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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

combined to make the human being the mechanical addition to the plant, by confining him to the manufacture of certain parts only of the complete product; with the fur­ther result also of shortening the hours of labor, and, except under specially adverse circumstances, of increasing the amount of his wages.

The exhibits in the Woman’s Building show most conclusively that, at the present day, it is only in those countries where the masses have not yet attained a high plane of education, and where the general condition of the industrial classes is the most deplorable in point of wages, and consequently comfort attained, that the complete artisan is to be found of either sex. The main object of exhibiting the work of the complete artisan in this place is to show if there may yet remain a place where these trades can be carried on with profit and under conditions neither antagonistic to sound economic law nor injurious to human life. If antagonistic to present economic condi­tions it is childish to attempt their revival. Some of these trades, indeed most of them, may be of the class of luxuries for which there is but a limited demand, and wise women would desire to limit and diversify rather than to increase the number in such avocation. If, however, this class of display is in the ideal arts where machinery and steam may never become a rival, it is safe to compete in the open market. It then becomes the highest purpose and noblest individuality of expression, combined with the capture of opportunity which wins a livelihood, fame or fortune.

While striving for a loftier conception of the dignity of labor, which may be con­sidered one of the ideal uses of the Woman’s Building, it would fail utterly of its purpose if it did not rouse women to that knowledge of conditions which should make them clasp hands with the many toilers pleading for shorter hours and that legislation which will insure protection for life and limb and secure sound sanitary conditions.

We hear much of a demand for a higher education for women nowadays. There is not in all this building one material thing which indicates any advance along any lines where the higher education of women in its scholastic sense touches or has pro­duced it, unless it may be through inference in the organization room, or where the application of scientific knowledge in the care of the sick or the maimed has made the art of nursing a profession.

There is small use of the higher education if its sole use is to enable women to devote themselves to the learned or scientific professions, leaving out its noblest pur­pose the application of the science of government and economics to the correction of the miseries of mankind. The mightiest lever in society, next to the relentless giant necessity, is sympathy, and for that noblest, most ennobling attribute of the human race, this building stands today, and through this subtle influence its permanent suc­cessor will for the future accomplish its mission, as one more step along the highway of human progress.

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