What Eight Million Women Want | Page 3

one for the white yarn
and the other for the black."
The rich young man shook his head with the air of one who goes away
exceedingly sorrowful.
"No," he replied, "we can't. The business won't stand it."
This story presents in miniature the social attitude of the majority of
men. They cannot be held entirely responsible. Their minds
automatically function just that way. They have high and generous
impulses, their hearts are susceptible to tenderest pity, they often
possess the vision of brotherhood and human kinship, but habit, long
habit, always intervenes in time to save the business from loss of a few
dollars profit.
Three years ago Chicago was on the eve of one of its periodical "vice
crusades," of which more later. Sensational stories had been published
in several newspapers, to the effect that no fewer than five thousand
Jewish girls were leading lives of shame in the city, a statement which
was received with horror by the Jewish population of Chicago. A
meeting of wealthy and influential men and women was called in the
law library of a well known jurist and philanthropist. Representatives
from various social settlements in Jewish quarters of the town were
invited, and it was as a guest of one of these settlements that I was
privileged to be present.
Eloquent addresses were made and an elaborate plan for investigation
and relief was outlined. Finally it came to a point where ways and
means had to be considered. The presiding officer put this phase of the
matter to the conference with smiling frankness. "You must realize,
ladies and gentlemen," he said, "that we have entered upon an extensive
and, I am afraid, a very expensive campaign."
At this a middle aged and notably dignified man arose and said with
emotion trembling in his voice: "Mr. Chairman, and ladies and

gentlemen of the conference, this surely is no time for us to think of
economy of expenditure. If the daughters of Israel are losing their
ancient dower of purity, the sons of Israel should be willing, nay, eager
to ransom them at any cost. Permit me, as a privileged honor which I
value highly, to offer, as a contribution towards the preliminary
expenses of this campaign, my check for ten thousand dollars."
He sat down to that polite little murmur of applause which goes round
the room, and I whispered to the head resident of the settlement of
which I was a guest, an inquiry as to the identity of the generous donor.
"That gentleman," she whispered in reply, "is one of the owners of a
great mail order department store in Chicago." She sighed deeply, as
she added: "During the first week of the panic that store discharged,
without warning, five hundred girls."
These typical examples of the reasoning processes of men are offered
without the slightest rancor. They had to be given in order that the
woman's habit of thought might be explained with clearness.
Women, since society became an organized body, have been engaged
in the rearing, as well as the bearing of children. They have made the
home, they have cared for the sick, ministered to the aged, and given to
the poor. The universal destiny of the mass of women trained them to
feed and clothe, to invent, manufacture, build, repair, contrive,
conserve, economize. They lived lives of constant service, within the
narrow confines of a home. Their labor was given to those they loved,
and the reward they looked for was purely a spiritual reward.
A thousand generations of service, unpaid, loving, intimate, must have
left the strongest kind of a mental habit in its wake. Women, when they
emerged from the seclusion of their homes and began to mingle in the
world procession, when they were thrown on their own financial
responsibility, found themselves willy nilly in the ranks of the
producers, the wage earners; when the enlightenment of education was
no longer denied them, when their responsibilities ceased to be entirely
domestic and became somewhat social, when, in a word, women began
to think, they naturally thought in human terms. They couldn't have

thought otherwise if they had tried.
They might have learned, it is true. In certain circumstances women
might have been persuaded to adopt the commercial habit of thought.
But the circumstances were exactly propitious for the encouragement of
the old-time woman habit of service. The modern thinking, planning,
self-governing, educated woman came into a world which is losing
faith in the commercial ideal, and is endeavoring to substitute in its
place a social ideal. She came into a generation which is reaching
passionate hands towards democracy. She became one with a nation
which is weary of wars and hatreds, impatient with greed and privilege,
sickened of poverty, disease, and social injustice. The modern,
free-functioning