By M. Carey Thomas
Unheralded, with no blare of trumpets, reluctantly emerging into the light, are millions of women wage-earners thronging every trade and profession, multiplying themselves beyond all calculation from census to census in every country of the civilized world. Even in the United States where fewer women are at work than in any other country about five millions of women, or about one-fifth of all women of working age, are supporting themselves outside the home. It is because this industrial revolution has taken place in our own lifetime that we do not as yet realize it. Women of my own age, however, need only refer to their own experience. I can remember when no women at all were employed in business offices, when the business streets of New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore were practically deserted by women. Now all the great office buildings are like rabbit hutches swarming with women typewriters, women bookkeepers, women secretaries, and business women of every sort, kind and description. Already everyone who studies the subject is compelled to recognize that whether we wish it or not the economic independence of women is taking place before our eyes. Men of the poorer classes have long been unable to care for their families without the assistance of women, and men of the classes which formerly supported their wives and daughters in comfort are now unable to do so and are becoming increasingly unwilling to marry and assume responsibility which they cannot meet....
Woman’s Awakening
By Josephine Conger
(Editor “Home Life Magazine.” Formerly editor and publisher “The Progressive Woman.”)
She wrought, and the world wore on its back the cloth her nimble fingers wove.
And as she wrought her mind lay blank beneath the thick-coiled tresses of her hair,
For man had relegated to her that one task of weaving.
And while her mind lay blank, the rulers of the earth reached forth, and (clad in cloth she wove)