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diff --git a/15691.txt b/15691.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3bc6007 --- /dev/null +++ b/15691.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5026 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman in Modern Society, by Earl Barnes + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Woman in Modern Society + +Author: Earl Barnes + +Release Date: April 23, 2005 [EBook #15691] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + +WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY + + + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR:_ + +STUDIES IN EDUCATION +(IN TWO VOLUMES) + +WHERE KNOWLEDGE FAILS + + + + +WOMAN +IN MODERN SOCIETY + +BY + +EARL BARNES + +AT ONE TIME PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN THE STATE +UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA, AND LATER PROFESSOR +OF EDUCATION IN LELAND STANFORD +JUNIOR UNIVERSITY + +NEW YORK +B.W. HUEBSCH + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1912 +BY B.W. HUEBSCH +PRINTED IN U.S.A. + + + + +This volume is dedicated to a woman endowed by her ancestors with +health and strength, reared by a wise mother, trained to earn her own +living, and university bred, at one time an independent wage-earner and +now equal partner in the business of a home, a social force in the life +of her community, member of a woman's club, a suffragist, the devoted +and intelligent mother of a group of fine children, and the center of a +family which loves and reverences her and finds the deepest meaning of +life in her presence. + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WOMAN 9 + II. WOMAN'S HERITAGE 31 + III. WOMEN IN EDUCATION 57 + IV. THE FEMINIZING OF CULTURE 85 + V. THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN 107 + VI. WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 123 + VII. THE MEANING OF POLITICAL LIFE 150 +VIII. WOMAN'S RELATION TO POLITICAL LIFE 173 + IX. THE MODERN FAMILY 207 + X. FAMILY LIFE AS A VOCATION 231 + XI. CONCLUSION 251 + + + + +WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY + +I + +What it Means to be a Woman + + +If we go back to the earliest forms of life, where the unit is simply a +minute mass of protoplasm surrounded by a cell wall, we find each of +these divisions to be a complete individual. It can feed itself, that +its life may go on to-day; it can fight or run away, that it may be here +to fight to-morrow; and by a process of division it can create a new +life so that its existence may continue across the generations. With +such units it is quite conceivable that life might go on through all +eternity, death following birth, were it not that protoplasm contains +within itself a principle of change. Life and change are synonymous. + +And this change moves ever toward a complexity, which we call +development, where cells unite in a larger life, and functions and +organs are specialized. Thus there comes a time when the part split off +carries with it power to eat and digest, to fight or run away, but only +half the power of procreation. This half unit, this incomplete +individual, is either male or female, and from this time on, the epic of +life gathers around the search of these half-lives for their +complements. The force that impels to this search, while at first +valuable only for the perpetuation of the generations, gathers into +itself modifying feeling and desires and, at a later period, ideas and +ideals, which finally, when men and women appear, make it the greatest +of all the shaping forces in life.[1] + +[1] The fact that sexual selection does not play the part in organic +evolution which Darwin assigned it does not affect this statement. See +chapter on Sexual Selection in YVES DELAGEE and MARIE GOLDSMITH, _The +Theories of Evolution_, New York: Huebsch, 1912. + +Of course, in such a sweeping statement as this, one must include under +sex hunger all the forces that drive men and women to seek each other's +society, rather than that of their own sex. In this sense, it can be +truly said that it gives a motive for our care of offspring, and for +all our other most self-forgetful devotions, our finest altruisms, our +most polished expressions in language, manners and dress. It justifies +labor, ambition, and at times even self-effacement. It underlies nearly +all the lyric expressions in art; furnishes almost the only theme for +that delineation of modern life which we call the novel; and is a main +support for music, painting, statuary and belles-lettres. It gives us +the institution of the family, which is the parent of the state; it is +closely allied to religion; and in our individual lives it lifts us to +the heights of self-realization and happiness, or plunges us down to the +depths of degradation and tragedy. + +While this sex hunger belongs equally to men and women, it has come to +be associated with women, until we even speak of them as "the sex." +Hence, when we are discussing women, we are generally discussing the sex +interest common to both men and women, and this disturbs our point of +view. The fact is that sex interest is a common possession, that the +unit in human life, even more than among lower animals, is always a male +and a female bound together by love. Just as a body can function in +sleep or under the influence of a narcotic, for a time seemingly +independent of the mind, so a man or a woman can live for a time in +seeming independence of the opposite sex; but from any biological point +of view, such a separate existence of male and female is only a +transient effort. The half-life must find its mate or, after a few brief +days, it dies, leaving its line extinct. For all the larger purposes of +life, man is but a half-creature, and woman is equally a fragment. + +It is, of course, conceivable that these two halves of the biological +unit might have been made, or might have developed, alike in everything +except the sexual function. At least they might have been as much alike +as men are alike. They might have been of the same size, possessed of +the same strength, of the same figures and gestures, complexion and +hair. Their voices might have been alike. They might have had the same +kinds of nervous systems, with the same desires, feelings, ideas and +tendencies. In the assertions and arguments born of intellectual, +industrial, social and political readjustments, it is often assumed +that this is the case. Differences are minimized or denied, and an +attempt is made to resolve the world of men and women into a world of +human beings capable of living together in mingled competitions and +cooperations, regardless of sex, except where the reproductive process +is considered. But this view is superficial; born of argument it breaks +down when confronted by any body of significant facts. + +Again, it has happened that in the long struggle of developing +civilization, sometimes one and sometimes the other sex has gained what +has seemed an advantage over the other, just as in the development of +any man's individual life, his brain may gain a seeming advantage over +his stomach, so that it has more than its fair share of nourishment and +activity. Arguing from such a case, we might declare the brain superior +to the stomach in power, health and function; but in the long +accounting, all such temporary superiorities are wiped out. So with men +and women, seeming advantages for either are gained only at the expense +of the common life; and in the last analysis, each finds his individual +value only in the common life of the unit. + +Let us try then to see what the special characteristics of women are, +ignoring as far as possible the accidental variations of individuals, +and the temporary advantages or disadvantages due to economic or +ideational forces, and all assertions of what would be if things were +not as they are. + +While the whole matter of sex differences is in a state of unsettlement, +it seems very certain that males are more active and more variable than +females. This superabundant vitality appears in the males of the higher +animals in secondary sex characteristics, such as more abundant and +unnecessary hair and feathers, tusks, spurs, antlers, wattles, brilliant +colors and scent pouches. It also appears in mating calls, songs, and +general carriage of the body. Correspondingly, the female is smaller, +duller colored, and less immediately attractive than the male. + +All the studies that have been made on men and women, also confirm our +ordinary observation that men are taller, heavier, stronger and more +active than women, and this holds true in all stages of civilization, +wherever tests have been made. In strength, rapidity of movement, and +rate of fatigue Miss Thompson's studies[2] show that men have a very +decided advantage over women. Thus in strength tests, the men in Yale +have double the power of women in Oberlin;[3] while our college athletic +records place men far ahead of women in all events requiring strength +and endurance. + +[2] HELEN B. THOMPSON, _Psychological Norms in Men and Women_, p. 167. +University of Chicago Press, 1903. + +[3] THOMAS, _Sex and Society_, p. 21. University of Chicago Press, 1907. + +The differences in structure between men and women are such as to +correspond with the functional differences just stated. A woman's bones +are smaller in proportion to her size, than are those of a man. The body +is longer, the hips broader, and the abdomen more prominent. Relatively +to the length of the body, the arms, legs, feet and hands are shorter +than in men, the lower leg and arm are shorter in proportion to the +upper leg and arm. Man has the long levers and the active frame. One has +only to look at two good statues of a man and a woman to realize the +greater strength and activity of the man. + +Woman, as she actually appears in modern society, is also less subject +to variation than man;[4] she is much less liable to be a genius or an +idiot than her brother.[5] She offers greater resistance to disease, +endures pain and want more stoically, and lives longer; so that while +more boys than girls are born in all parts of the world, where +statistics are kept, in mature years women always outnumber men. + +[4] KARL PEARSON denies this. See _The Chances of Death_, Vol. I, p. +256. London, 1897. + +[5] C.W. SALEEBY, in _Woman and Womanhood_, p. 54, New York, Mitchell +Kennerley, 1911, maintains that woman is biologically more variable than +man, and that woman's less variable activity is due to her training. + +All these statements are summed up by saying that not only in women, but +in most female animals of the higher orders, life is more anabolic than +in males. They tend to more static conditions; they collect, organize, +conserve; they are patient and stable; they move about less; they more +easily lay on adipose tissue. Compared with the female, the male animal +is katabolic; he is active, impulsive, destructive, skilful, creative, +intense, spasmodic, violent. Such a generalization as this must not be +pushed too far in its applications to our daily life; but as a statement +of basal differences it seems justified by ordinary observation as well +as by scientific tests.[6] + +[6] PATRICK GEDDES and ARTHUR THOMPSON, in _The Evolution of Sex_, D. +Appleton & Co., 1889, first advanced this position. + +Meantime, it is probably true that the female, as mother of the race, is +more important biologically than the male, since she both furnishes germ +plasm and nourishes the newly conceived life. The latest studies, along +lines laid down by Mendel, seem to indicate that the female brings to +the new creation both male and female attributes, while the male brings +only male qualities. Thus when either sex sinks into insignificance, as +sometimes happens in lower forms of life, it is generally the male which +exists merely for purposes of reproduction.[7] + +[7] C.W. SALEEBY, _Woman and Womanhood_, Chapter V. New York: Mitchell +Kennerley, 1911. + +The differences in the nervous systems of men and women are now fairly +established on the quantitative side. Marshall has shown that if we +compare brain weight with the stature in the two sexes there is a slight +preponderance of cerebrum in males; but if the other parts of the brain +are taken into consideration, the sexes are equal.[8] Havelock Ellis has +carefully gathered the results of many investigators and declares that +woman's brain is slightly superior to man's in proportion to her +size.[9] But these quantitative differences are now felt to have +comparatively little significance; and of the relative qualities of the +brain substance in the two sexes we know nothing positively. In fact, if +we give a scientist a section of brain substance he cannot tell whether +it is the brain of a man or a woman. + +[8] MARSHALL, _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_, July, 1892. + +[9] HAVELOCK ELLIS, _Man and Woman_, p. 97, Contemporary Science Series. + +It is very probable that the average woman's mind is capable of much the +same activity as the average man's mind, given the same heredity and the +same training. They are both alike capable of remarkable feats of +imitation, and an ordinarily intelligent man could probably learn to +wear woman's clothes, and walk as she generally walks, so as to deceive +even a jury of women, if there were a motive to justify the effort. +Women also can perform, and they do perform, most of the feats of men. + +At the same time it is desirable to note present differences in modes of +thinking and feeling, for while they may have been produced by +environment and ideals, and may hence give way to education, they must +be reckoned with in making the next steps. In the chapter on education +we shall discuss certain academic peculiarities of women's minds, but +here we are interested in seeing what fundamental differences +characterize the thinking of the sexes. + +Women seem more subject to emotional states than men;[10] and this +general observation agrees with the fact that the basal ganglia of the +brain are more developed in women than in men, and these parts of the +brain seem most intimately concerned with emotional activity. Whether +emotion follows acts or leads to acts remains a disputed question, but +certainly emotion gives charm and significance to life and distinguishes +modes of thinking. Particularly in the dramatic art, this quality of +mind gives women special excellence. The fact that she more often +appeals to emotion than to reason, as cause for action, in no way marks +her as inferior to man, but simply as different. As Ellen Key says: +"There is nothing more futile than to try to prove the inferiority of +woman to man, unless it be to try to prove her equality."[11] + +[10] HELEN BRADFORD THOMPSON, _Psychological Norms in Men and Women_, p. +171, University of Chicago Press, 1903. + +[11] ELLEN KEY, _Love and Ethics_, p. 52. New York: Huebsch, 1911. + +Most women think in particulars as compared with men. The individual +circumstance seems to them very important; and it is hard for them to +get away from the concrete. On the other hand, a man's thinking is more +impersonal and general; and he is more easily drawn into abstractions. +It is true that woman's domestic life would naturally develop this +quality but we are not now concerned with the question of origins. Most +women find it easy to live from day to day; the man is more given to +systematizing and planning. Thus in offices, men are more efficient as +heads of departments, while women handle details admirably. In public +life we have recently seen thousands of women eager to depose a United +States Senator, accused of polygamy, without regard to the bearing of +the concrete act on constitutional guarantees. Women have done little +with abstract studies like metaphysics; they have done much with the +novel, where ideas are presented in the concrete and particular. + +This habit of dealing with particulars, and disinclination for +abstraction, leads easily to habitual action. It is easy for women to +stock up their lower nerve centers with reflex actions. This, of course, +goes along with the general anabolic characteristics of the sex. Hence +women are the conservers of traditions; rules of conducting social +intercourse appeal to them; and they are the final supporters of +theological dogmas.[12] Women naturally uphold caste, and Daughters of +the Revolution and Colonial Dames flourish on the scantiest foundations +of ancestral excellence. Man, on the other hand, is more radical and +creative. He has perfected most of our inventions; he has painted our +great pictures; carved our great statues; he has written music, while +women have interpreted it. + +[12] HELEN B. THOMPSON, _Psychological Norms in Men and Women_, p. 171, +University of Chicago Press, 1903. + +Along with these fixed qualities of action, women have a tendency to +indirection when they advance. We say they have diplomacy, tact and +coquetry, while man is more direct and bald in his methods. Of course, +one easily understands how these qualities may have arisen, since "fraud +is the force of weak natures," and woman has always been driven to +supplement her weakness with tact, from the days of Jael and Delilah +down to the present day adventuress. + +These qualities of mind naturally drive women to literary interests +which are concrete, personal and emotional. Men turn more easily than +women to the abstract generalizations of science. Of course, there are +marked exceptions to these general statements, in both sexes. Madame +Curie, who was recently a candidate for the honors of the French +Academy, and who, in 1911, was given the Nobel prize for her +distinguished services to chemistry, is but one of many women who are +famous to-day in the world of science. Still the private life of these +women, as in the case of Sonya Kovalevsky, seems to bear out our general +conclusion. Men, on the other hand, as milliners and editors of ladies' +journals, show marked skill in catering to women's tastes; but on the +whole the differences indicated seem important and widely diffused. + +Another profound difference between men and women is the woman's greater +tendency to periodicity in all her functions and adjustments to +life.[13] In all normal societies the life of the man is fairly regular +and constant from birth to old age. He moves along lines mainly +predetermined by his heredity and his environment, his habits and his +work. Even puberty is less disturbing in its effect upon a boy than upon +a girl; and often by eighteen we can anticipate the life of a young man +with great accuracy. The one element in his life hardest to forecast is +the effect of his love-affairs. + +[13] See chapter on Periodicity in G. STANLEY HALL'S _Adolescence_, Vol. +I, p. 472. + +With a woman, it is quite different. As a girl, the period of puberty +produces profound changes; and after that, for more than thirty years +she passes through periodical exaltations and depressions that must play +a large part in determining her health, happiness and efficiency. In the +forties, comes another great change which affects her life to a degree +strangely ignored by those who have dealt with her possibilities in the +past.[14] + +[14] KARIN MICHAELIS, _The Dangerous Age_, John Lane Co., 1911, is said +to have sold 80,000 in six weeks when it first appeared in Berlin. _The +Bride of the Mistletoe_, by JAMES LANE ALLEN (Macmillan), deals with the +same period. + +But the great element of uncertainty, always fronting the girl and young +woman, is marriage. Marriage for her generally means abandonment of old +working interests, and a substitution of new; it brings her geographical +change; new acquaintances and friendships; and the steady adjustment of +her personal life to the man she has married in its relation to +industry, religion, society and the arts. If children come to her, they +must inevitably retire her from public life, for a time, with the danger +of losing connections which comes to all who temporarily drop out of the +race. + +A boy, industrious, observant, with some power of administration, +studies mining engineering, moves to a mining center and expresses his +individual and social powers along the lines of his work until he is +sixty. The women who impinge against his life may deflect him from the +mines in California to those in Australia, or from the actual work of +superintendence to an office; or from an interest in Browning to +Tennyson; or from Methodism to Christian Science. The girl with +industrious and observant interests studies stenography and +type-writing, moves to the vicinity of offices, but is then caught up in +the life of a farmer-husband who shifts her center of activity to a farm +in Idaho where she must devote herself to entirely different activities, +form new associations, think in new terms, respond to new emotions, and +adjust herself to her farmer-husband's personality. When, after +twenty-five years, she has reared a family of children, and when +improved circumstances enable them to move up to the county seat, she +confronts many of the conditions for which she originally prepared +herself, but with farm habits, diminishing adaptability and diminishing +power of appealing to her husband. His powers are still comparatively +unimpaired, and as a dealer in farm produce or farm machinery his +interests undergo slight change. In general, it may be said that a +woman's life falls into three great periods of twenty-five years each. +The first twenty-five years of childhood and girlhood is a time of +getting ready for the puzzling combination of her personal needs as a +human being, her needs as a self-supporting social unit, and her +probabilities of matrimony. The second twenty-five years, the domestic +period of her life, is a time of adjustments as wife and mother, which +may instead prove to be a period of barren waiting, or a time of +professional and industrial self-direction and self-support. The third +twenty-five years is a time of mature and ripened powers, of lessened +romantic interests, and if the preceding period has been devoted to +husband and children, it is often a time of social detachment, of +weakened individual initiative, of old-fashioned knowledge, of +inefficiency, of premature retirement and old age. + +On the moral side, as Professor Thomas has so admirably pointed +out,[15] women have evolved a morality of the person and of the family, +while men have evolved a morality of the group and of property. Since +men have had a monopoly of property and of law-making they have shaped +laws mainly for the protection of property, and in a secondary degree +for the protection of the person. Under these laws a man who beats +another nearly to death is less severely punished than one who signs the +wrong name to a check for five dollars. Man's katabolic nature and his +greater freedom have given him almost a monopoly of crime under these +laws which he has made. Offences against the coming generation, against +health, social efficiency and good taste have until recently been left +to the tribunal of public opinion as expressed in social usage; and +here, as we have seen, women are generally the judges and executioners. +In this, her own field of moral judgment, woman is idealistic and +uncompromising. If one of her sisters falls from virtue she will often +pursue her unmercifully. If a man, on the other hand, commits a burglary +or forgery her sympathy and mercy may make her a very lenient judge. + +[15] WILLIAM I. THOMAS, _Sex and Society_, p. 149. University of Chicago +Press, 1907. ELLEN KEY, in _Love and Marriage,_ G.P. Putnam's Sons, +1911, traces the same lines of growth. + +In aesthetics, the differences follow the same general law. Women express +beauty in themselves; jewels are for their ornament; and rooms are +furnished as a setting for themselves. The lives of millions of workers +go to the adornment of women. In painting they sometimes excel, but a +Madame Le Brun does her best work when she paints herself and her child, +and when Angelica Kauffmann would paint a vestal virgin, she drapes a +veil over her own head and transfers her features to the canvas. +Sculpture and architecture are too impersonal and abstract to attract +much attention from women at present. Even a sculptor like Mrs. Bessie +Potter Vonnoh finds her truest theme in statuettes of mothers with their +children about them. + +During the past few years psychologists have paid great attention to +secondary sex characteristics of the mind, and doubtless many qualities +of the thought and feeling of men and women owe their origin to the same +source as brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, +retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of +maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late +forties must probably be understood from this point of view. So, also, +must the bold, swaggering, assertive, compelling bearing of youth be +interpreted. The shy or modish, dandified, lackadaisical cane-carrying +youth is naturally disliked as a sexual perversion. + +Women alone, whether individually or in groups, tend to develop certain +hard, dry, arid qualities of mind and heart, or they become emotional +and unbalanced. Losing a sense of large significances, they become +overcareful, saving, sometimes penurious, while in matters of feeling +they lavish sentiment and sympathy on unimportant pets and movements. + +Men, when alone, become selfish, coarse, and reckless; their judgments +become extravagant and their pursuits remorseless. + +Thus it is certainly true that men and women supplement each other in +the subjective as in the objective life. Man creates, woman conserves; +man composes, woman interprets; man generalizes, woman particularizes; +man seeks beauty, woman embodies beauty; man thinks more than he feels, +woman feels more than she thinks. For new spiritual birth, as for +physical birth, men and women must supplement each other. + +To be a woman then, is to be for twenty-five years a girl and then a +young woman, capable of feeding and protecting herself, possessed of +preparing and conserving powers superior to her brothers. After that, +for twenty-five years, she is a human being primarily devoted to +romanticism, finding her largest fulfilment only in wifehood and +motherhood, direct or vicarious; in the last twenty-five years, she +should be a wise woman, of ripe experience, carrying over her gathered +training and powers to the service of the group. All this time she is, +like the man, an incomplete creature, realizing her greatest power and +her greatest service only when working in loving association with the +man of her choice. + + + + +II + +Woman's Heritage + + +So thoroughly have modern men fastened their attention upon the problems +of the immediate present, that one feels driven to justify oneself in +taking up an historical investigation of any subject presented in a +popular manner. And yet it takes little argument to show that what we +shall be depends in large measure on what we are; and that what we are +rests back on what we have been. In anything we try to think or feel or +do, we quickly reach a limit; and this limit is determined by the +original quality of our nervous system plus the training it has +received. For here is the curious fact about this instrument of thought +and feeling which at once takes it away from comparison with mechanical +instruments. Whatever it does, becomes a part of itself, and then helps +to determine what it will do the next time and how it will do it. With +the making easy of mental operations through repetition, and with the +formation of associations based on our choices, it may be truly said +that we become whatever we habitually think and feel and do. + +Every choice we make is thus literally built into our character and +becomes a part of ourselves. After that, the old choice will help +determine the new, and we shall find ourselves being directed by all of +our past choices, and even by the choices of our ancestors. Since, then, +all our earlier selves are continued in us and make us what we are, we +are simply studying ourselves when we study the history of our +ancestors. If we would go forward, we must first look backward; for we +must rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves. + +But history is not merely the story of the past. To relate that, would +take as long as it took to live it, and the result would be but +weariness of spirit. History, to be significant, must select the events +with which it will deal; it must arrange these in series that are in +accord with the constitution of things; and then it must use the +generalizations it reaches to interpret the present, and even to +forecast the future. It is obvious that this interpretation will depend +on the point of view held by the interpreter. + +Hence we must ask in what fundamental beliefs this presentation rests. +These are, first, that life tends to move along certain lines that +constitute the law of human nature. Just as the infant tends first to +wriggle, then creep, then walk, then run and dance, so human nature +tends to move upward from savagery through primitive settled life to the +complex forms of larger settled units. In this progress, material or +economic forces play a large part; but ideas, originally born out of +circumstances, but sometimes borrowed from other people, sometimes +degenerate remnants of past utilities, also play a large part. The +progress we finally make is thus directed by this human tendency, by +material circumstances, and by ideas. Sometimes it keeps pretty closely +to what seems to us to be upward human growth; sometimes it stagnates; +sometimes it gives us perverted products; and sometimes it destroys +itself. + +Thus it becomes necessary to trace the past experiences of woman that we +may see with what heritage she faces the future. She is all that she +has felt and thought and done. She started with at least half of the +destiny of the race in her keeping. Handicapped in size and agility, and +periodically weighted down by the burdens of maternity, she still +possessed charms and was mistress of pleasures which made her, for +savage man, the dearest possession next to food; and for civilized man, +the companion, joy and inspiration of his days. + +Of woman's position in early savage times we know only what we can learn +from fragmentary prehistoric remains, from the structure of early +languages, from records of travelers and students among savages of more +recent times; or what can be inferred from human nature in general. Most +of this data is difficult to interpret, but it is probable that woman's +position was not much worse than man's. It is a bad beast that fouls its +own food or its own nest; and the female had always the protection of +the male's desire. If she could not entirely control her body, she could +still control her own expressions of affection and desire; and, without +these, mere possession lost much of its charm. + +As keeper of the cave, cultivator of the soil, and guardian of the +child, woman, rather than her more foot-loose mate, probably became the +center of the earliest civilization. The jealousy of men formed tribal +rules for her protection; and to these, religion early gave its powerful +sanctions. Thus there came a day when the woman took her mate home to +her tribe and gave her children her own name. Even if the matriarchal +period was not so important as has sometimes been assumed, woman +certainly had large influence over tribal affairs in early savage life. + +With the increase in population, and the consequent disappearance of +game, man was forced to turn his attention to the crude agriculture +which woman had begun to develop. The superior qualities which he had +acquired in war and the chase, enabled him slowly to improve on these +beginnings and to shape a body of custom which made settled society +possible. With man's leadership in the family the patriarchal form of +government developed, and man's power over woman was sanctioned by +custom and law. The woman was stolen, or bought; and while sexual +attraction did not play the continuous part which it plays in developed +society, it must have done much to protect women from abuse and neglect, +at least during the years of girlhood and child-bearing. It is at this +point that our historical records begin. + +In the pages of Homer, or of the Old Testament, in Tacitus's "Germania," +or in the writings of Livy, we find woman's position well defined. True, +she stands second to the man, but she is his assistant, not his slave. +She must be courted, and while marriage presents are exchanged, she is +not bought. In times of emergency, she steps to the front and +legislates, judges, or fights. It is possible in the pages of the Old +Testament to find women doing everything which men can do. Even where +the power is not nominally in her own hands, she often, as in the cases +of Penelope or Esther, rules by indirection. Her body and her offspring +are protected; and the Hebrew woman of the Proverbs shows us a +singularly free and secure industrial position.[16] Such was the +condition in primitive Judea, in early Greece, in republican Rome, or +among the Germans who invaded southern Europe in the third and fourth +centuries of our era. + +[16] _Proverbs_ xxxi, 10. + +Man's jealousy of his woman as a source of pleasure and honor to +himself, and to his family, must have always acted to limit woman's +freedom, even while it gave her protection and a secure position in +society. With the development of settled government in city states, like +Athens or early Rome, the necessity for defining citizenship made the +family increasingly a political institution. A man's offspring through +slave women, concubines, or "strangers" lived outside the citizen group, +and so were negligible; but the citizen woman's children were citizens, +and so she became a jealously guarded political institution. The +established family became the test of civic, military, and property +rights. The regulations limiting the freedom of girls and women were +jealously enforced, since mismating might open the treasures of +citizenship to any low born or foreign adventurer.