Gilded Age Women Helping Women

“Where are you going to spend the summer?” … “Somewhere where I don’t have to spend anything else.” Vogue Magazine, 1893 –
“Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go.” - Margaret Walker

To Help Women in the Country

A Michigan woman, much interested in the fresh air work, suggests that city women engaged in this work should invite the country mothers who have entertained children at their homes, to visit in the city homes a few days in the winter. 

These farmers’ wives, who take in the city waifs at a time when summer work presses hardest and summer heat is most oppressive, need a change of scene almost as much as do the mothers and children in the tenements, and for lack of change and rest it is said that farmers’ wives form a large percentage of the inmates of insane asylums. It is not the hard work, but want of companionship, the isolation from books, music, lectures, the theater, the desolation of intellectual starvation.

In some of the western towns a movement is afoot to establish clubs among the country women, where it is believed a higher mental development is possible than in the city, because no other form of recreation will distract attention. The plan is to divide each county into sections and organize a woman's club in each section. These country clubs will co-operate with those in the cities for the interchange of ideas and the forming of friendships mutually beneficial.-New York Sun, 1893

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia