Chapter 5
In order to discuss the effects which this monopoly of education by women is having on the curriculum of the schools we must first agree on what constitutes the peculiarity of women's minds as compared with men's minds.[29] In our first chapter, it was asserted that women are more interested in the concrete, human, personal, conserving and emotional aspects of life; while men more easily turn to the abstract, material, impersonal, creative and rational aspects. To put it broadly, women are more interested in the humanities; men more readily pursue the sciences. Let us admit at once that there are many individual exceptions to this statement. Some women have reached great excellence in abstract studies; and some men are notoriously concrete and emotional; but nevertheless the general statement seems borne out by a wealth of common observations and detailed comparisons.
[29] See _The Americans_, by HUGO MÜNSTERBERG, pp. 558-589. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901.
Personal observation must always be colored by prejudices and prepossessions, but my own have been so wide, and so uniformly in one direction, that it seems justifiable to report them.
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For a quarter of a century I have been working in schools or with teachers, and my personal observations all agree with the above characterization. I have spent five years in Cornell University, New York; one year in Zurich University in Switzerland; two years in the State University of Indiana and seven years in Stanford University in California. These institutions are widely distributed; they were all fully co-educational; and they each had a wide range of elective studies. In all of them, class-rooms devoted to literature and modern languages had a large attendance of women, while lecture-rooms and laboratories devoted to abstract science were almost deserted by them. This could not have been due to commercial considerations, for many of these women were facing teaching; and during all this time the demand for women who could teach science has been much greater than for women who could teach literature.
In my work with teachers, both in the classroom and in the field, I have carried out many inductive, quantitative studies, based on measurements or returns from large numbers of children. I have never found women teachers taking up and carrying out this kind of work with any such enthusiasm as men apply to it, though it lies at the base of their professional life.
Institutional generalizations seem all to point in this same direction. For instance, the Girls' Evening High School in Philadelphia is managed by one of the best known scientific women in the country, Dr. L.L.W. Wilson, head of the biological department of the Philadelphia Normal School. With a thousand girls of high school grade, under the leadership of a scientific woman, the only science courses given in the school are those in domestic science. The reason is that the girls, most of them not being candidates for a degree, will not take up science work, though they form strong classes in literature and languages.
If, from such general facts of observation, one turns to exact comparisons, where quantities can be measured, the results are all the same. Of students enrolled in classical departments of universities, colleges and technical schools reporting to the United States Bureau of Education, in 1910, 36.5% were women, while of those enrolled in general science courses, but 17.2% were women. In 1,511 public and private high schools and seminaries, reporting to the Bureau of Education in 1909-1910, a larger percentage of boys than of girls was enrolled in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, physical geography, civil government and rhetoric, which is a scientific study of language. A larger proportion of girls enrolled in Latin, French, German, English literature and history, and there was a slightly greater enrollment of girls in botany, zoology and physiology.
In the further discussion of this subject it will then be taken for granted that in education, feminization means emphasis on languages, literature and history, as opposed to mathematics, physics, chemistry and civics. For the elementary schools we have no data capable of reduction to figures, but general observation, backed by an examination of courses of study and textbooks, will compel any one to say that in twenty years we have made wonderful progress in reading, language, stories, mythology, biography and history; while all our efforts to bring nature work into vital relation with the schools have borne little fruit. Our country schools need lessons in agriculture, and the children should gain a deep sense of country life. But how can celibate young women, longing toward the towns, give this? Any subjects well taught are sure to be increasingly taught, and it takes no extended study to see that our elementary schools are being feminized in the direction of literature. This is the more striking when we remember that these twenty years have been dominated, in the larger world, by scientific interests.
In the high schools and seminaries, we have fairly complete returns showing the number of students enrolled in certain subjects since 1890. The pupils taking Latin have increased 15%; French, 4%; German, 13%; English literature has increased in ten years 7% (there is no record for this subject before 1898); and European history, 27%. There has also been an increase of 11% in algebra and 10% in geometry, probably partly due to vocational need and to the emphasis laid on these subjects for admission to college. But physics, in the twenty years under consideration, has fallen off 7%; chemistry, 3%; physical geography, 5%; physiology, 15%; and civics, 7%.[30] A careful study of these figures must convince any fair-minded person that our school curriculum, even in the secondary field, where women's control is least complete, is moving rapidly in the direction of what we have called feminization.
