New York alone are but sixty cents a day, some receiving as little
as thirty cents in the east side factories; that 30,000 young girls
between the ages of twelve and fourteen employed as cash girls cannot
supply themselves with food unless having parents upon whom to
partially depend, are no less moral than material questions. Nor are
they questions confined to that one city, or to any one portion of the
United States, or of christendom, but belong to humanity itself. As all
are parts of one great whole, the evil that afflicts one class touches
all; all suffer because of the wrong done to even one human being. The
population of the city of New York is more largely comprised of women
than of men and a great proportion of this class are dependent upon
their own labor for a livelihood. Although many foreign-born women
emigrate to this country, over two millions having landed upon our
shores within the nine years from 1881 to 1890, it is not alone upon
them these conditions of severe labor fall, but native-born American
women, both within and without the household, suffer from the same kind
of oppression. Even upon the Pacific coast where few foreigners except
Chinese are found, little girls of five and six years are put to work
in the jute mills and factories by side of their drudging mothers,
whose wages do not equal those of the men employed. In government
clerkships at Washington, women receive but one-half the pay that men
receive for the same kind and quality of work. Although the sweating
system in the manufactories of clothing has called the nation’s
attention to its abuses, yet in the District of Columbia, under
sole power of Congress, a system of similar nature exists. Nor are
statistics of woman’s severe work in the United States of immediately
recent date. The labor Commission report of the state of Connecticut
for 1876, declaring that the wives and daughters of the farmer engage
in work which he can find no man to do, rising at four o’clock in the
morning and working until nine in the evening. Analyzing the statistics
of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau for 1891, the _Boston Globe_ showed
the greatly inferior payment of women laborers:
The figures simply show that in the employments in which the
very lowest wages are paid, women constitute over 70 per cent
of the workers, while in the employments where as high as
$20 a week are paid, they constitute hardly over 3 per cent.
In addition to all this is the humiliating fact that in some
occupations, standing side by side with men, the females are
paid less wages for the same work; or, what amounts to the
same thing, a woman of 20 years or upwards is made to work
side by side with a boy often at the same wages. Women are
compelled, then, to fill most of the cheap places, and paid
less wages for the same work at that.
In this report the shameful fact is proven through governmental
statistics that the wages paid to a girl of twenty years are no more
than those paid a boy of ten, women constituting over seventy per cent
of the workers to whom the very lowest wages are paid. Underlying all
other results are those upon woman herself. Before every question of
population, is that of woman as an individual. Overwork and the under
nourishment of muscle, nerve, brain, render her own proper evolution
either as a physical or as a moral being impossible. To just the extent
that such pressure comes upon her, does she cease to be a morally
responsible being. Thousands to whom life and comforts are sweet,
throw aside all scruples, entering that one avenue of escape always
open to a young woman or a girl. For the statement that the majority
of women entering upon immorality have been driven by actual want to
this mode of life, we are again indebted to rigorous investigation and
statistics for information, but the moral deterioration of the race
arising from these wrongs to women can not be estimated by figures. In
teaching, the only absolute equality of wages between man and woman is
found in the Cherokee nation of Indians. The civilization of the Indian
tribes is a question of woman’s education and freedom. The world still
holds a mistaken idea of force and power, those questions not so fully
pertaining to the physical as to the intellectual and spiritual parts
of the being. The _New York Nation_ recently said, “It is absolutely
essential to the preservation of the dignity and independence of
women that they should be on a par with men as regards property and
education, the two things that in modern times have supplanted physical
force as elements of power.”
Real estate possesses more power as property than either money or
jewels. The real strength of American civilization lies in the fact
that almost every family owns its home. Permanent national strength
lies in the division of realty. In England women are more rapidly
becoming part of the governing class than in the United States, and
in that country one-seventh of the landed property owners are women.
These facts should be borne in mind in regard to the civilization of
the native races of America. It is through the Indian women that the
problem of their civilization must be answered; the title in fee simple
to lands should be in the hands of the women.
