century. Herbariums for dry and botanic gardens for living plants are
essential. The latter are not as necessary to the study as formerly, as
the facilities for travel bring the votaries of the science to distant
places in a short time. Nature furnishes the living material for study
at a less outlay of time and money than in the old way of growing
the plants for the purpose. Few modern botanic gardens have the fame
of those of the past. It is the great Herbarium of Kew, rather than
the living plants, that makes that famous spot the great school for
botany to-day. In our own country, the Herbariums of Cambridge, Mass.;
Columbia College, New York; the National at Washington; and that of the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, are the most famous in
America.
PROGRESS OF WOMEN WITHIN THE CENTURY
BY MARY ELIZABETH LEASE,
_Ex-President Kansas State Board of Charities_.
The whole woman question may be briefly summed up as a century-old
struggle between conservatism and progress. Women are moving
irregularly, and perhaps illogically, along certain lines of
development toward a point that will probably be reached; while
conservatism, halting and fearful, is struggling blindly to hold points
and maintain lines that must be given up.
Unfortunately for the rapidity of women’s advancement, women themselves
have no thoroughness, no clearness, as to the fundamental cause of
their grievances or the ends to be attained, and are not yet alive to a
consciousness of the fact that the question of woman’s rights is simply
and purely a question of human rights, the basic solution of which, on
the broad plane of justice, will solve all the social, political, and
industrial problems of which the woman question forms a part.
The time when woman suffered silently and toiled patiently without
once questioning the justice of her lot has happily passed forever.
Confusion and antagonism are engendered because of misunderstanding of
the real movement. Women are consciously or unconsciously struggling
for that selfhood which has hitherto been denied them, and are seeking
for opportunity to develop that personality which Browning, Ruskin,
and other broad thinkers declare “is the good of the race.” The most
discouraging feature of the situation is the fact that women as a
whole do not realize that a politically inferior class is a degraded
class; a disfranchised class, an oppressed class; and that her economic
dependence upon man is the basic cause of her inferiority.
The grievances openly proclaimed by the advocates of woman suffrage
as causes of hostility are too frequently childish, unreasonable, and
unworthy of serious attention. In the majority of cases they centre
around some fancied wrong that is a result rather than a cause. The
keynote not only to the woman question, but to the labor question may
be found in the words of that deep thinker and able writer, August
Bebel: “The basis of all oppression is economic dependence upon the
oppressor.” The widespread discontent with present social conditions
is an augury of hope for the future. There is no element in the unrest
which need excite grave apprehension. Thoughtful people perceive
clearly that women are intensely human, nothing more, and that as human
beings they are entitled not only to food, clothes, and shelter, but to
an opportunity for development.
It is only as we are familiar with the oppression that has been the
common lot of women since the beginning of time that we can realize
that her lot has been sweetened, her condition ameliorated, and her
progress within the century marvelous indeed. The woman question,
historically considered, contains all the physical subjugation and
consequent inferiority which constituted all the differentiation
between the physical and mental powers of men and women. It contains
all the humiliation, uncertainty, and ultimate hope of her future.
The history of the woman question is analogous with the history of
the labor question, with the difference that woman slavery had its
origin in the peculiarities of her sexual being, while the laborer’s
slavery began when he was robbed of the land which is the birthright
of every human being. It will be seen, therefore, that woman’s slavery
antedates the thralldom of the thrall, and “was more humiliating, more
degrading, because she was treated and regarded by the laborer as his
servant, his inferior.” This condition largely prevails among laborers
to-day, and was indirectly given utterance to a few weeks ago, when
some of the members of the American Federation of Labor formulated
a traditional resolution demanding that “women be excluded from all
public work and relegated to the home,”—a demand that would be to
some extent reasonable, and no doubt acceptable, to the great army of
working-women, had the chivalrous laborers who formulated the demand
the ability and industry to provide a home for the women whom they
would render paupers by deprivation of work, and for the children for
whom their fathers were unable to provide. It is gratifying to know
that this resolution was lost in the committee room, and that its
formulation was greeted by the press of the whole country with a storm
of deserved disapproval.
Inasmuch as the rapidly increasing number of bread-winners among women
makes it evident that men are either unable or incompetent to provide
for them, it remains for the working-women of the country to formulate
a resolution demanding that men be excluded from all work that has
hitherto been considered as belonging to or peculiarly adapted to
women. What an army of mosquito-legged men from the eating-houses,
laundries, and dry-goods establishments would rise up to proclaim the
idiocy of women and protest against such injustice!
