168 wiscojTSin academy sciences, arts, and letters 



children, notwithstanding the theoretical value placed thereon, they 

 fall into the rut of a uniformly low estimate ot what is properly 

 considered a woman's work. Evidence of this is found in the fact 

 of no provision made for the development of any practical efficiency 

 for their performance in the home, and in the placing of children 

 under charge of the most incompetent and poorb,' paid teachers in 

 the schools. 



Not nntil the best institutions that can be established make 

 ready the devoutly impressed and richly furnished yonng women 

 to become mothers will women believe there is an}' honest convic- 

 tion behind the complimentary speech with which this branch of 

 home service is taken out of the category of contempt. From the 

 gridiron and clothes line to the best possible administration of the 

 home, it is against this grinding sense of undervaluation of her 

 employments that woman makes her way through life. 



Of education', as a cause of the present revolutionary movement, 

 it is more difficult to speak. I refer now to that v/rong and inade- 

 quate education, of which gh'Is get so much that women find them- 

 selves practically v/ithout any. It commences early and continues 

 long, in that indirect tutelage found in the home, in institutions, 

 laws, literature and society, and which, between repression and 

 stimulation, becomes an almost systematic procedure for baffling 

 nature and substituting the standards of art. And what do we see? 

 Hearty, happy little girls? We see very little, any more, of that 

 phase of female loveliness. Preferences and tendencies are no 

 longer tolerated unless of clear becomijigness, according to esti- 

 mates as changing as the unreliable qualities they foster. To atone 

 for this ever present repression in regard to food, frolic and devices 

 of taste, an enerv£i,tion of indulgence sets in, v/ith corresponding 

 results to body and mind. 



The law of nature, which is development and not hindrance, is 

 thus stimulated to over-activity among boj's by the constant as- 

 sault upon its application to the girls of the household. Thus the 

 hard and aggressive nature of boys becomes harder and more ag- 

 gressive than nature intended, resulting in injury to the female or- 

 ganism. Reference is had to that sort of injury upon v,'hieli the 

 discovered relations of physiology and psychology begin to throw 

 some light, and v/hich is due to the more complete wholeness of 



