POVERTY AND ITS PSYCHICAL RESULTS
In the story of Buddha it is related that it was the shock of learning
of the existence of four great evils which aroused his desire to save
mankind. These evils were Old Age, Sickness, Death, and Poverty.
Theologians and the sentimentalists are unanimous in their praise of
poverty,--the theologians because they seek their treasure in heaven,
and the sentimentalists because they are incorrigible dodgers of
reality, because they cannot endure the existence of evil. But Buddha
knew better, and the common sense of mankind has shown itself in the
desperate struggle to reach riches.
We have spoken of the part played by the physical disadvantages of
poverty in causing the nervousness of the housewife. It is not alleged
or affirmed that all poor housewives suffer from the neurosis,--that
would be nonsense. But poor food, poor housing, poor clothing, the lack
of vacations, the insufficient convalescence from illness and childbirth
are not blessings nor do they have anything but a bad effect, an effect
traceable in the conditions we are studying.
Furthermore, the woman who does all her own housework, including the
cooking, scrubbing, washing, ironing, and the multitudinous details of
housekeeping, in addition to the bearing and rearing of children, does
more than any human being should do. It is very well to say, "See what
the women of a past generation did," but could we look at the thing
objectively, we would see that they were little better than slaves. That
is the long and short of it,--the Emancipation Proclamation did not
include them.
Aside from the physical effects of poverty on the housewife, there are
factors of psychical importance that call for a hearing. After all, what
is poverty in one age is riches in another; what is poverty for one man
is wealth to his neighbor. More than that, what a man considers riches
in anticipation is poverty in realization. Here again we deal with the
mounting of desire.
The philosophical, contented woman, satisfied with her life even though
it is poor, is exempted from one great factor making for breakdown.
Contentment is the great shield of the nervous system, the great bulwark
against fatigue and obsession. But contentment leads away from
achievement, which springs from discontent, from yearning desire.
Whether civilization in the sense of our achievements is worth the price
paid is a matter upon which the present writer will not presume to pass
judgment. Whether it is or not, Mankind is committed to struggle onward,
regardless of the result to his peace of mind.
There are two principal psychical injuries with poverty--fear and
worry--and we must pass to their consideration as factors in the
neuroses of some women.
Worry is chronic fear directed against a life situation, usually
anticipated. Man the foreseeing must worry or he dies,--dies of
starvation, disease, disaster. It is true that worry may be excessive
and directed either against imaginary or inevitable ills; ills that
never come, ills that must come, like old age and death.
Men in comfortable places cry "Why worry?" meaning of course that the
most of worry is about ills that are never realized. That is true, but
the person living just on the brink of disaster, ruined or made
dependent on charity by unemployment, a long illness, or any failure of
power and strength, cannot be as philosophical as the man fortified by a
nice bank account or dividend-paying investments. These well-to-do
advisers of the poor remind one of the heroes of ancient fables who,
having magic weapons and impenetrable armor, showed no fear in battle.
One wonders how much courage they would have had if armed as their
foemen were.
For the poor housewife who sees no escape from poverty, whose husband is
either a workman or a struggling business man always on the edge of
failure, life often seems like a wall closing in, a losing battle
without end.
Especially in the middle-aged, in those approaching fifty, does this
happen. Aside from the condition produced by "change of life", the
so-called involution period, there is a reaction of the "time of life"
that is found very commonly. For old age is no longer far off on the
horizon; it is close at hand, around the corner, and the looking-glass
proclaims its coming. The woman wonders whether her husband will long be
able to keep up,--and then "what will become of us?"
To be thrown on the benevolence of children is a sad ending to
independent natures, to people of experience. Crudely put, those who
have been dependents are now sustainers; those who have been led now
guide; the inferiors are the superiors. This is not cynicism, for with
the best intentions in the world, if the children are also poor, the
care of the parents is a burden that they cannot help showing, sooner or
later.
Looking forward to such an ending to the hard work and struggle of a
lifetime is part of the worry of poverty, to be classed with the fear of
sickness and unemployment.
We may loudly proclaim that one honest man is as good as another, that
character is the measure of worth, that success cannot be measured by
money. These things are true; the difficulty is not to make people
believe it, it is to make people _feel_ it. Deeply ingrained in poverty
is not alone to be deprived of things desired; more important is the
feeling of inferiority that goes with the condition. Only in the
Bohemia of the novelists do the poor feel equal to the rich.
