Chapter 7
Women have themselves done much to quicken this public consciousness. Enrolled in labor unions, they have shown power to stand together and make sacrifice, as in the shirt-waist makers' strike in New York in 1908, which commanded the admiration of all fair-minded observers. The more fortunately placed women have aided these movements toward self-betterment; and, through such organizations as the National Consumers' League, they have compelled manufacturers and shopkeepers to observe more reasonable hours, pay better wages, and furnish decent material conditions for their employees.[38]
[38] See the recent volume, based on investigations made by the National Consumers' League, _Making Both Ends Meet_, by SUE AINSLIE CLARK and EDITH WYATT, The Macmillan Co., 1911. See, also, _Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores_, by ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BUTLER, published by the Charities Publication Committee, for the Russell Sage Foundation, 1912.
The solution of woman's present industrial problem is not an easy task, but out of the present unsettlement certain facts are emerging with a good deal of clearness. The efficiency in production, secured by concentration and specialization, make it certain that the old-time home with its multiplied industries will not return, but that more and more even of its present lessened activities will be transferred to factories and to their equivalents. It is also certain that women are not going to be supported in indolence by men, because when deprived of the discipline which full participation in life gives, they must always degenerate. For themselves, and for the sake of their children, they will demand a chance to live abundantly. It is also clear that our present chaotic conditions are destructive of health, happy marriages, effective homes, and the strong line of descendants which must always be the chief care of an intelligent society.
In the first place, then, we must work to produce an entire change in our present mental attitude toward organized industries. Our present worship of industrial products, no matter how obtained, must give way to a recognition of the fact that the chief asset of a nation is its people; that a woman is more important than the clothes she makes in factories or sells in stores; and that to needlessly destroy or scrapheap a working woman is worse than to needlessly destroy or scrapheap the finest and most costly machine ever devised by man. Such a statement seems to carry conviction in its every phrase, but the fact is that we do not believe it, and until we do believe it, there will be little help for our present absurd and wretched conditions. Unregulated competition, backed by greed of individuals and groups, will go on wasting the wealth of women's lives until we cease to be fascinated and hypnotized by the display of products which they make possible. Better fine women and children, and few things, than stores and warehouses crowded with goods, and the women and children of our present factory towns. By fixing our attention on people instead of things, we should almost certainly secure more and better things; but, regardless of cost, we must change the focus of our attention.
In the second place, girls must get ready to be women. The education of the home and the school must be unified, and together they must give a training that will lead girls into the actualities of the life that lies before them. Our present elementary schools, and still more our high schools, lead girls neither to intelligent work nor to intelligent living as women and mothers. Up to at least the age of fourteen, the education should be general, looking to the development of all the powers of body, mind and sensibilities. But through all these eight or ten years of training, two factors should receive constant and intelligent attention. In the first place, we should realize that we are not fitting women for drawing-rooms nor for convents, but for a working world; therefore well graded and interesting manual training should run through all these years and should furnish a well-developed base for later special industrial preparation of some kind. In the second place, the girls should be taught by men and women, married and unmarried, and fine ideals of actual womanhood, not alone in shops and factories, in school-rooms, and in professions--but also in homes, should be constantly held before them. Our present education leaves this training mainly to the homes, and neither the parasitic rich nor our eight million wage-earning women, when mothers, can or will attend to it.
After the girl reaches the age of fourteen, she should have at least two years of further education in which she could master the details of some necessary work which would enable her to look the world in the face and offer fair payment for her living. With most girls, this work would be connected with children and the service of the home; for domestic service, no matter how organized, must always occupy a multitude of women. All girls should have at least rudimentary training in these matters.
During the period of transition from schools to their own family life, the girls might well give a half dozen years to work in factories and stores where the conditions should be as good, and as well guarded, as in our best school buildings--in factories, in a word, where the employers would be willing that their own daughters should work. This is surely a fair standard. Work which is not safe or fit for me to do, is not fit for me to hire done. If this principle fails, then democracy is but a dream.
But during all this period of preparation we should never forget that, as Madame Gnauck-Kühne so admirably points out, "women's work has to a large extent an episodic character."[39] All women confront romantic love, marriage and children; and any woman who misses them misses the crowning joy and glory of her life. Vicarious realization may save the soul, but it can never fill the place of reality. The man fronts these same experiences, but they are not related to his work as they are related to the work of women. Surely there can be no doubt that the ideal solution, in this period, is a man and woman so deeply bound together by love that there is no question of self-protection, either in terms of work or money; and the man being freed from the burdens of maternity, should mainly earn the income. We shall discuss the new type of home and family in a later chapter, but in any home where there are children there is need of an intelligent mother's very constant care.
