Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1911 — Woman’s World [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Woman’s World

Olive Schreiner, the Novelist, Gives Radical Prediction.

“It is quite possible that the female half of humanity may be found more fitted than are men for the bulk of human labors in the future.” So says Olive Schreiner, and she pictures women as becoming the greatest financiers, judges and lawmakers. This same Olive Schreiner, who was once known only as a great but peaceful novelist, author of "The Story of an African Farm.” is now marching up at the head of the women’s rights procession. Her motto is. “We women take all fields of labor for our right” In her new book. “Women and Labor.” she states her demand with the hard science of a college professor. Women, she declares, must and will take over a balf in all fields of labor, from digging ditches to ruling nations, or else, with this modem age of machinery, they must become mere parasites. In answering the objections likely to be urged against her theories she declares, in reply to the retort that women may be unable to carry on a full half of all labors, that, on the other hand, women may prove much more able to conduct the world than are men. Is Olive Schreiner right? Is woman to rule the world? • A Columbia college professor declares that she is not merely as regards some sort of distant future, but as regards _oday. He points out that today in all the large cities where there are large and important movements for the improvement of social conditions women are at once more studious and more active practically. He declares that even in law and in medical schools the women are the most earnest and practical. In small towns, he points out, it is not men but women who get away from the cracker box and village gossip to form municipal improvement and study clubs. And in answer to the oft given objection that it is only men who have been able to rule he quotes Mrs. Schreiner's “Woman and Labor” to the effect that the best rulers in the world have been queens—Victoria and Elizabeth and Catherine of Russia. Is there some truth in the humorous papers’ frequent jests to the effect that it will soon be the men who are reduced to the dishwashing and mending while women rule the world?

OLIVE SCHRETNER.