as merely
been reading the story of the American club woman. I have not succeeded
at all if my readers imagine that I have been writing only about a
selected group of women. What I have meant to do is to show the
instinctive bent of the universal woman mind in all ages, reflected in
the actions of the freest group of women the world has ever seen.

I might have reanimated ages of stone and of bronze; might have shown
you women, through slow centuries, inventing the arts of spinning and
weaving, and pottery molding; learning to build, to till the earth, to
grind and to cook grains, to tan skins for clothing against the cold. No
one taught them these things. Out of their brains, as undeveloped and as
primitive as the brains of men, they would never have conceived so much
wisdom. The vague mind of the savage woman never sent her to the spider,
the nesting bird, and the burrowing squirrel to learn to weave and to
build and to store. When we find exactly what it was that taught
primitive woman how to lay the first stones of civilization, we have a
perfect philosophical understanding of all women.

I chose to interpret the woman mind through the modern American woman,
partly because she has learned the great lesson of organization, and has
thus been able to work more effectively, and to impress her will on the
community more strikingly than other women in other ages. What she has
done is apparent and easy to prove.

Also, I chose the American club woman because she represents, not an
unusually gifted type, but the average intelligent, well-educated,
energetic, wife-and-mother type of woman. The club woman is not radical,
or at least not consciously radical. She has not, like the progressive
German and Russian woman, theories of political regeneration or of
family reconstruction. What she desires, what ideals she has formed, I
think must fairly represent the desires and ideals of the great mass of
women of the twentieth century.

When we survey the activities the club women have engaged in, when we
discover why they chose exactly these activities, we have a perfect
philosophical understanding, not only of the modern woman mind, but of
the cave woman mind and all the woman mind in between.

The woman mind is the most unchangeable thing in the world. It has
turned on identically the same pivot since the present race began.
Perhaps before.

Turn back and count over the club women's achievements, the things they
have chosen