Nellie McClung, ms., personal papers.
Women's organizations . . . have come into being, as an
expression of women's inherent desire to make life easier
for someone, and the world a better place to live in. When
the pioneer woman hurried through her own work, and then
walked across the snowy field, with three loaves of bread,
and her last jar of preserves, to minister to her sick
neighbour and stayed to clean the house, wash the children,
and cook a meal, she laid the foundation for the Victorian
Order of Nurses, and the Women's Institutes. When she went
over to the school to hearten the teacher, who was young and
homesick, and talked over with her the problem of the Zink
family whose big boy Bill would neither work in school nor
let anyone else work, she was laying the corner stone of her
great parent-teachers association. And when she gathered two
other neighbour women and together they pieced a quilt for
the new preacher's rapidly increasing family, she became the
forerunner of the great and powerful Ladies Aid and
Missionary Societies whose splendid activities each year
would fill many volumes.
Reprinted by permission of
Women's
Press. |