Week of 02/29/2016

As you might have guessed, our authors would not approve of booze in any form. There were other forms of "stimulants" which they also condemned, including tobacco, "opium mixtures,"and, surprisingly, tea and coffee. "It is in this aspect that we are to consider the ex- pediency of using tea and coffee in a family.

These drinks are a most extensive cause of much of the nervous debility and suffering endured by American women ; and relinquishing them would save an immense amount of such suffering."

What drinks were suitable? It is allowed by all medical men that pure water is perfectly healthful and supplies all the liquid needed by the body ; and also that by proper means, which ordinarily are in the reach of all, water can be made sufficiently pure.

It is allowed by all that milk, and the juices of fruits, when taken into the stomach, furnish water that is always pure, and that our bread and vegetable food also supply it in large quantities. There are besides a great variety of agreeable and healthful beverages, made from the juices of fruit, containing no alcohol, and agreeable drinks, such as milk, cocoa, and chocolate, that contain no stimulating principles, and which are nourishing and healthful. As one course, then, is perfectly safe and another involves great danger, it is wrong and sinful to choose the path of danger. There is no peril in drinking pure water, milk, the juices of fruits, and infusions that are nourishing and harmless. But there is great danger to the young, and to the commonwealth, in patronizing the sale and use of alcoholic drinks.

Click top or bottom image to reach the song and other temperance songs, as well.

As you can see, we're going to skip a number of chapters in The American Woman's Home. As you have seen, Ms. Beecher and Ms. Stowe were fascinated by science, and kept up with everything. Perhaps one of you might be interested in doing a thesis on Women and Science in the 19th Century. Marie Curie was not the only one. But I wanted to use have us spend some time with these four chapters (none of them very long). We've seen how important yards became as we worked in Jackson's Crabgrass Frontier. They were important at the time this book was written, and moreover they were largely the responsibility of women.

Yes, there was a "woman's question"back in the days of Ms. Beecher and Ms. Stowe. Note how the notion of "domestic animals" has changed since their days. For us, what do we mean? Cats, Dogs, Canaries, perhaps parrots or other birds: in other words, pets. The definition in the age when the edges of suburbia melded into farmland included animals to eat or milk, as well as animals to pet. In the 1970s, I remember some houses on Wood Street in Bristol where rabbits were kept for that purpose in pens in the back yard. I don't know if that is still the case. Click on the illustration to the right to reach The family, farm and gardens, and the domestic animals . In three parts. Illustrated Published in 1859, about the same time as The American Woman's Home. They are, in fact, quite similar.

The most absorbing part of the " Woman's question " of the present time is the remedy for the varied sufferings of women who are widows or unmarried, and without means of support. As yet, few are aware how many sources of lucrative enterprise and industry lie open to woman in the employments directly connected with the family state.

A woman can invest capital in the dairy and qualify 'herself to superintend a dairy farm as well as a man. And if she has no capital of her own, if well trained for this business, she can find those who have capital ready to furnish an investment that well managed will become profitable. And, too, the raising of poultry, of hogs, and of sheep are all within the reach of a woman with proper abilities and training for this business. So that if a woman chooses, she can find employment both interesting and profitable in studying the care of domestic animals.

Homelessness isn't just a problem in our era. As we shall see, this was a concern of our authors, as well. They were humanitarians and advocates for many different causes, and performed their advocacy in books of fact and fiction. I Probably the most famous of Harriet Beecher Stowe's work was Uncle Tom's Cab in, or Life Among the Lowly, which she wrote in 1852. Catherine E. Beecher wrote advocating abolitionism, educational improvements, and theology such as Common Sense Applied to Religion, or the People and the Bible. (In the 19th century, "vicious" meant immoral, not necessarily brutal or dangerous.

There are many residences in our large cities where women claiming to be Christ's followers live in almost solitary grandeur till the warm season, and then shut them up to spend their time at watering-places or country resorts. The property invested in such city establishments, and the income required to keep them up, would secure "Christian homes " to many suffering, neglected, homeless children of Christ, who are living in impure air, with all the debasing influences found in city tenement-houses. Meantime, the owners of this wealth are suffering in mind and body for want of some grand and noble object in life. If such could not personally live in such an establishment as is here described, by self-denying arrangements and combination with others they could provide and superintend one.

The Authors have a different idea in their minds when they use the word "neighborhood". Their image isn't quite that of a small city like Bristol or an area in a metropolis like Chicago or New York. They're thinking of many small farming communities near the east coast and elsewhere, Lowell or Lawrence, Massachusetts, for example, where many of the young children especially young women have left their homes to get work in the mills. The ideas in the chapter reflect the dreams and visions of both sisters. Women could actually return home and open buildings combining house, schoolhouse, and church in one structure, used twenty-four hours a day. I think the idea is rather brilliant myself. What do you think?

The aim is to illustrate one mode of commencing a Christian neighborhood that is so economical and practical that two or three ladies, with very moderate means, could carry it out very moderate means, could carry it out. A small church, a school- house, and a comfortable family dwelling may all be united in one building, and for a very moderate sum, as will be illustrated by the following example

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The ground plan,... includes one large room twenty-five feet wide and thirty-five feet long, having a bow window at one end, and a kitchen at the other end. The bow-window has folding-doors, closed during the week, and within is the pulpit for Sunday service. The large room may be divided either by a movable screen or by sliding doors with a large closet on either side. The doors make a more perfect separation ; but the screen affords more room for storing family conveniences, and also secures more perfect ventilation for the whole large room by the exhaust-flue.

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Two good-sized chambers are over the large lower story,... Large closets are each side of these chambers, where are slatted openings to admit pure air ; and under these openings are registers placed to enable pure air to pass through the floor into the large, room below. Thus a perfect

mode of ventilation is secured for a large number.

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Two ladies residing in this building can make an illustration of the highest kind of "Christian family," by adopting two orphans, keeping in training one or two servants to send out for the benefit of other families, and also pro- viding for an invalid or aged member of Christ's neglected ones. Here also they could employ boys and girls in various kinds of floriculture, horticulture, bee-raising, and other out-door employments, by which an income could be received and young men and women trained to industry and thrift, so as to earn an independent livelihood.