[17] + +[17] T.G. TUCKER, _Life in Ancient Athens_, Chapter VIII, Macmillan Co., +1906. + +In the ancient Orient, in Greece, Rome, and in later Europe, these +stages have been repeated again and again. Woman is first a slave, +stolen or bought, protected by sexual interest to which is later added +social custom and religious sanction. Early civilization centers around +the woman, so that she becomes in some degree the center of the +home-staying group. In primitive civilization man takes over woman's +most important activities; but she gains a fixed position, protected, +though still further enslaved, by political necessities. + +But with the increase of wealth, whether in terms of money, slaves, or +trade, woman found herself subject to a fourth form of enslavement more +subtly dangerous than brute force, lust, or political and religious +institutionalism. This was the desire of man to protect her and make her +happy because he loved her. He put golden chains about her neck and +bracelets on her arms, clothed her in silks and satins, fed her with +dainty fare, gave her a retinue of attendants to spare her fatigue, and +put her in the safest rear rooms of the habitation. But it is foolish to +talk of conscious enslavement in this connection. Rich men and luxurious +civilizations have always enslaved women in the same way that rich, +fond, and foolish mothers have enslaved their children, by robbing them +of opportunity, by taking away that needful work and that vital +experience of real life which alone can develop the powers of the soul. + +Thus in the Periclean age in Greece, in the Eastern Kingdoms established +by Alexander, in Imperial Rome, in the later Italian Renaissance, in +France under Louis XIV and Louis XV, in England under the Stuart kings, +and in many centers of our own contemporary world, women have given up +their legitimate heritage of work and independent thought for trinkets, +silks, and servants, and have quickly degenerated, like the children of +rich and foolish mothers, into luxury-loving parasites and +playthings.[18] + +[18] OLIVE SCHREINER, _Woman and Labor_, Chapters on Parasitism. New +York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1911. + +To maintain this luxurious setting for their mistresses, whether wives +or irregular concubines, men of the Occident have generally been driven +to ever fiercer struggle with their fellows. Thus a Pericles, at the +zenith of his powers, facing difficulties which strained and developed +all his forces, had for his legitimate wife a woman, bound hand and +foot by conventions and immured in her house in Athens. But a man is +only half a complete human being, and the other half cannot be furnished +by a weak and ignorant kept-woman, no matter how legal the bond. Hence +the forces always driving men to completeness and unity drove Pericles +away from his house and his legitimate children and his mere wife to +find the completion of his life. + +In these cases, as elsewhere, demand creates supply, and there were to +be found everywhere in Athens able and cultivated foreign women, many of +whom had come over from the mainland of Asia Minor; and one of these, +Aspasia, became the mistress of Pericles and bore him children. She was +no adventuress of the street, but an educated and brilliant woman, in +whose home you might have met not only Pericles, but also Socrates, +Phidias, Anaxagoras, Sophocles and Euripides. + +This is the stage that always follows the period of the luxury-loving +wife. It was so in Imperial Rome, in later Carthage, in Venice, and in +eighteenth-century France. But the normal human unit is the man and +woman who love each other, not these combinations of illegality, law, +lust, love and dishonor. Such a triangle of two women and a man rests +its base in shame, and its lines are lies, and its value is destruction. +So virile republican Rome swept over decadent Greece and made it into +the Roman province of Achaia; later the chaste Germans swarmed over the +decadent Roman Empire and then slowly rebuilt modern Europe; the ascetic +Puritans destroyed the Stuarts; while the French Revolution was the +deluge that swept away Louis XVI and put the virtuous, if commonplace, +bourgeoisie in power. + +So far we have dealt with the position of women as though it depended +alone on human hungers, passions and environment; but while these are +the driving forces of life, they are very subject to the repressing and +diverting power of ideas, working in an environment of economic +conditions. These ideas may themselves date back to earlier passions and +economic conditions, but they often survive the time which created them, +and then they enter into life and conduct as seemingly independent +forces. These ideas played a large part, even in the ancient world. + +The Jews organized their religious and political practices about a +patriarchal Deity ruling a patriarchal state; and their tradition +handicapped all women with the sin of Eve, the sin of seeking knowledge. +The Greeks, on the other hand, gave woman a splendid place in the +hierarchy of the gods, and idealized not only her beauty in Aphrodite +but her chaste aloofness in Artemis, her physical strength in the +Amazons, and her wisdom in Athena and Hera. They covered the Acropolis +with matchless monuments in honor of Athena, patron goddess of their +fair city, and celebrated splendid pageants on her anniversaries. So, +too, republican Rome, while it gathered its civic life about patriarchal +ideas in which the father was supreme, gave women positions of high +honor in its religion, whether as deities or as servitors of the gods. +In the Niebelungenlied, the Germans bodied forth their splendid +conceptions of female beauty, strength and passion in such figures as +Brunhilda. These ideas must have done much to offset the physical +weakness and functional handicaps of women in the ancient world. + +The Christian ideas, which have dominated us now for nearly two +thousand years, are generally considered to have been favorable to +women. In their insistence on the value of the human soul, and on +democratic equality, they have doubtless helped to raise the status of +women along with that of all human beings. But, as between man and +woman, Christianity has given every possible advantage to men, and has +added needlessly to the natural burdens of women.[19] + +[19] JAMES DONALDSON, _Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient +Greece and Rome and Among the Early Christians_, Longmans, Green, and +Co., 1907. + +From Judaism, Christianity borrowed Eve, with her eternally operative +sin, and thus placed all women under a perpetual load of suspicion and +guilt. The Founder of the new faith never assumed the responsibilities +of a family, and he included no woman among his disciples. Example, even +negative example, is often more powerful than precept. Paul, the most +learned of the disciples, in his writings, and as an organizer of the +Church, emphasized the older Jewish position. In the new organization, +women filled only lesser places, while the men settled all points of +dogma, directing and mainly conducting the services of worship. Meantime +each woman's soul remained her own, to be saved only by her individual +actions; therein lay her hope for the future, both on earth and in +heaven. + +But it was those later developments of belief and practice that gathered +around Christian asceticism which placed woman and her special functions +under a cloud of suspicion from which she is not even yet entirely +freed. Celibacy became exalted; virginity was a positive virtue; +chastity, instead of a healthful antecedent to parenthood, became an end +in itself; and monasteries and convents multiplied throughout +Christendom. Something of shame and guilt gathered around conception and +birth, as representing a lower standard of life, even when sanctified by +the ceremonies of the Church. From the second century to the sixth, the +ablest of the Church Fathers, Greek and Latin alike, formulated +statements in which woman became the chief ally of the devil in dragging +men down to perdition. We still hear ancestral reverberations of these +teachings in all our discussions of woman's place in civilization. + +But ideas can only for a time overcome or divert the primitive human +hungers, and slowly Mary, Mother of Jesus, won first place among the +saints. Celibate recluses who feared to walk the streets for fear of +meeting a woman, and who spent the nights fighting down their noblest +passions, starving them, flagellating and rolling their naked bodies in +thorny rose hedges or in snow-drifts to silence demands for wife and +children, threw themselves in an ecstacy of adoration before an image of +the Virgin with the Baby in her arms. So Maryolatry came to bless the +world. + +But even this blessing was not without alloy, for it gave us an ideal of +woman, superhuman, immaculate, bowing in frightened awe before the angel +with the lily, standing mute with crossed hands and downcast eyes before +her Divine Son. She represented, not the institution of the family, but +the institution of the Church. Even when she appeared in representations +of the Holy Family, Joseph, her husband, was not the father of her +child, but his servant. + +Chivalry took up this conception, and shaped for us the fantastic lady +who stands back of much of modern romantic love. Robbed of her simple, +human, pagan passions, she became often an anaemic and unfruitful, if +angelic, creature. For the direct and passionate assurances of a +virtuous and noble love she substituted sighs and tears, languishing +looks and weary renunciations. This sterile hybrid, bred of human +passions and theological negations, must be finally banished from our +literature and from our minds before we can have a healthy eugenic +conscience among us.[20] + +[20] R. DE MAULDE LA CLAVIERE, _The Woman of the Renaissance. A Study in +Feminism_, translated by George H. Ely. New York: C.P. Putnam's Sons, +1900. + +The Protestant Revolution went far to restore the special functions of +women to respect. Belief in her individual soul, and in its need of +salvation through individual choice, was supplemented by the belief that +this choice must be guided by her individual judgment. Celibacy ceased +to be a sign of righteousness; and the best men and women married. But +beliefs cannot be directly destroyed by revolution; they can only be +disturbed and modified. The teachings of Paul, Augustine, Tertullian and +St. Jerome were still authoritative, and Calvin and Knox reaffirmed +many of them. The family was still subordinate to the Church; and +marriage still remained a sacrament, with theological significances, +rather than the simple union of a man and woman who loved each other. +The choice of a mate once made was final, because theological, and it +could be broken only with infinite pain and disgrace. + +The great political upheaval, which we call the French Revolution, +carried in its fundamental teachings freedom and opportunity for men and +for women; but like the corresponding revolution in religion, it +required time to make adjustments, and so we have been content to live +for more than a hundred years in the midst of verbal affirmations which +we denied in all our institutional life. + +In America, conditions have always been favorable for women to work out +their freedom. Among the immigrants who came to our shores before 1840 +there were, of course, a few traders, adventurers and servants who hoped +to improve their financial conditions; but the leaders, and most of the +rank and file, came that they might be free to think their own thoughts +and live their own lives. If this selection of colonists, through +religious and political persecution, sometimes gave us bigots with one +idea, it also gave us people who knew that ideas can change. Along with +Cotton Mather it gave us Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams and William +Penn. + +Most of these who came in the early days belonged to extreme dissenting +sects believing in salvation through individual choice, based on +personal judgments. Preaching was exalted at the expense of ritual; and +by substituting new thinking for old habits in religion, the American +settlers made it less difficult for other adjustments to be made, even +in such a conservative matter as woman's position. It is through no +accident that Methodists, Friends, Unitarians and the Salvation Army +have been much more sympathetic to woman's progress than have the older +ritualistic faiths. + +And these theological ideas had to be worked out under the material +conditions of the New World, which were also favorable to the +emancipation of women. Facing primitive conditions in the forest, it +became a habit to do new things in new ways. Woman's work and judgment +were indispensable; and these picked women showed themselves capable in +every direction. They did every kind of work; and when it came to +enduring privation or even to starving, they set an example for men. + +But while every new movement in ideas always carries with it other +radical ideas, the practical difficulties of mental, social and legal +adjustment always prevent the full and harmonious development of all +that is involved in any new point of view. In the American colonies the +need for new adjustments in religion, government and practical living +made it inevitable that any very important change in woman's position +should linger. In fact, the student of colonial records finds many +traces of ultra conservatism in the treatment of women, though the +forces had been liberated which must inevitably open the way for her +through the New World of America into a new world of the spirit. + +And before the quickening influence of the new life had time to become +commonplace, the struggle with England began. The Revolutionary period +was a time of intense political education for every one. War and +sacrifice glorified the new ideas; and even the children and women could +not escape their influence. Why then did not the American Revolution +pass on to full freedom and opportunity for women? For the same reason +that it did not forever abolish slavery in America. The vested interests +involved were so many, and the changes so momentous and difficult, that +only the most imperative needs could receive attention. + +But this does not mean that the interest in a larger life for women was +not active or that women were making no advance in self-direction. There +is evidence that women like Abigail Adams realized the abstract +injustice of their position, and the fact that as early as 1794, Mary +Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was republished in +Philadelphia shows that her ideas must have had some currency in +America. + +After the Revolution, the intimate, stimulating influence of Europe, +which the earlier colonists had enjoyed, was for a time almost entirely +lost. The new States became extremely provincial; and minds untouched by +the larger world always tend to conservatism. Noah Webster, in "A +Letter to Young Ladies," published in Boston, in 1790, declared that +they "must be content to be women; to be mild, social and sentimental." +Three years later the "Letters to a Young Lady," by the Reverend John +Bennett, were republished in Philadelphia, after going through several +London editions. He placed the qualities to be cultivated in this order: +"A genteel person, a simple nature, sensibility, cheerfulness, delicacy, +softness, affability, good manners, regular habits, skill in fancy work, +and a fund of hidden genteel learning." Through the first half of the +nineteenth century these ideals struggled along parallel with the new +ideas that were everywhere springing up from the colonial forest +experiences of the last two generations. + +As conservers of morals and as leaders in higher ideals of life, the +advanced women of America came early face to face with two outgrown +abuses. One of these was human slavery and the other was intemperance. +In attacking these abuses, women had to break with all the traditions +that defined their position. + +The wealthy and intelligent Englishwoman, Frances Wright, who came to +this country in 1818 to attack slavery, found herself doubly opposed +because she was a woman speaking in public. Had not St. Paul declared: +"It is a shame for women to speak in the church"? Lucretia Mott, born in +the Society of Friends in Nantucket, had escaped the full force of this +injunction, but even she found, when she attacked slavery in public, +that she had invaded a world sacred to men, and she was sternly warned +back. Miss Susan B. Anthony also began her public life as a teacher and +a temperance reformer. It was only when she found herself helpless, in +presence of the prejudices against her sex, that she turned her +attention to freeing women from all purely sex limitation in public +life. + +When the Civil War broke out, the women were ready to do their part. It +is quite possible that the names of Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix may be +remembered when Grant and Sherman are forgotten. With the establishing +of new human values the historian of the future may consider the saving +of life and the preventing of misery as more worthy of lasting record +than even military genius. These women and their millions of helpers +had not the resources of organized government at their disposal; but, +instead, they had oftentimes to work against the jealousy of those in +authority. At the close of the war, the Sanitary Commission comprised +seven thousand aid societies scattered over the country, and it had +raised over fifteen millions of dollars. Those women who remained at +home, in the absence of fathers and sons for four years, faced all the +problems of practical life. Who can estimate the value of training in +cooperative work and organization which the Civil War gave to the +American women? + +In the Civil War, women directly served men; but in the great industrial +reorganization which came afterward they served mainly women and +children. Here the victories have been won in the press, in the +legislative halls, and in courts of law. Working with men, or alone, +they have perfected organization, agitated, raised money, printed +appeals, and carried cases through the courts, until factories and +stores have been made safer, excessive working hours have been cut down, +young children have been exempted from labor, many sweat-shops have +been closed, and women workers have begun to be organized to care for +their own needs. Much has been done; more remains to be done; but the +training of the women has gone steadily forward. + +These, then, are the forces which have pushed women forward in America: +European political and religious persecution, the forest necessities of +colonial life, the American Revolution, the struggle with slavery and +intemperance, the Civil War, the industrial struggle and the need to +protect women and children from capitalistic exploitation. Possibly +women have now reached a point in their development where they can turn +to public service and to a full realization of their powers and +responsibilities without the goading necessity of a great wrong. If not, +there are sufficient wrongs still calling to lead them for many years. +Intemperance is not yet banished; the negro is not yet freed from the +effects of his slavery; working women and children are not yet fairly +protected; disease reaps needlessly large harvests; Lazarus still begs +at the table of Dives; our public education leaves much to be desired; +criminals are badly handled; millions of European refugees come marching +into our land needing guidance. Meantime, millions of women are content, +because themselves comfortable, and there are some even willing to aid +the powers of obstruction. + +In these later years, marvelous changes have taken place all over the +world. Even in China, official attempts are now being made to leave +women free to walk by abolishing the bandaging of infants' feet. In +Turkey, women are going out from the harem to participate in public +life. In Germany, they are escaping from the exclusive service of the +home. In England, they are repeating the cries of the men of 1776 and of +1789: "All men and women are born free and equal." "No taxation without +representation." "One person, one vote." In Finland, Australia, New +Zealand, Norway and Sweden, women have all the essential civic and +political rights of men. + +But, as in all human progress, first the ideas of a few leaders change; +they shape legislation; and the new organization slowly makes over the +practices and then the deep-seated mental and moral habits, which +constitute popular prejudices. These old unreasoning feelings still +largely dominate us, blinding us to the facts of life and blocking each +new advance by which women might pass into the world of free choice and +adjustment of their lives as co-workers with men. In the next chapters +we must study these present-day conditions in detail. + + + + +III + +Women in Education + + +In discussing woman's relation to formal education we are really +examining her ability to master and teach certain intellectual +exercises, for in our modern industrial democracies our efforts are +confined almost exclusively to training the mind and to stocking it with +information. Each year we talk more and more about physical, moral, +political, social and industrial education; but requirements for +entrance into schools, promotions in them, and graduation from their +courses, still rest almost entirely on information acquired; and in a +less degree, on intellectual ability displayed. + +Even in selecting and certifying teachers, the emphasis is all laid on +intellectual equipment. On the physical, moral, or social sides we at +most demand that the candidates shall not be too bad; on the political +side we do not demand even this, since nearly 80 per cent. of our whole +teaching force is declared legally unfit to vote or hold office, and is +yet employed to train our future citizens. But on the intellectual side +we demand positive proof of fitness. Thus it is fair to say that our +modern education deals almost exclusively with knowledge. + +Knowledge, in the past, has nearly always been considered much as we +consider dynamite to-day. It was a dangerous force, useful to a ruling +class, and hence preserved in the hands of a cult, generally a +priesthood; but it was thought capable of working endless mischief in +the hands of ignorant people. Through all the pages of history we find +individuals, and weaker groups, driven away from the accumulated +treasure; and if detected in their desire to know, especially if they +sought knowledge through original investigation, they were branded with +such titles of disgrace as "wizard" or "heretic;" and, as a warning to +others, they were often burned in the public square or buried alive. + +Women, as an inferior class, were especially restrained from learning. +Knowledge would breed discontent in them; it would make them question +the binding power of the conventions and beliefs which held them in +their place; and it would show them how to achieve their freedom, and +might even encourage them to assume leadership. Here and there, +individual women gained the training necessary for leadership, as in the +cases of Sappho, Aspasia or Hypatia; but the great mass of women was +sternly repressed. Eve leads a long line of women martyrs who, across +the ages, have paid a great price for their desire to eat of the tree of +knowledge. For herself, she might have paid the price but, with subtle +understanding of women, the penalty was made to involve all whom they +loved; the terrors of that price have held the sex in restraint ever +since. Eurydice, Pandora, Eve, Lot's wife and Bluebeard's wife have in +turn served as awful warnings. After a time it came to be understood by +women that they should fix their eyes on their husbands and never look +forward or backward, lest they lose their Eden and drag those whom they +loved after them to destruction. + +Of course, if women could not learn they could not teach; at least, they +could not teach where it was necessary to impart knowledge; and so their +share in formal education has been slight, until our own time. Young +children have been considered their special charge, and the care and +culture of infancy and young childhood have always rested in the hands +of mothers, grandmothers, aunts and female servants. Beyond these early +years, however, woman's part has been restricted to emphasizing, mainly +with girls, the dogmas and practices of caste, kitchen and church. + +These were the conditions which prevailed through early Oriental and +Classical times. Christianity brought women some degree of intellectual +freedom, but it also imposed new forms of restraint. Its fundamental +teachings, based as they were on a belief in individual values, were +favorable to the extension of knowledge and to the opening of +opportunity for all. The Church, however, shaped under the +half-civilized conditions of the Middle Ages, quickly took knowledge +into her own keeping, forbade its extension, and increasingly held +before woman, as her highest ideal, the negative virtues of the +cloister. + +The humanistic and theological changes which came with the awakening of +the European mind at the close of the Middle Ages, did much to set free +the accumulated treasures of knowledge. Protestantism, by exalting +individual judgment and insisting on the necessity of each one reading +and judging the sacred records for himself, made it possible for even +women to enter into the heritage of the ages. At least, the key to +learning, reading, was given into her hands. Later Protestant sects +broke down the limits of sacerdotalism, until women found that they +could look forward a little way without losing their Edens, or could +even glance backward without being turned into pillars of reproach. + +The political revolutions of the eighteenth century also affirmed in +their point of view the same intellectual freedom for women as for men. +It has taken a long time to make the practical adjustments, but they are +now well under way. Since 1870, women have had very great freedom in +their approach to knowledge; and having knowledge, they have been +allowed to impart it to others. + +In America, freedom for women to study has moved more rapidly than in +Europe. Even in the colonial period, there were emancipated women, as +we have seen; and in the last half of the eighteenth century several +schools were opened for girls, which were more than polite finishing +schools. Notable among these institutions were the seminary at +Bethlehem, Pa., opened in 1753 by the Moravians, and the school +established by the Society of Friends, in Providence, R.I., in 1784. But +nearly all girl's schools before 1800 were limited to terms of a few +months, where girls attended to learn needle-work, music and dancing, +and to cultivate their morals and manners. + +At the close of the Revolutionary War, the leaders of public opinion +universally recognized that their new experiment in government would +succeed only if the voters were intelligent. This statement of belief +became the major premise on which all arguments for free and compulsory +education were based; and while we have practically accepted a much +wider justification for education, in connection with the care of +defectives, industrial training, and other recent movements, we have not +yet changed our formulated philosophy concerning the relation of the +state to its children. Free and compulsory education is still mainly +justified on the ground that it produced good citizens. + +But the women had not full citizenship and hence the argument for +general education did not apply to them. Had they been enfranchised +after the Revolution, all educational opportunities would have been open +to them at once as a matter of course; and an immense amount of +struggle, futile effort, and unnecessary friction would have been saved. +But this larger view of woman's rights and powers would have required an +adjustment in deep-seated ideas and prejudices, concerning her proper +position, too great to be undertaken by men facing a new form of +government and the material problems of a new world. + +But even without this change in ideas, economic conditions steadily +forced the women into educational activity. There were not enough men +available to teach the scattered country schools, and citizens had to be +trained for the needs of the new democracy. John Adams recognized this +when he wrote to Mr. Warren that their wives must "teach their sons the +divine science of politics;" though he would have been one of the last +to favor admitting women to full participation in public life. He did +not realize that if women were to train men for citizenship, the +rudiments of knowledge which they had learned in scattered schools and +in their poor little academies must be greatly supplemented. Life, +however, is never logical, and at this advance men balked. Necessity was +forcing women into schools as teachers, and hence into larger +preparation for their own lives; but public opinion, here as elsewhere, +failed to recognize the forces that were compelling its action. + +Thus the work of furnishing more advanced intellectual training for +American women had to be started by the women themselves. This is +possibly the first time in human history that a great group of people +feeling itself irresistibly moving toward a social, industrial and +political readjustment, little less than revolutionary in its nature, +has gone deliberately to work to prepare for the change through +education. The working classes of the world are doing the same thing +now; but women showed them the way. In some vague degree, American +women recognized the truth which Dr. Gore recently brought before a mass +of working men in England. "All this passion for justice will accomplish +nothing," he declared, "unless you get knowledge. You may become strong +and clamorous, you may win a victory, you may affect a revolution, but +you will be trodden down again under the feet of knowledge if you leave +knowledge in the hands of privilege, because knowledge will always win +over ignorance."[21] + +[21] _The Highway_, London, Nov., 1911. + +American women were fortunate, too, in having for their leaders such +women as Emma Willard, Mary Lyon and Catherine Beecher. Emma Willard was +a woman of the world; she had traveled abroad and she brought to her +work a cultivated nature, wide experience of life and natural +leadership. Her personality went far toward lifting the movement to a +plane of respect. After trying a little academy in Vermont, she appealed +to the State of New York in 1814 for help. In this appeal, she wisely +adopted the prevailing view of the relation of the state to education. +The state must have good citizens, she repeats, and then goes on, "The +character of children will be formed by their mothers; and it is through +the mothers that the government can control the character of its future +citizens." The State of New York granted her articles of incorporation +for her academy at Waterford, N.Y., but refused her the modest sum of +five thousand dollars for which she had asked. In 1821, she established +the Troy Female Seminary, where for years she trained and led the +intellectual life of American women. + +Miss Mary Lyon begged the money from the common people with which she +opened Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1837. Those who feared the education of +women were disarmed by the fact that in the new institution domestic +service was emphasized to the extent of having the girls do all their +own work. Another group of possible critics was won over by the fact +that religious instruction received constant care. But notwithstanding +the conserving influence of housework and religion, there went steadily +out from Mount Holyoke during the following years a strong line of +teachers demanding ever larger opportunity for themselves and for those +they taught. + +Miss Catherine Beecher added to her work in schools for girls a general +propaganda for woman's education, and she devised large plans for its +development. In 1852, she organized the American Woman's Educational +Association "to aid in securing to American women a liberal education, +honorable position, and remunerative employment." She helped to start +girls' schools in half a dozen cities, and by writing and talking she +sowed in the hearts of women, especially in the Middle West, a +discontent with existing conditions and a deep desire to know. + +From the time of this awakening in the thirties and forties, two lines +of educational activity for the advancement of woman's education +steadily developed. One was the effort of women to educate themselves in +distinctly women's schools; and the other was the movement by which +existing institutions for boys and men were gradually opened to girls +and women. These two lines of activity still remain distinct, and not +always sympathetic with each other's aims. + +The effort to establish distinctly women's schools was continued after +the Civil War by Matthew Vassar, who founded in 1861, and opened in +1865, the first adequately endowed and organized college for women in +America. Ten years later, Miss Sophie Smith founded and endowed Smith +College to furnish women "with means and facilities for education equal +to those that are offered in colleges for young men." The institution +was opened in 1875; and in the same year Henry Durant established +Wellesley College. + +The last Report of the United States Commissioner of Education shows +that there are now 108 institutions of higher learning to which men are +not admitted; but most of them have modeled themselves so closely upon +men's colleges that they have not been able to work out lines of +distinctive instruction specially fitted to women. One cannot help +feeling that since they do not open their doors to men they should do +something more toward working out an ideal education for women than they +have so far undertaken. When the Association of Intercollegiate Alumnae +met in New York, in the autumn of 1911, its discussions gathered around +the possibility of adding to college courses subjects of special value +to women. Hygiene, biology and sociology were the subjects most favored; +but the matter needs attention from women and men who stand outside the +group dominated by our older college traditions. This movement to +provide distinctive schools for women had brought together, in 1910, +35,714 girl students in private secondary schools and 9,082 women +students in higher institutions of learning. + +The second line of development, which sought to open up all existing +schools to girls and women, began when Boston opened a high school for +girls in 1825. New York opened a high school for girls three years +later. + +It was in the West, however, that this movement took strongest root and +made most steady advance. The West has always led the East in opening +equal opportunity to women, even equal suffrage. The forest and the +frontier compel such action even in such commonwealths as Australia, New +Zealand and Canada, where there has been no political revolution to +hasten it. Labor is scarce; the invading people are intelligent and +ambitious for their children and desire them educated. The women must +teach them to read and write; the girls learn with their brothers; and +so the women master the mysteries of formal education. + +Thus it is no accident that Oberlin, in the western forest, was the +first college to open its doors to women. Antioch, under Horace Mann's +direction, was, however, the first institution of higher learning to +give men and women equal opportunity. The new States of the Mississippi +Valley early established State universities. These institutions were +little more than seminaries, but the free spirit of the frontier was so +strong in them that in 1863 Wisconsin University admitted women to its +privileges, and Kansas and Indiana followed shortly after. + +It is the year 1870, however, that marks the beginning of a new period +in the higher education of women as in so many other lines of advance. +In that year, Michigan University, California University and the +University of Evanston, adopted co-education. Michigan was just entering +on a great career and her influence was very important. There, for the +first time, women could follow a university curriculum under the same +conditions as men. Two years later, Andrew D. White introduced the +Michigan idea at Cornell. + +In the forty years since Michigan opened her doors, the advance of women +under conditions of co-education has been steady and rapid. In Harvard +and Columbia opportunity takes the form of annexes where women can +secure almost any educational opportunities they desire. In other +universities, like Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins, women are admitted to +graduate study. Most of the institutions of higher education that do not +yet admit women are theological and technical schools, or small colleges +like Haverford, where there are equivalents in Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, +for women who wish to attend a Friend's College. A woman can work in +almost any important university in America to-day if she cares to do so. +In 1910 there were conferred in the United States 12,590 A.B. degrees, +and women took 44.1 per cent. of them. + +Meantime, there have been no important reactions in institutions which +have once opened their doors to women.