Our Chimney-Corner, of which we have spoken somewhat, has, besides the
wonted domestic circle, its habitues who have a frequent seat there.
Among these, none is more welcome than Theophilus Thoro.
Friend Theophilus was born on the shady side of Nature, and endowed by
his patron saint with every grace and gift which can make a human
creature worthy and available, except the gift of seeing the bright
side of things. His bead-roll of Christian virtues includes all the
graces of the spirit except hope; and so, if one wants to know exactly
the flaw, the defect, the doubtful side, and to take into account all
the untoward possibilities of any person, place, or thing, he had best
apply to friend Theophilus. He can tell you just where and how the
best-laid scheme is likely to fail, just the screw that will fall
loose in the smoothest-working machinery, just the flaw in the most
perfect character, just the defect in the best-written book, just the
variety of thorn that must accompany each particular species of rose.
Yet Theophilus is without guile or malice. His want of faith in human
nature is not bitter and censorious, but melting and pitiful. "We are
all poor trash, miserable dogs together," he seems to say, as he looks
out on the world and its ways. There is not much to be expected of or
for any of us; but let us love one another and be patient.
Accordingly, Theophilus is one of the most incessant workers for human
good, and perseveringly busy in every scheme of benevolent
enterprise, in all which he labors with melancholy steadiness without
hope. In religion he has the soul of a martyr,--nothing would suit him
better than to be burned alive for his faith; but his belief in the
success of Christianity is about on a par with that of the melancholy
disciple of old, who, when Christ would go to Judaea, could only say,
"Let us also go, that we may die with him." Theophilus is always ready
to die for the truth and the right, for which he never sees anything
but defeat and destruction ahead.
During the late war, Theophilus has been a despairing patriot, dying
daily, and giving all up for lost in every reverse from Bull Run to
Fredericksburg. The surrender of Richmond and the capitulation of Lee
shortened his visage somewhat; but the murder of the President soon
brought it back to its old length. It is true that, while Lincoln
lived, he was in a perpetual state of dissent from all his measures.
He had broken his heart for years over the miseries of the slaves, but
he shuddered at the Emancipation Proclamation; a whirlwind of anarchy
was about to sweep over the country, in which the black and the white
would dash against each other, and be shivered like potters' vessels.
He was in despair at the accession of Johnson, believing the worst of
the unfavorable reports that clouded his reputation. Nevertheless he
was among the first of loyal citizens to rally to the support of the
new administration, because, though he had no hope in that, he could
see nothing better.
You must not infer from all this that friend Theophilus is a social
wet blanket, a goblin shadow at the domestic hearth. By no means.
Nature has gifted him with that vein of humor and that impulse to
friendly joviality which are frequent developments in sad-natured men,
and often deceive superficial observers as to their real character. He
who laughs well and makes you laugh is often called a man of cheerful
disposition, yet in many cases nothing can be further from it than
precisely this kind of person.
Theophilus frequents our chimney-corner, perhaps because Mrs.
Crowfield and myself are, so to speak, children of the light and the
day. My wife has precisely the opposite talent to that of our friend.
She can discover the good point, the sound spot, where others see only
defect and corruption. I myself am somewhat sanguine, and prone rather
to expect good than evil, and with a vast stock of faith in the
excellent things that may turn up in the future. The millennium is one
of the prime articles of my creed; and all the ups and downs of
society I regard only as so many jolts on a very rough road that is
taking the world on, through many upsets and disasters, to that final
consummation.
Theophilus holds the same belief theoretically; but it is apt to sink
so far out of sight in the mire of present disaster as to be of very
little comfort to him.
"Yes," he said, "we are going to ruin, in my view, about as fast as we
can go. Miss Jenny, I will trouble you for another small lump of sugar
in my tea."
"You have been saying that, about our going to ruin, every time you
have taken tea here for four years past," said Jenny; "but I always
noticed that your fears never spoiled your relish either for tea or
muffins. People talk about being on the brink of a volcano, and the
country going to destruction, and all that, just as they put pepper on
their potatoes; it is an agreeable stimulant in conversation,--that's
all."
"For my part," said my wife, "I can speak in another vein. When had we
ever in all our history so bright prospects, so much to be thankful
for? Slavery is abolished; the last stain of disgrace is wiped from
our national honor. We stand now before the world self-consistent with
our principles. We have come out of one of the severest struggles
that ever tried a nation, purer and stronger in morals and religion,
as well as more prosperous in material things."
"My dear madam, excuse me," said Theophilus; "but I cannot help being
reminded of what an English reviewer once said,--that a lady's facts
have as much poetry in them as Tom Moore's lyrics. Of course poetry is
always agreeable, even though of no statistical value."
"I see no poetry in my facts," said Mrs. Crowfield. "Is not slavery
forever abolished, by the confession of its best friends,--even of
those who declare its abolition a misfortune, and themselves ruined in
consequence?"
