Part 8

The nineteenth century has seen a wonderful change in the position of woman all over the world. This remark is so trite that my pencil blushes to record it. The twentieth century is ushering woman in as a very decided factor in the world’s progress and will doubtless bring her into greater activities and prominence than ever; but God instituted woman a number of years ago, when He set certain limits to her physical development, and He has not yet shown any decided intention of changing her mental qualities into replicas of the biped He created a short time previous and called man, and we shall continue to be just plain women when all is said and done.

Not but what that greatest room in the world—the room for improvement—is still open to us; but the fun of it is that so many more are all the time crowding up to its doors. Women as a class are growing more intelligent every year; realizing their own responsibilities, inside and outside the four walls of home; learning to balance themselves and to walk steadily along untried paths; rejoicing in this discovery of their own mental powers and yet clinging tightly to the old family loves and home ties.

So let us not worry ourselves over the dismal prophecies of great men as to the position of woman. We will continue to meander along the pleasant paths of improvement, but spell ourselves with a small w.

God made us all; may He help us to realize our limitations as well as to develop our utmost. Selah.

XIV

ON PUBLIC DUTIES

One of Mary E. Wilkins’ delightful heroines remarks, in speaking of certain would-be leaders of social reform in her village: “I don’t know that I think they are so much above us as too far to one side. Sometimes it is longitude and sometimes it is latitude that separates people.” “This is true,” says President Roosevelt, “and the philosophy it teaches applies quite as much to those who would reform the politics of a large city, or, for that matter, of the whole country, as to those who would reform the society of a hamlet.” But the active woman of to-day—and much more the woman of to-morrow—is not in danger of separating herself by either latitude or longitude. She is eager to help, and meets her problems half-way with outstretched hands. She is taking hold of all sorts of municipal matters and working against unsanitary conditions, defective sewerage, poor drainage, impure drinking water and the practice of making backyards, alleys and even streets the dumping-ground of those who are too negligent, or too indolent to consider the appearance of their immediate locality.

“The poor ye have always with you,” and as Dr. Babcock has said: “To take care of the lower orders is essential to social safety, though the words, ‘Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these,’ had never been spoken, and the thought of helping humanity should be some little comfort, though the recognition of a ‘cup of cold water’ had never been dreamed of. To help poor children to learn to sew cannot compromise you in any way. To prick your finger in the sewing-school and draw one little red drop, is in the line of the world’s redemption, at least from ignorance and incapacity.”

But to this mission of woman from simply altruistic motives we can add that divine commission entrusted to Mary at the door of the sepulchre on that Sabbath morning nineteen hundred years ago, so that she is working everywhere to lift little children out of degradation, to teach them, to make of them good citizens, to abolish child-labor. And is it not true that every woman working in a quiet way for the improvement of those in her immediate neighborhood is manifesting the spirit of the scriptural injunction, “Bear ye one another’s burdens”?

“The women’s clubs of the period, with their classes for intelligent study of the great questions of the day, are creating a new political economy,” says the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, late chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, and no man in this country is better fitted to judge of the economic conditions that attend any great movement. One of the significant features of the club movement is that our deepest thinkers, our most far-sighted men recognize in it one of the great forces of the age. It is all well enough for one or two brilliant women writers who pride themselves on belonging to no women’s clubs whatever, to direct their powers of sarcasm against the movement and to flippantly observe that women’s clubs are a fad, or to inveigh against our taking ourselves seriously. We can even bear that Mr. Bok or Mr. Cleveland should warn his readers against being led unwillingly into public life, to the utter neglect of buttonless husbands and starving children; these things are outside the pale of serious consideration.

What does the earnest, thinking woman who reads Drummond’s “Ascent of Man” and Ruskin’s “Unto This Last” care? What does the woman who is studying the great humanitarian problem of to-day—whether singly or in classes—mind if a magazine writer who cares more for brilliancy than for accuracy takes her to task because she takes the fact of organized effort for bettering present conditions, and ministering to great human needs, seriously? For men who think and read and observe what is going on in the world to-day, men who come nearest to seeing what are the present economic forces and whither they are tending—such men are the quickest to recognize women as an important factor in the world’s progress, and are the most cordial in extending a hand-clasp of sympathy and “God-speed” to any specialized movement among us.

