n is getting to be mighty
independent. Instead of waiting, Micawber-like, for something (a man) to
turn up they are going to work to turn it up themselves. They would
rather make a living for themselves than have a man to make it for them.
They are teaching schools, operating telegraph instruments and
telephones, clerking, keeping books of account, type-writing, doing
short-hand reporting, lecturing, preaching, practicing law, and some
have so far fallen from grace as to be editing papers. But many of these
occupations present closed doors to our country girls and women. Many of
these can not leave their country homes, and these occupations, with the
exception of school teaching, can not be carried on in the country.
Others, who could leave home, are chary of braving the wiles and
temptations of the city, and their friends are still more loth to have
them go. The great need is some work, light, respectable, and yet fairly
remunerative, which our country lassies can carry on at home. School
teaching is possible, but teaching country district schools is the most
thankless of all drudgery, and, besides, a majority of our young women
are not able to endure the worry and close confinement. If it can be
made successful, sericulture offers by far the best opportunity to
country girls to earn their own pin money, or even their own living. It
can be engaged in at home; it is light, pleasant, and interesting work;
and there is no doubt that American silk can be produced of such a
quality that there will be a brisk demand for it at good prices. But if
all this be true the question at once presents itself, Why have not
American women engaged largely in sericulture?

The answer is that they have been appalled at the very outset by the
alleged expense of the undertaking. The promoters of the enterprise took
to writing books. There was an excuse for this amounting almost to a
necessity. To engage in silk culture, a person must be possessed of some
special knowledge. It is no harder than poultry or bee-keeping, but a
person to succeed at these must have some expert knowledge, and as
sericulture was a new thing, beginners must have books containing what
they needed. But these authors made the business much more difficult and
expensive than it should be. First of all, they laid it down as one of
the Medes and Persian laws of sericulture, that the worms must have
mulberry leaves to subsist upon. Mulberry sprouts are costly to begin
with;