[30] _Report of the United States Commissioner of Education_, 1910, Vol. II, p. 1139.
The schools, too, must increasingly do something more than train the intellect; and in all physical activity involuntary suggestion is very powerful. Playgrounds are laboratories of conduct, and they should not only give physical exercise, but should also furnish standards and ideals. There can be no doubt that women are physically more restrained, retiring, non-contesting, and graceful than men; but can dancing, marching, and gymnastics take the place of more aggressive, direct and violent contests in the training of boys? So in industries, women are more given to conserving, arranging and beautifying, more given to clerking and recording, while men are more creative, disbursing, more given to mining, agriculture and commerce. Even granting equal understanding and experience, the tradition of the race must count for much; and it would seem that at every stage of growth, boys and girls alike should feel the impulse to imitate men who have an instinct to make and unmake, to trade and carry. It is no justification of existing conditions to say that the men now in the teaching profession lack these qualities; if they do, let us get rid of them and have real men. And for purposes of political life, does it not seem strange to bring up a generation of boys and girls who are to be the future citizens of a democracy under the exclusive leadership of people who have never been encouraged to think about political life nor allowed to participate in it? Let us by all means enfranchise women; but even then they cannot hope to quickly catch up with those who have some thousands of years the start, even after allowing for the fact that girls inherit from both father and mother.
Most of these differences which we have been discussing seem to rest in the fact that women are more personal in their interests and judgments than men are. This may be due to their education for thousands of years; but that makes it no less true. Women certainly, in a great majority of cases, are more interested in a case than in a constitution; in a man than in a mission; in a poem that in a treatise; in equity than in law. In a generation when everything is tending toward great aggregations, consolidated industries, segregated wealth, and new syntheses of knowledge, both boys and girls should have such training as will fit them to play their part in these larger units.
As to the feminizing influence of exclusively women teachers on manners and morals and general attitude toward life there can be no real doubt. Boys and girls cannot spend eight or twelve impressionable years of childhood and youth under the constant daily influence of women without having the ladylike attitude toward life strongly emphasized. To deny this is to repudiate the power of constant involuntary suggestion and association. Whether it is desirable or not, is another question. The change may be all in the direction of advancing civilization; but just as in the assimilation of our subject races, the philosophic mind must be distressed by the disappearance of so many varieties of speech, customs, and artistic and industrial products, so in this present assimilation, one cannot help regretting the steady disappearance of the katabolic qualities of the human male. One does not need to say that this feminized product is better or worse than what we have had, but it is certainly narrower, and less in harmony with the world's thought and work, than it formerly was.
If we turn from education to the press we have similar conditions. During these past few years, hundreds of journals have sprung up devoted to women's special interests. They are almost all of them showy, fragmentary, personal, concrete and emotional. It is difficult to find one that represents general or abstract interests. At least one of these journals which boasts a fabulous circulation is supported by its women subscribers and readers to oppose the larger interests of women in education, industry and political life. At least, if it does not oppose these interests, it does not aid them. Imagine a million German women sending the Kaiser one dollar and a half a year to induce him to tell them once a month to go back to their kitchens, churches and children!
The newspapers of America have steadily changed during the last three decades in the same direction. Editorial pages and news columns have been steadily modified in the direction of fragmentary, egoistic, personal and sensational, or at least emotional, appeals. These are the qualities of children's minds and of undeveloped minds everywhere. The change is, of course, a part of the larger democratic movement of our time, and many causes have contributed to bring it about. Had women not been so active, something of the same sort would have happened; but if women were all to forget how to read overnight, there is little doubt that the newspapers would find it advantageous to print more statesmanlike editorials and more general and abstract news.
With the weeklies and monthlies, the change taking place is the same. The new reading public, brought in by increase in population and by popular education, does not support the _Atlantic_, the _Century_ and _Scribner's,_ but turns to _Munsey's_, _McClure's_ and _Everybody's_. The very change in names speaks of the new personal and egoistic element that has come into journalism. Of course, such changes are only in part due to the influence of women, but the change is in the direction of the qualities that characterize distinctively women's journals.
