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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d5842ef --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #69234 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69234) diff --git a/old/69234-0.txt b/old/69234-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index dfd8e7b..0000000 --- a/old/69234-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3655 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The long road of woman's memory, by -Jane Addams - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The long road of woman's memory - -Author: Jane Addams - -Release Date: October 25, 2022 [eBook #69234] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Fay Dunn and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN'S -MEMORY *** - - - - - - THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN’S MEMORY - - - - - [Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS - ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. - TORONTO - - - - - THE LONG ROAD OF - WOMAN’S MEMORY - - - BY - - JANE ADDAMS - - AUTHOR OF “TWENTY YEARS AT HULL HOUSE” - “THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE - CITY STREETS,” ETC. - - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1916 - - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1916, - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916. - - - Norwood Press - J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. - Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. - - - - - TO MY DEAR FRIEND - - MARY H. WILMARTH - - WHOSE MEMORY STORED WITH THE BEST IN LITERATURE - AND WHOSE FINE PUBLIC SPIRIT ARE DAILY PLACED - AT THE SERVICE OF HER FRIENDS AND OF - HER CITY, WITH A GALLANT AND - GENTLE COURTESY - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - INTRODUCTION ix - - I. WOMEN’S MEMORIES--TRANSMUTING THE PAST, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE - STORY OF THE DEVIL BABY 1 - - II. WOMEN’S MEMORIES--REACTING ON LIFE, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE - STORY OF THE DEVIL BABY 25 - - III. WOMEN’S MEMORIES--DISTURBING CONVENTIONS 53 - - IV. WOMEN’S MEMORIES--INTEGRATING INDUSTRY 84 - - V. WOMEN’S MEMORIES--CHALLENGING WAR 115 - - VI. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN INTERPRETATIVE MEMORY 141 - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -For many years at Hull-House I have at intervals detected in certain -old people, when they spoke of their past experiences, a tendency to an -idealization, almost to a romanticism suggestive of the ardent dreams -and groundless ambitions we have all observed in the young when they -recklessly lay their plans for the future. - -I have, moreover, been frequently impressed by the fact that -these romantic revelations were made by old people who had really -suffered much hardship and sorrow, and that the transmutation of -their experiences was not the result of ignoring actuality, but was -apparently due to a power inherent in memory itself. - -It was therefore a great pleasure when I found this aspect of memory -delightfully portrayed by Sir Gilbert Murray in his life of Euripides. -He writes that the aged poet, when he was officially made one of -the old men of Athens, declared that he could transmute into song -traditional tales of sorrow and wrong-doing because, being long past, -they had already become part mystery and part music: “Memory, that -Memory who is the Mother of the Muses, having done her work upon them.” - -Here was an explanation which I might have anticipated; it was the -Muses again at their old tricks,--the very mother of them this -time,--thrusting their ghostly fingers into the delicate fabric of -human experience to the extreme end of life. I had known before that -the Muses foregathered with the Spirit of Youth and I had even made a -feeble attempt to portray that companionship, but I was stupid indeed -not to see that they are equally at home with the aged whose prosaic -lives sadly need such interference. - -Even with this clue in my hands, so preoccupied are we all with our own -practical affairs, I probably should never have followed it, had it not -been for the visit of a mythical Devil Baby who so completely filled -Hull-House with old women coming to see him, that for a period of six -weeks I could perforce do little but give them my attention. - -When this excitement had subsided and I had written down the -corroboration afforded by their eager recitals in the first two -chapters of this book, I might have supposed myself to be rid of the -matter, incidentally having been taught once more that, while I may -receive valuable suggestions from classic literature, when I really -want to learn about life, I must depend upon my neighbors, for, as -William James insists, the most instructive human documents lie along -the beaten pathway. - -The subject, however, was not so easily disposed of, for certain -elderly women among these selfsame neighbors disconcertingly took quite -another line from that indicated by Euripides. To my amazement, their -reminiscences revealed an additional function of memory, so aggressive -and withal so modern, that it was quite impossible, living as I was in -a Settlement with sociological tendencies, to ignore it. - -It was gradually forced upon my attention that these reminiscences -of the aged, even while softening the harsh realities of the past, -exercise a vital power of selection which often necessitates an onset -against the very traditions and conventions commonly believed to find -their stronghold in the minds of elderly people. Such reminiscences -suggested an analogy to the dreams of youth which, while covering the -future with a shifting rose-colored mist, contain within themselves the -inchoate substance from which the tough-fibred forces of coming social -struggles are composed. - -In the light of this later knowledge, I was impelled to write the -next two chapters of this book, basing them upon conversations held -with various women of my acquaintance whose experience in family -relationships or in the labor market had so forced their conduct to a -variation from the accepted type that there emerged an indication of a -selective groping toward another standard. They inevitably suggested -that a sufficient number of similar variations might even, in Memory’s -leisurely fashion of upbuilding tradition, in the end establish a new -norm. - -Some of these women, under the domination of that mysterious -autobiographical impulse which makes it more difficult to conceal -the truth than to avow it, purged their souls in all sincerity and -unconsciously made plain the part borne in their hard lives by -monstrous social injustices. - -These conversations proved to be so illustrative of my second thesis -that it seemed scarcely necessary to do more than record them. The -deduction was obvious that mutual reminiscences perform a valuable -function in determining analogous conduct for large bodies of people -who have no other basis for like-mindedness. - -So gradual is this process, so unconsciously are these converts under -Memory’s gentle coercion brought into a spiritual fellowship, that the -social changes thus inaugurated, at least until the reformers begin -to formulate them and to accelerate the process through propaganda, -take on the aspect of beneficent natural phenomena. And yet, curiously -enough, I found that the two functions of Memory--first, its important -rôle in interpreting and appeasing life for the individual, and second -its activity as a selective agency in social reorganization--were -not mutually exclusive, and at moments seemed to support each other. -Certain conversations even suggested that the selective process itself -might be held responsible for the softened outlines of the past to -one looking back, by the natural blurring of nonessentials and the -consequent throwing into high relief of common human experiences. - -The insistence of Memory upon the great essentials, even to the -complete sacrifice of its inherent power to appease, was most -poignantly brought to my attention during two months I spent in Europe -in the summer of 1915. Desolated women, stripped by war of all their -warm domestic interests and of children long cherished in affectionate -solicitude, sat shelterless in the devastating glare of Memory. Because -by its pitiless light they were forced to look into the black depths of -primitive human nature, occasionally one of these heart-broken women -would ignore the strident claims of the present and would insist that -the war was cutting at the very taproots of the basic human relations -so vitally necessary to the survival of civilization. I cannot hope -to have adequately reproduced in Chapter V those conversations which -themselves partook of the grim aspect of war. - -It was during this cataclysmic summer in Europe that I sometimes sought -for a solace, or at least for a source of sanity, by resting my mind -on the immemorial monuments of ancient Egypt, from which I had once -received an almost mystic assurance of the essential unity of man’s -age-long spiritual effort. But because such guarding of continuity as -Egypt had afforded me had been associated with an unexpected revival -of childish recollections, I found that Memory was a chief factor -also in this situation. Therefore, in spite of the fact that these -reminiscences of my childhood were vividly resuscitated in Egypt by -a process which postulates a reversal of the one described in the -first two chapters of this book, I venture to incorporate my personal -experience in the last chapter. It may suggest one more of our -obligations to Memory, that Protean Mother, who first differentiated -primitive man from the brute; who makes possible our complicated modern -life so daily dependent on the experiences of the past; and upon whom -at the present moment is thrust the sole responsibility of guarding, -for future generations, our common heritage of mutual good-will. - - - - - THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN’S MEMORY - - CHAPTER I - -WOMEN’S MEMORIES--TRANSMUTING THE PAST, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE STORY OF - THE DEVIL BABY - - -Quite as it would be hard for any one of us to select the summer in -which he ceased to live that life, so ardent in childhood and early -youth, when all the real happenings are in the future, so it must be -difficult for old people to tell at what period they began to regard -the present chiefly as a prolongation of the past. There is no doubt, -however, that such instinctive shiftings and reversals have taken place -for many old people who, under the control of Memory, are actually -living much more in the past than in the ephemeral present. - -It is most fortunate, therefore, that in some subtle fashion these -old people, reviewing the long road they have travelled, are able to -transmute their own untoward experiences into that which seems to make -even the most wretched life acceptable. This may possibly be due to an -instinct of self-preservation, which checks the devastating bitterness -that would result did they recall over and over again the sordid detail -of events long past; it is even possible that those people who were not -able thus to inhibit their bitterness have died earlier, for as one old -man recently reminded me, “It is a true word that worry can kill a cat.” - -This permanent and elemental function of Memory was graphically -demonstrated at Hull-House during a period of several weeks when we -were reported to be harboring within its walls a so-called “Devil Baby.” - -The knowledge of his existence burst upon the residents of Hull-House -one day when three Italian women, with an excited rush through the -door, demanded that he be shown to them. No amount of denial convinced -them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like with -his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears and diminutive tail; the Devil Baby -had, moreover, been able to speak as soon as he was born and was most -shockingly profane. - -The three women were but the forerunners of a veritable multitude; -for six weeks from every part of the city and suburbs the streams of -visitors to this mythical baby poured in all day long and so far into -the night that the regular activities of the settlement were almost -swamped. - -The Italian version, with a hundred variations, dealt with a pious -Italian girl married to an atheist. Her husband in a rage had torn -a holy picture from the bedroom wall saying that he would quite as -soon have a devil in the house as such a thing, whereupon the devil -incarnated himself in her coming child. As soon as the Devil Baby was -born, he ran about the table shaking his finger in deep reproach at -his father, who finally caught him and, in fear and trembling, brought -him to Hull-House. When the residents there, in spite of the baby’s -shocking appearance, wishing to save his soul, took him to church -for baptism, they found that the shawl was empty and the Devil Baby, -fleeing from the holy water, was running lightly over the backs of the -pews. - -The Jewish version, again with variations, was to the effect that the -father of six daughters had said before the birth of a seventh child -that he would rather have a devil in the family than another girl, -whereupon the Devil Baby promptly appeared. - -Save for a red automobile which occasionally figured in the story and -a stray cigar which, in some versions, the new-born child had snatched -from his father’s lips, the tale might have been fashioned a thousand -years ago. - -Although the visitors to the Devil Baby included persons of every -degree of prosperity and education, even physicians and trained nurses, -who assured us of their scientific interest, the story constantly -demonstrated the power of an old wives’ tale among thousands of men -and women in modern society who are living in a corner of their -own, their vision fixed, their intelligence held by some iron chain -of silent habit. To such primitive people the metaphor apparently is -still the very “stuff of life,” or rather no other form of statement -reaches them; the tremendous tonnage of current writing for them has no -existence. It was in keeping with their simple habits that the reputed -presence of the Devil Baby should not reach the newspapers until the -fifth week of his sojourn at Hull-House--after thousands of people had -already been informed of his whereabouts by the old method of passing -news from mouth to mouth. - -For six weeks as I went about the house, I would hear a voice at the -telephone repeating for the hundredth time that day, “No, there is no -such baby”; “No, we never had it here”; “No, he couldn’t have seen -it for fifty cents”; “We didn’t send it anywhere, because we never -had it”; “I don’t mean to say that your sister-in-law lied, but there -must be some mistake”; “There is no use getting up an excursion from -Milwaukee, for there isn’t any Devil Baby at Hull-House”; “We can’t -give reduced rates, because we are not exhibiting anything”; and so -on and on. As I came near the front door, I would catch snatches of -arguments that were often acrimonious: “Why do you let so many people -believe it, if it isn’t here?” “We have taken three lines of cars to -come and we have as much right to see it as anybody else”; “This is a -pretty big place, of course you could hide it easy enough”; “What are -you saying that for, are you going to raise the price of admission?” - -We had doubtless struck a case of what the psychologists call the -“contagion of emotion” added to that “æsthetic sociability” which -impels any one of us to drag the entire household to the window when -a procession comes into the street or a rainbow appears in the sky. -The Devil Baby of course was worth many processions and rainbows, and -I will confess that, as the empty show went on day after day, I quite -revolted against such a vapid manifestation of even an admirable human -trait. There was always one exception, however; whenever I heard the -high eager voices of old women, I was irresistibly interested and left -anything I might be doing in order to listen to them. As I came down -the stairs, long before I could hear what they were saying, implicit in -their solemn and portentous old voices came the admonition:-- - - “Wilt thou reject the past - Big with deep warnings?” - -It was a very serious and genuine matter with the old women, this -story so ancient and yet so contemporaneous, and they flocked to -Hull-House from every direction; those I had known for many years, -others I had never known and some whom I had supposed to be long dead. -But they were all alive and eager; something in the story or in its -mysterious sequences had aroused one of those active forces in human -nature which does not take orders, but insists only upon giving them. -We had abruptly come in contact with a living and self-assertive human -quality! - -During the weeks of excitement it was the old women who really seemed -to have come into their own, and perhaps the most significant result -of the incident was the reaction of the story upon them. It stirred -their minds and memories as with a magic touch, it loosened their -tongues and revealed the inner life and thoughts of those who are so -often inarticulate. They are accustomed to sit at home and to hear the -younger members of the family speak of affairs quite outside their -own experiences, sometimes in a language they do not understand, and -at best in quick glancing phrases which they cannot follow; “More -than half the time I can’t tell what they are talking about,” is an -oft-repeated complaint. The story of the Devil Baby evidently put into -their hands the sort of material with which they were accustomed to -deal. They had long used such tales in their unremitting efforts at -family discipline, ever since they had frightened their first children -into awed silence by tales of bugaboo men who prowled in the darkness. - -These old women enjoyed a moment of triumph--as if they had made good -at last and had come into a region of sanctions and punishments which -they understood. Years of living had taught them that recrimination -with grown-up children and grandchildren is worse than useless, that -punishments are impossible, that domestic instruction is best given -through tales and metaphors. - -As the old women talked with the new volubility which the story of the -Devil Baby had released in them, going back into their long memories -and urging its credibility upon me, the story seemed to condense -that mystical wisdom which becomes deposited in the heart of man by -unnoticed innumerable experiences. - -Perhaps my many conversations with these aged visitors crystallized -thoughts and impressions I had been receiving through years, or the -tale itself may have ignited a fire, as it were, whose light illumined -some of my darkest memories of neglected and uncomfortable old age, -of old peasant women who had ruthlessly probed into the ugly depths -of human nature in themselves and others. Many of them who came to -see the Devil Baby had been forced to face tragic experiences, the -powers of brutality and horror had had full scope in their lives and -for years they had had acquaintance with disaster and death. Such old -women do not shirk life’s misery by feeble idealism, for they are long -past the stage of make-believe. They relate without flinching the most -hideous experiences: “My face has had this queer twist for now nearly -sixty years; I was ten when it got that way, the night after I saw my -father do my mother to death with his knife.” “Yes, I had fourteen -children; only two grew to be men and both of them were killed in the -same explosion. I was never sure they brought home the right bodies.” -But even the most hideous sorrows which the old women related had -apparently subsided into the paler emotion of ineffectual regret, after -Memory had long done her work upon them; the old people seemed, in some -unaccountable way, to lose all bitterness and resentment against life, -or rather to be so completely without it that they must have lost it -long since. - -None of them had a word of blame for undutiful children or heedless -grandchildren, because apparently the petty and transitory had fallen -away from their austere old age, the fires were burnt out, resentments, -hatreds, and even cherished sorrows had become actually unintelligible. - -Perhaps those women, because they had come to expect nothing more -from life and had perforce ceased from grasping and striving, had -obtained, if not renunciation, at least that quiet endurance which -allows the wounds of the spirit to heal. Through their stored-up habit -of acquiescence, they offered a fleeting glimpse of the translucent -wisdom, so often embodied in the old, but so difficult to portray. It -is doubtless what Michael Angelo had in mind when he made the Sybils -old, what Dante meant by the phrase “those who had learned of life,” -and the age-worn minstrel who turned into song a Memory which was more -that of history and tradition than his own. - -In contrast to the visitors to the Devil Baby who spoke only such words -of groping wisdom as they were able, were other old women who, although -they had already reconciled themselves to much misery, were still -enduring more: “You might say it’s a disgrace to have your son beat -you up for the sake of a bit of money you’ve earned by scrubbing--your -own man is different--but I haven’t the heart to blame the boy for -doing what he’s seen all his life, his father forever went wild when -the drink was in him and struck me to the very day of his death. The -ugliness was born in the boy as the marks of the Devil was born in the -poor child up-stairs.” - -Some of these old women had struggled for weary years with poverty and -much childbearing, had known what it was to be bullied and beaten by -their husbands, neglected and ignored by their prosperous children, and -burdened by the support of the imbecile and the shiftless ones. They -had literally gone “Deep written all their days with care.” - -One old woman actually came from the poorhouse, having heard of the -Devil Baby “through a lady from Polk Street visiting an old friend who -has a bed in our ward.” It was no slight achievement for the penniless -and crippled old inmate to make her escape. She had asked “a young -bar-keep in a saloon across the road” to lend her ten cents, offering -as security the fact that she was an old acquaintance at Hull-House who -could not be refused so slight a loan. She marvelled at some length -over the goodness of the young man, for she had not had a dime to -spend for a drink for the last six months, and he and the conductor -had been obliged to lift her into the street car by main strength. She -was naturally much elated over the achievement of her escape. To be -sure, from the men’s side, they were always walking off in the summer -and taking to the road, living like tramps they did, in a way no one -from the woman’s side would demean herself to do; but to have left in -a street car like a lady, with money to pay her own fare, was quite -a different matter, although she was indeed “clean wore out” by the -effort. However, it was clear that she would consider herself well -repaid by a sight of the Devil Baby and that not only the inmates of -her own ward, but those in every other ward in the house would be made -to “sit up” when she got back; it would liven them all up a bit, and -she hazarded the guess that she would have to tell them about that baby -at least a dozen times a day. - -As she cheerfully rambled on, we weakly postponed telling her there was -no Devil Baby, first that she might have a cup of tea and rest, and -then through a sheer desire to withhold a blow from a poor old body who -had received so many throughout a long, hard life. - -As I recall those unreal weeks, it was in her presence that I found -myself for the first time vaguely wishing that I could administer -comfort by the simple device of not asserting too dogmatically that the -Devil Baby had never been at Hull-House. - -Our guest recalled with great pride that her grandmother had possessed -second sight; that her mother had heard the Banshee three times and -that she, herself, had heard it once. All this gave her a certain -proprietary interest in the Devil Baby and I suspected she cherished a -secret hope that when she should lay her eyes upon him, her inherited -gifts might be able to reveal the meaning of the strange portent. At -the least, he would afford a proof that her family-long faith in such -matters was justified. Her misshapen hands lying on her lap fairly -trembled with eagerness. - -It may have been because I was still smarting under the recollection -of the disappointment we had so wantonly inflicted upon our visitor -from the poorhouse that the very next day I found myself almost -agreeing with her whole-hearted acceptance of the past as of much more -importance than the mere present; at least for half an hour the past -seemed endowed also for me with a profounder and more ardent life. - -This impression was received in connection with an old woman, sturdy -in her convictions, although long since bedridden, who had doggedly -refused to believe that there was no Devil Baby at Hull-House, unless -“herself” told her so. Because of her mounting irritation with the -envoys who one and all came back to her to report “they say it ain’t -there,” it seemed well that I should go promptly before “she fashed -herself into the grave.” As I walked along the street and even as I -went up the ramshackle outside stairway of the rear cottage and through -the dark corridor to the “second floor back” where she lay in her -untidy bed, I was assailed by a veritable temptation to give her a full -description of the Devil Baby, which by this time I knew so accurately -(for with a hundred variations to select from I could have made a -monstrous infant almost worthy of his name), and also to refrain from -putting too much stress on the fact that he had never been really and -truly at Hull-House. - -I found my mind hastily marshalling arguments for not disturbing -her belief in the story which had so evidently brought her a vivid -interest long denied her. She lived alone with her young grandson, who -went to work every morning at seven o’clock and save for the short -visits made by the visiting nurse and by kind neighbors, her long day -was monotonous and undisturbed. But the story of a Devil Baby, with -his existence officially corroborated as it were, would give her a -lodestone which would attract the neighbors far and wide and exalt her -once more into the social importance she had had twenty-four years -before when I had first known her. She was then the proprietor of -the most prosperous second-hand store on a street full of them, her -shiftless, drinking husband and her jolly, good-natured sons doing -exactly what she told them to do. This, however, was long past, for -“owing to the drink,” in her own graphic phrase, “the old man, the -boys, and the business, too, were clean gone” and there was “nobody -left but little Tom and me and nothing for us to live on.” - -I remember how well she used to tell a story when I once tried to -collect some folk-lore for Mr. Yeats to prove that an Irish peasant -does not lose his faith in the little people nor his knowledge of -Gaelic phrases simply because he is living in a city. She had at that -time told me a wonderful tale concerning a red cloak worn by an old -woman to a freshly dug grave. The story of the Devil Baby would give -her material worthy of her powers, but of course she must be able to -believe it with all her heart. She could live only a few months at the -very best, I argued to myself; why not give her this vivid interest and -through it awake those earliest recollections of that long-accumulated -folk-lore with its magic power to transfigure and eclipse the sordid -and unsatisfactory surroundings in which life is actually spent? I -solemnly assured myself that the imagination of old age needs to be fed -and probably has quite as imperious a claim as that of youth, which -levies upon us so remorselessly with its “I want a fairy story, but I -don’t like you to begin by saying that it isn’t true.” Impatiently I -found myself challenging the educators who had given us no pedagogical -instructions for the treatment of old age, although they had fairly -overinformed us as to the use of the fairy tale with children. - -The little room was stuffed with a magpie collection, the usual odds -and ends which compose an old woman’s treasures, augmented in this -case by various articles which a second-hand store, even of the most -flourishing sort, could not sell. In the picturesque confusion, if -anywhere in Chicago, an urbanized group of the little people might -dwell; they would certainly find the traditional atmosphere which they -strictly require, marvelling faith and unalloyed reverence. At any -rate, an eager old woman aroused to her utmost capacity of wonder and -credulity was the very soil, prepared to a nicety, for planting the -seed-thought of the Devil Baby. If the object of my errand had been -an hour’s reading to a sick woman, it would have been accounted to me -for philanthropic righteousness, and if the chosen reading had lifted -her mind from her bodily discomforts and harassing thoughts so that -she forgot them all for one fleeting moment, how pleased I should have -been with the success of my effort. But here I was with a story at my -tongue’s end, stupidly hesitating to give it validity, although the -very words were on my lips. I was still arguing the case with myself -when I stood on the threshold of her room and caught the indomitable -gleam of her eye, fairly daring me to deny the existence of the Devil -Baby, her slack dropsical body so responding to her overpowering -excitement that for the moment she looked alert in her defiance and -positively menacing. - -But, as in the case of many another weak soul, the decision was taken -out of my hands, my very hesitation was enough, for nothing is more -certain than that the bearer of a magic tale never stands dawdling on -the door-step. Slowly the gleam died out of the expectant old eyes, the -erect shoulders sagged and pulled forward, and I saw only too plainly -that the poor old woman had accepted one more disappointment in a life -already overflowing with them. She was violently thrown back into all -the limitations of her personal experience and surroundings, and that -larger life she had anticipated so eagerly was as suddenly shut away -from her as if a door had been slammed in her face. - -I never encountered that particular temptation again, though she was no -more pitiful than many of the aged visitors whom the Devil Baby brought -to Hull-House. But, perhaps as a result of this experience, I gradually -lost the impression that the old people were longing for a second -chance at life, to live it all over again and to live more fully and -wisely, and I became more reconciled to the fact that many of them had -little opportunity for meditation or for bodily rest, but must keep on -working with their toil-worn hands, in spite of weariness or faintness -of heart. - -The vivid interest of so many old women in the story of the Devil -Baby may have been an unconscious, although powerful, testimony that -tragic experiences gradually become dressed in such trappings in order -that their spent agony may prove of some use to a world which learns -at the hardest; and that the strivings and sufferings of men and -women long since dead, their emotions no longer connected with flesh -and blood, are thus transmuted into legendary wisdom. The young are -forced to heed the warning in such a tale, although for the most part -it is so easy for them to disregard the words of the aged. That the -old women who came to visit the Devil Baby believed that the story -would secure them a hearing at home was evident, and as they prepared -themselves with every detail of it, their old faces shone with a timid -satisfaction. Their features, worn and scarred by harsh living, as -effigies built into the floor of an old church become dim and defaced -by rough-shod feet, grew poignant and solemn. In the midst of their -double bewilderment, both that the younger generation was walking in -such strange paths and that no one would listen to them, for one moment -there flickered up the last hope of a disappointed life, that it may -at least serve as a warning, while affording material for an exciting -narrative. - -Sometimes in talking to a woman who was “but a hair’s breadth this -side of the darkness,” I realized that old age has its own expression -for the mystic renunciation of the world. Their impatience with all -non-essentials, the craving to be free from hampering bonds and soft -conditions, recalled Tolstoy’s last impetuous journey, and I was once -more grateful to his genius for making clear another unintelligible -impulse of bewildered humanity. - -Often, in the midst of a conversation, one of these touching old women -would quietly express a longing for death, as if it were a natural -fulfilment of an inmost desire, with a sincerity and anticipation so -genuine that I would feel abashed in her presence, ashamed to “cling -to this strange thing that shines in the sunlight and to be sick with -love for it.” Such impressions were, in their essence, transitory, but -one result from the hypothetical visit of the Devil Baby to Hull-House -will, I think, remain: a realization of the sifting and reconciling -power inherent in Memory itself. The old women, with much to aggravate -and little to soften the habitual bodily discomforts of old age, -exhibited an emotional serenity so vast and so reassuring, that I -found myself perpetually speculating upon how soon the fleeting and -petty emotions which now seem unduly important to us might be thus -transmuted; at what moment we might expect the inconsistencies and -perplexities of life to be brought under this appeasing Memory with its -ultimate power to increase the elements of beauty and significance and -to reduce, if not to eliminate, all sense of resentment. - - - - - CHAPTER II - - WOMEN’S MEMORIES--REACTING ON LIFE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE STORY OF THE - DEVIL BABY - - -During the weeks when the Devil Baby seemed to occupy every room in -Hull-House, I was conscious that all human vicissitudes are, in the -end, melted down into reminiscence, and that a metaphorical statement -of the basic experiences which are implicit in human nature itself, -however crude in form the story may be, has a singular power of -influencing daily living. - -At moments we also seemed to glimpse the process through which such -tales had been evolved. As our visitors to the Devil Baby came day by -day, it gradually became evident that the simpler women were moved -not wholly by curiosity, but that many of them prized the story as a -valuable instrument in the business of living. From them and from -the surprising number of others who had been sent by the aged and the -bed-ridden to secure an exact history and description of the child, -the suggestion finally became quite irresistible that such a story, -outlining a great abstraction, may once have performed the high service -of tradition and discipline in the beginnings of a civilized family -life. - -The legend exhibited all the persistence of one of those tales which -has doubtless been preserved through the centuries because of its -taming effects upon recalcitrant husbands and fathers. Shamefaced men -brought to Hull-House by their women folk to see the baby, but ill -concealed their triumph when there proved to be no such visible sign of -retribution for domestic derelictions. On the other hand, numbers of -men came by themselves, one group from a neighboring factory on their -“own time” offered to pay twenty-five cents, a half dollar, two dollars -apiece to see the child, insisting that it must be at Hull-House -because “the women had seen it.” To my query as to whether they -supposed we would, for money, exhibit a poor little deformed baby, if -one had been born in the neighborhood, they replied: “Sure, why not?” -and “it teaches a good lesson, too,” they added as an afterthought, or -perhaps as a concession to the strange moral standards of a place like -Hull-House. All the members in this group of hard-working men, in spite -of a certain swagger towards one another and a tendency to bully the -derelict showman, wore a hang-dog look betraying that sense of unfair -treatment which a man is so apt to feel when his womankind makes an -appeal to the supernatural. In their determination to see the child, -the men recklessly divulged much more concerning their motives than -they had meant to do. Their talk confirmed my impression that such a -story may still act as a restraining influence in the sphere of marital -conduct which, next to primitive religion, has always afforded the most -fertile field for irrational taboos and savage punishments. - -What story could be better than this to secure sympathy for the mother -of too many daughters and contumely for the irritated father; the -touch of mysticism, the supernatural sphere in which it was placed, -would render a man quite helpless. - -The story of the Devil Baby, evolved in response to the imperative -needs of anxious wives and mothers, recalls the theory that woman first -fashioned the fairy story, that combination of wisdom and romance, -in an effort to tame her mate and to make him a better father to her -children, until such stories finally became a crude creed for domestic -conduct, softening the treatment men accorded to women. Because such -stories, expressing the very essence of human emotion, did not pretend -to imitate the outside of life, they were careless of verisimilitude -and absolutely indifferent to the real world. They did, however, meet -an essential requirement of the good story, in that they dealt with -fundamental experiences. - -These first pitiful efforts of women were so widespread and powerful -that we have not yet escaped their influence. As subconscious memories, -they still cast vague shadows upon the vast spaces of life, shadows -that are dim and distorted because of their distant origin. They remind -us that for thousands of years women had nothing to oppose against -unthinkable brutality save “the charm of words,” no other implement -with which to subdue the fiercenesses of the world about them. Only -through words could they hope to arouse the generosity of strength, -to secure a measure of pity for themselves and their children, to so -protect the life they had produced that “the precious vintage stored -from their own agony” might not wantonly be spilled upon the ground. -Possibly the multitude of life’s failures, the obscure victims of -unspeakable wrong and brutality, have embodied their memories in a -literature of their own, of which the story of the Devil Baby is a -specimen, crude and ugly in form, as would be inevitable, but still -bringing relief to the surcharged heart. - -During the weeks that the Devil Baby drew multitudes of visitors to -Hull-House, my mind was opened to the fact that new knowledge derived -from concrete experience is continually being made available for the -guidance of human life; that humble women are still establishing rules -of conduct as best they may, to counteract the base temptations of a -man’s world. I saw a new significance in the fact that thousands of -women, for instance, make it a standard of domestic virtue that a man -must not touch his pay envelope, but bring it home unopened to his -wife. High praise is contained in the phrase, “We have been married -twenty years and he never once opened his own envelope,” or covert -blame in the statement, “Of course he got to gambling; what can you -expect from a man who always opens his own pay?” - -These humble domestic virtues, of which women see the need so much more -vividly than men do, have furthermore developed their penalties. The -latter, too, are put into aphorisms which, in time, when Memory has -done her work upon them, may become legendary wisdom. - -Such a penalty was recently illustrated in our neighborhood by the -fate of an old man who was found in his room almost starved to death. -He was pointed out by many of our neighbors as an example of the -inevitable fate of one who deserts his family and therefore, “without -a woman to keep him straight,” falls into drink and shiftlessness and -the endless paths of wrong-doing, so that loneliness and destitution -inevitably overtake his old age. - -The women were so fatalistically certain of this relation of -punishment to domestic sin, of reward to domestic virtue, that when -they talked about them, as they so constantly did in connection with -the Devil Baby, it often sounded as if they were using the words of a -widely known ritual. Among the visitors to the Devil Baby were many -foreign-born peasant women who, when they had come to America, had -been suddenly subjected to the complicated and constantly changing -environment of city life, and, finding no outlet for many inherited -tendencies, might easily have been thrown into that state described by -psychologists as one of “baulked disposition.” To them this simple -tale, with its direct connection between cause and effect, between -wrong-doing and punishment, brought soothing and relief, and restored -a shaken confidence as to the righteousness of the universe. They used -the story not only to tame restless husbands, but mothers threatened -their daughters that if they went to dance halls or out to walk with -strange young men, they would be eternally disgraced by devil babies. -As the story grew, the girls themselves seized upon it as a palpable -punishment to be held over the heads of reckless friends. That the -tale was useful was evidenced by many letters similar to the anonymous -epistle here given. - - “me and my friends we work in talor shop and when we are going home on - the roby street car where we get off that car at blue island ave. we - will meet some fellows sitting at that street where they drink some - beer from pail. they keep look in cars all time and they will wait and - see if we will come sometimes we will have to work, but they will wait - so long they are tired and they dont care they get rest so long but a - girl what works in twine mill saw them talk with us we know her good - and she say what youse talk with old drunk man for we shall come to - thier dance when it will be they will tell us and we should know all - about where to see them that girl she say oh if you will go with them - you will get devils baby like some other girls did who we knows. she - say Jane Addams she will show one like that in Hull House if you will - go down there we shall come sometime and we will see if that is trouth - we do not believe her for she is friendly with them old men herself - when she go out from her work they will wink to her and say something - else to. We will go down and see you and make a lie from what she say.” - -Because the Devil Baby embodied an undeserved wrong to a poor mother -whose tender child had been claimed by the forces of evil, his merely -reputed presence had power to attract to Hull-House hundreds of women -who had been humbled and disgraced by their children; mothers of the -feeble-minded, of the vicious, of the criminal, of the prostitute. -In their talk it was as if their long rôle of maternal apology and -protective reticence had at last broken down, as if they could speak -out freely because for once a man responsible for an ill-begotten -child had been “met up with” and had received his deserts. Their -sinister version of the story was that the father of the Devil Baby had -married without confessing a hideous crime committed years before, thus -basely deceiving both his innocent young bride and the good priest who -performed the solemn ceremony; that the sin had become incarnate in his -child which, to the horror of the young and trusting mother, had been -born with all the outward aspects of the devil himself. - -As if drawn by a magnet, these forlorn women issued forth from the -many homes in which dwelt “the two unprofitable goddesses, Poverty -and Impossibility.” Occasionally it seemed to me that the women were -impelled by a longing to see one good case of retribution before they -died, as a bullied child hopes to deal at least one crushing blow at -his tormentor when he “grows up,” but I think, on the whole, such an -explanation was a mistake; it is more probable that the avidity of the -women demonstrated that the story itself, like all interpretative art, -was “one of those free, unconscious attempts to satisfy, outside of -life, those cravings which life itself leaves unsatisfied.” At moments, -however, baffled desires, sharp cries of pain, echoes of justices -unfulfilled, the original material from which such tales are fashioned, -would defy Memory’s appeasing power and break through the rigid -restraints imposed by all Art, even that unconscious of itself. - -With an understanding quickened, perhaps, through my own acquaintance -with the mysterious child, I listened to many tragic reminiscences -from the visiting women; of premature births, “because he kicked me -in the side”; of children maimed and burnt because “I had no one to -leave them with when I went to work”; women had seen the tender flesh -of growing little bodies given over to death because “he wouldn’t let -me send for the doctor,” or because “there was no money to pay for the -medicine.” But even these mothers, rendered childless through insensate -brutality, were less pitiful than some of the others, who might well -have cried aloud of their children as did a distracted mother of her -child centuries ago: - - “That God should send this one thing more - Of hunger and of dread, a door - Set wide to every wind of pain!” - -Such was the mother of a feeble-minded boy who said: “I didn’t have -a devil baby myself, but I bore a poor ‘innocent’ who made me fight -devils for twenty-three years.” She told of her son’s experiences from -the time the other little boys had put him up to stealing that they -might hide in safety and leave him to be found with “the goods on him,” -until grown into a huge man he fell into the hands of professional -burglars; he was evidently the dupe and stool-pigeon of the vicious and -criminal until the very day he was locked into the State Penitentiary. -“If people played with him a little, he went right off and did anything -they told him to, and now he’s been sent up for life. We call such -innocents ‘God’s Fools’ in the old country, but over here the Devil -himself gets them. I’ve fought off bad men and boys from the poor lamb -with my very fists; nobody ever came near the house except such-like -and the police officers, who were always arresting him.” - -There were a goodly number of visitors to the Devil Baby of the type of -those to be found in every large city, who are on the verge of nervous -collapse, or who exhibit many symptoms of mental aberration, and yet -are sufficiently normal to be at large most of the time, and to support -themselves by drudgery which requires little mental effort, although -the exhaustion resulting from the work they are able to do is the one -thing from which they should be most carefully protected. One such -woman, evidently obtaining inscrutable comfort from the story of the -Devil Baby even after she had become convinced that we harbored no such -creature, came many times to tell of her longing for her son, who had -joined the army eighteen months before and was now stationed in Alaska. -She always began with the same words. - -“When Spring comes and the snow melts so that I know he could get out, -I can hardly stand it. You know I was once in the Insane Asylum for -three years at a stretch, and since then I haven’t had much use of -my mind except to worry with. Of course I know that it is dangerous -for me, but what can I do? I think something like this: ‘The snow is -melting, now he could get out, but his officers won’t let him off and -if he runs away he’ll be shot for a deserter--either way I’ll never -see him again; I’ll die without seeing him’--and then I begin all over -again with the snow.” After a pause, she said: “The recruiting officer -ought not to have taken him, he’s my only son and I’m a widow. It’s -against the rules, but he was so crazy to go that I guess he lied a -little--at any rate, the government has him now and I can’t get him -back. Without this worry about him my mind would be all right; if he -were here he would be earning money and keeping me and we would be -happy all day long.” - -Recalling the vagabondish lad, who had never earned much money and had -certainly