[22] In 1902, Chicago University +separated men and women students, but only during the first two years of +their undergraduate work. Practically this has affected only one-half of +the women in the first year and a very much smaller proportion in the +second year.[23] When Leland Stanford Junior University was opened in +1891, 25.4% of the students were women. This proportion rose in +successive years as follows: 1892, 29.7%; 1893, 30.4%; 1894, 33.8%; +1895, 35.3%; 1896, 36.6%; 1897, 37.4%; 1898, 40.1%. Fearing that the +institution would be swamped with women, and that able men students +would stay away, Mrs. Stanford ruled that there should never be more +than five hundred women students in the university at one time. This +limit was reached in 1902, and it was then provided that women should +not be received as special students, nor in partial standing. Later, men +in partial standing were cut out, though they continued to be received +as special students. Women are now admitted in order of application, +but preference is given to juniors and seniors. This really establishes +a higher standard for women than for men, and one would expect that men +would be kept away from an institution requiring a higher standard for +women quite as much as from one where there were many women working on +an equality with men. In 1910, Tufts College decided to separate men and +women, for local reasons. The statement was made at the time that a +philanthropist had promised a gift of $500,000 for a woman's college, if +the sexes were separated.[24] The doors of Wesleyan are to be closed to +women after 1912, but this is due to local and financial reasons. + +[22] HELEN R. OLIN, _The Women of a State University_, G.P. Putnam's +Sons, 1909. + +[23] MARION TALBOT, _The Education of Women_, University of Chicago +Press, 1910. + +[24] _Report of the United States Commissioner of Education_, p. 132, +1910. + +The movement in European universities, while not so uniform as in +America, has been in the same direction. Miss Buss, Miss Beal and Miss +Emily Sheriff led an early movement for higher secondary education of +girls similar to that which gathered around Miss Willard in America. In +1871, Miss Clough started in England the lectures for women which led +to the establishment of Newnham and Girton at Cambridge, and opened +Oxford to women. Now women can study almost any subject they like at +these universities and take the same examinations as the men. They do +not receive degrees, but they have most of the other advantages of men, +and for forty years they have carried off many honors. In the newer +universities of London, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and in the Welsh +University they have every advantage open to men. + +In Germany, the opportunities for higher education of women have changed +from year to year; but in 1910, there were 1,856 women in the +universities as compared with 1,108 in 1909, and this notwithstanding +the Emperor's well known belief that woman's sphere should be limited to +domestic activities. + +The claims advanced in opposition to the higher education of women have +largely broken down to-day. It was long maintained that her mind was +inferior to man's mind in kind and quality, and that she could not do +the work required. In the presence of thousands of young women carrying +all kinds of university work with credit and honor such charges become +absurd. The belief that woman's health could not stand the strain fails +for the same reason. The fear that she would be less likely to marry; or +marrying, would be less likely to have children, has been seen to have +some body of fact behind it; but we have seen also that university +students are recruited from groups that are not the most fecund, and +that the same danger applies to men students as to women.[25] Women in +higher education are now accepted as a regular part of our modern life. + +[25] Eight hundred and eighty-one Harvard graduates, twenty-five years +after graduation, had but 1,226 children. If half were boys, we have but +613 sons for 881 Harvard graduates. HUGO MUeNSTERBERG, _The Americans_, +p. 582. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901. + +And yet there is one objection that still remains unanswered in very +many minds. It has always been feared that women would lower the +standard of scholarship; and there is much in the quality of the present +generation of women students that may strengthen this belief. In the +seventies and eighties, the fear of being thought peculiar still kept +many ordinary women away from colleges. Now it has become fashionable, +and a woman who has been to college stands better in a community than +one who has not. Add to this the freedom and romance of "going to +college" and it follows that many young women, with increasing economic +freedom, are tempted to go up to the universities just as well-placed +young Englishmen go to Cambridge or Oxford as passmen. They have no +special interest in scholarship; but they like the life. This large body +of young women, and of men under similar conditions, will doubtless +lower the scholarship of modern college and university life as a whole. +But possibly the need of the world for all-around men and women is even +greater than its need for scholars; and in that case we may find +justification for both passmen and passwomen. + +With the opening of knowledge to women it became possible for them to +instruct children in matters intellectual; and since our school learning +was almost entirely a matter of information and mental training, they +early became an important part of the teaching profession in America. + +Once started, all our conditions favored the rapid increase of women +teachers. There were industrial openings for men on every side; and with +our rapid increase in population, an army of teachers was required. +Since the calling had in the past been filled by inferior members of the +clergy, broken-down soldiers, or old women, there was a tradition of +constant change, and young men on their way to permanent professions +were steadily supplanted by young women on their way to the altar. + +Co-education very materially assisted this substitution. Social, +religious and economic reasons early combined to establish co-education +in elementary schools in America, and now it has become a national +custom. In cities like Philadelphia and Brooklyn there are some separate +schools; but in 1910, only 4 per cent. of all the elementary children +and only 5 per cent. of the children in public high schools were in +separate classes. In private schools, which care for less than 10 per +cent. of the children of the country, the percentage of children in +separate schools is greater. + +Practically all American children are now in co-educational +institutions. Had the boys been in schools by themselves it would have +been more difficult to place women teachers over them, but in mixed +schools the question does not arise. Even where the boys and girls were +separated, however, that fact did not prevent the employment of women +teachers, though it may have retarded it. Thus in Philadelphia, in 1911, +there were 125 boys' classes, 174 girls' classes, and 894 mixed classes +in the grammar grades; still there were but 175 men teachers employed +and, of course, the girls' classes were all taught by women. + +While administrative positions are less monopolized by women than +teaching posts, they are being steadily filled by them. For fifteen +years Idaho has had able women State superintendents elected by popular +suffrage; Colorado and Montana have also given this highest educational +post to women. In most of our States we have women serving as county +superintendents; and in Idaho women fill nearly all these positions. +Several of our largest cities, notably Chicago and Cleveland, have women +superintendents; while many high schools and most of our elementary +schools have women principals. In 1909, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young was +elected president of the National Education Association; and in 1911, +Miss Alice Dilley was elected president of the Iowa State Teachers' +Association. Both of these elections were victories for women won in the +face of determined opposition from many of the men. + +Another feature of this monopoly of teaching by women should be +emphasized. Many boards of education require a woman to resign her +position if she marries, and married women are seldom appointed to +teaching positions, except where they are widows or separated from their +husbands. In a test case recently carried to the Supreme Court of the +State of New York a decision was rendered that the Board of Education of +New York City could not dismiss teachers for marrying; but by refusing +leave of absence to prospective mothers the Board is still able to +remove all women who dare to have children. Thus we have a modern +industrial democracy being educated almost entirely by celibate women. + +But why should a woman be forced to leave teaching because she marries? +Would not married women do much to strengthen and broaden the calling? +Are not married women better fitted than celibates to deal with boys and +girls in the period of adolescence? There is doubtless a feeling that a +married woman should make way for some girl who needs the position to +help herself along; but schools should not be used for the needs of +teachers, no matter how deserving the individual may be. + +There is, too, a possibility that a married woman might have a child, +and a feeling that this would shock the other teachers and the children. +Surely we have grown beyond this condition; the teacher could easily be +given a leave of absence for a few months, or for a few years; and +nowhere else could the children better meet this fact of universal +existence around which our Anglo-Saxon reticence has woven such a +shameful conspiracy of silence. At least, when a woman has passed the +period of childbearing she could bring to the school incalculable gifts +of balanced judgment and ripe understanding of life. + +Meantime all the influences which have brought about the monopoly of +teaching by women are increasingly operative. Every year more able women +leave our high schools, normal schools and universities, with no +corresponding new lines of occupation open to them. The feeling of +rivalry between men and women teachers grows stronger each year. +Powerful teachers' federations, such as those in Chicago and Buffalo, +composed mainly of women, are said to be using their influence to favor +women. In New York City, the women teachers have compelled the city to +equalize the wages of men and women, at an annual expense of $3,500,000, +after a bitter fight lasting several years. + +The effects of this monopoly upon the women themselves are very +difficult to estimate. Some alarmists tell us that women teachers face +the danger of a premature and loveless old age; that the celibate +communities they form in the commonwealth are marked by pettiness and +emotionalism; that the salaries paid teachers are so small that they +cannot provide for sickness and old age, and that, unless pensioned by +the state, some of them must one day eat the bread of charity. + +On the other hand, we are told that education is the natural province +of women; that teaching fits them to be good mothers and helpful +citizens; that women alone can form the character of girls; and that +boys are refined and perfected by the constant contact with women. + +Probably neither of these statements is wholly true. It is certain that +many women teachers do marry, do become the mothers of fine children, +and are social forces in their communities. With advancing standards of +scholarship, better salaries, old age pensions, and a popular demand for +professional efficiency in teachers, it will be increasingly difficult +for men to use the calling as a preparation for law and medicine, or for +women to use it as a preparation for matrimony. The calling doubtless +does offer a greater equivalent for marriage than most others; and many +women live their mother life vicariously for other people's children. + +At the same time, however, when a woman has given fourteen years of her +life to preparation for teaching, eight years in an elementary school, +four in a high school, and from two to four in professional training, +she has made an investment and formed habits which will make her +hesitate before turning to matrimony. The independence and income will +prove attractive during young maidenhood; and matrimony can hardly yield +its best results to the woman who enters it after she is thirty. It is +certainly true that women are decreasingly willing to enter the teaching +profession; and in many parts of the country there is a chronic dearth +of trained teachers. + +Meantime, for good or ill, women have eaten, and are eating of the tree +of knowledge as they will. If this has driven them out of the little +paradise of the past, they are in a fair way to make the whole world +into a paradise of the present. Only through training their minds could +they have broken away from an outworn past. In this time of readjustment +there must be many mistakes and many tragedies.[26] The fool-killer will +gather a rich harvest, but if we are open-minded and eager to see the +truth, each martyr will teach her sisters, and the future generations +of women will conserve the values of the past and add to them new +treasures and new graces of knowledge and understanding. + +[26] See chapter on Education of Adolescent Girls, in _Adolescence_, by +G. STANLEY HALL. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1904. + +It is most unfortunate that these real issues should be obscured by sex +rivalry. There can be no real rivalry between a man's soul and his body, +between science and religion, between man and woman. Such antagonisms +rest back in the failure to realize the incompleteness of man or woman +alone, for any purposes of life. And there is, too, that evil notion +which still affects economics, that when two trade one must lose. The +fact is that in all honest exchange buyer and seller gain alike, and all +who participate become rich. It is so in all honest relations between +these half-creatures we call men and women. In agreement, association, +cooperation, lies strongest significant life for both. In separation, +competition and antagonism lie arid, poor, mean lives, conceited and +egotistic, vapid and contemptible. + + + + +IV + +The Feminizing of Culture + + +With the weakening of sex prejudices and the removal of legal +restrictions on women's freedom it was inevitable that they should +invade fields of activity where formerly only men were found. Since +women must eat every one knew that they must work, and the sight of a +woman at work was no new experience. Even in the days when they were +most secluded and protected, the number kept in ease was always very +small compared with the women slaves and servants who spun, cooked and +served. Hence men were used to seeing women at work; and while +industrial adjustments have not been easily made, they have still been +accepted as a matter of course. But who, fifty years ago, could have +imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning, +teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater? +And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at +the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does +not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of +liberal culture as opposed to the field of immediately productive work. + +Some of the reasons for this change are so clear that it seems as though +they might have been anticipated. In a comparatively few years the +greater part of Western Europe and all of America has become rich, not +this time through the enslavement of other peoples and the confiscating +of their wealth, but through the enslaving and exploitation of the +material forces of nature. This wealth is not well distributed, but +large numbers of families have received enough so that the women do not +have to work constantly with their hands. At this point all historic +precedent would have turned these women into luxury-loving parasites and +playthings. A good many of them have taken this easiest way and entered +the peripatetic harems of the rich. But several million women refused to +repeat the old cycle of ruin; they knew too much.[27] What then should +they do? Faith in the value of conventual life for women had passed; +industrial changes had transformed their homes so that the endless +spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting were no longer there, even to be +supervised. Penelope's tasks had passed to foremen, working under trades +union agreements, in the factories of Fall River and Birmingham. Even +the function of the lady bountiful who looked after the spiritual and +family affairs of her tenants and servants and distributed doles and +Christmas baskets was gone. Her tenants owned their own farms, and her +chauffeur resented her interference with his personal life. What should +she do? + +[27] RHETA CHILDE DORR, _What Eight Million Women Want,_ Boston: Small, +Maynard & Co., 1910. + +And this movement was not confined to the rich, for those who were not +yet economically free were still deeply influenced by the changes which +were taking place. The Goulds, Stanfords, Vanderbilts, Floods, Carnegies +and Schwabs had all been lifted from the level of the masses to +financial grandeur before the eyes of the multitude, and democratic +ambitions drove parents who thought themselves in the line of financial +advancement to secure culture for their girls in time. If the daughter +was destined to live on Fifth Avenue, or to marry a duke, it was best to +get her ready while young. In all our industrial democracies, armies of +American parents have devoted themselves to labor, and even sacrificed +comforts and necessities, that the daughters might get ready to live +easier and fuller lives than the parents had known. If the choice had to +be made between the girl and her brother, the chivalry of the father and +the ambition of the mother very often gave the opportunity to the girl. + +And so an emancipated army of leisure has been formed which has +transformed the very nature of the culture with which it has busied +itself. Books, periodicals, musical instruments, travel became cheaper +and cheaper as the demand increased. Wholesale production makes almost +any luxury accessible to every one. It is also possible to find modern +and agreeable forms for older academic exercises. If Greek and Latin +were too full or too difficult, courses in Romanic and Germanic +philology would do as well. Anglo-Saxon gave way to Old English; and +Chaucer to the Lake Poets. Philosophy struggled for favor with the +English novel on equal terms. The works of Raphael were photographed and +lithographed until the Sistine Madonna became as commonly known as the +face of any strenuous and popular statesman of the day. With the aid of +these art productions, and John Addington Symonds, every woman with +leisure became an art critic. If economics was not interesting, +sociology was available; and it could be democratized to any degree +desired. If travel was troublesome, one could leave it to Cook; buy a +ticket and he would do the rest. + +If these awakening hungers and corresponding opportunities had affected +only the period of life formerly thought available for education, these +changes would have come about much more slowly than they have. But the +genetic conception of life, steadily popularized since 1870, has led us +to see that education is coterminous with life. It seems strange that we +should have ever thought that mental activity belongs alone to youth. +Dorland's study shows that in a list of four hundred fairly +representative great men, only 10.25% ceased their mental activity +between the ages of forty and fifty; 20.75% between fifty and sixty; 35% +between sixty and seventy; 22.5% between seventy and eighty; and 6% +after eighty.[28] + +[28] W.A. NEWMAN DORLAND, _The Age of Mental Virility_. New York: The +Century Company, 1908. + +The recognition of such facts as these has given us a new genetic sense +of life, under the influence of which mothers and grandmothers have +joined the younger women in the pursuit of culture. They have formed +clubs--study clubs, current events clubs, camera clubs, art clubs, +literary clubs, civic clubs. They have organized courses of university +extension lectures; enrolled in Chicago University correspondence +courses; and have flocked to Chautauqua by the thousand in the summer, +when not abroad. It is not through the generosity of men that liberal +culture has come into the possession of women; they have carried it by +storm and have compelled capitulation. + +Judging by the facts presented in the last chapter, women are pretty +fully in possession of formal education. If we examine this monopoly a +little more carefully, we shall find that while in the kindergarten and +in the elementary schools boys furnish 51% of the enrollment, simply +because more boys are born in civilized communities than girls, as soon +as we reach the high schools, girls increasingly take the lead. In 1910, +the girls formed 56.45% of the enrollment in high schools--or there were +110,249 more girls than boys. The proportion of girls increased through +each of the four years of the course, and of the graduates, 60.8% were +girls. In the public normal schools, 64.45% of the students were girls. + +The universities, colleges and technical schools, which are massed +together in our government reports, had hardly any women students in +1870; in 1880, 19.3% of the students were women; in 1890, 27%; in 1910, +30.4%. In all these institutions we had enrolled in 1910, 17,707 women. +Of 602 institutions reported in 1910, 142 were for men only; 108 were +for women only; and 352 were open to both sexes. But here again the +influence of women increases during each of the four years for, as we +have seen, the women took 41.1% of the A.B. degrees granted in 1910. It +is surely not too much to say that, if present conditions continue, +women will soon be in an overwhelming majority in all secondary and +higher education in the United States. + +If we examine the teaching force, we find this monopoly already +established. In 1870, when our government records begin, 59% of the +teachers were women; in 1880, 57.2% were women; in 1890, 65.5%; in 1900, +70.1%; in 1910, 78.6%. The more settled and intelligent the community +the more rapid this advance has been. Thus Arkansas has 52.4% women +teachers; but Massachusetts has 91.1% and Connecticut has 93%. + +In cities, too, the women fill nearly all teaching positions. New York +City has 89% women in its force; Boston, 89%; Philadelphia, 91.4%; +Chicago, 93.3%. In many cities the proportion is even greater than this: +Omaha has 97%; Wheeling, W. Va., 97.5%; Charleston, S.C., 99.3%; and in +forty-six American towns of 4,000 to 8,000 inhabitants there is no man +teaching. When we remember that many of the men indicated above are in +high schools or in supervising posts, we are prepared for the statement +in a report recently laid before the Board of Education of New York City +that in half the cities of the United States there are virtually no men +teaching. + +In our high schools, 54% of the teachers are women; in public normal +schools, 65%; and in institutions of higher learning 17.6% are women. +Even in supervising positions, there are more women than men in the +large centers of population. Certainly these figures justify us in +saying that women have established a monopoly of education in the United +States, except in the higher institutions. + +In order to discuss the effects which this monopoly of education by +women is having on the curriculum of the schools we must first agree on +what constitutes the peculiarity of women's minds as compared with men's +minds.[29] In our first chapter, it was asserted that women are more +interested in the concrete, human, personal, conserving and emotional +aspects of life; while men more easily turn to the abstract, material, +impersonal, creative and rational aspects. To put it broadly, women are +more interested in the humanities; men more readily pursue the sciences. +Let us admit at once that there are many individual exceptions to this +statement. Some women have reached great excellence in abstract studies; +and some men are notoriously concrete and emotional; but nevertheless +the general statement seems borne out by a wealth of common observations +and detailed comparisons. + +[29] See _The Americans_, by HUGO MUeNSTERBERG, pp. 558-589. Boston: +Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901. + +Personal observation must always be colored by prejudices and +prepossessions, but my own have been so wide, and so uniformly in one +direction, that it seems justifiable to report them. + + * * * * * + +For a quarter of a century I have been working in schools or with +teachers, and my personal observations all agree with the above +characterization. I have spent five years in Cornell University, New +York; one year in Zurich University in Switzerland; two years in the +State University of Indiana and seven years in Stanford University in +California. These institutions are widely distributed; they were all +fully co-educational; and they each had a wide range of elective +studies. In all of them, class-rooms devoted to literature and modern +languages had a large attendance of women, while lecture-rooms and +laboratories devoted to abstract science were almost deserted by them. +This could not have been due to commercial considerations, for many of +these women were facing teaching; and during all this time the demand +for women who could teach science has been much greater than for women +who could teach literature. + +In my work with teachers, both in the classroom and in the field, I have +carried out many inductive, quantitative studies, based on measurements +or returns from large numbers of children. I have never found women +teachers taking up and carrying out this kind of work with any such +enthusiasm as men apply to it, though it lies at the base of their +professional life. + +Institutional generalizations seem all to point in this same direction. +For instance, the Girls' Evening High School in Philadelphia is managed +by one of the best known scientific women in the country, Dr. L.L.W. +Wilson, head of the biological department of the Philadelphia Normal +School. With a thousand girls of high school grade, under the leadership +of a scientific woman, the only science courses given in the school are +those in domestic science. The reason is that the girls, most of them +not being candidates for a degree, will not take up science work, though +they form strong classes in literature and languages. + +If, from such general facts of observation, one turns to exact +comparisons, where quantities can be measured, the results are all the +same. Of students enrolled in classical departments of universities, +colleges and technical schools reporting to the United States Bureau of +Education, in 1910, 36.5% were women, while of those enrolled in general +science courses, but 17.2% were women. In 1,511 public and private high +schools and seminaries, reporting to the Bureau of Education in +1909-1910, a larger percentage of boys than of girls was enrolled in +algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, physical geography, +civil government and rhetoric, which is a scientific study of language. +A larger proportion of girls enrolled in Latin, French, German, English +literature and history, and there was a slightly greater enrollment of +girls in botany, zoology and physiology. + +In the further discussion of this subject it will then be taken for +granted that in education, feminization means emphasis on languages, +literature and history, as opposed to mathematics, physics, chemistry +and civics. For the elementary schools we have no data capable of +reduction to figures, but general observation, backed by an examination +of courses of study and textbooks, will compel any one to say that in +twenty years we have made wonderful progress in reading, language, +stories, mythology, biography and history; while all our efforts to +bring nature work into vital relation with the schools have borne little +fruit. Our country schools need lessons in agriculture, and the children +should gain a deep sense of country life. But how can celibate young +women, longing toward the towns, give this? Any subjects well taught are +sure to be increasingly taught, and it takes no extended study to see +that our elementary schools are being feminized in the direction of +literature. This is the more striking when we remember that these twenty +years have been dominated, in the larger world, by scientific interests. + +In the high schools and seminaries, we have fairly complete returns +showing the number of students enrolled in certain subjects since 1890. +The pupils taking Latin have increased 15%; French, 4%; German, 13%; +English literature has increased in ten years 7% (there is no record for +this subject before 1898); and European history, 27%. There has also +been an increase of 11% in algebra and 10% in geometry, probably partly +due to vocational need and to the emphasis laid on these subjects for +admission to college. But physics, in the twenty years under +consideration, has fallen off 7%; chemistry, 3%; physical geography, 5%; +physiology, 15%; and civics, 7%.