Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/19

Rh their toil, by reason of the process of subdivision and the employment of machinery, has been robbed of all individuality and rendered so deadly monotonous that it has become repulsive and hateful to them. Monotony and the machine are together killing the natural love of productive, creative labour.

When the critic speaks of the extinction of male qualities in men, is he quite justified in his use of language? Custom and habit, it is true, have separated the virtues and the vices, classifying them as masculine and feminine respectively; thus strength, vigour, courage, and honesty are regarded as characteristic of the typical man, whilst tenderness, grace, softness, and modesty are the commonly allotted attributes of the natural woman. Similarly greed, lust, and cruelty are more often and more commonly attributed to men than to women; and craft, dishonesty, and dissimulation to women than to men.

Every one knows cases where the exact opposite of this has been true. Speaking generally, it would be untrue to say that there is not some warrant, so far as the common uses of life and the conveniences of speech are concerned, for this classification of qualities. The particular work and environment of each sex have tended to make moral specialists of men and women, and to develop