The Alaska citizen. (Fairbanks, Alaska) 1910-1917, 1915-06-14
BY MIS-. Roy C. Hall

~ W D IVY ~ ''"''
No one who looks at the life
about us can fail to see the altera-
tions going on; the growth and in
tensity of the social consciousness
among us is a conspicuous feature
of modern life Never before have
people cared so much about the
people. The whole social body res
ponds with wave OF feeling over
some world calamity or world re
joicing, From its first expression
IN greater kindness and helpfulness
toward individuals to its last ex-
preston in movements toward inter
national justice and law the heart
Of the world is alive and stirring
today
Human progress lies in the per
fectinG OF the social organization and
it is here that the changes of our
day are most marked, and the
change in woman's position is most
jgnificant
Women have always been indis-
uensable TO society because they
produced the people of whom so.
ciety was made, but till compare
lively recent years they have had
4 most insignificant part in the
world of their sons. Their relation
TO society was a purely individual
one. Consider how in ages half the
human race was denied free eX-
preston, forced to confine it's pro
ductiYe human energies to the level
IF immediate personal bodily service
pairing Of food for individuals We
shall not understand what the news
papers glibly call the Woman Prob
EN- till We recognize the fact that
the whole social order for unnum-
bered generations conspired to han
dicap women. and our main struggle
today is against the long accumu-
lation of those handicaps due to a
false position. Women have always
.onged for common interests and
activity, for the opportunity to la
Dor together. and for other needs
.han those of the family relation
The fondness of women for the
church is based not alone upon re-
ligious feeling but on the human
desire for coordinate interests In
the church first came the oppor
tunity to work together When
gradually larger social service be
came possible TO them, women rose
everywhere to meet the need and
proved beyond a doubt their readi-
ness TO answer demands of other
than personal relations. The SAM
tary commission in the Civil war
was perhaps the first organized eff
fort on the part of women in our
country, and if We review the ac-
tVity of women in the half cen
turH which has elapsed since that
undertaking was so splendidly car
ried out we shall find their progress
toward a definite place in the social
structure steadily maintained Such
women as Susan b. Anthony, Eliza
beth Cady Stanton and their splen-
did sisterhood forced their way into
the freedom so long denied them,
not for themselves alone but for
others. How unsparingly have we
ridiculed the unattractive and I'M
feminine of these vanguard workers,
but how few have thought what man
ner of spirit it must take to leave
the easy paths of the old fashioned
so-called ''woman's sphere" and hew
cut new ones alone
In our day, thanks to these heroic
pioneers, the gates are open and
the activities of women are free
Of the case will allow Great wo-
men, many of them we have among
us, who embody the highest spirit
of the age, but there still remains
as the legacy of the years behind
the innumerable company of weak
and thoughtless ones whose aspira-
lions are rather those of affectionate
animals than of beings socially re-
sponsible
Spending the accommodating ener-
gleS OF the race in the narrow
sphere allowed her, woman has
out a curiously tangled mass
of expressions. She surrounded her
self with things useful and useless,
and monumental com
Portable and uncomfortable-and the
labor of her life was to wait upon
these things and keep them clean.
With room for fuller individual ex-
preston in wider economic activi-
ties her soul has risen above tides
and photograph holders and is learn
ing to love simplicity. But even
in the present day We have not
sufficiently emerged but that our
life and our association with each
other is most unsatisfactory We
call upon one another. and then
solemnly arise and return these calls.
We prepare much food and invite