sustained and monotonous labour sends the factory girl into the
streets at night. She is too unstrung for rest. That this is in
a measure true, no experienced worker will deny, because every
experienced worker is familiar with the sensation. Every woman who
has toiled for hours, whether with a sewing machine or a typewriter,
whether with a needle or a pen, whether in an office or at home, has
felt the nervous fatigue which does not crave rest but distraction,
which makes her want to “go.” Every woman worth her salt has overcome
this weakness, has mastered this desire. It is probable that many men
suffer and struggle in the same fashion. Dr. Johnson certainly did.
With inspired directness, he speaks of people who are “afraid to go
home and think.” He knew that fear. Many a night it drove him through
the London streets till daybreak. He conquered it, conquered the sick
nerves so at variance with his sound mind and sound principles, and
his example is a beacon light to strugglers in the gloom.
Naturally, the working girl knows nothing about Dr. Johnson. Unhappily,
she knows little of any beacon light or guide. But, if she be a
reasonable human being, she _does_ know that to expect every evening
to “bring her some measure of recreation” is an utterly unreasonable
demand, and that it can be gratified only at the risk of her physical
and moral undoing. She has been taught to read in our public schools;
she is provided with countless novels and story-books by our public
libraries; the lightest of light literature is at her command. Is
this not enough to tide her over a night or two in the week? If her
clothes never need mending or renovating, she is unlike any other woman
the world has got to show. If there is never any washing, ironing,
or housework for her to do, her position is at once unusual and
regrettable. If she will not sometimes read, or work, or, because she
is tired, go early to bed; if her craving for amusement has reached
that acute stage when only the streets, or the moving pictures, or the
dance-hall will satisfy it, she has so completely lost nerve that she
has no moral stamina left. She may be virtuous, but she is an incapable
weakling, and the working man who marries her ruins his life. Such
girls swell the army of deserted wives which is the despair of all
organized charities.
The sincere effort to regenerate the world by amusing it is to be
respected; but it is not the final word of reform. The sincere effort
to regenerate the world by a legal regulation of wages is a new version
of an old story,--the shifting of personal obligation, the search for
somebody’s door at which to lay the burden of blame. It is also a
denial of human experience, inherited and acquired, and a rejection of
the only doctrine which stands for self-respect: “Temptations do not
make the man, but they show him for what he is.” Qualities nourished by
this stern and sane doctrine die with the withering of faith.
So much well-meant, but not harmless nonsense--nonsense is never
harmless--has been preached concerning women and their wages, that we
are in the predicament of Sydney Smith when Macaulay flooded him with
talk. We positively “stand in the slops.” A professor of economics
in an American college offers out of the fulness of his heart the
following specific and original remedy for existing ills: “My idea is
that one of the best ways to get an increased remuneration for women is
to make them worth it.”
“My idea!” This is what it means to have the scientific mind at work.
A unique proposition (what have we been thinking about with our free
schools for the past hundred years?), unclogged by detail, unhampered
by ways and means. And if we do not see salvation in truisms, if we
are daunted by the gulf between people who are theorizing and people
who are merely living, we can take refuge with the reformers who
demand “increased remuneration for women” whether they are worth it
or not; who would make the need of the worker, and not the quality of
the work, the determining factor in wages. We may “protect women from
themselves,” by prohibiting them from accepting less than their legal
hire.
The only real peril of a minimum wage-law is that it has a tendency
to relegate the incompetent to beggary. It cannot, as some economists
claim, discourage efficiency. Nothing can discourage efficiency, which
scorns help and defies hindrance. But, by the same ruling, nothing
can command more than it is worth in the markets of the world. We do
wrong when we release the worker from any incentive to good work. We
do wrong when we release her from a sense of personal responsibility.
We do wrong when we give her a plausible excuse for following the line
of least resistance, when we blight her courage by permitting her
to think that her moral welfare lies in any hands but her own. The
choice between poverty and dishonesty, the choice between poverty and
prostitution is not an “open question.” It is closed, if human reason
and human experience can speak authoritatively upon any subject in the
world.
The injury done by loose thinking and loose talking is irremediable.