In books, the personal and romantic novel has taken precedence over every other form of literature. Many of these are written by women; their circulation, both through libraries and through sales, is much greater with women than with men; and in many of them the personal gossip is as transient as that which fills the evening papers.[31]
[31] _The Feminine Note in Fiction_, by W.L. COURTNEY, London, Chapman & Hall, 1904; the author tries to prove that there is such a thing as a feminine style in fiction.
In the churches, especially in the ritualistic churches, women have long been the faithful attendants. Nowhere, except in the churches which make a rationalistic and abstract appeal, and in the Ethical Societies, does one find a preponderance of men. In 1903, a careful enumeration of all attendants at places of worship was made in the city of London. The count was taken on fair Sundays in autumn, and covered both morning and evening services. Sixty-one per cent. of all adult attendants were women, 146,372 more women than men passing through the doors.
About the same time a similar census was made in the part of New York City lying on Manhattan Island. The women were in excess by 171,749, and formed 69 per cent. of all attendants. Even church service, if not entirely tied to set forms, must seek to interest those who occupy the pews; and no observer can fail to note in both England and America, a movement toward ritualism on the one hand, and on the other, toward popular, personal, concrete and sometimes sensational preaching. The same general changes are taking place in libraries, in the drama, in concerts, in all group activities connected with learning and the fine arts.
But on the other side, if emancipated women had not applied themselves, since 1870, to the direction of education, literature, religion and amusements, all these interests must have suffered serious neglect and probable deterioration through the concentrating of the interests of the ablest men in engineering, manufacturing, commerce and other fields of pure and applied science. By popularizing these interests, women have really humanized them, as all similar revolutions have done in the past. In breaking up old forms and intellectual conventions they have set free new and vital impulses. Whether the historian of the future will consider this period of democratization and feminization a time of advance may be uncertain; but it is certainly a time of liberated energy and of broadening participation in all that is best in life.
V
The Economic Independence of Women
Nowhere does a human being escape compulsion. Even were he alone in the world he would be forced to obey the physical laws governing gravity, heat, cold, hunger and disease. No matter what his desires might be, he would find himself limited and constrained by fixed laws, the inexorable penalties of which he could escape only by obedience. If the man were not alone, then each one of his companions would limit his freedom, and he would limit each one in the group, if they were to live together in peace and efficiency; and yet each of the man's companions would help to free him from the tyranny of physical forces, from the social pressure of others, and even from the bondage of his own nature.
Independence is thus an ideal to be achieved only through obedience. It begins in self-subordination and reaches its finest realization in social subordination. Since the beginning of time men who thought have always dreamed of freedom; and for two hundred years now independence has been a word to conjure with. But in so far as independence means freedom to follow one's own unregulated desires, it is a fantastic and dangerous dream; and yet this dream of impossible independence has been among the greatest influences in furthering human development in the past.
The old-time dependence of one individual on the immediate caprices of another largely disappeared with the passing of slavery. But in place of this personal subjection has come a more complex and in some ways more compelling and crushing control through the monopoly of wealth. Property has become the medium through which the most binding of human relations are organized. Accumulated wealth has become a great reservoir of power to which some individuals gain access through rights of birth, others through carefully guarded privileges, and still others through cunning devices or through force; but the masses of the people must gain their fragments of this wealth through arduous lifelong labor. Even the earth, the original source of all wealth, is parceled out, and all of it is now owned by individuals or groups who control it in their own interests. One man may thus have thousands of acres which he cannot use, and which he will not allow others to use, while another has not where to lay his head. Laws jealously guard this wealth, which is the key to all opportunity; and public opinion, that most subtle, pervasive and compelling of all forms of law, gathers a thousand sacred initiations, rites, ceremonies, prohibitions and ex-communications around it. A man who has killed his neighbor, or ruined his friend's family, may be less punished by society than one who cheats at cards.
