Kluckhohn Says Women Unhappy In 'Conference of Future' Speech

Modern women are discontented, Florence Kluckhohn, lecturer in Sociology, disclosed to insurance men at the second session of a three-day "Conference on the Future" in New York, which ended yesterday.

She was one of a group of six scholars who enlightened insurance executives as to what science could foresee in the coming years. A "test tube baby" from "test tube parents" was another savant's prediction.

Mrs. Kluckhohn said that the role of women in society is a major topic of contemporary interest, and that people wonder whether they are happy or contented. Most writers, she said, think they are neither.

Make Women Creative

Questioned as to the proportion of happy females, she replied that the situation is "critical, but not alarming."

She suggested that men change their attitudes towards domestic tasks and assign them a worth that will spur women on to truly creative accomplishments. Americans should change our sense of values to give non-economic activity the same regard as money-making, she concluded.

Referring to present successes in keeping various human organisms alive out side the body. Dr. Ralph W. Gerard, professor of Physiology at the University of Chicago, said he believed that these proceases could be improved. Some day, he continued, reproductive organs will be kept alive in test tubes, and the next step will be mating a sperm and an egg in a glass container.

"It will then be possible to hand-tailor human beings," he said. "You can breed them for this, that, or the other attribute.

"When that time comes, I think that you agree that it will be high time to do some pretty severe thinking as to what ends we are aiming at. What kind of humans do we want, and for what reasons? Pretty, strong, intelligent, docile ones could be had for the breeding, so to speak."