The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-09-01
WOMAN AS A HUMAN BEING.

During a recent rummage through
our Office we picked up copy of the
New York Tribune of not very recent
date, and, glaneing up and down its
columns with the rapid, comprehensive
glance with which custom endows an
editor, our eyes fell upon the following
paragraph:
Any partial organiztion which weakens or
tampers with the great primal relations of hu-
manity, is abnormal and unwholesome in its
influence and results. The difficulty with our
public women has been heretofore that they
have overlooked this fact in their zeal to be vo-
ters and acknowledged members of the worlds
markets, they have contemned their duties
as wives and mothers; the most eager openly
denounced babies and husbands as obstacles
in their way to the polls, to the medical di-
ploma, or the lawyers brief; in word, in
their loyalty to themselves as women, they
forget TO be true to themselves as human be-
ings. The human foundation being the
stronger, invariably, asserted itself at last, and
the woman's plan or hobby failed.
Sentiments so bombastic, so utterly
void of fact as the above, would not at
tract our attention in less pretentious
journal; but, coming from this one,
they seem to demand at least passing
notice. The "great primal relations of
humanity" woman neither complains
of, hampers with, nor seeks to disturb.
So far from having overlooked the
fact, as this paragraph implies, that
they are, and are to be the mothers of
the race, they give constantly their
best care, their strength, their youth,
and their beauty's prime to the dis
charge of wifely, sisterly, and maternal
obligations and duties. The leaders in
this great reform have neither con-
temned their duties as wives and moth
eTs, nor sought to shirk them, but have
proved, and that most triumphantly,
to the candid judgment of men, that
"these things also they can do and not
leave the other undone.n The women
workers in this reform areas is the
case with men before they attain poIit-
ical, public, or professional honors-
mostly past middle life, their morn
ings work-the rearing of family
done and well done, and themselves at
liberty to bring to the service of the
cause or the nation the wisdom and ex-
perience which successful ruling over a
miniature realm for years has given
them. True to themselves first and at
all times as women, they seek to be
true to themselves as human beings by
entering into the heritage of freedom,
which, as intelligent beings, they are
entitled to possess unchallenged. To be
true to themselves as human beings by
using the powers which, in common
with their brethren, they possess, is
what they desire, and hence they are
not satisfied to bury their talent in a
napkin, cramp and dwarf their intel
lect, and content themselves as mere
puppets, ecboing the will and wish OF
others not more largely endowed intel
lectually than themselves. This deter
minatiOn, this aspiration for develop.
ment, this desire to make the best use
of powers God-given, narrow-minded
men and women too term 'hobbies,"
and speak of efforts that tend in that
direction with scorn ill-concealed, and
aspersion all unmerited. Finally, fail
ing to stop with their puny breath the
oncoming current of progress, they con-
sole themselves, or strive to do so by
asserting that "the hobby has failed"
An exchange, speaking of the senti-
ments contained in the paragraph
quoted, says:
Those who have observed with what adroit
ness the Tribune" has blown hot and blown
cold on the anti-slavery, temperance, and
other refoms, will not be surprised to hear il
now talking as though an antagonism existed
between "woman as woman, and woman as
human being" and also that the "wOman's
hobby" had, in some sense, "failed."