[39] Madame GNAUCK KÜHNE, _Die Deutsche Frau_.
If a happy home were the universal destiny of women, our problem would be greatly simplified; but this is far from being the case. Not more than one-half of all women over fifteen are married at any one moment. From the ages of twenty to thirty-five, one-half are married; but it is only from thirty-five to fifty-five that as many as three-fourths are married; over fifty-five there are less than one-half married, and most of the others are widows.[40] Most of these women who are not married must work outside the home, and no girl, rich or poor, should be allowed to reach maturity without being prepared to face this possibility. Work is not a curse but a blessing; it is an indispensable part of every well-ordered life; and without it, the individual and the group will certainly degenerate. Rich and foolish parents, who cannot realize this basal fact, should nevertheless see that, even as insurance, their daughters must be able to pay their way in life, if need comes, without selling themselves either in marriage or out. Even if the woman marries happily, she is never sure that she may not some day have to face self-support, and possibly for more mouths than her own.
[40] B.L. HUTCHINS, Woman's Industrial Career in _The Sociological Review_, October, 1909.
But the woman who marries during her adolescent period, between the ages of twenty-five and fifty, must also work, and here we meet the hardest problem of all. More money is often needed than the man can earn; the wife may bring an industrial or professional equipment which is too valuable to discard; often the demands of the home, especially where there are no children, do not call forth the best energies of the woman, and she needs the larger life of outside work. Hence many married women must continue to work away from the home. In any of these cases, the problem is difficult. Bearing and rearing a child should retire a mother from fixed outside occupation for at least a year. Arguments born out of conflict cannot change this primitive fact.[41] Women should not do shop or factory work during the last months of pregnancy, and babies should be nursed from seven to nine months. A baby should be nursed for twenty minutes, every two or three hours of its waking time; and since it does not always waken regularly, the nursing mother is debarred from most continuous work, even if it does not interfere with her effectiveness as a milk producer.
[41] Dr. ETHEL VAUGHAN-SAWYER, speaking before the Fabian Women's Group, in 1910, said: "Fortunately, after the first two or three months, most children will thrive equally well when artificially fed, so long as the milk is good and reliable, and is properly prepared." All of our facts go to disprove this statement.
The question of maternal care for children after they are weaned is more difficult to settle, but notwithstanding certain statistics gathered in Birmingham,[42] in February, 1910, which showed that the infant mortality among working mothers was one hundred and ninety per thousand, while, among those not industrially employed, it was two hundred and seventy per thousand, it seems sure that infant mortality is extremely high in foundling asylums and in factory homes. In Fall River, where out of every one hundred women, forty-five are at work outside the home, three hundred and five babies, out of every one thousand born, die before they are a year old; while even in New York City, but one hundred and eighty-nine out of a thousand die. The natural location of Fall River should make it a very healthy city. One remembers, too, the classic statement that deaths among little children fell off steadily in Paris during the siege of 1870. Little children seem better off even in time of war, with the mothers at home, than in time of peace with their mothers in the factory.
[42] Pamphlet entitled _Report on Industrial Employment of Married Women and Infant Mortality_, signed by Dr. JOHN ROBERTSON, the Medical Officer of Health, Birmingham.
A few years ago, we turned to sanitary day nurseries, and to pasteurized milk and other prepared baby foods, as the solution for neglected or unhygienic feeding. To-day we know that even a dirty and ill-conditioned mother secretes better milk for her baby than can be prepared in any laboratory. We must wash the mother and feed her the milk, and then let her give it to her baby, instinct with her own life. It is quite possible that our recent talk of ignorant mother love and of the necessary substitution of sanitary nurseries, canned care and pre-digested affection must all go the same way. We shall probably get our best results by cleaning up the home, enlightening the mother, and then letting her love her child into the full possession of its human qualities.
Economically, too, at least with factory workers, it is questionable if their wages will support sanitary day-nurseries, with intelligent nurses for small groups of children, and at the same time pay some one to cook and scrub at home. If the mother must still cook and care for her house, in addition to her factory work, the burden is too great; and if money for nurses must come from the state, or from charity, then we all know the danger of such subsidies to industry, in its effect on wages.
