employments of the male sex? More and more exclusively, war and the
chase. From these two vocations, monopolizing literally the whole active
life of the savage man, the savage woman is almost absolutely excluded.
Precisely at the point where the man’s sphere leaves off, in each of
these pursuits, the woman’s sphere begins. Among American Indians, the
man takes the captive, the woman tortures him. The man kills the deer,
carries it till within sight of his own village, and then throws it
down, that the squaw may go out and drag it in. Much that seems cruel
and selfish in Indian life is the result, as Mrs. Jameson long since
pointed out, of this complete separation of functions. The reason why
the Indian woman carries the lodgepoles and the provisions on the march
is that the man’s limbs may be left free and agile for the far severer
labors of war and of the chase, from which she is excluded. The reason
why she finally brings the deer to the camp is because he has had the
more exhausting labor of hunting and killing it.
Contrast now this absolute “sexual difference of employment” with the
greater and greater blending of civilized society,—a blending, observe,
which proceeds from both sides, and not from woman only. It is hard to
say which is more remarkable, within the last half-century,—the way in
which women have encroached on men’s work, or the way in which men have
encroached on women’s.
In many mechanical and commercial pursuits,—as printing and
bookkeeping,—once almost monopolized by men, you now find a very large
number of women. In some pursuits, as in education, the women have come
to outnumber the men enormously, at least in America; in others, as
telegraphy, they seem likely to do the same. We constantly hear of new
channels opening. A friend of mine, the other day, just before
addressing an audience on woman suffrage, stepped into a barber’s shop,
and to his great amazement was shaved by a woman. On inquiry, he learned
for the first time, that a good many of that sex, mostly Germans,
pursued this occupation in New York and elsewhere. Thus do the vocations
of men and women now “blend and coincide.” On the other hand, the
leading dressmaker of the world is a man; our bonnetshops are largely
conducted by men; the eminent hotel cooks, whose salaries exceed any
paid by Harvard University, are men; and the lady who goes to rest in a
sleeping-car on our railroads has her pillow smoothed and her curtains
drawn, not by a chambermaid, but by a chamberman.
These are the facts which seem to me, I must say, quite fatal to Dr.
Hedge’s theory. And there is one thing worth noticing in the very
different criticisms passed on men and on women as to these invasions of
each other’s province. If you call attention to the way in which men are
everywhere taking part in women’s work, people say approvingly, “To be
sure! greater energy, greater skill! they do even women’s work better
than women themselves can.” But if you point out, that, on the other
hand, women are also doing men’s work, and in some cases—as in
literature and lecturing—are actually obtaining higher prices than most
men can obtain, the same people shake their heads disapprovingly, and
say, “Unsexed; out of their sphere!” Now, if we lived in an age of
chivalrous protection of women, it would be a different thing; but, as
we live in an age of political economy, there is no reason why men alone
should have the benefit of its laws. If practical life is to be regarded
as a game of puss-in-the-corner, I should recommend to each ejected puss
to make for the best corner she finds open, without much deference to
the theories of the sages.
LXII.
THE USE OF ONE’S FEET.
Is it better to stand on one’s own feet, or to depend on those of other
people? We need clear views on that matter, certainly; and there is not
much doubt which theory will ultimately prevail.
For one, I believe the whole theory of a leisure-class, whether for man
or woman, to be a snare and a delusion. It seems to me that there is one
great drawback that a young American may encounter,—namely, the
possession of an independent property; and that there is one great piece
of good fortune,—to be thrown on one’s self for support. Of all
influences for development or usefulness, I know of none so great as
“the wholesome stimulus of pecuniary necessity.” Of all forms of social
organization, that seems to me the most favorable which opens to all
most freely the opportunity of early education, and then calls upon each
to exert himself for his own support.
To be sure, it is hardly possible to overrate the value of cultivated
companionship and refined association. In other countries it may be
worth while, for the sake of these, to be born to wealth: it is so hard
to get them without wealth. But the happiest and best American
households are apt to be found among such as Miss Alcott, for instance,
habitually describes, where there is plenty of refinement and very
little money; where perhaps there has been wealth in times past, but it
has been lost just in time for the good of the children. All that money
can bring—all books, all travel, all art—are not worth so much as the
power to stand on one’s own feet. It is an essential to the character,
and it is certainly the greatest of delights. To have earned, for a
single year, one’s own support, gives one, in a manner, the freedom of
the universe. Till that is done, we are children: after that we are
mature human beings.