When the State Senate Vice Investigating Committee of Illinois
permitted and encouraged an expression of what it was pleased to call
the “shop-girl’s philosophy,” it sowed the seeds of mischief deep
enough to insure a heavy crop of evil. I quote a single episode, as it
was reported in the newspapers of March 8th, 1913,--a report which, if
inaccurate in detail, must be correct in substance. A young woman who
had been in the employ of Sears, Roebuck & Co. was on the stand. She
was questioned by Lieutenant-Governor O’Hara.
“‘If a girl were getting $8 a week, and had to support a widowed
mother, would you blame that girl if she committed a crime?’
“The witness looked up frankly, and replied, ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
“‘Would you blame her if she killed herself?’
“‘No, I wouldn’t,’ came the emphatic reply.
“‘And would you blame her, if she committed a greater crime?’
“The young Lieutenant-Governor’s meaning was in his embarrassed tones
and in his heightened colour. The girl was the more composed of
the two. She paused a moment, and then repeated distinctly, ‘No, I
wouldn’t.’
“The room had been painfully quiet, but at this there was a round
of applause, led by the women spectators. It was the first general
spontaneous outburst of the session. ‘Emily’ was then dismissed.”
Dismissed with the “round of applause” ringing in her ears, and in her
mind the comfortable assurance that her theory of life was a sound
one. Also that a warm-hearted public was prepared to exonerate her,
should she find a virtuous life too onerous for endurance. Is it likely
that this girl, and hundreds of other Emilys, thus encouraged to let
down the walls of resistance, can be saved from the hopeless failure
of nerve which will relegate them to the ranks of the defeated? Is it
likely that the emotional hysteria of the applauding audience, and
of hundreds of similar audiences, can be reduced to reason by such
sober statistics as those furnished by the Bureau of Social Hygiene in
New York, or by the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford
Hills? Less than three per cent of seven hundred girls examined at
the Bedford Hills reformatory pleaded poverty, as a reason for their
fall; and, of this three per cent, more than half had been temporarily
out of work. On the other hand, twenty per cent were feeble-minded,
were mentally incapacitated for self-control, and as much at the
mercy of their instincts as so many animals. These are the blame-less
unfortunates whom vice commissioners seem somewhat disposed to ignore.
These are the women who should be protected from themselves, and from
whose progeny the public should be protected.
It is evident that triumphant virtue must have strong foundations.
Income and recreation are but slender props. Becky Sharp was of the
opinion that, given five thousand pounds a year, she could be as
respectable as her neighbours; but, in our hearts, we have always
doubted Becky. “Where virtue is well rooted,” said the watchful Saint
Theresa, “provocations matter little.” All results are in proportion
to the greatness of the spirit which has nourished them. When Cromwell
made the discomforting discovery that “tapsters and town apprentices”
could not stand in battle against the Cavaliers, he said to his cousin,
John Hampden, that he must have men of religion to fight with men of
honour. He summoned these men of religion, fired them with enthusiasm,
hardened them into consistency, and within fourteen years the nations
which had mocked learned to fear, and the name of England was “made
terrible” to the world.
For big issues we must have strong incentives and compelling measures.
“Where the religious emotions surge up,” says Mr. Gilbert Murray, “the
moral emotions are not far away.” Perhaps the mighty forces which have
winnowed the world for centuries may still prove efficacious. Perhaps
the illuminating principles of religion, the ennobling spirit of
patriotism, the uncompromising standards of morality, may do more to
stiffen our powers of resistance than lectures on “Life as a Fine Art,”
or papers on “The Significance of Play,” and “Amusement as a Factor in
Man’s Spiritual Uplift.” Perhaps the stable government which ensures
to the Industrious Apprentice the reward of his own diligence is more
bracing to citizenship than the zealous humanity which protects the
Idle Apprentice from the consequences of his own ill-doing.
Christianity and War
There are two disheartening features in the attitude of Americans
toward the ruthless war which has been waged in Europe for the past
two years. One is the materialism of pacifists who ignore, and have
steadily ignored, the crucial question of right and wrong, justice
and injustice. The other is the materialism of pious Christians who
lament the failure of Christianity to reconcile the irreconcilable, to
preserve the long-threatened security of nations.
