The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-11
OF FEMININE INTEREST
WOMEN WHO WORK FOR A LIVING
NOT IN NEED OF CONDOLENCE.
A Problem of observation-disclosures
Exercise Fashions for
Little Girls.

Thank heaven, the day is past when had
to write consoling letters to those among
my friends who were forced to join 1.-THE
noble army Of workers. 1 remember, says
Priscilla in the New York Tribune, that l
used that expression with great effect in
writing to a girl L knew who had taken
small clerkship in some Office. and was
afraid that her friends would desert her.
At that time-it was twenty years ago
there was really some danger that few
of them might desert her. Nowadays, we
poor folks are not afraid of the judgment
of our social and intellectual equals; we
have only to fear the insolence of infer
iors. With that we shall always have to
contend, as only money and the sort of
power it brings can impress the narrow
and common mind In the lower realms it
will always be true that every door is bar
red with gold. and opens but to golden
keys, and lit is only heaven that can be
had for the asking
The subject of women in the business
world is very broad one. and is usually
judged in very narrow way. There seems
to be no method of persuading' men to
judge of women any way but masse;
they always leave out the one point in the
argument that really counts-the individual
lot. They insist upon considering woman,
not women; it never enters their heads that
this woman can be different from that
woman, as lone star differeth from an
other in glory" (Not that we're all stars,
by any means, either on the stage or off it,
The trouble is they have preconceived no
ton that one woman ought not to differ
from another. Even Kipling, the man who
can enter into the soul and consciousness of
everything that lives-even animal or a
machine (for he makes the latter seem to
be conscious)-even he has presumed to say
that the woman was made for one pur-
pose only, and the man for many Until
the mind of the world opens out to admit
the common fact of experience, that God
would not have given special faculties and
talents to individual women If He had not
meant them to be exercised in in
dividual ways, the woman ques-
ton will not cease to be prob
lem. 1t isn't a problem except in the sense
that all life Is a problem.
We always assume that woman who is
not domestic, in the technical sense of the
word, is therefore not womanly. As a
matter of fact, some of the most womanly
women 1 have known were professional
women or self-supporting women, and some
of the most unwOmanly were domestic
women in the narrow sense. Because L
cannot understand the woman who counts
all her linen every week, and mourns II
some of her centerpieces land things are
crushed in the drawer, does that mean that
/ am unwomanly? Perhaps it does! l don't
know. / only know that with me the
home idea" is limited to good comrade-
ship. If / can't get that In the home
don't care for the home, and wherever L
can get il, there L can make home, even
without bric-a-brac
Turn in vain, frivolous, narrow minded
woman into the business world, and, of
course, she will be unwomanly-a shade
more so than she was before. The point is
that you didn't see her when she was