[30] A careful study of these figures +must convince any fair-minded person that our school curriculum, even in +the secondary field, where women's control is least complete, is moving +rapidly in the direction of what we have called feminization. + +[30] _Report of the United States Commissioner of Education_, 1910, Vol. +II, p. 1139. + +The schools, too, must increasingly do something more than train the +intellect; and in all physical activity involuntary suggestion is very +powerful. Playgrounds are laboratories of conduct, and they should not +only give physical exercise, but should also furnish standards and +ideals. There can be no doubt that women are physically more restrained, +retiring, non-contesting, and graceful than men; but can dancing, +marching, and gymnastics take the place of more aggressive, direct and +violent contests in the training of boys? So in industries, women are +more given to conserving, arranging and beautifying, more given to +clerking and recording, while men are more creative, disbursing, more +given to mining, agriculture and commerce. Even granting equal +understanding and experience, the tradition of the race must count for +much; and it would seem that at every stage of growth, boys and girls +alike should feel the impulse to imitate men who have an instinct to +make and unmake, to trade and carry. It is no justification of existing +conditions to say that the men now in the teaching profession lack +these qualities; if they do, let us get rid of them and have real men. +And for purposes of political life, does it not seem strange to bring up +a generation of boys and girls who are to be the future citizens of a +democracy under the exclusive leadership of people who have never been +encouraged to think about political life nor allowed to participate in +it? Let us by all means enfranchise women; but even then they cannot +hope to quickly catch up with those who have some thousands of years the +start, even after allowing for the fact that girls inherit from both +father and mother. + +Most of these differences which we have been discussing seem to rest in +the fact that women are more personal in their interests and judgments +than men are. This may be due to their education for thousands of years; +but that makes it no less true. Women certainly, in a great majority of +cases, are more interested in a case than in a constitution; in a man +than in a mission; in a poem that in a treatise; in equity than in law. +In a generation when everything is tending toward great aggregations, +consolidated industries, segregated wealth, and new syntheses of +knowledge, both boys and girls should have such training as will fit +them to play their part in these larger units. + +As to the feminizing influence of exclusively women teachers on manners +and morals and general attitude toward life there can be no real doubt. +Boys and girls cannot spend eight or twelve impressionable years of +childhood and youth under the constant daily influence of women without +having the ladylike attitude toward life strongly emphasized. To deny +this is to repudiate the power of constant involuntary suggestion and +association. Whether it is desirable or not, is another question. The +change may be all in the direction of advancing civilization; but just +as in the assimilation of our subject races, the philosophic mind must +be distressed by the disappearance of so many varieties of speech, +customs, and artistic and industrial products, so in this present +assimilation, one cannot help regretting the steady disappearance of the +katabolic qualities of the human male. One does not need to say that +this feminized product is better or worse than what we have had, but it +is certainly narrower, and less in harmony with the world's thought and +work, than it formerly was. + +If we turn from education to the press we have similar conditions. +During these past few years, hundreds of journals have sprung up devoted +to women's special interests. They are almost all of them showy, +fragmentary, personal, concrete and emotional. It is difficult to find +one that represents general or abstract interests. At least one of these +journals which boasts a fabulous circulation is supported by its women +subscribers and readers to oppose the larger interests of women in +education, industry and political life. At least, if it does not oppose +these interests, it does not aid them. Imagine a million German women +sending the Kaiser one dollar and a half a year to induce him to tell +them once a month to go back to their kitchens, churches and children! + +The newspapers of America have steadily changed during the last three +decades in the same direction. Editorial pages and news columns have +been steadily modified in the direction of fragmentary, egoistic, +personal and sensational, or at least emotional, appeals. These are the +qualities of children's minds and of undeveloped minds everywhere. The +change is, of course, a part of the larger democratic movement of our +time, and many causes have contributed to bring it about. Had women not +been so active, something of the same sort would have happened; but if +women were all to forget how to read overnight, there is little doubt +that the newspapers would find it advantageous to print more +statesmanlike editorials and more general and abstract news. + +With the weeklies and monthlies, the change taking place is the same. +The new reading public, brought in by increase in population and by +popular education, does not support the _Atlantic_, the _Century_ and +_Scribner's,_ but turns to _Munsey's_, _McClure's_ and _Everybody's_. +The very change in names speaks of the new personal and egoistic element +that has come into journalism. Of course, such changes are only in part +due to the influence of women, but the change is in the direction of the +qualities that characterize distinctively women's journals. + +In books, the personal and romantic novel has taken precedence over +every other form of literature. Many of these are written by women; +their circulation, both through libraries and through sales, is much +greater with women than with men; and in many of them the personal +gossip is as transient as that which fills the evening papers.[31] + +[31] _The Feminine Note in Fiction_, by W.L. COURTNEY, London, Chapman & +Hall, 1904; the author tries to prove that there is such a thing as a +feminine style in fiction. + +In the churches, especially in the ritualistic churches, women have long +been the faithful attendants. Nowhere, except in the churches which make +a rationalistic and abstract appeal, and in the Ethical Societies, does +one find a preponderance of men. In 1903, a careful enumeration of all +attendants at places of worship was made in the city of London. The +count was taken on fair Sundays in autumn, and covered both morning and +evening services. Sixty-one per cent. of all adult attendants were +women, 146,372 more women than men passing through the doors. + +About the same time a similar census was made in the part of New York +City lying on Manhattan Island. The women were in excess by 171,749, +and formed 69 per cent. of all attendants. Even church service, if not +entirely tied to set forms, must seek to interest those who occupy the +pews; and no observer can fail to note in both England and America, a +movement toward ritualism on the one hand, and on the other, toward +popular, personal, concrete and sometimes sensational preaching. The +same general changes are taking place in libraries, in the drama, in +concerts, in all group activities connected with learning and the fine +arts. + +But on the other side, if emancipated women had not applied themselves, +since 1870, to the direction of education, literature, religion and +amusements, all these interests must have suffered serious neglect and +probable deterioration through the concentrating of the interests of the +ablest men in engineering, manufacturing, commerce and other fields of +pure and applied science. By popularizing these interests, women have +really humanized them, as all similar revolutions have done in the past. +In breaking up old forms and intellectual conventions they have set free +new and vital impulses. Whether the historian of the future will +consider this period of democratization and feminization a time of +advance may be uncertain; but it is certainly a time of liberated energy +and of broadening participation in all that is best in life. + + + + +V + +The Economic Independence of Women + + +Nowhere does a human being escape compulsion. Even were he alone in the +world he would be forced to obey the physical laws governing gravity, +heat, cold, hunger and disease. No matter what his desires might be, he +would find himself limited and constrained by fixed laws, the inexorable +penalties of which he could escape only by obedience. If the man were +not alone, then each one of his companions would limit his freedom, and +he would limit each one in the group, if they were to live together in +peace and efficiency; and yet each of the man's companions would help to +free him from the tyranny of physical forces, from the social pressure +of others, and even from the bondage of his own nature. + +Independence is thus an ideal to be achieved only through obedience. It +begins in self-subordination and reaches its finest realization in +social subordination. Since the beginning of time men who thought have +always dreamed of freedom; and for two hundred years now independence +has been a word to conjure with. But in so far as independence means +freedom to follow one's own unregulated desires, it is a fantastic and +dangerous dream; and yet this dream of impossible independence has been +among the greatest influences in furthering human development in the +past. + +The old-time dependence of one individual on the immediate caprices of +another largely disappeared with the passing of slavery. But in place of +this personal subjection has come a more complex and in some ways more +compelling and crushing control through the monopoly of wealth. Property +has become the medium through which the most binding of human relations +are organized. Accumulated wealth has become a great reservoir of power +to which some individuals gain access through rights of birth, others +through carefully guarded privileges, and still others through cunning +devices or through force; but the masses of the people must gain their +fragments of this wealth through arduous lifelong labor. Even the earth, +the original source of all wealth, is parceled out, and all of it is now +owned by individuals or groups who control it in their own interests. +One man may thus have thousands of acres which he cannot use, and which +he will not allow others to use, while another has not where to lay his +head. Laws jealously guard this wealth, which is the key to all +opportunity; and public opinion, that most subtle, pervasive and +compelling of all forms of law, gathers a thousand sacred initiations, +rites, ceremonies, prohibitions and ex-communications around it. A man +who has killed his neighbor, or ruined his friend's family, may be less +punished by society than one who cheats at cards. + +In primitive life a man may be a man by virtue of what he is; to-day he +may have all the rights and privileges of any man by virtue of what he +possesses. In any community can be found strong men, honest, though +misplaced or unfortunate, begging bread, wasting their lives for want of +money to live decently. And beside these one sees other men of weak +physique and feeble minds, who have lived as parasites on society all +their lives, but who are handsomely dressed, well fed, and possessed of +power to do as they will, simply because they have access to wealth. It +is no wonder that if one would seek freedom to-day in America he must +look for her image on a gold coin. + +It is not difficult to see why property has become such a powerful +instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a +psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a +toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one's personality into +it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which +his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him +life more abundantly. A landless man must become a soulless man. Of +course, we are not here speaking of legal ownership. Many people own +legally things into which they have never infused themselves; sometimes +they have so many things that no individual could possibly infuse +himself into them. + +These conditions may prevail even in primitive life, but to-day they +have been vastly increased through the fact that with advancing +civilization money was devised. This is a system of counters, generally +coin or paper, not really valuable in themselves, but always resting +back for value on the earth, or on something derived from it. In the +past it was supposed that there were some things which, because of their +nature, were not marketable, while others were beyond price. To-day we +set values on everything, even on men's bodies; eyes, ears, legs and +lives can be priced. There are, in fact, insurance companies and +factories that have regular schedules of value for various parts of the +body. Our courts set prices on blighted affections, damaged reputations, +social advancements, impaired digestions, damaged complexions, nervous +shocks and extreme humiliations. Even a woman's honor may have a price +in dollars. + +These property rights, like the rights of the person, have always been +subject to violence. Powerful individuals and groups have always been +able to overstep legal restrictions and public opinion, and seize what +they desired. The land grabbing going on in North Africa and Persia +to-day and the activity of great industrial monopolies at home, show us +that some property rights still need to be secured by force. In this +struggle, it has come about naturally that men, being stronger, freer +and less scrupulous than women, have outstripped them and have so far +had a pretty complete monopoly of wealth. In fact women themselves have +at times become property. In such times a man who stole or bought a +woman, naturally took over with her all her rights in real estate and +personal property as well as her person and her services. + +Only gradually did women gain power to hold property themselves. Mainly +because fathers wished to preserve property in their families, the right +of women to inherit became slowly established as civilization advanced. +In Judea, Greece and Rome, certain rights of a woman to hold property +were clearly settled. In the reversion to force under feudalism, woman's +rights to outside property suffered; but they have been gradually +restored during the last few centuries. To-day, in civilized lands, a +woman's rights to property, inherited or definitely given her or +purchased by her, are everywhere recognized, if she does not marry. In +France, and other Latin countries, she may still lose control of her +property if she takes a husband; but in northern and western lands, even +a married woman may retain her possessions. + +Woman's body, too, is increasingly looked upon as her personal property. +With the raising of the age of consent; with increasing severity in laws +punishing rape, and with the abrogation of judicial orders for the +restitution of marital rights, it is now quite generally recognized that +a woman should have the right to control her own person. Still, in many +lands there is much to be done before this right is fully safeguarded. + +The place where a woman has not yet achieved economic freedom is in the +disposal of her labor. One must remember, however, in this connection, +that not only is there no fixed standard of values in human service as +yet, but that many indispensable forms of service have not even been +legally recognized as valuable. In early forms of civilization, fighting +and praying were considered the most important work the community +received, and warriors and priests gained the big rewards. They +received lands, gold, servants and dignities, while industrial workers, +even the directors, were despised. To-day we have reversed all this and +we may pay a general only five thousand dollars a year, and a priest +eight hundred dollars, while a man who develops a big industry may +receive a hundred thousand dollars annually. Again, a man who invents a +new gun may be given a fortune, like that of Herr Krupp, while a man who +invents a surgical instrument is prevented by the ethics of his +profession from even patenting it. If Pasteur had been paid for his +services to France and to humanity, he would have ranked in the +financial world with Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Schwab. We pay a State +superintendent of public instruction ten thousand dollars a year; but +Miss Jane Addams, as instructor in ethics to the United States, receives +no salary, and she must even beg the money to maintain her laboratory at +Hull House. The whole question of payment for services is in a chaotic +condition. Those who serve mankind most faithfully are rewarded on the +principle, "From each according to his ability;" but nowhere is the +remainder of the principle, "To each according to his needs," +recognized. Hence our greatest servants must still beg support from our +cleverest exploiters. + +Domestic service is indispensable to society, but so far it has remained +in the field of semi-slavery and uncertain barter; in a word, it is +still in the feudal stage. The woman gives what she is and has, and +nominally she gets protection and support. Sometimes these fail and, on +the other hand, she occasionally receives the unearned gifts supposed to +befit a potentate or a shrine. As women become educated they find this +condition of uncertainty and instability unbearable. They are willing to +work, but they must have a chance to think and to plan their lives +according to their individual needs. Some degree of economic +independence is necessary to intelligent thinking and orderly living. It +is not that women are demanding more property; they are demanding some +definite individual property as a home for their souls; and they are +coming to realize that if this property rests on some one else's +feelings and caprices it is no home for the soul; it is only a tavern. + +This conception is well illustrated by the case of a woman in western +New York, who married about 1850, and went to live on a farm with her +husband. They had small means, but she brought seven hundred dollars to +the altar, which was more than he possessed in ready capital. Her part +was, however, soon swallowed up in the general business, and while there +was a tacit agreement, voiced at long intervals, that she had put +something into the business, her part never increased, though the man +with whom she worked grew well-to-do. Certain feudal rights in the +butter the woman made and in the chickens she raised, yielded her small +sums, which often escaped her, but which she sometimes secured and put +into a few silver spoons and dishes for her table, a square of Brussels +carpet, three lace curtains, a marble topped stand, and six horsehair +covered chairs for her parlor. These articles were considered in a very +special sense her own. The man might have sold them and used the money, +but public opinion would have condemned him had he done so. + +Meantime the woman cooked for the family and the hired men, scrubbed +and washed and mended. She strained and skimmed the milk from a dozen +cows, and churned the butter; she fed the calves; cared for the hens; +dug in the garden; gathered the vegetables; did the family sewing; and +stole fragments of time for her flower-beds. Her hours were from five in +the morning until nine at night, three hundred and sixty-five days in +the year, with no half-days or Sundays off. + +Incidentally she read her Bible, maintained religious exercises in the +village, provided the church with a carpet by methods of indirection and +kept the church clean. She upheld a moral standard toward which men only +weakly struggled; hunted down and drove away all other women who refused +equal service to their lords; ministered to the neighboring sick; and +doled out alms in winter-time. Her home was a social and industrial +microcosm which she conducted as a feudal holding under the protection +of her lord. It would be an interesting study to work out the rules of +this feudal relation between husband and wife in any agricultural +community. They would be found as varied, as unjust and arbitrary, and +as generous, as those of the old regime in France. + +A woman in a home is supposed to furnish three kinds of service. She +must be a housekeeper, a wife and a mother. As housekeeper, her services +can be estimated in current values running from three to twenty-five +dollars a week with board and lodging. The other two kinds of service +have never been reduced to monetary values. + +As a wife, a woman is supposed to give her love, her person, her +sympathy and inspiration; the personal care of a husband, including his +clothes, attention to his relations and friends and general management +of his social position and reputation. If she fills this position well, +she is mistress, valet, confidential adviser and public entertainer. +Possibly these services can be rated except the first, and even here the +divorce courts scale alienated affections all the way from five hundred +to twenty-five thousand dollars, according to the appearance of the +woman and the skill of contending lawyers. + +As a mother, the woman is supposed to give children a good heritage, +nurse them, care for them, doctor them and train them. We have +established values for these services as wet-nurse, nurse-maid, +governess, doctor and teacher, but who can estimate a woman's value in +giving a child a good heritage? + +It is no wonder that such a difficult problem has remained thus far +unsolved. Here and there a man gives his wife a household allowance, +from the money they earn in common, and she struggles to save from it +some fragments for her individual needs; others put their wives on a +salary; and some others divide the income on a fractional basis. But the +slightest study of existing conditions must convince any one that women +are everywhere deeply dissatisfied with their economic relations to the +family. On referring recently to this fact before an audience almost +equally divided between suffragists and anti-suffragists, I found every +woman present applauding the statement. Another time when I asked more +than sixty of the wealthiest women in one of our cities how many were +dissatisfied with their relations to the family property, explaining +that I was not asking how many wanted more money but how many wanted a +different relation to the family money, all the women raised their +hands except three and they all had private property. + +Meantime, economic changes, to be described in the next chapter, have +transformed our homes and nearly eight million women have gone outside +to earn money. The gladness with which they have gone shows that they +were not afraid to work, though at first the money did not belong to +them, but to their families. Almost everywhere in the United States the +money women now earn is their own; only in Louisiana can the husband +collect his wife's wages. Any one who reads Mrs. Gilman's masterly study +of the evil effects accompanying woman's economic independence must feel +how far-reaching are not only the discontent but also the evil +influences of our present system through over-emphasizing sex and +through corrupting the public thinking and feeling concerning services +and wages in general.[32] + +[32] CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN, _Woman and Economics_, Boston: Small, +Maynard & Co., 1898. See, also, _Woman and Labor_, by OLIVE SCHREINER, +New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1911. + +Yet no one can seriously approach this problem in his own person +without feeling that the relations of husband and wife contain elements +that not only make it impossible to resolve the woman's service into +money values, but that would make it useless to do so even if it could +be done. The most distinctive quality of love is its desire to give. +Love that seeks to get is not love. If when a woman gives herself she +tries to secure individual property it will be only that she may give it +to the man she loves. Marriage is a partnership of soul and body, and +this includes property. It still remains true, however, that each must +have in order that he may give. Besides this, there are always outside +obligations, and special needs within the group, that require individual +property for their realization. + +In the past, the partnership of marriage has been incomplete on the +property side; why not complete it? Why not reorganize our laws and our +public opinion so that two people who establish a family, putting into +it all they have, should pay out of the income the necessary family +expenses and divide all else equally between the parties? Property +acquired before marriage, and all inherited property, might well be held +in individual right since it should never be a prize for prostitution, +not even when it is euphemistically termed "a good home." + +Under equal suffrage Idaho has passed such a law, and all property +gained after marriage belongs equally to husband and wife. If the wife +dies, her heirs, in absence of a will, inherit half of the family +property. If the two separate, the court, in absence of an outside +agreement, settles the property as it does the children. The judge may +order that it be divided equally, or he may give it all to either party, +according to conditions; but the woman has identical rights with the +man. Surely some such solution is demanded by our present unrest. No one +will ever be economically independent; but husband and wife should be +economically equal. + + + + +VI + +Women in Industry + + +In all the animal world one can hardly find a place where orderly +effort, planned to secure some future advantage, does not appear. +Getting food, defending life, and caring for offspring have all combined +to drive not only the descendants of Adam, but his ancestors as well, to +sweat-producing effort. Of course this is not definitely planned; +getting food often waits on appetite; defense is sometimes merely +running away; and the young are frequently left to feed themselves or +die. But the fact remains that in digging burrows, building nests, +laying up honey and nuts, and in protecting and providing for the young, +a vast deal of effort is put forth in forest and field which is not +immediately productive of pleasure. + +This work is seldom equally shared by all the members of the group. With +bees, the drones and the queen are alike exempt from work, and an +asexual group has been developed to feed and protect them. Some ants +compel others to do their work; and everywhere there seem to be +individuals who are constitutionally lazy and others who, because of +strength or sex attractiveness, are able to get more than their share of +food and protection with less than their share of effort. + +From the first, some division of work between male and female grows +almost inevitably out of their different relations to reproduction. +Following conception, the male can always run away and leave the female +to feed and fight for herself and her offspring, and he is very prone to +do so. Even when he stays by and shares in the joy of the newly born he +generally leaves the female to get ready the nest, and largely she +protects and provisions it. + +Among domesticated animals, where their working possibilities have been +very highly developed, females are much more desirable workers than +males. The maternal function partly explains this, as in the case of +cows and hens which give us milk and eggs; and even with mares and sheep +the offspring adds to the general working value. Still, it seems to be +true that even for purposes of draught, the males are of less value than +the females, unless reduced to the non-sexual condition of geldings and +oxen. The stallion, bull or ram is too katabolic, too much of a +consuming, distributing, destroying force to be very valuable in the +daily routine of agriculture or commerce. While the female is generally +smaller and less powerful than the male, she is quiet, easily enslaved; +and, as we have said, her maternal functions can be diverted to our +daily use. She produces more workers, and her flesh is more palatable, +because less distinctive, than that of the male. Hence, among +domesticated animals, selection, based on considerations of work, +multiplies females and keeps males only for breeding purposes. + +As a quadruped, the female suffers very little handicap from the +functions peculiar to her sex, except when actually carrying her young +or nursing them. When she stands erect, however, the support for the +special organs of reproduction is far from ideal; heavy lifting, or +long-continued standing, often leads to disaster, and the periodic +functions, even in the healthiest conditions, must always place women +at a working disadvantage as compared with men. Add to this the fact +that women are smaller, less agile, and far less strong, than men, and, +even when not encumbered with young, it is clear that a woman, when +confronting physical work in competition with men, needs something more +than a fair field and free competition.[33] Idealists and travelers +among primitive people love to tell us how easily women meet their +special functions, carrying burdens equal to those carried by men when +on the march, and dropping out from the caravan for only a few hours to +give birth to a child; but the fact remains that women in all primitive +societies age quickly and that those who are spoiled are thrown aside +and forgotten.[34] Woman's handicap as a working animal in competition +with man is too obvious and too deep-seated to be idealized away. + +[33] The Supreme Court of the United States, in passing on the "Oregon +laundry case," in 1907, declared a bill limiting a woman's working hours +constitutional. See the _Brief for the State of Oregon_, prepared by +LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, published by The National Consumers' League, 105 East +22d Street, New York. + +[34] DUDLEY, _Principles and Practices of Gynecology_, pp. 23-24, says +that among Indian women want of care during and after labor leads to +numberless evils. + +In all savage societies labor is clearly specialized between the sexes. +The man, because of his superior strength and mobility, fights, hunts +and makes weapons of the chase. The woman fetches and carries, digs and +delves, cures the meat, makes the rude huts, clothing and pottery. +Gradually she changes wild grasses to domesticated plants, and rears the +young animals brought home from the chase, till they follow and serve +their human masters. She is truly the mother of industries, and it in no +way detracts from her credit that her motherhood is here, as elsewhere, +mainly unthinking. + +With the exhaustion of the supply of wild animals, man is forced to turn +his attention to the world of vegetation and he takes over the direction +of the plants and animals which woman has largely domesticated. In his +career as fighter and hunter he has learned to cooperate with his +fellows to a degree which aids him greatly in dividing the arable land, +protecting his crops, and using grazing lands in common with the tribe. +He has also learned to make stone hatchets, spears and bows and arrows. +Woman has not felt the same necessity to invent in her work; such new +tools as she has devised have been helpful, but men who could not invent +have been wiped out by those who learned to make stronger spears or +better arrow-heads. + +It is the same difference in adaptability which one observes to-day +between the farmers on the western frontier of America and those who +remain in their peasant homes in Europe. The peasant has even greater +need of inventing than has his expatriated countryman in Colorado, but +he lacks the driving impulse. It was the same with women and men under +the conditions of savage life. Thus it came about that man's greater +strength and mobility, backed by power of cooperation and invention, +gave him the leadership in such primitive life as we find depicted in +the pages of Homer or in the epic of the Jews. True, woman was his first +lieutenant, but he spoke for her in most of the larger matters of the +industrial life. + +With settled conditions and accumulation of wealth, the most desirable +women were almost entirely freed from physical labor and gradually +became luxury-loving parasites and playthings, as we pointed out in the +second chapter of this volume. Meantime slaves were multiplying, male +and female and, while the most desirable women passed to the harem, the +mass of them became drudges in house and field. It is hard for us to +realize that it is exactly in those times when a few women are +surrounded with great luxury that most of the sex are reduced to heavy +labor and wretchedness. + +During the early Christian ages, a tradition was gradually formed +concerning woman's place in industry, or rather three traditions were +formed. The working woman of the lower classes was to be the +housekeeper, which meant that she was to care for food, cook, spin, +weave, sew and mend, scrub and wash, bear children and nurse and tend +them. If she were of the middle class, she was to be a mother, to +supervise this range of work, look after dependents, conserve social +conditions and be the lady bountiful of her district. The second ideal +was the woman of religion, who was to subdue her passions, observe set +prayers and other religious exercises, and do the menial work of the +convent. The third ideal was the lady of chivalry, who appeared after +the tenth century. She was to be cared for and protected from work or +anxiety; menials were to prepare her food, clothes and ornaments; +gallants were to await her orders and do her bidding. + +With the rise of Protestantism, and later with the rise of modern +democracy, these ideals were blended, and women found themselves, not +indeed slaves and subject to sale, but serfs, entangled in a mass of +feudal obligations and bound to the house. Practically, most men still +hold this threefold conception of woman's place in the social organism. +She is to be a combination of housekeeper, nun and lady. It is the +kitchen, church and children ideal of the German Emperor. + +Meantime forces were set at work which were to change the economic +foundations of the family and enable the woman to emerge from serfdom +into some new form of industrial relationship. From the rise of the +European cities in the twelfth century, certain industries have tended, +especially in the Netherlands and in England, to segregate themselves in +farm-houses and towns. Women naturally participated in these +activities, generally taking the least desirable parts. With the freeing +of the mind, which followed the democratic revolutions at the end of the +eighteenth century, inventions blossomed out and perfected steam +engines, cotton gins, spinning jennies, and a thousand other machines +driven by steam or water power, which have changed the civilization of +Europe and America. Miss Edith Abbott has shown us how this change, +involving increasing segregation and specialization, came into America +even in the pre-Revolutionary time.