"I confess, my dear madam, that we have succeeded, as we human
creatures commonly do, in supposing that we have destroyed an evil,
when we have only changed its name. We have contrived to withdraw
from the slave just that fiction of property relation which made it
for the interest of some one to care for him a little, however
imperfectly; and, having destroyed that, we turn him out defenseless
to shift for himself in a community every member of which is
embittered against him. The whole South resounds with the outcries of
slaves suffering the vindictive wrath of former masters; laws are
being passed hunting them out of this State and out of that; the
animosity of race--at all times the most bitter and unreasonable of
animosities--is being aroused all over the land. And the free States
take the lead in injustice to them. Witness a late vote of Connecticut
on the suffrage question. The efforts of government to protect the
rights of these poor defenseless creatures are about as energetic as
such efforts always have been and always will be while human nature
remains what it is. For a while the obvious rights of the weaker
party will be confessed, with some show of consideration, in public
speeches; they will be paraded by philanthropic sentimentalists, to
give point to their eloquence; they will be here and there sustained
in governmental measures, when there is no strong temptation to the
contrary, and nothing better to be done; but the moment that
political combinations begin to be formed, all the rights and
interests of this helpless people will be bandied about as so many
make-weights in the political scale. Any troublesome lion will have
a negro thrown to him to keep him quiet. All their hopes will be
dashed to the ground by the imperious Southern white, no longer
feeling for them even the interest of a master, and regarding them
with a mixture of hatred and loathing as the cause of all his
reverses. Then if, driven to despair, they seek to defend themselves
by force, they will be crushed by the power of the government and
ground to powder, as the weak have always been under the heel of the
strong.
"So much for our abolition of slavery. As to our material prosperity,
it consists of an inflated paper currency, an immense debt, a giddy,
foolhardy spirit of speculation and stock-gambling, and a perfect
furor of extravagance, which is driving everybody to live beyond his
means, and casting contempt on the republican virtues of simplicity
and economy.
"As to advancement in morals, there never was so much intemperance in
our people before, and the papers are full of accounts of frauds,
defalcations, forgeries, robberies, assassinations, and arsons.
Against this tide of corruption the various organized denominations of
religion do nothing effectual. They are an army shut up within their
own intrenchments, holding their own with difficulty, and in no
situation to turn back the furious assaults of the enemy."
"In short," said Jenny, "according to your showing, the whole country
is going to destruction. Now, if things really are so bad, if you
really believe all you have been saying, you ought not to be sitting
drinking your tea as you are now, or to have spent the afternoon
playing croquet with us girls; you ought to gird yourself with
sackcloth, and go up and down the land, raising the alarm, and
saying, 'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'"
"Well," said Theophilus, while a covert smile played about his
lips, "you know the saying, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow,'
etc. Things are not yet gone to destruction, only going,--and why
not have a good time on deck before the ship goes to pieces? Your
chimney-corner is a tranquil island in the ocean of trouble, and
your muffins are absolutely perfect. I'll take another, if you'll
please to pass them."
"I've a great mind not to pass them," said Jenny. "Are you in earnest
in what you are saying, or are you only saying it for sensation? How
can people believe such things and be comfortable? I could not. If I
believed all you have been saying I could not sleep nights,--I should
be perfectly miserable; and _you_ cannot really believe all this, or
you would be."
"My dear child," said Mrs. Crowfield, "our friend's picture is
the truth painted with all its shadows and none of its lights. All
the dangers he speaks of are real and great, but he omits the
counterbalancing good. Let _me_ speak now. There never has been a
time in our history when so many honest and just men held power in
our land as now,--never a government before in which the public
councils recognized with more respect the just and the right.
There never was an instance of a powerful government showing more
tenderness in the protection of a weak and defenseless race than
ours has shown in the care of the freedmen hitherto. There never
was a case in which the people of a country were more willing to
give money and time and disinterested labor to raise and educate
those who have thus been thrown on their care. Considering that we
have had a great, harassing, and expensive war on our hands, I
think the amount done by government and individuals for the
freedmen unequaled in the history of nations; and I do not know why
it should be predicted from this past fact that, in the future,
both government and people are about to throw them to the lions,
as Mr. Theophilus supposes. Let us wait, at least, and see. So
long as government maintains a freedmen's bureau, administered by
men of such high moral character, we must think, at all events,
that there are strong indications in the right direction. Just
think of the immense advance of public opinion within four years,
and of the grand successive steps of this advance,--Emancipation in
the District of Columbia, the Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, the
General Emancipation Act, the Amendment of the Constitution. All
these do not look as if the black were about to be ground to
powder beneath the heel of the white. If the negroes are oppressed
in the South, they can emigrate; no laws hold them; active,
industrious laborers will soon find openings in any part of the
Union."
