Since we have learned to study the development of human life as we study
the evolution of species throughout the animal kingdom, some peculiar
phenomena which have puzzled the philosopher and moralist for so long,
begin to show themselves in a new light. We begin to see that, so far
from being inscrutable problems, requiring another life to explain,
these sorrows and perplexities of our lives are but the natural results
of natural causes, and that, as soon as we ascertain the causes, we can
do much to remove them.
In spite of the power of the individual will to struggle against
conditions, to resist them for a while, and sometimes to overcome them,
it remains true that the human creature is affected by his environment,
as is every other living thing. The power of the individual will to
resist natural law is well proven by the life and death of the ascetic.
In any one of those suicidal martyrs may be seen the will, misdirected
by the ill-informed intelligence, forcing the body to defy every natural
impulse,—even to the door of death, and through it.
But, while these exceptions show what the human will can do, the general
course of life shows the inexorable effect of conditions upon humanity.
Of these conditions we share with other living things the environment of
the material universe. We are affected by climate and locality, by
physical, chemical, electrical forces, as are all animals and plants.
With the animals, we farther share the effect of our own activity, the
reactionary force of exercise. What we do, as well as what is done to
us, makes us what we are. But, beyond these forces, we come under the
effect of a third set of conditions peculiar to our human status;
namely, social conditions. In the organic interchanges which constitute
social life, we are affected by each other to a degree beyond what is
found even among the most gregarious of animals. This third factor, the
social environment, is of enormous force as a modifier of human life.
Throughout all these environing conditions, those which affect us
through our economic necessities are most marked in their influence.
Without touching yet upon the influence of the social factors, treating
the human being merely as an individual animal, we see that he is
modified most by his economic conditions, as is every other animal.
Differ as they may in color and size, in strength and speed, in minor
adaptation to minor conditions, all animals that live on grass have
distinctive traits in common, and all animals that eat flesh have
distinctive traits in common,—so distinctive and so common that it is by
teeth, by nutritive apparatus in general, that they are classified,
rather than by means of defence or locomotion. The food supply of the
animal is the largest passive factor in his development; the processes
by which he obtains his food supply, the largest active factor in his
development. It is these activities, the incessant repetition of the
exertions by which he is fed, which most modify his structure and
develope his functions. The sheep, the cow, the deer, differ in their
adaptation to the weather, their locomotive ability, their means of
defence; but they agree in main characteristics, because of their common
method of nutrition.
The human animal is no exception to this rule. Climate affects him,
weather affects him, enemies affect him; but most of all he is affected,
like every other living creature, by what he does for his living. Under
all the influence of his later and wider life, all the reactive effect
of social institutions, the individual is still inexorably modified by
his means of livelihood: “the hand of the dyer is subdued to what he
works in.” As one clear, world-known instance of the effect of economic
conditions upon the human creature, note the marked race-modification of
the Hebrew people under the enforced restrictions of the last two
thousand years. Here is a people rising to national prominence, first as
a pastoral, and then as an agricultural nation; only partially
commercial through race affinity with the Phœnicians, the pioneer
traders of the world. Under the social power of a united
Christendom—united at least in this most unchristian deed—the Jew was
forced to get his livelihood by commercial methods solely. Many effects
can be traced in him to the fierce pressure of the social conditions to
which he was subjected: the intense family devotion of a people who had
no country, no king, no room for joy and pride except the family; the
reduced size and tremendous vitality and endurance of the pitilessly
selected survivors of the Ghetto; the repeated bursts of erratic genius
from the human spirit so inhumanly restrained. But more patent still is
the effect of the economic conditions,—the artificial development of a
race of traders and dealers in money, from the lowest pawnbroker to the
house of Rothschild; a special kind of people, bred of the economic
environment in which they were compelled to live.
One rough but familiar instance of the same effect, from the same cause,
we can all see in the marked distinction between the pastoral, the
agricultural, and the manufacturing classes in any nation, though their
other conditions be the same. On the clear line of argument that
functions and organs are developed by use, that what we use most is
developed most, and that the daily processes of supplying economic needs
are the processes that we most use, it follows that, when we find
special economic conditions affecting any special class of people, we
may look for special results, and find them.
