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into continuing conditions. I am inclined to believe that the industrial freedom of woman will tend temporarily to a decrease in the marriage rate and an increase in the divorce rate; but this should not frighten us in the least. As woman has the power given her to support herself, she will be less inclined to seek marriage relations simply for the purpose of securing what may seem to be a home and protection. The necessity under which many young women live, of looking to marriage as a freedom from the bondage of some kinds of labor, tends, in my mind, to the worst form of prostitution that exists. I cannot see much difference between a woman who sells her whole freedom and her soul to a man for life because he furnishes her with certain conveniences and one who sells her temporary freedom and her soul for a temporary remuneration, except in this, that the former may be worse than the latter. If a woman has the opportunity of supporting herself honorably while she is developing her intellectual and spiritual faculties, she is more likely to seek or to accept marriage relations which depend upon the purest and highest elements of companionship.

So while divorces may grow temporarily more frequent and marriages less frequent as the industrial emancipation of woman progresses to completeness, the purity and the sacredness and the happiness of married life must be correspondingly increased, and the result must be that marriage will take place only when companionship in the holiest sense is intended. Industrial independence which will secure such results must lead to the recruiting of the human race from the best elements, instead of from the lowest, as is now so largely the case. If there is any value in these suggestions, then the family, as the resultant of marriage, will be placed upon a more enduring basis than that on which it now stands; it will be more sacred, because it will be less irritating. If marriage is to be purer and the family more sacred, with woman cccupying an exalted position as to remunerative service, the morals of the community must be correspondingly enhanced.

I know very well that many writers would not agree with what I have said, and there is even now a sharp and critical contest with regard to this subject going on which is attracting public attention. Perhaps the most brilliant warfare in this direction is that which has taken place, and may be continued, between Mr. Frederic Harrison, one of the leaders of the positivists in England, and Mrs. Millicent Fawcett. Mrs. Fawcett has no fears of the great evil which Mr. Har

rison predicts as a result of the emancipation of woman, which emancipation she does not hesitate to say is the result of woman's entrance upon industrial pursuits. She believes that many of the shipwrecks of domestic happiness which most people can call to mind have been caused by the wife having no real vocation for the duties and responsibilities of marriage, or from her having married without deep affection for her husband, simply because she felt it was a chance she ought not to miss of what is euphemistically called "settling herself in life." Mrs. Fawcett thinks evil conditions are induced by lack of industrial independence, and that it is hardly too much to say that it is not till women have had an opportunity of working for wages outside the home that the value of their work in the home receives the recognition it deserves.

It must be true that woman will secure the extension of her opportunities for intellectual work. She may know now everything that a man may learn; she may reach any intellectual height; she may place her name as high as that of any man. Her economic freedom will stimulate the introduction of some convenient system of liv ing by which she can rid herself, if she choose, of the drudgery of household work without destroying the home, and thereby gain time and opportunity for individual improvement, for the cultivation of her best talents, and for bestowing the highest care upon the rearing of her children. She will secure, as the direct result of industrial emancipation, her absolute social equality, and this will warrant her in making great changes in her whole environment, whether these changes be of dress, of amusement, of avocation, or of political action. Social equality will not, as Mr. Harrison predicts, warrant her in making a fool of herself, but it will enable her to step out from under the restraining conditions which prevent her from taking the wisest individual action. It is not fair to predict that though now the most active element of all church organization and of the highest forms of charity service, in the forefront of moral reforms, with still greater powers, with still further development, she is going to act unwisely. I believe she will act wisely and demonstrate her right to the industrial emancipation which is to place her on true social equality with man. With such social equality her loveliness will become more lovely, she will make man's life happier and better, and with increased influence over his intellectual being, she will lead him to higher attainments, and with her intense psychic force she will be able to become a power in the world that we have not yet fully seen nor yet fully comprehended.

And if all this leads to what many are pleased to call equal political rights, we cannot quarrel with it.

It is not just that all other advantages which may come through industrial emancipation be withheld simply because one great privilege on which there is a division of sentiment may also come. One of the greatest boons, and one of the surest prophecies which can be offered as the result of the industrial emancipation of woman, will be the frank admission on the part of the true and chivalric man that she is the sole, rightful owner of her own being in every respect, and that whatever companionship may exist between her and man shall be as thoroughly honorable to her as to him. She will enter upon organized work in the future, and this will be ethical, as it has been in the past when she has attempted organized effort; but the essential feature will be perfection in skill, dedication to calling, integrity of service, and the use of her mind under conditions which have brought success to her father and her brother. She will enter chiefly those branches of industry where women by experience are found to surpass men, and in those, high or low, she will ultimately hold the sway. In callings where men surpass women, the woman will be obliged to abandon the field; but where duties are performed with equal skill and integrity by both, there will come honest competition and an equalization of compensation.

