Page:Women Wanted.djvu/411

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE RING AND THE WOMAN
375

have a due share of the common property and of the earned income, with full power to defray his or her personal expenses and those of the home.

9. Before marriage, the contracting parties shall agree on which of the three systems the property shall be arranged. This agreement shall be capable of alteration after marriage with due legal formalities and safeguards.

10. Husband and wife shall inherit from each other on the same footing with the children.

This memorial from the Finnish women coincides perfectly in spirit with the new laws in process of construction for Scandinavia. When the Dutch Parliament, which has just conferred a new measure of suffrage on the women of the Netherlands, was in 1917 debating the matter, an alarmed reactionary rose to object: "But how can married women vote? For married women are not free. They are like soldiers in barracks, who have lost the liberty to express their thoughts."

THE NEW FATHERHOOD

Sir, that's just the point. But the liberty that was lost, is found. No one, as we have seen, is going to compel this new woman to be anything that she does not want to be. Let us not forget this now as she goes on talking. For she is coming presently to that which is at the heart of the whole woman question, nay, more, the human question.

"Dear," she is going to say, "there is that which matters more than all the rest for us now to decide.