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women shall take hold of one man". v
tiaa tne wtse ota seer or tne nasi m
' I A activities and thought of the: earth?
and toihng to fleas one woman? ten--ai3, perhaps,-would have been written but
Never before was the world -our fart . for WOman's monopoly of literature upon the
of it, at leastso feverishly bent on doing hopeless, ineffectual protests made f by man
things., IF e Man great enterprises that against woman's invasion of his fields of em
would astound the shades of l: a; pyramid-,;
building Pharaoh: we construct railroads
' and dig canals ; we put up new factories and
enlarge warehouses ; we are proud that ourf
manufactures are increasing, our literature
is growing; our arts and sciences making un-
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heard-of strides. And why
are
we doing it all?
- For woman.
- When all is said and done,
we must admit that woman is the
i real ruler of the land. We build
nur hnuxfs tn please her and eaui
them to
suit her taste; we write books for her ltJ
brary table and publish newspapers that she
will like to read.
' If jt wefe not for her approval and
support, drama would languish and music
be stilled to silence;' she selects' the family
physician as she chooses the paper for the
wall; the butcher, the' baker, the candle
stick maker are her slaves. More industrial
enterprises are planned to please her than
the world dreamed of half a century ago.
She is our ' uncrowned ' but' all-powerful
queen. -
One hair of a woman can draw mors than a nun-. ,
rflrad pair of oxen-Howelli -.-.'-.....'.:.'. : v-
LONGER academic is the suf
frage question," - declared Mrs. -
J. Cobden-Sanderson, Eng
land's leading suffragist, recently.
h !
If
r "It is a vital political movement." ' '
" And the possible Buffragettes-of the United
States, to whom she made the declaration, went
on washing : the , supper dishes o reading the
latest novel or scanning the alluring announce-:
; ments for the morrow's bargain sales. Some
how "they didn't seem tremendously, impressed '
'. by . Mrs. CJobden-Sanderson's declaration.
- Of course, the - supper dishes , had to be
' washed1 it was an immediate duty, and it was, '
; crhaps; Bridget's evening put. But there was
another and more striking reason for the seem-
ing indifference the women knew that, after
all, they were twisting -. the .whole v country-
around their tapering fingers, so why heed they
aim for morel ; - - 1 -'
It seems thatin the United States there'
, are 22,000,000 men over 16 years of age who are ;:
in employment 4and there are very nearly .''
6,000,000 women and youri girls over 16 who
but there is just as little doubt that a notable
.. . percentage H.fv:.wii
; That ia. the brief, statistical statement of ,
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Ma
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America
ployment until the time came, long ago, when the tyrant,
trembling in his No.O's, abandoned to her hia easy job of
selling ribbons and pushing pens, and hustled for the con
ductor'a end of' the trolley car, where he could be. lord
upreme. .' ; t v "
s But it takes no account of the utterly overlooked fact
that the 22,489,013 men and lads over 16, who
tickets, cutting
and pushing trade, driving
watering flowers and
stocks, shearing sheep and shearing lambs,
and baiting bears, squeezing customers and
-waists, are in their multifarious jobs simply and
cause the 23,48c,55 women of the land
-of whom '4,833,630 do something else
and 18,651,929-do nothing else if they
don't want to tell them what to do and
f.
it.
are now
meats and
watering
baiting traps
squeezing
solely be
how to do it.
However magnificently,
munificently or parsimonious
ly man may ' boss Europe,
Asia and Africa, he ia Charles
the Buried in the United States. And he knows
it; and she knows it; and he says it; but she
doesn't. She doesn't have to.
It is not thati already, woman has pre
empted nearly one-fifth of the employment in
the country; it is not tffat he would fail in
seizing upon the remaining four-fifths if she
thought the hire worthy of the labor. It is
simply that she disdains the work she does not
choose to do-so long as man does the work and
she gets the wages. , -
She may not get all the wages, or, all, that
the wages buy, albeit many states guarantee to
her a larger portion of his net earnings when
he dies than they do the mother who -bore hiin
and to the children wh are his natural., direct
heirs, while all states constrain him, so long as
he lives, to pay to her a sufficient portion of his
wages to maintain her independently .whenever
he fails to maintain her properly as his partner. ,
In effect, the American partnership be
tween woman and man has reversed the old or
der of the partnership between man and wom
an; she joyfully takes precedence and
more joyfully concedes him the seniority.
The whole energy, the whole activ
ity, the whole vast creative power of
this whole vast nation becomes con
creted into cash; and of all tliat enor
mous product, of all that gigantic la
bor, man makes four-fifths and woman,
at the most moderate calculation.
spends four-fifths. , "
He is the producer, she is the disburser.
