cure—for that is the
physician's part, but to prevent—disease, or stop it at the starting.
Our gravest illnesses come from neglected colds, indigestion, and
headaches.

Who first finds out when one is ill, and is best prepared to search for
the cause? Why should not every housekeeper know the first symptoms of
common illnesses, the cause and the cure? Not chiefly in the hospital
or by the bedside is a well-instructed nurse needed, but by the family
fireside, where she can observe the first symptoms, give early warning,
and apply the simple cure. There is no technical training so valuable
to a woman as that which enables her to keep the doctor out of the
house, and to send for him when he is needed.

Again, to woman must be committed the charge of new-born infants—and of
the mothers at the most perilous and most anxious period of life, and
one demanding so much discretion, tenderness, and self-denying labor.
Thousands of young, uninstructed mothers are sent out of life or made
suffering invalids from their own ignorance of all they most need to
know, or from the neglect or ignorance of untrained nurses.

The departments of practical life, to which the majority of women
are ordained, ought to receive the honors and aid of lectures,
professorships, endowments, and scientific treatment; the same as
is bestowed to fit men for practical life. The care of a house, the
conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and
government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and
scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the
management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.
Shall man secure for himself endowments, and professors, and lectures
on stock-raising, the diseases of domestic animals, and the laws
by which they are preserved in health, and woman be denied equal
advantages for learning the laws by which health, beauty, and mental
soundness may be secured to the more precious children under her care?

It is granted by all parties that it is women who are to nurse and
train the children the first years of life, and they must do it either
ignorantly and blunderingly, or intelligently guided by scientific
knowledge. For this reason every college and high-school for women
should have a well-instructed woman professor, whose duty it shall be
to instruct young women (in the last years of their education) in all
they need to know as wife, mother, nurse, and guardian of infancy and
childhood.

For young men we find endowed scientific schools to teach them
agricultural chemistry, that they may learn wisely to conduct
a farm; why should not women be taught domestic chemistry and
domestic philosophy? The more civilization advances, the more do
complicated contrivances multiply for the charge of which women are
mainly responsible. The laws that regulate heat, as applied in the
construction of furnaces, stoves, ranges, and grates; the principles of
hydraulics, as applied in constructing cisterns, boilers, water-pipes,
faucets, and other multiplied modern conveniences, demand scientific
and intelligent supervision impossible to a woman untrained in this
department of her domestic duties.

Again, young men are provided with lectures on political economy, while
domestic economy, as yet, has not been so honored. Most women come
to the duty of providing for a family utterly ignorant of the science
of comparative values, and of the greater or less economies of the
articles they are to provide and preserve.

But the most important of all the departments of a woman's profession
is one for which no college or high-school for women has made any
proper provision.

Woman, as mother and as teacher, is to form and guide the immortal
mind. She, more than any one else, is to decide the character of her
helpless children, both for this and the future eternal life. And for
this, liberal provision should be made; so that no woman shall finish
her education till all that science and training can do shall be
bestowed to fit her for this supernal duty. The preparation of young
ministers for the duties of the church does not surpass in importance
the training of the minister of the nursery and school-room. The
clergyman meets his parishioners two or three times a week to train
them for an immortal existence. But the mother and school-teacher have
their ministry in charge every hour of the day, and with a power of
influence such as no clergyman can command.

In this review of the varied and complicated duties of a woman's
profession, we find that she needs not only the general discipline
and training for the development of mental faculties, but a special
training for a far greater diversity of duties than are ever to be
undertaken by men. We claim that woman's profession demands such very
diverse training from the professions of the other sex that access
to universities for men does not meet her most sacred necessities. A
university education for woman should be as diverse from that of man's
as are her duties and responsibilities.

We will now notice what has been done to prepare young men for their
several professions, that we may sustain our position, that such
advantages are unjustly withheld from their sisters, and that this has
engendered multiplied evils to our sex, and thus to the commonwealth.

The mode of providing for the professions of men has been, not to
trust chiefly to tuition fees for the support of instructors, but to
secure the highest class of teachers by endowments insuring a salary
independent of popular whims and changes. By means of such endowment,
such _a division of labor and responsibility_ is secured that each
teacher is responsible for only one or two branches of instruction, and
to only _one_ class, and for only one or two hours each day.

The president of a college teaches only one class, and has no care or
responsibility as to the proper performance of the several professors.
Each professor has charge of only one class in one or two branches, and
is responsible for only those branches; while neither president nor
any other officer has any control or responsibility except in his own
department. For the president is only _primus inter pares_ (first among
equals) as presiding officer of a faculty, in which every question
is decided by majority vote. He has not (as do principals of most
female colleges) the selection and direction of all the teachers, the
supervision of finance and expenditure, the authority to inspect and
control in every department, and the regulation of all salaries and
expenditures for apparatus and libraries.

By this college method, every professor is made the honorable and
independent controller of his own department, responsible to no one
but the corporation or trustees. By this method, each teacher having
in charge only one or two classes, and a single department, is able
to devote much time to self-improvement and the advancement of his
specialty.

Endowments also render the college permanent in its course of
instruction and in retaining a permanent faculty, which can never be
the case in schools that must change with every changing principal.

Endowments also open avenues of honor and support to large numbers
of young men who eventually become professors, or who are stimulated
to exertion by the hope of winning such permanent and honorable
positions. No such opening for independence is provided for women.

Endowments have secured to young men not only a thorough training in
branches of literature and science which enlarge the mental powers,
but also have served to honor and elevate several of the trades
and professions to which they are devoted, so that they are now on
an honorable equality with the so-called liberal professions. The
scientific schools, the art schools, and the schools of technology
are fast elevating many heretofore degraded professions to equal
honor with law, medicine, and divinity. The more these various arts
and professions are made honorable by endowments to support learned
professors, the larger the number of honorable and remunerative
professions are provided for young men; and, as yet, woman (with one
or two exceptions) has had no such opportunities provided. To support
such institutions for young men, every State in the Union has been
taxed, and large grants of land made by the general government, while
individual benefactions have been still more abundant. Our oldest
colleges all count their endowments as valued from half a million to
four and five millions each. There are now more than two hundred well
endowed colleges and scientific schools for young men, supporting many
hundred professors. The State of New-York has twelve endowed colleges,
having doubled the number in twenty years. Connecticut has three
endowed colleges, and four endowed professional schools. Massachusetts
has four colleges and six professional schools for young men, and other
States in similar proportions.

As a contrast to this liberal provision for young men, I may be allowed
to narrate some of my own experience. When I commenced my profession
as teacher, the most popular boarding-schools taught little except the
primary branches, though occasionally was executed by the pupils a
"mourning piece," that is, an embroidered tombstone under an apparition
by courtesy called a weeping willow, with a row of darkly-clad weeping
friends approaching it. I was among the first to introduce what are
called the higher branches. My school soon numbered over one hundred;
and yet I had only one room and one assistant, while I had both to
teach the higher branches and to study them myself; not having been
taught them in my school days. I also had to prepare my teachers, who
like myself had never been trained for these departments. And as my
school rose in popularity, other schools followed the example, so that
as fast as I trained reliable teachers, they were drawn off by the
offers of higher salaries.

Meantime all the responsibilities, which in colleges are divided among
the president, the professors, the tutors, and the treasurer, rested
on me. Ten years of such complicated labor, study, and responsibility
destroyed health, as it has done for multitudes of other women, who
have thus toiled unaided by any of the advantages given to college
teachers.

Ever since that time, I have devoted my income, strength, and time to
efforts for securing professional advantages of education for my sex
equal to those bestowed on men. It is over forty years that these
efforts have been continued. And now, after remarkable and unexpected
restoration to health, the institution I founded so many years ago is
again committed to my charge.

In all this period, not a single institution has been founded which
includes in its curriculum the course of practical training that
prepares a woman for the complicated responsibilities I have enumerated
as included in her profession. The Mount Holyoke plan does not even aim
at any thing of this kind, but is only a method of economy to lessen
expenditure. Vassar College has no endowment to support teachers,
and so its tuition fees far exceed those of colleges for men. Nor
is the industrial training of woman for her distinctive profession
any part of its aim, while the largest portion of the income of that
institution goes for the support of men instead of women teachers,
five out of seven professors being men. And the excuse for this is,
that well-trained female teachers can not be found, and so more highly
educated men must be taken. But if woman had received the advantages
given to men, most of these honorable and remunerative positions would
have been hers.

The fact that men have been so much more highly educated in literature
and science than women, causes the unjust discrimination in giving men
the most honorable and remunerative positions even in female schools,
where women equal or surpass them as successful teachers; so also in
the comparatively unjust wages given to them in public schools.

The history of some of the most prominent female institutions shows
that women are equal if not superior to men, in ability to educate
their own sex, even when so little has been done for them and so
much for men. For example, about the time I commenced my school,
Mrs. Willard petitioned the Legislature of New-York to bestow some
endowments on her flourishing institution, but without success; and yet
without any such aid that institution has carried out a high course of
literary education for woman, has had uninterrupted success, and still
offers equal advantages with most female colleges where college-trained
men are the chief recipients of the income, and are chief managers.

The Ingham University, of Central New-York, was founded by two women,
and when it numbered over two hundred, sought endowments in vain. A
man was then placed at its head, hoping thus to gain endowments; but
under his administration the institution ran down, and was restored to
prosperity only by restoration to woman's care.

The institution I founded at Hartford has always run down with
college-educated men as principals, and flourished most under the
charge of women.

The Milwaukee Female College, established by my influence, rose to
prosperity under women, failed under a man, and was restored to
prosperity by a woman.

The Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was founded by a woman, and has been
sustained forty years by women alone. In all these cases, the men had a
college education, and the women gained an education chiefly by unaided
personal efforts. I think similar illustrations can be found all over
the nation.

It is the unvarying testimony of the supervisors of public schools
that women teachers are equal to men in ability and success, and yet
to men, as the general rule, are given the best places and the largest
salaries. While so many avenues to wealth and honor are open to men
and so few to women, all will allow, that this is neither just nor
generous, and if women can do so well at such disadvantage, what would
they do if equal in privileges?

To illustrate still further the unjust discrimination in educational
advantages, I will state that in Hartford, close beside my institution,
is a college founded at nearly the same time, the numbers being about
the same as in my school. The president teaches only one or two hours
a day, and has no responsibility for any department except his own.
The college treasurer has all the care of the finances, and, having
endowments for this purpose, pays salaries to the president and five or
six other teachers which would provide a house and support for a family
to each. There are only four classes, and each teacher is required to
instruct only one or two hours a day, having the remaining time for
self-improvement and for literary labor to add to his income.

In the same city is a theological seminary with only twenty-five
young men.[39:A] For them are provided spacious accommodations, with
furniture frequently provided by generous women. Women also are among
the most liberal founders of those endowments, valued at nearly or
quite half a million, by which four professors and their families are
supported and the board and expenses of a good portion of the pupils
are paid. In Middletown is another endowed theological seminary, where
ten instructors are provided for only thirty-six students. At New-Haven
is another endowed theological seminary, where six instructors are
employed to teach fifty-two young men, and so endowed that four
professors and their families are supported by funds. And in all these
cases, each professor teaches only one or two hours a day in only one
or two branches. And in more than half the States of our Union, are
similar institutions to train young men for church ministries, a large
portion of them largely endowed by women; while not even one has yet
been established to train woman for her no less sacred ministry.

    [39:A] These statistics are taken from the Report of the
    National Bureau of Education for 1870.

When I took charge of the Hartford Female Seminary, this fall, the
trustees and former principal had established a course of study, and
pupils were preparing to graduate as in past time; while many reasons
were urged for making no great changes.

The list of branches to be taught, as exhibited in the circular, is no
larger than is common in many women high-schools and colleges, each
one requiring a text-book, and reads thus: Spelling, reading, writing,
grammar, arithmetic, higher arithmetic, algebra, history of the United
States, physiology, physical geography, geometry, natural philosophy,
chemistry, astronomy, mental philosophy, Butler's Analogy of Natural
and Revealed Religion, æsthetics, English literature, history of
Greece, history of Rome, philology, ancient and modern history,
composition, natural history, history of England, history of France,
botany, geology, rhetoric, trigonometry, moral philosophy, history of
literature, history of arts and sciences, Latin, Greek, French, German,
Italian, Spanish, drawing, painting in water-colors, painting in oil,
vocal music, instrumental music, and gymnastics; _forty-four_ in the
whole.

For all these I am responsible to select teachers, to examine
text-books, to decide on the modes of teaching, and to see that all
departments are administered properly.

I can not carry out all these without at least seven English teachers,
and four or five for the languages and accomplishments. And in
arranging classes in so many branches, these teachers, on an average,
must teach four or five hours a day, and have charge of six or seven
classes in nearly as many different studies.

Though tuition charges have ever been larger than young men pay in
colleges, in my former experience forty years ago, I could not retain
the best teachers and furnish apparatus and advantages needed, only
by using the whole income, except what I paid for my own board and
my very economical personal expenses. And now, the income from one
hundred pupils would not save me from embarrassing debt had I not other
resources.

If I worked my teachers at the risk of their health, and employed those
of humbler qualifications, I might, perhaps, make a small profit, but
not otherwise. And as fast as teachers are trained, so as to be most
valuable, (as in my earlier experience,) they will leave for posts
offering higher pay and less labor. Neither Mrs. Stowe, nor myself,
nor any of the most highly qualified ladies of our country, could take
charge of such an institution without a sacrifice of an income counting
by thousands. Will not a time come when ladies, the most highly
qualified to educate their own sex, shall receive such advantages
and compensation for these duties as now are exclusively given to
men? My extensive acquaintance with ladies of this class all over
the land enables me to predict an abundant supply of highly-trained
educators to the duties of our sex, if the appropriate facilities,
such as college professors obtain, were offered to them. But to take
such a post as I now occupy, or to become a hard-working, ill-paid
subordinate, or to become a family assistant, would not tempt them from
present advantages of usefulness, independence, and comfort.

The present agitation as to woman's rights and wrongs is the natural
and necessary result of the want of appreciation and neglect of the
claims and duties of the family state. It is the manifest design of
our Creator that each man should seek a wife and establish a family.
And the family state has two ends to be accomplished; one is the
increase and perpetuity of our race, and the other is its education
and training; not chiefly to enjoy this life, but mainly to form a
character that will secure endless happiness in the life to come.

The distinctive feature of the family state is, _the training of a
small number by self-sacrificing labor and love_. Abraham, the friend
of God, and the great model of faith and obedience to both Jews and
Christians, was not allowed to have a child of his own till he had
trained six hundred servants, each man dwelling in his tent with a
family of his own, forming a religious community that obeyed the true
God. This shows that it was not for personal gratification as the chief
end that God instituted the family, and that those who are childless
may have as great a work to perform as the parental.

But the more our nation has advanced in wealth and civilization, the
more have the labors and the duties of the family state been shunned.
Many virtuous young men are withheld from it from the incompetence and
the extravagant habits and tastes of those they would otherwise seek
for wives. Another class is withheld by guilty courses that destroy
the hope of family love and purity. Another large class shun the toil,
self-denial, and trials of married life, and prefer their ease and the
many other enjoyments wealth will secure.

To these add the hundreds of thousands of young men who perished
in our destructive war, and the emigration to new settlements where
early marriage is impracticable, and as the consequence, the census
shows hundreds of thousands of women who can never commence the family
state as wife and mother. This is the great emergency that agitates
society and forms the chief moral problem of our age. The question in
its simplest form is this, What is to be done to secure the highest
usefulness and happiness of _woman as a sex_, when marriage and the
family state are more and more passing away? Our customs and our laws
are all framed on the assumption that women are to be supported by
husbands to rear up families; and yet marriage and the family state
are more and more avoided. And what is the remedy to be sought? Will
the ballot relieve this difficulty? Can any laws be enforced that
will oblige men to marry? and if not, what are we to do to meet the
emergency?

In reply, I will first state some important facts developed here in
Massachusetts, where well-educated marriageable women most abound; not
in employments for which God designed them, but in shops and mills and
employment detrimental both to health and morals.

The report of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities states that
the present mode of collecting special classes of the helpless, the
unfortunate, and the vicious into great establishments, managed by paid
agents, is not the best method to secure their physical, moral, and
social improvement, and that it involves many unfortunate influences.

Then it is suggested that the better way would be to scatter these
helpless and unfortunate ones in families of Christian people. Now,
as before stated, the family is God's mode of training our race to
self-denying love and labor; and the _Christian_ family, in contrast
to the worldly, is the one in which a small number is given to one or
two, who have the spirit of Christ and live as he lived, to labor for
others, and not for self-indulgent ease and worldly enjoyments.

Hundreds of Massachusetts women have this spirit of Christ and are
pining for this ministry, which is as sacred and as effective as that
of the church. Thousands of neglected orphans, or worse than orphans,
abound on every side. The homeless, the aged, the weak, the sick, and
the sinful, also, are all around us.

And how can truly Christian homes be established where there are no
young children to train, no aged persons to watch over, no invalids
to nurse, and no vicious to reclaim? Why are orphans thrown upon the
cold world, and why are the aged held in a useless, suffering life
except to furnish opportunities for Christian love and self-sacrifice?
Here is the problem for Massachusetts. Let her do for her daughters as
liberally as for her sons, and it will speedily be solved.

There are multitudes of women in unwomanly employments, who, if
educated to the scientific duties of a nurse for young infants and
their mothers, with all the advantages of high culture given to medical
men, and with the social honor accorded to high culture, would be
greeted in many a family, be sought as the most welcome benefactors of
the family state, and take a superior position to that now given to the
teachers of music, French, and drawing.

Again, there is no agent of the family state who has a more constant,
daily influence on the character of childhood than the one who shares
with a mother the cares of the nursery. And yet where shall we find an
institution in which young women are properly trained for these sacred
offices? The heir of an earthly kingdom is surrounded by the noblest
and the wisest, who deem the humblest office an honor in his service.
But the young heir of an immortal kingdom, whose career, not for a few
earthly days, but for eternal ages, is to be decided in this life, to
whom is he committed, and _where_ and _how_ were they trained for these
supernal duties? The bogs of Ireland—the shanty tenement-houses—the
plantation huts—the swarming, poverty-stricken wanderers from Europe,
China, and Japan are coming to reply!

The influx of wealth, the building of expensive houses demanding many
servants, and the increasing demands of social life, are changing
mothers from the educational training of their own offspring to the
training and care of servants; and yet, in our boarding-schools and
colleges for women, how much is done to train them for such duties?

When I read the curriculum of Vassar and other female colleges,
methinks their graduates by such a course as this will be as well
prepared to nurse the sick, train servants, take charge of infants, and
manage all departments of the family state, as they would be to make
and regulate chronometers, or to build and drive steam-engines.

The number of branches introduced into female schools has nearly
doubled since I commenced my school, while the real advantages gained
by this increase have been lessened. And as yet little or no progress
has been made in preparing women for the practical duties of their
profession. The expenses of most popular boarding-schools confine their
advantages to the rich, who do not aim to have daughters trained to do
woman's work, or to earn their own independence.

The evils that women suffer from the want of proper training for their
appropriate duties, few can fully realize. The Working-Woman's Union,
in New-York City, reports that of the 13,000 applicants for work, not
one half were qualified to any kind of work in a proper manner. The
societies for aiding poor women report as their greatest embarrassment
that but few can sew decently, or do any other work properly. The
heads of dress-making establishments complain that few can be found
who can be trusted to complete a dress properly, and say that those
properly trained find abundant work and good pay. The demand for good
mantua-makers in country towns is universal. In former days, plain
sewing was taught in schools; but now it is banished, and mothers are
too pressed with labor, or too negligent, to supply the deficiency.

In the middle classes, unmarried women and widows feel that they are
an incumbrance on fathers and brothers, who, from pride or duty, feel
bound to support them, and yet no openings offer for them to earn an
independence. Thousands of ladies of good families and good education,
with aged mothers or young children to support, can find either no
employments or those offering starvation wages. The school or the
boarding-house is the chief alternative for such persons; and yet every
opening for a school-teacher has scores, and sometimes hundreds of
applicants.

The factory-girls, and those in shops and stores, must stand six,
eight, or ten hours a day in bad air and unwholesome labor. The influx
of ignorant and uncleanly foreigners into our kitchens, and the
exactions of thriftless young housekeepers from boarding-schools, drive
self-respecting American women from many of our kitchens.

Meantime, in our more wealthy classes, those who have generous
and elevated aspirations feel that they have no object in life—no
profession, like their brothers, by which they can secure their own
independence, and aid in elevating others. Our young girls are trained
only for marriage; and when that fails, fathers and brothers forbid
their earning an independence, as implying disgrace to themselves.

The remedy for all this would soon be achieved were woman's work
elevated to an honorable and remunerative science and profession,
by the same methods that men have taken to elevate their various
professions. The establishment of _Woman's Universities_, in which
every girl shall secure as good a literary training as her brothers,
and then be trained to some profession adapted to her taste and
capacity, by which she can establish a home of her own, and secure an
independent income—_this_ is what every woman may justly claim and
labor for, as the shortest, surest, and safest mode of securing her own
highest usefulness and happiness, and that of her sex; a mode which
demands only what, if once achieved as practicable, every intelligent
and benevolent man would approve and delight to promote.

Here I feel bound to express dissent from the frequent implication that
men are alone responsible for the present disabilities and wrongs of
woman, owing to a selfish and tyrannical spirit not existing in my sex.
There is no nation in the world, and never has been one, in which all
classes of men were so trained to honor, protect, and provide for women
as in our own. On the contrary, women with us have been trained to
expect care and protection, and not to a chivalrous and tender regard
for their own sex, such as has been cultivated in brothers, fathers,
and husbands.

Moreover, women are trained to economy in details more than men, and
have not the free use of money as have those who earn family support.
As a consequence, when the raising of the wages of a school-teacher, or
the charges of a seamstress, or the pay of a cook is discussed, it is
often the case that women are no more ready than men thus to increase
the advantages of their sex.

In the matter of educational benefactions, women have given liberally
to endow colleges and professional schools for men; and it is a
remarkable fact that, if we except Roman Catholic nunneries, I know
not of even one case in this nation where a woman is supported as an
educator by an endowment given by a woman.

As previously indicated, the main causes of the evils that now press
on my sex are the want of appreciation of the honor and duties of the
family state, and the decrease of marriage, owing to war, emigration,
self-indulgence, and vices consequent on increase of civilization and
wealth.

There is every evidence that men are as sympathetic, and as anxious to
devise remedies for the evils complained of, as are our own sex; and
the impolitic and unjust manner in which they have been treated by some
who are generously laboring for the relief and elevation of woman, is
greatly to be regretted. In all my past efforts, I have depended mainly
on the powerful influence of my sex in gaining what was sought; for I
believe there is no benevolent plan, which is so approved by judicious
and benevolent women as to secure their earnest efforts, which will
not receive from fathers, brothers, and husbands all that is sought.
My only difficulty in the past has been to secure such appreciation
from my sex of the honor and duties of the family state, of the need
of scientific and practical training for these duties, as would secure
their earnest attention, influence, and efforts.

