The Rock Island Argus

Women in Texas,
[Woman's Journal]
There are a great many handsome men in Texas. The free, outdoor life, with much horseback riding, gives them good forms, clear eyes and complexions. There is a great deal of native intelligence and good thinking.

The women among the well-to-do classes appear to live mostly indoors. Even in cities very few are seen on the street or in the stores. They are not as often rosy-cheeked as the men, but much oftener powdered. Living with doors and windows open a large part of the year, and in houses all the year that let in the air on every side, it seems strange that they do not look fresher. At one place, where the railroad missed the town a mile, and all the stores had been taken to the depot, we asked how they got to the stores through the mud.
"Oh, we never go; the men go on horseback and they do the buying."
So, it is not uncommon to see men buying dress goods, stockings and other articles for women's wear.

Good help is scarce, and the women usually do the housekeeping in a few rooms, every one of which has one or more beds in it. Their timidity is so great that they object to two-story houses, "because the wind blows."
For recreation many dip snuff and read stories. Old snuff-dippers look snuff-colored.

Among the poorer classes women work in the fields at cotton raising. Hoeing and picking are done by hand, and what one man can plant and plow, several hands are required to hoe and pick. But raising cotton is clean farm work. There are no briars to scratch, nor juice to stain the hands. The stooping is tiresome, but less so than picking strawberries. Children are valuable pickers, being nimble and of suitable height.
We have seen little girls who had picked hundreds of pounds, with sunbonnets and mitts on in the hot sun, who were not tanned at all. In years when the crop is good wages are high, and many well-to-do women go out and pick cotton. They are paid by the hundred pounds.