The day has gone by when it is fair or safe to arraign men for conditions which hedge in a woman; by which I mean that the men of this country are ready and willing to extend a helping hand to women who really want anything. When the women of this country or any part of it rise up and declare in a body that they want the ballot, for instance, they will get it; for it is not the men who are keeping it from us. When the women of America come forward ready for concerted action on any subject, the men are with them as a rule. Of course this refers to mankind collectively, not individually, and I leave it to any woman if the men of her household are not, as a rule, quite in sympathy with her outside interests and work. The average man sees in some measure the value of the club movement. The thinking man and the one who sees below the surface in this restless, changing, hopeful age goes farther and recognizes that with all our shortcomings and superficialities we have at heart an unquenchable desire to do our part of the world’s work; moreover, that there is a tremendous psychological significance in the banding together of several hundred thousand women all actuated by the same purpose, even if the movement be slightly chaotic and not always well directed.

The fact that thousands of earnest club-women all over this great country are studying its social conditions is of tremendous significance. We began in club life by studying literature, present and past. Then we took up history, and from comparing causes and effects in the past we naturally come to studying the economic conditions of to-day. Once take up this question and we become a powerful factor in its evolution. Women can create and maintain public sentiment, and it is the thinking women who usually become club women. The new political economy, which means the care and culture of mankind, to-day demands our attention. There are many phases of it, but most of our studies bear upon it in one form or another. It is not pleasant to hear about women who make shirtwaists for forty-eight cents a dozen and ruffled skirts for nineteen cents apiece, and thankful—poor creatures!—to get even that. It is heart-breaking to hear of the girls who work in laundries at three to six dollars a week, and at a risk of having hand or foot crushed in the mangle. It is quite heartrending to be told of the hardships that befall a girl who has lost her hand and must find some way to earn her scanty living. But when we are told how we can help these conditions the matter becomes practical. When we are shown that by patronizing bargain counters and buying cheap shirtwaists and petticoats we encourage these conditions, and it is explained how we can improve matters for the laundry girl, then our feelings have not been harrowed in vain.

When we come to realize that it rests with us to create a demand for better conditions we are ready for our part of the work. We may deplore the existence of “yellow journals,” but if we buy them we encourage their sale and contribute to their support. We may believe the sweatshop to be a pet institution of Satan, but if we buy its products we are encouraging the men who keep up its existence. One of the most hopeful auguries for the future of the concerted “woman movement” is the fact that it has definitely recognized its duty with respect to industrial conditions. Thousands of women and children are suffering from the lack of intelligent sympathy as well as from scanty wages, impure air, improper food and all the other things that are attendant on grinding poverty. Shall we—because fate has cast our lot in happier conditions—ignore these sisters of ours? Shall we not, rather, set about the earnest study of our duty in the premises?

You remember the story of Henry Ward Beecher, who hired a horse at a livery stable to go for a drive. Before starting he said, “That is a fine-looking animal; is he as good as he looks?” The owner replied, “Mr. Beecher, that horse will work in any place you put him and do all that any horse can do.” And Mr. Beecher eyed the animal still more admiringly and remarked, “Well, I wish to goodness he was a member of my church.” Now, that is the way we ought to work if we would find all that modern opportunities mean for us individually—“Work in any place we are put and do all that a woman can do.” But not restlessly, strenuously.

The truest and best philanthropic work tends to broaden the sympathy and widen the conception, if not of the brotherhood of man, at least of the sisterhood of woman. There is really no end to it—this question of what women may accomplish for the public good. And one of the most hopeful signs of this close of the nineteenth century is that women are no longer content with hiding their light under a bushel. They think very little about the position of the light, so that it is shedding bright rays over the dark places of the earth.

There is still here and there a woman who feels that she is of no value because she has not money or some special gift. Let her take heart. Whatever she is of herself, whatever she can do in the way of personal service, is of inestimable value. There is nothing else to compare with it. Christ gave Himself. It is the highest gift, and its noblest form is personal service in small things.

XV

ON HOME-LOVING AND HOUSEKEEPING

There are people in the world in this enlightened age who are worrying about the relation of the woman of to-morrow to the home. They argue that the new woman, with her opportunities, her relation to the business world, her college education, her mental development (which they delight in referring to as “so far ahead of their physical development”)—that this woman of the future is sure to cut asunder from all home ties; that we are to become a race of nomads, who roam desolately from one hotel or boarding-house or lodging-house to another, with no taste or desire for the old-fashioned home. But this is now, as it always was, sheer nonsense. Ever since Eve hugged her first baby to her heart women have been proud and happy mothers. Ever since she urged Adam to partake of the fateful apple woman has been enticing man with dinners, good or bad. Think you that after thousands of years we are going to change our natures entirely because of a little college training, a little “advanced thought”? Not while women are women.

