THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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The enthusiasts “pressed down, shaken together and running over” with things seen and heard from their seventh heaven, predict another end. “We are living in the dawn of the millennium,” they say. “ What need of further conquest.” “Behoki the dawn of a magnificent future,” cries the suffragist; “save Kansas, and we, the women live to rule, henceforth and forever.” ^

With some hesitation, a representative of the wage-earning women of the day ventures to define a pathway through the chaos resultant from the general upheaval that is everywhere bringing women up to light and civilization, thankful, bewildered, dizzy or inflated with pride as the case may be, and, but for a growing conviction that a proper and rational settling of the condition of affairs would be a long and tedious process without laborers in the field, both tongue and pen would have maintained silence.

The new era is at hand, but not that of the perfection that bringeth into the king­dom, nor that, it is hoped, that means the reversal of the positions of men and women, nor that which may herald destruction or defeat. But an era, God grant, of equal rights, woman with woman, the home with the world, domestic tranquillity with the public wel­fare, God with the minds he has created. The day has gone by for the expression of that sentiment which surrounds the business woman with the halo of a glorified inde­pendence, and places her on a pedestal in the market-place, the envy and admiration of the stay-at-homes, a spectacle to beget jealousy, covetousness, heavy-heartedness and despair in her purseless sisters, and in the end the lever, perhaps, that overturns some happy home. The day has gone by for the expression of that sentiment that ignores the practical side of the life of wife and mother, and pleads only for that Divine calling, which, with its ceaseless panorama of pots and pans, cradles and tubs, butch­ers, bakers and mantua-makers, supposably heralds an estate but little lower than the angels.

The new era finds women divided into two great classes, wage-earners and home­makers. Upon the proper adjustment of these depends future serenity. The limit of tension is now at hand. Relations have been strained to the utmost. Surface indica­tions prove the wage-earning class the stronger. The flaunted dollar is proving the magnet to draw the wife from the husband, the mother from her children, and fair young girls from the safe shelter of the home. Nay, more. The signs of the times prove that husbands, fathers, sons and brothers are not averse. The husband makes room for the desk of his wife, the father finds place for his daughter’s typewriter, brothers skirmish for positions for their sisters, the small boy greedily fingers the pennies that mother has earned, and the home goes to destruction. What need of detail? Thousands of roomers in the large cities, cramped housekeeping in apart­ment flats, bear silent testimony. The dusty parlor, the cluttered kitchen, the half made beds, the hurried meals are familiar objects today in the homes where the women have gone over to the hustling world, while for her pains, the thrifty stay-at- home, who has planned and worked and ordered affairs in true gospel fashion, must smother a sigh as within her own household she hears the commendation bestowed on the money-making women on the other side of the wall, and her home-loving daughter creeps to her room disheartened and discouraged at the thinly veiled hint of father or brother—go thou and do likewise.

The unappreciated home-makers of today, and, oh men and brothers, how many there are! watch the career of the wage-earning woman with hungry eyes. The wage­earning woman sighs for the comforts of home, but views home-life with distrust. Both are discontented, and in that discontent lies the leaven that will work future destruction. This discontent, so universal and so widely recognized as the one evil that threatens the success of the women of the future, owes its strength to the sharply defined line that exists between the earner and the home-maker. Not the dividing line of caste, as formerly. Everywhere the working woman is compelling the atten­tion and respect of the women of so-called leisure. She finds cordial recognition in the homes of wealth. She is an honored guest at public functions. Her opinion is