Part 8

In those parts of the world where the Christian religion is little known, the progress of women has been even slower and beset with more obstacles than in Christendom. Indeed, the women of those countries must look to Christian lands for their salvation. Buddhism, the principal religion of Japan, teaches that woman's only hope of heaven is that she may be reincarnated as a man. Confucius, the founder of the religion that prevails in China, taught that ten daughters do not equal the value of one son. The woman of Brahminic faith is forbidden to read the scriptures or to offer prayer in her own right. We all know something of the horror of the suttee in India, which, until prohibited by English law, permitted a widow to be sacrificed on her husband's funeral pyre. The Moslem man prays, "O God, I thank thee that thou hast not made me a woman," and the Koran teaches that strict obedience to her husband is the only condition upon which a woman can be saved.

The fact that so few women have attained a supreme place in any art or profession is often brought forward to prove the natural inferiority of women. When we recall how few men attain the first rank in spite of the honors and rewards showered by an approving world upon such a man, and when we remember that until recently it was considered hardly respectable for a woman to write a book, to paint a picture, or even to publish music, the surprising thing is that so many women have defied public opinion and have given expression to the genius that was in them. George Eliot wrote under the name of a man in order to get a hearing. The rich poetic gifts of Dorothy Wordsworth largely increased the fame of her illustrious brother. No one knows how many of Felix Mendelssohn's beautiful "Songs without Words" were the work of his sister Fanny, as we are told by his recent biographers. Caroline Herschel was another gifted sister whose labors helped bring honor and fame to her brother, the great astronomer. If any of these women had lived in the twentieth century, the world would have paid them high honor for the work of their gifted minds.

The last half of the nineteenth century brought educational opportunity to women and the inevitable result followed: they began to reason and hence to ask their share of things, and it looks as if they would not stop until they get it. What are they asking? That all artificial barriers to their freedom be removed, nothing more. So far as nature has created barriers for them and placed limitations upon them, these barriers and limitations should be respected, must be respected. With these, reasonable women have no quarrel. It is the artificially made barriers they are determined to remove. The Chinese woman is realizing that she has burdens sufficiently heavy to bear without adding that of an artificial deformity. Life will not be any too easy for the feminine half of the race even when they have obtained every right and every opportunity to which they have a claim.

One of the things which women asked in vain for many years was the privilege of higher educational opportunity. One hundred years ago there was not a single college in our country which opened its doors to women. All the arguments which are put forward against the enfranchisement of women to-day were put forward yesterday against the extension of their educational opportunities. Serious-minded and earnest men--and women, too--argued that women had no use for the higher education; that they were not capable of receiving it, and that if some, by chance, were equal to it intellectually, they were not physically. The final and seemingly unanswerable argument was that education would unfit women for the sacred duties of the home. Now that our colleges are graduating more than ten thousand young women every year who have not lost their health and who make better wives and mothers because of their wider horizon and broader interests, no one remembers these foolish fears.

Another privilege which women have been seeking for many years is the opportunity to work; that is, they have been asking that there be no artificial barriers between them and the work they want to do. The world is yielding them this privilege, though slowly and somewhat grudgingly. We are still told occasionally that woman is out of her place whenever she seeks remunerative employment outside of the home. It makes little difference, however, who approves and who disapproves. To put things back to where they were one hundred years ago would be no less difficult than to turn back Niagara River. Statistics tell us that there are at present over eight million women in this country engaged in gainful occupations.

Perhaps you ask, But why do women rush out into the world to find work? Why can we not go back to the good old times when all women found shelter and safety within the walls of the home? The answer to this question is a very complex one. More than fifty years ago Harriet Martineau wrote of conditions in England, "A social organization framed for a community of which half stayed at home while the other half went out to work cannot answer the purposes of a society of which a quarter remains at home while three quarters go out to work. With this new condition of affairs, new duties and new views must be adopted."

There is wide disagreement as to the answer to the question why so many women are engaged in gainful employments. You can best work out the problem for yourself by recalling the women and girls of your acquaintance who are earning a livelihood by work outside of the home. Ask one of these why she does not give up her present position and go back to the "shelter of the home." She will probably tell you that there is in her home no possible means of support for her. The chances are that she will tell you that her labor is one of the sources of income for the maintenance of that home and dependent ones in it.

