Text 3: Excerpt from “All in the Day’s Work: An Autobiography” by
Ida M. Tarbell
I had been disturbed for some time by what seemed to me the calculated belittling of
the past achievements of women by many active in the campaign for suffrage. They
agreed with their opponents that women had shown little or no creative power. That,
they argued, was because man had purposely and jealously excluded her from his
field of action. The argument was intended, of course, to arouse women’s
indignation, stir them to action. It seemed to me rather to throw doubt on her creative
capacity. Power to create breaks all barriers. Women had demonstrated this, I
believed, again and again while carrying on what I as an observer of society was
coming to regard as the most delicate, complex, and essential of all creative tasks –
the making of home. There was the field of invention. At the moment it was being
said in print and on the platform that, in all the history of the Patent Office, women
had taken out only some three hundred patents.
I had seen so much of women’s ingenuity on the farm and in the kitchen that I
questioned the figures; and so I went to see, feeling very important if scared at my
rashness in daring to penetrate a government department and interview its head. I
was able to put my finger at once on over 2000 patents, enough to convince me that,
man-made or not, if a woman had a good idea and the gumption to seek a patent
she had the same chance as a man to get one. This was confirmed by the
correspondence with two or three women who at the time were taking out patents
regularly.
i just want to know what the text says explicitly and the main idea
i read ti but i stil don't undertsad
is it that Men think their superior and women instead decide they want to show their power
Yes. Tarbell also argued that women showed a lot of creativity as home makers. She also cites the much larger number of patents than the Patent Office had reported.
whats the main idea?
and the authors raliability
also the influence of the contents
and the quality of the authors facts and examples support the argument
that men think their superior
The main idea is that women haven't been given credit for their accomplishments.
The author is reliable and her examples support her facts.