While below they took me into the patio, that quiet inner garden which
was so attractive from above. It was a lovely place. The moon was riding
high and shone down into it; a slender fountain spray rose shimmering
from its carved basin; on the southern-facing wall a great wistaria vine
drooped in budding purple, and beds of violets made the air rich with
soft fragrance.
Here and there were people walking; and in the shadowy corners sat young
couples, apparently quite happy.
"I suppose you don't know the names of one of them," I suggested.
"On the contrary, I know nearly all," answered Hallie. "These apartments
are taken very largely by friends and acquaintances. You see, the
gardens and roofs are in common, and there are the reading-rooms,
ballrooms, and so on. It is pleasanter to be friends to begin with, and
most of us get to be afterward, if we are not at first.
"But surely there are some disagreeable people left on earth!"
"Yes; but where there is so much more social life people get together in
congenial sets," put in Nellie; "just as we used to in summer resorts."
"There aren't so many bores and fools as there used to be, John," Owen
remarked. "We really do raise better people. Even the old ones have
improved. You see, life is so much pleasanter and more interesting."
"We're all healthier. Uncle John, because we're better fed; that makes
us more agreeable."
"There's more art in the world to make us happier," said Jerrold.
"Hallie thinks it's all due to her everlasting bread and butter. Listen
to that now!"
From a balcony up there in the moonlight came a delicious burst of
melody; a guitar and two voices, and the refrain was taken up from
another window, from one corner of the garden, from the roof; all in
smooth accord.
"Your group here must be an operatic one," I suggested. But my nephew
answered that it was not, but that music--good music--was so common now,
and so well taught, that the average was high in both taste and
execution.
We sat late that night, my new family bubbling over with things to say,
and filling my mind with a confused sense of new advantages, unexplained
and only half believed.
I could not bring myself to accept as commonplace facts the unusual
excellences so glibly described, and I suppose my silence showed this as
well as what I said, for my sister presently intervened with decision:
"We must all stop this for to-night," she said. "John feels as if he was
being forcibly fed--he's got to rest. Then I suggest that to-morrow Owen
take him in hand--go off for a tramp, why don't you?--and really
straighten out things. You see, there are two distinct movements to
consider, the unconscious progress that would have taken place anyway in
thirty years, and then the deliberate measures adopted by the 'New
Lifers,' and it's rather confusing. I've labored with him all the way
home now; I think the man's point of view will help."
* * * * * *
Owen was a big man with a strong, wholesome face, and a quizzical little
smile of his own. He and I went up the river next morning in a swift
motor boat, which did not batter the still air with muffled banging as
they used to do, and strolled off in the bright spring sunshine into
Palisade Park.
"We've saved all the loveliest of it--for keeps," he said. "Out here,
where the grass and trees are just as they used to be, you won't be
bothered, and one expositor will be easier to handle than four at once.
Now, shall I talk, or will you ask questions?"
"I'd like to ask a few questions first, then you can expound by the
hour. Do give me the long and short of this 'women-waked-up'
proposition. What does it mean--to a man?"
Owen stroked his chin.
"No loss," he said at length; "at least, no loss that's not covered by a
greater gain. Do you remember the new biological theory in regard to the
relative position of the sexes that was beginning to make headway when
we were young?"
I nodded. "Ward's theory? Oh, yes; I heard something of it. Pretty
far-fetched, it seemed to me."
"Far-fetched and dear-bought, but true for all that. You'll have to
swallow it. The female is the race type; the male is her assistant. It's
established beyond peradventure."
I meditated, painfully. I looked at Owen. He had just as happy and proud
a look as if he was a real man--not merely an Assistant. I though of
Jerrold--nothing cowed about him; of the officers and men on the ship;
of such men as I had seen in the street.
"I suppose this applies in the main to remote origins?" I suggested.
"It holds good all through life--is just as true as it ever was."
"Then--do you mean that women run everything, and men are only helpers?"
"Oh, no; I wasn't talking about human life at all--only about sex.
'Running things' has nothing to do with that. Women run some businesses
and are in practically all, but men still do the bulk of the world's
work. There is a natural division of labor, after all."
This was pleasant to hear, but he dashed my hopes.
