(equal does not mean similar, remember!), content to see every industry
on earth taken away from them, save house-service and child-culture,
growing up in the full knowledge and acceptance of this field of
labour, generally declining to study said industries before undertaking
them, cheerfully undertaking them without any pretense of efficiency,
and then calling upon the other half of the world, upon men, who do
everything else that is done to maintain our civilisation, to help them
do their work!
We object to seeing the man harness the woman to the plough, and we are
right. It is a poor way to work. A horse is more efficient, a
steam-plough still better. It is time that we objected to the woman's
effort to harness the man to the home, in all its cumbrous old-world
inefficiencies. It is not more labour that the home wants, it is better
machinery and administration.
Some hold that the feebleness of woman has a beneficent effect on man,
draws out many of his nobler qualities. He should then marry a
bed-ridden invalid--a purblind idiot--and draw them all out!
The essential weakness and deficiencies of the child are quite
sufficient to call out all the strength and wisdom of both parents,
without adding this travesty of childhood, this pretended helplessness
of a full-grown woman. The shame of it! That a mother, one who needs
every attainable height of wisdom and power, should forego her own
human development--to make good her claim on man for food and clothes
and draw out his nobler qualities! The virtue of parentage is to be
measured by its success, not by the amount of effort and sacrifice
expended.
Granting that the care of the body is woman's especial work; the
feeding, clothing, and cleaning of the world; she should by this time
have developed some system of doing it which would make it less of a
burden to the man as well as the woman. It is most discreditable to the
business sense of a modern community that these vitally important life
processes should be so clumsily performed, at such heavy cost of time,
labour, and money.
The care and education of children are legitimately shared by the
father. In this a man and his wife are truly partners. They engage in a
common business and both labour in it. At present the man by no means
does his share in this all-important work, save as he does it
collectively, through school and college; there the woman is in
default.
In the early years the man gives little thought and care to the child,
this being supposed to be perfectly well attended to by the woman. That
it is not, we may readily see; but the man can by no means assist in
it; because he is so overburdened already in the material provision for
the home.
The enormous and unnecessary expense of our domestic processes
constitutes so excessive a drain on man's energy that it would be
cruel, as well as useless, to expect him to do more.
With the reduction in expense which we have shown to be possible,
lessening the cost of living by two-thirds and adding to productive
labour by nearly half, the home, instead of being an unconscionable
burden and ceaseless care, would become what it should be: an easily
attained place of complete rest, comfort, peace, and invigoration.
The present influence of the home on men is felt most through this
inordinate expense. The support of the family we have laid entirely
upon man, thus developing in the dependent woman a limitless capacity
for receiving things, and denying her the power to produce them. If
this result remained in its simple first degree it would be bad enough;
requiring of the man the maintenance of himself, a healthy able-bodied
woman, and all the children, instead of having a vigorous helpmate, to
honourably support herself, and do her share toward supporting her own
children.
This result is cumulative, however. The confinement of the woman
to the home, when she does not labour, results in her becoming a
parasite, and the appetite of a parasite is insatiable. She has no
sense of what we call "the value of money,"--meaning how much labour
it represents,--because she never laboured for it. She received it from
her father, all unthinking of where he got it, as is natural to a
child; and she continues to be a child, receiving as unthinkingly from
her husband. This position we consider right, even beautiful; man
stoutly maintains it himself, and considers any effort of the woman to
support herself as a reflection on him. He has arrogated to himself as
a masculine function the power of producing wealth; and considers it
"unfeminine" for a woman to do it; and as indicating a lack of
manliness in him.
He should "consider the ant," in this capacity, or the bee; and see
that a purely masculine functionary has no other occupation whatsoever.
He should consider also the male savage--he is "masculine" enough
surely; but he is little else. Last, nearest, and most practical he
should consider the immense majority of women all over the world to-day
who labour in the home. The Lady of the House is a pure parasite,
almost wholly detrimental in her influence, but the Housewife is one of
the hardest workers on earth. She works unceasingly; as Mrs. Diaz put
it years ago, in a thoughtful husband's sudden consideration of his
wife's working hours--"No noonings--no evenings--no rainy days!" She
works harder and longer than the man, in a miscellaneous shifting field
of effort far more exhausting to vitality than his specialised line;
_and she bears children too_! If any man could make a boast equal
to that of the mother of nine children--(whose son told me this
himself) that she had never missed washing on Monday _but
twice_--there might be some ground for the claim of superior
strength.
In this kind of home--and it is still the rule on earth--what is the
influence on man? Does this grade and amount of labour on the part of
women lighten the burden, as we so fondly and proudly assume? It shows
great ignorance of economic values to assume it.
