THE STRIKE OF A SEX
_THE BELLAMY LIBRARY.--No. 12_
THE
STRIKE OF A SEX
A Novel.
BY
GEORGE NOYES MILLER.
(_Member of the Oneida Community)._
[Illustration]
LONDON:
WM. REEVES: 183, CHARING CROSS RD. W.C.
Printed by the New Temple Press, Grant Road, Croydon.
SPECIAL PREFACE TO ENGLISH EDITION.
An English edition of this celebrated American story seems called for
by the great and increasing interest felt in the problem of property
in the old and crowded countries of Europe. It is nearly a hundred
years since Malthus expounded the true relation between poverty and
the increase of the human race: and it is more than thirty years since
Darwin, in his “Origin of Species,” showed that the Malthusian Law lies
at the basis of all organic evolution. No further apology is needed for
a tale which points to a discovery, already tested by experience, which
claims to solve, at one and the same time, the Malthusian or population
problem, the Darwinian or eugenic problem, the problem of social
purity, and the problem of personal health in relation to sex.
F. W. F.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
To tell the truth, I put forth this slight piece of literature in
much fear and trembling. Not that I had any morbid dread of literary
condemnation, or any solicitude about financial failure. My anxiety was
solely in regard to the reception that my little book might meet from
women. To my mind, there was no other judge: and I awaited her verdict
in real suspense.
But my suspense was happily short and in its relief, I think that I
tasted something like the overpowering joy which the prisoner feels
when he is declared to be innocent. The letters of gratitude which I
have received and am receiving from noble women in two continents have
fairly overwhelmed me and they have rewarded me a hundredfold.
The whole world is plainly in travail to lift the primeval curse of
brutalizing labour from man. But the just, at least, are beginning to
perceive that the primeval curse must also be lifted from woman. When
these long-borne curses are really lifted from man and woman--what then?
The Garden of Eden!
GEORGE NOYES MILLER.
188, WEST HOUSTON ST., N.Y.
JAN., 1891.
WOMAN’S FUTURE.
Oppression with her leaden mein
Nor there is seen,
Nor can the wrinkled brow of Care
Find entrance there.
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THE STRIKE OF A SEX.
CHAPTER I.
I was greatly fatigued, and a feeling of irresistible drowsiness
had begun to creep over my senses, when my flagging energies were
suddenly aroused by the appearance of a town which, though I had not
before observed it, now seemed quite close at hand. Tall and graceful
spires, glistening domes, and high-rearing chimneys, from which poured
plentiful volumes of smoke, betokened a place of thrift and business
importance. I therefore began to enter one of its residence streets
with the pleasant mental exhilaration which the pedestrian feels when
he opens his eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of a strange city.
But I had not gone far before I was compelled to acknowledge to
myself that the city belied in some unaccountable respects the smart
appearance which it had borne from a distance. The men whom I began to
meet, although seemingly full of a kind of jaded activity, bore strange
marks of carelessness, not to say positive disorder in their attire.
Their untrimmed beards showed a great lack of taste and neatness.
Their collars and cuffs were soiled and wrinkled, and their neckties,
fastened about their necks in all sorts of ungainly knots, were very
much awry. All had a deeply preoccupied air, and I noticed that many
of them had a finger or hand clumsily wrapped in rags of a mottled and
dingy hue, as if they had met with untoward accidents, such as burns,
cuts, or bruises. The odour of arnica pervaded the atmosphere.
But I soon began to perceive that the most perplexing feature of this
universal disorder, or I might say dilapidation of attire, was the
total absence of buttons from garments of every description. It was
as if some greedy speculator or anaconda-like Trust had suddenly made
a corner of the entire product of buttons and put them so far beyond
the reach of his kind that man had been compelled to supply the place
of these indispensable little articles with all sorts of mechanical
makeshifts. Pins, strings, hooks, and I observed in some instances,
shingle nails, held together the textile frame-work which invested
every man I saw.
