Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY _BY THE SAME AUTHOR:_ STUDIES IN EDUCATION (IN TWO VOLUMES) WHERE KNOWLEDGE FAILS WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY BY EARL BARNES AT ONE TIME PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA, AND LATER PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY NEW YORK B.W. HUEBSCH COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY B.W. HUEBSCH PRINTED IN U.S.A. This volume is dedicated to a woman endowed by her ancestors with health and strength, reared by a wise mother, trained to earn her own living, and university bred, at one time an independent wage-earner and now equal partner in the business of a home, a social force in the life of her community, member of a woman's club, a suffragist, the devoted and intelligent mother of a group of fine children, and the center of a family which loves and reverences her and finds the deepest meaning of life in her presence. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WOMAN 9 II. WOMAN'S HERITAGE 31 III. WOMEN IN EDUCATION 57 IV. THE FEMINIZING OF CULTURE 85 V. THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN 107 VI. WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 123 VII. THE MEANING OF POLITICAL LIFE 150 VIII. WOMAN'S RELATION TO POLITICAL LIFE 173 IX. THE MODERN FAMILY 207 X. FAMILY LIFE AS A VOCATION 231 XI. CONCLUSION 251 WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY I What it Means to be a Woman If we go back to the earliest forms of life, where the unit is simply a minute mass of protoplasm surrounded by a cell wall, we find each of these divisions to be a complete individual. It can feed itself, that its life may go on to-day; it can fight or run away, that it may be here to fight to-morrow; and by a process of division it can create a new life so that its existence may continue across the generations. With such units it is quite conceivable that life might go on through all eternity, death following birth, were it not that protoplasm contains within itself a principle of change. Life and change are synonymous.