FEMINISM 
 
 Mr.andMrs.JOHN MARTIN 
 
FEMINISM 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/feminismitsfallaOOmartrich 
 
FEMINISM 
 
 ITS FALLACIES AND FOLLIES 
 
 BY 
 
 MR. AND MRS. JOHN MARTIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 

 Copyright, 1916 
 By DODD, mead AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 BOOK I 
 
 FROM THE man's POINT OF VIEW 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Feminism Versus Humanism .... 3 
 
 II Woman's Physical Handicaps . . . . 12 
 
 III The Industrial Subjugation of Woman . 21 
 
 IV Humanist Industrial Programme for 
 
 Women 32 
 
 V Woman's Work before Marriage ... 39 
 VI The Married Woman in Industry . . . 46 
 
 VII The Mother In Industry 59 
 
 VIII Woman's Work in the Autumn of Life . 77 
 
 IX Woman's Economic Value in the Home . 82 
 
 X Equal Pay for Men and Women ... 93 
 
 XI Feminism and Free Love 112 
 
 XII The Woman's Movement and the Baby 
 
 Crop 122 
 
 XIII The Fading of Maternal Instinct . . 143 
 XIV Humanist Education for Women . . .162 
 XV Woman's Deepest Wrongs and the 
 
 Humanist Remedy 170 
 
 503224 
 
CONTENTS 
 BOOK II 
 
 FROM THE woman's POINT OF VIEW 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Feminism and the Family 191 
 
 II The Passing of the Family 201 
 
 III Selling the Race 220 
 
 IV Two Sorts of Heroines 229 
 
 V Nothing to Do in the Home .... 236 
 
 VI The Proper Education of Women . . . 246 
 
 VII Eugenics and Woman 254 
 
 VIII The Family and the Servant .... 263 
 IX The Moral Uses of Husbands .... 299 
 
 X Some Impressions from Ellen Key . . . 305 
 
 XI Votes for Women 312 
 
 XII Feminism and Her Master 341 
 
BOOK I 
 FROM THE MAN'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MARTIN 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 FEMINISM VERSUS HUMANISM 
 
 Feminism Is a movement changing from year to year, 
 not a code finally formulated. Whatever definition 
 of Feminism one person offers, another person may 
 . deny. Even Socialism, with its fifty-seven varieties, 
 is more authoritatively defined, because there is at 
 least a Socialist party with a representative conven- 
 tion and a formally adopted platform. Feminists 
 are not In one party, but in all parties. Their plat- 
 form Is not one document, but many documents ; their 
 prophetesses are not elected, but self appointed; of 
 their leaders each has her own followers, but none is 
 shepherd to all. 
 
 Nevertheless Feminism, or, as many feminists pre- 
 fer to style it, " The Woman's Movement," is to- 
 day a powerful ferment In society — It may be a 
 healthy yeast or it may be a sour corruption. 
 
 The philosophy of the woman's movement must be 
 gathered from a library of books, from a cloud of 
 pamphlets, and from a host of speeches and conver- 
 sations. By this tedious process we have found that 
 Feminism Is In several parts and can be comprehended 
 and examined only when it is analysed. In general 
 terms It has been defined by Mrs. Carrie Chapman 
 
 3 
 
.4. . ., FEMINISM 
 
 Catt,' wKd sp^^k's with authority in America for the 
 organised suffragists, as: 
 
 *' The world-wide movement of revolt against all 
 the artificial barriers which laws and customs have in- 
 terposed between women and human freedom." 
 
 *' Freedom " and " Independence " are the key- 
 words of Feminism. Liberty for the individual 
 woman, the throwing down of all barriers to her self- 
 development or self-reahsation, the opportunity for 
 each woman to strike out on her own path, " the full 
 and free emancipation of woman," the revolt against 
 the barriers which her sex and social custom interpose 
 between her and human freedom — these are the 
 ideas which persistently recur in feminist speech and 
 writing. " It is a question of being free, free in all 
 human ways," says Mary Johnston.^ " The chief 
 purpose of feminists," writes Mrs. Ethel Snowden, 
 an English leader, ** through all the years and at the 
 present time, is the achievement of freedom for 
 womanhood and its equal opportunity with man- 
 hood." ^ " Women are striving for economic, legal 
 and sexual Independence," writes Dr. Elizabeth S. 
 Chesser.^ 
 
 Without Indulging in metaphysics about what Is 
 freedom, we can accept the minimum meaning at- 
 tached to the words " human freedom " by feminists 
 as " whatever freedom Is allowed by laws and cus- 
 
 i"Hagar," p. 255. 
 
 2 "The Feminist Movement," p. 13. 
 
 * " Woman, Marriage and Mptherhood," p. 257. 
 
FEMINISM VERSUS HUMANISM 5 
 
 toms to man." In China the women who revolt 
 against the bandaging and crippling of the feet, to 
 which men are not subjected, in India the women who 
 refuse, as widows, to mount the funeral pyre which 
 widowers are not expected to mount, in Turkey the 
 ladies who experiment in walking the streets unveiled 
 like men — these would all be Included In the feminist 
 world-wide movement of revolt by Mrs. Catt. 
 
 But while such generous inclusion of foreign move- 
 ments, which every American instinctively approves, 
 tends to recommend the home brand of Feminism to 
 his favour, yet It does not clarify his judgment. 
 Other revolts nearer to him concern him more closely. 
 There is a movement of revolt in great cities and 
 smart sets against the barrier of custom which is in- 
 terposed between woman and the freedom men enjoy 
 to smoke cigars and cigarettes; a revolt against the 
 custom which requires the woman and not the man to 
 change her name on marriage; which requires a 
 chaperone for girls and young women where no 
 chaperone protects young men. Dr. Mary Walker 
 led a revolt against the custom which permits men, 
 but not women, to wear trousers. Such revolts 
 against the " artificial barriers which laws and cus- 
 toms have interposed between woman and human 
 freedom " are not instinctively approved by Ameri- 
 cans, but would come within Mrs. Catt's definition. 
 
 Historically the woman's movement in America 
 was first concerned with winning for woman control 
 over her own property without relinquishing her 
 
6 FEMINISM 
 
 rights In her husband's property, control of her chil- 
 dren without sacrificing any of the father's responsi- 
 bility for the children, opportunity for divorce on 
 equal or easier terms with men, and an education like 
 man's in college and university. These have been 
 conceded by male legislatures and male public opinion 
 in most of the States, although not always with that 
 advantage to women and to society which feminist 
 advocates take for granted. 
 
 At the same time women have trooped into factory, 
 shop and store and dribbled into pulpit, court room 
 and hospital. Paradoxically enough, while medical 
 schools, law schools and theological seminaries were 
 entered with loud huzzas after prolonged bombard- 
 ment by a few hundreds of women, the factory, ma- 
 chine shop and store, eagerly thrown open by thrifty 
 \ proprietors to those who would work for the lowest 
 wages, were occupied by hundreds of thousands of 
 women without agitation or tumult. But the in- 
 vasion being accomplished, it became an integral and 
 dominant part of the woman's movement. It found 
 its philosophers, its apologists, its glorlfiers. Its poet- 
 esses. To-day the struggle for the so-styled " eco- 
 nomic independence of woman " is an accepted part 
 of the revolt " against the barriers which laws and 
 customs have Interposed between woman and human 
 freedom." Woman's freedom to earn the living for 
 herself and her children, just as man does. Is in- 
 dubitably a part of orthodox Feminism. 
 
 Along with these has gone continuously the de- 
 
FEMINISM VERSUS HUMANISM 7 
 
 mand for woman suffrage. Now vociferous, now 
 gentle voiced, for a period commanding universal at- 
 tention, then for decades hushed and neglected, but 
 never entirely stilled — wearied, but never put to 
 sleep — the appeal has been made from the earliest 
 times of the woman's movement for the equal right 
 with men to the franchise. Unquestionably " votes 
 for women " is a part of Feminism, though its rela- 
 tive Importance is by no means proportionate to the 
 noise It makes. 
 
 Later has arisen a revolt against the laws and cus- 
 toms interposed between woman and her human free- 
 dom to bear a child, to enjoy the blessings of ma- 
 ternity under the conditions she prefers, to own her 
 own body either within or without marriage, to over- 
 throw for herself the limitations which custom and 
 law set upon mating. We shall show that the fem- 
 inist philosophy logically covers much of this sex free- 
 dom, and that the political and economic and educa- 
 tional parts of the woman's movement, as its literary 
 defenders show, inevitably lead up to the movement 
 for sex freedom. 
 
 According to this advanced school of Feminism, of 
 which Ellen Key is the chief prophetess, the goal of 
 the woman's movement Is the attainment by woman 
 of sex freedom. All her achievements in other direc- 
 tions have been merely preparatory, a necessary train- 
 ing of the will In order to enable her to rise to 
 this, her culminating emancipation. For this end 
 It has been necessary for her to assert and prove 
 
8 FEMINISM 
 
 her equality to man; for this she has received 
 higher education; for this she has steeled herself 
 in industrial struggle; for this she is to wield 
 the ballot. All these things are for their own 
 sake not worth striving for; their use is to arm 
 woman with sufficient strength to win her supreme 
 right. Not only is sex freedom the final goal of the 
 woman's movement, but without it the achievements 
 of the movement hitherto have been worse than use- 
 less, for taken by themselves they rather degrade 
 woman than otherwise. As Ellen Key declares : 
 
 " The net result of these achievements is merely to 
 \ reduce woman to a competitive struggle with man, 
 with no compensating advantage " ; and " Wherever 
 the conscious striving to elevate the education and to 
 secure the rights of woman has been profound it has 
 been united with the desire to reform the position of 
 woman in love and marriage." * 
 
 Another advocate exclaims: "The free power 
 of Selection in Love. Yes! That is the true Fe- 
 male Franchise. It must be regained by woman. 
 Existing marriage is a pernicious survival of the 
 patriarchal age." ^ In the view of these intrepid 
 feminists the woman who stops short of the final 
 goal of the woman's movement is not so much pru- 
 dent as blind, not so much reasonable as cowardly, 
 not so much wise as incompetent. 
 
 American feminists are recognising more slowly 
 
 *"Love and Marriage," pp. 6i and 62. 
 — B « xhe Truth About Woman," by C. Gasquoine Hartley, p. 256. 
 
FEMINISM VERSUS HUMANISM 9 
 
 than their Swedish, German and English sisters that 
 the extreme feminists are but extending the logical 
 argument from the suffragist premises. As Kath- 
 arine Anthony confesses : ^ " The extreme feminists 
 have pushed on into fields of controversy which have 
 estranged the more conservative spirits of their own 
 ranks but which have nevertheless been the logical 
 outgrowth, of the self-same faith." And, " So com- 
 pletely have we, the political column of the woman 
 movement, accepted our specialty that people are just 
 beginning to discover that Feminism means more 
 than suffragism; that the ballot for the ballot's sake 
 is not the whole meaning of the suffrage agitation; 
 that the political demands of women are inseparable 
 from the social, educational, and economic demands 
 of the whole feminist movement." 
 
 Feminism, or the woman's movement, to-day, then 
 IS mainly concerned with the demand for ( i ) politi- 
 cal duties like man's, (2) educational and industrial 
 careers like man's, and (3) sex freedom. In each 
 case, as with respect to property rights, and the con- 
 trol of children, no objection is being raised by fem- 
 inists to an allowance of freedom or of privilege in 
 excess of man's. 
 
 In contradistinction to Feminism may be set Hu- 
 manism, a term employed in feminist literature to de- 
 note, vaguely, the belief in a movement toward a 
 ^ nobler civilisation for the whole race, men, women, 
 
 ^ " Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia," by Katharine An- 
 thony, pp. 10-11. 
 
10 FEMINISM 
 
 and children, and accepted in this book under that 
 definition^ Man and woman can alike advance only 
 in co-operation, and the race can improve only on 
 condition that man and woman, both, will sacrifice 
 their own comfort and ease for the child. But Fem- 
 inism, regarding fixedly the woman, her freedom, her 
 self-development, her satisfaction, would sacrifice, 
 sometimes consciously, sometimes unwittingly, the all- 
 important child, its life, its development, its potential 
 gifts. 
 
 Feminism is individualist; Humanism is social. 
 Feminism is female Anarchism ; it would cut woman 
 loose from the family, the only well-rooted social 
 group, to roam the world, self-sufficient, self-con- 
 tained, self-satisfied. Humanism would cherish the 
 family and attack the poverty, the weakness, the vice 
 which undermine the family. 
 
 As the key word of Feminism is independence, the 
 key word of Humanism is social obligation. Fem- 
 inism is centripetal: driving the man, the woman, 
 the child away from each other. Humanism Is cen- 
 trifugal: drawing the man, the woman, the child 
 closer to one another. 
 
 Feminism decries distinctions of sex and would 
 abolish them; Humanism glories in distinctions of 
 sex and would develop them. Feminism would make 
 women more like men; Humanism would make 
 women less like men. Like evolution. Humanism 
 
 7 Humanism is defined by the Standard Dictionary as " a system 
 of thought in which the human element or interest predominates." 
 
FEMINISM VERSUS HUMANISM ii 
 
 seeks differentiation, while Feminism seeks similar- 
 ity. Feminism laments what it sees as the inferi- 
 ority of women; Humanism rejoices in what it sees 
 as the superiority of women. Feminism would 
 industrialise women in order to produce greater 
 material wealth; Humanism would exempt women 
 from competitive industry in order to produce 
 greater human beings. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 woman's physical handicaps 
 
 Feminism seeks to approximate woman's life and 
 work to man's life and work. Women, it teaches, 
 should be educated like men; they should do the same 
 work as men in politics — voting, legislating, admin- 
 istering; they should follow industrial careers like 
 men; they should reduce to a minimum the demands 
 of motherhood and, like men, subordinate the home 
 to their *' life's work." " Feminism can be defined 
 philosophically," says Mr. W. L. George, " as the 
 levelling of the sexes." ^ 
 
 Now, If it be admitted that women are in body 
 and mind different from men, there is a preliminary 
 obstacle, hard to evade, to the working out of this 
 programme, and therefore Feminism is concerned to 
 show that there Is little difference in nature between 
 men and women. Most of the characteristics that 
 distinguish women from men are acquired, it con- 
 tends, through the conventional training and environ- 
 ment to which they are subjected In a man-made 
 world. 
 
 It Is difficult to discover any characteristics that 
 Feminists allow are feminine. Though the existence 
 of those fundamental physiological habits of body 
 
 1 " Woman and To-morrow," p. 8. 
 
 12 
 
WOMAN'S PHYSICAL HANDICAPS 13 
 
 which handicap women cannot be denied, even they 
 are pooh-poohed, minimised and Ignored. " I find 
 that an average of sixty per cent, of girls enter col- 
 lege,'' says Miss M. Carey Thomas, president of the 
 Bryn Mawr College, " absolutely and in every 
 respect well, and that less than thirty per cent, 
 make, or need to make, any periodic difference what- 
 ever in exercise or study from year's end to year's 
 end." 2 
 
 In the same spirit, a president of a woman's college 
 in England tells a feminist group that she finds young 
 women can study hard, take examinations, and keep 
 up with all their work by exercising a little strength 
 of will when they have headaches and pain. It is 
 good for them, she thinks, not to allow trifling bodily 
 ailments to check their pursuit of knowledge.^ 
 
 Scientific and medical opinion is emphatically in op- 
 position to the statements of feminist heads of col- 
 leges at this point. It recommends, not that exercise 
 and study be pursued without regard to periodic 
 variations of bodily condition; but that closer atten- 
 tion be paid to the effect of college life on the girl's 
 bodily functions. A medical study made in 19 12, 
 of three hundred and fourteen girls in the University 
 of Chicago, *' showed that 32 per cent, changed their 
 type of menstruation during the year under the stress 
 of university life. The physical director was able to 
 
 2 Educational Review, January, 1908. 
 
 3 See Fabian Tract, No. 1 1, " Discussion upon the Disabilities of 
 Mothers as Workers." 
 
 V 
 
14 FEMINISM 
 
 Improve the type of only fourteen of these girls."* 
 Similar testimony is given about women in business. 
 Respecting a set of observations made by Engelmann, 
 it Is stated, " As Is to be expected, great suffering dur- 
 ing menstruation is found in the business woman, 
 averaging in those here considered, 83 per cent.; but 
 this varies, even In the same class of business, with 
 the character of the work. The girl behind the 
 counter, who Is on her feet most of the day, with but 
 little space for change of position, shows 91 per cent. ; 
 those who sit, bookkeepers and stenographers, show 
 82 per cent., and those who have a certain freedom of 
 motion — floorwalkers — cash girls — packers — 
 are noted with only 78 per cent." ^ 
 
 So impressed is Dr. G. Stanley Hall, after a wide 
 and thorough examination of medical and historical 
 evidence, concerning the Importance of the lunar 
 period to the physical, mental and emotional life of 
 adolescents that he surmises " the time may come 
 when we must even change the divisions of the year 
 for women, leaving to man his Sunday holiday each 
 week and giving to her the same number of Sabbaths 
 per year, but in groups of four successive days per 
 month." « 
 
 Such sympathetic recognition by humanists of the 
 handicap which nature imposes on woman for man's 
 
 *Dr. Caroline Hedger, at Conference on Infant Mortality, Lon- 
 don, August, 1913. 
 5 " Man and Woman," by Havelock Ellis, p. 297. 
 8 " Adolescence," by G. Stanley Hall, p. 511. 
 
WOMAN'S PHYSICAL HANDICAPS 15 
 
 work, and of the unmistakable way In which nature 
 marks woman for her own more important racial 
 work, is obnoxious to devout feminists. Miss 
 Thomas witnesses that she felt a feeling of humilia- 
 tion and degradation on reading Dr. HalPs quiet, 
 scholarly account of those physiological and psychical 
 differences between men and women which appear 
 during adolescence. 
 
 Similarly, the disability for man's work which 
 motherhood Imposes upon women is dismissed by 
 Feminism as due mainly to artificial civilisation. 
 Stories of savage women who drop aside for an hour 
 or two on their march and presently catch up with 
 the caravan, carrying their new-born babe, are consol- 
 ing to those who, in their eagerness to minimise the 
 pangs and exhaustion of maternity, overlook the 
 medical testimony that the increased difficulty of birth 
 is due In large part to the increasing size of the baby's 
 head under civilisation. " The fact remains that 
 more and more women require surgical aid, if they 
 are to become mothers. Even within one genera- 
 tion, according to hospital statistics, the numbers re- 
 quiring operative aid have enormously increased." '^ 
 
 Even the greater muscular strength of man is not 
 accepted by Feminism as inherent in the constitution 
 of things. Jealous that Samsons are males. Fem- 
 inism points with pride to the fact that " Japanese 
 women will coal a vessel with rapidity unsurpassable 
 
 '' " Woman, Marriage and Motherhood," b^ Dr. E. S. Chesser, 
 p. 90. 
 
1 6 FEMINISM 
 
 by man and the pit-brow women of the Lancashire 
 collieries are said to be of finer physical develop- 
 ment than any other class of women workers." ^ 
 Such Instances of the performance, under semi-savage 
 conditions, of strenuous, brutallsing physical toll by 
 females do not shock the feminist. 
 
 In further denial of man's natural muscular superi- 
 ority, some pleaders, following Lester Ward, take 
 huge dehght In the Inferior size and relative unim- 
 portance of the male In the lowest reaches of the ani- 
 mal kingdom, away down below the vertebrates. At 
 the beginnings of life. It appears that the male cell 
 " was an afterthought of nature devised for the ad- 
 vantage of having a second sex," Indicating that " the 
 female Is of more Importance than the male from 
 nature's point of view." ^ It is clearly, then, the 
 height of impudence for the male, nowadays, to claim 
 superiority. 
 
 Husbands among rotifers, cirrlpedes, menatodes 
 and the like are usually pigmies, attached to the fe- 
 male and parasitic upon her. Cases have been found 
 (and are seriously quoted In authoritative works for 
 their significance in determining the relation of 
 woman to man) In which seven little complemental 
 males were attached to one female cirripede, and 
 lived upon her juices, being tolerated by their host 
 exclusively for their possible use In fertilising her. 
 
 " Here, indeed, is a knock-down blow to the theory 
 
 8 "The Truth about Woman," by C. G. Hartley, p. 284. 
 8 "The Truth about Woman," by C. G. Hartley, p. 284. 
 
WOMAN'S PHYSICAL HANDICAPS 17 
 
 of the natural superiority of the male/' exclaims a 
 woman apologist of unusual learning and poise. ^^ 
 
 If any twentieth-century man can stand upright 
 again after this knock-down blow, Feminism invites 
 him to contemplate the exploits of the female spider 
 and the praying mantes, the conjugal antics of which 
 are dellciously described by Fabre. The female 
 spider, huge, fat and ferocious, slays and devours 
 her mate Immediately she has received the conjugal 
 embrace ; but not quite with the same circumstance of 
 ferocity as Is displayed by the praying mantes. That 
 small monster, with fiendish fury, devours limb by 
 limb and piece by piece the body of her spouse as, 
 driven by inexorable Instinct, though shrinking In ter- 
 ror, he clasps her capacious body and offers himself a 
 martyr to the continuance of his species. Literally, 
 but a fleck of him remains when his fierce partner has 
 finished her bridal repast. " For the female of the 
 species is more deadly than the male." 
 
 These instances satisfy some feminist advocates 
 that the female In nature may be more robust, more 
 muscular, than the male and dominate him, and that 
 muscular weakness in womankind is not, therefore, 
 natural and unchangeable. It is not explained how, 
 if the female started with this advantage and has lost 
 It In the aeons of development from spider to man, 
 the difficulty can now be overcome of retracing that 
 development or of reversing conditions. 
 
 However, return to spider and mantes is unneces- 
 
 10 " The Truth about Woman," by C. G. Hartley, p. 52. 
 
i8 FEMINISM 
 
 sary, it is further Implied, because, since man ap- 
 peared on earth, he has passed everywhere through 
 a matriarchal stage of government during which " the 
 husband, without property right, with no — or very 
 little — control over the woman and none over her 
 children, occupying the position of a more or less 
 permanent guest in her hut or tent," woman ruled 
 the roost.^^ 
 
 Some who find spider and mantes unsatisfactory 
 examples for their imitation and doubtful proofs of 
 any natural superiority of the female body (ethics 
 being left out of account) , yet discern In that period 
 long since passed by cIvIHsed man, when children 
 were known by the name of their mother, property 
 descended through her and tribal rule was exercised 
 by her, a demonstration that woman Is naturally the 
 head of the household, and that mother right has 
 only been superseded by father right through the use 
 of the brute force of brothers, uncles and husbands 
 at a time when, warfare being well-nigh continuous, 
 woman (who. It Is admitted, Is not the warrior part- 
 ner) was fain to submit for the sake of protection. 
 
 That period of woman's rule and man's subor- 
 dination gives great joy and hope to those who com- 
 plain that woman In modern society Is degraded and 
 subjugated. " It is a period whose history may well 
 give pride to all women," they aver.^^ 
 
 If the historical existence of matriarchal societies 
 
 ""The Truth about Woman," by C. G. Hartley, p. 169. 
 12 "The Truth about Woman," p. 124. 
 
WOMAN'S PHYSICAL HANDICAPS 19 
 
 in which women held social sway be admitted (though 
 It Is denied by Lord Avebury, Letourneau, Chamber- 
 lain and other ethnologists), yet It remains to be ex- 
 plained how woman, having fatally permitted man by 
 brute strength to dethrone her so long ago that the 
 history of his usurpation can only be surmised, shall 
 now undo that blunder and overcome the handicap 
 of that difference of bodily strength which has been 
 transmitted through the ages. If women once held 
 sway and lost It, that Is more damaging to their claim 
 than if they had never possessed It. For, had they 
 always been Inferior in position, they might have con- 
 tended that the Inferiority of bodily strength was due 
 to inferiority of position and would change with a 
 change of status. But a monarch overthrown when 
 she had the advantage of position can hardly re-es- 
 tablish herself, so long as her forces are weaker than 
 her conquerors'. 
 
 It is Indeed vain to deny the obvious. Woman is 
 
 . not idehtlcal with man, either in body, mind or feel- 
 ings. As Havelock Ellis testifies : " The whole or- 
 ganism of the average woman, physical and psychic, 
 Is fundamentally unlike that of the average man. 
 The differences may be often of a slight or subtle 
 character, but they are none the less real and they 
 extend to the smallest details of organic constitu- 
 
 \^ tlon." " A man Is a man to his very thumbs and a 
 woman is a woman down to her little toes." ^^ 
 Women flatter men unduly when they deny their 
 
 13 " Man and Woman," pp. 442. 
 
\ 
 
 20 FEMINISM 
 
 own natures and prefer masculinity. As Dr. G. Stan- 
 ley Hall says: "The pathos about the leaders of 
 woman's so-called emancipation is that they, even 
 more than those they would persuade, accept man's 
 estimate of their state, disapprove, minimise and per- 
 haps would eliminate, if they could, the very best 
 thing in their nature. In so doing, it is the feminists 
 who are still apishly servile to man, even in one of his 
 greatest mistakes, who have done woman most 
 wrong." ^^ 
 
 Woman, then, is so distinct from man, in body and 
 In mind, through and through, right down to the 
 foundation of her nature, and such distinction is so 
 precious to civilisation, so essential to that variety 
 which is the mark of development and the charm of 
 life that the approximation of woman's life and work 
 to man's life and work is as hopeless as it would be 
 disastrous. But, though it can never be accom- 
 plished, it may be partially tried. With ruinous re- 
 sults. Hence the necessity to expose the undertaking. 
 
 Most immediately threatening is the Industrial 
 Subjugation of Woman, which will next be consid- 
 ered. 
 
 1* " Adolescence," p. 511. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL SUBJUGATION OF WOMAN 
 
 Feminism glories in the employment of wom^en and 
 girls in factory, shop, store and office. Any work 
 for wages, however onerous, it extols as " economic 
 independence," an indication that the woman is free- 
 ing herself from her age-long subjection as a " mere 
 female " and asserting her dignity as a human being. 
 It is blind, to the hardships and the ills of industrial 
 competition; it magnifies the pecuniary benefits. 
 
 In their laudation of money earning and their 
 exaltation of woman^s out-family work, feminists 
 glimpse hazily the lot of the millions of wage earners 
 and gaze fixedly, until hypnotised, on the shining in- 
 stances of highly salaried earners. They assume to 
 speak for womankind and wail to the world that the 
 whole sex longs for more work. " We women, to- 
 day, demand all labour for our province," exclaims 
 Olive Schreiner, with the fervour of italics, over and 
 over again.^ 
 
 This demand, she says, is in pursuance of " an en- 
 deavour on the part of a section of the race to save 
 itself from inactivity and degeneration." Women 
 are threatened with moral death by *' parasitism," by 
 living without labour, idly sucking sustenance from 
 
 1 See " Woman and Labor." 
 
 21 
 
22 FEMINISM 
 
 man. And this dread fate '' threatens vast masses " 
 of women and " may, under future conditions, 
 threaten the entire body." For, while " female 
 parasitism In the past resembled gout — a disease 
 dangerous only to the overfed, pampered and few, 
 never to the population of any society as a whole " — 
 in the next fifty years " it is Inevitable that not merely 
 a class but the whole bodies of females in civilised 
 society must sink into a state of more or less absolute 
 dependence on their sexual functions alone," unless 
 indeed women, stirred by the preaching of feminists, 
 " grasp the new forms of labour and procure all 
 labour for their province." ^ 
 
 Already they are conquering in a variety of indus- 
 tries, and Miss M. Carey Thomas, the president of 
 Bryn Mawr College, Is " sure that in two or three 
 generations practically all women will either support 
 themselves or engage in some form of civic activ- 
 ity." ^ Indeed, woman may supersede man as the 
 provider, since it is possible, as Feminism foresees, 
 " that with the smaller general bulk and the muscular 
 fineness and the preponderance of brain and nerv- 
 ous system in net bulk over the fleshy and osseous 
 parts of the organism, which generally character- 
 ise the female, go mental qualities which will pe- 
 culiarly fit her for the labour of the future." So 
 that, magnificent to relate, " It Is quite possible that, 
 taken In the bulk and on the whole, the female half 
 
 2 "Woman and Labor," p. 115. 
 8 Educational Re'vienv, June, 1908, 
 
INDUSTRIAL SUBJUGATION 23 
 
 of humanity may, by virtue of a structural adapta- 
 tion, be found more fitted for the bulk of human 
 labours In the future." ^ Then let man beware. 
 The blight of parasitism will next attack him! 
 
 In one of the gospel books of Feminism, Charlotte 
 Perkins Oilman deplores that " we are the only 
 animal species in which the female depends on the 
 male for food, the only animal species in which the 
 sex relation Is also an economic relation;"^ which 
 difference, she argues, puts woman a little lower than 
 the brutes, for by this dependence on husband for 
 support " woman has been checked, starved, aborted 
 in human growth, and the swelling forces of race 
 development have been driven back In each genera- 
 tion to work In her through sex functions alone." ^ 
 
 So it is the traditional family, in which the father 
 is head of the household, and supplies the livelihood, 
 which threatens woman's degradation. Home- 
 keeping mothers are a disgrace to their sex, it ap- 
 pears, and a menace to humanity, so subdued to their 
 own shame that they are unaware of it. " We care- 
 fully maintain among us an enormous class of non- 
 productive consumers — a class which Is half the 
 world and mother of the other half. We have made 
 for ourselves this endless array of horse-leech's 
 daughters, crying, * Give ! Give I ' '"^ 
 
 *" Woman and Labor," p. ii6. 
 5 " Woman and Economics," p. 5. 
 ^Ibid., p. 75. 
 "^ Ibid., p. 118. 
 
24 FEMINISM 
 
 This kind of doctrine is equally rampant in Eng- 
 land. The London Fabian Woman's Group, all ar- 
 dent and well-educated feminists, after prolonged con- 
 sideration and the discussion of many papers, flatly 
 endorse the wage or salary-earning self-support of 
 all women, single or married, widowed or divorced. 
 ** Looking forward to a time when each individual 
 shall be economically independent," they work to 
 " bring women into line with men in the advance to- 
 wards paid work for all " ; and believing " economic 
 independence to be the one remedy for various social 
 ills," they are endeavouring to establish that " this 
 solution must ultimately be accepted by all those who 
 believe in the equality of opportunity for all citizens 
 irrespective of sex." Suffrage without wage-earn- 
 ing to them is vain.^ 
 
 At the root of the feminist demand for " all la- 
 bour for woman's province " is the complaint, made 
 in anguish and bitterness, that man excludes woman 
 from lucrative opportunities in the business world 
 solely on account of her sex. Law and custom, based 
 on man's preferences, she laments, shut against her 
 the avenues into life's richest careers. Feminist 
 pleas imply that on every side woman's ambition is 
 restricted by a statute of limitations. 
 
 In England, it is true, women are not admitted to 
 the bar or to the pulpit or to the highest posts in the 
 civil service. But in the United States in 19 lo there 
 ' The Neiv Statesman, Febfuary 21, 1914. 
 
INDUSTRIAL SUBJUGATION 25 
 
 were 558 lawyers and 685 clergymen who are women; 
 in Idaho, every school superintendent through the 
 State is a woman, and in other States some of 
 the highest educational posts are filled by women. 
 Women buyers for department stores command 
 high salaries and women novelists and dramatists 
 find their sex no bar with publishers and man- 
 agers. A multi-millionaire woman financier operates 
 in Wall Street and a woman contractor runs a con- 
 siderable building business in New York City. In 
 fact, so hospitable are law and custom to woman's 
 Industrial ambitions that feminists *' thrill with de- 
 light '^ as they read the census returns which display 
 women's activities as steam-fitters, railroad engineers, 
 railroad brakemen, baggagemen and switchmen, as 
 blacksmiths, machinists, charcoal, coke, and lime 
 burners, well-borers, boiler-makers and ships carpen- 
 ters. *' There are but few kinds of work from which 
 the female sex Is absolutely debarred either by nature, 
 law or custom," explains the census man, for which 
 opinion one enthusiastic feminist would "build a 
 statue to him." 
 
 Yet, even in America, including those States where 
 women long have voted, the number of women oc- 
 cupying the highest industrial and governmental posts 
 Is negligible. Though law and custom may not ab- 
 solutely bar woman from any branch of industry, 
 Nature bars her from the highest success In Industry. 
 In Idaho, and In most suffrage States, there Is no 
 
26 FEMINISM 
 
 woman in the legislature and where, as in Colorado, 
 a few women have been elected, they have not won 
 eminence. 
 
 At the risk of appearing to be ungallant it must 
 be pointed out that, though brakemen have climbed 
 to the railroad president's chair, no woman stenog- 
 rapher or secretary on a railroad has cHmbed near 
 that dizzy eminence. Though the automobile busi- 
 ness, but a decade old, was wide open to women to 
 enter, and many women had independent fortunes 
 which they might have risked for their " self-real- 
 isation " in a new field where nobody could say a 
 woman " Nay," yet no woman's name is connected 
 with a popular machine. Though rich women ac- 
 tresses are many, women theatre owners and man- 
 agers are few. Women write successful novels and 
 plays; but men win the fortunes by publishing and 
 producing them. Women become buyers in de- 
 partment stores; but men continue to own and con- 
 trol the stores. Women doctors are not scarce ; but 
 the eminent surgeons are all men and the most lucra- 
 tive physicians' practices are men's. Women may 
 enter the Church, but the metropolitan pulpits of 
 distinction are all filled by men. Women lawyers 
 practise in every large city, but the leaders of the 
 bar are all men and no woman has dazzled the na- 
 tion by her brilliancy in any cause celehre. 
 
 Neither law nor custom prevents any woman from 
 making a fortune in real estate. A broker will buy 
 or sell houses and lots as eagerly for a woman as for 
 
INDUSTRIAL SUBJUGATION 27 
 
 a man. Yet, where Is the bold and successful woman 
 real estate operator? Cotton spinners and woollen 
 weavers are in a majority women. No law precludes 
 a woman from starting a small cotton or woollen 
 mill, engaging other women to operate the machinery, 
 establishing her own credit by skilful management 
 and gradually enlarging her mill until she stands 
 among the giants. But where have women thus mas- 
 tered the difficulties which even negro men, against 
 greater external odds, have conquered? 
 
 Woman is free to win riches and distinction as a 
 mining prospector. The mountain solitudes and lone 
 wildernesses of the West, the icy sands and stern 
 wastes of Alaska, are open to her to roam. She may 
 shoulder a pack or load a burro and, like adventurous 
 man, roam silent and lonesome to uncover some vein 
 of gold or silver or copper. Why has woman never 
 discovered a Calumet or a Homestake mine and 
 leaped into national prominence ? Not on account of 
 legal barriers. 
 
 Multitudinous women are boarding-house keepers, 
 but the palatial hotels that adorn our cities are man- 
 aged by men. Even hotels for women have men in 
 the top positions. The United States Patent Office 
 will register a patent without asking the sex of the 
 inventor and no legislature nor man-made prejudice 
 forbids a woman from contriving new devices to 
 serve mankind. She may rack her brains and spend 
 her substance till she perfects the process which in 
 imagination she foresaw and no law or public opinion 
 
28 FEMINISM 
 
 will try to thwart her. But where Is the feminine 
 Edison or Westinghouse or MacCormack or Singer? 
 Not that man or statute forbade her taking pre- 
 cedence. Here was labour she had not to demand 
 for her province. It was free to any man or woman. 
 The laws of mechanics are sexless. Why has she 
 failed? Not through man-made restrictions. 
 
 Let it be conceded that the law blocks the ambi- 
 tion of a woman to be President of the United States, 
 a member of the Cabinet or the Governor of a State. 
 But, even if these conspicuous posts were open to 
 them, of what avail would that be to their ambitions, 
 when they have not produced a legislator of com- 
 manding ability and power as yet in any State where 
 legislative halls are theirs to enter? Governorships 
 and cabinets and Presidencies must be confined to per- 
 sons already eminent in professional, administrative 
 or business life. Under the Homestead Act, Uncle 
 Sam will give a woman a free farm on exactly the 
 same terms as a man. But has any woman so dis- 
 tinguished herself as a farmer and a leader of farm- 
 ers that she could be considered for Secretary of Ag- 
 riculture ? 
 
 For every place of power from which women are 
 excluded there are a thousand to which they may as- 
 pire. When they have won an appreciable fraction 
 of those already open, it will be credible that they 
 would qualify for the handful that are closed and 
 that their legal exclusion is a grievous wrong. 
 
 Not statute law but natural law bars women from 
 
INDUSTRIAL SUBJUGATION 29 
 
 eminence In Industrial life. And nature will not be 
 gainsaid. For her own purposes, she has endowed 
 the male with muscular strength, with pugnacity and 
 adventurous spirit, with conquering will and with 
 vaulting ambition. She does not handicap him for 
 commercial contest by a periodic drain upon his 
 strength. He can fight with competitors day by day, 
 year in and year out, without respite; he can plan 
 long campaigns and follow them to the fatiguing and 
 distant end without exhaustion. No baby drains his 
 vitality or paralyses his roaming spirit. The family 
 responsibilities, which are inescapable if the race is 
 to endure, exert opposing Influences on the man and 
 the woman for success In commerce and Industry. 
 They debilitate her, they Invigorate him. They pull 
 her back into the home, they thrust him out into 
 the world. They bid her be reposeful, they bid him 
 be adventurous. His fatherhood but stimulates his 
 energies and adds courage to his enterprises. While 
 the woman Is enduring the pangs that have compelled 
 her withdrawal, perchance at a critical moment, from 
 her outside undertaking, he is braced for her sake to 
 more strenuous effort. While the infant, to feed its 
 own life, is sucking the mother's strength. It is add- 
 ing, by its helpless appeal, fresh strength to the 
 father's determination. 
 
 Few occupations offer chances either to men or to 
 women for winning national distinction or consider- 
 able fortune. In the employments which engage the 
 mass of workers at weekly wages, woman's competi- 
 
30 FEMINISM 
 
 tion with man in office, store and factory has meant 
 for woman the occupation of the lowest places at the 
 ^ meanest wages. Wherever skill, experience, brains 
 and leadership yield large incomes, there she is in a 
 trifling minority; wherever weakness, unskilfulness 
 1 and ignorance are worst exploited, there she is in 
 overwhelming majority. In the sweated trades, 
 which starve the workers for an inhuman length of 
 workday, woman, not man, is the chief victim. Only 
 her children endure like privation and fatigue. 
 Everywhere the women work for less remuneration 
 than men in similar callings and hold only the more 
 monotonous and less responsible posts. 
 
 " Those who enter gainful employments as girls of 
 from fourteen to eighteen," writes Prof. Henry 
 Seager, president of the American Association for 
 Labour Legislation, '' may marry before they reach 
 the age of twenty-five. With this, possibility before 
 them, they have less incentive than boys to learn 
 trades. The consequence of these two facts, rein- 
 forced by the inferior strength of women, is that they 
 are able to command wages which average about 
 one-half those that are paid to men. This means 
 for most girls and women who have to be self-sup- 
 porting a heartbreaking and health-destroying strug- 
 , gle. Underpay and the correlative overwork are the 
 common lot." ^ 
 
 Reformers and philanthropists are struggling 
 
 « Introduction to " Women in the Bookbinding Trade," by Mary 
 Van Kleeck. 
 
INDUSTRIAL SUBJUGATION 31 
 
 heroically to ameliorate that " heartbreaking and 
 health-destroying struggle/' due to the circumstance 
 that women can " command wages which average 
 one-half those that are paid to men." Feminists 
 have an easy road, a short cut, to the cure. Simply 
 enact, they say, that women shall be paid the same 
 as men and all will be well. Alas ! In our complex 
 industrial organisation, where each employer is striv- 
 ing to cut down costs to save his own economic life, 
 and where women are employed mainly because they 
 will accept lower wages and worse conditions than 
 men, no royal remedy can be applied. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HUMANIST INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME FOR 
 WOMEN 
 
 Let us outline a humanist programme for women 
 in Industry, a programme consistent with her own 
 natural and happiest development and with national 
 and racial welfare. Such a programme must take 
 cognisance of 
 
 1. The Industrial conditions which are inimical to 
 all girls and women, and 
 
 2. The special conditions applicable to women at 
 different stages of life, under which they may bene- 
 ficially be wage earners. 
 
 I. The fundamental fact which must control the 
 humanist determination of woman's place In Industry 
 is that nearly every woman is a potential mother. 
 Even those women who are unhappily sterile must be 
 considered through most of life as potential mothers, 
 for only prolonged experience can prove their ste- 
 rility. This potential motherhood is woman's prime 
 social value, of higher worth to her and to the nation 
 than any quantity of cotton she can spin or ledgers 
 she can balance or ribbons she can sell across the 
 counter. To the maintenance of her power for 
 healthy, happy motherhood, every other factor in her 
 
 32 
 
INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 33 
 
 life must be subordinate. Law and custom should 
 distinguish, with eternal vigilance, in matters indus- 
 trial, between man's place and woman's place. 
 Woman's prime difference from man, instead of be- 
 ing Ignored, as feminists demand, should be more 
 and more watchfully considered. 
 
 " The heartbreaking and health-destroying strug- 
 gle," which Professor Seager testifies, Is the lot of 
 ** most girls and women who have to be self-support- 
 ing," unavoidably involves damage to their powers 
 of maternity. A man may be terribly overworked 
 without affecting his power for paternity. He may 
 toil for twenty-three hours and yet become the father 
 of a healthy child In the twenty-fourth hour. He 
 may stand the livelong day at a machine and subsist 
 on black bread and water and still beget vigorous 
 babies. 
 
 But a woman who similarly stands all the long day 
 
 \ before an unwearying machine cannot bring forth 
 
 healthy offspring. ' She has sold something which her 
 
 wages have not and never could pay for — the life 
 
 and vigour of the next generation. 
 
 Employments not so mechanical but yet exhausting 
 have their proportionate effects upon the woman's 
 highest function. Appallingly common are the cases 
 of girls with tense nervous organisations and delicate 
 brains whose latent maternity has been rendered a 
 torture by the exhaustion following on their conscien- 
 tious obedience to the demands of school and college, 
 of social work or society life. 
 
34 FEMINISM 
 
 No industry Is suitable for any woman nor should 
 be open to her which overstrains her female organs, 
 drains the vitality which she will need at her supreme 
 moment or so denatures her as to make motherhood 
 distasteful. 
 
 '' Every employment open to women," is the motto 
 of Feminism. " No employment open to women un- 
 less proven noninjurious " is the motto of Humanism. 
 
 Already, a hesitating start has been made in fixing 
 the humanist conditions under which an industry shall 
 be closed to women. Women are forbidden by law 
 in civilised States to work underground in the dark 
 and dirt of mines. They are usually excluded also 
 from the poisonous dangers of white lead works. In 
 America they are forbidden to incur the moral dan- 
 gers of service behind a saloon bar. In six States, 
 Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, 
 Oregon, and Nebraska, though the law has not yet 
 run the gauntlet of the courts, they are not permitted 
 to work in factories or workshops by night; in a num- 
 ber of States woman's maximum hours of labour are 
 legally less than man's maximum hours. Her consti- 
 tutional right to contract for the sale of her labour 
 has been limited, with the approval of the Supreme 
 Courts of various States and of the United States, as 
 man's right cannot be constitutionally limited, under 
 the exercise of a police power which takes cognisance 
 of the basic fact that, as the Federal Supreme Court 
 said, " Woman's physical structure and the per- 
 
INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 35 
 
 formance of maternal functions place her at a disad- 
 vantage In the struggle for subsistence." 
 
 Even these tentative restrictions are condemned 
 by the straltest sect of the feminists, who are pre- 
 pared to face unflinchingly the sufferings of their 
 sisters caused by a rigorously logical application of 
 the doctrine of equal treatment for men and women. 
 The Equality Alliance of New York City, whose 
 membership Includes teachers, editors, professors and 
 writers of Influence, proposed to offer an amendment 
 of the State Constitution which should make it Im- 
 possible to deny by legislation " any civil or legal 
 right to any person on account of sex." They would 
 even thus prevent, if possible, the enforcement of the 
 humane law which forbids the employment of a 
 woman in factory, store or shop for a few weeks be- 
 fore or after a baby Is born to her, since it is by na- 
 ture Impossible to make that law applicable to man. 
 In like spirit some women's organisations in Lon- 
 don, headed by eminent ladles, actively opposed the 
 closing of the saloons against women up to eleven 
 A.M. during the war, a step taken to check the in- 
 creasing drunkenness among women. They argued 
 that women should not be denied any opportunity to 
 get drunk which men enjoyed. 
 
 On the other hand, pioneer humanists have pro- 
 posed far-reaching extensions of this sex discrimi- 
 nation in favour of womankind. A section of the 
 National Conference of Charities and Corrections 
 
26 FEMINISM 
 
 has approved the legal prohibition to women of 
 work which requires continuous standing. Settle- 
 ment leaders have declared that work as store clerks 
 is specially unsuitable to girls and women.^ 
 
 If only these two proposals were adopted, what 
 an exodus of women from the Land of Bondage 
 would commence ! In the United States nearly two 
 hundred and fifty thousand saleswomen alone would 
 be liberated and from every steam laundry, cotton 
 mill, woollen mill and silk mill, pale-faced women 
 would emerge into the sunshine. 
 
 Only scientific and prolonged enquiry can deter- 
 mine which employments can be undertaken by 
 women without deranging their peculiar and racially 
 essential powers or the limits within which the em- 
 ployments open to them are safe for them and for 
 posterity. 
 
 From all poisonous occupations they should evi- 
 dently be excluded, for women are peculiarly sus- 
 ceptible to industrial poison. To expose them to the 
 fumes of lead, arsenic or phosphorus is more mur- 
 derous than to expose their brothers and husbands. 
 
 From some of the most dangerous employments 
 — caisson sinking for deep foundations in which 
 work under compressed air causes a painful disease 
 called the *' bends," structural iron working on 
 bridges and skyscrapers, as brakemen on railroads, 
 rollers in steel mills and labourers around smelting 
 furnaces — women are already protected by custom 
 
 iSee "Young Working Girls," edited by Woods and Kennedy. 
 
INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 37 
 
 and by muscular weakness; for the bizarre and 
 startling instances, discovered by the census, of odd 
 women engaged in such virile occupations are only 
 negligible exceptions. 
 
 How unsafe it is to assume the suitability of the 
 most alluring and seemingly light and cleanly work 
 to woman's organism is indicated by the report of 
 the Canadian Royal Commission that in the tele- 
 phone service " the breaking point of the operator's 
 health is not far from the breaking point of effi- 
 cient work." When the breaking point of the fe- 
 male operator's health is approached, her potential- 
 > jty for motherhood, the gift which raises her in social 
 ^ value above man, is in imminent danger, and so- 
 ciety must intervene for the sake of its own perma- 
 nence. 
 
 Hitherto, the rule has been, in blind stupidity, 
 to permit girls and women to be lured into any oc- 
 cupation where their labour could be utilised and, 
 later, when the evil effects were too conspicuous to 
 be ignored, timidly to curtail the damaging condi- 
 tions. Humanism would make a survey of all in- 
 dustries with respect to their influence on women 
 workers and permit no industry, either new or 
 old, to engage female workers unless licenced by a 
 medical and scientific board as " Non-deleterious." 
 
 Progressive States, in order to conserve the work- 
 ers' general health, require a statutory minimum 
 of light and air and ventilation and sanitary con- 
 veniences in work places where women are em- 
 
38 FEMINISM 
 
 ployed. But these requirements are vain when the 
 whole working process undermines their powers. 
 The thorough application of the humanist prin- 
 ciple that the woman's vigour and maternity shall 
 not be sacrificed necessitates the barring of all 
 conditions which mihtate against the potential moth- 
 er's life. " Take women and children out of the 
 factories " — the programme announced by Samuel 
 Gompers, President of the American Federation of 
 Labour, at its Annual Convention in 19 15 — is ac- 
 ceptable to Humanism. 
 
 Though there be found occupations in which 
 women may engage without injury to their maternal 
 powers, it does not follow that a woman with so- 
 cial safety and to her own ultimate advantage can 
 pursue them all through life. 
 
 Woman's working Hfe is naturally divided, as 
 man's is not, into three stages: First, the period 
 before marriage when, her formal education being 
 finished as far as her parents' means will allow, she 
 is waiting for her romance and womanly realisation 
 and has a few years for money-earning work. 
 
 Second, her married life, when, normally, for her 
 own best development and for society's preservation, 
 she will bear and rear a family, and 
 
 Third, her declining years, after her physiological 
 climacteric when, her children matured and leaving 
 the home she made for them, she still has vigour and 
 capacity that may be utilised for the social good. 
 These we will consider in order. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 woman's work before marriage 
 
 The first period in woman's working life is the 
 shortest. Its length varies according to social 
 grades. The wage-earning working girl leaves 
 school between fourteen and eighteen (usually by 
 sixteen) and hopes to marry before she is twenty- 
 five. Physiologically, socially and morally it is ad- 
 vantageous if she marry by twenty-three. The col- 
 lege woman graduates at twenty-two to twenty-five, 
 but she marries several years later than her less priv- 
 ileged sister. Though entirely her misfortune, that 
 is not entirely her own fault, since the men in the 
 social grades from which her mate naturally comes 
 delay marriage until their prolonged business prepa- 
 ration and novitiate are complete. 
 
 For all grades of women, then, there may be a 
 period of six to nine years between finishing school 
 and starting a home. What shall they do with it? 
 Idle philandering is not possible for the working 
 woman nor desirable for the college woman. In an- 
 ticipation of their coming high duties the best occu- 
 pation for them would be connected with children 
 and homemaking. A mechanic who expected to be 
 a carpenter for the twenty years of his prime would 
 not try stenography nor selling ribbons for five or 
 
 39 
 
40 FEMINISM 
 
 six years. A college man who purposed being an 
 engineer would not put in five or six years in a law 
 office. But women who anticipate being mothers 
 and homemakers during their prime are urged by 
 Feminism to practise cotton spinning or ribbon sell- 
 ing or law — anything, no matter how remote from 
 their life's work, that offers wages. 
 
 Fortunately, one profession, that of teaching, 
 most popular with educated women, does prepare 
 them for training their own children. Its only 
 drawbacks are the overstrain on their physical pow- 
 ers, which it often involves, especially during the 
 preparatory period of examinations, and the tempta- 
 tion which the high salaries in the better positions 
 present to women to discard motherhood entirely. 
 
 A conscious adaptation of work during this inter- 
 lude to work in after hfe, an adaptation which Hu- 
 manism would welcome, will come only when the 
 adolescent girls and their mothers — and society — 
 exhibit a better appreciation of the significance and 
 difficulty and glory of the home queen's duties. 
 *' Though the average girl sees in marriage a step 
 toward freedom," witness the best informed observ- 
 ers, yet *' while in her romancing the girl naturally 
 centres her thoughts about the management of a 
 home, she does not look upon housekeeping as a 
 trade to be learned, but expects to blossom into do- 
 mestic competence after the marriage ceremony. 
 Some few girls have a fore-handed interest in cook- 
 ing, a still smaller number manifest a workmanlike 
 
WORK BEFORE MARRIAGE 41 
 
 zest for homemaking ; hardly any think to' prepare 
 themselves for motherhood. From the very start 
 the Interest of the girl Is divided between present 
 wage-earning and future housekeeping.'* ^ 
 
 Since the normal woman will pursue a money-mak- 
 ing occupation only for a few years, she cannot profit- 
 ably devote several years to special preparation for 
 It, unless It also prepares her for homemaking and 
 motherhood. Occupations which require a lustrum 
 to a decade of special study, and which, like law and 
 preaching, yield an equipment not serviceable to the 
 mother, presuppose either the abandonment of the 
 profession before It can return the expenses of 
 preparation, or the renunciation of motherhood by 
 the woman who undertakes them. Medicine and 
 teaching, on the other hand, have value in the home 
 which compensates for the long novitiate. 
 
 Machine industry, the destiny of most industrial- 
 ised women, requires but short time for learning, 
 and speed, the element most sought by employers, 
 IS gained while wages are being earned. It is for 
 this reason that factory work has become so widely 
 available. The feminlsatlon of Industry follows 
 upon its simplification. The lighter and more me- 
 chanical the process, the greater the certainty that it 
 will be done by women. 
 
 So women can and do and should regard indus- 
 trial employment as a stop gap In a life's work — 
 an Interlude between the subjection of school and the 
 
 1" Young Working Girls," by Woods and Kennedy, p. 162. 
 
42 FEMINISM 
 
 independence of marriage. They view their occupa- 
 tion differently from men. They have not the same 
 stimulus to master a complicated industry, not the 
 same interest in laying foundations wide and deep 
 on which they may build a lucrative career in later 
 life. They consequently combine less readily than 
 men in trade organisations, endure less willingly the 
 sacrifice necessary to perfect a defence which will 
 serve them a decade later. They must have imme- 
 diate returns. 
 
 These limitations Feminism bemoans and urges 
 women to break through. It laments that a woman, 
 by looking forward to matrimony, should diminish 
 her interest in her factory work. It would reverse 
 conditions : make wage earning permanent and mar- 
 riage transient, salary the major and children the 
 minor interest. 
 
 Humanism, on the contrary, would encourage 
 young women to regard industrial work as only a 
 temporary expedient for filling their time, with more 
 or less profit, until they marry. No employment 
 would it countenance which, in any way, would re- 
 duce the young woman's fitness for motherhood, and 
 it would advise her to select an employment which 
 would prepare her for her real Hfe's work. For in- 
 stance, domestic service in a good home, even at low 
 wages under an intelligent, sympathetic woman who 
 would encourage the servant in " keeping company,'' 
 would be more advantageous than making paper 
 boxes or artificial flowers, dipping matches, tending 
 
WORK BEFORE MARRIAGE 43 
 
 a spinning machine, or wrapping parcels under a driv- 
 ing man superintendent, in a store or factory. And, 
 in fact, the money return for the domestic service 
 would be higher. 
 
 A vocational bureau for guiding girls into an oc- 
 cupation, whether under private philanthropy or in 
 connection with public schools, if under the control 
 of feminist ideas will hunt for jobs preferably out- 
 side of homes and alien to domestic life, but, if un- 
 der control of humanist ideas, will seek first to fill 
 every procurable opening inside homes or, like nurs- 
 ing, preparatory for domestic life. 
 
 Under Humanism the regiments of bright young 
 women engaged on salary in social and philanthropic 
 institutions, would be warned when they were en- 
 gaged that they would not be retained beyond a few 
 years and must, on no account, regard the employ- 
 ment as a life's career. 
 
 The director of one eugenic association which an- 
 nually engages a few of the most brilliant graduates 
 of the women's colleges says to them: " I will em- 
 ploy you for three years, and no longer, because by 
 the end of that time I expect you will have secured 
 a permanent engagement to become some good 
 man's wife and continue your eugenic work in a more 
 fruitful way." 
 
 Teachers' salary schedules would in a similar spirit 
 be revised. In large cities, like New York, the 
 salaries are arranged as if there were a deliberate 
 purpose to present the maximum temptation to spin- 
 
44 FEMINISM 
 
 sterhood. For sixteen years and more after starting 
 to teach, the woman's salary is annually increased al- 
 most automatically and promotion to the highest 
 positions is the reward reserved to those who eschew 
 motherhood. Humanism would organise school 
 systems on the presumption that it desired every 
 teacher to marry before thirty and approved her 
 return to the service, for ten to fifteen years, after 
 forty-five, when her children were grown up. It 
 would, therefore, make the first appointment of a 
 woman fresh from training school, for a maximum 
 of five to ten years, and would reserve the highest 
 teaching positions available to women for those 
 women'who had completed the richest of a woman's 
 experiences, the rearing of a family. Meantime, 
 (as explained more fully later on,) it would subsidise 
 her for the teaching of her own young children at 
 home, to an amount fully equal to the present cost 
 of teaching them in school. 
 