When I had become somewhat accustomed to this oddity, although
inwardly much wondering what should cause it, I began to observe
that the residences themselves although substantial in structure and
ornamental in design, bore the same marks of surprising carelessness
that I saw in their owners. The fine stone and marble doorsteps were
strangely littered and untidy. Curious utensils for such places such
as coffee-pots and dishpans, stood in the front windows of the various
rooms. The parlours, which I could plainly see through the carelessly
left open windows, were in a state of great disorder. Dust and
confusion seemed to reign unmolested, and the curtains were clumsily
fastened as if by unskilful hands.
These visible signs of a slatternly kind of housekeeping seemed to
multiply as I advanced, but my attention to them soon began to be
somewhat distracted by my sense of smell. Mysterious and inscrutable
odours, defying all my powers of analysis, emanated from these
residences. From one it was like burnt rags, from another it seemed
to be grease in some stage of decomposition, from another the odour
was that of musty and decaying food, while from still others there
proceeded an indescribable mixture of all these.
More and more puzzled by the strange sights and smells to which my
senses had grown more acute as I proceeded, I soon found that they
were, after all, almost wholly driven from my mind by an infinitely
sharper sense of the utter joylessness of the place. In spite of the
hurrying crowds of men who jostled one another upon the streets, I
began to be conscious of an overpowering sense of desolation such as I
had never before known. An unaccountable gloom, which seemed to cover
the whole town like a funeral pall, began to settle upon my hitherto
buoyant spirits. It was as if the sun were not merely obscured by a
passing cloud, but had been wholly withdrawn from the heavens, leaving
the earth to be lighted only by some murky and baleful star. I recalled
the fact that though many of the irregularities of apparel which I had
noticed were in a high degree ludicrous, I had not seen the ghost of a
smile upon the face or heard anything approaching a jest from the lips
of a human being since I entered the town. I attempted to arouse myself
and shake off the deadly chill that was beginning to envelope me, and
as I did so I unconsciously muttered, “One would think it were the
town of Hamelin from which the Pied Piper had just drawn away all the
children.”
No sooner had these words passed my lips than, like an electric shock,
I remembered that I had not only not seen a child but I had not seen a
woman since I entered the town. This dizzying fact was so astounding
to me that I stopped in sheer and sudden fright and leaned against a
tree near at hand in order to assure myself that it was true. Step by
step, with minutest accuracy, I went over in my mind the ground which
I had trodden. I recalled the anxious, hurrying figures of men, whose
oddities of raiment no longer tempted me to smile, but not the face
of a woman could I conjure up in the retrospect, nor even the glimpse
of a woman’s garment. I had not, with a weakness which I think the
angels forgive, turned on the streets to look after a woman’s beautiful
figure. I surely had not seen a woman on those unswept doorsteps, I had
not caught a glimpse of a woman in those dust-ridden parlours. Even the
blooming faces and joyous, sparkling chatter of school-girls had been
wholly absent from the streets which I had traversed.
With a sigh I thought of the still younger girls, the unspeakably
innocent little ones of three and four years of age whose charming
prattle I tried to persuade myself that I had surely heard about some
doorstep. But no, I never failed to notice these darlings, and my
memory told me with unfailing accuracy that I had seen only men. Men,
no one but men, bald, angular men, and these in their bold loneliness
appearing to be robbed of all the graces and sweetness of immortal
beings!
My speculations as to the meaning of the strange state of things which
I had observed in the town into which I had fallen, had hitherto been
only those prompted by a dignified and philosophical curiosity. But the
shock which I experienced on discovering the utter absence of woman
from my environment had now made them positively painful. I stood
still and shivered in the street. Surely I had gotten into an uncanny
place, from which the sweetness and beauty of woman and the innocence
of children had been banished! I could bear the suspense no longer.
Casting my hitherto dignified deportment to the winds I ran recklessly
after a man who had emerged from a drug store at some distance in front
of me and seized him almost rudely by the arm.
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