While I would urge these views on the attention of all women who have
any influence, I beg leave to suggest other modes by which the same
ends may be promoted. Thus, every cultivated woman who dignifies
domestic labor, by living in such a style as enables her to work
herself, and to train her sons and daughters to work with her, is a
co-laborer in this beneficent enterprise. Every woman who goes to her
kitchen in the spirit of Christ, by self-denying efforts to train her
servants to intelligence, honesty, and benevolence, is another blessed
laborer on the same field. Every young lady who seeks to impart some
of her advantages to those who labor in her service will be preparing
to hear from their and her Lord, "Inasmuch as ye did it to these the
least of my brethren, ye did it to me." Every school-teacher who
trains her pupils to value home labor, and to learn to do all woman's
proper work in the best manner, is also a minister of good to the
family state. Every woman who uses her influence to introduce sewing
into public schools, or to establish sewing-schools among the poor, is
another co-laborer for the same high aim. Every woman who can bring the
views here presented to the notice of wealthy and influential men and
women, may be sowing seed that will yield rich fruits even for ages to
come, by endowments secured through such quiet influences.

_A Woman's University_, that will realize the ideal aimed at, may,
perhaps, come by no sudden growth, but by many experiments in different
fields and diverse departments, each aiding to advance every other,
till all eventually will be combined in a harmonious and perfected
result. And for this consummation my good friend and opponent is as
ready to labor as those of us who have not her courage and hopes as to
the results of woman suffrage.

I stated that I have resumed the charge of the seminary I founded forty
years ago, to teach the higher branches, with Mrs. Stowe, then, as
now, my associate. We began when women were trained to domestic labor,
and almost nothing else. We have seen the pendulum swing to the other
extreme, till, both in families and schools, women are taught the
higher branches, and almost nothing else. We now begin at the other
end, and, by the aid and counsel of the judicious women of Hartford, we
hope to set an example of a woman's university which shall combine the
highest intellectual culture with the highest practical skill in all
the distinctive duties of womanhood.

Our good friends of the women suffrage cause often liken their
agitation to that which ended the slavery of a whole race doomed to
unrequited toil for selfish, cruel masters. When so many men are
toiling to keep daughters, wives, and mothers from any kind of toil, it
is difficult to trace the resemblance.

Moreover, we of the other side are believers in slavery, and we mean to
establish it all over the land. We mean to force men to resign their
gold, and even to forge chains for themselves with it; and when we
have trained their fair and rosy daughters, we will enforce a "Pink
and White Tyranny" more stringent than any other earthly thraldom. And
we will make our slaves work, and work from early dawn to dark night,
under the Great Task-master, the Lord of love and happiness, until
every one on earth shall fear him, as "the beginning of wisdom;" and
then "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God," as the whole
end and perfection of man.

    For want of time, only a part of this address was delivered at
    the Boston Music Hall. Mrs. Livermore followed, and at Note A
    are remarks in reply to some of hers. What follows will present
    further views on the subject of Woman's Profession.

After resigning the charge of the Hartford Female Seminary, many
circumstances combined to give me unusual facilities for observing
educational influences in various institutions for both sexes.

Continued ill health led to extensive travels, and to protracted
visits to a widely dispersed family and to former pupils settled in
every section of the country. My father was president of a theological
seminary, and my brother-in-law has been professor in two colleges
and one theological seminary. One brother was valedictorian and tutor
at Yale, and then president of one of the first Western colleges. Six
brothers were educated in five different colleges, and thirteen nephews
were students in six different colleges. Thirty-four nieces and nephews
have been connected with a great number of different boarding-schools
as scholars or teachers, while several hundred of my former pupils have
been teachers or pupils in almost every State of the Union, and have
extensively reported to me their experiences and observations.

I have also been connected with two organizations for establishing
schools and female colleges in such a way as to make it a part of my
duties to select teachers for schools and to organize faculties for
large female institutions.

These opportunities, extended over a period of nearly forty years, have
secured principles and conclusions of such importance as warrants not
only general statements, but some details to illustrate.

A fundamental principle thus gained is, that the school should be an
appendage of the family state, and modeled on its primary principle,
which is, _to train the ignorant and weak by self-sacrificing labor and
love; and to bestow the most on the weakest, the most undeveloped, and
the most sinful_.

It is exactly the opposite course to which teachers are most tempted.
The bright, the good, the industrious are those whom it is most
agreeable to teach, who win most affection, and who most promote the
reputation of a teacher and of a school or college. To follow this
principle, therefore, demands more clear views of duty and more
self-denying benevolence than ordinarily abound.

Moreover, the common practice of schools and colleges is, after a
certain amount of trial, to turn out those who are too dull to reach a
given line of scholarship, or too mischievous to conform to rules. It
is assumed that the interests of the more intelligent and docile are
to override those of the stupid and disobedient, and that schools and
colleges are not to adopt the great principle illustrated in the story
of the prodigal son, the strayed lamb, and the heavenly joy over one
that was lost more than over the ninety and nine that went not astray.

The results of attempts to carry out this divine principle in school
management, in my earlier years, were very encouraging. The frequent
teachers' meetings were made the means of discovering the intellectual
and moral deficiencies of each pupil, and then the difficult cases were
apportioned to the care and watch of the several teachers, according to
their adaptation to the duty assigned. Each was to consult and devise
methods, report to me, and to receive counsel from me as to further
measures. A few specific cases will illustrate some results.

For example, one of our best pupils and very intelligent in certain
directions, was reported as utterly incapable of understanding the
reasoning process in geometry. After experiments for more than a year,
this pupil became not only one of our best mathematical scholars, but
one of our most successful teachers in that study.

In another case, the pupil was one of a numerous class that have
imagination and fancy undeveloped and apparently wanting, having little
or no appreciation of poetry, fine writing, or works of imagination.
A long course of discipline and practice so developed these dormant
powers that this pupil not only became an admirer and critic of poetry
and fine writing, but presented, as her closing public exercise, a
specimen of poetry, devised and completed without aid, which would
favorably compare with half of that which is written and admired in our
current literature.

In other cases, in my school and among my friends, I have noticed
that, while some children have all the mental faculties equally
developed, others appear to possess small capacities, except in one
or two directions, which in some cases are prominent and in others so
undeveloped as to appear wanting.

For example, the son of a dear friend had been trained by good teachers
and sent to a first-class college, where every ordinary method was
employed to carry him through with at least moderate respectability,
and all proved an utter failure. The young man was then placed with a
good private teacher, who, after repeated experiments, ascertained that
in certain directions the mental faculties were above mediocrity, but
in points not reached by college training. Another method was adopted,
and the result was, that the young man became distinguished in one
branch of practical science, and eventually a popular and successful
professor in a scientific school.

In treating both intellectual and moral deficiencies, great attention
and care are demanded, so as not to deal with the willing but weak
as with the careless or mischievous. Both efforts demand the labor
of self-sacrificing love, and the rewards for such efforts have been
witnessed in such abundance as to cause great regret that so seldom our
higher schools and colleges aim at such results.

Another very important principle, especially in the training of women,
is, that the duties of the family state, as performed when parents and
children are united in domestic labors, have a direct and very decided
influence in training the intellectual powers.

In such families, the first-born, especially if a daughter, begins
almost in infant days to aid the mother in the care of the younger.
Discretion, quickness, invention, and many other faculties are
cultivated in the care of the little one, in regulating its caprices
and controlling its mischievous impulses. She learns to wash and dress
a younger child, to execute contrivances for its amusement, to regulate
its habits, and to aid as a teacher in its first school lessons. She is
trained to sew, mend, and to make family clothing, and then to aid in
teaching these arts to the younger. The first rudiments of culture in
the fine arts commence when assisting in ornamenting garden and parlor
with flowers and with various contrivances. She learns to cook food,
and to understand the varieties and the modes of preservation. And so
of many other household duties which demand quickness of apprehension,
discretion, energy, and perseverance. It is an unconscious intellectual
training, usually enforced by limited means, and insuring benefits
which the offspring of the rich rarely enjoy.

It is on this principle that Frobel arranged his system of the
Kindergarten, which develops many mental faculties and trains to
intellectual exercises before book knowledge is sought, chiefly by
exercises that cultivate taste, ingenuity, contrivance, and skill in
the use of the hand and eye.

The early training in my own personal and family history is a
remarkable illustration of this principle. This was at a time when
book-learning for the young was at its lowest stage. The whole of
my childhood was a play-spell, where my chief contrivances were to
avoid all kinds of confinement to study, or any kind of intellectual
taxation, except in practical employments, for which happily I had a
decided taste.

The death of a wise and tender mother at sixteen, and the consequent
responsibilities that came on the eldest of eight children, still
further developed the intellectual powers which are cultivated in
domestic employments. But school duties were never relished, except as
opportunities of furnishing merriment and various amusing contrivances
for escaping study. No discipline by book knowledge was gained, and no
reading attempted except in works of imagination.

It was not till school-days were over, that the discipline of sorrow,
and the consequent forces of religion, sobered an exuberant nature and
led to preparation for the office of a teacher.

Then, for the first time, commenced a training in book knowledge
under the care of a college-trained brother, and then a few months
accomplished what, with most school-girls, demands as many years. And
this speed and success were secured by aid of faculties developed
and strengthened chiefly by domestic training, together with the
conversation and intellectual influence of the parents and family
friends who were my educators.

The mental history of these family friends is an additional
illustration of this principle. My father had a college education; my
mother and an aunt, who was a member of our family, had only that of
a country home, when reading, writing, and arithmetic were the only
branches in children's schools. My mother had a natural taste for
profound investigation, and, with no aid but a small encyclopedia,
performed some remarkable mathematical calculations where my father was
helpless. But apparently she had no talent for poetry or fine writing,
though having a high appreciation of both. On the contrary, my aunt was
a fine writer, and composed poetry of a high order. Both the ladies
were extensive readers of the best English classics, much more so than
my father.

And now in my recollections of home discussions, and of the admiration
universally accorded to my mother's intellectual gifts, I should say
that by the common school, by domestic duties, by English literature,
and by the sciences studied in one small encyclopedia and two or three
other scientific books, my mother was, if not superior, fully equal to
my father in mental power and culture. And in fine writing and most
æsthetic developments my aunt was superior to both, though she was
their inferior in several other directions.

Moreover, five of my father's sons were trained in the best colleges,
while his daughters all knew little or nothing of the chief branches
included in the college course. And yet the domestic training of the
daughters and their more extensive reading, as I view it, made them
fully equal to my brothers in intellectual development.

Similar observations met me in general society when comparing the
mental development of sisters having only a common school education
with that of college-trained brothers, and this at all periods and in
every direction. And it is in view of such multiplied illustrations
that I understand how it is that women, with much fewer advantages of
classic and mathematical training than college graduates enjoy, prove
better educators than men for children and for the more mature of their
own sex.

Here I wish it to be understood, that my aim in remarks on colleges is
not to present their advantages or deficiencies, except so far as they
are influencing female institutions to the same courses of study and
organization. I am not qualified to advise as to institutions for men;
but the profession and pursuits of women as a sex are to be so widely
diverse from those of men that they should secure as diverse methods of
training.

I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as
very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be
united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very
desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from
parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home.

There will always be exceptional cases when children have no suitable
parents or guardians; while at a maturer period, after the principles
and habits are largely solidified, there are advantages in sending a
child from home. The true method, at the immature periods of life, is
the union of the home and the school in protecting from dangers and in
forming good habits and principles.

I have repeatedly resided in the immediate vicinity of boarding-schools
for boys, embracing the children of my relatives or intimate friends,
and never without wonder and distress at the risks to some and the
ruin to others constantly going on. Such institutions always have had
inmates shrewd and often malignant, while the rash curiosity of youth
is ready to meet any danger.

Withdrawn from parents and sisters, and all home influences, the young
boy is lodged, often in isolated dormitories or in negligent private
families, with class-mates of all kinds of habits. And so tobacco,
creating an unnatural thirst for other exciting stimulants, is secretly
introduced; then alcoholic drinks; then the most gross and licentious
literature; and all so secretly that teachers can not meet the evil. I
have known these results repeatedly in schools under the most careful,
pious, and celebrated teachers.

Thus, at the age most susceptible and most dangerous, the young boy is
taken from mother and sisters and the safe guardianship of a home, and
amid such perils committed to strangers who, with multitudinous pupils
and cares, can give no special care to any one child.

Another general principle attained by my experience is, that both
quickness of perception and retention of memory depend very greatly on
the _degree of interest_ excited. It is not the most learned teacher
that always has most success in imparting permanent knowledge. As an
illustration, when I commenced teaching Latin, it was under the care of
a very accurate and faithful brother, who stood first in scholarship in
Yale as valedictorian. I was then only a few pages ahead of my scholars
in the _Liber Primus_, and yet, when they had finished most of Virgil
and selections from Cicero, this brother and several other examiners
said that they had never seen any classes of boys superior to my class
in accurate and complete scholarship.

Even in the pronunciation of the French, I have found that it was not
the best educated teacher, speaking with the purest Parisian accent,
who was most successful, but rather a lady whose enthusiasm and
perseverance and carefulness would not allow a single syllable to be
mispronounced by her pupils. This explains how it is that women with
less education so often prove more successful than men in managing
female institutions.

By this same general principle of quickening intellect by exciting
interest, I learned the importance of educating every young girl with
some practical aim, by which, in case of poverty, she might support
herself; and also, of selecting for this end some pursuit suited to her
natural tastes and character. To study what is liked and with the hope
of thus securing some agreeable and substantial advantage in future
life more than doubles the interest, and thus quickens and exalts the
intellectual powers.

In this view of the case, it became an important inquiry as to which of
the employments and studies of our higher female seminaries could be
made available in securing a remunerative profession to a woman, and
one that would be suitable for her sex. Here, again, I may be allowed
to introduce some of my own experience as guiding to a conclusion, at
least in one particular.

All through my childhood, my father daily read the Bible, in course, at
family prayers, and when his inquisitive children asked questions as
to matters of delicacy, they were told that the Bible was given by God
to instruct men in all their duties, and that some things were not for
children to know till they were men and women; that this inquiry was
about things they could not understand, and that it was wrong to try to
do so.

After such wise training, my first experience as a teacher of Latin was
to a class of young girls as ignorant as myself of all the wickedness
of the world; and then I was plied with questions I could not answer
except by aid of a brother; when to my dismay and disgust I found the
worst vices of heathenism, and those most likely to tempt young boys,
made respectable and attractive by the charms of classic poetry, and
forming a part of a boy's training for college.

And here I would ask why it has come to pass that the Bible, in its
original Greek, is turned out of the college course of most of our
leading colleges, (for it formerly was required,) while the vulgarity
and vice of heathenism are preserved and made attractive in fitting
boys for college? Is it not time for woman to have a more decided
ministry in training young boys for their college life? Should not
women be trained in Latin and Greek, so that mothers and sisters thus
taught could fit young boys for college, instead of sending them at
the most perilous age away from the watch and care of a home and all
female influence, to boys' boarding-schools, to mix with all sorts, and
there be taught all manner of evil? Teachers trained in these languages
could go into families to aid a mother in these duties, and would be
liberally compensated. This, then, is a profession for which a woman
can be trained even in our common schools as well as in female colleges.

Another very interesting fact revealed by personal experience is,
that there is no knowledge so thorough and permanent as that gained
in teaching others. Repeatedly, in my own case, and still oftener in
the case of my teachers, has it been observed that a lesson or problem
supposed to be comprehended, was imperfect, and corrected only in
attempts to aid others in understanding it. In no other profession is
the sacred promise, "Give and it shall be given unto you," so fully
realized as in that of a teacher.

This view of the case has led me to devise methods by which every
pupil, in school-days, shall have an opportunity to attempt to teach,
and be taught how to do it in the best manner; and that, too, in every
stage of advancement from lowest to highest. There are methods which
secure this advantage with great economy of time and labor which can
not be detailed here.

Another very important principle in acquiring knowledge is the
taking of a few branches at one time, and especially in having
these associated in their character, so that each is an assistance
in understanding and remembering the other. For illustration, let
geography, history, polite literature, and composition, for a certain
period, be the leading studies of a class which has completed a short
course in these studies in the preparatory school. Then let history
be studied by successive periods, marked by some great events or by
some distinguished characters; and as each country is introduced, let
its civil, political, and physical geography be fully studied; its
animals and productions be illustrated by drawings and by selection
from travels read to the class; this might be done either in connection
with the history or as a separate class in geography, conducted in
connection with the class of history and reciting at a different hour.

At the same time, the teacher of the class in literature and
_belles-lettres_ could be presenting at another hour the state of
science, literature, and the fine arts, with illustrative drawings,
and also an account of the prominent learned men and authors of that
period, with some account of their most celebrated works, reading
some selections. For example, suppose, the period that of Alexander
the Great, by this method, one teacher would introduce most of the
geography of countries of the ancient world, while the literature
and the fine arts of Greece in its palmy days would, under another
teacher, be connected with the study of its history. At the same time
the exercises in a daily class in composition might have topics and
exercises to correspond.

So in the period of the crusades; in one class, the history would be
studied; in another, the civil, political, and physical geography of
the countries introduced; in another, the history of literature, the
fine arts, and the distinguished authors, with some account of their
works. This period might be still more vividly presented in standard
works of fiction, such as Scott's _Talisman_ and _Ivanhoe_, to be read
in hours of social gathering or at home.

To make room for such a method, much of the minute and uninteresting
details now so excessive in our geographies and histories, which are
forgotten as soon as learned, would be omitted for these more valuable
and more interesting exercises. On such a plan, the pupil would have
three or four recitations on diverse topics, and yet so connected that
each would illustrate and vivify the other, while the interest thus
excited would make permanent in the memory all these details.

There is great loss of time and labor in the common method of pursuing
four, five, or six disconnected branches of study. The mind is
distracted by the variety, and feels a feeble and divided interest
in all. In many cases, this method of _cramming_ the mind with
uninteresting and disconnected details serves to debilitate rather than
to promote mental power. The memory is the faculty chiefly cultivated,
and this at the expense of the others. This method has been greatly
increased since the honors of graduating have become so popular in
female colleges and high-schools.

The excess of uninteresting details is a serious objection to many
text-books of history and geography. It is very much to be regretted
that the plan introduced in Woodbridge and Willard's Geography, by
which details are systematized under general heads, is so widely
neglected.

No experience has been more valuable to me than that relating to
physical training. Few are aware how much can be done in schools to
promote development, health, and the proper and graceful use of the
body and limbs. My residence in such a large number and variety
of health establishments, in studying the causes and cure of the
prevailing debility and diseases of American women, has led to the
conviction that there are very few diseases or deformities which a
teacher properly trained may not remedy by natural methods, and those
which may be made a part of school training.

Here I would invite the special attention of mothers and teachers to
a work on the Diseases of Women, by Dr. George H. Taylor, published
by G. Maclean, 85 Nassau St., N. Y., in which such natural methods
are presented, many of which can be employed in the family and school
without the attendance of a physician.

In the early part of my school experience, a European lady artist of
fine personal appearance offered to teach in my school a system of
exercises by which she herself, once a humpback cripple, was restored
to a perfect and graceful figure. These were disconnected exercises,
one portion of which I introduced into my work on physiology and
calisthenics as what could be easily used in all schools without
demanding a separate room and dress for the purpose.

Other portions I combined into a system of calisthenic exercises
_set to music_, and demanding a separate room, and this method was
extensively introduced into schools until Dr. Dio Lewis prepared his
system, now extensively used.

The difficulties of Dr. Lewis's method are, that it demands a separate
dress and room for the purpose, which multitudes of schools will not
adopt, and also is so violent as to endanger the health of delicate
young girls, while it has but little tendency to promote ease and
gracefulness of person and movements. For these reasons it is
constantly passing out of use after a short trial.

In place of this, I have originated another method by which personal
defects and deformities are remedied, and gracefulness in the movement
of head, body, and limbs promoted. It includes exercises which _gently_
train all the muscles, which are varied and entertaining, and which
are performed to music, the pupils singing songs prepared for each
exercise.

The results in curing defects and promoting health, ease, and
gracefulness of movement and manner have been so remarkable as to
excite some wonder that, even in dancing-schools, so little has been
attempted in these particulars, when so much might be so easily
effected. The proper and graceful mode of walking, sitting, and
using the hands and arms is rarely taught in any schools. So, also,
the training of the voice to agreeable tones and enunciation in
conversation is almost never attempted, and yet few things have a more
constant influence in giving pleasure.

The regulation and use of amusements as a part of education is, as
yet, scarcely recognized as a school duty. There is nothing that gains
more personal regard and influence with pupils than joining in their
amusements, while opportunities are thus given to promote both health
and literary improvement. And teachers need this kind of exercise and
relaxation as much or more than their scholars.

One very valuable method is combining the reading of interesting works
of fiction with the period of history pursued in school hours, and also
with ornamental needle-work pursued while listening to reading. In long
winter evenings, an hour for study, an hour for active amusements, and
an hour for this kind of reading and needle-work would unite health,
pleasure, and literary improvement in an unusual degree.

In resuming the religious training of an institution embracing pupils
whose parents hold views differing essentially from mine, it becomes
my duty to state the method I shall pursue. I propose to avoid all
conflict with opinions taught to my pupils by their parents and
clergymen. I shall simply take the teachings of Christ as my only
guide, and present, as he did, "Our Father in heaven" as a kind and
sympathizing parent, who loves and cares for _all_ the children he
has created more tenderly than any earthly parent can do; who ever is
seeking their best good; who is pleased when they strive to do right,
and grieved when they do wrong.

If any come to me for help in regard to theological doctrines, I shall
teach them the simple laws of interpretation used in common life, and
how to employ them in studying for themselves the teachings of the
Bible. I shall assume the foundation principle of the teachings of
Jesus Christ as the basis of religious training. I mean _the dangers of
the future world_. For it was the prime object of his advent to teach
us these dangers, and the way of escape.

Here I shall avoid all theories and all speculations, and confine
myself strictly to _the facts_ taught by Jesus Christ. I shall assume
as true _the fact_ revealed by the only person who has died and
returned to this life to tell us what awaits us in that dark and silent
land toward which we all are hastening; the solemn and dreadful _fact_
that there are such awful dangers in the world to come that the chief
end and aim of this life should be to save ourselves and all we can
influence, and, if need be, at the sacrifice of every earthly plan and
enjoyment.

Still more solemn to each individual mind is _the fact_ taught by our
Lord, that the number of those who escape an awful doom in the future
life depends on the character and efforts of the followers of Christ.

I shall assume as true the _fact_ revealed by Jesus Christ that
the _only_ way of salvation is by _faith_ in our Creator; not a
mere intellectual belief in his existence and laws, but a faith
including this belief and also practical obedience to his laws; by
_repentance_, not a mere emotion of sorrow, but including the ceasing
of disobedience; by _love_, not chiefly emotional, but rather that
which is thus defined by inspiration, "This is the love of God, that ye
keep his commandments."