[35] + +[35] EDITH ABBOTT, _Women in Industry: A Study in American Economic +History_, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1910. + +Spinning and weaving industries led the way in this movement, but its +full force was not felt until the late eighteenth century. Since then, +one industry after another has left the home for the factory until +to-day, in all large communities, even the preparation of food +increasingly goes to the packing-house, the canning establishment, the +bakery and the delicatessen-store. These industries needed hands, and so +the women followed them to the factories. + +As 1870 marks the beginning of higher education for women, so it also +marks the beginning of her industrial self-consciousness. The perfecting +of such inventions as the typewriter, the telegraph and the telephone, +and the creation of a great variety of office appliances, together with +the perfecting of highly elaborate means of distribution, like the +departmental store, called for thousands of cheap workers possessed of +some slight intelligence but not necessarily having any serious +preliminary training. Our elementary schools and high schools have +increasingly turned out a multitude of girls who could meet these +requirements. The increased cost of living, the lessened labor demands +of the home, and the attractions of the pay envelope, have called +millions to work in industrial plants. In 1890, there were 4,005,532 +wage-earning women in the United States; in 1900, 5,319,397; while in +1910, we have probably nearly 8,000,000. + +Like most other great changes in civilization, this industrial +transformation was neither preceded nor accompanied by any general +consciousness of what was happening. Daily necessities were offset by +weekly pay envelopes, or the failures fell out of sight, and so the next +week and the years followed. Country populations moved away; cities grew +enormously, leading to congestion in living which, combined with the +daily absence of women, has often transformed the old time homes into +communal tiers of tenements occupied, during working hours, only by the +young and the infirm. + +The children of all ages after a while followed their mothers into the +factories; but the evil effects of child labor were so apparent that +repressive legislative measures have increasingly raised the age of +their admission until now, in the more advanced communities, they must +stay outside the factory doors until they are twelve or fourteen years +old. Some growing self-consciousness, largely of a police nature, has +led us to institute measures for the protection of the children who are +not allowed to work. Schools, playgrounds, day nurseries, institutional +churches, college settlements and public social centers now bid against +the streets and vacant lots, the nickel shows and the dancing halls, for +the children's patronage. + +Education, however, true to its origin as the assistant of theology, +refuses to recognize in any large way the new world into which we have +come, and where the next generation of children must follow. Manual +training has, here and there, quieted the fears of some who had +disturbing visions; and we go on employing an army of unenfranchised, +celibate women, with little or no industrial experience, to teach ten +million boys how to be good citizens of a republic, and how to serve in +a modern industrial army; and ten million girls how to work in shops and +factories, and how to live without homes. As a consequence, girls come +up to the factories from their schools with ideals,[36] so far as the +school has shaped them, founded on unmarried school mistresses and +George Washington; and they pass, by way of the altar, into cheerless +tenements which the school still thinks of as places where children are +cared for, family clothing is made and the family baking is done. +Practically, of course, most education is given outside the schools, and +there the evils of an unregulated time of transition are multiplied +through imitation. + +[36] EARL BARNES, Children's Ideals, in _Studies in Education_, Vol. II, +p. 237; also School Girls' Ideas of Women's Occupations by SARAH YOUNG, +in _Studies in Education_, Vol. II, p. 259. + +The wealth and material comfort produced for the fortunate classes by +these segregated industries have blinded us to their effects on human +life, and we have all been bribed to silence concerning everything which +could discourage enterprise or frighten capital. Like most bribes, +however, these have largely stopped in the pockets of the exploiters of +public opinion. + +In the opening years of this new century, public consciousness has had a +wonderful awakening.[37] The popular mind, quickened by universal +education, and freed from a burden of fixed beliefs, is turning +restlessly to inquire about everything that affects human life. Work +could not escape this inquisition, and so we are asking not only for a +fairer division of the profits of work, but we are also inquiring what +occupations are unfit for women, with their special limitations and +obligations. When the work is reasonable, how long should a woman work +daily? Should she work at night and overtime? Should she work with +dangerous machinery? Should she handle substances that endanger health? +Should she be required to stand through hours of continuous work? Should +she work in bad air, due to dust, moisture, or excessive heat or cold? +Should she have a decent retiring-room? Some daring inquirers are even +asking whether industrial efficiency, gained through specialization and +keying up, may not be purchased at too high a price of mental monotony +and nervous strain. Most people are content to learn that the effects +are not immediately destructive to the girls and women involved; but +some day we shall demand that the barons of industry shall not be +allowed to squander the heritage of the unborn generations. + +[37] C. HANFORD HENDERSON, _Pay-Day_, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., +1911. + +Women have themselves done much to quicken this public consciousness. +Enrolled in labor unions, they have shown power to stand together and +make sacrifice, as in the shirt-waist makers' strike in New York in +1908, which commanded the admiration of all fair-minded observers. The +more fortunately placed women have aided these movements toward +self-betterment; and, through such organizations as the National +Consumers' League, they have compelled manufacturers and shopkeepers to +observe more reasonable hours, pay better wages, and furnish decent +material conditions for their employees.[38] + +[38] See the recent volume, based on investigations made by the National +Consumers' League, _Making Both Ends Meet_, by SUE AINSLIE CLARK and +EDITH WYATT, The Macmillan Co., 1911. See, also, _Saleswomen in +Mercantile Stores_, by ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BUTLER, published by the +Charities Publication Committee, for the Russell Sage Foundation, 1912. + +The solution of woman's present industrial problem is not an easy task, +but out of the present unsettlement certain facts are emerging with a +good deal of clearness. The efficiency in production, secured by +concentration and specialization, make it certain that the old-time home +with its multiplied industries will not return, but that more and more +even of its present lessened activities will be transferred to factories +and to their equivalents. It is also certain that women are not going to +be supported in indolence by men, because when deprived of the +discipline which full participation in life gives, they must always +degenerate. For themselves, and for the sake of their children, they +will demand a chance to live abundantly. It is also clear that our +present chaotic conditions are destructive of health, happy marriages, +effective homes, and the strong line of descendants which must always be +the chief care of an intelligent society. + +In the first place, then, we must work to produce an entire change in +our present mental attitude toward organized industries. Our present +worship of industrial products, no matter how obtained, must give way to +a recognition of the fact that the chief asset of a nation is its +people; that a woman is more important than the clothes she makes in +factories or sells in stores; and that to needlessly destroy or +scrapheap a working woman is worse than to needlessly destroy or +scrapheap the finest and most costly machine ever devised by man. Such a +statement seems to carry conviction in its every phrase, but the fact is +that we do not believe it, and until we do believe it, there will be +little help for our present absurd and wretched conditions. Unregulated +competition, backed by greed of individuals and groups, will go on +wasting the wealth of women's lives until we cease to be fascinated and +hypnotized by the display of products which they make possible. Better +fine women and children, and few things, than stores and warehouses +crowded with goods, and the women and children of our present factory +towns. By fixing our attention on people instead of things, we should +almost certainly secure more and better things; but, regardless of cost, +we must change the focus of our attention. + +In the second place, girls must get ready to be women. The education of +the home and the school must be unified, and together they must give a +training that will lead girls into the actualities of the life that lies +before them. Our present elementary schools, and still more our high +schools, lead girls neither to intelligent work nor to intelligent +living as women and mothers. Up to at least the age of fourteen, the +education should be general, looking to the development of all the +powers of body, mind and sensibilities. But through all these eight or +ten years of training, two factors should receive constant and +intelligent attention. In the first place, we should realize that we are +not fitting women for drawing-rooms nor for convents, but for a working +world; therefore well graded and interesting manual training should run +through all these years and should furnish a well-developed base for +later special industrial preparation of some kind. In the second place, +the girls should be taught by men and women, married and unmarried, and +fine ideals of actual womanhood, not alone in shops and factories, in +school-rooms, and in professions--but also in homes, should be +constantly held before them. Our present education leaves this training +mainly to the homes, and neither the parasitic rich nor our eight +million wage-earning women, when mothers, can or will attend to it. + +After the girl reaches the age of fourteen, she should have at least two +years of further education in which she could master the details of some +necessary work which would enable her to look the world in the face and +offer fair payment for her living. With most girls, this work would be +connected with children and the service of the home; for domestic +service, no matter how organized, must always occupy a multitude of +women. All girls should have at least rudimentary training in these +matters. + +During the period of transition from schools to their own family life, +the girls might well give a half dozen years to work in factories and +stores where the conditions should be as good, and as well guarded, as +in our best school buildings--in factories, in a word, where the +employers would be willing that their own daughters should work. This is +surely a fair standard. Work which is not safe or fit for me to do, is +not fit for me to hire done. If this principle fails, then democracy is +but a dream. + +But during all this period of preparation we should never forget that, +as Madame Gnauck-Kuehne so admirably points out, "women's work has to a +large extent an episodic character."[39] All women confront romantic +love, marriage and children; and any woman who misses them misses the +crowning joy and glory of her life. Vicarious realization may save the +soul, but it can never fill the place of reality. The man fronts these +same experiences, but they are not related to his work as they are +related to the work of women. Surely there can be no doubt that the +ideal solution, in this period, is a man and woman so deeply bound +together by love that there is no question of self-protection, either in +terms of work or money; and the man being freed from the burdens of +maternity, should mainly earn the income. We shall discuss the new type +of home and family in a later chapter, but in any home where there are +children there is need of an intelligent mother's very constant care. + +[39] Madame GNAUCK KUeHNE, _Die Deutsche Frau_. + +If a happy home were the universal destiny of women, our problem would +be greatly simplified; but this is far from being the case. Not more +than one-half of all women over fifteen are married at any one moment. +From the ages of twenty to thirty-five, one-half are married; but it is +only from thirty-five to fifty-five that as many as three-fourths are +married; over fifty-five there are less than one-half married, and most +of the others are widows.[40] Most of these women who are not married +must work outside the home, and no girl, rich or poor, should be allowed +to reach maturity without being prepared to face this possibility. Work +is not a curse but a blessing; it is an indispensable part of every +well-ordered life; and without it, the individual and the group will +certainly degenerate. Rich and foolish parents, who cannot realize this +basal fact, should nevertheless see that, even as insurance, their +daughters must be able to pay their way in life, if need comes, without +selling themselves either in marriage or out. Even if the woman marries +happily, she is never sure that she may not some day have to face +self-support, and possibly for more mouths than her own. + +[40] B.L. HUTCHINS, Woman's Industrial Career in _The Sociological +Review_, October, 1909. + +But the woman who marries during her adolescent period, between the ages +of twenty-five and fifty, must also work, and here we meet the hardest +problem of all. More money is often needed than the man can earn; the +wife may bring an industrial or professional equipment which is too +valuable to discard; often the demands of the home, especially where +there are no children, do not call forth the best energies of the +woman, and she needs the larger life of outside work. Hence many married +women must continue to work away from the home. In any of these cases, +the problem is difficult. Bearing and rearing a child should retire a +mother from fixed outside occupation for at least a year. Arguments born +out of conflict cannot change this primitive fact.[41] Women should not +do shop or factory work during the last months of pregnancy, and babies +should be nursed from seven to nine months. A baby should be nursed for +twenty minutes, every two or three hours of its waking time; and since +it does not always waken regularly, the nursing mother is debarred from +most continuous work, even if it does not interfere with her +effectiveness as a milk producer. + +[41] Dr. ETHEL VAUGHAN-SAWYER, speaking before the Fabian Women's Group, +in 1910, said: "Fortunately, after the first two or three months, most +children will thrive equally well when artificially fed, so long as the +milk is good and reliable, and is properly prepared." All of our facts +go to disprove this statement. + +The question of maternal care for children after they are weaned is more +difficult to settle, but notwithstanding certain statistics gathered in +Birmingham,[42] in February, 1910, which showed that the infant +mortality among working mothers was one hundred and ninety per thousand, +while, among those not industrially employed, it was two hundred and +seventy per thousand, it seems sure that infant mortality is extremely +high in foundling asylums and in factory homes. In Fall River, where out +of every one hundred women, forty-five are at work outside the home, +three hundred and five babies, out of every one thousand born, die +before they are a year old; while even in New York City, but one hundred +and eighty-nine out of a thousand die. The natural location of Fall +River should make it a very healthy city. One remembers, too, the +classic statement that deaths among little children fell off steadily in +Paris during the siege of 1870. Little children seem better off even in +time of war, with the mothers at home, than in time of peace with their +mothers in the factory. + +[42] Pamphlet entitled _Report on Industrial Employment of Married Women +and Infant Mortality_, signed by Dr. JOHN ROBERTSON, the Medical Officer +of Health, Birmingham. + +A few years ago, we turned to sanitary day nurseries, and to +pasteurized milk and other prepared baby foods, as the solution for +neglected or unhygienic feeding. To-day we know that even a dirty and +ill-conditioned mother secretes better milk for her baby than can be +prepared in any laboratory. We must wash the mother and feed her the +milk, and then let her give it to her baby, instinct with her own life. +It is quite possible that our recent talk of ignorant mother love and of +the necessary substitution of sanitary nurseries, canned care and +pre-digested affection must all go the same way. We shall probably get +our best results by cleaning up the home, enlightening the mother, and +then letting her love her child into the full possession of its human +qualities. + +Economically, too, at least with factory workers, it is questionable if +their wages will support sanitary day-nurseries, with intelligent nurses +for small groups of children, and at the same time pay some one to cook +and scrub at home. If the mother must still cook and care for her house, +in addition to her factory work, the burden is too great; and if money +for nurses must come from the state, or from charity, then we all know +the danger of such subsidies to industry, in its effect on wages. + +Surely the ideal toward which we must work is for the mother, during the +period when she is bearing and rearing children, to be supported by the +father of her children. Let her do the work meantime which will best +care for her children, and at the same time conserve and strengthen her +powers for the third period of her life. + +This period, from fifty to seventy-five years, is now more shamefully +wasted than any other of our national resources. If one attends a State +federation of women's clubs one will find nearly every delegate of this +age. They are women of mature understanding and of ripe judgment, still +possessing abundant health and strength, and where relieved by economic +conditions from the necessity of manual work, they have to live such +irregular and uncertain relations to life as can be maintained by +mothers-in-law, grandmothers, club secretaries, and presidents of town +improvement societies. Remove all restrictions on woman's activity, and +these strong matrons would vitalize our schools, give us decent +municipal housekeeping, supervise the conditions under which girls and +women work in shops and factories, and do much to clean up our politics. +Debarred from direct power as they are, they are still making us decent +in spite of ourselves. + +For the future, then, it seems that we must accept working women in +every path of life. We must remove all disabilities under which they +labor, and at the same time protect them by special legislation as +future wives and mothers. All girls must master some line of +self-supporting work; and, except in the cases of those who have very +special tastes and gifts, they should select work which can be +interrupted, without too great loss, by some years of motherhood. During +this time, the mother must be supported so that she can largely care for +her own child, though she must also maintain outside interests through +work, which will keep her in touch with the moving current of her time. +Industries must be humanized and made fit for women. The last third of a +woman's life must be freed from legal limitations and popular +prejudices, so that we may secure these best years of her life for +private and public service. And meantime, it is well to remember that +every step we take in making this a fit world for woman to work in, +makes it a fit world for her father, her brothers, her lover and her +husband to work beside her. + + + + +VII + +The Meaning of Political Life + + +It is a well-known fact that when words have been long and vigorously +used they gather within and around themselves varied meanings. Some +parts of these meanings are remnants of historic, and possibly outworn, +experience; other parts are the result of more or less deliberate +perversion under the stress of deep feelings aroused by opposition and +fighting. This is especially the fate of words in any way associated +with politics. Think how battered and useless for purposes of ordinary +discussion "democrat" and "republican" or "socialist" have become in +America! + +In the struggle of the last fifty years over woman's suffrage, most of +the words involved have undergone such transformations; and so many +prejudices have become associated with them, that no one can think or +speak clearly and fairly to-day in these terms. "Woman's Rights," +"enfranchisement," "Votes for Women," "suffragette," "polls," "ballot," +"political issues," and many other words, have gone through this +destructive process. + +To read some of the most popular literature on this subject one might +imagine that women had all deserted home and fireside, babies and +baking, and were lined up, struggling fiercely to deposit certain +printed slips, called votes or ballots, dealing with esoteric mysteries +understood only by men like Mr. Bryan or Mr. Roosevelt, in ballot-boxes. +These receptacles are supposed to be behind, or very near, lawless +saloons, where gangs of hoodlums are waiting to assault the bearers of +these mysterious tickets. Thus Miss Seawell writes in the _Atlantic +Monthly_ for September, 1910: "The trouble would begin with the mere +attempt of women to deposit their ballots. A dozen ruffians at a single +polling-place would prevent a single woman from depositing a single +vote. There can be no doubt that this means would be used by the rougher +element and that the polls would become a scene of preordained riot and +disorder." Of course, such statements could not appear in a leading +magazine, in a land where women have been voting quietly for many years, +were it not for the perversity of the words which the author tries to +use, but which really use her. In other periodicals, equally +respectable, one learns that women, goaded on by the intolerable +political tyranny of men, have agreed as one soul to advance, with +ballots in their hands, and sweep graft and greed, drink and all other +human wrongs, into the sea of oblivion forever. Of course, this is +nonsense, or worse, and in this chapter I should like to turn away from +this warfare, leaving even the battered and prejudiced-soaked words +alone, as much as may be possible, and simply ask: What is political +life, not as defined in books, but as actually lived by a +self-respecting farmer or merchant of our acquaintance? What qualities +does political life presuppose in a participant? How does its use affect +him? What does it enable him to accomplish? What is the relation of a +woman--not some militant or unsexed ogre, nor a female breeding animal +in a harem, but our own sisters, wives and daughters as they really +are--what is their relation to this mysterious process? + +If one approaches the political life of our modern democracies in this +simple spirit of inquiry it would seem that the first requisite for +participation is the ability to form sound judgments concerning +political matters; and all matters are now becoming political which +affect the welfare of the community. Certainly the citizen cannot devise +political machinery nor select candidates to work such machinery, much +less "cast a ballot," until he knows what he wants done. What are some +of the questions, then, on which he must form judgments? + +First of all, he must be prepared to think intelligently about +protecting his life and property. He must know something of the danger +of foreign invasion, of the consequent need of a navy and standing army. +He must make up his mind whether it is necessary to spend $123,000,000 +yearly on an American navy and $156,000,000 on an American army, as we +are at present doing, that we may be ready to fight England, Germany or +Japan if at any time we want to do so. He must ask himself whether this +money might not better be used in fighting ignorance, crime, poverty and +disease. + +The would-be citizen must also think about protecting himself from +assault as he walks about the streets; about protecting his house from +thieves as he lies asleep at night. He must have thought about the +careless use of cars, automobiles, firearms and explosives in general. +He must consider the danger from fires, contagion, diseases, mobs; he +must think intelligently about contaminated water and impure foods. All +these things are necessary for the physical well-being of the community +life. Of course, if either man or woman cannot think intelligently about +these things, he ought not to have control of them; he should leave such +matters to those who can think of them. + +In the second place, the would-be citizen must have fairly sound +judgments on questions of raising and spending necessary revenue. What +are the effects of direct and indirect taxation? Would a heavy tax on +land force unused lands, including mines and waterways, into use? Should +a man with a cash income of $50,000 a year pay more to support +government than one with a cash income of $500? What are the objections +to an income tax? How does it work in England, where it has been fairly +tried? Should a great corporation pay taxes in proportion to its wealth, +and in places where the wealth is protected by the law? If so, how can +it be reached? Should churches, museums, libraries and schools be taxed; +if not, why not? Should taxes be laid on flour, meat and eggs, on woolen +cloth, on silks, velvets, ostrich plumes and diamonds? Should taxes be +laid on whiskey, wines, tobacco, cigars and race-tracks? Should taxes be +devised, or continued, to protect such infant industries as now handle +our kerosene oil, meat, sugar and steel? Surely no one who cannot form +independent judgments on these matters should presume to direct them +through voting. + +But not only must a nation raise revenue in the wisest and most +equitable manner possible, and spend it effectively and economically, +but it must also care for its present possessions. So the would-be +citizen must know about the wealth in which he wants to share. What do +the national, State and municipal governments own? How should the vast +domains of land, the onetime inexhaustible forests, the mines of coal +and metal, the waterways and water-powers, the special privileges and +franchises belonging to the people be used? Should they be thrown away, +gambled away, given away as favors, rented, sold, or handled directly by +the people? On what terms or under what guarantees should they be turned +over to individuals or companies, if this is to be done? Those who +cannot form judgments on these matters should not be entrusted with such +vast responsibility, be they men or women. + +Questions of our foreign relations must also occupy the thought of the +citizen. Are foreign entanglements necessary or desirable? If so, with +what European or Asiatic nations should we seek to strengthen our +friendship? Are our interests nearly identical with those of England? If +we formed a close defensive alliance with her should we be thereby +aiding universal peace as much as we might by maintaining more generally +friendly relations with all European powers? Would an alliance with +England probably draw us into her troubles, if she has any, in Egypt or +India? How would such an alliance affect our relation with England's +present ally, Japan? Are we fitted by the genius of our institutions +and by our experience to handle a foreign empire? If not, what should +we do with the Philippines? + +So, too, those who are to direct the destinies of the country must think +out what our relations are to be with Latin America. In the past some +statesman, a Richelieu or a Bismarck, had a policy and led his nation to +it by devious paths of indirection. But now that each citizen is a king, +he must have a policy for his realm. Are our republican neighbors to the +south to be increasingly recognized as under our protection and +direction? If so, how are we to maintain the peace and secure payment of +their foreign debts? All these problems are bound up with the management +of the Panama Canal. They confront us in different forms in connection +with immigration, especially of Asiatics. + +Our institutional life must also be regulated by the citizens, and so +they must have judgments about each of its details. They must know what +they think about the family, forms of legal marriage and divorce, and +the care of children when the family fails. The Church must be +considered and protected; possibly it should be encouraged; and +possibly its unwarranted assumption should sometimes be checked. Schools +must be founded, supported, directed. Art galleries, museums and clubs +must be chartered, and then controlled; and so must all the other +institutions of our modern society. The would-be citizen must be able to +think about all this work. + +Industries, on which our individual and collective well-being depend, +must be encouraged by special favors, limited to the public good, +protected from violence, inspected in the interest of employees. Hours +must be regulated, disputes settled, conditions of labor and safety +secured. Children should be protected against employers' greed; and +working women must receive special consideration, if the race of strong +men is to continue. Here again the citizen must have judgments, or the +power to make judgments, as new needs arise. + +Then, too, there is a tradition of government, established by the +fathers and modified by experience, which should be understood by the +citizens. It recognizes certain rights as being reserved by the +individual States, and others as belonging to the national government. +The would-be citizen should be acquainted with this tradition so that he +can determine how far it is desirable to adopt a new nationalism. He +will have to pass judgment on the control of interstate commerce, +national or State control of public lands, national divorce and liquor +laws, national food inspection, and other practical subjects which may +destroy the older balance of power so jealously guarded by our earlier +statesmen. The citizen must make up his mind if this is desirable. + +Newer political theories must also receive the citizens' attention. Many +people believe that wealth created by the people can be enjoyed by the +people only when they control the sources of supply and the means of +production and distribution. The citizen should know whether these +socialist tendencies should be favored or suppressed. There are others +who believe that government is unnecessary, and that men and women can +be happy and effective only when formal laws are abrogated. The citizen +must determine whether he will allow those who hold such doctrines to +express them; or whether he will suppress their meetings and forbid +them to enter the country. These are but a few of the subjects +concerning which the citizen must think, but they are typical and they +may represent the rest. + +In the last analysis, it is these judgments on political matters which +govern a modern democracy, whatever the laws on the statute books may +be, and whatever machinery of government may be established. + +Not long since, I visited one of our States where the laws forbid any +one to make or sell, as a beverage, any intoxicating liquors, within the +State. At the leading hotel, in the large city where I stopped, beer and +whiskey signs were displayed outside the entrance; and at an open bar, +in the center of the hotel, four bartenders were dispensing all kinds of +drinks, while at the tables of the hotel restaurant, liquors were openly +bought and drunk. There are many indictments standing against this +hotel, but in two test cases juries have refused to convict the +proprietors. I am told it is the same in all of the principal hotels in +the larger cities of this State. In this same State, the laws forbid the +manufacture or sale of cigarettes, but they are openly displayed and +sold in nearly all cigar stores. In the same State, whites and blacks +live under the same laws, but blacks seldom vote; they do not use the +parks, attend white people's meetings nor ride with the whites in public +conveyances. And yet the city was quiet and orderly and I felt as safe +in person and property as though the laws on the statute books, instead +of the judgments in the public mind, were being obeyed. Since this form +of public opinion is so powerful, it is well that it should be +intelligent. + +Granted, then, that the candidate for citizen honors is prepared to pass +judgment on such matters as we have indicated, he must next be prepared +to devise and control means to carry these judgments into effect. Here +he approaches the problems of statescraft. He must have in his mind a +general scheme of government, with a sense of legislative, judicial and +executive functions. He must realize the value of a constitution, as a +point of departure; and have a theory as to safe ways of modifying it. +He must have fairly clear notions of legislation, and of the kinds of +laws that are desirable and effective. He should know how far +representative legislative bodies can be trusted to express the will of +the people; and he should have studied the working of the initiative and +the referendum. It is also desirable that he should know the theory of +two chambers, and should have ideas as to how the members of the second +chamber, if there is to be one, should be chosen. + +The candidate for citizen honors should know something of the +organization of the judicial branch of government. He should know +something of the powers and duties of local magistrates, of county, +State and national courts. He should recognize the difference between +civil and criminal jurisdiction. He should have an opinion as to whether +judges should be elected or appointed, and if appointed, who should +select them. He should realize the grave dangers that surround a corrupt +judiciary, and he should know the means by which a court is enabled to +maintain its standing and authority. + +So of the executive power, he should see its relation to the other +powers, from the constable to the president. He should know the +qualities required in a good executive and should be able to +distinguish them in possible candidates. He should know that when the +executive is lax the best of laws fall into abeyance, and he should know +how such officers can be held up, through criticism by public opinion +and penalties, to the fulfilment of duties. The recall should have been +considered. + +In the third place, the citizen should know how to select the right kind +of people to carry his political judgments into effect. Possibly, under +a representative form of government, this is the most necessary +qualification for a good voter. Many of the matters with which modern +government must deal are technical, and the citizen here, as in his +private affairs, must rest on the judgment of those he employs. And yet, +in general, he must know what he wants. + +He must know the general laws that govern the organization of parties; +and he should be somewhat acquainted with the psychology of crowds. He +should know how candidates are selected under the convention or caucus +system; he should have an independent judgment on direct primaries. + +In selecting men, the citizen must be able to recognize general ability +and intellectual fitness. It is at this point that modern democracies +are most apt to go wrong. The standards by which we measure men and +women are most imperfect; and we are prone to let one good or bad +quality overshadow all others. Thus in an extended study on school +children's attitude toward Queen Victoria in England, and toward +President McKinley in America, made while these rulers were alive, we +found that less than twenty per cent. mentioned any kind of political +ability, nor did they often mention their general ability, nor their +honesty. They admired them primarily because they were "good and kind." +In other words the school children of these two lands approve their +rulers because, in a vague general way, they like them.