The talk of some people would lead you to think that if women would only behave themselves they might all spend their lives in weaving and spinning, as their great-grandmothers did. But if they did this there would be no market for their labors; and who would earn the money necessary for their support? If you knew the facts in regard to the average home of one hundred years ago, you would find conditions vastly different from what they are now. Then, the great bulk of the population lived on farms, from which the labor of all drew sustenance for all. For many years the trend of population has been toward the cities, and the man who once made a comfortable living from the farm, with the assistance of his family, now works in a store or a factory or some other industrial concern. The compensation is often not enough for the family necessities, and the labor of women must be added to that of men. Formerly there were few men who did not have several dependent women relatives in addition to wife and daughters. Now a self-respecting woman prefers the independence which comes with self-support.

Moreover, a great deal of the most interesting work has been forced out of the home. Labor-saving inventions have multiplied and every year brings new ones. Thus have the forces of water and air and electricity conspired to take away much of the ancient prerogative of woman. Your great-grandmother, in all probability, made all the clothing for her family, men included. Moreover, she and her assistants wove the cloth and her hands spun the wool out of which it was made. The linen and the wool must still be woven and made into cloth, but it must be done outside of the home. One would almost have to be wealthy now in order to wear garments toward which no machine had made any contribution. The Ruskin weaving industries of England are an example of the handwork of the twentieth century, but the textiles made on those looms are costly.

In your great-grandmother's home were manufactured all the lights needed, the wax or tallow candles. We now demand gas and electricity. Then all the food consumed in the home was prepared there. Now vast canneries and factories do the work at less cost than it can be done in the home. Ready-made clothing can often be bought as cheaply as the materials alone for home manufacture.

What I wish to show is that the transference of the labor of the home to the factory has robbed many women of useful, satisfying labor. This has produced widespread unrest among them. The protest against inactivity has caused an increasing army of women to knock upon the door of every opportunity for productive, satisfying occupation.

It is not a wrong instinct in women which urges them, when not needed in the home, to find activity outside of it. If you have a craving to do something in the world, don't be ashamed of it. It may not be best for you to do it, but the wish to do it does not prove that you are unwomanly, even if it is something that has oftenest been done by men. I am always glad when I find a girl seriously taking up some line of work by means of which she may, if necessary, gain a livelihood. Is it wise for parents to bring their daughters up without any definite aim, instilling into their minds the idea that they will always be taken care of and protected? Who is protected, who can be protected, when fortunes are heaped up to-day only to be swept away to-morrow?

In the progress of women, it is the question of their enfranchisement which is particularly agitating the world to-day, just as, yesterday, it was the question of their education. We have no right not to be interested in the matter. The statement may fearlessly be made that there is not an American young woman alive to-day upon whom will not fall, if she lives to a reasonable age, the responsibility of the ballot. You may believe in woman suffrage or you may not, yet, with your consent or without it, there will some time be placed in your hands an instrument for the possession of which men struggled and fought for hundreds of years, and for which many of them died; and for which women have struggled since long before you were born, and for which many of them would have been willing to die. The danger is that when woman suffrage shall have become universal, and we are no longer reminded, as we now constantly are, of the cost and the value of the ballot, we shall cease to prize it, and shall grow careless of its use, as many men also have done. That is the way of the world. What one generation purchases at tremendous cost, the next accepts as a matter of course. A distinguished woman, who, though she labored hard to help secure higher educational privileges for women, was born a little too soon to avail herself of them, gave an illustration of this. Her granddaughter, just home on her first vacation from college, said to her, "Grandmother, I wonder that you did not go to college. It is splendid!" How little that girl knew of the long, uphill struggle that had taken place in order that she might receive a college education!

Why are women asking for an opportunity to vote? Whatever arguments may be adduced in favor of woman suffrage, we always come back to equality as a first principle, the primary right of each individual to claim before the law the same right as every other individual. It is not entirely a question of the wise use of suffrage, it is a question of liberty and equality. As the world has become more enlightened, liberty has more and more become its governing principle, and the progress cannot stop until every adult fitted for citizenship in any civilized state shall be enfranchised.