The union of the state with the church in the enforcement of man’s
“curse” upon woman is most forcibly shown by a decision of the New York
Court of Appeals rendered early in 1892 which held that the services of
a wife belong to the husband and that she cannot recover wages from him
even if holding his written promise to pay. This decision like that of
the Agar-Ellis case in England, was upon the principle that the wife is
so fully under subjection to her husband as to incapacitate her from
making a contract even with that husband. In all the wife’s relations
to the husband she is regarded as a being without responsibility. The
case upon which this decision rested is this: A woman fell down a
coal-hole and sued for damages, recovering $500. The defendant asked
for a new trial upon the ground that the woman was working for her
husband and the court had taken into account her loss of wages. The
services of the wife belonging to the husband, her claim for lost
wages was a fraud. But this decision of the Court of Appeals doubtless
will not interfere with the power of the husband to recover damages
for loss of her time by reason of this injury which deprived him of
her services. The decision of the Court recognized the right of the
husband to compel the wife to perform household duties for him. When
in England, 1880, the married woman’s property rights bill was before
parliament, a commission of inquiry was sent to New York to learn the
effect of securing the control of their own property to married women.
Under various amendments since the first passage of this act in 1848,
the legislature of New York has farther secured to married women the
right of making wills, of collecting wages for work, and of entering
business outside of the household, the proceeds belonging entirely to
herself. But under this decision of the Court of Appeals, the ground
was taken that the wife cannot collect wages from the husband, and
that household work for him is compulsory upon her.[4] This decision
as to compulsory housework controverts that other right recognized by
legislation, of entering into business, doing work outside of the home,
the proceeds to belong solely to herself. Under this decision of the
Court of Appeals, a wife can be compelled to work for the husband in
the house without wages, and is debarred from all outside business.
St. Augustine in his “City of God,” taunts Rome with having caused her
own downfall by her treatment of her slaves. He speaks of the slaves
as miserable beings put to labor only fit for the beasts of the field
and even degraded below them; their condition had brought Rome to its
own destruction. But Roman wives were not forced to labor. The peace
made by the Sabines with the Romans after the forcible abduction of
the Sabine maidens, had for one of its provisions that no labor except
spinning should be required from wives. Among both the ancient Greeks
and Romans, the woman about to become a mother, as heretofore shown,
was held sacred; she was exempt from hard labor and no one was allowed
under penalty of punishment, to vex or disturb her mind.
If degrading their slaves below the beasts of the field led to the
destruction of Rome, as declared by Augustine, what may not be
predicted of that Christian civilization which in the twentieth century
of its existence degrades women and children to such labors as he
declared unfit for the slaves of ancient Rome, suitable only for the
beasts of the field; which harnesses them by side of cows, asses and
dogs to do the most menial work, which robs them in wages and stints
them in food in the name of “religion”?
_Chapter Nine_
+The Church of Today+
While under advancing civilization, a recognition of the religious
rights of woman is steadily progressing among people at large, it
requires but slight investigation to prove that olden church theories
regarding her not only came into the reformation, but largely remain
the same today. The Christianity of the ages having taught the
existence of a superior and an inferior sex possessing different
rights in the Christian Church, held accountable to different codes of
morals, it is not strange that we do not find morality to have been
more of a fundamental principle among the pastors of early Protestant
churches than in the Catholic priesthood. The doctrine of “Once in
grace, always in grace,” carries with it a plea for vice, and the
early experience of strict Calvinistic Scotland was much that of
mediaeval Catholic Europe. The Presbyterian Conventicles[1] early bore
an extremely evil reputation. The fact that ministers of the reformed
church were permitted marriage did not change priestly teaching that
woman was created solely for man, and they found apologies in the Bible
for illicit conduct. These Protestant clergymen taught, as had the
Catholic, that a priest was incapable of sinning; and from the Sermon
on the Mount, “To the pure all things are pure,” was quoted in proof
of this assertion. Even when under circumstances of great personal
peril and danger to life, the trust of parishioners in the morality
of their shepherds was often abused; of this, Rev. David Williamson,
one of the most eminent Presbyterian ministers of Edinburgh, was a
conspicuous example. In defense of his immorality Mr. Williamson said,
“Verily, I do not deny that with St. Paul I have a law in my members
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity unto
the love of sin which is in my members.” The strangest sermons, most
insulting to woman and too indecorous for quotation, were constantly
preached; while her inferiority and incapacity for understanding even
the gospel was also as constantly declared from the pulpit. An old
Presbyterian preacher, Rev. David Douglas, discovering a woman weeping
in the kirk, pointed toward her, crying, “Wife, what makes you weep?
I am sure thou understandeth not what I am saying; my discourse is
directed to the brethren and not to the like of you.” The present
century, with all its enlightenment does not cease to give us glimpses
of that favorite mediaeval doctrine that “sin can be killed with sin as
the best way of becoming innocent again,” and its concomitant, that it
is impossible for a person in grace to commit sin.[2] The doctrines of
holiness and entire sanctification, taught by some sects today, and the
theory that all experience is necessary in order to a full development
of character, are of the same nature. Eastern “Wisdom Religion”
declares that a person can become neither God nor deva without passing
through all experience, returning again and again to earth for this
purpose.
