it was in the old sectarian institutions where boys were told morning,
noon, and night that they would go to hell if they did not behave.
The new spirit is not going to be accepted at once by society. There
must first be some wailing and much gnashing of teeth; and the monster,
custom, which all sense doth eat, will still for a time be antagonistic
as it has been in the past. "In no society has life ever been completely
controlled by the reason," remarks Professor Thomas,
"but mainly by the
instincts and the habits and the customs growing out of these. Speaking
in a general way, it may be said that all conduct both of men and
animals tends to be right rather than wrong. They do not know why they
behave in such and such ways, but their ancestors behaved in those ways
and survival is the guaranty that the behaviour was good. We must admit
that within the scope of their lives the animals behave with almost
unerring propriety. Their behaviour is simple and unvarying, but they
make fewer mistakes than ourselves. The difficulty in their condition
is, that having little power of changing their behaviour they have
little chance of improvement. Now, in human societies, and already among
gregarious animals, one of the main conditions of survival was common
sentiment and behaviour. So long as defence of life and preying on
outsiders were main concerns of society, unanimity and conformity had
the same value which still attaches to military discipline in warfare
and to team work in our sports. Morality therefore became identified
with uniformity. It was actually better to work upon some system,
however bad, than to work on none at all, and early society had no place
for the dissenter. Changes did take place, for man had the power of
communicating his experiences through speech and the same power of
imitation which we show in the adoption of fashions, but these changes
took place with almost imperceptible slowness, or if they did not,
those who proposed them were considered sinners and punished with death
or obloquy.
"And it has never made any difference how bad the existing order of
things might be. Those who attempted to reform it were always viewed
with suspicion. Consequently our practices usually run some decades or
centuries behind our theories and history is even full of cases where
the theory was thoroughly dead from the standpoint of reason before it
began to do its work in society. A determined attitude of resistance to
change may therefore be classed almost with the instincts, for it is not
a response to the reason alone, but is very powerfully bound up with the
emotions which have their seat in the spinal cord.
"It is true that this adhesion to custom is more absolute and
astonishing in the lower races and in the less educated classes, but it
would be difficult to point out a single case in history where a new
doctrine has not been met with bitter resistance. We justly regard
learning and freedom of thought and investigation as precious, and we
popularly think of Luther and the Reformation as standing at the
beginning of the movement toward these, but Luther himself had no faith
in 'the light of reason' and he hated as heartily as any papal dogmatist
the 'new learning' of Erasmus and Hutten.... We are even forced to
realise that the law of habit continues to do its perfect work in a
strangely resentful or apathetic manner even when there is no moral
issue at stake.... Up to the year 1816, the best device for the
application of electricity to telegraphy had involved a separate wire
for each letter of the alphabet, but in that year Francis Ronalds
constructed a successful line making use of a single wire. Realising the
importance of his invention, he attempted to get the British government
to take it up, but was informed that 'telegraphs of any kind are now
wholly unnecessary, and no other than the one in use will be adopted.'"
The reader will doubtless be able to add from his own experience and
observation examples which will support Professor Thomas's admirable
account of the power of custom. Among many barbarous tribes certain
foods, like eggs, are _taboo_; no one knows why they should not be
eaten; but tradition says their use produces bad results, and one who
presumes to taste them is put to death. To-day, we believe ourselves
rather highly civilised; but the least observation of society must
compel us to acknowledge that _taboo_ is still a vital power in a
multitude of matters.
There is a still more forcible opposition to a recasting of the status
of women by those men who have beheld no complete regeneration of
society through the extension of the franchise in four of our States.
Curiously oblivious of the fact that partial regeneration through the
instrumentality of women is something attained, they take this as a
working argument for the uselessness of extending the suffrage. They
point to other evils that have followed and tell you that if this is the
result of the emancipation of women, they will have none of it. For
example, there can be no doubt that one may see from time to time the
pseudo-intellectual woman. She affects an interest in literature,
attends lectures on Browning and Emerson, shows an academic interest in
slum work, and presents, on the whole, a selfishness or an egotism which
repels. There never has been a revolution in society, however beneficial
eventually, which did not bring at least some evil in its train. I
cannot do better in this connection than to quote Lord Macaulay's
splendid words (from the essay on Milton): "If it were possible that a
people, brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system, could
subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the
objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case,
be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious
effects on the intellectual and moral character of a people. We deplore
the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the
outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The
violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity
and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the
people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under
which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war.
