62 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE MOTHER AS A POWER FOR WOMAN'S 

 ADVANCEMENT. 



By Mrs. BUf^TON SMITH. 



THERE are still thoughtful, liberal-minded men and women 

 who persistingly declare that there should be no woman 

 question ; that women have now all the rights and opportunities 

 which should be theirs, and that a just appreciation of what they 

 have already would leave no time nor desire for further de- 

 mands. There is a great deal of truth and justice in this position, 

 as there is generally in any honest view of any really serious 

 question ; but the unalterable fact remains that there is a woman 

 question, and that a discussion which has had the earnest atten- 

 tion and advocacy of so many high-minded, well-balanced men 

 and women must have had its origin in the real needs of some 

 portion of humanity. Surely, no matter what the point of view, 

 the cause of woman's advancement on the best and broadest lines, 

 whatever may be its highest expression to the individual, will 

 have at least sympathy from every thoughtful human being. In 

 this cause, with all its wide-reaching consequences, in all its 

 breadth and fullness, motherhood has just now a peculiar call for 

 effort. 



In all great questions which set the world thinking and listen- 

 ing, which touch men's hearts and stir their brains, there is a 

 necessary tendency to extremes. The very force of conviction 

 and power of feeling which go to make the prophets and leaders, 

 carry them away from lines of moderation. But when thought 

 and agitation have developed into real activity, conservatism, as 

 much as enthusiasm, is needed in any movement for reform. 



Just at present the woman question is a most convincing illus- 

 tration of these truths. The ardor of each side has carried its 

 advocates to extremes, which have probably never been equaled 

 in sociological discussion. There are women who affirm that 

 there is no intellectual, social, or professional advancement for 

 woman except as she asserts her independence of man, and arrays 

 herself against him as the enemy of her sex ; there are others 

 who declare all marriage slavery, all married life under the exist- 

 ing state of things mere bondage. Such women are as far from 

 the truth as the novelist who has recently attempted to illustrate 

 in her heroine the "soul-destroying" influences of the higher 

 education for women ; or the woman who declares, " With the 

 new school of thought, and the new class of woman it has bred, 

 we have lost both the grace and the sweetness, both the delicacy 

 and the virtues, of the real womanly ideal." Such rash generaliz- 

 ing on either side simply balances against rash generalizing on 



