THE CELIBATE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 553 



know her only as a stenographer, a teacher or a journalist. Our last 

 census returns show how widespread this condition is, for except in 

 New England, there is no excess of men in the cities. But in the 

 countryside the excess of men is great, for they have been left behind 

 in the struggle towards larger intellectual and economic independence 

 whch has swept the young women into the towns. 



These women, possessing a fairly large intellectual and professional 

 life, often move in a pitifully narrow social circle. The home, as a 

 center for social activity, has been sadly squeezed in our emigration 

 from the country into the city. Friends and acquaintances come less 

 often than in the past to spend a few days with the family. Calls are 

 more formal and brief. Acquaintances less often drop in for a meal; 

 and meantime the older social conditions that limit a woman's initiative 

 in making acquaintances still hold and are broken by young women 

 only at considerable risk. 



Even public meeting places are apt to be restricted to one sex. 

 If the girl joins a club, it is a girl's club; if she joins the Y. W. C. A., 

 the young men are a half mile away in the Y. M. C. A. When shall 

 we be wise enough to turn both these institutions into Young People's 

 Christian Associations ? And meantime, while the hunting field is narrow^ 

 the difficulty of selection has increased. A generation ago, as we have 

 pointed out, a girl might hope to find a desirable mate among a dozen 

 acquaintances. Now she needs to look over a hundred young men to 

 find her own. 



In the light of this analysis the wonder is not that we have so many 

 unmarried women in America, but that we have so few. Nature has 

 loaded the dice in favor of marriage and she generally has her own 

 way. Many of these young women, however, will never marry. Nuns 

 will continue to vow their virginity to the Celestial Bridegroom; re- 

 formers will spend their lives in securing social justice for their sisters 

 and for their sisters' children ; professional women will continue to seek 

 fame and service ; teachers will fight off the wars of the future, not with 

 submarines and aeroplanes, but with ideas and ideals planted and nour- 

 ished in young minds. Many other women, with no particular devotion 

 to sustain them, will be held by the charm of pay envelopes and inde- 

 pendent latch keys until it is too late; while the accidents of fate will 

 leave many stranded in their struggle tow^ards a complete life. 



Meantime there can be no doubt that the most complete life a 

 woman can live, at least between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, 

 is found in a marriage based on a deep and lasting love; and the 

 same is no less true for a man. What, then, has our modern life to 

 offer to celibate women as compensation for the life they do not at- 

 tain? 



There are at least certain negative values which come to them. 



VOL. LXXXVI. — 3S. 



