further than measures for the alleviation of their woes. If real
fellow-feeling is to be restored, producer and consumer must get
acquainted through actual contact. They must share the same life. This
immediately suggests, of course, life for the consumer under the pall of
factory smoke. But the conditions under which commodities are made
ought not to be so hideous as they are. There is no place too beautiful
to be the workshop of a human being. Our ideal for the future must be
for every man to have a little plot of ground, and to live and to work
where he can say:
“I’m glad the sky is painted blue,
And the earth is painted green,
With such a lot of nice, fresh air
All sandwiched in between.”
When the producer finds a place like that, the consumer will be glad to
live next door to him.
And is this an idle dream of a Utopia beyond all possibility of
realization? Well, there is earth enough surely, and every day the
electric cars and telephones are making it possible for us to spread out
over the land without getting out of communication with the world. It
may be possible for the producer of the future to live next door to the
consumer without being very close to him.
Then half, at least, of the machinery which makes the worker an
undesirable neighbor is unnecessary, whether we consider his needs or
the consumer’s. From the point of view of the latter, this unnecessary
machinery is being used in manufacturing abominable trash, or in making
articles to take the place of others which were badly made and faded or
fell to pieces, or wore out before their time. From the point of view of
the worker, much of our modern machinery saves labor which it would be
life and health and happiness for him to perform by hand. All the
assistance he needs from machinery is a little power to take the place
of his muscular energy and to save his strength and vitality for brain
work. He wants a machine which shall be his slave as he works out his
designs into useful and beautiful articles, not a tyrant which he must
“tend” all day long. A small machine is a much better slave than a big
one. If the workers should spread themselves out over the country with
their small machines, this would not mean the sacrifice of any real good
in the present system. Improved methods of transmitting power are making
it possible for each community to have a central power plant from which
energy may be sent to run the seamstress’s sewing machine, the
carpenter’s lathe, the potter’s wheel, and the rug-maker’s loom. Thus
the present desire to simplify life and the present dissatisfaction with
the flimsiness of the average factory-made article, which create a
demand for a smaller and better product, combine with improved means for
transportation, for communication, and for transmission of power to make
it practicable for small workshops to take the place, to a certain
extent, of large factories, and to make it possible for the producer of
household stuff to become a desirable neighbor.
The shops that are springing up all over the country in connection with
technical schools show the advantages of labor under good conditions. In
addition to the students’ workrooms there is usually, in connection with
these schools, a shop where men are employed to make furniture and other
articles for the institution. The demands of instruction make it
possible to equip these shops with apparatus which would otherwise be
too costly. Such places offer a man pleasant conditions for work, a
stimulus to mental activity, and an opportunity to see the direct
results of his labor. I have in mind such a school and shop. There, one
day, the girls of the cooking class served orange ice and rolled wafers
to the engineer and the carpenter. I felt sure that, good as the ice and
wafers were, they tasted better to the carpenter because they were
passed on a tray he had made, and to the engineer because he had made
the tins on which the wafers were baked. There is a satisfaction in
seeing the products of one’s labor in actual use.
Another hopeful sign lies in the fact that illustrated magazines which
are published in the interests of the Arts and Crafts movement and of
household decoration are spreading knowledge of design and are making it
desirable to hire work done by local cabinet makers. In the Northwestern
University Settlement, in Chicago, there is good furniture, including a
beautiful round table for the reading room, which was made in a small
shop after designs furnished by one of the residents.
It is not even enough, however, for the producer and consumer to come
into contact. They must have the same interests. These common interests
the manual training schools are supplying. Such schools are training the
children of the rich to work with their hands. At the same time they are
offering an education of more immediate practical value than was the
purely cultural education of old, and are for this reason attracting the
children of the poor, who used to be put early to work. The young people
who are to be the manual laborers of the future are getting their
apprenticeship under conditions which give culture and general
information. Thus the technical school tends to destroy the class
distinction between brain workers and hand workers.
There is, however, a suspicion that some manufacturers, under the cloak
of interest in technical education, are advocating the extension of
manual training courses for their own selfish purposes, rather than for
the general good; that they are seeking to increase the number of
skilled workers among whom they may choose, and to make themselves
independent of labor organizations. It is fair to the labor
organizations to hear both sides in this, as in other matters where
there seems to be a conflict of interests between employer and employed.
Through the Woman’s Trade Union League, which has branches in most of
our large cities, housekeepers may learn the women workers’ side as it
is presented by themselves.
