The West had its lewd women—as have our big cities today—but Roosevelt testified that the sense of honor and dignity of the average plainswoman was as high as that found in the centers of culture. In the cowboy balls, to which men and women flocked from the surrounding towns, the greatest decorum was observed, and those behaving unseemingly were banished and punished with typical cowboy celerity and vim.
In his later years Roosevelt wrote a vigorous paper on the parasite woman, appealing therein to American women to rear strong families for their country, and to train them to be prepared for military service if needed. A Michigan woman of the same brave pioneer stamp described above formed the conclusion that Roosevelt was writing without knowledge of the hardships many of her sex were forced to undergo, and wrote to him this letter:
“Dear Sir: When you were talking of ‘race suicide’ I was rearing a large family on almost no income. I often thought of writing to you of some of my hardships, and now when ‘preparedness’ may take some of my boys, I feel I must. I have eleven of my own and brought up three stepchildren, and yet, in the thirty years of my married life I have never had a new cloak or winter hat. I have sent seven children to school at one time. I had a family of ten for eighteen years, with no money to hire a washerwoman though bearing a child every two years. Nine—several through or nearly—of my children have got into high school and two into State Normal School, and one into the University of Michigan. I haven’t eaten a paid-meal in twenty years or paid for a night’s lodging in thirty. Not one of the five boys—the youngest is fifteen—uses tobacco or liquor. I have worn men’s discarded shoes much of the time. I have had little time for reading.
“I think I have served my country. My husband has been an invalid for six years—leaving me the care and much work on our little sandy farm. I have bothered you enough. To me race suicide has perhaps a different meaning when I think my boys may have to face the cannon.
Respectfully.
“MRS. ——”
Roosevelt’s reply to her was warmly sympathetic, but there was no withdrawing from the principles he had set forth. The following paragraphs from his reply illustrate that tender yet just attitude that Roosevelt took toward American women, including, of course, the women of his own household:
“Now, my dear Mrs. ——, you have described a career of service which makes me feel more like taking off my hat to you, and saluting you as a citizen deserving of the highest honor, than I would feel as regards any colonel of a crack regiment. But you seem to think, if I understand your letter aright, that ‘preparedness’ is in some way designed to make your boys food for cannon.
“Now, as a matter of fact, the surest way to prevent your boys from being food for cannon is to have them, and all the other young men of the country—my boys, for instance, and the boys of all other fathers and mothers throughout the country—so trained, so prepared, that it will not be safe for any foreign foe to attack us. Preparedness no more invites war than fire insurance invites a fire. I shall come back to this matter again in a moment. But I will speak to you first a word as to what you say about race suicide.
“I have never preached the imposition of an excessive maternity on any woman. I have always said that every man worth calling such will feel a peculiar sense of chivalric tenderness toward his wife, the mother of his children. He must be unselfish and considerate with her. But, exactly as he must do his duty, so she must do her duty. I have said that it is self-evident that unless the average woman, capable of having children, has four, the race will not go forward; for this is necessary in order to offset the women who for proper reasons do not marry, or who, from no fault of their own, have no children, or only one or two, or whose children die before they grow up. I do not want to see Americans forced to import our babies from abroad. I do not want to see the stock of people like yourself and like my family die out—and you do not either; and it will inevitably die out if the average man and the average woman are so selfish and so cold that they wish either no children, or just one or two children.
“We have had six children in this family. We wish we had more. Now the grandchildren are coming along; and I am sure you agree with me that no other success in life—not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else—comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed.
“Mrs. Roosevelt and I have four sons, and they are as dear to us as your sons are to you. If we now had war, these four boys would all go. We think it entirely right that they should go if their country needs them. But I do not think it fair that they should be sent to defend the boys who are too soft or too timid ‘to face the cannon,’ or the other boys who wish to stay at home to make money while somebody else protects them.”