 Through thoughtlessness and through blindness 
 to the fatal racial consequences, schools and colleges, 
 philanthropic societies and the best employers of 
 labour are engaged unconsciously in a conspiracy 
 against matrimony. They say in effect to the most 
 competent young women: " If you renounce mar- 
 riage and continue in this salary-earning work we 
 will raise your earnings periodically and promote 
 you to positions of greater honour and responsibil- 
 ity." 
 
 Such conspiracy Is treason to society more flagrant 
 
WORK BEFORE MARRIAGE 45 
 
 far than any combination In restraint of trade. By 
 breaking up that conspiracy Humanism would reduce 
 the problem of the married woman In Industry. 
 This must next be considered. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY 
 
 Should a woman resign her wage-earning position 
 when she marries? "No! emphatically no!" an- 
 swers Feminism. " She must preserve her hard- 
 won independence. She can add conjugal love to 
 her life ; but never must she allow love to supersede 
 earning. By continuing at lucrative work she can 
 hire experts to do her household duty and, exempt 
 from the drudgery of cooking, cleaning, sewing and 
 serving, she can realise herself in her occupation and 
 swim in the great current of the world's life. Not 
 only should she keep up her vocation after the wed- 
 ding but she should endeavour to make it legally Im- 
 possible for any employer to bar her from factory, 
 school or office on account of matrimony." 
 
 The legislature of Western Australia has made It 
 a crime punishable with imprisonment for three 
 months or a fine of $2500 for any employer either 
 to dismiss a work woman or to reduce her In grade 
 when she marries. That is the logical climax of In- 
 dustrial Feminism, of the Ideal — " Every woman at 
 work for wages.'' If the dependence on husband 
 is a disgrace and the earning of her own bread a 
 precious right which every mother should cherish, 
 
 46 
 
MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY 47 
 
 then no employer should be permitted to deny her 
 that right. 
 
 This doctrine, dinned into the ears of bright, am- 
 bitious college girls, deflects their minds from home- 
 making and often turns the balance against it. But 
 working women by the ten thousand who toil for 
 wages of five to ten dollars a week are not prone 
 to this deception. They look forward to marriage 
 as a release from drudgery. They expect the hus- 
 band's wages to be handed to them for disbursement, 
 regarding their work in homemaking as their full 
 and sufficient contribution to the joint menage. 
 That their economic service in the home is fully as 
 valuable as in the factory they know without elab- 
 orate demonstration, because if they are to pay for 
 suitable help, according to feminist directions, every 
 cent of their slender earnings will go to the " suitable 
 help " who, even then, will do far less for money 
 than they themselves for love. 
 
 Such women, the real wage-earners, know from 
 their own bitter experience, as Humanism recognises, 
 how hurtful to health and well-being is the indus- 
 trial employment of women. To this harmfulness 
 whole libraries of evidence has been given by doc- 
 tors, factory inspectors, investigators, sociologists 
 and officials of every grade. As to the effect on the 
 worker herself, a British factory inspector says : 
 
 " In weaving rooms and other places where 
 women are obliged to stand at their work, varicose 
 veins are more than commonly frequent and, nat- 
 
48 FEMINISM 
 
 urally enough, occur more frequently among the 
 married women." ^ 
 
 Earlier in life the damage has already appeared. 
 " The witness has lived in twenty factory towns and 
 has observed that young women who work in the 
 factories are many of them ruined in morals and 
 nearly all in health. A rosy-cheeked girl put in a 
 mill will begin to fade in three months." ^ A high 
 price, surely, to pay for initiation into industry. A 
 doctor testifies that, " Forty per cent, of married 
 women who have been factory or shop girls come 
 under medical attention for pelvic troubles under 
 thirty years of age." ^ Such penalties are rarely 
 escaped by the women who work as ninety-nine out 
 of every hundred women who seek '' economic in- 
 dependence " must work. 
 
 Few women workers are so well placed as those 
 who are gracefully styled lady compositors, yet as 
 to them, " Long hours of standing result in injuries 
 to the tissues of the legs and feet, often persisting 
 for years, occasioning much pain and in some cases 
 total disability." * Naturally such injuries culmi- 
 nate in early death and, " Statistics show that the 
 mortality of working women is higher than that of 
 working men and also higher than that of other 
 women not at work." ^ 
 
 1 " Fatigue and Efficiency," by Goldmark, p. 132. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 132. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 135. 
 * Ibid., pp. 141-2. 
 « Ibid., p. 28, 
 
MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY 49 
 
 Even If she do not marry, the woman cannot es- 
 cape the penalty of her sex when exposed to the 
 strains of industry. '' The unmarried as well as the 
 married woman is subject to the physical limitations 
 of her sex and each suffers alike from those inci- 
 dents of industrial work most detrimental to the fe- 
 male reproductive systems, such as overstrain from 
 excessive speed and complexity, prolonged standing 
 and the absence of a monthly day of rest." ^ 
 
 Employments that do not require constant stand- 
 ing and are quite " genteel " in character, yet bring 
 their own special harm to women workers. Uni- 
 versally girls are employed as operators at telephone 
 switch-boards. Smartly dressed, intelligent in fea- 
 ture, sifted and trained in special schools, better 
 paid than most girl workers, these telephone op- 
 erators, with '* the voice with a smile that wins," 
 to whose prompt " Number please? " we are all ac- 
 customed, are not usually brought to mind when the 
 distresses of female wage-working are considered. 
 Yet a Canadian royal commission aided by twenty- 
 eight physicians reported: "^ " In our opinion a day 
 of six working hours ... is quite long enough for 
 a woman to be engaged in this class of work if a 
 proper regard is to be had for the effect upon her 
 health." But the average hours of work in the 
 United States are eight and one-half per day and, 
 far from a six-hour day, a case of thirty-nine hours 
 
 ® Ibid., p. 40. 
 
 ^ Senate Document No. 380. 
 
50 FEMINISM 
 
 overtime in two weeks added to a regular nine-hour 
 day " is not an exceptional case. Many other girls 
 are working as long hours." Women in industry 
 must sacrifice themselves to the business. The busi- 
 ness will not sacrifice itself to them ; it will exact the 
 last ounce of strength. " It is safe to say that the 
 breaking point of the operator's health is not far 
 from the breaking point of efficient work," says the 
 report. 
 
 So it goes. In England, in Germany, in France, 
 in Canada, in the United States — wherever eyes 
 have been opened to look clearly on the effect of 
 wage-earning on woman's vigour and enjoyment of 
 life — the same dismal tale of sickness and prema- 
 ture death is told. Yet, with increasing frequency 
 girls in offices and stores and social work, the cleaner 
 and lighter occupations, tend to stay at work after 
 marriage, at least until handicapped by the coming 
 of a baby; in which case the woman does double 
 duty as provider and housekeeper. The young 
 couple start with light housekeeping in which John 
 is expected to help Mary by lighting the morning 
 fire, wiping the dishes and sharing in the heavy 
 furniture cleaning. Of this, in his masculine, self- 
 ish way, he presently tires. Always the tendency 
 is for more and more of the housework to fall ex- 
 clusively on the woman. She does it more handily, 
 it seems " natural like " for her to undertake it, 
 the bliss of love's young dream, so vivid during the 
 courtship, when he found his greatest delight in 
 
MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY 51 
 
 joining with her in any work that gave a chance for 
 a hand touch and a stolen kiss, begins to fade, and 
 presently the traditional functions of woman in the 
 home are added to her self-retained new function 
 of provider for the home. Theory fails against 
 age-long custom and natural fitness. Her hours at 
 the office are the same as his. Together they may 
 start off in the morning and return in the evening; 
 but before she goes she must get the breakfast and 
 plan the evening meal and when they return there is 
 the meal to be cooked, table to be laid, dishes to be 
 washed and dusting, cleaning and furnishing of 
 rooms to fill the evening. Unless she succeeds in 
 smothering all her feminine instincts she will be 
 more eager to make the rooms into a domestic nest 
 than she was to turn her single bachelor hall-bed- 
 room into an abiding place. So Mary works while 
 John reads the newspaper and smokes. Inevitably 
 she is overloaded. Marriage has brought him a 
 cosy place of his own in which to rest and refresh 
 \ himself after the day's fatigues; but she has found 
 an additional burden, lightened indeed by love and 
 the creation of a nest of her own — but yet of neces- 
 sity an additional drain on her vitality, an added pull 
 on her elasticity. 
 
 " But," the feminist will exclaim, '* why doesn't 
 she hire a woman to come in while she is away dur- 
 ing the day and clean up everything, lay the table 
 tor supper, have the lamps lighted and the curtains 
 r drawn against the mistress's return and everything 
 
52 FEMINISM 
 
 beautifully arranged so that Mary, like John, can 
 read the newspaper and smoke her cigarette the live- 
 long evening through?" For cogent reasons. 
 After Mary has paid out of her very moderate 
 salary for her carfare and her lunches, for the neat 
 shirtwaists and hats in the fashion which her situa- 
 tion demands, for her laundry and other expenses 
 incidental to her work, so little is left as her con- 
 tribution to the household for food, rent, light, in- 
 surance and saving that she does not see how she 
 can give some other woman $6.00 a week to do her 
 housekeeping for her, even if she can find a trust- 
 worthy, capable person who for a dollar a day will 
 not break and waste more than the worth of her 
 services. 
 
 No ! The feminist substitute for the wife's work 
 In the home — that some other woman shall do It — 
 presupposes an Income which the wife rarely earns. 
 
 But when the wife earns a salary of a thousand 
 dollars a year and over, should she not prefer to con- 
 tinue her earning and hire a servant to do her house- 
 work? " Surely that would be an economy," argues 
 the feminist. " For twenty-five dollars a month and 
 board (that Is, forty-five dollars a month gross) 
 she can get a nice, clean, handy, amiable, competent 
 person who will reHeve her of all but the highest, 
 the intellectual and artistic, parts of the housekeep- 
 ing and she will be free to earn her salary — a net 
 gain to the household of around five hundred dollars 
 a year. What folly for a teacher, a secretary, a 
 
MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY 53 
 
 so cLal worker, a forewoman, to abandon her career, 
 where she is making good as a human be ing* to sink j 
 down into the insignificance of a homemaking wife.'^ 
 
 At two places this scheme^^T hfe breaks" down. 
 First, the capable, handy, amiable, clean, trustworthy 
 substitute is a rarity, hard to find and harder to 
 keep. She also is dissatisfied with domestic work, 
 as eager as the feminist mistress to swing into the 
 rapid current of the world's life and handle more 
 of her own money. By supposition she is fit to be 
 left alone all day long without supervision, to clean 
 and cook and wash and purchase. She is honest and 
 able, far above the grade of the raw immigrant who 
 falls to the hard lot of the majority of mistresses, 
 and who must be trained and watched with a patience 
 and a skill that double her cost. So the wife dis- 
 covers shortly that her paragon, if she has had the 
 rare luck to find her in the first instance, demands 
 a fast rising wage, too much for her to spare, as the 
 price for staying contentedly in another woman's 
 house, acting as its mistress while enjoying no sense 
 of possession. The harassing servant problem has , 
 been added to the wife's burdens by marriage. 
 
 Second, the wife cannot escape the cares of super- 
 vision and some duties of dusting, decorating, buying 
 and sewing, even if she would; and usually she will 
 prefer to fill some of her spare time with these 
 womanly devices. She cannot behave like a guest 
 in her own house, never making a bed, cooking a 
 dish, arranging a table or placing a bit of bric-a-brac. 
 
54 FEMINISM 
 
 She finds that, willy-nilly, she also, while retaining 
 her day's work at her office, has added home duties 
 which make her end of the load that she and husband 
 are carrying the heavier. Her vitality is exhausted, 
 her strength undermined, her interest divided. 
 School superintendents have testified that the mar- 
 ried teacher comes more tardily to school and leaves 
 more eagerly on the minute of -dismissal than she did 
 before she married. 
 
 In the very exceptional cases of women of ex- 
 traordinary talent who, fitted in industry with the 
 exact work that suits them, are able to earn three 
 thousand dollars a year and more, enough may be 
 allotted to buy the services of the paragon house- 
 keeper and maids to work under her so that the mis- 
 tress can be spared any drain on her strength when 
 she returns from her lucrative day's work. 
 
 But, even then, other difficulties make this sys- 
 tem of going in double harness, wife and husband 
 pulling an equal share of the economic load, im- 
 practicable as a usual mode of life. Suppose either 
 man or woman, by the common exigencies of their 
 business, must remove to another city. What then 
 becomes of the double-harnessing? Which shall 
 control? Shall he go with her to enable her to es- 
 tablish herself afresh or she break her business con- 
 nections to stay with him? " Whither thou goest I 
 will go," has been the loving pledge of the wife in 
 the patriarchal family because the necessities of the 
 family compel the father to follow his business op- 
 
MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY s^ 
 
 portunlty wherever It leads. But when loyalty to 
 her career clashes with loyalty to her husband, which 
 shall then conquer? 
 
 I knew one lovely young feminist whose hopes 
 came to wreck on just this reef. She was an able 
 and enthusiastic labour agitator, hailing from Eng- 
 land, who found congenial and well-paid employment 
 In America. But before entering this sphere she 
 had shown the weakness to fall In love with an Eng- 
 lishman, whom. In the expectation that her career 
 need not be broken, she shortly afterwards married. 
 However, the husband, unable to discover suitable 
 employment In America, went to a good berth in 
 South Africa, explaining that, '' I didn't demand that 
 my wife should give up her career but I never had 
 any idea of giving up my own." With this geo- 
 graphical separation what arrangement could be 
 reached? Could two hearts on two separate con- 
 tinents continue to beat as one? Manlike and 
 Englishmanlike, he expected his wife to follow him. 
 At first she was recalcitrant, for she was saturated 
 with feminist theory, but after a few months of 
 dallying her husband offered her the alternative of 
 complete union or a complete rupture of communica- 
 tion. A famine of letters from him brought about 
 a crisis and she finally sacrificed her work to her mar- 
 riage vows. 
 
 To follow the feminist rule of life, a woman 
 preacher must confine her emotions to the men of the 
 township where her church stands. If Cupid smites 
 
S6 FEMINISM 
 
 her in some distant town she must leave her pulpit to 
 assuage the wound and a new pulpit in her lover's 
 neighbourhood it will be impossible in most cases to 
 find. A teacher may marry another teacher in the 
 same city and join salaries comfortably until one of 
 them finds promotion elsewhere. Then the wrench 
 comes. Even in the same big city, New York, for 
 instance, it is not feasible for him to teach at one 
 end of the city and her at the other end and both to 
 live in the centre; the geographical difficulties are 
 insuperable; the time required for transportation 
 and the double weariness of the travelling make the 
 cost too high. 
 
 All these mundane obstacles, however, are of 
 trifling importance compared with the peril of the 
 central assumption of this menage a deux, an assump- 
 tion most repugnant to Humanism: that there shall 
 be no early fruit of the marriage. Society's prevail- 
 ing arrangement is based on the opposite expectation. 
 Civil service rules and the rules of boards of edu- 
 cation, which require the resignation of a woman em- 
 ploye when she marries, are drafted on the assump- 
 tion that married couples will have babies and that 
 the first conception will occur, on the average, not 
 many months after marriage. But that assumption 
 is becoming old fashioned and obsolete. As is 
 demonstrated by the agitation against the retire- 
 ment of women teachers, doctors or civil servants 
 upon marriage and is verified by the West Australian 
 law that forbids any employer to dismiss or demote 
 
MARRIED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY 57 
 
 a woman upon her marriage, feminists resent the 
 impHcation that any physiological disability for the 
 full discharge of their business duties will follow 
 upon their marriage. And, In truth, as we have 
 shown in another chapter, the college and profes- 
 sional and business woman knows how to keep any 
 maternal longings under the strictest control and to 
 outwit Dame Nature's devices. 
 
 Feminism would supplant instinct by thrift and 
 strike out of the marriage service all reference to the 
 Biblical injunction to " be fruitful and multiply and 
 replenish the earth." It challenges society to alter 
 Its fundamental assumptions about the consequences 
 of marriage and to base industrial employment for 
 women on the presupposition that maternity. If not 
 entirely avoided, will at least be effectively regulated 
 by the law of economic Independence for women. 
 Society has been organised, hitherto, on the human- 
 ist assumption that the operation of instinctive Im- 
 pulse was so dependable and Its consequences so in- 
 evitable that the woman would, shortly after mar- 
 riage, be Incapacitated for strenuous outside activity 
 and should therefore, upon marriage, resign that 
 activity. 
 
 Feminism challenges society to revise that com- 
 mon expectation, and to recognise that mating need 
 not mean maternity and to rearrange the rules of 
 employment so as to approve and encourage the fem- 
 inist In her subordination of maternity to money- 
 making. 
 
V 
 
 58 FEMINISM 
 
 Not, however, that all feminists approve of com- 
 pletely sterile marriages. A child is necessary to the 
 woman, argue some, for her complete self-realisa- 
 tion; therefore, she must not permit even her eco- 
 nomic independence to sentence her to maternal ste- 
 rility. But neither must she permit the baby to sen- 
 tence her to economic dependence. She should not 
 resign her vocation on marriage because marriage 
 implies a baby, since, even with a baby, she will not 
 need to resign her vocation. That brings us to the 
 question of the mother in industry, which must next 
 be considered. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 
 
 For the mother who accepts support from her chil- 
 dren's father while she is bearing and rearing them, 
 Feminism has neither patience nor respect. She is 
 a " parasite," a " horse-leech's daughter crying, 
 * Give! Give! ' " '* This economic dependence of 
 the human female on her mate," it is declared, has 
 " modified her to sex to an excessive degree." ^ 
 Neither the woman who supports herself without 
 having children nor the woman who has children 
 without supporting herself is best aiding the woman's 
 movement, say young feminists, but the woman who 
 both supports herself and has a family. 
 
 In our glorious day, when machines do so much 
 and when, as Olive Schreiner has most fortunately 
 discovered, " in modern cities our carpets are beaten, 
 our windows cleaned, and our floors polished by ex- 
 tra domestic and often male labour," it is clear to 
 Feminism that women, even the wives of labourers, 
 who, as everybody knows, have their tenement flats 
 kept spotlessly clean for them, " by machinery or 
 extra-domestic and often male labour," commit a 
 crime against society when they refrain from earn- 
 ing wages and stay at home on the mediaeval plea 
 
 1" Woman and Economics," by Charlotte P. Gilman, p. 38. 
 
 59 
 
6o FEMINISM 
 
 that a few babies and an apartment fully occupy their 
 hands and brains. 
 
 An awful era of female parasitism threatens civi- 
 lisation, Olive Schreiner declares. " During the 
 next fifty years so rapid will be the spread of the 
 material conditions of civilisation that the ancient 
 forms of female, domestic, physical labour of even 
 the women of the poorest classes will be little re- 
 quired, their place being taken, not by other females, 
 but by always increasingly perfected labour-saving 
 machinery," so that " it would be entirely possible 
 for the female half of the race, whether as prosti- 
 tutes, as kept mistresses or as kept wives, to cease 
 from all forms of active toil." ^ 
 
 '' Kept wives " are classed with " prostitutes and 
 kept mistresses," for it is self-evidently absurd that 
 " we justify and approve the economic dependence 
 of women upon the sex relation in marriage while we 
 condemn it unsparingly out of marriage." ^ 
 
 How ridiculous that the trifling factor of marriage 
 should make so enormous a difference to our opinion 
 of " the economic dependence of women upon the 
 sex relation " ! The Madonna with her children 
 clinging around her knees merits no more reverence, 
 indeed, than the sinning Magdalen, unless she en- 
 noble her motherhood by toiling in field or factory 
 for the support of her offspring! ! 
 
 Not that the curse of parasitism will overtake 
 
 2 "Woman and Labor," p. 115. 
 
 3 " Woman and Economics," p. 97. 
 
THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 6i 
 
 woman through her refusing altogether the burden 
 of child bearing. " One of the Incomplete emanci- 
 pations will assuredly be from the thraldom of child 
 bearing, which I do not suppose she will abandon," 
 says another feminist champion. " Increasingly 
 perfected labour-saving machinery " has not yet been 
 devised to save woman's child labour; and we are 
 reassured when we read that " I think that we may 
 safely assume that the majority of women con- 
 \ sclously or unconsciously desire to have children, 
 much more so than to practise an art." ^ Though 
 the feminist advocate Is not positive of the continu- 
 ance of the maternal Instinct In human beings (an un- 
 certainty perhaps justified by the few marriages and 
 fewer children among women college graduates), 
 yet It Is comforting to know that even the stout fem- 
 inist will admit that fifty-one out of one hundred 
 women, a '* majority " desire to have children even If 
 V " unconsciously," so that, not being aware of It, they 
 may direct their lives without regard to It. 
 
 But bearing children Is no excuse for welcoming 
 '' parasitism." The mother should resent the In- 
 dignity of dependence on husband, for *' this eco- 
 nomic use of sex Is the real cancer at the very root 
 of the sexual relationship." " It Is but a step fur- 
 ther and a perfectly logical one that leads to pros- 
 Istitutlon ! " ^ In Egypt, It appears. In the halq^on 
 ' days of woman rule, " woman's position and liberty 
 
 * " Woman and To-morrow," by A. L. George, p. lOO. 
 5 "The Truth about Woman," p. 215. 
 
62 FEMINISM 
 
 of action was In no way dependent on her power of 
 sex fascination and not even directly dependent on 
 her position as mother, and this really explains the 
 happy working of their domestic relationships." ^ 
 So long as a mother is dependent upon her husband 
 for support, claims Feminism, she cannot be a free 
 human being, as exalted In dignity, as elevated In 
 worth as the man, and a bar is placed to " the happy 
 working of their domestic relationships." 
 
 But there Is a cleavage of opinion as to the best 
 scheme for dispensing with the husband's support. 
 One section of Feminism smiles approvingly on all 
 proposals for the state endowment of motherhood, 
 the payment by the community to the mother direct 
 of weekly sums sufficient to support her and her chil- 
 dren during their time of tutelage, as a public recog- 
 nition that child bearing Is a communal service, not a 
 private luxury, which, being essential to the con- 
 tinuance of the nation, should be equally rewarded 
 with the service of the soldier In the defence of the 
 nation. Mr. H. G. Wells would even abrogate the 
 private family altogether. Socialism is the state 
 family, he contends, and " the old family of thcx 
 private Individual must vanish before It, just as the 
 old waterworks of private enterprise or the old gas 
 company. They are incompatible with It." 
 
 This cure for mother's parasitism, however. Is re- 
 pugnant to those feminists who exult in all woman's 
 
 6 "Truth about Woman," p. 216. 
 
THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 6^ 
 
 industrial activity, because it implies payment for sex 
 functions and " women are not salaried as mothers 
 and it would be unspeakably degrading if they 
 were." "^ Also and mainly, child bearing and child 
 rearing, to the feminists, is only an episode in wom- 
 an's life which may be passed through smoothly and 
 lightheartedly without serious interruption of her 
 business and professional duties. 
 
 They protest stridently against " the economically 
 unsound, unjust and racially dangerous tendency in 
 many salaried professions to enforce upon woman 
 resignation on marriage." They deplore the fact 
 that some women doctors retire from practice at 
 marriage, and they consider it is " much more de- 
 sirable from the point of view of medical women as 
 a whole for them to continue their work." This 
 course is practicable and safe, although " while bear- 
 ing a child such a doctor will need to retire from 
 practice for at least two or three months, probably 
 longer." ^ For at least two or three months the de- 
 light of amputating limbs must be abandoned by the 
 female medico for the mere matter of creating a 
 human being! 
 
 And this glad day of mother's emancipation from 
 father's support is fast approaching. The president 
 of Bryn Mawr College predicts composedly that 
 
 ''"Woman and Economics/' p. 17. 
 
 8 " Women Workers in Seven Professions," edited by Edith J. 
 Morley, p. i6a. 
 
64 FEMINISM 
 
 *' in the immediate future all dowerless women who 
 wish to marry men without inherited fortunes or ex- 
 traordinary money-making capacity must work for 
 their own and their children's daily bread." ^ 
 
 This doctrine puts Feminism in close alliance with 
 machine industry, where '' the field of employment 
 constantly widens in which wives are expected to 
 earn wages, as in tobacco factories, laundries, cigar- 
 making, the garment trades and the textiles. In- 
 dustry now counts upon having not only men and 
 girls but married women as well. Girls marry with 
 the knowledge that as wives they will have to work 
 for wages and accept it as the will of God, or the 
 curse of nature, when in their families babies die." ^^ 
 
 Indeed, though ignorant of feministic teachings, 
 thousands of mothers throughout the civilised world 
 are wage-earning in factory and mill and field and 
 store, utterly unaware how much their self-abnega- 
 tion has raised their dignity and improved the status 
 of womankind! 
 
 On the contrary, with a perversity which perplexes 
 the feminist, the genuine working mother, in the 
 overwhelming proportion of cases, regards her 
 " economic independence " as a curse to herself, to 
 her children and to the community, and Is eager to 
 escape it. 
 
 Of its deleterious effects on her and her offspring, 
 
 8 " A New-fashioned Argument for Woman Suffrage," published 
 by National Woman Suffrage Association. 
 10 "Modern Industry," by Florence Kelly, p. 15. 
 
THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 6s 
 
 the evidence is appalling, and to Humanism perfectly 
 convincing. 
 
 Dr. George Reid, the county medical officer of 
 Staffordshire, England, made an investigation of the 
 early life history of 4275 infants born in that county 
 in 6 pottery towns in 1908. He found that in the 
 first year, out of every 1000 births, among those 
 whose mothers stayed at home, 146 died, and among 
 those whose mothers were working in factories or 
 were from home during the day 209 died. There 
 . was an extra death toll, then, of 63 per thousand due 
 ^ to the mother's " economic independence." 
 
 Dr. John Robertson, medical officer of health in 
 Birmingham, England, found in a district inhabited 
 by very poor, unskilled labourers, that among the 
 mothers employed before confinement 52 out of 
 V 1000 births were premature, and among mothers not 
 ^ employed before confinement 38 out of 1000 were 
 premature — a direct sacrifice of 14 nascent lives out 
 of every thousand to the Moloch of " economic in- 
 dependence." He testifies further that " a larger 
 percentage of infants of mothers not employed than 
 of those of mothers employed were at the end of 
 twelve months in good health." " In the special 
 area under review there seems to be no doubt about 
 the prejudicial influence of employment of preg- 
 nant and nursing mothers in factories, both on their 
 Infants and on themselves." 
 
 This can cause no astonishment to the informed, 
 for another investigator, Mr. George Cadbury, wit- 
 
66 FEMINISM 
 
 nesses that " inspection of the homes of women who 
 have to be at factories all day clearly indicates that 
 the removal of the mother gives rise to many con- 
 ditions of dirtiness or irregular or bad nourishment 
 of infants which must obviously be prejudicial." 
 
 This neglect is inevitably injurious, also, to the 
 father, and Mr. Cadbury's investigations in Birming- 
 ham showed that the proportion of sober and steady 
 men was nearly twice as great in families where 
 wives do not work as in homes where wives do 
 work, and the evidence indicated not that the 
 mothers went to work because the fathers drank, but 
 that the fathers drank because of the comfortless 
 homes when the mothers went to work. 
 
 Dr. Hamilton writes: " A poorer way of living 
 with the mother at home causes fewer deaths among 
 infants than better living with the mother working 
 out," ^^ a statement which was picturesquely verified 
 during the siege of Paris in 1871, when, despite the 
 famine and the misery, the death rate of Infants fell 
 40 per cent, because the mothers could not leave 
 them to go out to work. Lancashire had a similar 
 experience during the cotton famine. 
 
 In consequence of the fact that, while there had 
 been a steady decline in the general mortality of 
 Preston, England, during the past thirty years, the 
 infant mortality has shown an increase, a subcom- 
 mittee was appointed to inquire into the causes 
 ( 1902) , and submitted the conclusion that: 
 
 11 Charities and the Commons, September, 1908. 
 
V 
 
 THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 67 
 
 " First among these causes is the employment of 
 female labour in mills " ; 
 
 " In general it may be said that It Is the employ- 
 ment of women from girlhood all through married 
 life and during the period of child bearing, the con- 
 tinual stress and strain of the work and hours and 
 the general conditions prevailing in woman's labour, 
 that is exerting its baleful Influence on the individual 
 and on the home." ^^ 
 
 " It Is singular," writes Mr. Thomas M. Dolan, 
 " how unanimous all medical officers of health are 
 in assigning the employment of women in factories 
 as a cause of infant mortality." 
 
 Germany adds her weight to the testimony. 
 
 In regard to the injurious effect of factory work, 
 the factory inspector of Wiirtemberg writes : " The 
 children of such mothers — according to the unani- 
 mous testimony of nurses, physicians and others who 
 were Interrogated on this important subject — are 
 mostly pale and weakly; when these In turn must en- 
 ter upon factory work immediately upon leaving the 
 school. It is impossible for a sound, sturdy, enduring 
 race to develop." ^^ 
 
 Dr. Max HIrsch relates that ** a very considerable 
 number of reports indicate as a cause of the exces- 
 sive mortality of suckling infants, besides insufficient 
 nourishment, the Insufficient care given to them, since 
 the mother Is prevented by work at the factory from 
 
 12 *< Ii>fant Mortality," by George Newman, M.D., p. 131. 
 13 " Reports of German Factory Inspectors, Berlin, 1905." 
 
68 FEMINISM 
 
 devoting herself sufficiently to her children when 
 they are in good health and even when they are 
 sick." 1^ 
 
 Dr. George Adler of the University of Freiburg 
 testifies that: "The worst physiological effects of 
 factory work for women were shown by the in- 
 creased number of still births " — half as many more 
 in the district of Miihlhausen as in the neighbouring 
 country regions. 
 
 From America equally full testimony is not obtain- 
 able, because vital statistics are not so accurately 
 kept and scientific investigations on this matter have 
 not been so thorough. But in America also " in 
 cities where a large proportion of the women are 
 industrially employed a high rate of infant mortality 
 is almost always found." ^^ Though, in America, 
 the percentage of working women who are married 
 is only 15.5 as against 29.7 in Germany, 41.4 in 
 Austria, and 52.2 in France. ^^ 
 
 Of an investigation by the Federal Children's 
 Bureau into the infant mortality in Johnstown, Penn- 
 sylvania, in 191 1, Miss JuHa C. Lathrop, the direc- 
 tor, writes: " Where mothers were forced to work 
 in order to supplement the husband's income the 
 mortality rate for their babies was 188 as against 
 1 17.6 in the families where the mother was not 
 
 1* " Prohibition of Night Work for Women," p. 27. 
 
 15 Mr. Chas. H. Verrill, United States Bureau of Labor, at In- 
 ternational Congress on Hygiene, 1912. 
 
 16 Dr. Friederich Zahn of Munich, at International Congress on 
 Hygiene, 1912. 
 
THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 69 
 
 forced to work directly before or after the birth of 
 her child." " It was also found that in the matter 
 of feeding, artificially-fed babies died at an appall- 
 ing greater rate than breast-fed babies." And when 
 the mother is also a wage earner, artificial feeding is 
 a necessity. Thus the mother's wage earning means 
 death to the baby. 
 
 Incontrovertible evidence of like character could 
 be offered, in overwhelming quantity, to prove that, 
 in real life, the results of the struggle for economic 
 independence by women is the black opposite to the 
 forecasts in the golden dreams of Feminism. 
 
 Confronted with this mass of evidence of the sac- 
 rifice of infants, the mutilation of mothers and the 
 wreck of homes wrought by the industrial employ- 
 ment of mothers. Feminism begins to protest that 
 this hideous outcome, though it accompanies the 
 mother's wage earning, Is a consequence, not of her 
 toil, but of her poverty, ignorance and environment. 
 
 Doubtless these factors affect the appalling result, 
 as is claimed in the report of the United States 
 Bureau of Labour upon a very limited Inquiry into 
 the effects of the employment of mothers in the mills 
 of Fall River. An enlightened mother, well trained 
 and prosperous, whose home was happy and healthy, 
 would keep her baby In health even though she went 
 to the factory herself, better than another mother 
 who, stupid, half starved and wretched, sat dully by 
 the cradle, doping her baby with narcotics. But, all 
 other conditions being the same, of two mothers, she 
 
70 FEMINISM 
 
 who suckled her infant at her breast and hourly at- 
 tended to its every want in her home would, self- 
 evidently, keep burning its fitful flame of life more 
 securely than she who left it daily for ten hours to 
 a nursing bottle and a casual hired attendant. 
 
 Misery and ignorance, bad housing and insanitary 
 habits, are all allied with mother's industrial occupa- 
 tion in the destructive battle against the babies and 
 their homes. All are growths from the same evil 
 root — the insufficiency of the father's wages to sus- 
 tain his home in reasonable comfort. Not the in- 
 dustrial enslavement of mother but the adequate re- 
 muneration of father is the remedy to be sought, says 
 Humanism. 
 
 Further, the varicose veins, the killing fatigue, the 
 strain on the reproductive organs and the drained 
 vitality that afflict the mother herself are directly 
 caused by her employment, irrespective of her own 
 penury and illiteracy. An intelligent and well-to-do 
 woman will not suffer these ills, because an Intelligent 
 and well-to-do woman will not subject herself to 
 the evil conditions. A very brief experience will 
 convince her that, whether or not mother's place is 
 \ in the home, mother's place is not in the factory. 
 
 Driven back by the mass of the facts, Feminism 
 has only one manoeuvre left. " We admit," they 
 say, *' that as conditions now obtain they are a dis- 
 grace to civilisation, a peril to womankind and a 
 menace to the race. But they are injurious also to 
 men. In the Interest of both sexes we «hall amend 
 
THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 71 
 
 factory acts, improve wages, shorten hours and make 
 all work places sanitary, so that ill health, pain, 
 sterility and infanticide will no longer, In the wom- 
 an's paradise, be the toll exacted for woman's eco- 
 nomic Independence." 
 
 Although the most revolting consequences of 
 woman's toil In the sweated Industries and under the 
 vilest circumstances of overwork and underpay, 
 should be mitigated by legislation and public opin- 
 ion. Humanism recognises that woman's conditions 
 in industry can never be equalised with man's. Al- 
 ways man can stand in front of the machine for long 
 hours daily without injury to himself or influence on 
 his progeny, and always the effect of the same work 
 on woman's reproductive organs will be torturing to 
 her and murderous to her Infants. Always wom- 
 an's lesser muscular strength and greater natural 
 need for quiet and retirement, especially at certain 
 periods each month, must place her at a disadvantage 
 in comparison with man. Always nature's unremit- 
 ting, urgent call to woman to obey the racial sum- 
 mons will break up women's ranks, shatter their 
 solidarity In Industry and render them less able than 
 men to combine, permanently, for mutual defence. 
 Always the rigour of machine work, which must be 
 done with the regularity and persistence of clock 
 work, will be less suitable for woman than work in 
 the home and by hand, which may be done irregu- 
 larly as her capacity dictates. 
 
 Especially, and above all else, always will the 
 
72 FEMINISM 
 
 pains and exhaustions and anxiety of pregnancy and 
 child bearing and baby tending vitally handicap 
 mothers In Industry and push them down to the bot- 
 tom of the Industrial pit. To-day, observers find 
 that only the most Ul-pald, precarious and arduous 
 tasks are open to those widows and mothers who 
 must labour or starve. They must accept whatever 
 offers that Is near enough to their homes to allow 
 them to give some care, scant though It may be, to 
 their children; and the work must be of a sort that 
 can be done without special preparation or skill, and 
 dropped periodically as domestic exigencies dictate. 
 So disagreeable, unhealthy or exhausting tasks at 
 pitifully small wages fall to their lot. The man In 
 their class who Is eager for a permanent position, 
 may wander afar after It. He may rise through ac- 
 quiring skill by practice and through long service; 
 but the women have no such opportunity. The im- 
 perative conditions of their life forbid them to rise 
 in Industry. Never can they be prosperous, happy, 
 contented and healthy In Industry. As well try to 
 suit the northern winter climate to orange trees by 
 burning stoves in the fields as try to adjust the in- 
 dustrial climate to women by enacting factory laws. 
 
 With notable inconsistency those who at one time 
 exalt the value of child bearing as giving an equal 
 claim with the soldiers to a share In government, at 
 another time belittle Its Importance and deny that It 
 justifies Immunity from wage labour. 
 
 Ladles with a feminist mission write of a possible 
 
\ 
 
 THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 73 
 
 withdrawal of the woman for two or three months 
 from professional tasks while she Is passing down 
 the valley to the gates of death, there to snatch a 
 fresh life and bring it to earth. They shut their 
 eyes to the exhaustions of pregnancy, to the exacting 
 details of Infant care, to the eternal vigilance which 
 Is the price of maternity. 
 
 Even professional work, the lightest and most 
 alluring open to women, Is Incompatible with child 
 bearing and child training. To suckle a baby for 
 two and a half hours during the day, and to wake at 
 two and at six during the night to repeat the service, 
 does not make for keen mental efficiency during the 
 following day. Peaceful sleep, between times. Is not 
 certain; for the best-regulated baby will have Its 
 screaming fits at times and be troubled with teething 
 and minor Ills. Feminists plead that their wider 
 experiences will make them fitter mothers and en- 
 able them " to be a greater joy and pleasure " to 
 their children. But the well-brought-up child would 
 be In bed by the time the professional mother reaches 
 home. Child rearing Is so high and valuable a thing 
 that to put It on a level with ribbon selling or legal . 
 pleading Is a degradation. Child rearing is thep>^ 
 noblest work an Intellectual woman can do. A child ' 
 can be as much an expression of a woman's person- 
 ality as any scientific discovery or work of art, and 
 It exacts as great devotion as science or art. 
 
 How long shall the remitting care of the con- 
 scientious mother endure? One year, two years, 
 
74 FEMINISM 
 
 three years? Six years? With no woman to help 
 her (and only one household in ten can afford even 
 one servant) how soon will the baby be so far self- 
 caring as to make it safe for mother to desert it daily 
 for ten hours? In these merciful days, when em- 
 ployers are forbidden under penalties to work 
 women more than eight to ten hours a day, Human- 
 ism sees that it would not put women on an equality 
 with men to arrange that, so soon as baby leaves 
 them free for a few hours out of the twenty-four, 
 they shall take up other wearing duties. Mother 
 also is entitled to some rest and change. She must 
 not be treated as a criminal sentenced to hard la- 
 bour. Since, as Feminism admits, she is a human 
 being, she must be worked humanely. So the tyr- 
 anny of baby, endured gladly for love, must not be 
 supplemented, at the moment it begins to moderate, 
 by the tyranny of the machine or of Mammon. Al- 
 together even one baby Is a creative work that ab- 
 sorbs more vital force and utilises more executive 
 skill than a third-rate novel or a pettifogging law 
 practice. It would be cruel to demand that the 
 mother add to that creative task the routine drudg- 
 ery of office or factory. 
 
 A minimum of three babies, and probably four, 
 on the average, to every strong, fertile woman is 
 essential to keep the nation at its present strength 
 and to provide for slow, natural increase, and the 
 woman capable of contributing three children to the 
 nation does not atone for her neglect to reproduce by 
 
THE MOTHER IN INDUSTRY 75 
 
 making the pile of material goods a trifle higher. 
 To bear and give home training to three children 
 will employ a woman fully and strenuously for fif- 
 teen to twenty years. From the first pregnancy un- 
 til the youngest is fourteen, allowing two years be- 
 tween consecutive births, nearly nineteen strenuous 
 years will pass, a full average working lifetime. If 
 the mother married at twenty-three to twenty-five 
 she will be forty to forty-five when the youngest of 
 her little brood Is ready for high school; and in a 
 wise family, In comfortable circumstances, the 
 mother will, for some years longer, be the valued 
 counsellor, friend and guide of her adolescent young. 
 If she has done her work conscientiously and skil- 
 fully, she has displayed stores of patience, tact, 
 knowledge and resourcefulness that few lawyers or 
 , business men exhibit. Her own personality has been 
 developed to its utmost capacity, her body has been 
 rigorously trained, her mind kept alert, her char- 
 acter . purified. And her contribution to the real 
 wealth of the land has been Immeasurably greater 
 than the contribution of a woman doctor or a school- 
 marm, a female attorney or a forewoman. She has 
 made the wealth to which all other wealth is subor- 
 dinate, for which all other wealth Is created. For 
 the only ultimate justification of all material things 
 Is that they contribute to the maintenance of 
 " healthy, happy, bright-eyed human beings." 
 Without women to create In travail those human 
 beings, the rich store of goods that pours from fac- 
 
76 FEMINISM 
 
 tory and shop and is loaded on ship and wharf, 
 would be as fantastic a mockery as the Epicurean 
 feast offered on his last night of life to the con- 
 demned murderer in his cell. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 woman's work in the autumn of life 
 
 There remains for consideration woman's industrial 
 position in the last period of her life. This problem 
 does not concern wage-earning women, those who 
 have never kept a servant, and who have toiled wear- 
 ily for bare self-support. For them this period is 
 never reached or is pathetically short. Exhausted 
 by the double burden of money earning and child 
 bearing, they die early, for " statistics show that the 
 mortality of working women is higher than that of 
 working men and also higher than that of other 
 women not at work." ^ 
 
 Those mothers in wage earners' homes whose lot 
 has been lighter and happier, because they have not 
 been driven to support themselves or their children, 
 are yet usually sucked empty of energy by the time 
 the children are off their hands. They crave rest 
 and peace, not fresh labour and strife. The allure- 
 ments of " economic independence " have no attrac- 
 tion for them. They have no dread of " parasit- 
 ism." A cosy corner by the fireplace in the house 
 of a married child and a chance to enjoy the prattle 
 and baby tricks of their grandchildren is all they 
 ask. For them but a short span remains before the 
 
 1" Fatigue and Efficiency," by Goldmark, p. 23. 
 
 17 
 
78 FEMINISM 
 
 sun of their life will sink, and neither woman suf- 
 frage nor industrial Feminism stirs their interest. 
 They only know, without a flicker of doubt, that 
 the days of their life in the home were crowded full 
 of work and joy, that hfe without their children, 
 despite all they cost, would have been blank and flat 
 and meaningless, and that now, their life's task 
 ended and their loved ones safely settled, they are 
 ready at any time to obey the last summons and to 
 chant: "Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant de- 
 part in peace." 
 
 A small proportion of women, less than one m 
 ten, have led easy, quiet lives, with servants always 
 in their homes, with small families to absorb their 
 vitality, with the most expert medical care during 
 every sickness and with doting husbands who have 
 sheltered them from the world's roughest blasts. 
 These women populate women's clubs. They con- 
 stitute the leisured class of America. 
 
 A convention of women's clubs Is noticeably grey 
 haired. It Is composed In chief part of women of 
 fifty and upwards. They have safely weathered 
 their physiological climax, their children are grown 
 up, their household Is well organised and almost au- 
 tomatic, and they overflow with superfluous energy. 
 In the main, their husbands have prospered and serv- 
 ants stand ready to cook and scrub and wash and 
 dust In their houses. They are capable, experienced, 
 energetic, and their obligatory duties do not nearly 
 
IN THE AUTUMN OF LIFE 79 
 
 exhaust their strength. They reach out for fresh 
 worlds to conquer. 
 
 The arguments we have unfolded on previous 
 pages as to women in industry do not fit these robust 
 mothers in the autumn of life. They are not justi- 
 fying their seat at the banquet of life any longer by 
 child training and not fully by homemaking. How 
 shall they occupy their time ? 
 
 The proportion of such women in the population 
 increases as civilisation progresses, and the span of 
 life extends. Their presence is a token of improv- 
 ing conditions. As the art of life is better prac- 
 tised they will multiply. So the problem of their 
 lives is a problem of increasing importance. 
 
 Such of them as were earlier trained for medicine 
 or teaching may again find openings where their wid- 
 ened outlook on life, their garnered experience, will 
 be valued. Especially in women's colleges should 
 they find a place. No woman should be eligible for 
 president of a woman's college unless, by training 
 several children of her own, she has passed through 
 the enriching career which would qualify her wisely 
 to influence younger women just when they are gaz- 
 ing with eyes of wonder into the land of Romance. 
 If it became the common custom for women who 
 had been trained at the expense of the State as teach- 
 ers themselves to teach their own children they could 
 readily return to teaching other people's children in 
 the autumn of life. 
 
8o FEMINISM 
 
 But industry does not engage grey hairs; Industry 
 dismisses grey hairs. So for most retired mothers 
 salaried opportunities will not open. But they can 
 furnish In the national life an altruistic, refining ele- 
 ment. In their homes they have created use values, 
 not negotiable in bank or stock exchange, created in 
 love, offered without price. Now they can display 
 the same spirit in a wider field. Service for pay is 
 not the noblest service. America needs a strong 
 corps of voluntary workers whose effort will not be 
 measured by the check they receive at the month's 
 end. The sordldness of industry may be relieved by 
 the spontaneous gifts to the community of its aging 
 matrons. 
 
 The ripened woman has full opportunity, if she 
 will but grasp it, to contribute to the nation's wel- 
 fare. Upon her may well fall and largely does fall 
 the work of church, charitable society, civic associa- 
 tion and temperance league. So long as there Is a 
 mother overwrought and sorrowing, or a child yearn- 
 ing to be mothered, these released women, pen- 
 sioners from the home, have a social service at hand. 
 By private visiting and public activity they can put 
 their leisure and their talents to the increase of the 
 common good. Themselves on the retired list of 
 the home army, they can yet volunteer for short time 
 fighting abroad. 
 
 For the self-culture of these matrons the universi- 
 ties, in an era of Humanism, would make special pro- 
 vision. They are the real leisured class, who are in 
 
IN THE AUTUMN OF LIFE 8i 
 
 the strategic position for valuing literature, science 
 and art for their own sake. Short courses, such as 
 Wisconsin and other universities already provide, 
 should be adapted to their needs, that, as the forest 
 in autumn glows with Its brightest colours, so their 
 autumnal minds may glow afresh In the sunlight of 
 new learning. 
 
 None of the 111 results of the higher education of 
 adolescent girls can overtake such mature students. 
 They are the finest postgraduates, graduated from 
 the home, prepared to sip at leisure the sweets of 
 study In academic shades. For ten to twenty years 
 they may read and think and converse, they may set 
 the tone of society, create salons In which the art 
 of conversation may be revived, encourage pains- 
 taking art, appreciate progressive drama and offer a 
 constituency for the choicest writers. It Is their 
 privilege to save American life from the blight of 
 materialism. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 woman's economic value in the home 
 
 That woman In the home does not earn her salt is 
 the grotesque charge made against her by Feminism, 
 a charge which is the outcome of the widespread de- 
 lusion that the few, very few women, whose houses 
 are run by servants, comprise the bulk of American 
 womanhood. As to the nine-tenths with no serv- 
 ant, not even a greenhorn immigrant, and as to the 
 larger part of the remaining tenth, those with one un- 
 trained, exasperating, unreliable " helper," the 
 charge is ludicrous. 
 
 Apart even from woman's supreme contribution, 
 the children of the nation, her economic contribution 
 in the home is as valuable as man's contribution out- 
 side. She has no reason to hang her head in shame. 
 
 Her contributions fall mainly in two classes, ( i ) 
 as purchasing agent or consumer, and (2) as creator 
 of use values. 
 
 I 
 
 As purchasing agent for the home, woman con- 
 trols most production and deeply Influences the na- 
 tional industrial life. The consumer is master of 
 the producer. Only what the consumer approves 
 can the producer continue to produce. 
 
 Hitherto, In America, the most skilful and vlgor- 
 
 82 
 
WOMAN'S ECONOMIC VALUE 83 
 
 ous efforts have been directed to production. Sub- 
 duing the wilderness, and making a continent habit- 
 able, was a huge business and has absorbed the na- 
 tion's best energy. Making corn grow where before 
 wild grasses waved, establishing mills, shops and 
 cities where the prairie wolf had roamed, linking the 
 oceans together and grid-ironing the States with steel 
 highways - — all were essential, stimulating, tremen- 
 dous tasks, demanding the nation's best strength. 
 Comparatively little attention has been given to the 
 problems of equitable distribution; while to the prob- 
 lems of consumption, of the utilisation in the most 
 efficient way for promoting human well-being of all 
 the stores of goods turned out, has been given almost 
 no scientific consideration. 
 
 Of this section of the economic life women are 
 mainly in charge because they are the family buying 
 agents. To them are addressed the pages of illus- 
 trated and seductive advertising, which sustain our 
 many, magazines. Upon their discernment, judg- 
 ment and good sense depends the rational application 
 of most of the masculine productive energies. 
 Should women condemn breakfast foods for their 
 costliness or low nutritive value, then Battle Creek 
 would languish. When women substitute fish for 
 meat on the family menus, the Chicago beef barons 
 are humbled. By an improvement in women's taste 
 some furniture houses are driven into bankruptcy 
 and artistic craftsmen made prosperous. If they af- 
 fect " Oriental " rugs, Hoboken factories are flush 
 
84 FEMINISM 
 
 with orders and Philadelphia carpet mills run on 
 short time. When women wear hobble skirts and 
 -^ skimpy blouses silk houses face ruin. 
 y Woman's preferences, then, potently affect the na- 
 tional output of goods. Her expertness as purchas- 
 ing agent for the homes of the land touches the na- 
 tional well-being as closely as the expertness of the 
 producers. To do her job properly she must be 
 variously equipped; she must know something of 
 science, of art, of commerce, of history, of law. 
 Consider her duty with respect to the simple essen- 
 tials, food, clothing and housing: 
 
 (a) Food. A good housewife, seeing that she no 
 longer bakes her bread or prepares her own pickles 
 and preserves, must be alert daily to save her clients 
 from adulterated foods and drinks. She must 
 keep abreast of the literature on pure foods, an open 
 eye for the announcement of state departments of 
 ^food inspection. For her cakes and pies she must 
 purchase flour, not the best advertised and most ex- 
 pensive, but the most nutritious at the price. Her 
 verdict will settle whether the essential elements of 
 the bran shall reach her children's stomach or be 
 sifted and bleached out of the flour to suit the con- 
 i venlence of retailers. She must determine by ex- 
 I periment and by Inquiry which canned goods are 
 wholesome, what brands of tongue and ham and 
 chicken are untrustworthy. Of the thousand and 
 one articles that come into her home, she must know 
 the properties and be able to detect the cheaper, un- 
 
WOMAN'S ECONOMIC VALUE 85 
 
 wholesome substitutes. She must know the fair 
 market prices, visit the stores personally, compare 
 and estimate, figure and judge. With an amount 
 to spend often too little for her family's full needs, 
 her care and prevision and knowledge must make 
 a dollar furnish a dollar's worth of sustenance, or 
 her charges will not be well nourished. So every 
 dime should be expended as carefully as the business 
 man makes his bigger contracts. 
 
 Women higher In the social scale, with more to 
 spend, must show as much zeal and Ingenuity in pro- 
 ducing more elaborate results, with menus carefully 
 concocted, table service artistically devised and di- 
 gestion scientifically safeguarded. 
 
 (b) Clothing. In clothing herself and children 
 on the average man's earnings the average woman 
 needs as much knowledge, patience, cleverness and 
 experience as her helpmeet. Some knowledge of 
 fabrics, a discerning acquaintance with fashions, 
 foresight to seize bargains, judgment to distinguish 
 the real bargain from the sham and skill to fashion 
 last year's raiment into next month's styles, can all 
 be utilised by the mother In the home. If she buys 
 cotton goods lavishly southern planters rejoice; if 
 she prefer shoddy to wool, honest cloth weavers 
 languish. If she encourage American styles. New 
 York may supplant Paris as the birth-place of fash- 
 ion; If she be extravagant and love the bizarre in 
 costume, foreign cities may thrive on American fol- 
 lies. 
 
86 FEMINISM 
 
 (c) In the selection of a home and its furnish- 
 ings and in the type of surroundings she prefers, 
 y^ the American woman fixes the mould of our civili- 
 sation. If she prefer cramped and huddled apart- 
 ment or tenement to airy and spacious suburban 
 home, then cities grow ever more monstrous and 
 the national life more hurried and nervous. Her 
 taste tells in house architecture and the colour 
 schemes of living-rooms. Her demand determines 
 whether open plumbing and ample closets, abundant 
 bathrooms and wide windows, shall make domestic 
 life more healthy, clean, comfortable and refined for 
 the average family to-day than it was for the noble 
 two centuries ago. 
 
 Few women are able to perform all these multi- 
 farious and complicated duties as purchasing agents 
 and choosers for the family with complete efficiency, 
 as few men are competent to farm or manufacture 
 or even operate one machine with complete effi- 
 
 ^ ciency. Woman has shared the national indif- 
 ference to efficient consumption. Only a few moral- 
 ists have inquired how best to apply income to the 
 purchase of physical and mental development and 
 
 well-being. Thoreau and Whitman have few imi- 
 tators. Prodigious production and reckless con- 
 
 \ sumption has been the national plan. French thrift 
 and German household skill are alien to native 
 American traditions. 
 
 But the comparative neglect of wise consump- 
 tion in the past is a poor excuse for abandoning it 
 
WOMAN'S ECONOMIC VALUE 87 
 
 altogether in the future by withdrawing woman from 
 the superintendence of consumption, as Feminism 
 proposes, to hurl her also into the fevered struggle 
 for greater production. 
 
 II 
 
 In the home woman produces use values. In the 
 world man produces exchange values. For ex- 
 change values our civilisation has exaggerated re- 
 spect because it has over-reverence for the dollar 
 standard. But the woman's use values, created and 
 consumed in the home, have a real value as high 
 as if they were exchanged for cash. And for large 
 part of them no cash could pay. 
 
 A trained nurse, paid twenty-five dollars a week, 
 appreciates that her labour has an exchange value, 
 and her services are reckoned by statisticians among 
 the national wealth. But the mother who nurses 
 her baby back to health or pulls her husband through 
 an attack of grippe, though she is paid no fee, has 
 created a use value just as promotive of well-being, 
 as much real wealth as the paid nurse. And every 
 day the women in homes are creating use values 
 which, if expressed in money terms like exchange 
 values, would be measured by many millions of dol- 
 lars. What is the worth of their services in get- 
 ting ready the nation's children for school, in 
 binding up all their little hurts, in comforting their 
 hearts lacerated with their small but so serious woes, 
 in cooking and serving their dinners and suppers, 
 
88 FEMINISM 
 
 In mending and patching their torn garments and in 
 tucking them cosily away to bed. These countless, 
 invaluable, indispensable services are rendered with- 
 out money and without price, but who shall calcu- 
 late their worth? What if they be not counted in 
 the statistics of the nation's wealth? What if the 
 census bureau, with grim humour, reckons not the 
 home keeping mother as engaged In a *' gainful oc- 
 cupation " ? 
 
 * Her price Is far above rubies 
 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, 
 Strength and honor are her clothing; 
 She shall rejoice in time to come." 
 
 Feminism decries these unpaid services and 
 would obliterate them. It considers nothing of 
 worth which fetches no price. It would commer- 
 cialise home life and degrade it to the moral level 
 of factory life. It would set a cash value on the 
 services of wife and mother, and transfer them to 
 ' hirelings. 
 
 While It might conceivably appraise In dollars and 
 cents the coarser, more routine services In the home 
 — the scrubbing and washing and cleaning and cook- 
 ing — letting these out to peripatetic gangs of work- 
 ers, how could the finer, tenderer, most estimable 
 use values be figured In any tariff? Something like 
 this would be needed: 
 
 \ To caressing baby $ .10 
 
 ^ To one morning kiss to husband 25 
 
WOMAN'S ECONOMIC VALUE 89 
 
 To cheering up little Mary .15 
 
 To lying awake scheming how to send Alice 
 
 to college 1 .00 
 
 To radiating affection for one week 2.00 
 
 To being patient under a cloud of difficulties 1.75 
 To loving husband and wayward son when 
 
 they don't deserve loving how much ? 
 