Surely the ideal toward which we must work is for the mother, during the period when she is bearing and rearing children, to be supported by the father of her children. Let her do the work meantime which will best care for her children, and at the same time conserve and strengthen her powers for the third period of her life.
This period, from fifty to seventy-five years, is now more shamefully wasted than any other of our national resources. If one attends a State federation of women's clubs one will find nearly every delegate of this age. They are women of mature understanding and of ripe judgment, still possessing abundant health and strength, and where relieved by economic conditions from the necessity of manual work, they have to live such irregular and uncertain relations to life as can be maintained by mothers-in-law, grandmothers, club secretaries, and presidents of town improvement societies. Remove all restrictions on woman's activity, and these strong matrons would vitalize our schools, give us decent municipal housekeeping, supervise the conditions under which girls and women work in shops and factories, and do much to clean up our politics. Debarred from direct power as they are, they are still making us decent in spite of ourselves.
For the future, then, it seems that we must accept working women in every path of life. We must remove all disabilities under which they labor, and at the same time protect them by special legislation as future wives and mothers. All girls must master some line of self-supporting work; and, except in the cases of those who have very special tastes and gifts, they should select work which can be interrupted, without too great loss, by some years of motherhood. During this time, the mother must be supported so that she can largely care for her own child, though she must also maintain outside interests through work, which will keep her in touch with the moving current of her time. Industries must be humanized and made fit for women. The last third of a woman's life must be freed from legal limitations and popular prejudices, so that we may secure these best years of her life for private and public service. And meantime, it is well to remember that every step we take in making this a fit world for woman to work in, makes it a fit world for her father, her brothers, her lover and her husband to work beside her.
VII
The Meaning of Political Life
It is a well-known fact that when words have been long and vigorously used they gather within and around themselves varied meanings. Some parts of these meanings are remnants of historic, and possibly outworn, experience; other parts are the result of more or less deliberate perversion under the stress of deep feelings aroused by opposition and fighting. This is especially the fate of words in any way associated with politics. Think how battered and useless for purposes of ordinary discussion "democrat" and "republican" or "socialist" have become in America!
In the struggle of the last fifty years over woman's suffrage, most of the words involved have undergone such transformations; and so many prejudices have become associated with them, that no one can think or speak clearly and fairly to-day in these terms. "Woman's Rights," "enfranchisement," "Votes for Women," "suffragette," "polls," "ballot," "political issues," and many other words, have gone through this destructive process.
To read some of the most popular literature on this subject one might imagine that women had all deserted home and fireside, babies and baking, and were lined up, struggling fiercely to deposit certain printed slips, called votes or ballots, dealing with esoteric mysteries understood only by men like Mr. Bryan or Mr. Roosevelt, in ballot-boxes. These receptacles are supposed to be behind, or very near, lawless saloons, where gangs of hoodlums are waiting to assault the bearers of these mysterious tickets. Thus Miss Seawell writes in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1910: "The trouble would begin with the mere attempt of women to deposit their ballots. A dozen ruffians at a single polling-place would prevent a single woman from depositing a single vote. There can be no doubt that this means would be used by the rougher element and that the polls would become a scene of preordained riot and disorder." Of course, such statements could not appear in a leading magazine, in a land where women have been voting quietly for many years, were it not for the perversity of the words which the author tries to use, but which really use her. In other periodicals, equally respectable, one learns that women, goaded on by the intolerable political tyranny of men, have agreed as one soul to advance, with ballots in their hands, and sweep graft and greed, drink and all other human wrongs, into the sea of oblivion forever. Of course, this is nonsense, or worse, and in this chapter I should like to turn away from this warfare, leaving even the battered and prejudiced-soaked words alone, as much as may be possible, and simply ask: What is political life, not as defined in books, but as actually lived by a self-respecting farmer or merchant of our acquaintance? What qualities does political life presuppose in a participant? How does its use affect him? What does it enable him to accomplish? What is the relation of a woman--not some militant or unsexed ogre, nor a female breeding animal in a harem, but our own sisters, wives and daughters as they really are--what is their relation to this mysterious process?
If one approaches the political life of our modern democracies in this simple spirit of inquiry it would seem that the first requisite for participation is the ability to form sound judgments concerning political matters; and all matters are now becoming political which affect the welfare of the community. Certainly the citizen cannot devise political machinery nor select candidates to work such machinery, much less "cast a ballot," until he knows what he wants done. What are some of the questions, then, on which he must form judgments?