"No," said Theophilus, "there will be black laws like those of
Illinois and Tennessee; there will be turbulent uprisings of the
Irish, excited by political demagogues, that will bar them out of
Northern States. Besides, as a class, they _will_ be idle and
worthless. It will not be their fault, but it will be the result of
their slave education. All their past observation of their masters has
taught them that liberty means licensed laziness, that work means
degradation; and therefore they will loathe work, and cherish laziness
as the sign of liberty. 'Am not I free? Have I not as good a right to
do nothing as you?' will be the cry.
"Already the lazy whites, who never lifted a hand in any useful
employment, begin to raise the cry that 'niggers won't work;' and I
suspect the cry may not be without reason. Industrious citizens can
never be made in a community where the higher class think useful labor
a disgrace. The whites will oppose the negro in every effort to rise;
they will debar him of every civil and social right; they will set
him the worst possible example, as they have been doing for hundreds
of years; and then they will hound and hiss at him for being what they
made him. This is the old track of the world,--the good, broad,
reputable road on which all aristocracies and privileged classes have
been always traveling; and it's not likely that we shall have much of
a secession from it. The millennium isn't so near us as that, by a
great deal."
"It's all very well arguing from human selfishness and human sin in
that way," said I; "but you can't take up a newspaper that doesn't
contain abundant facts to the contrary. Here, now,"--and I turned to
the "Tribune,"--"is one item that fell under my eye accidentally, as
you were speaking:--
"'The Superintendent of Freedmen's Affairs in Louisiana, in making up
his last Annual Report, says he has 1,952 blacks settled temporarily
on 9,650 acres of land, who last year raised crops to the value of
$175,000, and that he had but few worthless blacks under his care; and
that, as a class, the blacks have fewer vagrants than can be found
among any other class of persons.'
"Such testimonies gem the newspapers like stars."
"Newspapers of your way of thinking, very likely," said Theophilus;
"but if it comes to statistics, I can bring counter-statements,
numerous and dire, from scores of Southern papers, of vagrancy,
laziness, improvidence, and wretchedness."
"Probably both are true," said I, "according to the greater or less
care which has been taken of the blacks in different regions. Left to
themselves, they tend downward, pressed down by the whole weight of
semi-barbarous white society; but when the free North protects and
guides, the results are as you see."
"And do you think the free North has salt enough in it to save this
whole Southern mass from corruption? I wish I could think so; but all
I can see in the free North at present is a raging, tearing, headlong
chase after _money_. Now money is of significance only as it gives
people the power of expressing their ideal of life. And what does this
ideal prove to be among us? Is it not to ape all the splendors and
vices of old aristocratic society? Is it not to be able to live in
idleness, without useful employment, a life of glitter and flutter and
show? What do our New York dames of fashion seek after? To avoid
family care, to find servants at any price who will relieve them of
home responsibilities, and take charge of their houses and children
while they shine at ball and opera, and drive in the park. And the
servants who learn of these mistresses,--what do they seek after?
_They_ seek also to get rid of care, to live as nearly as possible
without work, to dress and shine in their secondary sphere, as the
mistresses do in the primary one. High wages with little work and
plenty of company express Biddy's ideal of life, which is a little
more respectable than that of her mistress, who wants high wages with
no work. The house and the children are not Biddy's; and why should
she care more for their well-being than the mistress and the mother?
"Hence come wranglings and moanings. Biddy uses a chest of tea in
three months, and the amount of the butcher's bill is fabulous;
Jane gives the baby laudanum to quiet it, while she slips out to
_her_ parties; and the upper classes are shocked at the demoralized
state of the Irish, their utter want of faithfulness and moral
principle! How dreadful that there are no people who enjoy the
self-denials and the cares which they dislike, that there are no
people who rejoice in carrying that burden of duties which they do
not wish to touch with one of their fingers! The outcry about the
badness of servants means just this: that everybody is tired of
self-helpfulness,--the servants as thoroughly as the masters and
mistresses. All want the cream of life, without even the trouble of
skimming; and the great fight now is, who shall drink the skim-milk,
which nobody wants. _Work_,--honorable toil,--manly, womanly
endeavor,--is just what nobody likes; and this is as much a fact in
the free North as in the slave South.
"What are all the young girls looking for in marriage? Some man with
money enough to save them from taking any care or having any trouble
in domestic life, enabling them, like the lilies of the field, to
rival Solomon in all his glory, while they toil not, neither do they
spin; and when they find that even money cannot purchase freedom from
care in family life, because their servants are exactly of the same
mind with themselves, and hate to do their duties as cordially as they
themselves do, then are they in anguish of spirit, and wish for
slavery, or aristocracy, or anything that would give them power over
the lower classes."
"But surely, Mr. Theophilus," said Jenny, "there is no sin in
disliking trouble, and wanting to live easily and have a good time in
one's life,--it's so very natural."