The poorer a man is, the more he has to pay for everything. In this
nine-tenths of our population where the woman works in the home, the
man works harder and gets less comfort for his money than among those
more successful men able to maintain a parasite. He sustains to the
fullest degree all the economic disadvantages we have previously
enumerated--the last extreme of wasteful purchase, the lowest stage of
industrial exchange. With him, a self-supporting wife would at once
double the family income, and the benefits of organised labour and
purchase would reduce their expenses at the same time. The unnecessary
expenses of a poor man's home are far greater in proportion than those
of the rich man; and his enjoyment of the place is less.
He has always a tired wife, an unprogressive wife, a wife who cannot be
to him what a strong, happy, growing woman should be. If she had eight
hours (to take even the custom of our labour-wasting time) of
specialised work, to be done with and left with eagerness for the
beloved home, she would have a far fresher and more stimulating mind
than she has after her ceaseless, confusing toils in the confined
domestic atmosphere. The two, together, could afford a better house.
The two, together, with twice the money and half the expense for food,
could furnish their children with far better care than the overworked
and undereducated housewife can give them.
The result upon the man would be pleasant, indeed. A clean, pretty,
quiet home--not full of smell and steam and various messy industries,
but simply a place to rest in when he comes to it. A wife as glad to be
at home as he. Children also glad of the reunion hour, and the mother
and father both delighted to be with their children. What is there in
this a man should dread?
Would not such a home be good to come to, and would not its influence
be wholly pleasant? Our Puritanism shrinks at the idea of homes being
wholly pleasant. They should be something of a trial, we think, for our
soul's good. The wife and mother ought to be tired and overworked,
careworn, dirty, anxious from hour to hour as she tries to "mind the
children" and all her other trades as well. The man ought to be
contented with the exhausted wife, the screaming babies, the ill-cooked
food, the general weary chaos of the place, the endless demand on his
single purse.
Is he? What is the average workingman's attitude toward this supposed
haven of rest? The statistics of the temperance society are enough to
show us the facts. A man does not like that kind of a place--and why
should he?
He is tired, working for six or ten; and to go from his completed
labour of the day, back to his wife's uncompleted labour of the day and
night, does not rest him. He wants companionship. She cannot give it
him. Her talk is of the suds, the coal, the need of shoes, clothes,
furniture, utensils--everything!
He wants amusement, she cannot give it him. An exhausted woman, taken
every day, is not entertaining. The children are, or should be, in bed.
The wife wants rest and companionship, and amusement, too; but that is
another story. We are considering the man. She must stay at home in any
case, the home being her place; but he does not have to, and out he
goes.
The instinctive demands of a highly developed human creature, a social
creature, are strong within him; needs as vital as the needs of the
body, and utterly unsatisfied at home. Out he goes, and to the one
pleasant open door--the saloon. Ease, freedom, comfort, pleasant
company, talk of something new, amusement--these are the main needs;
and if a stimulating drink is the necessary price, there is nothing in
the average man's ill-fed stomach, overdeveloped personal selfishness,
or untrained conscience, to refuse it.
The measureless results in evil we all know well. Many are the noble
souls devoting their life's efforts to the closing of the saloon, the
driving back of erring man to the safe and supposedly all-satisfying
shelter of the home. We do not dream that it is the home which drives
him there.
One thing we have divined at last; that insufficient and ill-chosen
food, villainously cooked, is one great cause of man's need for
stimulants. Under this much illumination we now strive mightily to make
man's private cook a better cook. If every man's wife were a Delmonico,
if his appetites were catered to with absolute skill and ingenuity,
would that teach him temperance and self-control?
The worse the private cook, the greater the physical need for
stimulant. The better the private cook, the greater the self-indulgence
developed in the happy Epicurean. But good or bad, no man of any grade
can get the social stimulus he needs by spending every evening with his
cook!
That is the key to the whole thing. Your cook may be "a treasure," she
may cater to your needs most exquisitely, she may also be the mother of
your children, as has been the case from the earliest times; but she is
none the less your own personal servant, and as such not your social
equal. You may love her dearly and honour her in her female capacity,
also honour the excellence of her cooking, but you are not satisfied
with her conversation or her skill in games.
The influence of the home with a working wife is not all that could be
desired; and we may turn with some hope of better things to the home
with a parasite wife. Here certainly the man comes home to rest and
peace and comfort, and to satisfying companionship with the "eternal
feminine." Here is a woman who is nothing on earth but a woman, not
even a cook. Here, of course, the food is satisfactory; the children
all a father's heart could wish, having the advantage of the incessant
devotion of an entire mother; the machinery of the home, so painfully
prominent to the workingman, is here running smoothly and unseen; and
the whole thing is well within the means of the proud "provider."
