Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1900-03-12
WOMAN AND THE CENTURY.
How the Past Hundred Years Have
Advanced Her Sex.

What the nineteenth century has
done for women has recently been
demonstrated by four well-known
American women, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, who remarked their upward
progress; Jennie June Croly, who de-
scribed the effect upon club life; Helen
Varick Boswell, who voiced the atti-
tude of the sex in politics, and Mrs. G.
Fl. Gilbert, who wrote of her fellow
worker on the stage. Mrs Stanton
says:
ITO the student of history law of
progress is apparent, steadily running
from century to century, gradually de-
veloping the higher possibilities of
the race. The emancipation of woman
from the bondage of the past has cul-
minated during the last century in the
assertion of her right ito an equal
place on this planet claiming the ST.
multaneous creation of man and wo-
man, with an equal title deed ito this
green earth and equal dominion over
every creeping thing thereon, accord
/ ing to the book of Genesis, claimed by
some to be the earliest record of the
race.
Fifty years ago, like the daughters
of Belophehad in the scriptures Num-
bers xviii, woman brought her case
into court, with her own judges, advo-
Gates and witnesses, and made pop
ular appeal for her right to an equal
inheritance. The goddess of justice,
weighing the claims of man and wo-
man, said: s'The women are right; so
let it be- Open sesame! And gave
them the key to the schools, colleges.
trades and professions. In the face of
leaders of church and state they
pushed back bolts and bars, walked
the wards of the hospital, entered the
courts of justice, expounded the COM
mands of God in the pulpit and ques-
lions of government in legislative
halls. In vain did the men protest, as
Iithey saw the power slipping from their
hands; vain were their thunderbolts Of
denunciation. Women began to fill an
equal place, gradually taking posses
sion OF all the vantage points in the
world of thought and action, crowding
into the colleges by the thousand,
pushing their way in the trades and
professions, becoming the most popu-
lar orators, authors and actors, and
rapidly coming into competition with
the most distinguished musicians, sci
j entists and philosophers, proving them
selves the equal of man in every de-
partment where they have had equal
opportunities for development.
Men and that class of women
dubbed parasites by Olive Schreiner
are helpless to roll back this incoming
tide of intelligence as was Dame Part
ington in beating back the Atlantic
ocean.
1T is now foo late for bishops, SEN
ators, college presidents, professors
and fashionable women to set limits
to the achievements and aggressions Of
Ewes daughters. The wheels of prog
ress never move backward; until full
equality is accorded her everywhere;
until the canon and civil laws, bibles
and constitutions shall alike bow with
love and reverence to the mother of
the race.
Mrs Croly says
To women who were in the begin
ming, and who have watched the
/ growth and diversified development of
the modern club life among women of
all classes and degrees of intelligence,
nothing is more curious than the
eagerness with which old societies of
ia semi-scientific, semi-religious or
semi-educational character, whose
members formed boards that met an
nually, semi-annually or quarterly to
render up accounts and report decline
or progress under the leadership of
some more than commonly liberal
minded pastor, and who in the begin
ming disavowed severely any sanction
of the club idea, now claim the prlv1-
leges of age and the later adoption of
more social and progressive features
as their claim to precedence and the
honor of being among the first ito in
itiate the curiously rapid social phe-
nomena which now constitute the
club life of women.
AS late as 1860 there were no soci-
cites, secular or religious, former,
ocered and sustained wholly by wo-
men. There were here and there little
auxiliaries to bible and foreign mis-
sions, formed under the influence of
the pastor of a church, and whose OBJ
ject was the gathering of small contri-
buttons to be turned over to the fund
of the parent society.
'The word club in it's social sense
means cooperation on free and equal
terms, for any purpose approved by the
general body 1t involves the power
of independent action on the part of in
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