THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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the higher activities of life, includes educated husbands, educated fathers, educated brothers, and above all, educated lovers. Where are these to come from? The high school of the country does not give evidence that the supply will meet the demand. Any woman who has self-respect, to say nothing of aesthetic taste, would intuitively refuse a partnership with one of whom she might, under many circumstances eas­ily imagined, be ashamed. A woman who is once ashamed of her lord and master’s static intellect has already committed conjugal suicide. In this respect the conditions were different when women were yet embryonic, for if women were coy, sweet tem­pered and pretty, admirable traits surely, the catalogue of requirements was adequate. That will not do any longer. The seriousness and earnestness and womanliness with which she has taken hold of life takes woman, once for all, from the playhouse, and puts her in the workshop.

With the educated woman on the outside, although her personal endeavor be rich with results, the home will sustain endless disadvantages; for it is altogether a plati­tude to say that upon the intellectual and moral character of the mother largely depends the welfare of the home, as well as on the state and society. The edu­cated woman in the school can only educate, cultivate what is already in the child’s mental make-up; even the vigor and conscience of a well equipped teacher cannot create a new make-up in the child. The home, then, as an institution, meeting the demands of an advancing civilization, must be the resultant of equally good types of constituent elements.

It is unquestionable that men do and are to hold the places of distinction. So let it be. They are naturally fitted for leadership in executive, legislative, judicial and commercial activities. They have the brain and the virile character which emi­nently qualifies them to direct the affairs and the thought of the world. But man as man is on the precise plane with woman as woman. Man as man is not what the future demands. Men who actively and consciously make special preparation for the per­formance of life’s duties are they only who can serve a struggling humanity. Only the men who are willing to absolutely devote themselves to the principles which underlie this complex civilization; only men who can’t meet the century in its chal­lenge not only for deep insight, but for the most outspoken convictions resulting from that insight—only these men will be qualified to take hold vigorously of the problems which are already crying for solution. Duties assumed, though faithfully and expeditiously performed by the women of the world, can never elevate the race as a race. There must be a full and rich manhood, as well as a complete womanhood, to constitute the home of the future.

The public school system is an organic part of this stupendous American specu­lation—the speculation of self-government. This speculation is not, however, of the same sort as the South Sea scheme, based on the “ vain imagination of the heart.” On the contrary, our speculation of the public school, of self-regulated life—one could not exist without the other—is based on the deepest needs and the broadest sympa­thies and the most exalted aspirations of the human soul. Such a speculation as this means a trial at living under the highest conditions yet furnished for man by man, If this speculation is to be more than a South Sea scheme, the foundation of the whole inclusive scheme of self-government must be made adequate to bear up the whole enormous structure which we are assisting to construct. It matters not what one’s religious, social or political views may be, every law-loving man agrees that the home is the basal unit of our institutions, and that the man best equipped for the per­formance of either public or private duties is the man directly from the home influ­ence. The faithful performance of these duties means more here and now than at any other place or time since the beginning of human history. To be a true citizen of a nineteenth century republic is to be the center of myriad responsibilities. From the individual extends ten thousand threads which touch at their ends the state, the school, the home, the church, society. Each of these is a part of the individual, and the individual is a part of each of them. Never before have there been such demands