The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1914-09-05

oA\o oCIA C111cI, Ill " Ollldn ant
Labor"
1t may he said: What then of war
that struggle of the human creature
to attain it's ends by. physical force
and at the price of the ifeoof others;
will you take part in that also ?" We
reply: Yes; more particularly in that
field we intend to play our part. We
have always borne part of the weight
OF war, and the major part. 1t is not
that in primitive times we suffered
from the destruction. of the fields we
titled and the houses we built; it is
not that later as domestic laborers
and producers, though unwaged, we,
in taxes and material loss and addi-
tional labor, paid as much as our
males toward the cost of war; it is
not that in a comparatively insignifi-
cant manner, as nurses of the wound
ed in modern times, or now and
again as warrior lchieftainesses and
leaders in primitive and other socie-
ties, we have borne our part; nor is
it even because the spirit Of resolu-
ton in its women, and their willing
ness to endure, has in all ages, again
and again largely determined the fate
of a race that goes to war, that we
demand our controlling right where
war is concerned. Our relation to
war is far more intimate, personal,
and indissoluble than this. Men
have made boomerangs, bows, swords
or guns with which to destroy one an
other; we have made the men who
destroyed and were destroyed! We
have in all ages produced, at an
enormous cost, the primal munition
of war, without which no other would
exist. There is no battlefield on earth
nor ever has been, howsoever covered
with slain, which it has not cost the
women of the race more in actual
bloodshed and anguish to supply than
1t has cost the men who lie there. We
pay the first cost on all human life.
In supplying the men for the car
mage of battlefield, women have
not merely lost actually more blood.
and gone through more acute an
guish and WEAKNESS, in the long
months of bearing and in the final
agony OF childbirth, than has been ex-
perienced by the men who cover it;
but, in the long months Of rearing
that follow, the women of the race go
through long, patiently endured
strain which no knapsacked soldier
on his longest march has ever more
than equaled; while, even in the mat
ter Of death, in all civilized societies;
the probability that the average wom-
an will die in childbirth is immeasur-
able greater than the probability
that the average male will die in
battle.
There is, perhaps. no woman.
whether she have borne children, or
be merely potentially a child-bearer,
who could look down upon a battle
field covered with slain, but the
thought would rise in her, $50 many
mothers. sons! So many young
bodies brought into the world to lie
there! So many months of WEAKNESS
and pain while bones and muscles
were shaped within! So many hours
of anguish and struggle that breath
might be! So many baby mouths
drawing life at women's breast-al1
this, that men might lie with glazed
eyeballs and swollen faces, and fixed
blue, Enclosed mouths, and great
| limbs tossed-this, that an acre OF
ground might be MANFRED with hui
! man flesh, that next years grass or
peoples or karoo bushes may spring
up greener and redder, where they
have lain, or that the sand of plain
| may have CLINT of white bones!
And we cry, "Without an memorable
| cause, this must not be-" No woman
! who is woman says Of a human
body, 1T is nothing!'
On that day when the woman takes
her place beside the man in the gov
ernance and arrangement Of exter-
nal affairs of her race will also be
that day that heralds the death OF
war as a means Of arranging human
differences. No tinsel of trumpets
and flags will ultimately seduce
women into the insanity Of reckless
ly destroying life, or gild the wilfu]
taking of life with any other name
than that Of murder, whether it be
the slaughter Of the million or Of one