The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
BY
VIRGINIA PENNY.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY WALKER, WISE, & COMPANY,
245 WASHINGTON STREET.
1863.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by
VIRGINIA PENNY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the SouthernDistrict of New York.
TO
WORTHY AND INDUSTRIOUS WOMEN
IN THE UNITED STATES,
STRIVING TO EARN A LIVELIHOOD,
This Book
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR.
It is very easy to obtain book after book on "The Sphere ofWoman," "The Mission of Woman," and "The Influence of Woman."But to a practical mind it must be evident that good advice is notsufficient. That is very well, provided the reader is supplied withthe comforts of life. But plans need to be devised, pursuits requireto be opened, by which women can earn a respectable livelihood. Itis the great want of the day. It is in order to meet that want that thiswork has been prepared. The few employments that have been opento women are more than full. To withdraw a number from the fewmarkets of female labor already crowded to excess, by directing themto avenues where they are wanted, would thereby benefit both parties.
At no time in our country's history have so many women beenthrown upon their own exertions. A million of men are on the battlefield, and thousands of women, formerly dependent on them, havelost or may lose their only support. Some of the mothers, wives,sisters, and daughters of soldiers, may take the vacancies created inbusiness by their absence—others must seek new channels of labor.
An exact estimate of woman as she has been, and now is, furnishesa problem difficult to solve. Biographies and histories merely furnisha clue to what she has been. Prejudice has exaggerated these portraitures.Woman as she now is, save in fiction and society, isscarcely known. The future position of woman is a matter of conjectureonly. No mathematical nicety can be brought to bear upon thesubject, for it is one not capable of data. More particularly is it difficultto define what her future condition in a business capacity will be.Man will have much to do with it, but woman more. I know of nowork giving a true history of woman's condition in a business capa[Pg v]city.Socially, morally, mentally, and religiously, she is written about;but not as a working, every-day reality, in any other capacity thanthat pertaining to home life. It has been to me a matter of surprisethat some one has not presented the subject in a practical way, thatwould serve as an index to the opening of new occupations, and presentthe feasibility of women engaging in many from which they arenow debarred. It is strange there is no book on the subject, in anylanguage, for it is a world-wide subject. Its roots are in the very basisof society—its ramifications as numerous as the nations of the earth—yes,as the individual members of the human family. The welfare ofevery man, woman, and child is involved in the subject. For who isentirely free from female influence—who is de