never “kept” his hard-working mother, I ventured to suggest -that, even if he were at home, he might not have work these hard times, -that he might get into trouble and be arrested--I did not need to -remind her that he had already been arrested twice--that he was now fed -and sheltered and under discipline, and I added hopefully something -about his seeing the world. She looked at me out of her withdrawn, -harried eyes, as if I were speaking a foreign tongue. “That wouldn’t -make any real difference to me--the work, the money, his behaving well -and all that, if I could cook and wash for him. I don’t need all the -money I earn scrubbing that factory. I only take bread and tea for -supper and I choke over that, thinking of him.” - -She ceased to speak, overcome by a thousand obscure emotions which -could find no outlet in words. She dimly realized that the facts in -the case, to one who had known her boy from childhood, were far from -creditable, and that no one could understand the eternally unappeased -idealism which, for her, surrounded her son’s return. She was even -afraid to say much about it, lest she should be overmastered by her -subject and be considered so irrational as to suggest a return to the -Hospital for the Insane. - -Those mothers who have never resisted fate nor buffeted against the -black waters, but have allowed the waves to close over them, worn and -bent as they are by hard labor, subdued and misshapen by the brutality -of men, are at least unaffrighted by the melodramatic coarseness -of life, which Stevenson more gently describes as “the uncouth and -outlandish strain in the web of the world.” The story of the Devil Baby -may have made its appeal through its frank presentation of this very -demoniac quality, to those who live under the iron tyranny of that -poverty which threatens starvation, and under the dread of a brutality -which may any dark night bring them or their children to extinction; -to those who have seen both virtue and vice go unrewarded and who have -long since ceased to explain. - -This more primitive type embodies the eternal patience of those humble, -toiling women who through the generations have been held of little -value, save as their drudgery ministered to their men. One of them -related her habit of going through the pockets of her drunken son -every pay day, and complained that she had never found so little as -the night before, only twenty-five cents out of fifteen dollars he had -promised for the rent, long overdue. “I had to get that as he lay in -the alley before the door; I couldn’t pull him in, and the copper who -helped him home, left as soon as he heard me coming and pretended he -didn’t see me. I have no food in the house, nor coffee to sober him up -with. I know perfectly well that you will ask me to eat something here, -but, if I can’t carry it home, I won’t take a bite nor a sup. I have -never told you so much before. Since one of the nurses said he could -be arrested for my non-support, I have been awful close-mouthed. It’s -the foolish way all the women in our street are talking about the Devil -Baby that’s loosened my tongue, more shame to me.” - -A sorrowful woman clad in heavy black, who came one day, exhibited such -a capacity for prolonged weeping that it was evidence in itself of the -truth of at least half her statement, that she had cried herself to -sleep every night of her life for fourteen years in fulfilment of a -“curse” laid upon her by an angry man, that “her pillow would be wet -with tears as long as she lived.” Her respectable husband had a shop -in the Red Light district because he found it profitable to sell to -the men and women who lived there. She had kept house in the room over -the “store” from the time she was a bride newly come from Russia, and -her five daughters had been born there, but never a son to gladden her -husband’s heart. - -She took such a feverish interest in the Devil Baby that, when I was -obliged to disillusion her, I found it hard to take away her comfort in -the belief that the Powers that Be are on the side of the woman when -her husband resents too many daughters. But, after all, the birth of -daughters was but an incident in her tale of unmitigated woe, for the -scoldings of a disappointed husband were as nothing to the curse of a -strange enemy, although she doubtless had a confused impression that if -there were retribution for one in the general scheme of things, there -might be for the other. When the weeping woman finally put the events -of her disordered life in some sort of sequence, it became clear that -about fifteen years ago she had reported to the police a vicious house -whose back door opened into her own yard. Her husband had forbidden -her to do anything about it and had said that it would only get them -into trouble, but she had been made desperate one day when she saw her -little girl, then twelve years old, come out of the door, gleefully -showing her younger sister a present of money. Because the poor woman -had tried for ten years without success to induce her husband to move -from the vicinity of such houses, she was certain that she could save -her child only by forcing out “the bad people” from her own door yard. -She therefore made her one frantic effort, found her way to the city -hall and there reported the house to the chief himself. Of course, -“the bad people stood in with the police” and nothing happened to them -save, perhaps, a fresh levy of blackmail, but the keeper of the house, -beside himself with rage, made the dire threat and laid the curse upon -her. In less than a year from that time he had enticed her daughter -into a disreputable house in another part of the district. The poor -woman, ringing one doorbell after another, had never been able to find -her, but her sisters, who in time came to know where she was, had been -dazzled by her mode of life. The weeping mother was quite sure that -two of her daughters, while still outwardly respectable and “working -downtown,” earned money in the devious ways which they had learned all -about when they were little children, although for the past five years -the now prosperous husband had allowed the family to live in a suburb, -where the two younger daughters were “growing up respectable.” - -Certain of the visitors, although confronted by those mysterious and -impersonal wrongs which are apparently inherent in the very nature of -things, gave us glimpses of another sort of wisdom than that expressed -in the assumptions that the decrees of Fate are immutable. - -Such a glimpse came to me through a conversation with a woman whose -fine mind and indomitable spirit I had long admired; I had known her -for years, and yet the recital of her sufferings, added to those the -Devil Baby had already induced other women to tell me, pierced me -afresh. The story of the Devil Baby may have incited these women to -put their experiences more vividly than they had hitherto been able to -do. It may have been because they were unconsciously spurred by the -hope that a supernatural retribution might intervene even for them, or -because they were merely comforted by the knowledge that it had once -done so for some one else that they spoke with more confidence than -they had ever done before. - -“I had eleven children, some born in Hungary and some born here, nine -of them boys; all of the children died when they were little but my -dear Liboucha. You know all about her. She died last winter in the -Insane Asylum. She was only twelve years old when her father, in a fit -of delirium tremens, killed himself after he had chased us around -the room, trying to kill us first. She saw it all, the blood splashed -on the wall stayed in her mind the worst; she shivered and shook all -that night through, and the next morning she had lost her voice, -couldn’t speak out loud for terror. After a while she went to school -again and her voice came back, although it was never very natural. -She seemed to do as well as ever and was awful pleased when she got -into High School. All the money we had I earned scrubbing in a public -dispensary, although sometimes I got a little more by interpreting for -the patients, for I know three languages, one as well as the other. -But I was determined that whatever happened to me, Liboucha was to be -educated. My husband’s father was a doctor in the old country, and -Liboucha was always a clever child. I wouldn’t have her live the kind -of life I had, with no use for my mind except to make me restless and -bitter. I was pretty old and worn out for such hard work, but when -I used to see Liboucha on a Sunday morning ready for church in her -white dress, with her long yellow hair braided round her beautiful pale -face, lying there in bed as I was, being brought up a free-thinker, -and needing to rest my aching bones for the next week’s work, I’d feel -almost happy, in spite of everything. But of course no such peace could -last in my life; the second year at High School Liboucha began to seem -different and to do strange things. You know the time she wandered -away for three days and we were all wild with fright, although a kind -woman had taken her in and no harm came to her. I could never be easy -after that; she was always gentle, but she was awful sly about running -away and at last I had to send her to the asylum. She stayed there off -and on for five years, but I saw her every week of my life and she was -always company for me, what with sewing for her, washing and ironing -her clothes, cooking little things to take out to her, and saving a bit -of money to buy fruit for her. At any rate, I had stopped feeling so -bitter, and got some comfort out of seeing the one thing that belonged -to me on this side of the water, when all of a sudden she died of -heart failure and they never took the trouble to send for me until the -next day.” - -She stopped as if wondering afresh that the Fates could have been so -casual, but with a sudden illumination, as if she had been awakened -out of the burden and intensity of her restricted personal interests -into a consciousness of those larger relations that are, for the most -part, so strangely invisible. It was as if the young mother of the -grotesque Devil Baby, that victim of wrong doing on the part of others, -had revealed to this tragic woman much more clearly than soft words had -ever done, that the return of a deed of violence upon the head of the -innocent is inevitable; as if she had realized that, although she was -destined to walk all the days of her life with the piteous multitude -who bear the undeserved wrongs of the world, she would walk henceforth -with a sense of companionship. - -At moments it seemed possible that these simple women, representing -an earlier development, eagerly seized upon the story because it -was primitive in form and substance. Certainly, one evening, a -long-forgotten ballad made an unceasing effort to come to the surface -of my mind as I talked to a feeble woman who, in the last stages of an -incurable disease from which she soon afterwards died, had been helped -off the street car in front of Hull-House. The ballad tells how the -lover of a proud and jealous mistress, who demanded as a final test of -devotion that he bring her the heart of his mother, had quickly cut -the heart from his mother’s breast and impetuously returned to his -lady, bearing it upon a salver; and how, when stumbling in his gallant -haste, he stooped to replace upon the silver plate his mother’s heart, -which had rolled to the ground, the heart, still beating with tender -solicitude, whispered the hope that her child was not hurt. The ballad -itself was scarcely more exaggerated than the story of our visitor that -evening, who had made the desperate effort of a journey from home in -order to see the Devil Baby. I was familiar with her vicissitudes; the -shiftless, drinking husband and the large family of children, all of -whom had brought her sorrow and disgrace, and I knew that her heart’s -desire was to see again, before she died, her youngest son, who was -a life prisoner in the penitentiary. She was confident that the last -piteous stage of her disease would secure him a week’s parole, founding -this forlorn hope upon the fact that “they sometimes let them out to -attend a mother’s funeral, and perhaps they’d let Joe come a few days -ahead; he could pay his fare afterwards from the insurance money. It -wouldn’t take much to bury me.” Again we went over the hideous story: -Joe had violently quarrelled with a woman, the proprietor of the house -in which his disreputable wife was living, because she had withheld -from him a part of his wife’s “earnings,” and in the altercation had -killed her--a situation, one would say, which it would be difficult for -even a mother to condone. But not at all, her thin gray face worked -with emotion, her trembling hands restlessly pulled at her shabby -skirt as the hands of the dying pluck at their sheets, but she put -all the vitality she could muster into his defence. She told us he had -legally married the girl, who supported him, “although Lily had been -so long in that life that few men would have done it. Of course, such -a girl must have a protector or everybody would fleece her. Poor Lily -said to the day of her death that he was the kindest man she ever knew, -and treated her the whitest; that she herself was to blame for the -murder because she told on the old miser, and Joe was so hot-headed -she might have known that he would draw a gun for her.” The gasping -mother concluded: “He was always that handsome and had such a way. One -winter, when I was scrubbing in an office building, I’d never get home -much before twelve o’clock, but Joe would open the door for me just -as pleasant as if he hadn’t been waked out of a sound sleep.” She was -so triumphantly unconscious of the incongruity of a sturdy son in bed -while his mother earned his food, that her auditors said never a word, -and in silence we saw a hero evolved before our eyes, a defender of -the oppressed, the best beloved of his mother, who was losing his high -spirits and eating his heart out behind prison bars. He could well defy -the world even there, surrounded as he was by that invincible affection -which assures both the fortunate and unfortunate alike that we are -loved, not according to our deserts, but in response to some profounder -law. - -This imposing revelation of maternal solicitude was an instance of what -continually happened in connection with the Devil Baby. In the midst -of the most tragic reminiscences, there remained that something in the -memories of these mothers which has been called the great revelation -of tragedy, or sometimes the great illusion of tragedy; that which has -power in its own right to make life palatable and at rare moments even -beautiful. - - - - - CHAPTER III - - WOMEN’S MEMORIES--DISTURBING CONVENTIONS - - -In sharp contrast to the function of woman’s long memory as a -reconciler to life, revealed by the visitors to the Devil Baby, are -those individual reminiscences which, because they force the possessor -to challenge existing conventions, act as a reproach, even as a -social disturber. When these reminiscences, based upon the diverse -experiences of many people unknown to each other, point to one -inevitable conclusion, they accumulate into a social protest, although -not necessarily an effective one, against existing conventions, even -against those which are most valuable and those securely founded upon -cumulative human wisdom. But because no conventionalized tradition is -perfect, however good its intent, most of them become challenged in -course of time, unwittingly illustrating the contention that great -social changes are often brought about less by the thinkers than by “a -certain native and independent rationalism operating in great masses of -men and women.” - -The statement is well founded that a convention is at its best, -not when it is universally accepted, but just when it is being so -challenged and broken that the conformists are obliged to defend it and -to fight for it against those who would destroy it. Both the defenders -of an old custom and its opponents are then driven to a searching of -their own hearts. - -Such searching and sifting is taking place in the consciences of -many women of this generation whose sufferings, although strikingly -influencing conduct, are seldom expressed in words until they are -told in the form of reminiscence after the edges have been long since -dulled. Such sufferings are never so poignant as when women have -been forced by their personal experiences to challenge the valuable -conventions safeguarding family life. - -A woman whom I had known slightly for many years came to Hull-House -one day escorted by her little grandson. Her delicate features, which -were rather hard and severe, softened most charmingly as the little boy -raised his cap in good-by from the vanishing automobile. In reply to -my admiring comment upon the sturdy lad and his affectionate relation -to her, she startled me by saying abruptly, “You know he is really not -my grandson. I have scarcely admitted the doubt before, but the time -is coming when I must face it and decide his future. If you are kind -enough to listen, I want to tell you my experience in all its grim -sorrow. - -“My husband was shot twenty-seven years ago, under very disgraceful -circumstances, in a disreputable quarter of Paris; you may remember -something of it in the newspapers, although they meant to be -considerate. I was left with my little son, and with such a horror of -self-indulgence and its consequences, that I determined to rear my -child in strict sobriety, chastity, and self-restraint, although all -else were sacrificed to it. Through his school and college days, which -I took care should be far from his father’s friends and associations, -I always lived with him, so bent on rectitude and so distressed by any -lack of self-control that I see now how hard and rigorous his life -must have been. I meant to sacrifice myself for my child, in reality I -sacrificed him to my narrow code. - -“The very June that he took his master’s degree, I myself found him, -one beautiful morning, lying dead in his own room, shot through the -temple. No one had heard the report of the revolver, for the little -house we had taken was so on the edge of the college town that the -neighbors were rather remote, and he must have killed himself while I -sat in the moonlight, on the garden bench, after he had left me, my -mind still filled with plans for his future. - -“I have gone over every word of our conversation that evening in the -garden a thousand times; we were planning to come to Chicago for his -medical course, and I had expressed my exultant confidence in him to -withstand whatever temptation a city might offer, my pride in his -purity of thought, his rectitude of conduct. It was then he rose rather -abruptly and went into the house to write the letter to me which I -found on his table next morning. In that letter he told me that he was -too vile to live any longer, that he had sinned not only against his -own code of decency and honor, but against my lifelong standards and -teachings, and that he realized perfectly that I could never forgive -him. He evidently did not expect any understanding from me, either for -himself or for ‘the young and innocent girl’ about to become the mother -of his child, and in his interpretation of my rigid morals he was quite -sure that I would never consent to see her, but he wrote me that he -had told her to send the little baby to me as soon as it was born, -obviously hoping that I might be tender to the innocent, although I was -so harsh and unpitying to the guilty. I had apparently never given him -a glimpse beyond my unbending sternness, and he had all unwittingly -pronounced me too self-righteous for forgiveness; at any rate, he -faced death rather than my cold disapprobation. - -“The girl is still leading the life she had led for two years before -my son met her. She is glad to have her child cared for and hopes -that I will make him my heir, but understands, of course, that his -paternity could never be established in court. So here I am, old and -hard, beginning again the perilous experiment of rearing a man child. I -suppose it was inevitable that I should hold the girl responsible for -my son’s downfall and for his death. She was one of the wretched young -women who live in college towns for the express purpose of inveigling -young men, often deliberately directing their efforts toward those -who are reputed to have money. I discovered all sorts of damaging -facts about her, which enabled me to exonerate my son from intentional -wrong-doing, and to think quite honestly that he had been lured and -tempted beyond his strength. The girl was obliged to leave the little -town, which was filled with the horror and scandal of the occurrence, -but even then, in that first unbridled public censure against the ‘bad -woman’ who had been discovered in the midst of virtuous surroundings, -there was a tendency to hold me accountable for my son’s death, -whatever the girl’s earlier responsibility may have been. - -“In my loathing of her I experienced all over again the harsh and -bitter judgments through which I had lived in the first years after -my husband’s death. I had secretly held the unknown woman responsible -for his end, but of course it never occurred to me to find out about -her, and I certainly could never have brought myself to hear her name, -much less to see her. I have at least done better than that in regard -to the mother of my ‘grandson,’ and Heaven knows I have tried in all -humility and heartbreak to help her. She fairly hated me, as she did -anything that reminded her of my son--the entire episode had seemed to -her so unnatural, so monstrous, so unnecessary--she considered me his -murderer, and I never had the courage to tell her that I agreed with -her. Perhaps if I had done that, really abased myself as I was willing -she should be abased, we might have come into some sort of genuine -relation born of our companionship in tragedy. But I couldn’t do that, -possibly because the women of my generation cannot easily change the -traditional attitude towards what the Bible calls ‘the harlot.’ At any -rate, I didn’t succeed in ‘saving’ her. She so obviously dreaded seeing -me, and our strained visits were so unsatisfactory and painful, that I -finally gave it up, and her son has apparently quite forgotten her. I -am sure she tries to forget him and all the tragic scenes associated -with his earliest babyhood, when I insisted not only upon ‘keeping -mother and child together’ but also on keeping them with me.” - -After a moment’s pause she resumed: “It would have been comparatively -easy for me to die when my child was little, when I still had a -right to believe that he would grow up to be a good and useful man, -but I lived to see him driven to his death by my own stupidity. I -have encountered the full penalty for breaking the commandment to -judge not. I passed sentence without hearing the evidence; I gave up -the traditional rôle of the woman who loves and pities and tries to -understand; I forgot that it was my mission to save and not to judge. - -“As I have gone back over my unmitigated failure again and again, -I am sure at last that it was the sorry result of my implacable -judgment of the woman I held responsible for my husband’s sin. I did -not realize the danger nor the inevitable recoil of such a state of -self-righteousness upon my child.” - -As she paused in the recital I rashly anticipated the conclusion, -that her bitter experiences had brought the whole question to that -tribunal of personal conduct whose concrete findings stir us to our -very marrow with shame and remorse; that she had frantically striven as -we all do, to keep herself from falling into the pit where the demons -of self-reproach dwell, by clinging to the conventional judgments -of the world. I expected her to set them forth at great length in -self-justification, and perhaps, belonging, as she so obviously did, -to an older school, she might even assure me that the wrong to those to -whom it was now impossible to make reparation had forever lifted her -above committing another such injustice. I found, however, that I was -absolutely mistaken and that whatever might be true of her, it still -lay within me to commit a gross injustice, when she resumed with these -words: “It is a long time since I ceased to urge in my own defence that -I was but reflecting the attitude of society, for, in my efforts to get -at the root of the matter I have been convinced that the conventional -attitude cannot be defended, certainly not upon religious grounds.” - -She stopped as if startled by her own reflections upon the subject of -the social ostracism so long established and so harshly enforced that -women seem to hold to it as through an instinct of self-preservation. - -She was, perhaps, dimly conscious that the tradition that the unchaste -woman should be an outcast from society rests upon a solid basis of -experience, upon the long struggle of a multitude of obscure women -who, from one generation to another, were frantically determined to -establish the paternity of their children and to force the father to -a recognition of his obligations; and that the living representatives -of these women instinctively rise up in honest rebellion against -any attempt to loosen the social control which such efforts have -established, bungling and cruel though the control may be. - -Further conversation showed that she also realized that these stern -memories inherited from the past have an undoubted social value and -that it is a perilous undertaking upon which certain women of this -generation are bent in their efforts to deal a belated justice to the -fallen woman. It involves a clash within the very mass of inherited -motives and impulses as well as a clash between old conventions and -contemporary principles. On the other hand, it must have been obvious -to her in her long effort to get at “the root of the matter” that the -punishment and hatred of the bad woman has gone so far as to overreach -its own purpose; it has become responsible for such hardness of heart -on the part of “respectable” women towards the so-called fallen ones, -that punishment is often inflicted not only without regard to justice, -but in order to feed the spiritual pride, “I am holier than thou.” -Such pride erects veritable barricades, deliberately shutting out -sympathetic understanding. - -The very fact that women remain closer to type than men do and are -more swayed by the past, makes it difficult for them to defy settled -conventions. It adds to their difficulty that the individual women, -driven to modify a harsh convention which has become unendurable -to them, are perforce those most sensitive to injustice. The sharp -struggle for social advance, which is always a struggle between ideas, -long before it becomes embodied in contending social groups, may thus -find its arena in the tender conscience of one woman who is pitilessly -rent and pierced by her warring scruples and affections. Even such a -tentative effort in the direction of social advance exacts the usual -toll of blood and tears. - -Fortunately the entire burden of the attempt to modify a convention -which has become unsupportable, by no means rests solely upon -such self-conscious women. Their analytical efforts are steadily -supplemented by instinctive conduct on the part of many others. A -great mass of “variation from type,” accelerating this social change, -is contributed by simple mothers who have been impelled by the -same primitive emotion which the Devil Baby had obviously released -in so many old women. This is an overwhelming pity and sense of -tender comprehension, doubtless closely related to the compunction -characteristic of all primitive people which in the earliest stage -of social development long performed the first rude offices of a -sense of justice. This early trait is still a factor in the social -struggle, for as has often been pointed out, our social state is like a -countryside--of a complex geological structure, with outcrops of strata -of very diverse ages. - -Such compunction sometimes carries the grandmother of an illegitimate -child to the point of caring for the child when she is still utterly -unable to forgive her daughter, the child’s mother. Even that is a step -in advance from the time when the daughter was driven from the house -and her child, because a bastard, was conscientiously treated as an -outcast both by the family and by the community. - -Such an instance of compunction was recently brought to my attention -when Hull-House made an effort to place a subnormal little girl twelve -years old in an institution in order that she might be protected from -certain designing men in the neighborhood. The grandmother who had -always taken care of her savagely opposed the effort step by step. She -had scrubbed the lavatories in a public building during the twenty-five -years of her widowhood, and because she worked all day had been unable -to protect her own feeble-minded daughter who, when barely fifteen -years old, had become the mother of this child. When her granddaughter -was finally placed in the institution, the old woman was absolutely -desolated. She found it almost impossible to return home after her -day’s work because “it was too empty and lonesome, and nothing to come -back for. You see,” she explained, “my youngest boy wasn’t right in his -head either and kept his bed for the last fifteen years of his life. -During all that time I took care of him the way one does of a baby, -and I hurried home every night with my heart in my mouth until I saw -that he was all right. He died the year this little girl was born and -she kind of took his place. I kept her in a day nursery while she was -little, and when she was seven years old the ladies there sent her -to school in one of the subnormal rooms and let her come back to the -nursery for her meals. I thought she was getting along all right and I -took care never to let her go near her mother.” The old woman made it -quite clear that this was because her daughter was keeping house with -a man with whom there had been no marriage ceremony. In her simple -code, to go to such a house would be to connive at sin, and while she -was grateful that the man had established a control over her daughter -which she herself had never been able to obtain, she always referred -to her daughter as “fallen,” although no one knew better than she how -unguarded the girl had been. As I saw how singularly free this mother -was from self-reproach and how untouched by any indecisions or remorses -for the past, I was once more impressed by the strength of the stout -habits acquired by those who early become accustomed to fight off black -despair. Such habits stand them in good stead in old age, and at least -protect them from those pensive regrets and inconsolable sorrows which -inevitably tend to surround whatever has once made for early happiness, -as soon as it has ceased to exist. - -Many individual instances are found in which a woman, hard pressed by -life, includes within her tenderness the mother of an illegitimate -child. A most striking example of this came to me through a woman -whom I knew years ago when she daily brought her three children to -the Hull-House day nursery, obliged to support them by her work in a -neighboring laundry because her husband had deserted her. I recall her -fatuous smile as she used to say that “Tommy is so pleased to see me at -night that I can hear him shout ‘Hello, ma’ when I am a block away.” -I had known Tommy through many years; periods of adversity when his -father was away were succeeded by periods of fitful prosperity when -his father returned from his wanderings with the circus with which “he -could always find work,” because he had once been a successful acrobat -and later a clown, and “so could turn his hand to anything that was -needed.” - -Perhaps it was unavoidable that Tommy should have made his best friends -among the warm-hearted circus people who were very kind to him after -his father’s death, and that long before the Child Labor Law permitted -him to sing in Chicago saloons, he was doing a successful business -singing in the towns of a neighboring state. He was a droll little -chap “without any sense about taking care of himself,” and in those -days his mother not only missed his cheerful companionship but was -constantly anxious about his health and morals. When he grew older and -became a professional he sent his mother money occasionally, although -never very much and never with any regularity. She was always so -pleased when it came that the two daughters supporting her with their -steady wages were inclined to resent her obvious gratification, as they -did the killing of the fatted calf on those rare occasions when the -prodigal returned “between seasons” to visit his family. - -It is possible that his mother thus early acquired the habit of -defending him, the black sheep, against the strictures of the good -children who so easily become the self-righteous when they feel “put -upon.” However that may be, five years ago, after one daughter had been -married to a skilled mechanic and the other, advanced to the position -of a forewoman, was supporting her mother in the comparative idleness -of keeping house for two people in three rooms, a forlorn girl appeared -with a note from Tommy asking his mother “to help her out until the -kid came and she could work again.” - -The steady daughter would not permit “such a girl to cross the -threshold,” and the little household was finally broken up upon the -issue. The daughter went to live with her married sister, while the -mother, having moved into one room with “Tommy’s girl,” went back to -the laundry in order to support herself and her guest. - -The daughters, having impressively told their mother that she could -come to live with them whenever she “was willing to come alone,” -dropped the entire situation. In doing this, they were doubtless -instinctively responding to a habit acquired through years of “keeping -clear of the queer people father knew in the circus and the saloon -crowds always hanging around Tommy,” in their secret hope to come -to know respectable young men. Conscious that they had back of them -the opinion of all righteous people they could not understand why -their mother, for the sake of a bad girl, had deserted them in this -praiseworthy effort in which hitherto she had been the prime mover. - -Tommy had sent his “girl” to his mother on the eve of his departure -for “a grand tour to the Klondike region,” and since then, almost four -years ago, she has heard nothing further from him. During the first -half of the time the two women struggled on together as best they -could, supporting themselves and the child who was brought daily to the -nursery by his grandmother. But the pretty little mother, gradually -going back to her old occupation of dancing in the vaudeville, had -more and more out-of-town engagements, and while she always divided -her earnings with the baby, the grandmother suspected her of losing -interest in him, a situation which was finally explained when she -confessed that she was about to be married to a cabaret manager who -“knew nothing of the past,” and to beg that the baby might stay where -he was. “Of course, I will pay board for him, but his father can be -made to do something, too, if we can only get the law on him.” - -It was at this point that I had the following conversation with the -grandmother, who was shrewd enough to see that the support of the -baby was being left upon her hands, and that she could expect help -from neither his father nor his mother, although she stoutly refused -the advice that the whole matter be taken into the Court of Domestic -Relations. “If I could only see Tommy once I think I could get him to -help, but I can’t find out where he is, and he may not be alive for -all I know; he was always that careless about himself. If he put on -a new red necktie he’d never know if his bare toes were pushing out -of his shoes. He probably didn’t get proper clothes for ‘the Klondike -region’ and he may have been frozen to death before this. But whatever -has happened to him, I can’t let his baby go. I suppose I’ve learned -to think differently about some things after all my years of living -with a light-minded husband. Maggie came to see me last week, for she -means to be a good daughter. She said that Carrie and Joe were buying a -house way out on the West Side, that they were going to move into it -this month, and that she and I could have a nice big room together. She -said, too, that Carrie would charge only half rate board for me, and -would be glad to have my help with her little children, for they both -think that nobody has such a way with children as I have. The night -before, when she and Carrie were playing with the little boys, they -remembered some of the funny songs father used to teach Tommy, and how -jolly we all were when he came home good-natured and would stand on his -head to make the candy fall out of his pockets. I know the two girls -really want me to come back, and that they are often homesick, but when -I pointed to the bed where the baby was and asked, ‘What about him?’ -Maggie turned as hard as nails and said as quick as a flash, ‘We’re -all agreed that you’ll have to put him in an institution. We’ll never -have any chance with the nice people in a swell neighborhood like ours -if you bring the baby.’ She looked real white then, and I felt sorry -for her when she said, ‘Why, they might even think he was my child, -you never can tell,’ although she was ashamed of that afterwards and -cried a little before she left. She told me that she and Carrie, when -they were children, were always talking of what they would do when they -got old enough to work, how they would take care of me and move to a -part of the city where nobody would know anything about the outlandish -way their father and Tommy used to carry on. Of course, it was almost -telling me that they didn’t want me to come to see them if I kept the -baby.” - -My old friend was quite unable to formulate the motives which underlay -her determination, but she implied that clinging to this helpless child -was part of her unwavering affection for her son when, without any -preamble, she concluded the conversation with the remark, “It’s the way -I always felt about him,” as if further explanation were unnecessary. - -It was all doubtless a manifestation of Nature’s anxious care--so -determined upon survival and so indifferent to morals--that had induced -her long devotion to her one child least equipped to take care of -himself; and for the same reason the helpless little creature whose -existence no one else was deeply concerned to preserve had become so -entwined in her affections that separation was impossible. - -From time to time a mother goes further than this, in her determination -to deal justly with the unhappy situation in which her daughter is -placed. When the mother of a so-called fallen girl is of that type -of respectability which is securely founded upon narrow precepts, -inherited through generations of careful living, it requires genuine -courage to ignore the social stigma in order to consider only the moral -development of her child, although the result of such courage doubtless -minimizes the chagrin and disgrace for the girl herself. - -In one such instance the parents of the girl, who had been prevented -from marrying her lover because the families on both sides objected -to differences of religion, have openly faced the situation and made -the baby a beloved member of the household. The pretty young mother -arrogates to herself a hint of martyrdom for her faith’s sake, but the -discipline and responsibility are working wonders for her character. -In her hope of earning money enough for two, she has been stirred to -new ambition and is eagerly attending a business college. She suffers -a certain amount of social ostracism but at the same time her steady -courage excites genuine admiration. - -In another case a fearless mother exacts seven dollars a week in -payment of the board for her daughter and the baby, although the -girl earns but eight dollars a week in a cigar factory and buys such -clothing for two as she can with the remaining dollar. She admits that -it is “hard sledding,” but that the baby is “mighty nice.” Whatever -her state of mind, she evidently has no notion of rebelling against -her mother’s authority, and is humbly grateful that she was not turned -out of doors when the situation was discovered. It is possible that -the mother’s remorse at her failure to guard her daughter from wrong -doing enables her thus grimly to defy social standards which, although -they are based upon stern and narrow tenets, nevertheless epitomize the -bitter wisdom of generations. Such mothers, overcoming that timidity -which makes it so difficult to effect changes in daily living, make a -genuine contribution to the solution of the vexed problem. - -In spite of much obtuseness on the part of those bound by the iron -fetters of convention, these individual cases suggest a practical -method of procedure. For quite as pity and fierce maternal affection -for their own children drove mothers all over the world to ostracize -and cruelly punish the “bad woman” who would destroy the home by -taking away the breadwinner and the father, so it is possible that, -under the changed conditions of modern life, this same pity for little -children, this same concern that, even if they are the children of the -outcast, they must still be nourished and properly reared, will make -good the former wrongs. There has certainly been a great modification -of the harsh judgments meted out in such cases, as women all over the -world have endeavored, through the old bungling method of trial and -error, to deal justly with individual situations. Each case has been -quietly judged by reference to an altered moral standard, for while the -ethical code like the legal code stands in need of constant revision, -the remodeling of the former is always private, tacit and informal in -marked contrast to the public and ceremonious acts of law-makers and -judges when the latter is changed. - -Such measure of success as the organized Woman’s Movement has attained -in the direction of a larger justice has come through an overwhelming -desire to cherish both the illegitimate child and his unfortunate -mother. In addition to that, the widespread effort of modern women -to obtain a recognized legal status for themselves and their own -children has also been largely dependent upon this desire, at least in -the beginnings of the movement. Women slowly had discovered that the -severe attitude towards the harlot had not only become embodied in the -statutory law concerning her, as thousands of court decisions every -day bear testimony, but had become registered in the laws and social -customs pertaining to good women as well; the Code Napoleon, which -prohibited that search be made for the father of an illegitimate child, -also denied the custody of her children to the married mother; those -same states in which the laws considered a little girl of ten years -the seducer of a man of well-known immorality, did not allow a married -woman to hold her own property nor to retain her own wages. - -The enthusiasm responsible for the worldwide Woman’s Movement was -generated in the revolt against such gross injustices. The most -satisfactory achievements of the movement have been secured in the -Scandinavian countries, where the splendid code of laws protecting -all women and children was founded on the instinct to defend the -weakest, and upon a determination to lighten that social opprobrium -which makes it so unreasonably difficult for a mother to support a -child born out of wedlock. In Germany, when the presence of over a -million illegitimate children under the age of fourteen years made -the situation acute, the best women of the nation, asserting that -all attempts to deal out social punishment upon the mothers resulted -only in a multitude of ill-nourished and weakened children, founded -“The Mutterchutz” Movement. Through its efforts to secure justice and -protection for these mothers, it has come to be the great defender of -the legal rights of all German women. - -Many achievements of the modern movement demonstrate that woman deals -most efficiently with fresh experiences when she coalesces them into -the impressions Memory has kept in store for her. Eagerly seeking -continuity with the past by her own secret tests of affinity, she -reinforces and encourages Memory’s instinctive processes of selection. -If she develops her craving for continuity into a willingness to -subordinate a part to the whole and into a sustained and self-forgetful -search for congruity and harmony with a life which is greater than -hers, she may lift the entire selective process into the realm of Art; -at least so far as Art is dependent upon proportion and so far as -beauty hangs upon an ineffable balance between restraint and inclusion. -Hungry for this finely proportioned living, she may at length become a -disciple of Diotema, the wisest woman of antiquity, who asserted that -the life which above all we should live, must be discovered by faithful -and strenuous search for ever-widening kinds of beauty. - -In woman’s search for “the eternal moment,” balanced independently of -time itself because so melted both into memories of the past and into -surmises of new beauty for the future of her children’s children, she -may recognize as one of the universal harmonies the touching devotion -of the endless multitude of mothers who were the humble vessels for -life’s continuance and who carried the burden in safety to the next -generation. - -Maternal affection and solicitude, in woman’s remembering heart, -may at length coalesce into a chivalric protection for all that is -young and unguarded. This chivalry of women expressing protection for -those at the bottom of society, so far as it has already developed, -suggests a return to that idealized version of chivalry which was the -consecration of strength to the defence of weakness, unlike the actual -chivalry of the armed knight who served his lady with gentle courtesy -while his fields were ploughed by peasant women misshapen through toil -and hunger. - -As an example of this new chivalry, the Hungarian women have recently -risen in protest against a proposed military regulation requiring that -all young women in domestic service, who are living in the vicinity -of barracks, be examined each week by medical officers in order to -protect the soldiers from disease. The good women in Hungary spiritedly -resented the assumption that these girls, simply because they are the -least protected of any class in the community, should be subjected to -this insult. - -An instance of this sort once again illustrates that moral passion -is the only solvent for prejudice, and that women have come to feel -reproached and disturbed when they ignore the dynamic urgency of -memories as fundamental as those upon which prohibitive conventions are -based. