Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - Women of the Future - 1916.pdf/12

 but all women have worked since the dawn of human existence. Women were workers before men. They were the pioneers and originators of all industry. They were producers, makers of things, at a time when men were only fighters, destroyers of things. Woman and labor have been inseparably linked throughout the ages of social evolution. How could we believe that this unbroken line of evolution should suddenly be interrupted and reverted by so rational and wholesome an order of society as the one proposed by Socialism?

Women of the future will work as surely as women of the past and present. They only will work differently, just as men will work differently. Their work will be lighter, more pleasant, more rational, more conducive to human health and happiness than the work of the majority of people is at present. A society resting on the recognition that labor is the most important and honorable function of human life, since all life depends upon labor, will supply work for all, and will adapt its methods of work to the needs and requirements of all. There will be no men and women out of a job. There will be no men and women deprived of the necessities of life because their labor power is not wanted. Neither will there be men and women aged before their time, broken in health and spirit, unfit for social usefulness and for a normal perpetuation of the race by the dull grind of incessant drudgery. The workshops and the tools will be socially owned and, therefore, will be conducted, not for the profit of the few but for the benefit of all. We may well picture the factory of the future, the place where socially necessary labor is performed, conducted like the public school of the present time, the place where socially necessary knowledge is acquired. The school and its implements are publicly owned to-day. Therefore the school is not conducted for private gain but for public benefit. The welfare of the pupils is the main consideration. Sanitary conditions are assured; hours of study are limited according to hygienic requirements; there is time for work and time for play, and the child's physical as well as mental development is taken into consideration. The same principles could be readily applied to the publicly-owned factory. The welfare