[My Lady Ludlow by Elizabeth Gaskell]@TWC D-Link book
My Lady Ludlow

CHAPTER XIV
12/44

There is no machine comes in to take away a man's or woman's power of earning their living, like the spinning-jenny (the old busybody that she is), to knock up all our good old women's livelihood, and send them to their graves before their time.

There's an invention of the enemy, if you will!" "That's very true!" said my lady, shaking her head.
"But baking bread is wholesome, straight-forward elbow-work.

They have not got to inventing any contrivance for that yet, thank Heaven! It does not seem to me natural, nor according to Scripture, that iron and steel (whose brows can't sweat) should be made to do man's work.

And so I say, all those trades where iron and steel do the work ordained to man at the Fall, are unlawful, and I never stand up for them.

But say this baker Brooke did knead his bread, and make it rise, and then that people, who had, perhaps, no good ovens, came to him, and bought his good light bread, and in this manner he turned an honest penny and got rich; why, all I say, my lady, is this,--I dare say he would have been born a Hanbury, or a lord if he could; and if he was not, it is no fault of his, that I can see, that he made good bread (being a baker by trade), and got money, and bought his land.


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