The departure of the soul-atom from the bosom of the Divinity
is a radiation from the life of the Great All, who expends
his strength in order that he may grow again and live by
its return. God thereby acquires new vital force, provided
by all the transformation that the soul-atom has undergone.
Its return is its final reward. Such is the secret of the
evolution of the Great Being and of the Supreme Soul.[3]
Directions for seeking out the way:
Seek it not by any one road, to each temperament there is one
road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found
by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent
progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation
of life. None can take the disciple more than one step onward.
All steps are necessary to make up the ladder, one by one,
as they are surmounted. The virtues of men are steps indeed,
necessary—not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though
they create a fine atmosphere and happy future, they are
useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be
used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. Each man
is to himself absolutely the way, the truth and the life.
Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths
of your own inmost being. Seek it by testing all experience,
by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and
meaning of individuality and the beauty and obscurity of those
other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with
you, and form the race to which you belong.[4]
The Catholic and Calvinistic doctrines of woman’s inferiority of
position and intellect taught from the pulpit, are by no means
relegated to past centuries, but continue to be publicly taught by the
Protestant clergy of every sect, as fully as by their Catholic and
Greek brethren. The first National Woman Suffrage Convention which
assembled in Washington, 1869, having invited Rev. Chaplain Gray, of
the House, to open its proceedings with prayer, he referred in this
petition to woman as an after-thought of the Creator, an inferior and
secondary being, called into existence for the special benefit of
man. The noble old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, sitting in an attitude
of devout attention, suddenly raised her head, and at close of the
prayer, Bible in hand, she read aloud the account of the creation,
Genesis I. 27-28, woman and man equals, both having been given dominion
over nature. The thirtieth anniversary of the first public demand of
woman for the recognition of her equality of right with man, held in
Rochester, N.Y., July 18, 1878, passed a series of resolutions[5]
asserting woman’s equality and religious rights with man. Three of
these proved especially obnoxious to the clergy of the country, in
declaring the first duty of every individual to be self development;
the duty of every woman to be guided by her own reason rather than the
authority of another; and that it was owing to the perversion of the
religious element in woman that she had been so completely subjugated
to priestcraft and superstition.
_Resolved_: That as the first duty of every individual is
self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience
taught to woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not
only to her own vital interests, but through her, to those of
the race.
_Resolved_: That the great principle of the Protestant
Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment
heretofore exercised by men alone, should now be claimed by
woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should
be guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the
church.
_Resolved_: That it is through the perversion of the religious
element in woman—playing upon her hopes and fears of the
future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance
to that which is to come—that she and the children she has
borne have been wrongfully subjugated by priestcraft and
superstition.
These resolutions immediately called forth a sermon in opposition from
the Rev. A. H. Strong, D.D., president of the Rochester Theological
Seminary (Baptist) in which he said:
She is subordinate to man in office, she is to be helper,
not principal. Therefore man has precedence in the order of
creation, woman is made of man, and to supply the felt need
of man. The race, therefore, is called the race of man and
not the race of woman. For this office of subordination and
whether they assert it or not, women are fitted by their very
constitution, and in the very creation of mankind in the
garden of beauty undefiled by the slimy track of the serpent
as it was, God ordained the subordination of woman and the
differences of nature that makes her subordination inevitable.
The power of rule seems to me to have been invested in the
head of the family that he may act for them, or rather that
they may act through him.
The assertion of this theologian that “the race therefore is called
the race of man and not the race of woman,” is of the same character
as that of Inquisitor Sprenger in regard to the word _femina_,
as applied to woman, showing the intellectual calibre of both
inquisitor and theologian to be the same. But in their assertion of
woman’s inferiority and subordination, neither Chaplain Gray nor
President Strong proceeded quite as far as an opposing speaker at the
Philadelphia Woman Suffrage Convention of 1854, who said, “Let woman
first prove that she has a soul, both the Bible and the Church deny
it.” Here we are set back to the Macon Council of the sixth century,
which debated the question of woman’s humanity.