"No sin, my dear, I admit; but there is a certain amount of work and
trouble that somebody must take to carry on the family and the world;
and the mischief is, that all are agreed in wanting to get rid of it.
Human nature is above all things lazy. I am lazy myself. Everybody is.
The whole struggle of society is as to who shall eat the hard
bread-and-cheese of labor, which must be eaten by somebody. Nobody
wants it,--neither you in the parlor, nor Biddy in the kitchen.
"'The mass ought to labor, and we lie on sofas,' is a sentence that
would unite more subscribers than any confession of faith that ever
was presented, whether religious or political; and its subscribers
would be as numerous and sincere in the free States as in the slave
States, or I am much mistaken in my judgment. The negroes are men and
women, like any of the rest of us, and particularly apt in the
imitation of the ways and ideas current in good society; and
consequently to learn to play on the piano and to have nothing in
particular to do will be the goal of aspiration among colored girls
and woman, and to do housework will seem to them intolerable drudgery,
simply because it is so among the fair models to whom they look up in
humble admiration. You see, my dear, what it is to live in a
democracy. It deprives us of the vantage-ground on which we cultivated
people can stand and say to our neighbor,--'The cream is for me, and
the skim-milk for you; the white bread for me, and the brown for you.
I am born to amuse myself and have a good time, and you are born to do
everything that is tiresome and disagreeable to me.' The 'My Lady
Ludlows' of the Old World can stand on their platform and lecture the
lower classes from the Church Catechism, to 'order themselves lowly
and reverently to all their betters;' and they can base their
exhortations on the old established law of society by which some are
born to inherit the earth, and live a life of ease and pleasure, and
others to toil without pleasure or amusement, for their support and
aggrandizement. An aristocracy, as I take it, is a combination of
human beings to divide life into two parts, one of which shall
comprise all social and moral advantages, refinement, elegance,
leisure, ease, pleasure, and amusement,--and the other, incessant
toil, with the absence of every privilege and blessing of human
existence. Life thus divided, we aristocrats keep the good for
ourselves and our children, and distribute the evil as the lot of the
general mass of mankind. The desire to monopolize and to dominate is
the most rooted form of human selfishness; it is the hydra with many
heads, and, cut off in one place, it puts out in another.
"Nominally, the great aristocratic arrangement of American society has
just been destroyed; but really, I take it, the essential _animus_ of
the slave system still exists, and pervades the community, North as
well as South. Everybody is wanting to get the work done by somebody
else, and to take the money himself; the grinding between employers
and employed is going on all the time, and the field of controversy
has only been made wider by bringing in a whole new class of laborers.
The Irish have now the opportunity to sustain their aristocracy over
the negro. Shall they not have somebody to look down upon?
"All through free society, employers and employed are at incessant
feud; and the more free and enlightened the society, the more bitter
the feud. The standing complaint of life in America is the badness of
servants; and England, which always follows at a certain rate behind
us in our social movements, is beginning to raise very loudly the same
complaint. The condition of service has been thought worthy of public
attention in some of the leading British prints; and Ruskin, in a
summing-up article, speaks of it as a deep ulcer in society,--a thing
hopeless of remedy."
"My dear Mr. Theophilus," said my wife, "I cannot imagine whither you
are rambling, or to what purpose you are getting up these horrible
shadows. You talk of the world as if there were no God in it,
overruling the selfishness of men, and educating it up to order and
justice. I do not deny that there is a vast deal of truth in what you
say. Nobody doubts that, in general, human nature _is_ selfish,
callous, unfeeling, willing to engross all good to itself, and to
trample on the rights of others. Nevertheless, thanks to God's
teaching and fatherly care, the world has worked along to the point of
a great nation founded on the principles of strict equality,
forbidding all monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, by its
very constitution; and now, by God's wonderful providence, this nation
has been brought, and forced, as it were, to overturn and abolish the
only aristocratic institution that interfered with its free
development. Does not this look as if a Mightier Power than ours were
working in and for us, supplementing our weakness and infirmity? and
if we believe that man is always ready to drop everything and let it
run back to evil, shall we not have faith that God will _not_ drop the
noble work he has so evidently taken in hand in this nation?"
"And I want to know," said Jenny, "why your illustrations of
selfishness are all drawn from the female sex. Why do you speak of
girls that marry for money, any more than men? of mistresses of families
that want to be free from household duties and responsibilities, rather
than of masters?"
