The Art of Public Speaking
are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before
have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of
administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a democratic
republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material
well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy,
self-reliance, and individual initiative, also have brought the care and
anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial
centers.
Upon the success of our experiment much depends--not only as regards our
own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the
cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its
foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to
the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.
There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is
every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from
ourselves the gravity of the problems before us, nor fearing to approach
these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them
aright.
Yet after all, tho the problems are new, tho the tasks set before us
differ from the tasks set before our fathers, who founded and preserved
this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and
these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains
essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We
know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people
which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed
will of the free men who compose it.
But we have faith that we shall not prove false to memories of the men
of the mighty past. They did their work; they left us the splendid
heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we
shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our
children's children.
To do so, we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday
affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of
hardihood, and endurance, and, above all, the power of devotion to a
lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the
days of Washington; which made great the men who preserved this Republic
in the days of Abraham Lincoln.
ON AMERICAN MOTHERHOOD[38]
(1905)
In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers
to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing
to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relatively to the country;
for the small land owners, the men who own their little homes, and
therefore to a very large extent the men who till farms, the men of the
soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting national life in
every State; and, if the foundation becomes either too weak or too
narrow, the superstructure, no matter how attractive, is in imminent
danger of falling.
But far more important than the question of the occupation of our
citizens is the question of how their family life is conducted. No
matter what that occupation may be, as long as there is a real home and
as long as those who make up that home do their duty to one another, to
their neighbors and to the State, it is of minor consequence whether the
man's trade is plied in the country or in the city, whether it calls for
the work of the hands or for the work of the head.
No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of
artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home
life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage,
common sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need
to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good
mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of
womanhood, able and willing to bear, and to bring up as they should be
brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind, and character, and
numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.
There are certain old truths which will be true as long as this world
endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the
truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the
breadwinner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the
woman is to be the helpmate, the housewife, and mother. The woman
should have ample educational advantages; but save in exceptional cases
the man must be, and she need not be, and generally ought not to be,
trained for a lifelong career as the family breadwinner; and,
therefore, after a certain point, the training of the two must normally
be different because the duties of the two are normally different. This
does not mean inequality of function, but it does mean that normally
there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I think the duty
of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the more
honorable of the two; on the whole I respect the woman who does her duty
even more than I respect the man who does his.
No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as
the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for
upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the
day but often every hour of the night. She may have to get up night
after night to take care of a sick child, and yet must by day continue
to do all her household duties as well; and if the family means are
scant she must usually enjoy even her rare holidays taking her whole
brood of children with her. The birth pangs make all men the debtors of
all women. Above all our sympathy and regard are due to the struggling
wives among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people, and whom
he so loved and trusted; for the lives of these women are often led on
the lonely heights of quiet, self-sacrificing heroism.
Just as the happiest and most honorable and most useful task that can be
set any man is to earn enough for the support of his wife and family,
for the bringing up and starting in life of his children, so the most
important, the most honorable and desirable task which can be set any
woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect
and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal
to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and
self-sacrifice. Of course there are exceptional men and exceptional
women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and
ought to lead great careers of outside usefulness in addition to--not as
substitutes for--their home work; but I am not speaking of exceptions; I
am speaking of the primary duties, I am speaking of the average
citizens, the average men and women who make up the nation.
Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers, I shall have
nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work
which is never ended. No mother has an easy time, the most mothers have
very hard times; and yet what true mother would barter her experience of
joy and sorrow in exchange for a life of cold selfishness, which insists
upon perpetual amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often
finds its fit dwelling place in some flat designed to furnish with the
least possible expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of
luxury, but in which there is literally no place for children?
The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect
as is no one else; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long
as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy
life for the man as for the woman; tho neither the effort nor the
self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in
the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman
who submits to gross and long continued ill treatment, any more than I
believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No
wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife and
the children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature.
Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of
consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them,
should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.
I believe in the woman keeping her self-respect just as I believe in the
man doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the
man's, and indeed a little more; and I regard marriage as a partnership,
in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the
other as well as of his or her own. But I think that the duties are even
more important than the rights; and in the long run I think that the
reward is ampler and greater for duty well done, than for the insistence
upon individual rights, necessary tho this, too, must often be. Your
duty is hard, your responsibility great; but greatest of all is your
reward. I do not pity you in the least. On the contrary, I feel respect
and admiration for you.
Into the woman's keeping is committed the destiny of the generations to
come after us. In bringing up your children you mothers must remember
that while it is essential to be loving and tender it is no less
essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be
treated as interchangeable terms; and besides training your sons and
daughters in the softer and milder virtues, you must seek to give them
those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely
need. Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training; and
some will go right even when their surroundings are most unfortunate;
nevertheless an immense amount depends upon the family training. If you
mothers through weakness bring up your sons to be selfish and to think
only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the
women who are to be their wives in the future. If you let your daughters
grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as you
yourselves have had to work hard they shall know only enjoyment, you are
preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves. Teach
boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in
avoiding difficulties, but to lives spent in overcoming difficulties.
Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others, is not curse
but a blessing; seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but
seek also to make them face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest
success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God
and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is
thrice fortunate among women.
There are many good people who are denied the supreme blessing of
children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to
those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great
blessings of life. But the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these
blessings, whether from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness,
self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference
between the all-important and the unimportant,--why, such a creature
merits contempt as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away
in battle, or upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those
dependent upon him, and who tho able-bodied is yet content to eat in
idleness the bread which others provide.
The existence of women of this type forms one of the most unpleasant and
unwholesome features of modern life. If any one is so dim of vision as
to fail to see what a thoroughly unlovely creature such a woman is I
wish they would read Judge Robert Grant's novel "Unleavened Bread,"