Page:The Business of being a Woman by Ida Tarbell.djvu/227

 equal. Men and women are widely apart in functions and in possibilities. They cannot be made equal by exterior devices like trousers, ballots, the study of Greek. The effort to make them so is much more likely to make them unequal. One only comes to his highest power by following unconsciously and joyfully his own nature. We run the risk of destroying the capacity for equality when we attempt to make one human being like another human being.

The theory that the class of free women considered here would be fired to unselfish interest in uncared-for youth if they were included in the electorate of the nation is hardly sustainable. The ballot has not prevented the growth of a similar class of men. Something more biting than a new tool is needed to arouse men and women who are absorbed in self—some poignant experience which