96 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



made by that section of womanliood in insurrection against the 

 present social order, and the implications which lie behind their 

 specific demands, who does not see the radical changes that will 

 come finally as a result of conceding these demands. However 

 disastrously the experiment may issue, the difiiculties of either 

 turning back or arresting the movement will be nearly insur- 

 mountable. 



Certain discontented women say they want the ballot, in order 

 that they may with it open to themselves, on the same terms and 

 for the same compensation, a free career in all the professions and 

 occupations in which men are engaged. They want to place all 

 women in the condition of service and hardship in which the 

 casualties of life and the precarious fortunes of business now 

 place a few women. They wish to make wounds which the pres- 

 ent social structure now receives here and there parts of its 

 normal status. For they want to be lawyers and physicians 

 charging the same fees, ministers having the same salaries, arti- 

 sans and workmen having the same wages as men. The greater 

 competition among the many women as against the few men in 

 the occupations now open to women they propose to counteract 

 by a statutory equalization of wages for the same kind of work. 



The great labor crises and the imperiled industrial equilib- 

 rium in the whole civilized world being confessedly due to the 

 excessive number of competitors for such paying work as machin- 

 ery has left to be done, it is proposed to aggravate the situation 

 by turning into the competition the whole mass of able-bodied 

 women, not hitherto generally reckoned among the working 

 class. 



In the woman-suffrage movement the "insurgent women" vir- 

 tually serve notice upon us men, that they do not desire any of 

 our courtesies, which are a badge of their servitude, and that our 

 politeness in giving them the best places in the concert room and 

 the horse-car is superserviceable and compromises their sense of 

 independence. They do not longer care to be petted or exempted 

 from perils and hardships or to be maintained by labor not their 

 own. They only want an equal chance to "paddle their own 

 canoe " in quest of their own fortunes. 



Whatever the answer to this demand may be, it will not be 

 likely to be this : Very well, please yourselves ; rough it with us 

 in the struggle for life, asking no favors if such a contest invites 

 you. Enlist in the military companies and stand the drill, and 

 when the next war comes, go to the front. Join the fire com- 

 pany in your ward, and run with the machine, when the next 

 fire calls you out at midnight. There is a ship in port bound 

 round Cape Horn, on a year's voyage ; the owners have had such 

 bad luck with drunken men, that they mean to try a crew of 



