"
It would be miraculous indeed if that victory which has been won, had
been gained without great toil, insufferable anguish and sacrifice
such as all persons experience when they dare to brave the conventions
of the dead past or blaze a trail for a new order.
But where the vision is clear, the faith deep, forces unseen rally to
assist and carry one over barriers which would otherwise have been
insurmountable. No part of this wave of woman's emancipation has won
its way without such vision and faith.
This is the one movement in which pioneering was unnecessary. The cry
for deliverance always goes up. It is its own pioneer. The facts have
always stared us in the face. No one who has worked among women can be
ignorant of them. I remember that ever since I was a child, the idea
of large families associated itself with poverty in my mind. As I grew
to womanhood, and found myself working in hospitals and in the homes
of the rich and the poor, the association between the two ideas grew
stronger.
In every home of the poor, women asked me the same question. As far
back as 1900, I began to inquire of my associates among the nurses
what one could tell these worried women who asked constantly: "What
can I do?" It is the voice of the elemental urge of woman--it has
always been there; and whether we have heeded it or neglected it, we
have always heard it.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195