The Business of Being a Woman

ING OF THE WO

ng is but proof of the difficulty the human mind has in distinguishing values when in the throes of social change. We rightly believe to-day that the world is not nearly so well run

hey allow full value to that which qualifies or contradicts their theories. The ardent and single-minded reformer is not infrequently the wor

capacity or liking for the exact truth or for self-restraint. He turns from him many who are as zealous as he to change conditions, but who demand that they be

e persistent belittling for campaign purposes of the Business of Being a Woman I have repeatedly referred to in this little series of essays; indeed, it has been founded on the propositio

lopment-than that which belittles the home and the position of the woman in it. As a social institutio

with her, but this is true of all human achievement. There is nothing done that does not mean self-denial, routine, disillusionment, and half realiza

tell her this giving of her life for life is merely a "female function," not a human part, is to talk nonsense and sacrilege. It is the clear conviction of even the most thoughtless girl that this way lies meaning and fulfillment of life, that gives her courage to go to her battle as a man-in-line

siness which is so popular. If she is of gentle nature, she becomes apologetic, she has "never done anything." If she is aggressive, she becomes a militant. In either case, she charges her dissatisfaction to the nature of her business. What has come to her is a common human experience, the discovery that nothing is quite what you expected it to be, that if hope is to be even halfway realized, it w

history," says one of the popular leaders in the Woman's movement, "when men and women were friends and comrades-but from that time to this she (woman) has held a subsidiary and exclusively feminine positio

with which the militant campaign started in this country in the 40's, re?nforced by the important point that women "back of history" enjoyed the priv

rses the laws which have governed all other human relations. Certainly, since history began, the only period where I can pretend to judge what has happened, the records show

n shaping human affairs. The teachings of the Christian Church in regard to women, the charge that she keep silent, that she obey, that she be meek and lowly-all grew out of the fear of the power she exercised at the period these teachings were given-a power which the saints believed prejudicial to

ailure to recognize this is due either to ignorance of facts or to a willful disregard of them; usually it is the former. For instance, one constantly hears to-day the exultant cry that women finally are beginning to take an interest and a part in political and radical discussions. But there has never been a time in this country's history when they were not active factors in such discussion. The women of the American Revolutionary Period certainly challenge sharply the women of to-day, both by their intelligent understanding of political issues and by their

y that they broke the silence in public which by order of the Christian Church they had so long kept-an order made, not for the sake of belittling women, but for the sake of establishing order in churches and better insuring the

had been as poor a stick, as downtrodden and ineffective as sometimes painted, she would not be a fit mate for the man beside whom s

ntrolling the property she had inherited or accumulated by her own efforts, which took from her a proper share in the control of her child,-we must admit, too, the equal enormity of the laws which permitted man to exploit labor in the outrageous way he has. It was not because he was a man that the labor was exploited-it was because he was the weaker in the prevailing system. Woman's case was parallel-she was the weaker in the system. It had always been the case with men and women in the world that he who could took and the devil got the hindermost. The way the laborer's cause has gone hand in hand in this country the last hundred years with the woman's cause is a proof of the point. In the 30's of the nineteenth century, for illustration, the country was torn by a workingman's

s of radical reformers for centuries had been to give to all the illumination of knowledge. But to teach those who did the labor of the world, its peasants and its serfs, was regarded by both Church and State as a folly and a menace. It was the establishment of a pure democracy that forced the experiment of universal

tion to giving women the same educational facilities as men was not saying that there was or ever had been a conspiracy on foot to keep her in intellectual limbo because she was a woman. The history of learning shows clearly enough that women have always shared in its rise. In the great revival of the sixteenth century they took an honorable part. "I see the

achievements of the eminent women produced by the system of training then in vogue is proof enough of the statement. Far and away the best letters by a woman, which have found their way into print in this country, are those of Mrs. John Adams, written late in

at scholars inscribed on the Boston Public Library. It produced Dorothea Dix, who for twenty years before the Civil War carried on perhaps the most remarkable investigation of conditions that has ever been made in this country by man or woman,-the one which required the most courage, endurance, and persistency,-her investigation of the then barbaric system for caring-or not cari

like a national scale. Mary Lyon's work for Mt. Holyoke College and Catherine Beecher's for the American Woman's Education Association are the most substantial individual achievements, though they are but types of what many women were doing an

e finest proofs in history of the capacity of the women of the mass to respond whole-heartedly to noble ideals,-one of the finest illustrations, too, of the type of service needed from women in great crises. But the rank and file which conducted itself so honorably in the Revolution was not a whit more noble and intelligent than the rank and file of the succeeding period. It would have been impossible ever to have established as promptly as was done the higher and the general schools for girls if women had not given th

ht. However good tactics this may have been in the past, and I am far from denying that there were periods it may have been good politics, however poor morals, surely in this country to-day there is no sound reason for introducing such complications into our struggles. The American woman's life is the fullest in its opportunity, all things consider

one that can stir the heart more deeply or give to human affairs such dignity and significance. The meaning of woman's natural business in the world-the part it has played in civilizing humanity-in forcing good morals and good manners, in giving a reason

ey need-or society needs-these particular services or operations from them, but because they conceive that this alone will prove them equal. The efforts of woman to prove herself equal to man is a work of supererogation. There is nothing he has ever done that she has not proved herself able to do equally well. But rarely is society w

ey are women who by the bungling machinery of society have been cast aside. There is no reason why these women should be idle, miserable, selfish, or antisocial. There are rich lives for them to work out and endless needs for them to meet. But they are not the women upon whom society depends; they a