The Pittsburgh Press (February 29, 1944)
Ferguson: Nagging
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
The nagging woman has always been classed as a major league. Such a prejudice has been built up against her that we have lost sight of the fact that her tongue sometimes accomplishes good results.
You won’t find one husband in a million willing to admit it, but wives are generally right when it comes to family health lectures. Many a valuable citizen is preserved to his business, community and country, only because his wife nagged at him about his diet, his blood pressure, or his teeth. I dare say multitudes of children have been saved from injury and sudden death because a mother nagged at them to stay on the curb and to look both ways in the street.
Nor have we given credit to nagging as a social force. I think it would not be wrong to say that Mrs. Roosevelt nags. She runs here and there forever talking about social reform, humanitarian progress and other good works. All men and women who are moved by the impelling power of a cause are naggers. What would you call the WAC recruiters or the War Bond salesmen or those who plug for racial justice?
Florence Nightingale was a nagger. So were Clara Barton, Anna Howard Shaw, Jane Addams and Jeanne d’Arc and so are Sister Kenny and Margaret Sanger and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. For the good of the world, I hope that women will not hold their tongues.
Nag, nag, nag, it must be in the social field – to move men, to change society, to establish justice.
