of two or three thousand pounds, do not need to make such inquiries. Could not a young lady go into a dairy-farm, in some cheese country, and give her services in return for her training and board?
Certainly not. The way is to begin at the beginning, as in acquiring all other arts. Looking on will never do; and no idlers or mere spectators can be tolerated in a place of such urgent and punctual business. A girl enters as a milker, probably, or as a fetcher and carrier and cleaner. She brings in the milk, and carries out the whey; and if she does not scour floors and tubs and shelves and pans as formerly, it is because scouring is going out of fashion. The duty now is to prevent the occurrence of dirt, instead of washing it away, at the cost of perpetual damp.
By degrees, the dairygirl rises, if she deserves to rise, from one department of cheesemaking to another, till she may become, in course of years, if clever, well taught, and steady, head dairymaid. What does this comprehend?
She has, for a dozen or twenty years, toiled as few or no other women toil. All that time she has been going through the whole set of labours twice a day,—lifting great weights, wielding heavy implements, straining every muscle in her body with reaching over the wide tubs, screwing up the ponderous presses, and turning and weighing the mighty cheeses which the ordinary run of ladies could no more carry to the scale than they could carry the farmhouse into the next parish. She has seldom been able to keep awake till bedtime, all those years, or to get her mending done to her clothes,—being overpowered with fatigue so as to be unable to sew in the evenings. As she is ready for the post of head dairywoman she must have a good share of health and strength, for women of average strength cannot bear the toil for a long course of years. They would find hoeing turnips, or digging potatoes, light work in comparison. The doctors compliment the constitutions of dairywomen who escape a particular set of maladies which beset their class,—diseases arising from over-fatigue and insufficient rest. There is a standing population of about 64,000 of them in Great Britain; and, though they are now for the most part spared the work of milking, which is consigned to men, and will soon be trusted to machinery, they too seldom reach, in health and comfort, the time when they may be more or less independent of daily labour.
What do they earn by all this toil? I shall be asked. The class of dairywomen are paid, according to quality and circumstances, from 8l. to 12l. a-year wages—board and lodging of course. I see how aghast young ladies look, as they well may, at this account of the life and prospects of a woman on a cheese-farm: and I am glad to be able to point out how the case is improving at the present time. Since the duty was taken off foreign cheese, and our dairy-farming has been roused out of its lethargy and its old superstitions, more and more of the hardest toil has been lifted off the human, and laid on the inanimate instruments of the manufacture. The whey runs into the piggeries instead of being carried in pails; the milk is delivered through pipes into the tubs, to save the entrance of wet feet and dirty petticoats within the area of the sacred process of manufacture; the warming is done by pipes and double bottoms, instead of by carrying milk or water to and from the copper: the breaking the curd and getting rid of the whey is done by mechanical methods, instead of by human arms, straining human backs by leaning over the tubs; and, by new methods of pressing and drying, the process of forming and hardening and salting the cheese is shortened by more than one half. All this is excellent: but the class of dairywomen has much ground to gain before the vocation can be in any way tempting to young women who can earn a maintenance on easier terms.
But is there no station, I shall be asked, between that of the dairywoman who leads the cheesemaking, at ten or twelve pounds a-year, and the employer who has a capital of some thousands?
Yes,—there is one official, who has the authority of the mistress without the anxiety of the capital and the profits, and better pay than the maids, without such heavy toil. In great established cheese-dairies there is a salaried Superintendent. She has her two rooms, and her servant, and her diet, and her coals and candles, and 50l. a-year or more.—“O come!” say the young ladies, “that will do! That is the sort of thing,—if only the salary were a little higher.”—But the young ladies must not fancy they have found what they want till they have calculated the chances for any one of them of obtaining such a position.
Let them consider the qualifications that are requisite. Let them remember how thoroughly skilled in the art such a Superintendent must be,—how liberally, and even learnedly trained and disposed, in these days of scientific improvement of processes; and moreover, how familiar with the character and mind of the rural neighbourhood in which she bears office over a company of natives. It must be considered, too, how few of these Superintendents are wanted, and how certainly there will always be candidates from the neighbourhood for every vacant place,—candidates born and reared among cheese-farms and cheeses peculiar to the district, and its pride.
No;—the cheese-manufacture does not at present offer a new field of employment to young women,—especially young ladies,—who have to look round for some means of subsistence. It is a good vocation for women,—suitable to their position, character and powers: but the women who go into it must be,—like hosts of Frenchwomen,—capitalists, entering into business as men do,—with good credit at the Bank, a certain habit or grace of authority in eye, tongue and carriage, and a certain pride and complacency in the special industry, deep-seated in the mind and heart. It takes all this to be, to any adequate purpose, the head of any considerable cheesemaking establishment.
I am reminded by a friend that young women need not, on this account, imagine that independence is out of their reach in the rural districts of the country, except as governesses and maid-servants. A suggestion of my friend’s delights me:
