The Pittsburgh Press (November 4, 1941)
Grand business
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Nowadays, women have no reason to envy men. We are luckier than they, because we have a much wider range of interests. Looking backward to those times when the fight for suffrage was on, and we only sniffed freedom from afar, it’s amazing to realize what opportunities lie before the modern girl.
We hold in our hands the possibilities of many kinds of happiness. Whether we use them well depends, of course, upon our good sense and intelligence. For example, can you mention any subject which does not make an appeal to a few women and often to a large group? Religion, politics, world economy, war business, international treaties, sociology, medicine, law, scientific research, the arts, merchandising – the list is endless. Maybe we have only a few experts in any field, but we are gathering information and learning fast.
These fields are new, untried areas into which any girl may go adventuring. Yet, in spite of their vastness and allure, you’ll find that we still adore the old kitchen garden patches too. They are the little things, which when counted together are really big. And they will always be ours in some sweet intimate way which men do not understand.
Oh, she’s just pottering around.
How often you hear those words spoken of the homebody who spends hours within her house and garden. The outsider wonders what she finds to do, yet she is always busy. These pottering jobs constitute our feminine inheritance and from them we still derive our deepest happiness, even when ambition rules us.
And so, in spite of the dark days, I think it’s grand business to be a woman.