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WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT
[Illustration: CONVENTION OF OUR WOMEN AT HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK]
WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT
BY RHETA CHILDE DORR
1910.
TO
THE AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVES
OF THE EIGHT MILLION--
THE EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND MEMBERS
OF THE GENERAL FEDERATION OF
WOMEN'S CLUBS--
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
Many of the chapters contained in this volume appeared as special
articles in _Hampton's Magazine_, to the editor of which the author's
thanks are due for permission to republish.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I INTRODUCTORY
II FROM CULTURE CLUBS TO SOCIAL SERVICE
III EUROPEAN WOMEN AND THE SALIC LAW
IV AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE COMMON LAW
V WOMAN'S DEMANDS ON THE RULERS OF INDUSTRY
VI MAKING OVER THE FACTORY FROM THE INSIDE
VII BREAKING THE GREAT TABOO
VIII WOMAN'S HELPING HAND FOR THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER
IX THE SERVANT IN HER HOUSE
X VOTES FOR WOMEN
XI IN CONCLUSION
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CONVENTION OF CLUB WOMEN AT HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK
CARPENTER SHOP, VACATION SCHOOL, PITTSBURGH
CAPTAIN BALL ON GIRL'S FIELD, WASHINGTON PARK, PITTSBURGH
STORY HOUR AT VACATION PLAYGROUND, CASTELAR SCHOOL YARD, LOS
ANGELES, CAL.
MRS. SARAH PLATT DECKER
LADY ABERDEEN
A "WOMEN'S RIGHTS" MAP OF THE UNITED STATES
MISS EMILIE BULLOWA
MRS. FREDERICK NATHAN
MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN
MISS ELIZABETH MALONEY
A DEPARTMENT STORE REST-ROOM FOR WOMEN
MISS MAUDE E. MINER
IN THE NIGHT COURT, NEW YORK
MISS SADIE AMERICAN
A TYPICAL DANCE HALL
AN UNTHOUGHT-OF PHASE OF THE SERVANT QUESTION
ANOTHER SERIOUS CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOCIAL QUESTION
THE SERVANT GIRL AND THE EMPLOYMENT AGENCY
SUFFRAGETTES IN LONDON ADVERTISING A MEETING
MRS. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH
MEETING A RELEASED SUFFRAGETTE PRISONER
THE WOMEN'S TRADES PROCESSION TO THE ALBERT HALL MEETING, APRIL 27,
1909
HELEN HOY GREELEY
SUFFRAGETTES IN MADISON SQUARE
THE "QUIET WALK" OF THE NEW YORK SUFFRAGISTS, WHOM THE POLICE WOULD
NOT PERMIT TO PARADE
SUFFRAGE DEMONSTRATION IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK
WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
For the audacity of the title of this book I offer no apology. I have
had it pointed out, not altogether facetiously, that it is impossible to
determine with accuracy what one woman, much less what any number of
women, wants. I sympathize with the first half of the tradition. The
desires, that is to say, the ideals, of an individual, man or woman, are
not always easy to determine. The individual is complex and exceedingly
prone to variation. The mass alone is consistent. The ideals of the mass
of women are wrapped in mystery simply because no one has cared enough
about them to inquire what they are.
Men, ardently, eternally, interested in Woman--one woman at a time--are
almost never even faintly interested in women. Strangely, deliberately
ignorant of women, they argue that their ignorance is justified by an
innate unknowableness of the sex.
I am persuaded that the time is at hand when this sentimental, half
contemptuous attitude of half the population towards the other half will
have to be abandoned. I believe that the time has arrived when
self-interest, if other motive be lacking, will compel society to
examine the ideals of women. In support of this opinion I ask you to
consider three facts, each one of which is so patent that it requires no
argument.
The Census of 1900 reported nearly six million women in the United
States engaged in wage earning outside their homes. Between 1890 and
1900 the number of women in industry increased faster than the number of
men in industry. _It increased faster than the birth rate._ The number
of women wage earners at the present date can only be estimated. Nine
million would be a conservative guess. Nine million women who have
forsaken the traditions of the hearth and are competing with men in the
world of paid labor, means that women are rapidly passing from the
domestic control of their fathers and their husbands. Surely this is
the most important economic fact in the world to-day.
Within the past twenty years no less than nine hundred and fifty-four
thousand divorces have been granted in the United States. Two thirds of
these divorces were granted to aggrieved wives. In spite of the
anathemas of the church, in the face of tradition and early precept, in
defiance of social ostracism, accepting, in the vast majority of cases,
the responsibility of self support, more than six hundred thousand
women, in the short space of twenty years, repudiated the burden of
uncongenial marriage. Without any doubt this is the most important
social fact we have had to face since the slavery question was settled.
Not only in the United States, but in every constitutional country in
the world the movement towards admitting women to full political
equality with men is gathering strength. In half a dozen countries women
are already completely enfranchised. In England the opposition is
seeking terms of surrender. In the United States the stoutest enemy of
the movement acknowledges that woman suffrage is ultimately inevitable.
The voting strength of the world is about to be doubled, and the new
element is absolutely an unknown quantity. Does any one question that
this is the most important political fact the modern world has ever
faced?
I have asked you to consider three facts, but in reality they are but
three manifestations of one fact, to my mind the most important human
fact society has yet encountered. Women have ceased to exist as a
subsidiary class in the community. They are no longer wholly dependent,
economically, intellectually, and spiritually, on a ruling class of men.
They look on life with the eyes of reasoning adults, where once they
regarded it as trusting children. Women now form a new social group,
separate, and to a degree homogeneous. Already they have evolved a group
opinion and a group ideal.
And this brings me to my reason for believing that society will soon be
compelled to make a serious survey of the opinions and ideals of women.
As far as these have found collective expressions, it is evident that
they differ very radically from accepted opinions and ideals of men. As
a matter of fact, it is inevitable that this should be so. Back of the
differences between the masculine and the feminine ideal lie centuries
of different habits, different duties, different ambitions, different
opportunities, different rewards.
I shall not here attempt to outline what the differences have been or
why they have existed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in _Women and
Economics_, did this before me,--did it so well that it need never be
done again. I merely wish to point out that different habits of action
necessarily result, after long centuries, in different habits of
thought. Men, accustomed to habits of strife, pursuit of material
gains, immediate and tangible rewards, have come to believe that strife
is not only inevitable but desirable; that material gain and visible
reward are alone worth coveting. In this commercial age strife means
business competition, reward means money. Man, in the aggregate, thinks
in terms of money profit and money loss, and try as he will, he cannot
yet think in any other terms.
I have in mind a certain rich young man, who, when he is not
superintending the work of his cotton mills in Virginia, is giving his
time to settlement work in the city of Washington. The rich young man is
devoted to the settlement. One day he confided to a guest of the house,
a social worker of note, that he wished he might dedicate his entire
life to philanthropy.
"There is much about a commercial career that is depressing to a
sympathetic nature," he declared. "For example, it constantly depresses
me to observe the effect of the cotton mills on the girls in my employ.
They come in from the country, fresh, blooming, and eager to work.
Within a few months perhaps they are pale, anaemic, listless. Not
infrequently a young girl contracts tuberculosis and dies before one
realizes that she is ill. It wrings the heart to see it."
"I suspect," said the visitor, "that there is something wrong with your
mills. Are you sure that they are sufficiently well ventilated?"
"They are as well ventilated as we can have them," said the rich young
man. "Of course we cannot keep the windows open."
"Why not?" persisted the visitor.
"Because in our mills we spin both black and white yarn, and if the
windows were kept open the lint from the black yarn would blow on the
white yarn and ruin it."
A quick vision rose before the visitor's consciousness, of a mill room,
noisy with clacking machinery, reeking with the mingled odors of
perspiration and warm oil, obscure with flying cotton flakes which
covered the forms of the workers like snow and choked in their throats
like desert sand.
"But," she exclaimed, "you can have two rooms, one for the white yarn
and the other for the black."
The rich young man shook his head with the air of one who goes away
exceedingly sorrowful.
"No," he replied, "we can't. The business won't stand it."
This story presents in miniature the social attitude of the majority of
men. They cannot be held entirely responsible. Their minds automatically
function just that way. They have high and generous impulses, their
hearts are susceptible to tenderest pity, they often possess the vision
of brotherhood and human kinship, but habit, long habit, always
intervenes in time to save the business from loss of a few dollars
profit.
Three years ago Chicago was on the eve of one of its periodical "vice
crusades," of which more later. Sensational stories had been published
in several newspapers, to the effect that no fewer than five thousand
Jewish girls were leading lives of shame in the city, a statement which
was received with horror by the Jewish population of Chicago. A meeting
of wealthy and influential men and women was called in the law library
of a well known jurist and philanthropist. Representatives from various
social settlements in Jewish quarters of the town were invited, and it
was as a guest of one of these settlements that I was privileged to be
present.
Eloquent addresses were made and an elaborate plan for investigation and
relief was outlined. Finally it came to a point where ways and means had
to be considered. The presiding officer put this phase of the matter to
the conference with smiling frankness. "You must realize, ladies and
gentlemen," he said, "that we have entered upon an extensive and, I am
afraid, a very expensive campaign."
