Do not mistake me: No woman should spend all of her time at home. Public needs and social duties must be attended to. From the latter she brings refreshment and new ideas to the home, and by giving a proper share of her energies to the former she can do her part toward helping the community in which she lives to be constantly improving itself, and so to become an ideal place in which to develop worthy citizens. With these interests she can be a real influence for good, and without them she must fall short of ideal motherhood. We must not forget that a woman can select her own time for her social duties, and they can be set aside at any time that more important matters need her attention in the home, but that she could not select her own time for political duties.
Let us remember, then, as Miss Lucy Price says, that after all, women in big business are not the successes, men can do that work as well and better than they. It is the women in the home, outnumbering all others fifteen to one (and fourteen of these do not keep a servant), who are really the great and typical women of the world.
XVI
SUFFRAGE AND THE SEX PROBLEM
MRS. WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM
Mrs. William Lowell Putnam; a director of the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality; Chairman, Department of Public Health of Women's Municipal League of Boston, which has the following committees: Household Nursing, Prenatal and Obstetrical Care, Sanitation and Safety of Public Buildings and Conveyances, Hygiene of Occupations, Abatement of Noise, Social Hygiene and Quackery; a member of the National Child Welfare Exhibit Committee, and of the Massachusetts Committee on Unemployment of the American Section of the International Association; Chairman, Executive Committee of Massachusetts Milk Consumers' Association; Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Boston of the Special Aid Society for American Preparedness.
J. A. H.