want it, did not see the need or good of it, and has done all he could
to prevent it. To the still inert majority of women, content in their
position, or attributing their growing discontent to other causes, it
is also an unnatural and undesired change. Ideas do not change as fast
as facts, with most of us. Mankind in general, men and women, still
believe in the old established order, in woman's ordination to the
service of bodily needs of all sorts; in the full sufficiency of
maternal instinct as compared with any trivial propositions of
knowledge and experience; in the noble devotion of the man who spends
all his labours to furnish a useless woman with luxuries, and all the
allied throng of ancient myths and falsehoods.
Thus we have not been commonly alive to the full proportions of the
woman's movement, or its value. The facts are there, however. Patient
Griselda has gone out, or is going, faster and faster. The girls of
to-day, in any grade of society, are pushing out to do things instead
of being content to merely eat things, wear things, and dust things.
The honourable instinct of self-support is taking the place of the
puerile acceptance of gifts, and beyond self-support comes the still
nobler impulse to give to others; not corrupting charity, but the one
all-good service of a life's best work. Measuring the position of woman
as it has been for all the years behind us up to a century or so ago
with what it is to-day, the distance covered and the ratio of progress
is incredible. It rolls up continually, accumulatively; and another
fifty years will show more advance than the past five hundred.
This alone is enough to guarantee the development of the home. No
unchanging shell can contain a growing body, something must break; and
the positive force of growth is stronger than the negative force of
mere adhesion of particles. A stronger, wiser, nobler woman must make a
better home.
In the place itself, its customs and traditions, we can also note great
progress. The "domestic industries" have shrunk and dwindled almost out
of sight, so greedily has society sucked at them and forced them out
where they belong.
The increasing difficulties which assail the house-keeper, either in
trying to occupy the primeval position of doing her own work, or in
persuading anyone else to do it for her, are simply forcing us, however
reluctantly, to the adoption of better methods. Even in the most
neglected field of all, the care and education of the little child,
some progress has been made. Education in the hands of men,
broad-minded, humanly loving men, has crept nearer and nearer to the
cradle; and now even women, and not only single women, but _even
mothers_, are beginning to study the nature and needs of the child.
The more they study, the more they learn, the more impossible become
the home conditions. The mother cannot herself alone do all that is
necessary for her children, to say nothing of continuing to be a
companion to her husband, a member of society, and a still growing
individual.
She can sacrifice herself in the attempt,--often does,--but the child
has a righteous indifference to such futile waste of life. He does not
require a nervous, exhausted, ever-present care, and it is by no means
good for him. He wants a strong, serene, lovely mother for a comfort, a
resource, an ideal; but he also wants the care of a trained highly
qualified teacher, and the amateur mama cannot give it to him.
Motherhood is a common possession of every female creature; a joy, a
pride, a nobly useful function. Teacherhood is a profession, a
specialised social function, no more common to mothers than to fathers,
maids, or bachelors. The ceaseless, anxious strain to do what only an
experienced nurse and teacher can do, is an injury to the real uses of
motherhood.
Why do we dread having children, as many of our much-extolled mothers
so keenly do? Partly the physical risk and suffering, which are not
necessary to a normal woman,--and more the ensuing care, labour, and
anxiety,--and oh,--"the responsibility!" The more modern the mother is,
the more fit for a higher plane of execution, the more unfit she is for
the lower plane, the old primitive plane of home-teaching.
If your father is a combination of all college professors you may get
part of a college training at home--but not the best part. If your
mother is a born teacher, a trained teacher, an experienced teacher,
you may get part of your schooling at home--but not the best part.
There would never have been a school or college on earth, if every man
had remained content with teaching his boys at home. There will never
be any proper standard of training for little children while each woman
remains content with caring for her own at home. But the house-wife is
changing. These ways no longer satisfy her. She insists on more modern
methods, even in her ancient labours.
Then follows the equally different attitude of the housemaid; her
rebellion, refusal, retirement from the field; and the immense increase
in mechanical convenience seeping in steadily from outside, and doing
more to "undermine the home" than any wildest exhortations of
reformers. The gas range, the neat and perfect utensils, these have in
themselves an educational reaction; we cannot now maintain the
atmosphere "where greasy Joan doth keel the pot." The pot is a white
enamelled double boiler, and Joan need not be greasy save of _malice
prepense_. Besides the improvement of utensils, we have in our
cities and in most of the smaller towns that insidious new system of
common supply of domestic necessities, which webs together the once so
separate homes by a network of pipes and wires.
Our houses are threaded like beads on a string, tied, knotted, woven
together, and in the cities even built together; one solid house from
block-end to block-end; their boasted individuality maintained by a
thin partition wall. The tenement, flat, and apartment house still
further group and connect us; and our claim of domestic isolation
becomes merely another domestic myth. Water is a household necessity
and was once supplied by household labour, the women going to the wells
to fetch it. Water is now supplied by the municipality, and flows among
our many homes as one. Light is equally in common; we do not have to
make it for ourselves.
