Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-11-07
wEwELOoME WOMEN TO WICHITA.

MARSHALL NJ. MURDOCH. Editor.
WE WELCOME WOMEN TO WICHITA
The EAGLE in welcoming the members
of the Social Science Club to our city
cannot undertake to go off into any
ethical discussion nor attempted explana
ton of the radical distinguishing traits
of American women, whose truest types
are found environed by the ambitions,
aspirations and rapid developments OF
the free untrammeled west. We simply
account for the whole problemn on the
hypothess, or rather fact, that western
women like their brothers the western
men. viii not submit to the restraints
which hamper the social, as well as all
phases of the life of the east, much less
be bound by the conservative ties OF
older civilizations which fixed for each
a lot or station beyond which it was the
improper thing to go. The women OF
the west, to us, constitute the highest
type of wonanhood of which we know
aught. Their freedom of spirit is Of our
own, while, touching their mental
attractiveness and physical superiority
no women of any cline match them, ali
in all.
The Social Science Club, which meets
in our city today, is, undoubtedly,
unique in its aim and scope. 1t Is proba-
bly, neither literary, scientific or social
wholly, but rather all of these in an
educational sense.
Women are not only compelled to
meet as many of the sterner duties of life
as men, but all the disadvantages of re-
pressive customs and false education up
on the one hand and all those of fattery,
fashion and sentiment upon the other,
additionally, which she is compelled to
bear up under Her clearer inner life,
her more spiritual and less earthly make
up, seem, in spite of her burthens, to
eyer sustain her superior to the situa-
tions which circumstances and tradition
have forced upon her, but of which time
and truer civilization are rapidly re-
lieving her.
Wendell Phillips said once, and the
saying comprehends volumes of meaning
yet ungrasped by woman suffragists,
H.,
equal and eternally different. Our faith
is unbounded in womankind, whether
mother, wife, daughter or sweetheart.
In their hands and hearts rests the des-
stinies of the race. Ii this be true, then
will be his own attainments, and that of
the race. The great failing Of man is
his selfishness, from which woman has
suffered more than from all else. Wheth-
er she would have been so near and SO
much of heaven in the absence of this
suffering we leave to the Social Science
Club to answer. AS the mother is the
woman is the only complete refuge to
whom ne fees when all other sources
have failed him, yet her devotion is ever
slightly estimated, often abused.
The other day great number of prom
inent men of this country, through the
syndicate press. said what they would
do if they were women. In our humble
Judgment they all made fools of them
selves, from any true womanS
standpoint. They did not know
what they were talking about,
and having no touch of woman's nature,
or any adequate conception of that
eternal difference" of which Wendell
Philips limited, they could not have.
And this fact reminds us that the
chances ere that we also may be no ex-
ception, and that therefore, we have said
enough. However, of this much we are
convinced; that any man who is incap-
able of a pure and lofty appreciation of
woman, who fails to understand that
woman is essentially higher and better
in the scale of being than is man, he be-
longs not properly to this age of woman's
social clubs, but rather to that fast re-
ceding time when woman was made the
silly toy upon the the one hand or the |
degraded slave upon the other.
One word touching the attitude of the |
EAGLE may not be out of place. as it has |
been most persistently misrepresented |
by at least one womans organization of |
this state. This paper is for woman's |
rights, but against female suffrage. As |
an abstract proposition, women are as |
much entitled to vote as men, but home |
life and public life are incompatible, as
certainly so as that universal suffrage Is
a mental absurdity and physical i'm
The cause of WOMAN is the cause of |
the EAGLE as against the whole world. !
our attesting witnesses being the reign
ing spirits of the thousands of happy
homes in which it is daily read.
The rebellion seems TO have reached
over into Iowa.
Now what do some people think of the
EAGLES fight against Kansas fool legis-
latures: