A few pages back, I ventured to remark that in Utopia or the Millennium
the women of the community would probably be supported in common by the
labour of the men, and so be secured complete independence of choice and
action. When these essays first appeared in a daily newspaper, a Leader
among Women wrote to me in reply, "What a paradise you open up to us!
Alas for the reality! The question is--could women ever be really
independent if men supplied the means of existence? They would always
feel they had the right to control us. The difference of the position of
a woman in marriage when she has got a little fortune of her own is
something miraculous. Men adore money, and the possession of it inspires
them with an involuntary respect for the happy possessor."
Now I got a great many letters in answer to these Post-Prandials as they
originally came out--some of them, strange to say, not wholly
complimentary. As a rule, I am too busy a man to answer letters: and I
take this opportunity of apologising to correspondents who write to tell
me I am a knave or a fool, for not having acknowledged direct their
courteous communications. But this friendly criticism seems to call for
a reply, because it involves a question of principle which I have often
noted in all discussions of Utopias and Millennia.
For my generous critic seems to take it for granted that women are not
now dependent on the labour of men for their support--that some, or even
most of them, are in a position of freedom. The plain truth of it
is--almost all women depend for everything upon one man, who is or may
be an absolute despot. A very small number of women have "money of their
own," as we quaintly phrase it--that is to say, are supported by the
labour of many among us, either in the form of rent or in the form of
interest on capital bequeathed to them. A woman with five thousand a
year from Consols, for example, is in the strictest sense supported by
the united labour of all of us--she has a first mortgage to that amount
upon the earnings of the community. You and I are taxed to pay her. But
is she therefore more dependent than the woman who lives upon what she
can get out of the scanty earnings of a drunken husband? Does the
community therefore think it has a right to control her? Not a bit of
it. She is in point of fact the only free woman among us. My dream was
to see all women equally free--inheritors from the community of so much
of its earnings; holders, as it were, of sufficient world-consols to
secure their independence.
That, however, is not the main point to which I desire just now to
direct attention. I want rather to suggest an underlying fallacy of all
so-called individualists in dealing with schemes of so-called
Socialism--for to me your Socialist is the true and only individualist.
My correspondent's argument is written from the standpoint of the class
in which women have or may have money. But most women have none; and
schemes of reconstruction must be for the benefit of the many. So-called
individualists seem to think that under a more organised social state
they would not be so able to buy pictures as at present, not so free to
run across to California or Kamschatka. I doubt their premiss, for I
believe we should all of us be better off than we are to-day; but let
that pass; 'tis a detail. The main thing is this: they forget that most
of us are narrowly tied and circumscribed at present by endless
monopolies and endless restrictions of land or capital. I should like to
buy pictures; but I can't afford them. I long to see Japan; but I shall
never get there. The man in the street may desire to till the ground:
every acre is appropriated. He may wish to dig coal: Lord Masham
prevents him. He may have a pretty taste in Venetian glass: the flints
on the shore are private property; the furnace and the implements belong
to a capitalist. Under the existing _régime_, the vast mass of us are
hampered at every step in order that a few may enjoy huge monopolies.
Most men have no land, so that one man may own a county. And they call
this Individualism!
In considering any proposed change, whether imminent or distant, in
practice or in day-dream, it is not fair to take as your standard of
reference the most highly-favoured individuals under existing
conditions. Nor is it fair to take the most unfortunate only. You should
look at the average.
Now the average man, in the world as it wags, is a farm-labourer, an
artisan, a mill-hand, a navvy. He has untrammelled freedom of contract
to follow the plough on another man's land, or to work twelve hours a
day in another man's factory, for that other man's benefit--provided
always he can only induce the other man to employ him. If he can't, he
is at perfect liberty to tramp the high road till he drops with fatigue,
or to starve, unhindered, on the Thames Embankment. He may live where he
likes, as far as his means permit; for example, in a convenient court
off Seven Dials. He may make his own free bargain with grasping landlord
or exacting sweater. He may walk over every inch of English soil, with
the trifling exception of the millions of acres where trespassers will
be prosecuted. Even travel is not denied him: Florence and Venice are
out of his beat, it is true; but if he saves up his loose cash for a
couple of months, he may revel in the Oriental luxury of a third-class
excursion train to Brighton and back for three shillings. Such
advantages does the _régime_ of landlord-made individualism afford to
the average run of British citizen. If he fails in the race, he may
retire at seventy to the ease and comfort of the Union workhouse, and be
buried inexpensively at the cost of his parish.
The average woman in turn is the wife of such a man, dependent upon him
for what fraction of his earnings she can save from the public-house. Or
she is a shop-girl, free to stand all day from eight in the morning till
ten at night behind a counter, and to throw up her situation if it
doesn't suit her. Or she is a domestic servant, enjoying the glorious
liberty of a Sunday out every second week, and a walk with her young man
every alternate Wednesday after eight in the evening. She has full leave
to do her love-making in the open street, and to get as wet as she
chooses in Regent's Park on rainy nights in November. Look the question
in the face, and you will see for yourself that the mass of mothers in
every community are dependent for support, not upon men in general, but
upon a single man, their husband, against whose caprices and despotism
they have no sort of protection. Even the few women who are, as we say,
"independent," how are they supported, save by the labour of many men
who work to keep them in comfort or luxury? They are landowners, let us
put it; and then they are supported by the labour of their farmers and
ploughmen. Or they hold North-Western shares; and then they are
supported by the labour of colliers, and stokers, and guards, and
engine-drivers. And so on throughout. The plain fact is, either a woman
must earn her own livelihood by work, which, in the case of the mothers
in a community, is bad public policy; or else she must be supported by a
man or men, her husband, or her labourers.
My day-dream was, then, to make every woman independent, in precisely
the same sense that women of property are independent at present. Would
it give them a consciousness of being unduly controlled if they derived
their support from the general funds of the body politic, of which they
would be free and equal members and voters? Well, look at similar cases
in our own England. The Dukes of Marlborough derive a heavy pension from
the taxes of the country; but I have never observed that any Duke of
Marlborough of my time felt himself a slave to the imperious taxpayer.
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace is justly the recipient of a Civil List
annuity; but that hasn't prevented his active and essentially
individualist brain from inventing Land Nationalisation. Mr. Robert
Buchanan very rightly draws another such annuity for good work done; but
Mr. Buchanan's name is not quite the first that rises naturally to my
lips as an example of cowed and cringing sycophancy to the ideas and
ideals of his fellow-citizens. No, no; be sure of it, this terror is a
phantom. One master is real, realisable, instant; but to be dependent
upon ten million is just what we always describe as independence.
THE END.
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