The rulers in the church and state reaped only what they had sown. They
had prohibited free discussion--they had done their best to keep the
people unacquainted with their duties and their rights.
The retribution
was just and natural. If they suffered from popular ignorance, it was
because they had themselves taken away the key to knowledge. If they
were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an
equally blind submission.
"It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of
them at first. Till men have been for some time free, they know not how
to use their freedom. The natives of wine-countries are always sober. In
climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. A newly-liberated
people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the
Xeres. It is said that when soldiers in such a situation first find
themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and
expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however,
plenty teaches discretion; and after wine has been for a few months
their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in
their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of
liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are
often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the
most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this
crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the
scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying
dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful
irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the
promised splendour and comfort are to be found? If such miserable
sophisms were to prevail, there never would be a good house or a good
government in the world.... There is only one cure for the evils which
newly acquired freedom produces--and that cure is freedom. When a
prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day--he is unable
to discriminate colours or to recognise faces. But the remedy is not to
remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun.
The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations
which have become half-blind in the house of bondage.
But let them gaze
on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to
reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides.
Hostile theories
correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to conflict,
and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is
educed out of the chaos.
"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a
self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are
fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old
story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim.
If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in
slavery, they may indeed wait for ever."
The speedy dissolution of family and state was prophesied by men when
first a girl took a public examination in geometry; whenever women have
been given complete control of their own property; when they have been
received into the professions and industries; and now in like manner
people dread the condition of things that they imagine might follow if
women are given the right to vote and to hold office. We may well
believe, with Lecky, that there are "certain eternal moral landmarks
which never can be removed." But no matter what our views may be of the
destinies, characteristics, functions, or limitations of the sex,
certain reforms are indispensable before woman and, through her, family
life can reach their highest development. Of these reforms I shall speak
briefly and with them close my history.
I. The double standard of morality for the sexes must gradually be
abolished.[423] Of all the sad commentaries on Christian nations none
is so pathetic or so tragical as the fact that for nineteen centuries
men have been tacitly and openly allowed, at least before marriage,
unrestrained liberty to indulge in sexual vice and intemperance, while
one false step on the part of the woman has condemned her to social
obloquy and, frequently, to a life on the street. This strange system, a
blasphemy against the Christ who suffered death in order to purify the
earth, has had its defenders not merely among the uneducated who do not
think, but even among the most acute intellects. The philosopher Hume
justifies it by commenting on the vastly greater consequences attendant
on vice in women than in men; divines like Jeremy Taylor have encouraged
it by urging women meekly to bear the sins of their husbands. This
subject is one of the great _taboos_ in modern society.
Let me exhort
the reader to go to any physician and get from him the statistics of
gonorrhea and syphilis which he has met in his practice; let him learn
of the children born blind and of wives rendered invalid for life
because their husbands once sowed a crop of wild oats with the sanction
of society; let him read the Report of the Committee of Fifteen in New
York (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902) on _The Social Evil_, the records of the
Watch and Ward Society in Boston, or the recent report of the special
jury in New York which investigated the "White Slave Traffic."[424]
The plain facts are not pleasant. A system which has been in vogue from
the beginning of history cannot be changed in a decade; but the desired
state of things will be more speedily achieved and immediate good will
be accomplished by three reforms which may be begun at once--have begun,
in fact. In the first place, the "age of legal consent"
should be
uniformly twenty-one. In most States to-day it is fourteen or
sixteen.[425] To the ordinary mind it is a self-evident proposition that
a girl of those ages, the slippery period of puberty, can but seldom
realise what she is doing when she submits herself to the lust of
scoundrels. But the minds of legislators pass understanding; and when, a
few years ago, a woman in the Legislature of Colorado proposed to have
the age of consent raised from sixteen to twenty-one, such a storm of
protest came from her male colleagues that the measure had to be
abandoned. In the second place the public should be made better
acquainted with the facts of prostitution. When people once realise
thoroughly what sickness and social ulcers result from the presence in
the city of New York of 100,000 debauched women (and the estimate is
conservative)--when they begin to reflect that their children must grow
up in such surroundings, then perhaps they will question the expediency
of the double standard of morality and will insist that what is wrong
for a woman is wrong for a man. It is a fact, to be borne carefully in
mind, that the vast majority of prostitutes begin their career below the
age of _eighteen_ and usually at the instigation of adult _men_, who
take advantage of their ignorance or of their poverty.