In view of these facts, attention is now called to a certain marked and
peculiar economic condition affecting the human race, and unparalleled
in the organic world. We are the only animal species in which the female
depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the
sex-relation is also an economic relation. With us an entire sex lives
in a relation of economic dependence upon the other sex, and the
economic relation is combined with the sex-relation. The economic status
of the human female is relative to the sex-relation.
It is commonly assumed that this condition also obtains among other
animals, but such is not the case. There are many birds among which,
during the nesting season, the male helps the female feed the young, and
partially feeds her; and, with certain of the higher carnivora, the male
helps the female feed the young, and partially feeds her. In no case
does she depend on him absolutely, even during this season, save in that
of the hornbill, where the female, sitting on her nest in a hollow tree,
is walled in with clay by the male, so that only her beak projects; and
then he feeds her while the eggs are developing. But even the female
hornbill does not expect to be fed at any other time. The female bee and
ant are economically dependent, but not on the male. The workers are
females, too, specialized to economic functions solely. And with the
carnivora, if the young are to lose one parent, it might far better be
the father: the mother is quite competent to take care of them herself.
With many species, as in the case of the common cat, she not only feeds
herself and her young, but has to defend the young against the male as
well. In no case is the female throughout her life supported by the
male.
In the human species the condition is permanent and general, though
there are exceptions, and though the present century is witnessing the
beginnings of a great change in this respect. We have not been
accustomed to face this fact beyond our loose generalization that it was
“natural,” and that other animals did so, too.
To many this view will not seem clear at first; and the case of working
peasant women or females of savage tribes, and the general household
industry of women, will be instanced against it. Some careful and honest
discrimination is needed to make plain to ourselves the essential facts
of the relation, even in these cases. The horse, in his free natural
condition, is economically independent. He gets his living by his own
exertions, irrespective of any other creature. The horse, in his present
condition of slavery, is economically dependent. He gets his living at
the hands of his master; and his exertions, though strenuous, bear no
direct relation to his living. In fact, the horses who are the best fed
and cared for and the horses who are the hardest worked are quite
different animals. The horse works, it is true; but what he gets to eat
depends on the power and will of his master. His living comes through
another. He is economically dependent. So with the hard-worked savage or
peasant women. Their labor is the property of another: they work under
another will; and what they receive depends not on their labor, but on
the power and will of another. They are economically dependent. This is
true of the human female both individually and collectively.
In studying the economic position of the sexes collectively, the
difference is most marked. As a social animal, the economic status of
man rests on the combined and exchanged services of vast numbers of
progressively specialized individuals. The economic progress of the
race, its maintenance at any period, its continued advance, involve the
collective activities of all the trades, crafts, arts, manufactures,
inventions, discoveries, and all the civil and military institutions
that go to maintain them. The economic status of any race at any time,
with its involved effect on all the constituent individuals, depends on
their world-wide labors and their free exchange. Economic progress,
however, is almost exclusively masculine. Such economic processes as
women have been allowed to exercise are of the earliest and most
primitive kind. Were men to perform no economic services save such as
are still performed by women, our racial status in economics would be
reduced to most painful limitations.
To take from any community its male workers would paralyze it
economically to a far greater degree than to remove its female workers.
The labor now performed by the women could be performed by the men,
requiring only the setting back of many advanced workers into earlier
forms of industry; but the labor now performed by the men could not be
performed by the women without generations of effort and adaptation. Men
can cook, clean, and sew as well as women; but the making and managing
of the great engines of modern industry, the threading of earth and sea
in our vast systems of transportation, the handling of our elaborate
machinery of trade, commerce, government,—these things could not be done
so well by women in their present degree of economic development.
This is not owing to lack of the essential human faculties necessary to
such achievements, nor to any inherent disability of sex, but to the
present condition of woman, forbidding the development of this degree of
economic ability. The male human being is thousands of years in advance
of the female in economic status. Speaking collectively, men produce and
distribute wealth; and women receive it at their hands. As men hunt,
fish, keep cattle, or raise corn, so do women eat game, fish, beef, or
corn. As men go down to the sea in ships, and bring coffee and spices
and silks and gems from far away, so do women partake of the coffee and
spices and silks and gems the men bring.