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - WOMEN’S MEMORIES--INTEGRATING INDUSTRY - - -If it has always been the mission of literature to translate the -particular act into something of the universal, to reduce the element -of crude pain in the isolated experience by bringing to the sufferer a -realization that his is but the common lot, this mission may have been -performed through such stories as that of the Devil Baby for simple, -hardworking women who at any given moment compose the bulk of the women -in the world. - -Certainly some of the visitors to the Devil Baby attempted to -generalize and evidently found a certain enlargement of the horizon, -an interpretation of life as it were, in the effort. They exhibited -that confidence which sometimes comes to the more literate person -when, finding himself morally isolated among those hostile to his -immediate aims, his reading assures him that other people in the world -have thought as he does. Later when he dares to act on the conviction -his own experience has forced upon him, he has become so conscious of -a cloud of witnesses torn out of literature and warmed into living -comradeship, that he scarcely distinguishes them from the likeminded -people actually in the world whom he has later discovered as a -consequence of his deed. - -In some of the reminiscences related by working women I was surprised, -not so much by the fact that memory could integrate the individual -experience into a sense of relation with the more impersonal aspects -of life, as that the larger meaning had been obtained when the -fructifying memory had had nothing to feed upon but the harshest and -most monotonous of industrial experiences. - -I held a conversation with one such woman when she came to confess that -her long struggle was over and that she and her sister had at last -turned their faces to the poorhouse. She clearly revealed not only -that she had caught a glimpse of the great social forces of her day, -but that she had had the ability to modify her daily living by what she -had perceived. - -Perhaps, under the shadow of a tragic surrender, she had obtained a -new sense of values, or at least had made up her mind that it was not -worth while any longer to conceal her genuine experiences, for she -talked more fully of her hard life than I had ever heard her before -in the many years I had known her. She related in illuminating detail -an incident in her long effort of earning, by ill-paid and unskilled -labor, the money with which to support her decrepit mother and her -imbecile sister. For more than fifty years she had never for a moment -considered the possibility of sending either of them to a public -institution, although it had become almost impossible to maintain such -a household after the mother, who lived to be ninety-four years old, -had become utterly distraught. - -She was still sharing her scanty livelihood with the feeble-minded -sister, although she herself was unable to do anything but wash -vegetables and peel potatoes in a small restaurant of her neighborhood. -The cold water necessary to these processes made her hands, already -crippled with rheumatism, so bad that on some days she could not hold -anything smaller than a turnip, although the other people in the -kitchen surreptitiously helped her all they could and the cooks gave -her broken food to carry home to the ever hungry sister. - -She told of her monotonous years in a box factory, where she had always -worked with the settled enmity of the other employes. They regarded her -as a pace setter, and she, obliged to work fast and furiously in order -to keep three people, and full of concern for her old mother’s many -unfulfilled needs, had never understood what the girls meant when they -talked about standing by each other. - -She did not change in her attitude even when she found the prices of -piece work went down lower and lower, so that at last she was obliged -to work overtime late into the night in order to earn the small amount -she had previously earned by day. She was seventy years old when the -legality of the Illinois Ten Hour Law was contested, and her employer -wanted her to testify in court that she was opposed to the law because -she could not have supported her old mother all those years unless -she had been allowed to work nights. She found herself at last dimly -conscious of what it was that her long time enemies, the union girls, -had been trying to do, and a subconscious loyalty to her own kind made -it impossible for her to bear testimony against them. She did not -analyze her motives but told me that, fearing she might yield to her -employer’s request, in sheer panic she had abruptly left his factory -and moved her helpless household to another part of the city on the -very day she was expected to appear in court. In her haste she left -four days unpaid wages behind her, and moving the family took all the -money she had painstakingly saved for the coming winter’s coal. She had -unknowingly moved into a neighborhood of cheap restaurants, and from -that time on she worked in any of them which would employ her until now -at last she was too feeble to be of much use to anybody. - -Although she had never joined the Union which finally became so -flourishing in the box factory she had left, she was conscious that in -a moment of great temptation she had refrained from seeking her own -advantage at the expense of others. As she bunglingly tried to express -her motives, she said: “The Irish--you know I was ten years old when we -came over--often feel like that; it isn’t exactly that you are sorry -after you have done a thing, nor so much that you don’t do it because -you know you will be sorry afterwards, nor that anything in particular -will happen to you if you do it, but that you haven’t the heart for it, -that it goes against your nature.” - -When I expressed my admiration for her prompt action she replied: -“I have never told this before except to one person, to a woman who -was organizing for the garment workers and who came to my house one -night about nine o’clock, just as I was having my supper. I had it -late in those days because I used to scrub the restaurant floor after -everybody left. My sister was asleep back of the stove, I looked sharp -not to wake her up and I don’t believe the Union woman ever knew that -she wasn’t just like other people. The organizer was looking for some -of the women living in our block who had been taking work from the -shops ever since the strike was on. She was clean tired out, and when -I offered her a cup of tea she said as quick as a flash, ‘You are not -a scab, are you?’ I just held up my poor old hands before her face, -swollen red from scrubbing and full of chilblains, and I told her that -I couldn’t sew a stitch if my life depended on it. - -“When I offered her the second cup of tea--a real educated-looking -woman she was, and she must have been used to better tea than mine -boiled out of the old tea leaves the restaurant cook always let me -bring home--I said to her, ‘My hands aren’t the only reason I’m not -scabbing. I see too much of the miserable wages these women around here -get for their sweatshop work, and I’ve done enough harm already with -my pace setting, and my head so full of my poor old mother that I never -thought of anybody else.’ She smiled at me and nodded her head over my -old cracked cup. ‘You are a Union woman all right,’ she said. ‘You have -the true spirit whether you carry a card or not. I am mighty glad to -have met you after all the scabs I have talked to this day.’” - -The old woman repeated the words as one who solemnly recalls the great -phrase which raised him into a knightly order, revealing a secret pride -in her unavowed fellowship with Trades Unions, for she had vaguely -known at the time of the Ten Hour trial that powerful federations of -them had paid for the lawyers and had gathered the witnesses. Some -dim memory of Irish ancestors, always found on the side of the weak -in the unending struggle with the oppressions of the strong, may have -determined her action. She may have been dominated by a subconscious -suggestion “from the dust that sleeps,” a suggestion so simple, so -insistent and monotonous that it had victoriously survived its original -sphere of conduct. - -It was in keeping with the drab colored experiences of her seventy hard -years that her contribution to the long struggle should have been one -of inglorious flight, nevertheless she had gallantly recognized the -Trades Union organizer as a comrade in a common cause. She cherished in -her heart the memory of one golden moment when she had faintly heard -the trumpets summon her and had made her utmost response. - -When the simple story of a lifetime of sacrifice to family obligations -and of one supreme effort to respond to a social claim came to an -end, I reflected that for more than half a century the narrator had -freely given all her time, all her earnings, all her affections, and -yet during the long period had developed no habit of self-pity. At a -crucial moment she had been able to estimate life, not in terms of her -self-immolation but in relation to a hard pressed multitude of fellow -workers. - -As she sat there, a tall, gaunt woman broken through her devotion, she -inevitably suggested the industrial wrongs and oppressions suffered by -the women who, forgotten and neglected, perform so much of the unlovely -drudgery upon which our industrial order depends. At the moment I could -recall only one of her starved ambitions which to my knowledge had ever -been attained. When a friend tenderly placed a pair of white satin -slippers upon the coffined feet of her old mother who for more than -ninety years had travelled a long hard road and had stumbled against -many stones, the loving heart of the aged daughter overflowed. “It is -herself would know how I prayed for white satin shoes for the burial, -thinking as how they might make it up to mother, she who never knew -where the next pair was coming from and often had to borrow to go to -Mass.” I remembered that as my friend and I left the spotless bare room -wrapped in the mystery of death and walked back to Hull-House together, -we passed a little child who proudly challenged our attention to his -new shoes, “shiny” in the first moment of joyous possession. We could -but recognize the epitome of the hard struggle of the very poor, from -the moment they scramble out of their rude cradles until they are -lowered into their “partial payment” graves, to keep shoes upon their -feet. The rare moments of touching pleasure when the simple desire for -“a new pair” is fulfilled are doubtless indicated in the early fairy -tales by the rewards of glistening red shoes or glass slippers to the -good child; in the religious allegories which turn life itself into -one long pilgrimage, by the promises to the faithful that they shall -be shod with the sandals of righteousness and to the blessed ones, who -having formally renounced the world, forswearing shoes altogether and -humbly walking on without them, that their bruised and torn feet shall -yet gleam lily-white on the streets of Paradise. - -I suddenly saw in this worn old woman who sat before me, what George -Sand described as “a rare and austere production of human suffering” -and was so filled with a fresh consciousness of the long barren road -travelled by the patient mother and daughter, that it merged into the -Via Dolorosa of the Poor of the world. It may have been through this -suggestion of an actual street that my memory vividly evoked a group -of Russian pilgrims I had once seen in Holy Week as they triumphantly -approached Jerusalem. Their heads, garlanded in wild flowers still -fresh with early dew, were lifted in joyous singing but their broken -and bleeding feet, bound in white cloth and thrust into sandals of -stripped bark, were the actual sacrifice they were devoutly offering at -the Sepulchre. - -As my mind swiftly came back from the blossoming fields of Palestine to -the crowded industrial district of Chicago, I found myself recalling -a pensive remark made by the gifted Rachel Varnhagen, a century ago. -“Careless Fate never requires of us what we are really capable of -doing.” - -This overwhelming sense of the waste in woman’s unused capacity came -to me again during a Garment Workers’ strike, when some of the young -women involved were sitting in the very chairs occupied so recently -by the visitors to the Devil Baby. They brought a curious reminder of -the overworked and heavily burdened mothers who had yet been able to -keep the taste of life in their mouths and who could not be overborne, -because their endurance was rooted in simple and instinctive human -affections. During the long strike these young women endured all -sorts of privations without flinching; some of them actual hunger, -most of them disapprobation from their families, and all of them a -loss of that money which alone could procure for them the American -standards so highly prized. Through participation in the strike they -all took the risk of losing their positions, and yet, facing a future -of unemployment and wretchedness, they displayed a stubborn endurance -which held out week after week. - -Perhaps because of my recent conversations with old women I received -the impression that the very power of resistance in such a socialized -undertaking as a strike, presents a marked contrast in both its -origin and motives to the traditional type of endurance exercised by -the mothers and grandmothers of the strikers or by their acquaintances -among domestic women living in the same crowded tenements. - -When a mother cares for a sick child for days and nights without -relief, the long period of solicitude and dread exhausting every -particle of her vitality, her strength is constantly renewed from the -vast reservoirs of maternal love and pity whenever she touches the -soft flesh or hears the plaintive little voice. But such girls as the -strikers represent are steadily bending their energies to loveless -and mechanical labor, and are obliged to go on without this direct -and personal renewal of their powers of resistance. They must be -sustained as soldiers on a forced march are sustained, by their sense -of comradeship in high endeavor. Naturally, some of the young working -women are never able to achieve this and can keep on with the monotony -of factory work only when they persuade themselves that they are -getting ready, and have not yet begun their own lives, because real -living for them must include a home of their own and children to “do -for.” - -Such unutilized dynamic power illustrates the stupid waste of those -impulses and affections, registered in the very bodily structure -itself, which are ruthlessly pushed aside and considered of no moment -to the work in which so many women are now engaged. My conversations -with these girls of modern industry continually filled me with surprise -that, required as they are to work under conditions unlike those -which women have ever before encountered, they have not only made a -remarkable adaptation but have so ably equipped themselves with a new -set of motives. The girl who stands on one spot for fifty-six hours -each week as she feeds a machine, endlessly repeating the identical -motions of her arms and wrists, is much further from the type of -woman’s traditional activity than her mother who cooks, cleans, and -washes for the household. The young woman who spends her time in -packing biscuits into boxes which come to her down a chute and are -whirled away from her on a miniature trolley, has never even seen how -the biscuits are made, for the factory proper is separated from the -packing room by a door with the sign “No Admittance.” She must work all -day without the vital and direct interest in the hourly results of her -labors which her mother had. - -These girls present a striking antithesis to the visitors to the Devil -Baby who in their forlorn and cheerless efforts were merely continuing -the traditional struggle against brutality, indifference, and neglect -that helpless old people and little children might not be trampled -in the dust. For these simple women it is the conditions under which -the struggle is waged which have changed, rather than the nature of -the contest. Even in this unlovely struggle, the older women utilize -well-seasoned faculties, in contrast to the newly developed powers -required by the multitude of young girls who for the first time in the -long history of woman’s labor, are uniting their efforts in order to -obtain opportunities for a fuller and more normal living. Organizing -with men and women of divers nationalities they are obliged to form new -ties absolutely unlike family bonds. On the other hand, these girls -possess the enormous advantage over women of the domestic type of -having experienced the discipline arising from impersonal obligations -and of having tasted the freedom from economic dependence, so valuable -that too heavy a price can scarcely be paid for it. - -This clash between the traditional conception of woman’s duty narrowed -solely to family obligations and the claims arising from the complexity -of the industrial situation, manifests scarcely a suggestion of -the latent war so vaguely apprehended from the earliest times as a -possibility between men and women. Even the restrained Greeks believed -that when the obscure women at the bottom of society could endure no -longer and “the oppressed women struck back, it would not be justice -which came but the revenge of madness.” My own observation has -discovered little suggesting this mood, certainly not among the women -active in the Labor Movement. - -I recall the recent experience of an organizer whom I very much admire -for her valiant services in the garment trades and whom I have known -from her earliest girlhood. Her character confirms the contention that -our chief concern with the past is not what we have done, nor the -adventures we have met, but the moral reaction of bygone events within -ourselves. - -As an orphaned child she had been cared for by two aunts who owned -between them a little shop which pretended to be a tailoring -establishment, but which in reality was a distributing centre for home -work among the Italian women and newly immigrated Russian Jews living -in the neighborhood. Her aunts, because they were Americans, superior -in education and resources to the humble home workers, by dint of much -bargaining both with the wholesale houses from which they procured the -garments, and with the foreign women to whom they distributed them, -had been able to secure a very good commission. For many years they -had made a comfortable living, and in addition had acquired an exalted -social position in the neighborhood, for they were much looked up to by -those so dependent upon them for work. - -Although my friend was expected to help in the shop as much as -possible, she was sent regularly to school and had already “graduated -from the eighth grade,” when a law was passed in the Illinois -legislature, popularly known as the Anti Sweat-shop Law, which, within -a year, had ruined her aunts’ business. After they had been fined in -court for violating the law, a case which obtained much publicity -because smallpox was discovered in two of the tenement houses in -which the home finishers were living, the aunts were convinced that -they could not continue to give out work to the Italian and Russian -Jewish women. Reluctantly foregoing their commissions they then tried -crowding their own house and shop with workers, only to be again taken -into court and fined when the inspector discovered their kitchen and -bedrooms full of half-finished garments. They both flatly refused to -go into a factory to work, and after a futile attempt to revive the -tailoring business, never very genuine, they were finally reduced -to the dimensions of the tiny shop itself, which, under the new -regulations as to light and air could accommodate but three people. My -friend was at once taken from school and made one of these ill-paid -workers and the little household was held together on the pittance the -three could earn. - -It was but natural, perhaps, that as these displaced proprietors became -poorer they should ever grow more bitter against the reformers and -the Trades Unionists who, between them, had secured the “high-brow” -legislation which had destroyed their honest business. - -The niece was married at eighteen to a clerk in a neighboring -department store who worked four evenings a week and every other Sunday -in his determination to get on. The bride moved into a more prosperous -neighborhood and I saw little of her husband or herself for ten -years, during which time they made four payments on the little house -they occupied fully three miles from the now abandoned sweat-shop. Her -husband worked hard with a consuming desire to rear his children in -good surroundings as much as possible unlike the slums, as he somewhat -brutally designated the neighborhood of his own youth. Through his -unrelieved years in the cheap department store where, however, he had -always felt a great satisfaction in being well dressed and had resisted -any attempts of his fellow clerks to shorten their preposterous hours -by trades-union organization, his health was gradually undermined and -he finally developed tuberculosis. He was unable to support his family -during the last decade of his life, and in her desperate need my friend -went back to the only trade she had, that of finishing garments. During -these years, although she sold the little house and placed her boy in -a semi-philanthropic institution, she steadily faced the problem of -earning insufficient wages for the support of the family, the pang -of her failure constantly augmented by the knowledge that, in spite -of her utmost efforts, the invalid never received the food and care -his condition required. The clothing factory in which she then worked -illustrated the lowest ebb in the fortune of the garment workers in -American cities when, the sweat shop having been largely eliminated -through the efforts of the factory inspectors, the workers from every -land were crowded into the hastily organized factories. Separated by -their diverse languages and through their long habits of home work, -they had become too secretive even to tell one another the amount -of wages each was receiving. It was as if the competition had been -transferred from the sweat shop contractors to the individual workers -themselves, sitting side by side in the same room, and perhaps it was -not surprising that the workers felt as if they had been hunted down -into their very kitchens and their poverty cruelly exposed to public -view. - -My friend shared this wretchedness and carried into it the bitterness -of her early experience. She says now that she never caught even a -suggestion that this might be but a transitional period to a more -ordered sort of industrial life. - -She did not tell me just when and how she had come to the conclusion -that wages must be higher, that legal enactment for better conditions -must be supplemented by the efforts of the workers themselves, but it -was absolutely clear that she had independently reached that conclusion -long before a strike in the clothing industry brought her into contact -with the organized Labor Movement. It was certainly not until the year -of her husband’s death that she became aware of the industrial changes -which had been taking place during the twenty-two years since her -aunts’ business had been ruined. - -She was grateful that the knowledge had first come to her through -an Italian girl working by her side, for, as she explained, her old -attitude toward the “dagoes,” as a people to be exploited, had to be -thoroughly changed before she could be of much real use in organizing a -trade in which so many Italians were engaged. Even during the strike -itself, to which she was thoroughly committed, having been convinced -both of its inevitability and of the justice of its demands, she -resented the fact that the leadership was in the hands of Russian Jews -and, secure in her Americanism, she felt curiously aloof from the group -with which she was so intimately identified. - -A few months after the strike my friend fortunately secured a place in -a manufactory of men’s clothing, in which there had been instituted -a Trade Board for the adjustment of grievances, and where wages and -hours were determined by joint agreement. When she was elected to -the position of shop representative she found herself in the midst -of one of the most interesting experiments being carried on in the -United States, not only from the standpoint of labor but from that of -applying the principles of representative government in a new field. -She felt the stimulus of being a part in that most absorbing of all -occupations--the reconstruction of a living world. - -One evening, at Hull-House, as she came out of a citizenship class -she had been attending, she tried to express some of the implications -of the great undertaking in which more than ten thousand clothing -employes are engaged. She repeated the statement made by the leader -of the class that it was the solemn duty and obligation of the United -States not only to keep a republican form of government alive upon -the face of the earth and to fulfill the expectations of the founders -but to modify and develope that type of government as conditions -changed; he had said that the spirit of the New England town meeting -might be manifested through a referendum vote in a large city, and -that it must find some such vehicle of expression if it would survive -under changed conditions. Her eyes were quite shining as she made her -application to the experiment being carried on in the great clothing -factory, with its many shops and departments unified in mutual effort. -Evidently her attention had been caught by the similarity between the -town meeting in its relation to a more elaborated form of government -and the small isolated sweat-shop such as that formerly managed by -her aunts, in its relation to the “biggest clothing factory in the -world.” She had heard her fellow workers say that the “greenhorn” often -found much friendliness in a small shop where his own language was -spoken, and where he could earn at least a humble living until he grew -accustomed to the habits of a new country, whereas he would have been -lost and terrified in a factory. She felt very strongly the necessity -of translating this sense of comradeship and friendliness into larger -terms, and she believed that it could be done by the united workers. - -As she sat by my desk, this woman who had not yet attained her fortieth -year looked much older, as if illustrating the saying that hard labor -so early robs the poor man of his youth that it makes his old age too -long. She seemed to me for the moment to have gathered up in her own -experience the transition from old conditions to new and to be standing -on the threshold of a great development in the lives of working women. - -As if she were conscious that I was recalling her past with which I -had been so familiar, she began to speak again. “You know that I have -both of my children with me now; the girl graduates from the Normal -School in June and hopes to put herself through the University after -she has taught for a few years. She reminds me of her father in her -anxiety to know people of education, to get on in the world, and I am -sure she will succeed. The boy has caught the other motive of pulling -up with his own trade and of standing by the organized Labor Movement. -Of course, sewing was too dull for him, and besides he grew ambitious -to be a machinist when he was in the Industrial School where I put -him with such a breaking of the heart when he was only ten years old. -He has to admit, however, that even his own Machinists’ Union, with -its traditional trade agreements and joint boards, is far behind our -experiment. He went with me to the banquet on May Day. We had marched -through the Loop in celebration of our new agreement and had stirring -speeches at the Auditorium in the afternoon, but it was in the evening -that we really felt at home with each other. When he saw the tremendous -enthusiasm for our beloved leader--my boy, I am sorry to say, is a -little inclined to despise foreigners and also tailors because they -aren’t as big and brawny as the members of his dear Machinists’ -Union--and really caught some notion of the statesmanlike ability -required for the successful management of such a complicated and -difficult industrial experiment, and when he realized that the ten per -cent increase provided for in the new agreement was to go in greater -proportion to those at the lower end of the scale, he suddenly forgot -his prejudices and I saw him applauding with his hands and feet as if -he had really let loose at last. - -“Of course, it hasn’t been easy for me even during these later years -to keep Helen in school and to support my aunt who is now too old and -broken even to keep house for us. But we have got on, and quite aside -from everything else I am thankful to have had a small share in this -forward step in American democracy--at least, that’s what they called -it at the banquet,” she ended shyly. - -The experience of my friend bore testimony that in spite of all their -difficulties and handicaps, something of social value is forced out -of the very situation itself among that vast multitude of women whose -oppression through the centuries has typified a sense of helpless and -intolerable wrongs. Many of them, even the older ones, are being made -slowly conscious of the subtle and impalpable filaments that secretly -bind their experiences and moods into larger relations, and they are -filled with a new happiness analogous to that of little children when -they are first taught to join hands in ordered play. - -Is such enthusiastic participation in organized effort but one -manifestation of that desire for liberty and for a larger participation -in life, found in great women’s souls all over the world? - -In pursuance of such a desire the working women have the enormous -advantage of constant association with each other, an advantage dimly -perceived even by pioneer women two hundred years ago. - -The hostesses of the famous drawing-rooms of the eighteenth century -laid great stress on human intercourse as the individual’s best means -of cultivation. Certain French women gave as a _raison d’etre_ for -their brilliant salons that “people must come together in order to -exercise justice,” and they became enormously proud of the fact that by -the end of the century “all Europe was thrown into a state of agitation -if injustice were committed in any corner of it.” - -This hypothesis was gallantly laid down a hundred years before the -industrial revolution which, in its consummation, has congregated -millions of women into factories all over the world. These myriad -women, most of them young and untrained and all of them working under -new industrial conditions, are gradually learning to “exercise justice” -if only because they have “come together.” Their association has been -accomplished under the stress of a common necessity, and they have -been tutored in a mass at the hard school of bitter experience. - -Were the sheltered drawing-room ladies the forerunners of such -contemporary advocates of industrial justice or do we find a better -prototype in those simple old women who, having reared their own -children and having come to be regarded as a depository for domestic -wisdom, dispense sound advice to bewildered mothers which always -contains the admonition, “Never be partial to any one of them, always -be as just as you know how.” - -Possibly women’s organizations of all types are but providing -ever-widening channels through which woman’s moral energy may flow, -revivifying life by new streams fed in the upper reaches of her -undiscovered capacities. In either case, we may predict that to -control old impulses so that they may be put to social uses, to serve -the present through memories hoarding woman’s genuine experiences, -may liberate energies hitherto unused and may result in a notable -enrichment of the pattern of human culture. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - WOMEN’S MEMORIES--CHALLENGING WAR - - -I was sharply reminded of an obvious division between high tradition -and current conscience in several conversations I held during the -great European war with women who had sent their sons to the front -in unquestioning obedience to the demands of the State, but who, -owing to their own experiences, had found themselves in the midst of -that ever-recurring struggle, often tragic and bitter, between two -conceptions of duty, one of which is antagonistic to the other. - -One such woman,[1] who had long been identified with the care of -delinquent children and had worked for many years towards the -establishment of a Children’s Court, had asked me many questions -concerning the psychopathic clinic in the Juvenile Court in Chicago, -comparing it to the brilliant work accomplished in her own city through -the coöperation of the university faculty. The Imperial government -itself had recently recognized the value of this work and at the -outbreak of the war was rapidly developing a system through which the -defective child might be discovered early in his school career, and -might not only be saved from delinquency but such restricted abilities -as he possessed be trained for the most effective use. “Through all -these years,” she said, “I had grown accustomed to the fact that the -government was deeply concerned in the welfare of the least promising -child. I had felt my own efforts so identified with it that I had -unconsciously come to regard the government as an agency for nurturing -human life and had apparently forgotten its more primitive functions. - -[1] The following conversation is a composite made from several talks -held with each of two women representing both sides of the conflict. -Their opinions and observations are merged into one because in so many -particulars they were either identical or overlapping. Both women -called themselves patriots, but each had become convinced of the folly -of war. - -“I was proud of the fact that my son held a state position as -professor of Industrial Chemistry in the University, because I knew -that the research in his department would ultimately tend to alleviate -the harshness of factory conditions, and to make for the well-being of -the working classes in whose children I had become so interested. - -“When my son’s regiment was mobilized and sent to the front I think -that it never occurred to me, any more than it did to him, to question -his duty. His professional training made him a valuable member of the -Aviation Corps, and when, in those first weeks of high patriotism his -letters reported successful scouting or even devastating raids, I felt -only a solemn satisfaction. But gradually through the months, when -always more of the people’s food supply and constantly more men were -taken by the government for its military purposes, when I saw the state -institutions for defectives closed, the schools abridged or dismissed, -women and children put to work in factories under hours and conditions -which had been legally prohibited years before, when the very -governmental officials who had been so concerned for the welfare of the -helpless were bent only upon the destruction of the enemy at whatever -cost to their fellow-citizens, the State itself gradually became for me -an alien and hostile thing. - -“In response to the appeal made by the government to the instinct of -self-preservation, the men of the nation were ardent and eager to -take any possible risks, to suffer every hardship, and were proud to -give their lives in their country’s service. But was it inevitable, -I constantly asked myself, that the great nations of Europe should -be reduced to such a primitive appeal? Why should they ignore all -the other motives which enter into modern patriotism and are such an -integral part of devotion to the state that they must in the end be -reckoned with? - -“I am sure that I had reached these conclusions before my own tragedy -came, before my son was fatally wounded in a scouting aëroplane and -his body later thrown overboard into a lonely swamp. It was six weeks -before I knew what had happened and it was during that period that I -felt most strongly the folly and waste of putting men, trained as my -son had been, to the barbaric business of killing. This tendency in -my thinking may have been due to a hint he had given me in the very -last letter I ever received from him, of a change that was taking -place within himself. He wrote that whenever he heard the firing of -a huge field-piece he knew that the explosion consumed years of the -taxes which had been slowly accumulated by some hard-working farmer or -shopkeeper, and that he unconsciously calculated how fast industrial -research would have gone forward, had his department been given once -a decade the costs of a single day of warfare, with the government’s -command to turn back into alleviation of industrial conditions the -taxes which the people had paid. He regretted that he was so accustomed -to analysis that his mind would not let the general situation alone -but wearily went over it again and again; and then he added that this -war was tearing down the conception of government which had been so -carefully developed during this generation in the minds of the very men -who had worked hardest to fulfill that conception. - -“Although the letter sounded like a treatise on government, I knew -there was a personal pang somewhere behind this sombre writing, even -though he added his old joking promise that when their fathers were no -longer killed in industry, he would see what he could do for my little -idiots. - -“At the very end of the letter he wrote, and they were doubtless the -last words he ever penned, that he felt as if science herself in this -mad world had also become cruel and malignant. - -“I learned later that it was at this time that he had been consulted -in the manufacture of asphyxiating gases, because the same gases -are used in industry and he had made experiments to determine -their poisonousness in different degrees of dilution. The original -investigation with which he had been identified had been carried on -that the fumes released in a certain industrial process might be -prevented from injuring the men who worked in the factory. I know how -hard it must have been for him to put knowledge acquired in his long -efforts to protect normal living to the brutal use of killing men. It -was literally a forced act of prostitution.” - -As if to free her son’s memory from any charge of lack of patriotism, -after a few moments she continued: “These modern men of science are -red-blooded, devoted patriots, facing dangers of every sort in mines -and factories and leading strenuous lives in spite of the popular -conception of the pale anæmic scholar, but because they are equally -interested in scientific experiments wherever they may be carried on, -they inevitably cease to think of national boundaries in connection -with their work. The international mind, which really does exist in -spite of the fact that it is not yet equipped with adequate organs -for international government, has become firmly established, at least -among scientists. They have known the daily stimulus of a wide and free -range of contacts. They have become interpenetrated with the human -consciousness of fellow scientists all over the world. - -“I hope that I am no whining coward--my son gave his life to his -country as many another brave man has done, but I do envy the mothers -whose grief is at least free from this fearful struggle of opposing -ideals and traditions. My old father, who is filled with a solemn pride -over his grandson’s gallant record and death, is most impatient with -me. I heard him telling a friend the other day that my present state -of mind was a pure demonstration of the folly of higher education for -women; that it was preposterous and more than human flesh could bear -to combine an intellectual question on the function of government with -a mother’s sharp agony over the death of her child. He said he had -always contended that women, at least those who bear children, had no -business to consider questions of this sort, and that the good sense -of his position was demonstrated now that such women were losing their -children in war. It was enough for women to know that government -waged war to protect their firesides and to preserve the nation from -annihilation; at any rate, they should keep their minds free from silly -attempts to reason it out. It’s all Bertha von Suttner’s book and other -nonsense that the women are writing, he exploded at the end.” - -Then as if she were following another line of reminiscence she -began again. “My son left behind him a war bride, for he obeyed the -admonition of the statesmen, as well as the commands of the military -officers in those hurried heroic days. But the hasty wooing betrayed -all his ideals of marriage quite as fighting men of other nations -did violence to his notions of patriotism, and the recklessness of a -destructive air raid outraged his long devotion to science. Of course -his child will be a comfort to us and his poor little bride is filled -with a solemn patriotism which never questions any aspect of the -situation. When she comes to see us and I listen to the interminable -talk she has with my father, I am grateful for the comfort they give -each other, but when I hear them repeating those hideous stories of -the conduct of the enemy which accumulate every month and upon which -the war spirit continually feeds itself, I with difficulty refrain from -crying out upon them that he whose courage and devotion they praise so -loudly would never have permitted such talk of hatred and revenge in -his presence; that he who lived in the regions of science and whose -intrepid mind was bent upon the conquest of truth, must feel that he -had died in vain did he know to what exaggerations and errors the -so-called patriotism of his beloved country had stooped. - -“I listen to them thinking that if I were either older or younger -it would not be so hard for me, and I have an unreal impression -that it would have been easier for my son if the war had occurred -in the first flush of his adventurous youth. Eager as he had been -to serve his country, he would not then have asked whether it could -best be accomplished by losing his life in a scouting aëroplane or -by dedicating a trained mind to industrial amelioration. He might -then easily have preferred the first and he certainly would never -have been tormented by doubts. But when he was thirty-one years old -and had long known that he was steadily serving his country through -careful researches, the results of which would both increase the -nation’s productivity and protect its humblest citizens, he could not -do otherwise than to judge and balance social values. I am, of course, -proud of his gallant spirit, that did not for a moment regret his -decision to die for his country, but I can make the sacrifice seem in -character only when I place him back in his early youth. - -“At times I feel immeasurably old, and in spite of my father’s -contention that I am too intellectual, I am consciously dominated -by one of those overwhelming impulses belonging to women as such, -irrespective of their mental training, in their revolt against war. -After all, why should one disregard such imperative instincts? We -know perfectly well that the trend of a given period in history has -been influenced by ‘habits of preference’ and by instinctive actions -founded upon repeated and unrecorded experiences of an analogous kind; -that desires to seek and desires to avoid are in themselves the very -incalculable material by which the tendencies of an age are modified. -The women in all the belligerent countries who feel so alike in regard -to the horror and human waste of this war and yet refrain from speaking -out, may be putting into jeopardy that power inherent in human affairs -to right themselves through mankind’s instinctive shifting towards -what the satisfactions recommend and the antagonisms repulse. The -expression of such basic impulses in regard to human relationships may -be most important in this moment of warfare which is itself a reversion -to primitive methods of determining relations between man and man or -nation and nation. - -“Certainly the women in every country who are under a profound -imperative to preserve human life, have a right to regard this maternal -impulse as important now as was the compelling instinct evinced by -primitive women long ago, when they made the first crude beginnings -of society by refusing to share the vagrant life of man because they -insisted upon a fixed abode in which they might cherish their children. -Undoubtedly women were then told that the interests of the tribe, the -diminishing food supply, the honor of the chieftain, demanded that they -leave their particular caves and go out in the wind and weather without -regard to the survival of their children. But at the present moment -the very names of the tribes and of the honors and glories which they -sought are forgotten, while the basic fact that the mothers held the -lives of their children above all else, insisted upon staying where the -children had a chance to live, and cultivated the earth for their food, -laid the foundations of an ordered society. - -“My son used to say that my scientific knowledge was most irregular, -but profound experiences such as we are having in this war throw -to the surface of one’s mind all sorts of opinions and half-formed -conclusions. The care for conventions, for agreement with one’s -friends, is burned away. One is concerned to express only ultimate -conviction even though it may differ from all the rest of the world. -This is true in spite of the knowledge that every word will be caught -up in an atmosphere of excitement and of that nervous irritability -which is always close to grief and to moments of high emotion. - -“In the face of many distressing misunderstandings I am certain -that if a minority of women in every country would clearly express -their convictions they would find that they spoke not for themselves -alone but for those men for whom the war has been a laceration,--‘an -abdication of the spirit.’ Such women would doubtless formulate the -scruples of certain soldiers whose ‘mouths are stopped by courage,’ -men who months ago with closed eyes rushed to the defence of their -countries. - -“It may also be true that as the early days of this war fused us all -into an overwhelming sense of solidarity until each felt absolutely -at one with all his fellow-countrymen, so the sensitiveness to -differences is greatly intensified and the dissenting individual has -an exaggerated sense of isolation. I try to convince myself that this -is the explanation of my abominable and constant loneliness, which is -almost unendurable. - -“I have never been a Feminist and have always remained quite unmoved -by the talk of the peculiar contribution women might make to the -State, but during the last dreadful months, in spite of women’s -widespread enthusiasm for the war and their patriotic eagerness to -make the supreme sacrifice, I have become conscious of an unalterable -cleavage between Militarism and Feminism. The Militarists believe that -government finally rests upon a basis of physical force, and in a -crisis such as this, Militarism, in spite of the spiritual passion in -war, finds its expression in the crudest forms of violence. - -“It would be absurd for women even to suggest equal rights in a world -governed solely by physical force, and Feminism must necessarily assert -the ultimate supremacy of moral agencies. Inevitably the two are in -eternal opposition. - -“I have always agreed with the Feminists that, so far as force plays -a great part in the maintenance of an actual social order, it is -due to the presence of those elements which are in a steady process -of elimination; and of course as society progresses the difficulty -arising from woman’s inferiority in physical strength must become -proportionately less. One of the most wretched consequences of war is -that it arrests these beneficent social processes and throws everything -back into a coarser mould. The fury of war, enduring but for a few -months or years, may destroy slow-growing social products which it -will take a century to recreate--the ‘consent of the governed,’ for -instance.... - -“But why do I talk like this! My father would call it one of my -untrained and absurd theories about social progress and the functions -of government concerning which I know nothing, and would say that I -had no right to discuss the matter in this time of desperate struggle. -Nevertheless it is better for me in these hideous long days and nights -to drive my mind forward even to absurd conclusions than to let it -fall into one of those vicious circles in which it goes round and round -to no purpose.” - -In absolute contrast to this sophisticated, possibly oversophisticated, -mother was a simple woman who piteously showed me a piece of shrapnel -taken from her son’s body by his comrades, which they had brought -home to her in a literal-minded attempt at comfort. They had told -her that the shrapnel was made in America and she showed it to me, -believing that I could at sight recognize the manufactured products -of my fellow-countrymen. She apparently wished to have the statement -either confirmed or denied, because she was utterly bewildered in her -feeling about the United States and all her previous associations with -it. In her fresh grief, stricken as she was, she was bewildered by a -sudden reversal of her former ideals. Many of her relatives had long -ago emigrated to America, including two brothers living in the Western -states, whom she had hoped to visit in her old age. For many reasons, -throughout her youth and early womanhood, she had thought of that -far-away country as a kindly place where every man was given his chance -and where the people were all friendly to each other irrespective of -the land in which they had been born. To have these same American -people send back the ammunition which had killed her son was apparently -incomprehensible to her. - -She presented, it seemed to me, a clear case of that humble -internationalism which is founded not upon theories, but upon the -widespread immigration of the last fifty years, interlacing nation to -nation with a thousand kindly deeds. Her older brother had a fruit -ranch which bordered upon one of those co-operative Italian colonies -so successful in California, and he had frequently sent home presents -from his Italian neighbors with his own little cargoes. The whole had -evidently been prized by his family as a symbol of American good-will -and of unbounded opportunity. Her younger brother had attained some -measure of success as a contractor in an inland town, and when he had -written home of the polyglot composition of the gangs of men upon -whose labors his little fortune had been founded, she had taken it as -an example of all nationalities and religions working happily together. -He had also served one term as mayor, obviously having been elected -through his popularity with the same foreign colonies from which his -employes had been drawn. - -For many reasons therefore she had visualized America as a land -in which all nationalities understood each other with a resulting -friendliness which was not possible in Europe, not because the people -still living in Europe were different from those who had gone to -America, but because the latter, having emigrated, had a chance to -express their natural good-will for everybody. The nations at war -in Europe suggested to her simple mind the long past days of her -grandmother’s youth when a Protestant threw stones at a Catholic just -because he was “different.” The religious liberty in America was -evidently confused in her mind with this other liberalism in regard to -national differences. - -Holding this conception of actual internationalism as it had been -evolved among simple people, crude and abortive though it was, she had -been much more shocked by the fact that friendly Americans should make -ammunition to be used for killing any human being than by the actual -war itself, because the war was taking place in Europe, where it was -still quite natural for a German to fight against a Frenchman or an -Italian against an Austrian. - -Her son had been a Socialist and from the discussions he sometimes held -with his comrades in her house, she had grown familiar with certain -phrases which she had taken literally and in some curious fashion had -solemnly come to believe were put into practice in her El Dorado of -America. - -The arguments I had used so many times with her fellow-countrymen -to justify America’s sale of ammunition, ponderously beginning with -The Hague conventions of 1907, I found useless in the face of this -idealistic version of America’s good-will. - -She was evidently one of those people whose affections go out to groups -and impersonal causes quite as much as to individuals, thus often -supplementing and enlarging harsh and narrow conditions of living. She -certainly obtained a curiously personal comfort out of her idealization -of America. Her conversation revealed what I had often vaguely felt -before when men as well as women talked freely of the war, that her -feelings had been hurt, that her very conception of human nature had -received a sharp shock and set-back. To her the whole world and America -in particular would henceforth seem less kind and her spirit would be -less at home. She was tormented by that ever recurring question which -perhaps can never be answered for any of us too confidently in the -affirmative, “Is the Universe friendly?” The troubled anguish in her -old eyes confirmed her statement that the thought of the multitude of -men who were being killed all over the world oppressed her day and -night. This old woman had remained faithful to the cause of moral unity -and bore her humble testimony to one of the noblest and profoundest -needs of the human spirit. - -These efforts at spiritual adjustment necessitated by the war are -attempted by many people, from the simple souls whose hard-won -conceptions of a friendly universe have been brought tumbling about -their ears, to the thinking men who are openly disappointed to find -civilized nations so irrational. Such efforts are encountered in all -the belligerent nations as well as in the neutral ones, although in -the former they are often inhibited and overlaid by an overwhelming -patriotism. Nevertheless, as I met those women who were bearing their -hardships and sorrows so courageously, I often caught a glimpse of an -inner struggle, as if two of the most fundamental instincts, the two -responsible for our very development as human beings, were at strife -with each other. The first is tribal loyalty, such unquestioning -acceptance of the tribe’s morals and standards that the individual -automatically fights when the word comes; the second is woman’s -deepest instinct, that the child of her body must be made to live. - -We are told that the peasants in Flanders, whose fields border upon -the very trenches, disconsolately came back to them last Spring and -continued to plough the familiar soil, regardless of the rain of -shrapnel falling into the fresh furrows; that the wine growers of -Champagne last Autumn insistently gathered their ripened grapes, though -the bombs of rival armies were exploding in their vineyards; why should -it then be surprising that certain women in every country have remained -steadfast to their old occupation of nurturing life, that they have -tenaciously held to their anxious concern that men should live, through -all the contagion and madness of the war fever which is infecting the -nations of the earth. - -In its various manifestations the struggle in women’s souls suggests -one of those movements through which, at long historic intervals, the -human spirit has apparently led a revolt against itself, as it were, -exhibiting a moral abhorrence for certain cherished customs which, up -to that time, had been its finest expression. A moral rebellion of this -sort was inaugurated three thousand years ago both in Greece and Judea -against the old custom of human sacrifice. That a man should slay his -own child and stand unmoved as the burning flesh arose to his gods was -an act of piety, of courage, and of devotion to ideals, so long as he -performed the rite wholeheartedly. But after there had gradually grown -up in the minds of men first the suspicion, and then the conviction, -that it was unnecessary and impious to offer human flesh as a living -sacrifice, courage and piety shifted to the men who refused to conform -to this long-established custom. At last both the Greeks and the Jews -guarded themselves against the practice of human sacrifice with every -possible device. It gradually became utterly abhorrent to all civilized -peoples, an outrage against the elemental decencies, a profound -disturber of basic human relations. Poets and prophets were moved to -call it an abomination; statesmen and teachers denounced it as a -hideous barbarism, until now it is so nearly abolished by the entire -race that it is no longer found within the borders of civilization and -exists to-day only in jungles and hidden savage places. - -There are indications that the human consciousness is reaching the same -stage of sensitiveness in regard to war as that which has been attained -in regard to human sacrifice. In this moment of almost universal -warfare there is evinced a widespread moral abhorrence against war, -as if its very existence were more than human nature could endure. -Citizens of every nation are expressing this moral compunction, which -they find in sharp conflict with current conceptions of patriotic duty. -It is perhaps inevitable that women should be challenged in regard -to it, should be called upon to give it expression in such stirring -words as those addressed to them by Romain Rolland, “Cease to be the -shadow of man and of his passion of pride and destruction. Have a clear -vision of the duty of pity! Be a living peace in the midst of war--the -eternal Antigone refusing to give herself up to hatred and knowing no -distinction between her suffering brothers who make war on each other.” - -This may be a call to women to defend those at the bottom of society -who, irrespective of the victory or defeat of any army, are ever -oppressed and overburdened. The suffering mothers of the disinherited -feel the stirring of the old impulse to protect and cherish their -unfortunate children, and women’s haunting memories instinctively -challenge war as the implacable enemy of their age-long undertaking. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN INTERPRETATIVE MEMORY - - -Several years ago, during a winter spent in Egypt, I found within -myself an unexpected tendency to interpret racial and historic -experiences through personal reminiscences. I am therefore venturing to -record in this closing chapter my inevitable conclusion that a sincere -portrayal of a widespread and basic emotional experience, however -remote in point of time it may be, has the power overwhelmingly to -evoke memories of like moods in the individual. - -The unexpected revival in my memory of long-forgotten experiences may -have been due partly to the fact that we have so long been taught -that the temples and tombs of ancient Egypt are the very earliest of -the surviving records of ideas and men, that we approach them with a -certain sense of familiarity, quite ready to claim a share in these -“family papers and title deeds of the race.” - -We also consider it probable that these primitive human records -will stir within us certain early states of consciousness, having -learned, with the readiness which so quickly attaches itself to the -pseudo-scientific phrase, that every child repeats in himself the -history of the race. Nevertheless, what I, at least, was totally -unprepared to encounter, was the constant revival of primitive and -overpowering emotions which I had experienced so long ago that they had -become absolutely detached from myself and seemed to belong to some one -else--to a small person with whom I was no longer intimate, and who was -certainly not in the least responsible for my present convictions and -reflections. It gradually became obvious that the ancient Egyptians had -known this small person quite intimately and had most seriously and -naïvely set down upon the walls of their temples and tombs her earliest -reactions in the presence of death. - -At moments my adult intelligence would be unexpectedly submerged by the -emotional message which was written there. Rising to the surface like a -flood, this primitive emotion would sweep away both the historic record -and the adult consciousness interested in it, leaving only a child’s -mind struggling through an experience which it found overwhelming. - -It may have been because these records of the early Egyptians are so -endlessly preoccupied with death, portraying man’s earliest efforts to -defeat it, his eager desire to survive, to enter by force or by guile -into the heavens of the western sky, that the mind is pushed back into -that earliest childhood when the existence of the soul, its exact place -of residence in the body, its experiences immediately after death, -its journeyings upward, its relation to its guardian angel, so often -afforded material for the crudest speculation. In the obscure renewal -of these childish fancies, there is nothing that is definite enough -to be called memory; it is rather that Egypt reproduces a state of -consciousness which has so absolutely passed into oblivion that only -the most powerful stimuli could revive it. - -This revival doubtless occurs more easily because these early records -in relief and color not only suggest in their subject-matter that a -child has been endowed with sufficient self-consciousness to wish to -write down his own state of mind upon a wall, but also because the -very primitive style of drawing to which the Egyptians adhered long -after they had acquired a high degree of artistic freedom, is the -most natural technique through which to convey so simple and archaic -a message. The square shoulders of the men, the stairways done in -profile, and a hundred other details, constantly remind one of a -child’s drawings. It is as if the Egyptians had painstakingly portrayed -everything that a child has felt in regard to death, and having, during -the process, gradually discovered the style of drawing naturally -employed by a child, had deliberately stiffened it into an unchanging -convention. The result is that the traveller, reading in these -drawings which stretch the length of three thousand years, the long -endeavor to overcome death, finds that the experience of the two--the -child and the primitive people--often become confused, or rather that -they are curiously interrelated. - -This begins from the moment the traveller discovers that the earliest -tombs surviving in Egypt, the mastabas,--which resemble the natural -results of a child’s first effort to place one stone upon another,--are -concerned only with size, as if that early crude belief in the power -of physical bulk to protect the terrified human being against all -shadowy evils were absolutely instinctive and universal. The mastabas -gradually develop into the pyramids, of which Breasted says that “they -are not only the earliest emergence of organized men and the triumph of -concerted effort, they are likewise a silent, but eloquent, expression -of the supreme endeavor to achieve immortality by sheer physical -force.” Both the mastabas at Sahkara and the pyramids at Gizeh, in the -sense of Tolstoy’s definition of art as that which reproduces in the -spectator the state of consciousness of the artist, at once appeal to -the child surviving in every adult, who insists irrationally, after -the manner of children, upon sympathizing with the attempt to shut out -death by strong walls. - -Certainly we can all vaguely remember, when death itself, or stories -of ghosts, had come to our intimate child’s circle, that we went about -saying to ourselves that we were “not afraid,” that it “could not come -here,” that “the door was locked, the windows tight shut,” that “this -was a big house,” and a great deal more talk of a similar sort. - -In the presence of these primitive attempts to defeat death, and -without the conscious aid of memory, I found myself living over the -emotions of a child six years old, saying some such words as I sat -on the middle of the stairway in my own home, which yet seemed alien -because all the members of the family had gone to the funeral of a -relative and would not be back until evening, “long after you are -in bed,” they had said. In this moment of loneliness and horror, I -depended absolutely upon the brick walls of the house to keep out the -prowling terror, and neither the talk of kindly Polly, who awkwardly -and unsuccessfully reduced an unwieldy theology to child-language, nor -the strings of paper dolls cut by a visitor, gave me the slightest -comfort. Only the blank wall of the stairway seemed to afford -protection in this bleak moment against the formless peril. - -Doubtless these huge tombs were built to preserve from destruction -the royal bodies which were hidden within them at the end of tortuous -and carefully concealed passages; but both the gigantic structures in -the vicinity of Memphis, and the everlasting hills, which were later -utilized at Thebes, inevitably give the impression that death is defied -and shut out by massive defences. - -Even when the traveller sees that the Egyptians defeated their object -by the very success of the Gizeh pyramids--for when their overwhelming -bulk could not be enlarged and their bewildering labyrinths could -not be multiplied, effort along that line perforce ceased--there is -something in the next attempt of the Egyptians to overcome death which -the child within us again recognizes as an old experience. One who -takes pains to inquire concerning the meaning of the texts which were -inscribed on the inner walls of the pyramids and the early tombs, finds -that the familiar terror of death is still there although expressed -somewhat more subtly; that the Egyptians are trying to outwit death by -magic tricks. - -These texts are designed to teach the rites that redeem a man from -death and insure his continuance of life, not only beyond the grave -but in the grave itself. “He who sayeth this chapter and who has been -justified in the waters of Natron, he shall come forth the day after -his burial.” Because to recite them was to fight successfully against -the enemies of the dead, these texts came to be inscribed on tombs, on -coffins, and on the papyrus hung around the neck of a mummy. But woe -to the man who was buried without the texts: “He who knoweth not this -chapter cannot come forth by day.” Access to Paradise and all its joys -was granted to any one, good or bad, who knew the formulæ, for in the -first stages of Egyptian development, as in all other civilizations, -the gods did not concern themselves with the conduct of a man toward -other men, but solely with his duty to the gods themselves. - -The magic formulæ alone afforded protection against the shadowy dangers -awaiting the dead man when first he entered the next world and enabled -him to overcome the difficulties of his journey. The texts taught him -how to impersonate particular gods and by this subterfuge to overcome -the various foes he must encounter, because these foes, having at one -time been overcome by the gods, were easily terrified by such pretence. - -When I found myself curiously sympathetic with this desire “to -pretend,” and with the eager emphasis attached by the Egyptians to -their magic formulæ, I was inclined to put it down to that secret -sympathy with magic by means of which all children, in moments of -rebellion against a humdrum world, hope to wrest something startling -and thrilling out of the environing realm of the supernatural; but -beyond a kinship with this desire to placate the evil one, to overcome -him by mysterious words, I found it baffling to trace my sympathy to a -definite experience. Gradually, however, it emerged, blurred in certain -details, surprisingly alive in others, but all of it suffused with the -selfsame emotions which impelled the Egyptian to write his Book of the -Dead. - -To describe it as a spiritual struggle is to use much too dignified -and definite a term; it was the prolonged emotional stress throughout -one cold winter when revival services--protracted meetings, they were -then called--were held in the village church night after night. I was, -of course, not permitted to attend them, but I heard them talked about -a great deal by simple adults and children, who told of those who -shouted aloud for joy, or lay on the floor “stiff with power” because -they were saved; and of others--it was for those others that my heart -was wrung--who, although they wrestled with the spirit until midnight -and cried out that they felt the hot breath of hell upon their cheeks, -could not find salvation. Would it do to pretend? I anxiously asked -myself, why didn’t they say the right words so that they could get up -from the mourners’ bench and sit with the other people, who must feel -so sorry for them that they would let them pretend? What were these -words that made such a difference that to say them was an assurance -of heavenly bliss, but if you failed to say them you burned in hell -forever and ever? Was the preacher the only one who knew them for sure? -Was it possible to find them without first kneeling at the mourners’ -bench and groaning? These words must certainly be in the Bible -somewhere, and if one read it out loud all through, every word, one -must surely say the right words in time; but if one died before one was -grown up enough to read the Bible through--to-night, for instance--what -would happen then? Surely nothing else could be so important as these -words of salvation. While I did not exactly scheme to secure them, I -was certainly restrained only by my impotence, and I anxiously inquired -from everyone what these magic words might be; and only gradually did -this childish search for magic protection from the terrors after death -imperceptibly merge into a concern for the fate of the soul. - -Perhaps, because it is so impossible to classify one’s own childish -experiences or to put them into chronological order, the traveller -at no time feels a lack of consistency in the complicated attitude -toward death which is portrayed on the walls of the Egyptian temples -and tombs. Much of it seems curiously familiar; from the earliest -times, the Egyptians held the belief that there is in man a permanent -element which survives--it is the double, the Ka, the natural soul in -contradistinction to the spiritual soul, which fits exactly into the -shape of the body but is not blended with it. In order to save this -double from destruction, the body must be preserved in a recognizable -form. - -This insistence upon the preservation of the body among the Egyptians, -antedating their faith in magic formulæ, clearly had its origin, as in -the case of the child, in a desperate revolt against the destruction of -the visible man. - -Owing to this continued insistence upon corporeal survival, the -Egyptians at length carried the art of embalming to such a state of -perfection that mummies of royal personages are easily recognized -from their likenesses to portrait statues. Such confidence did they -have in their own increasing ability to withhold the human frame from -destruction that many of the texts inscribed on the walls of the tombs -assure the dead man himself that he is not dead, and endeavor to -convince his survivors against the testimony of their own senses; or -rather, they attempt to deceive the senses. The texts endlessly repeat -the same assertion, “Thou comest not dead to thy sepulchre, thou comest -living”; and yet the very reiteration, as well as the decorations -upon the walls of every tomb, portray a primitive terror lest after -all the body be destroyed and the element of life be lost forever. -One’s throat goes dry over this old fear of death expressed by men who -have been so long dead that there is no record of them but this, no -surviving document of their once keen reactions to life. - -Doubtless the Egyptians in time overcame this primitive fear concerning -the disappearance of the body, as we all do, although each individual -is destined to the same devastating experience. The memory of mine -came back to me vividly as I stood in an Egyptian tomb: I was a tiny -child making pothooks in the village school, when one day--it must -have been in the full flush of Spring, for I remember the crab-apple -blossoms--during the afternoon session, the A B C class was told that -its members would march all together to the burial of the mother of -one of the littlest girls. Of course, I had been properly taught that -people went to heaven when they died and that their bodies were -buried in the cemetery, but I was not at all clear about it, and I was -certainly totally unprepared to see what appeared to be the person -herself put deep down into the ground. The knowledge came to me so -suddenly and brutally that for weeks afterward the days were heavy with -a nameless oppression and the nights were filled with horror. - -The cemetery was hard by the school-house, placed there, it had always -been whispered among us, to make the bad boys afraid. Thither the A B C -class, in awestruck procession, each child carefully holding the hand -of another, was led by the teacher to the edge of the open grave and -bidden to look on the still face of the little girl’s mother. - -Our poor knees quaked and quavered as we stood shelterless and -unattended by family protection or even by friendly grown-ups; for -the one tall teacher, while clearly visible, seemed inexpressively -far away as we kept an uncertain footing on the freshly spaded earth, -hearing the preacher’s voice, the sobs of the motherless children, -and, crowning horror of all, the hollow sound of three clods of earth -dropped impressively upon the coffin lid. - -After endless ages the service was over and we were allowed to go down -the long hill into the familiar life of the village. But a new terror -awaited me even there, for our house stood at the extreme end of the -street and the last of the way home was therefore solitary. I remember -a breathless run from the blacksmith shop, past the length of our -lonely orchard until the carriage-house came in sight, through whose -wide-open doors I could see a man moving about. One last panting effort -brought me there, and after my spirit had been slightly reassured by -conversation, I took a circuitous route to the house that I might -secure as much companionship as possible on the way. I stopped at -the stable to pat an old horse who stood munching in his stall, and -again to throw a handful of corn into the poultry yard. The big turkey -gobbler who came greedily forward gave me great comfort because he -was so absurd and awkward that no one could possibly associate him -with anything so solemn as death. I went into the kitchen where the -presiding genius allowed me to come without protest although the -family dog was at my heels. I felt constrained to keep my arms about -his shaggy neck while trying to talk of familiar things--would the cake -she was making be baked in the little round tins or in the big square -one? But although these idle words were on my lips, I wanted to cry -out, “Their mother is dead; whatever, whatever will the children do?” -These words, which I had overheard as we came away from the graveyard, -referred doubtless to the immediate future of the little family, but in -my mind were translated into a demand for definite action on the part -of the children against this horrible thing which had befallen their -mother. - -It was with no sense of surprise that I found this long-forgotten -experience spread before my eyes on the walls of a tomb built four -thousand years ago into a sandy hill above the Nile, at Assuan. The -man so long dead, who had prepared the tomb for himself, had carefully -ignored the grimness of death. He is portrayed as going about his -affairs surrounded by his family, his friends, and his servants; -grain is being measured before him into his warehouse, while a scribe -by his side registers the amount; the herdsmen lead forth cattle for -his inspection; two of them, enraged bulls, paying no attention to -the sombre implication of tomb decoration, lower their huge heads, -threatening each other as if there were no such thing as death in the -world. Indeed, the builder of the tomb seems to have liked the company -of animals, perhaps because they were so incurious concerning death. -His dogs are around him, he stands erect in a boat from which he spears -fish, and so on from one marvelous relief to another, but all the time -your heart contracts for him, and you know that in the midst of this -elaborately prepared nonchalance he is miserably terrified by the fate -which may be in store for him, and is trying to make himself believe -that he need not leave all this wonted and homely activity; that if his -body is but properly preserved he will be able to enjoy it forever. - -Although the Egyptians, in their natural desire to cling to the -familiar during the strange experience of death, portrayed upon the -walls of their tombs many domestic and social habits whose likeness to -our own household life gives us the quick satisfaction with which the -traveller encounters the familiar and wonted in a strange land, such a -momentary thrill is quite unlike the abiding sense of kinship which is -founded upon the unexpected similarity of ideas, and it is the latter -which are encountered in the tombs of the eighteenth century dynasty. -The paintings portray a great hall, at the end of which sits Osiris, -the god who had suffered death on earth, awaiting those who come before -him for judgment. In the center of the hall stands a huge balance -in which the hearts of men are weighed, once more reminiscent of a -childish conception, making clear that as the Egyptians became more -anxious and scrupulous they gradually made the destiny of man dependent -upon morality, and finally directed the souls of men to heaven or hell -according to their merits. - -There is a theory that the tremendous results of good and evil, -in the earliest awakening to them, were first placed in the next -world by a primitive people sore perplexed as to the partialities -and injustices of mortal life. This simple view is doubtless the one -the child naturally takes. In Egypt I was so vividly recalled to my -first apprehension of it, that the contention that the very belief in -immortality is but the postulate of the idea of reward and retribution, -seemed to me at the moment a perfectly reasonable one. - -The incident of my childhood around which it had formulated itself was -very simple. I had been sent with a message--an important commission it -seemed to me--to the leader of the church choir that the hymn selected -for the doctor’s funeral was “How blest the righteous when he dies.” -The village street was so strangely quiet under the summer sun that -even the little particles of dust beating in the hot air were more -noiseless than ever before. Frightened by the noonday stillness and -instinctively seeking companionship, I hurried toward two women who -were standing at a gate talking in low tones. In their absorption they -paid no attention to my somewhat wistful greeting, but I heard one of -them say with a dubious shake of the head that “he had never openly -professed nor joined the church,” and in a moment I understood that she -thought the doctor would not go to heaven. What else did it mean, that -half-threatening tone? Of course the doctor was good, as good as any -one could be. Only a few weeks before he had given me a new penny when -he had pulled my tooth, and once I heard him drive by in the middle of -the night when he took a beautiful baby to the miller’s house; he went -to the farms miles and miles away when people were sick, and everybody -sent for him the minute they were in trouble. How could any one be -better than that? - -In defiant contrast to the whispering women, there arose in my mind, -composed doubtless of various Bible illustrations, the picture of an -imposing white-robed judge seated upon a golden throne, who listened -gravely to all those good deeds as they were read by the recording -angel from his great book, and then sent the doctor straight to heaven. - -I dimly felt the challenge of the fine old hymn in its claim of -blessings for the righteous, and was defiantly ready at the moment to -combat the theology of the entire community. Of my own claim to heaven -I was most dubious, and I simply could not bring myself to contemplate -the day when my black sins should be read aloud from the big book; but -when the claim of reward in the next world for well-doing in this, came -to me in regard to one whose righteousness was undoubted, I was eager -to champion him before all mankind and even before the judges in the -shadowy world to come. - -This state of mind, this mood of truculent discussion, was recalled by -the wall paintings in the tomb of a nobleman in the Theban hills. In -an agonized posture he awaits the outcome of his trial before Osiris. -Thoth, the true scribe, records on the wall the just balance between -the heart of the nobleman, which is in one pan of the scale, and -the feather of truth which is in the other. The noble appeals to his -heart, which has thus been separated from him, to stand by him during -the weighing and not to bear testimony against him. “Oh, heart of my -existence, rise not up against me; be not an enemy against me before -the divine powers; thou art my Ka that is in my body, the heart that -came to me from my mother.” The noble even tries a bribe by reminding -the Ka that his own chance of survival is dependent on his testimony -at this moment. The entire effort on the part of the man being tried -is to still the voice of his own conscience, to maintain stoutly his -innocence even to himself. - -The attitude of the self-justifying noble might easily have suggested -those later childish struggles in which a sense of hidden guilt, of -repeated failure in “being good,” plays so large a part, and humbles a -child to the very dust. That the definite reminiscence evoked by the -tomb belonged to an earlier period of rebellion may indicate that the -Egyptian had not yet learned to commune with his gods for spiritual -refreshment. - -Whether it is that the long days and magical nights on the Nile lend -themselves to a revival of former states of consciousness, or that I -had come to expect landmarks of individual development in Egypt, or, -more likely still, that I had fallen into a profoundly reminiscent -mood, I am unable to state; but certainly, as the Nile boat approached -nearer to him “who sleeps in Philæ,” something of the Egyptian feeling -for Osiris, the god to whom was attributed the romance of a hero -and the character of a benefactor and redeemer, came to me through -long-forgotten sensations. Typifying the annual “great affliction,” -Osiris, who had submitted himself to death, mutilation, and burial in -the earth, returned each Spring when the wheat and barley sprouted, -bringing not only a promise of bread for the body but healing and -comfort for the torn mind; an intimation that death itself is -beneficent and may be calmly accepted as a necessary part of an ordered -universe. - -Day after day, seeing the rebirth of the newly planted fields on the -banks of the Nile, and touched by a fresh sense of the enduring miracle -of Spring with its inevitable analogy to the vicissitudes of human -experience, one dimly comprehends how the pathetic legends of Osiris, -by providing the Egyptian with an example for his own destiny, not only -opened the way for a new meaning in life, but also gradually vanquished -the terrors of death. - -Again there came a faint memory of a child’s first apprehension -that there may be poetry out-of-doors, of the discovery that myths -have a foundation in natural phenomena, and at last a more definite -reminiscence. - -I saw myself a child of twelve standing stock-still on the bank of a -broad-flowing river, with a little red house surrounded by low-growing -willows on its opposite bank, striving to account to myself for a -curious sense of familiarity, for a conviction that I had long ago -known it all most intimately, although I had certainly never seen the -Mississippi River before. I remember that, much puzzled and mystified, -at last I gravely concluded that it was one of those intimations of -immortality that Wordsworth had written about, and I went back to my -cousin’s camp in so exalted a frame of mind that the memory of the -evening light shining through the blades of young corn growing in a -field passed on the way has remained with me for more than forty years. - -Was that fugitive sense of having lived before nearer to the fresher -imaginations of the Egyptians, as it is nearer to the mind of a child? -and did the myth of Osiris make them more willing to die because the -myth came to embody a confidence in this transitory sensation of -continuous life? - -Such ghosts of reminiscence, coming to the individual as he visits -one after another of the marvellous human documents on the banks of -the Nile, may be merely manifestations of that new humanism which is -perhaps the most precious possession of this generation, the belief -that no altar at which living men have once devoutly worshipped, no -oracle to whom a nation long ago appealed in its moments of dire -confusion, no gentle myth in which former generations have found -solace, can lose all significance for us, the survivors. - -Is it due to this same humanism that, in spite of the overweight of -the tomb, Egypt never appears to the traveller as world-weary, or as -a land of the dead? Although the slender fellaheen, whom he sees all -day pouring the water of the Nile on their parched fields, use the -primitive shaduf of their remote ancestors, and the stately women bear -upon their heads water-jars of a shape unchanged for three thousand -years, modern Egypt refuses to belong to the past and continually makes -the passionate living appeal of those hard-pressed in the struggle for -bread. - -Under the smoking roofs of the primitive clay houses lifted high above -the level of the fields, because resting on the ruins of villages which -have crumbled there from time immemorial, mothers feed their children, -clutched by the old fear that there is not enough for each to have -his portion; and the traveller comes to realize with a pang that the -villages are built upon the bleak, barren places quite as the dead are -always buried in the desert because no black earth can be spared, and -that each new harvest, cut with sickles of a curve already ancient when -Moses was born, in spite of its quick ripening, is garnered barely in -time to save the laborer from actual starvation. - -Certain it is that through these our living brothers, or through the -unexpected reactions of memory to racial records, the individual -detects the growth within of an almost mystical sense of the life -common to all the centuries, and of the unceasing human endeavor to -penetrate into the unseen world. These records also afford glimpses -into a past so vast that the present generation seems to float upon its -surface as thin as a sheet of light which momentarily covers the ocean -and moves in response to the black waters beneath it. - - - Printed in the United States of America. - - - The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author - or on kindred subjects. - - - - - _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ - - -Women at the Hague - -BY JANE ADDAMS, EMILY G. BALCH AND ALICE HAMILTON - - _Boards, 12mo, $.75_ - -The official report of the International Congress of Women, convened at -The Hague in April, 1915. Among the titles of the different chapters -are noted the following: Journey and Impressions of the Congress, The -Women at the Congress, Civil Government in Time of War, Journey to the -Northern Capital and Factors in Continuing the War. - - -A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil - -BY JANE ADDAMS - - _Cloth, 12mo, $1.00. 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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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The long road of woman's memory</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Jane Addams</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 25, 2022 [eBook #69234]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Fay Dunn and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN'S MEMORY ***</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</span></p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</span></p> -<h1>THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN’S -MEMORY</h1> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img001"> -<img src="images/001.jpg" class="w10" alt="Publisher logo"> -</span></p> - -<p class="center"> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br> -<span class="small">NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br> -ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</span><br> -<br> -MACMILLAN & CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br> -<span class="small">LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br> -MELBOURNE</span><br> -<br> -THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br> -<span class="small">TORONTO</span><br> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</span></p> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center xbig"> -THE LONG ROAD OF<br> -WOMAN’S MEMORY<br> -</p> -<p class="center p2"> -BY<br> -<br> -<span class="big">JANE ADDAMS</span><br> -<br> -<span class="smcap">Author of “Twenty Years at Hull House”</span><br> -<span class="smcap">“The Spirit of Youth and the</span> -<span class="smcap">City Streets,” Etc.</span><br> -</p> -<p class="center p4"> -New York<br> -<span class="big">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span><br> -1916<br> -<br> -<span class="small"><i>All rights reserved</i></span><br> -</p> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</span></p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center p2"> -<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1916,</span><br> -<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br> -</p><hr class="r5"> -<p class="center small"> -Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916.<br> -</p> -<p class="center p4"> -Norwood Press<br> -J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br> -Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.<br> -</p> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center"> -TO MY DEAR FRIEND<br> -<br> -<span class="big">MARY H. WILMARTH</span><br> -<br> -WHOSE MEMORY STORED WITH THE BEST IN LITERATURE -AND WHOSE FINE PUBLIC SPIRIT ARE DAILY PLACED -AT THE SERVICE OF HER FRIENDS AND OF -HER CITY, WITH A GALLANT AND -GENTLE COURTESY<br> -</p> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr><th></th><th></th><th class="tdr">PAGE</th></tr> -<tr><td class="tdl" colspan="2"><a href="#INTRODUCTION"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdr"><a href="#THE_LONG_ROAD_OF_WOMANS_MEMORY">I.</a> -</td><td><a href="#THE_LONG_ROAD_OF_WOMANS_MEMORY"><span class="smcap">Women’s Memories—Transmuting the Past, as illustrated by the Story of the Devil Baby</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a> -</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><span class="smcap">Women’s Memories—Reacting on Life, as illustrated by the Story of the Devil Baby</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">III.</a> -</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><span class="smcap">Women’s Memories—Disturbing Conventions</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">IV.</a> -</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><span class="smcap">Women’s Memories—Integrating Industry</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">V.</a> -</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><span class="smcap">Women’s Memories—Challenging War</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">VI.</a> -</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><span class="smcap">A Personal Experience in Interpretative Memory</span></a></td><td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr> -</table> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span></p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</h2> -</div> - - -<p>For many years at Hull-House I have at intervals detected in certain -old people, when they spoke of their past experiences, a tendency to an -idealization, almost to a romanticism suggestive of the ardent dreams -and groundless ambitions we have all observed in the young when they -recklessly lay their plans for the future.</p> - -<p>I have, moreover, been frequently impressed by the fact that -these romantic revelations were made by old people who had really -suffered much hardship and sorrow, and that the transmutation of -their experiences was not the result of ignoring actuality, but was -apparently due to a power inherent in memory itself.</p> - -<p>It was therefore a great pleasure when I found this aspect of memory -delightfully portrayed by Sir Gilbert Murray in his life of Euripides. -He writes that the aged poet, when he was officially made one of -the old men of Athens, declared that he could transmute<span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</span> into song -traditional tales of sorrow and wrong-doing because, being long past, -they had already become part mystery and part music: “Memory, that -Memory who is the Mother of the Muses, having done her work upon them.”</p> - -<p>Here was an explanation which I might have anticipated; it was the -Muses again at their old tricks,—the very mother of them this -time,—thrusting their ghostly fingers into the delicate fabric of -human experience to the extreme end of life. I had known before that -the Muses foregathered with the Spirit of Youth and I had even made a -feeble attempt to portray that companionship, but I was stupid indeed -not to see that they are equally at home with the aged whose prosaic -lives sadly need such interference.</p> - -<p>Even with this clue in my hands, so preoccupied are we all with our own -practical affairs, I probably should never have followed it, had it not -been for the visit of a mythical Devil Baby who so completely filled -Hull-House with old women coming to see him, that for a period of six -weeks I could perforce do little but give them my attention.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span></p> - -<p>When this excitement had subsided and I had written down the -corroboration afforded by their eager recitals in the first two -chapters of this book, I might have supposed myself to be rid of the -matter, incidentally having been taught once more that, while I may -receive valuable suggestions from classic literature, when I really -want to learn about life, I must depend upon my neighbors, for, as -William James insists, the most instructive human documents lie along -the beaten pathway.</p> - -<p>The subject, however, was not so easily disposed of, for certain -elderly women among these selfsame neighbors disconcertingly took quite -another line from that indicated by Euripides. To my amazement, their -reminiscences revealed an additional function of memory, so aggressive -and withal so modern, that it was quite impossible, living as I was in -a Settlement with sociological tendencies, to ignore it.</p> - -<p>It was gradually forced upon my attention that these reminiscences -of the aged, even while softening the harsh realities of the past, -exercise a vital power of selection which often necessitates an onset -against the very traditions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</span> and conventions commonly believed to find -their stronghold in the minds of elderly people. Such reminiscences -suggested an analogy to the dreams of youth which, while covering the -future with a shifting rose-colored mist, contain within themselves the -inchoate substance from which the tough-fibred forces of coming social -struggles are composed.</p> - -<p>In the light of this later knowledge, I was impelled to write the -next two chapters of this book, basing them upon conversations held -with various women of my acquaintance whose experience in family -relationships or in the labor market had so forced their conduct to a -variation from the accepted type that there emerged an indication of a -selective groping toward another standard. They inevitably suggested -that a sufficient number of similar variations might even, in Memory’s -leisurely fashion of upbuilding tradition, in the end establish a new -norm.</p> - -<p>Some of these women, under the domination of that mysterious -autobiographical impulse which makes it more difficult to conceal -the truth than to avow it, purged their souls in all sincerity and -unconsciously made plain the part<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</span> borne in their hard lives by -monstrous social injustices.</p> - -<p>These conversations proved to be so illustrative of my second thesis -that it seemed scarcely necessary to do more than record them. The -deduction was obvious that mutual reminiscences perform a valuable -function in determining analogous conduct for large bodies of people -who have no other basis for like-mindedness.</p> - -<p>So gradual is this process, so unconsciously are these converts under -Memory’s gentle coercion brought into a spiritual fellowship, that the -social changes thus inaugurated, at least until the reformers begin -to formulate them and to accelerate the process through propaganda, -take on the aspect of beneficent natural phenomena. And yet, curiously -enough, I found that the two functions of Memory—first, its important -rôle in interpreting and appeasing life for the individual, and second -its activity as a selective agency in social reorganization—were -not mutually exclusive, and at moments seemed to support each other. -Certain conversations even suggested that the selective process itself -might be held responsible for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</span> softened outlines of the past to -one looking back, by the natural blurring of nonessentials and the -consequent throwing into high relief of common human experiences.