Woman’s life for centuries has been narrowed to a compass bounded by four walls; it is true that she has now stepped out and demonstrated her fitness to do her part of the work beyond those confines. She has learned the beauty and usefulness of association, the part that sustains the great whole. She has found out the meaning of the word “coördination” and the beauty of community work. She knows how to make the right connection between home life and world interests, and her family are the better therefor. She realizes what relation a good home bears to the good school, the influential church and pure society. She even begins to comprehend the immense bearing a good home and an upright community have upon a healthy industrial system.

I suppose I am optimistic, but it seems to me that things are going very well for our sex and that we have very little to complain of; also, that the opposite sex has very little to complain of as well, for he is still far from a buttonless state, and he acts as if he enjoyed having intelligent companionship from or with his womenkind. Few women are yet so “advanced” as to wish to bring up their babies on the coöperative plan. Many young women persist in getting married every year, and also in having babies. And what do they do about it? In the beginning they pin a little band around them and see that their milk is maternally sweet, and look confidently to God for the rest. And so far as we can judge, they seem to enjoy motherhood. Oh, I know it is the fashion to cry out “race suicide,” and all that, but let us not take to heart too seriously the dismal state of affairs bewailed by certain sensational reformers. For the world is rolling on towards the good—still swinging out to the light.

The most enduring element of our national strength lies in the fact that our American life centres around the home fireside. We are proud to boast of the goodness and bravery of our men, the beauty and purity of our women, and they have these qualities because the home is their school and the mother their teacher. The wise Creator, when He made woman, gave her the two highest offices in His gift—those of wife and mother. Kings boast of reigning by right divine, and inscribe “Rex Dei Gratia” upon the laws of their land, but woman is the only creature who may truthfully use those words, and she may say, “I am a woman by the grace of God, and rule in a kingdom of kingdoms.” She makes no laws, leads no armies, governs no enterprises, but she forms those by whom laws are made, armies led, great enterprises managed. I often think the wife and mother who lives quietly at home and looks well to the ways of her household; who still pursues the simple art of making her husband happy (I trust I do not misuse the word “simple”) and of bringing up her children to be good citizens—I often think that this woman feels that her life is wasted. She reads and hears of the public work of women, and sighs that her life is being thrown away. Not so. This woman is fulfilling the mission of her being, and the old-fashioned wife and mother will not go out of fashion as long as the world stands. Neither do those of us who do not happen to be wives and mothers do right in belittling their work and arrogating unto ourselves all the glory. I have never known a more splendidly developed woman, spiritually and intellectually, than my mother; and I have chanced to know most of the prominent women of the last quarter of a century. And I cannot go back on her work, although had the Lord seen fit to place her in the ranks of the care-free, or in the present day and generation, she would have gained far wider recognition.

Collectively, women may have been weak, mistakenly zealous, or wofully deficient in method, but in this modern association of all grades in society they are coming to know themselves and their possibilities as well as their limitations. And they are beginning to realize that collectively they are only beginning their education.

The men and women who by their lives have influenced the world, have been those who lived simple, earnest, honest lives. What was it that endeared the late Queen of England to her humble subjects? It was her interest and participation in the common things of every-day life. Her love of children, tenderness toward animals, even her relish for oatmeal porridge was a virtue in their eyes. The homes of the nation mean the life of the nation. No stream can rise higher than its fountain, and as we build our homes so our land will prosper. God has given us a picture of what Heaven may be, and He has given it in the shape of a perfect home. When we learn to give our girls the training for home life which will give them such power over their work that each day’s tasks will come to willing and able hands, then we shall have solved many of the problems that confront us at the beginning of this twentieth century. And right here, although it may not seem apropos, how many mothers are educating their sons in the matter of newspaper reading? How many wives say to the husband who brings home a pink or a yellow or a green, or even some of the white newspapers, “Please do not bring such papers home for the children to read”? Some women do this, it is true, but more are utterly thoughtless about it. Hosts of good women read the sensational papers themselves—because, perchance they cost only a cent, while perhaps the better ones cost two; and hosts of others allow their children to read the sensational, unreliable paper without ever giving a thought to the fact that those young, eager minds are being subjected to a lowering of taste and a lowering of moral and mental tone. They are particular about the associates their children select; they are even particular about the books they read; but a newspaper is an ephemeral thing, read to-day and forgotten to-morrow, and it does not occur to them that the effect upon the child’s taste is morally and intellectually the same as if they were allowed to come under the influence of a teacher with low morals.