The economic status of the human race in any nation, at any time, is
governed mainly by the activities of the male: the female obtains her
share in the racial advance only through him.
Studied individually, the facts are even more plainly visible, more open
and familiar. From the day laborer to the millionnaire, the wife’s worn
dress or flashing jewels, her low roof or her lordly one, her weary feet
or her rich equipage,—these speak of the economic ability of the
husband. The comfort, the luxury, the necessities of life itself, which
the woman receives, are obtained by the husband, and given her by him.
And, when the woman, left alone with no man to “support” her, tries to
meet her own economic necessities, the difficulties which confront her
prove conclusively what the general economic status of the woman is.
None can deny these patent facts,—that the economic status of women
generally depends upon that of men generally, and that the economic
status of women individually depends upon that of men individually,
those men to whom they are related. But we are instantly confronted by
the commonly received opinion that, although it must be admitted that
men make and distribute the wealth of the world, yet women earn their
share of it as wives. This assumes either that the husband is in the
position of employer and the wife as employee, or that marriage is a
“partnership,” and the wife an equal factor with the husband in
producing wealth.
Economic independence is a relative condition at best. In the broadest
sense, all living things are economically dependent upon others,—the
animals upon the vegetables, and man upon both. In a narrower sense, all
social life is economically interdependent, man producing collectively
what he could by no possibility produce separately. But, in the closest
interpretation, individual economic independence among human beings
means that the individual pays for what he gets, works for what he gets,
gives to the other an equivalent for what the other gives him. I depend
on the shoemaker for shoes, and the tailor for coats; but, if I give the
shoemaker and the tailor enough of my own labor as a house-builder to
pay for the shoes and coats they give me, I retain my personal
independence. I have not taken of their product, and given nothing of
mine. As long as what I get is obtained by what I give, I am
economically independent.
Women consume economic goods. What economic product do they give in
exchange for what they consume? The claim that marriage is a
partnership, in which the two persons married produce wealth which
neither of them, separately, could produce, will not bear examination. A
man happy and comfortable can produce more than one unhappy and
uncomfortable, but this is as true of a father or son as of a husband.
To take from a man any of the conditions which make him happy and strong
is to cripple his industry, generally speaking. But those relatives who
make him happy are not therefore his business partners, and entitled to
share his income.
Grateful return for happiness conferred is not the method of exchange in
a partnership. The comfort a man takes with his wife is not in the
nature of a business partnership, nor are her frugality and industry. A
housekeeper, in her place, might be as frugal, as industrious, but would
not therefore be a partner. Man and wife are partners truly in their
mutual obligation to their children,—their common love, duty, and
service. But a manufacturer who marries, or a doctor, or a lawyer, does
not take a partner in his business, when he takes a partner in
parenthood, unless his wife is also a manufacturer, a doctor, or a
lawyer. In his business, she cannot even advise wisely without training
and experience. To love her husband, the composer, does not enable her
to compose; and the loss of a man’s wife, though it may break his heart,
does not cripple his business, unless his mind is affected by grief. She
is in no sense a business partner, unless she contributes capital or
experience or labor, as a man would in like relation. Most men would
hesitate very seriously before entering a business partnership with any
woman, wife or not.
If the wife is not, then, truly a business partner, in what way does she
earn from her husband the food, clothing, and shelter she receives at
his hands? By house service, it will be instantly replied. This is the
general misty idea upon the subject,—that women earn all they get, and
more, by house service. Here we come to a very practical and definite
economic ground. Although not producers of wealth, women serve in the
final processes of preparation and distribution. Their labor in the
household has a genuine economic value.
For a certain percentage of persons to serve other persons, in order
that the ones so served may produce more, is a contribution not to be
overlooked. The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to
produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are
economic factors in society. But so are horses. The labor of horses
enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could. The horse
is an economic factor in society. But the horse is not economically
independent, nor is the woman. If a man plus a valet can perform more
useful service than he could minus a valet, then the valet is performing
useful service. But, if the valet is the property of the man, is obliged
to perform this service, and is not paid for it, he is not economically
independent.
