people who proclaim these things now. The writers who told of
these things and the dangers to which they were leading unfortunately
suggested no remedy. They thought they could drive women back to the
water pitcher and the loom, but that was impossible. The clock of time
will not turn back. Neither is it by a return to hand-sewing, or a
resurrection of quilt-patching that women of the present day will save
the race. The old avenues of labor are closed. It is no longer
necessary for women to spin and weave, cure meats, and make household
remedies, or even fashion the garments for their household. All these
things are done in factories. But there are new avenues for women's
activities, if we could only clear away the rubbish of prejudice which
blocks the entrance. Some women, indeed many women, are busy clearing
away the prejudice; many more are eagerly watching from their boudoir
windows; many, many more--the "gentle ladies," reclining on their
couches, fed, housed, clothed by other hands than their own--say: "What
fools these women be!"

There are many women who are already bitten by the poisonous fly of
parasitism; there are many women in whose hearts all sense of duty to
the race has died, and these belong to many classes. A woman may
become a parasite on a very limited amount of money, for the corroding
and enervating effect of wealth and comfort sets in just as soon as the
individuality becomes clogged, and causes one to rest content from
further efforts, on the strength of the labor of someone else. Queen
Victoria, in her palace of marble and gold, was able to retain her
virility of thought and independence of action as clearly as any
pioneer woman who ever battled with conditions, while many a
tradesman's wife whose husband gets a raise sufficient for her to keep
one maid, immediately goes on the retired list, and lets her brain and
muscles atrophy.

The woman movement, which has been scoffed and jeered at and
misunderstood most of all by the people whom it is destined to help, is
a spiritual revival of the best instincts of womanhood--the instinct to
serve and save the race.

Too long have the gentle ladies sat in their boudoirs looking at life
in a mirror like the Lady of Shallot, while down below, in the street,
the fight rages, and other women, and defenseless children, are getting
the worst of it. But the cry is going up to the boudoir ladies to come
down and help us, for the battle goes sorely