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Page 37
A few months after this the school children of the prosperous city of
Rochester, N.Y., where Miss Anthony had been a leading citizen for many
years, were asked to write school compositions in which they named the
person they would most wish to be like. Over three thousand girls, in
the elementary grades, wrote these papers, but not one chose Miss
Anthony. This first generation of women reformers could not establish
the type of womanhood for the modern world; they had not the leisure,
nor the freedom, nor could they see all that lay in the future. But all
the more, because their lives were hard, should they be held in grateful
remembrance.
To the second generation of leaders belong women like Alice Freeman
Palmer, Mary Sheldon Barnes and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They came on
the scene when the first campaign had been won; they could command their
own bodies and property; college doors were swinging open where they
could secure the training that should fit them for the struggle to win
educational, industrial, social and political opportunity for all their
sisters. They were still looked upon as blue-stockings and queer; they
had often to serve as the butt of ridicule; but they had education,
income, a certain degree of leisure, and a social recognition which, if
grudging in some quarters, was all the more generous in others.
With the rapid development of higher education, these women found
themselves associated with large groups of independent women who could
create a society of their own in advanced centers of population. There
was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they
could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live.
Their problems were, however, even more complex than those which
confronted their predecessors. What line of education should women
pursue? What lines of work could they best undertake? How could they
combine an independent professional or industrial career with the life
of a home and the responsibilities of a mother? How far must older
social restraints be modified in the interest of intellectual and
industrial freedom? It was a time for constructive statesmanship, rather
than for revolution; and each woman knew she was under criticism, and
that her success or failure was vastly more than her own personal
concern. In her all free women were being judged.
To the third generation belongs the host of women who are to-day filling
our college halls, managing the women's clubs, teaching the state
schools, and competing with men in every industrial calling. Theirs is
the task of completing woman's social and political emancipation, and of
educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that
this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and
the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate
adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of
the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be
excessive.
What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity
described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which
government gives? Are they able to form political judgments? Have they
knowledge of the working of political machinery; or, lacking it, are
they prepared to obtain it? Are they able to make a wise selection of
people to represent them in political action? Have they need of the
training which participation in political life gives? Have they the
preliminary preparation to take up that training to advantage, and can
they undertake these duties without serious loss of qualities desirable
in women?
Women certainly have need of protection; each has a life dear to her,
and honor which is dearer to her than life. In this respect she has a
greater need than men. Most women, also, have property of some kind, and
we are increasingly recognizing their right to control this for
themselves; hence they need property protection the same as men. We do
not need to think of Mrs. Sage, Mrs. Harriman, Miss Gould or Mrs.
Green, in this connection, for in every community we now have many women
who are immediately responsible for large property interests which new
legislation might affect most seriously.
In matters of institutional regulation by government, women are at least
as vitally interested as men. In all that touches the family, marriage,
or divorce, women have more at stake than men; and there are as many
wives as husbands involved. The schools are also nearer to women than to
men; more girls than boys attend them; more women are teachers; and more
women than men are interested parents of school children. The church is
also more vital to women to-day than to men. On the side of industries,
it is clear that our 8,000,000 independent wage-earning women have a
desperate stake in all governmental action touching the regulation of
working conditions. In whatever concerns general sanitation, safe water,
and pure foods, all are equally interested who must breathe and eat to
live. Surely the need of women for political protection is quite as
great as that of men.
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