The Pittsburgh Press (April 30, 1941)
THE IMPORTANT JOB
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The most important thing you can do for defense is to go on with what you are doing – only do it better than ever before.
Here, I think, is an excellent suggestion from a woman who represents consumer interests in the defense program, Miss Harriet Elliott.
It is excellent because it is sensible. In times, like these, the natural instinct is to dash out and do something. So urgent is the desire to get busy that many of us simply go into tailspins. Without planning, without considering our talents, we join something or other to start a new organization in a community already over-organized.
But each woman has a task she is now doing, or can do, and it is our own particular work that deserves our best attention. In a manner of speaking we, too, are soldiers, and good soldiers do one job at a time. When we take on too many extras we often neglect the important task, and emergencies are not then wisely met.
It seems to me the present one requires something more than work – it requires thought. American women never had so many opportunities to get information, and never before were they so encourage to seek it and to act upon their own conclusions.
The military program is but the first of a vast number of basic changes which are likely to come in our time and which may alter our lives past all belief. The way to meet those changes is to learn to think straight. At the moment our country is suffering from a confusion of tongues. False statements can be heard, even from the people we most respect.
The sensible woman will set up in her own mind a court where each statement must be proved before it is accepted.