"My charming young lady," said Theophilus, "it is a fact that in
America, except the slaveholders, women have hitherto been the only
aristocracy. Women have been the privileged class,--the only one to
which our rough democracy has always and everywhere given the
precedence,--and consequently the vices of aristocrats are more
developed in them as a class than among men. The leading principle of
aristocracy, which is to take pay without work, to live on the toils
and earnings of others, is one which obtains more generally among
women than among men in this country. The men of our country, as a
general thing, even in our uppermost classes, always propose to
themselves some work or business by which they may acquire a fortune,
or enlarge that already made for them by their fathers. The women of
the same class propose to themselves nothing but to live at their ease
on the money made for them by the labors of fathers and husbands. As a
consequence, they become enervated and indolent,--averse to any
bracing, wholesome effort, either mental or physical. The unavoidable
responsibilities and cares of a family, instead of being viewed by
them in the light of a noble life work, in which they do their part in
the general labors of the world, seem to them so many injuries and
wrongs; they seek to turn them upon servants, and find servants
unwilling to take them; and so selfish are they, that I have heard
more than one lady declare that she didn't care if it was unjust, she
should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with servants who
had so much liberty. All the novels, poetry, and light literature of
the world, which form the general staple of female reading, are based
upon aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristocratic
ideas; and women among us are constantly aspiring to foreign and
aristocratic modes of life rather than to those of native republican
simplicity. How many women are there, think you, that would not go in
for aristocracy and aristocratic prerogatives, if they were only sure
that they themselves should be of the privileged class? To be 'My Lady
Duchess,' and to have a right by that simple title to the prostrate
deference of all the lower orders! How many would have firmness to
vote against such an establishment merely because it was bad for
society? Tell the fair Mrs. Feathercap, 'In order that you may be a
duchess, and have everything a paradise of elegance and luxury around
you and your children, a hundred poor families must have no chance for
anything better than black bread and muddy water all their lives, a
hundred poor men must work all their lives on such wages that a
fortnight's sickness will send their families to the almshouse, and
that no amount of honesty and forethought can lay up any provision for
old age.'"
"Come now, sir," said Jenny, "don't tell me that there are any girls
or women so mean and selfish as to want aristocracy or rank so
purchased! You are too bad, Mr. Theophilus!"
"Perhaps they might not, were it stated in just these terms; yet I
think, if the question of the establishment of an order of aristocracy
among us were put to vote, we should find more women than men who
would go for it; and they would flout at the consequences to society
with the lively wit and the musical laugh which make feminine
selfishness so genteel and agreeable.
"No! It is a fact that in America, the women, in the wealthy
classes, are like the noblemen of aristocracies, and the men are
the workers. And in all this outcry that has been raised about
women's wages being inferior to those of men there is one thing
overlooked,--and that is, that women's work is generally inferior to
that of men, because in every rank they are the pets of society and
are excused from the laborious drill and training by which men are
fitted for their callings. Our fair friends come in generally by some
royal road to knowledge, which saves them the dire necessity of real
work,--a sort of feminine hop-skip-and-jump into science or mechanical
skill,--nothing like the uncompromising hard labor to which the boy
is put who would be a mechanic or farmer, a lawyer or physician.
"I admit freely that we men are to blame for most of the faults of our
fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and
love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted
daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it.
Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give
their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any
adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness
by applying herself to some occupation whereby she may earn her own
living, infallibly draws down on her the comments of her whole circle:
'Keeping school, is she? Isn't her father rich enough to support her?
What could possess her?'"
"I am glad, my dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect
yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As
usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your
assertions; but they are as far from being in themselves the truth as
would be their exact opposites.
"The class of American women who travel, live abroad, and represent
our country to the foreign eye, have acquired the reputation of being
Sybarites in luxury and extravagance, and there is much in the modes
of life that are creeping into our richer circles to justify this.
"Miss Murray, ex-maid-of-honor to the Queen of England, among other
impressions which she received from an extended tour through our
country, states it as her conviction that young American girls of the
better classes are less helpful in nursing the sick and in the general
duties of family life than the daughters of the aristocracy of
England; and I am inclined to believe it, because even the Queen has
taken special pains to cultivate habits of energy and self-helpfulness
in her children. One of the toys of the Princess Royal was said to be
a cottage of her own, furnished with every accommodation for cooking
and housekeeping, where she from time to time enacted the part of
housekeeper, making bread and biscuit, boiling potatoes which she
herself had gathered from her own garden-patch, and inviting her royal
parents to meals of her own preparing; and report says, that the
dignitaries of the German court have been horrified at the energetic
determination of the young royal housekeeper to overlook her own linen
closets and attend to her own affairs. But as an offset to what I have
been saying, it must be admitted that America is a country where a
young woman can be self-supporting without forfeiting her place in
society. All our New England and Western towns show us female teachers
who are as well received and as much caressed in society, and as often
contract advantageous marriages, as any women whatever; and the
productive labor of American women, in various arts, trades, and
callings, would be found, I think, not inferior to that of any women
in the world.
"Furthermore, the history of the late war has shown them capable of
every form of heroic endeavor. We have had hundreds of Florence
Nightingales, and an amount of real hard work has been done by female
hands not inferior to that performed by men in the camp and field, and
enough to make sure that American womanhood is not yet so enervated as
seriously to interfere with the prospects of free republican
society."