So, whether her taste in hams is good or her
taste in actors is bad, it is her taste, it' is
her choice which directs the whole range of
man's labors, from the kitchen ranges to which
he lugs the brand of coal she prefers at 6.30
A. M., to the mountain ranges from which ho
digu the gold she wants until sunset lets him'
eat his bacon and hardtack because he wouldn't
think pf asking her to leave home and mother.
' So woman fortunate American woman,
even while she is enduring the unaccustomed
hardship of washing the supper dishes can at
ford to let Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson and all her
..... . .. . '
lovely sunragettes whoop hollowly, while she re
, fleets . on the way she has man first locoed and
then roped and tied and trained to lick the fudge
oft her sticky fingers.
To start at the beginning, one can call to
mind the most salient fact of our American life,
that not only, is woman's part in the population
considered an exclusive monopoly in every house
holdfor where is the father who ever received
the smallest attention with- regard to the baby,
from naming it to spanking it! but the very
law tells him he is not fit to take care of it until
it isn't a' baby, any longer until, in fact, the
child is 7 years of age. '
The mother almost invariably gets the baby
when any dispute arises which leads to a sepa
ration of the parents. If they don't separate,
subsequent developments make it apparent that
the father remains merely an "also ran" until
he is dead and his supererogativeness is laid
away in the hop, wnich he jo unwisely trusted
might come rue during his "life, of a glorious,
resurrection., . , . '
These aspects of paternity have been obvious
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since the ancient patriarchate gaye place to the
modern matriarchate. But science has- gone to
great pains recently to demonstrate ' that the
male parent, in all species, is, at best, merely an
afterthought of Nature; and, with some, of the '
lowwr nnimnl nrrlora if Kiaa alraadv avinnaaAaA in s
carrying on species without the help of the male
half at all. , ,
How soon, in thn HcimtifiA cmirsn nf linmsn
events, man may oe reiegatea to Jiir. uieveiand a v
innocuous desuetude is not yet to be predicated;
1 a t .
Science, indeed, largely composed of men, aa ?
its votaries still are, has its distinguished women
astronomers and .bacteriologists, . its queens of
telescope' ana microscope, - wno, on tneir own
hook, emulate the career of Madaaio Curie, the i
discoverer of radium. - ' . ' "
Ttnf amntA . itaAl-f in nil it, mAUvnM if& r .
i . - iti : 3 .
women -to patronize iV 'Here; as in all: other
activities of our now 'complicated existence,;,
woman ' affords the .great market to which 'even r
haughty science must appeal, whether it be tov
implore her to . use the latest tests in her
kitchen for the detection of food impurities, or
to urge her to learn enough of bacteriology ta?
enable her to properly safeguard the sickroom. !
In its final, application," science, from itaW ,
, Weather Bureau,; which 'protects , Sunday silks, '
to its tests of aniline dyes for coloring them, f
has woman as. its. main customer, and regulates
most of its labors .accordingly.
of applied science, the practice of medicine, it
,1s not merely that-women have now their own -
medical colleges in umbers sufficient to make;
Charles Keade's famous defense of the woman!
doctor read like; Some prehistoric fiction, ori'.
that practitioners like Dr. Clara Marshall are!
known and honored the country over; or evenj
that jealous man is professing his willingness t -
important departments of the science.
We know that the family doctor, that awful '
authority who walks in with the imposing so
lemnity of $2 and jams ' the obstinate husband
into bed- ith orders to stay there till the mid
dle of next' week, is ' almost invariably . chosen,
by the wife. Yes, in medicine woman controls.
If the favor of woman makes or breaks
nearly all members of the medical-profession,
f 1 . A A. 1 X. ! .... 1' ..
we need only turn to law to learn with what
anlorub she can commit murder and weep and
smile any jury into a verdict of acquittal, where,
if it had been a man who blew, holes through a
senator or a sewer -cleaner, he must have got a
conviction and a ten-year sentence, at least.
Women lawyers, like Btlva 1 A.' Lockwood,
are far fewer than men doctors; and women
jurors do not. figure in the'law,to any extent
that is appreciable. But the most experienceil
lawyer agree that woman, on the witness stand
or in the dock, is her own best solicitor an j
the majority admit that, directly or. indirectly,
she is the source of most of their patroi-aze.
Find the lawyer who is not feed by worn' n
and you ' find the freak. As or jury duty, th-y
woman who would consent to take clionct c i
being tried by a jury with a woman on it tu -'1.
ask any woman who ever lived how s!:o woi.' I
like it. -
,s Only recently there was a fihinin? i!,! : 'n-
tion in Denver. - A woman, sued by 1 "r t
put up the defense that the gowns .--,.
' ' ' (CONTINUED ON INSIDE TAQ'.". )
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