In England, where the whole social atmosphere is so different, there are
many instances of much service done to art and philanthropy by persons
born to leisure. And yet, even in England, if the admissions of English
people may be trusted, these instances are bought by a frightful
disproportion of wasted lives; and the best work is, after all, done by
those who have learned to stand on their own feet. This last fact is
certainly true of France, Germany, and America. So far as my own
observation goes, for one American born to leisure who makes a good use
of it, there are a dozen who lead empty or vicious lives. And even that
exceptional one, with all his advantages, is often distanced in the race
by the men who have early had to stand on their own feet. The man of
leisure is usually so limited, either by the absence of stimulus or by
the tiresome narrowness of a petty circle, or by missing the wholesome
attrition of other minds, that he dwindles and grows feeble. If such a
man attains by the aid of wealth what the man of the next inferior grade
attains without it, we are all glad, and say it is “an honorable
instance.” Not that the rich are worse than other men. It is no calamity
to earn wealth, or even to inherit it after we have learned the lesson
of self-reliance. It is the children of wealth who are to be pitied.
Now, all women who are born outside of actual poverty in America are as
badly off as if they had been born to wealth. They are systematically
discouraged from the delightful tonic of self-support. But when it is
said that they never even feel the desire to support themselves, I must
dissent. For twenty years I have been encountering young women who so
longed for the sense of an independent position that even the happiest
paternal home could not satisfy them unless it gave them so much to do
that they might honestly feel that they earned their living. Otherwise
the most luxurious arm-chairs in their own houses would not satisfy
them, they so longed to learn the use of their own feet. I have known
girls to rejoice in their father’s loss of property, because it would
release them to enjoy the happiness of self-reliance; and, for one, had
I the good fortune to have a dozen daughters, I should wish them all to
be of this way of thinking. Any other theory would give us a world of
mere amateurs and dilettantes, and very little work would be done. We
are getting over the theory that it is undignified for a man to stand
upon his own feet; and we shall one day get over it in regard to women.
LXIII.
MISS INGELOW’S PROBLEM.
In a certain New England town I lived opposite the house of a thriving
mechanic. His wife, a young and pretty woman, soon attracted the
attention of my household by the grace and vivacity of her bearing, and
the peculiar tastefulness of her own and her little boy’s costume. On
further acquaintance, we found that she did every atom of her housework,
washing and all; that she cut and made every garment for herself and her
child; and that, finding her energies still unsatisfied, she took in
sewing-work from a tailor’s shop, and thus earned most of the money for
their wardrobe. It may be well to add, to complete this story of New
England social life, that her husband was one of the very earliest
volunteers for the war of the Rebellion; that he went in captain, came
out brigadier-general, and now holds an important government office.
There is nothing isolated or unexampled about this instance. My pretty
and ladylike neighbor was only energetic, ready, capable, and ambitious,
or, to sum it all up in the New England vernacular, “smart.” Whatever
she saw in society or life that was desirable for herself or her husband
or her child, that she aimed at, and generally obtained.
She “hadn’t a lazy bone in her body;” and she never will have, though
she may wear that body out prematurely by nervous tension. Wherever she
goes, she will carry the same restless, tireless energy; and, should her
husband ever go to Congress or to the Court of St. James, she will carry
herself with perfect fearlessness and ease. And in all this she
represents one great type of New England women.
When you ask of such a woman if she shrinks from work, it is as if you
asked, Does a deer shrink from running, or a swallow from flying? She
loves the work: indeed she loves it, in my opinion, far too much, and
sets a dangerous example. All theories of the natural indolence of
man—or woman—fall defeated before the New England temperament,
traditions, training, climate; before that “whip of the sky,” as a poet
has sung, that urges us on. If, therefore, “household work is thought
degrading,”—and Miss Ingelow asserts too hastily that “nowhere is this
so much the case as in America,”—it certainly is not merely because it
is work.
For myself, I doubt the fact, and demand the evidence. So far as the
free States of the Union are concerned, it seems to me that household
labor is thought less degrading than in England, and that the proportion
of well-taught and ladylike women who contentedly do their own work is
far greater in America, and keeps pace with the greater spread of
average education. There is not a city in the land, I suppose,—certainly
not a village,—where the housework in a large majority of the
American-born families is not done by Americans; for the large majority
are always mechanics and laborers, among whom, as a rule, the work is
done by the wives and sisters and daughters. The wages of domestics are
so much higher in America than in England,—being almost double,—that it
is here a more serious expenditure to employ such aid.
I think, therefore, that we must be very cautious before we say that
housework, as such, is held degrading in the free States. No doubt,
American women feel, as their husbands and brothers feel, that all work
should be done by machinery, as far as possible, and that the
washing-machine and the carpet-sweeper are as legitimate as the patent
reaper or mower. They would be foolish if they did not. They also feel,
as American men feel, that, in this great assemblage of all nations, the
place for the American is rather in posts of command than in the ranks.