"Men do almost all the violent plain work--digging and hewing and
hammering; women, as a class, prefer the administrative and constructive
kinds. But all that is open yet, and settling itself gradually; men and
women are working everywhere. The big change which Nellie is always
referring to means simply that women 'waked up' to a realization of the
fact that they were human beings."
"What were they before, pray?"
"Only female beings."
"Female human beings, of course," said I.
"Yes; a little human, but mostly female. Now they are mostly human. It
is a great change."
"I don't follow you. Aren't they still wives and mothers?"
"They are still mothers--far more so than they were before, as a matter
of fact; but as to being wives--there's a difference."
I was displeased, and showed it.
"Well, is it Polygamy, or Polyandry, or Trial Marriages, or what?"
Owen gazed at me with an expression very like Nellie's.
"There it is," he said. "You can only think about women in some sort of
relation to men, of a change in marriage relations as merely a change in
kind; whereas what has happened is a change in degree. We still have
monogamous marriages, on a much purer and more lasting plane than a
generation ago; but the word 'wife' does not mean what it used to."
"Go on--I can't follow you at all."
"A 'wife' used to be a possession; 'wilt thou be mine?' said the lover,
and the wife was 'his.'"
"Well--whose else is she now?" I asked with some sharpness.
"She does not 'belong' to anyone in that old sense. She is the wife of
her husband in that she is his true lover, and that their marriage is
legally recorded; but her life and work does not belong to him. He has
no right to her 'services' any more. A woman who is in a business--like
Hallie, for instance--does not give it up when she marries."
I stopped him. "What! Isn't Hallie married?"
"No--not yet."
"But--that is her flat?"
"Yes; why not?" He laughed at me. "You see, you can't imagine a woman
having a home of her own. Hallie is twenty-three. She won't marry for
some years, probably; but she has her position and is doing excellent
work. It's only a minor inspectorship, but she likes it. Why shouldn't
she have a home?"
"Why doesn't she have it with you?"
"Because I like to live with my wife. Her business, and mine, are in
Michigan; Hallie's in New York."
"And when she marries she keeps on being an inspector?" I queried.
"Precisely. The man who marries that young woman will have much
happiness, but he will not 'own' her, and she will not be his wife in
the sense of a servant. She will not darn his socks or cook his meals.
Why should she?"
"Will she not nurse his babies?"
"No; she will nurse _her_ babies--_their_ babies, not 'his' merely."
"And keep on being an inspector?"
"And keep on being an inspector--for four hours a day--in two shifts.
Not a bit more difficult than cooking, my dear boy."
"But--she will not be with her children--"
"She will be with her children twenty hours out of the twenty-four--if
she wants to. But Hallie's not specially good with children. . . . You
see, John, the women have specialized--even in motherhood."
Then he went on at considerable length to show how there had arisen a
recognition of far more efficient motherhood than was being given; that
those women best fitted for the work had given eager, devoted lives to
it and built up a new science of Humaniculture; that no woman was
allowed to care for her children without proof of capacity.
"Allowed by whom?" I put in.
"By the other women--the Department of Child Culture--the Government."
"And the fathers--do they submit to this, tamely?"
"No; they cheerfully agree and approve. Absolutely the biggest thing
that has happened, some of us think, is that new recognition of the
importance of childhood. We are raising better people now."
I was silent for a while, pulling up bits of grass and snapping small
sticks into inch pieces.
"There was a good deal of talk about Eugenics, I remember," I said at
last, "and--what was that thing? Endowment of Motherhood?"
"Yes--man's talk," Owen explained. "You see, John, we couldn't look at
women but in one way--in the old days; it was all a question of sex with
us--inevitably, we being males. Our whole idea of improvement was in
better breeding; our whole idea of motherhood was in each woman's
devoting her whole life to her own children. That turbid freshet of an
Englishman, Wells, who did so much to stir his generation, said 'I am
wholly feminist'--and he was! He saw women only as females and wanted
them endowed as such. He was never able to see them as human beings and
amply competent to take care of themselves.
"Now, our women, getting hold of this idea that they really are human
creatures, simply blossomed forth in new efficiency. They specialized
the food business--Hallie's right about the importance of that--and then
they specialized the baby business. All women who wish to, have babies;
but if they wish to take care of them they must show a diploma."
I looked at him. I didn't like it--but what difference did that make? I
had died thirty years ago, it appeared.
"A diploma for motherhood!" I repeated; but he corrected me.