In primitive life a man may be a man by virtue of what he is; to-day he may have all the rights and privileges of any man by virtue of what he possesses. In any community can be found strong men, honest, though misplaced or unfortunate, begging bread, wasting their lives for want of money to live decently. And beside these one sees other men of weak physique and feeble minds, who have lived as parasites on society all their lives, but who are handsomely dressed, well fed, and possessed of power to do as they will, simply because they have access to wealth. It is no wonder that if one would seek freedom to-day in America he must look for her image on a gold coin.
It is not difficult to see why property has become such a powerful instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one's personality into it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him life more abundantly. A landless man must become a soulless man. Of course, we are not here speaking of legal ownership. Many people own legally things into which they have never infused themselves; sometimes they have so many things that no individual could possibly infuse himself into them.
These conditions may prevail even in primitive life, but to-day they have been vastly increased through the fact that with advancing civilization money was devised. This is a system of counters, generally coin or paper, not really valuable in themselves, but always resting back for value on the earth, or on something derived from it. In the past it was supposed that there were some things which, because of their nature, were not marketable, while others were beyond price. To-day we set values on everything, even on men's bodies; eyes, ears, legs and lives can be priced. There are, in fact, insurance companies and factories that have regular schedules of value for various parts of the body. Our courts set prices on blighted affections, damaged reputations, social advancements, impaired digestions, damaged complexions, nervous shocks and extreme humiliations. Even a woman's honor may have a price in dollars.
These property rights, like the rights of the person, have always been subject to violence. Powerful individuals and groups have always been able to overstep legal restrictions and public opinion, and seize what they desired. The land grabbing going on in North Africa and Persia to-day and the activity of great industrial monopolies at home, show us that some property rights still need to be secured by force. In this struggle, it has come about naturally that men, being stronger, freer and less scrupulous than women, have outstripped them and have so far had a pretty complete monopoly of wealth. In fact women themselves have at times become property. In such times a man who stole or bought a woman, naturally took over with her all her rights in real estate and personal property as well as her person and her services.
Only gradually did women gain power to hold property themselves. Mainly because fathers wished to preserve property in their families, the right of women to inherit became slowly established as civilization advanced. In Judea, Greece and Rome, certain rights of a woman to hold property were clearly settled. In the reversion to force under feudalism, woman's rights to outside property suffered; but they have been gradually restored during the last few centuries. To-day, in civilized lands, a woman's rights to property, inherited or definitely given her or purchased by her, are everywhere recognized, if she does not marry. In France, and other Latin countries, she may still lose control of her property if she takes a husband; but in northern and western lands, even a married woman may retain her possessions.
Woman's body, too, is increasingly looked upon as her personal property. With the raising of the age of consent; with increasing severity in laws punishing rape, and with the abrogation of judicial orders for the restitution of marital rights, it is now quite generally recognized that a woman should have the right to control her own person. Still, in many lands there is much to be done before this right is fully safeguarded.
The place where a woman has not yet achieved economic freedom is in the disposal of her labor. One must remember, however, in this connection, that not only is there no fixed standard of values in human service as yet, but that many indispensable forms of service have not even been legally recognized as valuable. In early forms of civilization, fighting and praying were considered the most important work the community received, and warriors and priests gained the big rewards. They received lands, gold, servants and dignities, while industrial workers, even the directors, were despised. To-day we have reversed all this and we may pay a general only five thousand dollars a year, and a priest eight hundred dollars, while a man who develops a big industry may receive a hundred thousand dollars annually. Again, a man who invents a new gun may be given a fortune, like that of Herr Krupp, while a man who invents a surgical instrument is prevented by the ethics of his profession from even patenting it. If Pasteur had been paid for his services to France and to humanity, he would have ranked in the financial world with Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Schwab. We pay a State superintendent of public instruction ten thousand dollars a year; but Miss Jane Addams, as instructor in ethics to the United States, receives no salary, and she must even beg the money to maintain her laboratory at Hull House. The whole question of payment for services is in a chaotic condition. Those who serve mankind most faithfully are rewarded on the principle, "From each according to his ability;" but nowhere is the remainder of the principle, "To each according to his needs," recognized. Hence our greatest servants must still beg support from our cleverest exploiters.