While I have been busily occupied in working out my Scheme for the registration of labour,it has occurred to me more than once,why could not something like the same plan be adopted in relation to men who want wives and women who want husbands?Marriage is with most people largely a matter or opportunity.Many a man and many a woman,who would,if they had come together,have formed a happy household,are leading at this moment miserable and solitary lives,suffering in body and in soul,in consequence of their exclusion from the natural state of matrimony.Of course,the registration of the unmarried who wish to marry would be a matter of much greater delicacy than the registration of the joiners and stone-masons who wish to obtain work.But the thing is not impossible.I have repeatedly found in my experience that many a man and many a woman would only be too glad to have a friendly hint as to where they might prosecute their attentions or from which they might receive proposals.In connection with such an agency,if it were established--for I am mot engaging to undertake this task--I am only throwing out a possible suggestion as to the development in the direction of meeting a much needed want,there might be added training homes for matrimony.My heart bleeds for many a young couple whom I see launching out into the sea of matrimony with no housewifery experience.The young girls who leave our public elementary schools and go out into factories have never been trained to home duties,and yet,when taken to wife,are unreasonably expected to fill worthily the difficult positions of the head of a household and the mother of a family.A month spent before marriage in a training home of housewifery would conduce much more to the happiness of the married life than the honeymoon which immediately follows it.
Especially is this the case with those who marry to go abroad and settle in a distant country.I often marvel when I think of the utter helplessness of the modern woman,compared with the handiness of her grandmother.How many of our girls can even bake a loaf?The baker has killed out one of our fundamental domestic arts.But if you are in the Backwoods or in the Prairie or in the Bush,no baker's cart comes round every morning with the new-made bread,and I have often thought with sorrow of the kind of stuff which this poor wife must serve up to her hungry husband.As it is with baking,so it is with washing,with milking,with spinning,with all the arts and sciences of the household,which were formerly taught,as a matter of course,to all the daughters who were born in the world.Talk about woman's rights,one of the first of woman's rights is to be trained to her trade,to be queen of her household,and mother of her children.