If the miserable
Thaw trial did nothing else, it at least once more called public
attention to conditions which every intelligent man knows have existed
for years. Something can also be done by statute. New York has made
adultery a crime; and the State of Washington requires a physical
examination of the parties before marriage. In the third place,
physicians should take more pains to educate men to the knowledge that a
continent life is not a detriment to health--the contrary belief being
more widely spread than is usually suspected.
II. In the training of women, care should be taken to impress upon them
that they are not toys or spoiled children, but fellow-citizens, devoted
to the common task of advancing the ideals of the nation to their goal.
The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free: If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow?
TENNYSON, _The Princess_.
A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A Traveller between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
WORDSWORTH.
Towards a higher conception of their duties, women are steadily
advancing. It often happens that the history of words will give a hint
of the progress of civilisation. Such a story is told by the use of
_lady_ and _woman_. Not many decades ago the use of the word _woman_ in
referring to respectable members of the sex was interpreted as a lack of
courtesy. To-day, women prefer to be called _women_.
III. Women should be given the full right to enter any profession or
business which they may desire. As John Stuart Mill says:
"The proper sphere for any human being is the highest sphere that being
is capable of attaining; and this cannot be ascertained without complete
liberty of choice."
"We are, as always, in a period of transition," remarks Mr.
Björkman,[426] "the old forms are falling away from us on every side.
Concerning the new ones we are still uncertain and divided. Whether
woman shall vote or not, is not the main issue. She will do so sooner or
later if it suits her. No, the imperative question confronting us is
this: What are we to do that her life once more may be full and useful
as it used to be? That question cannot be answered by anybody but
herself. Furthermore, it can only be answered on the basis of actual
experience. And urged onward by her never-failing power of intuition,
woman has for once taken to experimenting. She has, if you please,
become temporarily catabolic. But it means merely that she is seeking
for new means to fulfil her nature, not for ways of violating it. And
the best thing--nay, the only thing--man can do to help her is to stand
aside and keep his faith, both in her and in life.
Whether it be the
franchise, or the running of railroads, or public offices, that her
eager hands and still more eager soul should happen to reach out for, he
must give her free way. All she wants is to find herself, and for this
purpose she must try everything that once was foreign to her being: the
trial over, she will instinctively and unfailingly pick out the right
new things to do, and will do them."
The opening up of professions and industries to woman has been of
incalculable benefit to her. Of old the unmarried woman could do little
except sit by the fire and spin or make clothing for the South Sea
Islanders. Her limited activities caused a corresponding influence on
her character. People who have nothing to do will naturally find an
outlet for their superfluous energy in gossip and all the petty things
of life; if isolated from a share in what the world is doing, they will
no less naturally develop eccentricities of character and will grow old
prematurely. To-day, by being allowed a part in civic and national
movements, women can "get out of themselves"--a powerful therapeutic
agent. Mrs. Ella Young, a woman of sixty, was last year made
Superintendent of the great Public School System of Chicago. Fräulein
Anna Heinrichsdorff is the first woman in Germany to get an engineer's
diploma, very recently bestowed upon her; an "excellent"
mark was given
Fräulein Heinrichsdorff in every part of her examination by the Berlin
Polytechnic Institute. Miss Jean Gordon, the only factory inspector in
Louisiana, is at present waging a strong fight against the attempt to
exempt "first-class" theatres from the child-labour law.
