a woman_. We feel that it is her
privilege and her right to be relieved from the necessity of working
in the field, from doing many things which it is manly in man to do.

We do not object to woman's sharing in the toil of the store, the
shop, or the factory. Better this than idleness and want; yet there is
a reason for pondering the question whether woman is wise in trying to
displace man for her own advantage. If any one must be idle, let it be
woman, and not man. It has been well said, "There are in Massachusetts
over seventy thousand more females than males, and probably twice
that number in the State of New York. It is an unnatural condition of
things. At the West the number of men greatly preponderates."

"Our young men go off early in life, leaving fathers, mothers, and
sisters behind them. The prospect for their sisters to marry, then, is
lessened by every emigration." Now, what shall be done in behalf of
these thousands of virtuous, educated, and noble girls? The cry is,
make them into clerks, and bookkeepers, and bankers, and give them all
the employments of men. Think it over. Suppose now we make these
girls into clerks in stores and counting-rooms, say ten thousand in
Massachusetts, and twenty thousand in New York--don't we displace
so many young men; drive them off to the West; prevent so many new
families from being established here; take away thirty thousand
chances of marriage from these females, and enhance the evil we are
trying to remedy?

Is it a blessing to woman to lessen her opportunities of marriage?

Again, a woman can be idle, and not be lost. Whereas man, if left
unemployed, runs to mischief, if not to crime.

The history of those manufacturing districts in England, so eloquently
described by Charlotte Elizabeth, where woman is preferred because of
the cheapness and skill of her labor, proves this position correct.
The husband lives in idleness, and has the care of the house. The
result is, that comfort and neatness are at an end. The children are
reared in crime, in indolence; the men pass their time in drinking and
in gambling, prostitution abounds, and the health of the community,
socially, physically, mentally, and morally, is destroyed.

On the other hand, enter one of those manufacturing towns where the
skilled labor of man is rewarded, and where women keep the house with
thrift and care, and you behold order, virtue, and prosperity. This is
not poetry. It is fact. It proves that G