When, at the request of President Wilson, the first Sunday of October,
1914, was set aside as a day of prayer for peace,--a day of many
sermons and of many speeches,--prayers and sermons and speeches all
alluded to the war as though it were the cholera or the plague,
something simple of issue, the abatement of which would mean people
getting better, the cure of which would mean people getting well.
The possibility of a peace shameful to justice and disastrous to
civilization was carefully ignored. The truth that death is better than
a surrender of all that makes life morally worth the living, was never
spoken. This may be what neutrality implies. We addressed the Almighty
in guarded language lest He should misunderstand our position. We
listened respectfully when Secretary Bryan told us that our first duty
was to use what influence we might have to hasten the return of peace,
without asking him to be more explicit, to say what on earth he would
have had us do, and how--without moving hand or foot--he would have had
us do it.
Since then, men of little faith have kept dinning in our ears that
religion is eclipsed, that Gospel law lacks the substance of a dream,
that Christian principles are bankrupt in the hour of need, that the
only God now worshipped in Europe is the tribal God who fights for
his own people, and that the structure of love and duty, reared by
centuries of Christianity, has toppled into ruin. To quote Professor
Cramb’s classic phrase, “Corsica has conquered Galilee.” Some of
these sad-minded prophets had fathers and grandfathers who fought in
the Civil War, and they seem in no wise troubled by this distressful
fact. Some of them had great-great-grandfathers who fought in the
Revolutionary War, and _they_ join high-sounding societies out of
illogical pride. Yet the colonists who defended their freedom and their
new-born national life were not more justified in shedding blood, than
were the French and Belgians and Serbians who heroically defended their
invaded countries and their shattered homes.
When Mr. Carnegie thanked God (through the medium of the newspapers)
that he lived in a brotherhood of nations,--“forty-eight nations in
one Union,”--he forgot that these forty-eight nations, or at least
thirty-eight of them, were not always a brotherhood. Nor was the family
tie preserved by moral suasion. What we of the North did was to beat
our brothers over the head until they consented to be brotherly. And
some three hundred thousand of them died of grievous wounds and fevers
rather than love us as they should.
This was termed preserving the Union. The abiding gain is visible to
all men, and it is not our habit to question the methods employed
for its preservation. No one called or calls the “Battle Hymn of the
Republic” a cry to a tribal God, although it very plainly tells the
Lord that his place is with the Federal, and not with the Confederate
lines. And when the unhappy Belgians crowded the Cathedral of St.
Gudule, asking Heaven’s help for defenceless Brussels, imploring
the intercession of our Lady of Deliverance (pitiful words that
wring the heart!), was this a cry to a tribal God, or the natural
appeal of humanity to a power higher and more merciful than man?
Americans returning from war-stricken Europe in the autumn of 1914
spoke unctuously of their country as “God’s own land,” by which they
meant a land where their luggage was unmolested. But it is possible
that nations fighting with their backs to the wall for all they hold
sacred and dear are as justified in the sight of God as a nation smugly
content with its own safety, living its round of pleasures, giving
freely of its superfluity, and growing rich with the vast increase of
its industries and trade.
What influence has been at work since the close of the Franco-Prussian
War, shutting our eyes to the certainty of that war’s final issue,
and debauching our minds with sentiment which had no truth to rest
on? We knew that the taxes of Europe were spent on armaments, and
we talked about International Arbitration. We knew that science was
devotedly creating ruthless instruments of destruction, and we turned
our pleased attention to the beautiful ceremonies with which the Peace
Palace at The Hague was dedicated. We knew, or we might have known,
that the strategic railway built by Germany to carry troops to the
Belgian frontier was begun in 1904, and that the memorandum of General
Schlieffen was sanctioned by the Emperor (there was no pretence of
secrecy) in 1909. Yet we thought--in common with the rest of the
world--that a “scrap of paper” and a plighted word would constitute
protection. We knew that Germany’s answer to England’s proposals for
a mutual reduction of navies was an increase of estimates, and a
double number of dreadnoughts. Did we suppose these dreadnoughts were
playthings for the Imperial nurseries?
