spirit in the broadest and most liberal interpretation of the term--can
do for us, and do it quickly and at once, more than all the college
settlements and all the trades-unions that can be organized within the
next ten years could hope to do. And for this reason: the church has all
the machinery ready, set up and waiting only for the proper hand to put
it in motion to this great end. The Christian church has a vast
responsibility in the solution of all problems of the social order, and
none of those problems is more grave or urgent than the one affecting
the economic condition of the wage-earning woman. It is curious that the
church, in this age, should choose to regard its primary function with
such evident apathy. The first business of the church in the past was
the adjustment of social difficulties. The gospel of Jesus Christ was
preeminently a social gospel, and when the church ceases to be a social
force it will have outlived its usefulness.
There are those who believe that the church _has_ outlived that primal
usefulness. I do not believe so. For men, perhaps, it has; but not for
women--certainly not for working women. We do not as a sex, we do not as
a class, flatter ourselves that we have got along so far in race
development that we have no further need of organized religion. In all
my experience of meeting and talking, often becoming intimately
acquainted, with girls and women of all sorts, I have never known one,
however questionable, to whom the church was not, after all, held in
respect as the one all-powerful human institution.
And yet, unless they were Catholics, mighty few went to church at all,
and most of them were resentful, often bitter, toward the church and
hostile toward all kinds of organized religion. They accused the church
of not doing its duty toward them, and they declared that organized
religion was a sham and a hypocrisy.
The only activity exerted by the church in the direction indicated
partakes too strongly of the eleemosynary nature to make it acceptable
to any save the most degraded--the weak-chinned, flabby-natured horde of
men and women who rally instinctively to the drum-taps of the
street-corner Salvationist, or seek warmth and cheer on cold winter
nights, and if possible more substantial benefits, from the missions and
"church houses."
I have no quarrel to pick with the Salvation Army, nor with the city
missions, as institutions. Both have done too much good for that "ninety
and nine" which the church forgets. But it is a pity that the work of
the Salvation Army and of the city missions is sometimes relegated to
the control of such incompetent and unworthy persons as Henrietta
Manners and "Brother" Mason. Since my brief acquaintance with those
aspiring reformers, I have investigated and found that both were
prominent workers and "guides" in the respective religious movements to
which they claimed allegiance; I also found that there were other
Henrietta Mannerses and not a few "Brother" Masons interested in the
same good work. It is the part of charity and justice to assume that
their superior officers were totally ignorant of their real characters.
But why should these sacred duties be relegated to the Henrietta
Mannerses and the "Brother" Masons? Are there not enough intelligent,
conscientious Christian men and women among the churches who would
consider it not only a duty, but a precious privilege, to carry the
gospel of Jesus Christ into the dark places? It is not wise to set a
thief to catch a thief, and it is worse than useless to encourage the
weak, not to say the depraved, to carry the gospel to their kind.
In the days when I could see no silver lining to the clouds I tried
going to a Protestant church, but I recognized very shortly the
alienation between it and me. Personally, I do not like to attend
Salvation meetings or listen to the mission evangelists. So I ceased any
pretension of going to church, thus allying myself with that great
aggregation of non-church-going Protestant working women who have been
forced into a resentful attitude against that which we should love and
support. It is encouraging, however, to find that the church itself
has, at last, begun to heed our growing disaffection and alienation:
"The fact must be admitted that the wage-workers of this country
are largely outside the churches. This breach has been steadily
widening; conditions are worse now than they were ten years ago.
One of the strongest reasons for this is the fact that the churches
have not recognized so clearly as they ought the equities of this
conflict. It is a grave failure. They ought never to have suffered
such an alienation to occur between themselves and the people who
constitute the very bone and sinew of our civilization," says a
prominent preacher and reformer.
"How can the Christian church clear herself of the charge that the
very people who heard her Lord gladly turn in multitudes from her
threshold? There is need of sober thought and deep humiliation,
that this most grave social problem may find a solution which shall
bring honor to the church and peace to society."[1]
Obviously the fundamental need of the worker of either sex is
education. She needs to be educated, this work-girl. She does not need a
fancy education; but she does need a good education, so that upon her
entrance into the workshop she will be able to read and write and add up
a column of figures correctly and with ease. This she seems not to be
able to do under present conditions. And there are other things, even
more important than the "three R's," which she should be taught. She
should be taught how to work--how to work _intelligently_. She should be
trained young in the fundamental race activities, in the natural human
instinct for making something with the hands, or of doing something with
the hands, and of taking an infinite pleasure in making it perfect, in
doing it well.
