The herald., 1895-04-27
An Able Paper Read at the FRI
day Morning Club
BY MRS. WILLIAM SPALDING
She Is Not Product of Today, but the
..se Result Of Ages
Some Of the Agencies and Forces That Have
.e Been INSTRUMENTAL In Her Gradual
.sDs je - Evofu ton.


liam Spalding yesterday morning. on the
New Woman. 1t was logical i'll construc-
ton, its arguments we're convincing and
it was made doubly interesting by the
manner of its delivery.
The assembly room was packed with
ladies who had come to hear what Mrs.
Spalding had to say, the substance OF
which was as follows:
It has always been the fashion to decry
women. The history of all ages SHOWS
that the custom goes back to a time that
the memory of man knoweth not OF.
Every people that has had a literature
have perpetuated the low estimate of this
half OF the human race. Every religion
from the remotest antiquity has repre-
sented woman as a weak or an immoral
creature.
However. it has remained for the relig-
ion of our own times to reach the acme
of cruelty. by making woman responsible
for all the ills that flesh is heir tofor
having brought sin and death into the
world So deeply ingrained is this idea
that eighteen centuries of creed en-
bodying Justice and truth, not to speak
of charity. have not yet rooted it out.
The origin of this idea, that is trace
able into the mists of antiquity. is a
problem for the student of phsycology.
Its perpetuation into the civilization OF
today had its cause in the universally
dependent condition OF women.
People are not aware how entirely. in
former ages. the law of superior strength
was the rule of life.
The stronger destroys the weaker
throughout nature. and as the human
race rose in the scale of being the strong
continued to dominate the weak. From
the earliest dawn of human society
every woman. owing to the value attached
10 her by men, com blned with her infer
iority in muscular strength, was found in
a state OF bondage to some man. Grad
ualIv. however as civilization progressed,
absolute slavery has been abolished in
m. most advanced nations. and the
slavery of women has been changed into
"a miloer form of dependence. which has
been mitigated and modified by the
same causes that have soitened general
manners and brought all human rela-
ii ms more under the control of justice
and the influences of humanity. This is
the logic OF John Stuart Mill. and upon
it he bases the assertion that the present
inequality of might between men and
women has no ouner source than the rule
of force-the low of the strongest.
With fire making began the first division
of labor based upon sex. When men made
raids upon other tribes. or went into the
fields or forests for game, the women at
the Preside became the burden bearer,
the basket-maker, weaver, potter, agricul-
turalist and domesticator of animals. 1t
has been an essential feature of evolution
that as the race progressed the energies
of man should of necessity be given to
securing and protecting his possessions,
and that into the hands OF women should
fall all those matters conducive to COM
fort and domestic prosperity. From these
conditions sprang the idea still so deeply
rooted that woman's only place is with
81, fou Lee ~ har homo
Early English law, like that of any
time. was the outgrowth OF existing con-
ditions, and, as women were held i'll
state OF subsection. that made them abso-
lutely dependent, naturally they had no
rights before the law. The spinster Jared
better than the wife, both as to property
rights and to personal freedom. and this
is a condition that obtains today in most
civilized countries. In regard to the prop
erty rights OF women, marriage annulled
any that she might have had till fate or
fortune made her widow.
The fundamental theory of English and
Oriental law is the same on one point
that one the husband. This is the oldest
of legal traditions and, throughout three
fourths of the world today this theory
is the very foundation of the social
structure.
In this country there sometimes occur
lDStaDCeS WQcIG but COlu leRdl lTduluOuS
are enforced, and community is startled
to find what laws do yet remain upon
the statute books.
1t is seldom brought home to us that
children are the property of the father
yet within certain limits, he may dispose
OF them as he sees fit during his life
time, and may will them away from the
mother at death.
1t is within the limits of one genera
ton, even in America, that married wo-
men have been given any property rights.
The conviction of the common people
is generally in advance of the letter of ar
unjust law. And. little by little, as par,
ticular cases come up and rouse public
Indignation, statutes are revised till at
least common humanity is not often out
ragged. But for all that. the improvement,
is matter of but a few years.
The object of this cursory sketch is moi
to lament the bondage and servitude OF
women in times past, nor even to decry
their present status; but it is rather t.
show for how short time women have
known even comparative liberty-hoN
ages of bondage were succeeded by cen
turtles of oppression--and, that only
within the last two generations womer
have been free enough to begin to con-
slider themselves at all in ordering theil
lives and to feel entitled to full benefi t o
modern civilization--that human being;
are no longer born to their place in life
and chained down by an memorable bond
but are free to seek the opportunities,
and, if possible, to achieve the lot tina
seems to them the most desirable.
Not the least of the evils entailcd by thu
physical subsection and dependence %
women, has been their intellectual re
preston. AS far back as history take
us we, find the belief that women wer
created on lower intellectual plane thar
man. Theology anu philosophy have
both taught this doctrine. Aristotle DIES
ignated woman as an accidental ANNA
monstrosity. Twenty-Five hundred year
later comes Mr.. Grant Allen, with al
echo of this thought, in consideri,
women as simply animals told off for tn
reproduction of the race.
The traditions of Turkey still weigh dow
Europe; the vast east. with its unbrokel
prejudices. casts it's black shadow owe
Europe and America. In Japan, tn,
most highly civilized and efined of east
ern nations, the dominant idea of society
is essentially masculine. Women are no
mentioned in polite conversation. VIVA
I.afcadio Hearn calls the eternal femi
nine is unknown in their literature o
their art, and to the Japanese student O
Anglo Saxon literature its almost beyon
apprehension.
In French literature we find the highes
authorities of the church and state agree
that, for women, learning was out of th
question. For generations Germany ha
lad the finest universities III the world
and German thought has had the wides
influence on modern intellectual life
But Germany's educational facilities FL