But that was only one point.
What did progress mean if women deliberately dropped from a higher plane to a lower? What had their ancestors worked for, possibly died for? It was their manifest duty to their class, to their family, to go up not down.
Moreover, when women had men to support them and insisted upon forcing their way into the business world, they made men ridiculous and undermined society. It was dangerous, damned dangerous. If he had his way not a woman in any class, outside of nursing and domestic service, should work. He'd tax every male in the land, according to his income or wage, to say nothing of the rich women, and keep every last one of the unportioned in idleness rather than risk the downfall of male supremacy in the world.
He hated every form of publicity for the women of his class. If he had his way their names, much less photographs, should never appear in the public press. Society should be sacrosanct. Its traditions should be handed on, not lowered…. Charity boards and settlement work, perhaps, but no further exposure to the vulgar gaze … he was glad she had never gone in for the last.
Civilization would be meaningless without that small class at the top that proved what Earth could accomplish in the way of breeding, the refinements of life, the beauty of distinction, in making an art of leisure, of pleasure—quite as much an art as writing books or painting pictures.
If the men in the younger nations had to work, at least they were able to prove to the older that the exquisite creatures they bred and protected were second to none on this planet, at least.
If women had genius that was another question. Let them give it to the world, by all means. That was their personal gift to civilization…. He was not bigoted like some men, even young men, who thought it a disgrace for a lady publicly to transfer herself to the artistic plane and compete with men for laurels…. But when it came to stripping off the delicate badges that only the higher civilization could confer, and struggling tooth and nail with the mob for no reason whatever—it was disloyal, ungrateful and monstrous.
He was no snob. He thought himself better than no man. (Different, yes.) But in regard to women, the women of his class, the class of his father before him, and of his father's father, he had his ideals, his convictions.
That was all.