_Obedience to the laws of our Creator_, physical, social, and moral,
being the chief element of the _faith_, _repentance_, and _love_ by
which alone we escape the dangers of the future world, the question
will be urged as to _the degree_ of obedience which will secure safety.
Here we find in Christ's teachings that _perfect_ obedience is not
indispensable to salvation. The demand is that "the heart" (that is,
the chief aim and interest) be devoted to such obedience. We are to
"seek _first_" the kingdom of God and _his righteousness_. And all
who do this, in both the Old Testament and the New, are recognized as
the righteous, as the children of God, and as heirs to the eternal
blessedness of his kingdom.

It is the revelation of the dangers of the life to come which decides
the character of the worldly educator in contrast to that of the
Christian. The one has for the leading interest and aim to secure the
enjoyments of this life; the other has as the chief interest and aim to
follow Christ in self-denying labors to save as many as possible from
the dangers of the life to come. The one lives as if there were little
or no danger in the future world. The other toils, as if in the perils
of a shipwreck, to save as many as possible and at whatever personal
sacrifice of ease or worldly enjoyment. The one finds little occasion
for self-sacrificing labors; the other is constantly aiming to save
others from sin and its ruin by daily self-denying efforts.

It was "for the joy that was set before him" that "the Shepherd and
Bishop of souls" "endured the cross, despising the shame." And when he
invites his followers to take and bear the same cross, he encourages
with the assurance that this yoke is easy and this burden light, and
that it brings "rest to the soul."

And here, for the encouragement of my pupils and friends, I feel bound
to give my testimony to the verity of these promises.

It is now more than forty years that my chief interest and aim has been
to labor to save my fellow-men to the full extent of my power. To this
end I have sacrificed all my time, all my income, my health, and every
plan of worldly ease and pleasure. With sympathies that would naturally
seek the ordinary lot of woman as the ideal of earthly happiness,
with no natural taste for notoriety or public action, with tastes for
art, and imaginative and quiet literary pursuits, I have, for all
that period, been doing what, as to personal taste, I least wished to
do, and leaving undone what I should most like to do. I have been for
many years a wanderer without a home, in delicate health, and often
baffled in favorite plans of usefulness. And yet my life has been a
very happy one, with more enjoyments and fewer trials than most of my
friends experience who are surrounded by the largest share of earthly
gratifications. And since health is restored, except as I sympathize
in the sorrows of others, I am habitually as happy as I wish to be in
this world. And this is not, as some may say, the result of a happy
temperament; for in early life, at its most favored period, I was happy
chiefly by anticipations that were not realized, and never with that
satisfying, peaceful enjoyment of the present, which is now secured,
and is never to end.

       *       *       *       *       *

The preceding views lead to inquiries of great practical importance,
such as these:

Is it consistent with Christian principles to take children from the
care of parents at the most critical period of life, and congregate
them in large boarding-schools and colleges, where temptations multiply
and individual love and care are diminished?

Is it practicable, in public and private schools, to institute
methods by which each pupil shall be trained according to peculiar
wants, so that deficient faculties shall be developed, and unfortunate
intellectual, physical, and moral traits or habits be rectified?

Can such schools institute methods by which every pupil shall, at
least, _commence_ a training for some business in future life, to which
natural abilities and tastes incline, and in which success would be
most probable?

Can woman's distinctive profession be made a large portion of her
school education?

To aid in deciding these questions, the following is given as the
_ideal_ at which I have been aiming in efforts to establish a _Woman's
University_; by which I mean, not a large boarding-establishment of
pupils removed from parental care, but an institution embracing the
whole course of a woman's training from infancy to a self-supporting
profession, in which both parents and teachers have a united influence
and agency.

According to this ideal, such an institution would be divided into
distinct schools; all under the same board of supervision, and all
carrying out a connected and appropriate portion of the same plan.
These are:

1. The _Kindergarten_, for the youngest children, who are not to use
books;

2. The _Primary School_, for children just commencing the use of books;

3. The _Preparatory School_, introductory to the higher;

4. The _Collegiate School_, embracing a course of four years;

5. The _Professional School_, to prepare a woman for all domestic
duties and for a self-supporting profession.

For the control of all these there would be such a _division of
responsibilities_ as follows:

1. The first would be the _department of intellectual training_;
committed to a woman of high culture in every branch taught in the
collegiate school; possessing quick discernment, intellectual and
moral force, and great interest in her special department. To her
would be committed the superintendence of all the schools, except the
professional, and it would be her duty to secure _perfect lessons_ from
every pupil by the following method.

She would first gain from the teachers such an arrangement of lessons
for every child as is fitted to its ability, and, if need be, have
classes so divided that those of nearly equal ability shall be in one
class, that the brighter or more advanced might not be retarded. Then,
at the close of the daily school, it would be the duty of every teacher
to send every pupil who has not a _perfect_ lesson, whatever might be
the cause, to the charge of this lady superintendent, who would keep
them with her until each had studied and recited the imperfect lesson
in the most satisfactory manner. By this method perfect lessons will be
secured every day from every pupil.

It would also be her duty to carry out a method, which will not here be
detailed, by which, after due training, every pupil shall occasionally
act as teacher under her supervision. By this and another method,
not here indicated, great economy of time will be secured to pupils
who ordinarily are obliged to spend much time in recitation-rooms in
hearing others recite, without any special benefit to themselves,
and involving great trial of their patience, and also temptation to
irregularities. Likewise it would be the duty of this teacher to
ascertain intellectual defects, and adapt measures for the remedy;
also to ascertain, by aid of both parents and teachers, natural tastes
and aptitudes, with reference to special school-training in branches
preparatory to a self-supporting profession.

2. The department of _moral training_ would be given to a woman of
high moral and mental culture, whose tastes, talents, and experience
prepare her to excel in this department. It would be her duty to study
the character and discover the excellences of every pupil, by aid both
of the other teachers and the parents, and then to devise methods
of improvement; instructing the other teachers how to aid in these
efforts. She also would seek the aid and coöperation of the most mature
and influential pupils, and direct them how to exert a coöperating
influence. The general religious instruction of the institution also
would be conducted under her supervision and control.

3. The department of the _physical training_ of all the institution
would be committed to a woman of good practical common sense, of
refined culture and manners, and one expressly educated for this
department. By the aid of both parents and teachers, she would study
the constitution and habits of every pupil, and administer a method of
training to develop healthfully every organ and function, and to remedy
every defect in habits, person, voice, movements, and manners.

Here I would remark that my extensive investigations in many
health-establishments as to the causes of the decay of female health,
and my extensive opportunities for gaining the opinions and counsels
of the most learned and successful physicians of all schools, lead me
to the belief that there are few chronic maladies, deformities, or
unhealthful habits that may not be entirely remedied by a system of
physical exercise and training _in schools_, under the charge of a
woman properly qualified for these duties.

If a similar officer were provided for our colleges, whose official
duty should be to train the body to health, strength, grace, and good
manners, should we not see much fewer sallow faces, round shoulders,
projecting necks, shambling gaits, awkward gestures, and gawky and
slovenly manners, such as now too frequently mark the college-graduate?
Why have the heathen youth of ancient Greece so excelled those of our
age and religion in manly strength, beauty, and grace?

And if a department in colleges should be instituted, on the plan here
indicated for _moral training_, would not the barbarous and vulgar
practices that so often degrade the manners, and endanger life and
limb, be ended?

It is a great evil in many of our colleges and professional schools,
that when a professor has once gained his chair, no degree of dullness
or neglect will oust him, especially if supported by nepotism or a
clique. This I have so often heard reported of institutions with which
my family and personal friends have been connected, that it would
seem as if few such institutions escaped this evil. And it seems to be
one which might be remedied by means of such an officer as has been
described as head of the department of intellectual training, whose
official duty it should be to examine every department and report
deficiencies to the faculty and corporation for remedy.

In this connection I would entreat special attention to the perils of
young girls in most large boarding-schools, and such as are little
realized. The collecting of many into buildings and rooms imperfectly
warmed and ventilated, the overtasking the brain by excessive study,
the excitements of boarding-school life in contrast to home quietude,
the unhealthful food and condiments bought at shops or sent from
home and distributed to companions, the want of proper healthful
exercise, the want of maternal watch and care at critical periods and
at commencing disease, the debilitating practices taught at the most
dangerous period to the ignorant by the thoughtless or vicious, and
many other unfortunate influences, combine to a greater or less extent
in all large boarding-schools.

Having had charge of one myself for nearly ten years, in which, as it
seemed to me, every thing was done that could be to abate such evils,
I have concluded that such institutions for both boys and girls may
be called successful only on the same calculation as would be made in
cultivating a garden on the top of a house. The best of soil, seed,
manure, and labor, with water and sun and awnings, may be provided,
and yet the proper place to make a good garden is on mother earth. And
so the proper place to educate children before maturity is under the
mother's care, with the coöperating aid of a school.

If I could narrate one half of the sad histories of the ruined boys and
girls, and the consequent agonies from blasted parental hopes, that
have come to my personal knowledge, where health or morals, or both,
were destroyed for a whole life at large boarding-schools, this false
and fatal method would be greatly abated.

And here I would direct attention to one item so pernicious, and yet so
common and so misunderstood as to excite constant wonder and regret as
connected with boarding institutions for both sexes, and that is _the
want of effective methods for providing pure air_. In private families,
only a few lungs vitiate the inhaled air; but the larger the number in
one building, the larger are the arrangements needed for emptying out
the foul air and introducing the pure.

An open fire is a sure and certain method. But when buildings are
warmed by hot-air furnaces, or by hot-water or steam-pipes, the almost
inevitable results are pernicious. In the case of heated air from a
furnace, it always will find exit from a building in the shortest or
most available direction, and then all the rooms not in this line of
draught will have the air nearly stationary, to be breathed over and
over again by their inmates.

Heating by steam or by hot-water pipes involves still greater
difficulties, when no arrangement is made for carrying off the foul
air, inasmuch as it is the air _in_ the house which is heated without
introducing pure air.

This is the most dangerous of all methods of warming when there is
no connected ventilating arrangement, while it is the best and most
agreeable of all methods when properly managed. Mr. Lewis Leeds,
ventilating engineer in New-York City, has invented the following
method. The coils of steam or hot-water pipes are placed close to a
window, with an opening at the bottom of it, regulated by a register
which admits pure air directly on to the coils, and thus it is warmed.

Thus a person can sit by the coils and secure radiated heat as from a
fire, have the light of the window and the influx of perfectly pure and
yet warm air. In addition, every room has an opening both at top and
bottom into a warm-air flue, through which the impure air of the room
is constantly carried off.

_Any_ room can be perfectly ventilated which has openings at the top
and bottom of a flue, through which warm air is passing. But no flues
filled with cold air will ventilate a room, though housebuilders, and
householders, and school committees have been ignorantly providing such
useless arrangements all over the land.

And here I affirm with heart-felt sorrow that never, in a single
instance, have I known or even heard of a large boarding-school with
any proper arrangements for ventilation. Even Vassar College, now so
extensively regarded as a model institution, has adopted the most
dangerous mode of warming without any arrangement but doors and windows
to supply pure air to its recitation-rooms and sleeping-rooms.

And so, as in all similar cases, the strong and well, who are
distressed for want of pure air, will have windows open, and then the
delicate, who are not inured to sudden changes or to great extremes,
will take colds. There is no doubt that the reports of the miasmatic
diseases and lung affections of teachers and pupils in this institution
have been greatly exaggerated; but not because there has not been
abundant reason for expecting such results.

When I took charge of my present school, I found neither the
boarding-house nor school-building provided with any proper modes of
ventilation, and after making all changes for improvement at command,
it is still needful to make it the constant duty of one teacher to see
that, so far as practicable, every room in school and boarding-house is
properly warmed and ventilated every hour of the day and night.

In regard to the course of study in the collegiate department of a
woman's university, there should be as great an amount as is required
in any of our colleges, yet only a few studies carried to so great
an extent as in many sciences pursued by men. But there should be a
much _greater variety_, together with an accuracy and thoroughness
that colleges rarely secure. And all should have reference to women's
profession, and not to the professions of men. Much in this department
at first must be experimental, having in view the ideal indicated.

So in regard to introducing _practical_ training for woman's domestic
duties _as a part of common school education_; although it is certain
that much more can be done than ever has been attempted, and that, too,
as a contribution to intellectual development rather than the reverse,
this also must be a matter of experiment.

In regard to a _special_ training in the preparatory and the collegiate
schools for future self-supporting employments, much more can be
done than has ever been supposed, and a few particulars will be
enumerated to illustrate. Young women of affectionate disposition, good
intelligence and morals, having only limited means, might be trained
to become a _mother's assistant_ in charge of a nursery, partly by the
studies of the primary and preparatory schools and partly by learning
the methods of the Kindergarten. Thousands of parents in all parts of
our nation would offer liberal wages to young women thus trained for
one of the most sacred offices of the family state.

Women of suitable social and moral character might be trained, _in
connection with school studies_, to be superior seamstresses and
mantua-makers, and thus be enabled to gain liberal wages.

If young ladies knew how much usefulness and comfort may be connected
with this domestic art, they would seek it with more interest than any
school study. The scarcity of well-trained mantua-makers in all parts
of the land has made my early training in this art a great blessing
to me and to many others whom I have been thus enabled to aid and to
teach; and there is no branch of school training that can be made so
directly available in promoting economy, comfort, and usefulness.

Women trained to fit young boys for college, in private families or in
small neighborhood schools, would command very high remuneration in
many quarters. _Every_ young girl whose means will allow it ought to be
prepared for this duty.

Pupils who have a decided talent for either music, drawing, or
other fine arts, might have a _special_ training for one of these
professions; while those without any such tastes or aptitudes should
be dissuaded from wasting time, labor, and money, as is so absurdly
and widely practiced, in learning to play the piano and acquiring other
accomplishments never pursued in after-life. Nine tenths of young girls
thus instructed lose all they learn in a very short period.

Some pupils have fine voices and a talent and taste for elocution, and
such might be trained for teachers of this art or for public readings.

Some pupils have talents that prepare them to excel in authorship, and
to such an appropriate and more extensive literary culture could be
afforded.

The art of book-keeping and of quick and legible penmanship insures
remunerative employment; and many other specialties might be enumerated
in which, _during school-days_, a woman might be trained to a
self-supporting profession. And _every_ woman should be trained for
all the duties that may in future life be demanded as wife, mother,
nurse, and school-teacher, if not in the ordinary school, in a separate
professional school.

When institutions are endowed to train women for all departments
connected with the family state, domestic labor, now so shunned and
disgraced, will become honorable, will gain liberal compensation, and
will enable every woman to secure an independence in employments suited
to her sex. And when this is attained, there will be few or none who
will wish to enter the professions of men or take charge of civil
government.

       *       *       *       *       *

Having expressed so strongly my views in reference to large
boarding-schools for both sexes, I will add some further details of my
_ideal_ for organizing a Woman's University. This has been suggested
by recent interviews with some who may have much influence in managing
the large funds recently bequeathed in Massachusetts for establishing
institutions for women, in one case a lady having bestowed what will
probably amount to nearly half a million, and in another case a
gentleman has bequeathed a million and a half for this purpose.

This, I believe, is but the beginning of similar benefactions that will
be provided for women in all parts of our country. There are men of
wealth who have lost a dear mother, wife, or daughter, who would find
comfort and pleasure in perpetuating a beloved name by an endowment
that for age after age will minister to the education and refinement of
women and the support and training of orphans.

In this view, it seems very important that the first endowed
institutions of this kind should adopt plans that may be wisely
imitated.

It seems desirable that such endowed institutions should be placed in
or so near a large town that the pupils of all the schools, except
the professional one, should reside with their parents instead of
congregating in a great boarding-house. The professional school would
ordinarily embrace only women of maturity, and might demand a location
with surrounding land for floriculture, horticulture, and other
feminine professions.

The Kindergarten, the primary school, and the preparatory school might
each have a principal and an associate principal, supported partly by
tuition fees and partly by endowment. These principals might establish
a family, consisting of the two, who would take the place of parents
to several adopted orphans and to several pay-pupils whose parents,
from ill health or other causes, would relinquish the care of their
children.

The collegiate schools might have endowed departments corresponding
to professorships in colleges, each having a principal and associate
principal, who also could establish families on the same plan. When
completed, the university would then consist of a central building for
school purposes, surrounded by fifteen or twenty families, each having
a principal and associate principal, acting as parents to a family
of from ten to twelve pupils, and all in some department of domestic
training.

Thus some thirty or forty ladies of high character and culture would be
provided with the independence and advantages now exclusively bestowed
on men, while at the same time the institution would practically and to
a considerable extent be an orphan asylum offering unusual advantages.

In regard to the practicability of finding women properly qualified to
carry on such a university with success, there is no difficulty. Few
know so well as I do how many women of benevolence and high culture
are living with half their noblest energies unemployed for want of the
opportunities and facilities provided for men. There is nothing needed
but _endowments_ to secure the services of a large number of ladies of
the highest culture and moral worth, well qualified to establish not
only one but many such institutions.

In my attempts to organize female institutions on the college plan
of independent principals of endowed departments, responsible not to
an individual but to a faculty and corporation, I have been met with
objections that apply as much to colleges for men. The jealousies
and jars incident to all complex institutions are the result of the
frailties of humanity common to both sexes. I have, in a large number
of instances, organized institutions on the college plan, which for
years were conducted with perfect harmony, some of them are still
prospering, and others were ended only for want of endowments to retain
the highest class of teachers.




    AN ADDRESS TO LADIES OF HARTFORD, CONN.,

    INVITED FROM ALL RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS;

    DELIVERED AT THE

    Calisthenic Hall of the Hartford Female Seminary,

    MAY, 1871.


LADIES AND KIND FRIENDS:

At a former meeting I stated that, as former principal of this
Seminary, I so exhausted my nervous system that I have never been able
to assume responsibilities involving obligations which, by my failure,
would cause disappointment to others. My method, therefore, has been to
originate plans, and then induce others, more capable than myself, to
execute them, and in such a way that I could help without taking any
responsibility.

Thus I originated the plan for transferring teachers to the West,
executed by Gov. Slade. And thus also I organized the American
Women's Educational Association, for securing _endowed_ collegiate
and professional schools for women, which has established several
flourishing institutions at the West. The most important of these
is the Milwaukee Female College, which for more than fifteen years
has been conducted by the chief agent of this Association, Miss Mary
Mortimer; and which now numbers 180 pupils, and exhibits many of the
benefits of our plan, although only partially endowed. The object of
this meeting is to gain your influence in order to secure, not only
what has been gained at Milwaukee, but to accomplish the whole plan of
a fully endowed Woman's University, as the model which we hope to see
reproduced all over the nation.

In all these educational efforts, I have been led by a deep and painful
sense of the depressed and suffering condition of large portions of our
sex, and to an extent little realized by women in easy and prosperous
circumstances. I introduce here an extract from a published article of
mine that gives some small exhibition of these painful facts.

    That there is something essentially wrong in the present
    condition of women, is every year growing more and more
    apparent, while the public mind is more and more perplexed with
    diverse methods proposed for the remedy. In one of our leading
    secular papers we read this statement of the case from the pen
    of a working woman:

        "There are so few departments of labor open to women,
        that, in those departments, the supply of female labor
        is frightfully in advance of the demand. The business
        world offers the lowest wages to eager applicants,
        certain that they will be ravenously clutched. And,
        indeed, to see the mob of women that block and choke
        these few and narrow gates open to them—the struggle—the
        press—the agony—the trembling eagerness—you might
        suppose they were entering the temple of fame or wealth,
        or, at least had some cosy little cottage ahead, in
        which competence awaited the winner. Nothing of the
        sort. These are blind alleys, one and all. The mere
        getting in, and keeping in, are the meagre objects of
        this terrible struggle. A woman who has not _genius_,
        or is not a _rare exception_, has no opening—no
        promotion—no career. She turns hopelessly on a pivot;
        at every turn the sand gives way, and she sinks lower.
        At every turn light and air are more difficult, and
        she turns and digs her own grave. Do you say these are
        figures of speech? Here, then, are figures of _fact_.
        There are _now thirty thousand_ women in New York, whose
        labor averages from _twelve to fifteen hours a day_, and
        yet whose income seldom exceeds _thirty-three cents a
        day_. Operators on sewing-machines, and a few others,
        enjoy comparative opulence, gaining five to eight
        dollars a week, though from this are to be paid three or
        four dollars for a bed in a wretched room with several
        other occupants, often without a window or any provision
        for pure air, and with only the poor food found where
        such rooms abound. Thousands of ladies, of good family
        and education, as teachers receive from two to six
        hundred dollars a year. Few women get beyond that, and
        a large proportion of them are mothers with children.
        Over these poorly-paid laborers broods the sense of
        hopeless toil. There is no bright future. The woman who
        is fevered, hurried, and aching, who works from daylight
        to midnight, loathing her mean room, her meaner dress,
        her joyless life, will, in ten years, neither better
        herself nor her children. The American working-woman
        has no share in the American privilege given to the
        poorest _male_ laborer—a growing income, a bank account,
        and every office of the Republic, if he have brain and
        courage to win them."

    This describes the condition and feelings of not all, but of
    a large class of women in many of our larger cities, who must
    earn their own livelihood. But, in the medium classes, as it
    respects wealth, the unmarried or widowed women feel that
    they are an incumbrance to fathers and brothers, who often
    unwillingly support them from pride or duty. For such, also,
    there is "no opening—no promotion—no career;" and they must
    remain dependent chiefly on the labor of others till marriage
    is offered, which to vast numbers is a positive impossibility.

    This has lately been proved, from the census, by a leading
    New York paper. In that it is shown that, in all our large
    cities, the male inhabitants, under fifteen and over the usual
    marriageable age, are greatly in excess of the females, and,
    consequently, the women at the marriageable age are greatly
    in excess of the marriageable men. Thus, in New York City,
    according to the statements of the _New York Times_, there are
    eleven thousand more females than males, of all ages, while
    there are one hundred and thirty-two thousand more women of
    marriageable age than men of that age. This is perhaps a large
    estimate, but the disproportion is at all events enormous.

    And, in the rural districts of New York State, we find a
    similar state of things; for the excess of females, of all
    ages, is twenty-one thousand, while the excess of marriageable
    women, if at the same ratio as that stated in New York City,
    would be two hundred and sixty-three thousand. A similar state
    of things will be seen in all our older States.

    The most mournful feature in this case is the fact that
    most of these women have never been trained for any kind of
    business by which they can earn an independent livelihood. The
    Working-woman's Protective Union, of New York City, reports
    that, of thirteen thousand applicants, not one-half were
    qualified to do any kind of useful work in a proper manner.
    The societies that are formed to furnish work for poor women
    report that their greatest impediment is that so few can sew
    decently, or do any other work properly.

    The heads of dress-making establishments report that very few
    women can be found who can be trusted to complete a dress,
    and that those who are competent find abundant work and good
    wages. The demand for really superior mantua-makers is almost
    universal in country places, and even in many of our cities.

    In former days sewing was taught in all schools for girls, but
    now it is banished from our common schools, and the mothers at
    home are too neglectful, or too ignorant, or too pressed with
    labor, to supply the deficiency.

