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The congress of women held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U.S.A.,1893 : with portraits, biographies, and addresses, published by authority of the Board of Lady Managers / edited by Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle
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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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ing room, one of the first essentials of which is to employ the best help she can find, pay them what their services are worth, trust them, and never nag them. As to the children, it is a wise woman who knows when she is not fitted to raise her own children. On the other hand, if she is so fitted, that is her profession, and she may make its prac­tice remunerative by taking the children of some woman in other professions and for a consideration raising those children. In fact, no more changes will be required in the adjustment of the domestic relations to professional life than the same changes necessitated in the readjustment of economic conditions in other fields now so rapidly taking place. It resolves itself into a question of division of labor, and will naturally settle itself as it is being settled every day by the need that every woman finds of doing the best she can for each day. When women find that by education and training they are worth in some trade or profession twenty dollars to fifty dollars per week, they will not be willing to spend their lives as nurse girl at three dollars per w r eek and board, when for that sum or less or more they can engage the services of a special kindergarten teacher who will undoubtedly train their child more carefully than they can. This may seem a heresy to those who have believed from time immemorial that a mothers first duty was to her children, but I am sure that when we look about us and find how very badly most of mothers do raise their children, my statements may be taken into consideration at least, and I am sure a thoughtful examination of my proposition will demonstrate its correctness. I speak with knowledge and from experience when I say that women who have devoted themselves to the professions usually occupied by men have been women who are remarkable for the fidelity with which they have served their homes and their families, and on the other hand women of the clinging-vine type, who faint easily and are afraid of rats, are women who neither keep house well nor raise well-behaved children.

To sum it all up, the more intelligence any one person possesses the better all the work of their lives is accomplished, and by changing that intelligence into broader channels you do not change the nature of the person. Therefore, you men and women who are wise do not check the inspirations of any child or women for broader condi­tions of life because of any preconceived unfitness for those conditions which you approve. The more she knows and grows physically, mentally and morally, the richer will be her life and the lives of all who are near to her. And now for the last of the qualities of my woman who has come: She is not conceited. She thinks that other people have lived who are as great and good as she is. She does not agree with the correspondent of one of the morning papers who claimed that no ideal man could be found who was worthy of the ideal woman. She thinks supply and demand are about evenly balanced on both sides, and she does not feel at all lonesome. She believes in the survival of the Anglo-Saxon race, and she believes that however many stopping- places there may be that race is making for righteousness. She believes in men and women. She also believes in that land, on the hills of which walk brave women and brave men hand in hand.

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