 Next a league of mothers, with rules against 
 working overtime for children and fathers, and dou- 
 ble piece rates for night work, that baby may prop- 
 erly remunerate mother when It wakes her In fret- 
 fulness or pain, would bring this commercialising of 
 home service nearer the feminist Ideal of " Noth- 
 ing rendered for love, a stipulated price for every 
 sacrifice." 
 
 Feminism Is the acme not only of anarchistic In- 
 dividualism but of gross materialism. It would 
 stifle the home spirit with the mephltic air of petty 
 peddling. It would calculate to a nicety the cash 
 value of a heart pang and measure In dollars the 
 worth of a mother's love. 
 
 Some wives, while not anxious to leave their 
 homes in pursuit of a salary, complain pitifully that 
 their Inestimable services as mothers ani homemak- 
 ers go unrewarded In money and every cent they 
 need for themselves, for dress, for education, for 
 philanthropy, Is grudgingly doled out by the hus- 
 band, who must be teased, coaxed and wheedled for 
 each dollar. That condition Is as grievous as It is 
 rare. 
 
90 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 In the overwhelming majority of homes, where 
 the husband earns a weekly wage, the contents of 
 ' the pay envelope are handed ovfr to the wife, re- 
 duced only by a moderate allowance for the man's 
 tobacco and sundries. In the richest homes the 
 wife possesses usually an independent fortune. But, 
 occasionally, especially when the costly home and 
 luxurious wife, in Veblen's phrase, are " expendi- 
 \ tures of display,'' maintained by a newly rich man 
 in high style as a public exhibition of his prosperity, 
 the husband fails to recognise any reason why the 
 wife should not be satisfied to enjoy the luxuries he 
 provides, at a cost beyond her economic value as 
 housekeeper, without demanding from him money 
 of her own to expend. In other instances the wife, 
 unused to handling money or incapable of restrain- 
 ing within bounds her mania for spending, ruins the 
 easy-going husband who allows her a free hand. 
 
 No public action, no law, can cure these unfortu- 
 nate defects. 
 
 A marriage is a close partnership, closer than any 
 \ business partnership, in which the business side is 
 subordinate. In nine cases out of ten affection and 
 common sense dictate an agreement, on matters 
 financial, satisfactory to both partners. They have 
 taken each other " for better or worse, in riches 
 or poverty." They would resent any legal dicta- 
 tion of the proportion of the family Income which 
 the wife shall handle, any arrangement which, mak- 
 ing the man the woman's formal paymaster, would 
 
/ 
 
 WOMAN'S ECONOMIC VALUE 91 
 
 necessarily give him a right to define her services. 
 Only a policy of give and take, of mutual forbear- 
 ance and consideration, can make the marriage suc- 
 cessful. If the bride has any misgivings she may 
 reasonably ask for an agreement before going to the 
 altar as to her own allowance as wife; but so com- 
 plex and changeable are family conditions that usu- 
 ally no agreement will prove for long workable 
 and satisfactory. Rarely on either side will legal 
 compulsion force more than affection will give. 
 However, an agreement will solidify the Idea that 
 some reasonable amount should be the wife's own 
 and any man who Is slow to appreciate her right may 
 well be educated in that fashion. 
 
 But no allowance by the husband will satisfy those 
 feminist leaders who seek complete escape from 
 housekeeping and solemnly avow, In the words of 
 one of them: " It Is the greatest source of great- 
 est evil that love and money have been forced to- 
 gether- by making women dependent on men." 
 *' The men own all the money," avers Mrs. Char- 
 lotte Perkins Oilman, " and, owning all the money, 
 they hold the whip hand over us." The truth 
 of the statement will be promptly recognised by that 
 overwhelming proportion of American men who 
 are working arduously, without respite, that their 
 wives, with the money earned, may be kept under 
 the lash!! So women should cast off the chains of 
 home and go after the dollars in the free outside. 
 It Is so much nicer to wheedle or tease an employer 
 
/; 
 
 \ 
 
 92 FEMINISM 
 
 for a job than to ask a husband for the cost of a 
 new hat, so much " freer " to thump a typewriter 
 or stand In pain behind a counter and to beg 
 some brutal or Indifferent manager to give you a 
 raise of a dollar a week because " a woman can't 
 live decently on seven dollars " than to share the 
 
 \ earnings of the man you love and return in serv- 
 ice for him and children the worth of all you con- 
 sume I Money earned in mill or store is sanctified, 
 forsooth, while money earned In nursery or kitchen, 
 
 \ unless somebody else's nursery or kitchen. Is ac- 
 cursed. Naturally, a woman usurer who heaps up 
 a fortune in Wall Street that the men may no longer 
 " own all the money " deserves veneration; while the 
 mother of Lincoln who, " dependent on men," 
 merely bore and reared, under heaviest handicap, 
 the saviour of his country, was an example of slavish 
 subordination to be abhorred! Make all women 
 earn their daily bread, anywhere so long as it Is not 
 in the home, and woman's emancipation will arrive 1 
 Such purblind confusion of shadow and substance 
 needs only to be Indicated to be repudiated. It fas- 
 cinates mainly that insignificant minority of wives 
 who, too feeble or Inexpert to master their job at 
 home and too Inexperienced to know the difficulty 
 of wresting a living from the world outside, delude 
 themselves with roseate dreams of how fine It would 
 be to cast off the duties which irk them and to re- 
 ceive a handsome monthy check for pleasant, unde- 
 
 ^ fined duties which they have never tried. 
 

 CHAPTER X 
 
 EQUAL PAY FOR MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 It Is a cherished doctrine of Feminism that women 
 shall receive equal remuneration with men for filling 
 the same positions. " Equal Pay for Equal Work " 
 or *' Pay for Position," this claim has been cleverly 
 baptised. At the annual convention of the National 
 American Woman Suffrage Association, In 19 14, 
 the following resolution was adopted: "That all 
 women be urged to encourage such Industries and in- 
 stitutions as adhere to the principle of * equal pay for 
 equal work regardless of sex.' " 
 
 Both in America and In England the average 
 wages of adult women are but half the average 
 wages of men In private employment; and In public 
 employment, with rare exceptions, women are paid 
 less than men. Feminism laments this Inequality 
 and purposes to utilise the votes of women to rectify 
 It. " Women are equal to men," It protests, " and 
 should be paid the same as men for filling the same 
 positions. We mean to abolish sex discriminations 
 In politics. In law. In Industry, and one of the first 
 points to be attacked when we get the vote will be 
 this Inequality of remuneration." 
 
 For the sake of clearness we will consider this 
 programme In its application (a) to manual work- 
 
 93 
 
94 FEMINISM 
 
 ers, (b) to brain workers in private employment, 
 and (c) to public employes. 
 
 " Equal Pay for Equal Work " assumes that the 
 work can be measured and the pay proportioned to 
 the amount done. In cotton spinning, coal mining, 
 garment making, printing and many other manual 
 occupations, such measurement can be made, and 
 piece rates are set under which the wages received 
 are exactly proportioned to the amount accom- 
 plished. When men hold such industries and 
 women threaten to invade them, the men often in- 
 sist enthusiastically on " Equal Pay for Equal 
 Work." Not, however, sad to tell, because in their 
 gallantry they wish tO' see women put on an indus- 
 trial equality with themselves ; but because they real- 
 ise that if they compel the employer to pay women 
 at the same rate as men only an odd woman here 
 and there will be employed at all. 
 
 The American Telegraphers' Union upholds this 
 principle doggedly, with the consequence that women 
 are not employed as telegraphers, even In those po- 
 sitions which in England are successfully filled by 
 women, and though in the analogous work of tele- 
 phone operating women have almost a monopoly. 
 Forbidden to engage women at smaller wages, em- 
 ployers are glad to find enough men, ready at the 
 wages offered, to endure the strain and the respon- 
 sibility and the night work Involved In telegraphy. 
 
 When the linotype machine was introduced, the 
 typographical union of the compositors in America 
 
EQUAL PAY 95 
 
 was in imminent risk of seeing the well-paid work 
 of straight composing by hand transferred to worse- 
 paid women at the machine. But, by establishing a 
 rule, in co-operation with the employers* associa- 
 tion, that the first opportunity to learn to work the 
 linotype machines should be given to printers al- 
 ready competent on skilled sorts of hand work, 
 work which women were not accomplishing, the men 
 reserved the machines for themselves, while still 
 applauding " equal pay for equal work.'* 
 
 In cases where women are engaged in consider- 
 able numbers at the same piece-work rates as men, 
 as in the English cotton mills, the output of the 
 woman is less than the output of the man, and the 
 small minority of men usually work on the heavier 
 class of looms. The woman's remuneration is 
 therefore less. Rarely, indeed, do women any- 
 where work at the same processes as men. Almost 
 always, even when men and women work under the 
 same roof, they work at different processes. When 
 the process demands muscular strength and physical 
 endurance, it is allotted to men; when it demands 
 light-fingered dexterity, nimbleness and routine pa- 
 tience, it is allotted to women. 
 
 In steam laundries, where women are in a ma- 
 jority, labour at the machines in the laundry wash- 
 rooms is done by men. In a cotton-thread mill in 
 which one-third of the employes are women, an in- 
 vestigator found that the processes of cleaning, 
 carding, combing, drawing and roving are done by 
 
96 FEMINISM 
 
 men. Then women speeders tend the last part, the 
 twisting and winding. Their product is forwarded 
 by boys to the women spinners who, in turn, pass on 
 the half-completed cotton to women spoolers. In 
 the twisting and plying of the cotton, processes suc- 
 ceeding the spooling, men are employed, who, in 
 turn, send on the yarn they produce to the girls in 
 the winding room. Within the one mill there is a 
 complete division of labour between men and 
 women. ^ 
 
 In a New England cloth finishing factory reported 
 upon by a special investigator, the first process at 
 which women are employed is that of keeping cloth 
 running evenly through a teetering machine. At 
 the calendering machines men are employed. Girls 
 stand at the yarding machines and do most of the 
 succeeding processes of preparation. In one proc- 
 ess, the tearing of wide cloth into lengths, the in- 
 vestigator found that the task was severe for the 
 muscles of the hand and forearm, and apt to cause 
 swollen fingers and sprained wrists. Thereupon, 
 the management, unusually humane, transferred the 
 work of tearing to men. The grievance of the 
 girls' strained wrists and swollen fingers could be 
 remedied, not by giving them men's wages, but by 
 setting men at men's wages to do the heavier work. 
 All the remaining operations on sheets and pillow 
 cases were done by men. 
 
 In cotton mills, heavy mule spmning is exclu- 
 
 1 " Making Both Ends Meet," by Clark and Wyatt, p. 250. 
 
EQUAL PAY 97 
 
 sively done by men, but lighter ring spinning by 
 women. Temporarily, as in woollen mills, the low- 
 est-grade, immigrant, male labour may work at the 
 same processes as women, because the men will ac- 
 cept the women's rate of pay. But a stratification 
 soon commences and, before long, men and women 
 are working in different rooms at different processes. 
 
 In domestic service a Japanese boy is paid more 
 than a Bohemian girl and undertakes jobs more nu- 
 merous and in greater variety. A butler is a man; 
 a chambermaid a woman. Waiters and waitresses 
 are not paid alike, and a hotel at which waiters and 
 waitresses serve together in the same dining-room 
 would be an anomaly. A man chef must be master 
 of more epicurean concoctions than a woman cook 
 and his salary is superior. 
 
 Only in odd cases, then, is the cry " Equal Pay 
 for Equal Work " relevant to any situation exist- 
 ing among female wage earners, the millions of pri- 
 vates in the army of women engaged in gainful oc- 
 cupations. 
 
 In the lower grades of professional brain work- 
 ers, the segregation of men and women is not so 
 distinct, though there also it appears. Stenogra- 
 phers and typists are nearly all females ; but court ste- 
 nographers, most expert and highly paid, are usually 
 men. A secretary or a social worker may be man 
 or woman; but when the employing organisation 
 fixes a high salary for the position it usually seeks 
 a man. A charity organisation society or a public 
 
98 FEMINISM 
 
 education association may be content with a woman 
 secretary in its early days of struggle and small 
 budgets, but so soon as its funds and its sphere gain 
 high dignity it marks its superior elevation by en- 
 gaging a man secretary, at a man's salary. Women 
 store clerks are in a majority, but men store clerks, 
 at higher wages, are also employed. 
 
 Positions of this order are but roughly classified 
 and have no standard rates. To adjust work to 
 pay on an abstract principle of equality between 
 millions of males and females In these positions is 
 not feasible, because between the individuals in dif- 
 ferent positions there is no such adjustment. It is 
 impossible to say when increased responsibility, 
 knowledge, and experience and personality warrant a 
 higher salary for the post of social worker or secre- 
 tary, much less to say that the capacities which a 
 man brings are worth precisely as much as the 
 capacities which a woman brings to the work. 
 Whether in any case the smaller remuneration of the 
 woman is given merely because she is a woman or 
 because the man contributes more valuable qualities 
 to the work, it Is impossible to determine. The for- 
 mula " Equal Pay for Equal Work " is again not 
 relevant to the concrete situation. It Is a useless ab- 
 straction. 
 
 In law, medicine, art, literature and the church, 
 conditions and salaries vary, to the widest extent, 
 according to the standing of the practitioner and 
 the wealth of the client. A Caruso receives thou- 
 
EQUAL PAY 99 
 
 sands of dollars for singing an opera. An inferior 
 singer might be glad to get fifty. They sing the 
 same notes and make equal exertions, but there 
 is no thought of giving them " equal pay for equal 
 work." A lawyer who receives a quarter million 
 dollar fee from a railroad corporation, or a sur- 
 geon who is paid fifty thousand dollars for remov- 
 ing a millionaire's appendix, may do less work than 
 a woman attorney who sues the railroad for smash- 
 ing a trunk, or a woman doctor who pulls a labour- 
 er's child through an attack of fever. It may cost 
 a woman preacher more labour to prepare her ser- 
 mon for a village congregation than an eminent di- 
 vine to prepare his sermon for the city cathedral, 
 but the dogma, " Equal Pay for Equal Work," is no 
 more useful for fixing the remuneration for such 
 services than an almanac platitude in measuring the 
 distance of a fixed star. Woman's struggle in these 
 spheres is to be retained at any price. Quality of 
 work is the prime requisite. She must win, not by 
 underselling but by superior service. 
 
 All through private employment, therefore, the 
 doctrine " Pay for Position " or " Equal Pay for 
 Equal Work " for men and women has the most 
 trifling connection with real life. 
 
 But in public employment a different rule pre- 
 vails. Remuneration is not fixed by economic com- 
 petition. 
 
 Permanent positions In the public service are of 
 two orders : ( i ) Positions exempt from civil serv- 
 
loo FEMINISM 
 
 ice regulations, and (2) positions in the classified 
 service, those under civil service rules. 
 
 I. Public positions exempt from civil service con- 
 ditions are filled by appointment and usually, in part, 
 even where impeccable reformers hold the offices, as 
 a reward for political services. To them " Pay for 
 Position " already applies. If a senator appoints 
 his daughter as his private secretary he is allowed 
 exactly the same salary for her (whether or not he 
 hands it over to her) as he would if he appointed 
 his nephew or his son. A woman commissioner of 
 charities is paid as much as a man commissioner of 
 charities; a woman superintendent of schools as a 
 man superintendent of schools. Discrimination is 
 shown in the proportion of men and women ap- 
 pointed. Probably in this group of positions more 
 women would be discovered to be fit for the jobs if 
 women voted; especially to the lower places in 
 counties and States where civil service rules are not 
 in force and positions go by political favour, a 
 greater number of women, if they had votes, could 
 establish a claim as district workers. 
 
 But equality of opportunity for appointment 
 would not ensure equality of service between men 
 and women. When appointment is made as a re- 
 ward for political activity, the incumbent, whether 
 man or woman, is frequently, alas ! unfitted for the 
 post. Though in special cases it would be impos- 
 sible for any human being to be less competent than 
 the male incumbent of political office, yet, on the 
 
EQUAL PA^;. J 10 1 
 
 average, the service of women politicians will be 
 still less efficient than the service of men politicians, 
 because, on the average, women are less fitted for in- 
 dustrial work than men, as is shown by their fail- 
 ure in private employment to command the same sal- 
 aries as men. For the protection of the public in- 
 terest pay should be proportioned to service, not 
 fixed for one grade of service and paid for a lower 
 grade of service, even if the title of the holder of 
 the office remains the same. 
 
 2. Under civil service rules positions are filled 
 by competitive examination, the salary being deter- 
 mined before the examination is held. If the salary 
 schedule makes no mention of sex, women can win 
 the opportunity of receiving equal pay with men 
 for the same position by securing admission to the 
 examination — as they did in New York City when 
 they were threatened with exclusion from competi- 
 tion for superintendents* positions in the employ- 
 ment bureaus. 
 
 If the salary schedule, like nature, distinguishes 
 between men and women, as most schedules for 
 school teachers have done, then the women may pro- 
 cure elimination of the sex distinction by legisla- 
 tion or by pressure upon the administrative body 
 concerned, the board of education, or the city gov- 
 ernment, as did the women teachers of New York 
 City. In that case the outcome will be the composi- 
 tion of two forces: the public officiaFs always sen- 
 sitive desire to be personally popular; and his fear 
 
10^2 ''"'■'.■'^i'^.^^' FEMINISM 
 
 of driving the taxpayer to a revolt, which would 
 throw the official himself into the penurious shades 
 of private life. Political conditions, not economic 
 necessity, will control. When the demand is that 
 women, equally with men, shall be admitted to the 
 competitive examinations, the passing of which en- 
 titles the competitor to appointment, only the most 
 obvious unfitness of women for the position is likely 
 to lead to the denial of the demand, because the pub- 
 lic outcry which a hundred women can make dis- 
 turbs the equanimity of the legislative authority 
 more than any fear for the inadequate perform- 
 ance of the duties involved. One newspaper arti- 
 cle denouncing the legislature for its refusal of 
 " the claim for consideration on the part of the de- 
 voted women of the community," will have greater 
 weight than the sure expectation that a woman will 
 not discharge the duties as capably as a man. The 
 legislator who opens the position to women is not 
 the executive officer who Is responsible for the effi- 
 cient discharge of the duties. Once the sex differ- 
 ence Is ignored in the requirements for candidates, 
 the appointing power must take the persons at the 
 top of the eligible list, regardless of sex. Thus, the 
 public, the real employer, acting through its agent, 
 the executive official, will be denied the opportunity 
 to choose between a man and a woman, as every pri- 
 vate employer chooses. 
 
 Sex being eliminated from civil service salary 
 
EQUAL PAY 103 
 
 schedules, on what principles shall the amount of the 
 salary be set? 
 
 Numerous factors must be considered — the qual- 
 ity of the person necessary to do the work efficiently, 
 the education and special training required, the pre- 
 vailing rate of remuneration for similar services in 
 private employment, the state of the public treas- 
 ury, the probable supply of competent candidates 
 and the cost of living. Democratic governments 
 must offer a living wage, the style of living consid- 
 ered proper being the style prevalent In the social 
 stratum In which It Is desired that the successful 
 competitors will move. A college professor Is of- 
 fered more than a street cleaner, partly because he 
 cannot do his work efficiently unless he enjoys more 
 comforts and leisure and can pay for more books, 
 music, travel and the like than are necessary to the 
 full discharge of a street cleaner's duties. Also the 
 persons competent to lecture in colleges are less 
 easily obtained, even in the best-educated commu- 
 nity, than persons competent to clean streets. 
 
 Both these factors — the supply of competent 
 candidates and the living wage — the doctrine of 
 *' Equal Pay for Men and Women '' would abro- 
 gate. 
 
 As is demonstrated by the outstanding fact that 
 men's wages average double women's wages In pri- 
 vate employment, the supply of women able and 
 willing to fill industrial positions open to women 
 
104 FEMINISM 
 
 Is greater than the supply of men. Men willing to 
 be teachers are much rarer than women of the same 
 competence; men typists are not so easily found as 
 women typists of like order of skill. Men cotton 
 spinners willing to accept low wages are not as 
 common as women cotton spinners. Only by Ignor- 
 ing this difference of supply and demand, by shut- 
 ting eyes to the fact that a man In the open market 
 has a greater scarcity value than a woman, can " Pay 
 for Position " be established. 
 
 More important, however, Is the principle of the 
 living wage. Democratic governments are be- 
 sought by reformers and humane taxpayers to be 
 model employers, not to pay the lowest wage for 
 which service can possibly be bought, but gener- 
 ously to set a minimum of a living wage for every 
 occupation. That appeal each year Is more and 
 more widely recognised to be well based. One fac- 
 tor that must enter Into the determination of re- 
 muneration Is the need of the employe. Ideally, 
 every employe, manual, mental or artistic, should re- 
 ceive a sufficient reward to keep his powers and skill 
 at their maximum efficiency. Never should health, 
 strength, skill or power of application be reduced 
 through financial Inability to live so as to preserve 
 them in full vigour. Never will the nation reach 
 Its maximum productivity until every worker Is as- 
 sured of this remuneration for life, every producer 
 kept as studiously efficient as the Japanese keep their 
 soldiers In their wars., A teacher whose salary is 
 
EQUAL PAY 105 
 
 too meagre for her to study, travel and mix with 
 refined people, cannot teach effectively. The street 
 cleaner who cannot afford three nourishing meals 
 a day will push his broom languidly. A clerk in a 
 city office who must live, on his beggarly Income, in 
 a dark tenement and sacrifice week-end jaunts into 
 the country, will make errors in his bookkeeping 
 and never devise ways to Improve his office routine. 
 Government authorities in the United States are 
 alive to these considerations and usually pay better 
 salaries than private employers. 
 
 However, what constitutes a living wage? When 
 sex is considered in framing salary schedules, a man's 
 living wage means a family's living wage and a 
 woman's living wage an individual wage. 
 
 The social importance of this factor grows each 
 year as public control of industry increases. Every 
 case of public ownership of an electric power sys- 
 tem, a street railway system, a water power plant, 
 or a milk supply, and every legal wage board estab- 
 lished, increases the social significance, of the prin- 
 ciple on which a living wage Is determined. Mini- 
 mum wages for women workers in various callings, 
 now being fixed by law in Massachusetts, Washing- 
 ton, Oregon, Colorado and other States, are uni- 
 formly determined by estimating the cost of a de- 
 cent living for an individual woman. 
 
 When sex is eliminated from consideration, shall 
 a woman's living wage also be made a family wage, 
 or a man's wage be reduced below a family wage? 
 
io6 FEMINISM 
 
 '' Make the woman's wage equal to the man's," or- 
 der the interested associations; "if you must re- 
 duce the man's so much the worse for him; but it is 
 not my concern. Raise the woman's until it meets 
 the man's and I shall be content." These were the 
 orders of the New York women teachers regard- 
 ing teachers' salaries — orders which the legisla- 
 ture faithfully executed. Suspicion that the legal 
 minimum wage fixed for women will become in prac- 
 tice the maximum wage for men in the same indus- 
 try, inspires the American Federation of Labor 
 with distrust of the fast-spreading, minimum wage 
 movement. Whether that suspicion will be justi- 
 fied will depend on the success of Feminism in con- 
 trolling legislatures and industrial courts. Trade 
 unionism has argued for the family wage as the 
 man's wage. When it presents to arbitration 
 courts its plea for higher wages to follow the in- 
 creased cost of living, as it did in the several cases 
 of the railroad engineers and the railroad conduc- 
 tors and brakemen, it consistently argues from the 
 cost of family living. Were its case founded on 
 the cost of living for the individual employe, it 
 would hopelessly crumble. Therein trade union- 
 ism Is inherently antagonistic to the woman's de- 
 mands; for "Equal Pay for Men and Women" 
 cannot conceivably mean a family wage for men and 
 for women throughout industry. In private em- 
 ployment the family wage for men may be abro- 
 gated; but a family wage for women Is economically 
 
EQUAL PAY 107 
 
 impossible. It Is self-evldently absurd to expect that 
 a store clerk, on attaining her majority, will be paid 
 enough to sustain herself, a husband and three chil- 
 dren. Equality must mean degradation of men's 
 wages. 
 
 Whether, for public employment, the woman's 
 salary will be raised to the man's level or his re- 
 duced to approach her level, will depend on the cir- 
 cumstances of each case. In employments, such as 
 teaching, where the women outnumber the men ten 
 or twelve to one, as they did In New York City, the 
 financial cost of making the woman's salary a family 
 salary Is so appalling that the most reckless legis- 
 lators, though themselves not responsible to the tax- 
 payers concerned, cannot face It. In New York 
 City a compromise was made. Under the old salary 
 schedule a woman class teacher was paid a minimum 
 of $600 a year, rising by annual Increments of $48 
 to $1320 In the sixteenth year and continuing to 
 $1440 for the teacher of the graduating class. Men 
 class teachers began with $900 a year and rose by 
 annual increments of $105 to $2160 In the thirteenth 
 year, and continued up to $2400 for teaching the 
 graduating class. 
 
 Consider, In some detail, the effect of successful 
 feminist agitation in this Instance, one of the most 
 conspicuous and far-reaching known, upon men's sal- 
 aries and men's employment. 
 
 Under the " Equal Pay " schedules men and 
 women teachers both were to receive $720 a year 
 
io8 FEMINISM 
 
 for three years and then rise by annual increments 
 of $60 to $1500 for teaching lower grades and 
 $1820 for teaching the seventh or eighth grades. 
 The women got a handsome increase of salary, the 
 men a disheartening decrease, applicable, however, 
 only to those accepting appointment subsequent to 
 the enactment of the law. 
 
 The law went Into effect In 19 12 and Immediately 
 the disastrous result of this effort to decrease men 
 teachers' salaries appeared. Of 79 men who were 
 offered appointment In March, ^^ declined. It was 
 plain that even men who had been through the stiff 
 preparatory training and had weathered the entrance 
 examinations would rather abandon their chosen pro- 
 fession than work for women's pay. Thereupon the 
 legislature modified the '' Equal Pay " law by provid- 
 ing that men whose names were on eligible lists when 
 the law was passed should be paid the old salary 
 rates. At once the number of men appointees in- 
 creased. A year later the legislature let down the 
 bars again and virtually abrogated the equal-pay 
 principle by enacting that men who were preparing 
 for the examinations for the licence to teach at the 
 time the " equal-pay " law was passed should be paid, 
 when appointed, the old schedule rates. Therefore 
 in November, 19 14, of 52 men offered appointment 
 only 8 declined. Of the 44 who accepted, 39 will 
 receive the higher schedule rates and some of the 
 remaining 5, by receiving an allowance for outside 
 experience, do not start at the bottom rate. 
 
EQUAL PAY 109 
 
 No reduction was made by law of the salaries of 
 men teachers In high schools. Instead, the generous 
 schedule framed to attract men teachers, running 
 from $900 a year by Increments of $100 to $2650 
 for assistant teachers and $3150 for first assistants, 
 was finally adopted also for the women teachers. 
 They thus secured, as a reward for their agitation, 
 the market rate for men teachers, a rate consid- 
 erably above the market rate for women teachers. 
 It was successfully argued that, since the women 
 teachers In high schools only slightly outnumber the 
 men teachers and are few in comparison with the 
 women teachers In grammar schools, the cost of 
 equalising salaries would not be ruinous and could 
 therefore be paid as the price of peace. The one 
 valuable outcome was that the rates fixed, being 
 men's rates. It Is still possible to get men teachers. 
 
 Thus a bonus above the Individual wage was voted 
 as a political gift to the women and the doctrine of a 
 family wage was repudiated, as to the grammar 
 schools, for the men. This repudiation Is a be- 
 trayal of the family. It concedes the anti-social con- 
 tention, never admitted by trade union or law, that 
 a man need not support his wife and children, but 
 the mother should work for her own and her off- 
 spring's dally bread. It advances a long march to- 
 wards the subjugation of woman to material pro- 
 duction, and her elimination from homemaking, baby 
 bearing and child training. It is betraying the fu- 
 ture to gain political ends. 
 
no FEMINISM 
 
 In cases where the female employes are very few, 
 as In controllers' offices, the women may receive the 
 same salaries as men without the reduction of the 
 men's salaries, because the cost to the community is 
 too small to make a struggle politically worth the 
 effort. Their bonus over what they could command 
 In private employment will be far higher than the 
 men's corresponding bonus, but their insignificant 
 numbers will protect them from the logical applica- 
 tion of economic principles. 
 
 In final outcome. In the first case, where women 
 already being in a large majority, the men are sac- 
 rificed to the feminist doctrine and are not paid a 
 full family wage, the men will soon eliminate them- 
 selves from the employment. In the latter case, 
 where the men's salaries are not reduced, the ap- 
 pointing officer, responsible for getting the office 
 work done with the maximum efficiency, will struggle 
 constantly against the substitution of women for 
 men, and the number of positions filled by women 
 will remain few. 
 
 In Australasia, where the State determines " fair 
 and reasonable " wages for men as well as women, 
 the rule Is established that a man's minimum shall 
 be a family wage, while the woman's minimum Is an 
 individual wage. Mr. Justice Higgins, president of 
 the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration 
 Court of Australia, describing the methods in which 
 that court had fixed wages, says : 
 
 " The test of a fair and reasonable standard is 
 
EQUAL PAY III 
 
 a wage sufficient for the normal needs of the average 
 employe living In a civilised community. The es- 
 sential needs are food, shelter and clothing. A full 
 and generous allowance for these should be made 
 to the average man who may be assumed to support 
 an average family, consisting of himself, his wife 
 and three dependent children." 
 
 But, '* a woman Is not, like a man, under general 
 obhgatlon for the support of her family." There- 
 fore, " Where women are continually employed In 
 preference to men, another standard should fix the 
 general rate of wages. This should be the cost of 
 living for the individual girl, living away from home 
 with the responsibility of supporting herself. Of 
 course many girls have family responsibilities; but 
 an employer cannot be told to pay a particular em- 
 ploye higher wages because she happens to have 
 parents dependent on her, any more than he can be 
 allowed to pay her less because she has a legacy from 
 her grandparents or because she lodges free with her 
 parents and merely wants some money for dress." ^ 
 
 Plainly there Is a blunt antagonism between the 
 doctrine of equal pay for men and women and the 
 doctrine of the minimum wage. If the demand for 
 equal pay be conceded, the legal minimum wage 
 for men must be abandoned; as must also the legal 
 obligation upon the man to support his wife and chil- 
 dren — a high price to pay for a doubtful advantage 
 to groups of women. 
 
 2 The Survey, August i, 1914. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FEMINISM AND FREE LOVE 
 
 Does Feminism lead toward Free Love? Con- 
 servative women suffragists resent the imputation 
 that their principles involve approval of changes in 
 the marriage laws or any condonation of laxer sexual 
 relationships. Yet literary exponents of Feminism, 
 more concerned with philosophy than practical poli- 
 tics, declare unequivocally that implicit in feminist 
 doctrine lies the advocacy of radical readjustments 
 of sexual relations. So long as the woman's move- 
 ment Is merely instinctive, a childish revolt, not sus- 
 tained by any thoughtful reasoning, so long it es- 
 capes the vision of its own destiny. But " wherever 
 the conscious striving to elevate, to educate and to 
 secure the rights of woman has been profound. It 
 has been united with the desire to reform the posi- 
 tion of women In love and marriage," declares Ellen 
 Key,^ the acute observer whose eye, from her Swed- 
 ish eyrie, follows the sweep of the woman's move- 
 ment the wide world over. 
 
 In America " the conscious striving " has not been 
 so " profound " as In Scandinavia and Germany, and 
 " the desire to reform the position of woman in love 
 and marriage " Is therefore not so Intense and sub- 
 
 - " Love and Marriage," p. 62. 
 
 113 
 
FEMINISM AND FREE LOVE 113 
 
 versive; though In America also, writes Mrs. Cool- 
 Idge, *' the emphasis upon freedom from the moral 
 domination of man, made by the first female Insur- 
 gents, Is now transferred to a readjustment of the 
 marriage relation and the question of economic re- 
 sponsibility." Another exponent exclaims: "The 
 free power of Selection In Love. Yes ! That Is the 
 true Female Franchise. It must be regained by 
 woman. Existing marriage Is a pernicious survival 
 of the patriarchal age." ^ " Free Power of Selec- 
 tion In Love " or " Freedom In Love " (Ellen Key's 
 phrase). Is a euphemism for what simple people call 
 free love. Yet these extreme doctrines, as another 
 American historian of the woman's movement tes- 
 tifies, " have been the logical outgrowth of the self- 
 same faith " held by the " more conservative spir- 
 its " in the women's ranks. ^ 
 
 Their logical lineage can be traced through the 
 emphasis made at all stages of Feminism upon free- 
 dom as the supreme aim. The key word of Fem- 
 inism is freedom. It seeks to make each woman 
 the arbltress of her own destiny, to rid her step by 
 step of the restraints which laws and customs im- 
 pose upon her. " Women are striving for legal, 
 political and sexual Independence," explains a woman 
 doctor.* 
 
 2 "The Truth about Woman," by C. Gasquolne Hartley, p. 256. 
 
 * " Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia," by Katharine 
 Anthony, p. 10. 
 
 * " Woman, Marriage and Motherhood," by Elizabeth S. Chesser, 
 p. 257. 
 
114 FEMINISM 
 
 But woman cannot enjoy freedom — so runs the 
 argument — so long as she accepts economic support 
 from her father or husband. Dependence means 
 subjection. So she must win economic independence 
 before marriage, that Is, l)e free from the domina- 
 tion of her father, and retain it after marriage, that 
 is, be free from the domination of her husband. 
 Her higher education must be directed to prepare her 
 for winning economic Independence and she must win 
 the vote mainly that she may use it to aid her in her 
 economic struggle. Accepting the support of her 
 children's father is " being dependent on her sex 
 functions for a means of livelihood " — a revolting 
 slavery.^ And " danger lurks for woman and her 
 freedom when, to safeguard her independence, she 
 has no other resources than the seduction of her 
 beauty to gain and to hold the love she Is able to in- 
 spire. Sex becomes the defensive weapon and one 
 she must use for self-protection if she is to live. It 
 seems to me that this economic use of sex Is the real 
 cancer at the very root of the sexual relationship. 
 It is but a step further and a perfectly logical one 
 that leads to prostitution." ^ To preserve them- 
 selves from this fate married women and mothers 
 must jealously guard their self-support through wage 
 earning. 
 
 Freedom from her husband's support, we are told, 
 
 '^ " Woman, Marriage and Motherhood," by Elizabeth S. Chesser, 
 p. 257. 
 
 «"Th^ Truth about Woman," by C. G. Hartley, p. 215. 
 
FEMINISM AND FREE LOVE 115 
 
 would be of little worth, however, did it not enable 
 a woman to grant or withhold conjugal rights at her 
 pleasure, and even to cast off a husband who was no 
 longer congenial. Of all forms of enslavement en- 
 forced subjection to marital embraces is one of the 
 most odious. Married women must win and assert 
 " possession of their own bodies." They must be 
 allowed by law and custom to determine whether 
 they will bear one child or none, whether their 
 wedded life shall be virginal or conjugal; none of 
 which is feasible so long as the husband Is the bread- 
 winner. They must be free to return to single life 
 whenever the husband Insists on entrenching upon 
 their privacy. So economic Independence is recog- 
 nised and advocated as preliminary to sexual Inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 As Mrs. Gallichan says, with respect to the Bur- 
 mese women, who do most of the business of the 
 country and throng the streets at all hours of the 
 day: ' "Given such complete economic freedom of 
 woman, and It is self-evident that the sexual rela- 
 tionship will also be free." Not necessarily loose 
 or Hcentlous, but free. " Very striking are the con- 
 ditions of divorce. The marriage contract can be 
 dissolved freely at the wish of both or even of one 
 of the parties." And, it should be remembered, a 
 large part of women suffragists approve the eco- 
 nomic self-support of both single and married 
 women, though usually they do not realise that, 
 ** given the complete economic freedom of women 
 
ii6 FEMINISM 
 
 and the sexual relationship will also be free." "^ A 
 few not only recognise the outcome but openly an- 
 nounce their intention. One of the founders of the 
 Equality Alliance in New York City, an organisa- 
 tion led by writers, editors and artists, formed 
 mainly to prevent the withdrawal of women teachers 
 from their salary-earning upon marriage or mother- 
 hood, announced, in the writer's hearing, to an ap- 
 plauding audience of feminists : " We mean to be 
 monogamous, but reasonably monogamous; not al- 
 ways monogamous with the same person." 
 
 " In the main," explains another candid advo- 
 cate in the Atlantic Monthly, " we are opposed to 
 the indissoluble Christian marriage. The present 
 increase in the divorce rate is of course gratifying; 
 but it Is not enough. Personally I believe that the 
 ultimate aim of Feminism is the suppression of mar- 
 riage and the Institution of free alliance. It may be 
 that only thus can woman develop her own per- 
 sonahty." ^ 
 
 For, the argument proceeds, if divorce and fre- 
 quent matings are to be common and easy, and if eco- 
 nomic support by the husband is repudiated as a dis- 
 grace why go through all the fuss and fettering of 
 marriage at all? Why not accept an " affinity " dur- 
 ing your pleasure and his good behaviour, assuming, 
 yourself, the responsibility for any offspring, and re- 
 taining to the full, without even temporary sacrifice, 
 
 7 "The Truth about Woman," p. 157. 
 8W. L. George, Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1913. 
 
FEMINISM AND FREE LOVE 117 
 
 your soul's chief joy, — freedom? Especially where 
 there are not enough men to give every woman a 
 husband why should a woman be debarred from 
 motherhood unless she find a husband? Why 
 should her freedom be so grievously curtailed in the 
 deepest concern of her life? Discussion of " Free 
 Motherhood," as this claim for a child outside of 
 wedlock is styled, is heard among the younger fem- 
 inists in American cities, but is most open in England 
 and Germany, where the slaughter of the future hus- 
 bands in the Great War is likely to make it in the 
 future, indeed, a vital issue. In both countries, as 
 one of the rebels asserts, " Very gallant and very 
 young are the rebels of this class for the most part, 
 seeking joy and self-expression, individualistic, as- 
 sured, capable. To the younger generation of reb- 
 els the potential mother crying for the prohibited 
 baby is become the central figure of life's tragedy." ^ 
 
 Another advocate avers: " As Indicating the ex- 
 tent of the present sex revolt we see a type of woman 
 arising who believes in a state of society in which 
 man will not figure In the life of woman except as 
 the father of her child." ^^ 
 
 While these conclusions are startling, the chain of 
 reasoning which leads to them Is continuous. All 
 the consequences follow from the fundamental as- 
 sumption of Feminism that so long as woman's fate 
 Is knit up with that of the family she cannot attain 
 
 * Candida in The Neiv Statesman, June 27, 1914. 
 
 10 W. L. George, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1913. 
 
ii8 FEMINISM 
 
 proper Individual development and that her salva- 
 tion demands that she disentangle herself from the 
 family relationship. And, if the freedom and self- 
 expression of the woman be exclusively considered, 
 the claim of Feminism must be granted. Surely, If 
 her satisfaction be Isolated from all other considera- 
 tions, each woman Is entitled to command over her 
 own body and to escape from an uncongenial hus- 
 band; she Is entitled to free maternity and to an In- 
 dependent economic status. This female Anarch- 
 Ism Is Impossible simply because woman is an essen- 
 tial part of the social organism. Her freedom and 
 self-expression cannot be exclusively regarded. Her 
 destiny Is bound up with the destiny of the child. 
 Woman must sacrifice even part of her freedom for 
 the sake of the race. 
 
 At each stage In the desired progress towards 
 sexual Independence for her there Is an Inalienable 
 conflict between woman's freedom and the child's 
 well-being. If, before marriage, she must win eco- 
 nomic Independence, the result Is too often that her 
 strength is exhausted and her maternal powers are 
 deranged. If, after marriage, she continue to earn 
 money that she may be economically Independent of 
 her husband, the outcome Is again Injurious to the 
 next generation. The tale of baby deaths In factory 
 towns, the slaughter of the Innocents wherever the 
 mother daily deserts the home, demonstrate the cost 
 to the race of the mother's specious freedom. If 
 the mother be free to part from her husband so sopn 
 
FEMINISM AND FREE LOVE 119, 
 
 as he becomes uncongenial and be free also to ac- 
 cept a new comrade, the child is again the victim. 
 Also " Free Motherhood " is to be repudiated, be- 
 cause the child needs two parents, its training a 
 masculine as well as a feminine hand. 
 
 It must be admitted that there is an ideal aspect 
 to the proposal to marry with the understanding 
 that any cooling of affection shall dissolve the bonds. 
 " Love alone consecrates marriage," pleads the ar- 
 dent young soul. " If Reginald ceases to love me 
 or I to love Reginald, we shall dissolve our mar- 
 riage." But society, concerned for its own perma- 
 nence and solicitous for the care of the next genera- 
 tion, cannot permit Reginald and Angela to be the 
 sole judges in their difficulty. Not merely they, but 
 society, not merely the present but the future, must 
 be considered. So divorce can be granted only by 
 legal process upon serious grounds. 
 
 In the end woman herself would suffer from the 
 effects of " freedom." Were Feminism's pro- 
 gramme to succeed, it would ultimately, despite the 
 seeming temporary advantage, inflict incalculable in- 
 jury on her. 
 
 First. Woman, struggling against man, through- 
 out life, in the industrial world, is robbed of that 
 affectional satisfaction in her work which is her 
 steadiest joy. Normally a woman, to be con- 
 tented, must be working for some person she loves. 
 With a child or a relative to serve, she can endure 
 prolonged effort without succumbing. She cannot 
 
120 FEMINISM 
 
 win satisfaction, as man can, from building up a 
 business, improving a firm's credit, increasing the 
 output, enlarging the nation's exports and the like. 
 Tending a machine, even if it demands less muscular 
 strength, is more wearing to her than tending a baby. 
 The machine exhausts her energy and gives back no 
 joy; the baby replenishes her energy and gives back 
 comfort for effort. As well try to further the satis- 
 faction of a musician by " freeing " him from slavery 
 to piano and violin that he may revel in the din of a 
 boiler factory as to further the satisfaction of 
 woman by " freeing " her from personal service to 
 those she loves that she may revel In impersonal, 
 economic independence. 
 
 Second. It would release man from the restraints 
 an3 obligations to which, through the ages, he has 
 gradually been subjected. Were the wife to become 
 customarily the bread-winner, the husband, set free 
 from drudgery, might return to the hunting and fish- 
 ing and fighting which engaged his savage ancestor 
 whose squaw fed the household. As man attained 
 a settled Hfe and began to till the soil he took the 
 field work from the woman's shoulders and assumed 
 an ever-increasing share of the responsibility for 
 feeding the family. But, if woman Insists on taking 
 back that responsibility, his will be the release and 
 herjs the burden. 
 
 Third. If, in addition, she should make the mar- 
 riage tie so loose that either partner could easily slip 
 the noose, she would find that man's fancy roams 
 
FEMINISM AND FREE LOVE 121 
 
 more lightly than woman's and she would most often 
 be left deserted. Her affection for the child and, 
 through the child, for the father, is naturally deeper 
 rooted than the husband's. Man, as yet. Is but " im- 
 perfectly monogamous." But the best protection of 
 mother and child will be secured by enforcing pater- 
 nal obligation ever more stringently, by demanding 
 from the husband a stricter and stricter fidelity. 
 
 Woman, like man, must choose between freedom 
 and duty. Her yearning for freedom Is not dis- 
 creditable. It has been shared by the world's 
 noblest spirits. It Is, Indeed, say the philosophers, 
 an Intimation of immortality. But freedom, pur- 
 sued after It parts company with duty, leads to de- 
 struction. And duty to the child Is the supreme duty 
 for woman, since, if she abandon that duty, the race 
 must decline. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE woman's movement AND THE BABY CROP 
 
 The woman's movement is a movement towards 
 progressive national degeneration and ultimate na- 
 tional suicide. 
 
 Already the evidence Is conclusive that the effects 
 of Feminism upon the inalienable function and im- 
 memorial duty of woman — the bearing of children 
 — are so appalling as to threaten the perpetuation 
 of the best parts of the nation. 
 
 The one duty to society which women alone can 
 discharge Is the bearing of children. In this respect 
 they can never, except at the cost of national extinc- 
 tion, attain identity of powers, and privileges and ex- 
 emptions with men.^ 
 
 The final test of the woman's movement Is its 
 effect upon the most essential, exacting and exalted 
 of woman's duties. Ultimately the woman's move- 
 ment must succeed or fail according as It strengthens 
 or weakens woman's motherhood — her mother- 
 hood physical, Intellectual and. spiritual. 
 
 We will examine, then, the available facts that 
 
 ^ We may thrust aside as too bizarre and foolish for serious 
 consideration, the experiments aiming at artificial incubation of 
 human infants which Dr. G. Stanley Hall says that a few groups 
 of women have conducted. 
 
 122 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 123 
 
 illuminate this phase of the woman's movement in 
 America. 
 
 Earliest among the manifestations of this move- 
 ment was the demand for higher education for 
 women, a demand which was speedily met. To-day 
 the college education of women Is so abundantly sup- 
 phed that In 1911-12 72,703 women were In col- 
 leges In the United States. College training has be- 
 come not merely respectable but fashionable. Little 
 trace remains of opposition to college training on the 
 ground that It Is unwomanly. In twenty years the 
 number of women at college has more than trebled. 
 This feminine corps of more-or-less Intellectuals has 
 Increased from 20,874 In 1889-90 to 72,703 In 
 1911-12, a rate of growth double as fast as the 
 men students' rate of growth. 
 
 It Is In the circles from which college women come 
 that the woman's movement has been most pro- 
 nounced, for Feminism as a cult touches the less in- 
 tellectual levels of society but lightly. All that Is in- 
 volved In the claims of Feminism, the liberation of 
 women by making their lives and work approximate 
 to the lives and work of men, has been attained more 
 by college graduates than by any other set of women. 
 Their lives have been directed consciously according 
 to the gospel of the woman's movement more than 
 the lives of their wage-earning sisters in factories 
 and stores. They have enjoyed that free choice be- 
 tween domestic and business careers, following upon 
 the best training and preparation that society af- 
 
124 FEMINISM 
 
 forded, that free choice which Feminism hopes to 
 offer to every woman. 
 
 When the higher education of women was in dis- 
 pute its advocates derided the idea that the mother- 
 hood of women could be prejudicially affected in the 
 slightest degree by college education. They argued 
 that maternal instincts were too deep seated and the 
 joys of motherhood were too much desired to be 
 modified by any changes of training or environment. 
 
 What are the facts ? When they are quoted they 
 are usually challenged. Therefore I have taken 
 them exclusively from the statistical publication of 
 highest repute and unimpeachable integrity, the ofii- 
 ^ cial journal of the American Statistical Association, 
 verifying and correcting my statements by correspon- 
 dence with the writers of the articles, none of whom 
 is arguing against Feminism. 
 
 First, it is now proven that half the college women 
 graduates do not marry at all. In an article in the 
 Journal of the American Statistical Association 
 (June, 19 14) has been brought together in scientific 
 fashion all the available marriage statistics of the 
 women graduates of colleges in America. The 
 writer concludes her examination as follows : *' The 
 decade of 1890 to 1899 is undoubtedly the most 
 fairly representative (as respects marriage rates). 
 On the one hand, it falls within the epoch which ac- 
 cepted college education for women and looked upon 
 it as thoroughly respectable. On the other hand, 
 the graduates in the latest graduating class (class of 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 125 
 
 1899) are now at least thirty-five years of age. 
 The marriage record of the decade is therefore 
 fairly complete. The eight colleges graduating 
 more than one hundred students each during the 
 decade (Earlham, Swarthmore, Wilson, Indiana, 
 Vassar, Radcliffe, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr) show 
 fairly uniform marriage rates. The lowest is Bryn 
 Mawr, 41.8 per cent. (294 graduates), and the 
 highest Swarthmore, 58.7 per cent. (148 graduates). 
 It is probable that the marriage rate for this decade 
 is fairly representative of the tendency in the mod- 
 ern women's college world." And, as shown by the 
 figures for this decade : " The proportion of 
 women college graduates who marry is approxi- 
 
 ^ mately one-half." Possibly a few members of the 
 latest classes included in the calculation might marry 
 after the age of thirty-five or thirty-six; but so few 
 as not to affect the argument. 
 
 This conclusion is accepted by women leaders 
 themselves as indisputable. Miss M. Carey 
 Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, says 
 " that 50 per cent, of women college graduates 
 marry and 40 per cent, bear and rear children," ^ 
 a gracious concession on their part to nature and to 
 society which should, in her opinion, save them from 
 hostile criticism. To feminists it appears to be a 
 matter of astonishment, a claim on man's gratitude, 
 
 . that one college woman out of two still consents to 
 marry and two out of five actually bear a child. 
 
 ^Educational Re'vieiv, January, 1908. 
 
126 FEMINISM 
 
 To judge whether this marriage rate is less than 
 normal and may be a result of the woman's move- 
 ment, we must know whether other women In the 
 United States of the same colour and race and na- 
 tivity marry more or less. Eighty-five per cent, of 
 women college graduates are of native white paren- 
 tage ; so plainly it would be unfair to compare their 
 marriage record with the record of coloured women 
 or of recent Immigrants. So we will make a com- 
 parison with women of their own colour and race. 
 We do not know, by direct count, the proportion 
 of noncolleglate, white native women, who, given 
 plenty of time, ultimately marry; but only the pro- 
 portion of them who, when a census is taken, are 
 married women. In 1 910 of all the women of na- 
 tive white parentage In the United States who were 
 15 years of age or over, 69.8 per cent, were mar- 
 ried; and of all college graduates of all ages in 19 12, 
 42.2 per cent, were married. But 15 per cent, of 
 college graduates are of foreign or mixed parentage; 
 and, paradoxically enough, the marriage rate among 
 women of foreign or mixed parentage Is lower than 
 among women of native white parentage. Making 
 allowance for this Infusion among college graduates 
 of a strain of mixed parentage It is shown ^ that out 
 of every 100 women of the same colour and nativity, 
 67 noncollegians, 15 years of age and over, are mar- 
 ried and 42.2 collegians. Collegians are all over 
 
 8 See article " Education and Fecundity," by Nearing, Journal of 
 American Statistical Association, June, 1914. 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 127 
 
 22. The percentage of noncollegians over 22 who 
 are married would be considerably higher than 67; 
 but, as we do not know the exact figure, we will ac- 
 cept the handicap upon the argument involved in tak- 
 ing the proportion for those 15 years of age and 
 over. Now, 67 is 59 per cent, above 42. So that 
 the chance that a noncollege white American girl will 
 marry is at least 59 per cent, higher than the chance 
 that a college girl will marry. But we know by 
 actual count that of every 100 collegians 50 
 marry; therefore, of every 100 noncollegians 80 
 will marry. 
 
 Thus far, then, it appears that the woman's move- 
 ment and college education and all that it brings in 
 its train must share the responsibility for the spin- 
 ster state of 30 out of every 100 graduates. 
 
 Next consider the number of children born to that 
 half of the graduates who, despite their college train- 
 ing and subsequent economic careers, do marry. 
 
 First, we notice the disturbing fact that a far 
 larger proportion of the marriages of college gradu- 
 ates are sterile than among the general population. 
 The proportion of infertile marriages among mar- 
 ried graduates of the period of 18 70-1 901, the 
 count being made over ten years after the graduation 
 of the youngest class considered, varies from 20.1 
 per cent, among the graduates of Rockford to 32.9 
 per cent, among the graduates of Smith;* whereas 
 
 *See Nearing on "Education and Fecundity": American Statisti- 
 cal Association Quarterly, June, 1914. 
 
128 FEMINISM 
 
 in the native white population outside colleges 
 among women under 45 years of age married 10 to 
 20 years, a group comparable in all respects, it is 
 13 per cent, as is proven by Dr. Joseph A. Hill.^ 
 So that childless marriages are one and a half to two 
 and a half times a^ common among those college 
 women who do marry as among married white 
 American women in general. Whether that sad 
 condition is due to causes physiological or psychologi- 
 cal will be considered later. 
 
 Next, how many children do those college women 
 bear, who do have any at all? We know that the 
 376 women who graduated from Vassar between 
 1880 and 1889 had, by 19 12, given birth to 348 
 children and that the 518 women who graduated dur- 
 ing the same period from Wellesley had given birth 
 to 427 children, which means less than i child per 
 graduate in each case, or for every 100 graduates 
 who married, 167.3 ^^^ 166.1 children, respectively. 
 Since the youngest of these women would be over 45 
 years old when the count was made, it is unlikely 
 that their families will increase. Plainly they have 
 not been recklessly prolific. They have scorned the 
 injunction to increase and multiply. 
 
 " Where only those graduates who have been 
 graduated a sufficient number of years to allow for 
 marriage and all probable family increase are con- 
 sidered," the number of children per family is less 
 than two. That Is to say, that women graduates, 
 
 5 See American Statistical Association Quarterly, December, 1913. 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 129 
 
 married and unmarried being reckoned, bear on an 
 \ average less than one child — not enough to replace 
 themselves and the husbands of the married half, 
 even if every child survived. The spinster half be- 
 comes extinct, unrepresented by any child of their 
 married classmates. Fruitless twigs on the tree of 
 life they die. Remember that 3.7 children to each 
 \ wife are. necessary to maintain a stationary popula- 
 tion.^ 
 
 Again, to judge whether the woman's movement 
 has had any influence in producing this race-suicidal 
 result we must consider the fruitlessness of noncol- 
 legians in the same sections of the population. Dr. 
 Joseph A. Hill has ascertained that the birth rate 
 of native-born white American women under 45 
 years of age, married 10 to 20 years, is 2.7 per 
 ^ family, the families of the youngest being incom- 
 plete.'^ Compare this figure with the number 1.67 
 for the completed families of Vassar and Wellesley 
 graduates, though to do so is to compare completed 
 collegians' families with incomplete noncollegians' 
 famihes, and therefore to weight the figures against 
 the argument. We find that of every 100 graduates 
 about 50 will marry and they will produce about 84 
 children, and of every corresponding 100 noncol- 
 legians about 80 will marry and they will produce 
 
 *" Education and Race Suicide," by Sprague in Journal of 
 Heredity, April, 19 15. 
 
 ^ See " Comparative Fecundity of Women of Native and Foreign 
 Parentage in the United States," in American Statistical Associa- 
 tion Quarterly, December, 1900. 
 
I30 FEMINISM 
 
 more than 216 children — roughly two and a half 
 times the baby crop.^ 
 
 That is the central and stupefying fact. Women 
 college graduates in America hear only two-fifths as 
 many children in proportion to their number as other 
 native white American women. 
 
 It Is not contended that the whole of this differ- 
 ence of fertility is due to the woman's movement. 
 Other factors operate — social and financial condi- 
 tions, the desire for luxury, the high standard of liv- 
 ing, the inability of their natural mates to marry as 
 young as formerly, the desire to give each child born 
 the highest training society offers. Can the influ- 
 ence of these factors be separated and a residuum, 
 the effect of the woman's movement, be left? Yes. 
 
 College men come from the same stratum of so- 
 ciety as college women; they are equally affected by 
 the craving for luxury, the business necessity for 
 postponing marriage, the wish to have no more chil- 
 dren than they can train most efficiently. A com- 
 parison of the marriage and birth rates among col- 
 lege men and college women will enable us to elimi- 
 nate the influence of the factors common to both and 
 to see whether a college education and the economic 
 independence which accompanies it and the whole 
 
 8 If the comparison were made with the families of Bryn Mawr 
 graduates married over ten years the proportion of children would 
 be two instead of two and a half times as many for non-collegiate 
 women. But the number of graduates of Bryn Mawr married 
 over ten years, being only 85, is too small to allow a valid com- 
 parison. 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 131 
 
 influence of the woman's movement on the college 
 girl appear to affect the woman as they do not affect 
 the man. 
 
