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Show WOMAN'S EXTRACTS From President Roosevelt's Address to the Congress of Mothers. "No piled-uwealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common sense and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear, and bring up as they should be brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease. There are certain old truths which will be true as long as this world endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-makefor his wife and the bread-winnchildren, and that the primary duty of the woman is to be the helpmeet, the housewife and mother. The woman should have ample educational advantages; but, save in exceptional cases, the man must be, and she need not be, and generally ought not to b?, trained for a lifelong career as the and, therefore, after a family bread-winnethe certain point, training of the two must be different, because the duties of normally the two are normally different. This does not mean inequality of functions, but it does mean that normally there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I respect the woman who does her duty even more than I respect the man who does his. No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day, but often every hour of the night. She may have to get up night after night to take care of a sick child, and yet must by day continue to do all her household duties as well; and if the family means are scant she must usually enjoy even her rare holiday taking her whole brood of chilmake all dren with her. The birth-pang- s men the debtors of all women. Above all, our sympathy and regard are due to the struggling wives among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people, and whom he so loved and trusted; for the lives of these women are often led on the lonely heights of quiet, heroism. Just as the happiest and most honorable and most useful task that can be set any man is to earn enough for the support of his wife and family, for the bringing up and starting in life of his children, so the most important, the most honorable and desirable task which can be set any woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home and mutual forbearmarked by ance, by willingness to perform duty, and or by refusal to sink into avoid that which entails effort and Of course, there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do, and ought to do, much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great careers of outside usefulness in addition to not as substitutes for their home work; but I am not speaking of exceptions; I am speaking of the primary duties, I am speaking of p r, er r; self-sacrificin- g self-respe- ct self-indulgen- ce self-sacrific- e. EXPONENT 79 the average citizens, the average men and women who make up the nation." Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers, I shall have nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work which is never ended. No mother hns an easy time, and most mothers have very hard times, and yet what true mother would barter her experience of joy and sorrow in exchange for a life of cold selfishness which insists upon perpetual amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often finds its fit dwelling place in some flat designed to furnish with the least possible expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury but in which there is literally no place for children. The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else, but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. are the law of Effort and life for the woman; as man for the worthy effort nor neither the the though be for as for the same one the the may other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman of the woman who submits to gross and any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression, No wrongdoing is so abhorrent as wrongdoing by a man towards the wife and the children that should arouse every tender feeling in his nature. Selfishness towards them, lack of tenderness towards them, laek of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul. I believe in the woman's keeping her just as I believe in the man's believe in her rights just as so. I doing much as I believe in the man's, and indeed a little more; and I regard marriage as a partnership, in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the other as well as of his or her own. But I think that the duties are even more important than the rights, and in the long run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done than for the insistence upon individual rights, necessary though this, too, must often be. Your duty is hard, your responsibility great; but greatest of all is your reward. I do not pity you in the least. On the contrary, I feel respect and admiration for you. Into the woman's keeping is committed the destiny of the generations to come after us. In bringing up your children, you mothers must remember that while it is essential to be loving and tender, it is no less essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as interchangeable terms; and besides training your sons and daughters in the softer and the milder virtues, you must seek to give them those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need-Som- e children will go wrong in spite of the best training, and some will go right even when their surroundings are most unfortunate; nevertheless, an immense amount depends upon the family training, If you mothers, through weakness, bring up your sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the fnture. If you let your daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that, as you yourself self-sacrific- e self-sacrifi- ce long-continu- self-respe- ct ed huve had to work hard, they shall know only enjoyment, you are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves. - Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in avoiding difficulties, but to lives spent in over- coming difficulties. Teach them that work for themselves, and also for others, is not a curse, but a blessing; seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but seek also to face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is most fortunate among women. There are many good people who are denied the supreme blessing of children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great blessings of life; but the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these blessings, whether from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartednes- self-indulgen- s, or mere failure, to appreciate aright the difference between the and the a creature merits such unimportant why, as visited as upon contempt any hearty the soldier who runs away in battle,or upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those dependent upon him, is yet content and who, though to eat in idleness the bread which others provide. The existence of women of this type forms one of the most unpleasant and unwholesome features of modern life. If any one is so dim of vision as to fail to see what a thoroughly unlovely creature such a woman is, I wish they would read Judge Robert Grant's novel, "Unleavened Bread," ponder seriously the character of Selma, and think of the fate that would surely overcome any nation which developed its average and typical woman along such lines. Unfortunately, it would be untrue to say that this type exists only in American novels. That it also exists in American life is made unpleasantly evident by the statistics as to the dwindling families in some localitable-bodie- d, ies. It is made evident in equally sinister fash- ion by the census statistics as to divorce, which are fairly appalling, for easy divorce is now, as it ever has been, a bane to any nation, a curse to society, a menace to the home, an incitement to married unhappi-nes- s and to immorality, an evil thing for men,and a still more hideous evil for women. These unpleasant tendencies in our American life are made evident by articles such as those which I actually read not long ago, in a certain paper, where a clergyman was quoted, seemingly with approval, as expressing the general American attitude when he said that the ambition of any save a very rich man, should be to rear two children only, so as to give his children an opportunity "to taste a few of the good things of life." This man, whose profession and calling should have made him a moral teacher, actually set before others the ideal, not of training children to do their duty, not of sending them forth with stout hearts and ready minds to win triumphs for themselves and their country, not of allowing them the opportunity and giving them the privilege of making their own place in the world, but, forsooth of keeping the number of children so limited that they might "taste a |
