INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The American people today may be likened to the onlookers of a great drama. A drama so tremendous, so spectacular, so tragic, that it surpasses anything the mind of man has hitherto conceived. The onlookers of this drama naturally are absorbed with its immediate movements. With its broad meanings they are intensely concerned, but beyond these they have no interest. Their vision for detail is clouded by the flare and vastness of the apparent. What lies beneath, above, about, are only incidentals and of no immediate consequence to them.
But the “incidentals” of the present war are, for the careful observer, to say nothing of the professional drama critic, the chips which show what is taking place as the result of the flare and the noise, and the tragedy. One of these incidents is the coming of woman into realms of activity which not for a million years—that is to say, never before—have been opened to her.
Under the stress involved in winning a world peace, this fact is scarcely noted, and is not understood in its full meaning. But the moment peace is declared it will become a question of vital importance, involving as it does all lines of human endeavor—labor, commerce, philosophy, literature, agriculture, law, education, and the crafts as well as the arts.
The conservative mind, freed from the absorptionof war, will turn with startled gasp to discover that one half of the race has been shaken out of the rut of ages, and is spilling itself helter-skelter, into every department of social achievement. And the conservative mind will ask with child-like frankness if the women are equal to the responsibility and the opportunity which has been thrust upon them.
“Woman’s Voice” has been compiled in anticipation of this awakening on the part of the multitude, as an answer to its wondering inquiry.
That women have themselves long yearned toward the broader paths of effort and usefulness is manifest in the utterances of those who have learned the art of self-expression. That they fully comprehend the meaning, hardships and blessings of the broader life, is plainly shown in their wide-spread printed word. “Woman’s Voice” is an effort to collect, in what may be called at once a brief and an exposition of woman’s entrance into the world of general endeavor, the wisdom of the women who have studied conditions with an earnestness and efficiency which renders them peculiarly fitted to speak for themselves upon the questions most closely touching themselves and their children.
For ages untold only the voice of man has dictated the conditions under which the rest of the world should live, including women and children. All the poetry, all the philosophy, all the wisdom of the ages was presented in man’s words, and from man’s standpoint. Woman, dumb, untutored, and handicapped by an adverse public opinion, another creation of the solely masculine mind, held to her chimney corneras helpless in the face of petty and colossal injustices as the children she bore.
“Woman’s Voice” portrays the effort of women to get away from this now apparent social mistake. Women have spoken and will continue to speak, for, if we are to proceed speedily and with the least possible resistance into the new order of things, education is still essential. There are millions to whom the apparent is not apparent, and whose eyes must be opened before the democracy for which the world is paying in blood and agony can become a reality.
I believe “Woman’s Voice” should be in every home in the nation, and in all nations where society is affected by the conditions which have brought women away from the hearth-stone into the market-place. As a digest of the best thought of representative women the world over, it will be read when the multiplicity of volumes from which it is quoted are passed by. It will be read not only for its seriousness, but for its poetic sentiment, and its sprightly comment on the every-day things of life. Its usefulness to club members and to workers in the equal suffrage campaigns will be invaluable, but it is to the average housewife and mother that I trust it will make its strongest appeal. To the women who have more or less dimly felt, but who have not as yet found a voice or an avenue through which to develop or express this feeling about things which so much concern them and their children. I am hoping, also, that it will fall into the hands of thousands of theorists who are opposing, for no reason except theirown ignorance about it, the advance of women in the coming world-democracy.
Briefly, but earnestly, I wish to thank the publishers, editors and writers who have made this Anthology possible through their permission to reprint from books, magazines and articles the matter contained herein. I have endeavored in all instances to give full credit to all of these, and if errors happen to occur in this regard they are unintentional, and only the result of the initial publishing of a work as new and comprehensive as this one. Also, if any name has been omitted whose observations should have appeared in this book, it is only because it was impossible for a very busy editor to fail to miss some very worthy writers. In future editions these can be gathered up, until we have a volume or many volumes which may be perfectly representative of the woman’s voice of the world.
Josephine CongerCompiler “Woman’s Voice”