The Twentieth Century American: Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great Anglo-Saxon NationsRobinson, Harry Perry
History
The Twentieth Century American: Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great Anglo-Saxon Nations
Robinson, Harry Perry
Great Britain -- Civilization; United States -- Civilization
And while we are thus comparing the position of women in America with
their position in England, it is to be noted that so excellent an
authority among Frenchmen as M. Paul Cambon, in speaking of the position
of women in England, uses precisely the same terms as an Englishman must
use when speaking of the conditions in America. Americans have gone a
step farther--are a shade more "Feminist"--than the English, impelled,
as has been seen, by the peculiar conditions of their growing
communities in a new land. But it is only a step and accidental.
Englishmen looking at America are prone to see only that step, whereas
what Frenchmen or other Continental Europeans see is that both
Englishmen and Americans together have travelled far, and are still
travelling fast, on a path quite other than that which is followed by
the rest of the peoples. In their view, the single step is
insignificant. What is obvious is that in both is working the same
Anglo-Saxon trait--the tendency to insist upon the independence of the
individual. Feminism--the spirit of feminine progress--is repugnant to
the Roman Catholic Church; and we would not look to see it developing
strongly in Roman Catholic countries. But, what is more important, it is
repugnant to all peoples which set the community or the state or the
government before the individual, that is to say to all peoples except
the Anglo-Saxon.
We see here again, as we shall see in many things, how powerless have
been all other racial elements in the United States to modify the
English character of the people. The weight of all those elements must
be, and, so far as they have any weight, is directly against the
American tendency to feminine predominance. All the Germans, all the
Irish, all the Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or other foreigners who
are in the United States to-day or have ever come to the United States
have not, as Germans, or Irish, or Frenchmen, contributed among them one
particle, one smallest impulse, to the position which women hold in the
life of the country to-day; rather has it been achieved in defiance of
the instincts and ideas of each of those by the English spirit which
works irrepressibly in the people. There could hardly be stronger
testimony to the dominating quality of that spirit. One may approve of
the conditions as they have been evolved; or one may not. One may be
Feminist or anti-Feminist. But whether it be for good or evil, the
position which women hold in the United States to-day they hold by
virtue of the fact that the American people is _Anglais_--an English or
Anglo-Saxon people.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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