The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-03-14
THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

The Barrier Of Sex Gradually Giving Way
to the Pressure of Reason and Justice.
VIM. T. Stead, who was chiefly instru
mental in securing the raising of the age
of legal protection for English girls
through his paper, the Pail Mall Ga
zette, has written an Address to Amer
lean Women" 1t was meant to be read
at the annual convention Of the National
w. c. I. u, but was delayed in the mails
and has just been published in the Unior
Signal. Some passages are we'll worth
reproducing. Mr.. Stead says:
'To me the most important. and by
far the most hopeful, movement of oul
women the right to rank as human be-
ings, with equal right and equal justice,
equal privileges and equal opportuni.
ties with the hitherto dominant section
of humanity. The great word of the
French revolution, which closed the old
regime, was the rights of man. The
great word of the new era. on the thresh-
hold of which we are standing. j. "
rIgn,o - =. omen. The TSs"rtlun VI the
principle that there shall no
longer be two measures and two stand
ards of right and of wrong, of justice or
of injustice, was made in 1889 against
the system of caste. The same princi-
pie has now to be asserted in the region
of sex. 1t has. as its natural compile
ment, the application of the law, "A ca
reer open to all who have the capacity,
to both halves of the human race. We
have not reached the point when it will
seem as preposterous to exclude capa-
BILE person from the highest Office in
Church and State merely because that
as it now would seem absurd to ostracise
all persons who are not of aristocratic
descent: but We are getting on, and there
is no better gauge of the progress of our
civilization than the extent to which
our laws defining the rights and privil-
eyes of citizenship are becoming color
blind as to sex.
Another great source of encourage
ment is the immense reinforcement
which science, in its demonstration of
the working of the law of heredity. has
brought to all those who are contending
for justice for woman. Strange though
it appears, it is nevertheless indisputa-
BILE that, to this day. the elementary
truth that every child is more or less
of an equation between the mental, NOR
al and physical qualities of both his
parents, is ignored by the immense ma
jority of the human race. The fact that
the woman, when degraded into the
mere plaything or the drudge of man,
avenges herself unconsciously by trans
uniting full measure of her degrade
ton to his sons, is obvious. But, in
stead Of regarding every prospective
parent as the transmitter to posterity of
the sum of all its inherited and acquired
capacities, virtues and vices, it is too
often supposed to be sufficient to allot
different virtues to different sexes. We
have taught men to be brave, and wom-
en- to be chaste. But the child Of the
cowardly woman and the immoral man
starts afresh at the bottom of the lad
der, with its full share of the inherited
cowardice of the one and the vicious pro-
pensities of the other. And then mar
vel at the slowness of the progress of
the race! How is it possible for progress
to be more rapid when each sex is taught
whether or not it neutralizes in posterity
the virtues of the other? 1t is time we
were done with this one-legged system,
this eternal goose step to which we have
been SO long condemned. Science
teaches us that even if we care nothing
for our girls, we must educate the moth
ers of our boys, not merely in book
learning, but in all the manly virtues
which we wish to be reproduced in these
sons. We must no longer have differ
ent decalogue for the two sexes. The
moral law is one that applies equally to
both men and women. We have now to
teach our women to add to their chas-
tity bravery, and our men to add to their
bravery chastity. Otherwise we can no
more expect higher standard in our
children than we can expet to pour pure
water from pitcher which we half
filed from a cesspool.
The success of our movement de-
ponds upon the extent to which it cuts
itself absolutely clear from the old idea
that the only safety for the morality of
man was to keep him as far as possible
out OF the society of women. We pro-
coed upon an exactly opposite tack. We
proclaim that there is no security for
the morality of man equal to that of
close and intimate association with good
women. and that morality, as a matter
of fact, perishes in every realm from
which the influence of woman is shut
out. So far from seeking to secure pur-
ity by practicing seclusion, we believe
that the moro points Of contact and OF
common interest which can be estab-
lished between men and women, the less
danger is there that they will establish
immoral relations.
THE development of the brotherly-
sisteriy ideal is the goal at which we are
aiming. Hence we would multiply in
every direction points of contact be-
tween men and women. Give them
more objects of common interest and
more opportunities of meeting on COM
mon ground; unite them more closely in
all public work, and every step taken in
that direction will leave farther and
farther in the background the old false
and degrading notions of the past"