As a telling illustration of that primitive woman’s occupations, as she carries them on among us today, the following will serve.  Quite recently a friend, traveling in the mountainous regions of Kentucky, at the head of Licking Creek, had occasion to call at a little mountain cabin, newly built out of logs, the chinks stopped up with clay, evidently the pride and the comfort of the dwellers.  It consisted of one long room.  At one end were three beds.  In the center was the family dining-table, and set out in order on one side a number of bark-seated hickory chairs made by the forest carpenters.  On the other a long bench, probably intended for the younger members of the family.  Facing the door, as the visitor entered, was a huge open fireplace, with a bar across, whence hung three skillets of kettles for the cooking of the food.  The only occupant of the cabin at that hour in the afternoon was an old woman.  She was engaged in combing into smoothness with two curry-combs a great pile of knotted wool, washed, but otherwise as it came off the sheep’s back.  The wool was destined to be made into blankets for the household.  The simple apparatus for the carrying-out of the whole process was there at hand, for the spinning-wheel stood back in a corner of the room, while the big, heavy loom had, for convenience’ sake, been set up on the porch.  That old woman’s life may be bare and narrow enough in many ways, but at least she is rich and fortunate in having the opportunity for the exercise of a skilled trade, and in it an outlet for self-expression, and even for artistic taste in the choice of patterns and colors.  Far different the lot of the factory worker with her monotonous and mindless repetition of lifeless movements at the bidding of the machine she tends.  The Kentucky mountain woman was here practicing in old age the art she had acquired in her girlhood.  Those early lessons which had formed her industrial education, were of life-long value, both in enriching her own life, and by adding to her economic and therefore social value, alike as a member of her own household, and as a contributor to the wealth of the little community.

We once had, universally, and there still can be found in such isolated regions, an industrial arrangement, soundly based upon community and family needs, and even more normally related to the woman’s own development, better expressing many sides of her nature than do the confused and conflicting claims of the modern family and modern industry render possible for vast numbers today.  And this, although wide opportunity for personal and individual development was so sadly lacking, and the self-abnegation expected from women was so excessive, that the intellectual and emotional life must often have been a silent tragedy of repression.