"I wonder," said Jenny, "what it is in our country that spoils the
working classes that come into it. They say that the emigrants, as
they land here, are often simple-hearted people, willing to work,
accustomed to early hours and plain living, decorous and respectful in
their manners. It would seem as if aristocratic drilling had done them
good. In a few months they become brawling, impertinent, grasping,
want high wages, and are very unwilling to work. I went to several
intelligence-offices the other day to look for a girl for Marianne,
and I thought, by the way the candidates catechized the ladies, and
the airs they took upon them, that they considered themselves the
future mistresses interrogating their subordinates.
"'Does ye expect me to do the washin' with the cookin'?'
"'Yes.'
"'Thin I'll niver go to that place!'
"'And does ye expect me to get the early breakfast for yer husband to
be off in the train every mornin'?'
"'Yes.'
"'I niver does that,--that ought to be a second girl's work.'
"'How many servants does ye keep, ma'am?'
"'Two.'
"'I niver lives with people that keeps but two servants.'
"'How many has ye in yer family?'
"'Seven.'
"'That's too large a family. Has ye much company?'
"'Yes, we have company occasionally.'
"'Thin I can't come to ye; it'll be too harrd a place.'
"In fact, the thing they were all in quest of seemed to be a very
small family, with very high wages, and many perquisites and
privileges.
"This is the kind of work-people our manners and institutions make of
people that come over here. I remember one day seeing a coachman touch
his cap to his mistress when she spoke to him, as is the way in
Europe, and hearing one or two others saying among themselves,--
"'That chap's a greenie; he'll get over that soon.'"
"All these things show," said I, "that the staff of power has
passed from the hands of gentility into those of labor. We may think
the working classes somewhat unseemly in their assertion of
self-importance; but, after all, are they, considering their inferior
advantages of breeding, any more overbearing and impertinent than the
upper classes have always been to them in all ages and countries?
"When Biddy looks long, hedges in her work with many conditions, and
is careful to get the most she can for the least labor, is she, after
all, doing any more than you or I or all the rest of the world? I
myself will not write articles for five dollars a page, when there are
those who will give me fifteen. I would not do double duty as an
editor on a salary of seven thousand, when I could get ten thousand
for less work.
"Biddy and her mistress are two human beings, with the same human
wants. Both want to escape trouble, to make their life comfortable and
easy, with the least outlay of expense. Biddy's capital is her muscles
and sinews; and she wants to get as many greenbacks in exchange for
them as her wit and shrewdness will enable her to do. You feel, when
you bargain with her, that she is nothing to you, except so far as her
strength and knowledge may save you care and trouble; and she feels
that you are nothing to her, except so far as she can get your money
for her work. The free-and-easy airs of those seeking employment show
one thing,--that the country in general is prosperous, and that
openings for profitable employment are so numerous that it is not
thought necessary to try to conciliate favor. If the community were at
starvation-point, and the loss of a situation brought fear of the
almshouse, the laboring-class would be more subservient. As it is,
there is a little spice of the bitterness of a past age of servitude
in their present attitude,--a bristling, self-defensive impertinence,
which will gradually smooth away as society learns to accommodate
itself to the new order of things."
"Well, but, papa," said Jenny, "don't you think all this a very severe
test, if applied to us women particularly, more than to the men? Mr.
Theophilus seems to think women are aristocrats, and go for enslaving
the lower classes out of mere selfishness; but I say that we are a
great deal more strongly tempted than men, because all these
annoyances and trials of domestic life come upon us. It is very
insidious, the aristocratic argument, as it appeals to us; there seems
much to be said in its favor. It does appear to me that it is better
to have servants and work-people tidy, industrious, respectful, and
decorous, as they are in Europe, than domineering, impertinent, and
negligent, as they are here,--and it seems that there is something in
our institutions that produces these disagreeable traits; and I
presume that the negroes will eventually be traveling the same road as
the Irish, and from the same influences.
"When people see all these things, and feel all the inconveniences of
them, I don't wonder that they are tempted not to like democracy, and
to feel as if aristocratic institutions made a more agreeable state of
society. It is not such a blank, bald, downright piece of brutal
selfishness as Mr. Theophilus there seems to suppose, for us to wish
there were some quiet, submissive, laborious lower class, who would be
content to work for kind treatment and moderate wages."
"But, my little dear," said I, "the matter is not left to our choice.
Wish it or not wish it, it's what we evidently can't have. The day for
that thing is past. The power is passing out of the hands of the
cultivated few into those of the strong, laborious many. _Numbers_ is
the king of our era; and he will reign over us, whether we will hear
or whether we will forbear. The sighers for an obedient lower class
and the mourners for slavery may get ready their crape and have their
pocket-handkerchiefs bordered with black; for they have much weeping
to do, and for many years to come. The good old feudal times, when two
thirds of the population thought themselves born only for the honor,
glory, and profit of the other third, are gone, with all their
beautiful devotions, all their trappings of song and story. In the
land where such institutions were most deeply rooted and most firmly
established, they are assailed every day by hard hands and stout
hearts; and their position resembles that of some of the picturesque
ruins of Italy, which are constantly being torn away to build prosaic
modern shops and houses.