First of all, he must be prepared to think intelligently about protecting his life and property. He must know something of the danger of foreign invasion, of the consequent need of a navy and standing army. He must make up his mind whether it is necessary to spend $123,000,000 yearly on an American navy and $156,000,000 on an American army, as we are at present doing, that we may be ready to fight England, Germany or Japan if at any time we want to do so. He must ask himself whether this money might not better be used in fighting ignorance, crime, poverty and disease.
The would-be citizen must also think about protecting himself from assault as he walks about the streets; about protecting his house from thieves as he lies asleep at night. He must have thought about the careless use of cars, automobiles, firearms and explosives in general. He must consider the danger from fires, contagion, diseases, mobs; he must think intelligently about contaminated water and impure foods. All these things are necessary for the physical well-being of the community life. Of course, if either man or woman cannot think intelligently about these things, he ought not to have control of them; he should leave such matters to those who can think of them.
In the second place, the would-be citizen must have fairly sound judgments on questions of raising and spending necessary revenue. What are the effects of direct and indirect taxation? Would a heavy tax on land force unused lands, including mines and waterways, into use? Should a man with a cash income of $50,000 a year pay more to support government than one with a cash income of $500? What are the objections to an income tax? How does it work in England, where it has been fairly tried? Should a great corporation pay taxes in proportion to its wealth, and in places where the wealth is protected by the law? If so, how can it be reached? Should churches, museums, libraries and schools be taxed; if not, why not? Should taxes be laid on flour, meat and eggs, on woolen cloth, on silks, velvets, ostrich plumes and diamonds? Should taxes be laid on whiskey, wines, tobacco, cigars and race-tracks? Should taxes be devised, or continued, to protect such infant industries as now handle our kerosene oil, meat, sugar and steel? Surely no one who cannot form independent judgments on these matters should presume to direct them through voting.
But not only must a nation raise revenue in the wisest and most equitable manner possible, and spend it effectively and economically, but it must also care for its present possessions. So the would-be citizen must know about the wealth in which he wants to share. What do the national, State and municipal governments own? How should the vast domains of land, the onetime inexhaustible forests, the mines of coal and metal, the waterways and water-powers, the special privileges and franchises belonging to the people be used? Should they be thrown away, gambled away, given away as favors, rented, sold, or handled directly by the people? On what terms or under what guarantees should they be turned over to individuals or companies, if this is to be done? Those who cannot form judgments on these matters should not be entrusted with such vast responsibility, be they men or women.
Questions of our foreign relations must also occupy the thought of the citizen. Are foreign entanglements necessary or desirable? If so, with what European or Asiatic nations should we seek to strengthen our friendship? Are our interests nearly identical with those of England? If we formed a close defensive alliance with her should we be thereby aiding universal peace as much as we might by maintaining more generally friendly relations with all European powers? Would an alliance with England probably draw us into her troubles, if she has any, in Egypt or India? How would such an alliance affect our relation with England's present ally, Japan? Are we fitted by the genius of our institutions and by our experience to handle a foreign empire? If not, what should we do with the Philippines?
So, too, those who are to direct the destinies of the country must think out what our relations are to be with Latin America. In the past some statesman, a Richelieu or a Bismarck, had a policy and led his nation to it by devious paths of indirection. But now that each citizen is a king, he must have a policy for his realm. Are our republican neighbors to the south to be increasingly recognized as under our protection and direction? If so, how are we to maintain the peace and secure payment of their foreign debts? All these problems are bound up with the management of the Panama Canal. They confront us in different forms in connection with immigration, especially of Asiatics.
Our institutional life must also be regulated by the citizens, and so they must have judgments about each of its details. They must know what they think about the family, forms of legal marriage and divorce, and the care of children when the family fails. The Church must be considered and protected; possibly it should be encouraged; and possibly its unwarranted assumption should sometimes be checked. Schools must be founded, supported, directed. Art galleries, museums and clubs must be chartered, and then controlled; and so must all the other institutions of our modern society. The would-be citizen must be able to think about all this work.
Industries, on which our individual and collective well-being depend, must be encouraged by special favors, limited to the public good, protected from violence, inspected in the interest of employees. Hours must be regulated, disputes settled, conditions of labor and safety secured. Children should be protected against employers' greed; and working women must receive special consideration, if the race of strong men is to continue. Here again the citizen must have judgments, or the power to make judgments, as new needs arise.