The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1912. THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 4, 30 December 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1912. THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT.

The Feminist Movement at Home is engaging much attention at this time, and many public men have spoken on the subject from the platform. The Rev. Father Day recently gave fojnr addresses on the question, and in the course of the second one, spoke of the transformation of labour involved in the industrial revolution , ushered in by the application of steam and electricity in the past century, which, he said, was the principal cause of the present economic phase of the feminist movement. A great variety of industrial pursuits opened out to women, who thus became economically independent and self-supporting, and, for the first time in her history, worked side by side with man, and entered into a limited industrial comjretition with him. From those changed habits and manners a new social situation arose, sharply contrasting with the spirit and laws of former times, and evidently requiring some adjustment. How that readjustment was to bo made was the new problem still pressing for solution. The votaries of advanced feminism seized the opportunity to proclaim the complete emancipation of their sex, and to herald the dawn of a new era of liberated womanhood. Foremost in their programme was the demand in the name of liberty and progress for complete economic independence. The claim, Father Day held to be “unnatural, unChristian, and reactionary,” and the only possible readjustment of society was that which proceed the lines of Christian philosophy, in accordance with natural biological law,-and in the light of revelation and reason. The plan of woman’s economic emancipation as formulated by the advanced feminists did not stop at the legitimate desire to improve the conditions and wages of female workers. It no doubt contained that desire, but its real ambition was to set woman free from her existing tutelage and to make her independent of the support and maintenance she had hitherto been accustomed to receive at the hands of man. The basis of the feminist claim was that woman was the industrial equal of man, and capable, if granted equal opportunities, of becoming economically independent and self-sufficient. He considered that such a contention was utterly fallacious and completely disproved by the logic of facts. Industry was not woman’s sphere, and the suggestion of equal opportunities was both futile am! cruel.