reatest
help any woman can be to any man. The care of home, the upbringing of
children, the strengthening of a husband's character here and there,
the detection of those thousand little vices of manner and speech and
thought which develop in every man--in short, the living of a natural
woman's life--is the only method of real helpfulness of a woman to a
man. And it is a priceless helpfulness.

Particularly is this true of political life and career. A man who must
be lifted to distinction by his wife's apron-strings, does not deserve
distinction. In the end, he does not get it--the apron-strings usually
break, and they ought to break. It may be stated as a general truth
that a man is never helped by the active participation of the wife in
his political affairs.

There are notable exceptions, just as there are to every rule. But as
a generalization this statement is accurate. Men resent that kind of
thing in politics. They want a man who aspires to anything to be
worthy of that thing on his own account. They want their leader to be
a leader; and no leader is "managed" in politics by his wife. They are
right about it, too. But whether they are right or wrong, that is the
way they feel.

So the only help which a woman can be to a man in politics is just to
be a wife in all that that term implies. And what greater help than
that could there be? She who impresses the American millions with the
fact that she is the ideal wife and mother has made the strongest,
subtlest appeal to the nation. But she cannot do this by "mixing up in
politics," by trying to plan and manage her husband's campaigns, and
so forth. For the people's instinct is unerring. We Americans are a
home-making and a home-loving people; and as a people we adore the
American wife and mother--the maker and keeper of the American home.

So you attend to your politics or your business and let your wife
attend to hers; and she will be happy and glad to make your home the
exclusive scene of her activities if you will only be man enough to do
a man's full part in the world and leave no room for a woman of spirit
to see that you are not doing a man's full part, and, therefore, to
try to help you out.

I sometimes think that the propaganda that woman is the equal of man,
and that it is all right for her to take on man's work in business and
the professions, is due not so much to an abnormal development in her
character as it is to a decadence in our manhood. At lea