At this a middle aged and notably dignified man arose and said with
emotion trembling in his voice: "Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen
of the conference, this surely is no time for us to think of economy of
expenditure. If the daughters of Israel are losing their ancient dower
of purity, the sons of Israel should be willing, nay, eager to ransom
them at any cost. Permit me, as a privileged honor which I value highly,
to offer, as a contribution towards the preliminary expenses of this
campaign, my check for ten thousand dollars."
He sat down to that polite little murmur of applause which goes round
the room, and I whispered to the head resident of the settlement of
which I was a guest, an inquiry as to the identity of the generous
donor.
"That gentleman," she whispered in reply, "is one of the owners of a
great mail order department store in Chicago." She sighed deeply, as
she added: "During the first week of the panic that store discharged,
without warning, five hundred girls."
These typical examples of the reasoning processes of men are offered
without the slightest rancor. They had to be given in order that the
woman's habit of thought might be explained with clearness.
Women, since society became an organized body, have been engaged in the
rearing, as well as the bearing of children. They have made the home,
they have cared for the sick, ministered to the aged, and given to the
poor. The universal destiny of the mass of women trained them to feed
and clothe, to invent, manufacture, build, repair, contrive, conserve,
economize. They lived lives of constant service, within the narrow
confines of a home. Their labor was given to those they loved, and the
reward they looked for was purely a spiritual reward.
A thousand generations of service, unpaid, loving, intimate, must have
left the strongest kind of a mental habit in its wake. Women, when they
emerged from the seclusion of their homes and began to mingle in the
world procession, when they were thrown on their own financial
responsibility, found themselves willy nilly in the ranks of the
producers, the wage earners; when the enlightenment of education was no
longer denied them, when their responsibilities ceased to be entirely
domestic and became somewhat social, when, in a word, women began to
_think_, they naturally thought in human terms. They couldn't have
thought otherwise if they had tried.
They might have learned, it is true. In certain circumstances women
might have been persuaded to adopt the commercial habit of thought. But
the circumstances were exactly propitious for the encouragement of the
old-time woman habit of service. The modern thinking, planning,
self-governing, educated woman came into a world which is losing faith
in the commercial ideal, and is endeavoring to substitute in its place a
social ideal. She came into a generation which is reaching passionate
hands towards democracy. She became one with a nation which is weary of
wars and hatreds, impatient with greed and privilege, sickened of
poverty, disease, and social injustice. The modern, free-functioning
woman accepted without the slightest difficulty these new ideals of
democracy and social service. Where men could do little more than
theorize in these matters, women were able easily and effectively to
act.
I hope that I shall not be suspected of ascribing to women any ingrained
or fundamental moral superiority to men. Women are not better than men.
The mantle of moral superiority forced upon them as a substitute for
intellectual equality they accepted, because they could not help
themselves. They dropped it as soon as the substitute was no longer
necessary.
That the mass of women are invariably found on the side of the new
ideals is no evidence of their moral superiority to men; it is merely
evidence of their intellectual youth.
Visitors from western cities and towns are often amazed, and vastly
amused, to find in New York and other eastern cities little narrow-gauge
street car lines, where gaunt horses haul the shabbiest of cars over the
oldest and roughest of road beds. The Westerner declares that nowhere in
the East does he find surface cars that equal in comfort and elegance
the cars recently installed in his Michigan or Nebraska or Washington
home town.
"Recently installed." There you have it.
The eastern city retains its horse cars and its out-of-date electric
rolling stock because it has them, and because there are all sorts of
difficulties in the way of replacing them. Old franchises have to expire
or otherwise be got rid of; corporations have to be coaxed or coerced;
greed and corruption often have to be overcome; huge sums of money have
to be appropriated; a whole machinery of municipal government has to be
set in motion before the old and established city can change its
traction system.
The new western town goes on foot until it attains to a certain size and
a sufficient prosperity. Then it installs electric railways, and of
course it purchases the newest and most modern of the available models.
New social ideals are difficult for men to acquire in a practical way
because their minds are filled with old traditions, inherited memories,
outworn theories of law, government, and social control. They cannot get
rid of these at once. They have used them so long, have found them so
convenient, so satisfactory, that even when you show them something
admittedly better; they are able only partially to comprehend and to
accept.
Women, on the other hand, have very few antiques to get rid of. Until
recently their minds, scantily furnished with a few personal preferences
and personal prejudices, were entirely bare of community ideals or any
social theory. When they found themselves in need of a social theory it
was only natural that they should choose the most modern, the most
progressive, the most idealistic. They made their choice unconsciously,
and they began the application of their new-found theory almost
automatically. The machinery they employed was the long derided,
misconceived, and unappreciated Women's Club.