My essay writing these days has now reached somewhere in excess of two hundred. In perhaps four or five of those essays, I have commented about women. That is not a surprising development in view of the fact that my mother was a woman, my wife is a woman, my daughters are women, my sisters were women as well as my aunts and my nieces. During a long career with AT&T, I was associated with thousands of traffic operators in St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. Throughout my career as a working person, women, including my secretaries, have been there to help me. Whatever success I may have achieved is attributable largely to women.
You may recall an essay I wrote some time back which started with the first verse of “The Waggoneer’s Lad.” The verse goes:

“Hard luck is the fortune of all womankind,
They’re always controlled, they’re always confined,
Controlled by their parents until they are wives,
And slaves to their husbands for the rest of their lives.”

My problem has to do with the final line in that first verse. There may be husbands who demand that their wives be slaves, but in the final analysis, it appears to me that there are simply not enough husbands to go around. If we were speaking about the era of World War II, it would be easier to understand in that more than 400,000 men lost their lives in that war. These would have been 400,000 potential husbands and fathers. But in the ensuing years of perhaps five or six decades, there seem to be women of all kinds who are not finding the husbands to wed. I am not in the matrimonial business but I mourn for the thought that there are so many loving women who would like to be wed and are unable to find a willing and acceptable suitor.
Perhaps it is like “The Waggoneer’s Lad” says in the first line, that hard luck is the fortune of all womankind. That is not the way it should be. Everybody should have a chance at happiness and I deeply regret that so many women are denied that opportunity. If that makes me a bleeding heart liberal, so be it.
So you see that as time goes forward, my sentiments are entirely in favor of womankind, which is not only wise but equitable as well. In time, it is my hope that we can do something about the unfairness toward women suggested by “The Waggoner’s Lad.” If we can bring democracy to the Middle East, we surely ought to be able to provide a level playing field for the women of this county.
E. E. CARR
July 23, 2006
Essay 202
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Kevin’s commentary: I don’t think it makes him a bleeding heart liberal, it just makes him a feminist. That’s a good thing. Absolutely nothing in this essay is unreasonable. That said, things are consistently moving in the right direction lately.