top to talk.

It is the women, who now have leisure, who are doing the talking. For
generations women have been thinking and thought without expression is
dynamic, and gathers volume by repression. Evolution when blocked and
suppressed becomes revolution. The introduction of machinery and the
factory-made articles has given women more leisure than they had
formerly, and now the question arises, what are they going to do with
it?

Custom and conventionality recommend many and varied occupations for
women, social functions intermixed with kindly deeds of charity,
embroidering altar cloths, making strong and durable garments for the
poor, visiting the sick, comforting the sad, all of which women have
faithfully done, but while they have been doing these things, they have
been wondering about the underlying causes of poverty, sadness and sin.
They notice that when the unemployed are fed on Christmas day, they are
just as hungry as ever on December the twenty-sixth, or at least on
December the twenty-seventh; they have been led to inquire into the
causes for little children being left in the care of the state, and
they find that in over half of the cases, the liquor traffic has
contributed to the poverty and unworthiness of the parents. The state
which licenses the traffic steps in and takes care, or tries to, of the
victims; the rich brewer whose business it is to encourage drinking, is
usually the largest giver to the work of the Children's Aid Society,
and is often extolled for his lavish generosity: and sometimes when
women think about these things they are struck by the absurdity of a
system which allows one man or a body of men to rob a child of his
father's love and care all year, and then gives him a stuffed dog and a
little red sleigh at Christmas and calls it charity!

Women have always done their share of the charity work of the world.
The lady of the manor, in the old feudal days, made warm mittens and
woolen mufflers with her own white hands and carried them to the
cottages at Christmas, along with blankets and coals. And it was a
splendid arrangement all through, for it furnished the lady with mild
and pleasant occupation, and it helped to soothe the conscience of the
lord, and if the cottagers (who were often "low worthless fellows, much
given up to riotous thinking and disputing") were disposed to wonder
why they had to work all year and get nothing, while the lord of the
manor did nothing all year an