Here are several reasons why, it seems to me, women should have the ballot.

First, in order that they may feed and clothe their families properly and provide healthful homes for them to live in. The preparation of food used to be solely women's business, but it is not now, as I have said. Upon proper inspection of dairies, bakeries, canneries, etc., every family depends for its well-being. Adulteration of food and misbranding need to be guarded against. We all know something of the struggle that has been waged for years by the Consumers' League and other beneficent agencies against the sweat-shop system. Poisonous germs may lurk in a garment made under unwholesome conditions. A polluted water-supply or a defective sewage system may bring disease or death into any home. The ballot is not the only weapon which can be employed against these evils that menace the home, but it is probably the most effective one.

Another reason why women should vote is for the sake of the moral welfare of their children. It is the voter who has it in his hands to eliminate the saloon and to control the public dance-hall, the debasing theater or moving-picture show, and other sources of moral corruption. It is the voter who has the power to establish libraries and art galleries, playgrounds and parks.

Women ought to vote for the sake of protecting and helping those who cannot help themselves; for the sake of abolishing child-labor, and of securing humane hours and reasonable wages for working-women as well as better protection for young girls against those who would ensnare them. They should vote, also, in order that they may have a voice in measures affecting the public welfare, such as old-age pensions, mothers' pensions, industrial insurance, prison reform, better care of the sick and the aged, and all forms of civic betterment.

Women should vote in order that they may help to abolish unjust discrimination against women. Even in this free Republic many steps will have to be taken before women will have the same rights before the law as men. The enfranchisement of women will hasten that time. It is only a few years since Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, called to his aid an ancient law of that State in order to enable his son, who had left his wife, to take their children from her. South Carolina is not the only State in which the law, in case of a legal separation, is most unjust to the woman. According to a recent authority, women have the same rights as men in the guardianship of their children in only sixteen States of the Union. In some States the father has even power to deed the children away from their mother. In a number of the States of the Union, the husband still has legal control of his wife's property and he may claim her wages. Every woman should resolve to do all in her power to help to abolish such obviously unjust laws as these.

There is one more reason why women should vote, and that is, for their own growth and enlargement. Only a few hundred years ago woman had practically no liberty. She had little freedom before marriage, small choice in marriage, unequal rights as a wife, no legal right to her children. She could own no property; educational opportunities were denied her; and her life from birth to death was determined by others, not by herself. One has only to read such a story as Browning's "The Ring and the Book" to understand something of the wrongs that millions of women suffered before the days when the world in the process of evolution was brought to a more enlightened idea of the rights of woman. What vast progress she has made! One who knows the story of it can be patient in regard to further progress, confident that it will come as surely as the planets will continue in their orbits. And we must not forget that at every step upward hands of strong and fearless men have been held out to her, else she could not have reached her present position. That person is doing small service to the world who attempts to set the interests of women over against those of men and to create antagonism between them. Let us never forget that their interests are not opposed to each other, but that in the long run nothing can be detrimental to one which is not also detrimental to the other.

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free; · · · · · · · If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow?"

XIII

SOURCES OF HAPPINESS

You do not need to be reminded of the importance of this subject. Do we not hear on all sides that happiness is what all the world is seeking? Why are men toiling and struggling and warring with each other to heap up wealth except that they believe it will bring happiness? It is probably true that most of the actions of the majority of human beings are directed, consciously or unconsciously, toward happiness as an end. "We keep pleasure in the background of our minds, not allowing it to be seen, yet always hoping for more and more of it," says one of our modern writers on ethics. Yet I should be sorry to have you believe that pleasure is the _summum bonum_ of life.

All normal, healthy young people are happy. There may be disappointments and sorrows, but the power of rebound is great and happiness returns. The Creator evidently wants us to be happy, and any other theory of life is an unnatural one. The ascetics of the Middle Ages had a mistaken idea of serving God, believing that the more they suffered, the better they were pleasing Him. Our conception of God as a God of love forbids that theory. In children and animals happiness is always a sign of well-being, as it seems to denote absence of ill-adjustment. If a young child appears to be happy, we feel that all is well with it. The frolicsome play of all young creatures is an expression of the gladness that has been implanted within them. The further removed we are from the spirit of gladness, the less are we conforming to one of the deepest laws of our being.