What the food supply is in the hands of the housemaid we have seen.
What the child is in the hands of the nursemaid, we may see anywhere.
The parasitic woman by no means uses the time free of housework to
devote herself to her children. A mother is essentially a worker. When
a woman does not work it dries the very springs of motherhood. The
idler she is, the less she does for her children. The rich man's
children are as often an anxiety and disappointment to him as the poor
man's.
The expense of the place is a thing of progressive dimensions. The home
of the parasitic woman is a bottomless pit for money. She is never
content. How could a human creature be content in such an unnatural
position? She is supplied with nourishment; she has such social
stimulus as her superficial contact with her kind affords, but nothing
comes out; there is no commensurate action.
In the uneasy distress of this position her only idea of relief is to
get something more; if she is not satisfied after one dinner, get or
give another dinner; if not satisfied with one dress, get two, get
twenty, get them all! If the home does not satisfy, by all means get
another one in the country; perhaps that will feel different; try first
one and then the other. If the two, or three, should pall, get a yacht,
go to some other country, get more things to put in the home or on
one's pretty body; get, get, get! and never a thought of the ease and
freedom and joy that would come of Doing. Not of playing at doing, with
a hot poker or a modelling tool--but really doing human work. It does
not occur to her, and it does not occur to him. He thinks it right and
beautiful to maintain the dainty domestic vampire, and pours forth his
life's service to meet her insatiate demands. All the reward he asks is
her love and faith, her sweet companionship.
May we look, then, in homes of this class for an ideal influence on
man? Consecrating his life to the business of not only feeding and
clothing, but profusely decorating and amusing a useless woman,--does
this have an elevating effect on him? When he thinks of how charming
she will look in the costly fur, the lace, the jewels, how she will
enjoy the new home, the new carriage, the new furniture; of her fresh
and ceaseless delight in her "social functions"--does his heart leap
within him?
He performs wonders in business, honest or dishonest, useful to mankind
or cruel; he slowly relinquishes the ideals of his youth, devotes his
talents to whatever will make the most money, even prostitutes his
political conscience, and robs the city and the state, in order to meet
the demands of that fair, plump, smiling Queen of the Home.
And she gives in return--? Her influence is--? The working wife does
not lift a man up very high. The parasite wife pulls him down. The home
of the working wife gives to boy and man the impression that women are
servants. The home of the idle wife gives to boy and man the impression
that women are useless and rapacious; but, we must have them because
they are women.
This is the worst that the home shows us, and is, fortunately, confined
to a minority of cases. But it is none the less an evil influence of
large extent. It leaves to the woman no functions whatever save those
of the female, and, as exaggeration is never health, does not improve
her as a female.
The really restful and stimulating companionship of man and wife, the
general elevating social intercourse between men and women, is not to
be found in the homes of the wealthy any more than in those of the
poor. The demands upon the man are unending, and the returns in good to
body or mind bear no proportion to the expense. The woman who has no
other field of usefulness or growth than a home wherein she is not even
the capable servant, cannot be the strong, noble, uplifting creature
who does good to man; but rapidly becomes the type most steadily
degrading.
XV
HOME AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
If there is one fact more patent than another in regard to social
evolution, it is that our gain is far greater in material progress than
in personal. The vast and rapid increase in wealth, in power, in
knowledge, in facility and speed in production and distribution; the
great spread of political, religious, and educational advantages; all
this is in no way equalled by any gain in personal health and personal
happiness.
The world grows apace; the people do not keep pace with it. Our most
important machines miss much of their usefulness because the brain of
the workman has not improved as rapidly as the machine. Great systems
of transportation, involving intricate mechanical arrangement, break
continually at this, their weakest link--the human being. We create and
maintain elaborate systems of justice and equity, of legislation,
administration, education; and they are always open to failure in this
same spot--the men are not equal to the system.
The advance in public good is far greater than the advance in private
good. We have improved every facility in living; but we still live
largely as before--sick, feeble, foolishly quarrelling over small
personal matters, unaware of our own great place in social evolution.
This has always been known to us and has been used only to prove our
ancient theory as to the corrupt and paltry stuff humanity is made of.
"Frail creatures of dust, and feeble as frail," is our grovelling
confession; and to those who try to take comfort in our undeniable
historic gains, it has been triumphantly pointed out that, gain as we
would, "the human heart" was no better--"poor human nature" was
unimprovable. This is utterly untrue.
Human nature has changed and improved in tremendous ratio; and, if its
improvement has been strangely irregular, far greater in social life
than in personal life, it is for a very simple reason. All these large
social processes which show such marked improvement are those wherein
people work together in legitimate specialised lines in the world.
