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By CLARA BEWICK COLBY, 522 6TJ ST. N.W. Washington, D.C NO 1 500 words
"FEMINISM". --------------------
"Feninism" is the ancient bug-a-boo of "Woman's Rights" under a foreign name which seems to invest it with new terrors and unknown possibilities of mischief. What people see in it depends on their sision. A man at a ball siad to his wife, "Who is that feller over there? Homeliest feller I ever saw." The wife whispered, "Hush dear, that is a mirror". People who see Feminism a menace to soceity simply catch the reflection of their own fears and fancies. Their "safe" woman is the "perfect lady" whom Havelock Ellis says is "a cross between an angel and an idiot". There is a holy sanctity about woman as a non-voter which they fear to dispel. They would fain approprate for women the epitaph inscribed on a tombstone at Wayland, Massachusetts,
"Here lies --- who never voted. Of such is the kingdom".
A recent cartoon showed a huge serpent marked "Feminist Movement" crushing in its coils the church and the homes in its path. This old scarecrow has appeared at every step woman has taken since Sydney Smith portrayed her as desrting her baby for a quadratic equation.
Feminism is not to be judged by individual utterances. People of all parties, beliefs, and theories are standing on its one essential plank "Freedom for Women". What women will do with freedom when achieved is her own affair. Freedom does not mean absolute liberty; no human being in social relations can have that. It does not mean equality; that is beyond law. But it means equal rights, equal opportunities, an equal voice in regulation social conditions. Is there anything terrifying in this? Why should the mother of the race be distrusted and feared? In the supremacy of the matriatchate she did not abuse her power. She bore and reared her children and never shirked her task. In all ages she has done her required part. Now that industrial conditions have changed her --- page torn --- will she with
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duties will she, with her larger education and outlook, for the first time fail humanity?.
Feminism seeks to establish a partnership between the sexes in home now too much neglected by men and the State now too much neglected by women, thus making them mutually comrades and helpers. With freedom there will be a natural division of duties which will take the place of the artificial barriers set up by men. The nature of woman, her love for home and mate, and child, are not dependent for their existence upon legislative enactment. They came to us from the cave women, and from the original impulse which differentiated itself as male and female, to be the equal counterpart of each other When woman is free she will find out her divine purpose for herself. Freedom will bring the woman seen by Shelley in his vision: -
"Frank, beautiful , and kind, Speaking the wisdom once she could not know; Looking emotions once she dared not feel; And changed to all that once she dared not be: But-being now- made earth a heaven."
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NO 7 About 700 word By Clara Bewick Colby
THE FEMINIST PROGRAMME.
"Feminism" in Europe is equivalent to the "Woman Movement". In Ame rica it is sometimes regarded as synonymous with "Woman Suffrage", and sometimes as being wholly apart from it. A prominent woman expressed herself recently as favoring Woman Suffrage but abhorring Feminism. It is therefore necessary to understand what Feminism aignifies to the person using the term. In general it means the proposal to abolish privileges and restrictions based on sex. It means that woman shall have the same control over her person and property that man has over his; equal opportunities for education and vocation; and equal share in regulating human conditions. When Frances Willard was asked to send a message to the first Woman's Club in India, she said, "Tell them the world was made for woman too". This is the message of Feminism, that since women make half the home, the nation, and the world, all these belong to women too.
Feminism, even in its radical demand of th ballot for women, is found in every country. Women of twenty-two nations sat in the lost Congress of the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, and from lands where there had been no propaganda, and from some where even men have no vote came word of women moving for freedom. Individua lization proceeds for men along the lines of humunisn never delayed by sex antagionism, for women have never opposed men's advancement, either in their own personal relations to them or collectively; They have helped men all the way. Now that in the course of social evolution wom en are becoming indicidualized they have first to overcome the antagonism of men and get them to think of women as human beings, and to remove the sex barriers which they have built. Women have also to over come their age-long habit of seeing themselves only in their relations to mankind, forgetting that whatever develops them as human beings fits them to fill all relations more perfectly. This educational
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Feminism 2 effort in both
