Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/224

 have agreed of late years to call woman the moral superior of man. But the ceaseless growth of human life, social life, has developed in him new virtues, later, higher, more needful; and the moral nature of woman, as maintained in this rudimentary stage by her economic dependence, is a continual check to the progress of the human soul. The main feature of her life—the restriction of her range and duty to the love and service of her own immediate family—acts upon us continually as a retarding influence, hindering the expansion of the spirit of social love and service on which our very lives depend. It keeps the moral standard of the patriarchal era still before us, and blinds our eyes to the full duty of man.

The Wrongfulness of Riches

(English essayist and nature student, 1848-1899)

If you are on the side of the spoilers, then you are a bad man. If you are on the side of social justice, then you are a good one. There is no effective test of high morality at the present day save this.

Critics of the middle-class type often exclaim, of reasoning like this, "What on earth makes him say it? What has he to gain by talking in that way? What does he expect to get by it?" So bound up are they in the idea of a self-interest as the one motive of action that they never even seem to conceive of honest conviction as a ground for speaking out the truth that is in one. To such critics I would answer, "The reason why I write all this is because I profoundly believe it. I believe the poor