Happiness is good, not only as a sign that all is well with us, just as silence in the machine denotes perfect adjustment, but it is good as productive of something beyond itself. If we are happy, we work better. Happiness has an exhilarating effect. If we are happy, we add to the joy of all about us and thus increase the gladness of the world. Happiness is not only the sign of absence of friction, it removes friction. It is not only an indication of health, but a cause of health. One who enjoys his dinner will digest it better than one who eats from duty. If happiness is, then, so important, we may reasonably ask what we can do to secure it.

We may rightly say that we want all the happiness we can have consistent with other aims. A wrong attitude regarding it is that we must purchase it at any cost, no matter how much we have to ride over the rights of others to secure it. This is the attitude of many young people who have been brought up in affluence and who have formed the fatal habit of thinking that life must bring them whatever they want. One longs to say to such young people that happiness does not depend upon what we have, but upon what we are. The person who is discontented in a hovel would be discontented in a palace, for even there he would have to live with himself. Mrs. Wiggs could not have been happier in a mansion than she was in her cabbage-patch, because her happiness was independent of external things. She made it herself by her attitude toward the world, toward her work, toward her troubles and her blessings. Those, however, who are of an unhappy, discontented nature always attribute their lack of happiness to some definite thing or things which their more fortunate friends have and the possession of which they think would bring complete happiness. In the expressive words of George Eliot, "Dissatisfaction seeks a definite object and finds it in the privation of an untried good."

Happiness is never won by direct pursuit. Just when she seems so close that we are sure we can reach out the hand and grasp her, she is gone, and again we must start in hot pursuit. Many have spent their lives in this way, a bootless chase. It is only when we give up this mad pursuit and attend to our business in life that Happiness comes and makes her home with us. "Pleasure to be got must be forgot."

But you are happy, so why talk to you about securing something which you already possess, indeed, have never been without? Because there are many kinds of happiness, some far more satisfying and more permanent than others. It is for us to see to it that ours is of a kind that will stand every test. At your stage of life you possess most of the blessings which the world has always regarded as most desirable. If you wish to count them you may begin with youth. To be young means that almost all of life is before you and that no irrevocable mistakes have as yet been made. There are many with misspent lives behind them, who would barter everything they possess for youth and the opportunity to begin all over again. You possess health. What would not the aged and feeble, the crippled, the diseased, give for your vigorous body! Like most of our truest riches, however, health is something we take as a matter of course and do not know the value of until it has departed from us. You have human love. Whoever you are there are those whose world is made brighter because of your presence in it.

Youth, health, love are yours, so why should you not be happy? But I have already said that you are happy. And yet I did not quite mean it. I should probably do you no injustice if I should say that you are not as happy as this splendid trio of blessings would seem to warrant. The reason is that real happiness does not come as a gift. It is achieved happiness that is of most worth.

You have often been told, no doubt, that the school days are the happiest days of life. Some men and women of maturer years are very fond of preaching this doctrine to young people. But it is a wrong and pernicious theory of life, and those who advocate it condemn themselves by their own words, for they show that they have lacked the power to make life richer and deeper as it went on. "I never will believe," says George Eliot, "that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one!"

Getting to the end of school days is not, then, like walking off a precipice. There is much beyond and it is good. To be sure, there will be no more days just like the school days, with their freedom from care, their glorious comradeship, and their stimulus to high endeavor. In future years they doubtless will wear a halo possessed by no others, but this will not mean that they were really the happiest. In fact, if the first twenty years of one's life have truly prepared one to live, life should constantly grow richer as it moves onward. We should grow happier as we grow older because of two things, increasing power of service, and a growing capacity for enjoyment. Dr. Eliot, ex-President of Harvard University, once defined education as "increasing the capacity for serviceableness and for enjoyment." In this sense education does not stop with the school days. Each year should reveal new springs of power and should develop within us new resources. Women ought to be even more careful than men to develop such powers and resources, for a man's active life in the world is much more likely to compel growth in him. How many women there are who, after reaching middle life, when their children are grown up and gone out of the home, find it impossible to secure happy employment for the mind! They might have developed resources and powers which would have given them an ever-increasing interest in life.