Where water and light are thus fully socialised, why are we so shy of
any similar progress in the supply of food? Food is no more a necessity
than water. If we are willing to receive our water from an
extra-domestic pipe--why not our food? The one being a simple element
and the other a very complex combination makes a difference, of course;
but even so we may mark great progress. Some foods, more or less
specific, and of universal use, were early segregated, and the making
of them became a trade, as in breadstuffs, cheese, and confectionery.
Where this has been done we find great progress, and an even standard
of excellence. In America, where the average standard of bread-making
is very low, we regard "baker's bread" as a synonym for inferiority;
but even here, if we consider the saleratus bread of the great middle
west, and all the sour, heavy, uncertain productions of a million
homes, the baker bears comparison with the domestic cook. It is the
maintenance of the latter that keeps the former down; where the baker
is the general dependence he makes better bread.
Our American baker's bread has risen greatly in excellence as we make
less and less at home. All the initial processes of the food supply
have been professionalised. Our housewife does not go out crying,
"Dilly-dilly! Dilly-dilly! You must come and be killed"--and then wring
the poor duck's neck, pick and pluck it with her own hands; nor does
the modern father himself slay the fatted calf--all this is done as a
business. In recent years every article of food which will keep, every
article which is in common demand, is prepared as a business.
The home-blinded toiler has never climbed out of her hogshead to watch
this rising tide, but it is nearly up to the rim, ready to pour in and
float her out. Every delicate confection, every pickle, sauce,
preserve, every species of biscuit and wafer, and all sublimated and
differentiated to a degree we could never have dreamed of; all these
are manufactured in scientific and business methods and delivered at
our doors, or our dumb-waiters. Breakfast foods are the latest step in
this direction; and the encroaching delicatessen shop with its list of
allurements. Even the last and dearest stronghold, the very core and
centre of domestic bliss--hot cooked food--is being served us by this
irreverent professional man.
The sacred domestic rite of eating may be still performed in the
sanctuary, but the once equally sacred, subsidiary art of cooking is
swiftly going out of it. As to eating at home, so dear a habit, so old
a habit, old enough to share with every beast that drags her prey into
her lair, that she and her little ones may gnaw in safety; this remains
strongly in evidence, and will for some time yet. But while it reigns
unshaken in our minds let us follow, open-eyed, the great human
distinction of eating together. To share one's food, to call guest and
friend to the banquet, is not a custom of any animal save those close
allies in social organisation, the ants and their compeers. Not only do
we permit this, but it is our chiefest joy and pride. From the child
playing tea-party to the Lord Mayor's Banquet, the human race shows a
marked tendency to eat together. It is our one great common
medium--more's the pity that we have none better as yet! To share food
is the first impulse of true hospitality, the largest field of
artificial extravagance. Moreover, in actual fact, in the working
world, food is eaten together by almost all men at noon; and by women
and men in what they call "social life" almost daily. In recent years,
in our cities, this habit increases widely, swiftly; men, women, and
families eat together more and more; and the eating-house increases in
excellence commensurately.
Whatever our opinion of these two facts, both _are_ facts--that we
like to eat in "the bosom of the family" and that we equally like to
eat in common. Why, then, do we so fear a change in this field?
"Because of the children!" most people will reply triumphantly. Are the
children, then, perfectly fed at home? Is the list of dietary diseases
among our home-fed little ones a thing to boast of? May it be hinted
that it is because child-feeding has remained absolutely domestic,
while man-feeding has become partially civilised, that the knowledge of
how to feed children is so shamefully lacking? Be all this as it may,
it is plainly to be seen that our domestic conditions as to food supply
are rapidly changing, and that all signs point to a steady rise in
efficiency and decrease in expense in this line of human service. There
remains much to be done. In no field of modern industry and business
opportunity is there a wider demand to be met than in this constantly
waxing demand for better food, more hygienic food, more reliable food,
cheaper food, food which shall give us the maximum of nutrition and
healthy pleasure, with the minimum of effort and expense. At this
writing--May, 1903--there is in flourishing existence a cooked-food
supply company, in New Haven (Conn.), in Pittsburgh (Pa.), and in
Boston (Mass.), with doubtless others not at present known to the
author.
Turning to the other great domestic industry, the care of children, we
may see hopeful signs of growth. The nursemaid is improving. Those who
can afford it are beginning to see that the association of a child's
first years with low-class ignorance cannot be beneficial. There is a
demand for "trained nurses" for children; even in rare cases the
employment of some Kindergarten ability. Among the very poor the
day-nursery and Kindergarten are doing slow, but beautiful work. The
President of Harvard demands that more care and money be spent on the
primary grades in education; and all through our school systems there
is a healthy movement. Child-study is being undertaken at last.