These personal processes which have not so improved, the parts of life
which are still so limited and imperfectly developed, may be fully
accounted for by their environment--the ancient and unchanging home.
Bring the home abreast of our other institutions; and our personal
health and happiness will equal our public gains.
Once more it must be stated that the true home, the legitimate and
necessary home, the home in right proportion and development, is wholly
good. It is at once the beautiful beginning, the constant help, and one
legitimate end of a life's work. To the personal life, the physical
life, this is enough. To the social life, it is not. If human duty had
no other scope than to maintain and reproduce this species of animal,
that duty might be accomplished in the home. The purely maternal
female, having no other reason for being than to bear and rear young; a
marauding male, to whom the world was but a hunting ground wherein to
find food for his family--these, and their unimproved successors, need
nothing more than homes. But human duty is not so limited. These
processes of reproduction are indeed essential to our human life, as
are the processes of respiration and digestion, but they do not
constitute that life, much less conclude it.
As human beings, our main field of duty lies in promoting social
advance. To maintain ourselves and our families is an animal duty we
share with the other animals; to maintain each other, and, by so doing
to increase our social efficiency, is human duty, first, last, and
always. We have always seen the necessity for social groups, religious,
political, and other; we have more or less fulfilled our social
functions therein; but we have in the main supposed that all this
common effort was merely for the greater safety and happiness of homes;
and when the interests of the home and those of the state clashed, most
of us have put home first.
The first person to learn better was that very earliest of social
servants, the soldier. He learned first of all to combine for the
common good, and though his plane of service was the lowest of all,
mere destruction, the group sentiments involved were of the highest
order. The destructive belligerence of the male, and his antecedent
centuries of brute combat, made fighting qualities most prominent; but
the union and organisation required for successful human warfare called
out high social qualities, too. The habit of acting together
necessarily develops in the brain the power and desire to act together;
the fact that success or failure, life or death, advantage or injury,
depends on collective action, necessarily develops the social
consciousness. This modification we find in the army everywhere,
gradually increasing with race-heredity; and, long since, so far
overwhelming the original egoism of the individual animal, that the
common soldier habitually sacrifices his life to the public service
without hesitation.
The steps in social evolution must always be made in this same natural
order, from one stage of development to another, by means of existing
qualities. Primitive man had no altruism, he had no honour, his courage
was flickering and wholly personal; he had no sense of order and
discipline, of self-control and self-sacrifice; but he had a strong
inclination to fight, and by means of that one tendency he was led into
relations which developed all those other qualities.
It is easy to see that this stage of our social development was
diametrically opposed by the home. The interests of the home demanded
personal service; the habits of the home bred industry and patience;
the influence of the inmates of the home, of the women and children,
did not promote martial qualities. So our valorous ancestor promptly
left home and went a-fighting, for thousands and thousands of years,
while human life was maintained by the women at home.
When men gradually learned to apply their energies to production,
instead of destruction; learning in slow, painful, costly ages that
wealth was in no way increased by robbing, nor productive strength by
slaughter; they were able to apply to their new occupations some of the
advantageous qualities gained in the old. Thus industry grew, spread,
organised, and the power and riches and wisdom of the world began to
develop.
As far back as history can go we find some men producing, even while a
large and important caste was still fighting. The warriors sought
wealth by plundering other nations, not realising that if the other
nations had been all warriors there would have been nothing to plunder.
Slowly the wealth-makers overtook the wealth-takers, caught up with
them, passed them; and now the greater part of the masculine energy of
the world is devoted to productive industry in some form, and the army
is recruited from the lowest ranks of life.
In this new field of social service, productive industry, what is the
influence of the home? At first it was altogether good. To wean the man
from his all too-natural instinct to wander, kill, and rob, the
attractions of home life were needed. To centre and localise his pride
and power, to make him bend his irregular expansive tendencies to the
daily performance of labour, was a difficult task; and here again he
had to be led by the force of existing qualities. The woman was the
great drawing power here, the ease and comfort of the place, the
growing love of family, and these influences slowly overcame the
warrior and bound him to the plough.
Thus far the home influence led him up, and, in turn, his military
qualities lifted the home industries from the feminine plane to the
human. To produce wealth for the home to consume was a better position
than that of living by plunder; but we should have small cause to glory
in the march of civilisation if that was all we had done.
Just as the fierce and brutal savage, entering into military
combination, under no better instincts than self-defence and natural
belligerence, yet learned by virtue of that combination new and noble
qualities; so the still fierce and brutal soldier, entering into
industrial combination under no better instincts than those of
sex-attraction and physical wants in increasing degree, yet learned, by
virtue of this form of union, new qualities even more valuable to the
race.