The herald., 1894-03-04
MANS COLUMN.
[ooNpUorED BY COO AND MAGoa.

CONDUCTED BY COG AND MAGod.
Irresponsible fatherhood is something
which man has always, more or less,
winked at if not wholly ignored. Yet
in these days of "more light" surely
that sort of irresponsibility ia blunder.
a crime. For it is now a we'll established
fact that nature herself winks at moth
ing, whatever the old Jewish Jehovah
may have winked at in times past.
Indeed, the stupid old dame industri-
ously weRves in her loom all the sleazy,
mildeWed, poisoned threads of mans
being, together with beautiful, the
magnetic, the grand fibers; all are
faithfully enwoven and the web dis
played for one to view as we'll as for
future generations. And not only to be
viewed but to serve as a warning IL may
be, or perhaps the undoing of many.
But if irresponsible fatherhood has held
small place in the civilization of the
past and is still almost an unrecogniged
factor in the up-building of humanity,
irrespc sibls motherhood is a thing
rightly Abhorred of men and ostensibly
precluded by nature.
Woman from the beginning has been
ordained to responsibility. She cannot
if she would-and it is to be hoped che
would not If she could-shirk the re-
sponsibility which is hers by the ac-
ceptance of motherhood. She ia the
loom which Dame Nature uses;. and
upon the head of woman has often fallen
the curse when she has only faithfully
enwebbed the poor material committed
to her by an irresponsible, corrupt faith
erhood. 1t is true, of course, that, to
have the best results the loom should
likewise be good; the finest, highest
type of material being easily spoiled in
the making. Now is it not little odd,
little less than logical, that since
nature has glarinRly yforeordsined woman
to responsibility, and since man. too, in
q sense holds her responsible, her en-
tire training should be adapted to make
of her an irresponsible creature? In
matters of religion she is taught to re-
we're and be guided by a religion in
which she is ssdulously taught ''subjec-
ton" to man, whether holy or quite
otherwise. In business she has all along
been held as q minor and treated as an
incompetent. In the matter of obtain
ing sound knowledge she has been al
most wholly debRrred-until within a
few vears-on account OF the supposed
weakness OF her intellect. She is not
vet regarded as competent to enact the
mart OF citizen. Now the question arises
how dare man take this woman, whom
nature has foreordained to responsibility
and train her to irrespOnsibility
Man in his greed and desire to emu
late sends to Europe for his seeds to fill
his gardens. and to Jersey island for a
bull to improve his cows, to Australia
for q ram to increase the wool-producing
quality that his hocks may increase in
value. Progress and study leaves its
mark on all things below himself. The
science OF evolution is taught in many
of our leading colleges, and the Adamic
theory and the ape theory have their
exponenta in these colleges, and while it
is thought as O most probable fact tR Z
man has left his claws and tail behind
him, yet we have scarcely entered the
field where he can plant and cultivate
his own seed and study it's results. His
generation without science or prepara-
ton 10 sown in the wind OF moral and
physical dissipation, and we are reaping
the whirlwind of criminals. "As man
sows 30 shall he reap" this is law
universal; he believes it in regard to
oats, wheat, rye, but in his own kind he
plants deiormity and hopes to gather
beauty; sowH debauchery and wants
virtue; nowa dishonesty and desires
truth.