[43] The +significance of the study lies in the fact that in all democracies a +large number of the voters live on an intellectual plane represented by +these school children. + +[43] EARL BARNES, _Studies in Education_, Vol. II, pp. _5-80_. +Philadelphia, 1902. + +This conclusion is borne out by the judgment of Miss Jane Addams who, +writing of foreign voters about Hull House, says: "The desire of the +Italian and Polish and Hungarian voters in an American city to be +represented by 'a good man' is not a whit less strenuous than that of +the best native stock. Only their idea of the good man is somewhat +different. He must be good according to their highest standard of +goodness. He must be kind to the poor, not only in a general way, but +with particular and unfailing attention to their every want and +misfortune. Their joys he must brighten and their sorrows he must +alleviate. In emergency, in catastrophe, in misunderstanding with +employers and with the law, he must be their strong tower of help. Let +him in all these things fill up their ideal of the 'good man' and he has +their votes at his absolute disposal."[44] + +[44] JANE ADDAMS, _Democracy_, p. 221. New York: The Macmillan Co., +1902. + +To be a safe citizen one must be able to go beyond this kindly feeling +and ask, Does the candidate know enough to do what I want done? Has he +the honesty to resist the temptation to exploit me? Has he the +leadership to command the best efforts of the subordinates in his +department? Has he serious defects that may cause his failure? Is he an +opportune man for the time and place? + +This selection is made very difficult to-day by the misrepresentation of +interested individuals and political parties; and especially by the +reports in the press, which seek to discredit candidates they oppose, +and to gloss over or deny defects in their chosen leaders. Thus the +whole public atmosphere in the midst of a campaign is intended to +confuse and bewilder the citizen who is honestly seeking the best +candidate. Only ripened intelligence, experience with men and women, and +ability to judge conflicting evidence, can enable the voter to select +wisely. + +In the last place, if the citizen knows what he wants, how to devise the +governmental machinery to get it, and how to select the right men to see +that it is done, he must register his desire by a vote; and then watch +his servant carefully to see if he justifies the trust imposed in him. +If he does not, then the citizen must criticise, threaten, and, if +necessary, finally dismiss the unfaithful employee. Only one who can +fulfil all these functions can be considered a desirable citizen from +the point of view of a modern democracy. "Eternal vigilance is the price +of liberty." + +And why should one desire to undertake this arduous responsibility? In +the first place, because he wants the public work well done, as he +understands it; and the only way to have it done in this manner is to +attend to it himself. If he does not attend to it, some one else will do +so; and if the intelligent citizens do not look after it then the public +business will be exploited by individuals, or groups, in their own +interest; and, before the citizen realizes what is happening, he will be +deprived of that political liberty to secure which millions of men and +women have struggled and suffered and even given their lives in the +years which lie behind us. + +And yet possibly the most important value of participation in political +life to-day is the byproduct of continuous education which it gives. +Modern political life has probably done more to train the men involved +in it than have schools or churches. Business and industries alone might +claim to be its rivals. In a despotism, all the events of public life +are uncertain and seemingly accidental, depending as they do on the +caprice of an individual. This discourages thought among the masses, +paralyzes action, and breeds inertia and hopelessness. At best, it gives +rise to periods of desperation and violence; at its worst, it gives us +the hopeless masses of Mohammedan lands. In a free democracy, on the +other hand, those who participate are in a continuous process of +education, judging, selecting, willing, and always with regard to +realities that affect daily life. Citizenship gives one a continuous +laboratory course of training in the art of right living. + +Nor can the full value of this continuous training be obtained by the +onlooker, no matter how intelligent he may be. For full growth of mind +and spirit one must participate; just as in athletics one must leave the +spectator's bench and play the game if one would develop one's own +powers. Participation means love, hate, devotion and sacrifice, and only +when all these powers of the soul are brought into play, together with +the judgment, is the character strengthened and life more abundantly +obtained. + +It must be evident to any one who has carefully followed this analysis +that hardly any of the adult male voters in our modern democracies have +the qualifications of good citizens. How, then, is good government +achieved? It is not achieved. We have very bad government. Everywhere +there is waste and inefficiency. Wealth is unjustly divided; great +corporations seize public utilities and exploit them for private gain; +enormous sums are squandered on unnecessary and dangerous battle-ships +and soldiers; in building a single State Capitol, $3,500,000 was +recently stolen, not only wasting public wealth, but corrupting public +morals; in some parts of our land little children still drive the wheels +of industry; and it is everywhere cheaper to scrap-heap men and women +than machines; most of our cities are ugly and badly ruled; drunkenness, +gambling and prostitution are common; life is not always secure from +lawless attack; and the machinery of justice is clogged and moves +slowly. Part of our intelligent adult population has no direct share in +the government under which it must live. We have just such a government +as we should expect where incompetent people decide such vast issues of +life. + +But, on the other hand, we are vastly better off than any great people +has ever been before us. The mistakes are our own; they are made by us +who participate in government, and we are learning from them. Those who +exploit us may be called to account; and frequently they are caught and +punished. Of those who stole the millions in Harrisburg, nearly a score +have died disgraced, or are in prison or exile; and $1,300,000 has been +returned to the treasury of the State. Even when those who betray us are +not caught red-handed we learn to distrust and then to despise them. +They pass their last years in exile, and when their statues are erected +in our State Houses they are memorials of shame. Thus we learn the art +of living, we who participate in political action. + +The whole business of a modern democracy is to educate itself through +doing, and we are all at school. If the bills are heavy, they are our +bills; and we are steadily learning how to make them less. In the past +no one learned. "The Bourbons learned nothing, and forgot nothing;" and +the common people were too discouraged to think. It is on these lines +that our modern democracies must be judged, not as efficient and +economical political machines, but as educational institutions. Judged +by this standard, we believe ourselves to be the triumph of the ages. + +Nor can it be possible for people to enter political life fully prepared +for its duties. Even when a young man approaches a business career we do +not ask that he shall possess a knowledge of the business before +beginning. If he has general preparation, and a desire to learn, he is +admitted to share in its responsibilities, and then learns as he goes +along. It is the same in political life; few young men at twenty-one or +foreigners at the time of naturalization, have the knowledge indicated +in the preceding pages. If they have general preparation and a desire to +learn, we admit them to participation, and they learn through doing. + +Years ago, while discussing education with an English statesman, he +asked whom I considered the leaders of education in his country. Knowing +his Tory instincts, I replied, "Bradlaugh, Annie Besant, William T. +Stead, John Burns and Keir Hardie." He laughed contemptuously: "Why +those people," he said, "are merely educating themselves in public." The +statement was true and far-reaching; that is what we are all doing in +our modern democracies; and that is at the same time our weakness and +our glory. + + + + +VIII + +Woman's Relation to Political Life + + +In discussing woman's right to vote it is well to remember that the +right to rule, which is implicit in the right to vote, has always been +limited by conditions of birth, residence, wealth, morality or +intelligence. Universal manhood suffrage has never yet been achieved, +and probably never will be. Under the best Greek conditions, it was only +the free-born citizen, residing in his native city state, who voted. In +both Greece and Rome, the suffrage was limited to classes defined by +social position, wealth or military service. In our modern democracies +there have always been limitations of birth, which might be overcome by +naturalization; of residence, which could be overcome by living for a +certain time in a locality; of wealth, which was supposed to insure a +stake in the communal well-being; and of morals and intelligence, which +at least shut out criminals, the insane and the imbeciles. + +Thus the right to vote is not the same thing as the right to live; and +even in a commonwealth founded on ideal justice only those having a +stake in the community life, and possessing normal intelligence and +morality, will be allowed to rule. In a word, equal suffrage is +possible, while universal man or woman suffrage is not. + +All through our colonial period women had a large influence in +determining community questions, and in Massachusetts, under the old +Providence Charter, they voted for all elective officers for nearly a +hundred years. Here and there women--like Margaret Brent, of Maryland; +Abigail Adams, of Massachusetts; or Mrs. Corbin, of Virginia--put +forward their right to participate in the public life around them. But, +in 1776, women were not voting, and the Federal Constitution left the +matter of determining electoral rights to the several States. They all +decided for male suffrage. + +The initial impulse to secure suffrage for American women came from +Europe. After the Revolution, Frances Wright, a young Scotchwoman, came +to America to lecture and write, claiming equal political rights with +men. In 1836, Ernestine L. Rose came from Poland and also advocated +equal political rights. All the teachings of the American Revolution had +favored the idea of human equality; and, as has been pointed out, when, +with established peace after the War of 1812, women engaged in +anti-slavery, temperance and allied movements, they were driven by the +logic of events to demand the suffrage. + +In 1848, the women of the country began to organize. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady +Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Martha C. Wright called together at Seneca +Falls, New York, the first convention in America to further equal +suffrage. No permanent organization was founded, but in 1850 a +convention was held in Salem, Massachusetts, and in 1852 a Woman's +Rights Convention was called in Syracuse, New York, with delegates +present from eight States and Canada. Miss Susan B. Anthony had meantime +joined the movement; and from this time on conventions and appeals +became common. + +The Civil War distracted attention from all social and political issues +but one. The Equal Rights Association turned its attention mainly to the +rights of negroes; and in 1869 the National Woman's Suffrage Association +was organized to work exclusively for woman's rights. Backed by such +women as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, and aided by +men like Henry Ward Beecher, the association became a national power. In +1890, the two organizations were united under the name of The National +American Woman's Suffrage Association. This organization still leads the +movement in America.[45] + +[45] _The History of Woman Suffrage_, by ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN +B. ANTHONY, and IDA HUSTED HARPER, 4 vols. Rochester, N.Y. + +In 1902, an international meeting was called in Washington; and in 1904 +the International Suffrage Alliance was formed in Berlin with Mrs. +Carrie Chapman Catt as president. Thirteen nations are now affiliated +with the Alliance; and the women of the world are highly organized to +further equal suffrage. + +Two generations of women have given themselves to this movement, and a +third still faces it. To the first group belong those leaders we have +already named: Emma Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, +Susan B. Anthony and their associates. It was their problem to secure +woman's control of her own body and property, some share in the +direction of her children, and some opportunity to train her own mind +and earn an independent living. These women bore the heat and burden of +a conflict in which all the blind prejudices of a fixed regime were +strongly massed, presenting few promising points of attack. It is small +wonder that some of these leaders gained a reputation for being hard, +dogmatic, aggressive, and sometimes careless of popular sensibilities. +The first generation of reformers in any field must be made of stern +stuff; and their beneficiaries are apt to forget the conditions that +justified means no longer necessary. + +The lives of these women could not be expected to fully illustrate the +type of life they hoped to see their sisters living when opportunity was +finally won. Only women who participated in this struggle could fully +appreciate the splendid devotion of these lives to the service of a +group many of whom, being personally comfortable, were insensible to the +needs of less fortunate women; and were sometimes even willing to fight +back any advanced ideas which might disturb their own comfort. The +feeling within this group of leaders, and the failure of oncoming +generations of American women to recognize the debt of obligation they +owe to its efforts, was illustrated by an incident that came up in +connection with the Third International Congress of Women which met in +London in 1899. The session was opened in Westminster Town Hall, with +seven hundred delegates present, representing the most thoughtful women +of the world. Lady Aberdeen was in the chair, and Mrs. Creighton, wife +of the late Bishop of London, was reading a paper. In the midst of deep +attention, a door at the rear of the platform was gently opened, and +Miss Susan B. Anthony stepped onto the stage. She had just arrived from +America. Her strong figure was bent with the weight of years; her face +was squared by the conflict and partial ostracism she had met; but her +glance had lost none of its stern kindliness, and her bearing none of +its indomitable courage. As she appeared, this most representative +audience of women in the world sprang to its feet and burst into wild +cheering. In vain did Lady Aberdeen rap for order and beg the audience +to let Mrs. Creighton proceed. Not until Miss Anthony came to the front +and urged the women to sit down was quiet restored. These women knew the +price of a life which their champion had paid for their opportunities. + +A few months after this the school children of the prosperous city of +Rochester, N.Y., where Miss Anthony had been a leading citizen for many +years, were asked to write school compositions in which they named the +person they would most wish to be like. Over three thousand girls, in +the elementary grades, wrote these papers, but not one chose Miss +Anthony. This first generation of women reformers could not establish +the type of womanhood for the modern world; they had not the leisure, +nor the freedom, nor could they see all that lay in the future. But all +the more, because their lives were hard, should they be held in grateful +remembrance. + +To the second generation of leaders belong women like Alice Freeman +Palmer, Mary Sheldon Barnes and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They came on +the scene when the first campaign had been won; they could command their +own bodies and property; college doors were swinging open where they +could secure the training that should fit them for the struggle to win +educational, industrial, social and political opportunity for all their +sisters. They were still looked upon as blue-stockings and queer; they +had often to serve as the butt of ridicule; but they had education, +income, a certain degree of leisure, and a social recognition which, if +grudging in some quarters, was all the more generous in others. + +With the rapid development of higher education, these women found +themselves associated with large groups of independent women who could +create a society of their own in advanced centers of population. There +was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they +could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live. +Their problems were, however, even more complex than those which +confronted their predecessors. What line of education should women +pursue? What lines of work could they best undertake? How could they +combine an independent professional or industrial career with the life +of a home and the responsibilities of a mother? How far must older +social restraints be modified in the interest of intellectual and +industrial freedom? It was a time for constructive statesmanship, rather +than for revolution; and each woman knew she was under criticism, and +that her success or failure was vastly more than her own personal +concern. In her all free women were being judged. + +To the third generation belongs the host of women who are to-day filling +our college halls, managing the women's clubs, teaching the state +schools, and competing with men in every industrial calling. Theirs is +the task of completing woman's social and political emancipation, and of +educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that +this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and +the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate +adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of +the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be +excessive. + +What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity +described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which +government gives? Are they able to form political judgments? Have they +knowledge of the working of political machinery; or, lacking it, are +they prepared to obtain it? Are they able to make a wise selection of +people to represent them in political action? Have they need of the +training which participation in political life gives? Have they the +preliminary preparation to take up that training to advantage, and can +they undertake these duties without serious loss of qualities desirable +in women? + +Women certainly have need of protection; each has a life dear to her, +and honor which is dearer to her than life. In this respect she has a +greater need than men. Most women, also, have property of some kind, and +we are increasingly recognizing their right to control this for +themselves; hence they need property protection the same as men. We do +not need to think of Mrs. Sage, Mrs. Harriman, Miss Gould or Mrs. +Green, in this connection, for in every community we now have many women +who are immediately responsible for large property interests which new +legislation might affect most seriously. + +In matters of institutional regulation by government, women are at least +as vitally interested as men. In all that touches the family, marriage, +or divorce, women have more at stake than men; and there are as many +wives as husbands involved. The schools are also nearer to women than to +men; more girls than boys attend them; more women are teachers; and more +women than men are interested parents of school children. The church is +also more vital to women to-day than to men. On the side of industries, +it is clear that our 8,000,000 independent wage-earning women have a +desperate stake in all governmental action touching the regulation of +working conditions. In whatever concerns general sanitation, safe water, +and pure foods, all are equally interested who must breathe and eat to +live. Surely the need of women for political protection is quite as +great as that of men. + +In the matter of forming political judgments, not even the wisest men +are beyond improvement. International affairs, monetary systems, the +best way of raising taxes, and similar problems, often divide the male +electorate pretty evenly into rival parties. Since both cannot be right, +a great deal of poor political thinking must be done by the present body +of voters. Meantime, women are showing their ability to deal +intelligently with all sorts of subjects in our educational +institutions, in business and in social life. Their judgments command +respect in every other field; and it is hard to see why they could not +apply their powers to political questions. + +We must remember, too, that during these last years the field of +political life has been rapidly broadening, through the awakening of +social consciousness among the people. To concern one's self with +politics now is to be interested in good market facilities, in rapid +transit for cities, in recreation centers for children, in honest +labelling of food products, in reformation of criminals, in preventing +marriage among the unfit, and in a hundred similar matters. Here women +will doubtless bring us a strong addition to our political efficiency. +They have long been considered the natural directors of social life and, +in spite of being disfranchised, they mainly handle such matters at +present. Now that these subjects are being brought into the political +field, women should follow them there, as they have followed their +industries from the homes into the factories. There is no reason to +believe that their judgments will be less sound than those of their +brothers and husbands. + +Of course, women's knowledge of means and methods is much less than that +of men in their own class. Not only have they not participated in +political life, but they have been steadily warned away from that +particular tree of knowledge. Yet the present generation of women has +gone through the same preliminary education in schools with its +brothers; and many women in high schools and colleges have made a more +extended study of political institutionalism. Still more important, more +than a million women have been educating themselves for some years in +this direction through voluntary associations of some kind; while in +most States they have had some political practice through limited +suffrage, and in a few States full experience. + +In selecting representatives to carry out their will, women have certain +obvious defects of temperament and training. Having been brought up for +generations to judge men only as providers of sustenance and fathers of +children, they must at first find it difficult to consider candidates +impersonally. Still, their general morality and their standards of right +are probably superior to those of men, and they are more intolerant of +faults, and they find it harder to compromise on matters of character +than do men. One can hardly believe that 1,700 women could be found +among the respectable, church-going, American-born residents in any +county of America, who would sell their votes, year after year, as that +number of men voters has recently confessed to doing in Adams County, +Ohio. In fact, Judge Blair says: "There was one class of the population +which rebelled against the practice. It was the womanhood of Adams +County, which had never become reconciled to the custom, and whose +continual hostility has resulted finally, I hope, in its +abolishment."[46] + +[46] Seventeen Hundred Rural Vote-Sellers, by A.Z. Blair, _McClure's +Magazine_, November, 1911. + +Of the need of women for the training which participation in political +life gives there can be no doubt. Their lives have always been directly +dependent upon other individuals, and they are prone to think in small +details. Any training which extends the horizon of their interests and +enables them to deal more largely with these details will fit them +better for living in a world where industrial, business and social +changes are so rapidly merging details in larger wholes. Experience in +selecting candidates for public office would also do much to broaden +women's judgments of life, and would help to break down the pettiness +which sometimes characterizes their personal relations. + +In the case of women, the community has a double reason for desiring +that they shall develop political judgments and become acquainted with +political methods. It is not only that they may share in the general +intelligence and carry their fair part of the political burdens; but +they have become the teachers, both in homes and schools, of the +oncoming generation of male voters. We no longer live in small +communities where children can see the simple processes of government +operating around them, but in a complex civilization where it must all +be interpreted to them, and mainly by women. Many boys who complete our +elementary schools never work a day under the direction of a man. In the +homes, busy fathers increasingly turn over the training of children to +their wives. How can these women train safe citizens for the future if +they do not understand the processes involved well enough to use them +themselves? + +Meantime the old arguments against woman suffrage are too outworn to +need serious attention. In the past decades our civilization has become +so complex, with so many groups carrying on differentiated functions, +that even if we had not the millions of educated, property-owning, +wage-earning, voting women that now fill our public life, the old +arguments would still be obsolete. The issues of life are no longer +primarily military, and but a fraction of men voters is capable of +meeting modern requirements as policemen and soldiers; in time of +crisis, all men would be called into the reserves; but in such periods +women have always fought in the breach, from Carthage to Paris. Still, +in modern warfare, those who guard the rear and furnish supplies are as +necessary as those who go to the front. + +It has also long been recognized that women who rear finest sons and +daughters must sometimes turn away from the cradle to refresh their +lives with the touch of other interests. It has also been demonstrated a +thousand times over that women do not incite the lawless element to riot +about the polls; but that, instead, their presence tends to remove the +polling-place from the saloon and make it safer for men to go there on +election-day. The plea that women would introduce a new element of sex +into politics, thereby confounding its real issues, is certainly not +well grounded. Sex has always played a great part in politics, as it has +in all the vital affairs of life. In the open competitions of education, +business or politics, sex ceases to be as significant as it is in the +drawing-room. + +Nor do thoughtful people imagine to-day that if women participated in +political life they would suddenly bring about a reign of universal +peace and righteousness. It has taken many centuries for men to learn to +play the game of politics indifferently well as they do. The first +effect of woman's participation would probably be to lower the +efficiency of the electorate in some directions; but they are starting +much farther along than men began, and they would learn more rapidly +than men have learned. + +It is often claimed that women do not want to vote; and, of course, +there are many who do not care to assume such arduous and often +difficult duties, if they can avoid it. The same holds true of many +intelligent, but selfish men who desire the advantages of good +government without its burdens. All such must be urged to do their duty +to the state. Those who have vision and a large sense of duty can be +trusted to do their fair part in caring for the public welfare. Those +who wish to enjoy the benefits of peace and settled government, +participating in the advantages of education, engaging in business, and +having their persons and property protected, without sharing the burdens +of government, should be forced to play their part. + +If a woman should board a street-car to-day and, when asked for her +fare, should hide her face with womanly modesty and declare that she did +not wish to be involved in such public matters, but preferred that the +man swinging on the strap before her should pay, she would be informed +that all who use the cars must pay for their maintenance. Women in +America now have more than their share of education and leisure. If they +do not wish to pay their fair proportion of service, they should +withdraw from the high schools and colleges, from literature and music, +from offices and factories, and not crowd into places where they are +unwilling to play the game. The woman who leads the movement against +equal suffrage in England has made a fortune in the open market as a +writer, protected by the national copyrights; she maintains a house +where she is protected in person and property by the city of London, the +organization and administration of which calls for the constant +attention of all intelligent citizens; and yet she urges women to take +what they can get, but to refrain from doing their fair share of the +city and national housekeeping, lest they lose their feminine charm. +Surely those who profit by government should give their share of +service. + +It is idle to claim that equal suffrage will make no change in women. It +will certainly accentuate the changes already made by higher education +and by a freer business life. Some loss there must inevitably be in any +such far-reaching change. We lost something of chivalry and of the +spirit of _noblesse oblige_ in the transition from feudalism to +democracy. In transferring causes of personal difference from the +dueling field to the courts of law, we lost a degree of poetic feeling +and tragic exaltation, of personal initiative and physical courage. So +when women passed from slavery to serfdom we lost something of male +dominance and of female submission. We shall lose something in the +present transition; but one must be content to lose Louis XIV and +Versailles if one thereby finds modern France; one must be satisfied to +lose an institution which gave us the tragically pathetic death of +Alexander Hamilton, if it increases human justice and saves fathers to +their families. We must even be content to lose the languishing and +weeping lady of chivalry, and the coquetting, crocheting and confiding +maiden of the eighteenth century if we gain in return fair minded +comrades in daily living, devoted partners in family life, and strong, +intelligent mothers for the coming generations. The sex instinct needs +no fostering; it has led us to our best developments in civilization; +and its work has only begun. + +So far we have taken the popular position, and have discussed this +matter as though it were still in the period of debate. The fact is, it +long ago passed from the field of theory; it is now a condition. In six +of our States, women have now full participation in managing public +affairs. In Wyoming, since 1869; in Colorado, since 1893; in Idaho, +since 1896; in Washington, beginning in 1910; and in California, since +1911, women have been sharing the vote with men. In twenty-nine States +they have school suffrage, and in many places municipal suffrage.[47] In +newer parts of the world, like New Zealand and Australia, women have +complete suffrage, while in old countries, like Norway, Sweden and +Finland, they have essentially all the rights of men. In England, there +are 1,141 women on Boards of Guardians and 615 on Educational +Committees; and they are demanding full participation in all political +life. In Canada they have school and municipal suffrage. It is no longer +a time for argument; it is time for adjustment. + +[47] BERTHA REMBAUGH, _The Political Status of Women in the United +States_, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, gives complete information to date. + +Meantime the results of woman's full participation in political life, +even where they have had the suffrage for some years, are difficult to +determine, because of the fact already pointed out that political life +in a modern democracy is so closely bound up with all the other life +about it. It is quite as difficult to estimate these effects as it would +be to estimate the effects of housekeeping or of woman's special +costume. And yet some results are clear enough to have a large bearing +on the extension of woman's suffrage in new localities. + +In 1906, the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League engaged Miss Helen Sumner +to make a careful study of the actual working of equal suffrage in the +State of Colorado. Miss Sumner, aided by several assistants, spent +nearly two years in the investigation. She gathered and carefully +analyzed written answers to an extended set of questions from 1,200 +representative men and women of Colorado, some opposing and some +favoring equal suffrage; and she and her assistants interviewed many +more. They also made a general study of industrial conditions and of +legislation for the State as a whole, and a detailed study of election +records and newspaper files for representative cities and counties. Her +report is a masterpiece of patient research and scientific +exposition.