THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

529

require submission and dependence, economic virtues are wanting. What, then, may be said of the moral growth resulting from a lifelong and complete dependence of one- half of the civilized world upon the other half—and the case aggravated through count­less generations of inheritance? For it is not alone that the economic pressure upon woman compels submission, it is that because of her inheritance of class dependence she can not rightly judge or strongly act independently of others. Her moral nature is stunted by her environment—her slavery.

I understand how inconsistent is this statement compared with the immoderate estimate of moral superiority granted to women within the last century or so; but her claim does not bear analysis, nor does it appear that in general cases women are cred­ited with superior moral sense. She is superior only in those virtues enforced upon her by her position—who is not?

Is the moral sense strong when almost every woman bears upon her hips, even while admitting the injury to her health, a dangerous weight of skirts, too often lying inches deep on floors and pavements, that sweep up and carry into homes and nurseries germs of stealthy pestilence?

Is the moral sense strong that leads women to spend millions of dollars annually in laces, jewels and idle ornaments, in cities where one-fourth of the population are paupers—where thousands of our own sex annually sell their souls for the necessaries of life; where multitudes of children are brought to an untimely grave from hunger and cold? Says Ruskin: “ So 'long as there is nakedness and cold in the land around you, so long will there be no question but that splendor of dress will be a crime.”

Is the moral sense strong when ninety-nine women out of a hundred scorn true standards of beauty in the human form and voluntarily so deform and weaken their own bodies as to increase the rate of infant mortality and otherwise lower health standards as to threaten the physical degeneracy of the race through this gigantic folly alone?

Is the moral sense strong when women, to whom society has a right to look for examples in matters of propriety, enter public gatherings so immodestly clad as to compel good men to turn their gaze away, and unprincipled ones to believe that wom­anly virtue exists but in name? And this, too, in defiance of a law of the land that requires, as an essential to modesty, that the body be covered? Such intelligent, high- minded women too often encouraging their daughters to attract the opposite sex by dis­plays of personal beauty and physical charms, rather than intellectuality and moral worth.

Can it be claimed that the moral sense is strong when women condemn the same sin a thousand-fold more severely in woman than in man; and for the sake of wealth or position, give an innocent daughter to a man of notoriously unclean life. Aye, ’tis claimed that the greatest stumbling-block men find to leading purer lives, is that women do not care.

If the moral sense of mothers is what it is painted, do you think she would ignore the sacred duty of teaching her sons that to take a wife who is to come to him in the beauty of purity, when he has shameful secrets to hide, is perfidy in the last degree? That to dishonor the poorest, giddiest, weakest girl will bring disgrace upon his kin­dred, his manhood, his unborn sons and daughters?

It is the economic pressure upon woman that has made her what she is. And it is by seeing herself apart from the ideal virtues ascribed to her, that she may ever hope to realize the glorious possibilities now opening to her, and properly estimate her value as a source of strength to others through the power and influence of a noble life. ,

The woman who enters the married relation for any pecuniary consideration what* ever, is either making a wicked sacrifice of herself or is lacking in moral sense or courage. And but for the economic pressure brought to bear upon her, would be regarded as little less fortunate than the woman who enters into a similar relation from similar motives without the sanction of the law. And the woman who marries to live in

( 34 )