"Not at all. Any woman can be a mother--if she's normal. I said she had
to have a diploma as a child-culturist--quite a different matter."
"I don't see the difference."
"No, I suppose not. I didn't, once," he said. "Any and every mother was
supposed to be competent to 'raise' children--and look at the kind of
people we raised! You see, we are beginning to learn--just beginning.
You needn't imagine that we are in a state of perfection--there are more
new projects up for discussion than ever before. We've only made a
start. The consequences, so far, are so good that we are boiling over
with propositions for future steps."
"Go on about the women," I said. "I want to know the worst and become
resigned."
"There's nothing very bad to tell," he continued cheerfully. "When a
girl is born she is treated in all ways as if she was a boy; there is no
hint made in any distinction between them except in the perfectly open
physiological instruction as to their future duties. Children, young
humans, grow up under precisely the same conditions. I speak, of course,
of the most advanced people--there are still backward places--there's
plenty to do yet.
"Then the growing girls are taught of their place and power as
mothers--and they have tremendously high ideals. That's what has done so
much to raise the standard in men. It came hard, but it worked."
I raised my head with keen interest, remarking, "I've glimpsed a sort of
'iron hand in a velvet glove' back of all this. What did they do?"
Owen looked rather grim for a moment.
"The worst of it was twenty or twenty-five years back. Most of those men
are dead. That new religious movement stirred the socio-ethical sense to
sudden power; it coincided with the women's political movement, urging
measures for social improvement; its enormous spread, both by preaching
and literature, lit up the whole community with new facts, ideas and
feelings. Health--physical purity--was made a practical ideal. The young
women learned the proportion of men with syphilis and gonorrhea and
decided it was wrong to marry them. That was enough. They passed laws in
every State requiring a clean bill of health with every marriage
license. Diseased men had to die bachelors--that's all."
"And did men submit to legislation like that?" I protested.
"Why not? It was so patently for the protection of the race--of the
family--of the women and children. Women were solid for it, of
course--and all the best men with them. To oppose it was almost a
confession of guilt and injured a man's chances of marriage."
"It used to be said that any man could find a woman to marry him," I
murmured, meditatively.
"Maybe he could--once. He certainly cannot now. A man who has one of
those diseases is so reported--just like small-pox, you see. Moreover,
it is registered against him by the Department of Eugenics--physicians
are required to send in lists; any girl can find out."
"It must have left a large proportion of unmarried women."
"It did, at first. And that very thing was of great value to the world.
They were wise, conscientious, strong women, you see, and they poured
all their tremendous force into social service. Lots of them went into
child culture--used their mother-power that way. It wasn't easy for
them; it wasn't easy for the left-over men, either!"
"It must have increased prostitution to an awful extent," I said.
Owen shook his head and regarded me quizzically.
"That is the worst of it," he said. "There isn't any."
I sat up. I stood up. I walked up and down. "No prostitution! I--I can't
believe it. Why, prostitution is a social necessity, as old as Nineveh!"
Owen laughed outright. "Too late, old man; too late! I know we used to
think so. We did use to call it a 'social necessity,' didn't we? Come,
now, tell me what necessity it was _to the women_."
I stopped my march and looked at him.
"To the women," he repeated. "What did they want of prostitution? What
good did it do them?"
"Why--why--they made a living at it," I replied, rather lamely.
"Yes, a nice, honorable, pleasant, healthy living, didn't they? With all
women perfectly well able to earn an excellent living decently; with all
women fully educated about these matters and knowing what a horrible
death was before them in this business; with all women brought up like
human beings and not like over-sexed female animals, and with all women
quite free to marry if they wished to--how many, do you think, would
choose that kind of business?
"We never waited for them to choose it, remember! We fooled them and
lied to them and dragged them in--and drove them in--forced them in--and
kept them as slaves and prisoners. They didn't really enjoy the life;
you know that. Why should they go into it if they do not have to--to
accommodate us?"
"Do you mean to tell me there are no--wantons--among women?" I demanded.
"No, I don't mean any such thing. There are various kinds of
over-developed and morbidly developed women as there are men, and we
haven't weeded them out entirely. But the whole thing is now recognized
as pathological--cases for medical treatment, or perhaps surgical.
Besides, wantonness is not prostitution. Prostitution is a social crime
of the worst order. No one thing did more harm. The women stamped it
out."
