Untitled - Portal Libertarianismo

34 teaching habits of thrift and economy
consensus: the promotion of self-reliance. Elizabeth B. McGowan stated that
women who participated with the opposite sex in auxiliaries often became
“timid in the presence of men of superior knowledge.” As a result they “waive
their rights and privileges and become reliant and dependent. . . . Thus, woman
becomes irresponsible.” McGowan concluded that such a woman was more
likely to be “courageous and strong in her own meeting hall where only sisterly
faces greet her and conscious that she must assume all the responsibilities.”
More bluntly, Emma Olds, the great commander of Ohio, argued that selfreliance
was worthy of the name only if it came from the initiative of women.
She approvingly quoted President James A. Garfield that the best lesson for a
young man was to be “thrown overboard.” For Olds, it “should be equally helpful
to character building to women to be thrown upon their own business resources,
to be allowed and even compelled to rely upon their own judgment
and business sagacity.” 54
The all-female rule reinforced another cornerstone of fraternalism: training
in self-government. Dr. Elsie Ada Faust, the district medical examiner for the
West, praised this policy for enabling a woman “to associate with her kind in
other ways than social pastimes. It teaches her many things that man has arrogated
to himself: the business conduct of a meeting, parliamentary law, many
details of money expenditure.” Faust expressed boundless faith in the potential
of women, given the right incentives and opportunities, to rise to any occasion.
She predicted that “if all the work of man was wiped from the earth, women
could reconstruct it and add to it.” 55
Another justification for male exclusion was that it would foster civility. In an
all-female society, women of various incomes and social backgrounds had to
cooperate. According to Bower this policy created “a bond which binds together
people of all classes, of all languages; the educated and the uneducated; the rich
and the poor.” Through the lodge, West added, “the sharp corners of egotism
and vanity are broken off, and the rough surfaces or inexperience are smoothed
and polished.” Another official wrote that the give-and-take of meetings exposed
the “quarrelsome, sarcastic, meddlesome, woman” as a “weakling and
her opinions are treated accordingly. Women can learn tolerance, and are learning
it.” 56
A defining aim was to recast fraternalism through creating an organization
that was “to the working woman what the woman’s club is to her sister of the
leisure class. Here she gets her first lessons in parliamentary law. . . . Here the
working woman comes for relaxation from the drudgery of domestic life.” In a
direct sense, this language addressed the day-to-day concerns of the rank and