NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | February 19, 2016 | PAGE 7
Labor 100 Years Ago — Feb. 19, 1916
A look back at the front page stories of the Oregon Labor Press, Feb. 19, 1916. A digital version of the front page can be seen on our web site at www.nwlaborpress.org
* Preparedness For Women
There is one question to
which every woman should be
able to answer yes. It is this:
“Can you earn a living if you
should need to do so?”
If there is one lesson more
than another that has been em-
phasized in recent years, it is
that the untrained suffer most
when a pinch comes. Another
lesson that is not sufficiently
understood is that there is
practically no security in for-
tune.
Preparedness should be the
watchword for women. Train
your daughters, your mothers,
to something that will pay a re-
turn sufficient at least for a
livelihood. It can do no harm,
and it may mean just the dif-
ference between happiness
and misery in later life.
There is nothing more pa-
thetic than the sight of some
unfortunate woman, brought
up utterly unprepared to sup-
port herself, who has been sud-
denly reduced to poverty. We
all know some such woman.
Pottering along at things that
are of no real use, at work
given by pitying friends or
strangers, more ore less dazed
by contract with a world that is
foreign to her, sinking little by
little to meaner surroundings
and more desperate make-
shifts, she at last disappears,
sucked under in the maelstrom
she has neither the strength nor
the training to resist.
Surely you don’t want to
run even the faintest chance of
becoming such a derelict: you
don’t want your daughter to
run any such risk. So be pre-
pared. Be fit for something,
trained to something, ready to
take hold if you must.
Know at least one thing so
well that people will be glad to
pay you for doing it. Be able
to say yes if the world should
ask you if you can return fair
value for a living. It is the
surest of human safeguards.
The knowledge that, in any
eventuality, one need not suf-
fer, will add confidence, pleas-
ure and assuredness to every
undertaking in life.
From Page 2:
“Women’s Department”
by Lena Pittman Stahl
*