    It was reported in the _New York Tribune_, not long since, that
    there are at least twenty thousand professed prostitutes in
    New York City alone, while Boston, in proportion to its number
    of inhabitants, shows a larger number, and all our cities
    give similar reports. This, it is hoped is an estimate much
    in excess of the reality; but the truth is mournful enough.
    Multitudes of these unfortunates have only two alternatives—on
    the one hand, poor lodgings, shabby dress, poor food, and
    ceaseless daily toil from eight to ten or fifteen hours; on
    the other hand, the tempter offers a pleasant home, a servant
    to do the work, fine dress, the theatre and ball, and kind
    attentions, with no labor or care. Where is the strength of
    virtue in those who despise and avoid these outcasts, that
    might not fall in such perilous assaults?

    It is this dreadful state of temptation which accounts for
    the fact that crime increases faster among women than among
    men. Thus, in Massachusetts, during the last ten years, among
    the men of that State, crime _decreased_ at the rate of eight
    thousand five hundred and seven less than during the ten
    preceding years, while, among women, crime _increased_ at the
    rate of three hundred and sixty-eight during the same period;
    that is, over eight thousand _less_ men, and over three hundred
    _more_ women, were guilty of crime than in the previous ten
    years.

    But, turning from these to the daughters of the most wealthy
    class, those who have generous and elevated aspirations also
    feel that for them, too, there is "no opening—no promotion—no
    career," except that of marriage, and for this they are trained
    to feel that it is disgraceful to seek. They have nothing to
    do but wait to be sought. Trained to believe marriage their
    highest boon, they are disgraced for seeking it, and must
    affect indifference.

    Meantime, to do any thing to earn their own independence is
    what father and brothers would deem a disgrace to themselves
    and their family. For women of high position to work for their
    livelihood, in most cases custom decrees as disgraceful. And
    then, if cast down by poverty, they have been trained to
    nothing that would earn a support, or, if by chance they have
    some resource, all avenues for its employment are thronged
    with needy applicants. Ordinarily, and with few exceptions,
    there are only two employments for such women that do not
    involve loss of social position, viz., school-teaching and
    boarding.

    But every opening for a school-teacher has scores, and
    sometimes hundreds, of applicants, while often the protracted
    toils in unventilated and crowded school rooms destroy health.
    To keep boarders demands capital to start, and an experience
    and training in household management and economy rarely taught
    to the daughters of wealth. In this country housework is
    dishonorable, and rich men make no attempts to train their
    daughters to any other business that would be a resort in
    poverty.

    Few can realize the perils which threaten our country from the
    present condition of women. The grand instrumentality, not only
    for perpetuating our race, but for its training to eternal
    blessedness, is the family state, and in this woman is the
    chief minister. As the general rule, man is the laborer out
    of the home, to provide for its support, while woman is the
    daily minister to train its inmates. But there are now many
    fatal influences that combine to unfit her for these sacred
    duties. Not the least of these is the decay of female health,
    engendering irritable nerves in both mother and offspring, and
    thus greatly increasing the difficulties of physical and still
    more of moral training.

    The factory girls, and many also in shops and stores, must
    stand eight and ten hours a day, often in a poisonous
    atmosphere, causing decay of constitution, and forbidding
    healthful offspring. The sewing-machine lessens the wages of
    needlewomen, while employers testify that those who use it
    for steady work become hopelessly diseased, and cannot rear
    healthy children. In the more wealthy circles, the murderous
    fashions of dress make terrible havoc with the health of young
    girls, while impure air, unhealthful food and condiments, lack
    of exercise, and over-stimulation of brain and nerves, are
    completing the ruin of health and family hopes.

    The state of domestic service is another element that is
    undermining the family state. Disgraced by the stigma of our
    late slavery, and by the influx into our kitchens of ignorant
    and uncleanly foreigners, American women forsake home circles
    for the unhealthful shops and mills.

    Then the thriftless young housekeepers from boarding-school
    life have no ability either to teach or to control their
    incompetent assistants, while ceaseless "worries" multiply in
    parlor, nursery, and kitchen. The husband is discouraged by the
    waste and extravagance, and wearied with endless complaints,
    and home becomes any thing but the harbor of comfort and peace.

    Add to all this, the now common practice which destroys
    maternal health and unborn offspring—the loose teachings
    of free love—the unfortunate influence of spiritualism, so
    called—the fascinations of the _demi-monde_ for the rich, and
    of lower haunts for the rest, with the poverty of thousands
    of women who but for desperate temptations would be pure, and
    the extent of the malign influences undermining the family
    state—that chief hope of our race—is appalling.

    Woman, in the Protestant world, is educated only _for
    marriage_, hoping to have some one to work for her support,
    and, when this is not gained, little else is provided.

    The Roman Catholic Church, while it honored the institution of
    marriage as a sacrament, and upheld its sanctity, yet taught
    that woman had a still higher ministry; and for this, large
    endowments, comfortable positions, and honorable distinction,
    were provided. The women who devoted their time and wealth and
    labors to orphans, to the sick, and to the poor, were honored
    above married women as _saints_, who not only laid up treasures
    in heaven for themselves, but also a stock of _merits_ to
    supply the deficiencies of others. The idea of self-sacrifice
    and self-denial in that church was so honored as to run into
    mischievous extremes, so that rich establishments of celibates
    of both sexes multiplied all over Christendom till they became
    burdens and pests.

    This drove the Protestant world to the other extreme, so that
    no provision at all has been made for the single woman. In
    most cases she must marry, or have no profession that leads to
    independence, honor, and wealth. To fit young men for their
    professions, thousands and millions are every year provided,
    securing by endowments the highest class of teachers, in
    addition to every advantage of libraries, apparatus, and
    buildings. But woman's profession has no such provisions made
    for its elevated duties.

    In the Roman Catholic Church the woman of high position,
    culture, and benevolence, is honored above all others if she
    remains single and devotes her time and wealth to orphans, to
    nurse the sick, to reclaim the vicious, and to provide for
    the destitute. She becomes a lady abbess, or the head of some
    sisterhood, where high position, influence, and honor, are her
    reward.

    And the priesthood of that Church employ all their personal and
    official influence to lead women of benevolence and piety to
    devote time, property, and prayers, to the salvation of their
    fellow-creatures from diseases of body, ignorance, and sin.

    But Protestant women, as yet, have been influenced to endow
    institutions for _men_, rather than for their own sex. The
    writer obtained from the treasurers of only six institutions
    for men the following statement of benefactions from women:

    Miss Plummer, to Cambridge University, to endow one
    professorship, gave $25,000; Mary Townsend, for the same,
    $25,000; Sarah Jackson, for the same, $10,000; other ladies,
    in sums over $1,000, to the same, over $30,000. To Andover
    Professional School of Theology ladies have given over $65,000,
    and, of this, $30,000 by one lady. In Illinois, Mrs. Garretson
    has given to one professional school $300,000. In Albany,
    Mrs. Dudlay has given, for a scientific institution for men,
    $105,000. To Beloit College, Wisconsin, property has been
    given, by one lady, valued at $30,000.

    Thus half a million has been given by women to these six
    colleges and professional schools, and all in the present
    century. The reports of similar institutions for men all over
    the nation would show similar liberal benefactions of women to
    endow institutions for the other sex, while for their own no
    such records appear. Where is there a single endowment from a
    woman to secure a salary to a woman teaching her own proper
    profession?

It is the depressed and suffering condition of our sex, here indicated,
which is the exciting cause of the agitation to gain woman suffrage.
To me, success in this effort appears not as a remedy, but rather as a
curse. But there are favorable results involved in this agitation that
deserve consideration. One is, the exhibition of the moral power now
held by women in our nation. For if women urging measures so contrary
to our customs and prejudices—not to say so contrary to common sense
and the Bible—with many prominent leaders so destitute of discretion
and political foresight, yet can move society so powerfully, what
could not be accomplished by the organized influence and action of that
vast majority of intelligent women opposed to such innovations?

Another beneficial result it is hoped will be, systematic and concerted
measures by judicious and benevolent women to organize agencies to
remedy the evils all must lament, and by measures more wise and more
practicable. What such measure will probably be, may be indicated by
a series of resolutions adopted first by two previous meetings, and
afterwards by a large public meeting at Steinway Hall, New York, of
ladies invited by the Managers of the American Woman's Educational
Association, from all religious denominations in the city, as follows:

    "Resolved, That one cause of the depressed condition of woman
    is the fact that the distinctive profession of her sex, as the
    nurse of infancy and of the sick, as educator of childhood, and
    as the chief minister of the family state, has not been duly
    honored, nor such provision been made for its scientific and
    practical training as is accorded to the other sex for their
    professions; and, that it is owing to this neglect that women
    are driven to seek honor and independence in the institutions
    and the professions of men.

    "Resolved, That woman's distinctive profession, in its various
    branches, involves more important interests than any other
    human science; and, that the evils suffered by women would be
    extensively remedied by establishing institutions for training
    women for her profession, which shall be as generously endowed
    as are the institutions of men, many of which have been largely
    endowed by women.

    "Resolved, That the science of domestic economy should be
    made a study in all institutions for girls; and that certain
    practical employments of the family state should be made a part
    of common school education, especially the art of sewing, which
    is so needful for the poor.

    "Resolved, That every young woman should be trained to some
    business by which she can earn an independent livelihood in
    case of poverty.

    "Resolved, That in addition to the various in-door employments
    suitable for woman, there are other out-door employments
    especially favorable to health and equally suitable, such as
    raising fruits and flowers, the culture of silk and cotton,
    the raising of bees, and the superintendence of dairy farms
    and manufactures. All of these offer avenues to wealth and
    independence for women as properly as men, and schools
    for imparting to women the science and practice of these
    employments should be provided, and as liberally endowed as
    are the agricultural schools for men." These resolutions were
    adopted unanimously and then published in all the leading
    secular and religious papers with equally unanimous approval.
    The following from the _N. Y. Evening Post_, is a fair specimen
    of the whole.

    "These resolutions contain sound sense; and their claim that
    practical schools for women deserve as much attention as
    similar schools for men, is undeniably just. If we are to have
    industrial schools at all, if it is important that anybody
    should be able to secure systematic and thorough instruction
    as a preparation for useful industries, girls would be as much
    benefited by such instruction as boys; and women need it as
    much as men.

    "There is no doubt that the present arrangement of society
    bears more hardly upon women than upon men; and all wise
    efforts to make them more independent of the mischances of life
    deserve encouragement."

Although the plan aimed at is large, this Association commenced with
only a small portion. At Milwaukee, where is their first institution,
a school already organized was taken as the nucleus. The citizens were
to furnish land, and building, and pupils enough to support by tuition
fees a given number of teachers. On these conditions the Association
agreed to provide endowments to support a certain number of teachers,
so long as the plan of the Association was carried out, but if it was
relinquished, to remove their patronage to another place. The Lady
Agent of the Association is still at the head of this Institution,
which has prospered on this plan for more than fifteen years, the
Association supporting by their funds a portion of the teachers.

In my former address in this place, I showed how in this and other
cities, the more wealthy, and best educated classes, and those who pay
the most taxes for public education, provide for their own daughters
inferior advantages to those given to the humblest poor. Our own
High School in this city compared with this Seminary and all private
schools, will illustrate this remarkable fact.

For our High School has a building healthfully and thoroughly warmed
and ventilated, as can be said of neither this Seminary, nor any
private school of this city; while its apparatus and library are
superior to any except those of the College, and the Theological
School, to which no girls have access. By reason of subordinate graded
schools, only well prepared pupils are admitted, or this is the rule
which can be enforced; while all scholars must enter at regular
periods. Thus, only four classes are formed and only a small number
of studies are pursued at any one time. The teachers are thus allowed
time to prepare themselves, and other great advantages for instructing,
while their salaries are much higher than can be given to assistant
teachers in most private schools. Thus the best class of teachers are
tempted to forsake private schools for these superior advantages.

In contrast to these advantages, although this Seminary is warmed and
ventilated as well as most private schools, it is necessary to employ
much of the time of an intelligent and careful teacher to keep the
rooms at proper temperature, well ventilated and free from poisonous
gases, and yet with but imperfect success.

Then the pupils enter this and all private schools, at any time and at
all grades of advancement, making it necessary to multiply classes and
to tax the teachers in order to bring forward the new comers to certain
classes. The method of arranging certain studies at one time of the
year, and others only at other times, as in colleges and our public
high schools, often cannot be enforced without dissatisfying patrons,
and thus lessening income. Then the accomplishments, especially Piano
music, to which classes must conform, greatly increases the difficulty
of classification in this and in all private schools.

The result usually is, a most inferior, desultory, and unsatisfactory
course of education. There are cases where by overworking poorly paid
assistant teachers, and by small profits to proprietors, some private
schools turn out as fine scholars as our best managed High schools. But
these are exceptions, and exceptions that bear very severely on the
subordinate women teachers.

Thus comes to pass the remarkable fact that the most wealthy and
cultivated pay the largest taxes to furnish the poorer classes a
gratuitous and a better education than they gain for their own
daughters by paying the largest tuition fees, or at expensive boarding
schools.

There is great misconception as to the advantages of education
for daughters of the more wealthy classes, owing to the fact that
the ambitious name of "college" is given to schools that have no
proper claim to this appellation. For the distinctive feature of a
college heretofore has been its _endowments_, by which a permanent
faculty of superior and co-equal teachers are maintained to a great
extent independent of tuition fees; and also supporting professors
as independent heads of departments, instead of subordinates to a
principal, as in High Schools and academies. This being the fact, there
is not a single college for women in this country, nor in the whole
world.

The only feature of a college in any institutions for women is a
similar course of study and graduating diplomas, and these without
endowments only increase the branches taught, and decrease the
thoroughness of instruction and overwork the teachers.

There is also great misconception as to the influence of woman's
domestic duties in developing and training the intellect. A problem
in arithmetic or geometry is far more interesting, and therefore more
quickening to the intellect, when it is directly applied to some
useful, practical purpose. Thus a woman who is daily calculating her
butcher's and grocer's accounts, or trading at stores, is cultivating
her intellect as much or more than she would by studying arithmetic
in college or school without any end but to escape reproof or marks
of imperfection. So the planning and cutting garments and the various
other calculations and measurements of carpets, curtains, and
furniture, are daily exercises in both geometry and arithmetic, while
the practical interest and the handicraft involved tend to quicken
intellectual vigor.

Then in kitchen affairs, domestic chemistry, though on a small scale,
is constantly studied and practically applied. Again in the care
of infants and of the sick, the discipline of the physiologist and
the physician are united. Then in the government of servants and
children, the same mental exertion and principles are employed as are
demanded for legislatures, statesmen, and magistrates. Then in the
religious training of children, all the most profound questions of
the metaphysician and the theologian are daily objects of enquiry and
reflection as childhood urges the most difficult problems of mental
science, and of natural and revealed religion.

A man in his daily toils, or in the learned professions has only
one or two subjects that hold his practical attention and interest,
but a woman as mother and housekeeper has a constant succession of
employments that tax all her intellectual and her moral powers. These
views are remarkably illustrated by some of the women of a former
generation whose intellectual training was chiefly in domestic pursuits
with little else except the humblest kind of common school, a very
small library, and a vigorous pulpit ministry. Let such be compared
with multitudes of women who with little domestic training and exercise
have graduated from the High Schools and Colleges of the present day,
and we shall have occasion for serious reflection as to the diverse
results.

I can best illustrate this by an individual case that may fairly
represent a large class of women forty or fifty years ago. In early
youth I lived in Litchfield, Conn., where a law school was conducted
by Judge Reeves, and Judge Gould, two of the most talented and learned
jurists of the nation, and gathered from forty to over one hundred law
students from the first colleges and the first families of every state
in the Union. There were also eight or ten other gentlemen of liberal
education and some of more than ordinary talents and culture, in the
same circle.

Then of the ladies I met in that circle, were Mrs. Judge Reeve, Mrs.
Judge Gould, Miss Sarah Pierce, to whom I owe my school education, Miss
Mary Pierce, Miss Amelia Ogden, Miss Lucy Sheldon, my father's sister
Esther, my mother's sister Mrs. Mary Hubbard, and my mother. In my own
family circle I used to hear my mother and aunts discussing a variety
of literary and scientific topics, and especially remember their
enthusiastic interest in the new discoveries of chemistry by Lavoisier,
and their practical test experiments in the kitchen and study. Aunt
Esther was deeply interested in medical science, and probably had read
medical works as extensively as most physicians of that day.

Then Mrs. Judge Reeve, and my mother and aunts, would meet and read
works of history, or travels, or some classic English literature.
Miss Mary Pierce was an accomplished elocutionist, and when Judge
Gould suffered from weak eyes, would go day after day to read works
of literature and discuss the topics introduced. Miss Sarah Pierce
was head of the largest and most celebrated female school of the
nation, and was overflowing with acquired knowledge, as well as poetic
treasures.

Now not one of these ladies had studied a line of Latin or Greek, or
of mathematics or other college studies which women are now seeking
so earnestly at the sacrifice of health and all domestic culture.
And yet when they met these gentlemen of the highest talents and
education, they were regarded as fully their equals in mental power
and intellectual debate. Indeed, some of my brothers educated in this
circle, honestly maintained that women were endowed by nature with
intellectual powers superior to men; and one brother argued in defence
of this position in a public college exercise. Moreover, six brothers
had a college education, while none of my sisters studied any part of
the college course; and yet there has been no marked inequality of
mental power and culture in this diverse training.

In that day, novels, by most women, were either deemed an unlawful
indulgence, or were taken as condiments only, while the substantials
of literature and science were their chief intellectual pabulum. And
having but few books and those the choice works of the best English
classics, they were perused and reperused with such interest as rarely
is given in colleges to the literature of Greece and Rome. And it was
a frequent fact, that women were far better read in English classic
literature than were their brothers and friends in colleges.

Now at the present day, when mothers and housekeepers meet gentlemen
in social gatherings, is there anything in their conversation and
pursuits to show the superior advantages of the female High Schools
and Colleges, which have nearly supplanted the intellectual domestic
training of a former generation? Have not novels, magazine stories,
newspaper literature, and the fashions and accomplishments of the age
taken the place of the more vigorous mental culture so common at a
former period?

A variety of intellectual training which is pursued in connection with
such interesting practical results as woman's employments involve,
tends to produce a vigorous and well balanced mind, far more than
devotion to one or two professional pursuits such as the business
of most men requires. And even in science and literature, we not
unfrequently find some of the most learned men entirely deficient in
intellectual balance and executive power; while their less learned
mothers or wives are respected as wise and practical counselors.

The diminution of domestic exercise in the family state by mothers
and daughters has equally tended to the loss of physical development
and vigor in the present generation of women. The Creator has wisely
adapted the physical organization of woman to her appropriate duties,
so that the alternating sedentary and active exercises of the nursery
and household are exactly those best fitted to sustain and invigorate
the organs which now are so extensively displaced or diseased. And the
artificial modes of exercise to remedy these evils, now so successful
in the Movement Cure, are to a large extent in imitation of these
domestic muscular movements demanded in the nursery and in other
household labors. The tending of infants, the bending, twisting, and
stooping constantly practiced in these domestic labors are exactly
what are demanded to preserve in health and activity the muscles most
important to womanly development and vigor; while the interchanging
employment of the needle and other sedentary domestic pursuits, when in
proper proportion, equally tend to healthful results. Very different
are the influences on woman's health as she stands six and eight hours
behind the counter or in shops and mills in one continuous and unvaried
toil, or sits day after day over the needle without intervening
healthful exercises. Not less are the evils to the daughters of wealth
and ease, whose brain and nerves are never relieved and strengthened
by the exercises of domestic life. Still more lamentable is the common
practice of those who, when sending daughters to the public schools,
free them from domestic labor, that they may give their whole time
to study and school duties. If instead of this, these pupils were
required to engage in domestic labor two hours each day and this amount
of time was deducted from school duties, not only health but higher
intellectual development would be secured.

If a time should come when the aims of the Woman Suffrage party are
attained, and women are trained for the pulpit, the bar, the political
arena, and other professions drawing woman from domestic life, still
more disastrous influences will show the great mistake of taking woman
from her true sphere and giving her the work designed for man. If, on
the contrary, women are trained to both the science and the practice of
their true profession in all its varied departments, and with the honor
and emolument that now are given exclusively to the professions of men,
every woman will be in demand for the services of the family and the
school, and will regard the employments of men as less important and
less inviting than her own sacred ministries.

It is often said that it is mothers who must give the domestic training
to daughters, and that school duties should be confined to literature
and science. This might have been true in former days, when daughters
and mothers performed most of the family labor, and when the style of
living was simple and economical. But with the present style of houses
and expenditures, demanding two, three or more servants, it is utterly
impossible for a mother and housekeeper to add to her multiplied cares
the scientific domestic training of her daughters; nor can anything
of this kind be successfully connected with large boarding schools.
The demand for _scientific_ domestic training is greatly increased by
improved modern conveniences.

The one item of selecting and superintending the management of stoves
and furnaces, demands much scientific study and practical instruction,
and there is no one point where family health and economy suffer more
than for want of them. The inhaling of poisonous gases, the sudden
changes of temperature, and the want of proper ventilation probably are
doing more to destroy the constitution and health of families than any
other cause, and owing greatly to the want of needed science and skill
in housekeepers.

In various other departments, the increase of civilization and
its elegancies and conveniences have greatly increased the need of
scientific training for mothers and housekeepers, who, never having
been thus instructed themselves, are not qualified to train their
daughters.

As to the virtue of economy, in our nation among the more wealthy
classes, it seems to have become one of "the lost arts." The art and
skill of domestic economy can no more be acquired without instruction
and training, than any of the mechanical trades. As eldest daughter
of a poor minister, and the pupil of a most ingenious mother and a
vigorously economical aunt, I know that by proper training, a young
lady can dress with taste and propriety at one half the expense
required by one untrained; and that a housekeeper without such a
preparation needs double the means of one who is properly instructed.
Not that there are not women as well as men, who have natural gifts
that enable them to excel in handicraft and skill without any training,
so as to equal those properly instructed. But these are exceptional
cases.

To illustrate the fact that the more civilization increases the
enjoyments and refinements of the family state, the more it multiplies
the responsibilities and cares of a mother and housekeeper, I will
reproduce a specimen of such conversations as I have repeatedly had
with familiar friends. The lady introduced, is a mother of five young
children all attending some primary, or some higher schools, and in
reply to her remark that she had no time for solid or systematic
reading, I enquired,

"How many servants have you?"

"Three; a cook, a chambermaid, and a boy for errands and care of yard
and garden."

"Now suppose," said I, "that you give me an outline of your ordinary
daily routine, that I may appreciate your difficulties; for I think
few understand how much is demanded of mother and housekeeper in these
days. At what hour do you rise?"

"Usually about seven; and then beside dressing myself, I must see that
the little ones are washed and dressed properly, as all the servants
are busy. Their hair must be combed and braided, their teeth and nails
in order, and their clothing be all whole and clean for school, which
often demands an extra stitch, or some change that I must regulate.
This takes till near breakfast hour, when I go down to see that all is
right on the table and in the kitchen. When I have a good cook, and
second girl, I have not much to do; but the frequent changes oblige me
often to be training, or overseeing one or the other. Then at table, I
serve the tea and coffee, and also take care of the two youngest, to
supply proper food, and see that they behave properly."