In our ships you find men of all nations in the forecastle, but
Americans in the cabin. In the regular army it is the officers,
commissioned or non-commissioned, who are Americans. Go as far west as
you please, you are surprised to find that the railway officials,
superintendents, conductors, baggage-masters, are not merely
American-born but often New-England-born. The better average education
tells. It is in the fitness of things that the under-work of household
life also should be done by the under-class of foreign elements, and
that it should be Americans who do the direction and guidance. Some such
instinct as this is the explanation of much that Miss Ingelow takes for
a contempt of household labor. An American woman does not despise such
labor, properly speaking, any more than an American man despises
mechanical labor. Both aim, if they can, to rise to occupations more
lucrative and more intellectual.
It is not the labor, it is not even the household labor, to which
objection is made. When you come to household labor for other people,
done in a capacity recognized as menial,—ay, there’s the rub! There is a
widespread feeling that domestic service in other people’s families is
menial.
For one I have publicly remonstrated against the excess of this feeling,
and think it is carried too far. Women will never compete equally with
men, until they are willing, like men, to do any honest work without
sense of degradation. This is one point where enfranchisement will help
them. So long as a man bears in his hand the ballot, that symbol of
substantial equality, his self-respect is not easily impaired by the
humblest position. “A man’s a man for a’ that,” he knows, before the
law. But a woman, not having this, has only the usages of society to
guide her; and, so long as society talks about “master” and “servant,” I
do not blame the American girl for refusing to accept such a
position,—just as I do not blame, but applaud, the American man for
refusing to wear livery. I only condemn them, in either case, when the
alternative is starvation or sin. Then pride should yield.
But this is the conclusive proof that it is not the housework which is
held degrading: the fact that there is no difficulty in securing any
number of American girls in our large country hotels, where they
associate with their employers as equals, and call no man master. The
fact that the proprietors of such hotels invariably prefer American
“help” to Irish, shows that the philosophy of the whole question lies in
a different direction from that indicated by our good friend Miss
Ingelow. The evil of which she speaks does not properly exist: the real
difficulty lies in a different direction, and cannot be settled till we
see farther into the social organization that is to come.
LXIV.
SELF-SUPPORT.
It is the English theory, that society needs a leisure class, not
self-supporting, from whom public services and works of science and art
may proceed. Even Darwin recognizes this theory. But how little is
England doing for science and art, compared to Germany! and the German
work of that kind is not done by a leisure class, but by poor men. I
believe that the necessity of self-support, at least in the earlier
years of life, is the best training for manhood; and it does not seem
desirable that women should be wholly set free from it.
A clever writer, on the other hand, maintains in the New York
Independent that women should never support themselves if it be possible
honorably to avoid it. “Pecuniary dependence, degrading to men, is not
only not undignified, but is the only thoroughly dignified condition,
for women. In a renovated and millennial society all women will be
supported by men,—will have no more to do with bringing in money than
the lilies of the field.” This statement is delightfully uncompromising,
and it is a great thing to hear an extreme position so clearly and
unequivocally put. Especially on a question so difficult as the labor
and wages of women, it is particularly desirable to have each extreme
worked out to its logical results.
It is certainly the normal condition of woman to be a wife and a mother.
It is equally certain that this condition withdraws woman from the
labor-market, during the prime of her life. The very years during which
a man attains his highest skill, and earns his highest wages,—say, from
twenty-five to forty,—are lost to woman, in this normal condition, so
far as earning money is concerned. This is the main fact, as I judge,
which keeps down the standard of both work and pay among women, as a
class. If men, as a class, were thus heavily weighted, the result would
be as clearly seen. Where one sex brings into the market the full vigor
of its life, and the other has only crude labor, or occasional labor, or
broken labor, to offer, the result cannot be doubtful. Yet this is
precisely the state of the competition between man and woman.
I believe, therefore, with this writer, that woman was not intended to
be the equal competitor of man in business pursuits—or, indeed, to be
self-supporting at all—during her career of motherhood. It is generally
recognized as a calamity, when she is obliged to support herself at that
time. Most people believe with Miss Mitford that “women were not meant
to earn the bread of a family,” and that men are. But to earn the bread
of a family is not self-support: it is much more than self-support. And
when this writer takes a step beyond, and says, “I think the necessity
of earning her own living is always a woman’s misfortune,” then she
seems to theorize beyond good sense, and to confuse things very
different. Self-support is one thing: supporting seven small children is
quite another thing.
That which should never be left out of sight is the essential dignity of
labor. Woman during the period of maternity is rightly excused from
earning money; but it is because she is better occupied. She is not
exempted in the character of lily of the field, but in the capacity of
mother of a family. It is an important distinction. For labor in the
lower sense, she substitutes what, in a higher and more sacred sense, we
still call “labor.” She is not supported because she is a woman, but
because, in her capacity as woman, she happens to have home-duties. If
she had no such duties, there seems no reason why she should be
supported any more than if she were a man. To be a wife and mother is a
vocation, and one which usually for a time precludes all others. Merely
to be a woman is not a vocation; and, so long as one can make no better
claim on the world than that, the world has a right to demand something
more. The Irishwoman who locks her little children into her one room,
that she may go out to earn their bread, seems to me in a position no
falser than that of the over-worked father who breaks himself down with
toil that his daughters may live like the lilies of the field.
