MY WORK FOR EDUCATION.
I was the first woman appointed on a Board of Advice under the
Education Department, and found the work interesting. The powers of the
board were limited to an expenditure of 5 pounds for repairs without
applying to the department and to interviewing the parents of children
who had failed to attend the prescribed number of days, as well as
those who pleaded poverty as an excuse for the non-payment of fees. I
always felt that the school fees were a heavy burden on the poor, and
rejoiced accordingly when free education was introduced into South
Australia. This was the second State to adopt this great reform,
Victoria preceding it by a few years. I objected to the payment of fees
on another ground. I felt they bore heavily on the innocent children
themselves through the notion of caste which was created in the minds
of those who paid fees to the detriment of their less fortunate school
companions. And again, education that is compulsory should be free.
Other women have since become members of School Boards, but I was the
pioneer of that branch of public work for women in this State. It is a
privilege that American women have been fighting for for many years--to
vote for and to be eligible to sit on School Boards. In many of the
States this has been won to their great advantage. In this present year
of 1910 Mrs. Ella, Flagg Young, at the age of 65, has been elected by
the Chigago Board, Director of the Education of that great city of over
two millions of inhabitants at a salary of 2,000 pounds a year, with a
male university professor as an assistant. At an age when we in South
Australia are commanding our teachers to retire, in Chicago, which is
said by Foster Fraser to cashier men at 40, this elderly woman has
entered into her great power.
It is characteristic of me that I like to do thoroughly what I
undertake to do at all, and when, on one occasion I had not received
the usual summons to attend a board meeting, I complained of the
omission to the Chairman. "I do not want," I said, "to be a merely
ornamental member of this board. I want to go to all the meetings." He
replied, courteously, "It is the last thing that we would say of you,
Miss Spence, that you are ornamental!" It was half a minute before he
discovered that he had put his disclaimer in rather a different form
from what he had intended, and he joined in the burst of laughter which
followed. Another amusing contretemps occurred when the same gentleman
and I were visiting the parents who had pleaded for exemption from the
payment of fees. At one house there was a grown-up daughter who had
that morning left the service of the gentleman's mother--a fact
enlarged upon by my companion during the morning's drive. "Why is your
eldest daughter out of a place?" was the first question he put to the
woman. "She might be earning good wages, and be able to help you pay
the fees." "Oh!" came the unexpected reply, "she had to leave old Mrs.
---- this morning; she was that mean there was no living in the house
with her!" Knowing her interlocutor only as the man in authority, the
unfortunate woman scarcely advanced her cause by her plain speaking,
and I was probably the only member of the trio who appreciated the
situation. I am sure many people who were poorer than this mother paid
the fees rather than suffer the indignity of such cross-questioning by
the school visitors and the board--an unfortunate necessity of the
system, which disappeared with the abolition of school fees.
It had been suggested by the Minister of Education of that period that
the children attending the State schools should be instructed in the
duties of citizenship, and that they should be taught something of the
laws under which they lived, and I was commissioned to write a short
and pithy statement of the case. It was to be simple enough for
intelligent children in the fourth class; 11 or 12--it was to lead from
the known to the unknown--it might include the elements of political
economy and sociology--it might make use of familiar illustrations from
the experience of a new country--but it must not be long. It was not
very easy to satisfy myself and Mr. Hartley--who was a severe
critic--but when the book of 120 pages was completed he was satisfied.
A preface I wrote for the second edition--the first 5,000 copies being
insufficient for the requirements of the schools--will give some idea
of the plan of the work:--"In writing this little book, I have aimed
less at symmetrical perfection than at simplicity of diction, and such
arrangement as would lead from the known to the unknown, by which the
older children in our public schools might learn not only the actual
facts about the laws they live under, but also some of the principles
which underlie all law." The reprinting gave me an opportunity to reply
to my critics that "political economy, trades unions, insurance
companies, and newspapers" were outside the scope of the laws we live
under. But I thought that in a new State where the optional duties of
the Government are so numerous, it was of great importance for the
young citizen to understand economic principles. As conduct is the
greater part of life, and morality, not only the bond of social union,
but the main source of individual happiness, I took the ethical part of
the subject first, and tried to explain that education was of no value
unless it was used for good purposes. As without some wealth,
civilization was impossible, I next sought to show that national and
individual wealth depends on the security that is given by law, and on
the industry and the thrift which that security encourages. Land tenure
is of the first importance in colonial prosperity, and consideration of
the land revenue and the limitations as to its expenditure led me to
the necessity for taxation and the various modes of levying it.
