Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/637

Rh. Fine-spun optimism does not right wrongs. No tyranny was ever abolished by those who persuaded themselves that it did not exist. Delusions, like the belief in Santa Claus, may do a certain good by charming us in childhood or outside of business hours. But when we get to business, the thing we want to believe and must believe or fail, is the exact truth, no matter how unpalatable. So in regard to the status of woman we shall get no further by thinking it is either worse or better than it is, or more or less susceptible of conscious improvement. The doses of a dishonest quack are no more dangerous than those of a self-deceived ignoramus. We have all fallen into a habit of polite flattery of the nobility of woman's work. This is a convenient little bit of hypocrisy. We are very careful not to be too polite to the man or woman who does woman's work for pay. We may socially recognize the man or woman who does man's work for a stipulated salary, but not the one who so does woman's work. Woman herself, with all her kindness of heart, is just as clear of it as any of us. She always keeps the brand of social as well as industrial inferiority plainly imprinted on her inherited specialty.

Woman grew into her present economic position, and very likely she must grow out of it, if she gets out. There is no peculiar sanctity about the process of growth as compared with other economic processes. But it does need peculiar treatment in order to reach the results we aim at. We should see this quite plainly if we were called on within the same hour to advise in the case of a man with a broken leg, and a tobacco-sign which had suffered the same mishap. In most of our economic troubles there is an element of growth and an element of artificiality. With these two elements we must deal differently. And it will always help us to know in each case as it comes up, whether, and to what extent, growth predominates over artificiality or artificiality over growth. It can not hurt us to remember that an institution which was wholly artificial some hundreds or thousands of years ago, may now have reached a stage where growth enormously predominates over artificiality. In childhood, I amused myself by twisting together the two stems of a cherry-tree. The process was wholly artificial. But when the tree and I had reached maturity, its trunk was still neatly doubled and twisted, like a thread of yarn. I have often untwisted threads of yarn, but I was never foolish enough to try to untwist that tree after it had reached its bearing age. What was once wholly artificial had become almost wholly a matter of growth.

I could not even do anything to help it grow untwisted. It may be that woman and her specialty are as firmly entwined together as were the two stems of my cherry-tree, and can not be separated without injury to vitality, growth, and fruitage. They may even have to grow more and more intimately interlocked, conforming more and more to each other. If this is inevitable, we ought to know it; if