Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1905-06-20

have been laughed to scorn, as is the
idea OF a woman president now.
1t us very likely If the time should
ever come that women are given the
ballot, and ever elected to Offices or
to that one highest in the peoples
power to bestow, that the educational
influence of the woman's club move
ment will be demonstrated in all its
glory. Parliamentary law is becoming
of more and more Importance In the
studies taken up by various women s
clubs. Whether any of them ever are
put in position to show their knoWl-
edge or ignorance of its rulings, train
ing in that direction will give a dig
nifty and poise otherwise unattained.
A writer in the Saturday Evening
Post in an article on THE Narrow
Minded Sex" calls attention to the
statement of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
that Half our citizens, the mothers
OF the country, occupy their minds all
their lives long, with small private af-
fairs" The article expresses abundant
sarcastic admiration for Mrs. Gilman's
conclusion, which is to the effect that
If these small-minded women are Civ
en- the suffrage they will become large
minded in accustonling their minds to
big public affairs. It's writer comes to
the battle front, however, with the
charge that the real Philistines of mod
ern society are the men, engrossed in
trade and politics, and insists on one
fact which Mrs Gilman has always ig-
nored in her schemes for the future of
her sex. This is, that biologists tell us
that in proportion as life has assembled
in the scale Of evolution, the functions
of the sexes have tended, as a rule to
become different. The article concludes
that the fact that only men have voted,
results from the fact that the affairs
of the state are closely allied to those
of the individual, and business and
politics are two birds which the male
citizen kills with the same stone. 9th
ers will agree too, that the latest law
of sex-differentiation has brought art,
literature and drama-even science and
philosophy, into the sphere of woman
hood. That they have already been
made such potent factors in the train
ing of each successive generation as to
throw the gravest doubt on Mrs. Gill
mans arraignment of her sex, as solely
occupied with small and merely private
affairs.
In connection with this view, that the
humdrum routine Of daily life makes
women narrow minded, a letter written
from Paris, by Dorothy Fennimore, and
published some little time ago, is of in
terest This letter was written to solve
the question of why evil attracts one
woman, as it does attract some, of the
more morbid type. This curious attrac-
ton was partially manifest at the trial
of Johann Hoch, the infamous polyga-
mist Dorothy Fenimore, in defense of
her sex, says that "the majority of our
American women look upon life with
the simplicity of children to whom a
fact is a fact, and not signpost. They
are wonderfully unsophisticated and
innocent, and often what seems IN
their conduct like an expression OF
morbid curiosity, is nothing but a mis-
effort to get away from the
routine of their life. Others
than the writer from Paris are truly
sorry to see any women showing this
lack of good sense and good taste.
They will agree with her that to study
evil idly, without a fixed purpose of
doing ones small part toward better
ing the race is more than mistake; it
is wrong to ones self and to ones
neighbors ESPECIALLY is this true in
regard to women. Religion and love
and childhood, are in their keeping, and
if they are to fulfill ther nohlest mis-
sion, they must keep their hearts pure
and their minds clean"
"The kindness of insincerity is like
the beauty of artificial roses; we value
it for what it is intended to represent"
Are women really more insincere than
men, or have they only more tact and
a greater art of masking disagreeable