The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-08-12
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
Put the Women to Work..
BY~DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman wFttsr

Tut the NOtucH 10 WORK..
Now that Uncle Sam has reached
out strong hand. clutched the mas
culine loafers by the slack of their
garments and dragged them up to the
work bench and is requiring every
nan to show that he is engaged in
some useful labor, let us hope that. he
will deal in the same manner with
parasitic women. az
What is sauce for the gander is
sauce for the goose. The idle. lazy
worthless woman is just as much,h
menace to the country as the lazy, idle
worthless man is. There is no more
excuse for a woman eating the bread
she has not earned, than there is for
man. and if this war can take the
poor, spineless, purposeless, ambition
of both sexes and turn them into en-
ergetic, efficient. competent men and
women. 1t will have done something.
at least, to atone for its horrors.
So far as women are concerned. no
one will deny that their chief vice, as
sex, is laziness. They adore soft
ness. They like bodily ease. 1t re-
quires heroic effort in a woman to in
spire her to make the slightest effort,
even to think. She is too supine to
get up and fight. That is why women
have been down trodden thru the ages
1t was easier to bear political. social
and domestic wrongs than 1t was to
rebel against them.
All of woman's much heralded pa
thence and endurance is nothing but
laziness, physical and moral.
! Out of this laziness grew the tradi-
ton that it was a misfortune for a
woman to have to do any kind of
labor, and women cherished this tradi-
ton so assiduously, and propagated 1t
so artfully, that at last they convinced
4 man that it was a reflection on him IL
he did not maintain his women kind
in idle worthlessness.
And to this day this theory still pre-
walls. The woman who has to do her
own housework looks upon herself as
a poor, prosecuted martyr. and her
husband feels ashamed of himself that
he can't provide her with a maid, the
why any healthy, intelligent, able
bodied woman isn't just as much call
ed upon to put her shoulder to tbs
wheel of the family chariot and boost
, it along, as the husband is, nobody
can say. =
Also. everybody pities and "pool
things" the woman who goes out into
} the world to work for her own living
: no matter how competent she may be
5 nor how much money she can earn
If she has a husband, he feels dis
} graccd by it. If she is unmarried, hcl
father and brothers adopt an apollo
|
Z tributing it to some vagary of th'
girls peculiar disposition that mad
her freal1ish and unlike a real, femi
min woman.
: And when women are forced b.
recessity to work, they nearly Away
do 1t der protest, and do as littl.
of 1t as they can. That is why the,
5 so seldom succeed in their undertak
ings. and why woman's work is 8
< badly paid. They are too lazy Il
even learn how to perform their job
8, properly, arl to do the extra worl
S that Is the bi dye over which on
> passes from mediocrity to the plac
S of responsibility and the big pa,
{ envelope.
This is true in every DEPARTMENT O
{ women's work. Women cook for fort
( years and never learn how to max
= bread that isn't a menace, to peace an
s happiness, or boil n potato that ism
:. an ircentive to murder. Women sey
: from the cradle to the grave withou
d ever finding out how to put on but
I ton or a hook So it won't come of
z offices and stores have a continua
t procession. of young women passin
:, thru who have plenty of brains I
: make themselves heads of depart
ments, private secretaries, or cracker
jack bookkeepers, but who never &c
y anywhere because they are too lazy
|, take the trouble to learn their trade.
4 III