isa-normaladvance-1914-00116

Description: 116THE NORMAL ADVANCEwoman of today known as the feministic move¬
ment. Caesar is eternally right when he said of
Cassius:Let me have men about me that are fat

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o nights

Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much
such men are dangerous.Yes, and such women too—to Caesars.Do not confuse this movement with the suf¬
frage movement, wThich is really only an in¬
finitesimal fraction of the whole. The feminis¬
tic movement is much broader, much deeper
and more fundamental than any legal status.Following close upon her breaking into the
educational world, early in the nineteenth cen¬
tury, came that great revolutionary social force,
the invention and widespread use of machinery
—the inauguration into the industrial world of
what is called the factory system. This
wrought a revolution in mans world, and it, all
but disrupted, the old order called womans
sphere. Let Olive Schreiner in her Woman
and Labor sum up for us its effect on womans
work and life. Our spinning wheels are all
broken
in a thousand huge buildings steam-
driven looms guided by a few hundred thou¬
sands of hands (often those of men) produce
the clothings of half the world
and we dare no
longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we
alone clothe our peoples.Our hoes and grindstones passed from us long
ago, when the plowman and the miller took our
place, but for a time we kept fast possession of
the kneading trough and the brewing vat. To¬
day steam often shapes our bread, and the
loaves are set down at our very door—it may
be by a man-driven motor car. The history of
our household drinkswe know no longer
we
merely see them set before us on the table. Day
by day modern prepared and factory-produced
viands take a larger place in the
dietary of rich and poor, till the workingmans
wife places before her household little that is
of her own preparation
while among thewealthier classes, so far has domestic change
gone, that men are not unfrequently found la¬
boring in our houses and kitchens, and even
standing behind our chairs to do all but actually
place the morsel of food between our feminine
lips. • * * In every direction the ancient
saw that it was exclusively womans sphere to
prepare viands of her household, has become,
in proportion as civilization has perfected it¬
self, an antiquated lie.Looking round, then, with the uttermost im¬
partiality we can command on the entire field
of womans ancient and traditional labor, we
find that fully three-fourths of it have shrunk
away forever, and that the remaining fourth
still tends to shrink. • It is this great fact, so
often and so completely overlooked, which lies
as a propelling force behind that vast and rest¬
less Womans Movement which marks our
day. It is this fact, whether clearly and in¬
tellectually grasped, or, as is more often the
case, vaguely and painfully felt, which awakes
in the hearts of the ablest modern European
women their passionate, and at times what
would seem almost incoherent, cry for new
forms of labor and new fields for the exercise of
their powers. Thrown into logical form our
demand is this: We do not ask that the wheels
of time should reverse themselves, or the stream
of life flow backward. We do not ask that ever
ancient spinning wheels be resuscitated and
placed in our hands. * * * We do not de¬
mand that society shall immediately reconstruct
itself that every woman may again be a child-
bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hun¬
ger for motherhood in every virile womans
heart)
neither do we demand that the chil¬
dren whom we bear shall again be put exclu¬
sively into our hands to train. This we know
cannot be. The past material conditions of life
have gone, forever
no will of man can recall
them, but this is our demand: We demand that,
in that strange new world that is arising alike
upon the man and the woman, where nothing
Source: http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/32568
Collection: Indiana State University Archives

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