Pedagogy is being taught as a science. In our public parks there is
regular provision made for children; and in the worst parts of the
cities an incipient provision of playgrounds.
There is no more brilliant hope on earth to-day than this new thought
about the child. In what does it consist? In recognising "the child,"
children as a class, children as citizens with rights to be guaranteed
only by the state; instead of our previous attitude toward them of
absolute personal ownership--the unchecked tyranny, or as unchecked
indulgence, of the private home. Children are at last emerging from the
very lowest grade of private ownership into the safe, broad level of
common citizenship. That which no million separate families could give
their millions of separate children, the state can give, and does. Our
progress, so long merely mechanical, is at last becoming personal,
touching the people and lifting them as one.
Now what is all this leading to? What have we to hope--or to dread--in
the undeniable lines of development here shown? What most of us dread
is this: that we shall lose our domestic privacy; that we shall lose
our family dinner table; that woman will lose "her charm;" that we
shall lose our children; and the child lose its mother. We are mortally
afraid of separation.
The unfolding and differentiation of natural growth is not separation
in any organic sense. The five-fingered leaf, closely bound in the bud,
separates as it opens. The branches separate from the trunk as the
trees grow. But this legitimate separation does not mean disconnection.
The tree is as much one tree as if it grew in a strait-jacket. All
growth must widen and diverge. If natural growth is checked, disease
must follow. If allowed, health and beauty and happiness accompany it.
The home, if it grows on in normal lines, will not be of the same size
and relative density as it was in ancient times; but it will be as
truly home to the people of to-day. In trying to maintain by force the
exact limits and characteristics of the primitive home, we succeed only
in making a place modern man is not at home in.
The people of our time need the home of our time, not the homes of
ancient barbarians. The primitive home and the home-bound woman are the
continually acting causes of our increasing domestic unhappiness. By
clinging to unsuitable conditions we bring about exactly the evils we
are most afraid of. A little scientific imagination well based on
existing facts, well in line with existing tendencies, should be used
to point out the practical possibilities of the home as it is to be.
Try to consider it first with the woman out for working hours. This is
an impassable gulf to the average mind. "Home, with the woman
out--there is no such thing!" cries it. The instant assumption is that
she will never be in, in which case I am willing to admit that there
would be no home. Suppose we retrace our steps a little and approach
the average mind more gradually. Can it imagine a home, a real happy
home, with the woman out of it for one hour a day? Can it, encouraged
by this step, picture the home as still enduring while the woman is out
of it two hours a day? Is there any exact time of attendance required
to make a home? What is, in truth, required to make a home? First
mother and child, then father; this is the family, and the place where
they live is the home.
Now the father goes out every day; does the home cease to exist because
of his hours away from it? It is still his home, he still loves it, he
maintains it, he lives in it, only he has a "place of business"
elsewhere. At a certain stage of growth the children are out of it,
between say 8.30 and 3.30. Does it cease to be home because of their
hours away from it? Do they not love it and live in it--_while they
are there_? Now if, while the father was out, and the children were
out, the mother should also be out, would the home disappear into thin
air?
It is home _while the family are in it_. When the family are out
of it it is only a house; and a house will stand up quite solidly for
some eight hours of the family's absence. Incessant occupation is not
essential to a home. If the father has wife and children with him in
the home when he returns to it, need it matter to him that the children
are wisely cared for in schools during his absence; or that his wife is
duly occupied elsewhere while they are so cared for?
Two "practical obstacles" intervene; first, the "housework"; second,
the care of children below school age. The housework is fast
disappearing into professional hands. When that is utterly gone, the
idle woman has but one excuse--the babies. This is a very vital excuse.
The baby is the founder of the home. If the good of the baby requires
the persistent, unremitting care of the mother in the home, then indeed
she must remain there. No other call, no other claim, no other duty,
can be weighed for a moment against this all-important service--the
care of the little child.
But we have already seen that if there is one thing more than another
the home fails in, it is just this. If there is one duty more than
another the woman fails in, it is just this. Our homes are not planned
nor managed in the interests of little children; and the isolated
home-bound mother is in no way adequate to their proper rearing. This
is not disputable on any side. The death rate of little children during
the years they are wholly in the home and mother's care proves it
beyond question. The wailing of little children who live--or before
they die--wailing from bodily discomfort, nervous irritation, mental
distress, punishment--a miserable sound, so common, so expected, that
it affects the price of real estate, tenants not wishing to live near
little children on account of their cries--this sound of world-wide
anguish does not seem to prove much for the happiness of these helpless
inmates of the home.
Such few data as we have of babies and young children in properly
managed day nurseries, give a far higher record of health and
happiness. Not the sick baby in the pauper hospital, not the lonely
baby in the orphan asylum; but the baby who has _not_ lost his
mother, but who adds to mother's love, calm, wise, experienced
professional care.
