The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1907-07-13

| to keep herself alive. She sings such
energetic paeans over her success as
a doctor OF china painter OF sales
woman-she is naturally in her need
| of money so thankful to have work to
do and so glad that she can do it
| that she begins to think that when
she was sent into the world, to work
was to be her highest occupation.
| It is not true. There is not fiber
in her body nor an impulse in her
nature which does not show that the
real primary business in life is to be
home-maker, the comrade OF man
and the mother of his children.
| God in His wisdom may have denied
her that highest and best work, but
whatever else she may do she knows
IN her heart that it is the highest and
the best
! A southern woman the other day
rated her sisters of the south sharply
because they took it for granted that
no woman is wage-earner except
from necessity and that when the ne
cesslty is removed she would gladly
return to her old vocation-that of
the lily of the feld.''
And why not?
The vocation of the lily of the field
is to be fair and sweet, to make one
little place on Gods earth brighter
and filter for His sight and to repro
| duce its kind to do the same work
| when it is dead.
| The woman who makes her home
center of help and intelligence and
high endeavor, who brings forth chill
dren and fits them in that home for
their future life, has done enough.
She does not need to earn single
dollar in any way to justify her right
to live.
AS for the woman who voluntarily
gives up her birthright-"t keep
house and be a joyful mother of chill
ren"-in order that she may busy her
self WITH public work, she is precisely
in the position of that mad English
peer of whom we all read a few years
ago, who turned his back on his BIRTH
right-castles, title and revenues-in
order that he might tramp on the
high road grinding a hand-organ for
a dancing monkey.
She is choosing the meaner part in
her ambition to exploit herself be-
fore the public. No club work is as
honorable or helpful as a gentlewom-
ans management of her home and fam
lily; nothing that her talents enable
her to give to the world-whether
| book or statue Or lecture-will ever
be as important or powerful an inf1u-
ence in it as a living child.
This is not a pleasant subject, but
when we read that the births of chill
dren of native American parents have
fallen off one-half in certain northern
states in the last two decades, it sure
ly is worth our consideration. AS men
go, the native American is a whole
some good bit of that human stuff
which makes up humanity. The world
seems to need him just now. II he
is not to be born into it, I doubt
whether the books or charitable work
given to it by childless American wom-
en- will fill his place.
There is one pleasant fact, however,
which cheers and comforts us in all
these doubts and dangers. That is.
that the large majority Of American
women have kept their footing dur:
ing all the struggles of their sex since
the close of the.civil war. They have
earned money when it was necessary
to do it, but they have not raised
money-earning to the highest place
among the achievements of life. They
have been shrewd, amused listeners to
the feminine wrangles in clubs and
newspapers, but are themselves usual
~ silent and unpublished. Occasion
ally they have exerted the power OF
dumb resistance with most salutary
effect, as when for several decades
they have silently refused to claim the
right Of suffrage.
They are best known by what they
do not do. They prefer to live in
homes, not in boarding houses and ho-
tells. They are not childless mothers
nor divorced wives. They find nc
higher code of truth to teach their lit
tie ones than that which Jesus brought
to the world. They do not replace it
by the sharp worldly wisdom Of Con.
| fucius or the vague yearnings OF
Buddhism. They answer all argu-
ments by the question: 'Who has led
man so far upward as Christi" and go
on quietly teaching their children the
Sermon on the Mount.
You call them old-fashioned and
commonplace, perhaps: But they are
eminently sane. One of the strongest
roofs of their sanity is that they are
content to be women and not imi-
tators of men and that they still keep
in their lives that charm of modesty
and aloofness which the noisy minor
ity of our women have SO fool1shly
thrown aside.