Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 244, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1911 — But Will They Go? [ARTICLE]

But Will They Go?

People of common sense will not be much disturbed by sentimental talk just now current over employment of women in the harvest fields of the middle west. From the traditional American standpoint It strikes pittie unpleasantly to see women engaged in the coarses forms of manual labor. Yet under the light of hygiene and broad comomn sense, is not labor in the fields far better than labor over sewing machines, washtubs and weaving shuttles under the conditions tn which these labors are jfcrformed in multitudes of factories? .Merely the 1 generation which sees ttio&ands of kromen and girls, worn and paUid, pass out of the department stores and sweatshops of our great cities every evening, ought to view without shock the labor of women tn fields and gardens. In the older countries women bear as active a part in outdoor labor as men; and it has not been observed that it has worked to their physical or moral detriment Certainly the ruddy-cheeked Swiss girl with hayrake in hand makes quite as pleasing a picture as the indoor shop worker so constantly in evidence in our American cities. —San Francisco Argonaut.