</p> - -<p>The insistence of Memory upon the great essentials, even to the -complete sacrifice of its inherent power to appease, was most -poignantly brought to my attention during two months I spent in Europe -in the summer of 1915. Desolated women, stripped by war of all their -warm domestic interests and of children long cherished in affectionate -solicitude, sat shelterless in the devastating glare of Memory. Because -by its pitiless light they were forced to look into the black depths of -primitive human nature, occasionally one of these heart-broken women -would ignore the strident claims of the present and would insist that -the war was cutting at the very taproots of the basic human relations -so vitally necessary to the survival of civilization. I cannot hope -to have adequately reproduced in Chapter V those conversations which -themselves partook of the grim aspect of war.</p> - -<p>It was during this cataclysmic summer in Europe that I sometimes sought -for a solace,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</span> or at least for a source of sanity, by resting my mind -on the immemorial monuments of ancient Egypt, from which I had once -received an almost mystic assurance of the essential unity of man’s -age-long spiritual effort. But because such guarding of continuity as -Egypt had afforded me had been associated with an unexpected revival -of childish recollections, I found that Memory was a chief factor -also in this situation. Therefore, in spite of the fact that these -reminiscences of my childhood were vividly resuscitated in Egypt by -a process which postulates a reversal of the one described in the -first two chapters of this book, I venture to incorporate my personal -experience in the last chapter. It may suggest one more of our -obligations to Memory, that Protean Mother, who first differentiated -primitive man from the brute; who makes possible our complicated modern -life so daily dependent on the experiences of the past; and upon whom -at the present moment is thrust the sole responsibility of guarding, -for future generations, our common heritage of mutual good-will.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> - -<p class="center xbig" id="THE_LONG_ROAD_OF_WOMANS_MEMORY">THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN’S MEMORY</p> -</div> -<hr class="r5"> -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br><span class="small">WOMEN’S MEMORIES—TRANSMUTING THE PAST, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE STORY OF -THE DEVIL BABY</span></h2> - - - -<p>Quite as it would be hard for any one of us to select the summer in -which he ceased to live that life, so ardent in childhood and early -youth, when all the real happenings are in the future, so it must be -difficult for old people to tell at what period they began to regard -the present chiefly as a prolongation of the past. There is no doubt, -however, that such instinctive shiftings and reversals have taken place -for many old people who, under the control of Memory, are actually -living much more in the past than in the ephemeral present.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p> - -<p>It is most fortunate, therefore, that in some subtle fashion these -old people, reviewing the long road they have travelled, are able to -transmute their own untoward experiences into that which seems to make -even the most wretched life acceptable. This may possibly be due to an -instinct of self-preservation, which checks the devastating bitterness -that would result did they recall over and over again the sordid detail -of events long past; it is even possible that those people who were not -able thus to inhibit their bitterness have died earlier, for as one old -man recently reminded me, “It is a true word that worry can kill a cat.”</p> - -<p>This permanent and elemental function of Memory was graphically -demonstrated at Hull-House during a period of several weeks when we -were reported to be harboring within its walls a so-called “Devil Baby.”</p> - -<p>The knowledge of his existence burst upon the residents of Hull-House -one day when three Italian women, with an excited rush through the -door, demanded that he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span> be shown to them. No amount of denial convinced -them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like with -his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears and diminutive tail; the Devil Baby -had, moreover, been able to speak as soon as he was born and was most -shockingly profane.</p> - -<p>The three women were but the forerunners of a veritable multitude; -for six weeks from every part of the city and suburbs the streams of -visitors to this mythical baby poured in all day long and so far into -the night that the regular activities of the settlement were almost -swamped.</p> - -<p>The Italian version, with a hundred variations, dealt with a pious -Italian girl married to an atheist. Her husband in a rage had torn -a holy picture from the bedroom wall saying that he would quite as -soon have a devil in the house as such a thing, whereupon the devil -incarnated himself in her coming child. As soon as the Devil Baby was -born, he ran about the table shaking his finger in deep reproach at -his father, who finally caught him and, in fear and trembling, brought -him to Hull-House.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> When the residents there, in spite of the baby’s -shocking appearance, wishing to save his soul, took him to church -for baptism, they found that the shawl was empty and the Devil Baby, -fleeing from the holy water, was running lightly over the backs of the -pews.</p> - -<p>The Jewish version, again with variations, was to the effect that the -father of six daughters had said before the birth of a seventh child -that he would rather have a devil in the family than another girl, -whereupon the Devil Baby promptly appeared.</p> - -<p>Save for a red automobile which occasionally figured in the story and -a stray cigar which, in some versions, the new-born child had snatched -from his father’s lips, the tale might have been fashioned a thousand -years ago.</p> - -<p>Although the visitors to the Devil Baby included persons of every -degree of prosperity and education, even physicians and trained nurses, -who assured us of their scientific interest, the story constantly -demonstrated the power of an old wives’ tale among thousands of men -and women in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> modern society who are living in a corner of their -own, their vision fixed, their intelligence held by some iron chain -of silent habit. To such primitive people the metaphor apparently is -still the very “stuff of life,” or rather no other form of statement -reaches them; the tremendous tonnage of current writing for them has no -existence. It was in keeping with their simple habits that the reputed -presence of the Devil Baby should not reach the newspapers until the -fifth week of his sojourn at Hull-House—after thousands of people had -already been informed of his whereabouts by the old method of passing -news from mouth to mouth.</p> - -<p>For six weeks as I went about the house, I would hear a voice at the -telephone repeating for the hundredth time that day, “No, there is no -such baby”; “No, we never had it here”; “No, he couldn’t have seen -it for fifty cents”; “We didn’t send it anywhere, because we never -had it”; “I don’t mean to say that your sister-in-law lied, but there -must be some mistake”; “There is no use getting up an excursion from -Milwaukee, for there isn’t<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> any Devil Baby at Hull-House”; “We can’t -give reduced rates, because we are not exhibiting anything”; and so -on and on. As I came near the front door, I would catch snatches of -arguments that were often acrimonious: “Why do you let so many people -believe it, if it isn’t here?” “We have taken three lines of cars to -come and we have as much right to see it as anybody else”; “This is a -pretty big place, of course you could hide it easy enough”; “What are -you saying that for, are you going to raise the price of admission?”</p> - -<p>We had doubtless struck a case of what the psychologists call the -“contagion of emotion” added to that “æsthetic sociability” which -impels any one of us to drag the entire household to the window when -a procession comes into the street or a rainbow appears in the sky. -The Devil Baby of course was worth many processions and rainbows, and -I will confess that, as the empty show went on day after day, I quite -revolted against such a vapid manifestation of even an admirable human<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> -trait. There was always one exception, however; whenever I heard the -high eager voices of old women, I was irresistibly interested and left -anything I might be doing in order to listen to them. As I came down -the stairs, long before I could hear what they were saying, implicit in -their solemn and portentous old voices came the admonition:—</p> - -<p class="poetry"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Wilt thou reject the past</span><br> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Big with deep warnings?”</span><br> -</p> - -<p>It was a very serious and genuine matter with the old women, this -story so ancient and yet so contemporaneous, and they flocked to -Hull-House from every direction; those I had known for many years, -others I had never known and some whom I had supposed to be long dead. -But they were all alive and eager; something in the story or in its -mysterious sequences had aroused one of those active forces in human -nature which does not take orders, but insists only upon giving them. -We had abruptly come in contact with a living and self-assertive human -quality!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p> - -<p>During the weeks of excitement it was the old women who really seemed -to have come into their own, and perhaps the most significant result -of the incident was the reaction of the story upon them. It stirred -their minds and memories as with a magic touch, it loosened their -tongues and revealed the inner life and thoughts of those who are so -often inarticulate. They are accustomed to sit at home and to hear the -younger members of the family speak of affairs quite outside their -own experiences, sometimes in a language they do not understand, and -at best in quick glancing phrases which they cannot follow; “More -than half the time I can’t tell what they are talking about,” is an -oft-repeated complaint. The story of the Devil Baby evidently put into -their hands the sort of material with which they were accustomed to -deal. They had long used such tales in their unremitting efforts at -family discipline, ever since they had frightened their first children -into awed silence by tales of bugaboo men who prowled in the darkness.</p> - -<p>These old women enjoyed a moment of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> triumph—as if they had made good -at last and had come into a region of sanctions and punishments which -they understood. Years of living had taught them that recrimination -with grown-up children and grandchildren is worse than useless, that -punishments are impossible, that domestic instruction is best given -through tales and metaphors.</p> - -<p>As the old women talked with the new volubility which the story of the -Devil Baby had released in them, going back into their long memories -and urging its credibility upon me, the story seemed to condense -that mystical wisdom which becomes deposited in the heart of man by -unnoticed innumerable experiences.</p> - -<p>Perhaps my many conversations with these aged visitors crystallized -thoughts and impressions I had been receiving through years, or the -tale itself may have ignited a fire, as it were, whose light illumined -some of my darkest memories of neglected and uncomfortable old age, -of old peasant women who had ruthlessly probed into the ugly depths -of human nature<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> in themselves and others. Many of them who came to -see the Devil Baby had been forced to face tragic experiences, the -powers of brutality and horror had had full scope in their lives and -for years they had had acquaintance with disaster and death. Such old -women do not shirk life’s misery by feeble idealism, for they are long -past the stage of make-believe. They relate without flinching the most -hideous experiences: “My face has had this queer twist for now nearly -sixty years; I was ten when it got that way, the night after I saw my -father do my mother to death with his knife.” “Yes, I had fourteen -children; only two grew to be men and both of them were killed in the -same explosion. I was never sure they brought home the right bodies.” -But even the most hideous sorrows which the old women related had -apparently subsided into the paler emotion of ineffectual regret, after -Memory had long done her work upon them; the old people seemed, in some -unaccountable way, to lose all bitterness and resentment against life, -or rather to be so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> completely without it that they must have lost it -long since.</p> - -<p>None of them had a word of blame for undutiful children or heedless -grandchildren, because apparently the petty and transitory had fallen -away from their austere old age, the fires were burnt out, resentments, -hatreds, and even cherished sorrows had become actually unintelligible.</p> - -<p>Perhaps those women, because they had come to expect nothing more -from life and had perforce ceased from grasping and striving, had -obtained, if not renunciation, at least that quiet endurance which -allows the wounds of the spirit to heal. Through their stored-up habit -of acquiescence, they offered a fleeting glimpse of the translucent -wisdom, so often embodied in the old, but so difficult to portray. It -is doubtless what Michael Angelo had in mind when he made the Sybils -old, what Dante meant by the phrase “those who had learned of life,” -and the age-worn minstrel who turned into song a Memory which was more -that of history and tradition than his own.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p> - -<p>In contrast to the visitors to the Devil Baby who spoke only such words -of groping wisdom as they were able, were other old women who, although -they had already reconciled themselves to much misery, were still -enduring more: “You might say it’s a disgrace to have your son beat -you up for the sake of a bit of money you’ve earned by scrubbing—your -own man is different—but I haven’t the heart to blame the boy for -doing what he’s seen all his life, his father forever went wild when -the drink was in him and struck me to the very day of his death. The -ugliness was born in the boy as the marks of the Devil was born in the -poor child up-stairs.”</p> - -<p>Some of these old women had struggled for weary years with poverty and -much childbearing, had known what it was to be bullied and beaten by -their husbands, neglected and ignored by their prosperous children, and -burdened by the support of the imbecile and the shiftless ones. They -had literally gone “Deep written all their days with care.”</p> - -<p>One old woman actually came from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> poorhouse, having heard of the -Devil Baby “through a lady from Polk Street visiting an old friend who -has a bed in our ward.” It was no slight achievement for the penniless -and crippled old inmate to make her escape. She had asked “a young -bar-keep in a saloon across the road” to lend her ten cents, offering -as security the fact that she was an old acquaintance at Hull-House who -could not be refused so slight a loan. She marvelled at some length -over the goodness of the young man, for she had not had a dime to -spend for a drink for the last six months, and he and the conductor -had been obliged to lift her into the street car by main strength. She -was naturally much elated over the achievement of her escape. To be -sure, from the men’s side, they were always walking off in the summer -and taking to the road, living like tramps they did, in a way no one -from the woman’s side would demean herself to do; but to have left in -a street car like a lady, with money to pay her own fare, was quite -a different matter, although she was indeed “clean wore out” by the -effort. However,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> it was clear that she would consider herself well -repaid by a sight of the Devil Baby and that not only the inmates of -her own ward, but those in every other ward in the house would be made -to “sit up” when she got back; it would liven them all up a bit, and -she hazarded the guess that she would have to tell them about that baby -at least a dozen times a day.</p> - -<p>As she cheerfully rambled on, we weakly postponed telling her there was -no Devil Baby, first that she might have a cup of tea and rest, and -then through a sheer desire to withhold a blow from a poor old body who -had received so many throughout a long, hard life.</p> - -<p>As I recall those unreal weeks, it was in her presence that I found -myself for the first time vaguely wishing that I could administer -comfort by the simple device of not asserting too dogmatically that the -Devil Baby had never been at Hull-House.</p> - -<p>Our guest recalled with great pride that her grandmother had possessed -second sight; that her mother had heard the Banshee three times and -that she, herself,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> had heard it once. All this gave her a certain -proprietary interest in the Devil Baby and I suspected she cherished a -secret hope that when she should lay her eyes upon him, her inherited -gifts might be able to reveal the meaning of the strange portent. At -the least, he would afford a proof that her family-long faith in such -matters was justified. Her misshapen hands lying on her lap fairly -trembled with eagerness.</p> - -<p>It may have been because I was still smarting under the recollection -of the disappointment we had so wantonly inflicted upon our visitor -from the poorhouse that the very next day I found myself almost -agreeing with her whole-hearted acceptance of the past as of much more -importance than the mere present; at least for half an hour the past -seemed endowed also for me with a profounder and more ardent life.</p> - -<p>This impression was received in connection with an old woman, sturdy -in her convictions, although long since bedridden, who had doggedly -refused to believe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> that there was no Devil Baby at Hull-House, unless -“herself” told her so. Because of her mounting irritation with the -envoys who one and all came back to her to report “they say it ain’t -there,” it seemed well that I should go promptly before “she fashed -herself into the grave.” As I walked along the street and even as I -went up the ramshackle outside stairway of the rear cottage and through -the dark corridor to the “second floor back” where she lay in her -untidy bed, I was assailed by a veritable temptation to give her a full -description of the Devil Baby, which by this time I knew so accurately -(for with a hundred variations to select from I could have made a -monstrous infant almost worthy of his name), and also to refrain from -putting too much stress on the fact that he had never been really and -truly at Hull-House.</p> - -<p>I found my mind hastily marshalling arguments for not disturbing -her belief in the story which had so evidently brought her a vivid -interest long denied her. She lived alone with her young grandson, who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> -went to work every morning at seven o’clock and save for the short -visits made by the visiting nurse and by kind neighbors, her long day -was monotonous and undisturbed. But the story of a Devil Baby, with -his existence officially corroborated as it were, would give her a -lodestone which would attract the neighbors far and wide and exalt her -once more into the social importance she had had twenty-four years -before when I had first known her. She was then the proprietor of -the most prosperous second-hand store on a street full of them, her -shiftless, drinking husband and her jolly, good-natured sons doing -exactly what she told them to do. This, however, was long past, for -“owing to the drink,” in her own graphic phrase, “the old man, the -boys, and the business, too, were clean gone” and there was “nobody -left but little Tom and me and nothing for us to live on.”</p> - -<p>I remember how well she used to tell a story when I once tried to -collect some folk-lore for Mr. Yeats to prove that an Irish peasant -does not lose his faith in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> little people nor his knowledge of -Gaelic phrases simply because he is living in a city. She had at that -time told me a wonderful tale concerning a red cloak worn by an old -woman to a freshly dug grave. The story of the Devil Baby would give -her material worthy of her powers, but of course she must be able to -believe it with all her heart. She could live only a few months at the -very best, I argued to myself; why not give her this vivid interest and -through it awake those earliest recollections of that long-accumulated -folk-lore with its magic power to transfigure and eclipse the sordid -and unsatisfactory surroundings in which life is actually spent? I -solemnly assured myself that the imagination of old age needs to be fed -and probably has quite as imperious a claim as that of youth, which -levies upon us so remorselessly with its “I want a fairy story, but I -don’t like you to begin by saying that it isn’t true.” Impatiently I -found myself challenging the educators who had given us no pedagogical -instructions for the treatment of old age, although they had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> fairly -overinformed us as to the use of the fairy tale with children.</p> - -<p>The little room was stuffed with a magpie collection, the usual odds -and ends which compose an old woman’s treasures, augmented in this -case by various articles which a second-hand store, even of the most -flourishing sort, could not sell. In the picturesque confusion, if -anywhere in Chicago, an urbanized group of the little people might -dwell; they would certainly find the traditional atmosphere which they -strictly require, marvelling faith and unalloyed reverence. At any -rate, an eager old woman aroused to her utmost capacity of wonder and -credulity was the very soil, prepared to a nicety, for planting the -seed-thought of the Devil Baby. If the object of my errand had been -an hour’s reading to a sick woman, it would have been accounted to me -for philanthropic righteousness, and if the chosen reading had lifted -her mind from her bodily discomforts and harassing thoughts so that -she forgot them all for one fleeting moment, how pleased I should have -been with the success of my effort.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> But here I was with a story at my -tongue’s end, stupidly hesitating to give it validity, although the -very words were on my lips. I was still arguing the case with myself -when I stood on the threshold of her room and caught the indomitable -gleam of her eye, fairly daring me to deny the existence of the Devil -Baby, her slack dropsical body so responding to her overpowering -excitement that for the moment she looked alert in her defiance and -positively menacing.</p> - -<p>But, as in the case of many another weak soul, the decision was taken -out of my hands, my very hesitation was enough, for nothing is more -certain than that the bearer of a magic tale never stands dawdling on -the door-step. Slowly the gleam died out of the expectant old eyes, the -erect shoulders sagged and pulled forward, and I saw only too plainly -that the poor old woman had accepted one more disappointment in a life -already overflowing with them. She was violently thrown back into all -the limitations of her personal experience and surroundings, and that -larger life she had anticipated so eagerly was as suddenly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> shut away -from her as if a door had been slammed in her face.</p> - -<p>I never encountered that particular temptation again, though she was no -more pitiful than many of the aged visitors whom the Devil Baby brought -to Hull-House. But, perhaps as a result of this experience, I gradually -lost the impression that the old people were longing for a second -chance at life, to live it all over again and to live more fully and -wisely, and I became more reconciled to the fact that many of them had -little opportunity for meditation or for bodily rest, but must keep on -working with their toil-worn hands, in spite of weariness or faintness -of heart.</p> - -<p>The vivid interest of so many old women in the story of the Devil -Baby may have been an unconscious, although powerful, testimony that -tragic experiences gradually become dressed in such trappings in order -that their spent agony may prove of some use to a world which learns -at the hardest; and that the strivings and sufferings of men and -women long since dead, their emotions no longer connected with flesh<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> -and blood, are thus transmuted into legendary wisdom. The young are -forced to heed the warning in such a tale, although for the most part -it is so easy for them to disregard the words of the aged. That the -old women who came to visit the Devil Baby believed that the story -would secure them a hearing at home was evident, and as they prepared -themselves with every detail of it, their old faces shone with a timid -satisfaction. Their features, worn and scarred by harsh living, as -effigies built into the floor of an old church become dim and defaced -by rough-shod feet, grew poignant and solemn. In the midst of their -double bewilderment, both that the younger generation was walking in -such strange paths and that no one would listen to them, for one moment -there flickered up the last hope of a disappointed life, that it may -at least serve as a warning, while affording material for an exciting -narrative.</p> - -<p>Sometimes in talking to a woman who was “but a hair’s breadth this -side of the darkness,” I realized that old age has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> its own expression -for the mystic renunciation of the world. Their impatience with all -non-essentials, the craving to be free from hampering bonds and soft -conditions, recalled Tolstoy’s last impetuous journey, and I was once -more grateful to his genius for making clear another unintelligible -impulse of bewildered humanity.</p> - -<p>Often, in the midst of a conversation, one of these touching old women -would quietly express a longing for death, as if it were a natural -fulfilment of an inmost desire, with a sincerity and anticipation so -genuine that I would feel abashed in her presence, ashamed to “cling -to this strange thing that shines in the sunlight and to be sick with -love for it.” Such impressions were, in their essence, transitory, but -one result from the hypothetical visit of the Devil Baby to Hull-House -will, I think, remain: a realization of the sifting and reconciling -power inherent in Memory itself. The old women, with much to aggravate -and little to soften the habitual bodily discomforts of old age, -exhibited<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> an emotional serenity so vast and so reassuring, that I -found myself perpetually speculating upon how soon the fleeting and -petty emotions which now seem unduly important to us might be thus -transmuted; at what moment we might expect the inconsistencies and -perplexities of life to be brought under this appeasing Memory with its -ultimate power to increase the elements of beauty and significance and -to reduce, if not to eliminate, all sense of resentment.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br><span class="small">WOMEN’S MEMORIES—REACTING ON LIFE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE STORY OF THE -DEVIL BABY</span></h2> -</div> - - - -<p>During the weeks when the Devil Baby seemed to occupy every room in -Hull-House, I was conscious that all human vicissitudes are, in the -end, melted down into reminiscence, and that a metaphorical statement -of the basic experiences which are implicit in human nature itself, -however crude in form the story may be, has a singular power of -influencing daily living.</p> - -<p>At moments we also seemed to glimpse the process through which such -tales had been evolved. As our visitors to the Devil Baby came day by -day, it gradually became evident that the simpler women were moved -not wholly by curiosity, but that many of them prized the story as a -valuable instrument in the business of living.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> From them and from -the surprising number of others who had been sent by the aged and the -bed-ridden to secure an exact history and description of the child, -the suggestion finally became quite irresistible that such a story, -outlining a great abstraction, may once have performed the high service -of tradition and discipline in the beginnings of a civilized family -life.</p> - -<p>The legend exhibited all the persistence of one of those tales which -has doubtless been preserved through the centuries because of its -taming effects upon recalcitrant husbands and fathers. Shamefaced men -brought to Hull-House by their women folk to see the baby, but ill -concealed their triumph when there proved to be no such visible sign of -retribution for domestic derelictions. On the other hand, numbers of -men came by themselves, one group from a neighboring factory on their -“own time” offered to pay twenty-five cents, a half dollar, two dollars -apiece to see the child, insisting that it must be at Hull-House -because “the women had seen it.” To my query as to whether they -supposed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> we would, for money, exhibit a poor little deformed baby, if -one had been born in the neighborhood, they replied: “Sure, why not?” -and “it teaches a good lesson, too,” they added as an afterthought, or -perhaps as a concession to the strange moral standards of a place like -Hull-House. All the members in this group of hard-working men, in spite -of a certain swagger towards one another and a tendency to bully the -derelict showman, wore a hang-dog look betraying that sense of unfair -treatment which a man is so apt to feel when his womankind makes an -appeal to the supernatural. In their determination to see the child, -the men recklessly divulged much more concerning their motives than -they had meant to do. Their talk confirmed my impression that such a -story may still act as a restraining influence in the sphere of marital -conduct which, next to primitive religion, has always afforded the most -fertile field for irrational taboos and savage punishments.</p> - -<p>What story could be better than this to secure sympathy for the mother -of too<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> many daughters and contumely for the irritated father; the -touch of mysticism, the supernatural sphere in which it was placed, -would render a man quite helpless.</p> - -<p>The story of the Devil Baby, evolved in response to the imperative -needs of anxious wives and mothers, recalls the theory that woman first -fashioned the fairy story, that combination of wisdom and romance, -in an effort to tame her mate and to make him a better father to her -children, until such stories finally became a crude creed for domestic -conduct, softening the treatment men accorded to women. Because such -stories, expressing the very essence of human emotion, did not pretend -to imitate the outside of life, they were careless of verisimilitude -and absolutely indifferent to the real world. They did, however, meet -an essential requirement of the good story, in that they dealt with -fundamental experiences.</p> - -<p>These first pitiful efforts of women were so widespread and powerful -that we have not yet escaped their influence. As subconscious memories, -they still cast vague<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> shadows upon the vast spaces of life, shadows -that are dim and distorted because of their distant origin. They remind -us that for thousands of years women had nothing to oppose against -unthinkable brutality save “the charm of words,” no other implement -with which to subdue the fiercenesses of the world about them. Only -through words could they hope to arouse the generosity of strength, -to secure a measure of pity for themselves and their children, to so -protect the life they had produced that “the precious vintage stored -from their own agony” might not wantonly be spilled upon the ground. -Possibly the multitude of life’s failures, the obscure victims of -unspeakable wrong and brutality, have embodied their memories in a -literature of their own, of which the story of the Devil Baby is a -specimen, crude and ugly in form, as would be inevitable, but still -bringing relief to the surcharged heart.</p> - -<p>During the weeks that the Devil Baby drew multitudes of visitors to -Hull-House, my mind was opened to the fact that new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> knowledge derived -from concrete experience is continually being made available for the -guidance of human life; that humble women are still establishing rules -of conduct as best they may, to counteract the base temptations of a -man’s world. I saw a new significance in the fact that thousands of -women, for instance, make it a standard of domestic virtue that a man -must not touch his pay envelope, but bring it home unopened to his -wife. High praise is contained in the phrase, “We have been married -twenty years and he never once opened his own envelope,” or covert -blame in the statement, “Of course he got to gambling; what can you -expect from a man who always opens his own pay?”</p> - -<p>These humble domestic virtues, of which women see the need so much more -vividly than men do, have furthermore developed their penalties. The -latter, too, are put into aphorisms which, in time, when Memory has -done her work upon them, may become legendary wisdom.</p> - -<p>Such a penalty was recently illustrated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> in our neighborhood by the -fate of an old man who was found in his room almost starved to death. -He was pointed out by many of our neighbors as an example of the -inevitable fate of one who deserts his family and therefore, “without -a woman to keep him straight,” falls into drink and shiftlessness and -the endless paths of wrong-doing, so that loneliness and destitution -inevitably overtake his old age.</p> - -<p>The women were so fatalistically certain of this relation of -punishment to domestic sin, of reward to domestic virtue, that when -they talked about them, as they so constantly did in connection with -the Devil Baby, it often sounded as if they were using the words of a -widely known ritual. Among the visitors to the Devil Baby were many -foreign-born peasant women who, when they had come to America, had -been suddenly subjected to the complicated and constantly changing -environment of city life, and, finding no outlet for many inherited -tendencies, might easily have been thrown into that state described by -psychologists as one of “baulked disposition.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> To them this simple -tale, with its direct connection between cause and effect, between -wrong-doing and punishment, brought soothing and relief, and restored -a shaken confidence as to the righteousness of the universe. They used -the story not only to tame restless husbands, but mothers threatened -their daughters that if they went to dance halls or out to walk with -strange young men, they would be eternally disgraced by devil babies. -As the story grew, the girls themselves seized upon it as a palpable -punishment to be held over the heads of reckless friends. That the -tale was useful was evidenced by many letters similar to the anonymous -epistle here given.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“me and my friends we work in talor shop and when we are going home on -the roby street car where we get off that car at blue island ave. we -will meet some fellows sitting at that street where they drink some -beer from pail. they keep look in cars all time and they will wait and -see if we will come sometimes we will have to work, but they will wait -so long they are tired and they dont care they get rest so long but a -girl what works in twine mill saw them talk with us we know her good -and she say<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> what youse talk with old drunk man for we shall come to -thier dance when it will be they will tell us and we should know all -about where to see them that girl she say oh if you will go with them -you will get devils baby like some other girls did who we knows. she -say Jane Addams she will show one like that in Hull House if you will -go down there we shall come sometime and we will see if that is trouth -we do not believe her for she is friendly with them old men herself -when she go out from her work they will wink to her and say something -else to. We will go down and see you and make a lie from what she say.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Because the Devil Baby embodied an undeserved wrong to a poor mother -whose tender child had been claimed by the forces of evil, his merely -reputed presence had power to attract to Hull-House hundreds of women -who had been humbled and disgraced by their children; mothers of the -feeble-minded, of the vicious, of the criminal, of the prostitute. -In their talk it was as if their long rôle of maternal apology and -protective reticence had at last broken down, as if they could speak -out freely because for once a man responsible for an ill-begotten -child had been “met up with”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> and had received his deserts. Their -sinister version of the story was that the father of the Devil Baby had -married without confessing a hideous crime committed years before, thus -basely deceiving both his innocent young bride and the good priest who -performed the solemn ceremony; that the sin had become incarnate in his -child which, to the horror of the young and trusting mother, had been -born with all the outward aspects of the devil himself.</p> - -<p>As if drawn by a magnet, these forlorn women issued forth from the -many homes in which dwelt “the two unprofitable goddesses, Poverty -and Impossibility.” Occasionally it seemed to me that the women were -impelled by a longing to see one good case of retribution before they -died, as a bullied child hopes to deal at least one crushing blow at -his tormentor when he “grows up,” but I think, on the whole, such an -explanation was a mistake; it is more probable that the avidity of the -women demonstrated that the story itself, like all interpretative art, -was “one of those free, unconscious attempts to satisfy, outside<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> of -life, those cravings which life itself leaves unsatisfied.” At moments, -however, baffled desires, sharp cries of pain, echoes of justices -unfulfilled, the original material from which such tales are fashioned, -would defy Memory’s appeasing power and break through the rigid -restraints imposed by all Art, even that unconscious of itself.</p> - -<p>With an understanding quickened, perhaps, through my own acquaintance -with the mysterious child, I listened to many tragic reminiscences -from the visiting women; of premature births, “because he kicked me -in the side”; of children maimed and burnt because “I had no one to -leave them with when I went to work”; women had seen the tender flesh -of growing little bodies given over to death because “he wouldn’t let -me send for the doctor,” or because “there was no money to pay for the -medicine.” But even these mothers, rendered childless through insensate -brutality, were less pitiful than some of the others, who might well -have cried aloud of their children as did a distracted mother of her -child centuries ago:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p> - -<p class="poetry"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“That God should send this one thing more</span><br> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of hunger and of dread, a door</span><br> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Set wide to every wind of pain!”</span><br> -</p> - -<p>Such was the mother of a feeble-minded boy who said: “I didn’t have -a devil baby myself, but I bore a poor ‘innocent’ who made me fight -devils for twenty-three years.” She told of her son’s experiences from -the time the other little boys had put him up to stealing that they -might hide in safety and leave him to be found with “the goods on him,” -until grown into a huge man he fell into the hands of professional -burglars; he was evidently the dupe and stool-pigeon of the vicious and -criminal until the very day he was locked into the State Penitentiary. -“If people played with him a little, he went right off and did anything -they told him to, and now he’s been sent up for life. We call such -innocents ‘God’s Fools’ in the old country, but over here the Devil -himself gets them. I’ve fought off bad men and boys from the poor lamb -with my very fists; nobody ever came near the house except such-like -and the police officers, who were always arresting him.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p> - -<p>There were a goodly number of visitors to the Devil Baby of the type of -those to be found in every large city, who are on the verge of nervous -collapse, or who exhibit many symptoms of mental aberration, and yet -are sufficiently normal to be at large most of the time, and to support -themselves by drudgery which requires little mental effort, although -the exhaustion resulting from the work they are able to do is the one -thing from which they should be most carefully protected. One such -woman, evidently obtaining inscrutable comfort from the story of the -Devil Baby even after she had become convinced that we harbored no such -creature, came many times to tell of her longing for her son, who had -joined the army eighteen months before and was now stationed in Alaska. -She always began with the same words.</p> - -<p>“When Spring comes and the snow melts so that I know he could get out, -I can hardly stand it. You know I was once in the Insane Asylum for -three years at a stretch, and since then I haven’t had much use of -my mind except to worry with. Of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> course I know that it is dangerous -for me, but what can I do? I think something like this: ‘The snow is -melting, now he could get out, but his officers won’t let him off and -if he runs away he’ll be shot for a deserter—either way I’ll never -see him again; I’ll die without seeing him’—and then I begin all over -again with the snow.” After a pause, she said: “The recruiting officer -ought not to have taken him, he’s my only son and I’m a widow. It’s -against the rules, but he was so crazy to go that I guess he lied a -little—at any rate, the government has him now and I can’t get him -back. Without this worry about him my mind would be all right; if he -were here he would be earning money and keeping me and we would be -happy all day long.”</p> - -<p>Recalling the vagabondish lad, who had never earned much money and had -certainly never “kept” his hard-working mother, I ventured to suggest -that, even if he were at home, he might not have work these hard times, -that he might get into trouble and be arrested—I did not need<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> to -remind her that he had already been arrested twice—that he was now fed -and sheltered and under discipline, and I added hopefully something -about his seeing the world. She looked at me out of her withdrawn, -harried eyes, as if I were speaking a foreign tongue. “That wouldn’t -make any real difference to me—the work, the money, his behaving well -and all that, if I could cook and wash for him. I don’t need all the -money I earn scrubbing that factory. I only take bread and tea for -supper and I choke over that, thinking of him.”</p> - -<p>She ceased to speak, overcome by a thousand obscure emotions which -could find no outlet in words. She dimly realized that the facts in -the case, to one who had known her boy from childhood, were far from -creditable, and that no one could understand the eternally unappeased -idealism which, for her, surrounded her son’s return. She was even -afraid to say much about it, lest she should be overmastered by her -subject and be considered so irrational as to suggest a return to the -Hospital for the Insane.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p> - -<p>Those mothers who have never resisted fate nor buffeted against the -black waters, but have allowed the waves to close over them, worn and -bent as they are by hard labor, subdued and misshapen by the brutality -of men, are at least unaffrighted by the melodramatic coarseness -of life, which Stevenson more gently describes as “the uncouth and -outlandish strain in the web of the world.” The story of the Devil Baby -may have made its appeal through its frank presentation of this very -demoniac quality, to those who live under the iron tyranny of that -poverty which threatens starvation, and under the dread of a brutality -which may any dark night bring them or their children to extinction; -to those who have seen both virtue and vice go unrewarded and who have -long since ceased to explain.</p> - -<p>This more primitive type embodies the eternal patience of those humble, -toiling women who through the generations have been held of little -value, save as their drudgery ministered to their men. One of them -related her habit of going through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> the pockets of her drunken son -every pay day, and complained that she had never found so little as -the night before, only twenty-five cents out of fifteen dollars he had -promised for the rent, long overdue. “I had to get that as he lay in -the alley before the door; I couldn’t pull him in, and the copper who -helped him home, left as soon as he heard me coming and pretended he -didn’t see me. I have no food in the house, nor coffee to sober him up -with. I know perfectly well that you will ask me to eat something here, -but, if I can’t carry it home, I won’t take a bite nor a sup. I have -never told you so much before. Since one of the nurses said he could -be arrested for my non-support, I have been awful close-mouthed. It’s -the foolish way all the women in our street are talking about the Devil -Baby that’s loosened my tongue, more shame to me.”</p> - -<p>A sorrowful woman clad in heavy black, who came one day, exhibited such -a capacity for prolonged weeping that it was evidence in itself of the -truth of at least half her statement, that she had cried herself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> to -sleep every night of her life for fourteen years in fulfilment of a -“curse” laid upon her by an angry man, that “her pillow would be wet -with tears as long as she lived.” Her respectable husband had a shop -in the Red Light district because he found it profitable to sell to -the men and women who lived there. She had kept house in the room over -the “store” from the time she was a bride newly come from Russia, and -her five daughters had been born there, but never a son to gladden her -husband’s heart.