Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1901-01-04
W0MAN'S PROGRESS.
Relation Of Women Of Our Country 10 the
Century That is Past.

us pause and do reverence while it vet
survives. What gifts these hundred
wonderful years have brought to u.s.
That we cannot better realize the
actual state of things domestic and
educational; that we have so little
knowledge of the scanty material re-
sources and facilities; that we fail to
measure the vast differences between
what we have today and what our
at-grandmotherS could turn to for
aid or lean upon for counsel, is a great
pity. We make a feeble effort to
reckon the advancement and gain of
our own generation, but what has been
done in the course of four generations
we scarcely reckon at all.
AS we read the charming letters of
the women living in the last years of
100 and the dawn of 1900, so graceful.
SO courteous, and so full of wit. treas
uries of that sort of thought which can
only come from unhurried lives, and
sparkling with genuine humor. we do
not for a moment stop to think of what
scanty teaching the writer's had re-
ceived. Even in times of awful stress
and danger there is a serene, uneX
sort of leisurely care to tell every
thing with rigid regard to truth of de-
tail.
We do not give our predecessors
sufficient credit. Maria Josepha Hol
royd's description of Paris in the first
| days of the Revolution. or Abigail
| Adamss delightful womanly. com
mon sense disclosures of early. Ameri
| can political conditions are marvellous
examples of entirely feminine, yet I'M
| terrified and unagitated, mental condi-
| lions. 1t were well for us to con-
slider where the fault lies in our mod
ern systems of teaching and living.
| that beautiful and interesting letter
| writing is now so rare.
| In the rush of life in which our
| children are involved, they are hurried
| even in their schoolrooms. and in try
| ing to compass everything, to know all
| the languages. all the sciences, all the
arts. fail either completely to understand
their own language or think their own
| thoughts. Predigested mental foods.
| already aSSimilated preparations of
| current events" do not deepen the
/ strength of our reflective powers, nor
| tend to teach us to discriminate de-
| tails.
1t would make an interesting and
| very instructive aid to our thoughts if
We could have the votes of any large
collection of women: say, for instance
of the educated women of New York
city, as to what was the greatest gift
of the nineteenth century to women.
l am disposed to think that
q n nj, zinc
| would say freedom to work independ-
entity and to maintain themselves.
| Large gifts. indeed. and accepted with
unflinching courage and industry,
! There is yet room for that sympathetic
historian who shall picture the
| homes maintained by the labor and
| brains of women and young
girls. Large room to make
plain to the present time and to gem
erations yet to come how unsefish
how cheerfully self forgetting is the
toll of young feminine hand and
| hearts.
But like every great triumph, ii has
| cost much. In the great competition,
in the struggle made with such grim
| resolution and tense muscles, young
wOmanhood has lost many graceS and
grown accustomed to coarse and often
! lowering contact. The swing of the
pendulum has been wide, and when
We crowd men out of their legitimate
places of gaining a livelihood, it has
| gone too far.
| We accept without sufficient appre-
| citation or gratitude the tightening of
manual labor and the physical comfort
which these years have brought to us
| women and our homes. The writer
often thinks. rs the touch of a button
| illumneS home or the turning of
stop-cock gives it's warmth. what the
mistress of the mansion would feel did
she have to sit in darkness until "a
! flint and steel gave spark large
enough to ignite the wick of a dreary
candle, or live in an atmosphere so
| cold that the fire drew family
towards its warmth with the power of
a magnet
There was small opportunity to q
woman of moderate means to study,
to see things beyond her own thresh-
old. to beautify with delicate art the
home she loves. when the difficulty of
providing for the necessaries of life
were all-absorbing. Wealth might
mitigate, but it could not give what
was non-existent, until the nineteenth
century, in the climax of it's glory.
brought forth light and warmth, and
flying needles which needed not a wo-
mans weary hand to drive them for
ward.
When shivering maids, or even, in
country places. the sons of good fam
| ily-vide Senator Hoar's story of his
bOyhood-stOod pumping scanty pail
fuls of water in the wintry mornings
no fortune was large enough to rem
edy the need: the flowing streams of
water, obedient to a chid's touch in
| every room of a household have
| wrought an entirely underestimated
change in our domestic life We
scarcely stop to remember how our
! grandmotherS had to struggle to get
enough hot water for the baby's bath
Under the Majestic names of science
| and progress. of electricity and steam
of architecture and decorative art. we
hear addresses full of splendid achieve
ment and rich with perOrations concern
ing their results: but few say anything
eloquent of the influences upon women
and their children. Whether they have
either been comforted and uplifted by
adding luxury to the best which the
1 a v1iar off