 Misleading statistics on this subject have been 
 quoted both by feminists and anti-feminists, mislead- 
 ing because they referred to families which would 
 naturally be increased by births after the time at 
 which the children were counted. A period must be 
 chosen for comparison sufficiently remote to allow 
 for the completion of the families at the time the 
 count is made. Yale and Vassar furnish the needed 
 statistics. The marriage rate of Yale graduates had 
 declined to 66.3 per cent, for the period 1867-86, 
 a period long enough to furnish a basis, and Pro- 
 fessor William B. Bailey, the statistician, has cal- 
 culated from the class records that the average num- 
 ber of children born to the married graduates of 
 these classes when all their families are complete is 
 2.3.® The graduates of 1870-89 at Vassar and of 
 1880-89 at Wellesley numbered 1277 and had borne 
 by 19 1 2, when the members of the youngest class 
 would average 45 years of age and their families 
 be complete, a total of 1197 children or 93.7 for 
 each hundred graduates. 
 
 So that every hundred Yale graduates produced 
 152.5 children and every hundred Vassar and Wel- 
 lesley graduates produced 93.7 children. 
 
 All circumstances of social standing, desire for 
 luxury, business necessity and the like being the same, 
 
 9 Yale Review, November, 1908, p. 337. 
 
132 FEMINISM 
 
 the only difference between the men and the women 
 being the different effect upon them of all that is con- 
 noted by and results from college education, it is 
 plain, then, that the fecundity of the men is 63 per 
 cent, greater than the fecundity of the women — an 
 appalling difference, a capital charge for the wom- 
 an's movement to answer. Whatever factors ac- 
 count for the slim crops of babies in the men gradu- 
 ates' families are insufficient to account for the still 
 slimmer crops in the women graduates' families. 
 The startling conclusion stands out: 
 
 The woman's movement has reduced the fertility 
 of college women by 6j per cent, below the level to 
 which it has been reduced by other causes. No more 
 serious impeachment could be made of any social 
 movement. 
 
 The defenders of the higher education of women 
 and of the Industrial work of women which follows 
 upon it, confronted by the low fertility of college 
 graduates, attempt to show that the race suicide 
 which glares from the vital statistics of women col- 
 legians Is equally rife among their cousins, sisters 
 and friends who do not go to college. " We know 
 that no one nowadays," writes Miss M. Carey 
 Thomas, " has more than about two children per 
 marriage — neither college men nor college women, 
 nor the brothers and sisters of college men and 
 women who have not been to college, nor native 
 white American families, nor American immigrant 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 133 
 
 families in the second generation." ^^ As has been 
 shown above, this statement is not accurate. Native 
 white American women produce more nearly three 
 than two children per marriage, and the human har- 
 vest among men collegians is more abundant by fifty- 
 eight children for every hundred graduates than 
 among women collegians — a difference sufficient to 
 determine extinction or survival. 
 
 An inquiry into the families of 337 college women 
 and 389 of their sisters, cousins and friends, showed 
 that the college graduates married about two years 
 later in life than their companions who did not go 
 to college and that the average number of living 
 children to each married woman at the time of the 
 inquiry, when the child-bearing period was not passed 
 for all the women, was 1.65 for the collegians and 
 1.87 for the noncollegians.^^ The figure when 
 stated as the average per family, indicates, appar- 
 ently, but a trifling difference; its significance is not 
 revealed until it is noticed that for every hundred 
 families there are twenty-two more children among 
 the noncolleglans than among the collegians, a dif- 
 ference quite palpable when the whole college 
 woman population is considered. It means that the 
 72,000 in colleges in 19 12 will bear 15,840 fewer 
 
 10 Educational Revienx}, January, 1908. 
 
 11 See article by Mary Roberts Smith, associate professor of 
 sociology in Leland Stanford University, in American Statistical 
 Association Quarterly, March- June, 1900. 
 
134 FEMINISM 
 
 children than the same number of their stay-at-home 
 companions. 
 
 But though comparisons between college women 
 and their noncollege compeers may display the dif- 
 ferences due exclusively to college education,, they do 
 not discover the total effects of the woman's move- 
 ment, because that movement embraces other factors 
 than education, and one of them, the economic In- 
 dependence of women, affects also the stay-at-home 
 women of the social strata from which college 
 women are drawn. 
 
 " More than half of the college women were en- 
 gaged in teaching and nearly three quarters in some 
 occupation outside of their own homes before mar- 
 riage," writes Dr. Mary Roberts Smith, with respect 
 to the graduates she investigated. " Less than one 
 quarter of the noncollege women were engaged in 
 teaching and only slightly more than one-third were 
 engaged in some occupation outside their own homes 
 before marriage. Evidently college education for 
 women results in wage earning. Whatever the 
 cause, the result is a striking degree of economic In- 
 dependence before marriage." 
 
 Here we descry the more potent cause of the re- 
 duced fertility of women college graduates. A col- 
 lege education results in an after struggle for eco- 
 nomic Independence with all the train of anti-social 
 consequences — marriage refused or postponed, 
 children discovered to be a fatal hindrance to a 
 career, health marred or ruined, luxurious standards 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 135 
 
 set up on the Income which need support only one 
 and a twist given to the nature away from domestic 
 life. And one-third of the noncoUegiate sisters, 
 cousins and friends are swept by the woman's move- 
 ment into the same vortex. Though their fertility, 
 therefore, be higher than their college companions' 
 fertility. It also Is lower than It would be were Fem- 
 inism not active also In their ranks. 
 
 The twenty-two fewer children born to each hun- 
 dred college graduates' marriages Is a measure only 
 of the additional effect which Feminism produces 
 when It can add to Its anti-domestic Influence among 
 all girls In well-to-do homes the further influence of 
 college education and the wider economic self-sup- 
 port which follows upon college education. 
 
 Apologists for the woman's movement, alarmed 
 by these facts, have put forward the defence " that 
 the earlier college women were more professionally 
 inclined, that their marriage rate was abnormally 
 low for this reason, and that with the more varied 
 classes of later years, the marriage rate must have 
 risen." But, unluckily for this defence, there has 
 been a steady decline Instead of an Increase In the 
 marriage rates, among Wellesley students, for ex- 
 ample, from the earliest classes to the later classes. ^^ 
 
 A part of the celibacy among college graduates 
 is accounted for by the fact that in some families 
 a selection Is made among the daughters. " Ger- 
 
 12 See " Wellesley's Birth-rate," by Johnson and Stutzmann, 
 Journal of Heredity, June, 1915. 
 
136 FEMINISM 
 
 trude is fond of the boys and they gather round her 
 like flies round honey. She will be all right and 
 surely marry. There's no need to put her to col- 
 lege," parents argue. " But Elizabeth cares as lit- 
 tle for young men as they seem to care for her. She 
 should be prepared to earn her own living." Thus 
 among college graduates there is a somewhat higher 
 proportion than in the general population of the 
 women less disposed, naturally, at least during 
 adolescence, towards marriage. How far this fac- 
 tor accounts for the high rate of celibacy and steril- 
 ity among college women nobody can tell. 
 
 However, the trend towards sterility is so con- 
 spicuous and the selection for college of the less 
 feminine among daughters is, relatively, of so little 
 moment, that the gravest fears for the future are 
 warranted. 
 
 Feminism sets for its goal the occupation of all 
 women for money outside their homes both before 
 and after marriage. Judging from the startling 
 facts above revealed it is clear that in the halcyon 
 day when Feminism's goal is reached the troubles of 
 the world will speedily be cured by racial extinction. 
 National problems will be solved by national death. 
 The woman's movement threatens to devote every 
 national energy to making of civilisation a soft bed 
 on which to put mankind to its eternal sleep. It has 
 succeeded in turning one-half of its best-beloved 
 votaresses into spinsters, into making a quarter of 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 137 
 
 the other half childless and setting a two-baby family 
 standard for the rest. 
 
 Discussions of the marriage and the fecundity of 
 college women are usually vitiated by the hypothe- 
 sis that the effect of the higher education alone is 
 under suspicion. While the statistics indicate that a 
 college training aggravates the disease of Feminism 
 they do not prove anything about the effect of strenu- 
 ous study upon woman's physiological capacity for 
 child bearing. That married graduates lose by still- 
 births or premature births a quarter of the babies 
 they conceive, as Dr. Mary Roberts Smith discov- 
 ered,^^ indicates that either the collegiate develop- 
 ment of their minds has been at serious cost to their 
 bodies or else that their intelligence Is not sufficiently 
 practical to enable them to care for themselves dur- 
 ing the most critical months of their lives. 
 
 But their aversion to marriage and to child bear- 
 ing is psychological as much as physiological. As 
 living in a dark and airless tenement makes the vic- 
 tim susceptible to tuberculosis, so the higher educa- 
 tion renders women susceptible to the germs of Fem- 
 inism. 
 
 Feminism does not operate so injuriously by mu- 
 tilating women's bodies as by starving their Instincts. 
 Women who have studied hard for a decade, who 
 have lived in college cloisters where no child's laugh 
 
 13 See quarterly publications of American Statistical Association, 
 March- June, 1900. 
 
138 FEMINISM 
 
 was ever heard, who have then started on a career, 
 straining every nerve to achieve success, their vital- 
 ity daily drained in classroom or office, with neither 
 time nor inclination left to fondle a baby or cultivate 
 domesticity; women who have won a salary and posi- 
 tion as the guerdon of their pains, find it hard to re- 
 tire into the privacy of a home or to sacrifice their 
 salary for the joys of motherhood. The joys look 
 pale, the sacrifices are patent. " It is not easy for 
 a self-respecting woman to find a mate with whom 
 she can live on the terms demanded by her self-re- 
 spect," explains one defender.^* 
 
 Why should a five-thousand-dollar woman be a 
 mere cow, they sceptically ask; why should she aban- 
 don a yearly trip to Paris as buyer or designer, a 
 growing medical practice, or a high position in a 
 school merely to attain an experience which any dull- 
 ard Immigrant can equally achieve? Or if mother- 
 hood's appeal and a husband's wishes are strong 
 enough to make a baby desired, then the interruption 
 to the career, the enforced seclusion and the financial 
 sacrifice all militate against a repetition of the ex- 
 periment. One baby may be tolerated for the sake 
 of *' self-development," for a supreme experience 
 which gives an added flavour to life. But a second 
 time It would be no novelty and a third time It would 
 be an insufferable handicap. So less than two 
 children to each married graduate has become the 
 rule. 
 
 14 "Marriage as a Trade," by Cicely Hamilton, p. 240. 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 139 
 
 " Tut! tut! Why worry? " is the retort of some 
 feminists to this impeachment. " Already there are 
 too many babies born. Let the college women go 
 childless and devote themselves to the better care 
 and training of the other children of the community. 
 What harm?" 
 
 If one baby be as good as another, the child of the 
 Bohemian peasant as valuable as the child of the 
 New England collegian, the infant Georgian picca- 
 ninny as desirable as the Infant Boston Brahmin, 
 then there Is no cause for alarm. America is not 
 threatened Immediately, like France, with a diminish- 
 ing population. By the fecundity of the Immigrants 
 in the first generation and by the flowing tide of im- 
 migration, the population of the United States 
 mounts millions higher each decade. Quantity we 
 have, enough and to spare. If every creature born 
 of woman Is endowed equally with potential powers, 
 powers of mind and body and spirit, which await only 
 a favouring environment for glorious development, 
 then the failure of college women to reproduce them- 
 selves is only their own concern. The nation can 
 find Its future governors and judges and business 
 leaders, its preachers and poets and philosophers, its 
 writers and thinkers, its superintendents and man- 
 agers, its bankers and brain workers, among the dull- 
 faced, semi-civilised victims of Europe's oppressions 
 who are now landing at Ellis Island. In that event 
 no social duty, no patriotic obligation, can be laid 
 on those women who have been showered with the 
 
I40 FEMINISM 
 
 choicest gifts the nation can offer to make any return 
 by assuming the holy cares of motherhood. They 
 are alone the judges of the loss they suffer In their 
 own lives by being childless. If they calculate that 
 a fat salary gives more comfort than a full cradle, 
 their neighbours have nothing to say. Religion may 
 upbraid them for the selfishness of their lives, for 
 thwarting the purposes of the Creator, and for bely- 
 ing the teachings of the Church; their mothers may 
 warn them that nature cannot be mocked with Im- 
 punity and that an empty lodging Is a cold refuge for 
 an aged woman's heart; and doctors may remind 
 them that the full use of the woman's bodily powers 
 Is essential to the woman's bodily health. But the 
 statesman and the sociologist must keep silence. Of 
 mere humanity there Is abundance. The pullulat- 
 ing swarms In city gutters, the crowded families in 
 negro hovels, offer raw material aplenty for the next 
 generation; and If they be Innately as fine material 
 as college women's babies, then there Is no fear of 
 national decay. 
 
 But biology and history forbid the assumption 
 which leads to this comfortable conclusion. Human 
 beings are not all alike at birth. They differ In qual- 
 ity equally with dogs and horses; one may be a mon- 
 grel, another a blue ribbon winner. Nature, as 
 much as nurture, determines what a child shall be- 
 come. The family strain delimits the child's des- 
 tiny. The budding science of eugenics is revealing 
 the incalculable worth of breeding for the improve- 
 
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 141 
 
 ment of mankind. The infertility of the best strains 
 means deterioration of stock. 
 
 Worse even than Its race suicidal effect Is Femi- 
 nism's selection for sterility of the best women in the 
 land.^^ It provides that, pending Its final victory, 
 when all women will be under its sway, the nation 
 shall breed from Its worse. 
 
 Granting that higher education develops the mind, 
 refines the character and demands superior mental 
 powers the lack of which causes the " weeding out " 
 of a large proportion in grammar school and high 
 school, we must assume that college graduates are 
 the pick of the nation's women. The ideal of 
 America is to continue the rapid extension of oppor- 
 tunities for college training until, as wealth increases 
 and parents come ever more under the sway of 
 American ideas, every girl capable of profiting by a 
 college education shall receive a college education. 
 
 But, to-day, a college education brings In its train 
 economic self-support and racial extinction. In pro- 
 portion as our young girls show superior ability and 
 are able to take a higher education do they cease to 
 bear children. So that the goal of Americanism, a 
 higher education for everybody, united with the pro- 
 gramme of Feminism, economic independence for 
 woman, Involves the perpetuation of a reduced na- 
 tion by breeding from the women who are too dull 
 
 15 Further evidence is contained in " The Decadence of the 
 Native American Stock," by Frederick S. Crura, quarterly publica- 
 tion, American Statistical Association^ September, 1914. 
 
142 FEMINISM 
 
 for college. That means breeding from the worse. 
 The ablest and best-trained women are to be enticed, 
 by college education first and by high salaries in busi- 
 ness after, to sterility. The mothers of the nation 
 are to be the half educated. When a family rises 
 In mentality and social position so that its daughters 
 can go to Vassar, Wellesley or Bryn Mawr, that fam- 
 ily, on the daughter's side, Is to die out. We are to 
 establish an Unnatural Selection of the Fittest to die, 
 and the Unfittest to survive. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 
 
 So self-evident is It that society cannot sanction 
 Its own annihilation that Feminism defends the com- 
 plete avoidance of maternity only by a favoured 
 few, who, It claims, have a gift to render superior 
 to offspring. Frau Meyreder, the German leader, 
 announces that " there can be no reason why women 
 who, for the sake of intellectual Interests, choose to 
 forego motherhood, should be covered with re- 
 proach. Only an age which no longer possesses a 
 spiritual guidance or ideals would consider the avoid- 
 ance of maternity as an objection to the intellectual 
 endeavours of certain women." ^ Such women 
 should be supported by " the general mass of 
 women," argues the German feminist leader, be- 
 cause " changes In the social order can be brought 
 about only through such women as have been freed 
 of the limitations of the sex which are in the order 
 of nature, who vary from the prevailing type, and 
 who, through the force of their Independence, at- 
 tain to a new conception of life. Such women, if 
 you choose, are the * unwomanly * ones — no doubt 
 less useful for man and the elemental sex purpose, 
 
 i"A Survey of the Woman Problem," p. 55. 
 
 143 
 
144 FEMINISM 
 
 and yet Indispensable factors of the advancing proc- 
 esses of civilisation." ^ 
 
 Here are set up the two usual defences of well-to- 
 do women who avoid maternity: i, Their work in 
 "securing changes in the social order"; and 2, 
 " their intellectual endeavours." 
 
 Doubtless the unwomanly women are procuring 
 " changes in the social order." Whether this serv- 
 ice compensates for their sterility depends upon the 
 social value of the changes which they procure. 
 What are these changes? What is their effect 
 upon social welfare? Such women form the fight- 
 ing phalanx in the woman's movement. They are 
 the pioneer advocates of '* votes for women," of eco- 
 nomic self-support for women and of sexual inde- 
 pendence for women. Their efforts are mainly di- 
 rected towards smoothing the road along which other 
 women may follow their lead and in persuading 
 women in larger numbers to advance after them. 
 Unfortunately for their contention, in proportion as 
 the changes l"n the social order which they advo- 
 cate are established, the number of childless women 
 increases. The success of the pioneers but hastens 
 the day of national decay. Their alternative social 
 service but increases the social danger. It Is an ag- 
 gravation, not an extenuation of their offence. 
 These women are in the same position as a man who 
 should claim to compensate society for his own re- 
 fusal to work for a living by persuading other men 
 
 2" A Survey of the Woman Problem," p. 63. 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 145 
 
 to join him in a strike against work. A hobo can- 
 not justify his hoboism by recruiting an army of ho- 
 boes. Rebellion against motherhood Is not conse- 
 crated by organising a general strike against 
 motherhood. 
 
 What are the " intellectual endeavours " which 
 can rightly be considered so much more valuable than 
 child bearing; what occupations are deemed suffi- 
 cient to excuse a woman for avoiding it? She who 
 avoids motherhood in order to leave herself free for 
 social pleasures, bridge, dancing and the like, is gen- 
 erally condemned. 
 
 If she avoids It in order to earn a salary and en- 
 joy independence, she is criticised still by some, 
 though by a smaller number. 
 
 If she be highly gifted, a great singer or actress 
 or public entertainer, we more readily excuse her 
 from maternal duties. 
 
 For the sake of high intellectual achievements, to 
 a George Eliot, a Rosa Bonheur, or Harriet Mar- 
 tineau, we still more readily grant exemption. 
 
 For the sake of public service, patriotism, philan- 
 thropy, a Florence Nightingale, a Clara Barton, a 
 Joan of Arc, a Jane Addams, a Susan B. Anthony, 
 a St. Theresa, we not only excuse from maternity but 
 we rejoice that celibacy left them free for service to 
 mankind of a '^ wider " sort. 
 
 Thus it transpires that the higher the type of 
 woman, the more readily we excuse her from mother- 
 hood; the more we encourage her to do something 
 
146 FEMINISM 
 
 else beside reproduce her kind, the more we applaud 
 her success In other than maternal offices. 
 
 Race Improvement under such circumstances Is a 
 Utopia which ever recedes. When the finer a 
 woman is the more readily we excuse her from per- 
 petuating her good qualities, we are making sure of 
 racial degeneration, using up the human capital and 
 inviting national bankruptcy.^ 
 
 A woman of splendid gifts or highest character, 
 who eschews matrimony, completely avoids mater- 
 nity. But the loss of the best elements in the popu- 
 lation is due, in large part, also, to the avoidance 
 of maternity, complete or partial, by favoured women 
 in large numbers, women for whom society has done 
 most, women who marry but either deliberately 
 remain childless or restrict their family to one 
 child. 
 
 Old-fashioned readers, who regard babies as 
 heaven sent, the natural fruit of marriage, given or 
 denied according to a fate which the parents can- 
 not control, will be aghast at the assumption that, 
 even when married, people accept or renounce 
 
 3 The case would be still worse if gifted men, too, were en- 
 couraged to embrace celibacy (as they were under the disastrously 
 dysgenic influence of raonasticism), in order to give their undivided 
 time to " serving humanity in a wider manner." To some extent 
 the rising standards of living are operating to shut oflf the most 
 highly organised of men, as well as women, from parenthood, but 
 the case is less alarming on the masculine side because success for 
 man encourages his marriage, while for woman success encourages 
 celibacy. 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 147 
 
 parenthood at their pleasure. That educated per- 
 sons, men and women, can and do exercise this pre- 
 rogative is a new and dominant factor in Feminism. 
 No longer is the birth rate controlled by nature, 
 its restriction dependent upon ascetic self-restraint. 
 The Malthusian doctrine that population tends to 
 increase faster than the means of subsistence has 
 been superseded by the Neo-Malthusian doctrine 
 that husband and wife, while continuing to cohabit, 
 can and should regulate the number of the offspring 
 with respect not merely to the means of subsistence 
 but to their own love of luxury. Young girls and 
 engaged couples discuss with amazing frankness, 
 wherever women have been " freed," the precise 
 number of children they will bear and the conditions 
 under which they will consent to bear them. The 
 deliberate prevention of conception, not the physio- 
 logical incapacity to conceive, is the main cause of 
 infertility. 
 
 How widespread is this practice is revealed in the 
 unique and most authoritative Report of the Royal 
 Commission on the Decline of the Birth Rate in New 
 South Wales, where Feminism is more advanced 
 than in America, and the statistics of births are anal- 
 agous to the American college statistics. 
 
 The commission reports: 
 
 " We are satisfied that the statistics show 
 
 a. That a decline of birth rate in recent years 
 has characterised all the States of Australia 
 
148 FEMINISM 
 
 and New Zealand; also the United King- 
 dom; also many of the large cities of Europe, 
 the United States, and South America. 
 b. That there was in New South Wales a sud- 
 den, remarkable fall in birth rate in the 
 year 1889, followed by a continuous and 
 rapid decline, until, in 1902, the total de- 
 cline had exceeded ten per thousand of popu- 
 lation." 
 
 The report of the commission further states: 
 
 " There is no evidence of any increase of physio- 
 logical sterility in women in New South Wales," but 
 
 *' The conclusions which we draw from the evi- 
 dence on this branch of our subject are inevitable; 
 namely, that there Is a diminution in fecundity and 
 fertility in recent years, which is due to : 
 
 a. Deliberate prevention of conception, and de- 
 struction of embryonic life; 
 
 b. Pathological causes consequent upon the 
 means used and the practices involved 
 therein." 
 
 " Prevention," it was further testified, " is com- 
 monly advocated in all classes of society " in New 
 South Wales " except among the very lowest," as 
 the slight evidence available suggests is also the 
 case in England and in the United States. Yet the 
 number of children born on the average to each fam- 
 ily in New South Wales when the marriage is con- 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 149 
 
 tracted before the age of thirty is over three.* 
 But, though the average age at marriage of the 
 women college graduates in America is also less than 
 thirty, the issue of the marriages on the average 
 is less than two. In France, also, the classic exam- 
 ple of the perils of excessive family restriction, 
 where the population is stationary, and in some De- 
 partments is declining, the fecundity even of the 
 least fecund, the intellectual classes, surpasses the 
 fecundity of American college women. To every 
 hundred families in France among the liberal pro- 
 fessions 305 children are born, half as many more 
 as are born to the married women graduates of 
 American colleges.*^ 
 
 So that France, the standing warning to the world 
 of the dangers of extreme limitation of families, 
 yet maintains a healthier rate of growth even among 
 those classes who most restrict their families than is 
 maintained by the finest product of American educa- 
 tion and American Feminism. 
 
 This diseased condition In whole sections of so- 
 ciety, this abnegation of the will to live, brings hus- 
 bands as well as wives under condemnation. 
 
 But responsibility for the failure to reproduce 
 must be laid mainly upon the wives, both because 
 
 *See Exhibit 34 in Report of Royal Commission on the Decline 
 of the Birth Rate in New South Wales, 1904, 
 
 ^ " The Fertility of Marriages According to Profession and Social 
 Position," by M. Lucien March, Directeur de la Statistique Generale 
 de la France, in the Report of First International Eugenics Con- 
 gress, London, 1912, 
 
ISO FEMINISM 
 
 the evidence already cited shows that college men 
 do In fact accept paternity more fully than college 
 women accept maternity, and also because, notably 
 in America, the wife, particularly in educated cir- 
 cles, is treated so justly by the husband that her 
 wishes as to the number of her children usually pre- 
 vail. Occasional cases can be cited of the refusal 
 of a husband to second a wife's desire for children; 
 but such rare instances are of little weight against the 
 bulk of evidence. It is impossible to credit that 
 college women marry men who shirk paternity, while 
 noncollege women marry men who desire paternity. 
 Much more likely is it that the readiness of the 
 American husband to save his wife the discomfort, 
 pain and seclusion of maternity is partly responsi- 
 ble for her successful avoidance of woman's natural 
 burden. Were he dominating, brutal and impul- 
 sive, careless of her desires and indifferent to her 
 pain, as feminists sometimes picture him, she could 
 not escape the fruitage of marriage. Upon a mat- 
 ter so private and delicate direct evidence it is well- 
 nigh impossible to procure; but the evidence given 
 before the Royal Commission in New South Wales, 
 given under responsibility and subject to sifting cross- 
 examination, the evidence of doctors, clergymen and 
 drug dealers, proved that women expressed the de- 
 sire to avoid maternity and took positive action in 
 accordance with their wishes. 
 
 ** Would Humanism, then," it will be asked, 
 " urge women to bear, fatalistically, all the family 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 151 
 
 physiologically possible ? " By no means. Fami- 
 lies of six, eight and more exhaust the mother's 
 strength before her time and condemn the young ones 
 to neglect and ill-training. Prudential restraint is 
 advantageous not only to the individual families but 
 to society. Reckless multiplication is a mark of in- 
 ferior civilisation. 
 
 Feeble-minded and degenerate parents, whose 
 progeny would inevitably people our prisons and 
 poorhouses, should, indeed, be safeguarded against 
 parenthood or marrying. The tuberculous and 
 those with any hereditary taint merit warm enco- 
 miums for refraining from parenthood. Wives 
 with diseased or vicious husbands whose traits of 
 character or defects of body they shrink from im- 
 posing on another generation, are to be deeply pitied, 
 not harshly blamed. Those few who are cursed to 
 sterility as a result of some man's vices may be par- 
 doned any bitterness in their hostility towards men 
 in general. 
 
 These exceptional, pathological cases and all 
 whose too numerous offspring are condemned to 
 semi-starvation and brutalised ignorance, should be 
 the first beneficiaries of medical advice and aid. 
 
 But it is one of life's large ironies that the knowl- 
 edge of preventive checks on population which was 
 spread for the purpose of staying the multiplica- 
 tion of the least fit, has been utilised, not by them, 
 but by the most fit, those best able, both in wealth 
 and in brains, to rear fine children. What was 
 
152 FEMINISM 
 
 meant for the poor has been seized by the rich. 
 And thus a differential, ill-balanced birth-rate has 
 been established. The well-to-do have not been sat- 
 isfied to reduce their contribution of children to a de- 
 sirable, patriotic limit; they are shirking a full half 
 of their fair contribution. 
 
 Though official evidence has never been taken in 
 America to prove that the voluntary limitation of 
 family by the same means as are universally prac- 
 tised in New South Wales Is the explanation of the 
 suicidally low birth rate In some classes, yet circum- 
 stantial and unofficial evidence is abundant. In a 
 book written by a feminist, Lydia K. Commander, 
 much of this evidence is collated. Summing up, she 
 states: " The knowledge of how to control family 
 scarcely existed In America two generations ago. 
 Now It Is practically universal. To-day thousands 
 of physicians In this country make a practice of dis- 
 seminating the knowledge of how to avoid chil- 
 dren"; and again: "The physicians who have 
 never advised any woman against child bearing, and 
 explained to her how to avoid It, appear to be few 
 In number.'' " Many people, however, are not de- 
 pendent upon physicians for such knowledge. It Is 
 widespread, almost universal among intelligent 
 Americans. The vast majority know how to con- 
 trol the size of the family, and do so deliber- 
 ately." 6 
 
 As to the relative responsibility of men and of 
 
 •"The American Idea," pp. 90 to 92. 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 153 
 
 women assumed in this matter, the same witness tes- 
 tifies: *' The strongest opposition to family is, how- 
 ever, coming from women. The control of repro- 
 duction is now largely in their hands, and they are 
 unfavourable to maintaining such a birth-rate as will 
 be for the benefit of the nation." 
 
 This outcome, repugnant upon first view, is so in- 
 evitable that it might have been anticipated. 
 Women are the temples of the race. They live 
 through their children more than do men. Nor- 
 mally man desires a wife for the sake of having 
 the woman; woman desires a husband for the sake 
 of having the child. Man seeks the woman in the 
 wife; woman seeks the child in the husband. Nor- 
 mally woman lives through her children, man lives 
 through his work. But Feminism destroys this dis- 
 tinction. It wants woman also to live through her 
 work, lucrative work pursued through life. Just 
 as man's life in his work has made minor his life 
 in his children, so, in proportion as woman's life is in 
 her work, her life is made minor in her children. 
 She cannot be deeply involved both in children and 
 in outside work. As her pursuits become mannish, 
 so will her preferences. And already the results are 
 in evidence in the decay and extinction of families. 
 
 Man's natural desire for the woman is far stronger 
 than woman's desire for the man. He may want 
 no children, but he cannot escape wanting a wife. 
 But when the woman wants no children she is apt 
 to want no husband. Man may be nonpaternal but 
 
154 FEMINISM 
 
 the race will endure ; but when woman is nonmaternal 
 the race will perish. 
 
 Desire for children is not an ineradicable instinct 
 in woman. It can be destroyed; it has been de- 
 stroyed. Put a woman till she is thirty under the 
 same training and environment as a man; cultivate 
 in her the same ambitions; subject her to the same 
 sort of strain; deprive her of baby companionship; 
 strip her of family life, and the dormant desire for 
 children of her own may never wake or may stir 
 so drowsily that it is stifled by other desires. Pre- 
 cisely as happens with men. But with men nature 
 has avoided the danger of race extinction by implant- 
 ing a strong sexual craving; with women nature has 
 supplied no such safeguard. The training and en- 
 vironment that narcotise her maternal longings also 
 narcotise her feebler sexual craving. And, conse- 
 quently, half the college women graduates do not 
 marry, and a quarter of those who do marry are 
 childless. Their desire for maternity has proved 
 too feeble to overcome the obstacles to maternity. 
 In more romantic terms, they have failed to fall 
 in love and to rouse a lover. While the blood ran 
 hot through their youthful veins and their tide of 
 life surged fullest, they were preoccupied with win- 
 ning degrees and professional standing. They were 
 too wide awake to dream love's sweet dream. Cu- 
 pid's arrow could not pierce the text book or the 
 ledger that armoured their heart. A lover would 
 have been a distraction favourable neither to college 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 155 
 
 standing nor professional advancement. A home 
 was less alluring than a business appointment, a baby 
 than an increase in salary. So that the natural 
 period for romance flew by and Dame Nature's chief 
 weapon was blunted. Middle-age calculation set 
 down marriage as a losing gamble and celibacy was 
 idealised as a life of freedom and self-development. 
 Yearnings for an infant to fondle could not over- 
 throw the yearnings for success in a career. A hes- 
 itating lover was repulsed because blood and heart 
 were not prepared to give a lover welcome. So was 
 consummated the tragedy of the woman's existence, 
 the extinguishing of the torch of Hfe which had been 
 handed down to her through the generations. So 
 the deterioration of the national stock was hastened; 
 so the worst bhght of Feminism afflicted the land. 
 
 The cure which Feminism advocates for the dis- 
 eased birth rate is to make such social arrangements 
 that women may have work without foregoing 
 motherhood; that Is, to combine outside pursuits 
 with maternal activity. This Is a quack remedy 
 which would only aggravate the disease. It at- 
 tempts to restore health by another dose of the 
 poison. As feminists themselves are compelled to 
 admit, " It is significant that simultaneously with 
 the decline of marriage and child bearing, the num- 
 ber of wage-earning women has steadily Increased. 
 The business woman seems not to be prolific. 
 Rarely can a woman manage a business career and 
 a large family at once. When she does so the fam- 
 
156 FEMINISM 
 
 ily IS a terrible handicap. Even a few children seri- 
 ously disturb a business or professional career." "^ 
 
 Analogous evidence is offered by numerous 
 women: " A doctor who has been practising for a 
 number of years largely among working women said: 
 * Women simply cannot have many children and 
 work away from home. They can manage one or 
 two, but not more. They find they must either neg- 
 lect the children or the business, and whichever they 
 slight they are apt to be dissatisfied. The usual way 
 is to leave the family out.' 
 
 " A woman dentist, with one little girl, said: * I 
 can't have more children because I'm so busy with 
 my profession, and I cannot get a competent person 
 to care for the baby. I should have to give it much 
 of my time and let my practice run down. It is out 
 of the question.' 
 
 " A business woman with two children said: * I 
 am fortunate in having my mother live with me, for 
 I can trust the children in her hands. In other cir- 
 cumstances I should not have been at liberty to have 
 children.' 
 
 " A doctor, with twenty years' practice and much 
 interested in sociology, said: * The wage-earning 
 woman fails to have children because she cannot 
 make motherhood and industry co-existent.' 
 
 " Another physician said : * Women in all ranks 
 
 of life are leaving housework for the industrial 
 
 world and the family is disappearing in consequence. 
 
 7 "The American Idea," pp. 193 and 194, by L. K. Commander. 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 157 
 
 When a woman loves her profession she will work 
 at it and will not have children when they interfere 
 with it; " 8 
 
 Concerning France, M. Henri Bordeaux writes: 
 " The daywork of women has been the death of 
 the home." ^ 
 
 Humanism recognises that it is impossible in nature 
 for a woman at the same time to bear and rear chil- 
 dren and to drain her strength in an outside occupa- 
 tion. Either child or business must suffer. Sensi- 
 tive women with a natural love for their children 
 abandon the business; tough-minded women, wedded 
 indissolubly to their money-making, let the children 
 suffer. Unfortunate mothers, compelled by poverty 
 to continue at work, know that their children are neg- 
 lected, and heart break at home is added to physical 
 exhaustion at work. Society cannot adopt the fem- 
 inist rule and attempt to adjust child bearing to in- 
 dustry except by adopting the feminist psychology 
 and admitting that children are less important than 
 material production. If the children are to come 
 first, then the mother must care for them. Espe- 
 cially in the first five years they cannot be reared 
 by factory methods. They must be hand trained. 
 Attempts to liberate the mother for business by put- 
 ting a dozen or two of babies under one nurse, mean 
 the destruction of the babies. Even the single, 
 hired, nurse girl is a rank failure, from the baby*s 
 
 8 "The American Idea," by L. K. Commander, pp. 194-195. 
 ^Atlantic Monthly, February, 1915. 
 
158' FEMINISM 
 
 point of view. That child is best guarded in the 
 most critical stage of its life journey, whose mother, 
 scorning money making and social pleasures alike, 
 with a sufficient income earned by the husband for 
 reasonable comfort and freedom from anxiety, her- 
 self spends with her child the greater part of each 
 day. 
 
 Humanism says that life must not be mutilated 
 to fit industry. Industry must be adjusted to fit life. 
 The woman who begrudges her own children a 
 few years of her undivided attention, perhaps can- 
 not be suppressed, but she need not be admired. 
 Her example is pernicious, her ethics immoral, her 
 selfishness destructive to the nation. Fortunately 
 nature decrees an effective remedy against her per- 
 manent influence. She becomes extinct. She is su- 
 perseded by the other type of woman " whose chil- 
 dren rise up and call her blessed." 
 
 To the humanist suggestion that motherhood is 
 the happiest, highest and most socially valuable of 
 all careers for women, it is often retorted that it is 
 useless to advocate marriage for all women because 
 there are so many more women than men that mil- 
 lions are spinsters by natural necessity. Unhappily 
 for Great Britain her reckless policy, pursued 
 through centuries, of sending her sons to possess 
 the distant parts of the empire has left her with 
 more than a million and a half of these " super- 
 fluous " women. 
 
 But in this matter, as in so many others, a special 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT 159 
 
 Providence seems to have cared for America. In 
 the United States among the adult population, 
 twenty-one years of age and over, there are no 
 males to every 100 females. The total excess of 
 adult males, according to the census reports of 19 10, 
 is 2,443,397. So the men suffer the grievance. 
 Thei men have the excuse for celibacy, for becoming 
 the army of the dissatisfied, while each adult woman 
 has the chance of one husband and a fraction of a 
 hu'sband over. 
 
 True, this excess of men doomed by fate to bache- 
 lorhood is not evenly distributed among all classes 
 and in all districts. But among the native whites of 
 native parentage, the blue-blooded families, the nat- 
 ural aristocracy of birth, the classes in which move 
 the women college graduates half of whom remain 
 single, there is a greater proportion of men to 
 women, 105.8 men to 100 women, than among those 
 of foreign or mixed parentage, or than among the 
 negroes. The natural opportunity for the high- 
 grade white woman to marry one of her own kind 
 actually exceeds the natural opportunity of the ne- 
 gress.^^ 
 
 ^^ Males to loo Females 
 21 years of age and 
 over {1910) 
 
 United States — total iio.o 
 
 Native white of native parentage 105.8 
 
 Native white of foreign or mixed parentage 98.5 
 
 Foreign born whites 132.7 
 
 Negroes 101.3 
 
i6o FEMINISM 
 
 Again, in some States there is a slight dearth of 
 marriageable men, though nowhere so marked a 
 dearth as there is in several States of marriageable 
 women. In Massachusetts there are only 95 adult 
 men to each 100 adult women. But to redress the 
 balance the superfluous women have but to travel by 
 trolley across the border into Vermont, Maine or 
 Connecticut, where the men outnumber the women 
 in a like proportion. While taking the States of 
 New England together there is a slight preponder- 
 ance of women, a few miles away in the State of New 
 York there is an equal preponderance of men. 
 
 In the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast States, 
 the men would indeed be in a parlous condition were 
 transportation to other States whence wives can be 
 won by peaceful methods not so easy. In Nevada 
 and Wyoming men outnumber women more than 
 two to one, and in Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Wash- 
 ington and Oregon by more than three to two. 
 Such unnatural discrepancies led in ancient times to 
 adventures like the rape of the Sabine women; to- 
 day they cause nothing more sensational than trips 
 East in search of a sweetheart.^^ 
 
 11 Males to loo Males to 100 
 
 Females 21 Females 
 
 and over. oil ages. 
 
 98.8 New England 99-3 
 
 105.6 Middle Atlantic 103.3 
 
 109.2 Great North Central 106.0 
 
 116.2 West North Central 109.9 
 
 102.1 South Atlantic 101.2 
 
FADING OF MATERNAL INSTINCT i6i 
 
 In the distribution of population, then, there is 
 no explanation of the maldistribution of the birth 
 rate. It is by preference, not by natural necessity, 
 that the most highly educated women eschew matri- 
 mony. If custom and current opinion approved the 
 woman exhibiting as much enterprise in moving 
 across the country to find a location favourable to 
 matrimony as a man shows in seeking a location 
 favourable to business, she would never need to 
 travel far to place herself where women are at a 
 premium. Men, not women, are " superfluous." 
 
 Males to loo Males to loo 
 
 Females 21 Females 
 
 and over. all ages. 
 
 loz.g Great South Central 101.9 
 
 113.8 West South Central loy.a 
 
 148.6 Mountain 127.9 
 
 144.9 Pacific 129.5 
 
 104.4 Maine 103.2 
 
 loi.o New Hampshire 100.9 
 
 106.2 Vermont 105.3 
 
 95.1 Massachusetts 96.7 
 
 98.5 Rhode Island 99.3 
 
 103.7 Connecticut 102.3 
 
 102.9 New York 101.2 
 
 105.2 Pennsylvania 105.9 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HUMANIST EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 
 
 The failure of women's colleges, from the human- 
 ist point of view, has been due largely to their aping 
 of men's colleges. Humanism would recognise the 
 equal right of women with men to an education 
 adapted to their natures and to their minds. It 
 would aim to transform education for girls and 
 women so that it would not starve the feminine in- 
 stincts, exhaust the physical vitality or direct the 
 mind and heart away from homemaking to the desert 
 of money-making. What changes are necessary? 
 
 The curriculum should be adapted from the gram- 
 mar school onward to the girl's psychology, to her 
 physical life and to her natural career. Already a 
 small beginning has been made by the teaching of 
 cooking and housecraft in grammar schools, in a 
 few schools (for instance. In New York City) , model 
 flats in which housekeeping in all its parts may be 
 practised, being part of the equipment. Every girl 
 who completes the grammar school course should be 
 familiar with the rudiments of mothercraft and 
 homemaking and every high school should offer a 
 full course in domestic science and art or Home 
 Economics and in caring for the baby. Surely to 
 adolescent girls these are more suitable and profit- 
 
 162 
 
HUMANIST EDUCATION 163 
 
 able than botany and geometry or typewriting and 
 stenography. 
 
 Even common subjects should not be taught to 
 girls in the identical mode as to boys. In 19 14 the 
 Board of Superintendents of the City of New York, 
 having awakened to the fact that a girl's mind, in 
 order of development and mode of action is not a 
 dupHcate of a boy's mind, approved special courses 
 of study in history, chemistry, physics, etc., for girls 
 in high schools. To make her follow the same in- 
 tellectual path, step for step, as her brother, is to do 
 her the same injustice as to set a boy with a musical 
 gift to study painting or a born draughtsman to fol- 
 low medicine. Girls do not attain as high a standard 
 as boys in the study of geometry and physics; they 
 do excellent work in language study and in the arts. 
 Boys will make sacrifices to indulge in athletic sports ; 
 girls will readily relinquish athletic sports. " Male 
 and female created he them," different in tastes and 
 mentality, each as good as the other, each capable 
 of great achievement, each requiring a training 
 suited to their special faculties. 
 
 In colleges the differentiation of studies Human- 
 ism would make more marked. Here the young 
 woman is nearing the period of Romance, a period 
 which does not mean to her the same as it means 
 to the young man. Falling in love to him suggests 
 harder work at business, a closer application to 
 money-making; for, pending the feminist millennium, 
 it implies maintaining wife and children. So it 
 
1 64 FEMINISM 
 
 spurs him to keener preparation for a career, to 
 closer application to the bread-and-butter studies. 
 But to the young woman it suggests naturally the 
 holier cares of maternity, the creation of a home, 
 the escape from the dusty strife of store or factory 
 or office. 
 
 So Humanism, in arranging college studies for 
 women, instead of copying the studies that have been 
 evolved for men, would start afresh to discover what 
 science, what art, what literature will best prepare 
 the woman adequately to meet all the probable ex- 
 periences of her later life. Humanism would not 
 anticipate that any but unfortunate women will be re- 
 quired to earn a livelihood outside of the home after 
 marriage. It would safeguard the interests of the 
 majority, who should become wives and mothers, 
 by first supplying their needs. It would adapt the 
 academic studies to young women, frankly ad- 
 mitting, for instance, that the fondness and aptitude 
 of young men for stiff mathematical problems. 
 Is not a good reason for loading the course in 
 physics for young women with mathematical prob- 
 lems. 
 
 Humanism would recognise that abounding vital- 
 ity, amiability and cheerfulness are more valuable 
 assets to a normal woman than stores of learning 
 on abstruse topics. It would deny a diploma to any 
 girl sickly at graduation, as a law school would deny 
 a diploma to a student unable to speak or write 
 grammatically. Health to the woman is as essential 
 
HUMANIST EDUCATION 165 
 
 to the happy discharge of her primary social obliga- 
 tion, the bearing of children, as correct speech to the 
 discharge of the lawyer's primary obligation, the 
 skilful practice of law. A sickly man may make a 
 good lawyer; a sickly woman cannot make a good 
 mother. 
 
 Humanism would recognise the superiority of 
 home teaching by a capable mother for young chil- 
 dren over teaching by factory methods, wholesale, 
 in public schools. It would therefore equip the col- 
 lege student with that modicum of psychology and 
 pedagogy needful to enable her to give her future off- 
 spring in early years the home tuition which only 
 the richest families now offer through private gov- 
 ernesses. 
 
 Humanism would encourage the schools of house- 
 hold craft and mothercraft beginning to appear in 
 connection with women's colleges. The technique 
 of baby care, of homemaking, of household budgets 
 and the like is a more appropriate acquisition for a 
 woman than ancient history and Greek roots — un- 
 less it be expected that she shall earn a livelihood 
 by lecturing on those subjects. 
 
 Above all. Humanism would make the atmos- 
 phere of women's colleges favourable to matrimony. 
 Semiconventual institutions it would discountenance. 
 Separation from young men during the critical years 
 when the young woman's being glows with romantic 
 warmth is as abhorrent to nature as it would be to 
 plant in one county the trees of a species which car- 
 
1 66 FEMINISM 
 
 ries the male pollen-bearing flowers and the trees 
 that carry the female seed-bearing flowers in another 
 county. 
 
 Not that study of the same subjects side by side 
 Is essential to mutual understanding and sympathy, 
 nor that co-educational colleges have proven much 
 more favourable to marriage than exclusively female 
 colleges. Inconclusive statistics of Illinois Univer- 
 sity, for example, show a like tendency on the part of 
 the women graduates to cehbacy and sterility as Vas- 
 sar and Wellesley. One investigation showed that 
 nearly 50 per cent, of co-educational women mar- 
 ried before the age of 30, and 40 per cent, of the 
 women from separate colleges. Even co-educa- 
 tional colleges may be anti-domestic, though they 
 may more readily than conventual colleges be made 
 humanist. 
 
 It is dangerous to womanhood and to the nation 
 to assume that even those who are selected for col- 
 lege because they display no early eagerness for 
 romance are natural spinsters whose maternal in- 
 stincts, being already weak, should be starved, and 
 whose femininity, being less than normal, should be 
 still further suppressed. A youth who is not natu- 
 rally manly is not committed by wise parents to a 
 girls' school that his virility may be still further re- 
 duced. Rather he Is thrown among rougher young 
 men, placed under manly tuition, encouraged to play 
 football and baseball, laughed at by the girls them- 
 selves for his lady-like ways and sternly required to 
 
HUMANIST EDUCATION 167 
 
 put on manliness. Why should a young woman who 
 analogously is not fully feminine be placed, on the 
 contrary, under conditions to starve her slight female 
 instincts ? 
 
 Their evil outcome will be corrected only in pro- 
 portion as the tone of the colleges is modified and the 
 trend given to the students' minds and natures is 
 changed from a money-making to a homemaking 
 career. That change involves more than setting 
 women students to study the technique of baby care 
 or to investigate why jelly jells and how household 
 budgets should be kept — admirable as all that may 
 be. It involves also a habit of thought among the 
 faculty, a temper of mind displayed in the evening 
 entertainments, the casual utterances and the in- 
 direct guidance. It would make impossible such a 
 monstrous regulation as the rule at Wellesley that no 
 young men are allowed to call on a student during 
 her one free day, Sunday. 
 
 One professor's home, with young children, 
 happy, cheerful, well-managed, to which a group of 
 the young women have easy, hospitable welcome, 
 will be more excellent for them than formal hours 
 in classroom or laboratory. A sour domestic 
 menage should be as prejudicial to a teacher's career 
 as slovenly work and ways: voluntary childlessness 
 an offence as grievous as drunkenness; a bevy of 
 healthy children, with whom the girls can gather 
 round the family table, as high a recommendation 
 as a German doctorate. As at Princeton each man 
 
1 68 FEMINISM 
 
 has a tutor to guide him in matters intellectual, so 
 at a girl's college each student should have a mother 
 on the campus to guide her in matters womanly. A 
 corps of such mothers, each required to qualify as a 
 successful home queen, each learned in matters of 
 the heart as a man tutor in matters of the head, each 
 bathing her student charges in a home atmosphere 
 and guiding their reading in poetry, in romance, in 
 belles lettres, would ensure among them a more 
 healthy disposition towards life, a more natural bias 
 towards marriage and homemaking. 
 
 The success of a woman's college should in part 
 be measured by the proportion of its graduates who 
 marry happily. A high proportion of homes is more 
 to be desired than a high proportion of post-graduate 
 theses. In college year books should be recorded 
 in place of honour the children born to women grad- 
 uates — more conspicuously than the salaried places 
 they have won or the academic distinctions gained. 
 And re-unions for mother-graduates, a maternity day 
 to celebrate their noble success as creators, and even 
 the conferring; of the honorary degree of Doctor of 
 Maternity, would give fitter inspiration to the girl 
 students than receptions to spectacled spinsters or 
 degrees conferred on childless literatae. 
 
 Under such conditions college life for women may 
 be extended without threatening the continuance of 
 the best strains in the race, the diffusion of pros- 
 perity and the resultant higher education of all girls 
 may be welcomed without fear that the fatal out- 
 
HUMANIST EDUCATION 169 
 
 come will be the accelerated disappearance of homes 
 and children. 
 
 These safe conditions will be attained in propor- 
 tion as 
 
 1. Parents send their daughters to institutions, 
 conducted by matronly women to prepare, avowedly, 
 for home life and motherhood, frankly recognising 
 that, while no training is too good for that noble 
 and exacting career, yet no training for women is 
 defensible which tends to incapacitate for that career, 
 and 
 
 2. State and private benefactors insist that 
 women's colleges shall be humanised by the substitu- 
 tion of mature matrons for spinsters among the fac- 
 ulty, by the reform of the curriculum, especially by 
 the teaching of domestic science in the broadest sense 
 of the term, and by the humanising of the general 
 regulations. 
 
 Discrimination in the distribution of funds should 
 be made in favour of the more soundly organised in- 
 stitutions. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 WOMAN*S DEEPEST WRONGS AND THE HUMANIST 
 REMEDY 
 
 In this book it has been argued that, for the per- 
 petuation of the nation and the elevation of the 
 species, it is essential that woman's chief service to 
 society shall be rendered in the home through moth- 
 erhood, and that her own highest development and 
 happiness will only thus be secured. Most men and 
 women accept this view. But society, while render- 
 ing lip homage to woman as mother, maintains con- 
 ditions, carelessly, cruelly, disastrously, which leave 
 millions of women to perform their highest functions 
 under the heaviest handicaps. A nation which 
 should send an army to the front untrained, un- 
 armed, with Red Cross service ridiculously ineffi- 
 cient, and with officers too cowardly to lead their 
 troops, would deserve the disasters which inevitably 
 would befall. Yet these are the hideous conditions 
 under which the mothers of the nation are set to 
 defend the nation against extermination. 
 
 Women suffer many wrongs, real, bitter, deep- 
 seated; wrongs which Humanism deplores; wrongs, 
 some of which Feminism cannot see, some of which 
 it aggravates. Feminism sees in woman's subjection 
 to maternity a wrong, especially as maternity handi- 
 
 170 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 171 
 
 caps woman for money-earning work. Through 
 total or partial evasion of maternity and the pursuit 
 of wages, Feminism seeks for woman a new free* 
 dom. But maternity cannot be evaded by most 
 women and, consequently, Feminism actually adds to 
 the burdens of motherhood, the burdens of wage- 
 earning. In the name of liberty it doubles the 
 bondage. Humanism welcomes maternity; but 
 would rriake the conditions for maternity as painless, 
 as care-free, as happy, as is humanly possible. And 
 for the cares and obligation of motherhood It would 
 exempt woman from the burden of wage-earning. 
 Humanism recognises also that every able-bodied 
 woman with unspoiled instincts has a right to mar- 
 riage and to healthy, safeguarded motherhood. 
 This right Is a natural right as much as the right 
 to breathe and to walk. In the words of Dr., G. 
 Stanley Hall: " The more we know of the contents 
 of the young woman's mind, the more clearly we see 
 that everything conscious and unconscious In It 
 points to maternity as the true goal of the way of 
 life. Even if she does not realise it, her whole na- 
 ture demands first of all children to love, who de- 
 pend on her for care, and, perhaps a little less, a 
 man whom she heartily respects and trusts, to 
 strengthen and perhaps protect her in discharging 
 this function. This alone can complete her being, 
 and without It her sphere, however she shape It, 
 is but a hemisphere. Nothing can ever quite take 
 its place; without it they are never completely 
 
172 FEMINISM 
 
 happy, and every other satisfaction is a little vicar- 
 ious." 1 
 
 Yet society leaves marriage and motherhood 
 mainly to chance. Nothing is organised, nothing 
 foreseen, nothing scientifically provided. Nature is 
 left to control the mating of human beings, almost 
 unaided by human reason, as she controls the mat- 
 ing of monkeys. 
 
 Consider in order the stages of marriage, child 
 bearing and child rearing. Nominally civilised 
 peoples approve monogamy; nominally they expect 
 each woman to take a husband ; nominally they abhor 
 prostitution. Yet England has recklessly drained 
 the home country of its young manhood for the sake 
 of empire until, even before the Great War, a mil- 
 lion and a half of adult women were left without 
 any possibility, under monogamy, of marriage. 
 And nations destroy the flower of their manhood in 
 hideous wars without recognition of the wrong they 
 are perpetrating on the women just reaching ma- 
 turity. We hear the laments of the widows and 
 orphans desolated by the carnage of devilish war- 
 fare ; equally heartbreaking to the most sensitive ears 
 are the sobs of the maidens, stifled in private after 
 peace is declared, because, the youth of the land be- 
 ing buried In the trenches, no lover can ever seek 
 their hand. 
 
 Less dramatic Is the wrong put upon woman in 
 America by the common attitude towards her right 
 
 1" Adolescence," p. 6io. 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 173 
 
 to many. Industries which summon women from 
 afar to crowd a city with females are officially en- 
 couraged, with sublime disregard of the penalty of 
 spinsterhood imposed on many of the women as a 
 result of the unnatural dearth of men. In the 
 Western States men are encouraged to penetrate the 
 frontiers of production, leaving their women and 
 children far in the rear, to suffer the same unholy 
 deprivation of home life during long times of peace 
 as soldiers endure through short times of war. So 
 long as the production of material wealth is stimu- 
 lated nobody stops to protest against the destruction 
 of real wealth, of human well being. In whole 
 States men outnumber women more than two to one, 
 and nobody complains, though prostitution becomes 
 as inevitable as bread riots in a starving city. 
 Bonuses are offered to induce industries to establish 
 themselves, and flaming advertisements beguile male 
 settlers, without a thought being given to the conse- 
 quences of making a she-town in the East or a he- 
 state in the West. 
 
 Under the influence of Feminism the mother in 
 well-to-do circles is being laughed and shamed out of 
 performing her instinctive and essential business of 
 helping her daughters to find a husband. The 
 match-making mamma is the butt of ridicule and ig- 
 norant jest. This is as sensible as it would be for 
 a country in war time to make the recruiting ser- 
 geant a target for satire. If the development of a 
 better type of mankind be more admirable than the 
 
174 FEMINISM 
 
 development of fatter pigs or faster horses, then the 
 anxiety of the human mother to settle her daughter 
 in life with a suitable mate is more admirable than 
 the cleverest selection by the stock breeder. Fem- 
 inists rail at the education which gives the little girls 
 dolls to play with and fosters the young woman's 
 natural instinct, with ribbons and frills and fur- 
 belows, to make herself attractive. As well deride 
 the vaunting prowess of the bull moose, the proud 
 preening of his tail by the peacock, or the eager 
 display of a man's skill and strength for the prize 
 conferred by the queen of beauty. 
 
 Colleges try to take their girl students' minds off 
 lovemaking and courtship. Their spinster presi- 
 dents would scorn to organise spring reunions of 
 graduates, where youth and maiden might meet in 
 feast and jollity, for days together, in greenwood 
 shades and college cloisters, encouraged in a modern, 
 innocent festival of Venus to follow nature's prompt- 
 ings and seek a mate. 
 
