Call the roll of the great and how many women’s names will be found there? Scarcely enough to enable you to call the company mixed.
No woman in her senses wishes to be merely the female of man. She aspires to be distinctly different—to exercise her varied powers in wholly different ways. Ex-President Roosevelt said: “Equality does not imply identity of function.” We do not care to put in telephones or to collect fares on a street-car.
Primitive man set forth from his cave to kill an animal or two, then repaired to a secluded nook in the jungle, with other primitive men, to discuss the beginnings of politics. Primitive woman in the cave not only dressed his game, but she cooked the animal for food, made clothing of its skin, necklaces and bracelets of its teeth, passementerie of its claws, and needles of its sharper bones. What wonder that she had no time for an afternoon tea?
The man of the twentieth century has progressed immeasurably beyond this, but his wife, industrially speaking, has not gone half so far. Is she not still in some cases a cave-dweller, while he roams the highways of the world?
If a woman mends men’s socks, should he not darn her lisle-thread hosiery, and run a line of machine stitching around the middle of the hem to prevent a disastrous run from a broken stitch? If she presses his ties, why should he not learn to iron her bits of fine lace?
Some one will say: “But he supports her. It is her duty.”
“Yes, dear friend, but similarly does he ‘support’ the servant who does the same duties. He also gives her seven dollars every Monday morning, or she leaves.” Are we to suppose that a wife is a woman who does general housework for board and clothes, with a few kind words thrown in?
A German lady, whom we well knew, worked all the morning attending to the comforts of her liege lord. In the dining room he was stretched out in an easy chair, while the queen of his heart brushed and repaired his clothes—yes, and blacked his boots! Doubtless for a single kiss, redolent of beer and sausages, she would have pressed his trousers. Kind words and the fragrant osculation had already saved him three dollars at his tailor’s.
By such gold-brick methods, dear friends, do men get good service cheap. Would that we could do the same! Here, and gladly, we admit masculine superiority.
Our short-sightedness, our weakness for kind words, our graceful acceptance of the entire responsibility for the home, have chained us to the earth, while our lords soar. After having worked steadily for some six thousand years to populate the earth passably, some of us may now be excused from that duty.