Above all, the conditions of farm life must always be shaped with a view to the welfare of the farmer’s wife and the farm laborer’s wife, quite as much as to the welfare of the farmer and the farm laborer. To have the woman a mere drudge is at least as bad as to have the man a mere drudge. It is every whit as important to introduce new machines to economize her labor within the house, as it is to introduce machinery to increase the effectiveness of his labor outside the house. I have not the slightest sympathy with any movement which looks to excusing men and women for the non-performance of duty and fixes attention only on rights and not on duties. The woman who shirks her duty as housewife, as mother, is a contemptible creature; just as the corresponding man is a contemptible creature. But the welfare of the woman is even more important than the welfare of the man; for the mother is the real Atlas, who bears aloft in her strong and tender arms the destiny of the world. She deserves honor and consideration such as no man should receive. She forfeits all claim to this honor and consideration if she shirks her duties. But the average American woman does not shirk them; and it is a matter of the highest obligation for us to see that they are performed under conditions which make for her welfare and happiness and for the welfare and happiness of the children she brings into the world. The Progressives, Past and Present There have been two great crises in our country’s history: first when it was formed, and then again when it was perpetuated. The formative period included not merely the Revolutionary War, but the creation and adoption of the Constitution and the first dozen years of work under it. Then came sixty years during which we spread across the continent—years of vital growth, but of growth without rather than growth within. Then came the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, the period of terrible struggle upon the issue of which depended the justification of all that we had done earlier, and which marked the second great period of growth and development within. The name of John Brown will be forever associated with this second period of the Nation’s history; and Kansas was the theater upon which the first act of the second of our great National life dramas was played. It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom, that the great experiment of democratic government on a national scale should succeed and not fail. It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and a terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much, also, of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the