Women and Economics by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In the face of so vital and radical a change in human life as this change of economic base in the position of women, it is well to call attention more at length to the illustrations of every-day facts in our common lives, which he who runs may read, if he knows how to read. We do not, as a rule, know how to read the most important messages to humanity,-the signs of the times. Historic crises, which have been slowly maturing, burst upon us in sudden birth before the majority of the people imagine that anything is going on. The first gun fired at Fort Sumter was an extreme surprise to most of the citizens of the Union. The Boston Tea Party was, no doubt, an unaccountable piece of insolence to many worthy Britons. When "the deluge" did pour over the _noblesse_ of France, few had been really foreseeing enough to avoid it.

Fortunately, the laws of social evolution do not wait for our recognition or acceptance: they go straight on. And this greater and more important change than the world has ever seen, this slow emergence of the long-subverted human female to full racial equality, has been going on about us full long enough to be observed. It is seen more prominently in this country than in any other, for many reasons.