THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1907. WHAT GERMAN WOMEN WANT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8511, 16 August 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1907. WHAT GERMAN WOMEN WANT.

To believe that the women's movement in Germany is the outcome of cleverly arranged agitation "is merely to betray a certain * naive ignorance of historical and psychological events and conditions which have brought the women's movement into existence." This view is set forth in the New York Independent by Dr. Helene Stocker, of Berlin, who occupies a prominent position m Germany as a lecturer and writer on philosophical and ethical matters pertaining principally to the women's questions. "Even if," Dr. Stocker continues, "women had had a fully satisfactory activity—satisfactory in the sense of its being productive as regards their household work, the changed conditions of industry would still have abolished it. From a productive activity, a more administrative activity developed, and the possibility of giving occupation to the numerous feminine element in the housshold was therefore lost. New kinds of work ha'J to be created to take the place of those that were lost. The old saying that 'A woman's place is at home' had its application only so long as the woman could do everything which belonged to the home. When the advancement of machinery took that out of her hands, there was nothing to do but to seek employment outside of the home, without which employment every person degenerates physically and mentally. In this way the women's movement became a necessity. Two ways only were open for a woman to whom the opportunity

for work was denied, providing she was not fortunate enough to have come into the world blessed with a yearly income. These were disgrace or death. Even those who could have no conception themselves of what mental hunger was, had to realise that womar. was acquainted, At all events, with physical hunger, and therefore she should be allowed to provide for her physical needs with the work of her own hands. Even if there had been no women's movement it would have been necessary for the leaders of the State to have originated it—unless they had had the intention to pension off all the women and maintain them at the public ex-

pense. The two roots of the women's movement, the material and the ideal, are so closely allied that it was not possible to do away with the material need without at once conceiving the ideal." The ultimate aim of the women's movement, declares Dr. Stocker, is "the complete civil and political equality of women with men," and, so far, the greatest success has been attained in the fields of education and training and the preparation for various professions. The universities outside Prussia have opened their doors to women, and the refusal to allow matriculation is "a simple formality." "The latest phase in the German women's movement, however, is in the direction of motherhood protection. At i. e head of this movement stand mt.i and women of all scientific opinions"— famous lawyers, well-known authorities on sex science, Socialists, and others. "When," says Dr. Stocker "wo consider the motherhood of women, with all its consequences, as a social work, we shall have taken one of the most significant steps toward the solution of the women's question, and which leads from barbarity to culture. And it seems sometimes as if we were not very far distant from this object."

ROCKEFELLERS' GIFT. Mr William J. Bryan's comment upon Mr John D. Rockefeller's recent gift of £6,400,000 to the General Education Board of the Unite:! States is that the donation should not blind the American people to the methods by which the money was made. Many investigations had proved that it was exacted by wrongful methods, "and it would have been better to return it directly to the people to whom it belongs, if that could have been done, rather than to have attempted to subsidise the people into acquiescence as to these wrongful business methods in this way." Mr Andrew D. White, the venerable ex-president of Cornell University, and former Ambassador to Russia, declares that the value of the benefaction will depend upon its administration. He warns the trustees against scattering its power for good over the country in sums given to institutions calling themselves by large names, but incapable of doing especially good work. He agrees with President Schurman, of Cornell, in hoping that the bulk of this donation will be devoted to the cause of education in the Southern States. The Rev. Washington Gladden, the well-known Ohio preacher and publicist,denounces the Rockefeller gift as either an overt restitution of money immorally filched from the pubilc or an indirect attempt to prejudice the courts in favour of the defendant in the numerous suits that have been . instituted against the Standard Oil Company. Mr Hannis Taylor, Professor of International and Constitutional Law at the George Washington University, ■ at Washington, and ex-Minister to ! Spain, says—"l know of no monster so dangerous to the life of a Republic as one who can in a moment throw bewildeiing millions in one direction or the other, especially when those millions grow out of abnormal economic conditions that .should not exist. The omnipotent; dispenser may throw his millions in a good direction to-day: it is sure to bs in a bad one to-morrow. But worst of all, ha is an image-breaker, an iconoclast who shatters the ideals upon which the life of this nation was founded." At the same time, President Schurman, of Cornell University, makes the epigram President Roosevelt's expressed fear of the threatened danger from "swollen fortunes": "The danger I see comes not from 'swollen fortunes,' but from stolen fortunes." j