The Business of Being a Woman

WOMAN AND THE

it in the cities, while a hundred miles away thousands of barrels of apples are rotting on the ground. Famine devastates one country, while the granaries of another are bursting with food. Men and women drink themselves int

nd ingenious kind, the great majority recognize no obligation to make any substantial return to society for its benefits. A small percentage of these are self-supporting, but the majority are purely parasitical. Indeed, the heaviest burden to-day on productive America, aside from the burden imposed by a vicious industr

n, useful women, everywhere talking about the desirability of not being obliged to do anything, commiserating women who must work, commiserating those who have heavy household re

ort can keep comfortable and attractive homes for themselves and their husbands, and yet who are utterly regardless of outside responsibilities, who are practically isolate

r the instant, popular, appears. Steady, intelligent standing by an undertaking through its ups and downs, its dull seasons and its unpopular phases, they are incapable of. Their efforts have no relation to an intelligently conceived purpose. With them may be grouped those women who,

perhaps fills their minds, but which is mere occupation-something to make them forget-not an art for art's sake, not labor for its

ful, a sense of the emptiness of life unattended by the imagination which reveals the sources from which life is filled. No one of them is building a "Ho

ful group of friendless children,-the deserted babe, the "little mother," the boys and girls running wild on side streets in every village in our land and in every slum in the cities, the factory child, the shop girl who has no home. Let us remember that a goodly perc

th suffering, and without suffering herself. One of the crying needs of to-day is a crusade, a jar, which will force upon our free women the friendless children of the country

r who were going through the daily pain of grappling with every phase of the distressing problems which come from the poverty, friendlessness, and overwork of the young. Out of their heartbreak

ung men and young women be devoured by crime and greed. Youth, its nurturing and developing, has become the passion of the day. This is the meaning of our bureaus of Ch

to which each has a natural right. No collective work, however good it may be, can protect or guide these children properly. Rightfully they should be the charge of that body of women who are unhampered, "free." These women have more, or less, intelligence, time, and means. They owe society a return for their freedom, their means, and their educat

l politician who leads the ward by the nose, who knows nothing of the records of the local candidates, never goes to the primaries,-this man is one of the most dangerous citizens we have. It is he who makes the machine possible. If he did his wor

under which the children, the boys and girls, young men and maids, in her vicinity are actually living. It is for her to be alert to their health, amusements, and general education. It

f it is neglected, adds just so much more to the stream of uncared-for youth. How is it to be done? Have you ever watched a woman interested in birds making her observations? She will get up at daylight to catch a note of a new singer. She will study in detail the little family that is making its home

rous small city of the Middle West which ended in the lynching of a young man, a mere boy, who in trying to discharge his duty as a public official had killed a man. Some t

hich the boys had been brought up. In a pretty, rich, busy town of 30,000 people proud of its churches and its schools, eighty sa

ary clubs, several sewing clubs, several bridge clubs, and a number of dancing clubs. I think they cared a little more for bridge than for literature, many of them at least. They took little part in civic work,

cle of eighty saloons! To offset the saloons they built churches-a church for each sect-each more gorgeous than its neighbor. It was in building churches that they showed the "greatest tenacity of purpose." They had a large temperance organization. It supported a rest room and met fortnightly to pray "ardently and sincerely." How

ir daily ways unseeing, though these ways were hedged with a corruption whose rank and horri

and the future of those that are in this whirl are affected vitally by what she is and does. To know all of the elements which are circulating about her as a man knows, if he does his work, the political and business elements in his own group, this is her essential task. That she sh

mly into the life of the community. With every year it should become necessarily more complicated, broader in interests, more demanding on her intellectual and spiritual qualities. Each one of the original members of her group gathers others about himself. In the nature of the case she will become one of the strongest influences

nd demanding as that of a woman, can hardly be expected to be worth much in a business as complicated and uncertain as politics, and for which she has had no training. The notion that the woman's business is ended at fifty or sixty is fantastic. It only ends there if she has been blind to the meaning of her own experiences; if she has never gone below the surface of her task-never seen in it

youth; fear and struggle characterize early manhood; disillusionment, the question whether it is worth while, fill the years from forty to fifty,-but resolute grappling with each period brings one out almost inevitably into a fine serene certainty which cannot but have its effect on those who are younger. Ripe o

r. The young do not have enough of the stimulating intellectual influence of their elders. The elders do not have enough of the vital

he outer circle, which exists only by and for her. That accident may throw her into this outer circle is of course true, but it is not her natural habitat, nor is she fitted by nature to live and circulate freely there. We underestimate, too, the kind of experience which is essential for intelligent citizenship in this outer circle. To know what is wise and needed there one should circulate in it. The man at his labor in the street, in the meeting places of men, learns unconscious

the same books, regardless of nature or capacity or future life. Insisting that women do the same things that men do, may make the two exteriorly more alike-it does not make them more equal. Men and women are widely apart in functions and in possibilities. They cannot be made equal by exterior devices like trous

e nation is hardly sustainable. The ballot has not prevented the growth of a similar class of men. Something more biting than a new tool is needed to arouse me

the East. Perhaps for the first time they have heard from the suffrage platform of the "little mother," the factory child, the girl living on

ncared-for child. To force these facts upon her, to cry to her, "You are the woman,-you cannot escape the guilt of the woe and crime which must come from the neglect of chil