THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

321

and aptitudes essential to a happy and successful domestic life. And are we prepared, therefore, to condemn our whole public school system of co-education, and to relegate our daughters back again to the Dames’ Schools of thebeginning of the century? No one could be found foolhardy enough to answer in the affirmative. Some other rem­edy than this must be found, and that remedy when found will not consist in revolu­tion, that is, overthrow, destruction, but in evolution, that is, adaptation.

We shall need to remind ourselves as well as the croakers that secondary educa­tion for girls dates back only to the middle of the century, and that the higher educa­tion of woman, as offered in any adequate form, can be measured by a quarter of a cent­ury. It is not strange that so potent a factor introduced into woman’s life should prove a disturbing element, and should require readjustment. The new thing always, for the time being, takes precedence of the old, if it does not supersede it. So wonder­ful was the new world opened up to women through books and education, the world of history and literature, science and art and philosophy, that the old world of domes­tic life seemed by comparison meager indeed. And if sharing the boy’s studies had brought such enlargement of life, might not sharing his occupations, or, at least, his life of public and organized activity, bring equal good? It was in the nature of things that the experiment must be tried. We are living in the transition period, and are interested observers of the experiment. What will be the outcome? The first result could not have been other than an over emphasis of importance put upon the public life in store or office or teacher’s chair (for these were all new), and an under empha­sis put upon the old life of home service. And it was well that it should be so. Domestic work had fallen under the ban of being an occupation adapted to the capac­ities of the uneducated and dependent classes. So that wife and daughters might with their own brains and hands plan and execute the work of the entire household, from cooking the food, through spinning, weaving and making the clothes, to caring for the children and nursing the sick, and yet this wife and these daughters before the law were supported by husband and father, and any money they might need for their own personal expenses was regarded as a gift, not as a wage earned. Moreover, as with all work done by uneducated and dependent classes, the value put upon it was low if it had to be obtained from strangers. Is it strange that when the public school had fitted a girl for earning an independent competence she should have gladly turned her back upon the often galling dependence of the home. And this is but one side of the movement; the other side is that the home being thus deprived of its accustomed workers, the household machinery creaks, bringing widespread discom­fort, and the world is awaking to the fact that housework as well as other work demands brains and skill and that these must be paid for in the home as well as in the shop and schoolroom.

Thus far the experiment has progressed. The world has begun to recognize the supreme importance of skilled work in the home, while on the other hand it has in efficient operation an instrumentality expressly adapted to insure that skilled work shall not be had there. Such is the dilemma. Readjustment must be made. What is the outlook for it? I turn, as I believe the world ere long will turn, for an efficient agent in such readjustment to the woman made by the higher education. She alone has reached the vantage-ground from which she is prepared to see domestic life in its true perspective in relation to all of life. She has learned from her sociological studies that the moral fiber which makes possible a free government must be devel­oped in the home; and from her scientific researches that moral and intellectual as well as muscular fiber are dependent upon pure air, cleanly surroundings, healthful food, adequate and appropriate clothing, regular habits, and a cheerful environment of comfort and hope, all of which it is largely the work of the house-mother and her assistants to furnish. Moreover, these college-bred women are prepared, by years of close logical thinking, to undertake the task of readjusting woman’s life to the life of society as a whole in the light of nineteenth-century needs and possibilities; because they are able to recognize society as an organism of which women are organic parts, ( 21 )