power of initiative and her organizing faculty. The Woman's Committee
of the Council of National Defense, appointed soon after the outbreak of
war, still has no administrative power. As one member of the Committee
says, "We are not allowed to do anything without the consent of the
Council of National Defense. There is no appropriation for the Woman's
Committee. We are furnished with headquarters, stationery, some printing
and two stenographers, but nothing more. It is essential that we raise
money to carry on the other expenses. The great trouble is that now, as
always, men want women to do the work while they do the overseeing."
[Illustration: The women of the Motor Corps of the National League for
Woman's Service refuting the traditions that women have neither strength
nor endurance.]
Perhaps holding the helm has become second nature to men simply because
they have held the helm so long, but I am inclined to think they have a
very definite desire to have women help steer the ship. Surely the
readiness with which they are sharing their political power with women,
would seem to indicate their wish for cooperation on a plan of
perfect equality.
In any case, it is not necessary to hang on the skirts of government.
America has always shown evidence of greater gift in private enterprise
than state action. Perhaps women will demonstrate the national
characteristic. It was farsightedness and enterprise that led the
Intercollegiate Bureaus of Occupations, societies run for women by
women, to strike out in this crisis and open up new callings for their
clients, and still better, to persuade colleges and schools to modify
curricula to meet the changed demands.
Women are often passed over because they are not prepared.
The Bureaus have found the demand for women in industrial chemistry and
physics, for instance, to be greater than the supply because the
graduates of women's colleges have not been carried far enough in
mathematics, and in chemistry have been kept too much to theoretical
text-book work. For example, the head of a certain industry was willing
to give the position of chemist at his works to a woman. He needed some
one to suggest changes in process from time to time, and to watch waste.
He set down eight simple problems such as might arise any day in his
factory for the candidates to answer. Some of the women, all college
graduates, who had specialized in chemistry, could not answer a single
problem, and none showed that grip of the science which would enable
them to give other than rule of thumb solutions. He engaged a man.
In answering the questionnaire which the New York Bureau of Occupations
sent to one hundred and twenty-five industrial plants, the manager in
almost every case replied, in regard to the possibility of employing
women in such positions as research or control chemists, that applicants
were "badly prepared." As hand workers, too, women are handicapped by
lack of knowledge of machinery. In this tool age, high school girls are
cut off from technical education, although they are destined to carry on
in large measure our skilled trades. I am told that in Germany many
factories had to close because only women were available as managers,
and they had not been fitted by business and technical schools for
the task.
If women individually are looking for a soft place, if they are afraid,
as one manager expressed it, "to put on overalls and go into a vat,"
even when their country is so in need of their service, it is futile for
them to ask collectively for equal opportunity and equal pay; if they
individually fail to prepare as for a life work, regarding themselves as
but temporarily in business or a profession, their collective demand
upon the world for a fair field and no favor will be as ineffective as
illogical.
The doors stand wide open. It rests with women themselves as to whether
they shall enter in.
To the steady appeals of the employment bureaus, backed by the stern
facts of life, the colleges are yielding. On examination I found that
curricula are already being modified. None but the sorriest pessimist
could doubt the nature of the final outcome, on realizing the pooling of
brains which is going on in such associations as the Intercollegiate
Bureau of Occupations and the League for Business Opportunities. They
work to the end of having young women not only soundly prepared for the
new openings, but sensitive to the demands of a world set towards
stern duty.
Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid
and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the
prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made
their stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women
would, on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only
nurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to
our nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not
only a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their
efficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state
hospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee
needs to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses
the rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have it, why not the Americans?
You will find that it will make a tremendous difference. You see, there
are no officers in our nursing personnel. One of our staff says we are
the hired extras! It is really a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be
waiting for a concentrated drive of public opinion against his tardy
representatives.
[Illustration: Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of
alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France.]
And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men
are dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women
unmobilized who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is
true, been submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but
they reach the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance
flights, but both have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will
it need a campaign to secure for our army this efficient service? Must
women pool their brains to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings
over our boys in France?
To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as it
stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of
her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of
woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name
of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there
will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and
woman, all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one
object of combining all resources.
The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And,
then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling,
but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the
nurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical
schools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet
the facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each
prejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause.
As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women,
no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will
break down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there
is not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes."
Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in
favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here.
IX
"BUSINESS AS USUAL"
It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on
earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being,
indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not
respond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride
reprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women have
mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities of
life. It's the luxuries we must have." One of the obstacles to complete
mobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of this
national failing sits the American woman enthroned.
Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if the
war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory.
I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me and
everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before.
A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of
ruins. Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding
Queen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of
the grass, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the
heart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in
the heaps of broken glass in each show window were improvised signs such
as, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something." The sign which was
displayed oftenest read, "Business as usual."
The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a
woman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She
looked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was
calm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee
tot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter
on her chubby cheek.
"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the
determination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race,
it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard
science, demanding every energy of the nation for its successful
pursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greater
than that of any European nation, our challenge to every business must
be the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions:
Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is it
essential to the well-being of our citizens?
But the discipline will not come from the gods. Nor will our government
readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as
self-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and the
conviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the
virility of our people, if any considerable part of the community
devotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nation
can make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power on
the two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life and
resources at home.
Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include
only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot
of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the
American woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of
women as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than
the mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving
in America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are the
buyers in the working class and in the professional class. Among the
wealthy they set the standard of living.
Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I am
not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, but
to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy
stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the
well-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner
or cutting out "that fourth meal."
Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul,
but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of
imitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But
the steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put
into the minds of the people very definite demands for independence and
for freedom.
In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will
not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an
aristocratic stimulus.
[Illustration: How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are
about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and
grenades into a bath of paraffin!]
I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do
class. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe
commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No
one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of
fashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns
except where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and
instead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that
of display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat
for some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened
as the railways are with freight and ordinary passenger traffic, I am
sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a
self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining
coaches to abandon their self-indulgence.
Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would
gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private
automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in
their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances.
But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and
self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the
most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift
waits for democratization.
We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The
average working-class family enjoys none of the fruits of coöperation We
keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is the
more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families.
Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an
Andersen, the nurse an O'Hara.
The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship.
The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central
heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements
where the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The
saving of coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for
the poor the comfort of the true method of fuel saving.
The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service.
The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one
another, do not profit by coöperative buying, or by central kitchens run
by experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and
clothing, and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking.
Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps
could be bought as a result of economy along these lines.
The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how
hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long
way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health
is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time
brings a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition
is making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to
women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than
according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the
lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop
herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency,
and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might
learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to the
simple things.
The Japanese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city to
enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and
applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the
producer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic
war economy would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature.
In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered
hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly
democratic it had not created channels into which savings might be
thrown with certainty of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe
was not ready with its great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments
been made which would enable a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us
say, in place of a useless dress.
Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. The
government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort
successful. Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms,
guns and ammunition supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called
for. The government needs money to carry on the industries essential to
winning the war.
If a plucky girl who works in a button factory refuses to buy an
ornament which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and
puts that twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit
of backing up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown
out of employment; instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental
fastenings will gradually cease, she will be kept busy on
government orders.
Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths,
the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of
war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service,
but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor
hoard, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment.
There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet.
There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger lies
in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get more
by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The
Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a
people's war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to
support the war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people.
There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion of
mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do,
but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The
only saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by
coöperation, civil or state.
It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children at
play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through
group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds
on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets
dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war
saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people.
Central municipal heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy
in many places. Municipal kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts
achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In
America no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not
an appeal has been made to women to save through solidarity.
Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir to
hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda
suggesting ways of saving the pennies.
If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as
usual.
X
"AS MOTHER USED TO DO"
Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an
obstacle as business as usual in the path of winning the war and
husbanding the race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of
mother in the past hides the shortcomings of today.
I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days
she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she
cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long
ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils
for dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning
cotton and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her
day, mother was a great creator of wealth.
But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof
was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones,
carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and
ends of occupations.
Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother
had become so intimately associated in the tribal mind with the
hearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation
accumulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the
mind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its
authors happened to be the government and could use the public treasury
in furtherance of publicity for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics
cut in stone, or written in plain English and printed on the front page
of an American daily.
One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her
sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food.
In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication,
has always been associated with woman. Mention food and the average man
thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one
must first consider this relation of women to food in the
Adamistic Theory.
[Illustration: Countess de Berkaim and her canteen in the Gare de St.
Lazarre, Paris.]
When the world under war conditions asked to be fed, Adam, running true
to his theory, pointed to mother as the source of supply, and declared
with an emphasis that came of implicit faith, that the universe need
want for nothing, if each woman would eliminate waste in her kitchen and
become a voluntary and obedient reflector of the decisions of state and
national food authorities. This solution presupposed a highly developed
sense of community devotion in women running hand in hand with entire
lack of gift for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display
more than her proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm
state direction and at the same time remain an exemplar of
individualistic performance. The Adamistic scheme seems still further to
demand for its smooth working that the feminine group show
self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason out
general plans.
It is within the range of possibility, however, that no comprehensive
scheme of food conservation or effective saving in any line can be
imposed on women without consulting them. The negro who agreed "dat de
colored folk should keep in dar places," touched a fundamental note in
human nature, over-running sex as well as racial boundaries, when he
added, "and de colored folk must do de placin'." It might seem to run
counter to this bit of wisdom for women to be told that the welfare of
the world depends upon them, and then for no woman to be given
administrative power to mobilize the group.
But the contest between man's devotion to the habits of his ancestry in
the female line, and the ideas of his very living women folk, is as
trying to him as it is interesting to the outside observer. The
conflicting forces illustrate a universal fact. It is always true that
the ruling class, when a discipline and a sacrifice are recognized as
necessary, endeavors to make it appear that the new obligation should be
shouldered by the less powerful. For instance, to take an illustration
quite outside the domestic circle, when America first became convinced
that military preparation was incumbent upon us, the ruling class would
scarcely discuss conscription, much less adopt universal service. That
is, it vetoed self-discipline. In many States, laws were passed putting
off upon children in the schools the training which the voting adults
knew the nation needed.
In the same way, when food falls short and the victualing of the world
becomes a pressing duty, the governing class adopts a thesis that a
politically less-favored group can, by saving in small and painful ways,
accumulate the extra food necessary to keep the world from starving.
The ruling class seeks cover in primitive ideas, accuses Eve of
introducing sin into the world, and calls upon her to mend her
wasteful ways.