One of the fundamental strivings of the human being is the enlargement
of the self-feeling, which fundamentally is the wish to be superior, to
have the admiration and homage of others. All daydreaming builds this
air castle; all ambition has this as its goal. No matter how we disguise
it to ourselves and others, the main ends of purpose are power and
place. True, we may wish for power and place so as to help others; we
may wish them as the result of constructive work and achievement, but
the enlargement of self-feeling is the end result of the striving.
To be poor is to be inferior in feeling and applies equally to men and
women. Man is a competitive-social animal and competes in everything,
from the cleverness and beauty of his children to the excellence of his
taste in hats. Money has the advantage of being the symbol of value, of
being concrete and definite, and of having the inestimable property of
purchasing power.
Now woman is as competitive as her mate. A housewife vies with her
neighboring housewives in her clothes, her good looks, her youth, her
husband, her children, her home, her housekeeping, her money,--vies with
her in folly as well as in wisdom. How much of the extravagance of women
(and here is a difficulty to be dealt with later) arises from rivalry
only the tongues of women could tell, but it is safe to say that the
greater part of it has this origin.
Jealousy and envy are harsh words, yet they stand for traits having a
great psychological value. Part of the impetus for effort rises from
these feelings, and an incredibly large part. Many a man who bends
unremitting in his effort has in mind some man of whose success he is
envious, or whose efforts he watches with a jealousy hidden almost from
himself.
Upon women these feelings play with devastating force. One may be
satisfied with what he has until some one else he knows gets more; that
is to say, the causes of most of the dissatisfaction and discontent of
the world are envy and jealousy. In many cases it may be a righteous
sort of jealousy or envy. A woman, especially because she is a rival of
her fellow-woman mainly in small things, becomes acutely miserable when
she is outstripped by her neighbor and especially if she is passed by
her relatives and intimate friends.
Poverty is especially hard on those intensely ambitious for their
children. "They must have the education I did not have; they must have a
good time in life which I never had; I don't want them to be poor all
their lives like we are." Here is the woman who works herself to the
bone, yet is content and well save for her fatigue, if her children
respond to her efforts by success in study and by ambitious efforts of
their own. But if the struggling mother is so unfortunate as to have
drawn in Nature's lottery an unappreciative or a weak-minded child, then
the breakdown is tragic.
A poor man is much more apt to be philosophical about poverty for his
children than his wife is. He is willing to do what he can for them, but
he is more apt to realize what mother love is blind to,--that the
average child is unappreciative of the parents' efforts and takes them
for granted. The man is more apt to think and say, "Let them stand on
their own feet and make their own way; it will do them good." The mother
usually longs to spare her children struggle, the father rarely shares
this desire except in a mild way.
It may be that there was a time when classes were more fixed, that
poverty had less of humiliation and blocked desire than it has at
present. That society of all grades is restless with the desire for
luxury seems without doubt. How profoundly the psychology of the masses
is being altered by education, by the newspaper, the magazine, the
movie, the automobile, the fashion changes that make a dress obsolete in
a season and above all the department store and the alluring
advertisement, no one can hope to even estimate. Modern capitalism reaps
great wealth by developing the luxurious, the spendthrift tastes of the
poor. It would be a peculiar poetic justice that will make that
development into the basis of revolution.
The women of the poor are perhaps even more restless than the men. In
fact, it is the women that set the pace in these matters. This is
because to woman has fallen the spending of the family funds, a fact of
great importance in bringing about discord in the house. As the shopper
the poor woman now sees the beautiful things that her ancestors knew
nothing of, since there were no department stores in those days. To-day
desires are awakened that cannot be fulfilled; she sees other women
buying what she can only long for, and an active discontent with her lot
appears.
Unphilosophical this, and severely to be deprecated as unworthy of
woman. This has been done so often and so effectively(?) by divines,
reformers, press, that a mere physician begs leave to remark that it is
a natural sequence of the publicity luxury to-day has. _The most
successful commercial minds of America are in a conspiracy against the
poor Housewife to make her discontented with her lot by increasing her
desires_; they are on the job day and night and invade every corner of
her world; well, they have succeeded. The divines, etc., who thunder
against luxury have no word to say against the department store and the
advertising manager.