</p> - -<p>She took such a feverish interest in the Devil Baby that, when I was -obliged to disillusion her, I found it hard to take away her comfort in -the belief that the Powers that Be are on the side of the woman when -her husband resents too many daughters. But, after all, the birth of -daughters was but an incident in her tale of unmitigated woe, for the -scoldings of a disappointed husband were as nothing to the curse of a -strange enemy, although she doubtless had a confused impression that if -there were retribution for one in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> the general scheme of things, there -might be for the other. When the weeping woman finally put the events -of her disordered life in some sort of sequence, it became clear that -about fifteen years ago she had reported to the police a vicious house -whose back door opened into her own yard. Her husband had forbidden -her to do anything about it and had said that it would only get them -into trouble, but she had been made desperate one day when she saw her -little girl, then twelve years old, come out of the door, gleefully -showing her younger sister a present of money. Because the poor woman -had tried for ten years without success to induce her husband to move -from the vicinity of such houses, she was certain that she could save -her child only by forcing out “the bad people” from her own door yard. -She therefore made her one frantic effort, found her way to the city -hall and there reported the house to the chief himself. Of course, -“the bad people stood in with the police” and nothing happened to them -save, perhaps, a fresh levy of blackmail, but the keeper<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> of the house, -beside himself with rage, made the dire threat and laid the curse upon -her. In less than a year from that time he had enticed her daughter -into a disreputable house in another part of the district. The poor -woman, ringing one doorbell after another, had never been able to find -her, but her sisters, who in time came to know where she was, had been -dazzled by her mode of life. The weeping mother was quite sure that -two of her daughters, while still outwardly respectable and “working -downtown,” earned money in the devious ways which they had learned all -about when they were little children, although for the past five years -the now prosperous husband had allowed the family to live in a suburb, -where the two younger daughters were “growing up respectable.”</p> - -<p>Certain of the visitors, although confronted by those mysterious and -impersonal wrongs which are apparently inherent in the very nature of -things, gave us glimpses of another sort of wisdom than that expressed -in the assumptions that the decrees of Fate are immutable.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p> - -<p>Such a glimpse came to me through a conversation with a woman whose -fine mind and indomitable spirit I had long admired; I had known her -for years, and yet the recital of her sufferings, added to those the -Devil Baby had already induced other women to tell me, pierced me -afresh. The story of the Devil Baby may have incited these women to -put their experiences more vividly than they had hitherto been able to -do. It may have been because they were unconsciously spurred by the -hope that a supernatural retribution might intervene even for them, or -because they were merely comforted by the knowledge that it had once -done so for some one else that they spoke with more confidence than -they had ever done before.</p> - -<p>“I had eleven children, some born in Hungary and some born here, nine -of them boys; all of the children died when they were little but my -dear Liboucha. You know all about her. She died last winter in the -Insane Asylum. She was only twelve years old when her father, in a fit -of delirium tremens, killed himself after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> he had chased us around -the room, trying to kill us first. She saw it all, the blood splashed -on the wall stayed in her mind the worst; she shivered and shook all -that night through, and the next morning she had lost her voice, -couldn’t speak out loud for terror. After a while she went to school -again and her voice came back, although it was never very natural. -She seemed to do as well as ever and was awful pleased when she got -into High School. All the money we had I earned scrubbing in a public -dispensary, although sometimes I got a little more by interpreting for -the patients, for I know three languages, one as well as the other. -But I was determined that whatever happened to me, Liboucha was to be -educated. My husband’s father was a doctor in the old country, and -Liboucha was always a clever child. I wouldn’t have her live the kind -of life I had, with no use for my mind except to make me restless and -bitter. I was pretty old and worn out for such hard work, but when -I used to see Liboucha on a Sunday morning ready for church in her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> -white dress, with her long yellow hair braided round her beautiful pale -face, lying there in bed as I was, being brought up a free-thinker, -and needing to rest my aching bones for the next week’s work, I’d feel -almost happy, in spite of everything. But of course no such peace could -last in my life; the second year at High School Liboucha began to seem -different and to do strange things. You know the time she wandered -away for three days and we were all wild with fright, although a kind -woman had taken her in and no harm came to her. I could never be easy -after that; she was always gentle, but she was awful sly about running -away and at last I had to send her to the asylum. She stayed there off -and on for five years, but I saw her every week of my life and she was -always company for me, what with sewing for her, washing and ironing -her clothes, cooking little things to take out to her, and saving a bit -of money to buy fruit for her. At any rate, I had stopped feeling so -bitter, and got some comfort out of seeing the one thing that belonged -to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> me on this side of the water, when all of a sudden she died of -heart failure and they never took the trouble to send for me until the -next day.”</p> - -<p>She stopped as if wondering afresh that the Fates could have been so -casual, but with a sudden illumination, as if she had been awakened -out of the burden and intensity of her restricted personal interests -into a consciousness of those larger relations that are, for the most -part, so strangely invisible. It was as if the young mother of the -grotesque Devil Baby, that victim of wrong doing on the part of others, -had revealed to this tragic woman much more clearly than soft words had -ever done, that the return of a deed of violence upon the head of the -innocent is inevitable; as if she had realized that, although she was -destined to walk all the days of her life with the piteous multitude -who bear the undeserved wrongs of the world, she would walk henceforth -with a sense of companionship.</p> - -<p>At moments it seemed possible that these simple women, representing -an earlier development,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> eagerly seized upon the story because it -was primitive in form and substance. Certainly, one evening, a -long-forgotten ballad made an unceasing effort to come to the surface -of my mind as I talked to a feeble woman who, in the last stages of an -incurable disease from which she soon afterwards died, had been helped -off the street car in front of Hull-House. The ballad tells how the -lover of a proud and jealous mistress, who demanded as a final test of -devotion that he bring her the heart of his mother, had quickly cut -the heart from his mother’s breast and impetuously returned to his -lady, bearing it upon a salver; and how, when stumbling in his gallant -haste, he stooped to replace upon the silver plate his mother’s heart, -which had rolled to the ground, the heart, still beating with tender -solicitude, whispered the hope that her child was not hurt. The ballad -itself was scarcely more exaggerated than the story of our visitor that -evening, who had made the desperate effort of a journey from home in -order to see the Devil Baby. I was familiar with her vicissitudes;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> the -shiftless, drinking husband and the large family of children, all of -whom had brought her sorrow and disgrace, and I knew that her heart’s -desire was to see again, before she died, her youngest son, who was -a life prisoner in the penitentiary. She was confident that the last -piteous stage of her disease would secure him a week’s parole, founding -this forlorn hope upon the fact that “they sometimes let them out to -attend a mother’s funeral, and perhaps they’d let Joe come a few days -ahead; he could pay his fare afterwards from the insurance money. It -wouldn’t take much to bury me.” Again we went over the hideous story: -Joe had violently quarrelled with a woman, the proprietor of the house -in which his disreputable wife was living, because she had withheld -from him a part of his wife’s “earnings,” and in the altercation had -killed her—a situation, one would say, which it would be difficult for -even a mother to condone. But not at all, her thin gray face worked -with emotion, her trembling hands restlessly pulled at her shabby -skirt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> as the hands of the dying pluck at their sheets, but she put -all the vitality she could muster into his defence. She told us he had -legally married the girl, who supported him, “although Lily had been -so long in that life that few men would have done it. Of course, such -a girl must have a protector or everybody would fleece her. Poor Lily -said to the day of her death that he was the kindest man she ever knew, -and treated her the whitest; that she herself was to blame for the -murder because she told on the old miser, and Joe was so hot-headed -she might have known that he would draw a gun for her.” The gasping -mother concluded: “He was always that handsome and had such a way. One -winter, when I was scrubbing in an office building, I’d never get home -much before twelve o’clock, but Joe would open the door for me just -as pleasant as if he hadn’t been waked out of a sound sleep.” She was -so triumphantly unconscious of the incongruity of a sturdy son in bed -while his mother earned his food, that her auditors said never a word, -and in silence we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> saw a hero evolved before our eyes, a defender of -the oppressed, the best beloved of his mother, who was losing his high -spirits and eating his heart out behind prison bars. He could well defy -the world even there, surrounded as he was by that invincible affection -which assures both the fortunate and unfortunate alike that we are -loved, not according to our deserts, but in response to some profounder -law.</p> - -<p>This imposing revelation of maternal solicitude was an instance of what -continually happened in connection with the Devil Baby. In the midst -of the most tragic reminiscences, there remained that something in the -memories of these mothers which has been called the great revelation -of tragedy, or sometimes the great illusion of tragedy; that which has -power in its own right to make life palatable and at rare moments even -beautiful.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br><span class="small">WOMEN’S MEMORIES—DISTURBING CONVENTIONS</span></h2> -</div> - - - -<p>In sharp contrast to the function of woman’s long memory as a -reconciler to life, revealed by the visitors to the Devil Baby, are -those individual reminiscences which, because they force the possessor -to challenge existing conventions, act as a reproach, even as a -social disturber. When these reminiscences, based upon the diverse -experiences of many people unknown to each other, point to one -inevitable conclusion, they accumulate into a social protest, although -not necessarily an effective one, against existing conventions, even -against those which are most valuable and those securely founded upon -cumulative human wisdom. But because no conventionalized tradition is -perfect, however good its intent, most of them become challenged in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> -course of time, unwittingly illustrating the contention that great -social changes are often brought about less by the thinkers than by “a -certain native and independent rationalism operating in great masses of -men and women.”</p> - -<p>The statement is well founded that a convention is at its best, -not when it is universally accepted, but just when it is being so -challenged and broken that the conformists are obliged to defend it and -to fight for it against those who would destroy it. Both the defenders -of an old custom and its opponents are then driven to a searching of -their own hearts.</p> - -<p>Such searching and sifting is taking place in the consciences of -many women of this generation whose sufferings, although strikingly -influencing conduct, are seldom expressed in words until they are -told in the form of reminiscence after the edges have been long since -dulled. Such sufferings are never so poignant as when women have -been forced by their personal experiences to challenge the valuable -conventions safeguarding family life.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> - -<p>A woman whom I had known slightly for many years came to Hull-House -one day escorted by her little grandson. Her delicate features, which -were rather hard and severe, softened most charmingly as the little boy -raised his cap in good-by from the vanishing automobile. In reply to -my admiring comment upon the sturdy lad and his affectionate relation -to her, she startled me by saying abruptly, “You know he is really not -my grandson. I have scarcely admitted the doubt before, but the time -is coming when I must face it and decide his future. If you are kind -enough to listen, I want to tell you my experience in all its grim -sorrow.</p> - -<p>“My husband was shot twenty-seven years ago, under very disgraceful -circumstances, in a disreputable quarter of Paris; you may remember -something of it in the newspapers, although they meant to be -considerate. I was left with my little son, and with such a horror of -self-indulgence and its consequences, that I determined to rear my -child in strict sobriety, chastity, and self-restraint, although all -else were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> sacrificed to it. Through his school and college days, which -I took care should be far from his father’s friends and associations, -I always lived with him, so bent on rectitude and so distressed by any -lack of self-control that I see now how hard and rigorous his life -must have been. I meant to sacrifice myself for my child, in reality I -sacrificed him to my narrow code.</p> - -<p>“The very June that he took his master’s degree, I myself found him, -one beautiful morning, lying dead in his own room, shot through the -temple. No one had heard the report of the revolver, for the little -house we had taken was so on the edge of the college town that the -neighbors were rather remote, and he must have killed himself while I -sat in the moonlight, on the garden bench, after he had left me, my -mind still filled with plans for his future.</p> - -<p>“I have gone over every word of our conversation that evening in the -garden a thousand times; we were planning to come to Chicago for his -medical course, and I had expressed my exultant confidence in him to -withstand whatever temptation a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> city might offer, my pride in his -purity of thought, his rectitude of conduct. It was then he rose rather -abruptly and went into the house to write the letter to me which I -found on his table next morning. In that letter he told me that he was -too vile to live any longer, that he had sinned not only against his -own code of decency and honor, but against my lifelong standards and -teachings, and that he realized perfectly that I could never forgive -him. He evidently did not expect any understanding from me, either for -himself or for ‘the young and innocent girl’ about to become the mother -of his child, and in his interpretation of my rigid morals he was quite -sure that I would never consent to see her, but he wrote me that he -had told her to send the little baby to me as soon as it was born, -obviously hoping that I might be tender to the innocent, although I was -so harsh and unpitying to the guilty. I had apparently never given him -a glimpse beyond my unbending sternness, and he had all unwittingly -pronounced me too self-righteous for forgiveness; at any rate, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> -faced death rather than my cold disapprobation.</p> - -<p>“The girl is still leading the life she had led for two years before -my son met her. She is glad to have her child cared for and hopes -that I will make him my heir, but understands, of course, that his -paternity could never be established in court. So here I am, old and -hard, beginning again the perilous experiment of rearing a man child. I -suppose it was inevitable that I should hold the girl responsible for -my son’s downfall and for his death. She was one of the wretched young -women who live in college towns for the express purpose of inveigling -young men, often deliberately directing their efforts toward those -who are reputed to have money. I discovered all sorts of damaging -facts about her, which enabled me to exonerate my son from intentional -wrong-doing, and to think quite honestly that he had been lured and -tempted beyond his strength. The girl was obliged to leave the little -town, which was filled with the horror and scandal of the occurrence, -but even then, in that first<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> unbridled public censure against the ‘bad -woman’ who had been discovered in the midst of virtuous surroundings, -there was a tendency to hold me accountable for my son’s death, -whatever the girl’s earlier responsibility may have been.</p> - -<p>“In my loathing of her I experienced all over again the harsh and -bitter judgments through which I had lived in the first years after -my husband’s death. I had secretly held the unknown woman responsible -for his end, but of course it never occurred to me to find out about -her, and I certainly could never have brought myself to hear her name, -much less to see her. I have at least done better than that in regard -to the mother of my ‘grandson,’ and Heaven knows I have tried in all -humility and heartbreak to help her. She fairly hated me, as she did -anything that reminded her of my son—the entire episode had seemed to -her so unnatural, so monstrous, so unnecessary—she considered me his -murderer, and I never had the courage to tell her that I agreed with -her. Perhaps if I had done that, really abased myself as I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> was willing -she should be abased, we might have come into some sort of genuine -relation born of our companionship in tragedy. But I couldn’t do that, -possibly because the women of my generation cannot easily change the -traditional attitude towards what the Bible calls ‘the harlot.’ At any -rate, I didn’t succeed in ‘saving’ her. She so obviously dreaded seeing -me, and our strained visits were so unsatisfactory and painful, that I -finally gave it up, and her son has apparently quite forgotten her. I -am sure she tries to forget him and all the tragic scenes associated -with his earliest babyhood, when I insisted not only upon ‘keeping -mother and child together’ but also on keeping them with me.”</p> - -<p>After a moment’s pause she resumed: “It would have been comparatively -easy for me to die when my child was little, when I still had a -right to believe that he would grow up to be a good and useful man, -but I lived to see him driven to his death by my own stupidity. I -have encountered the full penalty for breaking the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> commandment to -judge not. I passed sentence without hearing the evidence; I gave up -the traditional rôle of the woman who loves and pities and tries to -understand; I forgot that it was my mission to save and not to judge.</p> - -<p>“As I have gone back over my unmitigated failure again and again, -I am sure at last that it was the sorry result of my implacable -judgment of the woman I held responsible for my husband’s sin. I did -not realize the danger nor the inevitable recoil of such a state of -self-righteousness upon my child.”</p> - -<p>As she paused in the recital I rashly anticipated the conclusion, -that her bitter experiences had brought the whole question to that -tribunal of personal conduct whose concrete findings stir us to our -very marrow with shame and remorse; that she had frantically striven as -we all do, to keep herself from falling into the pit where the demons -of self-reproach dwell, by clinging to the conventional judgments -of the world. I expected her to set them forth at great length in -self-justification, and perhaps,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> belonging, as she so obviously did, -to an older school, she might even assure me that the wrong to those to -whom it was now impossible to make reparation had forever lifted her -above committing another such injustice. I found, however, that I was -absolutely mistaken and that whatever might be true of her, it still -lay within me to commit a gross injustice, when she resumed with these -words: “It is a long time since I ceased to urge in my own defence that -I was but reflecting the attitude of society, for, in my efforts to get -at the root of the matter I have been convinced that the conventional -attitude cannot be defended, certainly not upon religious grounds.”</p> - -<p>She stopped as if startled by her own reflections upon the subject of -the social ostracism so long established and so harshly enforced that -women seem to hold to it as through an instinct of self-preservation.</p> - -<p>She was, perhaps, dimly conscious that the tradition that the unchaste -woman should be an outcast from society rests upon a solid basis of -experience, upon the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> long struggle of a multitude of obscure women -who, from one generation to another, were frantically determined to -establish the paternity of their children and to force the father to -a recognition of his obligations; and that the living representatives -of these women instinctively rise up in honest rebellion against -any attempt to loosen the social control which such efforts have -established, bungling and cruel though the control may be.</p> - -<p>Further conversation showed that she also realized that these stern -memories inherited from the past have an undoubted social value and -that it is a perilous undertaking upon which certain women of this -generation are bent in their efforts to deal a belated justice to the -fallen woman. It involves a clash within the very mass of inherited -motives and impulses as well as a clash between old conventions and -contemporary principles. On the other hand, it must have been obvious -to her in her long effort to get at “the root of the matter” that the -punishment and hatred of the bad woman has gone so far as to overreach<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> -its own purpose; it has become responsible for such hardness of heart -on the part of “respectable” women towards the so-called fallen ones, -that punishment is often inflicted not only without regard to justice, -but in order to feed the spiritual pride, “I am holier than thou.” -Such pride erects veritable barricades, deliberately shutting out -sympathetic understanding.</p> - -<p>The very fact that women remain closer to type than men do and are -more swayed by the past, makes it difficult for them to defy settled -conventions. It adds to their difficulty that the individual women, -driven to modify a harsh convention which has become unendurable -to them, are perforce those most sensitive to injustice. The sharp -struggle for social advance, which is always a struggle between ideas, -long before it becomes embodied in contending social groups, may thus -find its arena in the tender conscience of one woman who is pitilessly -rent and pierced by her warring scruples and affections. Even such a -tentative effort in the direction of social<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> advance exacts the usual -toll of blood and tears.</p> - -<p>Fortunately the entire burden of the attempt to modify a convention -which has become unsupportable, by no means rests solely upon -such self-conscious women. Their analytical efforts are steadily -supplemented by instinctive conduct on the part of many others. A -great mass of “variation from type,” accelerating this social change, -is contributed by simple mothers who have been impelled by the -same primitive emotion which the Devil Baby had obviously released -in so many old women. This is an overwhelming pity and sense of -tender comprehension, doubtless closely related to the compunction -characteristic of all primitive people which in the earliest stage -of social development long performed the first rude offices of a -sense of justice. This early trait is still a factor in the social -struggle, for as has often been pointed out, our social state is like a -countryside—of a complex geological structure, with outcrops of strata -of very diverse ages.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span></p> - -<p>Such compunction sometimes carries the grandmother of an illegitimate -child to the point of caring for the child when she is still utterly -unable to forgive her daughter, the child’s mother. Even that is a step -in advance from the time when the daughter was driven from the house -and her child, because a bastard, was conscientiously treated as an -outcast both by the family and by the community.</p> - -<p>Such an instance of compunction was recently brought to my attention -when Hull-House made an effort to place a subnormal little girl twelve -years old in an institution in order that she might be protected from -certain designing men in the neighborhood. The grandmother who had -always taken care of her savagely opposed the effort step by step. She -had scrubbed the lavatories in a public building during the twenty-five -years of her widowhood, and because she worked all day had been unable -to protect her own feeble-minded daughter who, when barely fifteen -years old, had become the mother of this child. When her granddaughter -was finally placed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> in the institution, the old woman was absolutely -desolated. She found it almost impossible to return home after her -day’s work because “it was too empty and lonesome, and nothing to come -back for. You see,” she explained, “my youngest boy wasn’t right in his -head either and kept his bed for the last fifteen years of his life. -During all that time I took care of him the way one does of a baby, -and I hurried home every night with my heart in my mouth until I saw -that he was all right. He died the year this little girl was born and -she kind of took his place. I kept her in a day nursery while she was -little, and when she was seven years old the ladies there sent her -to school in one of the subnormal rooms and let her come back to the -nursery for her meals. I thought she was getting along all right and I -took care never to let her go near her mother.” The old woman made it -quite clear that this was because her daughter was keeping house with -a man with whom there had been no marriage ceremony. In her simple -code, to go to such a house would be to connive at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> sin, and while she -was grateful that the man had established a control over her daughter -which she herself had never been able to obtain, she always referred -to her daughter as “fallen,” although no one knew better than she how -unguarded the girl had been. As I saw how singularly free this mother -was from self-reproach and how untouched by any indecisions or remorses -for the past, I was once more impressed by the strength of the stout -habits acquired by those who early become accustomed to fight off black -despair. Such habits stand them in good stead in old age, and at least -protect them from those pensive regrets and inconsolable sorrows which -inevitably tend to surround whatever has once made for early happiness, -as soon as it has ceased to exist.</p> - -<p>Many individual instances are found in which a woman, hard pressed by -life, includes within her tenderness the mother of an illegitimate -child. A most striking example of this came to me through a woman -whom I knew years ago when she daily brought her three children to -the Hull-House<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> day nursery, obliged to support them by her work in a -neighboring laundry because her husband had deserted her. I recall her -fatuous smile as she used to say that “Tommy is so pleased to see me at -night that I can hear him shout ‘Hello, ma’ when I am a block away.” -I had known Tommy through many years; periods of adversity when his -father was away were succeeded by periods of fitful prosperity when -his father returned from his wanderings with the circus with which “he -could always find work,” because he had once been a successful acrobat -and later a clown, and “so could turn his hand to anything that was -needed.”</p> - -<p>Perhaps it was unavoidable that Tommy should have made his best friends -among the warm-hearted circus people who were very kind to him after -his father’s death, and that long before the Child Labor Law permitted -him to sing in Chicago saloons, he was doing a successful business -singing in the towns of a neighboring state. He was a droll little -chap “without any sense about taking care of himself,” and in those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> -days his mother not only missed his cheerful companionship but was -constantly anxious about his health and morals. When he grew older and -became a professional he sent his mother money occasionally, although -never very much and never with any regularity. She was always so -pleased when it came that the two daughters supporting her with their -steady wages were inclined to resent her obvious gratification, as they -did the killing of the fatted calf on those rare occasions when the -prodigal returned “between seasons” to visit his family.</p> - -<p>It is possible that his mother thus early acquired the habit of -defending him, the black sheep, against the strictures of the good -children who so easily become the self-righteous when they feel “put -upon.” However that may be, five years ago, after one daughter had been -married to a skilled mechanic and the other, advanced to the position -of a forewoman, was supporting her mother in the comparative idleness -of keeping house for two people in three rooms, a forlorn girl appeared -with a note from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span> Tommy asking his mother “to help her out until the -kid came and she could work again.”</p> - -<p>The steady daughter would not permit “such a girl to cross the -threshold,” and the little household was finally broken up upon the -issue. The daughter went to live with her married sister, while the -mother, having moved into one room with “Tommy’s girl,” went back to -the laundry in order to support herself and her guest.</p> - -<p>The daughters, having impressively told their mother that she could -come to live with them whenever she “was willing to come alone,” -dropped the entire situation. In doing this, they were doubtless -instinctively responding to a habit acquired through years of “keeping -clear of the queer people father knew in the circus and the saloon -crowds always hanging around Tommy,” in their secret hope to come -to know respectable young men. Conscious that they had back of them -the opinion of all righteous people they could not understand why -their mother, for the sake of a bad girl, had deserted them in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> this -praiseworthy effort in which hitherto she had been the prime mover.</p> - -<p>Tommy had sent his “girl” to his mother on the eve of his departure -for “a grand tour to the Klondike region,” and since then, almost four -years ago, she has heard nothing further from him. During the first -half of the time the two women struggled on together as best they -could, supporting themselves and the child who was brought daily to the -nursery by his grandmother. But the pretty little mother, gradually -going back to her old occupation of dancing in the vaudeville, had -more and more out-of-town engagements, and while she always divided -her earnings with the baby, the grandmother suspected her of losing -interest in him, a situation which was finally explained when she -confessed that she was about to be married to a cabaret manager who -“knew nothing of the past,” and to beg that the baby might stay where -he was. “Of course, I will pay board for him, but his father can be -made to do something, too, if we can only get the law on him.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p> - -<p>It was at this point that I had the following conversation with the -grandmother, who was shrewd enough to see that the support of the -baby was being left upon her hands, and that she could expect help -from neither his father nor his mother, although she stoutly refused -the advice that the whole matter be taken into the Court of Domestic -Relations. “If I could only see Tommy once I think I could get him to -help, but I can’t find out where he is, and he may not be alive for -all I know; he was always that careless about himself. If he put on -a new red necktie he’d never know if his bare toes were pushing out -of his shoes. He probably didn’t get proper clothes for ‘the Klondike -region’ and he may have been frozen to death before this. But whatever -has happened to him, I can’t let his baby go. I suppose I’ve learned -to think differently about some things after all my years of living -with a light-minded husband. Maggie came to see me last week, for she -means to be a good daughter. She said that Carrie and Joe were buying a -house way out on the West Side, that they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> were going to move into it -this month, and that she and I could have a nice big room together. She -said, too, that Carrie would charge only half rate board for me, and -would be glad to have my help with her little children, for they both -think that nobody has such a way with children as I have. The night -before, when she and Carrie were playing with the little boys, they -remembered some of the funny songs father used to teach Tommy, and how -jolly we all were when he came home good-natured and would stand on his -head to make the candy fall out of his pockets. I know the two girls -really want me to come back, and that they are often homesick, but when -I pointed to the bed where the baby was and asked, ‘What about him?’ -Maggie turned as hard as nails and said as quick as a flash, ‘We’re -all agreed that you’ll have to put him in an institution. We’ll never -have any chance with the nice people in a swell neighborhood like ours -if you bring the baby.’ She looked real white then, and I felt sorry -for her when she said, ‘Why, they might even think he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> was my child, -you never can tell,’ although she was ashamed of that afterwards and -cried a little before she left. She told me that she and Carrie, when -they were children, were always talking of what they would do when they -got old enough to work, how they would take care of me and move to a -part of the city where nobody would know anything about the outlandish -way their father and Tommy used to carry on. Of course, it was almost -telling me that they didn’t want me to come to see them if I kept the -baby.”</p> - -<p>My old friend was quite unable to formulate the motives which underlay -her determination, but she implied that clinging to this helpless child -was part of her unwavering affection for her son when, without any -preamble, she concluded the conversation with the remark, “It’s the way -I always felt about him,” as if further explanation were unnecessary.</p> - -<p>It was all doubtless a manifestation of Nature’s anxious care—so -determined upon survival and so indifferent to morals—that had induced -her long devotion to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> her one child least equipped to take care of -himself; and for the same reason the helpless little creature whose -existence no one else was deeply concerned to preserve had become so -entwined in her affections that separation was impossible.</p> - -<p>From time to time a mother goes further than this, in her determination -to deal justly with the unhappy situation in which her daughter is -placed. When the mother of a so-called fallen girl is of that type -of respectability which is securely founded upon narrow precepts, -inherited through generations of careful living, it requires genuine -courage to ignore the social stigma in order to consider only the moral -development of her child, although the result of such courage doubtless -minimizes the chagrin and disgrace for the girl herself.</p> - -<p>In one such instance the parents of the girl, who had been prevented -from marrying her lover because the families on both sides objected -to differences of religion, have openly faced the situation and made -the baby a beloved member of the household. The pretty young mother -arrogates<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> to herself a hint of martyrdom for her faith’s sake, but the -discipline and responsibility are working wonders for her character. -In her hope of earning money enough for two, she has been stirred to -new ambition and is eagerly attending a business college. She suffers -a certain amount of social ostracism but at the same time her steady -courage excites genuine admiration.</p> - -<p>In another case a fearless mother exacts seven dollars a week in -payment of the board for her daughter and the baby, although the -girl earns but eight dollars a week in a cigar factory and buys such -clothing for two as she can with the remaining dollar. She admits that -it is “hard sledding,” but that the baby is “mighty nice.” Whatever -her state of mind, she evidently has no notion of rebelling against -her mother’s authority, and is humbly grateful that she was not turned -out of doors when the situation was discovered. It is possible that -the mother’s remorse at her failure to guard her daughter from wrong -doing enables her thus grimly to defy social standards which,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> although -they are based upon stern and narrow tenets, nevertheless epitomize the -bitter wisdom of generations. Such mothers, overcoming that timidity -which makes it so difficult to effect changes in daily living, make a -genuine contribution to the solution of the vexed problem.</p> - -<p>In spite of much obtuseness on the part of those bound by the iron -fetters of convention, these individual cases suggest a practical -method of procedure. For quite as pity and fierce maternal affection -for their own children drove mothers all over the world to ostracize -and cruelly punish the “bad woman” who would destroy the home by -taking away the breadwinner and the father, so it is possible that, -under the changed conditions of modern life, this same pity for little -children, this same concern that, even if they are the children of the -outcast, they must still be nourished and properly reared, will make -good the former wrongs. There has certainly been a great modification -of the harsh judgments meted out in such cases, as women all over the -world have endeavored, through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> the old bungling method of trial and -error, to deal justly with individual situations. Each case has been -quietly judged by reference to an altered moral standard, for while the -ethical code like the legal code stands in need of constant revision, -the remodeling of the former is always private, tacit and informal in -marked contrast to the public and ceremonious acts of law-makers and -judges when the latter is changed.</p> - -<p>Such measure of success as the organized Woman’s Movement has attained -in the direction of a larger justice has come through an overwhelming -desire to cherish both the illegitimate child and his unfortunate -mother. In addition to that, the widespread effort of modern women -to obtain a recognized legal status for themselves and their own -children has also been largely dependent upon this desire, at least in -the beginnings of the movement. Women slowly had discovered that the -severe attitude towards the harlot had not only become embodied in the -statutory law concerning her, as thousands of court<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> decisions every -day bear testimony, but had become registered in the laws and social -customs pertaining to good women as well; the Code Napoleon, which -prohibited that search be made for the father of an illegitimate child, -also denied the custody of her children to the married mother; those -same states in which the laws considered a little girl of ten years -the seducer of a man of well-known immorality, did not allow a married -woman to hold her own property nor to retain her own wages.</p> - -<p>The enthusiasm responsible for the worldwide Woman’s Movement was -generated in the revolt against such gross injustices. The most -satisfactory achievements of the movement have been secured in the -Scandinavian countries, where the splendid code of laws protecting -all women and children was founded on the instinct to defend the -weakest, and upon a determination to lighten that social opprobrium -which makes it so unreasonably difficult for a mother to support a -child born out of wedlock. In Germany, when the presence of over a -million illegitimate children under the age<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> of fourteen years made -the situation acute, the best women of the nation, asserting that -all attempts to deal out social punishment upon the mothers resulted -only in a multitude of ill-nourished and weakened children, founded -“The Mutterchutz” Movement. Through its efforts to secure justice and -protection for these mothers, it has come to be the great defender of -the legal rights of all German women.</p> - -<p>Many achievements of the modern movement demonstrate that woman deals -most efficiently with fresh experiences when she coalesces them into -the impressions Memory has kept in store for her. Eagerly seeking -continuity with the past by her own secret tests of affinity, she -reinforces and encourages Memory’s instinctive processes of selection. -If she develops her craving for continuity into a willingness to -subordinate a part to the whole and into a sustained and self-forgetful -search for congruity and harmony with a life which is greater than -hers, she may lift the entire selective process into the realm of Art; -at least so far as Art is dependent upon proportion and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> so far as -beauty hangs upon an ineffable balance between restraint and inclusion. -Hungry for this finely proportioned living, she may at length become a -disciple of Diotema, the wisest woman of antiquity, who asserted that -the life which above all we should live, must be discovered by faithful -and strenuous search for ever-widening kinds of beauty.</p> - -<p>In woman’s search for “the eternal moment,” balanced independently of -time itself because so melted both into memories of the past and into -surmises of new beauty for the future of her children’s children, she -may recognize as one of the universal harmonies the touching devotion -of the endless multitude of mothers who were the humble vessels for -life’s continuance and who carried the burden in safety to the next -generation.</p> - -<p>Maternal affection and solicitude, in woman’s remembering heart, -may at length coalesce into a chivalric protection for all that is -young and unguarded. This chivalry of women expressing protection for -those at the bottom of society, so far as it has already developed, -suggests a return to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> that idealized version of chivalry which was the -consecration of strength to the defence of weakness, unlike the actual -chivalry of the armed knight who served his lady with gentle courtesy -while his fields were ploughed by peasant women misshapen through toil -and hunger.</p> - -<p>As an example of this new chivalry, the Hungarian women have recently -risen in protest against a proposed military regulation requiring that -all young women in domestic service, who are living in the vicinity -of barracks, be examined each week by medical officers in order to -protect the soldiers from disease. The good women in Hungary spiritedly -resented the assumption that these girls, simply because they are the -least protected of any class in the community, should be subjected to -this insult.</p> - -<p>An instance of this sort once again illustrates that moral passion -is the only solvent for prejudice, and that women have come to feel -reproached and disturbed when they ignore the dynamic urgency of -memories as fundamental as those upon which prohibitive conventions are -based.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br><span class="small">WOMEN’S MEMORIES—INTEGRATING INDUSTRY</span></h2> -</div> - - - -<p>If it has always been the mission of literature to translate the -particular act into something of the universal, to reduce the element -of crude pain in the isolated experience by bringing to the sufferer a -realization that his is but the common lot, this mission may have been -performed through such stories as that of the Devil Baby for simple, -hardworking women who at any given moment compose the bulk of the women -in the world.</p> - -<p>Certainly some of the visitors to the Devil Baby attempted to -generalize and evidently found a certain enlargement of the horizon, -an interpretation of life as it were, in the effort. They exhibited -that confidence which sometimes comes to the more literate person -when, finding himself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> morally isolated among those hostile to his -immediate aims, his reading assures him that other people in the world -have thought as he does. Later when he dares to act on the conviction -his own experience has forced upon him, he has become so conscious of -a cloud of witnesses torn out of literature and warmed into living -comradeship, that he scarcely distinguishes them from the likeminded -people actually in the world whom he has later discovered as a -consequence of his deed.</p> - -<p>In some of the reminiscences related by working women I was surprised, -not so much by the fact that memory could integrate the individual -experience into a sense of relation with the more impersonal aspects -of life, as that the larger meaning had been obtained when the -fructifying memory had had nothing to feed upon but the harshest and -most monotonous of industrial experiences.</p> - -<p>I held a conversation with one such woman when she came to confess that -her long struggle was over and that she and her sister had at last -turned their faces to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> the poorhouse. She clearly revealed not only -that she had caught a glimpse of the great social forces of her day, -but that she had had the ability to modify her daily living by what she -had perceived.</p> - -<p>Perhaps, under the shadow of a tragic surrender, she had obtained a -new sense of values, or at least had made up her mind that it was not -worth while any longer to conceal her genuine experiences, for she -talked more fully of her hard life than I had ever heard her before -in the many years I had known her. She related in illuminating detail -an incident in her long effort of earning, by ill-paid and unskilled -labor, the money with which to support her decrepit mother and her -imbecile sister. For more than fifty years she had never for a moment -considered the possibility of sending either of them to a public -institution, although it had become almost impossible to maintain such -a household after the mother, who lived to be ninety-four years old, -had become utterly distraught.</p> - -<p>She was still sharing her scanty livelihood with the feeble-minded -sister, although she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> herself was unable to do anything but wash -vegetables and peel potatoes in a small restaurant of her neighborhood. -The cold water necessary to these processes made her hands, already -crippled with rheumatism, so bad that on some days she could not hold -anything smaller than a turnip, although the other people in the -kitchen surreptitiously helped her all they could and the cooks gave -her broken food to carry home to the ever hungry sister.