That the church of the nineteenth century possesses the same character
as that of the fourteenth, the twelfth, and fifth, was forcibly
illustrated during the early days of the anti-slavery struggle,
especially in its persecution of the women who took part in that
reform. Lucretia Mott and Esther Moore were integral members of the
American Anti-slavery Society, having assisted in the convention which
organized this society in 1833. Shortly afterward the Grimke sisters
of South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina, convinced of the sinfulness
of slavery, left their delightful home in Charleston, and coming
North, spoke eloquently through Massachusetts against those wrongs
of which they themselves had been witnesses. The church, becoming
frightened at woman’s increasing power and influence, determined to
crush her work. Its action began with the Orthodox Congregational,
at that time the largest and most influential ecclesiastical body of
Massachusetts, and in 1837 the General Association of Massachusetts
issued a pastoral letter calling upon all “churches under their care”
to defend themselves by closing their doors against the abolitionists,
who had set aside the laws of God by welcoming women to their platforms
and allowing them to speak in public;[6] section third was the most
significant portion of this pastoral letter.
III. We invite your attention to the dangers which at present
seem to threaten the female character with wide spread and
permanent injury.
The appropriate duties and influence of woman are clearly
stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence
are unobtrusive and private, but the source of mighty power.
When the mild, dependent, softening influence of woman under
the sternness of man’s opinions is fully exercised, society
feels the effects of it in a thousand forms. The power of
woman is her dependence, flowing from the consciousness of
that weakness which God has given her for her protection, and
which keeps her in those departments of life that form the
character of individuals and of the nation. There are social
influences which females use in promoting piety and the great
objects of Christian benevolence which we cannot too highly
commend. We appreciate the unostentatious prayers and efforts
of woman in advancing the cause of religion at home and
abroad; in Sabbath schools; in leading religious inquirers to
the pastors for instruction; and in all such associated effort
as becomes the modesty of her sex; and earnestly hope that she
may abound more and more in these labors of piety and love.
But when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public
reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary;
we put ourselves in self-defense against her; she yields the
power which God has given her for her protection, and her
character becomes unnatural. If the vine whose strength and
beauty is to lean upon the trellis work, and half conceal
its clusters, thinks to assume the independence and the
overshadowing nature of the elm, it will not only cease to
bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor into the dust. We
cannot, therefore, but regret the mistaken conduct of those
who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious
part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex
who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character
of public lecturers and teachers. We especially deplore the
intimate acquaintance and promiscuous conversation of females
with regard to things which ought not to be named; by which
that modesty and delicacy which is the charm of domestic
life, and which constitutes the true influence of woman in
society is consumed, and the way opened, as we apprehend, for
degeneracy and ruin.
We say these things not to discourage proper influences
against sin, but to secure such reformation as we believe is
scriptural, and will be permanent.
That we may rightly judge the character of this pastoral letter, it
must be remembered, that no discussion upon what is known as “the woman
question” took place at those meetings, which were entirely devoted
to the southern slave. This letter was written by men, emanating
from a body of christian people that sustained colored slavery as an
institution upon which God had as equally placed his sanction, as upon
the subordination of woman. To such extent have the conscience and
will been under the bondage of the priesthood, that the more timid
members of the anti-slavery society became frightened, even some of
those who believed in woman’s equality advising these speakers to yield
their rights in the meetings, lest the ministers who had joined them
should withdraw, taking others with them. Thus priestly intolerance
and the timidity of anti-slavery men, had the effect of silencing the
philanthropic and eloquent Grimke sisters,[7] in their efforts for the
freedom of the slave. After ten months work, their voices were heard
no more. These sisters were not only persecuted in the North, under
ban of the church, but in the South the State united with the Church,
and by a decree of the city of Charleston they were rendered permanent
exiles from home, and informed that should they return despite this,
they would not be able to escape personal violence from a mob. With one
noble exception, this mandate of the church and clergy had effect for
a time in silencing woman’s plea for the slave. For seven long years
the voice of but one woman, that of Abby Kelly,[8] was heard upon the
anti-slavery platform, and the persecutions of the church made her life
one long martyrdom; her appeals for the slave were met by mob violence,
furious howls, cries, and the vilest language being supplemented by
more material efforts for silencing her voice. Were these proceedings
not so thoroughly substantiated, the time so shortly past, credence
could not be given as to the means used against this noble woman to
prevent her pleading for those so greatly wronged.[9] Ministers of
high standing assailed her from the pulpit, a favorite text being,
“Revelations” 2-20. I “have a few things against thee, because thou
suffereth that woman, Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to
teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication.” Not alone the
Congregational body, but all Christian sects, were imbued with the same
persecuting spirit, a Methodist presiding elder characterizing the
Garrisonian societies, as no longer anti-slavery, but “no-government,
no-sabbath, no-church, no-bible, no-marriage, woman’s rights societies.”