Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1914-10-15
Conducted ny
MISS MARJORIE DoRA6AN.
For the Nebraska Association OPP
posed TO Woman Suffrage.
Highest Social Service

There are two types OF women-the Gre
alive and the corrective. One reproduces
life. the other seeks to correct life after
other women have created II. The first
type of woman is absolutely essential TO
society, because all human progress is de-
pendent on the continuity OF life itself.
The second type, while useful, ia not es-
sentiaL Its contribution can be made as
well by men. 1t is a sexless contribution
and is rendered to society by either sex
with equal facility.
Practically all women who succeed in
public life belong in the corrective group.
They seek to mould and direct life, but
they seldom create 1t. To this group be
long most of the suffrage leaders-Miss
Jane Adams, Miss Anna Howard Shaw.
Miss Katherine r. Davis Miss Lillian d.
Wald, Miss Julia Lathrop and Mrs Car
RE Chapman Gait None is a mother.
Yet they are prolific in suggestions as to
how the human family should be regu-
lated. They typify the eternal spinster
spirit which has always sought to run
the human family, and regulate the moth
ers, yet has itself shirked maternity.
Children are handicap to the woman
who seeks temporal place and power. The
drag chain of maternity" as one Of the
feminists terms motherhood. is of course
irksome to women who wish to compete
with men in politics.
Nature seems to be eliminating the
highly educated women. To keep the edu-
Gated classes merely static. each woman
Of that class must bear at least three
children-two to replace the parents and
one to meet the vicissitudes attendant on
81 Iy.,k teth
rate among college women is not suffi-
cient to maintain the population static
Our educated women are falling to main
tain the state. The race of college wo-
men is dying out from generation to gen
GRAFTON. According to the best authori-
ties the population of the United states
is apparently increasing most rapidly
among that group which has the lowest
social worth. The largest families are
found among the immigrants. the low
paid workers and the detectives. The
continuance of such q condition must in
evitably mean the replacement OF the
more able by a less able stock. Such al
progress of reversed selection must mean,
for the nation. a constant decrease in the
social worth of each succeeding genera
ton"
Drafting all women for public service,
t. e., politics, will merely mean another
step in the wrong direction for the Ameri-
can woman. II the laurel wreath is held
up TO grlhood as q finer ornament than
the halo of the Madonna, the girls will
naturally reach for the wreath. Herein
lies the menace of the suffrage move
ment 1t is not enough for our educated
women to minister to lives born of
lower social group of women. They must
reproduce themselves If civilization is TO
advance. The highest social service is
efficient motherhood.
Miss Jane Adams was introduced to
us an Sunday last as "Chicago's greatest
citizen" Yet II every woman in Chicago
emulated Miss Adams, Chicago would
be dead city In fifty years. Miss Ida
M. Tarbell has been practical enough to
estimate woman's true service to So
ciety She says: "A few women in
every country have always and probably
always will find work and usefulness and
happiness in exceptional tasks. They are
sometimes women who are born with
what we call bachelors souls"-an in
teresting and sometimes even charming,
though always an incomplete possession.
There are rich lives for time to
work out and endless needs for them TO
meet But they are not the women upon
whom society depends; they are not the
ones who build the nation. The women
who count are those who Outnumber them
hundred to one-the women who are at
the great business of founding and filling
those natural social centers which we call
homes. Humanity will rise or fall as that
center is strong or weak. 1t is the
human core"
Women and War