refined and Christian wives and daughters of the mill-owners, had from the beginning of the system watched over the moral and physical welfare of these poor workers as they should have done; moving among their roaring looms and spindles, a beneficent presence of wise and tender charity, and weaving bright glimpses of comfort and a golden thread of beauty in the sordid pattern of their toilsome lives. But educated women have at present no capital wherewith to start farms or manufacturing enterprises, nor money to buy stock in those already established, sufficient to enable them to gain any control over the management of the operatives; and so manufacturing, like agricultural production, is, for the moment, out of our reach.
Distributing Production more Encouraging.
We need not fold our hands, however, nor devote them to the futilities of worsted work, because into two of the great armies of the world's wealth-makers we can find no admittance. That division of productive labour which consists in direct distribution to the consumer will afford "ample room and verge enough" for the energies and powers of most of us, if we only have spirit to undertake it. The Retail Trade of the world is, in my opinion, and at this present stage of its progress, the true and fitting feminine sphere, the only possible function open whereby the mass of educated women may cease from being burdens to society, may become profitable to themselves and to their families, and, above all, helpful to the great host of women-workers beneath them, whom now their vast superincumbent weight crushes daily more hopelessly to the earth.
Arguments for and against the Solution of the Difficulty.
"The retail trade!" I think I hear the two millions of American ladies protesting with one voice, "Why, even in