I have no technical knowledge of pedagogics; I must admit that. My
criticism of the public-school system I base entirely upon the results
as I have seen them in the workshops, the factories, and the store in
which I worked. During this period I had opportunity for meeting many
hundreds of girls and for becoming more or less acquainted with them
all. Now, of all these I have not yet discovered one who had not at some
time in her earlier childhood or girlhood attended a public school.
Usually the girl had had at least five years' continuous schooling, but
often it was much more. But, great or small as the period of her tuition
had been, I never met one whose knowledge of the simplest rudiments of
learning was confident and precise. Spelling, geography, grammar,
arithmetic, were never, with them, positive knowledge, but rather
matters of chance and guess. Even the brightest girls showed a woeful
ignorance of the "three R's." In only one thing did I find them
universally well taught, and that was in handwriting. However badly
spelled and ungrammatical their written language might be, it was
invariably neatly and legibly--often beautifully--executed. But if these
girls, these workmates of mine, learned to write clear and beautiful
hands, why were they not able also to learn how to spell, why were they
not able to learn the principles of grammar and the elementary knowledge
of arithmetic as far at least as long division? That they did not have
sufficient "apperceiving basis" I cannot believe, for they were
generally bright and clever.
It is true that the public schools are already teaching manual training,
and that kindergartens have enormously increased lately. These facts I
know very well. I also know how much ignorance and senseless prejudice
the pioneers of these educational reforms have had to overcome in the
introduction of the newer and better methods. The point I wish to make
carries no slur upon the ideal which the best modern pedagogy is
striving for; it is, on the contrary, an appeal for the support and
furtherance of that ideal on the part of intelligent citizenship
generally, and of conscientious parenthood particularly. I believe
firmly in the kindergarten; I believe that the child, whether rich or
poor, who goes to kindergarten in his tender years has a better chance
in life, all else being equal, than the child who does not. I do not
know how long the free kindergarten system has obtained to any degree in
New York City, but I do know that I have as yet found only one working
girl who has had the benefit of any such training in childhood. She was
"Lame Lena" at Springer's box-factory; and in spite of her deformity,
which made it difficult for her to walk across the floor, she was the
quickest worker and made more money than any other girl in the shop.
Tersely put, and quoting her own speech, the secret of her success was
in "knowing how to kill two birds with one stone," and, again, "makin'
of your cocoanut save your muscle." These formulae were more or less
vague until further inquiry elicited the interesting fact that "lame
Lena," had had in childhood the privilege of a kindergarten training in
a class maintained by some church society when the free kindergarten
was not so general as it is now.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that had this lame girl's workmates
enjoyed the privilege of the same elementary training, they might have
shown an equal facility in the humble task of pasting and labeling and
tissuing paper boxes. "Lame Lena" knew how to work; she knew how to
husband every modicum of nervous energy in her frail, deformed body; and
thus she was able to make up--more than make up--for her physical
inferiority. "Lame Lena" brought to her sordid task a certain degree of
organizing faculty; she did the various processes rhythmically and
systematically, always with the idea in view of making one stroke of the
arm or the hand do, if possible, a double or a triple duty. The other
girls worked helter-skelter; running hither and thither; taking many
needless journeys back and forth across the floor; hurrying when they
were fresh to the task, dawdling when they were weary, but at all times
working without method and without organization of the task in hand, and
without that coordination of muscular and mental effort which the
kindergarten might have taught them, just as it had certainly taught
"Lame Lena."
The free kindergarten movement is not yet old enough to begin to show
its effects to any perceptible degree in the factory and workshop.
Henrietta Manners and Phoebe Arlington and little Angelina were born too
soon: they did not know the joy of the kindergarten; they did not know
the delight of sitting in a little red chair in a great circle of other
little red chairs filled with other little girls, each and all learning
the rudimentary principles of work under the blissful delusion that they
were at play. These joys have been reserved for their little sisters,
who, sooner or later, will step into their vacant places in the
box-factory. What was denied Angelina it is the blessed privilege of
Angelina's baby to revel in.
Angelina's baby--the little baby that she kept in the day-nursery when
we worked together at Springer's--now goes to a free kindergarten. I
happen to know this because not long ago I met Angelina. She did not
recognize me--indeed, she had difficulty in recalling vaguely that I had
worked with her once upon a time; for Angelina's memory, like that of a
great majority of her hard-worked class, is very poor,--a fact I mention
because it is very much to the point right here. My solicitous inquiry
for the baby brought forth a burst of Latin enthusiasm as to the
cunningness and sweetness of that incipient box-maker, who, Angelina
informed me, goes to kindergarten in a free hack along with a crowd of
other babies. But Angelina, bless her soul! is down on the kindergarten.