There is encouragement also in the revival of the handicrafts. A few
people are making articles of household utility because they like the
work. These people are living examples of joy in labor. The movement is
important, also, because it tends to the establishment of democratic
relations. Experience has shown that when a woman whose connections have
been entirely with those who shared her ability to buy and to spend
becomes seriously interested in some form of handiwork her whole manner
of life changes. She is no longer free to participate in purposeless
social functions. To her studio teas she is likely to welcome those who
are working at her own or at similar crafts without reference to their
social position. Thus gradually and naturally and without any sudden
severing of relationships she passes from the aristocracy of those who
_have_ to the aristocracy of those who _do_. It may be that in this way
real sympathy between classes is to be restored.
In spite of hopeful signs, the great mass of those who produce our
household stuff still work under conditions which arrest bodily and
mental development, shorten life, and crush out happiness. There is not
enough encouragement in the present situation to lull to inactivity any
one who is interested in the improvement of the producer’s conditions,
but just enough to prevent complete discouragement and to suggest
promising fields for future work in the interest of those who make what
others use.
MORE CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER
The consumer is he who uses wealth. Each of us, therefore, is a
consumer. The wealth which we use is of two classes. The first includes
natural products; the second, those commodities which have been made
from natural products through human agency. To the first class belongs
the wild berry which one picks for his own use, and for which he is
beholden to no one. To the second belongs the cultivated berry, which is
served to one at his own table without labor or forethought on his part.
The second berry may be considered to be the first one plus the thought
and ingenuity and manual labor that were expended in cultivating,
transporting, and serving it. Of the first kind of wealth, the average
consumer uses ever less, of the second ever more, and thus his
dependence upon his fellows increases.
A person uses wealth for the purpose of satisfying his desires. But
other people as well as he have desires, which must be satisfied, if at
all, by natural wealth or by natural wealth adapted to human use by
human agency. Of unsatisfied desires the world is full. Some, to be
sure, are unworthy, but after we have stricken these out, the number is
still appalling. We want food, and good food. Some of us go hungry, and
some get sick because we are forced to eat bad food. We want safe water,
and thousands of us die every year because we cannot get it. We want
parks or large open spaces, with good roads and paths and plenty of
comfortable seats, with green grass, flowers, trees, playgrounds,
gymnasiums, and lunch rooms. We want beautiful factories and public
buildings, good schools, and libraries. We want beautiful houses,
furniture, clothes. Of these good things some of us have all, more of us
have only part, and many of us have none.
When we try to explain the fact that so many legitimate desires are
unfulfilled, the first reason that occurs to us is the fact that wealth
is not fairly distributed. This no one can gainsay. No one pretends
that incomes are proportioned to desert, to need, or even to men’s
capacity for using them for the public good. This, however, is a fact
over which the average person has little control. The most he can do is
to give moral support to the specialist who is trying to think out a
fairer means of distribution.
There is, however, another reason for want, the responsibility for which
comes nearer home. This is the tremendous waste involved in our present
method of making and distributing commodities. As a people we seem to
have little idea of measuring our resources, our natural wealth, and the
productive power that lies in our hands and brains up against our needs,
and of using them wisely and economically for the general good. Although
we understand the relation between good food and physical efficiency, we
spend time and energy in coloring, adulterating, and otherwise
sophisticating wholesome, natural food materials. We make numberless
articles of the same general character and of approximately the same
merit or demerit, and then we spend enough energy exploiting them to
feed all the hungry in the land. We know the relation of clothing to
health and to the development of taste, and yet we multiply many fold
the amount of labor necessary to clothe ourselves by making textile
fabrics which fade, shrink, and wear out prematurely. We need strong,
skillful, intelligent workers in every line of activity, and we know
that these can be produced only by careful training and education; and
yet, in some states, West Virginia, for example, we send little boys as
young as twelve into the mines to work all day underground, and we allow
girls of the same age to work in ill-ventilated shops, leaving them
oftentimes to find their way home after nightfall through the worst
districts of our great cities.
But some one says: “I am not responsible. I am the buyer and user, not
the maker nor the seller. I determine neither what shall be made nor the
conditions under which it shall be made.” To which the answer comes in
no uncertain accents from two sources: from the shopkeeper, on the one
hand, who says in the words so familiar to us all, “There is no demand
for it, so I do not keep it in stock”; and from the social economist, on
the other, who says, “The producing man is essentially the servant of
the consuming man, and the final direction of industry lies with the
consumers.”
If the consumers of wealth, by their demands, determine what shall be
made and under what conditions it shall be made and sold, what shall we
say of the housewife and her responsibility? She holds a unique position
among consumers. She buys not only that which she herself uses, but much
of that which the adult members of her family, and all of that which her
young children consume. Thus she assumes vicariously their
responsibility and holds their consciences. This is one of the great
social burdens which a woman takes upon herself when she makes a home.
To understand the problem of the home-maker, in her capacity as consumer
and buyer, we must remember that there are “two distinct
responsibilities. One is the responsibility for the conditions under
which things are made, the other is the responsibility for their being
made at all.” The first is for waste of life and productive power
through child labor, underpay, and unsanitary places for work. This can
be met only by organized methods. The second, the responsibility for the
fact that one article is made instead of another which would have
satisfied a larger number of real wants, each home-maker must meet
individually by careful and conscientious regulation of her own
expenditures.
That some women have accepted the first form of responsibility, the
existence and growth of the National Consumers’ League, with its various
state and local branches, testify. The object of this league is to
investigate, as the individual can not, the conditions under which
articles are made. Wishing to do thoroughly what it undertakes, it is at
present confining its attention to one branch of industry, and that a
branch in which the waste of human life is conspicuous--“the manufacture
of women’s and children’s stitched white cotton underwear.” This
industry lends itself readily to sweatshop methods, with all the
attendant danger to the consumer from contagious diseases, to the worker
from the lowering of wages and of the standard of living.
The way in which the league works may be briefly described. Upon request
of a manufacturer it investigates his shop. If it finds that the state
factory law is obeyed, that all goods are made on the premises, that
overtime is not worked, that no children under sixteen are employed, and
that the surroundings of the workers are clean and healthful, it grants
the use of its label. This label can, if the manufacturer so desires, be
stamped on all goods that leave his factory.
The investigations of the league naturally lead to activities of other
kinds. It is often found that the only objection to granting the use of
the label is the fact that children under sixteen are employed. If this
is in accordance with the state factory law, the next thing to do is to
get the law changed. This is usually the task which the state leagues
take upon themselves. The work of these state leagues has recently been
summarized by the national league and published in the form of a
handbook, which may be obtained from the headquarters in New York City.
After the label has been granted, there must be a market for the goods.
The creation of a demand for label goods is one of the duties of the
local branches that are springing up in many cities and towns. Besides
this, these branches prepare, in some cities, for the convenience of
purchasers, “white lists” of shops which reach certain standards with
reference to wages and to treatment of their employees. They urge the
granting of half holidays during the summer months, and seek to save
clerks and delivery men from the horrors of the Christmas trade by
inducing people to do their shopping early in the season and to refuse
to receive any goods delivered late at night.
The members of the league recognize the fact that their power to protect
themselves and to clear their consciences with reference to that which
they use lies in their ability to organize. They recognize also that
below them is a class of buyers too weak and too ignorant to band
together for the protection either of themselves or of those who make
and sell the grade of goods which they use. A large part of its work,
therefore, is educational, and aims to bring the public up to a point
where it will demand protection for all consumers and all workers. To
this end it distributes annually large quantities of valuable
literature.
The league has been obliged lately to turn much of its attention to the
establishment of the constitutionality of many of the laws passed for
the protection of women and children. That great victory by which the
Oregon law limiting the hours of women’s labor was declared
constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States was won chiefly
through its efforts. Encouraged by this decision, it is renewing its
efforts in other states.
But in connection with the distribution of household commodities, as
well as in connection with their production, there are shameful wastes.
In order to advertise their wares, some manufacturers disfigure towns
and routes of travel with hideous billboards, and injure or destroy
natural beauties. I stood on the platform of the station at Harper’s
Ferry, one beautiful September day, and looked across the river to a
magnificent bluff crowned with autumn foliage. There on the rocky face
of the bluff had been painted an enormous round advertisement, with
white letters nine feet high on a background of black. It read, “Use
Blank’s Talcum Powder.” Blank’s talcum had up to that time been a
household commodity with me. Since then, of course, I have used other
brands. But of what use in combating an evil of this sort is my
individual protest except as a source of satisfaction to myself, a
revenge for the disfigurement of a favorite view? I am much more
effective as a member of the American Civic Association, which is making
organized warfare against the advertising evil, than I am as a private
protester and complainer, even if I take no further part in its work
than to contribute my yearly dues. In some such organized movement
against the evils connected with distribution housekeepers must join,
if they are to meet their full responsibility.