"Cannot your husband take some of this care."

"Oh, no; he is so hurried in business and so anxious to get off as soon
as possible.

"Then we have prayers, and I must collect all the family, and see that
all the children behave properly. Then I make a memorandum of errands
or purchases for my husband to execute. Then I must see that all the
children are prepared for school, their books all collected, their hair
dressed, and shoes in order, and all their little wants supplied.

"Then I go to the kitchen and make arrangements with the cook for the
day, giving written orders for the grocer and butcher. Then I arrange
the work for the second girl for the day. I go over all the rooms and
chambers myself, and always find in my drawers and closets something
that needs care or labor, that I must do myself, or arrange for others
to do. Oh, the making, the mending, the altering, the washing, and the
care of clothing for young children which our present fashions require!
And yet I always hang back and do as little as possible without being
odd, or making the children fear lest all their companions should outdo
them.

"By noon I am so tired and nervous I can not do anything more than
sit down quietly and look over the morning paper. Then comes the noon
lunch, when I again have all the table serving and care of children.
After lunch, I send out the children to play, and then comes the family
sewing and mending, the shopping—to buy dresses, bonnets, shoes,
gloves, trimmings, and all the numerous et ceteras of the wardrobe for
husband, children, and self. The mantua-maker must come some days, and
then what worry and work! Then the sempstress comes other times; then
company calls that I must entertain; and then comes the children's
music practice, and their hard lessons in arithmetic or geometry, where
I must help or oversee.

"Then comes the dinner at 5 or 6, when company often is added, and I
must see that all is in order, and the children well behaved, and the
table served aright. For an hour or two after dinner comes a little
time to talk with my husband and children; but again I am called on to
help in the lessons of the older children, or to aid them when sewing
or drawing. Then I must go to prepare the little ones for bed, as both
servants are busy after dinner.

"All this is what I do when I have no visitors, and when there is no
baby. But when there is a nurse and a baby, and visitors staying in
the family to entertain, I am sure I do not know how I get through
all. I only know that most of my married life I have suffered constant
weariness, and a pain in head or back, and that all put together make
life such a burden that often I should willingly lay it down were it
not for my dear husband and children.

"And all these beautiful things around me, and my lovely home, seem
to double my cares because I have so much to keep in order. For all
these rich and delicate things are soon ruined if left in the hands of
servants, and the more we get, the more we have to watch and work to
save from injury or waste."

"If we lived in such a convenient little cottage as you have put in
your American Woman's Home, and had a highly educated governess,
and then all of us united to do the family work, except washing and
ironing, how much easier and happier life would be!"[140:A]

    [140:A] This book is enlarged and has questions for a text
    book for schools. Its title is "_Principles of Domestic
    Science_," and it is published by J. B. Ford, Park Place, New
    York. The second part entitled _The House Keeper & Health
    Keeper_ is in press and will be published in the fall by the
    Harpers.

But at present my thoughts and efforts are most engaged to accomplish
that department of a Women's University which relates to the
preservation and restoration of health. When often asked what is the
reason that our women are so delicate and unhealthy, and that our
young girls so often suffer what in former days was rare and then only
in connexion with maternity, my reply often is, that it is because
parents and teachers are doing every thing they can do to produce such
mischiefs.

Sleeping in unventilated chambers; living in schoolrooms and parlors
heated to excess and charged with poisonous gases; exposed to sudden
variations of temperature from mismanagement; eating unhealthful food
at irregular hours and to a dangerous excess; supplied with unhealthful
confectionery to eat at any hour; indulged in exciting amusements
with late hours for sleep; the brain stimulated by a multitude of
school duties and studies unrelieved by muscular exercises; the dress
contrived to impede vital functions, compressing the most yielding
parts so as to force the upper organs on to the lower, generating the
most cruel displacements and mental and bodily diseases; over-heating
the parts most injured by such treatment, and exposing the parts most
important to keep warm; compressing feet and ankles so as to impede
circulation, with high heels throwing all the muscles out of natural
play so as to increase all the dangerous tendencies to internal
displacement; these are only one portion of the many contrivances
adopted or allowed by parents and teachers to destroy the health of
women and young girls.

The public press is now circulating such charges against the most
cultivated Protestant women of our country as, if true, will verify
the assertion that in one important respect, "Protestantism is a
failure." For maternity in its normal aspect, involves what scripture
represents as the extremity of physical suffering. If to this is added
the protracted tortures of mind and body consequent on such outrages
on nature as are narrated above, it is not the graduates of boarding
schools, and High Schools and Colleges who are to be the mothers and
educators of this nation, but those rather who are protected from these
sins and sufferings by humble means, daily toil, and a vigilant and
politic priesthood.

All through my early days, no such charges against womanhood were
even imagined, for I saw a cheerful, healthful mother each second or
third year of her whole married life with another healthful infant,
and all received by my father as a precious "heritage from the Lord"
and through his long life his "chief joy and crown of rejoicing." And
this, which is now so rare an example, was a common experience, in that
more simple and healthful generation.

My opportunities for noticing the decline of health in women of this
generation, and forming opinions on medical subjects, have been
extensive, as for over forty years I have been taxing the science
and sagacity of medical men in all parts of the nation, residing in
many health establishments, reading medical works, and consulting all
classes of medical practitioners. In this course I have secured perfect
health and also learned many lessons that I hope will enable me to aid
others in gaining the same blessing.

And the most important of these lessons is, that most diseases are
consequences of violating the laws of health, (which are as really
the laws of God as any in the Bible), and that the surest and
safest remedies are found in conforming to these laws. This will be
illustrated by a short account of my experiences while so long a
wandering invalid.

During this period, as results have proved, I had no organic or
functional disease, except extreme prostration of the overworked brain
and nerves, increased by a punctured nerve, adding to the debility
of the connected sciatic nerve. Thus came inability to walk without
supporters, and little ability for any kind of either mental or
physical exercise.

The treatment to be narrated was in all cases but one, by regularly
educated physicians, most of whom were regarded as among the highest
in talents and skill, often the professors of medical colleges. The
first physician prescribed a heaping teaspoonful of carbonate of iron
three times a day, which was taken with no benefit. Next, a learned
professor, for a slight fever bled twice, and, to allay consequent
nervous excitement, gave camphor till temporary deafness ensued. Next,
another medical professor conjectured that the lameness resulted from
the state of the stomach, and gave small doses of rheubarb three times
a day with no advantage. Then another considered the spine as the
diseased point, and applied irritating ointments. Another prescribed
galvanism, but could give no rule as to time or manner, or expected
effects, but hoped that somehow it might do some good. Several
prescribed local applications to the limb, which in all cases increased
the difficulty.

These all failing, I commenced my rounds to health establishments. The
first was conducted by a sagacious and learned German physician, who
conjectured that the cause of the lameness was the state of the blood,
and used cold water to produce a skin eruption which came without any
good result. But during a year's residence there, I saw most remarkable
cures of many diseases, by treating the skin with alternations of
heat and cold connected with simple food, and outdoor exercise. In
repeated cases I saw thin, pale victims of tubercular consumption, some
apparently in the last stages, changed to rosy, plump and vigorous
women by this treatment. Here I also gained in vigor of mind and body,
though under the most heroic water treatment, but the weak limb was
unrelieved.

Then I resorted to an establishment where the treatment was confined
to simple food, only one or two articles being allowed at one meal.
To this was added short gymnastic exercises, alternating with short
periods of rest. Here I found that by reducing the quantity of food,
and taking only one or two articles at a meal I gained both in flesh
and strength, but the weak limb prevented the required exercises and
was unrelieved.

Then resort was had to an establishment where many women were cured of
internal displacements and consequent evils, but a lady physician by
proper investigation, decided that my lameness resulted from no such
cause. There the physician instructed me in a course of exercises by
which a forward curvature of the spine, caused by debility and use
of supporters, was remedied, and the figure restored to the natural
position, while at the same time the chest, and thus the breathing
capacity, were enlarged so as to demand three inches added to waists
and belts. Other cases I often have met of similar restoration of the
figure, and enlargement of the chest, and compressed lungs, in several
health establishments.

In addition to all these, I have tried Sulphur and Vapor baths,
Russian baths, Chemical baths, Turkish hot air bath, and the Sun bath,
and have seen patients benefited in all. Owing chiefly to my own
knowledge and caution I was not injured myself by any, though I saw
others, who, from ignorance, imprudence, or want of skill and care in
the physician were seriously injured in every one.

I have also met persons who were benefited by the Grape Cure, and the
Lifting Cure. Several friends have been treated by an ignorant tailor
who taught his patients that the centre of the nervous system was the
navel, and that he cured by operations that disentangled the nerves
that were gathered in bunches and knots. His method was to spend an
hour daily with each patient in a continuous pressure and pinching of
all parts of the body, which resulted in some remarkable cures in spite
of his ridiculous theories.

My final and only successful experiment was at the Swedish Movement
Cure, under the care of Dr. Geo. H. Taylor. This method so far
as I have observed, is the most reliable and efficacious remedy
for debilitated nerves, and for the internal displacements and
diseases consequent on the courses by which so many women weaken the
constitution or ruin the health. By this method the weak limb was
first relieved, and after this, by a strict obedience to all the laws
of health, for several years I have enjoyed perfect health. I have
also been every year gaining in strength and in the increased power of
faculties usually diminished by age. And should burnings, and crushings
of railroads, and other casualties be escaped, I have a fair chance for
at least another twenty years of health, and active usefulness.

But this result has been gained not by any one method of medical
treatment, but rather by faithful obedience to the laws of health,
while it is preserved and continued only by the same. For whenever I
failed in any one respect, my enfeebled nervous system, especially the
weaker member, reported the wrong with marvelous precision.

What has been gained is continued only by a faithful and diligent
course, securing pure air by night and day; regular and abundant sleep
in the hours of darkness, and no mental or physical labor except by
day; a daily towel bath in cool water in the sun or by a fire, except
in hot weather; living in light and well ventilated rooms, and often
sitting in the sun; abstinence from stimulating drinks of all kinds; a
simple diet of properly cooked food in a moderate quantity, and only at
regular hours; daily outdoor exercise by walking, riding, and use of
the muscles of the arms and trunk; clothing that never compresses any
part and always protects from chills; abstinence from over excitement
of all kinds; the cultivation of a cheerful and quiet spirit; healthful
amusements; benevolent activity never to exceed the strength; and all
this prayerfully pursued as a religious duty owed to God, to my fellow
men, and to myself.

Another lesson illustrated by my experience, is the advance of medical
science in detecting the _causes_ of diseases so as to apply remedies
intelligently. My case was simply prostration of the nervous system
by mental care and labor, increased by a punctured nerve. And yet my
medical advisers, most of them distinguished in their profession,
treated me, one, for diseased stomach, another for diseased spine,
another for diseased blood, and most of them applied stimulants to the
weak part, always thus increasing the weakness. That was nearly forty
years ago. Since then nervous diseases are better understood, while
animal chemistry, the microscope, and the thermometer have furnished
new means for intelligent search for _causes_ of disease.

And yet our most learned physicians complain of the deficient education
given to medical students, and their negligent practice in comparison
with European methods. I have before me the Richmond and Louisville
Medical Journal of 1869, which claims to be the largest medical monthly
in this nation. In it I find a letter from Dr. W. O. Baldwin, late
President of the National Congress of physicians, asking from Dr. Wm.
Neftel, of New York, late physician of the Russian Imperial Guard, an
account of the course of medical study in Europe, and remarking that
Dr. Neftel "beautifully illustrates by his example and by his valuable
contributions to science, the wisdom of the system in which he was
educated."

In reply, Dr. Neftel states that the first requisition in Europe for
medical license, is a course of general study equal to that demanded
in our colleges, and in addition, a thorough knowledge of physics.
Next follows four summer and four winter sessions in the medical
department. The first two years are devoted to anatomy, histology,
physiology, chemistry, pathological anatomy, general and special
pathology and therapeutics, the principles of operative surgery and
obstetrics, working at the same time in the chemical, physiological
and pathological laboratories. In the last sessions only the student
attends the different clinics—medical, surgical, obstetrical,
opthalmological, dermatological, and psychological. Then, under a
professor some special branch of medical science is pursued.

Dr. Neftel states as one cause of the advance of medical science in
Germany and Russia, is the institution of free teachers or _privat
docents_. These are students distinguished by original genius or great
research, who in connexion with the faculty, become teachers, and
have full access to laboratories, museums, and libraries. Many young
physicians of talents thus rise to high positions, and from this class
have risen the greatest men of science. Thus it is, also, that the
German Universities secure the best professors who devote their lives
to science and instruction, with most admirable results.

Another advantage to medical science in Germany, is the close connexion
of the medical departments in the Universities with the other faculties
of philosophy, law, and theology. In consequence of this, we find the
greatest chemists and natural philosophers to be medical men, and a
number of physiologists are great mathematicians.

Dr. Neftel, after completing this course, was connected with medical
departments in the Universities of London, Paris, and Germany for four
years. After this the adoption of republican opinions prevented his
return to Russia, and led him to this country.

It is by frequent intercourse with Dr. Neftel, and by observing his
methods of detecting the _causes_ of disease, that I have been
deeply impressed with the imperfect modes pursued by inexperienced
practitioners, and even by some who stand high in the profession.
For example, I took a friend to him who had been examined by several
physicians of high standing. One of them decided that the disease was
of the heart, another that it was of the liver, and a third that it was
of the kidneys. But by the microscope and by chemical tests, it was
proved that neither of these organs were diseased, and that all the
symptoms were caused by miasmatic fungi in the blood.

In the case of another lady I witnessed investigations to detect the
_cause_ of the frequent re-appearance of carbuncles, which had not been
sought for by other medical advisers; they only prescribing modes of
hastening and diminishing the crisis. To look at the tongue, feel the
pulse, and hear a statement of the symptoms, is the common method, and
then prescriptions are given of powerful chemical agents, which, if not
suited to the case are injurious.

Thus it comes to pass that the most learned and careful physicians are
demanding an increase of medical educational advantages in our country.

Thus also it has come to pass that health establishments abound, in
which the natural agencies of water, light, pure air, exercise, and
simple diet are the chief medical agents employed. And in most cases
the patients are those who have vainly tried the regular medical
treatment.

The great defect in all these institutions, so far as I have observed,
is confinement to one special method, and a neglect of enforcing
obedience to _all_ the laws of health. For in not even one such
institution have I ever known proper arrangements for securing pure air
both night and day; while in some the diet is at war with healthful
digestion. To these evils add the ignorance of the patients in
over-doing, and the want of skill, or care of the physician, and the
result has been more mischief than benefit in many cases. For there is
as much need of science and care in the physician in the use of these
natural agents as in the more common methods.

Recently some of the most efficacious methods employed in Water Cure
Establishments have received the sanction and approval of the highest
medical practitioners in Europe.

For in the _Medical Record_, the leading periodical of N. York
physicians, I find a paper read before the New York Academy of
Medicine, in October, 1868, by Dr. Neftel, in which he states that the
most distinguished writers and practitioners in Europe now employ cold
water for reducing fevers, just as for twenty years or more has been
practiced in Water Cures.

In this paper he says: "My first acquaintance with the use of water
in diseases, was during the Crimean war, when a murderous epidemic of
typhus fever prevailed, _resisting every known method of treatment_.
Following the instincts of patients and watching the effects of cold
water, I commenced treating with cold sponging and effusions and the
result surpassed my hopes, and was _far better than that obtained by
any other method_. I myself was attacked by the disease and was saved
from death only by my own mode of treatment. But still my treatment
was purely empyrical and symptomatic. Soon after, this method was
confirmed in the large hospitals of Russia, with excellent results."

"The principal rule observed is never to allow the temperature
(ascertained by a thermometer placed under the shoulder) to rise
higher than 103 Fahrenheit. The mildest degree of cooling is attained
by sponging the whole body with cold water or by keeping the patient
continually in a wet sheet. A wet cloth is laid on the head, and if not
asleep, every quarter of an hour the patient is offered a little cold
water to drink, and every three hours nourishing fluid food. The room
is to be kept well ventilated and stimulants avoided."

Dr. Neftel adds, "the effect of this treatment is so wonderful that
those familiar with typhoid patients will not recognize them. By
keeping the temperature below 103.1 Fahrenheit the exacerbations are
avoided and the fever kept in a continuous remission. The patients are
never unconscious, never delirious, the tongue always remains moist and
clean, the bronchial catarrh is very slight, and so is the diarrhœa, if
any at all. There is no tympanites, no hemorrhage, no complication, and
we have reason to believe the intestinal ulcerations do not occur at
all. Under this treatment the course of typhoid fever is very mild and
short, the convalescence very rapid, and the mortality none whatever.
A great number of patients treated by myself on this method, have
recovered without exception. In this city I had a patient whose morning
temperature once reached 106.34° Fahrenheit—_a case absolutely fatal
under every other treatment_—and she is now recovering."

"The thermometer indicates with the greatest exactness, the condition
of the animal heat, the presence of fever, its degree, intensity and
danger. It also traces the laws of the course of different types
of disease, indicates transitions from one stage to another, the
ameliorations and aggravations, and the return of the normal condition.
It enables us to form a correct diagnosis and prognosis, and gives us
positive therapeutical indications." In conversation I enquired if all
kinds of fevers should be subdued by this method, and was assured that
this was the safest and surest mode for all.

A scientific and very successful practitioner who managed a Water Cure
Establishment, and was largely employed in the town around, stated that
after a year or two of instruction in the use of cold water, he lost
all his outside patients, as the mothers and housekeepers had learned
to treat by his methods, and no longer needed his attention except in
rare cases.

I have stated that it was at the Swedish Movement Cure, under charge of
Dr. Geo. H. Taylor, that the cause of my long invalidism and its remedy
were ascertained. In addition to this personal benefit, I have learned
the cause and the proper remedy of a class of female diseases which
have baffled the most skillful practitioners and introduced methods in
many ways so unfortunate, that my whole sex will eventually recognize
as a great benefactor, the physician who has rendered them needless,
and introduced others at once philosophical, modest, and efficacious.

Dr. Taylor's discoveries and methods are presented in his work on the
Diseases of Women, published by George Maclean, 47 John Street, N. Y.
This work has the approval of the leading physicians of Philadelphia
and New York, and other distinguished practitioners whose specialty has
been in this department. If this work should find its way into every
school and family, it probably would do more for the health of women
and of the next generation than any other similar measure that can be
urged.

The information I have gained in the modes narrated, has increased my
conviction of the importance of giving to every woman a _scientific_
training for her profession as _healthkeeper_ of the family state.
Not that the long course needed for general medical practice should
be attempted, which in the chief European Universities would demand
ten and twelve years of study and training. Instead of this, I
would propose a moderate course in physiology and animal chemistry,
accompanied with instruction in practical scientific methods of
employing water, light, heat, cold, air, exercise, and diet—both to
prevent and to remedy diseases—nor should the application of these
remedies be left entirely to the judgment and skill of women, even
after such training, but be under the guidance of a physician, highly
educated, so as to detect by careful investigation the _causes_ of
disease, and of such another as Dr. Taylor, who has practised in both
the Water and Movement Cures.

I have stated that in one large town a Water Cure physician lost all
his outside practice by instructing mothers and housekeepers how to
use properly the methods of the Water Cure. If to these were added
the practical methods of the Movement Cure, as conducted by Dr. G.
H. Taylor, with the enforcement of _all_ the laws of health in a
given community, it is probable that all the physicians but those
superintending these methods, would lose all their practice.

One of the most judicious and well educated physicians I know,
expressed the opinion that if a number of families in a town would
unite to provide a salary to a good physician (the same as to a
clergyman) who should visit each family to watch over the habits and
health, and see all methods employed to keep them well, that in the
end, it would prove a great piece of economy in money as well as
in health. The sagacious Chinese have learned this, and pay their
physicians so long as they are well, and stop paying when they are ill.

But with us it is for the pecuniary interest of physicians to have
sickness general in a community, and there is need of a profession
whose honor and emolument depend on the _prevention_ of all diseases.
For this profession every woman, and especially every school-teacher
should be carefully trained.

If all the women teachers of this nation could be trained to be
_health-keepers_ under the supervision of the highest class of educated
physicians, and then sent forth to lecture in all our school districts
teaching mothers and housekeepers the laws of health, and the methods
of the Water and Movement Cures, it is probable that health and long
life would be doubled all over the nation.

And here I would urge renewed attention to the state of female health
in our country as exhibited in statistics published in a work of mine
fifteen years ago, and introduced in a chapter placed at the end of
this volume. I have never found any reason to doubt the correctness
of the impression made by these statements at first, nor to suppose
any marked improvement at the present time. For the diminution of
domestic labor by school girls of all ages and classes; the increase
of mental labor in public schools; the increase of cares to mother
and housekeepers in country as well as cities, from increase of
the refinements of civilization; the increased use of stoves and
furnaces without proper arrangements for ventilation; the increase of
unhealthful labor for women in unventilated stores, shops, and mills;
the unhealthful fashions of dress, and the fact that at this day women
receive more delicate constitutions than those given by mothers of a
former generation; all these things indicate an increase rather than a
diminution of the causes that undermine the health of women.

This brings me to the main object of this meeting, which is to enlist
the interest and influence of the ladies present, in devising and
executing plans for the proper education of the daughters of this
city—by methods that shall remedy the evils that have been set forth,
and which shall serve as a model to other cities and towns through our
nation.

In detailing an outline of the plan aimed at, I will first state that
it has already received the approval of ladies of good judgment, and of
practical experience as mothers and housekeepers; and also is approved
by the Trustees of the H. F. Seminary.

I appear at this time as the Secretary and Gen. Agent of the American
Woman's Educational Association. This consists of ladies of high
character and position in various states which meets annually to
receive reports of agents and direct their operations. This Association
has established several institutions at the West, the most important
being the Milwaukee Female College. The method employed was to take
a school already organized as the nucleus, and then offer to the
citizens to secure endowments to support teachers, on condition that
they provided a suitable building and tuition fees to support a
certain number of superior teachers. This was done, and for fifteen
years that institution, in its primary, preparatory, and collegiate
schools has successfully carried out one portion of the plan of the
Association, some teachers being supported by endowments provided by
the Association, and others by tuition fees. The chief agent of the
Association has had the control and supervision of this institution now
numbering nearly 200 pupils from all the Protestant denominations. The
chief difficulty has been the fact that the Association is located at
the East, and its work done at the West.

It is now proposed to carry out the plans of the Association more
completely in an institution at the East, under the immediate charge of
an Executive Committee, resident in the same place as the Institution.

It is proposed to organize the H. F. Seminary like that at Milwaukee,
with Primary, Preparatory, and Collegiate schools all under the care
of the Trustees as at present. These schools to be furnished by the
citizens, with building, library, and apparatus equal to those of the
High School, and a course of study instituted allowing entrance only
at certain periods, and limiting the number of studies each term, as
is done in the College and High School. Also to raise endowments to
support two of the highest class of teachers, so that they can secure
homes and salaries equal to those given to college professors.

