Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/312

 some use in its affairs for the minds of its cripples who in all times have contributed so much to its advancement.

The marvelous phenomenon known as the feminist movement which the students and historians of the next two hundred years will be busy elucidating will play its part, too, for in its vast impulse toward the equality of the sexes it must not only bring the single standard of morals, but it should somehow be the means of achieving for women their economic independence. This perhaps would be the most important of all the steps to be taken in the solution of the problem. The economic environment of course is in the lives of many girls a determining factor and in this connection the minimum wage indeed has its bearing. The old Puritan laws were conceived in minds intensely preoccupied with the duty of punishing people for their sins. Prostitutes were prostitutes because they were "bad," and when people were bad they must be punished. But now we see, or begin to see, if vaguely, that, except in metaphysics, there is no such thing in our complex human life as an absolute good or an absolute bad; we begin to discern dimly the causes of some of the conduct called bad, and to the problem of evil we begin to apply the conception of economic influences, social influences, pathological influences, and other influences most of us know little or nothing about.

Thus we begin to see that a girl's wages, for instance, may have something to do with what we call her morals; not everything, but something. The