Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/718

700 holding the opinions he attributes to them I should value the article in that proportion; but as I do not know a single one—and I have lived a good deal among women of "advanced" ideas—I can not help thinking the article worse than uncalled for.

As far as I know anything about it, those who shirk the duties of maternity have ideas very far from advanced: they are the poorer kind of society women, many of whom would be horrified at being suspected of intelligence or independence.

The charge used to be that women became spinsters because they could not get husbands, and that was considered sufficiently opprobrious. Now Mr. Allen charges them with unwillingness to take husbands; and yet states in the same breath that the marriageable men go off beyond reach when they "ought to be making love," etc.

Here is an arraignment indeed! Why not devote an article—any number of articles exclusively—to these marriageable men?

The great body of noble women who have thrown themselves into the struggle for equal freedom are behind no one in desire for true womanliness and femininity. Already we are well on the way to the emancipation that Mr. Allen pleads for, the sound bodies and minds that are to come from the free and entire development of girls and boys, and freedom from Mrs. Grundy; but all the progress made is due to these "women-question agitators."

If there exists this deplorable indifference to marriage on the part of women, is it not the consequence of the very state of things that these leaders are striving to abolish and also, perhaps, of the sacrifices that this strife entails, and of some of the characteristics that are inevitably developed by it, and that no one knows or deprecates more than these valiant workers themselves?

All reforms have their attendant evils; but it is the state of things that called for the reform that is to blame for them or the "nature of things."

We need patience, hands off, fair play without privilege, and that each should think most of his own duty.

Editor Popular Science Monthly:

have more than seven hundred pupils under my charge, and that, too, in a State not backward in common-school education, I venture to protest against being lodged in a criminal-making class. Like Mr. Reece, I would ask, "Of what utility are facts and experiences unless their teachings are heeded and their meaning properly interpreted?" With Mr. Atkinson, I say," All statistics, unless qualified by sound judgment, are mere rubbish."

Mr. Reece mentions the fact of the increase of criminals since the period of modern civilization and science commenced, but he does not mention that the methods of tracking criminals have wonderfully increased, so that we may have a larger ratio of criminals caught than in days before the swift post, the telegraph, the police system, the photograph, and the extradition treaty. Surely he should give the public school the praise of supplying some of the means of catching the criminal after it has made him! I will say nothing about the increased accuracy of the statistics of 1880 over those of the earlier period.

While discussing criminality in New York State, he states that the common schools furnish eighty-three per cent of the inmates of Auburn and Sing Sing, while a little over nine per cent is credited to the illiterate population. Out of 2,616 convicts, 1,801 are credited to the common school and 238 to the illiterates. I can not see that even his own arrangement of the figures is against us. Surely nine per cent is a much larger ratio, when compared with the number of illiterates in New York, than eighty-three per cent would be if compared with the number of the common-school graduates. It seems to me that he should have taken as bases for his example in social arithmetic the number of illiterates and the number of common-school graduates. I have not the statistics of illiteracy in New York at hand, but I believe the figures will show fully three times as large a ratio of criminals to be credited to them as to the common school.

Mr. Reece cites various savage tribes as being examples to us in morals. He fails to see that temptations are increased a thousand-fold for the civilized man. There could not be many thefts where all property is held in common, when the property owned is so paltry as not to be worth the carrying away.

I do not contend that the public school is doing all it is able, but it is doing as well as the church and the family are doing in their spheres toward elevating the moral tone of the community. Writers like Mr. Reece seem inclined to find fault with us because we can not do the work of the family and the church. We are doing a good share of it, but, under the triple burden, we may sometimes fail to send out all good citizens.

Editor Popular Science Monthly:

article in the January (1890) number of the "Monthly" brought me an inquiry from Quincy, Illinois, as to where the writer could get an olla (pronounced o-ya), and what it would cost. Here in southern California they are plenty, and the regular retail price is twenty cents a gallon. What the transportation would be I do not know.

Since my article was written I have heard