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condition of women for fear they would not be as good mothers. If
gain to the mother means robbery to the child, let the mother
remain as she is. But the standard is the amount of good done to
the children, not the amount of evil done to herself....

Grant that it is a woman's business to take care of her
children--not merely of her own children. If children anywhere
are not under right conditions, women ought to see to it. The
trouble is we are too wrapped up in _my_ children to think of
_our_ children. We can not keep out disease by shutting our own
front door. We have to know and care about the world outside our
gates. In order to do our duty to our children we must make this
world a better place to live in.

Our children are not born with that degree of brain power that we
could wish. They will not be, until our minds are widened by
study of the whole duty of a human being.... What is needed for
women is an enlargement of their moral sense so as to include
social as well as private virtues. We have been taught that there
is only one virtue for us. Our morality is high but narrow. It is
not wholesome to limit oneself to one virtue, or to six or to
ten. Sons resemble their mothers. While mothers limit their
interests to their own narrow domestic affairs, regardless of the
world outside, their sons will betray the interests of the
country for their own private business interests.... Women and
men are so connected that we can not improve one without
improving the other. Under equal rights we shall raise the moral
sense of the community by the natural laws of transmission
through the mothers. We shall learn to blame a man as much if he
betrays a public trust as we do if he deserts his wife.

Have we done our full duty when we have loved and served and
taken care of those that every beast on earth loves and serves
and takes care of--our own young? That is the beginning of human
duty but not the whole of it. The duty of woman is not confined
to the reproduction of the species; it extends to the working of
the will of God on earth. The family is a leaf on the tree of the
State. It can grow in strength and purity while the State is
healthy, but when the State is degraded the family becomes
degraded with it. We have not done our full duty