 Among the unfavoured classes nature with less re- 
 straint has her way. Popular newspapers and maga- 
 zines are full of advice for the lovelorn, and they 
 never weary of letters and articles on love, courtship 
 and marriage. So long as a man or a woman is 
 only half educated and mildly prosperous, society 
 offers no discouragement to their marriage. It is 
 as if there were a conspiracy to promote the multi- 
 plication of the least fit. Pulpits in fashionable 
 quarters are as silent about the injunction to be fruit- 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 175 
 
 ful and multiply as they are laudatory of the virtue 
 of worldly prosperity. While a few denounce the 
 search for a husband with a title and promote the 
 demand for a husband with healthy mind and body, 
 none would condemn the total renunciation of a hus- 
 band. 
 
 But the grievance of well-to-do women as to so- 
 ciety's tacit discountenancing of marriage fades into 
 nothingness compared with the bitter grievance of 
 the working woman in society's indifference to her 
 wrongs as mother. Most frightful, cruel, aban- 
 doned, is the common carelessness over the terrible 
 wastage of infant life, a wastage continuous, un- 
 checked, appalling, as inhuman as the wastage of 
 adult life on the stricken battlefield. Women en- 
 dure the pains and exhaustions of pregnancy; they 
 pass through the fiery torments of bringing a child 
 into the world; they offer to the nation the supreme 
 gift of a fresh young life ; and the nation with callous 
 unconcern makes light of their suffering, despises 
 their offering, and permits the life to be snuffed out 
 more lightheartedly than it permits a horse barn to 
 be burned. Against the destruction of a dwelling 
 by fire it organises brigades of fire fighters armed 
 with every appliance, no matter how expensive, to 
 maintain eternal vigilance against the slightest out- 
 break. Against the loss of the fruits of man's ma- 
 terial labours it insures and organises and struggles 
 unweariedly; against the loss of the fruits of woman's 
 vital labours it makes no insurance, it organises 
 
176 FEMINISM 
 
 the feeblest resistance, it neither watches nor 
 guards. 
 
 It permits pregnant women to be driven by pov- 
 erty to toil in factory and workshop, although doc- 
 tors assure It that the most likely consequence will 
 be premature or still birth or else a life so enfeebled 
 that It will never reach maturity. While the 
 wounded soldier is tended by skilled physicians in 
 well-equipped hospitals, the wounded mother at the 
 moment of her greatest need Is tended in the big 
 cities four times out of ten by unskilled midwives in 
 cramped and unclean quarters. The mothers are 
 often left in helplessness and suffering, handicapped 
 by every condition of anxiety, penury and squalor, 
 to protect the feeble, flickering flame of life without 
 the aid of any modern medical appliances, with less 
 helpful care than was enjoyed by the Indian squaw 
 in her tepee. 
 
 The results are staggering. In Chicago, typical 
 of modern cities, a special Inquiry among the poorer 
 classes showed that out of each thousand pregnancies 
 the frightful proportion of 388 of the incipient lives 
 never reach one year of age among the Slavs; among 
 the Germans, 360 are lost; among the Irish, 345; 
 among the Italians, 317; and among the Jews, 284.^ 
 Such figures demonstrate that the community's 
 professed reverence for motherhood Is Pecksniffian 
 hypocrisy. Wherever one life out of three which 
 
 2 See paper by Dr. Alice Hamilton at Conference on the Pre- 
 vention of Infant Mortality, New Haven, 1909. 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 177 
 
 the mother has borne In pain and sorrow is per- 
 mitted In sheer Ignorance and callousness to be lost, 
 society Is convicted of Irreverence for maternity. 
 Such a death rate Is as potent a proof of national 
 stupidity and Inhumanity as the decimation of mili- 
 tary ranks by disease In unclean concentration camps. 
 
 Happily the destruction of Infant life In the coun- 
 try at large Is less than these frightful losses amongst 
 the poorer classes In big cities. But everywhere the 
 loss Is disgraceful. In general, of every thousand 
 conceptions about 160 never attain one year of age.^ 
 With adequate care, even without the highest ad- 
 vantages which wealth can procure, the death tribute 
 has been reduced in special cases as low as 36. 
 Among the rich it has reached as low as 20 and un- 
 der. 
 
 While throughout the civilised world the general 
 death rate In the last generation has been heavily 
 reduced by Improvements In medicine, sanitation and 
 hygiene, the infant death rate has declined but 
 slightly. Woman's greatest wrong has not reached 
 the conscience of the nations. Probably as a wrong 
 to woman It would have gone unheeded still longer 
 but for the alarm In military countries over the de- 
 clining birth rate. So long as women, helpless in 
 the hands of Fate, bore in silent suffering a super- 
 fluity of babies, the Inhuman forces of plague, pesti- 
 
 3 See "Statistical Study of Infant Mortality," by E. B. Phelps. 
 Quarterly publications of American Statistical Association, Sep- 
 tember, 1908. 
 
178 FEMINISM 
 
 lence and famine were left to winnow out the 
 physically unfit, and a good supply of food for pow- 
 der satisfied the rulers. But the rapid dissemina- 
 tion of the knowledge of the means for limiting 
 families is changing the aspect of affairs. It is a 
 cruel paradox that life is valued only when life is 
 limited. In America the fecundity of the immi- 
 grants in the first generation maintains an increase 
 of population, but, unless the wanton destruction 
 of infant life be checked, America also within a gen- 
 eration, as education spreads and standards of life 
 are raised, must face in every section of society the 
 same problem of a declining population which al- 
 ready it faces among its most favoured classes. 
 ^ What can be done? 
 Lyj- The humanist programme for women starts with 
 \ the education of the girl in high school in sex mat- 
 ters, to warn her of the shoals and rocks she must 
 avoid when she leaves the sheltered harbour of home 
 to start her voyage on the sea of life. It includes 
 a course in the care of infants, with the encourage- 
 ment of the mother to use her daughters in helping 
 her to wash and tend and feed her younger brothers 
 and sisters. Humanism, while demanding, in op- 
 position to Feminism, that wives and mothers shall 
 not be driven by poverty or encouraged in caprice to 
 work outside the home, would make communal 
 changes vast and varied to insure that every mother 
 in the home shall be free from anxiety, and able in 
 health and joy to discharge her supreme duty. 
 
 
WOMAN^S DEEPEST WRONGS 179 
 
 Even to unmarried mothers, while lamenting their 
 sinful and painful condition, it would offer sym- 
 pathetic help in recognition of the value of the life 
 they were, without legal sanction, creating. It 
 would provide a refuge for the last months of preg- 
 nancy, with suitable occupation, under medical super- 
 vision, and the offer of secrecy that the shame of 
 exposure might not be made the price for humane 
 care. A maternity hospital for the time of confine- 
 ment, followed by a refuge for convalescence until 
 the baby is safe, and until nursing at the mother's 
 breast has awakened in her maternal love and social 
 consciousness, all hallowed by the personal influence 
 of women of high character, would add means of 
 redemption for the mother to the salvation of her 
 child. 
 
 A home must be found for the mother later, best 
 of all with her child, if she accepts the task volun- 
 tarily, and without the child if she insists upon 
 secrecy and the abandonment of the infant. 
 
 To make this humane provision, private charity, 
 public rehef, and, ultimately, sickness and maternity 
 insurance, must be requisitioned. 
 
 For married mothers the factors in a true hu- 
 manist policy include : 
 
 I. Obligatory repose, insured by law, as a pro- 
 tection against overstrain and exhaustion for a long 
 period both before and after confinement. Medical 
 opinion demands a much longer period of repose 
 than does statute law as yet In any country. Dr. 
 
i8o FEMINISM 
 
 Goler, mindful of the Inertia of public opinion, rec- 
 ommends compulsory rest for the mother from in- 
 dustrial employment for nine months before and 
 twelve months after confinement. Jevons says that 
 the woman should be kept out of the factory until 
 her youngest child is three years of age. As fast 
 as the appreciation of the mother's service deepens 
 the time of her exemption from industrial work must 
 be lengthened.^ 
 
 Ignorance Is a fruitful cause of Involuntary in- 
 fanticide. Therefore, visiting nurses, missionaries 
 of health, ladies Instructed by physicians, drilled for 
 the service and kept under medical control, should 
 be organised in every township, as they are in some 
 districts In New York City, to give free aid and 
 advice both before and after confinement. Phy- 
 sicians must give help in abnormal cases, before con- 
 finement, preferably In the homes, occasionally at 
 dispensaries, and during confinement the most expert 
 medical aid must be available to every mother. 
 How effective as a life-saver Is prompt medical aid 
 at the period of confinement is shown by the fact 
 that the baby deaths in the first week are fewer in 
 urban than In rural districts, though the purer air 
 and cleaner surroundings in the country make the 
 death rate lower from that time forward. After a 
 birth, consulting dispensaries, an Improvement upon 
 
 * For further details of this programme see " Proceedings of Con- 
 ferences on Prevention of Infant Mortality," under the auspices of 
 the American Academy of Medicine. New Haven 1909 and 1914. 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS i8i 
 
 the ** Consultation de Nourrissons " of France, 
 where the physician examines and weighs the babes, 
 instructs the mothers and prescribes diets, must be 
 established universally. After the period of breast 
 feeding, which it is now known can be and should 
 be enforced in almost every case, if there be a proper 
 appreciation of its importance, the diet for some time 
 will be chiefly milk. Therefore the provision of 
 pure milk, sterilised when necessary, under municipal 
 and state inspection and control, with rigorous 
 prosecution for any criminal neglect and abundant 
 stations in crowded quarters for cheap distribution, 
 are all essential to a decent national regard for 
 motherhood. 
 
 All these appliances for a minimum of civilisation 
 will cost money, lots of money. But what expendi- 
 tures more remunerative, more humane, more re- 
 productive, could be devised? At first funds must 
 be liberally furnished by private charity and by pub- 
 lic relief and later by maternity and sickness Insur- 
 ance. But insurance, which should gradually dis- 
 place charity, means regular payments before the 
 period of disablement and the accumulation of funds 
 to be liberally disbursed in the time of the woman's 
 stress. This implies the financial ability of the pros- 
 pective father to make the payments, for Humanism 
 demands the exemption of wives and mothers from 
 service in competitive industries. This involves the 
 raising of wages of fathers, and brings Humanism 
 into alliance with all those social reforms that would 
 
i82 FEMINISM 
 
 make a more generous distribution of the national 
 wealth amongst the manual workers. 
 
 When a wage labourer is wronged some woman is 
 injured. The labour question is also the woman 
 question. If a workman is maimed or killed on a 
 railway, some woman is left penniless to mourn. If 
 a factory shuts down, the workmen's wives must 
 pinch and starve, their children cry for bread. 
 When the workmen's wages are raised the women 
 live more easily. When overlong hours of daily 
 labour are reduced, the wives enjoy, in part, the 
 respite. Improvement of the man's lot involves im- 
 provement of the woman's lot. So labour reforms 
 are included in a humanist programme for women, 
 though Humanism does not advocate the active par- 
 ticipation of wives and mothers in fighting for such 
 reforms with the ballot any more than it includes ad- 
 mitting all workmen's wives to their trade unions 
 to help in fighting for reforms by collective bargain- 
 ing. 
 
 It is vain to plead for the maintenance of the 
 home, and the sustenance of wife and children by 
 the husband, unless the healthy, thrifty and indus- 
 trious husband be paid, regularly, enough to dis- 
 charge his obligations. Faced with the fact that the 
 wages of 60 per cent, of the adult men in the United 
 States are less than $600 a year. Feminism would 
 arrange that the woman shall shoulder half the bur- 
 den of maintaining herself and her children, while 
 Humanism would arrange that the man shall be paid 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 183 
 
 enough to release the woman for her more essential 
 services. 
 
 Even then the death of the husband, with pain- 
 ful frequency, leaves his widow, with young children, 
 and without resources. With cruel harshness and 
 short-sightedness society then usually requires the 
 mother, in order barely to keep her children alive, 
 to leave them daily without her care or guidance, 
 while she toils outside at low-paid labour, for a pal- 
 try wage. 
 
 Some of the appeals of charitable organisations 
 illustrate the prevailing blindness to the supreme 
 value of a mother's service to society. Here is 
 one: 
 
 " A widow nearly blind, with two sick children. 
 The mother earns $5 a week in a brush factory. 
 The Society desires money to pay the rent, and looks 
 to the mother to go out to work and to provide for 
 all the other needs of the family." ^ 
 
 What insufferable pretence Is our profession of 
 reverence for motherhood when we compel a half- 
 blind mother to grope her way to her labour in a 
 brush factory and allow her children to go ill-fed, 
 neglected, robbed of their most precious right and 
 best defence, a mother's care, even when their sad 
 case has come under the notice of a society supposed 
 
 s These examples are taken from an address on " Mothers' Pen- 
 sions," by Robert W. Hebberd, Secretary of the State Board of 
 Charities of New York at the National Conference on the Educa- 
 tion of Backward, Truant, Delinquent and Dependent Children, 
 held at BufFalo, N. Y., August 28, 1913. 
 
1 84 FEMINISM 
 
 to be equipped specially to help the deserving indi- 
 gent. 
 
 Another case : " A mother with four children de- 
 pendent on her, the father having gone insane. The 
 mother earns $6 a week in a factory; one child earns 
 $1.50 a week acting as nursemaid after school hours 
 and * even little Mamie,' " the appeal states, " helps 
 by earning fifty cents a week washing dishes. The 
 Society desires to raise approximately $4 a week ad- 
 ditional for food." 
 
 Four children and an insane husband ! ! What a 
 tragedy ! Even with the aid of " little Mamie," who 
 is put to console herself for her mother's absence at 
 the factory by *' washing dishes " after school, to 
 earn fifty cents a week, there Is not enough bread on 
 the table, and a kindly-disposed society wants to con- 
 tribute $4 a week. Better than nothing! But how 
 can four children be washed and brushed and guided, 
 how can their lodging be made Into a home, with 
 mother toiling every day In a factory? Surely the 
 richest city In the world Is rich enough to give the 
 mother a chance to spend on her four children the 
 essential love and care and solicitude which will make 
 them full human beings, ready to fit Into a refined 
 civilisation! Who can reckon how much. In later 
 years, it will cost them and the city to have deprived 
 them of their mother for the sake of $6 a week? 
 
 Another case: *' A widow with three small chil- 
 dren and expecting another. The youngest child 
 delicate and a care and expense. The Society seeks 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 185 
 
 to raise $90 for rent and food for six months. The 
 woman ' will be helped to find suitable employment 
 as soon as she can undertake it.' " 
 
 Was ever more Satanic irony? " A widow with 
 three small children and expecting another " " will 
 be helped to find suitable employment." Heaven 
 and love have combined to send four small children 
 to sit in that mother's lap and cluster at her knees. 
 In the name of Humanity and common sense what 
 suitable employment for her is there on the earth 
 or above the earth to compare with the loving and 
 tending of her own little brood? Yet, in New York 
 City, in the twentieth century, a society of well- 
 meaning philanthropists is so purblind, so stupefied 
 by the notion that working for wages gives inde- 
 pendence and working for her own children at home 
 is of inferior importance that it actually proposes, 
 publicly, in an appeal to the charitable-minded, as an 
 inducement to their generosity, to " find suitable em- 
 ployment " for her in a brush factory, or scrubbing 
 floors in offices, or doing v/ashing, so soon as, the 
 worst exhaustions of bringing a new life into the 
 world being over, she recovers some physical 
 strength and " can undertake it." ^ 
 
 Humanism would provide that no widow with a 
 child under school age should be working for wages 
 
 ^ From January, 191 6, counties in New York State are empow- 
 ered to grant widowed mothers relief in their homes to enable them 
 to care for their children instead of placing them in institutions. 
 A number of counties including New York County, will grant such 
 relief in approved cases. 
 
i86 FEMINISM 
 
 outside the home. Recognising that no other work 
 the mother can do would increase the real wealth 
 of the nation comparably to her work with her own 
 young ones, it weuld generously furnish the widow 
 with adequate family maintenance, holding her, in 
 return, to a high standard of child care and home 
 cleanliness. 
 
 Among the more favoured classes, whenever the 
 income of the man is sufficient to sustain decent 
 family life. Humanism would discourage the woman 
 from neglecting her service in the home for the sake 
 of salaried service outside that will add luxury to 
 comfort. 
 
 Society rightly saddles the man with the legal 
 obligation to support wife and children. Conse- 
 quently it should insist, as it does in Australia, that 
 his minimum wage shall be enough to keep a family. 
 
 But, correlatively, society can justly insist that 
 the woman shall not shirk her supreme contribution 
 and leave her children, even on the plea that she can 
 earn high wages outside. No mother is too good to 
 be wasted on her own children. Women cannot 
 both eat their cake and have it. Society cannot en- 
 force the man's duty to support his home and the 
 employer's duty to pay him enough to support his 
 home, and at the same time encourage or allow 
 mothers to desert the home. The national policy, 
 directed to the development of ever better grades 
 of citizen, must not be undermined by the wilfulness 
 of the nonmaternal types of women, who, for their 
 
WOMAN'S DEEPEST WRONGS 187 
 
 selfish enjoyment and development, would throw 
 over the rule necessary for the protection of other 
 women, and would subordinate their children to 
 their profession. 
 
 A home for every woman, the humanist ideal, is, 
 alas! still far from realisation, though America is 
 nearer to it than any European country. It is a 
 mockery to offer a woman a hovel or a two-roomed, 
 dingy tenement, and ask her, on ten dollars a week, 
 to create a home. None but a dauntless heroine 
 could overcome such a handicap and hallow the nar- 
 row quarters with home's angel spirit. To leave 
 the fecund immigrant mothers to wrestle, single- 
 handed, uninstructed and half starved, with a " deso- 
 lating flood of babies " is a cruel travesty of the wor- 
 ship of home. 
 
 At its best home is the dearest spot on earth. 
 But sickness, penury, hunger, squalor, will wreck the 
 strongest home and rot the foundations of society. 
 Woman Is the guardian of home, the mother the 
 brooding spirit who hovers over the cradle of the 
 most precious virtues. But not until the thousand 
 blasting influences in our civilisation which menace 
 the home have been destroyed, and not until every 
 woman is enabled to create a home, and every child 
 born may be welcomed without endangering the 
 economic security of the home, can Humanism be 
 content; for its motto is — 
 
 ** HOMES FOR WOMEN." 
 
BOOK II 
 
 A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 By 
 
 PRESTONIA MANN MARTIN 
 (Mrs. John Martin) 
 
 Author of " Is Mankind Advancing? " 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 FEMINISM AND THE FAMILY 
 
 When the cave woman sat nursing her infant in 
 a cave, and the cave man went forth to strangle wild 
 beasts with his hands at risk of his life, the first 
 stirrings of gratitude in her savage breast, prompt- 
 ing her to make the cave warm against his return 
 and cook the food according to his liking, mark the 
 beginning of the home. 
 
 Upon the reciprocal need of these three beings — 
 the woman's need of food and protection, the man's 
 need of rest, refreshment and comfort, the child's 
 need of nourishment and care — the family was 
 formed. If these three had not thus naturally 
 needed each other they would not have united to 
 form the family organism. 
 
 Among animals families are formed only when 
 they are necessary. Even the maternal instinct does 
 not develop except where it is needed. The mother 
 fish has none ; she deposits her eggs and swims away 
 without further concern. The mother bird cares 
 for hef young only as long as they need her, when 
 she promptly pushes them out of the nest. Among 
 horses, dogs and others, mothers, lavishly fond to- 
 day, are not on speaking terms with their offspring 
 to-morrow. When the need is gone parental ten- 
 
 191 
 
192 FEMINISM 
 
 derness and sympathy also vanish. Even the 
 mother drives her young away and knows them no 
 more. The conjugal pair measure their faithful- 
 ness to each other, likewise, by their mutual need 
 and by the necessities of their progeny. Where 
 their young have a prolonged period of infancy, so 
 helpless that the assistance of both parents is re- 
 quired, the parents stick together until the purpose 
 is fulfilled. 
 
 The family came into being because of the pro- 
 longed period of helplessness of the human in- 
 fant. 
 
 The chick picks its way out of its shell and starts 
 at once on its travels; the colt, the calf, stand in a 
 short time on their own wabbly legs; puppies and 
 kittens, as soon as their eyes are open, begin to lead 
 an active existence. By contrast with the young of 
 animals the human infant exhibits an extraordinary 
 degree of prolonged helplessness. By reason of its 
 need its mother found herself bound closely to its 
 side and because she must, for a long time, lead its 
 soft, sheltered life with it she too became tender, 
 soft and dependent. Unlike the mother cat, which 
 goes off hunting a few hours after her accouchement, 
 the human mother must look to her child's father 
 for food. This has made her the subject of con- 
 temptuous criticism on the part of feminist writers, 
 who scornfully point out that woman is the only 
 animal who fails to provide for herself and her 
 young. 
 
FEMINISM AND THE FAMILY 193 
 
 Woman's economic dependence does not, how- 
 ever, put her upon a plane lower than the cat and 
 the dog, since It springs solely from the helplessness 
 of her offspring, for which she is not to blame and 
 over which she has no control. It would, no doubt, 
 be more agreeable to her if she could rise from her 
 bed and go off hunting In the fresh morning air, like 
 that model feminist — the mother cat. But like 
 every mother in the animal kingdom, from top to 
 bottom, she Is bound to minister to her young as 
 long as the young need her. 
 
 The human mother loves deeply in response to 
 the deep needs of her offspring. Remove those 
 needs in the child or take the child away so that 
 she no longer beholds and responds to Its needs — 
 and her affection declines. 
 
 In the finny world it is of no consequence that the 
 female has no affection for her young, because she 
 will continue to produce young anyway. Whether 
 she- cares for them and enjoys them or not makes no 
 difference, next year's brood will be just as large. 
 In the human species, however, the case is different. 
 Unless women love children, some day there will be 
 no more children born, and the love of women for 
 children is kept alive only by loving contact, only 
 when they keep close to each other, touch, look In 
 each other's eyes, kiss and embrace again and again 
 with thrills of happiness which nourish and enrich 
 the emotional life of each. It is a necessary con- 
 dition for the survival of our race that the love of 
 
194 FEMINISM 
 
 children shall be kept alive in woman's breast. This 
 was not true in the past, when woman was forced 
 to take a husband in order to have some one to pro- 
 tect and support her and, having taken a husband, 
 was obliged to bear children whether she wished 
 to do so or not. Motherhood is by way of becoming 
 free; child bearing a voluntary sacrificial service. 
 And this is as it should be, provided always that, in 
 the process of setting woman '' free," we do not 
 end by destroying in her the desire for motherhood, 
 through depriving her of those compensating joys 
 which, alone, can purchase her invaluable services. 
 
 Not long ago there was in New York City offered 
 for adoption, privately, a brown-eyed baby girl 
 eighteen months old, a perfectly healthy, well-born, 
 rosy, dimpled, merry, delicious little person. At the 
 same time there was a rich woman, childless and 
 lonely, who had experienced a great longing to feel 
 an awakening in herself of the maternal raptures 
 which she had heard described. Her requirements 
 were, however, exacting; she demanded nothing less 
 than a perfect baby. But since perfect babies are 
 seldom produced in our noneugenic era, she had had 
 to wait in vain for many years. By good luck she 
 heard of the prize baby and she hastened to secure 
 It for her own. Joyfully she purchased a complete 
 baby outfit, delightedly she set apart one whole floor 
 of her mansion for baby's use. Then, having en- 
 gaged a trained nurse to take entire charge of the 
 little one, she sat down to watch the coveted maternal 
 
FEMINISM AND THE FAMILY 195 
 
 emotions rise in her bosom. Needless to say they 
 did not rise, and after an interval of anxious wait- 
 ing she returned the little woman to her first pro- 
 tectors. 
 
 It was not long, however, before another child- 
 less woman, hearing of the case, appHed for the 
 baby. Although this woman's preparations were 
 otherwise less elaborate, she, too, engaged a nurse, 
 with the result that after a week or so of trial she 
 too came to feel that having a baby about upset 
 things too much and provided no pleasures which 
 at all compensated for the care and trouble involved. 
 Before giving up, however, this woman, suspecting 
 what was lacking, told her husband that, in order 
 to test the matter, she would get the nurse out of 
 the way and take all the care of the baby for one 
 whole day, one whole, long day. It happened to 
 be a warm day, sunny, soft and balmy. Foster 
 mother and baby spent it on a broad open piazza 
 overlooking the sea. When night fell and the 
 mother laid the little dimpled darling, rosy and 
 fresh from her bath, in her soft nest in the open 
 air, the miracle had happened. " Anybody who at- 
 tempts to separate me from that baby," said she to 
 her husband, '' will have to do so over my dead 
 body." 
 
 " And only this morning you were about to return 
 her — give her up I " exclaimed husband in amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 " I didn't know her then," replied his wife in 
 
196 FEMINISM 
 
 ecstasy. " I had never tended her, never held her 
 and washed her and kissed her dimples, and seen her 
 clap her paddles, or played with her or heard her 
 laugh, or wiped away her tears. She wasn't mine; 
 now she is." 
 
 The woman who is poor and overburdened with 
 domestic cares sometimes thinks, " Oh, if I were rich 
 I should like a lot of children. They're no trouble 
 when you can hire plenty of servants to take care of 
 them. Then you can have all of the pleasure with 
 none of the work or worry." Little she realises that 
 because the rich shirk the work and worry they also 
 are denied the pleasure. It is not merely avoidance 
 of pain and danger which prompts wealthy wives to 
 forego motherhood; it is because their children mean 
 so little to them when they do come. 
 
 Feminism, by engaging the mother in daily oc- 
 cupation for wages outside the home, would make 
 universal that separation between mother and child 
 which, unhappily, is common among the frivolous 
 rich. 
 
 Feminism sees in the disruption of the family only 
 the liberation of woman, and a rise In her status 
 from being " a mere female " to the state of be- 
 coming " a human being." One feminist writer 
 exultlngly describes the change as it affects women's 
 occupations. According to her view, any work 
 which is done outside of the home for pay instead 
 of inside of the home for love, is ennobling. 
 
 For example, sewing on buttons for your chil- 
 
FEMINISM AND THE FAMILY 197 
 
 dren Is the old-time slavery; but running a button 
 machine in a factory is " the new freedom for 
 women " ! 
 
 Writing letters to your son Is woman's drudgery; 
 but writing letters for an employer in an office Is 
 emancipation. Wrapping up parcels for your 
 mother Is drudgery; but wrapping up parcels In a 
 coop- In a department store Is the evolution of In- 
 dustry! Making change with your grocer In your 
 own kitchen Is woman's old-time drudgery ; but mak- 
 ing change all day in a cage in a restaurant Is the 
 new independence for woman! 
 
 Scrubbing your own doorstep and being paid for 
 It in gratitude by your own husband is domestic 
 drudgery; but scrubbing an office or a barroom floor 
 and being paid for it in cash by somebody else's hus- 
 band is " the new freedom for women " ! 
 
 The feminist millennium contemplates the com- 
 plete individualising of society, even at the expense 
 of the family. 
 
 " The home Is the enemy of woman," exclaims 
 Mr. W. L. George. " Home Is the girl's prison 
 and the woman's workho.use," writes Mr. George 
 Bernard Shaw. 
 
 "Woman's fear (sphere) Is the home," says a 
 facetious feminist. 
 
 *' So far as many women are concerned, the home 
 can be done without," says Cicely Hamilton.^ 
 
 The most popular of American feminists, Miss 
 
 1 " Marriage as a Trade," p. 245, 
 
198 FEMINISM 
 
 Jane Addams, writing in the Independent, exclaims 
 fervently: " The unenfranchised woman of to-day 
 stands outside of the real life of the world. Never 
 before has so large an area of human life found 
 civic expression." 
 
 Think what this means! The woman who may 
 not vote, says this noted leader of women, is outside 
 of "the real life of the world." That is to- say: 
 political life is real life; business is real life; public 
 office is real life. Almost anything is real life that 
 goes on outside of the home. Never before, we are 
 to infer, has so small an area of human life found 
 domestic expression; never has the home meant so 
 little. The real life of the world is man's world; 
 woman's life is not real life; home life is not real 
 life. Homemaking women are not really living. 
 
 If this view be correct, then it is, of course, cruel, 
 as Miss Addams implies, to continue to confine 
 women within a moribund institution, to tie woman 
 to a corpse, to shut her in a house of death, where 
 there is nothing left save the wraiths of departed 
 Industries, lost interests, decayed hopes, vanished af- 
 fections. 
 
 If such feminist teachings be true, then women will 
 seek more and more to escape from the home into 
 " the real life of the world." If they be true, then 
 the family is doomed and, in due course of time, will 
 pass into the number of things outworn and for- 
 gotten. 
 
FEMINISM AND THE FAMILY 199 
 
 The unity of the family is threefold: it has 
 economic unity when the father is the bread-winner, 
 it has political unity when the father represents it 
 at the polls, it has sex unity when he is its only male 
 parent. 
 
 The family is being attacked on all these three 
 sides. Woman's entrance into independent indus- 
 try is disrupting its economic unity; woman suffrage 
 attacks its political unity, denying that the family's 
 political interests are one, and demanding that each 
 member of the family shall vote separately and in- 
 dividually. Finally extreme Feminism demands 
 woman's liberation from " sex domination," and es- 
 tablish her right to choose the father (or, it may be, 
 the fathers) of her children. 
 
 The integrating factor of the family is the hus- 
 band-father in his threefold capacity of bread-win- 
 ner, political representative and only authorised 
 male parent. Feminism undermines his position on 
 all three sides. It is a gradual process of putting 
 father out of business. His last state will be for- 
 lorn enough; relieved from all responsibilities, he 
 will wander through life wifeless, childless, object- 
 less, with nothing to do but stake out his own grub, 
 pay his taxes, and lay in a supply of cigars and 
 pocket money. At last his position will become like 
 that of the drone in the bee-hive when the industries 
 of the hive shall have passed mainly into the hands 
 of industrious, self-supporting, spinster workers. 
 
200 FEMINISM 
 
 In his final stage, preserved for one purpose only, 
 he will lead a subordinate and somewhat sur- 
 reptitious existence, sneaking in and out of the back 
 door when sent for, like a guilty plumber. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 
 
 I ONE day found myself seated at luncheon next to 
 a noted economist and a woman social worker. To 
 the conversation, which chanced to be upon the mini- 
 mum wage, my contribution was the remark that I 
 felt little interest in a minimum wage for women, 
 since I hoped for the day when women would be paid 
 no wages at all. My companions gasped. 
 
 *' Would you have women dependent for support 
 upon men? " 
 
 " Assuredly," I replied. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 *' Because it is better for men, and better for the 
 child and therefore it must be better, in the end, for 
 women." 
 
 " What do you mean by * in the end ' ? " 
 
 " I mean for the race. You realise, perhaps that 
 woman's entrance into industry carries with it the 
 abandonment of the home ? " 
 
 " Of course," assented my companions, promptly 
 and cheerfully. 
 
 *' Do you both accept that outcome? " 
 
 " Perfectly. The home is an obstacle to prog- 
 ress. We shall get on faster when it no longer im- 
 pedes our way." This from the woman. 
 
 201 
 
101 FEMINISM 
 
 " Whether we accept it or not — the home is van- 
 ishing." Thus the economist. 
 
 " And with the home do you understand the pass- 
 ing of the family? and do you welcome that too ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said the woman. " The family can- 
 not continue to exist under a free order of society. 
 The family is based upon woman's subjection. 
 When once she is free the family will dissolve." 
 
 These two persons, a man and a woman, addressed 
 by chance at a gathering of intelligent, public-spir- 
 ited New Yorkers, both highly educated, both de- 
 voted students and teachers of " social uplift," look 
 forward, calmly and unquestioningly, to the ap- 
 proach of a complete abandonment of the family. 
 They contemplate without a misgiving a social 
 change of vast importance and accept it as an essen- 
 tial step in social evolution. 
 
 " The break-up of the family is necessary," said 
 a socialist to me, " in order that capitalism may do 
 its perfect work and production be increased to the 
 point of providing enough for all. Then with an 
 equitable distribution there will be leisure for all." 
 
 " When that time has arrived, will the family be 
 restored? " I asked. 
 
 " Never again," was his reply; " it was a defen- 
 sive alliance, necessary to a certain stage of economic 
 development. But once abandoned, and the indi- 
 vidual set free, it will never be resumed. It will 
 have disappeared forever." I mention this incident 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 203 
 
 to show how serenely the passing of the family is 
 assented to also in other quarters. 
 
 A prominent feminist, referring to the custom of 
 women to give up their professions when they 
 marry, writes: "The tendency of woman still is 
 to revert to the instinctive function. But in days 
 to come when we have developed the individual, 
 
 when THE HOME HAS BEEN SWEPT AWAY AND THE 
 
 FAMILY DESTROYED, I do not believe that this fac- 
 tor will operate so powerfully." ^ 
 
 As indicating how bold the voice of Feminism 
 is becoming, let us contrast an early with a modern 
 feminist. . 
 
 Sixty years ago Horace Greeley wrote, " It is said 
 that it is woman's business to obey the husband, 
 keep his home tidy, and nourish and train his chil- 
 dren. But what if a woman rejoins: * Very true; 
 but suppose I choose not to have a husband or am 
 not chosen for a wife. I must somehow earn my 
 living; why should I not be at liberty to earn it In 
 any honest and useful calling? ' The legislator is 
 at this struck dumb ! " 
 
 In Greeley's time home life was still considered 
 desirable for women, and a feminist of that day 
 asked only that woman be allowed to do what she 
 had to do, namely, work for a living outside of the 
 home when it was necessary. He did not describe 
 this action as marking an advance, a liberation, but 
 iW. L. George. In the Atlantic Monthly, Jan., 1916. 
 
204 FEMINISM 
 
 only as the outcome of a stern necessity. So fast 
 have things been moving that the ultra-feminist of 
 to-day no longer believes domestic life desirable. 
 Many would urge woman to leave home, whether 
 she has to earn her living or not. Mr. W. L. 
 George 2 writes: *' Woman's work in the home Is 
 sterile and humiliating. It steals her individuality, 
 originality, spontaneity, opportunity for self-ex- 
 pression and self-development. It makes her stupid 
 and limited, either harsh or sentimental; deprives 
 her of beauty and grace, divorces her from social 
 function and unfits her to be man's equal companion." 
 
 By way of contrast compare this picture of the 
 woman at home with the statement of another fem- 
 inist writer of sixty years ago : 
 
 " It is often supposed that literary women must 
 of necessity neglect their domestic concerns of life. 
 But some of the most devoted mothers the world 
 has ever known, and whose homes were the abode 
 of every domestic virtue, have been women whose 
 minds were highly cultured and were active in philan- 
 thropic efforts for the welfare of the race." 
 
 This writer Is not urging that women should earn 
 their living outside of the home (though he would 
 probably also have advocated that), he Is merely 
 mildly protesting that a woman may be cultivated 
 and Intelligent and yet not neglect her home. It 
 Is Indeed a far cry from this quaint gentleman to 
 Mr. George, who believes that it Is only by neglect- 
 
 2 " Woman and To-morrow," Appleton & Co. 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 205 
 
 ing her home that woman can prove herself cultured 
 and Intelligent! 
 
 What would the old-fashioned gentleman above 
 quoted say, could he read to-day Mr. George's un- 
 equivocal declaration that the woman who stays in 
 the home is a fool, a stupid, limited, sterile, ugly, 
 awkward, boorish creature — " unfit to be man's 
 equal companion"? Mr. George, you see. Is in 
 the van of the procession, he is within sight of the 
 goal. And what Is the goal? The goal clearly Is 
 a future society composed of Independent Individ- 
 uals, a society freed from that stuffy, deadening, 
 sterilising, petrifying Institution known to us as the 
 family. 
 
 By way of goading women to seek independence, 
 some feminist writers picture man as a gruesome 
 tyrant. In her book, *' A Man-Made World," Mrs. 
 Gllman draws up a long Indictment. 
 
 Man has arranged things in this world solely to 
 please himself, she says. Woman, not man. Is the 
 ''race type" (whatever that may mean), and the 
 writer is indignant that man — " a mere variant " 
 — should be so presuming ! For example, he 
 makes a practice of selecting a mate with regard to 
 characteristics that please him — (as though that 
 were a proper criterion!) — and It is clearly for 
 his own vile purposes that he wishes young girls to 
 remain innocent. Woman is confined to the home, 
 it Is said, in order that she may not develop " hu- 
 manly." (It is only outside activities which are 
 
2o6 FEMINISM 
 
 really " human.") Within the family, is despotism; 
 outside is democracy. (It is understood, of course, 
 that in the " outside " there are no bosses, mag- 
 nates, monopolists or any form of tyranny; while in 
 the home there is never of course fraternity and a 
 rule of equality!) In the family woman has no in- 
 fluence, but lives in subjection to man rule. (All 
 Americans will recognise this picture at once.) 
 
 Women confined in the home are ugly, in this 
 philosopher's view. It is only when they are free 
 (to work in factories, mills, offices) that their beauty 
 blooms! The air in those places is so much purer 
 than the fetid atmosphere of the home ! Women are 
 blamed for being fond of dress but it is man who 
 forces woman to decorate herself. If free, she 
 would not stoop to such frivolity! 
 
 Prostitution is also solely man's work; woman 
 never willingly Is unchaste ! W hen women areJbadL 
 ins_mairijdDlng ; If they are good the credit Is their 
 own. Men have caused the degradation of litera- 
 ture by requir ing that 90 per cent, of all fiction shall 
 b e love stories. Women have higher tastes. The 
 andro-centric . culture perverts even childhood, for 
 men have foisted dolls upon little girls and mon- 
 strously encouraged them to " play mother " I 
 None but" sinisteFlriotrves can be behind such a 
 
 4\ ^ course ! 
 
 We are told further that it is a basic feminine im- 
 pulse to construct, but it Is a basic masculine im- 
 pulse to destroy. (This lack of constructive power 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 207 
 
 in man explains why they have never built cathe- 
 drals and bridges and canals and railways and 
 cities and philosophies and arts and sciences!) 
 Man degrades all the arts : the theatre, for instance, 
 has fallen to his level! (Matinees show how much 
 more elevated is the taste of women!) Man^as^ 
 established the double standard of morality, and ' 
 it is he who " condemns woman for sexual sin/v"^" 
 (Women never condemn other women for delin-^ 
 quencies of that sort ! ) 
 
 Man, it is said, has manufactured the religions 
 and foisted them upon woman (Mrs. Eddy never- 
 theless and notwithstanding), and the Devil is his 
 invention! Women would never have thought of 
 such a thing (nor would they have taken any hand 
 in witch-baiting or any such matter!). It is the 
 male mind, also, we learn, which is responsible for 
 having garbled Christianity into a selfish scheme for 
 saving man's own soul! 
 
 War is entirely man's doing, it need hardly be ex- 
 plained. He fights to please himself (never to de- 
 fend his hearth and home, his women and children). 
 If woman had her way there would be no strife. 
 She would not even consent to his protecting her 
 against the attacks of enemies, barbarians, burglars, 
 villains. Man has turned politics into warfare; 
 women would make it into a love feast! Even 
 football will be ladylike when women take charge 
 of it! 
 
 On the whole, it appears men are either useless 
 
2o8 FEMINISM 
 
 or malevolent. Some day, when the uselessness of 
 men is fully realised, then the woman's uprising will 
 come, the drones will be slain, their corpses swept 
 from the hive — woman will come to her own I 
 The feminist millennium will have arrived! 
 
 While it is the tendency of the teaching of one 
 branch of the feministic doctrine to alienate the af- 
 fections of women from man, another note is di- 
 rected at separating mother and child. Mr. Zcub- 
 lin, for example, declares that " women see too 
 much of their children; it is bad for their nerves." 
 Therefore they should, he thinks, leave their chil- 
 dren with a nurse — it not being bad for the nurse's 
 nerves — and themselves go out and be a mother to 
 the municipality! 
 
 The love between mother and child, as that of 
 men and women for each other, can be kept alive 
 only by propinquity. It is useless to deny this fact 
 or to rebel against it; thus are we made. If we look 
 at the Sistine Madonna holding her baby in her 
 arms her attitude suggests infinite closeness. It is 
 not probable that the Virgin could afford a gov- 
 erness or even a nurse, perhaps not even a teacher. 
 She and her darling lived and learned and grew to- 
 gether. 
 
 To-day society disapproves such intimacy, partly 
 because many undoubtedly do find it *' wearing," 
 and partly, perhaps, because intimacy between moth- 
 ers and their children is not commercially profitable 
 to the armies of women teachers who have to make 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 209 
 
 a living by Interfering with it. Thousands of 
 nurses and teachers who are turned loose annually 
 upon society must have some one to nurse and to 
 teach. Thus they wedge themselves between 
 mother and child (thereby often setting the mother 
 free to go out in her turn and wedge herself some- 
 where else), and thus the industrialisation of woman 
 forms a two-edged sword, cutting both ways against 
 the family. 
 
 It is part of the feminist philosophy that even 
 the young child is better off in the hands of an 
 expert outside of the family than under its mother's 
 care within the family. If this be true then the final 
 abandonment of the family is only a question of 
 time. For it was chiefly for the benefit of the child 
 that the family was organised. 
 
 Among other forces inimical to the family we 
 must also reckon efforts Intended to minimise the 
 differences between the sexes, and make men and 
 women as nearly as possible alike; for the family 
 thrives upon unlikeness in the sexes and the conse- 
 quent need they feel for each other, not merely sex- 
 ual but social, practical and spiritual. It is their 
 differences and unlikenesses which make them at- 
 tractive to each other; it Is their differences which 
 make them useful to each other. 
 
 The extraordinary increase in the demand for di- 
 vorce is an indication of conjugal instability. The 
 latest census returns report In the United States a 
 slight increase in the marriage rate, but, unhappily. 
 
2IO FEMINISM 
 
 it is accompanied by a continually falling birth 
 rate. It would appear, therefore, that while more 
 marriages are being formed an increasing propor- 
 tion of them are feministic marriages, that is, mar- 
 riages in which both members intend to pursue their 
 vocations outside of the home and between whom 
 there is an understanding that children shall not be 
 allowed to interfere with this plan. These unions, 
 although legaHsed, are scarcely more than haisons, 
 hardly deserving the name of marriage; nor is a 
 partnership of two persons entered into for mere 
 pleasure to themselves and devoid of any relation- 
 ship or contemplated service to the race entitled to 
 be called a family. 
 
 So far has the family influence already declined 
 that conscientious educators are becoming alarmed 
 at the absence in so many young persons of the 
 special qualities which nothing but home influence 
 can develop in them. " Our young people lack char- 
 acter, responsibility, depth. It is due, I think, to 
 the shallowness of their home hfe. We cannot com- 
 plain that their home influences are bad, nor yet are 
 they good. There are simply no influences at all of 
 any kind. The parents are absent from home most 
 of the time and home-made children are becoming 
 rare." 
 
 I have read recently an account written by a 
 highly successful professional woman of her mode 
 of life. Her domestic affairs are disposed of, she 
 informs us, in fifteen minutes over the telephone 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 211 
 
 and the remainder of her day Is spent at her office, 
 from which she returns In the evening In time to 
 be given a rub-down and put to bed. She concludes 
 her account by saying: *' I am often asked whether 
 my business makes me any less to my family. Of 
 course not. I am the life and Inspiration of my 
 family — • all the more so from my wider experience 
 and broader outlook." 
 
 Now given a woman who can be all that to her 
 family when she Is asleep, the question naturally 
 arises — would It be safe at all to have her around 
 the house when she was conscious ? 
 
 In cities, the multiplication of hotels, where chil- 
 dren are not admitted, points to the passing of the 
 family. The occasional child seen In a hotel Is an 
 object of curiosity and Is regarded as a nuisance or 
 else IS petted to death. The general feeling that 
 the child Is out of place In It measures the distance 
 between the hotel and the home — a household from 
 which children and pets are excluded, the Inmates 
 of which do no work, forms the mummified atmos- 
 phere In which human joys and sorrows, birth, 
 sickness, death, are out of place. Hotel dwellers 
 seem hung between heaven and earth. In a state of 
 suspended animation; scarcely dead — nor yet, in 
 any human way, alive. 
 
 Sickness In a hotel Is regarded by the other board- 
 ers as a personal affront. They dread sounds from 
 the sickroom, and ask to have their rooms changed. 
 The landlord is In terror lest they leave. In case 
 
212 FEMINISM 
 
 of death the body Is hustled away as fast as possi- 
 ble. • Concealment is practised concerning the room, 
 lest the next guest learn of its gruesome associations. 
 Hotel life is dehumanised. Yet hotel life is In 
 various forms an increasing habit. 
 
 In labouring families both parents often go out 
 to work, the grand parents are in an institution, the 
 children are at school or kindergarten, the baby is in 
 a day nursery, and even the old-maid aunt (the 
 home's last prop) has now gone out In search of 
 economic Independence.^ 
 
 In the old-time family parents endeavoured to 
 keep close to their children and form them accord- 
 ing to a cherished Ideal, because they expected to 
 live with their children and die with them and go 
 to heaven with them. Thus they handed down 
 their religious and moral convictions, not only be- 
 cause they thoroughly believed In them themselves, 
 but also because they hoped, by giving to their de- 
 scendants the same spiritual passports, that the 
 whole family would finally reach the same celestial 
 goal. Present customs look for a scattering of the 
 family to the ends of the earth In this mortal sphere, 
 and a very dubious reunion hereafter. 
 
 A striking illustration of the subtle Influence of 
 
 3 Mr. Frederic Harrison tells us that there are places in Spain 
 where among the working classes family life has already almost 
 disappeared. " The women are nearly as rough, coarse and un- 
 handy as the men. They know quite as little of household comfort, 
 of health, of children — of the grace and sweetness of a woman's 
 lif«." 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 213 
 
 family tradition upon morals Is found in the records 
 of illegitimaqr, a social ill which varies from 
 country to country and can be accounted for neither 
 by Irreliglon, nor by different religions, by city life 
 nor country life, nor by race. " For the real cause 
 one must look to a certain heredity influence," 
 writes Dr. Leffingwell, English Registrar of Births, 
 in his report of 1904. The chastity of Irish girls, 
 for example, Is due. It appears, not to any cause 
 that can be discovered except to the whispered warn- 
 ings handed down from mother to daughter in bed- 
 time confidences generation after generation, moni- 
 tions which take a deeper hold upon the maiden's 
 character than any extraneous influence. 
 
 The decline of the family is proceeding fastest 
 at the two extremes of society. It Is favoured by 
 city life and factory labour (both of which are on 
 the rapid increase), and it is checked chiefly by the 
 farming class, because It is still in farm houses that 
 the family best retains Its old-time character. Here 
 its earlier conditions prevail, the father working out- 
 side as breadwinner — yet never far removed from 
 his flock — the mother within as homemaker, the 
 children as companions to their parents. 
 
 When the family has gone, society, consisting 
 practically of bachelors, spinsters and orphans, will 
 present some curious features. It may be more 
 prosperous than now; for all energies will be de- 
 voted to wealth production. Unfortunates will be 
 herded In institutions ; the successful world will con- 
 
214 FEMINISM 
 
 sist of Independent, self-sustaining, self-sufficing in- 
 dividuals, the exertions of each centring upon him- 
 self. In many of its aspects it might seem to be a 
 successful society, except for one small matter — the 
 child ! " The weak point in Feminism is the care 
 of the baby," reluctantly admits one feminist. Let 
 us picture the life of a typical child in a family-less 
 society. 
 
 He makes his appearance In a maternity hospi- 
 tal and is given his mother's name. No questions 
 are asked concerning his father; since that matter 
 is understood to be solely his mother's affair. The 
 mother receives few visits from her mother, sisters 
 or women friends ; since they are all very busy earn- 
 ing their living at their various professions. After 
 office hours a gentleman comes to see her, who is 
 evidently on very friendly terms with her and the 
 Infant, and who may be supposed to be its father 
 by any one curious enough to be concerned with 
 matters of so exclusively personal a nature. The 
 mother Is eager to get well and return to her work. 
 The gentleman begs her to take time to recover her 
 strength. She, however, deplores the loss of sal- 
 ary entailed in this interruption. He offers his as- 
 sistance but it is indignantly refused. To accept it 
 savours of economic dependence, of woman's old- 
 time subjection. As a free woman she claims the 
 right to support herself and her child. If the bur- 
 den be beyond her strength she will accept help from 
 the State, but not from him. The new status of 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 215 
 
 woman has lifted her far above " sex slavery." 
 She has given herself freely and will accept no pay. 
 Pay for the child is pay for her. If she took it 
 now, she might be tempted to do so in future; then 
 she might seek to please him for the sake of the 
 pay and then the old enslavement of woman would 
 recommence. No, it must not be. 
 
 The man bows to her decision and goes his way. 
 It is evident that their relations can be only those 
 of equals and comrades. When she gets well, there- 
 fore, they will resume their companionship. 
 
 Meantime, baby is removed to a nursery, for nurs- 
 ing is inconvenient to a professional woman. In 
 the nursery it is given scientific care, unless the 
 nurses happen to forget, or have their attention 
 otherwise diverted, and there it leads a sterilised 
 existence in the company of other orphaned infants. 
 
 Upon its mother's recovery it is taken to her 
 apartment, where it is either brought up by a suc- 
 cession of hired women fetched from an employ- 
 ment agency, each of whom damages the child in 
 one way or another unknown to its mother, or it is 
 deposited in the common nursery of a feminist flat, 
 with sHghtly better results as to care and worse re- 
 sults as to wear and tear on its nerves. 
 
 Meantime, mother returns to her work and re- 
 sumes her friendship with the father of her child. 
 But when his business interests call him to another 
 city her business requires her to remain where she 
 is, and, since there is no bond of mutual obligation 
 
2i6 FEMINISM 
 
 between them and no unity stronger than that of an 
 agreeable friendship, they easily part company. 
 Their bond has been what feminists describe as 
 purely spiritual, but this is a world of temporal as 
 well as spiritual things and the bond is too tenuous 
 to stand any great strain. 
 
 The orphaned boy, pining under neglect, divides 
 his life between a huge school factory and his moth- 
 er's apartment. There he sees her for a short 
 while on the evenings when she stays at home from 
 meetings, theatres, and other matters to rest her 
 worn nerves or doze on the sofa. The boy is stren- 
 uously educated by the State for high economic effi- 
 ciency, and, as soon as he is ready, he starts upon 
 his career in pursuit of wealth, wealth in which his 
 mother is, of course, to have no share, as will neither 
 his wife, nor his daughters. It will be all his — 
 and the State's. Thus life goes on. 
 
 Now let us pause to ask what the father got out 
 of this affair. A pleasant friendship, gratification 
 of sex appetite, no responsibility or care; on the 
 other hand, no .sense of dignity and worth as the 
 head of a family, no moral satisfaction in duties un- 
 dertaken and well fulfilled; no compensation for the 
 struggle of existence in the love and gratitude of a 
 devoted family. 
 
 What has the woman got out of it? Also an 
 agreeable friendship lasting a few years, and — 
 freedom! Yes, freedom from *' sex domination." 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 217 
 
 Not freedom from toil and struggle, but freedom 
 from — man as husband ! But what has she got out 
 of motherhood? The pains and discomforts of 
 parturition, brief joys of possession — little com- 
 panionship, little attachment, little gratitude, little 
 appreciation, httle intimacy, little love, little com- 
 fort. Has she been repaid? Hardly. Would 
 she repeat the experience if she had her life to live 
 over again? Possibly, but not probably. Will she 
 advise other women that motherhood is worth 
 while? Probably not. Will she be likely under 
 such social conditions to bear more than one or two 
 children? No. Can the race survive on so impov- 
 erished a scale of reproduction? It cannot. 
 
 " But there is no danger of any such state of 
 affairs as is here depicted ever coming to pass," I 
 hear the reader exclaim. " Free love in various 
 forms has always been advocated by certain hare- 
 brained individuals, but the great mass of mankind 
 are untouched by its vagaries, and the instinct for 
 home and parenthood and the family may be trusted 
 to stave off any such outcome." 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that theories of a different 
 order of society as regards marriage have been dis- 
 cussed in every age from Plato down, but in our day 
 these changes are not merely under discussion, they 
 are in actual operation. Moreover, it is not merely 
 the idle speculations of dreamers which are here to 
 be considered but the enormous power of great eco- 
 
2i8 FEMINISM 
 
 nomic forces with which Feminism allies itself which 
 are shattering and regrouping society according to 
 their own laws and tendencies. 
 
 The family-making impulse with which man has 
 become endowed by the pressure of experiences 
 through the ages would be strong enough to with- 
 stand any amount of argumentation; indeed it has in 
 the past rejected very alluring promises of social 
 happiness and has clung persistently to the family. 
 The impulse would remain undiminished if the cir- 
 cumstances which evoked it continued. But circum- 
 stances are changing; many influences which hitherto 
 have tended to strengthen and confirm the family 
 im.pulse in each successive generation of men and 
 women are now operating to weaken and disrupt 
 it. 
 
 But if changing circumstances demand the aboli- 
 tion of the family, why resist them? it may be asked. 
 Perhaps children can be better raised by the State 
 than by their mothers. Why oppose It? 
 
 Because even although collective child raising 
 could be made more scientific, better standardised 
 and more successful, yet under such an order the 
 mother herself would not receive adequate compen- 
 sations for the pains and dangers of child-birth. 
 The State might be pleased with the result of its 
 experiments and even the child might do well; but 
 the mother would get nothing out of it. She would 
 not care to bear children. Why should she? 
 
 The vital objection, then, to abolishing the family 
 
THE PASSING OF THE FAMILY 219 
 
 lies In the fact that in doing so we shall finally abol- 
 ish the human race altogether. 
 
 The family rests upon the needs of Its members 
 for one another and the services they reciprocally 
 perform to satisfy those needs. When they no 
 longer need one another, then there will be no rea- 
 son for the continuance of the family. When the 
 woman has no longer any need for the man as bread- 
 winner and protector; when he has no further use 
 for her as hom.emaker; when the child has no more 
 any need for either of them as nurse, guide, teacher, 
 friend, but finds all Its needs supplied by hired per- 
 sons outside, then the bonds of affection will weaken 
 from disuse. If ever machinery, either social or me- 
 chanical, shall be Invented to perform- the services 
 which the members of the family have for so long 
 performed for one another — then the disintegra- 
 tion of the family is Imminent. Every organisation 
 perishes v/hen Its parts no longer serve one another. 
 Then dissolution sets in. And while mating may 
 continue Indefinitely, since nature has sex appetite 
 in hand, the family as an Institution, when it has out- 
 lived its usefulness, will cease to exist. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SELLING THE RACE 
 
 "There is found among women an increasing disinclination for 
 maternity, which deprives mankind of many superior mothers. 
 Woman's commercial work for self-support in all classes increases 
 her sterility."— Ellen Key. 
 
 I WENT the Other day to see a classmate of mine 
 whom I had not seen for years. She is a librarian, 
 and I found her standing before a card catalogue, 
 picking over cards and writing little figures in pen- 
 cil in the upper right hand corner. This is what 
 she had been doing for the most part during the past 
 fifteen years or so — picking over cards, and writ- 
 ing little figures, in pencil, in the upper right hand 
 corner. 
 
 I realised, of course, as I contemplated her rich 
 and varied experience that this was the " broad life," 
 that this was ** a career," that she had (in the lan- 
 guage of Feminism) ** ceased to be a mere female 
 and become a human being." By way of conver- 
 sation I asked how she felt about woman suffrage. 
 With an ineffable smile she replied, " I don't talk 
 much about suffrage; I live it." 
 
 Now, what did she mean? Being a college grad- 
 uate she must have meant something. How can 
 
 220 
 
SELLING THE RACE 221 
 
 one " live " woman suffrage? Upon further inquiry 
 I saw that to her, as to so many women, woman 
 suffrage means much more than the vote; it means 
 complete independence of man and the family. It 
 means self-support and celibacy. It means to earn 
 your own living and remain single. It means Femi- 
 nism. 
 
