ne? Nature said to man: 'Be thou _man_! Racing, the chase,
the cultivation of the fields, politics and violent labors of all sorts
are thy _privilege_!' It said to woman: 'Be thou _woman_! The care of
thy children, the details of thy household, the sweet inquietudes of
motherhood,--that is thy _work_!' Unwise women, why wish you to become
men? Is not mankind properly divided? What more can you want? In the
name of Nature, remain what you are; and, far from envying us the perils
of so stormy a life, rest satisfied to make us forget them in the lap of
our families, by allowing our eyes to rest upon the fascinating
spectacle of our children, made happy by your tender care."

The women allowed themselves to be silenced, and went away. There can be
no doubt that the radical Chaumette voiced the innermost sentiments of
most of our men, who otherwise abhor him. We also hold that it is a
proper division of work to leave to men the defense of the country, and
to women the care of the home and the hearth. In Russia, late in the
fall of the year and after they have tended the fields, the men of whole
village districts move to distant factories, and leave to the women the
administration of the commune and the house. For the rest, the
oratorical gush of Chaumette is mere phrases. What he says concerning
the labors of the men in the fields is not even correct: since time
immemorial down to to-day, woman's was not the easy part in agriculture.
The alleged labors of the chase and the race course are no "labors" at
all: they are amusements of men; and, as to politics, it has perils for
him only who swims _against_ the stream, otherwise it offers the men at
least as much amusement as labor. It is the egoism of man that speaks in
that speech.

At about the same time when the French Revolution was under way, and
engaged the attention of all Europe, a woman rose on the other side of
the Channel also, in England, to labor publicly in behalf of equal
rights for her sex. She was Mary Wollstoncraft, born in 1759, and who,
in 1790, published a book against Edmund Burke, the most violent enemy
of the French Revolution. She later, 1792, wrote a second book--"A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman"--in which she took the stand for
absolute equality of rights for her sex. In this book she demands the
suffrage for women in the elections for the Lower House. But she met in
England with even less response than did her sisters in France.
Ridiculed and in