On the threshold of the world’s morning, says a distinguished writer
and worker in the German Reichstag of to-day, we may correctly assume
that woman was man’s equal in mental and physical power. But she became
his inferior physically, and consequently dependent upon his bounty,
during periods of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing, when her
helplessness forced her to look to him for food and shelter. In the
childhood of the race might made right; brute strength was the standard
of superiority; the struggle for existence was crude and savage; and
thus this occasional helplessness became the manner of her bondage.
That nature is primarily responsible for the centuries of woman’s
enslavement there can be no doubt. And as nature’s laws are unchanging,
the advocates of woman’s political advancement would do well to
remember that woman’s greatest importance as a public factor can only
begin when the function of motherhood ceases. “In a real sense, as a
factory is meant to turn out locomotives or clocks, the machinery of
nature is designed in the last resort to turn out mothers. Life to the
human species is not a random series of random efforts; its course is
set as rigidly as the pathway of the stars; its laws are as immutable
as the laws of the Medes and Persians.” (Drummond’s Ascent of Man.)
Nature’s great work for the individual is reproduction and care of the
species. The first, Drummond terms the cosmic process; the second,
the moral process. Statistics show that one child out of every three
dies before maturity, and nature’s task is incomplete unless at least
two children be reared to the adult age by every family. Every couple,
then, at marriage, assumes the responsibility to society and posterity
of bringing three children into the world. Woman’s part in the
stupendous economy of nature is first and distinctively most important,
that of motherhood. She can only pay her debt to nature, fulfill her
mission to the world, and discharge her obligations to humanity by
faithfully discharging the duties of motherhood. But as the function
of motherhood ceases when the woman is in the prime of life, ripened
by experience and fortified by maternal ties, she may yet have ample
opportunity to exert her far-reaching influence in public work when
she has exemplified in her own life the words, Home, Love, Mother. And
there is, there can be, no rational objection to granting the fullest
suffrage to woman at this period.
[Illustration: MARY ELIZABETH LEASE]
Having located the basic cause of her dependence, it will be seen that
the only solution possible for the complete emancipation and mental
and physical development of woman is to render her, through industrial
freedom, so economically independent in every way of man’s grudging
bounty that she will scorn his pity, resent his abuse, and claim her
right to fullest individuality and opportunity as a human being.
For countless ages women were separated from the world by a barrier
as effective as the myriad-miled wall of China; vacillating between
the condition of slave and superintendent of the kitchen; taught
nothing but those flimsy accomplishments that would catch the eye
of the prospective husband and master; sneered at, ridiculed, and
abused whenever she attempted to cross the line which hoary prophets
and patriarchal slaveholders had marked across her path; subject to
man’s whim and caprice; her physical development, in time, became
meagre and crippled. And as her mental faculties were repressed and
imprisoned in the narrowest circle of feminine opinions, it became
difficult for her to rise above the most commonplace trivialities of
life. Thus it came about that the term “Weaker Sex,” originally used to
convey only the acknowledged truth that women are inferior to men in
physical strength, came to include the mind as well as body. Be this
as it may, the position of women for long centuries was inevitably one
of extreme cruelty and oppression. Countless bitter and unnecessary
limitations hedged her pathway and obstructed her development from
the cradle to the grave. It is not to be wondered at that she in time
became so inured to her degrading servitude as to accept it as her
natural position. Madame De Staël has truly said, “Of all the gifts and
faculties which nature has lavishly bestowed upon woman, she has been
allowed to exercise fully but one, the faculty to suffer.” The extent
of this suffering and the deteriorating influence which it has exerted
upon the race can never be estimated till Finis is written to the story
of humanity.
In the noonday of Grecian power and learning, woman trod not beside
man as helpmate and companion, but followed as his slave. Demosthenes
defines the wife as the “bearer of children, the faithful watch-dog
who guards the house for her master.” At the Council of Macon, held in
the sixth century, the question of the soul and humanity of women was
gravely weighed and debated, profound doctors of theology maintaining
that “woman is not a subject but an object for man’s use and pleasure.”
For centuries theological divines whetted their wit on helpless woman;
and the church in holy zeal persecuted the woman who was guilty of a
fault as a “daughter of the devil,” and held her up to public contumely
as the concentration of all evil.