This being secured by the citizens, the Association will appoint
their Executive Committee from ladies of this city, one from each
denomination, and others be added, selected by them, also a certain
number of the Trustees of the Seminary to become members. Then the
managers will appoint a collecting agent to raise funds to establish
a University School with diverse departments, in which pupils of the
Seminary and others shall be trained for all the distinctive duties of
women, and all who wish it also be trained for some suitable womanly
employment or profession by which to earn an honorable independence.

The first organized departments of the University would be the Normal
and Health departments. Two highly educated ladies would become the
Principals, and Dr. Neftel, and Dr. Taylor have engaged to act as
superintending physicians. The Association will aim to provide land and
buildings for these departments, and support the two lady principals
so that they can receive into their families two classes. During the
months of July and August, when most teachers have vacations, the class
will consist of enfeebled and exhausted teachers to be restored and
trained to teach our system of Calisthenics, and to administer the
methods of the Water Cure, and Movement Cure, and also to lecture on
the laws of health in the communities to which they will return.

At all other periods of the year, these families will consist of young
girls of delicate constitutions or poor health, to be trained to health
and vigor, and at the same time to pursue a moderate course of study in
the Seminary classes. These lady principals will also take charge of
the Seminary classes in Domestic Science, Physiology, Animal Chemistry,
Botany, and Calisthenics under direction of the Principals of the
Seminary. On this plan two teachers will be supported by endowments
provided by the citizens, and two by endowments provided by the
Association.

The Trustees of the Seminary will control all funds given for the
Primary, Preparatory, and Collegiate schools, and the Executive
Committee of the Association will control the funds given for the
University department. As to the probability of raising endowments,
the former agent of the Association testifies that he was cordially
welcomed to the pulpits of almost every Protestant denomination and
sometimes took larger collections than were given for any other objects.

There is one reason for endowing the H. F. Seminary, little
understood. Three female institutions are soon to go into operation in
Massachusetts, one endowed with a million and a half, another with half
a million, a third very largely provided. These will offer advantages
and salaries commanding the best teachers, and the public High Schools
will do the same. Thus the boarding and other pay schools not endowed,
will soon lose their best teachers and take up only with a humbler
class. This, and the multiplication of studies and classes, will make
boarding and day schools for the wealthy class, unless endowed, very
inferior to the public High schools and endowed institutions.

Many female colleges have attempted a regular course of study demanding
few classes for each term, and that all pupils enter at regular
periods. But not one that I know of, has raised endowments to support
teachers. Not even Vassar, though provided with over half a million,
has a single endowment to support a teacher. All has been spent
in expensive grounds, buildings, and furniture to draw pupils from
parental watch and care.

If this half million had been devoted to providing endowments for this
Seminary, some ten or twelve of the highest class of women teachers
might have permanent positions and incomes.

In reference to the patronage to be expected for the health department,
Dr. Dio Lewis gained very large patronage by taking charge of young
girls in delicate health who thronged from every part of the nation.

I will close by giving a specimen of the applications constantly made
to me from all quarters for teachers out of health. I think if it
were notified in the public prints that help could be given to such
applications, they would count more by thousands than by hundreds.

So much and so often have I been pained to turn away from such
piteous appeals, that nothing but the hope of some day meeting such a
sympathizing and influential body of friends and followers of Christ,
has sustained me.

    "Dear Miss Beecher:

    "Having read of your plans for aiding teachers in regaining
    health, I address you in behalf of a dear and only child. I
    myself was a teacher, and by intense interest and labor lost my
    health. My marriage afterwards was unfortunate, and ever since
    the birth of this child I have had to struggle alone and with
    poor health to support her and myself by my needle.

    "My child is fond of study, is a graduate of one of the best
    public schools, and afterward attended an excellent Grammar
    school in N. York city. The principal told me she was the
    brightest in her class, and had a depth and clearness of mind
    unusual in her age. She was much beloved in her classes,
    especially by her teachers.

    "But her studies were too severe, and for a long time she has
    not been able to study or do much except practice on the piano,
    for which she had the best of teachers, and would like to teach
    it when her head gets stronger. I have consulted one of the
    best physicians, and he says she may recover in time, that too
    much study is the cause of her trouble, and that she must not
    study at all.

    "Dear Miss Beecher, you cannot imagine how great is my interest
    in your plans, and how I long to place my daughter under your
    care. I thought the anxieties of a mother would prove some
    claim on your kindness, and that you would excuse me for
    applying to you for advice and help. If my child could go into
    some christian home near the sea-side and do light work to pay
    for her board, she would be willing to do so; and perhaps could
    teach one or two scholars in music. The poor child now feels
    distressed and discouraged, and I know not what to do. She is a
    Christian believer and a member of the church, and I hope our
    Heavenly Father will show us some way of help and comfort in
    this our low estate."




AN ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF AMERICA.


MY DEAR AND HONORED COUNTRYWOMEN:

When I wrote the first address in this volume, I had a very imperfect
idea of the scope and magnitude of the questions which the women of
this nation, who aim to be followers of Jesus Christ, will soon be
called to investigate and to decide—questions which are the very
foundation principles of both morals and religion—questions which every
woman must settle for herself aided by common sense, the Bible, and the
Divine aid obtained by prayer.

To us Jesus Christ appears as the only one born into this world who
lived to maturity, then died and then returned to life again; first to
prove that death does not end our existence, and next to teach what
awaits us in the invisible world to which we all are hastening.

Let those who have mused in lonely sorrow by the grave of the dearest
friends and asked with infinite longings—where are they? is this the
end? are we too to lie down in utter annihilation?—say how we could
have these questions answered so as to best secure a comforting belief?
Should we not say let our well-known, well-beloved friends, come forth
from the tomb and live with us again—walk, talk, eat, sleep, and act,
as in past times—and this for days and weeks and not alone with us,
but with many others who had known them through life? Can we imagine
anything to ask more satisfactory than this, to prove that death does
not end our existence?

Suppose that Abraham Lincoln, after his body had lain in state for
three days, had risen from his coffin and for thirty days had been
surrounded by his family, his cabinet, his personal friends, and by as
many as three hundred persons who knew him well; can we conceive of
anything more satisfactory to prove that death does not destroy the
soul? And would not his honest teachings of what is to be experienced
after death, be sought as the most reliable evidence possible of what
awaits us all when we pass to the invisible world?

This is exactly what the believers in the Christian religion claim was
done for us when Jesus Christ came and dwelt on earth for thirty-three
years, then was slain by enemies determined to prevent his predicted
resurrection, and then arose from the dead, bringing life and
immortality to light. And why did this good Being come and dwell on
earth, then die, and then arise from the dead? It was to teach us not
only that an immortal existence stretches before us after death, but
that the happiness of that immortality depends on _the character which
is formed by education here_.

What then is the character which we are to seek in order to attain
immortal blessedness? The first sermon of our Lord has this very topic
as its burden:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,"—those who feel the need of knowledge,
guidance, and help.

"Blessed are the meek,"—those that receive rebuke and instruction
without anger.

"Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness,"—those
that long to know what is the right way, and to walk in it.

"Blessed are the _happiness makers_,"[173:A]—those who make happiness
the right way, as taught by the Master—"for they are the children of
God,"—having His nature as the child has the father's nature, and they
are to dwell with Him forever.

    [173:A] This is a more exact translation than "Blessed are the
    peace-makers."

It is such who are to "rejoice and be exceeding glad" even when
persecuted, hated, and reviled, for right words and actions. It is such
who are to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

And what is this kingdom? It is one made up of the righteous, those
who long to know what is right and to do it, who hunger and thirst
after righteousness, and so are forever to be satisfied. And then the
Master teaches that His kingdom is not of this world, but exactly the
opposite. For the children of this world do not feel poor in spirit,
but rather seek to be called Rabbi, and to teach others. They do not
wish to be told of their ignorance, mistakes and sins, and are angry
when it is done. They do not hunger and thirst to find the lowly way of
righteousness, but rather the way of riches, honor, and power.

They do not seek to become true "happiness makers" as taught by the
words and example of the Master, taking a humble place, going about
and doing good, and working for others more than for self. Instead of
this they work and plan for self, first, and then for those belonging
to self, and care little for the world that the Master came to save.
They seek to be at the top and to have all below look up to them.

Now the family state is instituted to educate our race to the Christian
character,—to train the young to be followers of Christ. Woman is its
chief minister, and the work to be done is the most difficult of all,
requiring not only intellectual power but a moral training nowhere else
so attainable as in the humble, laborious, daily duties of the family
state.

Woman's great mission is to train immature, weak, and ignorant
creatures, to obey the laws of God; the physical, the intellectual, the
social, and the moral—first in the family, then in the school, then
in the neighborhood, then in the nation, then in the world—that great
family of God whom the Master came to teach and to save. And His most
comprehensive rule is, "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart," and "this is the love of God that ye keep His commandments."
And next, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." These two the
Master teaches are the chief end of man and includes all taught by
Moses and the prophets. This then is woman's work, to train the young
in the family and the school _to obey God's laws_ as learned partly
by experience, partly by human teaching and example, and partly by
revelations from God.

But the most solemn duty of the Christian woman is the _motives_ she
is to employ in training to this obedience. The motives used by the
worldly educator are the gain or loss of earthly pleasures, honors, and
comforts. But the truly Christian woman feels and presents as the grand
motive, the dangers of the future life from which our Lord came to save
us, and these so dreadful that all we most value in this life are to be
made secondary and subordinate, while the chief concern is, not mainly
to save self, but rather to save ourselves by laboring to save others
from ignorance of God's laws and to secure the obedience indispensable
to future eternal safety.

And this is to be done at a period when this great motive of Christ's
religion is more and more passing out of regard, even in the Christian
church. So much is this the case, that the world has good reason to
say that while most creeds and preachers teach it in words, few really
believe it. For "it is actions that speak louder than words," as to
what is believed.

For example, if a company of amiable persons were told that a shipwreck
was close at hand and help needed to save the struggling passengers,
and yet, after a few enquiries, all went on as before, it would justly
be said that these persons do not believe in the messenger and his
message. But suppose another company, on hearing the news, rush out
amid the darkness and danger, to help; this would prove their _faith_
in the messenger and his story.

Now no earthly danger can compare with those revealed by our Lord as
threatening every child born into this life; and He also teaches that
_the number saved depends on the self-denying labors of His followers_.
With small exceptions, all the Christian churches profess to believe
this, and that the first concern of Christian life is to _save as many
as possible_. And yet where is the _practical_ evidence that this is
believed?

If these teachings of Christ were fully and practically believed, would
it not so divide the church from the world that there could be no
mistake as to who are Christians and who are not? And is there any such
marked divisions in most of our churches?

It may be urged that this doctrine has been set forth with such hideous
detail and additions entirely unwarranted by the Bible and so abhorrent
to the best feelings of humanity, that the more men become humane and
Christ-like the more they revolt from it.[178:A]

    [178:A] Note C.

Yet if this be so, the fact remains that Jesus Christ, the only
reliable messenger from the invisible world, has in the strongest
language both literal and figurative, set forth these dangers and
enjoined on his followers as their _first_ concern, to save as many as
possible, by training them to a knowledge of God's laws and to habitual
obedience to them. And is there not a want of _belief_ in this—that
is, a want that _practical faith_ in Christ and his message, which it
is the great and chief mission of woman to secure by her ministry in
the family and school? She it is who daily is to train all under her
care to become _righteous_, that is, to _feel and act right_ according
to the rules of right revealed by Jesus Christ. She is to teach that
"repentance" which consists in such sorrow for wrong doing as involves
turning from it, and such love as secures obedience to the Lord and
Savior.

Now the Christian woman in the family and in the school is the most
complete autocrat that is known, as the care of the helpless little
ones, the guidance of their intellect, and the formation of all their
habits, are given to her supreme control. Scarcely less is she mistress
and autocrat over a husband, whose character, comfort, peace, and
prosperity, are all in her power. In this responsible position is she
to teach, by word and example, as did Jesus Christ? Is she to set an
example to children and servants not only of that of a ruler, but also
of obedience as a subordinate? In the civil state her sons will be
subjects to rulers who are weak and wicked, just as she may be subject
to a husband and father every way her inferior in ability and moral
worth. Shall she teach her children and servants by her own example
to be humble, obedient, meek, patient, forgiving, gentle, and loving,
even to the evil and unthankful, or shall she form rebellious parties
and carry her points by contest and discord? God has given man the
physical power, the power of the purse, and the civil power, and woman
must submit with Christian equanimity or contend. What is the answer of
common sense, and what are the teachings of Christ and His Apostles?

Let every woman who is musing on these questions, take a reference
Bible and examine all the New Testament directions on the duties of the
family state, and she will have no difficulty in deciding what was the
view of Christ and His Apostles as to woman's position and duties. She
is a _subordinate_ in the family state, just as her father, husband,
brother, and sons are subordinates in the civil state. And the same
rules that are to guide them are to guide her. She and they are to be
obedient to "the higher powers"—those that can force obedience—except
when their demands are contrary to the higher law of God, and in
such a conflict they are "to obey God rather than man," and take the
consequences whatever they may be. And a woman has no more difficulty
in deciding when to obey God rather than man in the family state
than her husband, father, and sons have, in the civil state. And
obedience in the family to "the higher power" held by man, is no more a
humiliation than is man's obedience to a civil ruler.

If this be so, then the doctrine of woman's subjugation is established
and the opposing doctrine of Stuart Mills and his followers is
in direct opposition to the teachings both of common sense and
Christianity.

There is a moral power given to woman in the family state much more
controlling and abiding than the inferior, physical power conferred
on man. And the more men are trained to refinement, honor, and
benevolence, the more this moral power of woman is increased. This
is painfully illustrated in cases where an amiable and Christian man
is bound for life to an unreasonable, selfish, and obstinate woman.
With such a woman reasoning is useless, and physical force alone can
conquer, and this such a man cannot employ. The only alternatives are
ceaseless conflicts, at the sacrifice of conscience and self-respect,
or hopeless submission to a daily and grinding tyranny.

The general principles to guide both men and women as to the duties of
those in a subordinate station, have been made clear by discussions
relating to civil government. But the corresponding duties of those
invested with power and authority have not been so clearly set
forth, especially those of the family state. While the duties of
subordination, subjection, and obedience, have been abundantly enforced
on woman, the corresponding duties of man as head and ruler of the
family state have not received equal attention either from the pulpit
or the press. And this is not because they are not as difficult, as
important and as clearly taught by the Master and the Apostles of
Christianity.

St. Paul, who, while he dwelt in retirement in Arabia, received the
direct instructions of Jesus Christ, claims to have full authority from
the Master to instruct on this important and fundamental topic, and in
his Epistle to the Ephesians we have his express and full teachings.
In this most interesting passage we find that the family state is the
emblem to represent Jesus Christ and the Church—the Church "which is
the great company of faithful people" in all ages and all lands—those
who are appointed to guide and save the world—the true educators of our
race, who, by self-denying labors are to train men for Heaven. Of this
body the Apostles teaches that Jesus Christ is the head—those whom He
has redeemed by His labor and sacrifice, and who are to train as His
children all whom they can rescue from ignorance and sin, by similar
labor and sacrifice.

It is in this connection that he sets forth the duties of the family
state, Ephesians v: 22 to 33, "Wives submit yourselves unto your own
husbands _as unto the Lord_. For the husband is head of the wife, even
as Christ is head of the Church: Therefore, as the Church is subject to
Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything."

"Husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the Church and
gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the
washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself, a
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that
it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives
as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man
ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it even as
the Lord the Church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and
of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother
and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."

No wonder these directions close with "this is a great mystery"; for
the most advanced followers of Christ have but just begun to understand
the solemn relations and duties of the family state—man the head,
protector, and provider—woman the chief educator of immortal minds—man
to labor and suffer to train and elevate woman for her high calling,
woman to set an example of meekness, gentleness, obedience, and
self-denying love, as she guides her children and servants heavenward.

It is this comprehensive view of the family state as organized to
train immortal minds for the eternal world that indicates the reason
for the stringency of the teachings of our Lord as to the indissoluble
union of man and wife in marriage.

    "And he said unto them, Moses, _because of the hardness of your
    hearts_, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the
    beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall
    put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall
    marry another committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her
    that is put away doth commit adultery."

    "Have ye not read that He which made them at the beginning
    made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a
    man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and
    they twain shall be one flesh. What therefore God hath joined
    together let not man put asunder."

This then is "the higher law" which abrogates all contrary human
statutes and forbids to marry more than once, except when death or
adultery breaks the bond. This statute brings all the advocates of
free divorce in direct antagonism with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
And it is a striking fact that the great body of those who advocate
free divorce and free love, deny the authority of Jesus Christ as the
authorized teacher of faith and morals.

In the discussions as to woman's rights and wrongs, it is assumed on
one side that she is not to take a subordinate position either in the
family or the State. And the apparent plausibility of the claim is
owing to a want of logical clearness in the use of words. When it is
said that "all men are created free and equal and equally entitled to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that women as much as
men are included, it is true in one use of terms and false in another.
It is true in this sense, that woman's happiness and usefulness are
equal in value to man's, and ought to be so treated. But it is not true
that women are and should be treated as the equals of men in _every_
respect. They certainly are not his equals in physical power, which is
the final resort in _government_ of both the family and the State. And
it is owing to this fact that she is placed as a subordinate both in
the family and the State. At the same time it is required of man who
is holding "the higher powers" so to administer that woman shall have
equal advantages with man for usefulness and happiness.

Hitherto the laws relating to women in the civil state have been
formed on the assumption that society is a combination of families, in
each of which the husband and father is the representative head, and
the one who, it is supposed, will secure all that is just and proper
for the protection and well being of wife and daughters. And if the
teachings of Christianity were dominant, and every man loved his wife
as himself, and was ready to sacrifice himself and suffer for her
elevation and improvement, even as Christ suffered to redeem and purify
the Church, there would be no trouble.

But both men and women have been selfish and sinful, neither party
having attained the high ideal of Christianity, and very many have not
even understood it so as to aim at it. But it is woman's mission as the
educator of the race to remedy the evil, not by giving up the ideal but
by striving more and more to conform herself and all under her care
to its blessed outlines. And in past times those families have been
the most peaceful and prosperous where the wife and mother has most
faithfully aimed to obey the teachings of Christ and His Apostles, in
this as in every other direction.

The principle of subordination is the great bond of union and harmony
through the universe. At the head is the loving Father and Lord whom
all are to obey with perfect faith and submission. Then revelations
teaches that in the invisible world are superior and subordinate ranks,
each owing obedience to superiors in station and described as "thrones,
dominions, principalities, and powers." Again, in this world are also
superiors and subordinates, not only in the family state but in all
kinds of business where heads of establishments and master workmen
demand implicit faith and obedience.

This being so, one of the most important responsibilities of a woman
in the family state is to train the young in this duty, not only by
precept but also by example. And a woman who clearly understands the
importance of this, will pride herself on her implicit obedience to
the official head of the family state, as much so as the citizen or
soldier does to his superior officer, or the subordinate operator to
his master-workman.

But at the same time, such a woman will demand and expect a return for
this submission, that the husband and father fulfil his corresponding
and more difficult duties; to love his wife as himself; to honor
her as _physically_ the weaker vessel needing more tender care and
less exposure and labor; to suffer for her in order to increase her
improvement, usefulness, and happiness, even as the Lord suffered to
elevate and purify his followers.

The duty of subordination, though so fundamental and important, is one
to which all minds are naturally averse. For every mind seeks to follow
its own judgment and wishes rather than those of another. Especially
is this the case with persons of great sensibilities and strong will.
It is owing to this that so many women of this class are followers of
Stuart Mills' doctrine that a wife is not a subordinate in the family
state. And it is for want of clear instruction on this subject from the
pulpit and the press that this doctrine spreads so fast and so widely.

The agitation at the present time in regard to woman's right and
wrongs is greatly owing to the fact that, from various causes, large
multitudes of women are without the love and protection secured by
marriage. And yet the laws and customs of society are framed on the
general rule that every man is to be head of a family and every woman
a wife. But war, emigration, vicious indulgencies, and many other
causes have rendered marriage impossible to multitudes of women;
counting by tens of thousands in the older States, and by hundreds
of thousands in our nation. A large portion of these women must earn
their own independence, while those who are provided with a support
are embarrassed by false customs or unjust laws. In regard to the
multitudes of women who flock to our cities and to such direful
temptations it is often said, why "do they not become servants in
families?" Let any woman who has a young daughter ponder this question
as one that may reach her own family. Does not almost every woman feel,
more or less, the bondage of _caste_ and shrink from taking the _lowest
place_ even though the Lord of Glory set the example?

And is it not the chief attraction toward our pitying Saviour that He
loves and tenderly cares for the weak, the wandering and the lost?
And are we not walking in His steps when we try to help the weak and
foolish who will not take care of themselves?

That there is an emergency which demands changes in our customs and
laws, all well informed and benevolent persons will concede. But the
main question is, what should be the nature of these changes and how
shall they be secured?

There are certain customs of society which are based on the assumption
that all women are to marry and be supported by husbands, and that
all men are to provide for the support of a family. It is on this
assumption that, in cases where men and women do the same work and do
it equally well, men receive much larger wages than women.

But as emigration, war, and the vices of unrestrained civilization have
interfered with this normal condition of society, the laws and customs
should be modified to meet the emergency. For there are many wrongs,
both to married and unmarried women, consequent on the present false
and unchristian state of things.

As one example of injustice, it is granted by all who superintend
public schools, that women are as good and often better teachers
than men, and yet they are unjustly denied equal compensation. In
many other directions the same unjust custom prevails. Still more
unjust is the custom which gives superior advantages to men for
the scientific and practical training for a profession by which an
honorable independence may be secured and almost none at all are
provided for women. So also in the distribution of public offices of
trust and emolument which secure an income from the civil state, there
are several in which woman can perform the duties as well or better
then men, especially in the care of schools, hospitals, jails, and all
public institutions of benevolence.

Almost all persons of intelligence will concede that justice and
mercy call for changes and improvement in these particulars. The main
question is, what is the best method for securing such improvement?

The party of men and women who are demanding woman suffrage claim
that this is the only sure and effective remedy for these and all
other wrongs that oppress women both in the family and in the civil
state. The party is organized and led by intelligent, energetic, and
benevolent women; they have well-conducted periodicals to urge their
views and to excite sympathy by details of the various ways in which
women suffer from unjust customs and laws; and they are sustained
by the approval and co-operation of many gentlemen of talents and
benevolence.

But the great majority of intelligent and benevolent men and women
are opposed to this measure, first, on account of the probable evils
involved and next because the good aimed at may be secured by a safer,
more speedy, and more appropriate method.

In enumerating the evils that would result from introducing woman
to the responsibilities and excitements of political life, the most
prominent is her increased withdrawal from the more humble, but
more important offices of the family state. At the present time,
the services of the seamstress and the mantua-maker are imperfectly
supplied, and when obtained it is often from those who are poorly
trained. An economical, trustworthy, and competent cook, is a treasure
growing more and more rare, which often the highest wages cannot
procure. A kind, intelligent, and affectionate woman, to aid a mother
in the cares of the nursery, is still more rare.

