New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-04-24
Explaining America
An English Visitor Detects the SchoomarnT Imposing Her
individuality Upon the Mind of the Nation
By J. O. P. Bland
From, an article in The National Review

There was time, many years ago,
when, as a casual student of manners
and customs in the United States,
WAS content to find in the spf ere of
economics an explanation for most of
the facts and phenomena peculiar to
the social and political conditions of
Gods own country" In particular it
seemed to me that the unchallenged
supremacy of woman, her privileged
position in the social scheme and the
malleable meekness q speak collective
ly) displayed by mere man in her au-
gust presence must be a direct result
and legacy of the days in which, rara
nantes in gurgite vasto, women domi-
mated their environment simply be-
cause of their limited numbers and
mans keen competition for their favor.
But acceptance of this solution of
the matter involves the inference that
as the country has rapidly filled up
and something nearer to equality has
been attained in the respective mum
bers of the sexes one might expect to
observe some indication of a swing of
the pendulum; we might expect, shall
we say, a less insistent feminism in
the social, political and humanitarian
activities so conspicuously manifested
in America; a gradual modification OF
the atmosphere of vague sentimentality
in which logic can hardly breathe.
The Guiding Force
But no one who has recently visited
and studied the cities of men in the
States, or who has followed, even from
afar. the makngs of the prohibition
law and other recent manifestation of
moral uplift, is likely to deny that the
hand that rocks the cradle rocks every
thing else in sight. 1t certainly makes
itself felt more masterfully to-day
than ever before as a guiding force in
all the social activities of the nation
and in the counsels of its lawgivers
and alleged rulers.
The female of the species is not only
much more lovely than the male, but
one is IuOIc wager anu dlcl I, siic1 idH Se
of vision and activities more COM
handing: there is more speculation in
her eye, swifter resolution in her
voice; her pride of place, far from be-
ing challenged, has been by common
consent exalted; and it would seem
that, having now made up her mind to
claim and exercise the vote, the world,
within the limits Of her ambition, is
hers to rule. To seek an explanation
of this supremacy in the realm of eco
Monies is no longer possible; we must
look elsewhere.
Last year / had occasion to revisit
the United States and to observe some
of the latest changes brought about by
the country's stupendous growth, and
also by the reactions of the great war.
From San Francisco to New York, as
an earnest. student of sociology, I
walked and talked with all sorts and
conditions of men, saw every kind of
public entertainment and read newspa-
pers of every creed and color.
Few will deny, l think, that for So
cial purposes intellectual and artistic
culture is an almost exclusive feminine
monopoly in the United States, or that
the peculiar manifestations Of vague
idealism and uplift which We have
come to associate with American polit-