Taxation led me to the power which imposes, collects, and expends it.
This involved a consideration of those representative institutions
which make the Government at once the master and the servant of the
people. Under this Government our persons and our prosperity are
protected by a system of criminal, civil, and insolvent law--each
considered in its place. Although not absolutely included in the laws
we live under, I considered that providence, and its various outlets in
banks, savings banks, joint stock companies, friendly societies, and
trades unions, were matters too important to be left unnoticed; and
also those influences which shape character quite as much as statute
laws--public opinion, the newspaper, and amusements. As the use of my
little book was restricted solely to school hours, my hope that the
parents might be helped and encouraged by its teaching was doomed to
disappointment. But the children of 30 years ago, when "The Laws We
Live Under" was first published, are the men and women of to-day, and
who shall say but that among them are to be found some at least worthy
and true citizens, who owe to my little book their first inspiration to
"hitch their wagon to a star." Last year an enthusiastic young Swedish
teacher and journalist was so taken with this South Australian little
handbook of civics that he urged on me the duty of bringing it up to
date, and embracing women's suffrage, the relations of the States to
the Commonwealth, as well as the industrial legislation which is in
many ways peculiar to Australia, but although those in authority were
sympathetic no steps have been taken for its reproduction. Identified
as I had been for so many years with elementary education in South
Australia, my mind was well prepared to applaud the movement in favour
of the higher education of poorer children of both sexes by the
foundation of bursaries and scholarships, and the opening up of the
avenues of learning to women by admitting them to University degrees.
Victoria was the first to take this step, and all over the Commonwealth
the example has been followed. I am, however, somewhat disappointed
that University women are not more generally progressive in their
ideas. They have won something which I should have been very glad of,
but which was quite out of reach. All opportunities ought to be
considered as opportunities for service. As my brother David regarded
the possession of honours and wealth as demanding sacrifice for the
common good, so I regarded special knowledge and special culture as
means for advancing the culture of all. It is said to be human nature
when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic
ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that
altruistic ideas should also be cultivated. We see that in China an
aristocracy of letters--for it is through passing difficult
examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are
appointed--is no protection to the poor and ignorant from oppression or
degradation. It is true that the classics in China are very old, but so
are the literatures of Greece and Rome, on which so many university
degrees are founded; and it ought to be impressed upon all seekers
after academic honours that personal advantage is not the be-all and
end-all of their pursuits. In our democratic Commonwealth, although
there are some lower titles bestowed by the Sovereign on colonists more
or less distinguished, these are not hereditary, so that an aristocracy
is not hereditary. There may be an upper class, based on landed estate
or one on business success, or one on learning, but all tend to become
conservative as conservatism is understood in Australia. Safety is
maintained by the free rise from the lower to the higher. But all the
openings to higher education offered in high school and university do
not tempt the working man's children who want to earn wages as soon as
the law lets them go to work. Nor do they tempt their parents to their
large share of the sacrifice which young Scotch lads and even American
lads make to get through advanced studies. The higher education is
still a sort of preserve of the well-to-do, and when one thinks of how
greatly this is valued it seems a pity that it is not open to the
talents, to the industry, to the enthusiasm of all the young of both
sexes. But one exception I must make to the aloofness of people with
degrees and professions from the preventible evils of the world, and
that is in the profession that is the longest and the most
exacting--the medical profession. The women doctors whom I have met in
Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney have a keen sense of their
responsibility to the less fortunate. That probably is because medicine
as now understood and practised is the most modern of the learned
professions, and is more human than engineering, which is also modern.
It takes us into the homes of the poor more intimately than even the
clergyman, and it offers remedies and palliatives as well as advice.
