The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1909-04-10
WHY SOME WOMEN
ARE NOT MARRIED
State Endowment. of Motherhood May
be the Law of Future
Generations.

State Endowment of Motherhood May
be the Law of Future
Generations.
IF women are to be taught the
profound Importance Of motherhood
which, Notwithstanding the prud-
ish silence of their education, most
Of them realize at present far better
critics-even more important" says
writer in the Albany Review, in
an article on THE Feminist Move
ment and the Birth Rate "is it
that men should be taught the sa-
cred import of fatherhood- the
great chastity of maternity" Most
women feel vaguely, in the dim
subconscious depths of their minds,
that they have sacred function to
perform.
Starving for Love.
"The writer on two separate oc-
casions, in a room full of profess
sional women starving for love and
maternity, of which they had most
of them never had reasonable
chance, heard an unmarried male
doctor, with satisfactory income,
gravely discourse on the sacred
duties of women in relation to fu-
ture generations.
Had these men understood the
feelings of fierce resentment that
burned within the breasts of the
women who listened to them, they
would have learned more about the
true significance of the women 8
movement than they are ever like
ly to understand.
Goodness of Men.
One Of these women said to an
other, We would be only too glad
to perform those duties if men
would give us an opportunity and
the other replied, We should. But
that's more than I have admitted
to living soul before The other
replied, To hear them talk, one
would imagine that parthenogenesis
was a possible way of reproduction
even among the human race
Reluctance of Men.
"The simple truth is that as sex
is a far more serious and funda-
mental thing to normal woman
than to man, and since under
our present social system she has
no other way-as the man has-of
satisfying her sex instincts save by
marriage, it is safe to assert that
most unmarried women, at least
among the younger generation OF
the feminist movement, are unmar-
ried because they have had No
satisfactory opportunity to be 9th.
erwise, because they have not met
sufficient men of their own intel
lectual and spiritual valiber to find
a fittering mate.
clustered Life.
IA woman educated in a high
school, then sent to woman's COL
lege, and finally teaching again in
high school, leads a life practic-
ALLY as much cloistered as does a
nun, and that not by choice but by
necessity. Sometimes. under those
circumstances her sex never awak-
ems, and she comes to resemble the
Older feminists. But often under
the influence of reading and thought
her fundamental instincts arise
within her; she longs fiercely for
lover, or more commonly for a
child, and then she has to listen
In quietness to lectures by men-
with whom from time immemorial
the initiative in sex has rested
on the modern woman's shocking
neglect of her most sacred duties.
The irony of the situation would
be amusing were it not too painful
Professional Men.
"The finest young professional
men rarely make enough to marry
very young, and not uncommonly
select heiresses. But they would
probably admit in a frank moment
that. for real companionship, they
would prefer one of the girls who
had worked side by side with them
in laboratory or hospital
The School Ma'am.
Surely woman in bearing and
rearing children is doing even fine
! work than when she teaches Older
children for a few hours a day il
school,. Yet the state will pay he,
for the one, but not for the other
Doubtless state endowment of moth.
erhOod is yet many, many years
BILE after wide sweeping social
changes. But when it does come
it will solve many problems, and
it's consideration, and the demand
that so many thoughtful and edu-
Gated women shall not be forced
to lead lives of celibacy, nor men
driven to marry heiresses, is
however little the fact be under
stood-one of the strong driving
forces at the back of the newer
feminist movement