Eugene Wood

“ And not to go so far back as the Garden of Eden and Mother Eve taking a bite out of the apple of knowledge of what was good and made folks wise, I have just returned from a trip to the Ozarks, where the women-folks wait on the men, and no more think of sitting down to the same table with them than niggers would think of sitting down to the same table with white folks. The women have always done productive work. ”

“ Males aren't such a much. It is a cheap experiment to try, to fancy a steady diminution of one sex while the other remains constant. If there were fewer and fewer women until finally there were only men, it would be fairly easy to figure out just about when human beings would cease to exist altogether. But up-end the proposition, and keep all the women, and gradually diminish the men until there are no more of them, it isn't so easy a problem in arithmetic.
Mind you, I am not advocating the extermination of the men-folks. ”

“ Society takes a lot of pains to produce automobiles and never turns a hand to see to it that I consume one. Doesn't pay any more attention to me in that respect than if I didn't exist. And, from what I can learn, there are many others in just my fix. It isn't that we can't use them or don't want to use them; the trouble is that Society doesn't pay us enough to buy them, and charges us far too much on things that we can't get along without, food and shelter and clothing and coal and carfare and such things. ”

“ You take a thousand men and a thousand women. Give to each batch an equal amount of intelligence, instruction and experience, and whether you put them on the Productive end or the Consumptive end, there won't be five cents' worth of difference between them. ”

“ It can't be very scientific if people read it and enjoy it. They aren't like literary folks, who when they take hold of a subject must not do more than pull out a few of the prettiest tail-feathers. They pluck the subject as bare as a teacup. ”

“ Nobody can be a Deep Thinker without capital letters sticking up through his copy like bristles on a cucumber. If I can't have any other symptoms of a Deep Thinker than Capital Letters, I must have them. ”

“ It is only quite recently that we have begun to produce more than we know what to do with until a large proportion of the people get over the notion that they are lucky to be alive. A great many of our citizens aren't educated up to believe that they are entitled to more than four things to eat, or more than two rooms to live in, or better clothes than what will do very well for a mop-rag. We are trying to educate them to live better, but oh, dear! It's an uphill job. ”

“ Woman not only works in the old-style hand-powered factory of the home, but very frequently in the new-style steam-powered factory away from the home. But if he saw, farther, that Mrs. Woman, with a frequency not known before in history, goes to the factory on Monday morning when the whistle blows, and works till Saturday night, while Mr. Man cooks the victuals, and sweeps the floor, and even minds the baby—— If Dr. Devine saw that also he has kept mighty still about it. In a case of that kind, what is the Economic Function of Man? ”

“ The men didn't turn their hand to anything in the way of productive labor until they, too, were enslaved. If you find men swinging the hammer while women fry the beefsteak, I can also show you women swinging the hammer and men frying beefsteak, both remaining essentially masculine and feminine. ”

“ But when it comes to getting all these things consumed so that, as a nation, we can keep the producing end of the enterprise running full-powered, why, we simply aren't there. The working-class doesn't get in wages what will buy back the things it produces. ”

“ It is a subject that is brought to the male attention so often, so very often when you consider the whole period from the cradle to the grave. And then, again, this seemed a particularly promising viewpoint from which to consider Woman—what, if any account, is she? ”

“ But in this matter, you ask, aren't the men-folks entitled to some slight consideration?
Oh, yes, but not nearly so much as they think they are. For quite a good way up the scale of life, they get along pretty well without males at all. And when they do appear, they cut very little ice. When a plant has been cultivated as long, for instance, as the banana-plant, and knows it will be taken care of on its merits, it quits all that sex-foolishness. ”

“ Women do most of the cooking that's done, but there are some mighty good men cooks, and most men can cook nearly as badly as most women. Women do most of the marketing, but there are men who can shop expertly, and most men can buy with as little judgment as most women. ”

“ The demagogue that goes about inflaming, the passions of the poor and making them envious of their more fortunate brethren has got his work all cut out for him, I tell you. But the fact remains that it is only the other day, so to speak, that we put in electricity, and scientific processes, and cut up industries into sets of two- and three-motion jobs, so that any kind of mud-heads could learn how to work at anything in a week. ”

“ And it isn't wonderful, either, come to look at it, that more attention has been paid to the Productive Department of the Nation's housekeeping than to the Consuming Department. It has only been about half a century that we have really got to that stage of human progress where, if we wanted to run full-powered, we could produce such oodles and oodles of the things we'd like to.have that we don't know what to do with them all. ”

“ At that she is a specialist who stands unrivalled. And while shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, and many other things are of great importance to be produced, I submit that a good crop of children coming on is of importance the vitalest. ”