Dublin Core
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Description
A letter to the editor of The Genesee Farmer claimed that the "drudgery and discomfort to which farmers’ wives and daughters are subjected" was even greater than the wives of laborers and mechanics. This was because farm women were responsible for "boarding and lodging large numbers of hired men" (Hill, "Laborer's Cottages--Farmer's Wives," The Genesee Farmer 19.1 (Jan. 1858): 16. Regardless of the writer's accuracy, he proposed housing hired farmworkers in small cottages as the solution.
Directly borrowed from A.J. Downing's The Architecture of Country Houses (1850), two renderings depict a modest structure containing a living room, pantry, three bedrooms, and a cellar. Its advantage was that a farmer "can employ married men and have them board themselves"--or more accurately their wives would. He claimed it would attract better hands and provide more comfortable accommodations for hired workers. Still, the focus was upon the expense, work, and ethnic distaste on the farmer's end: "we heartily desire the emancipation of farmers’ wives from the slavery of ‘keeping Irish,’ or Dutch, or even Yankee ‘boarding houses.’
Directly borrowed from A.J. Downing's The Architecture of Country Houses (1850), two renderings depict a modest structure containing a living room, pantry, three bedrooms, and a cellar. Its advantage was that a farmer "can employ married men and have them board themselves"--or more accurately their wives would. He claimed it would attract better hands and provide more comfortable accommodations for hired workers. Still, the focus was upon the expense, work, and ethnic distaste on the farmer's end: "we heartily desire the emancipation of farmers’ wives from the slavery of ‘keeping Irish,’ or Dutch, or even Yankee ‘boarding houses.’
Publisher
The Genesee Farmer
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jpeg, 599 KB
jpeg, 79 KB
jpeg, 79 KB
Type
Still Image Item Type Metadata
Original Format
Engraved illustration