Christianity, indeed, offered emancipation to women. It proclaimed a
startling doctrine,—the equality of the rich and the poor, the weak
and the strong, in the sight of God the Father. And it became evident
that such teachings would inevitably break down the barriers of class
and caste, eliminate injustice, and usher in a time when all should
stand equal before the law. But alas, the world, with the exception
of isolated and individual instances, has never been offered an
opportunity to test the efficacy of the all-corrective principles of
the religion which Christ gave to the world. The repression of women
biased the reformatory tendencies of Christianity, and rendered it as
ineffective as a medium of relief to the oppressed as our one-sided
political system of to-day. Christianity, under masculine domination,
was lost in the rubbish of churchianity, which, professing but failing
to practice the religion of Christ, has held woman in the same contempt
in which she has been held by all the ancient and idolatrous religions
of the world. Yet despite the fact that the great Master, were He to
come to-day, would scarcely recognize in the churches a trace of the
code which He lived and died to exemplify, it must not be forgotten
that the vital principle of religion never dies. It eventually attains
fullest development, and becomes identified with the progress of
civilization and the highest purpose of a people. Therefore, we may
reverently believe that in the ultimate triumph and rehabilitation of
practical Christianity lies the hope of the oppressed, and true liberty
not only for women, but for every human being.
[Illustration: Emma Willard]
Even now the mists are lifting. The great change in the position of
women—legal, social, and educational—within a hundred years is
breaking even the hard shell of orthodox usage. Whole denominations
have dropped the word “obey” from the marriage service. Many ministers
frequently omit it, or, if administered, it is pronounced by the bride
with mental reservation and looked upon as a word that has only the
most remote and shadowy significance. The new wine is breaking the old
bottles; the spirit of the nineteenth century is too progressive for
the usages and traditions of the eleventh century. Modern churchianity,
realizing that women constitute three fourths of its membership,
no longer wages a merciless warfare upon them. It has relaxed its
Pauline grip upon her throat, “I suffer not a woman to speak in the
churches.” And the more advanced theological bodies have offered her
the intellectual hospitality of the pulpit, where her eloquence is a
pleasing change to those who have grown tired of preachers’ platitudes.
Clerical decrees are no longer hurled at her defenseless head. The
doors of churches, schools, and colleges are swinging wide at her
approach, though they sometimes creak on their hinges. The ministers
no longer openly advocate that the gates of opportunity be bolted and
barred against her. There is everything to stimulate hope; the wings
of feminine nature have expanded till a return to the chrysalis is
impossible.
It is true that a very large number yet profess to believe that a
woman fulfills her whole mission in the world when she makes herself
as pretty and agreeable as possible, and devotes all her time and
attention to the discharge of domestic duties. But there has been a
wonderful modification of opinion since Schopenhauer declared that
“woman is not called to great things. She pays her debt to life by the
throes of birth, care of the children, and subjection to her husband.”
Two things have tended to bring about this modification of opinion;
the broader education and increased opportunities for development
attendant upon the growth of individual liberty and republican forms
of government; and the capability of self-maintenance due to improved
mechanical appliances. It is not mere inclination on the part of the
individual, nor is it the voice of the agitator, that is bringing about
these changes; it is the irresistible logic of events.
One hundred years ago the education of women in the most progressive
and wealthy families went little beyond reading and writing. In 1819,
when Mrs. Emma Willard issued an address to the members of the New
York legislature advocating the endowment of an institution for the
higher education of women, there was not a college in the country for
girls. In 1892, the colleges of the United States numbered more than
50,000 female students. In 1888, the ratio of female students to the
whole number of students pursuing a higher course of education in
universities and colleges in this country was 29.3 per centum, or a
little more than one fourth. At the same time the ratio in England was
11 per centum; in France, 2 per centum; while in Germany, Austria, and
Italy the ratio was so slight as to be but a mere fraction of 1 per
centum.
Such a thing as a female president of a college was unknown and
probably undreamed of in the eighteenth century; but we learn from the
Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1887–88 that there are in
the United States forty-two colleges and institutions for the superior
instruction of women having a woman for president.
In the high and secondary schools, in 1888, over one half of the
students were girls. And in the same year, tabulated statistics reveal
that 63 per centum of the teachers were women. And this percentage will
become greater and greater as we grasp the truth that woman is, by
gift of greater intuition and sympathy, the natural instructor of the
human race. The salaries paid to women teachers are grossly unfair when
compared to the pay of male teachers for the same or less work. But as
the difference in compensation is growing smaller every decade, there
is at least room for hope that this injustice will soon be righted.
The law of evolution is the discoverer and formulator of woman’s
advancement. The invention and use of gunpowder placed the peasant on
an equal war-footing with the mailed knight. The enormous increase
in mechanical appliances and productive machinery has taken woman
out of the rank of unpaid menials, has given her leisure for mental
development, opportunity to receive recompense for toil, and is largely
breaking down the physical barriers which had hitherto been considered
unsurmountable. Statistics show that there are forms of machinery
in the operation of which the production of a woman is even greater
than that of a man, thus furnishing an actual proof of the falsity of
the idea that woman is incapacitated for competition with man in the
physical world. And the trend of events is indicated by the statistics
given in the Report of the Commissioner of Labor, from which we learn
that in some trades and professions the percentage of women engaged has
increased fivefold in the last decade.
