iece of land and making it their
own, they prefer taking a pen and adding from 9 a.m. till 5 or 6 p.m.
pounds and shillings which do not belong to them. The result is that
they overcrowd the cities, and women can often obtain no work except on
condition that they accept it for a smaller remuneration than would be
offered to men, or, in other words, submit to being sweated.

Is it a manly occupation to be assistant in a draper's store, to be a
hairdresser, copyist, to make women's dresses, hats, corsets? When I see
in dry goods stores a great big man over six feet high measure ribbons
or lace, instead of tilling the soil or doing any other kind of manly
work, I want to say to him, 'Aren't you a man?'

Europe is full of men doing such work. I know America is not, although I
have many times seen in the United States positions filled by men which
would be filled equally well by women, and often better.

Many writers maintain that woman was intended to tread on a path of
roses, to be tended, petted--I may have been myself guilty of holding
views somewhat in this direction--but women are not all born in
'society'; millionaires are very few, and people whom you may call rich
form after all but a very small minority in the whole community. The
path of roses can only exist for the very few, and, besides, there are
women whose aim in life is not to be petted. In fact, some absolutely
object to being petted.

I tell you the time is coming, and coming at giant strides, when every
child--boy or girl--will be made early to choose the kind of work he or
she best feels ready to undertake to make a living. The time is coming
when no poverty will stare in the face the woman who can and is willing
to work.

Maybe the time is coming when a woman who bravely earns a good living
will be considered not only most respectable--she is that now--but will
be envied for her 'social standard' by the frivolous, useless women who,
from morning to night, yawn and wonder how they could invent anything to
make them spend an hour usefully for their good or the good of their
fellow-creatures.

CHAPTER XXXII

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The women's-righters are so often accused, and justly, too, of trying to
disturb the equilibrium of happiness in family life, that they should
immediately be praised when they do something likely to establish it on
a firmer basis.

In Paris they have just succeeded in starting, under the best and
happi