OF A CENTURY

When a German woman residing in a Western city, but recently arrived in
America from the midst of the conservative social circles of her native
land, described American women at large as _furchtbar frei und furchtbar
fromm_ [frightfully free and frightfully pious], she unintentionally
paid a compliment to our feminine civilization. The accusation of piety
calls for no rebuttal; and that of freedom was caused by the
confounding, as was natural in European thought, of innocent simplicity
with recklessness of deportment. The social manners of American women of
the present is a subject of philosophy rather than history; but the fact
of the freedom of intercourse between the sexes may be touched upon,
since, however strange and reprobatory it may seem to European eyes, it
is as much a national "institution" as our form of government itself,
while its causes lie in the story of the past.

The opening of the vast treasures of the West, and the marvellous
development of that section, had effect upon the direction of feminine
thought and effort in various channels. Though the leaps of that part of
our country into prominence had made of such places as Chicago and St.
Louis, as well as lesser but still important cities of the West, a
potent influence in the development of material interests long before
the century had entered upon its ninth decade, until that time they had
won but little power as social influences. They were fast taking their
places as powers in this direction also, however, and before long
Chicago at least came to be recognized as a stalwart rival to New York,
the acknowledged leader of the East in things social. Then, because of
the lusty strength incidental to the vigorous youth of the junior
members of our commonwealth, Western ideas and influences began to be
felt in the East and to modify the conditions that existed in Eastern
society.

The simplicity [freedom] of which the German woman complained is in
truth one of the finest, as of the most characteristic, traits of our
social system in its regulation of intercourse between the sexes, and it
was well that the East, which was beginning to pay too much attention to
the ultraconservative ideas of the Old World in this respect, should
find a counter influence within the borders of its own land. Even more
important, however, was the hearty acceptance by the West--far broader
than that of the East--of the theory of woman's place in affairs; t