[The Business of Being a Woman by Ida M. Tarbell]@TWC D-Link book
The Business of Being a Woman

CHAPTER IX
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He makes converts of those of his own kind, those who like him have rare powers for indignation and sacrifice, but little capacity or liking for the exact truth or for self-restraint.

He turns from him many who are as zealous as he to change conditions, but who demand that they be painted as they are and that justice be rendered both to those who have fought against them in the past and to those who are in different ways doing so to-day.
The movement for a fuller life for American women has always suffered from the disregard of some of its noblest followers, both for things as they are and for things as they have been.

The persistent belittling for campaign purposes of the Business of Being a Woman I have repeatedly referred to in this little series of essays; indeed, it has been founded on the proposition that the Uneasy Woman of to-day is to a large degree the result of the belittlement of her natural task and that her chief need is to dignify, make scientific, professionalize, that task.
I doubt if there is to-day a more disintegrating influence at work--one more fatal to sound social development--than that which belittles the home and the position of the woman in it.

As a social institution nothing so far devised by man approaches the home in its opportunity, nor equals it in its successes.
The woman's position at its head is hard.

The result of her pains and struggles are rarely what she hopes, either for herself or for any one connected with her, but this is true of all human achievement.


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