94 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to be studied in their irregular and unusual development, but in 

 their normal evolution. 



If a capable and ambitious girl declares that she will teach 

 school, or solicit a clerkship, or literary work in a newspaper 

 office, or open a store, it will be the father and brothers who will 

 protest, and not the mother and sisters. The men of the family- 

 are apt to feel that it will compromise their respectability if they 

 have a daughter of the house earning anything. Fathers of sons 

 and daughters have been reported, who have said : " I shall leave 

 what little property I have to my girls, who will need it ; the boys 

 can take care of themselves." Many persons are cognizant of the 

 fact that among their circle of acquaintance are a few men, high- 

 spirited, conscientious, alive to the demands of nobly living, who 

 have denied themselves the solace of marriage because they be- 

 longed to families where there were unmarried sisters, and the 

 home could not be respectably maintained if their personal in- 

 come was used in supporting another household. 



VI. Now, putting any just valuation upon these great exemp- 

 tions which the majority of women enjoy, and which all women 

 enjoy so far as the appointment of men as a whole can predeter- 

 mine their lot, can it be for a moment claimed that the position of 

 women is one of oppression, and not of privilege ? 



I do not wish to say that men and women ever made a formal 

 compact that the latter should surrender to the former all their 

 natural political rights, as a condition for enjoying these privi- 

 leges which have been awarded to them. None of the established 

 customs of society, not even the forms of political government, 

 were made in this artificial way. They were not made at all, but 

 grew spontaneously. Rousseau's doctrine of a social contract is 

 less in vogue than it was in the political philosophy of our fa- 

 thers. But what I do wish emphatically to say is that, bargain or 

 no bargain, the weaker sex has not been taken advantage of, and 

 that its immunities and privileges are a full equivalent for all the 

 political rights of which it may have been deprived. 



For all the last century, perhaps for all the next, the stress and 

 activity of the world have been and will be directed toward the 

 development of a more pronounced individualism. Everybody is 

 in intense pursuit of his rights. Everybody passionately asks: 

 What of the common goods of existence can I appropriate to my 

 own personal advantage and enjoyment ? While this passion rules, 

 nothing is to be expected but revolution and revulsion, the tear- 

 ing down of the existing social and political institutions. When 

 shall begin that more noble, more religious inquisition, not for 

 rights, but for duties, when it shall be asked : What can I do to 

 render some equivalent for the boon of life ? What of my rights 

 and my possessions can I surrender and sacrifice for the general 