 But I am asked: *' What are women in needy 
 circumstances to do ? They must live ; and is it not 
 far better for a woman to retain her self-respect and 
 support herself than to go husband hunting or to 
 marry for a living? " 
 
 " It certainly is," I reply. 
 
 " Well, then, what do you object to? " 
 
 " What I objected to in this case, was that ineffa- 
 ble smile! It was the smile, not of one who has 
 tried to make the best of a bad situation, but the 
 smile of one who believes she has triumphed. It 
 was the smile of a woman who thinks she has had 
 a lucky escape in turning her back on home and hus- 
 band and family; who thinks that her celibacy 
 proves her to have risen superior to man and all his 
 works." 
 
 That smile, that ineffable smile, as it appears on 
 the faces of the best women, is doing as much harm 
 to the human race as any frown that ever darkened 
 the human countenance, for it means that women, 
 deprived of the real woman's life, can yet hypnoti- 
 cally convince themselves and one another that they 
 are happy. 
 
%ii FEMINISM 
 
 My friend's conduct was honourable; her smile 
 was horrible. 
 
 And if you run your eye over our vast country and 
 observe the thousands and increasing thousands of 
 its best women smiling in that way and for that 
 cause ; smiling because they are single and independ- 
 ent and prosperous; smiling because they are home- 
 less and childless; smiling because they are helping 
 to ruin the future of our country and our race — 
 you may well shudder and say, " The nation whom 
 the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad." 
 
 The superior woman's likelihood of marrying is 
 rapidly declining, while the average woman's chances 
 of remaining single have doubled in the last genera- 
 tion. Moreover, if a woman does marry, the 
 chances are one in ten that she will be divorced in 
 ten years. In Washington State the chance is one 
 in six. Her mother's chance of divorce was one in 
 thirty-four. The director of the census calls this 
 the threefold velocity of divorce. As time goes on 
 it is more and more the incompetent woman who 
 can't get her living any other way who marries. If 
 it continues, in a few generations only occasional 
 women of infirm intellect will marry at all — and 
 they will stay married only long enough to estab- 
 lish a claim for alimony! The best women will 
 remain single, will be earning high salaries as they 
 become scarcer and scarcer, and the ineffable smile 
 will stretch in a continuous line from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific. 
 
SELLING THE RACE 223 
 
 We may note this difference in woman's relation 
 to labour and that of man. When a fine young man 
 " makes good " it is a matter for public congratu- 
 lation, not only because it shows that he has fulfilled 
 the expectations held of him and justified the efforts 
 expended upon him, but because it means that he 
 will probably marry sooner and better (having a 
 wider range of choice) and so his valuable qualities 
 will be transmitted to posterity. 
 
 A young woman's success means exactly the re- 
 verse. The more rapid her advancement, the more 
 likely she is to remain single. Every rise in salary 
 inclines her to postpone marriage, or as youth's im- 
 pulses fade, to omit it altogether. 
 
 And so we have this interesting paradox, that the 
 stronger, more efficient, healthy, high spirited and 
 altogether admirable a young woman is, the less 
 likely it is that she will hand on those qualities to the 
 future. We have so bedevilled this matter that so- 
 ciety pays high salaries to superior women, entic- 
 ing more and more of them from reproduction. It 
 deliberately selects large numbers of the best of 
 each generation and sets them apart for sterility. 
 You can't run society on that principle. You 
 couldn't run a chicken farm on that principle. Sup- 
 pose you picked out your best hens and paid them 
 large salaries to remain single, or sent them to col- 
 lege, or put them In feather factories, to manufac- 
 ture feathers for other hens to wear! 
 
 I knew a fine woman who struggled twenty years 
 
224 FEMINISM 
 
 to bring herself to the point of giving up her sal- 
 ary and marrying an excellent young man. In the 
 end the salary won and she gave up the excellent 
 young man. 
 
 Think what that means to humanity! It had 
 taken our race millions of years to produce a woman 
 of her grade. But now her line is to be brought to 
 an end. That spark, lighted in the immemorial past, 
 handed on century after century, from generation to 
 generation, with infinite care and pains, amid in- 
 finite hardships and dangers, is now to be extin- 
 guished — never to be hghted again — gone for- 
 ever, snuffed out — by a salary! 
 
 When society pays a high salary to a man, it makes 
 a profitable investment. When it pays a high sal- 
 ary to a woman, it has to mortgage its future to 
 meet the indebtedness. Man's worldly success is a 
 benefit to the race. The same success in woman is 
 tainted. Nature applauds man for his material 
 achievements and frowns on woman for doing the 
 same thing. This is because our old mother is not 
 interested in any sort of success for woman — save 
 one! 
 
 We all know women to-day in token of whose con- 
 tinued celibacy the flag on the city hall should fly 
 at half-mast. The reason is simple. If the exam- 
 ple continues to spread, that flag will come down 
 some day altogether. 
 
 And yet you may explore the consciousness of 
 these same women from end to end, in every nook 
 
SELLING THE RACE 225 
 
 and cranny, and find no trace of any suspicion on 
 their part that they have any responsibility to their 
 Maker, to their country, to their race or to them- 
 selves in this matter whatever. 
 
 And this, not that they lack moral feeling, but 
 that the subject has become so tangled up that its 
 underlying principles are totally obscured. 
 
 As war wreaks injury to race standards by de- 
 stroying the bravest and strongest of a nation's men, 
 so commercialism is depleting the race by render- 
 ing large numbers of the ablest and most enterpris- 
 ing women sterile. Moreover, this sort of war is 
 continuous. 
 
 The commercialisation of women is carried on 
 with apparently no recognition that the consequences 
 are not those which accompany the buying and sell- 
 ing of the labour of men. The inexorable law that 
 woman is not able to detach her labour power from 
 her sex power and sell one without affecting the 
 other^ seems to be completely disguised even from 
 women themselves. 
 
 I knew of a charming professional woman who, 
 owing to the exigencies of her career, was in the 
 habit of depositing her husband in one State and 
 her baby in another, although she always made a 
 point, it was said, of calling upon one or the other 
 of them whenever she was passing through. In this 
 way she found no difficulty, she declared, in follow- 
 ing her profession without neglecting her family in 
 the least. Her successful demonstration of femi- 
 
226 FEMINISM 
 
 nlst principles was marred by only one disadvantage, 
 namely, that although she was fond of children, yet, 
 while she was making so much money, the luxury of 
 a larger family would have to be indefinitely post- 
 poned. 
 
 Let us look clearly at this fact without blinking! 
 
 The managers who engage this charming person, 
 and we who pay for the privilege of admiring her, 
 are buying something more than her labour power 
 (which is all that we buy when we employ a man). 
 We are buying and she is selling, along with her 
 talents and her labour — the lives of the unborn I 
 
 Most of the famous women opera singers and ac- 
 tresses buy their celebrity with the price of mother- 
 hood as part payment. But no such price has to 
 be paid by the noted tenors who warble for our 
 amusement; nor is a similar racial deprivation in- 
 cluded in the price of our ticket to the performance 
 of the famous actor or acrobat. 
 
 The sale of the race by the women of the work- 
 ing classes includes both the denial of motherhood 
 and the still more tragic slaughter of the innocents 
 which the early death of their babes provides. It 
 has been repeatedly shown that in mill towns, where 
 women are employed, the rate of infant mortality 
 is double that of those of the homekeeping women 
 on the outlying farms. It is evident, in such cases, 
 that the pay envelope, when handed to a mill woman, 
 has bought something more than her labour. In 
 Lancashire, when our Civil War closed the cotton 
 
SELLING THE RACE 227 
 
 mills, the women employed there were obliged to 
 stay at home and become once more — in feminist 
 parlance — "mere women." The mothers, having 
 nothing better to do, filled in their time by tak- 
 ing care of their children. Whereupon the rate of 
 infant mortality dropped one-half. When the fac- 
 tories reopened, however, and the women went 
 back to. work, their babies immediately resumed 
 their habit of dying off. Were not their lives sold 
 along with their mothers' labour power? Did not 
 the mill-owners buy, in addition to the mothers' 
 work, the bodies of her young? 
 
 When a woman sells her labour (and this is not 
 the case with a man), her sex power is often 
 checked, thwarted, weakened, damaged; sometimes 
 it is destroyed altogether. When a woman sells her 
 work she sells herself — that is the law. Her la- 
 bour power and her sex power cannot be separated 
 and sold apart. It is perfectly clear, when you come 
 to think of it, that when you buy a man's labour 
 power, you buy a man's labour power and nothing 
 more. But when you buy a woman's labour power 
 you buy along with it a part of the race. And the 
 
 RACE SHOULD NOT BE FOR SALE. 
 
 Every one sees this truth clearly when it con- 
 cerns the prostitute. This unfortunate creature is 
 despised and abhorred because she publicly sells for 
 money a private service which should be sacred to 
 race preservation. But it is not seen that the mil- 
 lions of women who are selling their labour power 
 
228 FEMINISM 
 
 in the most approved manner, acclaimed by fem- 
 inism, are nevertheless being prevented by a price 
 froln the due exercise of their normal mother power. 
 The degraded prostitute is of infinitely lower 
 worth to the world than the woman college presi- 
 dent, the social worker, the famous public official. 
 But if both were brought before Dame Nature's 
 judgment seat the sterility of the latter might call 
 down to a still greater degree her righteous wrath 
 for more was expected of the gifted ones and there- 
 fore their defection has by so much more jeopar- 
 dised our future. The barrenness of the harlot is 
 a merciful dispensation; but had Nancy Hanks or 
 Mary Washington been bribed to sterility by a 
 college presidency, or an actress' celebrity, or the 
 halo of a settlement worker, or the sanctity of an 
 abbess, or the glory of a municipal commissioner — 
 thereby depriving us of our two greatest men, a 
 wrong would have been done to our race which we 
 could not have repaired, nor Nature, perhaps, have 
 forgiven. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 TWO SORTS OF HEROINES 
 
 The early anti-feminists who made doleful predic- 
 tions concerning the higher education of women 
 have long since been silenced; their predictions and 
 denunciations drowned in derisive laughter. Col- 
 leges for women have multiplied, women highly and 
 ever more highly educated no longer excite com- 
 ment, and the sex appears to have demonstrated 
 that it can study the same subjects and pass the 
 same examinations as men. As to the price woman 
 has to pay for so doing, opinions, differ. Many a 
 woman comes from college a broken wreck, and 
 many a one comes away with a frozen heart and a 
 chilled brain, while many another comes as a 
 conquering heroine, healthy, blooming (though 
 learned), buoyant, triumphant. 
 
 Thus, if we judge singly by individuals, the effect 
 of higher education for women, like other incidents 
 of life, is sometimes good and sometimes bad. But 
 there is no such uncertainty as regards its effect 
 upon the race. Here it is certain that the advance- 
 ment of our species has no more subtle and in- 
 sidious enemy than the higher education of women 
 as it is, at the present time, generally arranged. 
 Statistically it has been shown that they do not even 
 
 229 
 
230 FEMINISM 
 
 physically reproduce themselves, and hence In them 
 the race tends to die of! continually at the top. The 
 future is sacrificed that the present may be more di- 
 versified, agreeable and cultured. 
 
 It is sometimes said that though the class of cul- 
 tured women produce few offspring, yet these few, 
 being of superior quality, will prove the leaders of 
 the next generation. Alas ! Most of them are far 
 from robust; they in turn tend to die out rapidly, so 
 that, far from continuing to be the leaders of the fu- 
 ture, they are more likely in a few generations no 
 longer to exist! 
 
 Moreover, it is doubtful whether the educating 
 of a mother improves in the least the mentality of 
 her offspring. The most learned of women trans- 
 mits (according to latest biological belief) only the 
 ability she was born with — her native, inborn, 
 mother wit, and no more. Whether this be devel- 
 oped or not is of no consequence to the next gener- 
 ation. Indeed, there are some reasons to believe 
 that a suppressed talent is more surely transmitted 
 than if it be fully expressed, for the very process 
 of developing it in itself sometimes proves in women 
 exhausting to the whole organism, and the power 
 to transmit it is therefore impaired. If conserved, 
 it may be handed on Intact. 
 
 This fact was strikingly exemplified In the ca- 
 reer of the Immortal EHzabeth Tuttle, prolific 
 mother of giants, the most remarkable woman Amer- 
 ica has produced. Beside the feats of her colossal 
 
TWO SORTS OF HEROINES 23! 
 
 motherhood the puny accomplishments of the women 
 who " do things " are as sounding brass and tinkling 
 cymbal. 
 
 The details of her life are painfully scant. (The 
 present writer confesses to a keener curiosity re- 
 garding her career than that concerning any other 
 character, alive or dead.) We are given a snapshot 
 ghmpse of her as she walked the streets of Hart- 
 ford, Connecticut, some 150 years ago, a tall, dark- 
 eyed, commanding woman, her tall, distinguished- 
 looking husband at her side, the two forming so 
 handsome a couple that every one turned to look 
 at them. This is the brief description we have of 
 her: "A woman of strong will, extreme intellec- 
 tual vigour and a mental grasp akin to rapacity." 
 
 These qualities mark a woman who, were she 
 living to-day, would, almost inevitably, be sucked 
 into a career. She would be a college president, 
 or a founder of settlements, or a clergyman, or per- 
 haps police commissioner or commissioner of chari- 
 ties and corrections; instead of which she passed her 
 time in sheer enjoyment, no doubt, of her " intellec- 
 tual vigour and mental grasp akin to rapacity," and 
 for the rest in the exercise of her mighty reproduc- 
 tive instinct — the latter with certain culpable ir- 
 regularities, as it would appear, since after she had 
 been married for twenty-four years to the correct 
 Mr. Edwards, he divorced her upon such a charge. 
 In his second wife he chose a mediocre lady, who 
 faithfully transmitted her mediocrity to a consid- 
 
232 FEMINISM 
 
 erable progeny; — but the five children who had 
 been presented to him by the colossal Elizabeth 
 have covered him and his native land with glory. 
 It has been surmised that the history of the United 
 States would have been different had Elizabeth not 
 lived, for her blood, carrying with it her force 
 unspent and her brightness undimmed by any ex- 
 hausting efforts on her part to " realise herself," 
 gave to her country an army of great men and 
 women. Her progeny and descendants, including 
 Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest philosopher, 
 included also college presidents, doctors, judges, 
 clergymen, statesmen, authors, leaders in every walk 
 of hfe, including also' two presidents of the United 
 States, Grover Cleveland and U. S. Grant. 
 
 To the feminist mind Elizabeth Tuttle led the nar- 
 rowest of lives, the domestic life, but the genera- 
 tions who follow her could spare more easily many 
 women who, while winning distinction for them- 
 selves, have lost it for the race. 
 
 In similar fashion the feminist would have as- 
 sured Nancy Hanks, when she was sweeping the 
 earthen floor and washing the pewter dishes and 
 shaking up the bed of leaves on which slept a little 
 boy, later to be favourably known as Abraham Lin- 
 coln, that she was wasting her life, and would have 
 urged her to seek " freedom.'' The Nancy Hanks 
 of to-day has sought and found freedom. She is 
 buyer in a department store at five thousand dol- 
 lars a year. She is the confidential secretary to a 
 
TWO SORTS OF HEROINES 233 
 
 Wall Street broker; she Is the editor of a trade 
 magazine, she is drummer for a commission house, 
 she is a female lobbyist at Washington, she is an 
 operator In real estate or wheat, she is the wielder 
 of a surgeon^s knife in a dissecting room. Some 
 day, if all goes well, she may be a policeman I 
 
 But meantime the supply of Abraham Lincolns Is 
 curiously scant. 
 
 Besides its lists of spinster heroines who have 
 won renown solely by " doing things *' on their own 
 account outside of the family, Feminism has a sort 
 of duplex heroine who combines both careers, that 
 of mother and wage earner. The stories of their 
 deeds of valour have a military flavour, combining 
 daring with secrecy. There Is the story of the 
 woman government employe who smuggled her in- 
 fant into the Capitol itself, nursing it surreptitiously 
 in its hidden nook in the moments she was supposed 
 to be absent from the room for other purposes. A 
 high school woman teacher in a New York school 
 bears and rears two children unknown to the world, 
 save, as we may suppose, her husband and with the 
 connivance of her principal, who arranges with her 
 to conceal her pregnancy behind a high desk. The 
 young mistress of a fashionable New York dress- 
 making establishment, carrying on a profitable busi- 
 ness, has her baby trundled daily up and down be- 
 fore her shop in its carriage, at which Madame, over 
 the shoulders of her customers, peers, now and then, 
 through the window for a precious glimpse of baby 
 
234 FEMINISM 
 
 awake; for when mother returns from her work at 
 night the baby is always asleep. '' Leaving baby 
 in the morning is the hardest work I do all day," 
 she says, '' but I hope by working now to give baby 
 more advantages when she is grown up." (*' More 
 advantages " than having had a mother !) Like the 
 juggler balancing two plates on two sticks, this type 
 of feminist keep a baby and a business revolving 
 at the same time, to the admiration of all behold- 
 ers. 
 
 The heroines of Feminism may be simplex — 
 spinsters celebrated for achievements other than do- 
 mestic; or duplex — wives famous for hyphenated 
 prowess as mother-teachers, mother-singers, mother- 
 circus performers, mother-this or mother-that. Of 
 the latter it appears that their renown rests not 
 upon special merit in either performance, but in the 
 acrobatic feat of being two things at once, and calls 
 forth a wonder such as that evoked by persons who 
 ride two horses or write with their toes, or hang 
 by their teeth or do other wholly unnatural and un- 
 necessary things. 
 
 The heroines of the family, unlike those of Fem- 
 inism, are not women famous for being something 
 other than mothers, or being something else plus 
 being mothers, but are venerated just as great 
 mothers. 
 
 The heroines of anti- feminism are those figures 
 who stand back in the shadowy doorways of life, in 
 quiet grandeur, in maternal reticence, unnoticed and 
 
TWO SORTS OF HEROINES 235 
 
 obscure, behind the great men of all time: The 
 mother of Socrates, the mother of Aristides, the 
 mother of Pericles, the mother of Homer, the 
 mother of Shakespeare, the mother of Isaac New- 
 ton, the mother of Washington, the mother of Lin- 
 coln. We know nothing of these women except 
 their greatness, but^f that we know with absolute 
 certainty, for it is revealed in their sons. As the 
 Greeks raised an altar to the unknown God, so a 
 future generation with its bias toward eugenics may 
 build a temple to the unknown Mothers of Great 
 Men, fair and noble figures, loving and suffering, in- 
 visible in their proud and patient silence, seeking no 
 other reward than that of their hopes fulfilled. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOME 
 
 " There is nothing left In the home for women to 
 do," Is a commonplace of Feminism. 
 
 How far is this true? Is it true of all women, 
 or only of some women? Of what women Is it 
 true? Surely millions of homes still exist, and vast 
 amounts of work have to be done In them — by 
 somebody ! Only one in ten contains a servant. In 
 the other nine the work Is still done by the wives 
 and mothers. If ever I need any reassurance on 
 this point I have but to run down across the lawn 
 to my coachman's cottage, where a typical working- 
 class mother is engaged in the never-ending task of 
 caring for husband and four children. As far as 
 I can observe there are no Indications that she is 
 suffering from the lack of occupation. 
 
 It is true that the character of woman's toil In 
 the home has been somewhat altered by modern 
 methods of industry. Her drudgery is somewhat 
 lessened; but, although she uses a carpet sweeper 
 in place of a broom, the room has still to be swept. 
 The amount of leisure secured to her by labour- 
 saving devices Is not so great as It is often assumed 
 to be. Moreover, as far as leisure Is actually at- 
 tained, it is almost Immediately absorbed by a rise 
 
 236 
 
NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOME 237 
 
 in the standards of living. Time saved by the wash- 
 ing machine is forthwith expended upon a more 
 plentiful supply of clean clothes. Running water in 
 the house saves drawing water from a well, but leads 
 to the installing of the sink and bathtub which have 
 to be kept clean. 
 
 In the isolated farmhouse of a hard-working 
 family I was shown, last summer, a well-equipped 
 bathroom, and was told, with pretty pride, by the 
 house mother that her children were given a bath 
 every night. In her native home there had been no 
 such conveniences for bathing, but there was also 
 very little bathing — which evened things. Women 
 welcome labour savers in the home, but the time 
 gained by the use of them is not, by any means, 
 stagnant. It is rapidly absorbed into new refine- 
 ments of living. The house mother knits stockings 
 for her family no more; but her mending basket is, 
 on the other hand, always overflowing. She weaves 
 towels no longer, but she uses many more towels. 
 She has not now to draw the water to wash her 
 dishes; but she has many more dishes to wash. It 
 is a far cry from eating off of bare boards, up to the 
 luxury of table cloths and napkins; while it is per- 
 haps a still greater leap from clean napkins every 
 day to a fresh one every meal, said to be the final 
 goal to which many a woman, baffled, yet hopeful, 
 aspires. 
 
 I have before me a set of cooking recipes which 
 go all over the country into the hands of " the peo- 
 
238 FEMINISM 
 
 pie." I note especially the menu of what is said 
 to be an ideal Christmas dinner. It is much lighter 
 than the old-fashioned feasts and most of its in- 
 gredients will be bought ready to use; yet its very 
 lightness demands time and thought which the heavy 
 repast of a coarser age could scarcely exceed. From 
 the trussing and stuffing of the goose the day before, 
 through the details of a complicated salad, a shrimp 
 cocktail, an ephemeral dessert, the house mother of 
 to-day is called upon, if she is to reach the ideal 
 here set forth, to make quite as many motions as her 
 Puritan grandmother expended upon the similar cele- 
 bration as it was prescribed in her day. 
 
 Not long ago a woman invited thirty of her 
 neighbours in one afternoon, for a cup of tea. Sim- 
 ple enough ; only a handful of people, only a cup of 
 tea. But I noted the process in detail. Of about 
 twenty articles required for the function everything 
 except the hot water and the mayonnaise was 
 brought to the house ready prepared. Yet it took 
 the hostess, deft as she was, four hours with one 
 assistant to prepare and set forth " this cup of tea " I 
 It is the finishing touch that takes time. The bread 
 must be cut just so thin, spread just so even, with 
 butter just so soft. The lettuce must be washed 
 above suspicion, drained, selected, wiped and 
 chopped. The mayonnaise alone took half an hour 
 in the making. The lemons must be sliced, the su- 
 gar dominoes disposed, every piece of silver must 
 shine, all the glass must gleam, immaculate linen 
 
NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOME 239 
 
 must be spread, delicate doylies, lace tray cloth, fine 
 serviettes properly disposed. The tea must be made 
 every few minutes to be fresh and fragrant for each 
 comer. The petits fours, the bonbons duly dis- 
 posed; lastly flowers must be procured, sprinkled, 
 picked over, vased and picturesquely placed. All 
 these processes and details, though not hard work, 
 take deftness and time. 
 
 Are they worth while? Are any of the refine- 
 ments of civilisation worth while? We must 
 acknowledge that the elaboration of the final details 
 of living mark the development of society from 
 primitive to cultured conditions, and In the last 
 analysis the only value of machinery Is to take over 
 the coarser forms of labour In order that there may 
 be time gained for more delicate and elegant opera- 
 tions. Thus woman finds that as her hands are 
 emptied of primitive labour they are filled at once 
 with occupations inspired by the desire (however 
 trivially it may express Itself) for more grace and 
 beauty and health and elegance in her personal life. 
 
 The wife of one of my farmer neighbours, to save 
 work for herself, bought the outfit for her expected 
 baby from a Chicago mail-order house. But when 
 baby had arrived she proceeded to apply to the care 
 of the Infant a multitude of advanced ideas (brought 
 home with her, along with the baby, from the hos- 
 pital) which reduced her husband to a state of 
 mind bordering upon consternation. 
 
 " Why," said he, " It uses up her hul time, jes' 
 
240 FEMINISM 
 
 takin' care o' that little mite. What would my 
 mother 'a' done? They was nine of us, an' only 
 one nurse, my mother, an' she wuz a little woman an' 
 she had all the work besides, an' the milk an' but- 
 ter, an' scourin' pans an' washing, an' meals to git 
 for the hul of us, an' the hired man in hayin'. 
 
 "How wuz it done? Well, it wan't done; we 
 jes' got along somehow, that's all." 
 
 It is not to be denied that modern machinery has 
 relieved woman of some forms of drudgery and it 
 is to be noted that along with this relief goes a loss 
 not always recognised. It has also robbed her of 
 many innocent handicrafts to lose which has se- 
 riously affected her happiness. The woman of the 
 future may insist upon restoring some of them. Al- 
 ready many women look back with envy to the age 
 of spinning and knitting, the making of wonderful 
 bedquilts, priceless laces and immortal samplers. 
 Even the plying of the harmless domestic needle, 
 except for incessant mending, is becoming super- 
 erogatory. I well remember my mother's chagrin 
 at having to abandon the fine needlework which was 
 her pride. And I recall another dear old lady who 
 took her last stand upon crocheted table mats, which 
 she, breathing defiance at modern machinery, re- 
 fused to abandon. 
 
 It is difficult for men to realise what a hardship it 
 is to women to lose the little crafts which have kept 
 their fingers busy, their nerves calm, their thoughts 
 cheerful. What a sense of cosy comfort, of being 
 
NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOME 241 
 
 useful and busy and of some use in the world, two 
 handfuls of knitting will bestow upon a woman! 
 Was it not pitiful to see the famished eagerness with 
 which they seized upon the excuse to knit mufflers 
 for the soldiers, and was it not cruel how, in many 
 cases, their work was snatched out of their hands 
 again by meddlesome and unfeeling economists, who 
 insisted that it should be left to the unemployed? 
 "And are we not also the unemployed?" they 
 might have asked. 
 
 It was related of my grandmother that her hands, 
 except when holding her Bible, were never still. In 
 old age, being overtaken with palsy, she found her- 
 self obliged, one day, to discontinue her knitting for- 
 ever. Rolling up her work she laid it aside for the 
 last time and meekly folded her tired hands on her 
 lap, while a tear of silent mourning coursed slowly 
 down her aged cheek. It was the first tear which 
 her son, a grown man, had ever seen gather in her 
 brave and faithful eyes. No grief had ever shaken 
 her as did this giving up of a little, useful, innocent 
 craft which for so long had cheered and comforted 
 her. 
 
 Women chained to lonely farmhouses cling tena- 
 ciously to the old handicrafts, and it is here that the 
 process of transmuting leisure gained by machinery 
 into the embellishments of life may be best observed. 
 Freed energy, applied to the home, causes the par- 
 lour to blossom and put forth " art." The rag 
 carpet, the bedquilts, sofa pillows, tidies, make their 
 
242 FEMINISM 
 
 appearance, followed by the organ or piano. Very 
 touching often are these first fruits of the spirit. 
 The homely parlour becomes a temple, dedicated 
 to the cherishing of such things believed to be beau- 
 tiful or precious as their owners' poor means afford. 
 
 I have often stood in these household shrines with 
 tears in my eyes, so pathetic are these faint longings 
 for beauty. I am quite unable to understand the 
 ridicule so often cast upon them. The crude draw- 
 ings of the cave man are regarded with reverence; 
 but no sympathy is accorded to the efforts, almost as 
 crude but quite as sincere, of the hard-working 
 woman. Yet she, too, has here been considering life 
 playfully, as something to be enjoyed and embel- 
 lished. Here she has gathered together what ex- 
 presses for her brightness, mystery, her reverence 
 for her ancestors, her tenderest memories, her most 
 valued souvenirs; in a word, the " highest " that she 
 knows. I am, myself, rather addicted to interior 
 decoration, and my own grey drawing-room repre- 
 sents the last cry of the French decorators. But I 
 know a little village parlour, a pandemonium of 
 colour from floor to ceiling, with a carpet upon which 
 are strewn all the flowers and fruits of the earth, 
 with every nook and corner aglow with impossible 
 birds and blossoms, and crowded with gay, silly 
 trifling knick-knacks, which to me, considering what 
 it means to its owner, is a bower of enchantment. 
 
 The working-class woman cannot get very far, nor 
 very often, from home. She must spend her leisure 
 
NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOME 243 
 
 in the same spot where she has performed her 
 labour. The needle which she has used in hemming 
 dishcloths in leisure she may employ in *' fancy 
 work " (if it be only the piecing of " crazy quilts ") . 
 Humble as her deeds may be, she is following the 
 method of the handicrafts, which took their rise in 
 home work shops and out of which all great arts 
 have arisen. The elemental conditions of great art 
 have always been that leisure must be spent where 
 one has lived and worked. Work tools are con- 
 verted into play tools and thus work and play are 
 blended into one. The carpenter becomes a wood- 
 carver in his free hours, the draughtsman an artist. 
 
 Under modern conditions, on the contrary, the 
 worker escapes from his tools and flies their very 
 presence the moment he is free. His tools which, 
 in many trades, do not even belong to him, are to 
 him symbols of his bondage, not instruments of his 
 deliverance. His leisure is solaced with idleness, 
 gossip, tobacco, the newspaper, the saloon, the cor- 
 ner store, the *' movies " — by anything, rather than 
 by his craft. Under such circumstances the pursuit 
 of art is left to a handful of highly educated per- 
 sons, who do nothing else, and who suck their in- 
 spiration not from work and life but mainly from 
 criticising one another. Their art is therefore an 
 artificial product, having no root in the soil of human 
 labour and experience. 
 
 Women in the home are almost the only class who 
 still maintain the normal relation to labour, in that 
 
244 FEMINISM 
 
 they own their tools and in that they must remain 
 near i:heir workshop. They are thus in position to 
 transmute their daily toil into a craft and finally 
 into art. There is no limit to woman's possible ex- 
 pansion in her sphere. Not a department cf her 
 province but needs vast improvements. Consider 
 cooking. A distinguished scientist at a recent con- 
 vention stated that if he had his choice he would 
 spend the next ten years of his life experimenting 
 in a kitchen, so convinced was he that he could serve 
 mankind better in no other way. The bad feeding 
 of children is responsible for many tribulations and 
 even crimes of after life. Morbid conditions then 
 set up result later in all sorts of misbehaviour, from 
 bad manners to murder. The cravings then en- 
 gendered develop into various forms of dipsomania 
 and drugging, from the perpetual guzzling of tea 
 and coffee, the smoking of tobacco and the imbib- 
 ing of beer, up to the madness of inebriation. Pro- 
 fessor Bailey of Yale declares that the sum of three 
 billions of dollars spent annually upon these seda- 
 tives and stimulants is " worse than wasted." It 
 may perhaps be doubted, therefore, whether that 
 woman has mastered her job in whose family the 
 craving for these things exists. The time has not 
 yet come when woman's especial work in the world 
 has been so perfectly done that she must needs take 
 up man's work. 
 
 If a carpenter whose hours of labour have been 
 reduced sells his labour power so saved to some other 
 
NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOME 245 
 
 trade, obviously he has gained nothing. Similarly, 
 if the woman who has been reheved of household 
 drudgery sells herself to commercial drudgery then 
 nothing whatever for humanity has been gained. 
 Only those persons can mistake this for progress in 
 whose minds lies always the fundamental assump- 
 tion that the object of human existence is to make 
 money. The effect of labour-saving machinery for 
 women should be not that they shall leave the home 
 for another form of drudgery but that, remaining in 
 the home, they shall use their liberated energies in 
 higher achievements there. 
 
 Woman need not depart from her own province to 
 find abundant means of self-development, or new 
 achievements. A higher race is waiting to be bred. 
 It should be fed upon better food, clothed more 
 beautifully, intellectually nourished more abundantly. 
 It must be more tenderly and at the same time more 
 specifically and more strictly educated. In its early 
 years it must be morally moulded in the hollow of 
 woman's hand. An enriched family life will give 
 scope for every talent. Woman may paint the pic- 
 tures of her home, embroider its coverlets, bind its 
 books, sing its jubilees, make its furniture, carve its 
 statues, write its love carols, compose its cradle songs 
 and intone its funeral dirges. Her sphere within 
 the despised *' four walls " of a house is as wide as 
 the universe. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PROPER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 
 
 Upon an occasion when we visited a woman's col- 
 lege In a New England town we determined to omit 
 the usual tour of buildings, halls, chapels, and all the 
 rest of it, and considering the college rather as be- 
 ing a sort of large orchard, confine our attention 
 to Inspecting Its fruit. In other words, we looked 
 at the girls! not the buildings, nor the libraries, 
 nor the laboratories, nor the gymnasiums, nor the 
 dormitories, nor the professors, nor the classrooms, 
 nor the recitations; just the girls. In the course of 
 our Inspection we spent several hours walking the 
 campus over and over, and traversing the streets that 
 radiated from the college. We passed scores and 
 scores of girls walking In groups, chattering or hur- 
 rying to recitations. They wore light jackets but 
 no hats; and many carried a book or two. In brief 
 glances we noted as minutely as we could the details 
 of their appearance. The results were not reassur- 
 ing. 
 
 Although they were neatly and appropriately 
 dressed, there were very few figures which one could 
 admire for grace or affluence. Most of the girls 
 were undersized; many were unsymmetrlcal and as 
 a whole rather weedy. Their manner of walking 
 
 246 
 
PROPER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 247 
 
 lacked every element of distinction. The dressing 
 of their hair was usually neat and simple, but the 
 hair itself lacked gloss and suppleness. Generally 
 It looked dry, lustreless and brittle, though occasion- 
 ally abundant. The most disappointing feature 
 about them was their complexions. Nowhere did 
 we see a face glowing with the fresh bloom which, 
 as well as the clear, sparkling eye, we have a right 
 to expect to see in a young girl even as freshness In 
 a rose. 
 
 The college would be, of course. In no wise held 
 responsible for their shortcomings of figure, form, 
 anatomy, gait, etc. Our race Is not bred for beauty. 
 But the state of the skin and brightness of eye Is an 
 Indication of general physical well-being which the 
 college should be responsible for. If we found the 
 roses In our garden as spotty, dull, wrinkly and fleshy 
 as these girls — we should change gardeners. Of 
 eighty-three girls whose young visages I carefully 
 scrutinised not one showed the bloom of youth — 
 there was not a rosy cheek or a sparkling eye among 
 them. 
 
 Was this condition due to higher education, to 
 close air, to long hours of study, to improper food, 
 to sedentary occupation, to the lack of home life, to 
 the lack of stimulus to the affections, the lack of pets, 
 of lovers ? Was It due to diverting the blood supply 
 from the reproductive organs to the brain? Some- 
 thing clearly was wrong. These girls were not 
 blooming as girls should. But one could not be cer- 
 
248 FEMINISM 
 
 tain whether higher education or other conditions 
 were responsible. 
 
 Not long afterward I had the opportunity to make 
 some similar observations upon a large body of 
 young women of a different class, who were not en- 
 gaged in study, to whom the doors of the institu- 
 tions of higher learning were forever closed. The 
 results of my observations in this case were even 
 more disheartening. 
 
 I had landed in New York at an early hour, and 
 made my way to the shopping district, only to find 
 the shops not yet open. For an hour I stood in the 
 doorway of one of these, watching. In fascinated 
 curiosity, thousands upon thousands of working girls 
 walking in endless procession to their work. How 
 did they compare with the college girls? 
 
 In general they were considerably smaller, more 
 stunted, more weedy. There were many foreign 
 faces among them, many Hebrews. It was a jumble 
 of races and nations, only in part of the American 
 type. The faces were duller than the college girls' 
 faces, less intelligent, less disciplined, less alert. 
 There were many bloated, puffy cheeks and star- 
 tlingly bleary eyes. Occasionally a face of extraor- 
 dinary, striking beauty — generally In that case 
 painted and powdered. But whatever the effect 
 sought for, and whatever the type of beauty, it was 
 never that of wholesomeness and health. That 
 bloom and sweetness, that glowing fragrance, which 
 we expect from youth, Its glistening white of the eye, 
 
PROPER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 249 
 
 the merry sparkle, the soft suppleness of line, the 
 buoyant elastic tread, the general air of vigour and 
 well-being throughout the whole body where there is 
 no inert matter, no tumidity, no flaccid degeneration 
 — all of this was wanting in this heavy-footed, dull- 
 eyed army filing listlessly to its daily grind. 
 
 If the object of life is merely to produce com- 
 modities, or make inventions, or amass learning, one 
 wonders why women were created at all. If life 
 has for its goal the achievements properly belonging 
 to men, it is a pity that the world cannot be given 
 over to men entirely and women retire to the in- 
 visible and unknown. 
 
 But if she is to live, what is to be done with her? 
 What goal should we keep in view regarding her? 
 The schoolmen used to describe excellence as " plen- 
 itude of being" — a fine horse is one abounding in 
 horse quality (in the apt slang of the day he is 
 "some horse"). Everything is most excellent of 
 its kind as it meets the particular purpose for which 
 it exists. We say of a fine man, " he is a good deal 
 of a man." 
 
 The proper education of woman may perhaps be 
 sought through the application of this principle. 
 The virtues common to both sexes we yet demand in 
 larger measure from one sex than the other. This 
 difference in what we expect springs from our rooted 
 conviction that each sex has a special function to per- 
 form which it can do better than the other, and we 
 therefore are led particularly to admire in each the 
 
250 FEMINISM 
 
 '' plenitude of being '' In the qualities which best 
 fit it for Its function. 
 
 In woman we value qualities which we have come 
 to call womanly, and these qualities have reference 
 less to doing or knowing than to her being. A 
 man's success Is measurable largely, almost entirely, 
 by yard sticks and quart pots and avoirdupois and 
 ledger accounts. He knows so and so; he can do 
 this and that. He has written this book, made this 
 discovery, invented this thing, accomplished that, 
 passed laws, organised parties, founded Institutions, 
 built railroads — above all " made " money. He is 
 always expressible in terms of quantity — generally 
 in terms of dollars and cents. 
 
 Great womanHness cannot be measured in this 
 way. It consists In the latent possession of certain 
 qualities which may or may not become active. It 
 is enough that they are there. Their very existence 
 is a force, and every one who comes in contact with 
 the person knows that these virtues are latent. 
 
 In a little four-room flat in a cheap New York 
 apartment house there lived for thirty years a woman 
 whose every thought and feeling was cast in a colos- 
 sal mould. In the outside world her only son en- 
 joyed a nation-wide fame for the things he " did," 
 but every one who knew them both knew perfectly 
 well that his doings were feebleness compared with 
 what his mother was. His affluence and success 
 never drew her from her humble quarters, partly 
 because she preferred retirement and obscurity and 
 
PROPER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 251 
 
 partly because in the midst of surroundings mean, 
 bare, meagre, she was more conscious perhaps of 
 the stores of power and self-sufficiency Imbedded in 
 her intrepid soul. 
 
 She " did " nothing, beyond the slight finger work 
 of home Interests, the needle and the pen her only 
 instruments — she knew little beyond the wisdom of 
 reflection and experience — but she was the spirit 
 of woman Incarnate. No college, no business, no 
 *' career," no " new life," no emancipation, no en- 
 franchisement, will ever be able to turn out finer 
 specimens of womanhood; and without these, living 
 and dying quite alone, she went to the full limit of 
 the woman and touched all that a woman can be. 
 
 Whenever I turn over In my mind the vexed ques- 
 tions concerning the education of women, I find my- 
 self asking first what sort of a woman we want to 
 produce, and Immediately the image of that astound- 
 ing personality comes to my mind, and I say hum- 
 bly — "This is the goal." "What are the means 
 of reaching It? " It Is true that In her case much 
 of her power was inherited from a noble ancestry, 
 but the qualities of womanliness In her had been de- 
 veloped In the process of leading the woman's life 
 — as devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother and 
 friend. In all these relations her sympathy was 
 penetrating, her loyalty unswerving. She had a 
 passion for beauty — In art, in music, in literature, 
 and feasted her soul daily upon these things. It was 
 no effort for her to keep her mind above gossip and 
 
252 FEMINISM 
 
 scandal and depression and pettiness, because these 
 things did not in the least interest her. Yet she 
 was so little sentimental that she possessed stores of 
 righteous indignation against ignoble conduct, some- 
 times carrying dismay to wrong-doers. 
 
 She had unlimited funds of humour and gaiety, 
 and took delight in social intercourse. She revered 
 traditions when they were noble and guided her judg- 
 ments by precepts handed down to her. Yet she had 
 streaks of strong radicalism and welcomed proposals 
 for a better order of society. Generosity to new 
 ideas and loyalty to old ones sometimes waged war 
 in her mind, but sympathy usually turned the balance. 
 
 She had an absorbing love for nature and got 
 more delight from a glimpse from her window of a 
 patch of stars between tenement roofs than many 
 people derive from all out-of-doors. She was in- 
 tensely partisan, idealising her friends with incor- 
 rigible persistence, taking their part against their 
 enemies more eagerly than they did themselves. 
 None of her friends, she beheved, ever were suffi- 
 ciently appreciated or got their deserts. But when 
 my mother used to turn the tables on her and ex- 
 patiate upon her hidden and secluded merits she 
 was much touched at such proofs of groundless de- 
 votion, which in the end she refused to disturb " be- 
 cause " she said " after all, it is so good to be over- 
 estimated." 
 
 As I pass her qualities in review, fortitude, sym- 
 pathy, cheerfulness, proud self-reliance, capacity for 
 
PROPER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 253 
 
 enjoying little things, love of home, devotion to 
 friends, loyalty, playfulness, enthusiasm for the 
 good, reverence for beauty, gentleness, humour, re- 
 finement, simplicity, contentment, absence of ambi- 
 tion, vanity or restlessness — and realise that these 
 are qualities which neither the higher education or 
 the higher business or politics nor any of the new 
 activities promote, nor are they qualities which count 
 in those places — I realise that they are the product 
 of a totally different set of influences, and just as 
 they are the qualities which produce a home and 
 promote family happiness, they also are the qualities 
 which were produced by the home and by family 
 happiness. 
 
 I conclude that the best education for a woman 
 consists in being the daughter of a noble home- 
 keeping mother, and living as a little girl at that 
 mother's side, doing what she does, reading with 
 her, sewing, cleaning, playing, exercising with her. 
 Later, with a few — a very few — other little girls, 
 learning to play together under the supervision of a 
 teacher. Still later specialising on some womanly 
 vocation, I.e., one that does not compete with men; 
 one that is calculated to bring gaiety, joy, order, 
 peace, or homeliness Into the world. In short, she 
 is to receive an education of the family by the family 
 for the family, that the family may not perish from 
 the earth. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 EUGENICS AND WOMAN 
 
 Eugenics is the name given to what, it is hoped, 
 may some day be a science of " being well born," a 
 science by means of which a higher race may be 
 produced and man shall achieve his most stupendous 
 conquest — that of lifting himself above himself. 
 
 Greater care and skill in mating, seconded by 
 greater skill in child rearing, are the methods of 
 eugenics and in the attainment of its goals woman 
 will play the leading part. Her selective ability, al- 
 though largely instinctive, is superior to man's. She 
 is, for instance, usually repelled by a sick man, 
 whereas the propensity of men to choose sickly wives 
 is notorious and deplorable. In the illegitimate 
 miscegenation of whites with blacks it is almost in- 
 variably the man who commits this eugenic sin. 
 The woman is more tenacious of her position upon 
 a higher racial level and is unwilling to degrade her 
 offspring. She feels more acutely the eugenic con- 
 sequences of mating: her eugenic sense, both as to 
 purity of race and superiority among individuals 
 within the race, is stronger. 
 
 As Burbank has bred many excellencies into his 
 plants and flowers and the great animal breeders 
 
 254 
 
EUGENICS AND WOMAN 255 
 
 have created new and wonderful strains of horses, 
 sheep and cattle, while plant growers have added 
 untold sums to the national wealth by improving 
 wheat and corn, it seems not too much to expect that 
 some day the way will be clear to an improvement 
 even more valuable in the human species. Hu- 
 manism, which places the welfare of the race above 
 the temporary advantage of the individual, will re- 
 gard eugenics as its handmaid. 
 
 Because we do not as yet fully understand the laws 
 of heredity, and because we have not the courage 
 to apply such knowledge as we have, eugenics ap- 
 pears to be to-day hardly practicable; but mankind 
 must find, some day, a way to start on the eugenic 
 quest — a real search for the Holy Grail. Already 
 mankind is beginning to realise how only partially 
 all its other hopes for progress, without better be- 
 ings, can prosper. The European War has done 
 much to hasten this awakening. It has revealed, 
 with appalling clearness, how frail were the props 
 upon which society leaned. Christianity, socialism, 
 science, philosophy, ethics, high finance, industrial- 
 ism, commerce, means of communication, identity of 
 religion, education, prudence, justice — the whole 
 fabric of civilisation, in twenty-four hours, shud- 
 dered as from an earthquake. 
 
 So must it be with all our devices, our strategies, 
 our schemes and struggles to achieve human advance 
 unless at the same time we give more attention to 
 the production of a more highly organised, more 
 
256 FEMINISM 
 
 reasonable race of men. At present, neglecting this 
 principle, the world puts excessive and dispropor- 
 tionate reliance for progress upon the improvement 
 of environment. While the farmer knows well that 
 good seed is quite as potent as good soil in securing 
 for him better crops, in human improvement we aim 
 exclusively at bettering conditions, and becauG^ no 
 care at all is taken to improve the quality of our 
 race, colossal efforts have to be continually exerted 
 to patch up inferior material into a semblance of 
 reason and virtue. Every fresh disclosure of hu- 
 man shortcomings only serves to redouble the de- 
 mand for more schools, more churches, libraries, 
 hospitals; more comforts, more charity, amusements, 
 playgrounds, free baths, dance halls, clubs; more 
 police, more preaching, more government, more 
 /otes, more laws (especially more laws) — more ef- 
 forts of every kind to " do something " which means 
 always to improve conditions. Thus we put forth 
 vast effort to reduce the volume of smoke but none 
 to put out the fire. 
 
 In our eagerness to elaborate education we forget 
 that a more Intelligent crop of children would do 
 better with less education. We build more churches 
 and preach more desperately, oblivious that a 
 sounder race would of its own free will live vir- 
 tuously. We pour out streams of charity, much of 
 which Is but watering a swamp, forgetful that a 
 sturdier race would know how to help Itself. We 
 struggle earnestly to mitigate the effects of social 
 
EUGENICS AND WOMAN 257 
 
 inequalities (which we maintain) and to soften the 
 cruelty of the strong toward the weak. We forget 
 how unnecessary this would be were the weak re- 
 placed by persons who would not permit us to op- 
 press them. We compassionately multiply hos- 
 pitals and insane asylums, oblivious that a sound and 
 robust race would turn these mournful dungeons into 
 pleasure halls and gymnasia, and laugh our charity 
 to scorn. We pile laws upon laws, exaggerate the 
 importance of legislation, demand that everybody 
 (even women, and perhaps children) shall partici- 
 pate in politics — forgetting that a more sensible 
 race would burn the law books, reduce law codes to 
 a few rules, entrust voting to a representative hand- 
 ful of just and sturdy men and turn its own thoughts 
 to the higher reaches of creative endeavour. 
 
 It is beginning to appear that the evils of the 
 world can by no other means be cured than by sum- 
 moning from the loins of humanity its hidden treas- 
 ure — a nobler race. The lesson we never learn 
 is not to expect of poor humanity more than it is at 
 present capable of. We seem unable to renounce 
 the hope that somehow men can be talked or 
 preached into being better than they are — or at 
 least into acting as though they were better. But 
 every now and then the veneer cracks. At the out- 
 burst of the European War the principles of Chris- 
 tianity and socialism broke down utterly and both 
 became the laughing-stock of unbelievers every- 
 where. The manner in which they burst showed 
 
258 FEMINISM 
 
 them to be bubbles, or dreams ; very far, as yet, from 
 possessing any binding validity in our consciousness. 
 
 Who shall say, however, that this must always be 
 the case? When the War Age and the Industrial 
 Age and the Age of Unrealisable Aspirations shall 
 all have been tried out and found wanting, then must 
 not the Eugenic Age come, if for no other reason 
 than because no other resource will be left us? 
 
 When it comes, the Eugenic Age will be the true 
 Woman's Age, because its province is always hers 
 and in it she will come to her own. That it has 
 been long delayed is due largely to her failure to 
 assert herself, to make herself count for all she is 
 worth. All her following after man into his world 
 is wholly off the track, and means an indefinite post- 
 ponement of her final arrival. 
 
 Eugenics is essentially and profoundly the coming 
 Woman's Movement because she is the temple of the 
 race, the guardian of the life force, the priestess of 
 posterity. By all her normal predilections woman 
 is adapted to the culture of eugenics. She bestows 
 her chief interest normally upon questions regarding 
 marriage, births, matings, family histories, ro- 
 mances, love affairs, traditions, the consideration of 
 physical appearance, vigour, defects, beauty of per- 
 son and of character, ugliness, health, disease, fer- 
 tility, virtues, vices. All of such matters are of the 
 closest concern to the healthy, unspoiled woman. 
 The reason for it is very naturally to be found in 
 
EUGENICS AND WOMAN 259 
 
 the fact that these matters are closely bound up 
 with her happiness, but biology hints at a still deeper 
 reason. 
 
 The female reproductive cell, In those simple 
 forms of life so far specially explored, contains an 
 extra chromosome (so called because it takes on 
 colour when dyed). This is a matter of probable 
 importance if, as is supposed, these chromosomes are 
 the vessels of sex energy. At the very inception of 
 her life the female appears thus to be more heavily 
 weighted as to sex than is the male. This may per- 
 haps offer a physical explanation of the indubitable 
 fact that, throughout her career, woman stands 
 closer to sex than man — that is, she is more deeply 
 involved in it, is in all her being more generally 
 suffused by it. 
 
 Modern life, which is driving or luring vast num- 
 bers of women away from the strictly womanly ex- 
 istence Into exhausting industries. Is tending to be- 
 numb the vitality of the extra chromosome. In 
 many women that vital atom would appear to be 
 either already dead or else in a state of suspended 
 animation. Dr. Saleesby suggests, for example, that 
 the power of nursing their infants is being lost by 
 many modern women. In England already only one 
 mother in eight nurses her Infant. The failure of 
 lactation may or may not accompany a decline in 
 reproductive power, but at least it indicates that the 
 highest of all mammals may one day (what a day 
 
26o FEMINISM 
 
 of triumph for Feminism) cease to be a mammal. 
 To some feminists the change brings woman from a 
 condition of being '' oversexed " down to a normal 
 level, but in the view of other observers the condi- 
 tion of being oversexed is the normal for the hu- 
 man female and anything under it is subnormal. 
 
 To say that woman is more heavily " weighted " 
 with sex than man may sound fanciful, but it aptly 
 suggests that curiously high specific gravity with 
 which even a delicate woman who is saturated with 
 femininity seems to be spiritually invested, and 
 which may be due to the premonitions of pregnancy 
 that haunt even her virgin years. Great bodily ac- 
 tivity, a sign of vigour in a man, is always suspicious 
 in a woman. A still man is generally a sick man, 
 while the stillest women are the happiest. Restless- 
 ness in man often marks unused energy — in woman 
 more often it accompanies excitement. For this rea- 
 son smoking tobacco, admissible in men, Is a distaste- 
 ful sight in women. We dislik e a woman who has 
 lost her womanly calm and resorts to artificial nar- 
 cotics to help regain what is expected to be her nor- 
 mal poise. It is like seeing a man resort to brandy 
 to bolster up the manly courage which we expect him 
 to command without artificial assistance. 
 
 The instinct for quietude was early demonstrated 
 
 j/Vby woman. Primitive woman, say the anthropolo- 
 
 ^ gists, showed herself averse to aggressive pursuits. 
 
 ^ She was devotedly industrious and Ingeniously 
 
 founded the crafts, but if there was killing to do or 
 
EUGENICS AND WOMAN 261 
 
 something strenuous to be accomplished, she left It 
 to man's superior strength and greater pugnacity. 
 To this day, woman does violence, to herself when 
 she becomes aggressive in imitation of man, and no- 
 toriously outdoes him in unscrupulousness whenever 
 she competes with him in the exercise of qualities 
 not natural to her. Thus, In sexual aberrations, her 
 cure is as much more difficult than his as her fall has 
 been greater. 
 
 Pride in motherhood is to be the lever that will 
 move the world toward eugenics; for in order to 
 produce the great man — the hero, saint, sage, seer, 
 artist, scientist. Inventor, statesman — it Is first 
 necessary to produce a great baby (and to accom- 
 plish this every woman whose extra chromosome Is 
 in working order. Is eager). In the precious per- 
 son of the Great Baby the future smiles. The or- 
 dinary baby who has everything to do for himself 
 (literally his own way to make), finds the odds are 
 too. heavy; the common span of life Is far too short 
 for him to accomplish much. But the well-born 
 baby has already been carried far on his way before 
 his birth. His ancestors strove for his same goal 
 and their victories are already in his blood. His 
 battle is half won from the start. Hence the poise 
 and harmony of the well bred. 
 
 Why should not this, the highest gift of the gods, 
 be some day the patrimony of all Instead of being the 
 endowment of only the lucky fev/? How can we, 
 indeed, continue to prate of democracy and of 
 
262 FEMINISM 
 
 equality so long as this fundamental and essential 
 equality of being well born is denied to most and 
 so long as efforts to secure it for all are not begun, 
 nor considered, nor scarcely dreamed of I 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 
 
 Let us define the " servant " as a person who per- 
 forms, in a family, menial, personal services for no 
 other motive than for wages. 
 
 The servant, properly speaking, is a function of 
 the family. A waitress in a restaurant, is not, for 
 example, properly a servant. 
 
 The governess, although she resides in the family 
 and works for hire, is yet not a servant because her 
 service is not menial. 
 
 A maiden sister or aunt who resides in the family, 
 who performs constantly menial, personal services, is 
 n-ot a servant, because she does not work for hire. 
 All of the conditions of the definition must be pres- 
 ent before we have the servant. 
 
 The social ancestor of the servant, the serf or the 
 family slave, the handmaid or the bondwoman, was 
 essentially a member of the family, sharing its good 
 or ill-fortune. The modern servant is no longer 
 *' one of the family." Among other reasons may 
 be mentioned the fact that the average stay of the 
 average servant in a place is said to be now only 
 two weeks ! 
 
 It is inevitable that the servant and the family 
 mutually jar; they belong to two different orders of 
 
 263 
 
2,64 FEMINISM 
 
 society. The servant belongs to the commercial or- 
 der; serving is her business, and the principle of 
 business is to get as much and give as little as you 
 can. In the family, mutual service is freely given. 
 Towards the servant the house mother must, how- 
 ever, also apply commercial principles and get as 
 much as she can for her money. Thus the commer- 
 cial principle is introduced into the family — the 
 spot of all the world which should remain uncon- 
 taminated by it. 
 
 Therefore the healthy family instinctively resents 
 the servant as an alien and perplexing influence. 
 She interrupts family intercourse, disturbs family 
 confidence, robs the family of privacy. When she 
 departs a family will sometimes break into antics of 
 glee and mirth which continue until it is again cowed 
 by the arrival of her successor. One husband told 
 the writer that the happiest days of his wedded life 
 had been the periods of a week or two which his 
 wife always insisted on taking to set her house in 
 order between the departure of one servant and the 
 arrival of the next. 
 
 The servant comes between the members of the 
 family, performing services which they should per- 
 form for one another in order to strengthen the 
 bonds of affection between them. Many a divorce 
 might be traced to a wedge cunningly driven in be- 
 tween husband and wife by a malicious servant. 
 Many a married couple looks back regretfully to the 
 lost intimacy of their early married days, when they 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 265 
 
 " waited on " each other, before servants came be- 
 tween them. It has often been observed that illness 
 which rallied the members of a family to minister 
 to a suffering loved one, brought them closer to- 
 gether, and revealed the love they had been in dan- 
 ger of losing sight of. The family wishes to be all 
 in all to its members, but here in the midst of them 
 appears a stranger who, although sharing their roof, 
 would not give them a cup of water unless paid for 
 it. Nor would they, on their part, tolerate her so- 
 ciety for an hour did she not perform continually 
 menial services for them. 
 
