The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-03-22

ment is. nothing but struggle that
women are making to be recognized as
just plain, ordinary human being
Do you hear that sound of things
rending, crashing, smashing?
Be not alarmed, oh, timid soul. 1t
is not the final cataclysm of the end of
the world, as some suppose. 1t is
merely the noise that women are max
ing in their effort to become human
beings.
Women have been many things dur
ing the history of the world. They
have been beasts of burden and toys.
They have been slaves and queens.
They have been martyrs and saints.
They have been devils and pin feather
ed angels. But they have never once
been just plain, ordinary human be-
ings, with an ordinary human beings
rights and privileges and perquiSites.
And that's what women desire more
than anything else on earth. That's
what they aspire to-that's what they
are determined to have-that,s what
they are fighting for. Hence this
rumpuS.
Woman doesn't want to be bound
down by shackles any longer. She's
weary of being nothing but a dressed
up doll. She doesn't want to perch
up on a pedestal. Neither does she de-
sire to wear halo about her head or
to sprout wings. She just wants to jog
along in the middle of the road of
life, side by side with man, neither his
inferior nor his superior, suffering and
enjoying, working and playing as he
does-just being a human being such
as he is
That's all that this much discussed
feminist movement means when you
get down to the real essence of it It's
just the struggle that women are MAX
ing for acknowledgement. It's tragic
when you look at it in one way. It's
grotesquely humorous when you view
it from another angle, for all that the
most advanced woman asks for her sex
is what is accorded the male sex as
it's alienable birthright.
A boy is born a human being, but
his sister has to achieve this blessing
with tears and blood, if she is ever
lucky enough to win it at all. The
mere accident of sex sets her apart in
pariah class, where she has no
rights as a human being, and only
such privileges as she can gain by
finding favor in mans eyes.
The most curious and pathetic thing
about the whole feminist revolution;
that fills SO many worthy people with
terror and despair, is that women are
asking for nothing that men have not
always had, and that they are repre-
hended for doing exactly the same
things for which men have been cam
noniZed for doing. Between George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson,
fighting against taxation without rep
resentation, and Susan B. Anthony and
Lucretia Mott, there is no difference
in principle or patriotism 1t is merely
the difference of sex that gave one the
right, in public opinion, to gloriously
resist tyranny, and made the other
the laughing stock of cheap wits be-
cause she presumed to suppose that a
woman was a human being and had
rights.
Let US consider some of these an
archistic doctrines of the new woman
party which are sending the cold shfv
ers up and down so many spines. If
you do, you will be surprised at two
things First, that women ask just
plain, common human rights. and sec
ondly, that anybody has the arrogance
to dispute with them their right to
these rights. For, be it observed, that
no woman, in asserting her heirship to
all the ages, has ever once even ex-
pressed the desire to curtail her
brothers inheritance She only wishes
to share his liberties with him.
The first thing that women asked in
their efforts to become human beings
was right to an education 1t SEEM
ed to a woman that the good Lord
must have known what He was about
when He endowed female with in