If the good mothers and grandmothers, who have trained their own
offspring, would take pity on the young mothers all over the land
who are suffering for want of just such sympathy and help as only
such women can bestow, they would soon find, especially in the poorer
classes, a field of usefulness far more in keeping with the tender
spirit of Christian love and humility than any offices that political
action would provide.

Again, the demand for well trained governesses and family teachers is
unsupplied, while multitudes of children all over the nation have no
teachers and no schools of any kind. To open avenues to political place
and power for all classes of women would cause these humble labors of
the family and school to be still more undervalued and shunned.

Another evil to be apprehended from introducing women into political
life is increasing the temptations to draw them from the humble,
self-sacrificing Christian labor among the ignorant and neglected,
which now is so imperfectly supplied. To be a member of the
Legislature, a member of Congress, a Judge, a Governor, or a President,
are temptations heretofore unknown to women. Who shall say what
would be the result should every woman of _every class in society_ be
stimulated by such temptations?

Another danger to be feared, is the introducing into political strifes
the distinctive power of sex, an element as yet untried in our form of
government. In some short experiments that have been made we have seen
how pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser
sort, their very innocence and inexperience making them credulous and
the helpless tools of the guilty and bold.

Another danger from universal woman suffrage would result from
the course that would be taken by many of the most virtuous and
intelligent women. Of those who would regard this measure as an act
of injustice and oppression, forcing duties on their sex unsuited to
their character and circumstances, many would refuse to assume any
such responsibilities. Thus a large number of the most intelligent and
conscientious women would be withdrawn from the polls, increasing the
relative proportion of the ignorant and incompetent voters, a class
that already bring doubt on the success of republican institutions.
On the other hand, another portion would be forced to the polls by
conscientious motives, and there meet the lowest and vilest of their
sex as those who are to appoint their rulers and decide their laws. How
would it be possible for such women to honor the rulers and respect the
laws instituted by such agencies?

The final objection to universal woman suffrage is that there is
another safer, surer, and more speedy method at command which would
secure all the benefits aimed at without any of these dangers.

This method is based on the general principle that in seeking either
favors or rights it is a wise policy to assume the good character and
good intentions of those who have the power to give or withhold. The
law-making power is now in the hands of men, and the advocates of women
suffrage practically are saying, "you men are so selfish and unjust
that you cannot be trusted with the interests of your wives, daughters,
and sisters; therefore give them the law-making power that they may
take care of themselves."

As a mere matter of policy, to say nothing of justice, how much wiser
it would be to assume that men are ready and willing to change unjust
laws and customs whenever the better way is made clear and then to ask
to have all evils that laws can remedy removed. Whenever this course
has been practiced it has always been successful and therefore should
first be tried. For any men who would give up the law-making power to
women in order to remedy existing evils, would surely be those most
ready to enact the needful laws themselves.

The woman suffrage party is so extensively organized, with such
energetic and persistent leaders and such ably conducted papers and
tracts, that those of our sex who are opposed to this measure begin
to feel disturbed and anxious lest it should finally be consummated.
Instead of meeting this danger by ridicule and obloquy I would suggest
that practical methods be instituted in which conservative men and
women can unite, and which the most radical will approve and aid.

There are many ways in which great influence can be exerted without any
regular organization or establishing newspapers or circulating tracts
as is now so vigorously carried on by those favoring woman suffrage.
One method might be enlisting editors of newspapers and magazines
to promote the circulation of this little volume and also to insert
extracts of some of the most effective portions in their columns.
Another might be to present this work to the clergymen and seek their
influence and counsel in promoting its aims.[198:A]

    [198:A] A small periodical, published in Baltimore, Md.,
    entitled the _True Woman_, ably edited by Mrs. Charlotte E.
    McKay, is valuable as a cheap and excellent tract with the same
    aim.

Still another might be, efforts to promote the establishment of such a
University for Women as the one here indicated, commencing with seeking
endowments for the Health and Domestic departments in connection with
some flourishing literary institution, for the purpose of restoring
women teachers to health, and also for training pupils to become
health-keepers in families, schools, and communities.

The importance of this last measure will appear in the following
extract from a public address of a regularly educated American
physician:

    It is much to be deplored that we have no chair devoted to
    _Hygiene_ in any of our medical colleges. During four courses
    of Lectures, that I attended, one of them in Paris, I never
    heard a single lecture upon the Laws of Health; and when on one
    occasion I asked one of our Professors if he would not devote
    one or more of his course to this subject, he replied, that he
    ought to, but feared he would not find time; and then jokingly
    remarked, that we would find it more to our interests to learn
    how to cure people than to keep them well; that we would get
    gratitude and money for healing the sick, but neither the one
    nor the other for preserving the health of the people, however
    well we might do it.

    I have since found that there was more truth in the remark then
    I was then willing to admit. Still, I cannot help thinking
    that we should have such Lectures in every medical school,
    if for no other purpose but to enable its graduates to heal
    the sick—confident that more can be gained in this way by
    a thorough knowledge of Hygiene, than by any other means
    whatever. No drug or medicine is as powerful for good in
    disease as a wise advantage of Nature's laws.

    We spent in one Session over three weeks in the study of
    Mercury, its different preparations, effects, etc.; not
    one hour in learning the value of Light, Air, Sleep, Food,
    and Clothing. The result was we know much about Calomel,
    and literally nothing about the Laws of Health; so we sat,
    something over four hundred students, for five or six hours
    daily, in a room—an amphitheatre—the seats extending from
    the floor to the ceiling—so small, that another hundred
    could not possibly be packed into it—and not a window opened
    all winter—no ventilation whatever—a regular "black hole of
    Calcutta"—the air heavy, foul, offensive with bad breaths—the
    odors of tobacco, liquor, onions—poisonous in the extreme—not a
    fresh cheek among the four hundred. Many of the students drank;
    most of them used tobacco, coffee, sausages, pork, in short
    lived like barbarians. A large proportion of them were ill
    all the time, and some died before the session closed, others
    soon after, and many since. The professors themselves were
    often ailing—not very healthy men. If any of my readers will
    step into any of the medical lectures in any of the colleges
    of this city, some winter afternoon, he will be able to verify
    the truth of this description. Their presiding genius seems to
    have no respect for fresh air, sunlight—in short for the laws
    of health. How then shall these schools inspire respect for
    these laws in others? How can they teach them when they know so
    little of them?

Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, in a recent public address also has
lamented the fact that a Woman's Medical College should be the first
one sustaining a Chair for instructing in Hygiene, as if it were a
conceded fact that it is not the business of physicians to _prevent_
disease in a community, but only to cure their patients with medicines.

Is it not a proper time and measure for the women of our country to
ask for benefactions, both private and legislative, to secure equal
advantage for their professional duty as _health-keepers_, such as have
so long and so liberally been bestowed on men to train them for their
professions?

Believing that such a measure would meet wide approval, the following
form of petition is drawn up, which might be used in every State:

    _To the honorable members of the Senate and House of
    Representatives of the State of ——_:

    We the undersigned, ladies of the State of —— and gentlemen
    citizens of the same, respectfully petition that an
    appropriation be made to endow one department of a _Woman's
    University_ under charge of the Trustees of —— Seminary;
    the object of which shall be to train school-teachers and
    house-keepers in all that relates to health in schools and
    families, and that this endowment be made equal to what has
    been or may be given to endow Scientific Schools for young men;
    and also that this be given on condition that the citizens
    of the place give an equal sum to promote the scientific and
    practical training of women for their distinctive professions.

It is believed that there is not a single state in the Union where such
a petition signed by a large portion of the intelligent women of the
state, would fail. The difficulty is not that the fathers, husbands,
and brothers are not ready to bestow all that such women would unite
in asking, but rather that women do not so feel the importance of such
measures as to unite in such a petition.

It appears in the preceding pages that the daughters of the more
wealthy classes who are educated in boarding schools and most academies
and female colleges cannot enjoy advantages equal to what are given
gratuitously in our best public High Schools to the children of the
poor. Instead of following in the rear of public schools, those who
have wealth should aim to elevate the public schools by the example of
institutions of the highest order for their own daughters. And they
also would be doubly blest if they would set an example that should
both dignify labor and protect their daughters from helpless poverty
should reverses come, by having them _trained to some profession_ by
which they could earn an honorable independence.

When the precepts and example of Jesus Christ fully interpermeate
society, to labor with the hands will be regarded not only as a duty
but a privilege.


TO THE FORMER PUPILS AND PERSONAL FRIENDS OF THE WRITER.

If this enterprise succeeds in Connecticut its example will be followed
in other States, and this volume is sent to many former pupils and
personal friends that they may co-operate in the several ways suggested.

As the writer in former times has received such aid and co-operation,
with funds also to employ at her discretion, and for several years
has had no official organs to report results, it is proper to state
that her personal expenditures for many years have been in a style of
economy which she has seen practised to such a degree nowhere else, and
that _all_ her income not thus employed has been devoted to plans from
aiding her own sex to prepare for and perform their sacred ministry.

The question as to _how much_ of our income it is _our duty_ to give
for the cause for which our Lord came and suffered is a difficult
one to settle. But He instructed the rich young man, "Sell all that
thou hast and give to the poor and come and follow us," and he also
approved the poor widow who gave her last mite to the service of God.

In following out the spirit of these teachings, even in this life, to
the writer has been fulfilled His gracious promise, "Give and it shall
be given, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over."
And the added rewards will increase through eternal ages, as immortal
spirits, rescued from ignorance and sin, will carry forward the same
noble work of training immortal minds to virtue and happiness.

Those who spend their money and time for earthly enjoyments that perish
in the using "have their reward" in the short lived pleasures. Those
who most literally follow the Divine Master lay up treasures that fail
not, but draw interest through everlasting ages. This is written for
the comfort and encouragement of those who by the writer were trained
to "seek _first_ the kingdom of God and His righteousness."




NOTE A. Mrs. Livermore, in her address which followed this,
expressed the wish that I had noticed more directly the main point, (i.
e.) woman's natural, as well as constitutional right to the ballot.
This I will briefly attempt here.

It will be conceded by all, that neither man nor woman has any right
to anything which is contrary to the _best_ good of society. The
question then is, does the best good of society demand a _division of
responsibilities_, so that man shall take those out of the family, and
woman those in it? In other words, shall man take the responsibilities
of nursery and kitchen in addition to his outside business, and shall
women take charge of government, war, and the work men must do in
addition to her home duties? Past laws and customs demand the division,
and it is probable that it will be retained.

As to the constitution of the United States, and the 14th and 15th
amendments, the question all turns on the use of the terms _citizen_
and _people_. Both these words, (as the dictionaries show,) have two
uses, a wide, and a limited. In the widest sense they include men,
women, and children. In the limited sense they include only a portion
of society with certain qualifications which the _best_ good of society
requires. It is not probable that any court will ever decide that the
framers of the constitution, or of the two amendments, used these terms
in the widest sense, thus including not only women, but children.

If the best good of society requires women to be law-makers, judges
and juries, she has a right to these offices; if it does not, she has
no right to them. As to taxation, it is probable that the best good
of society _does_ require that _women holding property_ shall have
the ballot, for this would increase the proportion of responsible and
intelligent voters, and not add a mass of irresponsible and ignorant
ones, as would universal woman suffrage.

It is owing to this that in Europe the statesmen are aiming to give
suffrage, not to _all_ women as demanded here, but only to those
who hold property and pay taxes; for this, in reality, is a method
of increasing the proportion of intelligent voters. And if this
measure were adopted here it probably would add to the safety of our
institutions.

It is worthy of notice that a large portion of those who demand woman
suffrage are persons who have not been trained to reason, and are
chiefly guided by their generous sensibilities. Such do not seem to be
aware that all _reasoning_ consists in the presentation of evidence
to prove that a given proposition is included in a more general one
already believed and granted, and also that in this process there must
be definitions of the sense in which terms are used that have several
meanings.

Instead of this, they write and talk as if _reasoning_ were _any kind_
of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine
or measure is true and right. And so they deal abundantly in exciting
narratives and rhetorical declamations, and employ words in all manner
of deceptive senses.

For example, when Mrs. Livermore pleads that women should have equal
rights with men before law, everybody grants it in _some_ sense. But
the question is in what sense is she to be made equal? All will allow
that law should be so framed that woman's highest usefulness and
happiness shall be treated as equal in value to that of man's. But this
is not relevant to the question whether laws be framed by fathers,
husbands, and brothers, or by women. Most women believe that it is for
their best good that the responsibility of making and enforcing laws be
taken by men and not by women.

But however clearly these distinctions are urged, Mrs. Livermore and
her party will keep on saying that women should be made equal with men
before the law, without stating in what sense they used these terms. So
also they will insist that all "citizens" and all the "people" have a
right to vote, without stating what they mean by "a right," or in which
sense they use the words "people" and "citizens."




NOTE B. The author of this volume is preparing a new edition
of her works on Domestic Science and Economy with many improvements.
Its name is to be _The Housekeeper and Healthkeeper_, and it is
designed for a complete Encyclopædia of Domestic Science and Practice.
It will be published this winter by the Harpers.

It will offer these new and peculiar features:

1. The recipes for food and drink will be in two portions. The first
portion will embrace a _very_ large collection of simple and economical
dishes, which, according to _all_ medical and physiological rules, are
_perfectly healthful_. The second portion will be a collection of more
elaborate and expensive articles, which, according to _all_ rules,
are of at least doubtful character as to healthfulness. Thus, every
housekeeper will have safe and intelligent guidance in her selections.

2. There will be _exact directions_ as to _flavors and seasonings_,
such as in most receipt-books are to be "according to the taste," thus
leaving young housekeepers to the mercies of untrained cooks.

3. It will contain exact directions for preserving and restoring health
by the _scientific_ use of the _natural agencies_ of water, heat, cold,
light, diet, exercise, and pure air, and such only as will be approved
by scientific men of _all_ medical schools.




NOTE C. All the creeds of the large Christian denominations
agree in the following, viz.: that God created angels and our first
parents with a "holy nature," and also created such a constitution
of things, that by a single sin they changed their holy nature to
a "depraved nature" and also transmitted to all their posterity
not the holy nature but the depraved one. In consequence of this
constitution of things made by God, all our race, except those who are
"regenerated," go to everlasting misery in Hell.

As intelligence and Christian feeling have increased, multitudes
educated in these views deny the doctrine of future punishments and
hold that the righteous and the wicked all go to Heaven at death.

Others hold that God creates all infant minds perfect as to _nature_,
being "in his image," yet imperfect in development, and that holy
_character_ and action can be secured only by training, knowledge and
self-control; that "the deeds done in the body" influence character
and happiness through an eternal existence; that _some_ form such a
character in this life as secures eternal happiness and that _some_, by
voluntary resistance to the highest possible good influences, form a
changeless character of selfishness and consequent misery, so that it
were "better never to have been born"; that with others the training to
virtue goes on during the intermediate state, in Hades where Christ, at
his death, went and preached to those that lived before the flood; (see
I Peter, 3: 18, 19, 20,) that the day of judgment is the time when the
final separation of the righteous and the wicked will take place; that
the punishment of the wicked is only the natural result of perpetuated
selfishness in a world from which all the good are removed; and that
this separation will not take place until God and all good beings have
done all in their power to rescue as many as possible from selfishness
and sin.

There are many modifications of these general views in various
denominations; but all except a small number agree that Christ teaches
that there are awful dangers in the life to come; and that it should
be the chief aim of every parent and educator to train all within the
reach of their influence so to live and act in view of these dangers as
to follow Him in self-denying labors to save as many as possible.

It will be found that in all ages the _fear_ of dangers in the life to
come has been the basis of the most earnest labor and self sacrifice
to save men from ignorance and sin. "The _fear_ of the Lord is the
_beginning_ of wisdom," and those who throw aside this principle loose
the most powerful motive in training to safety both for this and the
future life. And there are modes of presenting this doctrine so as not
to implicate the justice and mercy of our Heavenly Father as do some
representations from which humanity more and more revolts.

The fact that sin and suffering exist in a universe created by a
perfectly benevolent, wise, and almighty Being, is proof that "almighty
power" is not the power to work contradictions, and therefore _in
this respect_ is limited. In the words of my venerated father, "God
cannot govern the stars by the ten commandments, nor free agents by the
attraction of gravity." This limitation of God's power in governing
free agents, is expressly taught in the Bible. For our only idea of
power is causing anything by _willing_ it, and _want_ of power is
inability to cause a thing by willing it. And God repeatedly declares
that he is not willing that any should perish; and that he did all for
the people of Israel that he could do to make them obedient.

The parents and teachers who hold that _all_ are to come out good
and happy at last, however negligent or criminal in this life, or
that _all_ have a second probation, never can train the young to the
self-denying labors to save men which Jesus Christ has taught by both
precept and example, to be the duty of his followers. It is very
certain that the whole course of my life would have been changed for
the worse had I believed either that there was little or no danger in
the life to come or that _all_ had a second probation after death.




NOTE D. The following chapter is a part of my small work
entitled _Letters to the People on Health and Happiness_, published by
the Harpers, who have loaned the stereotype plates here used.

Before reading it, I would ask that my _definitions_ be borne in mind
when I class the degrees of health, and also the fact that when I give
my own observations I am confined to those persons whom I know well
enough to ascertain exactly their state of health, while there may be
others in close vicinity not noticed, whom on enquiry I might find to
be vigorously healthy women.

Every woman who has any kind of liability to be a mother, or a nurse of
the sick, or to meet other exhausting emergencies of the family state
needs a _reserved_ force of vital strength which many women who seem
to be in perfect health find lacking in such emergencies. This want of
this is one cause of the frequent failure of health after marriage, and
is one result of a transmitted delicate constitution.

I also ask special attention to the fact that women in the country
of the industrial classes have not the robust health of earlier
generations. In addition to other causes, for this, is the overworking
and anxiety consequent on increased civilization. The fashions and
expenditures of cities stimulate the country, and the mothers strain
every nerve to secure for sons and daughters a style of dress and
furniture in former days unknown. This and the desire to accumulate,
wears out many a wife and mother before half her days are accomplished,
making her a perpetual invalid or sending her to an early grave.


    LETTER EIGHTEENTH.

    STATISTICS OF FEMALE HEALTH.

    During my extensive tours in all portions of the Free States,
    I was brought into most intimate communion, not only with my
    widely-diffused circle of relatives, but with very many of my
    former pupils who had become wives and mothers. From such, I
    learned the secret domestic history both of those I visited
    and of many of their intimate friends. And oh! what heartaches
    were the result of these years of quiet observation of the
    experience of my sex in domestic life. How many young hearts
    have revealed the fact, that what they had been trained to
    imagine the highest earthly felicity, was but the beginning
    of care, disappointment, and sorrow, and often led to the
    extremity of mental and physical suffering. Why was it that
    I was so often told that "young girls little imagined what
    was before them when they entered married life?" Why did I so
    often find those united to the most congenial and most devoted
    husbands expressing the hope that their daughters would never
    marry? For years these were my quiet, painful conjectures.

    But the more I traveled, and the more I resided in health
    establishments, the more the conviction was pressed on my
    attention that there was a terrible decay of female health
    all over the land, and that this evil was bringing with it
    an incredible extent of individual, domestic, and social
    suffering, that was increasing in a most alarming ratio. At
    last, certain developments led me to take decided measures
    to obtain some reliable statistics on the subject. During my
    travels the last year I have sought all practicable methods of
    obtaining information, and finally adopted this course with
    most of the married ladies whom I met, either on my journeys or
    at the various health establishments at which I stopped.

    I requested each lady first to write the _initials_ of _ten_
    of the married ladies with whom she was best acquainted in her
    place of residence. Then she was requested to write at each
    name, her impressions as to the health of each lady. In this
    way, during the past year, I obtained statistics from about two
    hundred different places in almost all the Free States.

    Before giving any of these, I will state some facts to show how
    far they are reliable: In the first place, the _standard of
    health_ among American women is so low that few have a correct
    idea of _what a healthy woman is_. I have again and again been
    told by ladies that they were "perfectly healthy," who yet, on
    close inquiry, would allow that they were subject to frequent
    attacks of neuralgia, or to periodic nervous headaches, or
    to local ailments, to which they had become so accustomed,
    that they were counted as "nothing at all." A woman who has
    tolerable health finds herself so much above the great mass of
    her friends in this respect, that she feels herself a prodigy
    of good health.

    In the next place, I have found that women who enjoy universal
    health are seldom well informed as to the infirmities of their
    friends. Repeatedly I have taken accounts from such persons,
    that seemed singularly favorable, when, on more particular
    inquiry, it was found that the greater part, who were set
    down as perfectly healthy women, were habitual sufferers from
    serious ailments. The delicate and infirm go for sympathy, not
    to the well and buoyant, but to those who have suffered like
    themselves.

    This will account for some very favorable statements, given
    by certain ladies, that have not been inserted, because more
    accurate information showed their impressions to be false. As
    a general fact, it has been found that the more minute the
    inquiry, the greater the relative increase of ill health in all
    these investigations.

    Again, I have found that ladies were predisposed usually to
    give the _most favorable_ view of the case; for all persons
    like to feel that they are living in "a healthy place" rather
    than the reverse.

    Again, I have found that almost every person in the result
    obtained, found that the case was worse than had been
    supposed, the proportion of sick or delicate to the strong and
    healthy being so small.

    It must be remembered, that in regard to those marked as
    "sickly," "delicate," or "feeble," there can be no mistake, the
    knowledge being in all cases _positive_, while those marked as
    "well" may have ailments that are not known. For multitudes of
    American women, with their strict notions of propriety, and
    their patient and energetic spirit, often are performing every
    duty entirely silent as to any suffering or infirmities they
    may be enduring.

    As to the terms used in these statements, in all cases there
    was a previous statement made as to the sense in which they
    were to be employed.

    A "perfectly healthy" or "a vigorous and healthy woman" is one
    of whom there are _specimens_ remaining in almost every place;
    such as used to _abound_ when all worked, and _worked in pure
    air_.

    Such a woman is one who can through the whole day be actively
    employed on her feet in all kinds of domestic duties without
    injury, and constantly and habitually has a feeling of perfect
    health and perfect freedom from pain. Not that she never has a
    fit of sickness, or takes a cold that interrupts the feeling of
    health, but that these are out of her ordinary experience.

    A woman is marked "well" who usually has good health, but
    can not bear exposures, or long and great fatigue, without
    consequent illness.

    A woman is marked "delicate" who, though she may be about
    and attend to most of her domestic employments, has a frail
    constitution that either has been undermined by ill health, or
    which easily and frequently yields to fatigue, or exposure, or
    excitement.

    In the statements that follow, I shall place first those
    which are _most reliable_, inasmuch as in each case personal
    inquiries were made and the specific ailments were noted, to
    show that nothing was stated without full knowledge. As a
    matter of delicacy, the _initials_ are changed, so that no
    individual can thus be identified.


        MOST RELIABLE STATISTICS.