 Between the house mother and the servant there 
 Is ground for eternal friction. The mother is de- 
 voted to the upkeep of her family, the health and 
 growth of her children, the happiness and welfare 
 of her dear ones. The service seems to her so 
 precious, so valuable; she would sacrifice her life to 
 do it well; she does it freely, without money and 
 without price ! *' All I ask in this life," said such 
 a mother to the writer, " is to see my husband and 
 children well and happy." 
 
 But now another woman has come into the home. 
 She performs the same services for the same dear 
 man, the same wonderful children. Only they are 
 not dear or wonderful to her; she cares not a pin for 
 them. She has come for money and she stays for 
 money. To the house mother she is strangely in- 
 appreciative and lacking in sensibility; the mercenari- 
 ness of her gets onto one's nerves. And if, through 
 
i66 FEMINISM 
 
 her careless indifference, anything happens (baby 
 left out in the rain, or dropped) or in any way the 
 family health be endangered — the mother's rage 
 knows no bounds. '* Take her out of my house ; she 
 is a fiend, a heartless fiend; she has no sympathy with 
 our troubles," begged a sick mother tearfully of her 
 physician, referring to an antipathetic servant. 
 
 The servant difficulty bears hardest upon mothers. 
 In the first place, households with children are 
 avoided by servants. Many servants, especially 
 those of quiet and orderly disposition, will take only 
 situations in families where there are no children. 
 Beside their noise and disorderliness, the imper- 
 tinences which children commit toward servants, un- 
 checked In many cases by Indulgent parents, are re- 
 sented by self-respecting servants. Cooks are often 
 especially Irritable toward the interruptions and im- 
 portunities of children and their youthful propensity 
 for " gettin' Into everything." A new cook's first 
 battle sometimes turns upon the vexed point as to 
 whether the children are to " keep out of the 
 kitchen " — or not. An anxious mother. In an em- 
 ployment agency, trying to explain away the ex- 
 istence of her offspring, or at least extenuate her of- 
 fence, is one of the most pathetic figures in contem- 
 porary society. "I — I — have only three," she 
 stammers, " and they are very nice children, so quiet, 
 they never cry, no trouble at all — " she murmurs 
 with a sinking heart, while she meets the cold, steely 
 glitter in the servant's eye which says as plain as 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 267 
 
 words : " You needn't be givin' me that. Them 
 lies is old." 
 
 The relationship between servant and child is 
 essentially unsound and is instinctively felt to be such 
 by each of them. The institution is one devised by 
 grown-ups for their own personal convenience and 
 it often arouses in its hapless victims mutually vin- 
 dictive passions. A child who is being dragged, 
 kicking and screaming, away from its parents (who 
 wish, for the moment, to be rid of it) by a servant 
 who would like to be permanently rid of it — is a 
 pitiful object both for its misery and for its im- 
 potence. It is only equalled in unpleasantness by the 
 servant herself, also miserable and impotent, when 
 she gets the child alone and can give vent to her 
 feelings untrammelled. The upbringing of the hu- 
 man young demands endless patience which is pro- 
 vided normally in parents by their love for their 
 offspring and by their hope of receiving one day 
 abundant recompense for their efforts when the child 
 shall emerge into power and maturity. Neither of 
 these motives is of any help to the servant. She has 
 no hope of future recompense nor has she present 
 love; she has nothing but her need of twenty dollars 
 a month, board and lodging. But the need of 
 twenty dollars a month is not of sufficient power and 
 richness in the catalogue of human springs of action 
 to provide the copious outflow of love and patience 
 which children require. 
 
 Women of experience have told me that the in- 
 
268 FEMINISM 
 
 fluence of servants on their children had been almost 
 invariably bad. Either the servant indulges it or 
 bullies it or neglects it — with equal disadvantage. 
 To enter into a conspiracy to defeat the will of the 
 parents Is not uncommon. " Don't tell mother; 
 what she don't know won't hurt her," is the motto 
 of such cabals. Habits of deception toward her 
 mother were inculcated by a series of servants in the 
 mind of a little girl whose mother was deaf. A 
 visitor once heard the child, with a smile, which 
 totally misled her unhappy parent, cursing her 
 mother in round terms to her face, while the mother, 
 unknowing, smiled contentedly back. 
 
 For the sake of peace most parents are glad when 
 servants succeed, as some do, in winning the affec- 
 tion of their little tyrants. But even this amiable 
 ability may work ill, as was shown in a case known 
 to the writer. " Before you engage me as govern- 
 ess," said a charming young woman to her pros- 
 pective employers, " I must tell you that there is one 
 serious drawback about me; the children in my 
 charge become very fond of me. I have recently 
 lost two excellent positions because of it." 
 
 " Be quite easy on that score in our home," they 
 replied; *' the more our children love you the better 
 pleased we shall be." 
 
 " Very well," she replied, " but please don't say 
 later that I did not give you fair warning." 
 
 " Go ahead, don't mind us, do your worst," 
 laughed the fond father gleefully. Yet within six 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 269 
 
 months these parents were obliged to dismiss the 
 charming governess because the children had become 
 so infatuated with her that they could not be sep- 
 arated from her except by force, and would have 
 nothing to do with their parents, whose society, in 
 comparison, had become tiresome to them. This Is 
 an extreme case, but In the mind of a sensitive 
 mother there is seldom absent a misgiving, when 
 the strange woman steps in between her and her 
 darling, a misgiving that she may in some way dam- 
 age the child, or else — equally to be feared — in 
 the child's heart supplant its mother. 
 
 Aside from her effect upon children, the situa- 
 tion of the servant in the family Is often that of an 
 Irritating foreign body, and a wild longing to expel 
 them wholly from her home sometimes besets women 
 In whom the fire of domesticity burns pure. " The 
 relation Is a hateful one, and nothing can cure It," 
 said one such woman to me one day. 
 
 Most women are afraid to discuss the question 
 freely. They are ashamed to say how many times 
 they have changed cooks, for If the neighbourhood 
 and the servant world and the employment agencies 
 get wind of It — her difficulties will increase; she 
 will be called " hard " and only the " tough " mem- 
 bers of the trade will venture into her service. So 
 she thinks It wiser to keep still about her troubles. 
 Then suddenly she has a run of luck. She gets " a 
 nice girl " — who stays. All the reason which led 
 " the others " to depart leave her untouched. All 
 
270 FEMINISM 
 
 the reasons which led to the dismissal of her pred- 
 ecessors seem absent in her. It seems too good to 
 be true; yet month after month glides away and 
 " she " is still there ! Self-confidence begins to ooze 
 slowly back in the bosom of her employer. Like 
 a wet hen after a shower, she shakes herself and 
 prepares to hold up her head once more. Presently 
 she begins to look pityingly upon other evidently less 
 capable and amiable mistresses. A few months 
 later she will be saying confidently, " I never have 
 any trouble with servants whatever. They are de- 
 voted to me. My present maid will do anything 
 for me. I couldn't drive her away with a club. 
 After all, it is only a question of careful selection. 
 One must know how to pick them out ! '' Yet in her 
 heart she knows that next week she may be trudging 
 about from one office to another, heavy at heart 
 and humbled to the dust. Then it will be no more 
 a question of " picking out carefully " with her; she 
 is prepared to take anything she can get. 
 
 In most cases the relationship between mistress 
 and maid Is one of veiled conflict which both would 
 be glad to end in a moment if they could, and, 
 within a year or two at most, their compact is joy- 
 fully dissolved by mutual consent. Then one seeks 
 a new mistress and the other a new maid in pleased 
 anticipation of a new situation wherein, during a 
 brief interval before hostihties are again renewed, 
 a pretence of mutual good-will may be kept up. Ex- 
 ceptions appear where the servant, by long stay or 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 271 
 
 unusual congeniality, has really become " one of 
 the family." Exceptions, too, occur in the case of 
 young maids, fresh from their own family circle, who 
 have not yet lost the capacity for daughterly feeling 
 and who are thus able to inspire a motherly regard 
 in their mistress. A cessation of hostilities some- 
 times occurs too, between aged serving women and 
 their aged mistresses, both too old to fight any longer 
 and desirous of peace at any price. There is also 
 the incompetent mistress who lies down at the out- 
 set, suffers servants to ride over her and " gets 
 along " famously. There is again a small number 
 of shrewd housekeepers, with a faculty for selecting 
 and controlling servants, who are able to monopolise 
 the best in the market. 
 
 As the demand for servants increases (through 
 the growth of the wealthy class) and the supply 
 diminishes (through the opening of other occupa- 
 tions to women), the situation is bound to become 
 worse, and means of escape are already being sought 
 by many persons who find their chains more galling 
 in proportion as their dependence upon servants be- 
 comes more confirmed. Some flee to hotels for 
 refuge, but that method offers no real escape from 
 servants. On the contrary, the refugee finds these 
 unfortunate beings there in still greater numbers. 
 They stand about and meet one everywhere. They 
 possess keys to one's room and pry into one's draw- 
 ers; they hang over one at table, their palms out- 
 stretched, metaphorically, in perpetual solicitation. 
 
272 FEMINISM 
 
 It is said that servants, despite this humiliating posi- 
 tion, prefer hotel to private service as being more 
 regular and less subject to personal whims. Never- 
 theless I cannot remember to have noted on the pale, 
 sad faces of hotel servants any the less that fixed 
 look of weary endurance which marks the servant 
 class. 
 
 The evils associated with the servant problem are 
 sometimes attributed to the iniquities of servants 
 and sometimes to the natural depravity of mistresses. 
 Mistresses are enjoined to take their maids to their 
 hearts ; to put a pretty picture in their room, to keep 
 the fashion magazines or the latest novel on the 
 kitchen table, while dainty gifts, such as opera 
 glasses, silk umbrellas, or corner lots are often rec- 
 ommended as valuable. It is said that if we allude 
 to servants as " lady helpers " — all may yet be well ! 
 One even hears that a rocking chair In the pantry 
 will heal all wounds and smooth the path of diffi- 
 culty. As for the servant, her proper course is 
 clear; she should " make her employer's interests 
 her own.*' Let her but ponder well this great and 
 simple maxim ! 
 
 " I will arise at four A. M.," she should say to 
 herself, " and surprise my mistress by stoking the 
 furnace that she may dispense with a man. If the 
 family are ill I will nurse them and save the cost of 
 a nurse. The more company the family have and 
 the more work the company make, the better I shall 
 be pleased, for all those things show that the missus 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 273 
 
 and I have many friends and are prosperous. Also, 
 I will lower my wages, since it is clearly for her in- 
 terest that I should do so, and what she saves on 
 my wages she may spend on more furniture for me 
 to dust. This, too, I shall welcome, seeing that our 
 interests are one." 
 
 The mark of domestic success being the servant 
 who " stays," to this end we bend our most earnest 
 efforts. The finer person she is, the harder we try, 
 in our humble way, to find favour in her sight, so 
 that she will stay, and stay. Moreover, the more 
 faithful and able she is — and therefore the more 
 desirable that she should go away from us at once, 
 without a moment's delay, and marry, and raise a 
 family like herself, the more determined we are that 
 she shall remain a virgin consecrated to our service. 
 
 " I never have any trouble with servants because 
 I treat my maids so well," said a proud matron to me 
 once. " My Katy has been with me seven years. 
 She was engaged to be married when she came, but 
 I headed her off by raising her wages every year and 
 giving her silk waists and vacation and theatre 
 tickets and everything I could think of. She has 
 become my friend; my home is her home." 
 
 " And what of her young man? " 
 
 *' Oh, he grew tired of waiting and married an- 
 other girl — a poor, sickly thing, not half so fine a 
 woman as Katy." 
 
 Now this amiable mistress is obviously an enemy 
 of the human race. The better she treats her Katies 
 
274 FEMINISM 
 
 the worse it will be for posterity. " Treat them 
 well and there will be an end of the servant prob- 
 lem," said she. Alas! that is not the end of the 
 problem; it is only the beginning. 
 
 Her boast was a common one. A staying serv- 
 ant is universally regarded in somewhat the same 
 light as the Iron Cross or a V. C, to be won for 
 valour, conferring distinction upon a mistress and 
 shedding a reflected glory upon the entire family. 
 Even Ruskin, one remembers, wrote most compla- 
 cently of an aged serving-woman of his mother's 
 whose entire life, from girlhood to old age, was con- 
 sumed in ministering unremittingly to their crea- 
 ture comforts. In my own family I have often 
 heard the story of a woman servant who never left 
 the village, and scarcely left the house of the doc- 
 tor whom she served, and who, after sixty-four years 
 of continuous service, devised in her last will and 
 testament the entire sum of her saving to her em- 
 ployer! Since I never remember to have heard 
 this story told with any other sentiment than that 
 of the utmost pride and satisfaction, I must con- 
 clude that most of us are more interested in getting 
 ourselves well served than we are in seeing that the 
 rare qualities, such as this faithful woman un- 
 doubtedly possessed, shall continue to appear in our 
 race. Yet we complain that such qualities are be- 
 coming rare ! 
 
 The two persons most directly concerned in solv- 
 ing the servant problem are the mistress and the 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 275 
 
 maid; but their respective views of how it is to be 
 solved are diametrically opposite. The mistress^ in 
 most cases, would solve it by having provided for 
 her, somehow, a plentiful supply of trained serv- 
 ants at low wages. The servant's solution, in so 
 far as she has any, is, as far as she can, to abolish 
 servants altogether by choosing some other call- 
 ing, and her solution at present seems the more 
 likely to be realised. Indeed, unless some radical, 
 social change shall intervene, the mistress' solution 
 has little prospect of success. The close of the 
 war will see a rush of surplus women from Europe 
 into the wage-earning classes and some of them will 
 undoubtedly enter service. But the psychological 
 factors now at work which lead women to prefer 
 almost any other occupation to domestic service will 
 continue In force and the main stream of women- 
 workers will flow, perhaps in increasing volume, to- 
 ward workshop, office and factory, avoiding the 
 home. Perversity? False pride? Well, perhaps; 
 nevertheless there Is the fact! Despite the higher 
 wages paid in domestic service, an Increasing num- 
 ber of women, forced to seek their own livelihood, 
 will face almost starvation rather than serve other 
 women In their homes. 
 
 The shop offers free evenings and Sundays, 
 definite hours, the single, specified task, the bustle 
 and companionship of other workers, the hope of 
 adventure, the supposedly better matrimonial out- 
 look In a position where she can see and be seen. 
 
276 FEMINISM 
 
 These are among the reasons commonly adduced 
 for this persistent tendency. But no explanation 
 which leaves out of account the peculiar and mys- 
 terious stigma which attaches to the calling of serv- 
 ant, suffices. The stigma is more drastic in Amer- 
 ica than in Europe, because in the old world peo- 
 ple are still bound by the hmitations of their class 
 and no disgrace attaches to fulfilling a destiny which 
 you cannot escape. But in the free air of America 
 none are supposed to follow a calling or remain in 
 a position which does not suit them. Hence, Amer- 
 ican girls in only rare instances will enter domes- 
 tic service and for the upkeep of homes America is 
 almost wholly dependent upon the daughters of for- 
 eign countries. 
 
 The stigma attaching to the servant's calling Is 
 not due to the unpleasantness of her tasks, since the 
 trained nurse performs services quite as disagree- 
 able. It is not because housework is hard; since 
 many forms of labour outside, in factories and 
 slaughter houses and mines, is harder. It is not be- 
 cause it is unskilled, since the finer departments of 
 housework demand considerable skill. It is not be- 
 cause the servant "lives out" and has- no home of 
 her own, since the governess and the trained nurse 
 are similarly placed, without loss of prestige. It 
 is not because the servant is unorganised, since the 
 stigma began its pursuit of her before trade unions 
 were heard of. It is not because she is " bossed," 
 since the condition of being bossed, criticised and 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 277 
 
 found fault with is the lot of all who work under 
 others and the chance of being fired is the correla- 
 tive of being hired. It is not because the servant 
 is ill paid or ill-treated, since, despite continuously 
 rising pay and more considerate treatment, the 
 stigma continues to follow her. 
 
 It Is true that the very rich are able to overcome 
 the stigma by paying exorbitant wages, and there- 
 fore, there is, for the rich, properly no servant prob- 
 lem. They can have whatever they choose to pay 
 for and they will pay for anything they want. 
 Whether they choose imported lackeys, or oriental 
 coolies, or mechanical automatons, or trained mon- 
 keys, need not concern us. Their problem is their 
 own and they are quite able to solve it. What the 
 Interests of humanity demand are not that the idle 
 and luxurious may be provided with the means of 
 being more idle and more luxurious, but that women 
 in the home who are engaged in performing valuable 
 services, which are beyond their unaided strength 
 to perform, shall be furnished the necessary assist- 
 ance. 
 
 The upkeep of happy and fruitful homes Is an 
 Invaluable service and If, as It may appear. It Is one 
 which makes too many exactions upon one woman, 
 then It Is extremely desirable that. In a well-organ- 
 ised society, help shall be provided her. Under 
 present conditions, many homes are falling to pieces 
 because the mothers In charge of them are them- 
 selves Ill-trained, and because of this, together with 
 
278 FEMINISM 
 
 the fact that their task is beyond their strength, can- 
 not fulfil their function properly. Help is needed 
 to maintain these homes, but it is not forthcoming 
 because in some there are not the means to pay 
 for help, and in others, where the means are pres- 
 ent, the help cannot be had. In a nutshell this is 
 the servant problem: how to make available good 
 help for those families who need it, and should 
 have It. 
 
 The solutions of the servant problem now of- 
 fered are mainly three: first, abolish servants alto- 
 gether; second, kind treatment, higher wages and the 
 like, with a view of attracting larger numbers to the 
 calling; third, replacing servants by trained workers 
 who live at home. 
 
 To persons of refinement the first solution is es- 
 pecially attractive and many ingenious efforts are be- 
 ing made by desperate women to establish a self- 
 respecting independence of servants. Sometimes the 
 family moves Into smaller quarters; flats and deli- 
 catessen stores, the janitor, the telephone, the 
 dumb waiter, the steam-heated apartment, the free 
 hot water, reduce housework to the capacity of a 
 single pair of hands. More luxurious families 
 adopt labour-saving machinery and hired cleaners; 
 they also enlist the co-operation of the members of 
 the family and so forth. One hears of a thirty- 
 five thousand dollar country house in the Catskills, 
 constructed throughout with the view of ellminat- 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 279 
 
 ing the necessity of servants, and there Is no doubt 
 that if an Inventor of self-cleaning, self-running 
 domiciles for human beings should appear a fortune 
 awaits him. More Immediately available are, how- 
 ever, the estimable efforts of some Intelligent women 
 to perfect and set forth new methods of " scien- 
 tific housekeeping " whereby woman, though bound, 
 may yet be free. It Is to be achieved by the exer- 
 cise of " system,'' " planning," " measured move- 
 ments," " records " and the like. There is very 
 much that Is admirable In these teachings; and, if 
 women were more widely trained In really scientific 
 housekeeping, there would be many more happy 
 homes and more light-hearted women. The matter 
 Is not, however, as easy as It appears In the fluent 
 books upon the subject. The aim is to apply to the 
 home the efficiency methods which have accom- 
 plished so much In office and factory; the theory con- 
 siders the home as a factory. But the home is not 
 a factory and methods which are very rigid and 
 exact cannot well be applied to it, or. If they were 
 so applied, might endanger Its most precious char- 
 acteristics. The home is not a favourable field for 
 the application of efficiency methods, because it Is 
 precisely the place to which men turn to escape 
 from too much efficiency. The trouble with all 
 machinery, no matter how perfect, Is that the whole 
 is dependent upon the smooth working of all the 
 parts, and a home which has so far lost Its nor- 
 
28o FEMINISM 
 
 mal flexibility that any little irregularity will throw 
 out the entire day's schedule, shatter the household 
 equanimity and reduce the house mother to desper- 
 ation, has lost as much as it has gained by scientific 
 management. Moreover, to replace servants by 
 elaborate electric machinery, beside being beyond 
 the reach of most women to install, is beyond the 
 ability of more to operate. A dinner of ten cov- 
 ers, such as Mrs. Pattison describes herself as cook- 
 ing and serving, alone and unaided, while still pre- 
 serving all the nonchalance of a care-free, chef- 
 served hostess, requires a truly Napoleonic grasp of 
 intellect, united to an Edisonian grasp of electric ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 The most beneficial feature of the effort to dis- 
 pense with servants is that it leads to a simplifica- 
 tion of existence and the attempt to strip life of 
 some of its superfluous burdens — a lesson we can- 
 not learn too soon nor too often. But, however 
 certain persons may dally with the idea that the 
 ideal solution of the servant question is to get rid 
 of servants, that is not the ideal commonly held. 
 The general intention in the mind of most families 
 is to secure a servant as soon as they can afford 
 one. Thousands of women, who congratulate them- 
 selves in after life, as does the author of " The Long 
 Day," that no matter how hard they were pushed, 
 out of work and starving, in their girlhood, they 
 still never sank so low as to accept domestic service 
 — still the moment they have climbed the ladder to 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 281 
 
 a competence hasten to find some other girl willing 
 to " sink so low " as to serve them. 
 
 The " servant/' strictly speaking, is bound in time 
 to be abolished, indeed is now engaged in abolish- 
 ing herself. Before many decades she is likely to 
 survive only in the famihes of millionaires, and the 
 maintenance of servants will be the unmistakable 
 evidence of vast opulence. They will be very rare 
 and precious, very well-trained and very expensive. 
 In the families of the masses of the people there 
 will be no servants, the girls and women previously 
 so employed having all passed into the office, the 
 workshop, the store, the factory. Such a state of 
 things, sure to be hailed as progress by feminists, 
 because it deals another blow at the family, and se- 
 cures economic independence for more women, is not 
 to be welcomed by humanists. 
 
 In our view the family is the corner-stone of so- 
 ciety, and measures which render it more sure, not 
 those which join with the forces that threaten it, 
 are to be advocated. The family needs not less 
 help but more; and while we willingly see the insti- 
 tution of servantry depart to keep company with 
 those of slavery and vassalage which preceded it, 
 still we recognise that the upkeep of the nation's 
 families is too important a work to be left to fall 
 into neglect, and, since where there are children or 
 aged people or invalids it cannot be properly done 
 by one woman alone, there should be some means of 
 providing her with help, according to her needs. 
 
282 FEMINISM 
 
 We consent to the abolition of servants; but we in- 
 sist that some form of domestic helpers must still be 
 available. 
 
 The favourite solution of the problem now cur- 
 rent is that of establishing professional housework- 
 ers to come to one's house by the day or by the 
 hour and vanish as does the plumber or the gas 
 man when their work is done. Although this plan 
 has been hopefully discussed for the past twenty 
 years it seems no nearer realisation. The highly 
 trained college graduate, who, we were told, would 
 appear at one's door every morning, do up the work 
 as by magic and vanish as a fairy at fall of day, 
 is a being who exists, as far as I know, only in the 
 pages of lady sociologists, who periodically produce 
 books about her. Yet every one favours this solu- 
 tion; all hope for it; most people seem confidently 
 to anticipate it. 
 
 In some of the larger cities, it is true, the cus- 
 tom is already common for negro women to work 
 in this way. They have no objection to being out 
 late and the plantation tradition, under which the 
 darkles retired to their own quarters at nightfall to 
 sleep with their own people, still lingers. The prac- 
 tice is not, however, favoured by young white girls. 
 If they are to live at home and work out they much 
 prefer shop or factory, which closes promptly at six, 
 so that they can count exactly upon their homecom- 
 ing. 
 
 As for the highly trained, graduated, home-eco- 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 283 
 
 nomics demonstrator, who was once promised us, 
 she has never appeared in the flesh, her energies 
 having been invariably enlisted, it seems, not in run- 
 ning our homes for us as she has been instructed 
 so efficiently how to do, but in teaching others how 
 — to teach! It is true that for a special occasion 
 expert caterers can always be had at the command 
 of a long purse, but these awesome creatures are 
 quite out of reach for performing the prosaic grind 
 of daily household tasks. 
 
 The chief obstacle to converting housework into 
 a day's work task is that the life of the home, in- 
 stead of shutting down at six p.m., as outside work 
 does, intensifies at precisely that hour. All the 
 scattered members of the family come wandering 
 hungrily home, and any person who must serve at 
 this office has her evening spoiled, a fact which 
 weighs heavily in the competition which goes on be- 
 tween the home and the factory for the young girl's 
 work. The only class of young girls to whom this 
 is not a disadvantage is the homeless immigrant. 
 To her, a sheltered spot in a strange land where she 
 can both live and work is highly desirable, for to 
 go home after work means to her only to creep into 
 a desolate room somewhere, empty and cold and bear- 
 ing no resemblance to a home in any way. There- 
 fore it is the raw immigrant girl, alone, who flocks 
 plentifully into domestic service and more and more 
 It is she, raw, stupid, and untaught, who is the over- 
 burdened housemother's only prop and hope. 
 
284 FEMINISM 
 
 The remedy of kind treatment which it was hoped 
 would call more and better women into the service 
 is only partially successful, as we see when we re- 
 member that, in spite of it, the tide flows increas- 
 ingly into the shops. Thus all of the remedies com- 
 monly proposed offer little promise of rehef. 
 
 And yet not only is it not desirable, in the inter- 
 ests of the nation's homes, that they should be poorly 
 manned and equipped by the abandonment of help- 
 ers; but it is necessary that many more famiHes than 
 are now receiving help should receive it. Thou- 
 sands of the nation's mothers, engaged in a most 
 important work, are sadly overburdened. They 
 should be given all the help necessary to their task. 
 
 At the same time there are constantly arising 
 troops of young daughters, whose work is not needed 
 in their own families, and who should enter upon 
 a period of self-support previous to marriage. The 
 most desirable arrangement imaginable would be 
 that they should be able to support themselves, 
 while at the same time perfecting themselves in a 
 caUing which will assist them in their ultimate serv- 
 ice as homemakers. No other work is so well suited 
 ^or this double purpose as domestic service. How 
 ^htn can we remove the stigma which now attaches 
 to that service, and open it freely to future home- 
 makers? How can we make it compete successfully 
 against its dangerous rivals — the workshop, office 
 and factory? If we can do so it will be better for 
 the girls, it will be better for the homes, it will be 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 285 
 
 better for the mothers, It will be better for the na- 
 tion and better for the race. 
 
 How shall we deflect the tide of young working 
 girls away from shops and Into homes? How shall 
 we bring them into the service of the nation's moth- 
 ers ? How shall we adapt them to the requirements 
 of housemothers and adapt housemothers to their 
 requirements so that they will like each other and 
 work harmoniously together? We wish to utilise 
 a large fund of unused motherllness on the part of 
 capable women, and, on the other hand, a fund of 
 wasted daughterliness of good young girls, now lost 
 In the grind of business. These girls and these 
 women should be brought together In quasi-i^mily 
 groups to occupy toward each other the relationship, 
 partly of teacher and pupil, partly of mother and 
 daughter. All families containing young children 
 need help and this should be rendered by the na- 
 tion's unattached women — the young maids, spin- 
 sters, .elderly women. In the coming struggle for 
 supremacy among nations that race has a better 
 chance to prevail which utilises to best advantage 
 the energies of its women — young and old. When 
 this Is understood, young women may pledge them- 
 selves to the service of the home as young men now 
 rush to the colours. This kind of preparedness Is 
 very necessary, and universal conscription, by which 
 all young girls who do not fall below the standard 
 should be required to serve their time In household 
 service, would be eminently desirable. 
 
286 FEMINISM 
 
 The writer offers the following suggestions look- 
 ing toward a possible solution of the domestic prob- 
 lem. The plan keeps consistently in view the bene- 
 fits to the race which, in our judgment, are bound up 
 with the continued maintenance of the family; and it 
 advocates a deliberate pohcy of domestication as 
 against the commercialisation of young women. 
 The foundation for such a scheme must be laid in 
 educating girls for the home rather than for the mar- 
 ket-place. Up to the age of twelve, a girl should 
 be given the usual rudiments of general education; 
 i.e., they should be taught to read and write and 
 spell and to speak pure English (far more attention 
 being given to this matter than is now the custom). 
 In addition, they are naturally given an idea of the 
 geography of their own country, and, more gener- 
 ally, of the rest of the earth, together with an out- 
 line of history. But at twelve years of age their 
 education should take a definite turn, and, during 
 the next four to six years, it should move steadily 
 in the direction of the domestic arts. With these 
 as a solid foundation should be combined abundant 
 physical exercise, especially dancing, and the cultiva- 
 tion of the love of beauty through art, music, litera- 
 ture and the like. 
 
 After the age of sixteen or eighteen those girls 
 — and they are very few — who have demonstrated 
 a real and genuine thirst for abstract knowledge 
 could return to the pursuit of " book learning " and 
 pass on to the upper reaches of " higher education." 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 287 
 
 The average girl, however, pursues further the line 
 of domestication. This she may do by perfecting 
 her knowledge of some of the domestic arts or else, 
 if it is necessary for her to become, as soon as pos- 
 sible, self-supporting, she enters at once into a period 
 of apprenticeship as a co-operative houseworker in 
 a selected home. 
 
 In the first instance she may become an expert 
 cook or milliner, or dancer or singer, developing 
 these activities purely as personal accomplishments, 
 to enhance her personal value in the home, not, as 
 yet, with a view of selling them in the market-place. 
 In the second instance the girl passes into a home 
 where she will be given the opportunity to put in 
 practice the knowledge of the domestic arts in which 
 she has been trained. Here we approach the do- 
 mestic help problem from a new angle. 
 
 This public school girl enters family service not as 
 a servant but as a co-operative worker. Her 
 status in the family is that of the apprentice who 
 used to enter his master's family for a twofold pur- 
 pose — to perfect himself in his craft under the eye 
 of a master, and at the same time to render assist- 
 ance to his master while so engaged. Some one has 
 recently written of the college that " the college will 
 never really get the undergraduate until it trans- 
 forms itself into a sort of intellectual workshop in 
 which young men can serve an apprenticeship under 
 the masters of their day." The same may be said 
 of the home. It will not secure the high-souled, dis- 
 
.288 FEMINISM 
 
 interested service of maidens, which for its own good 
 and theirs, it should command, until their relation 
 to their work is so transformed that it comes to be 
 regarded by them as a period of apprenticeship to 
 a higher vocation. The status of such an ap- 
 prentice is no more that of the servant, than the 
 status of a patriotic soldier resembles that of a hired 
 mercenary. 
 
 The entrance of the girl into a refined home as 
 apprentice causes no jar to the family because she 
 has been specially trained for it, having received the 
 teaching and the discipline to make her not only an 
 efficient house worker, but an agreeable home com- 
 panion. Not only does she know how to cook and 
 sew and clean and make beds and set a table, and 
 understand how to take care of a baby and the ele- 
 ments of sick nursing, but she has been drilled in 
 the use of pure English and clear enunciation; she 
 has been trained in dainty care of her person, from 
 the taking of a daily bath to the properly dressed 
 hair and polished nails; she has been made to ex- 
 perience the benefits of fresh air, exercise, plain food, 
 plenty of sleep, both in their effects upon her com- 
 plexion and her temper as well as her general health. 
 She has been made to understand that an obliga- 
 tion which society entails upon her is to keep her- 
 self in blooming condition. She has been fitted in 
 every way to take her place, modestly, but with dig- 
 nity, as an " apprentice daughter " in the household 
 of a woman of refinement* 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 289 
 
 She does not enter her vocation for the money 
 there is in it, any more than does the soldier or the 
 Red Cross nurse. Her wage is nominal; probably 
 about the size of an allowance which a mother might 
 give her daughter to buy her clothes and little pleas- 
 ures. The goal of the apprentice-daughter is not 
 to accumulate wages but to accumulate useful ex- 
 perience, and to perfect herself in all the accomplish- 
 ments which she hopes to use, herself, as wife and 
 mother, when she comes to preside over her own 
 home, and in turn to be mother and guide to other 
 apprentices. 
 
 That marriage is her aim and goal should be 
 frankly recognised by her and by society. She 
 should believe that it is not honest ever to deny 
 this or to conceal it. She should never be ashamed 
 of it or permit any one to make her ashamed of 
 it. As every one knows what her aim is, no hin- 
 drances are to be put in her way; on the contrary 
 every facility, within propriety, must be provided to 
 enable her to realise her woman's destiny. To join 
 hands with a worthy mate and with him raise a fine 
 family seems to her more suitable as a life motive 
 than to secure by haggard efforts a big salary under 
 barren spinsterhood. 
 
 The ornamental side of her nature has not been 
 neglected, for she is to be not only a houseworker 
 but a homemate and qomrade. Her mind has been 
 stored with games and fairy tales, folk songs, poetry 
 and romance. Some day she is to be the life of the 
 
290 FEMINISM 
 
 nursery. She can sing a merry song, join in a col- 
 lege glee and dance like a fairy. She can sketch, 
 she can swim, she can walk; she knows birds, and 
 trees and flowers. She can make her own dresses 
 and trim her own hats and has been taught the charm 
 of simphcity and cleanliness. She can embroider 
 and knit all sorts; she can keep accounts; she has 
 been taught order and system, how to economise 
 and manage ; how to buy, and how not to buy. 
 
 Her position in the household resembles that of 
 a young physician serving as interne in a hospital. 
 She aims to perfect herself in her calling by con- 
 tinual practice under the direction and criticism of 
 experts. The glory of the goal illumines the noviti- 
 ate like that of the nun. There is no stigma follow- 
 ing such a career, no matter how menial the task 
 performed, any more than there is with regard to the 
 nun or the nurse or the medical student serving his 
 time as an interne. 
 
 If it is necessary to the success of such a scheme 
 that the apprentice shall have been trained, it is no 
 less essential that the mother-matron shall have been 
 fitted for her function. Only matrons who had 
 themselves been thoroughly trained in the principle 
 and practice of domestic art would be eligible to re- 
 ceive the services of the apprentice-daughters. 
 
 Both matrons and daughters should be members 
 of an organisation — called the Guild or Co-opera- 
 tive Homemakers, or something of the sort — 
 which should be under the auspices of the state edu- 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 291 
 
 catlonal system. It would establish in connection 
 with the public schools a placing bureau. (There is 
 already a placing secretary attached to the vocational 
 schools of New York City.) The finest young girls 
 graduating from the public schools after from four 
 to six years of training in the domestic arts would 
 be placed in selected families whose matrons had 
 themselves passed the required tests and examina- 
 tions. 
 
 The standards of household management vary 
 from house to house; but there is no reason, when 
 the subject is better understood, why households 
 should not be standardised and classified according 
 to the standard adopted. Roughly speaking, house- 
 holds might be graded in three grades. The first 
 grade might follow the standard maintained by the 
 best hotels and the households of millionaires. 
 Among its items are perfect order and cleanliness 
 from garret to cellar; bed linen changed each morn- 
 ing, table linen at each meal; "made dishes" ex- 
 clusively, served; all window sills cleaned daily, 
 clothing brushed, shoes blacked, beds opened, baths 
 drawn, tubs polished, glass and silver always like 
 new, and so forth. The second grade falls consid- 
 erably short of this concert pitch while not falling 
 below the health line. A third grade might repre- 
 sent a still further slackening from the highest stand- 
 ard. 
 
 A household interne should have experience of all 
 the grades and be able to discriminate between them. 
 
292 FEMINISM 
 
 The higher the standard set in any establishment the 
 larger the number of internes necessary to maintain 
 the standard, and the larger the opportunity to make 
 acquaintance and friendship among co-workers. In 
 order to gain variety of experience it would be de- 
 sirable that young internes should not remain more 
 than two or three years in one place. After they 
 have learned what one household has to teach, then, 
 provided they have not yet met their future hus- 
 band, they should move on in search of pastures 
 new, domestic and matrimonial. In these various 
 positions a young woman would secure not only 
 varied practical experience but could learn much of 
 proper family relations — how best to secure family 
 harmony and sweeten family intercourse. A wise 
 httle girl, who kept her eyes open and her mind 
 awake, might thus arrive at some very shrewd con- 
 clusions as to what kind of a man NOT to marry, and 
 what kind of a wife not to be. 
 
 As for the guild matrons, not only would they 
 have to have won certificates of proficiency before 
 they would be entitled to the services of the Guild 
 of Internes, but the households of the guild matrons 
 would be subject to periodical inspection by expert 
 officers of the Guild, in order to determine whether 
 the standard adopted by the household were being 
 maintained and whether either the matron or the 
 apprentice-daughters were falling behind and needed 
 " jacking up.'' This feature of the scheme is ren- 
 dered necessary by the incorrigible human propen- 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 293 
 
 sity to slump ; but far from being regarded as an In- 
 trusion, it would, I believe, be earnestly welcomed 
 by matrons who take their functions seriously. 
 This is especially the case if the inspection covers, as 
 it should, health and hygiene and the general family 
 conditions. There is scarcely a family in any class 
 but would benefit by periodical visits and inspection 
 of its conditions by experts. 
 
 To belong to the Guild of Matrons would be an 
 honour to any woman and more to be desired — ex- 
 cept for money-making purposes — than a college 
 degree. Aside from Its practical advantage it would 
 enable a superior woman to practise a species of 
 maternity extension, by exercising motherly helpful- 
 ness over a wider area than that covered by her im- 
 mediate family. Her position would be that of 
 head mistress in a school, or head nurse in a nurses' 
 training school, or head physician in a hospital. 
 Although she may have little work to do, and lit- 
 tle actual teaching, her duties of inspection, plan- 
 ning, criticising and directing are unremitting. She 
 is the conductor of the household orchestra; she 
 must understand all the instruments, even if she do 
 not play them, and upon her devolve leadership, ex- 
 ample and responsibility. She and her apprentice- 
 daughters have an object in common — the perfect- 
 ing of the American home and the future improve- 
 ment of the American nation. The matron Is not 
 to lose sight of the fact that her charges are not 
 there to minister to her indolence, but to prepare 
 
294 FEMINISM 
 
 themselves, under her guidance, for their own ca- 
 reers as wives and mothers, and they must be con- 
 sistently assisted to attain this end. 
 
 Let us picture to ourselves a typical case. Mrs. 
 A. is a woman of forty; her family consists of her 
 husband and herself with their four children and 
 her husband's mother. Mrs. A. is a finely dis- 
 ciplined character, kindly and capable, an excellent 
 housekeeper, an admirable wife and mother. She 
 has for years been struggling hopelessly with the 
 servant problem. Her own standards have been 
 continuously rising as she gained knowledge and ex- 
 perience and came to see how things ought to be 
 done. But her task grew harder instead of easier as 
 she was forced to depend upon a constantly deterio- 
 rating class of domestics. 
 
 Mrs. A. has passed her examinations and is a 
 member of the Guild. After consultation she has 
 decided that the third grade standard of housekeep- 
 ing is all that she can at present maintain, so far 
 have things fallen behind under the ruinous regime 
 she has been struggling under. To maintain this 
 standard, given the size of her house and the fam- 
 ily requirement, four internes will be needed. Ac- 
 cordingly one day there are brought to Mrs. A.'s 
 house to take the place of the two stupid, ignorant, 
 slatternly, pilfering, lazy, deceitful, quarrelsome In- 
 competents whom the family finances have hitherto 
 placed in successive pairs at her disposal — four 
 bright, healthy, dainty, rosy, merry girls, fresh 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 295 
 
 from the public schools where they have been fol- 
 lowing, from four to six years, thorough courses in 
 the most approved methods of advanced housekeep- 
 ing. They are neat, orderly, handy, quick, cheer- 
 ful, and tickled to death with their new surround- 
 ings, their chance to work together, the prospect 
 of practising what they have learned, and the 
 opening up of the woman's period in their career. 
 As they have been trained to system and despatch, 
 to have a place for everything and to keep every- 
 thing in its place ; as they are young and lively, and 
 as there are twice as many hands now as formerly, 
 the household tasks are accomplished in far less 
 time. Therefore their actual working hours are 
 shortened and time is set free for the upkeep of 
 their health and personal attractiveness. They are 
 also required to spend a certain time each day in 
 reading and in cultivating any little craft or accom- 
 plishment — such as embroidery, knitting, singing, 
 dancing, which they may have begun at school. At 
 the guild headquarters they will receive instruction 
 in continuation classes so that they will not be 
 allowed to suppose that their education in any 
 respect has come to an end. To the Guild, more- 
 over, both matron and apprentice will make regular 
 reports, stating any cause of complaint or dissatis- 
 faction. 
 
 At the guild hall there would be a dancing and 
 music room with a little stage for dramatic per- 
 formances. Here would centre the social life of 
 
296 FEMINISM 
 
 the band of apprentice-daughters of the town. 
 Chaperoned by one of the league matrons they 
 would meet to dance, play games, sing, prattle, give 
 little plays, hold fairs, and " bees," and singing 
 classes and otherwise amuse themselves as young 
 girls should. Here, too, they would meet their 
 brothers and parents, and friends and lovers, and 
 here, for the most part, would ripen the friendships 
 leading to their own marriage. Out of four appren- 
 tices, two could be free in the evening to visit their 
 homes, or the guild hall or rest, as they pleased. 
 In connection with the Guild a fund might be raised 
 to buy wedding presents for apprentices and chris- 
 tening gifts for the first baby. Sick benefits and 
 insurance would probably follow. 
 
 Some of Mrs. A.'s apprentice-daughters will re- 
 main under her roof until they marry. Some will 
 stay only a year or two and then journey to an- 
 other town in search of fresh adventures and new 
 experiences, just as the old guild members used to 
 do in their wander-years. Those who, after a suffi- 
 cient time has passed, abandon the Idea of marriage 
 altogether would finally separate themselves from 
 the band of apprentice-daughters and could then fit 
 themselves for commercial pursuits. Only when 
 their prime service to humanity seems unlikely ever 
 to be fulfilled will society willingly consent to their 
 giving themselves over to the getting and saving of 
 money. Some of them will find employment in 
 teaching in the public and guild schools, while for 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE SERVANT 297 
 
 others vocational schools will be maintained by the 
 State to fit them for commercial life. 
 
 Under such a scheme Mrs. A., as we have seen, 
 IS able to enjoy the neat and cheerful service of four 
 young trained workers for the same outlay which 
 formerly procured her two poor ones. In similar 
 fashion households supporting one might then have 
 two and households which now have none might 
 then have one. But large numbers of working- 
 class women, who sorely need help, would still be 
 without it. How are we to meet that difficulty? 
 The only answer is that, should the time ever come 
 when the improvement of the human race, through 
 its more careful breeding and rearing in the home, 
 should seem to be the most important work into 
 which any society can enter — then we might hope 
 that a gathering spirit of service (even now evi- 
 dent in the volunteer soldier, the nurse, the army 
 surgeon, the sister of charity) might extend to this 
 service of the race, in the home — a cause no less 
 worthy. 
 
 Every family requires at some period outside 
 help. The lowest Italian household must have the 
 service of the midwife occasionally. In nearly 
 every country district some ignorant but foot-free 
 old woman answers the call to help wash the baby 
 or help lay out the corpse. In this age-long cus- 
 tom lies the key to the woman question and inci- 
 dentally to the servant question. Women must help 
 each other. Their toil must be utilised, not to the 
 
298 FEMINISM 
 
 increasing of the national bank account, not to the 
 enriching of capitalist employers, not to increasing 
 their own expenditure of display, but for the bene- 
 fit of the race, in the service of women and chil- 
 dren. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MORAL USES OF HUSBANDS 
 
 It is a curious fact that when man and woman 
 are drawn together by affection they tend to de- 
 velop in each other opposite qualities — the man be- 
 coming more manly and the woman more womanly. 
 But when they approach each other on a business 
 basis, occupying a neutral zone, then they tend to 
 become more alike, equally hard and determined. 
 They enter a competitive struggle in which there is 
 an effort to Ignore differences of sex, but in which 
 nevertheless the fact of sex serves but to embitter 
 the struggle. 
 
 In their normal relations the special service which 
 woman performs toward man is to tame him. The 
 service he performs for her is to steady her. 
 
 If it were not for woman's taming powers, we 
 should lapse into savagery; if it were not for man's 
 steadying power, society would approach Bedlam. 
 It is true that a man engaged in correcting his wife 
 presents a most odious appearance. He is looked 
 upon as a cad, and In general he feels himself to 
 be one. Therefore men have withdrawn, more and 
 more, from corrective functions. But just as almost 
 all men are only half-tamed savages, so almost all 
 women are potentially hysterics; and just as it Is 
 
 299 
 
300 FEMINISM 
 
 true that the disciplined savage makes the strongest 
 man, so the controlled hysteric gives the strongest, 
 richest woman nature. 
 
 The effect of each sex when they are normally re- 
 lated Is to strengthen the sex characteristics in each 
 and then mutually to help each other to control them. 
 
 Certainly in America nothing could be worse for 
 woman than the course pursued by many men, who 
 neglect their womenkind in order to be free to fol- 
 low their own pursuit of wealth, and when it is se- 
 cured use the wealth in indulging and enervating 
 their womenkind. The nerve-chaos which results in 
 their women they meet with more indulgence, more 
 freedom — withholding the steadying hand which 
 alone can save them from themselves. 
 
 I remember questioning my father, a physician, 
 on one occasion when he had been called to treat 
 a woman in hysterics. What had he done for her? 
 
 With the grave, stern, half-sad expression which 
 he sometimes wore, he answered, " I made her 
 stop." 
 
 I used sometimes to compare my lot exultingly 
 with that of other little girls and their extrava- 
 gances. " WeVe got a man in our family who can 
 make us stop.'* Although we did not need the 
 strong hand, it was always there and we knew it 
 could be counted upon should need arise. What 
 soul-turmoil Is more distressing than that of the 
 woman who cannot make herself stop, and cannot 
 make her father or husband make her stop. 
 
THE MORAL USES OF HUSBANDS 301 
 
 Of our men it can too often be said that ma- 
 terially they have done too much for their women, 
 but splrtually too little. Too often a man's con- 
 jugal Ideal Is to work himself to death for a woman, 
 and at the same time neglect her. She tires then of 
 her half-celibate life. 
 
 Dentists tell us that teeth lacking some chemical 
 element will crumble. Women who turn against 
 the woman-life are women who are crumbling. 
 Some special element has been left out of their com- 
 position, an Ingredient which only man's will can 
 supply and which his neglect robs her of. In giv- 
 ing a woman freedom man forgets that freedom has 
 not the same meaning for her as for him, nor has she 
 the same use for It. What he meant to be freedom 
 is often neglect on his part. 
 
 The moral uses of a husband and man's chief serv- 
 ice to woman. Is that of a railway track in relation 
 to a train of cars, namely, to make smooth Its way, 
 lift it over valleys, carry it through mountains, 
 spare it all unnecessary exertion, and yet not fail 
 to determine its direction. Man's moral duty to 
 woman Is to prevent her destroying herself by jump- 
 ing her track. 
 
 Man should understand better than she does (his 
 being the longer and keener vision as hers is the 
 nearer and tenderer) what her real destination is, 
 and lay her tracks toward it. 
 
 If this Is tyranny, then the steel bars which guide 
 precious loads in safety across a continent — are 
 
302 FEMINISM 
 
 tyrants. The despot who guides us to our true goal 
 and makes smooth our way thither is the sort of 
 despot we all need. Tyranny of that sort is indis- 
 tinguishable from service^ it is the highest service. 
 " Our chief need," said Emerson, " is some one who 
 can make us do what we can " — and he might have 
 added, who will not let us try to do what we can- 
 not. 
 
 All about us are women who have jumped the 
 track, who have lost sight of their destination and 
 are reaching out for other occupations than those in 
 which they truly move forward. 
 
 Feminism directs its bitterest attacks upon women 
 who are economically dependent upon their husbands, 
 even though the relation be a happy one and mu- 
 tually satisfactory to the parties concerned. 
 
 Among the amenities commonly practised by femi- 
 nists in this connection may be mentioned a habit 
 of alluding to married women who are supported 
 by their husbands as *' parasites." This figure is 
 questionable. The example of a parasite which at 
 once occurs to us is the flea, a creature which leads 
 a luxuriant existence and derives a comfortable liv- 
 ing from sucking the blood of the reluctant and in- 
 furiated dog. 
 
 There are several points of dissimilarity between 
 this predatory insect and a wife. The first super- 
 ficial difference which we may note is the fact that 
 the man upon whose life blood his wife, if she is 
 " a parasite," is supposed to subsist, very earnestly, 
 
THE MORAL USES OF HUSBANDS 303 
 
 In his courtship days, besought her to become his 
 parasite, and in some cases moved heaven and earth 
 to persuade her to accept the position. Dogs don't 
 do that with fleas. 
 
 Again there are ways which women have of mak- 
 ing their hosts comfortable, If it be no more than 
 warming their slippers or tying their cravat or meet- 
 ing them at the door with a smile. What flea has 
 ever been known to do this ? 
 
 Moreover, man shows an unwillingness to part 
 with his wife, will fight the interloper who seeks to 
 deprive him of her. But what dog Is there who 
 will not willingly part with his flea ? 
 
 A man takes pride in his wife, likes to walk out 
 with her and introduce her to his friends. But no 
 dog takes any pride In his flea, prefers not to walk 
 out with her or to introduce her to anybody, unless 
 It should be some one who would agree to take her 
 off his — back. 
 
 Again, woman soothes, sympathises with and en- 
 courages her man, while the flea exerts quite the con- 
 trary effect upon the dog. It Is true that both 
 women and fleas have the property of stimulating 
 to action their respective supporters, but while the 
 man is generally spurred to valuable productive la- 
 bour by his wife, the dog's activities and exertions 
 In relation to the flea are wholly unproductive. 
 
 Finally, no dog puts on mourning crepe or dies of 
 a broken heart when his flea is called to a better 
 world, as sometimes happens to a man when his 
 
304 FEMINISM 
 
 wife is taken. All of which facts seem to indicate 
 that in return for her support, woman, unlike the 
 flea, gives something to man (aside from mother- 
 ing his children) which he, unlike the animal, is will- 
 ing to accept as an equivalent return for the nourish- 
 ment he gives to her. 
 
 Considering all these circumstances, there would 
 appear to be a certain inappropriateness in the term 
 " parasite " as applied to a homekeeping woman. 
 We feel sure that our feminist friends will not fail 
 to perceive this when once their attention has been 
 called to it. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SOME IMPRESSIONS FROM ELLEN KEY 
 
 Ellen Key^s eclecticism, though praiseworthy, is 
 bewildering. Evolution, it seems, has required 
 woman to leave home and make a man of herself; 
 but evolution requires no less that she shall eventually 
 go back home again where she belongs. She must 
 vote, of course, in order to prove that she is man's 
 equal; but the vote is not of much consequence and 
 there is nothing special for her to do with it. 
 Woman should be faithful and constant; yet she 
 should be allowed to take mates on approval and 
 change at pleasure. 
 
 Despite her contrarieties the Swedish sybil is a 
 wise, old, modern woman who has received many 
 women's confidences. Women are her pets; but her 
 love tends to dotage and, like a fond grandmother, 
 she wishes, regardless of consequences, to gratify 
 her darling's every wish. 
 
 It is undeniable that many of her pets have been 
 having a pretty hard time in the past, especially 
 in those countries which Ellen Key knows best. 
 Tyrannical parents, a narrow, sour, home life, in- 
 voluntary celibacy, an emptiness of existence, embit- 
 tered by a sense of neglect — these formed a load 
 of sorrow heaped upon many women in Europe dur- 
 
 305 
 
3o6 FEMINISM 
 
 ing the last century. In part they are the entail 
 upon women of military nations who have the habit 
 of draining off their best male blood, periodically, in 
 cruel wars; in part they were due to the wide pre- 
 occupation of men in the game of wealth-getting, 
 never so absorbing before. In all the turmoil 
 woman seemed somehow to get left and few for- 
 lorner beings have existed than the old maid of fifty 
 years ago. Miss Key's tears over this unhappy 
 creature are well bestowed. Clearly something 
 needed to be done for her. Either work or the in- 
 sane asylum. Work came. She took it awk- 
 wardly but with pathetic gratitude. Ellen Key is 
 too wise to see the change wholly as a " liberation," 
 but she does regard it as a useful substitute for the 
 real thing; better than nothing; better than mad- 
 ness! 
 
 For the rest, Ellen Key has fallen under the mod- 
 ern curse and read too many books. Worse yet — 
 she has believed them! Her eclectic mind leads 
 her to see " good " in everything, with the result 
 that a vast number of goods have been frightfully 
 jumbled together in one well-meaning mind. We 
 wish common factors could be cancelled, divided by 
 the greatest common divisor or subjected to some 
 other operation of mathematical house cleaning, and 
 we be presented with a simplified net result. 
 
 From the present disarray of her ideas it hap- 
 pens, however, that persons holding the most con- 
 tradictory views on the woman question all look con- 
 
IMPRESSIONS FROM ELLEN KEY 307 
 
 fidently to Ellen Key's books for support; and Ellen 
 never fails them. To feminists she is a tower of 
 strength ; to anti-feminists a seer and a prophetess. 
 
 By way of illustration let us take a few passages 
 from " Love and Marriage." 
 
 " Woman has gained her highest qualities in the 
 home" — (applause from anti-suffragists), 
 
 — " but she must now exercise this character on 
 public matters" — (applause from suffragists). 
 
 ''She must enter man's sphere" — (cries of joy 
 from feminists), 
 
 — " but without becoming less womanly. The 
 differences in the sexes are of priceless value " — 
 (similar cries from antis). 
 
 " However, both sexes should follow the same oc- 
 cupations in order that their differences shall be mini- 
 mised — (demonstration by feminists). 
 
 *' Unless women maintain their different charac- 
 teristics when they enter politics" — (voice from 
 antis — "which they won't, their votes will only 
 double the poll without altering results." Vocifer- 
 ous assent from antis). 
 
 " Not until governments embody motherliness as 
 well as fatherliness will they provide for the needs 
 of all their children " — (wild enthusiasm of suffra- 
 gists; cries of "tommy rot" from antis). 
 
 " State care of children would wither parental af- 
 fection " — (assent from conservatives). 
 
 " The line of life is freedom for love's selection, 
 under conditions favourable to the race ; limitation of 
 
3o8 FEMINISM 
 
 procreation, but not of love, under conditions un- 
 favourable to the race" — (consternation of con- 
 servatives; cheers from radicals and free lovers). 
 
 '^ Humanity is approaching the parting of the 
 ways. Either woman must devote herself to moth- 
 erhood and the home while man either personally by 
 outside labour or through state pensions provides for 
 her maintenance — or — " (breathless suspense) 
 " or women must be trained to enter into a relentless 
 competition against men " (cries of " hear, hear " 
 from suffragists). '* In which case they will lose 
 more and more the capacity as well as the desire for 
 motherhood and the State will have to undertake 
 the breeding as well as the rearing of children " 
 — (horrified suspense of both parties). 
 
 " If we are to retain the old order of things and 
 the home is not to become a mere place for eating 
 and sleeping, then woman must be won back to the 
 home" — (applause from the antis). 
 
 " Woman's desire for freedom as a human being 
 provides for her a tragic conflict. Her soul is 
 bound to the tops of two trees. Her struggles will 
 one day surpass in fanaticism any war of religion or 
 of race. She cannot do two things at once. What 
 is personal In her home life cannot be left to an- 
 other. But care of her family may interfere with 
 her book, her picture, her lecture " — (voice of fem- 
 inist: ''Freedom above all!"). 
 
 " When talented women decide for their career 
 it is doubtful whether the race would not have gained 
 
IMPRESSIONS FROM ELLEN KEY 309 
 
 more had they been mothers " — (loud applause from 
 anti-femlnists. A voice from the gallery, " Oh, 
 hang the race! Votes for women! ''). 
 
