Then—Back to the Home!By Caro Lloyd(American contemporary writer. Sister of Henry Demarest Lloyd, and author of his Biography. The following was taken from an article in “The Progressive Woman.”)
By Caro Lloyd
(American contemporary writer. Sister of Henry Demarest Lloyd, and author of his Biography. The following was taken from an article in “The Progressive Woman.”)
Search any woman’s heart, no matter how “emancipated”, how “modern”, she may be, andyou will find there the love of home, of a lover, of a child, either realized or hoped for. How far this love is being denied to women today needs no showing. Women are being forced from the home into industry at a faster rate than the birth rate. Those still in the home are beginning to realize the interdependence of the modern social order and to see that only by extending their home-making out into the larger life of the community are their own circles safe.
As they go out into this wider service and struggle, women will take the spirit of the home with them. There are already signs that the faith, honesty, cleanliness, kindness of the home are to become the qualities of future society. We are to forsake our present régime with its cruel hostilities, and to build an order which shall meet the needs of all its children with the tenderness of father and mother, which shall institutionalize sisterhood and brotherhood. In this reconstruction women, the home-makers, will do a valiant share.
Then, having battled for their emancipation and won, and having used their new powers to join in the crusade for a higher civilization and won, women will go back into the home. Back to the home! But it will be as free women to a free home, under whose roof justice, equality and security will be sheltered. At last there will be an era of peace, and the morning rays of the golden age will tint the hilltops.