Part 139 (1/2)
THE SOCIALIST AND THE SUFFRAGIST
Said the Socialist to the Suffragist: ”My cause is greater than yours!
You only work for a Special Cla.s.s, We for the gain of the General Ma.s.s, Which every good ensures!”
Said the Suffragist to the Socialist: ”You Underrate my Cause!
While women remain a Subject Cla.s.s, You never can move the General Ma.s.s, With your Economic Laws!”
Said the Socialist to the Suffragist: ”You misinterpret facts!
There is no room for doubt or schism In Economic Determinism-- It governs all our acts!”
Said the Suffragist to the Socialist: ”You men will always find That this old world will never move More swiftly in its ancient groove While women stay behind!”
”A lifted world lifts women up,”
The Socialist explained.
”You cannot lift the world at all While half of it is kept so small,”
The Suffragist maintained.
The world awoke, and tartly spoke: ”Your work is all the same; Work together or work apart, Work, each of you, with all your heart-- Just get into the game!”
COMMENT AND REVIEW
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There is a book which ought to be held in continual prominence by every magazine in the world that appeals particularly to women. It contains a scientific theory of more importance to the world than any put forth since the theory of evolution, and of more importance to women than any ever produced.
It is new, original, wildly startling, intensely significant, and, in the world of ideas, revolutionary in the highest degree.
When this theory is generally accepted, and when the world's ideas have been rearranged in accordance with it, we shall find ourselves looking at a new life--with new eyes.
All our social questions will require new reading, and will find new answers.
It furnishes a key to the whole ”woman question,” which unlocks every long-barred door and ironbound chest; it cuts the ground from under the feet of the most ancient prejudice, and makes tradition seem but a current rumor of to-day.
This book was published in 1893.
When I read it I was so impressed with its colossal possibility that I went to the publishers and asked to see the reviews--expecting to find some recognition of a world-lifting truth.
I found nothing of the sort. The reviewers reviewed the book in general with respect, with varying insight and intelligence, and one or two dwelt fot a moment on this special theory; but not one recognized its measureless importance.
This is not remarkable. In proportion to the far-reaching value of a truth is the difficulty of popular recognition. With almost all of us the mind is constantly used upon immediate facts and their short-distance relations; a man may be an expert lumber-jack, for instance, or a successful lumber-dealer, yet utterly fail to grasp the importance of forest conservation.
Even those most interested in the woman's movement of to-day were little impressed by this new view.
”What difference does it make?” they said. ”We are dealing with conditions of to-day--not with questions of primitive biology!”