Omaha daily bee., 1889-12-08

ing women from the true problem Of their
sex to fix 1t on side issues Of comparative un.
Importance.
And this, ] believe, Is what almost all the
woman's right women are sedulously doing
at the present day. They are pursuing a
chimera, and neglecting TO perceive the true
aim of their sex. They are setting VI q false
and unattainable ideal, while they omit tore
alizo the true and attainable one which alone
Is open TO them.
For let us look again for a moment at what
this all but universal necessity of maternity
implies. Almost every woman must bear
Tour or hve children. In dong so she must
on the average use up the ten or twelve best
years OF her life-the ten or twelve years that
Immediately succeed her attainment OF COM
plete womanhood. For note, by the way,
that these women must also for the most part
marry young; as MIR. Gallon has shown,
you can quietly and effectually wipe
out q race by merely making its
women all marry at twenty-eight; married
beyond that age, they don't produce children
enough TO replenish the population. Again,
during these ten or twelve years of child
bearing at the very least, the women can't
conveniently earn their own livelihood /:
they must be provided for by the labor of
the men-pnder existing circumstances On
FAVOR OF which L have no philistine preju-
dlce) by their w husbands. IL il true that
In the very lowest state of savagery special
provision is seldom made by the men for the
women even during the periods of preg-
nancy, childbirth and infancy of tine off
spring. The women must live las among
the Hottentots) over the worst of these
periods on their own stored-up stock of fat,
like alternating bears or desert camels. II
Is true also that among savage races gen
orally the women have to work as hard as
the men, though the men bear in most cases
the larger share in providing actual food for
the entire family. But in civilized commu-
nltles--and the more so in proportion TO their
degree of civilization the men do most of
the hardest work, and in particular take
upon themselves the duty of providing for
the wives ana children. The higher the
type the longer are the wives and children
provided for. Analogy would lead one to
suppose with Comte) that in the highest
communities the men would do all the work
and the women would be left entirely free
TO undertake the management and education
of the children. .
Seeing, then, that these necessities are laid
by the very nature of our organization upon
women 1T would appear as though two du-
ties were clearly imposed the women them
selves, and upon all those men vino sympa-
thize in their welfare First, to see that
their training and education should tit them
above everything else for this their main
function In life; and, second. that in consid-
GRAFTON of the special burden they AVE to
bear in connection with reproduction, all the
rest of life should be made as light and easy
and free for them as possible. We ought
frankly to recognize that most women must
be wives and mothers; that most women
should therefore be trained, physically, NOR
ally, SOCIALLY and mentally in the way best
lifting them to be wives aud mothers; and
that all such women have a right to the full
est and most generous support in CARRYING
out their functions as wives and mothers.
And here it is that we seem to come in con-
fict for Il moment with most of the modern
w~oman-question agitators. L say for a mo-
mont only, for [ am not going to admit, even
for that brief space of time, that tine doctrine
/ wish to set forth here is one whit less ad-
vanced, one whit less radical, or one whit
less emancipatory than the doctrine laid
down by the most e"mancipatel women. On
the contrary, l feel sure that while women
are, crying for emancipation they really
want to be left in slavery; and
that it is only a few exceptional men here
and there in the world who wish TO see them
fully and wholly enfrauchised. Aud those
men are not the ones who take the lead in
so.calied woman's rights movements.
For what is the ideal that most of these
modern women agitators set before them?
Is it not clearly the ideal of an unsexed
woman! Are they not always talking to us
as though IL were not the fact that most
women must be wives and mothersl Do
they not treat any reference to that fact as
something uugenerous, ungentlemanly and
almost brutal! DO they not talk about our
casting their sex in their teeth !'-as though
any man ever resented the imputatiou of
maIliness. Nay, have we not even many
times lately heard those women who insist
bIoiA AN CIV WIN VI Olltu
described as TRAITORS to the cause of their
sexs" Now, we men are (rightly) very jeal-
GUS of our virility. We hold it a slight not
to be borne that any one should impugn our
essential manhood. And we do we'll TO be
angry, for virility is the key note to all that
is best and most forCible in the masculine
character. Women ought equally to glory
in their femininity. A woman ought to be
ashamed to say she has no desire to become
a wife and mother. Many such women
there are, no doubt-it is TO be feared,
with our existing training, far too
many; but, instead of boasting of
pride, they ought to keep it dark and to be
ashamed of it-as ashamed as a man in a like
predicament would be of his impotence.
They ought to feel they have fallen short of
the healthy instincts of their kind, instead of
posing as in some sense the cream of the
universe, on the strength of what is merely
a functional alteration.
Unfortunately, however, Just at the pres
ent moment, a considerable number of the
ablest women have been misled into taking
this unfeminine side, and becoming real
TRAITORS to their sex" in so far as they en-
deavor to assimilate women TO men in every.
thing, and to put upon their shoulders, as a
glory and privilege, the burden of their own
support. Unfortunately, too, they have
erected into an ideal what is really an un-
happy necessity of the passing phase. They
have set before them as an aim what ought
to be regarded as u bad example. And the
ssSJ eDt'S ~ ~
antly evident to everybody who takes a wide
and extended view of the present crisis
for a crisis it undoubtedly ls-in the position
or women.
In the first place, the movement for the
higher education of women, in itself an ex-
cellent and most p~raiseworthy movement,
has at first, almost of necessity, taken a
wrong direction, which has entailed in the
end much of the present uneasiness. OF
course, nothing could well be worse
than the so.called education of
women forty or fifty years ago
or course nothing could be narrower.
than the view of their sex then prevalent, as
eternally predestined to suckle fools and
chronicle small beer. But when the need
for some change was first felt. instead of
reform taking IA rational direction-instead
of women being taught to suckle strong and
intelligent children, and TO order well a
wholesome, reasonable household-the mis-
take was made of educating them like men
giving a like training for totally unlike
functions. The result was that many
women became unsexed in the process, and
many others acquired a distaste, an unnat-
ura! distaste, for the functions which nature
intended them to perform. At the present
moment a great majority of the ablest
women are wholly dissatisfied with their
positions as women, and with the position
imposed by the facts of the case upon
women generally; aud this as the direct
fault Of THAR fulaa aduraJinn rrliav huva