Page:Theresa Serber Malkiel - Woman of Yesterday and To-day.djvu/16

 transfer of the making of the food products from the home to factory left a large void in woman's life, increased the necessity of specialization and woman's seeking self-support. The first decade of the new century witnessed the doubling of the number of women breadwinners, the latest census recording over 8,000,000. Within this last decade six more States granted woman suffrage—Washington, Arizona, California, Oregon, Kansas and Illinois—making a total of 10 States in which 3,500,000 women exercised the right of voice and vote in the government of the land. Since then Montana and Nevada have followed suit. The awakening of the Social Conscience in women is in great evidence there. The individual mother did not grow less motherly because of this, but the motherly feeling in women has broadened out, became more human, embracing the children of the Nation.

YOU, who have come to womanhood during the second decade, have advanced still more. The experience gained by your grandmother and mother came you in good stead, moulded YOU into an independent being possessing all the faculties essential to the human race.

YOUR childhood days differed but little from those of your brother. YOU and he both had the freedom of play together in: the street or park. You used the same toys, resorted to the same games. You went together to Kindergarten, where they taught you both how to sew, build toy boats, construct houses from blocks and make bread out of clay; sex was not differentiated at all. This same attitude was taken at school. You sat on the same