</p> - -<p>She told of her monotonous years in a box factory, where she had always -worked with the settled enmity of the other employes. They regarded her -as a pace setter, and she, obliged to work fast and furiously in order -to keep three people, and full of concern for her old mother’s many -unfulfilled needs, had never understood what the girls meant when they -talked about standing by each other.</p> - -<p>She did not change in her attitude even when she found the prices of -piece work went down lower and lower, so that at last she was obliged -to work overtime late into the night in order to earn the small<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> amount -she had previously earned by day. She was seventy years old when the -legality of the Illinois Ten Hour Law was contested, and her employer -wanted her to testify in court that she was opposed to the law because -she could not have supported her old mother all those years unless -she had been allowed to work nights. She found herself at last dimly -conscious of what it was that her long time enemies, the union girls, -had been trying to do, and a subconscious loyalty to her own kind made -it impossible for her to bear testimony against them. She did not -analyze her motives but told me that, fearing she might yield to her -employer’s request, in sheer panic she had abruptly left his factory -and moved her helpless household to another part of the city on the -very day she was expected to appear in court. In her haste she left -four days unpaid wages behind her, and moving the family took all the -money she had painstakingly saved for the coming winter’s coal. She had -unknowingly moved into a neighborhood of cheap restaurants, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> from -that time on she worked in any of them which would employ her until now -at last she was too feeble to be of much use to anybody.</p> - -<p>Although she had never joined the Union which finally became so -flourishing in the box factory she had left, she was conscious that in -a moment of great temptation she had refrained from seeking her own -advantage at the expense of others. As she bunglingly tried to express -her motives, she said: “The Irish—you know I was ten years old when we -came over—often feel like that; it isn’t exactly that you are sorry -after you have done a thing, nor so much that you don’t do it because -you know you will be sorry afterwards, nor that anything in particular -will happen to you if you do it, but that you haven’t the heart for it, -that it goes against your nature.”</p> - -<p>When I expressed my admiration for her prompt action she replied: -“I have never told this before except to one person, to a woman who -was organizing for the garment workers and who came to my house one -night about nine o’clock, just as I was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> having my supper. I had it -late in those days because I used to scrub the restaurant floor after -everybody left. My sister was asleep back of the stove, I looked sharp -not to wake her up and I don’t believe the Union woman ever knew that -she wasn’t just like other people. The organizer was looking for some -of the women living in our block who had been taking work from the -shops ever since the strike was on. She was clean tired out, and when -I offered her a cup of tea she said as quick as a flash, ‘You are not -a scab, are you?’ I just held up my poor old hands before her face, -swollen red from scrubbing and full of chilblains, and I told her that -I couldn’t sew a stitch if my life depended on it.</p> - -<p>“When I offered her the second cup of tea—a real educated-looking -woman she was, and she must have been used to better tea than mine -boiled out of the old tea leaves the restaurant cook always let me -bring home—I said to her, ‘My hands aren’t the only reason I’m not -scabbing. I see too much of the miserable wages these women around here -get for their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> sweatshop work, and I’ve done enough harm already with -my pace setting, and my head so full of my poor old mother that I never -thought of anybody else.’ She smiled at me and nodded her head over my -old cracked cup. ‘You are a Union woman all right,’ she said. ‘You have -the true spirit whether you carry a card or not. I am mighty glad to -have met you after all the scabs I have talked to this day.’”</p> - -<p>The old woman repeated the words as one who solemnly recalls the great -phrase which raised him into a knightly order, revealing a secret pride -in her unavowed fellowship with Trades Unions, for she had vaguely -known at the time of the Ten Hour trial that powerful federations of -them had paid for the lawyers and had gathered the witnesses. Some -dim memory of Irish ancestors, always found on the side of the weak -in the unending struggle with the oppressions of the strong, may have -determined her action. She may have been dominated by a subconscious -suggestion “from the dust that sleeps,” a suggestion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> so simple, so -insistent and monotonous that it had victoriously survived its original -sphere of conduct.</p> - -<p>It was in keeping with the drab colored experiences of her seventy hard -years that her contribution to the long struggle should have been one -of inglorious flight, nevertheless she had gallantly recognized the -Trades Union organizer as a comrade in a common cause. She cherished in -her heart the memory of one golden moment when she had faintly heard -the trumpets summon her and had made her utmost response.</p> - -<p>When the simple story of a lifetime of sacrifice to family obligations -and of one supreme effort to respond to a social claim came to an -end, I reflected that for more than half a century the narrator had -freely given all her time, all her earnings, all her affections, and -yet during the long period had developed no habit of self-pity. At a -crucial moment she had been able to estimate life, not in terms of her -self-immolation but in relation to a hard pressed multitude of fellow -workers.</p> - -<p>As she sat there, a tall, gaunt woman<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> broken through her devotion, she -inevitably suggested the industrial wrongs and oppressions suffered by -the women who, forgotten and neglected, perform so much of the unlovely -drudgery upon which our industrial order depends. At the moment I could -recall only one of her starved ambitions which to my knowledge had ever -been attained. When a friend tenderly placed a pair of white satin -slippers upon the coffined feet of her old mother who for more than -ninety years had travelled a long hard road and had stumbled against -many stones, the loving heart of the aged daughter overflowed. “It is -herself would know how I prayed for white satin shoes for the burial, -thinking as how they might make it up to mother, she who never knew -where the next pair was coming from and often had to borrow to go to -Mass.” I remembered that as my friend and I left the spotless bare room -wrapped in the mystery of death and walked back to Hull-House together, -we passed a little child who proudly challenged our attention to his -new shoes, “shiny” in the first moment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> of joyous possession. We could -but recognize the epitome of the hard struggle of the very poor, from -the moment they scramble out of their rude cradles until they are -lowered into their “partial payment” graves, to keep shoes upon their -feet. The rare moments of touching pleasure when the simple desire for -“a new pair” is fulfilled are doubtless indicated in the early fairy -tales by the rewards of glistening red shoes or glass slippers to the -good child; in the religious allegories which turn life itself into -one long pilgrimage, by the promises to the faithful that they shall -be shod with the sandals of righteousness and to the blessed ones, who -having formally renounced the world, forswearing shoes altogether and -humbly walking on without them, that their bruised and torn feet shall -yet gleam lily-white on the streets of Paradise.</p> - -<p>I suddenly saw in this worn old woman who sat before me, what George -Sand described as “a rare and austere production of human suffering” -and was so filled with a fresh consciousness of the long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> barren road -travelled by the patient mother and daughter, that it merged into the -Via Dolorosa of the Poor of the world. It may have been through this -suggestion of an actual street that my memory vividly evoked a group -of Russian pilgrims I had once seen in Holy Week as they triumphantly -approached Jerusalem. Their heads, garlanded in wild flowers still -fresh with early dew, were lifted in joyous singing but their broken -and bleeding feet, bound in white cloth and thrust into sandals of -stripped bark, were the actual sacrifice they were devoutly offering at -the Sepulchre.</p> - -<p>As my mind swiftly came back from the blossoming fields of Palestine to -the crowded industrial district of Chicago, I found myself recalling -a pensive remark made by the gifted Rachel Varnhagen, a century ago. -“Careless Fate never requires of us what we are really capable of -doing.”</p> - -<p>This overwhelming sense of the waste in woman’s unused capacity came -to me again during a Garment Workers’ strike,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> when some of the young -women involved were sitting in the very chairs occupied so recently -by the visitors to the Devil Baby. They brought a curious reminder of -the overworked and heavily burdened mothers who had yet been able to -keep the taste of life in their mouths and who could not be overborne, -because their endurance was rooted in simple and instinctive human -affections. During the long strike these young women endured all -sorts of privations without flinching; some of them actual hunger, -most of them disapprobation from their families, and all of them a -loss of that money which alone could procure for them the American -standards so highly prized. Through participation in the strike they -all took the risk of losing their positions, and yet, facing a future -of unemployment and wretchedness, they displayed a stubborn endurance -which held out week after week.</p> - -<p>Perhaps because of my recent conversations with old women I received -the impression that the very power of resistance in such a socialized -undertaking as a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> strike, presents a marked contrast in both its -origin and motives to the traditional type of endurance exercised by -the mothers and grandmothers of the strikers or by their acquaintances -among domestic women living in the same crowded tenements.</p> - -<p>When a mother cares for a sick child for days and nights without -relief, the long period of solicitude and dread exhausting every -particle of her vitality, her strength is constantly renewed from the -vast reservoirs of maternal love and pity whenever she touches the -soft flesh or hears the plaintive little voice. But such girls as the -strikers represent are steadily bending their energies to loveless -and mechanical labor, and are obliged to go on without this direct -and personal renewal of their powers of resistance. They must be -sustained as soldiers on a forced march are sustained, by their sense -of comradeship in high endeavor. Naturally, some of the young working -women are never able to achieve this and can keep on with the monotony -of factory work only when they persuade themselves that they are -getting ready,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> and have not yet begun their own lives, because real -living for them must include a home of their own and children to “do -for.”</p> - -<p>Such unutilized dynamic power illustrates the stupid waste of those -impulses and affections, registered in the very bodily structure -itself, which are ruthlessly pushed aside and considered of no moment -to the work in which so many women are now engaged. My conversations -with these girls of modern industry continually filled me with surprise -that, required as they are to work under conditions unlike those -which women have ever before encountered, they have not only made a -remarkable adaptation but have so ably equipped themselves with a new -set of motives. The girl who stands on one spot for fifty-six hours -each week as she feeds a machine, endlessly repeating the identical -motions of her arms and wrists, is much further from the type of -woman’s traditional activity than her mother who cooks, cleans, and -washes for the household. The young woman who spends her time in -packing biscuits into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> boxes which come to her down a chute and are -whirled away from her on a miniature trolley, has never even seen how -the biscuits are made, for the factory proper is separated from the -packing room by a door with the sign “No Admittance.” She must work all -day without the vital and direct interest in the hourly results of her -labors which her mother had.</p> - -<p>These girls present a striking antithesis to the visitors to the Devil -Baby who in their forlorn and cheerless efforts were merely continuing -the traditional struggle against brutality, indifference, and neglect -that helpless old people and little children might not be trampled -in the dust. For these simple women it is the conditions under which -the struggle is waged which have changed, rather than the nature of -the contest. Even in this unlovely struggle, the older women utilize -well-seasoned faculties, in contrast to the newly developed powers -required by the multitude of young girls who for the first time in the -long history of woman’s labor, are uniting their efforts in order to -obtain opportunities<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> for a fuller and more normal living. Organizing -with men and women of divers nationalities they are obliged to form new -ties absolutely unlike family bonds. On the other hand, these girls -possess the enormous advantage over women of the domestic type of -having experienced the discipline arising from impersonal obligations -and of having tasted the freedom from economic dependence, so valuable -that too heavy a price can scarcely be paid for it.</p> - -<p>This clash between the traditional conception of woman’s duty narrowed -solely to family obligations and the claims arising from the complexity -of the industrial situation, manifests scarcely a suggestion of -the latent war so vaguely apprehended from the earliest times as a -possibility between men and women. Even the restrained Greeks believed -that when the obscure women at the bottom of society could endure no -longer and “the oppressed women struck back, it would not be justice -which came but the revenge of madness.” My own observation has -discovered little<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> suggesting this mood, certainly not among the women -active in the Labor Movement.</p> - -<p>I recall the recent experience of an organizer whom I very much admire -for her valiant services in the garment trades and whom I have known -from her earliest girlhood. Her character confirms the contention that -our chief concern with the past is not what we have done, nor the -adventures we have met, but the moral reaction of bygone events within -ourselves.</p> - -<p>As an orphaned child she had been cared for by two aunts who owned -between them a little shop which pretended to be a tailoring -establishment, but which in reality was a distributing centre for home -work among the Italian women and newly immigrated Russian Jews living -in the neighborhood. Her aunts, because they were Americans, superior -in education and resources to the humble home workers, by dint of much -bargaining both with the wholesale houses from which they procured the -garments, and with the foreign women to whom they distributed them, -had been able to secure a very good commission.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> For many years they -had made a comfortable living, and in addition had acquired an exalted -social position in the neighborhood, for they were much looked up to by -those so dependent upon them for work.</p> - -<p>Although my friend was expected to help in the shop as much as -possible, she was sent regularly to school and had already “graduated -from the eighth grade,” when a law was passed in the Illinois -legislature, popularly known as the Anti Sweat-shop Law, which, within -a year, had ruined her aunts’ business. After they had been fined in -court for violating the law, a case which obtained much publicity -because smallpox was discovered in two of the tenement houses in -which the home finishers were living, the aunts were convinced that -they could not continue to give out work to the Italian and Russian -Jewish women. Reluctantly foregoing their commissions they then tried -crowding their own house and shop with workers, only to be again taken -into court and fined when the inspector discovered their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> kitchen and -bedrooms full of half-finished garments. They both flatly refused to -go into a factory to work, and after a futile attempt to revive the -tailoring business, never very genuine, they were finally reduced -to the dimensions of the tiny shop itself, which, under the new -regulations as to light and air could accommodate but three people. My -friend was at once taken from school and made one of these ill-paid -workers and the little household was held together on the pittance the -three could earn.</p> - -<p>It was but natural, perhaps, that as these displaced proprietors became -poorer they should ever grow more bitter against the reformers and -the Trades Unionists who, between them, had secured the “high-brow” -legislation which had destroyed their honest business.</p> - -<p>The niece was married at eighteen to a clerk in a neighboring -department store who worked four evenings a week and every other Sunday -in his determination to get on. The bride moved into a more prosperous -neighborhood and I saw little of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> her husband or herself for ten -years, during which time they made four payments on the little house -they occupied fully three miles from the now abandoned sweat-shop. Her -husband worked hard with a consuming desire to rear his children in -good surroundings as much as possible unlike the slums, as he somewhat -brutally designated the neighborhood of his own youth. Through his -unrelieved years in the cheap department store where, however, he had -always felt a great satisfaction in being well dressed and had resisted -any attempts of his fellow clerks to shorten their preposterous hours -by trades-union organization, his health was gradually undermined and -he finally developed tuberculosis. He was unable to support his family -during the last decade of his life, and in her desperate need my friend -went back to the only trade she had, that of finishing garments. During -these years, although she sold the little house and placed her boy in -a semi-philanthropic institution, she steadily faced the problem of -earning insufficient wages for the support of the family, the pang -of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> her failure constantly augmented by the knowledge that, in spite -of her utmost efforts, the invalid never received the food and care -his condition required. The clothing factory in which she then worked -illustrated the lowest ebb in the fortune of the garment workers in -American cities when, the sweat shop having been largely eliminated -through the efforts of the factory inspectors, the workers from every -land were crowded into the hastily organized factories. Separated by -their diverse languages and through their long habits of home work, -they had become too secretive even to tell one another the amount -of wages each was receiving. It was as if the competition had been -transferred from the sweat shop contractors to the individual workers -themselves, sitting side by side in the same room, and perhaps it was -not surprising that the workers felt as if they had been hunted down -into their very kitchens and their poverty cruelly exposed to public -view.</p> - -<p>My friend shared this wretchedness and carried into it the bitterness -of her early<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> experience. She says now that she never caught even a -suggestion that this might be but a transitional period to a more -ordered sort of industrial life.</p> - -<p>She did not tell me just when and how she had come to the conclusion -that wages must be higher, that legal enactment for better conditions -must be supplemented by the efforts of the workers themselves, but it -was absolutely clear that she had independently reached that conclusion -long before a strike in the clothing industry brought her into contact -with the organized Labor Movement. It was certainly not until the year -of her husband’s death that she became aware of the industrial changes -which had been taking place during the twenty-two years since her -aunts’ business had been ruined.</p> - -<p>She was grateful that the knowledge had first come to her through -an Italian girl working by her side, for, as she explained, her old -attitude toward the “dagoes,” as a people to be exploited, had to be -thoroughly changed before she could be of much real use in organizing a -trade in which so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> many Italians were engaged. Even during the strike -itself, to which she was thoroughly committed, having been convinced -both of its inevitability and of the justice of its demands, she -resented the fact that the leadership was in the hands of Russian Jews -and, secure in her Americanism, she felt curiously aloof from the group -with which she was so intimately identified.</p> - -<p>A few months after the strike my friend fortunately secured a place in -a manufactory of men’s clothing, in which there had been instituted -a Trade Board for the adjustment of grievances, and where wages and -hours were determined by joint agreement. When she was elected to -the position of shop representative she found herself in the midst -of one of the most interesting experiments being carried on in the -United States, not only from the standpoint of labor but from that of -applying the principles of representative government in a new field. -She felt the stimulus of being a part in that most absorbing of all -occupations—the reconstruction of a living world.</p> - -<p>One evening, at Hull-House, as she came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> out of a citizenship class -she had been attending, she tried to express some of the implications -of the great undertaking in which more than ten thousand clothing -employes are engaged. She repeated the statement made by the leader -of the class that it was the solemn duty and obligation of the United -States not only to keep a republican form of government alive upon -the face of the earth and to fulfill the expectations of the founders -but to modify and develope that type of government as conditions -changed; he had said that the spirit of the New England town meeting -might be manifested through a referendum vote in a large city, and -that it must find some such vehicle of expression if it would survive -under changed conditions. Her eyes were quite shining as she made her -application to the experiment being carried on in the great clothing -factory, with its many shops and departments unified in mutual effort. -Evidently her attention had been caught by the similarity between the -town meeting in its relation to a more elaborated form of government -and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> small isolated sweat-shop such as that formerly managed by -her aunts, in its relation to the “biggest clothing factory in the -world.” She had heard her fellow workers say that the “greenhorn” often -found much friendliness in a small shop where his own language was -spoken, and where he could earn at least a humble living until he grew -accustomed to the habits of a new country, whereas he would have been -lost and terrified in a factory. She felt very strongly the necessity -of translating this sense of comradeship and friendliness into larger -terms, and she believed that it could be done by the united workers.</p> - -<p>As she sat by my desk, this woman who had not yet attained her fortieth -year looked much older, as if illustrating the saying that hard labor -so early robs the poor man of his youth that it makes his old age too -long. She seemed to me for the moment to have gathered up in her own -experience the transition from old conditions to new and to be standing -on the threshold of a great development in the lives of working women.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p> - -<p>As if she were conscious that I was recalling her past with which I -had been so familiar, she began to speak again. “You know that I have -both of my children with me now; the girl graduates from the Normal -School in June and hopes to put herself through the University after -she has taught for a few years. She reminds me of her father in her -anxiety to know people of education, to get on in the world, and I am -sure she will succeed. The boy has caught the other motive of pulling -up with his own trade and of standing by the organized Labor Movement. -Of course, sewing was too dull for him, and besides he grew ambitious -to be a machinist when he was in the Industrial School where I put -him with such a breaking of the heart when he was only ten years old. -He has to admit, however, that even his own Machinists’ Union, with -its traditional trade agreements and joint boards, is far behind our -experiment. He went with me to the banquet on May Day. We had marched -through the Loop in celebration of our new agreement and had stirring<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> -speeches at the Auditorium in the afternoon, but it was in the evening -that we really felt at home with each other. When he saw the tremendous -enthusiasm for our beloved leader—my boy, I am sorry to say, is a -little inclined to despise foreigners and also tailors because they -aren’t as big and brawny as the members of his dear Machinists’ -Union—and really caught some notion of the statesmanlike ability -required for the successful management of such a complicated and -difficult industrial experiment, and when he realized that the ten per -cent increase provided for in the new agreement was to go in greater -proportion to those at the lower end of the scale, he suddenly forgot -his prejudices and I saw him applauding with his hands and feet as if -he had really let loose at last.</p> - -<p>“Of course, it hasn’t been easy for me even during these later years -to keep Helen in school and to support my aunt who is now too old and -broken even to keep house for us. But we have got on, and quite aside -from everything else I am thankful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> to have had a small share in this -forward step in American democracy—at least, that’s what they called -it at the banquet,” she ended shyly.</p> - -<p>The experience of my friend bore testimony that in spite of all their -difficulties and handicaps, something of social value is forced out -of the very situation itself among that vast multitude of women whose -oppression through the centuries has typified a sense of helpless and -intolerable wrongs. Many of them, even the older ones, are being made -slowly conscious of the subtle and impalpable filaments that secretly -bind their experiences and moods into larger relations, and they are -filled with a new happiness analogous to that of little children when -they are first taught to join hands in ordered play.</p> - -<p>Is such enthusiastic participation in organized effort but one -manifestation of that desire for liberty and for a larger participation -in life, found in great women’s souls all over the world?</p> - -<p>In pursuance of such a desire the working women have the enormous -advantage of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> constant association with each other, an advantage dimly -perceived even by pioneer women two hundred years ago.</p> - -<p>The hostesses of the famous drawing-rooms of the eighteenth century -laid great stress on human intercourse as the individual’s best means -of cultivation. Certain French women gave as a <i>raison d’etre</i> -for their brilliant salons that “people must come together in order to -exercise justice,” and they became enormously proud of the fact that by -the end of the century “all Europe was thrown into a state of agitation -if injustice were committed in any corner of it.”</p> - -<p>This hypothesis was gallantly laid down a hundred years before the -industrial revolution which, in its consummation, has congregated -millions of women into factories all over the world. These myriad -women, most of them young and untrained and all of them working under -new industrial conditions, are gradually learning to “exercise justice” -if only because they have “come together.” Their association has been -accomplished under the stress of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> common necessity, and they have -been tutored in a mass at the hard school of bitter experience.</p> - -<p>Were the sheltered drawing-room ladies the forerunners of such -contemporary advocates of industrial justice or do we find a better -prototype in those simple old women who, having reared their own -children and having come to be regarded as a depository for domestic -wisdom, dispense sound advice to bewildered mothers which always -contains the admonition, “Never be partial to any one of them, always -be as just as you know how.”</p> - -<p>Possibly women’s organizations of all types are but providing -ever-widening channels through which woman’s moral energy may flow, -revivifying life by new streams fed in the upper reaches of her -undiscovered capacities. In either case, we may predict that to -control old impulses so that they may be put to social uses, to serve -the present through memories hoarding woman’s genuine experiences, -may liberate energies hitherto unused and may result in a notable -enrichment of the pattern of human culture.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br><span class="small">WOMEN’S MEMORIES—CHALLENGING WAR</span></h2> -</div> - - - -<p>I was sharply reminded of an obvious division between high tradition -and current conscience in several conversations I held during the -great European war with women who had sent their sons to the front -in unquestioning obedience to the demands of the State, but who, -owing to their own experiences, had found themselves in the midst of -that ever-recurring struggle, often tragic and bitter, between two -conceptions of duty, one of which is antagonistic to the other.</p> - -<p>One such woman,<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> who had long been identified with the care of -delinquent children<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> and had worked for many years towards the -establishment of a Children’s Court, had asked me many questions -concerning the psychopathic clinic in the Juvenile Court in Chicago, -comparing it to the brilliant work accomplished in her own city through -the coöperation of the university faculty. The Imperial government -itself had recently recognized the value of this work and at the -outbreak of the war was rapidly developing a system through which the -defective child might be discovered early in his school career, and -might not only be saved from delinquency but such restricted abilities -as he possessed be trained for the most effective use. “Through all -these years,” she said, “I had grown accustomed to the fact that the -government was deeply concerned in the welfare of the least promising -child. I had felt my own efforts so identified with it that I had -unconsciously come to regard the government as an agency for nurturing -human life and had apparently forgotten its more primitive functions.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> The following conversation is a composite made from -several talks held with each of two women representing both sides -of the conflict. Their opinions and observations are merged into -one because in so many particulars they were either identical or -overlapping. Both women called themselves patriots, but each had become -convinced of the folly of war.</p> - -</div> - -<p>“I was proud of the fact that my son<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> held a state position as -professor of Industrial Chemistry in the University, because I knew -that the research in his department would ultimately tend to alleviate -the harshness of factory conditions, and to make for the well-being of -the working classes in whose children I had become so interested.</p> - -<p>“When my son’s regiment was mobilized and sent to the front I think -that it never occurred to me, any more than it did to him, to question -his duty. His professional training made him a valuable member of the -Aviation Corps, and when, in those first weeks of high patriotism his -letters reported successful scouting or even devastating raids, I felt -only a solemn satisfaction. But gradually through the months, when -always more of the people’s food supply and constantly more men were -taken by the government for its military purposes, when I saw the state -institutions for defectives closed, the schools abridged or dismissed, -women and children put to work in factories under hours and conditions -which had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> legally prohibited years before, when the very -governmental officials who had been so concerned for the welfare of the -helpless were bent only upon the destruction of the enemy at whatever -cost to their fellow-citizens, the State itself gradually became for me -an alien and hostile thing.</p> - -<p>“In response to the appeal made by the government to the instinct of -self-preservation, the men of the nation were ardent and eager to -take any possible risks, to suffer every hardship, and were proud to -give their lives in their country’s service. But was it inevitable, -I constantly asked myself, that the great nations of Europe should -be reduced to such a primitive appeal? Why should they ignore all -the other motives which enter into modern patriotism and are such an -integral part of devotion to the state that they must in the end be -reckoned with?</p> - -<p>“I am sure that I had reached these conclusions before my own tragedy -came, before my son was fatally wounded in a scouting aëroplane and -his body later thrown overboard into a lonely swamp.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> It was six weeks -before I knew what had happened and it was during that period that I -felt most strongly the folly and waste of putting men, trained as my -son had been, to the barbaric business of killing. This tendency in -my thinking may have been due to a hint he had given me in the very -last letter I ever received from him, of a change that was taking -place within himself. He wrote that whenever he heard the firing of -a huge field-piece he knew that the explosion consumed years of the -taxes which had been slowly accumulated by some hard-working farmer or -shopkeeper, and that he unconsciously calculated how fast industrial -research would have gone forward, had his department been given once -a decade the costs of a single day of warfare, with the government’s -command to turn back into alleviation of industrial conditions the -taxes which the people had paid. He regretted that he was so accustomed -to analysis that his mind would not let the general situation alone -but wearily went over it again and again; and then he added that this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> -war was tearing down the conception of government which had been so -carefully developed during this generation in the minds of the very men -who had worked hardest to fulfill that conception.</p> - -<p>“Although the letter sounded like a treatise on government, I knew -there was a personal pang somewhere behind this sombre writing, even -though he added his old joking promise that when their fathers were no -longer killed in industry, he would see what he could do for my little -idiots.</p> - -<p>“At the very end of the letter he wrote, and they were doubtless the -last words he ever penned, that he felt as if science herself in this -mad world had also become cruel and malignant.</p> - -<p>“I learned later that it was at this time that he had been consulted -in the manufacture of asphyxiating gases, because the same gases -are used in industry and he had made experiments to determine -their poisonousness in different degrees of dilution. The original -investigation with which he had been identified had been carried on -that the fumes released in a certain industrial<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> process might be -prevented from injuring the men who worked in the factory. I know how -hard it must have been for him to put knowledge acquired in his long -efforts to protect normal living to the brutal use of killing men. It -was literally a forced act of prostitution.”</p> - -<p>As if to free her son’s memory from any charge of lack of patriotism, -after a few moments she continued: “These modern men of science are -red-blooded, devoted patriots, facing dangers of every sort in mines -and factories and leading strenuous lives in spite of the popular -conception of the pale anæmic scholar, but because they are equally -interested in scientific experiments wherever they may be carried on, -they inevitably cease to think of national boundaries in connection -with their work. The international mind, which really does exist in -spite of the fact that it is not yet equipped with adequate organs -for international government, has become firmly established, at least -among scientists. They have known the daily stimulus of a wide and free -range of contacts. They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> have become interpenetrated with the human -consciousness of fellow scientists all over the world.</p> - -<p>“I hope that I am no whining coward—my son gave his life to his -country as many another brave man has done, but I do envy the mothers -whose grief is at least free from this fearful struggle of opposing -ideals and traditions. My old father, who is filled with a solemn pride -over his grandson’s gallant record and death, is most impatient with -me. I heard him telling a friend the other day that my present state -of mind was a pure demonstration of the folly of higher education for -women; that it was preposterous and more than human flesh could bear -to combine an intellectual question on the function of government with -a mother’s sharp agony over the death of her child. He said he had -always contended that women, at least those who bear children, had no -business to consider questions of this sort, and that the good sense -of his position was demonstrated now that such women were losing their -children in war.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> It was enough for women to know that government -waged war to protect their firesides and to preserve the nation from -annihilation; at any rate, they should keep their minds free from silly -attempts to reason it out. It’s all Bertha von Suttner’s book and other -nonsense that the women are writing, he exploded at the end.”</p> - -<p>Then as if she were following another line of reminiscence she -began again. “My son left behind him a war bride, for he obeyed the -admonition of the statesmen, as well as the commands of the military -officers in those hurried heroic days. But the hasty wooing betrayed -all his ideals of marriage quite as fighting men of other nations -did violence to his notions of patriotism, and the recklessness of a -destructive air raid outraged his long devotion to science. Of course -his child will be a comfort to us and his poor little bride is filled -with a solemn patriotism which never questions any aspect of the -situation. When she comes to see us and I listen to the interminable -talk she has with my father, I am grateful for the comfort they give -each other, but when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> I hear them repeating those hideous stories of -the conduct of the enemy which accumulate every month and upon which -the war spirit continually feeds itself, I with difficulty refrain from -crying out upon them that he whose courage and devotion they praise so -loudly would never have permitted such talk of hatred and revenge in -his presence; that he who lived in the regions of science and whose -intrepid mind was bent upon the conquest of truth, must feel that he -had died in vain did he know to what exaggerations and errors the -so-called patriotism of his beloved country had stooped.</p> - -<p>“I listen to them thinking that if I were either older or younger -it would not be so hard for me, and I have an unreal impression -that it would have been easier for my son if the war had occurred -in the first flush of his adventurous youth. Eager as he had been -to serve his country, he would not then have asked whether it could -best be accomplished by losing his life in a scouting aëroplane or -by dedicating a trained mind to industrial amelioration.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> He might -then easily have preferred the first and he certainly would never -have been tormented by doubts. But when he was thirty-one years old -and had long known that he was steadily serving his country through -careful researches, the results of which would both increase the -nation’s productivity and protect its humblest citizens, he could not -do otherwise than to judge and balance social values. I am, of course, -proud of his gallant spirit, that did not for a moment regret his -decision to die for his country, but I can make the sacrifice seem in -character only when I place him back in his early youth.</p> - -<p>“At times I feel immeasurably old, and in spite of my father’s -contention that I am too intellectual, I am consciously dominated -by one of those overwhelming impulses belonging to women as such, -irrespective of their mental training, in their revolt against war. -After all, why should one disregard such imperative instincts? We -know perfectly well that the trend of a given period in history has -been influenced by ‘habits of preference’ and by instinctive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> actions -founded upon repeated and unrecorded experiences of an analogous kind; -that desires to seek and desires to avoid are in themselves the very -incalculable material by which the tendencies of an age are modified. -The women in all the belligerent countries who feel so alike in regard -to the horror and human waste of this war and yet refrain from speaking -out, may be putting into jeopardy that power inherent in human affairs -to right themselves through mankind’s instinctive shifting towards -what the satisfactions recommend and the antagonisms repulse. The -expression of such basic impulses in regard to human relationships may -be most important in this moment of warfare which is itself a reversion -to primitive methods of determining relations between man and man or -nation and nation.</p> - -<p>“Certainly the women in every country who are under a profound -imperative to preserve human life, have a right to regard this maternal -impulse as important now as was the compelling instinct evinced by -primitive women long ago, when they made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> the first crude beginnings -of society by refusing to share the vagrant life of man because they -insisted upon a fixed abode in which they might cherish their children. -Undoubtedly women were then told that the interests of the tribe, the -diminishing food supply, the honor of the chieftain, demanded that they -leave their particular caves and go out in the wind and weather without -regard to the survival of their children. But at the present moment -the very names of the tribes and of the honors and glories which they -sought are forgotten, while the basic fact that the mothers held the -lives of their children above all else, insisted upon staying where the -children had a chance to live, and cultivated the earth for their food, -laid the foundations of an ordered society.</p> - -<p>“My son used to say that my scientific knowledge was most irregular, -but profound experiences such as we are having in this war throw -to the surface of one’s mind all sorts of opinions and half-formed -conclusions. The care for conventions, for agreement with one’s -friends, is burned away. One is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> concerned to express only ultimate -conviction even though it may differ from all the rest of the world. -This is true in spite of the knowledge that every word will be caught -up in an atmosphere of excitement and of that nervous irritability -which is always close to grief and to moments of high emotion.</p> - -<p>“In the face of many distressing misunderstandings I am certain -that if a minority of women in every country would clearly express -their convictions they would find that they spoke not for themselves -alone but for those men for whom the war has been a laceration,—‘an -abdication of the spirit.’ Such women would doubtless formulate the -scruples of certain soldiers whose ‘mouths are stopped by courage,’ -men who months ago with closed eyes rushed to the defence of their -countries.</p> - -<p>“It may also be true that as the early days of this war fused us all -into an overwhelming sense of solidarity until each felt absolutely -at one with all his fellow-countrymen, so the sensitiveness to -differences is greatly intensified and the dissenting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> individual has -an exaggerated sense of isolation. I try to convince myself that this -is the explanation of my abominable and constant loneliness, which is -almost unendurable.</p> - -<p>“I have never been a Feminist and have always remained quite unmoved -by the talk of the peculiar contribution women might make to the -State, but during the last dreadful months, in spite of women’s -widespread enthusiasm for the war and their patriotic eagerness to -make the supreme sacrifice, I have become conscious of an unalterable -cleavage between Militarism and Feminism. The Militarists believe that -government finally rests upon a basis of physical force, and in a -crisis such as this, Militarism, in spite of the spiritual passion in -war, finds its expression in the crudest forms of violence.</p> - -<p>“It would be absurd for women even to suggest equal rights in a world -governed solely by physical force, and Feminism must necessarily assert -the ultimate supremacy of moral agencies. Inevitably the two are in -eternal opposition.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span></p> - -<p>“I have always agreed with the Feminists that, so far as force plays -a great part in the maintenance of an actual social order, it is -due to the presence of those elements which are in a steady process -of elimination; and of course as society progresses the difficulty -arising from woman’s inferiority in physical strength must become -proportionately less. One of the most wretched consequences of war is -that it arrests these beneficent social processes and throws everything -back into a coarser mould. The fury of war, enduring but for a few -months or years, may destroy slow-growing social products which it -will take a century to recreate—the ‘consent of the governed,’ for -instance....</p> - -<p>“But why do I talk like this! My father would call it one of my -untrained and absurd theories about social progress and the functions -of government concerning which I know nothing, and would say that I -had no right to discuss the matter in this time of desperate struggle. -Nevertheless it is better for me in these hideous long days and nights -to drive my mind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> forward even to absurd conclusions than to let it -fall into one of those vicious circles in which it goes round and round -to no purpose.”