The law is little studied by women in Australia, but in the United
States there are probably a thousand or more legal practitioners. It is
the profession that I should have chosen when I was young if it had
been in any way feasible. I had no bent for the medical profession, and
still less for what every one thinks the most womanly of
avocations--that of the trained nurse. I could nurse my own relatives
more or less well, but did not distinguish myself in that way, and I
could not devote myself to strangers. The manner in which penniless
young men become lawyers in the United States seems impossible in
Australia. Judge Lindsay, son of a ruined southern family, studied law
and delivered newspapers in the morning, worked in a lawyer's office
through the day, and acted as janitor at night. The course appears to
be shorter, and probably less Latin and Greek were required in a
western State than here. But during the long vacation in summer,
students go as waiters in big hotels at seaside or other health
resorts, or take up some other seasonal trade. All the Columbian guards
at the Chicago Exhibition were students. They kept order, they gave
directions, they wheeled invalids in bath chairs, and they earned all
that was needed, for their next winter's course. In the long high
school holidays youths and maidens who are poor and ambitious work for
money. I have seen fairly well-paid professors who went back to the
father's farm and worked hard all harvest time--and students always did
so. It appears easier in America to get a job for three months'
vacation than in England or Australia, and the most surprising thing
about an American is his versatility. Teaching is with most American
men only a step to something better, so that almost all elementary and
the far greater proportion of high school teaching is in the hands of
women. In Australia our male teachers have to spend so many years
before they are fully equipped that they rarely leave the profession.
The only check on the supply is that the course is so long and
laborious that the youth prefers an easy clerkship. Women, in spite of
the chance of marriage, enter the profession in the United States in
greater numbers, and as the scale of salaries is by no means equal pay
for equal work, except in New York, money is saved by employing women.
I think that it is the student of arts (that English title which is as
vague and unmeaning as the Scottish one of humanities)--student of
ancient classical literature--who, whether man or woman, has least
perception of the modern spirit or sympathy with the sorrows of the
world. With all honour to the classical authors, there are two things
in which they were deficient--the spirit of broad humanity and the
sense of humour. All ancient literature is grave--nay, sad. It is also
aristocratic for learning was the possession of the few. While writing
this narrative I came upon a notable thing done by Miss Crystal
Eastman, a member of the New York Bar, and Secretary of the State
Commission on Employers' Liability. It is difficult for us to
understand how so many good things are blocked, not only in the Federal
Government, but in the separate States, by the written constitutions.
In Great Britain the Constitution consists of unwritten principles
embodied either in Parliamentary statutes or in the common law, and
yields to any Act which Parliament may pass, and the judiciary can
impose no veto on it. This is one reason why England is so far ahead of
the United States in labour legislation. Miss Eastman was the principal
speaker at the annual meeting in January, 1910, of the New York State
Bar Association. She is a trained economic investigator as well as a
lawyer, and her masterly analysis of conditions under the present
liability law held close attention, and carried conviction to many
present that a radical change was necessary. The recommendations for
the statute were to make limited compensation for all accidents, except
those wilfully caused by the victim, compulsory on all employers. With
regard to dangerous occupations the person who profits by them should
bear the greatest share of the loss through accident. As for the
constitutionality of such legislation Miss Eastman said--"If our State
Constitution cannot be interpreted so as to recognise such an idea of
justice then I think we should amend our Constitution. I see no reason
why we should stand in such awe of a document which expressly provides
for its own revision every ten years." The evils against which this
brave woman lawyer contends are real and grievous. Working people in
America who suffer from injury are unmercifully exploited by the
ambulance-chasing lawyers. Casualty insurance companies are said to be
weary of being diverted from their regular business to become a mere
fighting force in the Courts to prevent the injured or the dependents
from getting any compensation. The long-suffering public is becoming
aware that the taxpayers are compelled to bear the burden of supporting
the pitifully great multitude of incapacitated or rendered dependent
because of industrial accident or occupational diseases. Employers
insure their liability, and the poor man has to fight an insurance
company, and at present reform is blocked on the plea that it is
unconstitutional. There are difficulties even in Australia, and to
enquire into such difficulties would be good work for women lawyers.