Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/22

 20 broken loose in the club, but the working woman also has broken the narrow bonds that were the result of a narrow social horizon. The woman's activity no longer being confined to the home her pleasures and associations could of course not remain confined to it. She can be seen on the street, alone or in company any hour out of the twenty-four without being considered indecent. Early hours and late hours, day work and night work have taken care of that. Being an independent wage earner woman would of course soon seek and pay for her own pleasures too. In these days of bachelor maidens it is too tedious a process to wait for the lover to take one out. So woman can go alone to balls, concerts, theaters, etc., without shocking the "decency" and "modesty" of the community. The commandment of the early Christian apostle that woman must not be heard in public is no longer recognized even by the most devout worshipers of the gospel themselves. Women are very much heard from in the fashionable churches and the Salvation lassies have done us the service of dispelling the last remnants of old fashioned modesty and backwardness.

The movements of women are freer than ever before in class society. Indeed we might almost say they are free. Therein consists the upward step in her evolution, no matter what other degrading influences may be at work.

Such are the changes in ethics and morals, customs and ideas wrought among the women of the last century! What would the women of the revolutionary days, if they suddenly came to earth, think of the Twentieth Century Woman?

When society's economic foundation was removed from the home, we saw that the women of the working class naturally drifted to the shop and the factory. There they found the doors open for them. The division of labor has done away with skill and consequently the long period of apprenticeship. The workers are machine tenders, feeders of the mechanism or receivers of the finished product, packers, pasters, labelers,