“A pretty toy,” quoth she, “the Thunderer’s bolt!
My urchins play with it.”
When in 1911 President Taft’s “message” was hailed as a prophecy of
peace, Germany’s reply was spoken by Bethmann-Hollweg: “The vital
strength of a nation is the only measure of a nation’s armaments.”
And now the good people who for years have been saying that war is
archaic, are reproaching Christianity for not making it impossible.
Did not the “American Association for International Conciliation”
issue comforting pamphlets, entitled “The Irrationality of War,” and
“War Practically Preventable”? That ought to have settled the matter
forever. Did we not appoint a “Peace Day” for our schools, and a “Peace
Sunday” for churches and Sunday schools? Did not Mr. Carnegie pay ten
millions down for international peace,--and get a very poor article for
his money? There were some beautiful papers read to the Peace Congress
at The Hague, just twelve months before Europe was in flames; and
there is the report of a commission of inquiry which the “World Peace
Foundation,” formerly the “International School of Peace,” informed us
three years ago was “a great advance toward assured peaceful relations
between nations.”
With this sea of sentiment billowing about us, and with Nobel prizes
dropping like gentle rain from Heaven upon thirsty peace-lovers, how
should we read the signs of war, written in the language of artillery?
It is true that President Nicholas Murray Butler, speaking in behalf
of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, observed musingly in November, 1913,
that there was no visible interest displayed by any foreign government,
or by any responsible foreign statesman, in the preparations for the
Third Hague Conference, scheduled for 1915; but this was not a matter
for concern. It was more interesting to read about the photographs
of “educated and humane men and women,” which the “World Conference
for Promoting Concord between all Divisions of Mankind” (a title that
leaves nothing, save grammar, to be desired) proposed collecting in a
vast and honoured album for the edification of the peaceful earth.
And all this time England--England, with her life at stake--shared our
serene composure. Lord Salisbury, indeed, and Lord Roberts cherished no
illusions concerning Germany’s growing power and ultimate intentions.
But then Lord Roberts was a soldier; and Lord Salisbury, though
outwitted in the matter of Heligoland, had that quality of mistrust
which is always so painful in a statesman. The English press preferred,
on the whole, to reflect the opinions of Lord Haldane. They were
amiable and soothing. Lord Haldane knew the Kaiser, and deemed him
a friendly man. Had he not cried harder than anybody else at Queen
Victoria’s funeral? Lord Haldane had translated Schopenhauer, and could
afford to ignore Treitschke. None of the German professors with whom
he was on familiar terms were of the Treitschke mind. They were all
friendly men. It is true that Germany, far from talking platitudes
about peace, has for years past defined with amazing lucidity and
candour her doctrine that might is right. She is strong, brave,
covetous, she has what is called in urbane language “the instinct for
empire,” and she follows implicitly
“The good old rule, ... the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”
It was forlornly amusing to see, three months after the declaration of
war, our book-shops filled with cheap copies of General von Bernhardi’s
bellicose volume; to open our newspapers, and find column after column
of quotation from it; to pick up our magazines, and discover that
all the critics were busy discussing it. That book was published in
1911, and the world (outside of Germany which took its text to heart)
remained “more than usual calm.” Its forcible and closely knit argument
is defined and condensed in one pregnant sentence: “The notion that
a weak nation has the same right to live as a powerful nation is a
presumptuous encroachment on the natural law of development.”
This is something different from the suavities of peace-day orators.