"Legislated us all into morality, did they?" I inquired sarcastically.
"Legislation did a good deal; education did more; the new religion did
most; social opinion helped. You remember we men never really tried to
legislate against prostitution--we wanted it to go on."
"Why, surely we did legislate against it--and it was of no use!" I
protested.
"No; we legislated against the women, but not against the men, or the
thing itself. We examined the women, and fined them, and licensed
them--and never did anything against the men. Women legislators used
very different measures, I assure you."
"I suppose it is for the good of the world," I presently admitted;
"but----"
"But you don't quite like to think of men in this new and peculiar
position of having to be good!"
"Frankly--I don't. I'm willing to be good, but-- I don't like to be
given no choice."
"Well, now, look at it. As it was, we had one way, according to what we
thought was good for us. Rather than lead clean, contented lives at some
expense to ourselves in the way of moral and physical control, we
deliberately sacrificed an army of women to a horrible life and a more
horrible death, and corrupted the blood of the nation. It was on the
line of health they made their stand, not on 'morality' alone. Under our
new laws it is held a crime to poison another human being with syphilis,
just as much as to use prussic acid."
"Nellie said you had no crime now."
"Oh, well, Nellie is an optimist. I suppose she meant the old kinds and
definitions. We don't call things 'crimes' any more. And then, really,
there is not a hundredth part of the evil done that there used to be. We
know more, you see, and have less temptation."
We were silent for a while. I watched a gull float and wheel over the
blue water. Big airships flew steadily along certain lines. Little ones
sailed about on all sides.
One darted over our heads and lit with a soft swoop on an open
promontory.
"Didn't they use to buzz?" I asked Owen.
"Of course; just as the first motor boats thumped and banged abominably.
We will not stand for unnecessary noise, as we used to."
"How do you stop it? More interference with the individual rights?"
"More recognition of public rights. A bad noise is a nuisance, like a
bad smell. We didn't used to mind it much--but the women did. You see,
what women like has to be considered now."
"It always was considered!" I broke in with some heat. "The women of
America were the most spoiled, pampered lot on earth; men gave up to
them in all ways."
"At home, perhaps, but not in public. The city and state weren't run to
suit them at all."
"Why should they be? Women belong at home. If they push into a man's
world they ought to take the consequences."
Owen stretched his long legs and looked up at the soft, brilliant blue
above us.
"Why do you call the world 'man's?" he asked.
"It was man's; it ought to be. Woman's place is in the home. I suppose I
sound like ancient history to you?" and I laughed a little shamefacedly.
"We have _rather_ lost that point of view," Owen guardedly admitted.
"You see----" and then he laughed. "It's no use, John; no matter how we
put it to you it's a jar. The world's thought has changed--and you have
got to catch up!"
"Suppose I refuse? Suppose I really am unable?"
"We won't suppose it for a moment," he said cheerfully. "Ideas are not
nailed down. Just take out what you had and insert some new ones. Women
are people--just as much as we are; that's a _fact_, my dear fellow.
You'll have to accept it."
"And are men allowed to be people, too?" I asked gloomily.
"Why, of course! Nothing has interfered with our position as human
beings; it is only our sex supremacy that we have lost."
"And do you _like_ it?" I demanded.
"Some men made a good deal of fuss at first--the old-fashioned kind, and
all the worst varieties. But modern men aren't worried in the least over
their position. . . . See here, John, you don't grasp this--women are
vastly more agreeable than they used to be."
I looked at him in amazement.
"Fact!" he said. "Of course, we loved our own mothers and daughters and
sisters, more or less, no matter how they looked or what they did; and
when we were 'in love' there was no limit to the glory of 'the beloved
object.' But you and I know that women were pretty unsatisfactory in the
old days."
I refused to admit it, but he went on calmly.
"The 'wife and mother' was generally a tired, nervous, overworked
creature. She soon lost her beauty and vigor, her charm and inspiration.
We were forever chasing fine, handsome, highly desirable young girls,
and forever reducing them to weary, worn-out women--in the name of love!
The gay outsiders were always a fresh attraction--as long as we couldn't
have them. . . . See here, John, can't you understand? Our old way of
using women wasn't good for them--nor for us, either, by the way--but it
simply spoiled the women. They were hopelessly out of the running with
us in all human lines; their business was housework, and ours was world
work. There was very little real companionship.
