ed for going out and working when one
remembers that they must either work or starve. Broidering pearls will
not boil the kettle worth a cent! There are now thirty per cent of the
women of the U. S. A. and Canada, who are wage-earners, and we will
readily grant that necessity has driven most of them out of their
homes. Similarly, in England alone, there are a million and a half
more women than men. It would seem that all women cannot have homes of
their own--there does not seem to be enough men to go around. But
still there are people who tell us these women should all have homes of
their own--it is their own fault if they haven't; and once I heard of a
woman saying the hardest thing about men I ever heard--and she was an
ardent anti-suffragist too. She said that what was wrong with the
women in England was that they were too particular--that's why they
were not married, "and," she went on, "any person can tell, when they
look around at men in general, that God never intended women to be very
particular." I am glad I never said anything as hard as that about men.

There are still with us some of the conventions of the old days of
chivalry. The pretty woman still has the advantage over her plainer
sister--and the opinion of the world is that women must be beautiful at
all costs. When a newspaper wishes to disprove a woman's contention,
or demolish her theories, it draws ugly pictures of her. If it can
show that she has big feet or red hands, or wears unbecoming clothes,
that certainly settles the case--and puts her where she belongs.

This cruel convention that women must be beautiful accounts for the
popularity of face-washes, and beauty parlors, and the languor of
university extension lectures. Women cannot be blamed for this. All
our civilization has been to the end that women make themselves
attractive to men. The attractive woman has hitherto been the
successful woman. The pretty girl marries a millionaire, travels in
Europe, and is presented at court; her plainer sister, equally
intelligent, marries a boy from home, and does her own washing. I am
not comparing the two destinies as to which offers the greater
opportunities for happiness or usefulness, but rather to show how
widely divergent two lives may be. What caused the difference was a
wavy strand of hair, a rounder curve on a cheek. Is it any wonder that
women capitalize their good looks, even at the expense of their
intelligence? The econom