LXV.
SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES.
For one, I have never been fascinated by the style of domestic paradise
that English novels depict,—half a dozen unmarried daughters round the
family hearth, all assiduously doing worsted-work and petting their
papa. I believe a sufficiency of employment to be the only normal and
healthy condition for a human being; and where there is not work enough
to employ the full energies of all, at home, it seems as proper for
young women as for young birds to leave the parental nest. If this
additional work is done for money, very well. It is the conscious
dignity of self-support that removes the traditional curse from labor,
and woman has a right to claim her share in that dignified position.
Yet I cannot agree, on the other hand, with Celia Burleigh when she says
that her “True Woman” should be self-supporting, even in marriage.
Women’s part of the family task—the care of home and children—is just as
essential to building up the family fortunes as the very different toil
of the out-door partner. For young married women to undertake any more
direct aid to the family income is in most cases utterly undesirable,
and is asking of themselves a great deal too much. And this is not
because they are to be encouraged in indolence, but because they
already, in a normal condition of things, have their hands full. As, on
this point, I may differ from some of my readers, let me explain
precisely what I mean.
As I write, there are at work, in another part of the house, two
paper-hangers, a man and his wife, each forty-five or fifty years of
age. Their children are grown up, and some of them married: they have a
daughter at home, who is old enough to do the housework, and leave the
mother free. There is no way of organizing the labors of this household
better than this: the married pair toil together during the day, and go
home together to their evening rest. A happier couple I never saw; it is
a delight to see them cheerily at work together, cutting, pasting,
hanging: their life seems like a prolonged industrial picnic; and, if I
had the ill-luck to own as many palaces as an English duke, I should
keep them permanently occupied in putting fresh papers on the walls.
But the merit of this employment for the woman is, that it interferes
with no other duty. Were she a young mother with little children, and
obliged by her paper-hanging to neglect them, or to leave them at a
“day-nursery,” or to overwork herself by combining too many cares, then
the sight of her would be very sad. So sacred a thing does motherhood
seem to me, so paramount and absorbing the duty of a mother to her
child, that in a true state of society I think she should be utterly
free from all other duties,—even, if possible, from the ordinary cares
of housekeeping. If she has spare health and strength to do these other
things as pleasures, very well; but she should be relieved from them as
duties. And, as to the need of self-support, I can hardly conceive of an
instance where it can be to the mother of young children any thing but a
disaster. As we all know, this calamity often occurs; I have seen it
among the factory-operatives at the North, and among the negro-women in
the cotton-fields at the South: in both cases it is a tragedy, and the
bodies and brains of mother and children alike suffer. That the mother
should bear and tend and nurture, while the father supports and
protects,—this is the true division.
Does this bear in any way upon suffrage? Not at all. The mother can
inform herself upon public questions in the intervals of her cares, as
the father among his; and the baby in the cradle is a perpetual appeal
to her, as to him, that the institutions under which that baby dwells
may be kept pure. One of the most devoted young mothers I ever knew—the
younger sister of Margaret Fuller Ossoli—made it a rule, no matter how
much her children absorbed her, to read books or newspapers for an hour
every day; in order, she said, that their mother should be more than a
mere source of physical nurture, and that her mind should be kept fresh
and alive for them. But to demand in addition that such a mother should
earn money for them, is to ask too much; and there is many a tombstone
in New England, which, if it told the truth, would tell what comes of
such an effort.
LXVI.
THE PROBLEM OF WAGES.
Talking, the other day, with one of the leading dressmakers of a New
England town, I asked her why it was, that, when women suffered so much
from scanty employments and low pay, there should yet be so few good
dressmakers. “You are all overrun and worn out with work,” I said, “all
the year round; every lady in town complains that there are so few of
you; and it is the same in every town where I ever lived.” She answered,
as such witnesses always answer, “Women do not engage in occupations, as
men do, for a lifetime. They expect only to continue in them for a year
or two, until they shall be married. I employ twelve girls, and not one
of them expects to be a dressmaker for life. They work their ten hours a
day, under my direction, and that is all.”
Here lies the point of difference between the work of women and that of
men, as a class: I mean, in their industrial pursuits, the work that
earns money. Until we reach this point, or get a social philosophy that
explains this, we are yet upon the surface only. The enfranchisement of
woman will help us towards this, but will not, of itself, solve the
problem of wages; because that depends on other than political
considerations.