"This great democratic movement is coming down into modern society
with a march as irresistible as the glacier moves down from the
mountains. Its front is in America,--and behind are England, France,
Italy, Prussia, and the Mohammedan countries. In all, the rights of
the laboring masses are a living force, bearing slowly and inevitably
all before it. Our war has been a marshaling of its armies, commanded
by a hard-handed, inspired man of the working-class. An intelligent
American, recently resident in Egypt, says it was affecting to notice
the interest with which the working classes there were looking upon
our late struggle in America, and the earnestness of their wishes for
the triumph of the Union. 'It is our cause, it is for us,' they said,
as said the cotton spinners of England and the silk weavers of Lyons.
The forces of this mighty movement are still directed by a man from
the lower orders, the sworn foe of exclusive privileges and landed
aristocracies. If Andy Johnson is consistent with himself, with the
principles which raised him from a tailor's bench to the head of a
mighty nation, he will see to it that the work that Lincoln began is
so thoroughly done, that every man and every woman in America, of
whatever race or complexion, shall have exactly equal rights before
the law, and be free to rise or fall according to their individual
intelligence, industry, and moral worth. So long as everything is not
strictly in accordance with our principles of democracy, so long as
there is in any part of the country an aristocratic upper class who
despise labor, and a laboring lower class that is denied equal
political rights, so long this grinding and discord between the two
will never cease in America. It will make trouble not only in the
South, but in the North,--trouble between all employers and
employed,--trouble in every branch and department of labor,--trouble
in every parlor and every kitchen.
"What is it that has driven every American woman out of domestic
service, when domestic service is full as well paid, is easier,
healthier, and in many cases far more agreeable, than shop and factory
work? It is, more than anything else, the influence of slavery in the
South,--its insensible influence on the minds of mistresses, giving
them false ideas of what ought to be the position and treatment of a
female citizen in domestic service, and its very marked influence on
the minds of freedom-loving Americans, causing them to choose _any_
position rather than one which is regarded as assimilating them to
slaves. It is difficult to say what are the very worst results of a
system so altogether bad as that of slavery; but one of the worst is
certainly the utter contempt it brings on useful labor, and the
consequent utter physical and moral degradation of a large body of the
whites; and this contempt of useful labor has been constantly
spreading like an infection from the Southern to the Northern States,
particularly among women, who, as our friend here has truly said, are
by our worship and exaltation of them made peculiarly liable to take
the malaria of aristocratic society. Let anybody observe the
conversation in good society for an hour or two, and hear the tone in
which servant-girls, seamstresses, mechanics, and all who work for
their living, are sometimes mentioned, and he will see that, while
every one of the speakers professes to regard useful labor as
respectable, she is yet deeply imbued with the leaven of aristocratic
ideas.
"In the South the contempt for labor bred of slavery has so permeated
society, that we see great, coarse, vulgar _lazzaroni_ lying about in
rags and vermin, and dependent on government rations, maintaining, as
their only source of self-respect, that they never have done and never
will do a stroke of useful work in all their lives. In the North there
are, I believe, no _men_ who would make such a boast; but I think
there are many women--beautiful, fascinating _lazzaroni_ of the parlor
and boudoir--who make their boast of elegant helplessness and utter
incompetence for any of woman's duties with equal naivete. The
Spartans made their slaves drunk, to teach their children the evils of
intoxication; and it seems to be the policy of a large class in the
South now to keep down and degrade the only working class they have,
for the sake of teaching their children to despise work.
"We of the North, who know the dignity of labor, who know the value of
free and equal institutions, who have enjoyed advantages for seeing
their operation, ought, in true brotherliness, to exercise the power
given us by the present position of the people of the Southern States,
and put things thoroughly right for them, well knowing, that, though
they may not like it at the moment, they will like it in the end, and
that it will bring them peace, plenty, and settled prosperity, such
as they have long envied here in the North. It is no kindness to an
invalid brother, half recovered from delirium, to leave him a knife to
cut his throat with, should he be so disposed. We should rather appeal
from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and do real kindness, trusting to
the future for our meed of gratitude.
"Giving equal political rights to all the inhabitants of the Southern
States will be their shortest way to quiet and to wealth. It will
avert what is else almost certain,--a war of races; since all
experience shows that the ballot introduces the very politest
relations between the higher and lower classes. If the right be
restricted, let it be by requirements of property and education,
applying to all the population equally.
"Meanwhile, we citizens and citizenesses of the North should remember
that Reconstruction means something more than setting things right in
the Southern States. We have saved our government and institutions,
but we have paid a fearful price for their salvation; and we ought to
prove now that they are worth the price.