So in her political ambition she must be content to stand or fall by the same rule. If she bungles, political emancipation will not come. If her experiments prove successful, she will secure political freedom, no matter what the arguments may be against it. In all respects I bespeak for the great influence which shall come from the industrial emancipation of woman a happier and purer social condition; and this I say, not as an advocate of woman suffrage, not as woman's champion, but simply from recognizing justice and from the inevitable trend of social forces which is hastened by industrial processes.

CARROLL D. WRIGHT.

DOES THE NEGRO PAY FOR HIS EDUCATION?

THREE things are noted as making it hard for the South to support public schools: the large ratio of children to parents, the scarcity of taxable property, and the sparseness of population. Some add a fourth; that is, State debts. Now, the practical question in the mind of every public-spirited Southerner ought, it seems to me, to be: Do these things so fully account for and so unavoidably control the present status of Southern public schools that it is useless to look or strive for better conditions while these four things remain as they are, or are the present starved conditions of these schools due in part to other obstructions removable, but largely overlooked?

Probably the answer comes easiest in regard to State debts. Alabama, poorer in net wealth than North Carolina, and South Carolina, poorer still, both provide better for public education than North Carolina does; while Arkansas, with twice the debt and little better than equal wealth per capita of minors, provides twice as well. Mississippi, the State of least wealth in the Union, excels five of the eleven southernmost States in yearly school provision per capita of her population, and yet is excelled by Arkansas, almost as poor and with two and a half times as much debt. So, then, State debts do not explain contrasts in school outlays. It may be well, therefore, for those who feel interested to look inquiringly at the other obstacles.

Both in the North and in the South, men whose integrity and generosity are beyond a moment's question have drawn comparisons between very rich and populous States of the North and very poor and thinly-settled States of the South, which have been only the more unfortunate for the Southern States because they flattered them. North Carolina, they say, spent lately in one year a larger ratio of her scant wealth for public education than did Massachusetts, which is seven times as rich per inhabitant. One who has gone no further than this comparison may be surprised to know that Utah, much more like the South in the summing up of her economic conditions than any Eastern State is, spends yearly for schools three and a half times as much per capita as the Carolinas, and has provided a public-school

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property whose cash value per capita of her school attendance is fourteen times that of South Carolina, and nearly one and a half times that of all the eleven southernmost States combined. But such comparisons are unfair, whether they flatter or condemn, because the opposite regions are too dissimilar for close comparisons. Strange that so few seem to have thought of the far greater value of comparing one Southern State with another. Surely this is one good way to find out whether or not the South is "doing all it can " for public education.

Let us see: The Carolinas are about equal in wealth, in outlays for public schools, and in the ratio of children aged from six to fourteen years. Arkansas is poorer, has more children, and is not half as thickly settled. And yet by every proportion Arkansas spends for schools nearly twice as much as either of the Carolinas. Neither Tennessee nor any seaboard State from Virginia to Texas spends so much yearly in proportion to wealth per capita as Arkansas, whose wealth per capita is the least in the United States. Every one of these States ought to be doing better than Arkansas, or else there are other causes hindering them that ought to be better known. We shall look for these presently. Meantime, is Arkansas a safe standard for other States? Is Arkansas, less than two-thirds of whose two hundred and seventy-five thousand children are enrolled in schools and with less than one-half in daily attendance, doing all she can?

Here we have to look beyond the South for comparisons; but let us look no farther than we must, avoiding violent contrasts in the three conditions already in view, and looking to those Northern States that in these conditions are nearest like the South. These are some four or five large States of the middle West just beyond the Mississippi and surrounding and including Iowa. Iowa has a density of population and ratio of children to adults about the same as that of the Carolinas. Her wealth is twice that of Arkansas, but is less than that of Texas. Yet her annual school outlay is nearly three times that of Texas and over five times that of Arkansas. Kansas is not quite so rich as Iowa. Her ratio of children is about the same. Yet in 1888-89 she spent for public schools seven times as much 2 as Georgia, or the sum total of the per capitas of Georgia and the five States by which Georgia is bounded. Other comparisons show similar contrasts; scantiness of population, low ratios of wealth, and high ratios of minors to adults fail to explain why Southern public 'Per capita of total population.

Per capita of population six to fourteen years old,

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