Mrs. Nellie
Upham, of Colorado, is President and General Manager of the Gold Divide
Mining, Milling, and Tunnel Company of Colorado and directs 300 workmen.
These are a few examples out of some thousands of what woman is
doing.[427] And yet there are men who do not believe she should do
anything but wash dishes and scrub.
Much more serious is the glaring discrepancy in the wages paid to men
and to women. For doing precisely the same work as a man and often doing
it better, woman receives a much lower wage. The reasons are several
and specious. We are told that men have families to support, that women
do not have such expensive tastes as men, that they are incapable of
doing as much as men, that by granting them equal wages one of the
inducements to marry is removed. These arguments are generally used with
the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support,
women by the hundreds support brothers and sisters and weak parents.
That they are incapable of doing as much sounds unconvincing to one who
has seen the work of sweat-shops. The argument that men have more
expensive tastes to satisfy is too feeble to deserve attention. Finally,
when men argue that women should be forced to marry by giving them
smaller wages, they are simply reverting to the time-honoured idea that
the goal of every women's ambition should be fixed as matrimony. If the
low wages of women produced no further consequence, one might dismiss
the matter as not of essential importance; but inadequate pay has been
found too frequently to be a direct cause of prostitution. No girl can
well keep body and soul together on four dollars a week and some
business managers have been known to inform their women employees with
frankness that a "gentleman friend" is a necessary adjunct to a limited
income.
The women who suffer most from low wages are probably the teachers in
our primary schools. They start usually on a salary of about three
hundred and fifty dollars a year. For this each teacher performs all the
minute labour and bears all the nervous strain of instructing sixty
pupils six and a half hours a day and of correcting dozens of papers far
into the night. And when crime increases or the pupils are not
universally successful in business, the school teacher has the added
pleasure of getting blamed for it, being told that she ought to have
trained them better. These facts lend some colour to Mark Twain's sage
reflection that God at first made idiots--that was for practice; then
he made school boards.
One of the most interesting examples of recent evolution in the
industrial status of women is the decision of the Supreme Court of
Illinois in the so-called Ritchie Case. The last Legislature of Illinois
passed a law limiting to ten hours the working day of women in factories
and stores. Now, as far back as 1893, the Legislature had passed a
similar law limiting woman's labour to _eight_ hours; but the Supreme
Court in 1895 declared it unconstitutional on the ground that it was an
arbitrary and unreasonable interference with the right of women to
contract for the sale of their labour. When, therefore, this year a
ten-hour bill was tried, W.C. Ritchie, who had secured the nullification
of the act of 1893, again protested. The decision of the Court, rendered
April 21, 1910, is an excellent proof of the great advance made within
two decades in the position of women. Reversing completely its judgment
of 1895, the Court left far behind it mere technicalities of law and
found a sanction for its change of front in the experience of humanity
and of common sense. These are its conclusions:
"It is known to all men, and of what we know as men we cannot profess to
be ignorant as judges:
"That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal
functions place her at a great disadvantage in the battle of life.
"That while a man can work for more than ten hours a day without injury
to himself, a woman, especially when the burdens of motherhood are upon
her, cannot.
"That while a man can work standing upon his feet for more than ten
hours a day, day after day, without injury to himself, a woman cannot.
"That to require a woman to stand upon her feet for more than ten hours
in any one day and to perform severe manual labour while thus standing
has the effect of impairing her health.
"And as weakly and sickly women cannot be the mothers of vigorous
children, it is of the greatest importance to the public that the State
take such measures as may be necessary to protect its women from the
consequences produced by long-continued manual labour in those
occupations which tend to break them down physically.
"It would seem obvious, therefore, that legislation which limits the
number of hours which women shall be permitted to work to ten hours in a
single day in such employments as are carried on in mechanical
establishments, factories, and laundries would tend to preserve the
health of women and assure the production of vigorous offspring by them
and would conduce directly to the health, morals, and general welfare of
the public, and that such legislation would fall clearly within the