Life — July 29, 1915 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“MEUTRALITY” Are Women Despots? OMMISSIONER OF CORE TION KATHARINE B, DAVIS has talked not wisely, but too loud, and has been much criticized. There was trouble at Hart's Island, and a dispo- sition to investigate it from the out- side made her mad. She complained that the District Attorney had been receiving information from Hart's Island keepers, and she was reported to have said: I told Mr. Martin a while ago that if I caught any of my employees tattling to him I would fire them so quick they wouldn't know how they got out of the door. He said they would be reinstated so quick I wouldn't know how it happened, and I said I'd fire them again. I will, too. These fervent words have been thought to manifest a degree of im- patience not compatible with the best interests of the institutions under Commissioner Davis's charge, and have brought letters to the papers that point out that because a woman's point of view is always personal women are not adapted to do as well as men in such offices as Miss Davis holds. One such writer, a woman, says in the Times: Women at heart are despots An office the success of which de- pends upon the exercise of those qualities natural only to the male sex no woman should ever hope to fill. Every generality is partly false, and no prudent person will quite agree that women at heart are despots, or even that a woman's point of view is always personal. But most people who hav lived reasonably long and noticed their fellow-creatures will agree that a woman’s point of view is very apt to be personal, and that the great fault of women’s rule is its tendency to allow too little room for the wills of others, and to restrict freedom be- yond what is wise. Admirable women, put in places of authority and long re- tained there, are often seen to cripple the lives they dominate by excessive exercise of control. They get over- development of the will, scare off the people who ought to work with them and come lonely to saddened ends. Some men-do the same, developing into domestic or office tyrants, but whatever is the reason for it, there is apt to be more liberty under man-rule than under woman-rule. There is truth in what Kipling said in his she- bear poem. Man is a milder creature than woman, He exercises his self- assertion against the forces of nature and mechanics. He beats time, space, poverty and competition. But She ex- ercises her self-assertion mainly upon him and her children. They are what she has to work with. They are her own, and her disposition to do with them what she feels is right has con- stantly to be tempered by masculine deprecation. It isn’t a mere smart say- ing that men own the world and women own the men. It is about as near the truth as we can get. Man, forever in bondage and never quite reconciled to it, keeps ea sentiment for liberty. He knows he will never get much freedom himself and that too much would not be best for him, but he does not want it to perish from the earth, But as for Miss Davis, it does not do to generalize too much about her. She is a very out-of-common woman, has done wonderfully in some respects in a hard place. If she dare trust anybody with her duties, a month's vacation would probably bring her suaviter in modo back into its normal relation to her fortiter in re. There is no tolerance in a tired-out nerve. E.S.M. oO” MAID: Frederick, why do you persist in kissing me so often? Younc Botner: Well, sis, you always look so grateful. A GERMAN MUG comicbooks.com