 " The women of the world produce annually per- 
 haps a hundred thousand novels and works of art 
 which might better have been boys and girls '^ — 
 ( feminist voice : " Bosh ! " ) . 
 
 " A return to the old ideal of womanliness is un- 
 thinkable " — (applause from feminists). 
 
 " Woman must be inspired in a new way, but in- 
 spired for her old task** — ("Hear, hear" from 
 antis). 
 
 " Woman needed to prove her title to the same 
 rights as man. In a century these rights have been 
 practically ceded" — (cheers from feminists). 
 
 — " but taken by themselves these privileges 
 merely reduce woman to the level of a competitive 
 struggle with maij" — (loud applause from anti- 
 feminists). 
 
 " Feminists have pressed forward woman's right 
 to work; but they have overlooked the effects of her 
 work " — (renewed applause from antis). 
 
 " Woman's competing with man in industry has 
 occasioned the growth of ill-feeling between the 
 sexes. Women feel themselves cheapened and un- 
 derestimated. Men resent being thrust aside " — 
 (chuckles from feminists). 
 
 " Man no longer finds in woman rest after his 
 worries. She meets him with her worries. She 
 has to overwork. She loses her elasticity. Love 
 
310 FEMINISM 
 
 requires peace. It cannot subsist upon the remnant 
 of our time. — The delight in labour is being lost. 
 The numbers increase to whom work means ill- 
 health, anxiety, lethargy. It destroys the treasures 
 of life. It makes women, like men, unscrupulous, 
 restless, empty, hard." . . . '' Even women are com- 
 ing to see that neither the right to work, nor educa- 
 tion, nor citizenship, can compensate for trampled 
 possibihties of happiness" — ("True!" from anti- 
 feminists). 
 
 '* Women are right who wish economic inde- 
 pendence, who will not confine their gifts to the 
 home, who wish to live their own lives " — (loud ap- 
 plause from feminists). 
 
 — " but what if it means exemption from moth- 
 erhood? "—(" Ha! ha!" from antis). 
 
 " They declare that making money, studying, 
 writing, taking part in politics, is a higher existence 
 than the mere passive function of bearing chil- 
 dren " — (feminist voice "Hear, hear"). 
 
 " But motherhood is not only passive. It con- 
 tains, as nothing else does, the possibility of put- 
 ting the whole personality into activity." " The 
 women who wish to lead their own lives are not en- 
 titled to equal respect with those who find their high- 
 est life through their children" — (applause from 
 antis) . 
 
 " In politics women would at first be reactionary; 
 but even then their direct influence would be less 
 
IMPRESSIONS FROM ELLEN KEY 311 
 
 dangerous than their Indirect, irresponsible influence 
 is now" — (loud applause from suffragists). 
 
 " Education weakens woman by detracting from 
 her qualities without giving her those of man " — 
 (assent from antis). 
 
 " But we hope that she will attain power before 
 she has lost her special characteristics, and so will 
 bring about new conditions " — (applause from 
 suffragists). 
 
 " If that hope fails then woman's entrance into 
 public life will not change it for a thousand years " 
 — (" No, indeed! " from antis). 
 
 " Opponents to woman suffrage declare that 
 woman should put her whole strength into the rear- 
 ing of men. If she produces great men they will 
 reform society and realise her ideals, whereas if she 
 endeavours to do so herself she will only lose her 
 ideals in party strife " — (murmurs of joy from 
 antis). 
 
 — " but this does not correspond to reality " — 
 (voice from suffragists: ** Of course not!" 
 Voice from antis : " Why not ? " ) . 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 VOTES FOR WOMEN 
 
 Of all the forms of Feminism, the movement known 
 as "votes for women'* is the most innocuous; in- 
 deed its relative unimportance in the scheme of the 
 universe has never been adequately described. That 
 women take it so seriously might be regarded as one 
 of the drollest manifestations of lack of humour were 
 it not obvious that their importunities rest upon a 
 childish delusion, quite solemnly held, regarding the 
 value of the ballot. Their absurd indignation at 
 being excluded from it is only comprehensible when 
 we realise the degree of exaggerated envy and ven- 
 eration which they attach to the privilege from which 
 they are being excluded. 
 
 " But the question of suffrage is so simple," pro- 
 tested a suffragist to me. " It is only justice; simple 
 justice. It is unfair to exclude women from the 
 privilege of the ballot." 
 
 Why is it unfair? Is it unfair to deprive them 
 of the privilege of wearing trousers, or serving on 
 juries, or bearing arms, or dying in the trenches? 
 
 Is it unfair to deprive a person of something they 
 don't want? Is it unfair or unjust to exclude a 
 
 312 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 313 
 
 woman from a privilege which is a privilege only in 
 some one else's judgment, not in hers? 
 
 In most families the custom obtains that while 
 the woman orders most things, the man of the house 
 orders the coal. Coal seems to belong to the out- 
 side world, along with lumber and bricks and earth 
 and the like. Moreover, the man often tends the 
 furnace; stoking Is his job. Somebody has to order 
 the coal; coal is in his province; he is the suitable 
 person; therefore he does it. The custom has 
 arisen spontaneously, no laws to that effect having 
 been enacted, and seems, as far as one can observe, 
 to work satisfactorily to all concerned. One never 
 hears that it is a matter of ** simple justice " that the 
 woman should order the coal, or at least half of 
 the coal! One does not hear her imploring to be 
 allowed to share this privilege with her man. If 
 he dies then she must take his place and order the 
 coal; but she does not seem to feel that her privileges 
 have been thereby extended, or her status in society 
 raised — neither she nor does any one else. Indeed, 
 she is rather commiserated than congratulated, as 
 one having to assume an extra burden. 
 
 Voting at political elections is a part of the or- 
 dinary, humdrum routine of life. It is to carrying 
 on government, what ordering coal is to a household. 
 Somebody has got to vote because, unfortunately, 
 we have to have a government, just as, in our cli- 
 mate, we have to burn fires, and therefore have 
 to order fuel. But there is nothing joyous, nothing 
 
314 FEMINISM 
 
 exhilarating, nothing elevating about either act, noth- 
 ing that confers an atom of weight or a spark of 
 glory upon those who perform it. 
 
 Men themselves, now that the first access of 
 democratic fever is somewhat spent, are coming to 
 attach less and less value to the ballot. In some 
 countries compulsory voting laws have become 
 necessary, and they are being proposed as a last re- 
 sort in getting out the vote — even in our own great 
 democracy. Moreover, interest in politics, as evi- 
 denced by voting, is declining fastest among the men 
 of those States in which women vote. As the vote 
 cheapens, men's eyes are being opened to its real 
 character as merely a rather burdensome duty. 
 Whereupon, in true man fashion, just as they have 
 turned over the churches and largely the schools to 
 the care of women — they are falling into the habit 
 already of leaving politics to them. In California, 
 for every woman who went to the polls upon the first 
 woman suffrage election, some man stayed at home. 
 They have already inaugurated the policy of " leav- 
 ing it to the women." They seem to have said to 
 themselves what the Irish trooper said to his horse, 
 when the animal got its hoof into the stirrup: 
 " Now, then, if ye're goin' to get on, Oi'm goin' to 
 get off." 
 
 The glamour with which women continue to in- 
 vest the ballot, long after men are ceasing to do 
 so, is due to the echoes of a political superstition 
 which was at its height among men some fifty years 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 315 
 
 ago. The tide reached flood at the close of our 
 Civil War, when the vote was extended to the negro. 
 Since then it has been steadily receding and women 
 suffragists are about a half-century, intellectually, 
 behind the procession. The psychology of the 
 movement is, as might be expected, a thing of shreds 
 and patches, a droll medley of childish delusions, 
 irrelevancies, sophistries and general poppycock — 
 a thing to be good-naturedly favoured or good- 
 naturedly opposed, according to one's bias, but never 
 to be taken too seriously. 
 
 A lady suffragist once epitomised to me its logical 
 aspects in the following syllogism : — 
 
 Major premise; Men have made a mess of poli- 
 tics. 
 
 Minor premise : Women are men's equals. 
 
 Conclusion : Therefore they should be permitted 
 to make a mess of politics. 
 
 The bewildering variety of opinion among women, 
 pro and con, might be summarised as follows : 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 The vote is a boon and a privilege. Therefore I 
 want it. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 The vote is a burden and a nuisance. Therefore 
 I do not want it. 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 Whether you want it or not, you should be made 
 to take it. 
 
3i6 FEMINISM 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 Whether we want it or not Is our own affair. 
 You have no right to force it upon us. 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 It IS your duty; duty needs to be enforced; you 
 should not be permitted to evade it. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 We reserve the right to determine what is our 
 duty ourselves. Besides, you have declared that 
 the vote is a privilege. If that is correct why do 
 you talk of forcing it upon us? People don't need 
 to have privileges thrust upon them. 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 But you don't seem to understand that It is a privi- 
 lege. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 We have a right to our own opinion on that sub- 
 ject. If we are intelligent enough to vote, as you 
 maintain, we are intelHgent enough to refuse it if we 
 see fit. 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 Men think voting is a privilege; that is why they 
 keep it to themselves and shut us out. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 On the contrary they know it is a burden and 
 therefore they are willing to relieve us of it. 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 317 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 We denounce men. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 We praise and thank men. 
 
 SOME OTHER SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 We do not denounce men; we are sorry for them; 
 their political burdens are greater than they can bear. 
 We wish to help them. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 We think men are quite capable of standing under 
 their duty without our assistance. 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 An anti-suffragist man is a tyrant. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 We don't like to state In public what we think of 
 the male suffragist! 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 Men can never save society without our help; 
 their politics are corrupt and incompetent. 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 The remedy for political ills is better men. Men 
 are what women In the home have made them. 
 There is where reform should begin. 
 
 SUFFRAGISTS 
 
 Politics Is a human concern. 
 
3i8 FEMINISM 
 
 ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS 
 Politics is a man's game. 
 
 There is scarcely less variety of opinion among 
 men who are for, or against, and the forming of 
 opinions upon personal experience is a weakness not 
 confined to the fair sex. There is the man, for ex- 
 ample, who says : " My mother and my wife are 
 the equals of any man. When I think that an 
 Italian labourer can vote while they may not, my 
 blood boils." He omits to mention that the Italian 
 labourer's wife's and mother's votes would probably 
 offset any advantage which would accrue intellec- 
 tually to the nation from the votes of his cultivated 
 woman folk. At the other extreme is the man con- 
 vinced that women are inferior and unfit mentally 
 to exercise the franchise. This species is rare. 
 There is the helpless man who cries to woman to 
 come help him out of his political difficulties. One 
 of these declared at a suffrage meeting: "I want 
 my wife at my side when I walk to the polling booth 
 to vote." A spirited young woman present ex- 
 claimed afterward to her friends: "A man like 
 that would want his wife to walk at his side when 
 he goes to the dentist to have a tooth filled! If / 
 were married to a man who wanted me to walk by 
 his side when he went to the polling booth, I should 
 say to him, kindly but firmly : * Now, see here, Per- 
 cival, if you are ill I will sit by your side and do 
 all I can for you. But so long as you are able- 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 319 
 
 bodied and quite capable of walking to the polling 
 booth by yourself, If it is only two blocks away and 
 perfectly safe In broad daylight, If you behave like 
 a lady — you'll have to put your ticket in the chop- 
 box without wifey's help, Perclval.' " 
 
 Opposite to Perclval Is the man who confides to his 
 men friends his opinion: "Politics is a dirty job, 
 do the best we can. Don't let's drag women into 
 it." Then there are the Indulgent men of both 
 types. *' If women want the vote, I'd give it to 
 them. I'd give the dear things anything they ask 
 for." And the other: "Women don't want the 
 vote. I won't see It forced upon them against their 
 will. They have burdens enough to bear now." 
 Again: "Women are our equals and should enjoy 
 equal privileges." And Its opposite: "Women 
 are our superiors and should not be worried with 
 vulgar matters like politics." 
 
 A chorus of men and women may be heard faintly 
 reiterating: "The vote is a privilege and should 
 be extended to all." " The vote is a burden 
 and should be restricted to those best able to bear 
 
 it." 
 
 Chorus (dying away in the distance) 
 
 ... a privilege ! 
 ... a nuisance I 
 
 ... It Is ! 
 , . . it Isn't! 
 
320 FEMINISM 
 
 ... I want it I 
 ... I don't want it ! 
 
 Some half a century behind the times the woman 
 suffrage movement to-day is full of certain quaint 
 anachronisms. With the single exception of the 
 supposed use that working women could make of the 
 vote to raise their wages (quite illusory, since men 
 have not voted themselves into higher wages), the 
 movement is naively irrelevant to the real needs of 
 the day. At a time, for example, when the elec- 
 torate is becoming already so enormous that the 
 mechanical counting of votes is difficult and the ex- 
 pense of elections quite beyond their value to the 
 country, it proposes to double the number of votes. 
 Common sense calls for simplification of govern- 
 mental machinery; but women suffragists call for 
 more confusion and complexity. At a time when all 
 indications point to the decay of the family they 
 would transfer still more human energy from it to 
 the State. At a time when the home needs renovat- 
 ing from garret to cellar, they call upon women to 
 undertake " municipal housekeeping." At a time 
 when woman's personal influence, as guardian and 
 teacher and nurse to her children, as guide, phi- 
 /osopher and friend to her husband, as benefactor 
 to her friends, to strangers and to the poor at her 
 gates, is urgently called for, woman suffrage de- 
 mands that she be given the vote in order to have 
 " something to do." At a time when §ociety is al- 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 321 
 
 ready too masculine in its ideals and pursuits it would 
 have woman add her presence to masculine ideals 
 and pursuits and thus upset still more the normal 
 balance. When she needs above all things to assert 
 HERSELF and to count for all she is worth, it would 
 cheapen her by throwing her into the welter of pub- 
 lic affairs. At a time when, by long efforts, a gen- 
 erous legal provision has been made for her, favour- 
 ing her above man before the law — it demands 
 for her a political equality which is likely to annul 
 these special privileges and, indeed, in suffrage 
 States, has already done so. At a time when men 
 are allowing their sense of political responsibility to 
 slacken and take every excuse to avoid political and 
 jury obligations, it is paving the way to further lax- 
 ness by making it possible for them to " leave it to 
 the women." At a time when compulsory voting 
 laws are being called for to force men to vote at all, 
 women are being told that the vote is a precious 
 possession, which they should make every sacrifice 
 to obtain. At a time when the immigration prob- 
 lem and the assimilation of foreign influences are be- 
 coming Increasingly difficult, it would add the immi- 
 grant woman to the immigrant man, as a voter, and 
 double the size of the Ignorant and venal vote. At 
 a time when the family has received a damaging 
 blow by the wholesale exodus of women into indus- 
 try, it proposes to add one more attraction and oc- 
 cupation to engage them still further in outside mat- 
 ters. At a time when the ranks of fallen girls is 
 
322 FEMINISM 
 
 augmented by the many who have lost the protection 
 of home, it proposes to throw them still more into 
 association with men in politics and expose them to 
 further temptation. At a time when social justice 
 demands, through collectivism, a wider distribution 
 of wealth, it proposes to inject into public affairs the 
 individualistic anti-collectivist influence of women 
 (wholly valuable in the family). At a time when 
 it is diflSicult for any man to clear himself of the 
 suspicion of self-seeking in politics, and when there- 
 fore it is pecuHarly desirable that there shall be a 
 body of citizens who shall be, like Caesar's wife, 
 " above suspicion," and thus able to push reforms in 
 a whole-hearted and disinterested manner, it pro- 
 poses to rob society of this invaluable asset and re- 
 duce both sexes to the same level of always suspected 
 self-interest. 
 
 At a time when half the world is at war and the 
 truth is made plain that the government of all na- 
 tions rests upon force, and that no law Is worth a 
 scrap of paper more than the force of the gun behind 
 it, woman suffragists propose that women shall en- 
 cumber government with special laws, which they 
 themselves could not enforce, and which men must, 
 therefore, be prepared to die for if necessary. The 
 male voter Is committed to the task of backing up 
 his vote with his fist or his gun In case It can be en- 
 forced In no other way. A woman's vote has no 
 guaranty behind It and therefore she can never be 
 a citizen in the same sense that a man is a citizen. 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 323 
 
 (At most she can only become a sort of left-handed 
 or morganatic citizen — never quite legitimately 
 wedded to the State.) She can vote only by cour- 
 tesy as a sort of honourary citizen, a citizen emer- 
 itus, not an active, sustaining member of the body 
 politic. As boys playing '* soldier," with sticks for 
 guns, the woman voter carries a gun that won't go 
 off. She casts her ballot when and where men suf- 
 fer her to do so. She can neither secure the ballot 
 nor hold it without his consent. She may rail at 
 this as much as she likes; but such is the case, and 
 nobody is to blame for it except Nature, which made 
 her the weaker. 
 
 It is true that not every man could enforce his 
 vote; the cripple could not. But, after all, disabled 
 men are a handful; while disabled women (phys- 
 ically) are the whole sex. Moreover, the man's 
 disability may be temporary and he may one day re- 
 cover his strength. But womanhood is an infirmity 
 from which women rarely, if ever, wholly recover. 
 
 Many women think that they want to vote be- 
 cause they do not quite know what voting is about. 
 They don't realise that its object is to make laws. 
 And laws, as every woman knows, are a nuisance. 
 Who wants to be always making laws, always try- 
 ing to rule and repress and regulate other people's 
 affairs? What pleasure can there be in perpetually 
 worrying your fellow-beings with more laws; have 
 they not troubles enough already! Women have 
 no affinity with laws ; they lack the aptitude either to 
 
324 FEMINISM 
 
 make laws or to obey them. In a world of women 
 there would be few laws made, and fewer still en- 
 forced. It is woman's way to get along somehow, 
 from hour to hour, compromising with each diffi- 
 culty as it arises. And there is much to be said for 
 this method. 
 
 The good woman who has been wheedled into 
 joining the suffrage sisterhood is fascinated by the 
 notion that with a vote she could reform society. 
 She would clean the streets with her vote — as 
 though it were a broom ! (The streets of Paris and 
 of Berlin are clean and not a woman's vote has made 
 them so.) She would abolish saloons. (They 
 have been abolished in numerous States where she 
 does not vote.) She would banish vice. (Denver 
 continues a hotbed of vice, uneffected by twenty years 
 of women's voting.) She would prohibit child-la- 
 bour. (Which no woman's State has done.) She 
 would protect women in factories. (Which is best 
 done in the older States, where she does not vote.) 
 
 Nevertheless she persists in thinking that with a 
 vote she could go forth and slay every dragon, like 
 Don Quixote with his lance. I have talked with 
 women who seemed to be under the impression that a 
 polling booth Is a place with a row of little boxes, 
 like nests in a hen house, and you drop a ballot In 
 this box if you want clean streets, and In that If you 
 want pure milk and fresh vegetables, and in this box 
 if you want the price of butter to go down, and in 
 that if you don't want your husband to stay out. 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 325 
 
 so late nights, and in this if you want more sub- 
 way trains — anything you want I Voting is just 
 like writing a letter to Santa Claus. 
 
 One woman, whom I interrogated before an elec- 
 tion a few years ago, as to her precise objects in 
 wishing to vote, said that with a vote she meant 
 to bring in economy, justice and efficiency in govern- 
 ment. She intended, she said, to vote for the Good, 
 the Beautiful, and the True. " Now, see here,'' I 
 protested, " you can^t vote for the Good, the Beau- 
 tiful and the True. They're not printed on the bal- 
 lot papers. What you have to vote for is just 
 William H. Taft, or William R. Hearst, or William 
 J. Bryan or some other William — it's Williams 
 you have to vote for — not the Good, the Beautiful 
 and the True ! " 
 
 Suffragists assure us that their very presence in 
 man's savage and barbarous world would soften and 
 civilise it. Yet women have entered business by the 
 thousands; have they altered business by their in- 
 fluence? They have entered journalism in shoals; 
 have they effected any change in newspaper meth- 
 ods? Is the press any the less vulgar, less sensa- 
 tional, less prying, less unscrupulous, for her pres- 
 ence In the editorial office ? The press Is susceptible 
 to pressure, but it must come from the box office, 
 from the advertiser, from the reader. Woman in 
 the home, as reader, as buyer, as wife of an adver- 
 tiser can affect journalism; as employe of the press 
 she ha§ no influence. Neither business, nor journal- 
 
326 FEMINISM 
 
 ism, nor politics becomes more moral, more refined, 
 more honest, more humane because of her participa- 
 tion in them. She is the subordinate when she en- 
 ters man's world, and takes on more colour than she 
 imparts. Her presence in man's world does not 
 turn it womanward. She is out of her element 
 there. She has no purchase on the situation. She 
 cannot lift man's world a hair's-breadth above His 
 level because it is his world. He made it; he con- 
 trols it; he understands it — at least better than she 
 does. She can influence his world best by staying 
 out of it and creating a world of her own, very dif- 
 ferent from his, the influence of which he will never- 
 theless not escape. 
 
 Feminists seem to be under a curious snob-obses- 
 sion which leads them to suppose that man moves 
 on a higher social plane, and that they must strain 
 every nerve to climb into his set. Why not let him 
 do the straining to climb into our set? 
 
 They would have women copy man, imitate him, 
 duplicate him. Always woman is to follow him, 
 follow him, follow him. Follow him into workshop, 
 oflUce and factory; follow him down into mines and 
 up in balloons; follow him to Arctic snows and 
 tropic jungles, to the bed of the ocean and to the 
 summits of the tall mountains. We are urged to 
 follow him into halls of learning and struggle with 
 him brain to brain; to follow him to his sports and 
 recreations — to his base ball games which we can- 
 jiot understand, to his prize fights which we detest 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 327 
 
 Follow him to the market place, the race track, the 
 cockpit. Follow him to the polling booth, to the 
 saloon; follow him into battle and into the insane 
 wars which he is not well-bred enough to avoid — 
 only follow him I 
 
 The perfect presentment of this aberration may 
 be seen any fine day on our country roads in that 
 strange apparition — the tandem motorcycle. On 
 the front seat sits the man, with fixed look and hag- 
 gard face, begrimed and begoggled, while behind 
 him clings his wretched mate, similarly begrimed 
 and begoggled and deliriously uncomely. Upon 
 her stony and desperate visage is plainly written the 
 legend: "Where he goes — I go. He shall not 
 escape me." 
 
 Far be it from the present writer to doubt that 
 the man enjoys the adventure with its elements of 
 power and danger congenial to the masculine mind. 
 But I cannot believe that the woman lives who can 
 honestly enjoy the position of his companion, help- 
 less, paralysed, blinded, hanging on like a monkey 
 to a circus horse, afraid to stay on and afraid to let 
 go ! The extraordinary thing about it is that some- 
 body has made her believe that this is freedom! 
 
 The woman who insists upon being herself does 
 not experience the slightest desire to do things 
 merely because men do them; neither to smoke, nor 
 chew, nor vote, nor fight. Often she has occasion 
 to ask herself: " What is man, that we are mind- 
 ful of him?'' 
 
328 FEMINISM 
 
 As intelligent reformers have already discovered, 
 the directest method of securing a reform, in our 
 country, is not by voting at all (that is the slowest, 
 most cumbersome and most uncertain of methods), 
 but by direct appeal to the legislative committees of 
 men, whom perhaps your opponents have elected. 
 The methods of these legislative committees are 
 an institution peculiar to America; and they render 
 the exercise of the ballot in this country, by women 
 reformers, entirely superfluous. Not a few women 
 have secured, without a vote, simply by appealing to 
 these legislative committees persistently, more re- 
 forms than has many a man with a vote. The ex- 
 ceptional woman, with a taste for politics (never 
 forget that she is a rare bird) is provided, by our 
 system, the means for the full exercise of her po- 
 litical talents. Women who are burning to be use- 
 ful may be reminded that there are. In New York 
 City alone, over eight thousand civic and philan- 
 thropic organisations, all shouting for helpers; and 
 they never ask whether one has a vote or not. Yet 
 one meets women who seem to be positively yearn- 
 ing to take part in " municipal housekeeping " — 
 whether they have made much of a success of their 
 home housekeeping or not. The latter is so sordid ! 
 And, of course, there is nothing sordid in hiring 
 street cleaners and garbage collectors or in superin- 
 tending city dumps! Any work is inspiring if only 
 it is not done at home ! They would like to give the 
 " feminine touch " to city management, be a sister 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 329 
 
 to the bureau of taxes, an aunt to the dock or the 
 fire departments, a mother-in-law to the board of 
 aldermen. 
 
 A taste for politics is in general a wholly arti- 
 ficial one in women. A few years ago I received 
 visits, at short intervals apart, from three women, 
 all friends of my girlhood, all of whom had married 
 and settled In suffrage States. I eagerly questioned 
 them regarding the part which voting played in 
 their lives. The first replied that she had never 
 voted in her life and never intended to do so. The 
 second confessed, somewhat apologetically, to having 
 voted " only once.*' It was to oblige her husband, 
 she explained, who wanted a friend of his elected to 
 an office and therefore asked her to help. " I 
 didn't know the man," she said, " and knew nothing 
 about the case, but of course I couldn't refuse Fred. 
 So I motored about town all day, picking up men, 
 arguing with them, begging them, driving them to 
 the polls and so on. Never again! Once was 
 enough; no more for mine! Politics is a man's 
 game; I take no interest in it whatever." The third 
 of my friends gave a somewhat different answer. 
 She was a Quakeress, and takes life seriously. 
 " Yes, I always vote at every election," she replied. 
 " I consider it my duty to do so. But I never go 
 to the polls without an inward feeling of indignation 
 and resentment. I realise that I have not enough 
 knowledge of the matter to vote intelligently. I say 
 to myself, ' This is a man's job; men ought to attend 
 
330 FEMINISM 
 
 to it themselves, and not impose it upon us.' " Here 
 was a piece of first-hand evidence. 
 
 The Quakeress had put her finger upon the fatal 
 weakness in the voting of women. Men, rather 
 than measures, are the subject-matter of elections. 
 If principles and policies were to be voted upon 
 women might read up on civics and take courses in 
 political economy. But when it is merely a ques- 
 tion of deciding whether Fritz Schmidt or Tim. 
 O'Brien will make a better coroner and the lady 
 voter does not know these gentlemen, or anything 
 about them, her decision is all in the air. Men can 
 inform themselves about other men by the time- 
 honoured institution of — hobnobbing. But women 
 cannot hobnob with candidates in saloons, or hotel 
 lobbies, or on street corners. They cannot hobnob 
 with men at all. To vote intelligently under our 
 system and in our times, it is necessary to hobnob — 
 and women cannot hobnob. Their men folk would 
 object, and the women folk of the hobnobbees would 
 object, even if women liked hobnobbing — which 
 they don't.^ 
 
 1 How their inability to hobnob disqualifies women from useful- 
 ness as voters was illustrated by an incident which occurred in 
 Chicago, as announced in the press on Feb. 25, 1915. "Nine hun- 
 dred women of a Chicago district voted yesterday for a coloured 
 barber to be alderman of their district without wishing or mean- 
 ing to do so." The coloured barber happened to bear a name 
 which resembled the name of another man whom some of the 
 women had voted for the year before. Not being up in political 
 gossip — through not hobnobbing — they knew nothing of the sub- 
 stitution. 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 331 
 
 Even if custom and their men's approval favoured 
 hobnobbing, women are by temperament disinclined 
 for it. They are as a sex not gregarious in the de- 
 gree that men are gregarious. Women never quite 
 understand the spirit which leads men to congregate 
 in clubs, saloons, smoking-rooms and the like, for 
 / the solid comfort they seem to take in the society 
 of other men. This is noticeable on shipboard, 
 where, within a few hours after sailing, the man will 
 leave his wife in order to scrape acquaintance with 
 half the men in the cabin; while his wife reclines 
 alone in her steamer chair, never dreaming of seek- 
 ing the society of other women, and often makes the 
 passage without exchanging a word with any woman 
 except the stewardess. 
 
 After the schoolgirl period is passed women have 
 no strong craving for the society of their own sex 
 outside their family circle. The woman's club Is 
 quite unlike the man's club; Its members assemble 
 once a fortnight or so to- listen to the reading of a 
 " paper." But the " paper " safely read, and duly 
 applauded, they Immediately go away again, unless 
 forcibly detained by afternoon tea. But men do not 
 have to be drawn to their clubs by " papers," nor 
 held there by — tea! It Is true that women enjoy 
 pageants, assemblages and functions where both 
 sexes are on parade, but they do not seem to be be- 
 set, as men are, by the perpetual longing to hold 
 sweet converse with their own sex. Women tire 
 one another, and, when weary, instead of separating, 
 
332 FEMINISM 
 
 as men do, they are prone to stay on and politely 
 scrap, indulging In their well-known pastime of ex- 
 changing feline amenities. (" How charming you 
 are looking. I hardly knew you!") Society 
 women give way under the strain of associating too 
 much with other women and become nervously im- 
 paired. The average woman, in a sense not true of 
 the average man, needs plenty of solitude, quiet and 
 sleep and is apt to suffer — as children do — men- 
 tally, morally and physically when deprived of it. 
 
 A psychological difference in the sexes may ex- 
 plain, in part, this varying degree of gregarious- 
 ness. When a group of men engage in conversa- 
 tion their minds may be observed to jog along side 
 by side, hour after hour, in the same general direc- 
 tion on the same general topic. But women's 
 minds seem to move rather in curves and circles (the 
 Euclidian definition of a curve, one remembers, is 
 a line which changes its direction at every point), 
 following lines more beautiful, perhaps, but more 
 irregular and more disconcerting. And thus it 
 arises that when one woman's mind comes in contact 
 with other women's minds, all equally erratic in their 
 orbits, there results a certain mutual bewilderment. 
 The stralght-away course of the male mind's gait 
 might seem to be less fatiguing; but it imposes a 
 strain of another sort, which becomes no less irksome 
 before long. 
 
 .Woman's endurance is spiritual rather than men- 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 333 
 
 tal. Her true strength Is being rather than doing 
 — or thinking. 
 
 Feminism is eager to alter this, her fundamental 
 characteristic, and to enlist her activities in spheres 
 in which she is less at home and less efficient. 
 Woman suffrage is especially insistent that she ap- 
 proach world problems from the outside rather than 
 from within. Said a suffrage lecturer, " Every in- 
 fluence for good which a mother may exert over her 
 boy is far outweighed by the evil influences of the 
 street he must pass through." 
 
 •Therefore the lecturer gave us to understand that 
 the mother need not hope to teach little Willie to let 
 drink alone, but, armed with the vote, she is to at- 
 tempt rather to regulate saloons I Little Willie is 
 not to be taught to let cards and dice alone, but his 
 mother Is to vote for raids on gambling houses! 
 Little Willie is not to be taught to walk unscathed 
 through streets lined with prostitutes ; but his mother 
 Is to vote down the social evil, segregating its 
 votaries, fining or Imprisoning them, putting them in 
 stockades — anything to get them out of little Wil- 
 lie's way! 
 
 All of which doctrine blinds Itself to the eternal 
 truth that the place for little Willie's mother to be- 
 gin her reforms, and the place for little Willie's 
 mother to continue her reforms, is in the heart and 
 soul of little Willie himself. And she is not to 
 forget that those saloons and gambling houses and 
 
334 FEMINISM 
 
 dens of infamy are there because other women, like 
 her, have not done their work well. 
 
 The most plausible argument for woman suffrage, 
 to an age which has taken the idea of democracy as 
 its shibboleth, is that democracy is not complete so 
 long as all citizens, female as well as male, do not 
 take part in government. '' Government," so runs 
 the argument, " should rest upon the will of ALL, not 
 upon the will of only a part of its citizens." And 
 this argument continues to be reiterated, despite the 
 fact that government never does rest upon the whole 
 but always upon a portion (the majority) of its citi- 
 zens^ wills. 
 
 " But at least the will of all must be expressed, 
 if we are to have a complete dem.ocracy," it is pro- 
 tested. Yes, democracy does aim to ascertain and 
 conform to the general public desires in the action 
 of its government. But that desire may be ex- 
 pressed in many ways, directly, or indirectly, in per- 
 son or by representatives. A democracy might de- 
 cree to have all Its citizens, men, women and chil- 
 dren, march to the polls once a week to register its 
 will on every trivial matter of public administration. 
 Or it might elect to pick out a dozen men and leave 
 all voting and all administration to them. In either 
 case — we might have democracy. Democracy con- 
 sists in the people arranging matters to suit their own 
 best convenience. We might have a democracy 
 where only men voted, or one In which only women 
 voted, or even one in which only children voted, or 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 335 
 
 one which embraced all three. The only value in 
 democracy is that it is a device for allowing the peo- 
 ple to govern themselves by whatever machinery 
 they choose.^ 
 
 The " will of the people " is not, as a matter of 
 fact, a composite photograph of every opinion held 
 by each and every individual in the community, to 
 attain which it would not do' to leave out a single line 
 or a single opinion. It is merely the general sense 
 of the community, which can be expressed, for all 
 practical purposes, in any way that happens to be 
 convenient. 
 
 Extending the ballot to more persons does not 
 therefore necessarily mean more democracy. It is 
 true that if some classes are admitted, while others 
 are excluded, there might be danger that the families 
 included might tax away the property, and vote away 
 the liberty, of the families excluded, unless they were 
 carefully watched. Therefore it has been found ad- 
 visable to admit all economic classes, by allowing the 
 representation of all families ; and the balance is ob- 
 
 2 Were we to accept suffragist reasoning, there are strong grounds 
 for admitting children to the franchise. Children are "people"; 
 they are "individuals"; they are "human beings"; they are good; 
 they are moral; they would lend innocence and purity to politics. 
 No one understands their needs as well as they themselves. They 
 should have a voice in the making of the laws which they must 
 obey. Many of them are wage-earners; they should be free to 
 determine their own conditions of wages and labour. The vote 
 would be a weapon and a protection. They would enjoy greater 
 respect if they were enfranchised. The broader the base upon which 
 democracy stands the firmer it is — and so forth. 
 
336 FEMINISM 
 
 tained when all families are admitted. Political 
 equilibrium has been established — the object of 
 democracy. All families being represented through 
 their male members, you might go on and admit the 
 women as well as the men. You would have more 
 voters but no more democracy. Admitting children 
 would bring the same result; more voters but no 
 more democracy. Multiplying both sides of an 
 equation does not alter it. 
 
 Woman suffrage propaganda, flourishes because it 
 IS the only remedy now being publicly offered as a 
 cure for women's discontent. Because it does not 
 comprehend the nature of her disease and refuses 
 to admit what really ails her, therefore it Is a quack 
 remedy, and will make her rather worse than better 
 if she adopt it. It only tends to Increase the force 
 of that pressure which Is driving her away from 
 the home and which, when her trouble is correctly 
 diagnosed, is itself the underlying cause of her dis- 
 tress. 
 
 Nevertheless we who are opposed to votes for 
 women, for reasons which seem to us wholly ade- 
 quate, have most of us taken with regret the position 
 of standing in the way of the gratification of their 
 wishes — no matter how childish they seem to us — 
 as expressed by so many women. There is no dis- 
 guising the fact that it is our opposition alone, not 
 that of our good-natured American men folk, which 
 has prevented and will prevent suffrage from being 
 given to women. Most mothers have found it ex- 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 337 
 
 pedient, however, when a child cries long and 
 earnestly for something which, after all, cannot do 
 it a great deal of harm, to grant its request. It 
 seems the only way, for the moment to stop its cry- 
 ing, and the only way for it to learn how mistaken 
 its desires were and how worthless their object. 
 Therefore the writer would feel inclined to yield to 
 the importunities of suffragists, who certainly have 
 wailed piteously and kept up an unconscionable 
 racket, for some sixty years or more — a long cry- 
 ing spell for a child of any age — were it not for 
 the fact that to grant their plea means to work an 
 even greater injustice upon other — and in her judg- 
 ment — wiser, women who do not desire to vote. 
 
 If, however, a means could be found whereby the 
 women who are clamouring for the ballot could be 
 granted the satisfaction of their whim, without a cor- 
 responding burden being laid through moral (and 
 probably, later, legal) compulsion upon their unwill- 
 ing sisters, I should myself be glad to welcome such 
 an arrangement. 
 
 A proposal which I am about to describe seems to 
 me to meet these requirements. I have submitted it 
 casually to three men, active in public life, all law- 
 yers. The first shied hard at it; the other two re- 
 ceived the suggestion cordiajly, declaring it a feasible 
 and practical solution of a much-vexed question. 
 
 The proposal is as follows: Any State which 
 shall hereafter extend the franchise to its women 
 shall accompany the act by an amendment providing 
 
338 FEMINISM 
 
 that any woman who chooses may, legally, and with- 
 out moral delinquency, delegate her vote to some 
 male voter of her free choice — giving him two 
 votes instead of one. For example: A girl upon 
 reaching voting age might go with her father before 
 a judge and swear out an affidavit empowering her 
 father to vote for her. His appointment might be 
 for a certain period of years, or to last indefinitely, 
 as she chose, or the proxy might be revokable by her 
 at any time. A certificate would be issued to her 
 father which he would record and preserve like a 
 deed or a bond or any other legal document. This 
 certificate he would present upon registering as a 
 voter previous to an election, and he would be as- 
 signed the responsibility for casting two ballots in- 
 stead of one. 
 
 Fraud might occur, as it does in every other legal 
 transaction yet devised, but, as in other cases, it 
 could be guarded against. Some women would un- 
 doubtedly sell their proxies; but some women would 
 and undoubtedly do sell their votes. On the other 
 hand, their notorious admiration for fine men might 
 lead them to heap proxies upon men of high char- 
 acter, thus augmenting the power of the latter — 
 which would be all to the good. 
 
 A woman's vote could In no case be delegated to 
 another woman, nor could men be permitted to 
 transfer their vote to a woman under any circum- 
 stances. Both of these acts would tend to foster 
 the danger of " petticoat government," which is pre- 
 
VOTES FOR WOMEN 339 
 
 cisely the order of things which women who object 
 to voting would wish to avoid, and to escape which 
 would be the main inducement which would lead 
 many women to renounce their vote for themselves. 
 They would prefer, as most women prefer and most 
 men prefer, to live under a masculine government, 
 because they have greater confidence in its stability 
 as well as its efficiency. The transference of one 
 man's vote to another would of course also be 
 prohibited. There could be no general exchange 
 of proxies. Nothing but the transfer of women's 
 votes to men would be permitted, and that only for 
 the purpose of relieving women of a burden not of 
 their own choosing, imposed without their consent 
 and, in the case of the majority, against their will. 
 
 Such a compromise should satisfy both parties. 
 It would enable the woman who desires to vote at 
 first hand for her political representative to do so; 
 while it would permit those women who are dif- 
 ferently minded to remain more in the background 
 and to choose for themselves, not a political repre- 
 sentative at first hand, but, a representative at sec- 
 ond hand to choose such representatives. In one 
 sense all women would vote, some by electing repre- 
 sentatives, and others at one more remove by elect- 
 ing electors, one method being only a little more 
 indirect and a little farther removed from the po- 
 litical arena than the other, and therefore by so much 
 the better suited to the tastes and capacities and 
 preferences of a majority of women. They would 
 
340 FEMINISM 
 
 vote privately, instead of publicly, and by this means 
 could choose a representative intelligently from 
 among the men they knew well, not unintelligently 
 from among men of whom they knew nothing. 
 
 Such a measure recommends itself as being a 
 golden mean between depriving all women of the 
 ballot or, on the other hand, of burdening all women 
 with the ballot. Personally the writer stands ready 
 to withdraw opposition to Votes for Women in each 
 case where the imposition of the franchise upon 
 women shall be accompanied by an amendment as 
 above described which would leave women free — 
 free to vote in person and equally free to delegate 
 their vote to a representative voter of their own 
 choosing. Injustice, of which both sides now com- 
 plain, would then be dispelled; while the only object 
 of holding elections at all — namely, to ascertain 
 the drift of public opinion on political questions — 
 would be adequately served. 
 
 This proposed system of Proxy or Optional Votes 
 for Women, beside being politically practicable, has 
 the advantage that it would put an end to the long 
 and bitterly fought factional fight among women. 
 Let us have peace. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 
 
 A Dialogue 
 
 [Read before the League for Political Education in 
 New York in March, igi^l 
 [The chief character in the dialogue is a giant 
 named Commercialism. We behold him look- 
 ing through a magnifying glass into the roof of a 
 cottage in which a woman is engaged in housework 
 and the care of children. After watching her care- 
 fully for some time, the giant retires to his palace, 
 seats himself upon his throne, summons his minion 
 Necessity, whom he thus addresses il 
 
 commercialism 
 
 I have again been watching woman at work in 
 her home. As I told you, it is sheer economic waste 
 for her to be spending her energies upon her family. 
 She should be brought out of the home and put com- 
 mercially at work. Have you obeyed my orders 
 and summoned her ? 
 
 necessity 
 
 Sire, the woman refuses to leave her family. 
 341 
 
342 FEMINISM 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Did you remind her that she is a slave in the 
 home? 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 I did, Sire. But she said that being a slave to 
 her family was no worse than being a slave to you. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Did you offer her wages? 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 I did, Sire, but she said that she had a sufficiency 
 and was content. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 She must be got out of the home. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 I dare not use force, Sire. I have to remember 
 habeas corpus and Magna Charta, etc. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 But offer her economic independence, extras, 
 money of her own, etc. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 She says that she has her work to do at home. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Then take her work away from her. Take away 
 her spinning and weaving, and knitting and baking, 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 343 
 
 and brewing and needlework. They shall all be 
 commercialised. That makes business for me. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, she says that even then she still has to pre- 
 pare the food for the family. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Oh! well — Use some ingenuity. Put a deli- 
 catessen store on the corner near her home. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 But, Sire, she says that she must teach her chil- 
 dren. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Build schools for them — that's easily managed. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 But, Sire, she says that she must train the little 
 children herself. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Start some kindergartens. Take all the children 
 off her hands. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 But the baby, Sire. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Day nurseries, creches, that's the thing. Get her 
 out of the home. I must have more workers, more 
 income, more wealth, more profits. Get her out of 
 
344 FEMINISM 
 
 the home. Bring the women Into Industry. Com- 
 mercialise them. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, they are coming out of the home by the thou- 
 sands. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Thousands ! I want a million — I must have 
 cheaper labour. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 But, Sire, they persist In preferring homework 
 with Its change of occupation. Long hours at one 
 thing are hard for them. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Well, If It's necessary In order to get them, make 
 things a little easier. Get some laws passed short- 
 ening their hours of labour. Give them seats in 
 shops, some rest rooms, and things like that. Do 
 what Is necessary, of course; only get them out of 
 the home. That's the thing — get them out. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 They are coming. Sire — look at them ! You 
 asked for a million; there are two millions, — -and 
 still they come. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 They shall come faster. Put on more pressure. 
 See how I am driving. I have set them to compet- 
 ing with men, lowering men's wages so that men can- 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 345 
 
 not support families, and driving men altogether out 
 of some vocations. I am spending millions in ad- 
 vertising in order to stimulate woman^s wants, to 
 get them to craving more and more things, so that 
 they will come out and earn wages in order to get 
 them. I am doing my part; you do yours. Get 
 them out of the home. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Alas, Sire, I do my best, — but many are still re- 
 luctant. Some of them say conditions in industry 
 are too hard, and some of them are making bold to 
 suggest — 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 What? 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 They are venturing to ask for something which 
 they are being told in some quarters will better their 
 conditions. I hardly dare mention it — 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 Speak out! What is it? 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, they are asking for the vote. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Oh, ho! Is that all? Why, that's all right. 
 Why not give it to them. What harm will it do ? 
 
346 FEMINISM 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 But, Sire, I thought — 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 You thought nothing. You can't see an inch be- 
 yond your nose. Their asking for the vote is a good 
 sign. It shows that they are restless and discon- 
 tented; don't know exactly what they want, and are 
 grasping at any straw. What harm can they do 
 with the vote? Haven't the men had it for a cen- 
 tury or more? And has it ever bothered me a jot? 
 Haven't I grown to my present gigantic dimensions 
 during the very period that they have had it? 
 Haven't I made the workers work as hard? It has 
 never put a pebble in my way. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 True, Sire. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Give them all the votes they want. They are 
 good playthings. Voting takes very little time away 
 from work, and anything which diverts their atten- 
 tion from the home is to the good. Get them to 
 competing with men in politics as they do now in 
 industry. It's all to the good. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, you have the vision of a god. I had not seen 
 that far. 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 347 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 I have the vision of a god when it comes to seeing 
 where my interests He. My real enemy is the home 
 
 — those Httle fortresses dotted all over the land; 
 those little spots where competition is checked and 
 co-operation reigns ; where the family snuggles down 
 in safety, and men, women and children waste on 
 one another energies which I might turn to profit. 
 The home must be shattered, opened up, so that I 
 can get the meat out of the nut. Chase them all out 
 
 — men, women, and children too. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, it shall be done. Eight million women and 
 hundreds of thousands of children are now at your 
 disposal. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Good! Getting the children was a great idea. 
 In cotton and many Industries their little fingers are 
 better" than adults' and they are cheaper. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, when the older children are at work there's 
 no one left In the homes but the babies and the old 
 people. Shall I let them remain? 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 No; put the aged In Institutions, — that's the 
 cheapest way to dispose of them; and the babies in 
 
348 FEMINISM 
 
 day-nurseries, as I said. Get them all out. An 
 empty home, that is what I am after. I'll get there 
 finally, but it's slow work, and your incompetence is 
 maddening. Here are millions of women still re- 
 maining in the home. Why don't you get hold of 
 them somehow? 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 I am helpless. Sire. Their husbands are still able 
 to support them. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 There must be some way to get them out ; use your 
 imagination. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 I have done my best, Sire. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Why not try calling them names ? Tell them they 
 are parasites. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 I have tried that. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Tell them the home is a harem. Tell them 
 women at present are stunted; they are in a state 
 of arrested development. Tell them that marriage 
 is legalised prostitution. Tell them — 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 349 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, you forget, — I have but one weapon. 
 Necessity, and these sheltered women are beyond the 
 reach of that; I cannot dislodge them. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Then I shall have to find some one who can. The 
 home must be turned inside out; everything and 
 everybody in it shall be commercialised. Art, re- 
 ligion, education, love, friendship, the family, — 
 then at last I shall be monarch of the globe. 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, I can do no more. You need a cleverer 
 servant than I, one who knows how to delude and 
 cajole women. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 That's it, fool, youVe hit it! I need some one 
 with enthusiasm, resources, — some one who can 
 coax women out of the home who don't need to go; 
 make them think the home is a prison and glory lies 
 outside of it. Who can do this service for me? 
 
 NECESSITY 
 
 Sire, I know the very person. Her name is Fem- 
 inism ; she can do all that you ask. I will summon 
 her. 
 
 [Enter. Feminism, an engaging^ up-to-date per- 
 son.^ 
 
350 FEMINISM 
 
 Sire, I have a long time admired you and your 
 wonderful achievements. In what way can I assist 
 you? 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 I need your help, Feminism, in fulfilling my de- 
 sign. The object of life Is the accumulation of 
 wealth and everything should bend to this end; but 
 despite my utmost efforts large amounts of human 
 energy are still running to waste in other channels. 
 The most extravagant of all institutions Is the home. 
 In this practical age It Is an anachronism. Think 
 of hundreds of cook stoves where one communal 
 stove would do. Think of separate firesides when 
 one bonfire of colossal range might answer the pur- 
 pose. Think of single nurseries Instead of common 
 dormitories. All this Is waste. In the family men, 
 women and children squander time, strength and 
 thought on one another. The family Is outworn, 
 cumbersome — an obstacle In the road of progress. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I am of the same opinion. Sire, not so much be- 
 cause It Is wasteful, as you think, but because it Is 
 narrowing; but we agree that it must go. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Very good! We are agreed. Now to work. 
 Where shall we begin ? 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 351 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 The place to begin is with the father, — the hus- 
 band, once rightly called the house-band, who bands 
 the home together. He must be dispensed with. 
 He shall no longer support the family. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 I have already arranged for that. In millions of 
 cases he is no longer able to do so. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 And then when he has ceased to be the bread win- 
 ner he is no longer competent to represent the fam- 
 ily politically. Women must vote. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 I have already consented to that. I don't mind. 
 Get on. The special task I want of you is to work 
 on the minds of independent women. Sow the seeds 
 of discontent. Talk of bonds and fetters and so on. 
 Get them out of the home for anything — even 
 higher education is better than nothing. It defers 
 marriage at least. What is your chief doctrine? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I preach equality of the sexes. 
 
352 FEMINISM 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Nothing could be better, — and you include sex 
 equality, I hope? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 Yes, Sire, but that goes more slowly. Most 
 women are conservative on that subject. They 
 usually embrace Suffrage first, and later declare for 
 economic independence. They, say each woman 
 must vote and support herself, but there they stop. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Keep it up, nevertheless, you'll bring them around. 
 Free love won't do of course; our people won't 
 stand for it — it is revolting. All you have to do 
 is to preach — independence, independence, inde- 
 pendence,— and keep it up. You'll get them in 
 time. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I am very hopeful too, Sire. I use the same set 
 of arguments in all three stages: I say woman is 
 an individual, therefore she should vote; woman 
 is an individual, therefore she should be self-sup- 
 porting; woman is an individual, therefore she 
 should be free from sex domination. In this way, 
 when a woman has once been brought to accept 
 suffrage she can be led on gently from step to step, 
 you understand. 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 353 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Perfectly. Now, one more matter. No decep- 
 tion has ever been successfully foisted upon human- 
 ity for any length of time without the help of a 
 fine-sounding watchword. Where would War have 
 been if It had not been for its watchwords " Self 
 defence," "National honour" and "Patriotism"? 
 Where . would Asceticism have been without 
 " Purity " ? Where would I, Commercialism, be 
 without my watchword " Prosperity"? I presume 
 you have a watchword too, have you not? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I have indeed, Sire. My watchword is " Free- 
 dom." I do all my work in its name. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Good, excellent! Harp continually upon free- 
 dom. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 That IS my practice, Sire. I never cease calling 
 upon women to be free; I never cease reminding 
 them of their enslavement In the family, of the tyr- 
 anny of fathers and husbands, of the drudgery of 
 housework, the wearisomeness of children, the 
 monotony of home life. I urge them to submit no 
 longer to the degradation of being mere females. 
 I tell them — Sire, I tell them — that they are — 
 human beings! 
 
354 FEMINISM 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Good Idea ! And I presume it strikes them as 
 novel? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 Always, Sire. The idea intoxicates them. It 
 strikes them as something wonderful, and beautiful 
 and new. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 It is a great idea ! 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 But of course I make it plain that they can't be 
 human beings in the home. They must work out- 
 side, sell their labour, commercialise themselves if 
 they wish to become truly human beings. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 That's the stuff ! I see you know your business. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I never lose sight of my main object. Sire, which 
 Is to wean women from the home. I assure them 
 that all their services to the family can be better per- 
 formed by experts. I urge them to turn all their 
 functions over to paid outsiders. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Admirable! That makes more openings for 
 women and more business for me. Keep it up I 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 355 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I tell them to hire specialists to minister to every 
 want. Servants for housework, teachers for their 
 children, seamstresses for home sewing, entertain- 
 ers to amuse the family. I know one woman who 
 hires a professional grandmother to come to see 
 her children every day and bring them cookies. I 
 tell them that this is the age of specialists, and that 
 home making too should be turned over to hired 
 experts. This will set the wife and mother free to 
 become a specialist in something herself, and that 
 will take her out. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Good! But what do you do with the incurably 
 domestic women who stick in the home like maggots 
 in a cheese? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 T9 that sort of women. Sire, I talk municipal 
 housekeeping. She likes that. I tell her the city 
 is just a part of her home. I begin with street 
 cleaning and milk. I tell her that she Is directly 
 concerned with the milk supply, because her baby 
 drinks milk. Later on I shall tell her that she Is 
 directly concerned with the tobacco supply, because 
 her husband smokes tobacco, and with the coal sup- 
 ply, because the family burns coal. Thus I plan to 
 lead her gently on. By the same token I shall one 
 day suggest that she ought to Inspect slaughter- 
 
356 FEMINISM 
 
 houses, and canneries, and ash dumps, and that it 
 IS her duty to supervise commerce and agriculture, 
 and arbitrate labour disputes, preside over courts, 
 and concern herself with regulating the entire in- 
 dustrial, financial and judicial systems of the coun- 
 try. I shall show her conclusively that there is no 
 place to stop, that everything touches the home. 
 But of course that comes later : for the present I be- 
 gin with milk, and street cleaning; they sound so 
 harmless, and so nearby. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Capital ! That's the way to work it. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 But I may tell you confidentially, Sire, a short time 
 ago I had a great scare. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 How so? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 You see, this drawing mothers out of the home 
 as we are doing, works havoc sometimes in the fam- 
 ily. People are beginning to say that the degenera- 
 tion of the race is largely due to it, and are trac- 
 ing the increase in feeble-mindedness, insanity, pros- 
 titution, vice, and corruption, to the lack of home 
 training and neglect of children. If this idea grows 
 we shall have trouble. 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 357 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 How did you meet the situation ? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 I had an ingenious idea. I announced that it is 
 precisely because of the evils in society that women 
 are needed In politics and legislatures, etc. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Did they swallow that? 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 Lapped it up like water. By that means I am 
 coaxing hundreds of women out of the home on the 
 plea of reforming the world, who would not leave It 
 for any other purpose. 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 That comes near to being genius ! 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 Thank you, Sire! I think, too, that the idea 
 has a great future. It's this way. When all work- 
 ing class women shall have left home to earn a liv- 
 ing, then (as their families become demoralised and 
 society begins to suffer), the leisure class women 
 will have to go too in order to reform the evils 
 which the other women's leaving home has caused. 
 In this way I am smoking out some of the most 
 cantankerously domestic women who ever darned 
 
358 FEMINISM 
 
 socks. Take Mrs. John Martin, e.g., even she has 
 to leave the home once a year or so now to try to 
 undo some of the harm which other women's not 
 staying at home has brought about. Do you get the 
 idea? 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Perfectly. But now tell me, what is your object 
 in all this? Myself I understand; I want to empty 
 the home for my own purposes — to increase pro- 
 duction. The more people there are at work the 
 larger my returns. That's simple. But I don't un- 
 derstand exactly what you are after. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 [confidentially^ 
 
 I will tell you. My object is to get woman to 
 revenge herself on man for his age long domina- 
 tion. I want to teach her how to do without him, 
 and put him out of business. When he is no longer 
 useful, he will have no more power. Then woman 
 can assert her supremacy and take the reins of gov- 
 ernment in her own hands. I want to show her 
 how to put man down where he belongs, — reduce 
 him to subservience. I want to enthrone woman — 
 I want to feminise the world ! 
 
 COMMERCIALISM 
 
 Humph ! I don't follow you there. My aim is 
 to commercialise the world. I don't propose to 
 
FEMINISM AND HER MASTER 359 
 
 hand It over to you. Man Is a good friend of mine; 
 he has made me what I am. I should hate to see 
 him go under. It was with his consent that I have 
 been calling women out of the home. But I don't 
 think he foresaw that anything of this kind was 
 likely to happen. I don't believe he thought that 
 you were likely to come along; and what's more, I 
 think when he really finds out what you are up to he 
 will take measures to put a stop to it. 
 
 FEMINISM 
 
 l^with blazing eyes'] 
 
 A stop to it! Let him try, let him try! That 
 will mean a declaration of war, sex war! Very 
 well; I am gathering my forces for that now. Let 
 men attempt to oppose us. Let them come on, — 
 we shall be ready for them. 
 
 [Feminism clenches her little fist, and shakes it 
 fiercely into empty space, A sound is heard 
 without; steps approach. Feminism looks up 
 expectant and defiant. Enter Man. And 
 with the entrance of Man our curtain falls.] 
 
 THE END 
 
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