While woman’s work has always been a recognized factor in the world’s
progress, yet her admittance to the field of remunerative work is
limited to the last one hundred years; is, in fact, the prominent
feature of the nineteenth century. There is overwhelming evidence
that her work in every department to which she has been admitted is
as capable, acceptable, and in every way as faithfully performed as
the work of her brother man. In the last century it is estimated that
not more than 1 per centum of artists and teachers of art were women;
while in 1890 women comprised 48.08 per centum, or nearly one half of
that profession. Nearly the same proportion of increase is found in the
ranks of teachers and musicians,—women now forming over 60 per centum
of the teachers of the United States.
There are now about three million women and girls in this country
who earn their own livelihood. And the eleventh census reveals
the startling information that in the city of New York there are
twenty-seven thousand men who are supported by their wives. Yet these
men, useless to society, a burden to the women who support them, are
permitted the immunities and privileges of law and custom, while women
have equality only in the duties and punishments.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were but few
occupations in which women were permitted to engage. Their abilities
and ambitions were restricted to the school and the home. In the latter
they received food and shelter as compensation; in the former, but
one half or one third the salary allowed to male teachers. The first
noticeable change in woman’s condition, when she became something
more than a mere household drudge, whose busy hands carded and wove,
spun and knit, the family supply of cloth, dates from the first bale
of cotton grown in this country in the early years of the eighteenth
century. In that bale of cotton lay the seeds of not only a new
movement in labor, but the beginning of a new epoch for woman, in which
her work and wages were destined to take coherent shape and form. In
all industrial progress since that time women have taken an active part
while receiving a meagre share of the product. Forced by the course of
events to emerge from seclusion and repression, she has passed from
one stage of development to another, always a step or two behind man
in the progress of social evolution, till the close of the nineteenth
century reveals myriad changes and the actual realization of Tennyson’s
prophetic lines in the “Princess,” “We have prudes for proctors,
dowagers for deans.”
[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT.]
One hundred years ago it was the duty of a woman to efface herself.
She was expected to make of herself a mental blank-book upon which her
husband might inscribe what he would. Thus it is only lately that women
have begun actively to compete with men in expression of any kind.
Indeed, previous to that time, with a few notable exceptions, they
were denied recognition of individual life. The woman, if unmarried,
was merged in the family, or, if married, merged in the husband. Her
name, her religion, her gods, were changed on marriage. But, married
or single, the absorption was complete. So it has happened that woman,
throbbing with poetic sympathy, has, with the exception of Sappho,
produced less high and unmistakable poetry than man. With more harmony,
more music in her nature, her very soul attuned to symphony and rhythm,
she has been little known as a composer. With far vision and clear
literary insight, she has been suppressed in art and literature.
George Eliot gave her sublime literary productions to the world under
a masculine _nom de plume_, because of the prejudice of even that not
remote day. Fanny Mendelssohn was compelled by her family to publish
her musical compositions as her brother’s. Mary Somerville met only
discouragement and ridicule in her mathematical studies. In every
sphere, in every department of science and art, abuse, injustice, and
the croaking of reactionary frogs have greeted each step of her upward
way. The wonder is, then, not that she has accomplished so little, but
that she is not in the same condition to-day that she was when Paul
thrust a gag in her mouth in the shape of a Corinthian text, “And if a
woman would learn anything, let her ask her husband at home.” It will
be seen, therefore, that the oft-repeated assertion that women have not
given to the world as much evidence of genius as men is a Lilliputian
assertion tainted somewhat with envy. “There has been no Shakespeare
among women,” says the advocates of man’s supremacy. With all the world
as their own, and the gates of boundless opportunities swinging wide,
there has been but one Shakespeare among men. It has been asserted
that George Eliot is the Shakespeare among women and Mrs. Browning
the counterpart of Bacon. But their immortality has not been tested.
They lived but a little while ago. But there is one woman, at least,
who has established her claim thoroughly, and whose genius twenty-five
centuries have tested. Sappho is truly immortal. Her fame and genius
have been sealed by the approval of all the great literati of the
centuries. Coleridge, who occupies no uncertain place in the world
of letters, says of her, “Of all the poets of the world, of all the
illustrious artists of all literature, Sappho is the one whose every
word has a peculiar and unmistakable poetic perfume, a seal of absolute
perfection and illimitable grace.” Swinburne, the greatest living
master in the world of verbal music, declares that, “Her verses are the
supreme success, the final achievement, of poetic art.” Sappho’s claim
to immortality exceeds that of Shakespeare’s by twenty-three hundred
years.