To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
WORDSWORTH.
Towards a higher conception of their duties, women are steadily advancing. It often happens that the history of words will give a hint of the progress of civilisation. Such a story is told by the use of lady and woman. Not many decades ago the use of the word woman in referring to respectable members of the sex was interpreted as a lack of courtesy. To-day, women prefer to be called women.
III. Women should be given the full right to enter any profession or business which they may desire. As John Stuart Mill says:
"The proper sphere for any human being is the highest sphere that being is capable of attaining; and this cannot be ascertained without complete liberty of choice."
"We are, as always, in a period of transition," remarks Mr. Björkman,[[426]] "the old forms are falling away from us on every side. Concerning the new ones we are still uncertain and divided. Whether woman shall vote or not, is not the main issue. She will do so sooner or later if it suits her. No, the imperative question confronting us is this: What are we to do that her life once more may be full and useful as it used to be? That question cannot be answered by anybody but herself. Furthermore, it can only be answered on the basis of actual experience. And urged onward by her never-failing power of intuition, woman has for once taken to experimenting. She has, if you please, become temporarily catabolic. But it means merely that she is seeking for new means to fulfil her nature, not for ways of violating it. And the best thing—nay, the only thing—man can do to help her is to stand aside and keep his faith, both in her and in life. Whether it be the franchise, or the running of railroads, or public offices, that her eager hands and still more eager soul should happen to reach out for, he must give her free way. All she wants is to find herself, and for this purpose she must try everything that once was foreign to her being: the trial over, she will instinctively and unfailingly pick out the right new things to do, and will do them."
The opening up of professions and industries to woman has been of incalculable benefit to her. Of old the unmarried woman could do little except sit by the fire and spin or make clothing for the South Sea Islanders. Her limited activities caused a corresponding influence on her character. People who have nothing to do will naturally find an outlet for their superfluous energy in gossip and all the petty things of life; if isolated from a share in what the world is doing, they will no less naturally develop eccentricities of character and will grow old prematurely. To-day, by being allowed a part in civic and national movements, women can "get out of themselves"—a powerful therapeutic agent. Mrs. Ella Young, a woman of sixty, was last year made Superintendent of the great Public School System of Chicago. Fräulein Anna Heinrichsdorff is the first woman in Germany to get an engineer's diploma, very recently bestowed upon her; an "excellent" mark was given Fräulein Heinrichsdorff in every part of her examination by the Berlin Polytechnic Institute. Miss Jean Gordon, the only factory inspector in Louisiana, is at present waging a strong fight against the attempt to exempt "first-class" theatres from the child-labour law. Mrs. Nellie Upham, of Colorado, is President and General Manager of the Gold Divide Mining, Milling, and Tunnel Company of Colorado and directs 300 workmen. These are a few examples out of some thousands of what woman is doing.[[427]] And yet there are men who do not believe she should do anything but wash dishes and scrub.
Much more serious is the glaring discrepancy in the wages paid to men and to women. For doing precisely the same work as a man and often doing it better, woman receives a much lower wage. The reasons are several and specious. We are told that men have families to support, that women do not have such expensive tastes as men, that they are incapable of doing as much as men, that by granting them equal wages one of the inducements to marry is removed. These arguments are generally used with the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support, women by the hundreds support brothers and sisters and weak parents. That they are incapable of doing as much sounds unconvincing to one who has seen the work of sweat-shops. The argument that men have more expensive tastes to satisfy is too feeble to deserve attention. Finally, when men argue that women should be forced to marry by giving them smaller wages, they are simply reverting to the time-honoured idea that the goal of every women's ambition should be fixed as matrimony. If the low wages of women produced no further consequence, one might dismiss the matter as not of essential importance; but inadequate pay has been found too frequently to be a direct cause of prostitution. No girl can well keep body and soul together on four dollars a week and some business managers have been known to inform their women employees with frankness that a "gentleman friend" is a necessary adjunct to a limited income.