"The empty chair, never to be filled; the light gone out on its
candlestick, never on earth to be rekindled; gallant souls that have
exhaled to heaven in slow torture and starvation; the precious blood
that has drenched a hundred battlefields,--all call to us with warning
voices, and tell us not to let such sacrifices be in vain. They call
on us by our clear understanding of the great principles of democratic
equality, for which our martyred brethren suffered and died, to show
to all the world that their death was no mean and useless waste, but a
glorious investment for the future of mankind.
"This war, these sufferings, these sacrifices, ought to make every
American man and woman look on himself and herself as belonging to a
royal priesthood, a peculiar people. The blood of our slain ought to
be a gulf, wide and deep as the Atlantic, dividing us from the
opinions and the practices of countries whose government and society
are founded on other and antagonistic ideas. Democratic republicanism
has never yet been perfectly worked out either in this or any other
country. It is a splendid edifice, half built, deformed by rude
scaffolding, noisy with the clink of trowels, blinding the eyes with
the dust of lime, and endangering our heads with falling brick. We
make our way over heaps of shavings and lumber to view the stately
apartments,--we endanger our necks in climbing ladders standing in the
place of future staircases; but let us not for all this cry out that
the old rat-holed mansions of former ages, with their mould, and moss,
and cockroaches, are better than this new palace. There is no
lime-dust, no clink of trowels, no rough scaffolding there, to be
sure, and life goes on very quietly; but there is the foul air of slow
and sure decay.
"Republican institutions in America are in a transition state; they
have not yet separated themselves from foreign and antagonistic ideas
and traditions, derived from old countries; and the labors necessary
for the upbuilding of society are not yet so adjusted that there is
mutual pleasure and comfort in the relations of employer and employed.
We still incline to class distinctions and aristocracies. We incline
to the scheme of dividing the world's work into two orders: first,
physical labor, which is held to be rude and vulgar, and the province
of a lower class; and second, brain labor, held to be refined and
aristocratic, and the province of a higher class. Meanwhile, the
Creator, who is the greatest of levelers, has given to every human
being both a physical system, needing to be kept in order by physical
labor, and an intellectual or brain power, needing to be kept in order
by brain labor. Work, use, employment, is the condition of health in
both; and he who works either to the neglect of the other lives but a
half-life, and is an imperfect human being.
"The aristocracies of the Old World claim that their only labor should
be that of the brain; and they keep their physical system in order by
violent exercise, which is made genteel from the fact only that it is
not useful or productive. It would be losing caste to refresh the
muscles by handling the plough or the axe; and so foxes and hares must
be kept to be hunted, and whole counties turned into preserves, in
order that the nobility and gentry may have physical exercise in a way
befitting their station,--that is to say, in a way that produces
nothing, and does good only to themselves.
"The model republican uses his brain for the highest purposes of brain
work, and his muscles in productive physical labor; and useful labor
he respects above that which is merely agreeable. When this equal
respect for physical and mental labor shall have taken possession of
every American citizen, there will be no so-called laboring class;
there will no more be a class all muscle without brain power to guide
it, and a class all brain without muscular power to execute. The
labors of society will be lighter, because each individual will take
his part in them; they will be performed better, because no one will
be overburdened. In those days, Miss Jenny, it will be an easier
matter to keep house, because, housework being no longer regarded as
degrading drudgery, you will find a superior class of women ready to
engage in it.
"Every young girl and woman, who in her sphere and by her example
shows that she is not ashamed of domestic labor, and that she
considers the necessary work and duties of family life as dignified
and important, is helping to bring on this good day. Louis Philippe
once jestingly remarked, 'I have this qualification for being a king
in these days, that I have blacked my own boots, and could black them
again.'
"Every American ought to cultivate, as his pride and birthright, the
habit of self-helpfulness. Our command of the labors of good
employees in any department is liable to such interruptions, that he
who has blacked his own boots, and can do it again, is, on the whole,
likely to secure the most comfort in life.
"As to that which Mr. Ruskin pronounces to be a deep, irremediable
ulcer in society, namely, domestic service, we hold that the last
workings of pure democracy will cleanse and heal it. When right ideas
are sufficiently spread; when everybody is self-helpful and capable of
being self-supporting; when there is a fair start for every human
being in the race of life, and all its prizes are, without respect of
persons, to be obtained by the best runner; when every kind of useful
labor is thoroughly respected,--then there will be a clear, just,
wholesome basis of intercourse on which employers and employed can
move without wrangling or discord.
"Renouncing all claims to superiority on the one hand, and all thought
of servility on the other, service can be rendered by fair contracts
and agreements, with that mutual respect and benevolence which every
human being owes to every other. But for this transition period, which
is wearing out the life of so many women, and making so many
households uncomfortable, I have some alleviating suggestions, which I
shall give in my next chapter."