[48] + +[48] HELEN L. SUMNER, _Equal Suffrage. The Results of an Investigation +Made in Colorado for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York +State._ New York: Harper & Bros., 1909. + +Equal suffrage goes back to 1893 in Colorado; and while the influence of +women has been in no way revolutionary, this report shows that, on the +whole, political conditions have improved and woman's intelligence and +her general public spirit have increased with no appreciable loss in +distinctive feminine charm. One cannot help feeling as one reads this +report that it is what a disinterested observer would have to say about +the effect of woman's larger educational or industrial life since 1870. + +In all democracies it is difficult to bring voters to the polls unless, +as in some Swiss cantons, they are fined for absence. In Colorado, Miss +Sumner shows that women cast about forty per cent. of the total vote in +the earlier years of their enfranchisement, though they were in a +minority of the total population.[49] In the work of the primaries they +were in a much smaller minority, except when some special problem or +candidate appealed to them. The more intelligent the community, the +larger the woman's vote; and it is largest of all in the best residence +districts of Denver, the capital city. The vote of American born women +is larger than that of foreigners; and while the prostitutes of Denver +have been voted in the interests of the party in power, public opinion +is steadily making this more difficult. In Idaho, all residents of the +red light district have been disfranchised by statute; and practically +they do not vote. + +[49] Mr. LAWRENCE LEWIS, in the _Outlook_, for January 27, 1906, +analyzes the election returns for parts of Pueblo City and vicinity, and +he finds from 25 to 46 per cent. of the vote was cast by women, and the +proportion of women increased with the intelligence and _morale_ of the +precinct. + +There is no appreciable tendency on the part of women to form a new +party, nor to favor their own sex. They are more inclined than men to +scratch the ticket and, as illustrated in the case of Judge Lindsey, +they sometimes rally efficiently around an independent candidate, +especially on a moral issue. On the whole, women vote with their +husbands, just as sons vote with their fathers; but the strength of the +family vote, as compared with the vote of unsettled people, is certainly +desirable. + +Since the beginning of equal suffrage, Colorado has fully held her own +with other States in advanced legislation, especially in social and +educational lines. Women have suffered no insult at the polls, and on +the whole polling-places have improved; but how far this is due to +women's presence no one can say. Women have occasionally held +legislative and executive offices; but they have especially +distinguished themselves as State and county superintendents of schools. + +When it comes to estimating the effect of voting on the women +themselves, it is still harder to form an opinion. A large majority of +those reporting to Miss Sumner think that women have become more +intelligent and more public-spirited, but some doubt it. Morally, they +have shown themselves less corrupt than men; but a considerable number +think women as a whole have suffered some deterioration. This is a +question bound up with our deepest feelings and our most conservative +ideals; and it is inevitable that some observers should find any change +for the worse. On the whole, belief in equal suffrage seems to have +increased in Colorado during the twelve years under survey. Probably the +results are much what they would be if one were to study a group of the +most intelligent and refined men in the same community. + +During the summer of 1911, I spent a month in the State of Idaho; and as +I had long been interested in the problem of equal suffrage, both in +England and America, I seized eagerly on the opportunity to study its +practical workings at first hand. On the streets and in the tram-cars, +in hotel lobbies and in lecture halls, when dining out or when making a +call, few people escaped inquisition. I interviewed working men and +women, men of affairs, ranchers, sheep raisers and miners, doctors, +lawyers, teachers, ministers and practical politicians, both men and +women. + +The thing that first impresses one who has been intimately in touch with +the excited and turbulent condition of mind among the English +suffragettes, and the sustained and often impassioned feeling of Eastern +suffrage leaders, is the absence of any burning interest in the subject +on the part of men or women in Idaho. In London or New York, a suffrage +inquirer would constantly strike "live wires;" in Idaho, every one is +insulated. The subject is no more an issue than civil service reform or +state versus national control of banking systems. Most people have even +forgotten the passage of the constitutional amendment conferring equal +suffrage, in 1896. Since then, men and women have gone on voting and +holding office until the woman's right has become as commonplace as, and +no more interesting or questionable than, the vote of any busy citizen +in New Jersey. + +The first question that one raises, is naturally whether women do +actually vote and hold office in Idaho. To answer this question, there +is no body of statistics available. Every one, however, declares that +they pretty generally vote. On account of long distances in the country +side, they poll less votes than men, especially if the weather is bad. +Probably about three-quarters as many women as men go to the polls. +Often I met women who said that they did not care for the vote, and +sometimes one who said she thought women ought not to vote; but these +same women often added that since they had the responsibility they felt +it their duty to cast a ballot; and no woman told me that she did not +fulfil the obligation. + +In the first legislature which met after the granting of equal suffrage, +that of 1898, three women were seated, Mrs. Hattie F. Noble, Clara L. +Cambell, and Mary A. Wright; Mrs. Wright afterward became chief clerk of +the House. In 1908, another woman, Mrs. Lottie J. McFadden, was +returned; but there was no woman in the last legislature, and so far as +I can learn, only these four have taken part in law-making. When asked +why, after the first ardor of emancipation, women have taken so little +part in legislation, most people said it was because they had found the +work and conditions surrounding it unsuited to them. It seems generally +agreed, however, that a woman could be elected to the legislature at any +time if she represented a cause which needed to be brought before the +people through that body. + +Theorists have always insisted that equal suffrage would greatly improve +the material conditions which surround the polls on election day. One of +the prominent political leaders in Idaho, who has been intimately in +touch with conditions for a quarter of a century, said that of course +there had been great improvement in the last fifteen years. "Things +would have improved any way," he said, "but I am sure that the women +have had a large influence. No woman has ever been insulted at the polls +in Idaho and she runs no more danger of annoyance than she would in +buying her ticket at a railway window. Men are not always sober in +either place; but if a man made a remark to a woman that was not polite, +or used annoying language in her presence, he would be mobbed by the +men even in the roughest mining camp in the State." Doubtless women have +helped to break the connection between the saloon and the polling-place, +but no one claims that women have made voting into a drawing-room +ceremony. On the contrary, women are very persistent workers at the +polls, seeking to direct doubtful voters. + +Advocates of equal suffrage have pretty generally held the belief that +if women were given the ballot their superior moral standards would lead +to a marked change in the handling of such problems as the liquor +traffic and the control of red light districts. Of woman's superior +moral standards there can be no doubt; of the actual effect of her vote +upon these questions there is a great deal of doubt. While I was in +Idaho, the question of local option came up before the voters of Salt +Lake City, in the neighboring equal suffrage State of Utah, and the +"wets" won by a vote of 14,775 to 9,162. Thousands of women must have +voted for license to bring about this result. In April, 1911, the +question of license or no license was voted on in Boise. In this case +again the "wets" won by a considerable majority. + +Take another case. For several years in Boise, until 1909, the red light +district was segregated in two alleys in the heart of the city. In the +municipal election of that year this issue came fairly before the +voters, and the democratic nominee for mayor, who was pledged to break +up the system, was elected by a considerable majority, though the city +is strongly republican. This result was undoubtedly due to the women's +vote. After two years, the issue came up again; and the republican +nominee, who was opposed to the scattering policy though not pledged to +segregation, was elected; and this result must again have been due to +the woman's vote. Prominent women of the city told me that during the +two years when the scattering policy prevailed, the evil was very +conspicuous, and women going about alone felt far less comfortable than +under the older system. + +There are two ways to explain the fact that, after fifteen years of +political experience, the women of Boise voted in large numbers for +license and for a policy in handling the red light district which they +knew would mean a return to police control. In the first place, it may +be said that fifteen years of steady contact with political life had +blunted the sensibilities of women and dulled their moral feeling. On +the other hand, it may be held that practical experience, under the +steady pressure of responsibility, had made them realize the +difficulties involved in the handling of these great social problems and +had made them feel that a law which could command the support of public +opinion, even though it regulated these difficulties, was better than a +law which they might consider ideal, but which was incapable of +execution. + +In Idaho, as in Colorado, the payment of women political workers seems +to have become a rather wide-spread abuse. Under the conditions of the +State, with many new settlers constantly arriving, it has long been +thought necessary to employ paid workers to register voters, get them +out on election-day and influence those who are uncertain. After 1896, +women were often hired to do this work, and were paid from three to five +dollars a day. With their weak sense of party affiliation, it is +claimed that they will work for the party that pays best. A candidate +with plenty of money may hire so many workers that it becomes a system +of wholesale bribery. It is universally conceded that this is an abuse, +and that many women look upon election service as a source of pin money +to a degree that is undesirable. Meantime, practical politicians assured +me that it was a system the women found in operation when they came in; +that far more men than women were paid; and that the abuse could be +corrected by proper legislation. + +To summarize the matter, we may say that equal suffrage in Idaho has +simply accentuated the movement toward setting women free to live their +individual lives which general education and participation in industrial +life has already carried so far all over the country. Equal suffrage is +accepted there, as the higher education of women is accepted in +Massachusetts, and the results in the two cases have been much the same. + +Surely these reports carry the matter beyond the experimental stage. +Conditions in Colorado and Idaho are not identical with those in the +East, but they are similar enough to make the experience of these States +amount to a demonstration. Meantime the new obligation resting on women +is profound. They must learn to "sweat their tempers and learn to know +their man." They must become students of public affairs and of +institutional life. Old issues are past; and equal suffrage will soon +prevail everywhere. Women, like men, have more "rights" in our modern +democracies than they can use. Woman's Rights are largely realized; from +now on we must front Woman's Duties. + + + + +IX + +The Modern Family + + +The most powerful influence in shaping our lives to-day is the sexual +impulse which has created the institution we call the family. Few of us, +at least in our modern democracies, live in daily fear that our +neighbors will attack and kill us, or carry us off into slavery. Even +the hunger for food, that once forced men into action, plays little +direct part in the shaping of the lives of most of us. None of those who +read these pages would starve if they never did any more work. If they +tried to starve, they would be arrested and sent to jail; and if they +persisted, they would be fed by force. + +Meantime it is sex hunger, manifesting itself in a hundred forms of +beauty and ugliness, courtesy and insult, cultivated conversation and +ribald jest, beautiful dancing and suggestive indecencies, honor and +dishonor, self-repression and prostitution, love and lust, children of +gladness and children of shame, that lifts us to such heights as we +attain, or plunges us into the hells we create for ourselves. If one +could insure one good thing in life for the child one loves, one would +ask, not money nor fame, but a continuously happy marriage. + +In the past, women have always looked upon marriage and family life as a +career; and the majority of men have found their most significant life +in the building up of the family institution. To-day, however, family +life as a career is everywhere called in question. Many women claim to +prefer educational opportunity, professional recognition or an +independent bank account to husband and children. Social service is +exalted; domestic service is debased. Why is it so much nobler to care +for other people's children in a social settlement, or in a school, than +to care for one's own in a home? Why should women mass themselves +together in vast groups as industrial workers, as teachers, as +suffragettes? We hear of women's work, of women's careers, of women's +clubs, associations and parties, of women's interests, movements, +causes. In November, 1911, two hundred and twenty women were arrested +in London for assaulting the English government in the supposed interest +of women. Why do women prefer social to domestic service? + +Two reasons spring at once to the mind of any intelligent observer of +the life about him. The first is the complexity of our modern life; the +second is the nature of the institution of marriage. + +A man or woman wishes to live with the one he or she loves. Sexual love +is in its very nature restricted, circumscribed, monopolistic--in a +word, monogamic. As has been said repeatedly in this volume, the human +unit is neither a man nor a woman; it is a man and a woman united in a +new personality through the unifying and blending power of love. To say +that this unit is exclusive and monogamic is simply saying that it +respects its own personality. It can no longer act simply as a man or a +woman; it is a family and it must act as such in order to satisfy its +own demands. A man can no more act independently of the woman he loves +than the heart can act independently of the lungs. The man and woman who +compose the new unit are not only flesh of one flesh, but they are one +soul, one life; they are a complete organism. And the life of this +organism must be persistent to realize its own aims. In all the higher +forms of existence, processes move slowly. For nine months a woman +carries her baby as a part of her own body; then for three years the +father and mother carry the child in their arms; for a score of years +they must support, protect and train it before they let it go to seek +its own. Hence sexual love must be persistent as well as monogamic. + +From all this it follows that each half of the human unit must find the +major part of its adult life in devotion to the one it has chosen as its +complement. This is no hardship; it is divine opportunity, if love binds +the lives in harmonious unity. If love is lacking, then there is no new +organism; and such a case falls outside this discussion. + +Under the simpler forms of civilization that have prevailed in the past, +it was comparatively easy to find the complement for any particular man +or woman. With physical sympathy and desire, little more was needed than +common race and the same general social position. With simple +personalities even the marriage of convenience was apt to prove happy. + +But, to-day, not only have men become infinitely more complex and +self-conscious than formerly, but women have ceased to be a general +class; and, in becoming individuals, they have developed wide ranges of +individual needs. Instead of fitting at the two or three points of +physical desire, race and social position, a man or woman, to live +strongly and well in this close union of body and soul, must fit each +other at many points. To the older sympathies must be added a common +attitude toward religion, education, artistic tastes, social ambitions, +industrial aptitudes, and a score of other living sympathies, if the +days are to pass in happiness, and each is to maintain his fair share of +the life of the new unit. Physical desire still remains the paramount +thing, but these other sympathies tend to strengthen it, or their +absence may weaken and ultimately destroy it. It is comparatively easy +for a person to find a complement to two or three of his, or her, +qualities; it is very difficult for a person to find fulfilment for a +score of his personal needs in another personality. + +In earlier times, too, the individual reached such maturity as he or she +was to attain much earlier than now, when education has become a +life-long process. Once united, there was comparatively little danger +that passing years would develop latent tastes that might prove +dissimilar. To-day, complete union at twenty may mean many oppositions +at forty, if each half of the unit goes on developing its powers. And we +must add to this individual complexity and slower development of the +present-day men and women the intense self-consciousness of modern times +which makes it impossible for us to forget our conditions and go on +living in a world once significant and true but now empty or false. + +A second cause for the unrest of the present is doubtless to be found in +the inflexibility of the institution of the family, under which lovers +are allowed to live together and bring into existence the children of +their love. The family, as we have it, was shaped under the stress of +mediaeval disorder. In such a time men are willing to pay any price for +peace and quiet. And so the barbarian invaders, living among the broken +fragments of Greek and Roman civilization, gradually shaped feudalism, +culminating in absolute monarchy, which gave them political security. +They shaped the Holy Roman Catholic Church that they might worship in +peace. They shaped the guilds that they might work quietly, and enjoy +the fruits of their labors. The family, with its civil and +ecclesiastical sanctions, was formed to protect the personal lives of +men and women who wished to live together and rear children. + +But with peace, life grew stronger and more intense; and the bonds which +the people had shaped, and which had given them security, reached their +limits of growth, became painful, and threatened to prevent all further +development. The rising cities bought their freedom from feudal lords; +even the serfs won better conditions; and the rising national units beat +down the older political institutions with their swords. Finally the +movements that gather around the French Revolution opened the way for us +into the democratic freedom and security which we enjoy to-day. The +guilds were broken up and a measure of freedom was secured, though the +industrial institution which shall give us freedom and security in our +work is yet to be formed. The Protestant Revolution led us by devious +ways into religious freedom where men can worship as they will. + +Of all these older institutions, shaped under iron necessity, the only +one that remains practically unchanged is the family. Dealing with the +most powerful of all our human hungers, as it does, we have not dared to +make it fit our modern life. Not only is this true, but the forces of +the older state and church which survived, fastened themselves upon this +institution and strengthened its resisting power. The church +increasingly made marriage into a holy sacrament, so that it not only +protected lovers, but became a subtle, inviolable and indissoluble +mystery. The state sanctioned the family, and made it an instrument for +regulating political and property rights. Formal society proclaimed the +family and made it the standard for respectability. + +Two centuries hence, our family, with its sacramental significances, its +lack of a eugenic conscience, its financial subordination of women, its +frequent lack of love and sympathy, its primogeniture, and its +determining power over social opportunity, will be as incomprehensible +to students of institutional forms as the Holy Roman Empire is to us +to-day. Who will then understand how church and state could have +licensed and consummated marriages between young and inexperienced +people, marriages which were to be binding on their thought, feeling and +action for life without requiring some time, however brief, between the +application for a license and the final binding of vows? Who will be +able to understand how church and state could have sanctioned marriage +between a broken-down old noble and a young and inexperienced girl of +seventeen? How will the future student explain the fact that in New +Jersey state and church combined to sanction and bless the marriage of +an imbecile woman and of her offspring until they had produced 148 +feeble-minded children to curse the state.[50] + +[50] See _The Kalikak Family_, by HERBERT H. GODDARD, New York: +Macmillan Company, 1912. + +Who will then understand why a man and woman who had not only ceased to +love each other but had come to feel a deep repugnance for each other +should have been compelled to share bed and board, even when there were +no children, until even murder seemed preferable to such slavery of soul +and body? How can this student understand woman's economic dependence, +her uncertain income, her insecure rights in property for which she +toiled side by side with her husband? Who will then believe that in the +year 1911 an English citizen could go before a court and secure an order +for legalized rape, under the name of restitution of marital rights? + +Meantime every issue of the daily press counts as its choicest items +stories of the shameful and soul-destroying ways in which men and women +are trying to live their lives in spite of this mediaeval institution. So +far-reaching is the unrest, that at each new revelation of marital +heresy, society feels constrained to rush forward and frantically +denounce the heretic in order to prove its own orthodoxy. + +Our own attitude toward marriage as a sacrament to be directed by a +church, or as a pleasure to be exploited by individuals, must be +changed if the life of the family is to be re-established as the great +vocation of earnest men and women. Intelligence must be turned upon this +problem as upon all others that vitally affect our lives. What President +Eliot has called "the conspiracy of silence touching matters of sex" +must be broken, and when it is, I believe honest men will agree with +Ellen Key that "In love humanity has found the form of selection most +conducive to the ennoblement of the species."[51] + +[51] ELLEN KEY, _Love and Marriage._ New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1911 + +In this field, at least, a eugenic conscience must take the place of the +older theological conscience.[52] We must recognize the infamy of +knowingly bringing defective children into existence. We must agree that +under no conditions should people tainted with syphilis be allowed to +marry; and that those subject to imbecility or insanity should not be +allowed to live together unless they are unsexed.[53] Justice to future +generations, and protection of the state, demands at least this much. + +[52] See the publications of the Eugenic Education Society, especially +files of _The Eugenics Review_, 6 York Buildings, Adelphi, London. + +[53] Indiana has an admirable law on this subject, and New Jersey has +just added the same to her statutes. + +Whether alcoholics, those suffering from congenital sense defects, and +near relatives, should be allowed to marry may still be an open +question; but it should be recognized that the state has the right and +the duty to inquire into these conditions and to impose restrictions. +Society must come to feel that it is at least as shameful for a broken +old noble to live with a young girl under the forms of marriage as for +two young lovers to live together outside them. + +As to what the personal, social and industrial relation of man and wife +should be, we have widely different views and practices. The older view, +still embodied in the practice of most nations, and best seen in Germany +and England, is that the woman's duty is to complement the husband. He +does what he wishes, so far as he can, and the wife rounds out the +whole. It is the old ideal of later savagery, that the man should +provide and protect, and the woman should breed children, care for the +home, pray and wait. + +This is really the same ideal that dominated our political life until a +hundred and fifty years ago. It was the duty of the lords to direct and +fight; the peasants should work and wait. In politics there gradually +grew up a middle class which combined with the peasants to overthrow the +older privileges; and now all classes direct, fight, wait and watch +together. Whether this democratic idea is finally to prevail, we may not +know; but it is well worth trying, and the results so far are full of +promise. + +In the same way, in the family, a great middle class of wives has grown +up, largely since 1870, through education and industry, as the burgers +did in political life, and these emancipated women are insisting that +the peasant of the family, the _Hausfrau_, shall join with them and +dethrone the husband so that all shall share life's responsibilities +together as free and equal partners. In fact, in America, the revolution +has already come; and, as in the earlier stages of political +revolutions, those deposed are having a hard time to maintain even their +equal share of opportunity. + +But the parallel between political and domestic life is not complete, +and if pushed too far the analogy is mischievous. The assumption of +physical, intellectual and social superiority on the side of political +lords and domestic lords was the same. It is possible, however, rightly +or wrongly, to reduce all the people to the same political level and set +them all at work doing the same things. But between men and women there +was not only the assumption of physical and mental difference, but there +was and must always be the infinite difference of sex. In domestic life, +the women cannot live without men nor the men without women. Not only +would the generations fail, but the present generation would lose its +deepest meaning, if either sex were banished or debased. + +In their reactions against old abuses, writers like Mrs. Gilman or Olive +Schreiner try to create a world for women alone, on the political +analogy. Men might be tolerated as fathers; but, to secure political +freedom, these leaders would turn to that nebulous creation of social +reformers, the state; and it should subsidize the mothers in their +periods of need. But there are only two ingredients out of which a +nation can be formed: one is women; the other is men. Shall woman in +her time of need turn to a state made up of other women, or to a state +made up of men? Obviously it must be to both; and if woman is to depend +on men, she might as well depend on man. No, in the political +revolutions we broke up artificial, outworn and unjust combinations; but +in this domestic revolution we are breaking up and must readjust the +fundamental unit of life. + +Men and women must live and work together in the domestic unit, and they +cannot do the same things. Nature has specialized their functions and +each must supplement the other. Even in Germany, the _Hausfrau_ is not +going back to an exclusive service of children, cooking and church; nor +in America will man continue to be merely the breadwinner and the father +of children. With the enlightenment that is on the way, we shall see +that husband and wife can have no antagonistic differences. Each profits +in all that really benefits the other; and slowly we shall shape a new +institution based on absolute equality, and at the same time on +complementary service. + +In this adjustment, legal forms can help or hinder; but they cannot +prevent nor compel the final action of human beings. Sex instinct is +stronger than any human law. The law can, however, help us in regulating +conditions of marriage, in settling disputes about common property and +children, and in determining how the contract may be set aside when that +becomes necessary. + +The right of the church to sanction or regulate the family, rests in a +belief that marriage involves spiritual changes and obligations that +make it a sacrament, in its nature inviolable, and to be administered +only by the church, like the sacrament of baptism. This is a belief +resting not in eugenic considerations, nor in the human needs of the +persons involved, but in theological dogmas with which this chapter +cannot deal. Hence we shall maintain that the church has no more right +to control matters of marriage than it has to interfere in business or +political relations. + +The state, on the other hand, meaning by the state the whole community, +must concern itself with the marriage of its individuals. The +commonwealth must have future citizens, and these should be strong and +intelligent; hence it must prevent the breeding of the unfit. If parents +die, or fail in obligations, the community must care for the children. +In case of disagreement between married people, the courts of the +community must settle disputes about children and property; hence the +state must know when a man and woman determine to live together. The +regulation of marriage certainly belongs to the state, that is, to all +of us. + +Marriage should therefore always be a matter of definite and open record +in the archives of the community. It should also be advertised, through +the public record, for a considerable time, preferably six months or a +year, before consummation, that the past experiences of contracting +parties may be looked up by interested friends or officials, and the +marriage of the unfit prevented; and so that mere caprice and passion +shall have time to realize their mistake and turn away. The form which +the final ceremony of marriage will take can well be left to the tastes +and traditions of the contracting parties. + +The question of rights in children, or in property acquired after +marriage, should be settled by the state; and it is hard to see how it +can ever be settled satisfactorily except on a basis of equal +partnership. No man should be contented with a woman to bear and train +his children, and create a social atmosphere for his home, who is not +worth half of what he makes; and the same holds true of a woman. So with +regard to children, while one parent or the other may, under certain +conditions, be given the direction of the child's life, it is hard to +imagine any circumstances that would justify society in refusing either +father or mother the right frequently to see his child. + +Since marriages must be contracted in youth and since inexperienced +people must make mistakes and the wisest must sometimes change, it will +sometimes happen that men and women must face the possibility of +separation. The problem of divorce is very difficult.