The Influence of Young Women. LADY HENRY SOMERSET, London. President of the British Woman's Christian Temperance Union. President of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 'T is within the present province of mankind to develop nature but not to improve on it. All the present deliciousness of fruits or flowers was contained in the original seeds out of which they were developed. Men have added nothing to nature. Now the normal condition of men and women is that of the family. Without one's family, what were all else of life? Without them would life be worth the living? How could there be love, and hope, and ambition, without the family? There might be lust of appetite, of acquisition, of conquest, for mere existence, but how could holy love exist without the family relation? And love is life. In the Bible the words are almost interchangeable in meaning. Now men are ruled by their appetites, and women by their affections, until education has taught them the proper uses of both. As the highest relation is the family, the highest position in that highest relation is given by nature to women, to wit, the care and culture of home and children. She holds in her keeping the happiness and the welfare of the world. As a rule the first seven years of life determine the future of the child and so of the man. If the home-life is cheap, frivolous, impure, unintelligent, its product will be such. Not only a man, but a man's children, are what his wife will let them, and him, be. If she is socially, naturally, his superior, she can elevate him. But if she is socially inferior to him, her condition fixes his status: for, however good or great a man may be, he is always degraded and humbled in his own sight and in that of the world, when he has to blush on account of or make apologies for his wife. The young women of to-day will be the matrons of to-morrow, and while they never can make over the young men whom their mothers have made years ago, they can almost wholly determine the character of the next generation, by wisely using their influence with the present one. What kind of associates, what kind of companions, will you choose among men? Fate will not fix it for you, but you must determine it. There are serious vices among men, foul blots on humanity that impair its energies, that bar all upward progress of the race, that are steadily dragging it downward to bestiality and diabolism,-vices that breed crimes, natural, unnatural, and preternatural, by which and from which woman has been and is the silent, greatest sufferer,-shall they be perpetuated? On its answer hangs the destiny of the ages. Shall the vice of the father be fastened on your innocent child through you? That is the problem you are to solve. Over against the world's misery stand the young women of the day with power not merely to assuage it, but to blot it out. Will they do it? Do you ask how? By resolutely refusing to be the medium for its perpetuation. Demand purity of thought, purity of purpose, purity of deed inexorably of the young men with whom you consort. How long would the vice of drink, the filth of tobacco, the delirium of gambling, the leper-seeking of lust, dwell in this world, if the young women in it were to refuse fellowship with any young man tainted by them? Not a generation. How often one may see on the public thoroughfares, intelligent, refined virtuous young women in company with gentlemen acquaintances who so far forget the honor of the lady's company as to belch forth the smoke and stench of the cigarette and cigar, or the lesser filth. of the quid? Would they do it if they knew they should forfeit the lady's favor? No young lady wishes to go through the Golgotha of suffering of the drunkard's wife-yet how few have courage to refuse association with a young man who takes his wine, if he be a man of wealth, or position? No young man of sense would take for a consort one whose impure life would entail nameless sufferings on himself and offspring. Why should not a young lady be equally prudent and exacting? Demand of your gentleman friends both the purity of life and of speech they require of you. Believe me, there is no young man whose acquaintance is worth the having who will not respect and admire you more for refusing to fellowship what he may call his petty weaknesses, than he will do if, for the sake of his company, you quietly ignore vices you would not think of cherishing in yourself. You know and he knows that a woman's social condition, aye, her eternal condition, is determined, not by her wealth, nor by her beauty, but by her moral and mental qualities. Will the eternal balance be less exacting in his case? If not, why do you seek to make it so in this life by smiling on his vices? The young women of the world must redeem it of its vices, or doom it. Nature-no, he who created nature-has given them an influence that would regenerate the race if they would but use it aright. Nature's great decree is that man shall seek his mate, not the mate the man. If he come unclean of body or of soul shall he find the pure equally as ready as the unclean to welcome him? Shall there be no distinction? Is it not time that the pure young women of the land face toward the future, and demand a noble, virtuous companionship? It will come, but only at their bidding. To have it come, frown down intemperance, the tobacco evil, profanity, impurity of deed and speech, idleness, and dudishness. Insist on the cultivation of mind as well as brawn, of godliness rather than covetousness, of gentleness as well as genteelness, of truth rather than tricks in trade. Have it understood that respect, courtliness, and kindness toward one's own mother and sisters is as great virtue in a young man as vows of love to his sweetheart. Make it known that honor is greater than gold, and that the heart outweighs and outranks the brain. Woman's Work and Wages. NELLIE E. BLACKMER, Springfield, Mass. N "I stood up strait and worked My veritable work. And as the soul Which grows within the child makes the child grow,- The course I took, the work I did." -ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. EVER since "Adam delved and Eve span " has anyone questioned woman's right to work. She has fed and clothed the world, she has given unremittingly of strength of body and of soul; but the wage-earning woman is distinctively a factor of the complex problem of our modern life. Rapidly woman has worked her way into the wage-earning world, with a remarkable facility and power of adaptation entering every industry which does not require the exercise of great physical strength. This is well. The outlook of woman has been widened, her dormant capacities quickened and developed, she has been removed from the humiliating position of a dependent, she is valued as never before; and, as an indirect result, both men and women have come to understand more clearly that the welfare of the human race depends as much upon the position and welfare of woman as upon that of man. Never yet has any great tidal wave of progress swept up the shore of time without carrying before it something of value that had been builded with patient care, destroying, only that more beautiful and enduring structures might be raised on firmer foundations. This change in the industrial world has taken place so quickly that the times have not kept pace with it. Equilibriums have been disturbed and complicated social prob lems arisen that will require time and patient thought to adjust. But it is plain that the advantages to woman and to the world at large of this change are inestimable, while the disadvantages may be overcome, not by yielding any of the ground gained, but by a steady pressing forward to a surer footing on heights beyond. Although this change in affairs has brought about evils and difficulties which did not before exist, it has set us free from dangers and difficulties still greater. The strong cords of tradition and custom by which woman was bound have been broken and she is free to do whatever she can do. With an unswerving purpose to exalt womanhood and secure its rights in the world of industry, never sacrificing principle nor yet arousing needless antagonism, the stronger helping the weaker, let every self-supporting woman stand in her place, proud to be a help, not a hindrance, a producer as well as a consumer, and glad to take her part in a forward movement involving the welfare of woman and so of the race. If any working woman to-day feels that her lot is a hard one she may well be thankful she was born no earlier. But little has been written about the common women of the early and middle ages. In every age there has been a class of women highly favored. Born to wealth and the heritage of a noble family, endowed with beauty and that indescribable power called "charm," men have been ready to serve them, to fight for them, and, if need be, die for them. Who has not been thrilled by the stories of the knights "without reproach or fear," who, bidding farewell to the ladies they left protected by castle walls, rode away "redressing human wrongs?" But what proportion of the women of those days, think you, were "ladies," and what proportion the slaves, not the queens, of men? Up to the opening of the present century there was small place for a woman forced to self-support. In colonial times wages in this country were about what they were in England, and a woman might earn a shilling a week by weeding or possibly two shillings by a week's work in the harvest field. |