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In the 1910s, Frank Leslie’s Weekly had an increase in news by and about women. Kate Upson Clark* and the paper’s “In the World of Womankind” page is a good example. After sharing news tidbits from around the world, she would respond to letters from readers:

FOR A EUROPEAN TRIP

Dear Mrs. Clark: I am going abroad for a six-weeks’ trip. I take a steamer trunk, two suitcases and a hand-bag. Please advise me about what dresses to take. I have a good tailor-made suit, and a charmeuse (short) dinner-dress. Our party will travel, stopping only a few days in any one place. Is this enough? I shall have three or four blouses to wear with the skirt of my tailor-made gown.—L. B., Trenton, N. J.

That supply should serve for so short a trip. Take stout, comfortable shoes, and new underclothes.

DEAR BALLOT BOX: Do you know that this interminable drudgery imposed on American mothers of petitioning—petitioning for the ballot—this humiliation of forever praying to their own sons to be allowed to enjoy their birthright with the men born of them, furnishes me with stronger evidence of the Darwinian theory than anything I am able to find elsewhere. Were it not for this relic which has no parallel in the history left us of the dark ages—of the long ago buried past, there would be little proof of such an age having once enshrouded the earth.

The brutish vulgarity which we see cropping out in men who ignorantly disgrace themselves by ignoring their own mothers, is conclusive evidence to me that the race must have come up through the long line of animal ancestry to the “man in the dugout,” and from thence to the men in our present Congress, some of whom still seem inclined to root, and grunt, and squeal, if others assert rights equal to their own: lest the visual line of their own pen be the world’s extent, and, if others should be allowed to enjoy like blessings, they would be crowded, off the stage of action. While there are other men on the same floor, who, I am proud to say, are infinitely in advance of all this, which is a promise and prophecy of the oncoming of those others, for which I thank God and take courage; and love to accept this theory because it gives us a better outlook—this law of eternal progress must in cycles of years lift the most sordid to a higher plane of nobler action.

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From time immemorial, the part of woman in war has been the hardest. It has been her lot to send her loved ones away as sacrifices on the altar of her country and to remain at home, torn by all the emotions that rend the spirit of mothers, wives and sweethearts. She has been forced in the ages past to await with fearful forebodings the news from the scenes of conflict; she has suffered the pangs of sudden bereavement, and has borne the consequent burdens in the future years.

The success of any nation’s arms has been due largely to the fortitude of its women. What we of the present day know as morale and which is maintained by large organizations in and out of the army, was just as important a factor in the years that have gone as it is today. But then there were no well organized bodies to see to it that our soldiers were kept in good spirits and guided in the right paths. The burden of the task lay with the women of our country.

It was their bravery at the parting, their cheerfulness in adversity, their fortitude in bereavement, their happiness in victory which inspired men to do or die, and which has demonstrated that “they also serve who stand and wait.” The ancient Spartan mother said to her son when he left her to do battle for Sparta, “Return with your shield or on it.” Human nature has not changed a great deal in the last two thousand years, and although the mother of today does not say so in so many words to her son, when he goes forth to battle, “acquit yourself honorably or do not return home,” she teaches him from childhood the value of bravery and the wretchedness of the coward. (more…)

“THE ENEMY AT THE GATE” – under this striking title The Outlook for April 6 (1912) published an article by Dr. Max G. Schlapp, the head of the department of neuropathology in the Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital of New York City and in the Cornell Medical School, sounding a note of warning regarding certain modern tendencies.

Dr. Schlapp’s conclusions are, in substance, that the strain of modern life is having an effect upon men, and especially upon women, that can be traced biologically; that it is such as to impair the vigor and faculties of a great proportion of children that are now being born into the world; that the effect is seen in injury to motherhood, in a reduced birthrate, in an increase in the proportion of the mentally defective, the insane and the delinquent; and that the resultant conditions are such that nothing short of a radical change in present tendencies can save modern civilized peoples from going the way of the Greeks and the Romans.

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I ask if the laws are right, in case a married woman possess real estate, (for of course she can possess no personal property,) and dies, leaving a husband; according to the laws of Ohio, (if I mistake not,) he is entitled to the whole amount. But if a man possesses property and dies, leaving a widow, she is entitled to none of his personal property, and only allowed the use of the third of his real estate; the surplus is to be divided equally among the children, if they have any, when the youngest is twenty-one years of age; also the remaining third, after the death of the widow. But if she has no children, it will go to the deceased husband’s relatives.

I would like to know if a woman does not need as much property to support a family of children as a man, who gets higher wages for labor?

But no; they deprive her of property, reduce her wages, and then compel her to wear away her life in unremitting toil, for a mere pittance, to provide for herself and her helpless children. Now, I ask, what justice is there in this? It is no wonder that people blush at the name of Slavery!

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