SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 619 



ters. Fine-spun optimism does not right wrongs. No tyranny was 

 ever abolished by those who persuaded themselves that it did not exist. 

 Delusions, like the belief in Santa Claus, may do a certain good by 

 charming us in childhood or outside of business hours. But when we 

 get to business, the thing we want to believe and must believe or fail, 

 is the exact truth, no matter how unpalatable. So in regard to the 

 status of woman we shall get no further by thinking it is either 

 worse or better than it is, or more or less susceptible of conscious im- 

 provement. The doses of a dishonest quack are no more dangerous 

 than those of a self-deceived ignoramus. We have all fallen into a 

 habit of polite flattery of the nobility of woman's work. This is a 

 convenient little bit of hypocrisy. We are very careful not to be too 

 polite to the man or woman who does woman's work for pay. We 

 may socially recognize the man or woman who does man's work for a 

 stipulated salary, but not the one who so does woman's work. Woman 

 herself, with all her kindness of heart, is just as clear of it as any of 

 us. She always keeps the brand of social as well as industrial infe- 

 riority plainly imprinted on her inherited specialty. 



Woman grew into her present economic position, and very likely 

 she must grow out of it, if she gets out. There is no peculiar sanctity 

 about the process of growth as compared with other economic processes. 

 But it does need peculiar treatment in order to reach the results we 

 aim at. We should see this quite plainly if we were called on within 

 the same hour to advise in the case of a man with a broken leg, and 

 a tobacco-sign which had suffered the same mishap. In most of our 

 economic troubles there is an element of growth and an element of 

 artificiality. With these two elements we must deal differently. And 

 it will always help us to know in each case as it comes up, whether, 

 and to what extent, growth predominates over artificiality or artifi- 

 ciality over growth. It can not hurt us to remember that an institu- 

 tion which was wholly artificial some hundreds or thousands of years 

 ago, may now have reached a stage where growth enormously pre- 

 dominates over artificiality. In childhood, I amused myself by twist- 

 ing together the two stems of a cherry-tree. The process was wholly 

 artificial. But when the tree and I had reached maturity, its trunk 

 was still neatly doubled and twisted, like a thread of yarn. I have 

 often untwisted threads of yarn, but I was never foolish enough to 

 try to untwist that tree after it had reached its bearing age. What 

 was once wholly artificial had become almost wholly a matter of 

 growth. 



I could not even do anything to help it grow untwisted. It may 

 be that woman and her specialty are as firmly entwined together as 

 were the two stems of my cherry-tree, and can not be separated with- 

 out injury to vitality, growth, and fruitage. They may even have to 

 grow more and more intimately interlocked, conforming more and 

 more to each other. If this is inevitable, we ought to know it ; if de- 



