The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1894-05-30
Mothers of Men.

looms, and so exercised her brains me
chanically, while her husband preached
and served the church as priest. Behold
the result l am profoundly convinced
that we have suffered loss beyond i'm
agination to conceive or language express
by keeping woman in the narrow routine
of housework She is mother She is
maker. She it is WHO stamps the babe
with prenatal bias. sic touches the souls
she bears with fire of genius or the tame
ness of platitudinous routine. Tesla's
mother was maker, a schemer an invent
or She was fortunate in that her hus-
band was the slave of tameness The con
sequence is a boy that has burst the bounds
of Slavic speculation and idealism and has
even come to the front of Saxon inventors
and discoverers A Slavic orator re-
preached his people that they had never
been able to invent so much as mouse
trap. But Tesla is the leader of the age Of
electricity. He has even surpassed for bril-
liant originality our Edison. l am con-
WINGED that this illustration is of very
wide application. Our mothers are cooks
and washerwomen and housekeepers. 1t
tells on the babes. We must first see to
the fountain, then to the stream-the
stream of humanity. What wonderful
care should be taken of the motherhood
All civilization should bend to the purpose
to furnish the future generation with pow
er giving mothers. Even the father is of
less importance-much less
John Stuart Mill said that II people ever
came to be highly moral 1t would be when
they came to fully understand that a sin
gle act by man or a woman might cause
untold misery for ages to come, and that
one might blight by single sin her own
child's eternal prospects. This subject of
hereditary influence has been studied very
much more thoroughly since MI Mill,
and 1t is conceded that the amount of free
dom that person enjoys is modified and
directed by the actions and character of
parents to degree never realized until
this era of scientific investigation. But
the weight of testimony goes more and
more to show that the mother is the real
maker of the child. I do not, however,
care SO much to speak Of individuals, but
of the general fact that you cannot raise
the average tone of people much above
the mothers. Educate them, inspire them,
and the sons come into the world with
propulsion for that which is noble and
necessity in them to do something worthy
and great.
The average woman's life is too fiat, too
simple too much occupied with the tame
and common. I am not inclined, howev-
er, to urge any further attempts at public
speaking-the rostrum age has fortunately
waned. We care less for actors, less for
talk. The typical men are no longer Clays
and Websters, but Edisons, Tyndalls, Hux-
leys. These are men that push the world
ahead in knowledge and achievement. But
they are rare. They should abound. When
community of people, the startling fact is
that so large part are nobodies do not
mean that they are merely not distinguish
ed, but that they are observation-disclosures
echoes in the world. Take out one tenth
of the people, and the nine tenths would
barely make "a living. They would do no
fresh thinking and no investigating of
the unknown. Problems would never be
solved, rarely even known to exist. What
twaddle makes up ordinary conversation!
Or, even worse, what vulgarity! 1 believe
this is not necessity; that the nine
tenths might be the people Of power and
thought and originality. The key to this
situation is with our mothers. But they
cannot turn the lock for themselves.
New England, by fine education Of
motherhood in theology, succeeded in Gre
ating race of theologians. Every woman
in New England in the eighteenth century
could discuss the whole body of divinity as
well as men could. They had equal privi-
leges and used them. Both sexes went to-
gether to church and the prayer meetings. :
The New England school for intellectual
wrestling was in the church, not in the
schoolhouse. The result was an equal ca
pacity of the sexes to dispute over election,
grace, the future state, free will and de-
crees. Such women bore splendid men.
The New Englanders made America intel
lectually. That sort of education has
passed away Equality now is demanded
and largely obtained in the common
schools and colleges Women can gradu-
ate at universities. But when woman is
married custom drops her into crack.
She is intended henceforth to keep house
In order. The predominant idea is sexual
That hers is the intellectual force to shape
the future is not comprehended Men have
long since fallen into the habit of forming
associations and clubs Women's clubs we
must have-not cooking clubs, but clubs
for intellectual work. / say it bluntly, our
women rarely think clearly, rarely spend
time on high problems to enable them to
advance opinions worth listening to.
-. 1t will pay to let the whole force of soci-
ETY. bear in the line Of making a race Of
grander mothers. Mothers, " said Napo-
leon, make France" He saw this to be
the greatest of truths. We do not yet see
it as people, not yet, but we shall come
to see it and act on it. The reign of wom-
an is also the reign of man. but the reign
of man is the subjugation of woman.
But let us bear in mind all along that
the only unperyerted force in community
is motherhood While not exalted, not in
spired as it should be, 1t is not degraded,
or when it is degraded the whole family
life tumbles into wreck with It, There
is in the function of life bearing a saliva
ton which has preserved us from the worst
results. What | plead for Is the greater
appeal to motherhood. Let us have the
best use Of this best Cf human Offices. -
| 81. Louis Globe Democrat.