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Woman's Wider World.

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Woman's Wider World. BY TERESA BII LINGTON GREIG. U.-WOMIN IN THE FUTURE. The barriers are falling. The advance ihot jromen are making towards complete liberty is no mirage-no dream. Every day the toad is widened a little and some woman I)Pases through to greater liberties. The days of the "Woman in Transition" are num- bered it may be ten years, or twenty years, or half a century, before she reaches the boundary, but she will reach it, and become Woman Free." She is facing the future now, with clear, far-seeing eyes, and freeing herself slowly from the trammels of the past. She is still in the midst of the dust of the fight. But she knows what she wants, although she may not know that she knows. SELF-POSSZSSION. She wants the recognition of her human status—of a status equal with that of her brother, which will make the law colour-blind to sex as it now is to race and creed. She wants the right of control over her own life and life-work—the right to possess herself. She wants to share those wider social and political liberties which mark off human existence from slavery and chaos. She wants her opportunity of training and education, and her choice of employment, to be as wide as her brother's, being determined solely by her own capacity. She wants the opportunity of attaining maturity with a sound mind in a sound body. She wants a just return for her labour in the working world-the prin- ciple that payment shall be made for work done, without regard to the sex of the doer, being the only one that can bring her security. THE INEVITABLE EMANCIPATION. All these things are to come, and all of them will come. A womanhood independent, free, well-born, and well-bred, will follow from them. And as the womanhood of to-day its, so is the manhood and womanhood of to- morrow. The world sees that the new woman is coming. It sees the slow, sure coming of the end, and frets and fumes, or rejoices ex- ceedingly. Like all changes of great moment, this emancipation of women is regarded by the men and women among whom it is taking place with widely different feelings. A great many people, happily decreasing in number, look upon it with complete indifference they move with the times and know not that they move. An increasing number of enthusiasts hail the progress of the movement with delight, and base upon it their prophecies of the golden age to come. But a fairly large proportion of the general public is still in opposition, and they regard every fresh ad- vance as an additional menace to the home and to the well-being of women themselves. EXCURSIONS AND ALARUMS. This danger of harm to the home, to women themselves, and to motherhood, seema to those oppressed by dread of it a very real and tangible thing. All who look upon these many changes in women's social, political, and industrial position know that they will bring with them changes in woman herself, and changes in the condition of wifehood and motherhood. They dread these changes and foretell grave disaster. But why should I change spell disaster? Beneficent changes are Bonstantlv being made in other departments of life. We recognise them as necessary; we I advocate them as desirable. Is this depart- ment of life which pertains to the position of Women the only one in which we have attained perfection? One would suppose so from the arguments of the opponents; and yet most of us can picture much more desir- able home conditions than those enjoyed by the average mother and child of to-day. A PBRTINBNT QUESTION AND EXAMPLE. But if we have really attained such per- fection in our family arrangements, when was it attained? Changes in domestic life, and in the relations of parents and children, have been taking place under our very eyes all through our lives, and took place just in the same way under the eyes of our mothers and grandmothers. The housewife of three generations ago was brewer and baker, spinner and weaver, butter and jam maker, and followed a multitude of other trades. To- day each of these separate trades has been taken out of the home into the world of organised Industry. Yet homes are still homes, though the men and women who saw those changes coming in the future might have predicted otherwise. Indeed, we know they did. An ancestress of my own refused her countenance to her son's marriage because the woman of his choice did her household needlework with a sewing- machine In such new-fangled ways of lazi- hess lay the destruction of home life to the old lady's mind. The dread of those who oppose the changes of to-day is just as un- reasonable, just as much due to ignorance, to want of imagination, and to habit and senti- IIWIIå HAKTT, ILL-ADVISSD MARRIAGES. But what changes are likely to occur; to what do the probabilities point? If women are able to earn comfortable livings by the Work of their hands they are less likely to marry merely for shelter. To-day one must admit many such marriages are made. To have this number decreased would be a dis- tinct advance from the point of view both bf morality aid of the happiness of the. mar- ried state. Then probably women would not marry so early, they would prefer to retain their state of bachelor independence until they were approaching thirty. But why not? It is surely more desirable for men and women to enter the marriage state at an age when they know their own l minds, than for them to contract hasty and Ill-advised unions which bring a harvest oi suffering from ignorance and poverty in their train. QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. There would be fewer children born, cry the opponents. Well, that would be a great ad vantage if those fewer children born were born to live and not to die. The number of children who die in infancy is a blot upon our eivilisatku. If the development of women's intelligence, with the establishment of industrial security, .secure. fewer children better born and better bred, and prevents the present waatago of child life and woman's life, it must be hailed as the greatest possible of all human reforms. But, the opponents will say, it is the effect upon the woman herself which most concerns us. She will lose all her womanly charm, and become masculine and degraded and un- suited to her high mission. Here, again, we have one of those comfortable popular fal- lacies which are exploded as soon as exam- ined. MORS COMPANIONABLE. The women of to-day have liberties undreamed of by their grandmothers. They concern themselves with aiPkinds of educa- tional work, but they are not the leas loving and lovable. They are physically strong and self-reliant, where their grandmothers Nere timid to the point of ludicrous, and fainted with painstaking perseverance on avery possible occasion. Yet the man of to- day finds health and bright spirits and men- tal capacity dlluring in a woman. Common interests and sympathies draw them to- Sether. If the twentieth century man, who nds this girl a delight, wei e to be asked to marry the typical girl of his grandmother's day he would probably reply that he prefer- red to drown himself. He recognises that the girl of to-day is a distinct advance upon the girl of yesterday. The girl of to-morrow will be an advance upon both. The problems of home-life are still many and require careful thought and energy for their solution. The organisation of domestic industry, the solution of the servant problem, the securing of liberty and status for the worker, married or single, the development of a cleaner and stronger race, the establish- ment of conditions of cleser mutual service and understanding between men and women —these are the task that lie to her hand.

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