The Washington times., 1914-06-16
THE WOMEN'S PROGRESS.

It Is just about twenty years since
the woman's club movement began
TO command attention, and people
lifted their brows inquiring whittier
the new activities of woman would
lead her. Within, the intervening
years there has been striking evo-
luton of the movement, which Is
still going on; but its tendencies
and directions are easily discernible.
The earliest manifestations of the
awakening desire of women for an
active part in new realms took the
forms of search for culture. Clubs
were literary. Every town had its
woman's club, its culture club, its
travel club, its Shakespeare circle,
its art league, and its federation in
which they were all brought togeth-
er. They did a deal of good, though
more, perhaps, by way of training
the women in the business of work
ing together than in the improve
ment of literary tastes and stand
ards. 1t was not long before culture
yielded first interest to cookery, art
to artisanship; the tenuities of travel
through the pages of the encyclo-
pedias gave way to the very prac-
teal facts of tramping around the
home town and seeing what might
be done to better it. Painting china
was succeeded by whitewashing
picket fences; the meter of Tenny-
son proved less permanently fasci-
mating than the gas meter. In short,
the women's clubs got very shortly
into practical, twentieth-ceutury af-
fairs.
They have been getting deeper in
ever since. There has been all too
little realization of the debt that
the country owes to organized wom-
ankind for promotion of sanitation,
enforcement of food and drug laws,
betterment of schools, better babies,
and a thousand exceedingly practical
things. If the women have not yet
been generally given the right of
vote, they have gone far toward
making up for it by generous en-
ployment of the right of petition.
Every legislator, State or National,
will give graphic testimony to the
activities of the woman's movement
along this line.
The convention of the General
Federation in Chicago the last few
days has marked a longer. progress
sion In these practical and useful
works than any previous gathering.
The women are demanding better vital
statistics, because they have learned
that the facts must be known before
effective measures for improvement
can be formulated. They are plan
ming education along the line of
home economics for those homes
that most need and least know the
practical possibilities of this work.
They want better foods, better
markets, better facilities for bring
ing consumer and producer togeth-
er. They are taking united steps to
protect the young-and others not
SO young-against contaminating lit
erature and dangerous social GUS
toms.
Finally, this convention of the
General Federation has formally de-
clared, for the first time, in favor
of the political equality of men and
women. Who, looking back over the
truly marvellous advance that women
have achieved in two decades, can
refuse to recognize that they are
marching straight ahead to that
goal? No other great community
ever grew so fast into the capacity
to use political power, or into the
realization that that power was
needed, as has this vast community
of American womanhood. To deny
the obvious end of this progression
would be as impossible as to side
track the spheres in their courses.