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Show Some Speculation as to Woman's Changing Status (By Gretta Palmer, Woman's Page Editor of the New York World-Telegram.) World-Telegram.) Nowadays there are two subjects which certainly command the human intelligence. They are women and economics. Looking over nny civilized civil-ized bookshelf, one is astonished to find to what an extent the role of modern woman is Involved. One Is also astonished to discover that our future, in terms of wheat and oil, Is being wisely discussed on all sides. Looking over a shelf of our library li-brary and without cheating we find seven titles in which the word Woman Wom-an is involved, out of a possible twelve. That, mesdames, Is high marksmanship. It means that we, as a subject for controversial writing, writ-ing, are pretty fancy stuff. And as a matter of fact, we are. For we have made more tremendous strides towards achievement than any other group within the memory of the current generation. Women, If you remember, were conspicious some fifty years ago as the Little Ladies who gilded fly swatters as a decoration for the home in a word, they were the complete intellectual washout. Today things have somewhat some-what changed. Today a woman like your humble servant can, without shame, admit to running a Woman's Page. Today a woman can confess that she lives in a woman's hotel without fear of being accused of being a perfectly splendid force In the W. C. T. U. movement. Today, in a word, a woman can express an Interest in the progress of her sex without any intimation in-timation of her being a shedder of Sweetness and Light, or a prude. There was a time, not so long ago, when nobody talked economics except ex-cept solemn young men with Ph. D.'s, and radicals. Those days have passed. Now, anyone with a vestige of Interest in current affairs must evince some appreciation of the experiments ex-periments under consideration in our nation's Capitol. And, by the same token, everybody today who is alive to contemporary happenings must awaken to the fact that woman is a brand new element In national affairs. af-fairs. .Perhaps she will be a permanent Institution. Perhaps she will not Nobody No-body can tell. There have been too many ages In which woman was thoroughly negligible for the most sanguine feminist to predict what will happen now. But we are, quite obviously, In a state of flux and change, so far as woman's status is concerned. And It behooves nobody to be too cocksure on what the outcome is bound to be. "Perhaps Women," as Sherwood Anderson said in his last book meaning that the Idealism of the race might find its final hope in womanhood. wom-anhood. Terhaps we must accept a less glorious future. But one thing is certain that it Is an exciting and unpredictable thing to be a woman In 1934. |