She says, with a pout and a contemptuous shrug, "they don't teach you're
kid nothing but nonsense, just cutting up little pieces of paper and
singing fool songs and marching to music." Angelina admitted, however,
that her _bambino_ was supremely happy there,--so happy, in fact, that
she hadn't the heart to take her away, even though she does know that it
is all "tomfoolishness" the "kid" is being taught by a mistaken
philanthropy.
It is fair to suppose that in the factory and workshop of every
description the kindergarten is bound to work incalculable results.
Indeed, I sometimes wonder if the kindergarteners themselves can quite
realize how well they are building--can fully comprehend the very great
need in the working woman of the identical principles which they are so
patiently and faithfully inculcating into the tender minds of these
forlorn babies gathered up in the courts and alleys.
Another important thing looking to the well-being of the working girl of
the future would be the wide dissemination of a better literature than
that with which she now regales herself. I have already outlined at
some length the literary tastes of my workmates at the box-factory. The
example cited is typical of other factories and other workshops, and
also of the department-store. A certain downtown section of New York
City is monopolized by the publishers and binders of "yellow-backs,"
which are turned out in bales and cart-loads daily. Girls fed upon such
mental trash are bound to have distorted and false views of everything.
There is a broad field awaiting some original-minded philanthropist who
will try to counteract the maudlin yellow-back by putting in its place
something wholesome and sweet and sane. Only, please, Mr. or Mrs.
Philanthropist, don't let it be Shakspere, or Ruskin, or Walter Pater.
Philanthropists have tried before to reform degraded literary tastes
with heroic treatment, and they have failed every time.
That is sometimes the trouble with the college-settlement folk. They
forget that Shakspere, and Ruskin, and all the rest of the really true
and great literary crew, are infinite bores to every-day people. I know
personally, and love deeply and sincerely, a certain young woman--a
settlement-worker--who for several years conducted an evening class in
literature for some girl "pants-makers." She gave them all the classics
in allopathic doses, she gave them copies of "A Crown of Wild Olive"
and "The Ethics of the Dust," which they read dutifully, not because
they liked the books, which were meaningless to their tired heads, but
because they loved Miss ---- and enjoyed the evenings spent with her at
the settlement. But Miss ---- did not succeed in supplanting their old
favorites, which undoubtedly she could have done had she given them all
the light, clean present-day romance they could possibly read. It is a
curious fact that these girls will not read stories laid in the past,
however full of excitement they may be. They like romance of the present
day, stories which have to do with scenes and circumstances not too far
removed from the real and the actual. All their trashy favorites have to
do with the present, with heroes and heroines who live in New York City
or Boston or Philadelphia; who go on excursions to Coney Island, to Long
Branch, or to Delaware Water Gap; and who, when they die, are buried in
Greenwood over in Brooklyn, or in Woodlawn up in Westchester County. In
other words, any story, to absorb their interest, must cater to the very
primitive feminine liking for identity. This liking, this passion, their
own special authors have thoroughly comprehended, and keep it constantly
in mind in the development of their plots.
This taste for better literature could be helped along immeasurably if
still another original-minded philanthropist were to make it his
business that no tenement baby should be without its "Mother Goose" and,
a little later, its "Little Women," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Robinson
Crusoe," and all the other precious childhood favorites. As it is, the
majority know nothing about them.
But, after all, the greatest factor in the ultimate development of the
working girl as a wage-earning unit--the most potent force for the
adjustment of all the difficulties besetting her at every turn, and for
the righting of all her wrongs, social, economic, or moral--will be the
attitude which she herself assumes toward the dispassionate
consideration of those difficulties to be adjusted, and of those wrongs
to be righted.
At the present time there is nobody so little concerned about herself
and her condition as the working woman herself. Taking everything into
consideration, and in spite of conditions which, to the observer viewing
them at a distance great enough to get a perspective, seem
irreconcilably harsh and bitter--in the face of all this, one must
characterize the working woman as a contented, if not a happy woman.
That is the great trouble that will have to be faced in any effort to
alleviate her condition. She is too contented, too happy, too patient.
But not wholesomely so. Hers is a contentment, a happiness, a patience
founded, not in normal good health and the joy of living and working,
but in apathy. Her lot is hard, but she has grown used to it; for, being
a woman, she is patient and long-suffering. She does not entirely
realize the tragedy of it all, and what it means to herself, or to her
children perhaps yet to be born.
In the happy future, the working girl will no longer be content to be
merely "worked." Then she will have learned to work. She will have
learned to work intelligently, and, working thus, she will begin to
think--to think about herself and all those things which most vitally
concern her as a woman and as a wage-earner. And then, you may depend
upon it, she will settle the question to please herself, and she will
settle it in the right way.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] "The Church and Social Problems," by Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D.
("International Quarterly.")