Selected Lead Articles from The Dawn | Page 5

on the little they eat and
the number of meals they miss altogether. For all these indiscretions
nature invariably inflicts a penalty, and the doctors, chemists, and
patent-medicine makers receive the fines. It does not pay the doctors to
teach health rules to the masses and it therefore behoves outsiders to

cry out to the people that they can be healthy if they will study the right
methods. The unfortunate children after they are weaned, struggle
under the sins of their ancestors with remarkable success, but it is an
obvious fact that the race might be strengthened and improved to an
indefinite extent if the mothers would consider health as capable of
evolution, instead of regarding it as an accidental accompaniment of
birth and permanent through life in that state of better or worse in
which it was originally inherited. If husbands when they return home
ask their wives what they have had to eat in their absence, ninety in
every hundred replies would be--"tea and bread-and-butter". This may
tend towards spirituality and the maintenance of that "dear delicate
little woman" variety of the "clinging" species prized by some men, but
the world would be none the worse, for a robuster, healthier, stronger
type of woman; nor should we be sorry if we could see the tea
merchants transformed to market gardeners and all the milliners driven
into the pro--vision trade.

The Man Question Or, The Woman Question Re-stated
The Dawn Volume 2, Number 5. Sydney, September 2, 1889
"WOMAN" as a topic for male journalistic pens has been popular ever
since the infancy of literature; the little feminine vanities and vagaries
have formed a delightful nucleus for descriptive and imaginative
literary work in "leaders", paragraphs, poems, plays and essays. Now
and then, exceptional tidal waves of controversy occur when
"marriage", "woman's suffrage", or similar subjects attract and swell
the billows of printing ink, but these subside, and the permanent
currents of the literary ocean carry always the same kind of
debris--disquisitions on woman, her weakness, inconstancy, vanity, and
little failings innumerable. When we read such articles we are reminded
of those sermonisers who
"Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have
no mind to.

and we should like authors to turn upon men and boys the searchlight
of genius with which they have hitherto illuminated the character of
women; for a serious examination of modern social affairs, renders
apparent the significant fact that women and girls in the mass, have a
higher standard of action, and a finer moral tone, than men and boys in
the mass possess. Begin at the top of English society and go down.
Apart from political considerations, Her Majesty the Queen has lived a
blameless and good life. She may have made political mistakes incident
to a difficult public position, but she has undoubtedly been a good
woman. Consider her feelings as a good mother and decide whether she
has found more comfort in the careers of her sons or of her daughters.
The Princess of Wales has won affection everywhere and no one doubts
that she is well worthy of it. Have the ways of her sons or of her
daughters most warmed her heart? Whose rectitude and goodness has
reached most nearly to the standard she herself has maintained? This
kind of enquiry may be pursued through all grades of society, and it
may afford the writers on "women" some new and impressive subjects
of study. At the foot of the scale, enquiries will find the hardworking
laundress, aided in her drudgery by her daughter, while her heart aches
over a selfish, idle, and vicious son, it is the daughter who helps to keep
the home together, who takes one handle of the clothes basket, who
walks long distances to get the food at the cheapest shop, who runs the
errands, and who misses her schooling in order to aid the old folks. Go
where you will among the poorer classes, you will see a mother toiling
at the tub or mangle, or in some way earning a living, while one or two
of her sons idle about the house. The sons are always ready to eat or to
complain, they do not hesitate to ask for the few shillings she has,
while she, poor soul, is happy to work for them if they will only keep
decent and "outof trouble". So also with that weary and overworked
woman, the boarding-house keeper. She chops the wood in the
backyard, while a son, whom she will not expose, "vamps" on the piano
or plays cards in the dining room. The sons gamble and drink; if they
earn any money it does not help to keep any home together, it
disappears at races or in amusements. There are hundreds of young