Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The Oracle of Princeton, ex-President Cleveland, who has gained
the most notoriety for his heavy diatribes against women's clubs,
also admits that there are a few societies which it might be well
for women to encourage and keep alive--religious organizations
and those which administer to the needs of the heathen in a
foreign land. The Oracle of Brooklyn, Dr. Lyman Abbott, adds a
few more to the list and includes philanthropic, reform and
social clubs. Would it be unwomanly to ask why there should have
been such wide divergence in the Divine Illumination which each
Oracle received?
Dr. Shaw quoted from Mr. Roosevelt: "The President of the United
States does not absent himself from the country during the term of his
presidency, it is his domain. So should it be with woman; she is queen
of her empire and that empire is the home," and after reminding him
that the President's term lasts but four or eight years she asked:
"What do men mean by saying that women should remain contentedly in
their homes? They do not intend us to understand that we are never to
leave them, for they are frequently calling us forth when conditions
become so intolerable that even men can no longer endure them. Then
they call upon women to come out from the seclusion and protection of
their homes and aid them to 'save the city and the State.'" She
pointed out the difference between the time when the home was "a
protective and industrial center" and now when "the results of
electricity and steam have scattered the households," but in picturing
the advance that women had made in their own domain she said: "There
never was a time when there was as large a number of good
housekeepers and homemakers; when there was as much intelligence shown
in the scientific preparation of food; such knowledge of household
sanitation; such reverence for individual life; such painstaking study
of the needs and rights of childhood; when there was so much thought
given to the development of the finer and more permanent qualities of
character; when such good comradeship existed between children and
their parents; when marriage had so deep a spiritual and human meaning
as at the present time. The home ideal of today is the best the world
has yet known and it will continue to develop as larger freedom and
broader culture come to all who share in its life...."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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