The labor which the wife performs in the household is given as part of
her functional duty, not as employment. The wife of the poor man, who
works hard in a small house, doing all the work for the family, or the
wife of the rich man, who wisely and gracefully manages a large house
and administers its functions, each is entitled to fair pay for services
rendered.
To take this ground and hold it honestly, wives, as earners through
domestic service, are entitled to the wages of cooks, housemaids,
nursemaids, seamstresses, or housekeepers, and to no more. This would of
course reduce the spending money of the wives of the rich, and put it
out of the power of the poor man to “support” a wife at all, unless,
indeed, the poor man faced the situation fully, paid his wife her wages
as house servant, and then she and he combined their funds in the
support of their children. He would be keeping a servant: she would be
helping keep the family. But nowhere on earth would there be “a rich
woman” by these means. Even the highest class of private housekeeper,
useful as her services are, does not accumulate a fortune. She does not
buy diamonds and sables and keep a carriage. Things like these are not
earned by house service.
But the salient fact in this discussion is that, whatever the economic
value of the domestic industry of women is, they do not get it. The
women who do the most work get the least money, and the women who have
the most money do the least work. Their labor is neither given nor taken
as a factor in economic exchange. It is held to be their duty as women
to do this work; and their economic status bears no relation to their
domestic labors, unless an inverse one. Moreover, if they were thus
fairly paid,—given what they earned, and—no more,—all women working in
this way would be reduced to the economic status of the house servant.
Few women—or men either—care to face this condition. The ground that
women earn their living by domestic labor is instantly forsaken, and we
are told that they obtain their livelihood as mothers. This is a
peculiar position. We speak of it commonly enough, and often with deep
feeling, but without due analysis.
In treating of an economic exchange, asking what return in goods or
labor women make for the goods and labor given them,—either to the race
collectively or to their husbands individually,—what payment women make
for their clothes and shoes and furniture and food and shelter, we are
told that the duties and services of the mother entitle her to support.
If this is so, if motherhood is an exchangeable commodity given by women
in payment for clothes and food, then we must of course find some
relation between the quantity or quality of the motherhood and the
quantity and quality of the pay. This being true, then the women who are
not mothers have no economic status at all; and the economic status of
those who are must be shown to be relative to their motherhood. This is
obviously absurd. The childless wife has as much money as the mother of
many,—more; for the children of the latter consume what would otherwise
be hers; and the inefficient mother is no less provided for than the
efficient one. Visibly, and upon the face of it, women are not
maintained in economic prosperity proportioned to their motherhood.
Motherhood bears no relation to their economic status. Among primitive
races, it is true,—in the patriarchal period, for instance,—there was
some truth in this position. Women being of no value whatever save as
bearers of children, their favor and indulgence did bear direct relation
to maternity; and they had reason to exult on more grounds than one when
they could boast a son. To-day, however, the maintenance of the woman is
not conditioned upon this. A man is not allowed to discard his wife
because she is barren. The claim of motherhood as a factor in economic
exchange is false to-day. But suppose it were true. Are we willing to
hold this ground, even in theory? Are we willing to consider motherhood
as a business, a form of commercial exchange? Are the cares and duties
of the mother, her travail and her love, commodities to be exchanged for
bread?
It is revolting so to consider them; and, if we dare face our own
thoughts, and force them to their logical conclusion, we shall see that
nothing could be more repugnant to human feeling, or more socially and
individually injurious, than to make motherhood a trade. Driven off
these alleged grounds of women’s economic independence; shown that
women, as a class, neither produce nor distribute wealth; that women, as
individuals, labor mainly as house servants, are not paid as such, and
would not be satisfied with such an economic status if they were so
paid; that wives are not business partners or co-producers of wealth
with their husbands, unless they actually practise the same profession;
that they are not salaried as mothers, and that it would be unspeakably
degrading if they were,—what remains to those who deny that women are
supported by men? This (and a most amusing position it is),—that the
function of maternity unfits a woman for economic production, and,
therefore, it is right that she should be supported by her husband.