</p> - -<p>In absolute contrast to this sophisticated, possibly oversophisticated, -mother was a simple woman who piteously showed me a piece of shrapnel -taken from her son’s body by his comrades, which they had brought -home to her in a literal-minded attempt at comfort. They had told -her that the shrapnel was made in America and she showed it to me, -believing that I could at sight recognize the manufactured products -of my fellow-countrymen. She apparently wished to have the statement -either confirmed or denied, because she was utterly bewildered in her -feeling about the United States and all her previous associations with -it. In her fresh grief, stricken as she was, she was bewildered by a -sudden reversal of her former ideals. Many of her relatives had long -ago emigrated to America, including two brothers living in the Western -states, whom she had hoped to visit in her old age. For many reasons, -throughout<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> her youth and early womanhood, she had thought of that -far-away country as a kindly place where every man was given his chance -and where the people were all friendly to each other irrespective of -the land in which they had been born. To have these same American -people send back the ammunition which had killed her son was apparently -incomprehensible to her.</p> - -<p>She presented, it seemed to me, a clear case of that humble -internationalism which is founded not upon theories, but upon the -widespread immigration of the last fifty years, interlacing nation to -nation with a thousand kindly deeds. Her older brother had a fruit -ranch which bordered upon one of those co-operative Italian colonies -so successful in California, and he had frequently sent home presents -from his Italian neighbors with his own little cargoes. The whole had -evidently been prized by his family as a symbol of American good-will -and of unbounded opportunity. Her younger brother had attained some -measure of success as a contractor in an inland town, and when he had -written<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> home of the polyglot composition of the gangs of men upon -whose labors his little fortune had been founded, she had taken it as -an example of all nationalities and religions working happily together. -He had also served one term as mayor, obviously having been elected -through his popularity with the same foreign colonies from which his -employes had been drawn.</p> - -<p>For many reasons therefore she had visualized America as a land -in which all nationalities understood each other with a resulting -friendliness which was not possible in Europe, not because the people -still living in Europe were different from those who had gone to -America, but because the latter, having emigrated, had a chance to -express their natural good-will for everybody. The nations at war -in Europe suggested to her simple mind the long past days of her -grandmother’s youth when a Protestant threw stones at a Catholic just -because he was “different.” The religious liberty in America was -evidently confused in her mind with this other liberalism in regard to -national differences.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p> - -<p>Holding this conception of actual internationalism as it had been -evolved among simple people, crude and abortive though it was, she had -been much more shocked by the fact that friendly Americans should make -ammunition to be used for killing any human being than by the actual -war itself, because the war was taking place in Europe, where it was -still quite natural for a German to fight against a Frenchman or an -Italian against an Austrian.</p> - -<p>Her son had been a Socialist and from the discussions he sometimes held -with his comrades in her house, she had grown familiar with certain -phrases which she had taken literally and in some curious fashion had -solemnly come to believe were put into practice in her El Dorado of -America.</p> - -<p>The arguments I had used so many times with her fellow-countrymen -to justify America’s sale of ammunition, ponderously beginning with -The Hague conventions of 1907, I found useless in the face of this -idealistic version of America’s good-will.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span></p> - -<p>She was evidently one of those people whose affections go out to groups -and impersonal causes quite as much as to individuals, thus often -supplementing and enlarging harsh and narrow conditions of living. She -certainly obtained a curiously personal comfort out of her idealization -of America. Her conversation revealed what I had often vaguely felt -before when men as well as women talked freely of the war, that her -feelings had been hurt, that her very conception of human nature had -received a sharp shock and set-back. To her the whole world and America -in particular would henceforth seem less kind and her spirit would be -less at home. She was tormented by that ever recurring question which -perhaps can never be answered for any of us too confidently in the -affirmative, “Is the Universe friendly?” The troubled anguish in her -old eyes confirmed her statement that the thought of the multitude of -men who were being killed all over the world oppressed her day and -night. This old woman had remained faithful to the cause of moral unity -and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> bore her humble testimony to one of the noblest and profoundest -needs of the human spirit.</p> - -<p>These efforts at spiritual adjustment necessitated by the war are -attempted by many people, from the simple souls whose hard-won -conceptions of a friendly universe have been brought tumbling about -their ears, to the thinking men who are openly disappointed to find -civilized nations so irrational. Such efforts are encountered in all -the belligerent nations as well as in the neutral ones, although in -the former they are often inhibited and overlaid by an overwhelming -patriotism. Nevertheless, as I met those women who were bearing their -hardships and sorrows so courageously, I often caught a glimpse of an -inner struggle, as if two of the most fundamental instincts, the two -responsible for our very development as human beings, were at strife -with each other. The first is tribal loyalty, such unquestioning -acceptance of the tribe’s morals and standards that the individual -automatically fights when the word comes; the second is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> woman’s -deepest instinct, that the child of her body must be made to live.</p> - -<p>We are told that the peasants in Flanders, whose fields border upon -the very trenches, disconsolately came back to them last Spring and -continued to plough the familiar soil, regardless of the rain of -shrapnel falling into the fresh furrows; that the wine growers of -Champagne last Autumn insistently gathered their ripened grapes, though -the bombs of rival armies were exploding in their vineyards; why should -it then be surprising that certain women in every country have remained -steadfast to their old occupation of nurturing life, that they have -tenaciously held to their anxious concern that men should live, through -all the contagion and madness of the war fever which is infecting the -nations of the earth.</p> - -<p>In its various manifestations the struggle in women’s souls suggests -one of those movements through which, at long historic intervals, the -human spirit has apparently led a revolt against itself, as it were, -exhibiting a moral abhorrence for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> certain cherished customs which, up -to that time, had been its finest expression. A moral rebellion of this -sort was inaugurated three thousand years ago both in Greece and Judea -against the old custom of human sacrifice. That a man should slay his -own child and stand unmoved as the burning flesh arose to his gods was -an act of piety, of courage, and of devotion to ideals, so long as he -performed the rite wholeheartedly. But after there had gradually grown -up in the minds of men first the suspicion, and then the conviction, -that it was unnecessary and impious to offer human flesh as a living -sacrifice, courage and piety shifted to the men who refused to conform -to this long-established custom. At last both the Greeks and the Jews -guarded themselves against the practice of human sacrifice with every -possible device. It gradually became utterly abhorrent to all civilized -peoples, an outrage against the elemental decencies, a profound -disturber of basic human relations. Poets and prophets were moved to -call it an abomination; statesmen and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> teachers denounced it as a -hideous barbarism, until now it is so nearly abolished by the entire -race that it is no longer found within the borders of civilization and -exists to-day only in jungles and hidden savage places.</p> - -<p>There are indications that the human consciousness is reaching the same -stage of sensitiveness in regard to war as that which has been attained -in regard to human sacrifice. In this moment of almost universal -warfare there is evinced a widespread moral abhorrence against war, -as if its very existence were more than human nature could endure. -Citizens of every nation are expressing this moral compunction, which -they find in sharp conflict with current conceptions of patriotic duty. -It is perhaps inevitable that women should be challenged in regard -to it, should be called upon to give it expression in such stirring -words as those addressed to them by Romain Rolland, “Cease to be the -shadow of man and of his passion of pride and destruction. Have a clear -vision of the duty of pity! Be a living peace in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> midst of war—the -eternal Antigone refusing to give herself up to hatred and knowing no -distinction between her suffering brothers who make war on each other.”</p> - -<p>This may be a call to women to defend those at the bottom of society -who, irrespective of the victory or defeat of any army, are ever -oppressed and overburdened. The suffering mothers of the disinherited -feel the stirring of the old impulse to protect and cherish their -unfortunate children, and women’s haunting memories instinctively -challenge war as the implacable enemy of their age-long undertaking.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br><span class="small">A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN INTERPRETATIVE MEMORY</span></h2> -</div> - - - -<p>Several years ago, during a winter spent in Egypt, I found within -myself an unexpected tendency to interpret racial and historic -experiences through personal reminiscences. I am therefore venturing to -record in this closing chapter my inevitable conclusion that a sincere -portrayal of a widespread and basic emotional experience, however -remote in point of time it may be, has the power overwhelmingly to -evoke memories of like moods in the individual.</p> - -<p>The unexpected revival in my memory of long-forgotten experiences may -have been due partly to the fact that we have so long been taught -that the temples and tombs of ancient Egypt are the very earliest of -the surviving records of ideas and men, that we approach them with a -certain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> sense of familiarity, quite ready to claim a share in these -“family papers and title deeds of the race.”</p> - -<p>We also consider it probable that these primitive human records -will stir within us certain early states of consciousness, having -learned, with the readiness which so quickly attaches itself to the -pseudo-scientific phrase, that every child repeats in himself the -history of the race. Nevertheless, what I, at least, was totally -unprepared to encounter, was the constant revival of primitive and -overpowering emotions which I had experienced so long ago that they had -become absolutely detached from myself and seemed to belong to some one -else—to a small person with whom I was no longer intimate, and who was -certainly not in the least responsible for my present convictions and -reflections. It gradually became obvious that the ancient Egyptians had -known this small person quite intimately and had most seriously and -naïvely set down upon the walls of their temples and tombs her earliest -reactions in the presence of death.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span></p> - -<p>At moments my adult intelligence would be unexpectedly submerged by the -emotional message which was written there. Rising to the surface like a -flood, this primitive emotion would sweep away both the historic record -and the adult consciousness interested in it, leaving only a child’s -mind struggling through an experience which it found overwhelming.</p> - -<p>It may have been because these records of the early Egyptians are so -endlessly preoccupied with death, portraying man’s earliest efforts to -defeat it, his eager desire to survive, to enter by force or by guile -into the heavens of the western sky, that the mind is pushed back into -that earliest childhood when the existence of the soul, its exact place -of residence in the body, its experiences immediately after death, -its journeyings upward, its relation to its guardian angel, so often -afforded material for the crudest speculation. In the obscure renewal -of these childish fancies, there is nothing that is definite enough -to be called memory; it is rather that Egypt reproduces a state of -consciousness which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> has so absolutely passed into oblivion that only -the most powerful stimuli could revive it.</p> - -<p>This revival doubtless occurs more easily because these early records -in relief and color not only suggest in their subject-matter that a -child has been endowed with sufficient self-consciousness to wish to -write down his own state of mind upon a wall, but also because the -very primitive style of drawing to which the Egyptians adhered long -after they had acquired a high degree of artistic freedom, is the -most natural technique through which to convey so simple and archaic -a message. The square shoulders of the men, the stairways done in -profile, and a hundred other details, constantly remind one of a -child’s drawings. It is as if the Egyptians had painstakingly portrayed -everything that a child has felt in regard to death, and having, during -the process, gradually discovered the style of drawing naturally -employed by a child, had deliberately stiffened it into an unchanging -convention. The result is that the traveller, reading in these -drawings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> which stretch the length of three thousand years, the long -endeavor to overcome death, finds that the experience of the two—the -child and the primitive people—often become confused, or rather that -they are curiously interrelated.</p> - -<p>This begins from the moment the traveller discovers that the earliest -tombs surviving in Egypt, the mastabas,—which resemble the natural -results of a child’s first effort to place one stone upon another,—are -concerned only with size, as if that early crude belief in the power -of physical bulk to protect the terrified human being against all -shadowy evils were absolutely instinctive and universal. The mastabas -gradually develop into the pyramids, of which Breasted says that “they -are not only the earliest emergence of organized men and the triumph of -concerted effort, they are likewise a silent, but eloquent, expression -of the supreme endeavor to achieve immortality by sheer physical -force.” Both the mastabas at Sahkara and the pyramids at Gizeh, in the -sense of Tolstoy’s definition of art as that which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> reproduces in the -spectator the state of consciousness of the artist, at once appeal to -the child surviving in every adult, who insists irrationally, after -the manner of children, upon sympathizing with the attempt to shut out -death by strong walls.</p> - -<p>Certainly we can all vaguely remember, when death itself, or stories -of ghosts, had come to our intimate child’s circle, that we went about -saying to ourselves that we were “not afraid,” that it “could not come -here,” that “the door was locked, the windows tight shut,” that “this -was a big house,” and a great deal more talk of a similar sort.</p> - -<p>In the presence of these primitive attempts to defeat death, and -without the conscious aid of memory, I found myself living over the -emotions of a child six years old, saying some such words as I sat -on the middle of the stairway in my own home, which yet seemed alien -because all the members of the family had gone to the funeral of a -relative and would not be back until evening, “long after you are -in bed,” they had said. In this moment of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> loneliness and horror, I -depended absolutely upon the brick walls of the house to keep out the -prowling terror, and neither the talk of kindly Polly, who awkwardly -and unsuccessfully reduced an unwieldy theology to child-language, nor -the strings of paper dolls cut by a visitor, gave me the slightest -comfort. Only the blank wall of the stairway seemed to afford -protection in this bleak moment against the formless peril.</p> - -<p>Doubtless these huge tombs were built to preserve from destruction -the royal bodies which were hidden within them at the end of tortuous -and carefully concealed passages; but both the gigantic structures in -the vicinity of Memphis, and the everlasting hills, which were later -utilized at Thebes, inevitably give the impression that death is defied -and shut out by massive defences.</p> - -<p>Even when the traveller sees that the Egyptians defeated their object -by the very success of the Gizeh pyramids—for when their overwhelming -bulk could not be enlarged and their bewildering labyrinths<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> could -not be multiplied, effort along that line perforce ceased—there is -something in the next attempt of the Egyptians to overcome death which -the child within us again recognizes as an old experience. One who -takes pains to inquire concerning the meaning of the texts which were -inscribed on the inner walls of the pyramids and the early tombs, finds -that the familiar terror of death is still there although expressed -somewhat more subtly; that the Egyptians are trying to outwit death by -magic tricks.</p> - -<p>These texts are designed to teach the rites that redeem a man from -death and insure his continuance of life, not only beyond the grave -but in the grave itself. “He who sayeth this chapter and who has been -justified in the waters of Natron, he shall come forth the day after -his burial.” Because to recite them was to fight successfully against -the enemies of the dead, these texts came to be inscribed on tombs, on -coffins, and on the papyrus hung around the neck of a mummy. But woe -to the man who was buried without the texts:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> “He who knoweth not this -chapter cannot come forth by day.” Access to Paradise and all its joys -was granted to any one, good or bad, who knew the formulæ, for in the -first stages of Egyptian development, as in all other civilizations, -the gods did not concern themselves with the conduct of a man toward -other men, but solely with his duty to the gods themselves.</p> - -<p>The magic formulæ alone afforded protection against the shadowy dangers -awaiting the dead man when first he entered the next world and enabled -him to overcome the difficulties of his journey. The texts taught him -how to impersonate particular gods and by this subterfuge to overcome -the various foes he must encounter, because these foes, having at one -time been overcome by the gods, were easily terrified by such pretence.</p> - -<p>When I found myself curiously sympathetic with this desire “to -pretend,” and with the eager emphasis attached by the Egyptians to -their magic formulæ, I was inclined to put it down to that secret -sympathy with magic by means of which all children,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> in moments of -rebellion against a humdrum world, hope to wrest something startling -and thrilling out of the environing realm of the supernatural; but -beyond a kinship with this desire to placate the evil one, to overcome -him by mysterious words, I found it baffling to trace my sympathy to a -definite experience. Gradually, however, it emerged, blurred in certain -details, surprisingly alive in others, but all of it suffused with the -selfsame emotions which impelled the Egyptian to write his Book of the -Dead.</p> - -<p>To describe it as a spiritual struggle is to use much too dignified -and definite a term; it was the prolonged emotional stress throughout -one cold winter when revival services—protracted meetings, they were -then called—were held in the village church night after night. I was, -of course, not permitted to attend them, but I heard them talked about -a great deal by simple adults and children, who told of those who -shouted aloud for joy, or lay on the floor “stiff with power” because -they were saved; and of others—it was for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> those others that my heart -was wrung—who, although they wrestled with the spirit until midnight -and cried out that they felt the hot breath of hell upon their cheeks, -could not find salvation. Would it do to pretend? I anxiously asked -myself, why didn’t they say the right words so that they could get up -from the mourners’ bench and sit with the other people, who must feel -so sorry for them that they would let them pretend? What were these -words that made such a difference that to say them was an assurance -of heavenly bliss, but if you failed to say them you burned in hell -forever and ever? Was the preacher the only one who knew them for sure? -Was it possible to find them without first kneeling at the mourners’ -bench and groaning? These words must certainly be in the Bible -somewhere, and if one read it out loud all through, every word, one -must surely say the right words in time; but if one died before one was -grown up enough to read the Bible through—to-night, for instance—what -would happen then? Surely nothing else could be so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span> important as these -words of salvation. While I did not exactly scheme to secure them, I -was certainly restrained only by my impotence, and I anxiously inquired -from everyone what these magic words might be; and only gradually did -this childish search for magic protection from the terrors after death -imperceptibly merge into a concern for the fate of the soul.</p> - -<p>Perhaps, because it is so impossible to classify one’s own childish -experiences or to put them into chronological order, the traveller -at no time feels a lack of consistency in the complicated attitude -toward death which is portrayed on the walls of the Egyptian temples -and tombs. Much of it seems curiously familiar; from the earliest -times, the Egyptians held the belief that there is in man a permanent -element which survives—it is the double, the Ka, the natural soul in -contradistinction to the spiritual soul, which fits exactly into the -shape of the body but is not blended with it. In order to save this -double from destruction, the body must be preserved in a recognizable -form.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span></p> - -<p>This insistence upon the preservation of the body among the Egyptians, -antedating their faith in magic formulæ, clearly had its origin, as in -the case of the child, in a desperate revolt against the destruction of -the visible man.</p> - -<p>Owing to this continued insistence upon corporeal survival, the -Egyptians at length carried the art of embalming to such a state of -perfection that mummies of royal personages are easily recognized -from their likenesses to portrait statues. Such confidence did they -have in their own increasing ability to withhold the human frame from -destruction that many of the texts inscribed on the walls of the tombs -assure the dead man himself that he is not dead, and endeavor to -convince his survivors against the testimony of their own senses; or -rather, they attempt to deceive the senses. The texts endlessly repeat -the same assertion, “Thou comest not dead to thy sepulchre, thou comest -living”; and yet the very reiteration, as well as the decorations -upon the walls of every tomb, portray a primitive terror lest after -all the body be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> destroyed and the element of life be lost forever. -One’s throat goes dry over this old fear of death expressed by men who -have been so long dead that there is no record of them but this, no -surviving document of their once keen reactions to life.</p> - -<p>Doubtless the Egyptians in time overcame this primitive fear concerning -the disappearance of the body, as we all do, although each individual -is destined to the same devastating experience. The memory of mine -came back to me vividly as I stood in an Egyptian tomb: I was a tiny -child making pothooks in the village school, when one day—it must -have been in the full flush of Spring, for I remember the crab-apple -blossoms—during the afternoon session, the A B C class was told that -its members would march all together to the burial of the mother of -one of the littlest girls. Of course, I had been properly taught that -people went to heaven when they died and that their bodies were -buried in the cemetery, but I was not at all clear about it, and I was -certainly totally unprepared to see what appeared to be the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> person -herself put deep down into the ground. The knowledge came to me so -suddenly and brutally that for weeks afterward the days were heavy with -a nameless oppression and the nights were filled with horror.</p> - -<p>The cemetery was hard by the school-house, placed there, it had always -been whispered among us, to make the bad boys afraid. Thither the A B C -class, in awestruck procession, each child carefully holding the hand -of another, was led by the teacher to the edge of the open grave and -bidden to look on the still face of the little girl’s mother.</p> - -<p>Our poor knees quaked and quavered as we stood shelterless and -unattended by family protection or even by friendly grown-ups; for -the one tall teacher, while clearly visible, seemed inexpressively -far away as we kept an uncertain footing on the freshly spaded earth, -hearing the preacher’s voice, the sobs of the motherless children, -and, crowning horror of all, the hollow sound of three clods of earth -dropped impressively upon the coffin lid.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p> - -<p>After endless ages the service was over and we were allowed to go down -the long hill into the familiar life of the village. But a new terror -awaited me even there, for our house stood at the extreme end of the -street and the last of the way home was therefore solitary. I remember -a breathless run from the blacksmith shop, past the length of our -lonely orchard until the carriage-house came in sight, through whose -wide-open doors I could see a man moving about. One last panting effort -brought me there, and after my spirit had been slightly reassured by -conversation, I took a circuitous route to the house that I might -secure as much companionship as possible on the way. I stopped at -the stable to pat an old horse who stood munching in his stall, and -again to throw a handful of corn into the poultry yard. The big turkey -gobbler who came greedily forward gave me great comfort because he -was so absurd and awkward that no one could possibly associate him -with anything so solemn as death. I went into the kitchen where the -presiding genius<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> allowed me to come without protest although the -family dog was at my heels. I felt constrained to keep my arms about -his shaggy neck while trying to talk of familiar things—would the cake -she was making be baked in the little round tins or in the big square -one? But although these idle words were on my lips, I wanted to cry -out, “Their mother is dead; whatever, whatever will the children do?” -These words, which I had overheard as we came away from the graveyard, -referred doubtless to the immediate future of the little family, but in -my mind were translated into a demand for definite action on the part -of the children against this horrible thing which had befallen their -mother.</p> - -<p>It was with no sense of surprise that I found this long-forgotten -experience spread before my eyes on the walls of a tomb built four -thousand years ago into a sandy hill above the Nile, at Assuan. The -man so long dead, who had prepared the tomb for himself, had carefully -ignored the grimness of death. He is portrayed as going about his -affairs surrounded by his family,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> his friends, and his servants; -grain is being measured before him into his warehouse, while a scribe -by his side registers the amount; the herdsmen lead forth cattle for -his inspection; two of them, enraged bulls, paying no attention to -the sombre implication of tomb decoration, lower their huge heads, -threatening each other as if there were no such thing as death in the -world. Indeed, the builder of the tomb seems to have liked the company -of animals, perhaps because they were so incurious concerning death. -His dogs are around him, he stands erect in a boat from which he spears -fish, and so on from one marvelous relief to another, but all the time -your heart contracts for him, and you know that in the midst of this -elaborately prepared nonchalance he is miserably terrified by the fate -which may be in store for him, and is trying to make himself believe -that he need not leave all this wonted and homely activity; that if his -body is but properly preserved he will be able to enjoy it forever.</p> - -<p>Although the Egyptians, in their natural<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> desire to cling to the -familiar during the strange experience of death, portrayed upon the -walls of their tombs many domestic and social habits whose likeness to -our own household life gives us the quick satisfaction with which the -traveller encounters the familiar and wonted in a strange land, such a -momentary thrill is quite unlike the abiding sense of kinship which is -founded upon the unexpected similarity of ideas, and it is the latter -which are encountered in the tombs of the eighteenth century dynasty. -The paintings portray a great hall, at the end of which sits Osiris, -the god who had suffered death on earth, awaiting those who come before -him for judgment. In the center of the hall stands a huge balance -in which the hearts of men are weighed, once more reminiscent of a -childish conception, making clear that as the Egyptians became more -anxious and scrupulous they gradually made the destiny of man dependent -upon morality, and finally directed the souls of men to heaven or hell -according to their merits.</p> - -<p>There is a theory that the tremendous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> results of good and evil, -in the earliest awakening to them, were first placed in the next -world by a primitive people sore perplexed as to the partialities -and injustices of mortal life. This simple view is doubtless the one -the child naturally takes. In Egypt I was so vividly recalled to my -first apprehension of it, that the contention that the very belief in -immortality is but the postulate of the idea of reward and retribution, -seemed to me at the moment a perfectly reasonable one.</p> - -<p>The incident of my childhood around which it had formulated itself was -very simple. I had been sent with a message—an important commission it -seemed to me—to the leader of the church choir that the hymn selected -for the doctor’s funeral was “How blest the righteous when he dies.” -The village street was so strangely quiet under the summer sun that -even the little particles of dust beating in the hot air were more -noiseless than ever before. Frightened by the noonday stillness and -instinctively seeking companionship, I hurried toward two women who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> -were standing at a gate talking in low tones. In their absorption they -paid no attention to my somewhat wistful greeting, but I heard one of -them say with a dubious shake of the head that “he had never openly -professed nor joined the church,” and in a moment I understood that she -thought the doctor would not go to heaven. What else did it mean, that -half-threatening tone? Of course the doctor was good, as good as any -one could be. Only a few weeks before he had given me a new penny when -he had pulled my tooth, and once I heard him drive by in the middle of -the night when he took a beautiful baby to the miller’s house; he went -to the farms miles and miles away when people were sick, and everybody -sent for him the minute they were in trouble. How could any one be -better than that?</p> - -<p>In defiant contrast to the whispering women, there arose in my mind, -composed doubtless of various Bible illustrations, the picture of an -imposing white-robed judge seated upon a golden throne, who listened -gravely to all those good deeds as they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> read by the recording -angel from his great book, and then sent the doctor straight to heaven.</p> - -<p>I dimly felt the challenge of the fine old hymn in its claim of -blessings for the righteous, and was defiantly ready at the moment to -combat the theology of the entire community. Of my own claim to heaven -I was most dubious, and I simply could not bring myself to contemplate -the day when my black sins should be read aloud from the big book; but -when the claim of reward in the next world for well-doing in this, came -to me in regard to one whose righteousness was undoubted, I was eager -to champion him before all mankind and even before the judges in the -shadowy world to come.</p> - -<p>This state of mind, this mood of truculent discussion, was recalled by -the wall paintings in the tomb of a nobleman in the Theban hills. In -an agonized posture he awaits the outcome of his trial before Osiris. -Thoth, the true scribe, records on the wall the just balance between -the heart of the nobleman, which is in one pan of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> the scale, and -the feather of truth which is in the other. The noble appeals to his -heart, which has thus been separated from him, to stand by him during -the weighing and not to bear testimony against him. “Oh, heart of my -existence, rise not up against me; be not an enemy against me before -the divine powers; thou art my Ka that is in my body, the heart that -came to me from my mother.” The noble even tries a bribe by reminding -the Ka that his own chance of survival is dependent on his testimony -at this moment. The entire effort on the part of the man being tried -is to still the voice of his own conscience, to maintain stoutly his -innocence even to himself.</p> - -<p>The attitude of the self-justifying noble might easily have suggested -those later childish struggles in which a sense of hidden guilt, of -repeated failure in “being good,” plays so large a part, and humbles a -child to the very dust. That the definite reminiscence evoked by the -tomb belonged to an earlier period of rebellion may indicate that the -Egyptian had not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> yet learned to commune with his gods for spiritual -refreshment.</p> - -<p>Whether it is that the long days and magical nights on the Nile lend -themselves to a revival of former states of consciousness, or that I -had come to expect landmarks of individual development in Egypt, or, -more likely still, that I had fallen into a profoundly reminiscent -mood, I am unable to state; but certainly, as the Nile boat approached -nearer to him “who sleeps in Philæ,” something of the Egyptian feeling -for Osiris, the god to whom was attributed the romance of a hero -and the character of a benefactor and redeemer, came to me through -long-forgotten sensations. Typifying the annual “great affliction,” -Osiris, who had submitted himself to death, mutilation, and burial in -the earth, returned each Spring when the wheat and barley sprouted, -bringing not only a promise of bread for the body but healing and -comfort for the torn mind; an intimation that death itself is -beneficent and may be calmly accepted as a necessary part of an ordered -universe.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p> - -<p>Day after day, seeing the rebirth of the newly planted fields on the -banks of the Nile, and touched by a fresh sense of the enduring miracle -of Spring with its inevitable analogy to the vicissitudes of human -experience, one dimly comprehends how the pathetic legends of Osiris, -by providing the Egyptian with an example for his own destiny, not only -opened the way for a new meaning in life, but also gradually vanquished -the terrors of death.</p> - -<p>Again there came a faint memory of a child’s first apprehension -that there may be poetry out-of-doors, of the discovery that myths -have a foundation in natural phenomena, and at last a more definite -reminiscence.</p> - -<p>I saw myself a child of twelve standing stock-still on the bank of a -broad-flowing river, with a little red house surrounded by low-growing -willows on its opposite bank, striving to account to myself for a -curious sense of familiarity, for a conviction that I had long ago -known it all most intimately, although I had certainly never seen the -Mississippi River before.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> I remember that, much puzzled and mystified, -at last I gravely concluded that it was one of those intimations of -immortality that Wordsworth had written about, and I went back to my -cousin’s camp in so exalted a frame of mind that the memory of the -evening light shining through the blades of young corn growing in a -field passed on the way has remained with me for more than forty years.</p> - -<p>Was that fugitive sense of having lived before nearer to the fresher -imaginations of the Egyptians, as it is nearer to the mind of a child? -and did the myth of Osiris make them more willing to die because the -myth came to embody a confidence in this transitory sensation of -continuous life?</p> - -<p>Such ghosts of reminiscence, coming to the individual as he visits -one after another of the marvellous human documents on the banks of -the Nile, may be merely manifestations of that new humanism which is -perhaps the most precious possession of this generation, the belief -that no altar at which living men have once devoutly worshipped, no -oracle to whom a nation long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> ago appealed in its moments of dire -confusion, no gentle myth in which former generations have found -solace, can lose all significance for us, the survivors.</p> - -<p>Is it due to this same humanism that, in spite of the overweight of -the tomb, Egypt never appears to the traveller as world-weary, or as -a land of the dead? Although the slender fellaheen, whom he sees all -day pouring the water of the Nile on their parched fields, use the -primitive shaduf of their remote ancestors, and the stately women bear -upon their heads water-jars of a shape unchanged for three thousand -years, modern Egypt refuses to belong to the past and continually makes -the passionate living appeal of those hard-pressed in the struggle for -bread.</p> - -<p>Under the smoking roofs of the primitive clay houses lifted high above -the level of the fields, because resting on the ruins of villages which -have crumbled there from time immemorial, mothers feed their children, -clutched by the old fear that there is not enough for each to have -his portion; and the traveller comes to realize with a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span> pang that the -villages are built upon the bleak, barren places quite as the dead are -always buried in the desert because no black earth can be spared, and -that each new harvest, cut with sickles of a curve already ancient when -Moses was born, in spite of its quick ripening, is garnered barely in -time to save the laborer from actual starvation.</p> - -<p>Certain it is that through these our living brothers, or through the -unexpected reactions of memory to racial records, the individual -detects the growth within of an almost mystical sense of the life -common to all the centuries, and of the unceasing human endeavor to -penetrate into the unseen world. These records also afford glimpses -into a past so vast that the present generation seems to float upon its -surface as thin as a sheet of light which momentarily covers the ocean -and moves in response to the black waters beneath it.</p> - -<hr class="tb p2"> -<p class="center">Printed in the United States of America.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - - -<p class="center">The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author -or on kindred subjects.</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Publisher1"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></h2> -</div> - - -<h3>Women at the Hague</h3> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> JANE ADDAMS, EMILY G. BALCH <span class="allsmcap">AND</span> ALICE HAMILTON</p> - -<p class="center"> -<i>Boards, 12mo, $.75</i><br> -</p> - -<p>The official report of the International Congress of Women, convened at -The Hague in April, 1915. Among the titles of the different chapters -are noted the following: Journey and Impressions of the Congress, The -Women at the Congress, Civil Government in Time of War, Journey to the -Northern Capital and Factors in Continuing the War.</p> - - -<h3>A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil</h3> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> JANE ADDAMS</p> - -<p class="center"> -<i>Cloth, 12mo, $1.00. Standard Library, $.50</i><br> -</p> - -<p>Jane Addams has an understanding way of looking at things. Hers is not -to censure or to blame, but only to help humanity. That is the purpose -of her new book in which she takes up a question that civilization -will always have with it, the greatest social evil of our times. Miss -Addams’s treatment is at all times frank, and there can be no doubt -but that such a plain statement of the conditions and the source of -the trouble, coupled with significant suggestions as to how these -conditions may be bettered, will do much to bring about that happier -state which, in Miss Addams’s opinion, is forecasted by the “new -conscience.”</p> - - -<h3>The Newer Ideals of Peace</h3> - -<p class="center"> -<i>12mo, cloth, leather back, $1.25. Standard Library, $.50</i><br> -</p> - -<p>“A clean and consistent setting forth of the utility of labor as -against the waste of war, and an exposition of the alteration of -standards that must ensue when labor and the spirit of militarism are -relegated to their right places in the minds of men.”—<i>Chicago -Tribune.</i></p> - -<hr class="r5"> -<p class="center"> -<span class="big">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span><br> -Publishers      64-66 Fifth Avenue      New York<br> -</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Publisher2"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></h2> -</div> - - -<h3>Democracy and Social Ethics</h3> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> JANE ADDAMS</p> - -<p class="center"> -<i>Cloth, 12mo, leather back, $1.25</i><br> -</p> - -<p>“Its pages are remarkably—we were about to say refreshingly—free -from the customary academic limitations ...; in fact, are the result -of actual experience in hand-to-hand contact with social problems.... -No more truthful description, for example, of the ‘boss’ as he thrives -to-day in our great cities has ever been written than is contained in -Miss Addams’s chapter on ‘Political Reform.’... The same thing may be -said of the book in regard to the presentation of social and economic -facts.”—<i>Review of Reviews.</i></p> - -<p>“Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the efficiency and inspiration -afforded by these essays.... The book is startling, stimulating, and -intelligent.”—<i>Philadelphia Ledger.</i> -</p> - - -<h3>Twenty Years at Hull-House</h3> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> JANE ADDAMS</p> - -<p class="center"> -<i>New edition, ill., dec. cloth, 8vo, $1.50</i><br> -</p> - -<p>Jane Addams’s work at Hull-House is known throughout the civilized -world. In the present volume she tells of her endeavors and of their -success—of the beginning of Hull-House, of its growth and its present -influence. For every one at all interested in the improvement of our -cities, in the moral education of those who are forced to spend much -of their time on the streets or in cheap places of amusement—“Twenty -Years at Hull-House” will be a volume of more than ordinary interest -and value.</p> - - -<h3>The Spirit of Youth in the City Streets</h3> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> JANE ADDAMS</p> - -<p class="center"> -<i>12mo, cloth, $1.25. Standard Library, $.50</i><br> -</p> - -<p>A protest against the practice of every large city of turning over to -commercialism practically all the provisions for public recreation, -leaving it possible for private greed to starve or demoralize the -nature of youth.</p> - -<hr class="r5"> -<p class="center"> -<span class="small">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span><br> -Publishers      64-66 Fifth Avenue      New York<br> -</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Business_of_Being_a_Woman">The Business of Being a Woman</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> IDA M. TARBELL</p> - -<p class="center"> -<i>Cloth, 12mo, $1.25</i><br> -</p> - - -<p>What is the business of being a woman? Is it something incompatible -with the free and joyous development of one’s talents? Is there no -place in it for economic independence? Has it no essential relation -to the world’s movements? Is it an episode which drains the forces -and leaves a dreary wreck behind? Is it something that cannot be -organized into a profession of dignity and opportunity for service -and for happiness? As will be seen from the above, Miss Tarbell’s -topic is a broad one, permitting her to discuss the political, social, -and economic issues of to-day as they affect woman. Suffrage, Woman, -and the Household, The Home as an Educational Center, the Homeless -Daughter, Friendless Youth and the Irresponsible Woman—these but -suggest some of the lines of Miss Tarbell’s thought. Though they may -at first seem disconnected, she has made out of them, because of their -bearing on all of her sex, a powerful unified narrative.</p> - -<hr class="r5"> -<p class="center"> -<span class="big">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span><br> -Publishers      64-66 Fifth Avenue      New York<br> -</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Ways_of_Women">The Ways of Women</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> IDA M. TARBELL</p> - -<p class="center"><i>Cloth, 12mo, $1.00</i><br> -</p> - - -<p>What are the activities and responsibilities of the average normal -woman? This is the question which Miss Tarbell considers in this book. -Despite the change in the outward habits, conduct, points of view, -and ways of doing things, which marks the present age, Miss Tarbell -maintains that certain great currents of life still persist. To -consider that these are lost in the new world of machines and systems -is, she holds, only to study the surface. The relation to society and -to the future of the old and common pursuits of the woman is her theme, -which at once makes the volume appear as a sort of supplement to her -previous work, “The Business of Being a Woman.”</p> - -<p>“A book of hopeful, cheerful thoughts ... a very human book, worthy of -careful reading.”—<i>Literary Digest.</i> -</p> - -<p>“A striking exposition of present-day woman’s ways.”—<i>Philadelphia North American.</i><br> -</p> - -<hr class="r5"> -<p class="center"> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br> -Publishers      64-66 Fifth Avenue      New York<br> -</p> - -<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop chap"> -<div class="chapter transnote"> -<h2>Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - -<p>Errors in punctuation have been fixed.</p> - -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN'S MEMORY ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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