I say this because the modern newspaper has a direct influence on the home and the people that dwell therein. The woman who used to spend her evenings picking out the rules for crocheting a cushion cover from the woman’s page has learned how to read good books, to write papers without a too free use of the encyclopedia, how to use her brains, how to think. Just as the woman who used to edit the page has come into her own and convinced the editor that women’s whole existence is not bounded on the north by angel cake, on the east by baby’s afghans, on the south by her pet dog, and on the west by her husband’s dinner; and that the magnetic needle which points her compass is not a crochet hook. Women everywhere are learning that scientific or simplified housekeeping is not beneath the attention of the refined nor beyond the comprehension of the uncultured. It is the duty of the rich and the salvation of the poor. We are all agreed that as our lives are now ordered we have too many things to care for, too much show and too little comfort.

“We have exchanged our stage coach for the electric motor, our tallow candles for the incandescent light, and our simple living for nervous prostration, so that inductive science, the new gospel, must come to our aid,” says a bright woman. “If we would save our bodies as well as our souls, and if the knowledge of household economics means anything to us, it means we must get back to nature’s heart and be content to live simpler lives.”

And we must remember that for every bad woman, every erratic woman, every cold and selfish woman in the world, there are a thousand good and true and faithful unto death. Only the cynic and the critic do not consider the latter worth talking about. They only emphasize the abnormal woman, thinking all the time they are holding the mirror up to nature and proving something; which they are not.

Domestic science is domestic sense, and domestic sense is common sense. Women should have the best and highest education they can obtain, and more especially if their lives are to be rounded out in the limited bounds of a four-room cottage; and while she may have caught the spirit of the times and become an expansionist by invading new territories, and may have been masquerading as the “eternal feminine” or the “new woman,” these little excursions and diversions only make her prize the more her old dominion, and the complexities of her nature find full play in the evolutions in the American home.

Statistics have already proved that the college-bred woman marries in the same proportion and infinitely better than the simpering sister who cares nothing for education. And she not only has as many children, but is manifestly better fitted to train them up to good citizenship. It is also evident that woman’s experience in the business world—while it makes her more cautious about marriage—renders her a more sympathetic, appreciative and sensible wife than the girl who waits at home for a husband, who, she has been taught to believe, must ever after be her body-slave. And although modern conditions make it possible for a woman to be self-supporting, and therefore not to marry unless she does it for that greatest reason in the world—_love_—the business of marrying and having children is going right on, age after age, generation after generation, long after you and I are forgotten. So there is no real cause for worry. Even the rankest pessimist may take heart if he will. And to all I commend the lamented Frank Norris’ definition of a “womanly woman,” a term we all love to use:

“To be womanly? It’s to be kind and well-bred and gentle mostly, and never to be bold or conspicuous; and to love one’s home and take care of it, and to love and believe in one’s husband, or parents, or children, or even one’s sister, above any one else in the world.”

XVI

ON GROWING OLD

It is often said that we have no old women nowadays, that modern conditions and modern dress keep us young until we drop into our graves. And when we look at women, marvelous women, indeed, like Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony, and Mary A. Livermore[1] and others whose activities and beneficences have kept them young, we are inclined to believe all this. But how is it with the most of us? Have we learned the true art of “growing old gracefully”? In this age of hurry-scurry let us give ourselves pause, once in awhile, long enough to remember that we owe ourselves something, and also those around us. I know a woman who broke down under the strain of club life a few years ago; she was one of those willing creatures who do everything anybody asks of them, and she finally had to withdraw from everything and remain in quiet seclusion for some years. I thought she had learned her lesson, but no. I met her again, almost breathless in her chase about the city on some mission or other.

“Why do you do it?” I asked. “You have broken down once under the strain of all this excitement. Why don’t you keep out of it now? Or, if you must be in the midst of things again, why not let others do the hard work?”

“Oh,” she replied, “I must do it. It has got to be done, and who else will do it?”

“My dear, good friend,” I asked her, “did you ever stop to ask yourself what would happen if you and I were to die?”

“Oh,” she exclaimed hurriedly, “nobody else will do my work; and it is very important—I really _have_ to do it.”

“No, you don’t have to,” I answered. “If we were to die to-night the waters would close right over our heads, and after saying the conventional things about us, and passing suitable votes of condolence, somebody else would take up our particular line of work; these things we think nobody else could possibly do so well would get done just as quickly and possibly a great deal better than if you and I kept wearing ourselves out with them. You just try it and see.”