The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1901-10-11

ed IN persuauing ourselves LnaE the
old heresy is orthodox, namely, that
God requires some men to neglect
their own homes and children in or
der to serve him; as if there we're
anywhere service more divine than
is the training of those who are of
ones ownflesh and blood Weneed
to be reminded that every child in
the world has native right to the
constant influence and training of
both father and a mother mas
culine and feminine culture. 1t
was Gods plan for making men
more refined and considerate and
women more stalwart and sturdy
1t would be calamity incalculably
great if the present generation of
children should be exclusively wo-
man-reared; yet are we not rapidly
drifting in our too-hurrIed lives
to ward the point where we men are
heads of our homes only in the
names of our wives? The time has
come--it ought to have arrived
sooner--when we must spend as
much time studying home making
as we ever spent pondering the
problems of success in business.
The proposition OF a current maga-
zine has in 1t more of the elements
of earnestness than jest, that our
schools for girls should establish
chairs and husband and home keep
ing. Our schools for boys might
do we'll not to let themselves be out
stripped in this educational pro-
gress. What, with the business
which keeps us away from home all
day, and the club life and the So
cial demands which lure us from
our fresides at night, there is lit
tie opportunity for our children to
share with us any good thing which
we might be or do; and now that
our wives have discovered the club
also, and are insisting upon such a
declaration of independence" as
will make them our competitors in
business and professional life, it be-
gins to look as if we we're about to
do by proxy all our work at home
and with our children.
A HOME AND A HOUSE.
But the kind of homes in which
we live are not the least of the dan
gers that threaten the households
within. The crowded fat, with its
plausible pleas for cooperative
housekeeping, greatly increases
the difficulties; while the boarding
house is positively fatal to the true
home life. We must be reasonable
OF course, and there may be condi-
tions under which it is impossible
for family to live apart from other
families, and when a boarding
house man be financial necessity;
but certainly there is great loss
when a child cannot live in a house
which deserves the honored name
of home, and somewheres about
which there is plat of green grass
all his own. Laziness and stingi-
ness have no right to deny to child
hood these inherited domestic priv
leges.
THE INDUSTRIAL HEREsY.'
Perhaps the greatest dangers
menacing the home are those grow
ing out of what has been aptly de-
nominated the industrial heresy,
that ever woman should be a wage
Garner, and as result of which
there are among the five million
American bread-winning women so
many who ought to be home-keep-
ing women. All honor to the wo-
man who works at trade, or in
some lucrative pursuit, becnase she
must to keep the wolf from her own
door or from the portal Of some
others home. Such are among
earth's noblest and best; IN the tru-
est sense ladies because true wo-
men. But let as not be in haste to
glority the woman who seeks sala-
ry merely to be independent" of
those upon whom she has the natu-
raj and moral right to be independ-
ent. The only truly independent
woman is the home-making woman;
and the woman who most deserves
and should most surely have the
largest attainable earnings is she
who gladdens home for the wor-
thy toiier who is at its head, her
husband or father. 1t is no evl-
dence OF progress" the advanced
woman to the contrary notwihstand-
ing that one-twelfth of all the wo-
men and girls Of this country are at
work for wages; nor is it a mark Of
progress that, whereas forty years
ago only twenty trades and profess
sions were open to women, there
are now 800, so that woman may
be butcher, baker a candle
stick maker, or anything else which