The home-maker, in her capacity as buyer for a family, is largely
responsible for that which is made as well as for the conditions under
which it is made and the methods employed in its distribution. Here she
must act single-handed, and decide for herself what it is worth while to
buy. In one section of his “Studies in Economics,” William Smart draws a
lesson from the record of his personal expenses. The items of the
account he has grouped under various heads--food, dress, shelter, etc.
With reference to the various heads, he says that if he spends more for
food than he needs for health he gives himself a form of pleasure which
he cannot share with others, and which is of the most fleeting
character. If, on the other hand, he spends more for dress than he
actually needs for comfort, he stands a chance of pleasing the eyes of
others as well as his own, and besides, an article of dress discarded
before it is worn out may keep some one else warm for a long time. Thus
extravagance in dress is likely to give pleasure to more people and for
a longer time than extravagance in food. The third head is “shelter.” If
he puts more into a house than he needs, he may be building not only for
the present, but for future generations. Here he stops, leaving us to go
on in imagination through the other heads, “books,” “travel,” etc. By
this simple illustration he shows to us poor laymen what he means by the
rather appalling title of his article, “The Socializing of Consumption.”
For what is society but other people, and what is it to socialize
consumption but to spend one’s income for the greatest good of the
greatest number? The choice between various forms of expenditure comes
when we spend more than is absolutely necessary. Then we have a chance
to choose between that, which we, by consuming, will destroy (ice cream,
let us say) and that which we can consume and yet pass on to others (a
book or periodical, which we can read and lend to the neighbors). And
what we demand and use will determine the form which wealth will take in
the future.
But no one is going to be able to compare what he needs to spend for a
given item and what he really does spend unless he keeps a strict
account. For this reason we find specialists in home economics urging
women to keep accounts, and to keep them in such form that they can
easily be tabulated so as to show what per cent of the income goes for
food, what for rent, etc. At a home economics exhibit which was held in
connection with a meeting of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ there
was a household cabinet arranged for keeping records according to the
card system. This was filled with cards in actual use by a woman
interested in home economics.
No consideration of the duties of woman as a consumer would be in any
degree complete without mention of her obligation to train her children
to the proper use of that wealth which they have in common with others.
The wealth which we hold in common--public school buildings, parks,
playgrounds, museums, art galleries, streets, and highways--is rapidly
increasing. Children must be trained to think of this wealth as theirs,
and of the obligation to protect it and to use it well as theirs. They
are too likely to think of all the obligations connected with it as
belonging to a far-off, impersonal government. They must be made to see
that the man who follows them about in the park and picks up their
peanut shells and crackerjack boxes might be making or tending a swing
for the delight of scores of children, or a flower bed for the delight
of hundreds. They must be made to see that when they pick out beautiful,
sweet-smelling places for picnics, and leave them strewn with papers,
tin cans, and watermelon rinds, they are not only misusing their own
property, but are interfering with the rights of others who have title
to it also.
There is a way of using wealth which impoverishes the world. There is
another way which enriches it. It is this second way which the
conscientious home-maker is ever seeking to find and to show to her
child.
NEW WORK FOR THE HOME
We have considered the effect of social, industrial, and political
changes upon woman, upon man, upon the household employee, upon the
health and beauty of the home, and upon the relations between the
producer and consumer of wealth. It remains to ask how they are
affecting the home itself, considered as an institution. Are they
tending to cripple and destroy it, or are they merely tending to modify
its external form and the “_minutia_ of its daily usages”? Or is there
perhaps a third and a better possibility that for the very reason that
they are changing its form they are increasing its possibilities for
social usefulness and for the enrichment of individual lives?
These questions can be answered only in the light of a clear distinction
between the spirit of home and the form of home, between the purpose
that lies back of its various activities and the material means which
it employs for the accomplishment of that purpose. To spirit, the one
essential is love. The love that leads to the founding of most homes has
its origin in and springs from sex attraction, but crowns that purely
self-regarding instinct with an unselfish desire for the welfare and
happiness of its object. The impulse may, however, come from the love of
parents who seek satisfactory means of preparing the child for
independent life, or from the love of comrades who seek mutual
helpfulness in close association, or from a love of broader application
which seeks to provide a meeting place for those of like interests and
aspirations. Something there must be of other-regarding affection, or
the spirit is wanting.