The best instance of this, as known to me, is that of M. Godin's
_phalanstère_ in Guise, France. An account of it can be found in
the _Harper's Monthly_, November, 1885; or in M. Godin's own book,
"Social Solutions," translated by Marie Howland, now out of print. This
wise and successful undertaking had been going on for over twenty years
when the above article was written. Among its features was a
beautifully planned nursery for babies and little children, and the
results to child and parent, to home and state were wholly good. Better
health, greater peace and contentment, a swift, regular, easy
development these children enjoyed; and when, in later years, they met
the examinations of the public schools, they stood higher than the
children of any other district in France.
A newborn baby leads a far happier, healthier, more peaceful existence
in the hands of the good trained nurse, than it does when those skilled
hands are gone, and it is left on the trembling knees of the young,
untrained mother.
"But the nurse does not love it!" we wildly protest. What if she does
not? Cannot the mother love it _while the nurse takes care of it_?
This is the whole position in a nutshell. Nothing is going to prevent
the mother from loving her children in one deep, ceaseless river of
calm affection, with such maternal transports as may arise from time to
time in addition; but nothing ought to prevent the child's being
properly taken care of while the love is going on. The mother is not
ashamed to depend on the doctor if the child is ill, on the specialist
if the child is defective, on the teacher when the child is in school.
Why should she so passionately refuse to depend on equally skilled
assistance for the first five years of her babies' lives--those years
when iron statistics remorselessly expose her incapacity?
The home that is coming will not try to be a workshop, a nursery, or a
school. The child that is coming will find a more comfortable home than
he ever had before, and something else besides--a place for babies to
be happy in, and grow up in, without shrieks of pain. The mother that
is coming, a much more intelligent person than she has ever been
before, will recognise that this ceaseless procession of little ones
requires some practical provision for its best development, other than
what is possible in the passing invasion of the home. "How a baby does
tyrannise over the household!" we complain, vaguely recognising that
the good of the baby requires something different from the natural home
habits of adults. We shall finally learn to make a home for the babies
too.
This involves great changes in both our idea of home, and our material
provision for it. Why not? Growth is change, and there is need of
growth here. Slowly, gradually, by successive experiments, we shall
find out how to meet new demands; and these experiments are now being
made, in all the living centres of population.
XVII
RESULTS
To us, who have for so many unbroken generations been wholly bound to
the home, who honestly believe that its service and maintenance
constitute the whole duty of men and women, the picture of a world in
which home and its affairs takes but a small part of life's attention
gives rather a blank outlook. What else are we to do! What else to
love--what else to serve eternally! What else to revere, to worship!
How shall we occupy the hands of man if but a tithe of his labour
supports him in comfort; how fill the heart of woman, when her family
are happily and rightly served without sacrificing her in the
operation! It is hard, at first--we being so accustomed to spend all
life in merely keeping ourselves alive--to see what life might be when
we had some to spare. We find it difficult to imagine this "world of
trouble" as rid of its troubles; as rationally and comfortably managed;
peaceful, clean, safe, healthy, giving everyone room and time to grow.
Nor need we labour to forecast events too accurately; especially the
material details which must be decided by long experiment. No rigid
prescription is needed; no dictum as to whether we shall live in small
separate houses, greenly gardened, with closely connected conveniences
for service and for education, for work and play; or in towering
palaces with shaded flower-bright courts and cloisters. All that must
work out as have our great modern wonders in other lines, little by
little, in orderly development. But what we can forecast in safety is
the effect on the human body and the human soul.
A peaceful, healthy, happy babyhood and childhood, with such delicate
adjustment of educational processes as we already see indicated, will
give us a far better individual. The full-grown mother, contributing
racial advance in both body and mind, will add greatly to this gain. We
can be better people everywhere, better born, bred, fed, educated in
all ways. But quite beyond this is the rich growth of our long aborted
social instincts, which will rapidly follow the reduction of these long
artificially maintained primitive and animal instincts.
Where now trying to meet general needs by personal efforts, modern
needs by ancient methods, we must perforce manifest an intense degree
of self-interest to keep up the struggle; as soon as we meet these
needs easily, swiftly, inexpensively, by modern methods and common
efforts, less self-interest will be necessary.
When sidewalks were narrow and streets foul, great was the jostling,
keen the resentment--"You take the wall of me, sir!" Where all is
broad, clean, safe, no such hot feeling exists. We do not truly prefer
to be always sharply looking out for ourselves; it is much more
interesting to look out for each other; but this method of handicapping
each man with his own affairs, in such needless weight, keeps up a
selfishness which true civilisation tends steadily to eliminate. Social
instincts in social conditions are as natural as animal instincts in
animal conditions.