Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/20

 20 tem now in use; the wasteful methods employed, the teaching of "commercialism," and enforcement of capitalistic ideas and ethics, is too vast to be taken up here, so I must leave it, hoping that it may soon be discussed by some one fully competent to handle it.

Another evil of this system of which I speak as boldly and freely as I think is the woman question in all its phases. Thank heaven that I am a woman, with sympathies and experiences which help me to understand all of the wrongs that my sex suffers from to-day! Let us take for an example the wife of any day laborer. You all know plenty such. She has to pinch and serape and plan from early morning until late at night and often far into the night doing work she cannot do when the children are awake—doing her washing, scrubbing, ironing, baking, mending, sewing and what not? With no time for reading, music, visiting or other pleasure; with her nerves worn out by constant wear and tear upon them of never-ending housework and care of children, is it any wonder that she is peevish and irritable at times and lives always with rebellion in her heart that it is so, and that she cannot make it otherwise? Is it any wonder that she blames the husband who is himself ground down by business worries and the responsibilities of his growing family, and thinks to herself, "I wish I had never got married; I wish there was a way I could earn money of my own so I could have a penny to spend when I want it." When she asks for money to get some necessaries, she gets a gruff answer and a few dollars grudgingly given that makes her heart ache for days and weeks afterwards.

Why is it? Is the husband to blame? No, he is no worse than thousands and he is better than hundreds. It is because we have not yet