[54] In less than +twenty years, from 1887 to 1906, 945,625 divorces were granted in the +United States; so that probably to-day there are nearly one million +divorced people in this country. Generally speaking, the divorce rate +increases as one goes westward. In 1900, the State of Washington led the +country with 184 divorces for each 100,000 of population. For the whole +country we averaged 73 per 100,000 of population. Japan alone leads us +with 215, while England and Wales had only 2. England grants divorce +only for infidelity; and on the man's side it must be accompanied by +cruelty; all divorce cases must be tried in London, and the expense, +never less than two hundred dollars, is prohibitive for the poor. +Meantime, England grants many separation orders; and it seems sure that +the Royal Commission, which has been taking evidence for the past three +years, will favor a freer system of divorce. + +[54] See _Statistics of Marriage and Divorce_, prepared by the Bureau of +the Census, beginning in 1906, and published in 1910. + +While divorce is increasing steadily all over the world, and most +rapidly in the most intelligent and progressive sections, the subject is +so bound up with our most deep-seated prejudices that it is difficult to +secure any intelligent thinking on the subject. Thus, most people think +Sioux Falls, in South Dakota, and Reno, Nevada, are places of free +divorce, but the fact is that twenty-one other States have a higher +divorce rate than South Dakota; and fourteen have a higher rate than +Nevada. So, too, the impression that divorces spring from hasty action +is certainly wrong, for in 46.5 per cent. of those for which we have +records there had been a separation of more than three years before the +divorce was granted. The idea that people generally seek divorces that +they may marry some one else seems also unfounded, since in the cases +for which we have records, less than forty per cent. remarry within a +year. + +There are three main objections which one hears urged against free +divorce. The first is that organized society rests on the family, and +with free divorce anarchy would ensue. In reply, it is pointed out that +the same argument was used to support kings, aristocracies and a +universal church. All these have been set aside, in many parts of the +earth, and society seems even more stable than before. The love of men +and women is probably more powerful and less in need of adventitious +support than either patriotism or religion. + +In the second place, it is claimed that children will suffer when +parents separate. It is replied that this is true, but they were already +suffering when parents had ceased to love each other. The fact that +children are involved in only two out of five divorces seems to indicate +that children hold parents together when the opposition is not too +strong; and when a separation occurs, those who favor divorce claim that +a child is better off with either father or mother alone than with both +if love is absent. + +In the third place, it is pointed out that often only one desires the +divorce and that this brings tragedy to the other life. In reply it is +claimed that many of the tragedies of life have always gathered around +the love of men and women, that when marriage is declined tragedy often +follows, and that compelling a person to live with some one whom he does +not love, and may even dislike, is more tragic than any separation. + +In conclusion, advocates of free divorce claim that their proposals are +profoundly conservative, that they are seeking to bring marriage back to +its eternally binding realities. They say that under our present +conditions of restricted divorce, we have wide-spread prostitution, +constant irregularities that are tolerated and condoned, and a million +divorced people, some prevented from remarrying and all socially +ostracized, so that the whole group is a dangerous element in our midst. +These advocates claim that with free divorce, granted some months after +the determination to separate had been registered in the public records, +the love of men and women and their mutual love for their children would +be free to bind families together in permanent trust and open honesty; +and that with all excuse for irregularity absent, the unfaithful man or +woman would sink to the level of unfaithfulness in business or political +life. With freedom to readjust their lives, if they preferred to keep +what they had and get what they could, they would simply take their +place among thieves and liars, and most of them would disappear. + +All transitions are hard, and this one in which we are involved is most +difficult of all; but no one can study the conditions around him without +seeing that change is inevitable and that we are not going back to our +earlier ideals. At the same time, no one can read the singularly +scholarly and fair-minded presentations of Ellen Key[55] without feeling +that she has a vision of the future. + +[55] _The Century of the Child._ New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907. +_Love and Marriage_, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1911. _Love and Ethics._ New +York: B.W. Huebsch, 1911. + +With regard to the nature of the material plant in which the family +should live, there are also two widely different ideals struggling for +favor in the public mind, and for realization in practice. The one +ideal, while recognizing the changes necessitated by modern conditions, +would still seek to retain those features which have been supposed to +make for family privacy, the kitchen, the nursery, and the garden. The +other would frankly accept our changed conditions, and pass on to the +larger groups of socialized buildings, with common kitchens, day +nurseries, and parks.[56] + +[56] See _Woman and Economics_, by CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN, Boston: +Small, Maynard & Co., 1898; and the writings of H.G. WELLS. + +This question has been discussed in the chapter on industry, and it will +be considered again in the following chapter. Meantime there can be no +doubt that love is reticent so far as the outside world is concerned; +and domesticity must always demand a large measure of privacy. It still +remains to be proved that this can be secured, in the absence of a +private kitchen, nursery and garden. Children, too, seem to need the +personal care and constant love of mothers, and women seem to need a +long period of loving and caring for a family to round out a deeply +significant life. + +To summarize this chapter we may say that the realization of romantic +love, under conditions of domesticity, is necessary for men and women, +and for the well-being of the race. Our present marriage system is +defective, and needs to be corrected through the creation of a eugenic +conscience. It should be taken out of the hands of the church and made +more difficult by the state. Women's property rights should be defined +and safeguarded, and men and women should never live together when they +are repugnant to each other. + + + + +X + +Family Life as a Vocation + + +The greatest of all wisdom is that which leads men and women to see the +real significance of their lives while they are still living. Life's +values, like the manna in the wilderness, must be gathered daily. If not +nourished day by day the power to live atrophies and dies; and no one +can live well to-day on the shrunken memories of yesterday. A full and +significant life is its own justification; and in a last analysis +philosophies and theologies offer us only the life more abundantly which +the great Teacher said he came into the world to bring. Buddhism offers +us eternal peaceful existence in Nirvana; Epicureanism offers pleasure, +which is but an intensification of life; Stoicism offers us life freed +from disturbing forces; and the great lure which Christianity has always +held before humanity is life eternal. Life is its own justification. + +We have maintained throughout this volume that complete +self-realization is impossible for the half-units which we call men and +women, when either lives alone. On every side of their natures they are +complementary; and the unit of human life must be found in the family +composed of a man and woman who love each other and the children born of +their love. "There are two worlds below, the home and outside of it." It +is in this unit, under the stress of sexual passion and maternal love, +that all the finer forces of our civilization have had their origin. +Unselfishness, devotion, pity and the higher altruisms all hark back to +the home as their source. + +But, meantime, evil counsels prevail and one hears everywhere of the +antagonistic interests of men and women. There can be no real rivalry +between a man's soul and his body, between science and religion, between +man and woman. The trouble all rests back in the failure to realize the +incompleteness of man or woman alone for any of the purposes of life. +And there is that evil notion which still afflicts economics that when +two trade one must lose. The fact is that, in all honest trade, buyer +and seller gain alike; and fair exchange makes all who participate in it +rich. It is so in all real relations between these half-creatures we +call men and women. In agreement, association and cooperation lies +strong and significant life for both. In antagonism, separation and +competition lie arid, poor, mean lives, egotistic and conceited, vapid +and fickle. + +In primitive life, the family furnished a full and adequate career for +men and women alike. The political life was the family life; each family +was a religious group; families mustered for war; and each family +maintained within itself a wide range of industrial activity. But, +because this unit was so basal, because all later special developments +of state, church and industry came from it, it was steadily perverted. +Warped from its original purpose, it has served in turn, as we have +seen, to define and secure all our later institutions until it has +become the servant of state, church, social ambition, property and +industrial advance. Marriage and the birthrate are seldom discussed +to-day from the point of view of individual needs; but are almost +always considered from the point of view of national and industrial +efficiencies. + +To-day men and women are confronted by two tempters which constantly +lure them away from the complete living of the family; one is work, and +the other is comfort. With the majority of people in our modern +industrial democracies work uses up the hours and the energy of life. We +have passed into a time when our habitual material needs are great, and +the products of work are shamelessly diverted to the excessive uses of +comparatively few individuals and groups. Hence millions of workers +march along the narrow dark roads that lead through factories and farms +to the grave. Only little patches of their nervous systems are ever +used, but all their energy flows through these sections day after day, +leaving their lives dull and empty. + +Marriage for these workers means decreased earning power for the woman, +with increased needs for the family, especially when the children come. +As one watches the procession of young factory and shop women, with +Sunday finery and some leisure, passing over into draggled factory +mothers, with no finery and no leisure, one marvels at the strength of +the forces with which nature drives them to their destiny. And yet, even +with these hopeless workers, marriage and children mark the heights of +life. + +With others, who are economically freer, work has become an obsession. A +Charles Darwin or a Herbert Spencer turns all of life's forces to +shaping facts into science; our industrial leaders mint their hours into +dollars; our reformers give up their lives that social conditions may be +changed; our society leaders trade life for triumphs. Meantime we all +know, or would know if we stopped to consider, that we are here to live +life fully and significantly day by day. But domesticity takes time and +effort, and so the hurrying specialist follows the narrow line of +success until he or she becomes a machine for manufacturing +generalizations, for painting pictures, for performing surgical +operations or for merely getting money. The richest woman in America +said with approval recently that her son was too busy to fall in love. + +As industry drives the mass of workers and specialists away from life's +deepest realizations, so the desire to become comfortable, physically +and mentally, through avoiding the deeper experiences of life, robs many +of those who have a large measure of economic freedom. In all periods of +great wealth this disease of ease has afflicted mankind. Life more +abundantly comes only at the price of vigorous living; and love travels +always in company with anxiety. It would be well, says Cicero, to have +children, were it not for the fear of losing them. Let a man apply this +principle to wife, friends, possessions and enthusiasm in general and +life sinks into utter worthlessness. + +The love of ease among women is in a measure independent of the +emancipation movement, but the entry of great numbers of young women +into lines of independent livelihood has placed them in a condition +where the ideals of a materialistic and commercial civilization appeal +to them with great force. Many of them have been liberally educated and +are living lives of independence. They lodge in flats or boarding houses +where they have no responsibilities for the routine work connected with +daily living. They carry their own latch-keys; and no one interferes +with their friendships or their pleasures. They read the books they +like, attend the theaters that appeal to them, and avoid people who bore +them. One can easily understand why these young women hesitate before +abandoning their easy conditions for the uncertain economic position of +wife and mother, with a man whose career lies in the future. And yet +here, as everywhere, one must lose one's life to gain it. + +What then does daily association of a man and woman who belong together +do for them? It gives gladness and peace, and these are fundamental +conditions for all good and healthful living. It gives incentive to +effort, for a man or woman dares not fail before the one he or she +loves; but, in case of failure, it gives comfort and support, for love +understands and credits intent and effort as highly as achievement. It +complements the powers, for it gives four eyes, four hands and two minds +with but one aim. And in this it does not simply multiply by two, but +the blended powers are far more than two times one. It calls into +activity all the gracious, artistic and altruistic powers of the soul. +Surely these are gifts for which we may well forego some material +comforts, may well work, and even face anxieties unafraid. + +Each part of the human unit must educate the other to a realization of +the fulness of life. This education is not entirely dependent on +physical intimacy. It is the development of soul and spirit. It polishes +the manners, cultivates the voice, broadens the judgments, sharpens the +wit. It makes conversation an art and discussion significant. A +woman-hating man or a man-hating woman is an unpolished and half-alive +creature, whether he be a mediaeval saint, or she a militant suffragette, +or they both be simply commonplace egoists. + +Because married life is so perfect when it finds its highest levels, it +is capable of sinking to any form of vulgarity, base betrayal and +cynicism when realization fails. The God to whom noblest souls aspire in +hours of deepest exaltation, is the God invoked by the ribald drunkard +when he curses his comrade. The family life we are discussing is the +subject of most of the vulgar and indecent jokes of the disappointed and +the unfit. The earth which nourishes the nations, merely soils the +boots of the boor who unthinkingly lives on her bounty. + +On the working side the life of the family has an evil record for +pettiness and monotony, but much of this is due to wrong comparisons. A +woman who does her own housework would presumably have to work in any +case. Is the work of the family more petty or monotonous than the work +of the factory, shop or office? Surely the woman who spends her days +looking after the details of furnishing a house and keeping it clean, of +providing and serving meals, of looking after clothing and caring for +children, has a world of self-expression compared with which factory and +shop work is infinitely petty and mean. In the social life of friends, +neighborhood, school and church she is at least as well placed as the +factory worker. If the woman has the preparation required for teaching +or independent business, she will find ways to use her powers that will +relieve the routine of housework. And if the family has means to hire +help, the wife has a position from which she can exercise social and +political power superior to that of the foot-loose celibate. + +Meantime, the housework grows steadily simpler and less exacting, even +with the growing complexity of our modern life. Most of the primitive +industries have left the home, and products come from the factory ready +to use. Furnace heating, hot and cold water, improved cooking conditions +and many domestic inventions of our day are keeping housework well +abreast of other unspecialized work in attractiveness. + +The fact that domestic servants are scarce and unwilling to do general +housework, in no way disproves the soundness of these conclusions. The +wife, if she is a real wife, and we are discussing no others, is working +for those she loves, under conditions of free initiative. The general +servant is working for those who will not even admit her right to +participate in their social life, and instead of freedom in her +industrial life, she must generally adjust her efforts to the caprices +of an untrained mistress. Well-trained mistresses, who know how to work +themselves and who have a democratic sense of human values, seldom have +trouble in securing able servants, even in this transition time when the +shops and factories are calling so loudly to working girls. + +No intelligence which a woman may possess needs remain unused in the +handling of a family. Women spend most of the household money to-day, at +least in lower and middle-class homes. To use wisely the family +pay-envelope requires knowledge and judgment of a high order. Problems +in economics, sanitation, food-values and aesthetics confront the +housewife at every turn of the day's work. "Even a slave need not work +as a slave;" and a woman living with the man she loves is the freest +woman on earth, so far as mind and spirit are concerned. + +But the factory girl, or the teacher, or the professional woman who +seeks the fulfilment of all of life in the factory, the school or the +consulting-room, will soon tire and clamor for relief. The housewife, or +the mistress of a home, must likewise seek life away from her work if +she is to love it and wake each morning with a desire to continue it. +Luckily we have reached a place where working women in the home are +seeking supplementary life outside, and they seem to be quite as +successful in their search as are factory girls or teachers. + +To the man, family life, of the kind we are considering, brings a vital +connection with the past and the future. Reputation, possessions, +friends, all become deeply significant when a man becomes a link in the +generations of men. In establishing his material home, and modifying it +to the changing conditions of the family; in building up a social +setting for the group; in projecting his work and his service into the +future, he is held to highest standards by the fact that he is working +with the partner of his choice, and for interests that are in harmony +with the constitution of the universe. + +Of the greater physical health of married people there can be no doubt. +Statistics all show the greater longevity of married people, and +insurance companies recognize it. The celibate type of physical +degeneration is so well differentiated that it can generally be +recognized even among strangers, at least after forty.[57] On the moral +side, too, very few criminals are found among married people. + +[57] ARNOLD LORAND, _Old Age Deferred. The Cause of Old Age and its +Postponement by Hygienic and Therapeutic Measures._ F.A. Davis Co., +1911. + +If children come to bless these homes of men and women, then even +intellectual life may shift to a higher level than was before possible. +With advancing years intellectual interests tend to become specialized. +The man or woman gives up singing, ceases to be interested in plant +life, stops reading poetry. One activity after another is cut off and +interests concentrate in some comparatively small field of work or +pleasure. But when a child comes, the parents are forced to start over +the round of human interests and thought once more. Before, they lived +it as children; now, they live the cycle as grown men and women. + +No matter how completely a woman has given up music, she will some day +find herself singing when she holds her baby in her arms. As she recites +Mother Goose and the fairy and folk-lore tales, she moves through the +path of man's upward progress, led by a child, but with the life and +understanding of adult years. As she walks with her child in the garden +and in the fields, she is driven to a new interpretation of the world +of nature. Few things can so broaden, quicken and enrich the +intellectual life as growing up with one's children. + +On the social side, a parent who has children is forced to live in all +the social world around him. The water-supply, the sewage, pure foods, +vacant lots, paving, fast driving in the streets, police protection, +undesirable residents, saloons and churches, schools and +libraries--everything that touches the social well-being--touches him +vitally and imperatively. The foot-loose celibate can always go away. +The parent finds it difficult to leave the place where he has planted +his roof-tree. Of course, there are many unmarried people, and people +who are childless, who live this domestic life vicariously through +friends or other people's children. One cannot but be grateful that life +is so organized that no woman can be entirely shut off, unless she wills +it, from the fructifying life that knits together the generations of the +old and the young. + +Ideals are very powerful in determining conduct, and the ideals of +extreme individualism, now so constantly presented by certain leaders +among emancipated women, must bear bitter fruit for an army of women in +the future. While the women are young, ambition and the charm of freedom +bear them gaily along. Generally better educated than the men of their +own class, habituated to a personal expenditure which would correspond +with a large family expenditure, their intelligence prevents their +falling desperately in love with the men whom they might marry. But in +the thirties they have visions of the future which are deeply +disturbing; and in the forties they face the tragedy of a lonely old +age. Some men and women there must always be whose lives lack the +fulfilment of family life because of ill health or the accidents of +personal relations. But most women, if they are willing to pay the same +price for a significant family life that they so gladly pay for +professional success, will find the way open to live all of life. Why is +it that women count it an honor to work and starve for an art, but +dishonor to undergo privations for their children? All that is here said +of women may be said of men, but the man's period of family life is +longer than woman's, and the tragedy of lonely old age with him seems +less overwhelming. + +The old plea that we must have an army of celibate women because in +civilized countries there is a preponderance of females does not hold at +present in the United States. The census of 1910 shows an excess of +2,691,678 males in this country. Nor is this entirely due to +immigration. More boys than girls are always born in civilized lands; +and of native white people born of native parents in the United States +there were, in 1910, 25,229,294 males and 24,259,147 females, a +difference obviously due to natural causes. New England alone in America +has a preponderance of females; and the excess there, as also in England +and Germany, is needed all along the frontiers of civilization. With the +industrial and social freeing of women now going on, we may reasonably +hope that the communities of old maids left behind, through the +emigration of young men, will be broken up. + +Of course, it will be pointed out that many men and women who do marry +fail to realize the ideal presented in these pages. Every form of living +is dangerous and not every one can hope to be a successful husband and +father or wife and mother. Even devotion to religion furnishes many +inmates for insane asylums; athletic contests leave a line of cripples +behind them; and railroad disasters fill thousands of graves annually. +The institution of marriage has had no such intelligence applied to its +improvement during the past years as has been given to perfecting +railroads; and since founding a family is a more difficult undertaking +than making a journey, one need not be astonished at the number of +fatalities. Even if the institution of marriage were as intelligently +and carefully brought up to date as railroad systems are, it would still +remain dangerous to live either in or out of marriage. + +And yet the danger could be greatly reduced by proper education of +youth. At present we are educating 10,000,000 girls in the state schools +of America, and as many boys. They are spending eight to twelve years, +under the direction of celibate women teachers, sharpening their +intelligence. Their most important work in life is to be the making of +homes, but they are supposed to master this art through imitating the +homes in which they grow up. Many of these are unworthy of imitation, +and they are all in process of transition. + +Every girl should be thoroughly trained in handling an income and in +spending money wisely. She should have a general knowledge of household +sanitation, of water-supply and sewage, of foods and their preparation. +She should know about clothes, their cost, wearing qualities and +decorative values. She should have a sense of the family and its +significance in life; of at least the social relations that husband and +wife must maintain toward each other if their partnership is to be happy +and effective. She should have the beginnings of a eugenic conscience +established in her, and she should know something of the care of +infancy. All this should be given in the school, if it is not definitely +given in the home, and no girl who goes through the eighth grade should +escape it. Before the girl is married, she should have wise counsel from +mature women who have lived and learned the art of living. Boys should, +of course, also be trained in comparable directions for this great part +of their lives. + +Something is already being done in this direction through the +establishing of special courses in domestic science, and allied branches +in our schools. The fact that educational leaders are awake to the need +was shown by the applause that followed Superintendent Harvey's plea for +this training in his paper on the education of girls at the +Superintendents' Association in St. Louis in February, 1912.[58] The +leading educators of the country greeted his plea with an enthusiasm +called out by no other paper of the session. + +[58] See _Report of the Department of Superintendence of the National +Education Association_, 1912. + +Every woman, then, and every man, not debarred by disease or accident +and not specially dedicated to a work which precludes marriage, should +spend his life in a family group, not that the state may have more +soldiers, or factory employees, but that he may realize the deepest +significance of his life. In this life the woman should be as free as +the man, an equal financial partner, and should share in all the social +and political opportunities of the community. When she bears children, +she should have special protection, support and reverence; and support +should come from the father of her children. If he fails her, then the +group, in its capacity as a state, should care for her honorably. But to +justify this protection and reverence, she should bring to her special +functions as mother of the generations a strong body, an intelligent +mind, a eugenic conscience and an absolute devotion to the children born +of her love. + + + + +XI + +Conclusion + + +The last two hundred years have revolutionized nearly all of our deepest +conceptions concerning the relations of human beings to religion, +government, property, and to each other. New knowledge has given us +partial control over vast forces of nature; and has so increased our +mobility as almost to free us from limitations of space. We have had +wonderful visions of the possibilities that lie in intelligent human +cooperation, and have begun to realize them in a hundred new forms. In +the midst of these compelling changes, women could no more remain +undisturbed, within the confines of kitchen and nursery, than men could +remain on their little New England farms or cobbling shoes and making +tin pans in the petty workshops of a century ago. But meantime the +special interests of women have been sadly confused because of the +larger changes in which all human relations have been involved in this +time of readjustment. Instead of talking of unquiet women to-day, we +should talk of an unquiet world. + +In the midst of this confusion, most of those who have sought to secure +a truer relation of women to the life around them have worked on the +lines of minimizing sex differences. It has been felt that the +educational, industrial, social and political limitations under which +women rested were due to the desire of men to exploit them. Men, being +free, had developed for themselves an ideal world of thought and work; +and if women wished to be free and happy, they needed only to break down +the barriers separating them from this man's world. + +Most of these barriers are now down; but the women who study in +universities, teach in the schools, maintain offices as doctors or +lawyers, collect news for the press, tend spindles in a factory or sell +ribbons at a counter have found that the man's world is far from ideal +and that by entering it they have not escaped the special limitations of +their sex. Everywhere the feeling is abroad that, instead of having +arrived at a destination, women have embarked on a journey fraught with +many uncertainties. + +This volume has been written in the belief that men and women alike will +achieve greatest freedom and happiness, not by minimizing sex +differences, but by frankly recognizing them and using them. If we could +reduce men and women to sameness, we should destroy at least half the +values of human life. They are not alike; but they are perfectly +supplementary. The unit can never be a man nor a woman; it must always +be a man and a woman. This means that in all the activities essential to +human development men and women must carefully study to find what each +can best provide. + +Thus we must some day have a Church, not composed exclusively of male +priests and women worshipers, not confined to rationalistic appeal nor +to ritualistic observance, but expressing the whole range of human +aspiration toward the unknown. Rational men and women of feeling must +combine with reverent men and intelligent women to create a belief and a +service which will express all the longings of humanity toward +perfection. + +So in government, we must have a state which will be not only just but +merciful; which will concern itself not only with militant economics but +also with human well-being. If men are more capable in expressing the +katabolic needs of aggression and protection, women must furnish the +anabolic products of care and conservation. If women must help pay the +bills and nurse the wounded, they must first have a voice in determining +whether there shall be a war. Men and women must join their qualities in +building and caring for cities, and in shaping nations, where they can +both live their largest lives. + +In education, we must devise institutions which will provide for the +special needs of women; and we must have the combined qualities of men +and women brought to bear on children of both sexes, and at all ages. +The foster parents of the nation's children must be both men and women. +The present attempt to exploit our twenty millions of boys and girls in +the interest of a sex will be a crime against humanity when we are +intelligent enough to see its real meaning. + +The specialization going on in industry means infinite variety if we +look at the whole field of activity. Some parts of the world's work are +specially fitted for men; other parts to women. No intelligent division +of labor has been attempted in the period since all work was transformed +by our modern inventions. Possibly men should do most of the +dressmaking, and women should make men's clothing, but no intelligent +man or woman can doubt that most work falls naturally into the hands of +one sex or the other. Some day we shall know enough so that there will +be little or no industrial competition between men and women. + +It is, however, in the family that both men and women must find their +deepest supplementary values. Sex antagonism can do much to impoverish +and ruin individual lives; but the monogamic and persistent union of +lovers, surrounded by their children, will easily survive all the +mistakes of a time of transition. In the meantime, those who would +uphold the finest family ideals of the past have less cause to fear the +militant agitator than they have to fear the idle, parasitic wife, who +relies on her legal rights to give her luxuries without labor, position +without leadership, and wifehood without the care and responsibility of +children. + +From the point of view of this book, all the efforts to open the doors +of opportunity, through which women can pass into the man's world, are +but preparations for the beginning of a journey. The sooner all such +doors are opened the better, for then a great source of dangerous sex +antagonism will pass away; and the energy of reformers will be set free +to work out the difficult problem of supplementary sex adjustments. + +And meantime, sex remains the greatest mystery and the most powerful +thing in human life. Its deeper values are lost sight of when men and +women are warring over work, wages, and votes, just as the meaning of +religion has been lost when priests and laity sought to advance their +meanly selfish interests. But in the crises of life it always comes +back. When a great ship founders in midocean, and but a third of the +people can be saved, there is then no question of woman's rights. In the +darkness of early morning, eager men's hands place their women in the +life-boats and push them off. The poorest peasant woman takes +precedence over any man. Almost every woman there would prefer to stay +and die with her man; would glory in staying and dying if he might thus +be saved; but in her keeping are the generations of the future, and she +is weak, therefore the strong gladly stand back and go down to death. +The solution of woman's place in the society of the future must be based +on a recognition of the supplementary forces that send women to +undesired safety while men die. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman in Modern Society, by Earl Barnes + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN IN MODERN SOCIETY *** + +***** This file should be named 15691.txt or 15691.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/6/9/15691/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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