        _Milwaukee, Wis._ Mrs. A. frequent sick headaches.
        Mrs. B. very feeble. Mrs. S. well, except chills.
        Mrs. L. poor health constantly. Mrs. D. subject to
        frequent headaches. Mrs. B. very poor health. Mrs. C.
        consumption. Mrs. A. pelvic displacements and weakness.
        Mrs. H. pelvic disorders and a cough. Mrs. B. always
        sick. Do not know one perfectly healthy woman in the
        place.

        _Essex, Vt._ Mrs. S. very feeble. Mrs. D. slender
        and delicate. Mrs. S. feeble. Mrs. S. not well. Mrs.
        G. quite feeble. Mrs. C. quite feeble. Mrs. B. quite
        feeble. Mrs. S. quite slender. Mrs. B. quite feeble.
        Mrs. F. very feeble. Knows but one perfectly healthy
        woman in town.

        _Peru, N. Y._ Mrs. C. not healthy. Mrs. H. not healthy.
        Mrs. E. healthy. Mrs. B. pretty well. Mrs. K. delicate.
        Mrs. B. not strong and healthy. Mrs. S. healthy and
        vigorous. Mrs. L. pretty well. Mrs. L. pretty well.

        _Canton, Penn._ Mrs. R. feeble. Mrs. B. bad headaches.
        Mrs. D. bad headaches. Mrs. V. feeble. Mrs. S.
        erysipelas. Mrs. K. headaches, but tolerably well. Mrs.
        R. miserably sick and nervous. Mrs. G. poor health. Mrs.
        L. invalid. Mrs. C. invalid.

        _Oberlin, Ohio._ Mrs. A. usually well, but subject
        to neuralgia. Mrs. D. poor health. Mrs. K. well, but
        subject to nervous headaches. Mrs. M. poor health. Mrs.
        C. not in good health. Mrs. P. not in good health. Mrs.
        P. delicate. Mrs. F. not in good health. Mrs. F. not in
        good health.

        _Wilmington, Del._ Mrs. ——, scrofula. Mrs. B. in good
        health. Mrs. D. delicate. Mrs. H. delicate. Mrs. S.
        healthy. Mrs. P. healthy. Mrs. G. delicate. Mrs. O.
        delicate. Mrs. T. very delicate. Mrs. S. headaches.

        _New Bedford, Mass._ Mrs. B. pelvic diseases, and every
        way out of order. Mrs. J. W. pelvic disorders. Mrs. W.
        B. well, except in one respect. Mrs. C. sickly. Mrs. C.
        rather delicate. Mrs. P. not healthy. Mrs. C. unwell
        at times. Mrs. L. delicate. Mrs. B. subject to spasms.
        Mrs. H. very feeble. Can not think of but one perfectly
        healthy woman in the place.

        _Paxton, Vt._ Mrs. T. diseased in liver and back. Mrs.
        H. stomach and back diseased. Mrs. W. sickly. Mrs. S.
        very delicate. Mrs. C. sick headaches, sickly. Mrs.
        W. bilious complaints. Mrs. T. very delicate. Mrs. T.
        liver complaint. Mrs. C. bilious sometimes, well most
        of the time. Do not know a perfectly healthy woman
        in the place. Many of these are the wives of wealthy
        farmers, who _overwork_ when there is no need of it.

        _Crown Point, N. Y._ Mrs. H. bronchitis. Mrs. K. very
        delicate. Mrs. A. very delicate. Mrs. A. diseased in
        back and stomach. Mrs. S. consumption. Mrs. A. dropsy.
        Mrs. M. delicate. Mrs. M. G. delicate. Mrs. P. delicate.
        Mrs. C. consumption. Do not know one perfectly healthy
        woman in the place.

        _Batavia, Illinois._ Mrs. H. an invalid. Mrs. G.
        scrofula. Mrs. W. liver complaint. Mrs. K. pelvic
        disorders. Mrs. S. pelvic diseases. Mrs. B. pelvic
        diseases very badly. Mrs. B. not healthy. Mrs. T. very
        feeble. Mrs. G. cancer. Mrs. N. liver complaint. Do not
        know one healthy woman in the place.

        _Oneida, N. Y._ Mrs. C. delicate. Mrs. P. scrofula. Mrs.
        S. not well. Mrs. L. very delicate and nervous. Mrs. L.
        invalid. Mrs. L. tolerably well. Mrs. A. invalid. Mrs.
        W. broken down. Mrs. D. feeble. Mrs. W. pale but pretty
        well.

        _North Adams, Mass._ Mrs. R. scrofula and liver
        complaint. Mrs. R. consumption. Mrs. C. consumption.
        Mrs. B. liver complaint. Mrs. B. consumption. Mrs.
        B. general debility. Mrs. F. consumption. Mrs. W.
        paralytic. Mrs. W. confined always to her bed. Mrs. R.
        scrofula.

        _Charlotte, Vt._ Mrs. W. spinal complaint. Mrs. D.
        spinal complaint. Mrs. N. spinal complaint. Mrs. R.
        bilious and paralytic. Mrs. R. pelvic disorders. Mrs.
        H. heart disease and dropsy. Mrs. B. dropsical. Mrs.
        H. pelvic disease and palsy. Mrs. H. scrofula and
        consumption. Mrs. S. quite delicate. Knows but one
        perfectly healthy woman in the place.

        _Maria, N. Y._ Mrs. H. consumption. Mrs. E. dyspepsia.
        Mrs. T. dyspepsia. Mrs. D. consumption. Mrs. P.
        dyspepsia. Mrs. R. sickly. Mrs. M. sickly. Mrs. R.
        delicate. Mrs. S. sickly. Mrs. R. consumption. Knows not
        one perfectly healthy woman in the place.

        _Vergennes, Vt._ Mrs. L. delicate. Mrs. H. consumption.
        Mrs. H. consumption. Mrs. C. sickly. Mrs. S. liver
        complaint. Mrs. S. asthma. Mrs. S. sickly. Mrs. B.
        bronchitis. Mrs. S. consumptive. Mrs. B. delicate. Does
        not know a perfectly healthy woman in the place.

        _Brooklyn, N. Y._ Mrs. B. very delicate. Mrs. G.
        scrofulous. Mrs. R. pelvic displacements. Mrs. I.
        nervous headaches. Mrs. A. pelvic diseases. Mrs. W.
        heart disease. Mrs. S. organic disease. Mrs. B. well but
        delicate. Mrs. L. well but delicate. Mrs. C. delicate.

        _Berlin, Conn._ Mrs. A. dyspepsia. Mrs. B. quite
        delicate. Mrs. C. nervous headaches. Mrs. G. pelvic
        disorders. Mrs. M. weak lungs. Mrs. F. not sound. Mrs.
        C. delicate. Mrs. N. vigorous and healthy. Mrs. C. well.
        Mrs. A. delicate.

        _Whitestown, N. Y._ Mrs. A. consumptive. Mrs. P. well
        but delicate. Mrs. M. well but delicate. Mrs. S. pelvic
        disorders. Mrs. R. dropsy. Mrs. B. pelvic disorders.
        Mrs. H. sick headaches. Mrs. K. organic disorder. Mrs.
        B. well but delicate. Mrs. T. bronchitis.

        _Proctorville, Vt._ Mrs. B. well. Mrs. H. well. Mrs. S.
        pelvic and stomach disorders. Mrs. S. not healthy. Mrs.
        F. not healthy. Mrs. B. sickly. Mrs. C. not healthy.
        Mrs. W. not healthy. Mrs. A. vigorous and usually well.
        Knows no other strong and healthy woman.

        _Saratoga, N. Y._ Mrs. M. pelvic disorders. Mrs. H.
        pelvic disorders. Mrs. A. pelvic disorders. Mrs.
        C. well. Mrs. C. neuralgia. Mrs. P. well. Mrs.
        T. consumptive. Mrs. J. tolerably well. Mrs. B.
        consumptive. Mrs. B. not well. Knows only one more well
        one among her acquaintance.

        _Saratoga, N. Y._ (by another resident). Mrs. T. pelvic
        disorder. Mrs. C. pelvic disease. Mrs. H. not well. Mrs.
        S. well and strong. Mrs. B. tolerably well. Mrs. M.
        usually well. Mrs. O. headaches. Mrs. H. O. well. Mrs.
        S. delicate. Mrs. P. not well.

        _Canandaigua, N. Y._ Mrs. A. well. Mrs. B. an invalid.
        Mrs. C. delicate. Mrs. H. delicate. Mrs. H. an invalid.
        Mrs. J. well. Mrs. P. delicate. Mrs. A. well. Mrs. C. an
        invalid. Mrs. W. well.

        _Livonia, N. Y._ Mrs. H. rheumatic. Mrs. R. healthy
        and vigorous. Mrs. S. well. Mrs. R. good health. Mrs.
        P. very poor health. Mrs. B. well. Mrs. G. an invalid.
        Mrs. S. delicate. Mrs. T. poor health. Mrs. ——, pelvic
        disorders.

        _Turkhannock, Penn._ Mrs. P. delicate and sickly. Mrs.
        L. delicate and well. Mrs. R. well and vigorous. Mrs.
        S. tolerably well. Mrs. C. well. Mrs. S. healthy. Mrs.
        T. consumption. Mrs. M. healthy. Mrs. R. well. Mrs. ——,
        pelvic disorders.

        _Bath, N. Y._ Mrs. H. an invalid. Mrs. H. rheumatic.
        Mrs. H. healthy and vigorous. Mrs. S. vigorous. Mrs.
        K. delicate. Mrs. K. very healthy. Mrs. W. broken down.
        Mrs. W. tolerably well. Mrs. W. an invalid. Mrs. H. poor
        health.

        _Castleton, N. Y._ Mrs. S. sickly. Mrs. W. healthy. Mrs.
        S. very delicate. Mrs. H. delicate. Mrs. H. delicate.
        Mrs. B. delicate. Mrs. W. not healthy. Mrs. H. not
        healthy. Mrs. D. not healthy.

    The following were furnished by ladies who simply arranged
    the names of the ten married ladies best known to them in the
    place of their residence, in three classes, as marked over the
    several columns:

    +------------------------+----------+---------+---------+
    |                        |Strong and|Delicate |Habitual |
    |       Residence.       |perfectly |   or    |Invalids.|
    |                        | Healthy. |Diseased.|         |
    +------------------------+----------+---------+---------+
    |Hudson, Michigan        |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |Castleton, Vermont      | Not one. |    9    |    1    |
    |Bridgeport, Vermont     |    4     |    4    |    2    |
    |Dorset, Vermont         | Not one. |    1    |    9    |
    |South Royalston, Mass.  |    4     |    2    |    4    |
    |Townsend, Vermont       |    4     |    3    |    3    |
    |Greenbush, New York     |    2     |    5    |    3    |
    |Southington, Connecticut|    3     |    5    |    2    |
    |Newark, New Jersey      |    2     |    3    |    5    |
    |New York City           |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |Oneida, New York        |    3     |    2    |    5    |
    |Milwaukee, Wisconsin    |    1     |    3    |    6    |
    |Rochester, New York     |    2     |    6    |    2    |
    |Plainfield, New Jersey  |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |New York City           |    3     |    6    |    1    |
    |Lennox, Massachusetts   |    4     |    3    |    3    |
    |Union Vale, New York    |    2     |    5    |    3    |
    |Albany, New York        |    2     |    3    |    5    |
    |Hartford, Conn.         |    1     |    5    |    4    |
    |Cincinnati, Ohio        |    1     |    4    |    5    |
    |Andover, Mass.          |    2     |    5    |    3    |
    |Brunswick, Maine        |    2     |    5    |    3    |
    |Southington, Connecticut|    3     |    5    |    2    |
    |Rochester, New York     |    2     |    6    |    2    |
    |Albany, New York        |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |Milwaukee, Wisconsin    |    1     |    3    |    6    |
    |Plainfield, New Jersey  |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |New York City           |    3     |    6    |    1    |
    |New York City           |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |Worcester, Massachusetts|    1     |    6    |    2    |
    |Newark, New Jersey      |    2     |    3    |    5    |
    |Bonhomme, Missouri      |    3     |    5    |    2    |
    |Painted Post, New York  |    1     |    3    |    6    |
    |Wilkins, New York       |    2     |    3    |    5    |
    |Johnsburg, New York     |    3     |    6    |    1    |
    |Burdett, New York       |    4     |    3    |    3    |
    |Horse Heads, New York   |    3     |    2    |    5    |
    |Pompey, New York        |    4     |    4    |    2    |
    |Tioga, Pennsylvania     |    3     |    4    |    3    |
    |Lodi, New York          |    2     |    5    |    3    |
    |Seymour, Connecticut    |    3     |    7    |    0    |
    |Williamsville, New York |    4     |    2    |    4    |
    |Herkimer, New York      |    3     |    2    |    5    |
    |Hudson, Michigan        |    2     |    4    |    4    |
    |Kalamazoo, Michigan     |    3     |    6    |    1    |
    +------------------------+----------+---------+---------+

    The following are those not so reliable as the preceding, as
    the papers were some of them not clear, and some uncertainty
    about others for want of personal inquiry:

        _Cattskill, N. Y._ Three vigorous, two well, three
        delicate, two sickly.

        _Batavia, N. Y._ One vigorous, two well, three delicate,
        one sickly.

        _Ogden, N. Y._ Three well, five well but delicate, two
        sickly.

        _Utica, N. Y._ Nine well but not vigorous, one invalid.

        _Rhinebeck, N. Y._ One vigorous, six well but not
        vigorous, one delicate, one invalid.

        _Cooperstown, N. Y._ Two vigorous, five well, two
        delicate, two sickly.

        _Lima, N. Y._ Five well, three delicate, two sickly.

        _Rockaway, N. Y._ Two vigorous, five well, one delicate,
        two sickly.

        _Brockport, N. Y._ Three vigorous, six well, one
        delicate, one sickly.

        _Buffalo, N. Y._ Five well, five delicate.

        _Potsdam, N. Y._ Eight tolerably well, two sickly.

        _Rome, N. Y._ Two well, seven tolerably well, one sickly.

        _Rochester, N. Y._ Four well, three delicate, three
        sickly.

        _Princeton, N. J._ Four well, five well but delicate,
        three sickly.

        _Muncy, Penn._ Two vigorous, six well but delicate, two
        sickly.

    The remainder of accounts furnished being less reliable, for
    want of opportunities of definite inquiry on my part, and will
    therefore be omitted. But they do not essentially differ from
    these presented.

    I will now add my own personal observation. First, in my
    own family connection: I have nine married sisters and
    sisters-in-law, all of them either delicate or invalids, except
    two. I have fourteen married female cousins, and not one of
    them but is either delicate, often ailing, or an invalid. In my
    wide circle of friends and acquaintance all over the land out
    of my family circle, the same impression is made. In Boston I
    can not remember but one married female friend who is perfectly
    healthy. In Hartford, Conn., I can think of only one. In New
    Haven, but one. In Brooklyn, N. Y., but one. In New York
    city, but one. In Cincinnati, but one. In Buffalo, Cleveland,
    Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, those whom I have visited are
    either delicate or invalids. I am not able to recall, in my
    immense circle of friends and acquaintance all over the Union,
    so many as _ten_ married ladies born in this century and
    country, who are perfectly sound, healthy, and vigorous. Not
    that I believe there are not more than this among the friends
    with whom I have associated, but among all whom I can bring to
    mind of whose health I have any accurate knowledge, I can not
    find this number of entirely sound and healthy women.

    Another thing has greatly added to the impression of my own
    observations, and that is the manner in which my inquiries have
    been met. In a majority of cases, when I have asked for the
    number of perfectly healthy women in a given place, the first
    impulsive answer has been "not one." In other cases, when the
    reply has been more favorable, and I have asked for specifics,
    the result has always been such as to diminish the number
    calculated, rather than to increase it. With a few exceptions
    the persons I have asked, who had not directed their thoughts
    to the subject, and took a favorable view of it, have expressed
    surprise at the painful result obtained in their own immediate
    circle.

    But the thing which has pained and surprised me the most is
    the result of inquiries among the country-towns and industrial
    classes in our country. I had supposed that there would be a
    great contrast between the statements gained from persons from
    such places, and those furnished from the wealthy circles, and
    especially from cities. But such has not been the case. It will
    be seen that the larger portion of the accounts inserted in the
    preceding pages are from country-towns, while a large portion
    of the worst accounts were taken from the industrial classes.

    As another index of the state of health among the industrial
    classes may be mentioned these facts: During the past year I
    made my usual inquiry of the wife of a Methodist clergyman, who
    resided in a small country-town in New York. Her reply was,
    "There are no healthy women where I live, and my husband says
    he would travel a great many miles for the pleasure of finding
    one."

    In another case I conversed with a Baptist clergyman and his
    wife, in Ohio, and their united testimony gave this result
    in three places where his parishioners were chiefly of the
    industrial class. They selected at random ten families best
    known in each place:

        _Worcester, Ohio._ Women in perfect health, two. In
        medium health, one. _Invalids, seven._

        _Norwalk, Ohio._ Women perfectly healthy, one, but
        doubtfully so. Medium, none. _Invalids, nine._

        _Cleveland, Ohio._ Women in perfect health, one. Medium
        health, two. _Invalids, seven._

    In traveling at the West the past winter, I repeatedly
    conversed with drivers and others among the laboring class on
    this subject, and always heard such remarks as these: "Well! it
    is strange how sickly the women are getting!" "Our women-folks
    don't have such health as they used to do!"

    One case was very striking. An old lady from New England told
    me her mother had twelve children; eleven grew up healthy, and
    raised families. Her father's mother had fifteen children, and
    raised them all; and all but one, who was drowned, lived to a
    good old age. This lady stated that she could not remember that
    there was a single "weakly woman" in the town where she lived
    when she was young.

    This lady had two daughters with her, both either delicate or
    diseased, and a sick niece from that same town, once so healthy
    when the old lady was young. This niece told me she could not
    think of even one really robust, strong, and perfectly healthy
    woman in that place! The husband of this old lady told me that
    in his youth he also did not know of any sickly women in the
    place where he was reared.

    A similar account was given me by two ladies, residents of
    Goshen, Litchfield Co., Connecticut.

    The elder lady gave the following account of her married
    acquaintance some forty years ago in that place:

        Mrs. L. strong and perfectly healthy. Mrs. A. healthy
        and strong as a horse. Mrs. N. perfectly well always.
        Mrs. H. strong and well. Mrs. B. strong and generally
        healthy, but sometimes ailing a little. Mrs. R. always
        well. Mrs. W. strong and well. Mrs. G. strong and
        hearty. Mrs. H. strong and healthy. Mrs. L. strong and
        healthy.

    All the above persons performed their own family work.

    The following account was given by the daughter of the lady
    mentioned above, and the list is chiefly made up of daughters
    of the above healthy women living at this time in the same town:

        Mrs. C. constitution broken by pelvic disorders. Mrs.
        P. very delicate. Mrs. L. delicate and feeble. Mrs. R.
        feeble and nervous. Mrs. S. bad scrofulous humors. Mrs.
        D. very feeble, head disordered. Mrs. R. delicate and
        sickly. Mrs. G. healthy. Mrs. D. healthy. Mrs. W. well.

    These last three were the only healthy married women she knew
    in the place.

           *       *       *       *       *

    I have received statements from more than a hundred other
    places besides those recorded here. The larger portion of these
    were taken by others, or else by myself in such circumstances
    that I could not make the inquiries needed to render them
    reliable, and some I have lost. The general impression made,
    even by these alone, would bring out very nearly the same
    result. The proportion of the sick and delicate to those
    who were strong and well was, in the majority of cases, a
    melancholy story. But among them were a few cases in which a
    very favorable statement was verified by close examination.
    In several such cases, however, most of the healthy women
    proved to be either English, Irish, or Scotch. In one case, a
    lady from a country-town, not far from Philadelphia, gave an
    account, showing eight out of ten perfectly healthy, and the
    other two were not very much out of health. On inquiry, I found
    that this was a Quaker settlement, and most of the healthy ones
    were Quakers.

    In one town of Massachusetts, the lady giving the information
    said all the ten she gave were healthy, but two. Her associates
    were all women who were in easy circumstances, and did their
    own family work. These two places, however, are the _only_
    instances I have found, where, on close inquiry, the majority
    was on the side of good health.

    There is no doubt that there are many places like these two,
    of which some resident would report that a majority of their
    acquaintance were healthy women; but out of about two hundred
    towns and cities, located in most of the Free States, only two
    have as yet presented so favorable a case in the line of my
    inquiries during the year in which they have been prosecuted.

    Let these considerations now be taken into account. The
    generation represented in these statistics, by universal
    consent, is a feebler one than that which immediately preceded.
    Knowing the changes in habits of living, in habits of activity,
    and in respect to _pure air_, we properly infer that it must be
    so, while universal testimony corroborates the inference.

    The present generation of parents, then, have given their
    children, so far as the mother has hereditary influence,
    feebler constitutions than the former generation received,
    so that most of our young girls have started in life with a
    more delicate organization than their mothers. Add to this the
    sad picture given in a former letter of all the abuses of
    health suffered by the young during their early education, and
    what are the present prospects of the young women who are now
    entering married life?

    This view of the case, in connection with some dreadful
    developments which will soon be indicated, proved so oppressive
    and exciting that it has been too painful and exhausting to
    attempt any investigation as to the state of health among young
    girls. But every where I go, mothers are constantly saying,
    "What shall I do? As soon as my little girl begins school
    she has the headache." Or this—"I sent my daughter to such a
    boarding-school, but had to take her away on account of her
    health."

    The public schools of our towns and cities, where the great
    mass of the people are to be educated, are the special subject
    of remark and complaint in this respect.

    Consider also that "man that is born of a woman" depends on her
    not only for the constitutional stamina with which he starts
    in life, but for all he receives during the developments of
    infancy and the training of childhood, and what are we to infer
    of the condition and prospects of the other sex now in the
    period of education?




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:


Grammatical errors remain as in the original. Variations in spelling
and hyphenation remain as in the original.

The following typographical errors have been corrected:

    Page 3: of civil government on woman.[period missing in
    original]

    Page 104: The Kindergarten[original has "Kindergarden"], the
    primary school

    Page 111: excess of marriageable[original has "marriagable"]
    women

    Page 121: "[quotation mark missing in original]These
    resolutions contain sound sense

    Page 121: "[quotation mark missing in original]There is no
    doubt that the present arrangement of society bears more
    hardly upon women than upon men; and all wise efforts to
    make them more independent of the mischances of life deserve
    encouragement.[quotation mark missing in original]"

    Page 155: far better[original has "bettter"] than that obtained

    Page 193: mantua-maker[original has "mantau-maker"] are
    imperfectly supplied

    Page 196: power to give or withhold[original has "withold"]

    Page 208: form a changeless[original has "changless"] character

    Page 216: Mrs. L. delicate[original has "deliicate"] and well.

    Page 218: Horse Heads,[comma missing in original] New York

    Page 218: Pompey,[comma missing in original] New York

    [173:A] Blessed[original has "Blesssd"] are the peace-makers

    [178:A] Note C.[period missing in original]





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