Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1885 — Woman as a Machinist. [ARTICLE]

Woman as a Machinist.

A woman don’t know any more about mechanical principles than a man does about feeding a baby; but the manner in which she doctors up a balky sewing machine and makes it go, is one of the world’s great wonders that has not yet been put in the catalogue with the other marvels. She never has the slightest idea what the trouble is, but her manner of taking the difficulty by the ear is about the same in all cases. She gets a hammer and pounds everything breakable for about five minutes, without doing the slightest harm. Then she takes a screw-driver with the corners so broken off that it has a point like a gimlet, and pokes around until she gets it wedged fast somewhere. She jerks and pulls, pounds, tugs, and pries in four directions at once; gets red in the face and white around the mouth; loses her temper and the concerns that hold up her back hair with considerable simultsneousness; gets her toes pinched under the treadle, and her apron wound tight around the main shaft, but just before she gets mad enough to swear, the screw-driver loses its grip and comes out with a suddenness that results in two broken finger nails, and considerable battered up skin in the neighborhood of the knuckles. And then she jumps backward with a rashness of impetuosity that upsets the baby’s crib and breaks the milk bottle, as the poor discouraged woman squats with unstudied grace in the middle of the floor, and lifts up her voice in the plaintive melody of primordial man. But all things have an end, and so has her song of woe. She jumps up and gives the machine a few shakes that make the gearing rattle, pours a lot of oil on the balance wheel, and the business is done. The thing resumes its stitching, and goes right along as smooth as prosperity, without any more kick. After a conrce of treatment like , this any

sewing machine can be guaranteed to run equal to a two-dollar watch for four months.— Chicago Ledger.