The ground is taken that the human female is not economically
independent, that she is fed by the male of her species. In denial of
this, it is first alleged that she is economically independent,—that she
does support herself by her own industry in the house. It being shown
that there is no relation between the economic status of woman and the
labor she performs in the home, it is then alleged that not as house
servant, but as mother, does woman earn her living. It being shown that
the economic status of woman bears no relation to her motherhood, either
in quantity or quality, it is then alleged that motherhood renders a
woman unfit for economic production, and that, therefore, it is right
that she be supported by her husband. Before going farther, let us seize
upon this admission,—that she _is_ supported by her husband.
Without going into either the ethics or the necessities of the case, we
have reached so much common ground: the female of genus homo is
supported by the male. Whereas, in other species of animals, male and
female alike graze and browse, hunt and kill, climb, swim, dig, run, and
fly for their livings, in our species the female does not seek her own
living in the specific activities of our race, but is fed by the male.
Now as to the alleged necessity. Because of her maternal duties, the
human female is said to be unable to get her own living. As the maternal
duties of other females do not unfit them for getting their own living
and also the livings of their young, it would seem that the human
maternal duties require the segregation of the entire energies of the
mother to the service of the child during her entire adult life, or so
large a proportion of them that not enough remains to devote to the
individual interests of the mother.
Such a condition, did it exist, would of course excuse and justify the
pitiful dependence of the human female, and her support by the male. As
the queen bee, modified entirely to maternity, is supported, not by the
male, to be sure, but by her co-workers, the “old maids,” the barren
working bees, who labor so patiently and lovingly in their branch of the
maternal duties of the hive, so would the human female, modified
entirely to maternity, become unfit for any other exertion, and a
helpless dependant.
Is this the condition of human motherhood? Does the human mother, by her
motherhood, thereby lose control of brain and body, lose power and skill
and desire for any other work? Do we see before us the human race, with
all its females segregated entirely to the uses of motherhood,
consecrated, set apart, specially developed, spending every power of
their nature on the service of their children?
We do not. We see the human mother worked far harder than a mare,
laboring her life long in the service, not of her children only, but of
men; husbands, brothers, fathers, whatever male relatives she has; for
mother and sister also; for the church a little, if she is allowed; for
society, if she is able; for charity and education and reform,—working
in many ways that are not the ways of motherhood.
It is not motherhood that keeps the housewife on her feet from dawn till
dark; it is house service, not child service. Women work longer and
harder than most men, and not solely in maternal duties. The savage
mother carries the burdens, and does all menial service for the tribe.
The peasant mother toils in the fields, and the workingman’s wife in the
home. Many mothers, even now, are wage-earners for the family, as well
as bearers and rearers of it. And the women who are not so occupied, the
women who belong to rich men,—here perhaps is the exhaustive devotion to
maternity which is supposed to justify an admitted economic dependence.
But we do not find it even among these. Women of ease and wealth provide
for their children better care than the poor woman can; but they do not
spend more time upon it themselves, nor more care and effort. They have
other occupation.
In spite of her supposed segregation to maternal duties, the human
female, the world over, works at extra-maternal duties for hours enough
to provide her with an independent living, and then is denied
independence on the ground that motherhood prevents her working!
If this ground were tenable, we should find a world full of women who
never lifted a finger save in the service of their children, and of men
who did _all_ the work besides, and waited on the women whom motherhood
prevented from waiting on themselves. The ground is not tenable. A human
female, healthy, sound, has twenty-five years of life before she is a
mother, and should have twenty-five years more after the period of such
maternal service as is expected of her has been given. The duties of
grandmotherhood are surely not alleged as preventing economic
independence.
The working power of the mother has always been a prominent factor in
human life. She is the worker _par excellence_, but her work is not such
as to affect her economic status. Her living, all that she gets,—food,
clothing, ornaments, amusements, luxuries,—these bear no relation to her
power to produce wealth, to her services in the house, or to her
motherhood. These things bear relation only to the man she marries, the
man she depends on,—to how much he has and how much he is willing to
give her. The women whose splendid extravagance dazzles the world, whose
economic goods are the greatest, are often neither houseworkers nor
mothers, but simply the women who hold most power over the men who have
the most money. The female of genus homo is economically dependent on
the male. He is her food supply.