"Now women are intelligent, experienced, well-trained citizens, fully
our equals in any line of work they take up, and with us everywhere.
It's made the world over!"
"Made it 'feminist' through and through, I suppose!" I groaned.
"Not a bit! It used to be 'masculist' through and through; now it's just
_human_. And, see here--women are more attractive, as women, than they
used to be."
I stared at this, unbelieving.
"That's true! You see, they are healthy; there's a new standard of
physical beauty--very Greek--you must have noticed already the big,
vigorous, fresh-colored, free-stepping girls."
I had, even in my brief hours of observation.
"They are far more perfect physically, better developed mentally, with a
higher moral sense--yes, you needn't look like that! We used to call
them our 'moral superiors,' just because they had the one virtue we
insisted on--and we never noticed the lack in other lines. Women to-day
are truthful, brave, honest, generous, self-controlled; they
are--jollier, more reasonable, more companionable."
"Well, I'm glad to hear that," I rather grudgingly admitted. "I was
afraid they would have lost all--charm."
"Yes, we used to feel that way, I remember. Funny! We were convinced on
the one hand that there was nothing to a woman but her eternal
womanliness, and on the other we were desperately afraid her womanliness
would disappear the moment she turned her mind to anything else. I
assure you that men love women, in general and in particular, much more
than they used to."
I pondered. "But--what sort of home life do you have?"
"Think for a moment of what we used to have--even in a 'happy home.' The
man had the whole responsibility of keeping it up--his business life and
interests all foreign to her. She had the whole labor of running it--the
direct manual labor in the great majority of cases--the management in
any case. They were strangers in an industrial sense.
"When he came home he had to drop all his line of thought--and she hers,
except that she generally unloaded on him the burden of inadequacy in
housekeeping. Sometimes he unloaded, too. They could sympathize and
condole, but neither could help the other.
"The whole thing cost like sin, too. It was a living nightmare to lots
of men--and women! The only things they had in common were their
children and 'social interests.'
"Well--nowadays, in the first place every body is easy about money.
(I'll go into that later.) No woman marries except for love--and good
judgment, too; all women are more desirable--more men want to marry
them--and that improves the men! You see, a man naturally cares more for
women than for anything else in life--and they know it! It's the handle
they lift by. That's what has eliminated tobacco."
"Do you mean to say that these women have arbitrarily prevented
smoking?" I do not smoke myself, but I was angry nevertheless.
"Not a bit of it, John--not a bit of it. Anybody can smoke who wants
to."
"Then why don't they?"
"Because women do not like it."
"What has that to do with it? Can't a man do what he wants to--even if
they don't like it?"
"Yes, he can; but it costs too much. Men like tobacco, but they like
love better, old man."
"Is it one of your legal requirements for marriage?"
"No, not legal; but women disapprove of tobacco-y lovers, husbands,
fathers; they know that the excessive use of it is injurious, and won't
marry a heavy smoker. But the main point is that they simply don't like
the smell of the stuff, or of the man who uses it--most women, that is."
"But what _difference does_ it make? I dare say that most women did not
like it before, but surely a man has a right----"
"To make himself a disgusting object to his wife," Owen interrupted.
"Yes, he has a 'right' to. We would have a right to bang on a tin pan, I
suppose--or to burn rubber, but he wouldn't be popular!"
"It's tyranny!" I protested.
"Not at all," he said, imperturbably. "We had no idea what a nuisance we
used to be, that's all; or how much women put up with that they did not
like at all. I asked a woman once--when I was a bachelor--why she
objected to tobacco, and she frankly replied that a man who did not
smoke was much pleasanter to kiss! She was a very fascinating little
widow--I confess it made me think."
"It's the same with liquor, I suppose? Let's get it all told."
"Yes, only more so. Alcoholism was a race evil of the worst sort. I
cannot imagine how we put up with it so long."
"Is this spotless world of yours one solid temperance union?"
"Practically. We use some light wines and a little spirits yet, but
infrequently--in this country, at least, and Europe is vastly improved.
"But that was a much more serious thing than the other. It wasn't a mere
matter of not marrying! They used all kinds of means. But come on--we'll
be late to dinner; and dinner, at least, is still a joy, Brother John."