the American woman is an ideal
democrat. Give her a ghost of a chance and she almost never fails to
better herself materially and socially. Nor can she be said to do it
by the clumsy methods we describe as "pushing." She does it by a
legitimate, if rather literal, application of the national formula for
rising,--get schooling and get money.

The average American man reverses the order of the terms in the
formula. He believes more in money. The time that boys and girls are
kept in school after the fourteen-or sixteen-year-age limit is
generally due to the insistence of the mother, her confidence that the
more education, the better the life chance. What it amounts to is that
the man has more faith in life as a teacher, the woman more faith in
schools. Both, however, seek the same goal, pin their faith to the
same tools. Both take it for granted that if they work out the
formulas, they thereby earn and will receive letters patent to the
aristocracy of the democracy!

The weakness of this popular conception of the democratic scheme is
that it gives too much attention to what a man gets and too little to
what he gives. Democracy more than any other scheme under which men
have tried to live together depends on what each returns--returns not
in material but in spiritual things. Democracy is not a shelter, a
garment, a cash account; it is a spirit. The real test of its
followers must be sought in their attitude of mind toward life, labor,
and their fellows.

Where does the average American woman come out in applying this test?
Take her attitude toward labor,--where does it place her? Labor
according to democracy is a badge of respectability. You cannot poach
or sponge in a democracy; if you do, you violate the fundamental right
of the other man. You cannot ask him to help support you by indirect
or concealed devices; if you do, you are hampering the free
opportunity the scheme promises him.

Moreover, the kind of work you do must not demean you. Nothing useful
is menial. It is in the quality of the work and the spirit you give it
that the test lies. Poor work brings disrespect and so hurts not only
you but the whole mass. Contempt for a task violates the principle
because it is contempt for a thing which the system recognizes as
useful. Classification based on tasks falls down in a democracy. A
poor lawyer falls below a good clerk, a poor teacher below a good
housemaid, since one renders a sound and the other an unsound se