It is also vastly different from the sentiments so gently expressed by
General von Bernhardi in his more recent volume, dictated by German
diplomacy, and designed as a tract for the United States and other
neutral nations. Soothing syrup is not sweeter than this second book;
but its laboured explanations, its amiable denials, even the pretty
compliment paid us by a quotation from “A Psalm of Life” (why ignore
“Mary had a little lamb”?), have failed to obliterate the sharp,
clear outlines of his pitiless policy. Being now on the safe side of
prophecy, we wag our heads over the amazing exactitude with which
Bernhardi forecast Germany’s impending war. But there was at least one
English student and observer, Professor J. A. Cramb of Queen’s College,
London, who gave plain and unheeded warning of the fast-deepening
peril, and of the life-or-death struggle which England would be
compelled to face. Step by step he traced the expansion of German
nationalism, which since 1870 has never swerved from its stern military
ideals. A reading people, the Germans. Yes, and in a single year they
published seven hundred books dealing with war as a science,--not one
of them written for a prize! If the weakness of Germany lies in her
assumption that there is no such thing as honour or integrity in
international relations, her strength lies in her reliance on her own
carefully measured efficiency. Her contempt for other nations has kept
pace with the distrust she inspires.
The graceful remark of a Prussian official to Matthew Arnold, “It
is not so much that we dislike England, as that we think little of
her,” was the expression of a genuine Teutonic sentiment. So, too,
was General von Bernhardi’s characteristic sneer at the “childlike”
confidence reposed by Mr. Elihu Root and his friends in the Hague High
Court of International Justice, with public opinion at its back. Of
what worth, he asked, is law that cannot be converted by force into
government? What is the weight of opinion, unsupported by the glint of
arms? Professor Cramb, seeing in Bernhardi, and in his great master,
Treitschke, the inspiration of their country’s high ambition, told
England in the plainest words he could command that just as the old
German Imperialism began with the destruction of Rome, so would the
new German Imperialism begin with the destruction of England; and that
if Englishmen dreamed of security from attack, they were destined to a
terrible and bloody awakening. Happily for himself,--since he was a man
too old and ill to fight,--he died nine months before the fulfilment of
his prophecy.
Now that the inevitable has come to pass, now that the armaments
have been put to the use for which they were always intended, and
the tale of battle is too terrible to be told, press and pulpit are
calling Christianity to account for its failure to preserve peace.
Ethical societies are reminding us, with something which sounds like
elation, that they have long pointed out “the relaxed hold of doctrine
on the minds of the educated classes.” How they love that phrase,
“educated classes,” and what, one wonders, do they mean by it? A
Jewish rabbi, speaking in Carnegie hall, laments, or rejoices--it is
hard to tell which--that Christian Churches are not taken, and do not
take themselves, seriously. Able editors comment in military language
upon the inability of religious forces to “mobilize” rapidly and
effectively in the interests of peace, and turn out neat phrases like
“anti-Christian Christendom,” which are very effective in editorials.
Popular preachers, too broad-minded to submit to clerical authority,
deliver “syndicated sermons,” denouncing the “creeds of the Dark Ages,”
which still, in these electricity-lighted days, pander to war. Worse
than all, troubled men, seeing the world suddenly bereft of justice and
of mercy, lose courage, and whisper in the silence of their own sad
hearts, “There is no God.”
Meanwhile, the assaulted churches take, as is natural, somewhat
conflicting views of the situation. Roman Catholics have been disposed
to think that the persecutions of the Church in France are bearing
bitter fruit; and at least one American Cardinal has spoken of the war
as God’s punishment for this offence. But if the Almighty appointed
Belgium to be the whipping boy for the sins of France, we shall have
to revise our notions of divine justice and beneficence. Belgium is
the most Catholic country in Europe. Hundreds of the priests and nuns
expelled from France found shelter within its frontiers. But if it
were as stoutly Lutheran or Calvinistic, it would be none the less
innocent of France’s misdemeanours. Moreover, it is worthy of note
that French priests, far from moralizing over the situation, have
rallied to their country’s call. The bugbear, “clerical peril,” has
dropped out of sight. In its place are confidence on the one side, and
unstinted devotion on the other. Exiled monks have returned to fight
in the French army. Students of theological seminaries have been no
less keen than other students to take up arms for France. Abbés have
served as sergeants and ensigns, dying as cheerfully as other men in
the monotonous carnage on the Aisne. Wounded priests have shrived
their wounded comrades on the battlefield. Everywhere the clergy are
playing manly and patriotic parts, forgetting what wrong was done them,
remembering what name they bear.