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Title: Woman's Voice
An anthology
Editor: Josephine Conger-Kaneko
Release date: February 13, 2025 [eBook #75366]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: The Stratford Company, 1918
Credits: Tim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN'S VOICE ***
Woman’s Voice
WOMAN’S VOICE
AN ANTHOLOGY
_By_
JOSEPHINE CONGER-KANEKO
[Illustration]
BOSTON
THE STRATFORD COMPANY
1918
Copyright 1918
The STRATFORD CO., Publishers
Boston, Mass.
The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
Dedicated to
THE SPLENDID WOMEN OF ALL NATIONS AND ALL AGES WHO HAVE VALIANTLY STRIVEN
TOWARD THE BROADER FIELDS OF THOUGHT AND ACTIVITY FOR THEIR SISTERS AND
FOR MANKIND AS A WHOLE
EDITOR’S PREFACE
Just now, when the world is going through the most significant period of
human history, it is well that woman’s voice be heard above the tumult.
For upon woman’s activity may rest the salvation of the race.
This Anthology is not an attempt at literary effects so much as it is
an attempt to present seriously woman’s viewpoint of life to a nation
standing on the verge of—it knows not what!
So new is the voice of woman in the affairs of life, that in time of
stress or panic it must become insistent to be heard or heeded. One book,
by one woman, regardless of its strength or purpose, could not have the
effect that one book by “crowds” of women could have. That is why this
volume has come into existence. It literally is the voice of “crowds of
women.”
Those whose words are quoted here are representative women, leaders
in their various organizations, representing hundreds of thousands of
individuals. Many of them are among our foremost writers, artists,
teachers, actors, orators and organizers—some of them combining several
of these qualities.
“Woman’s Voice” might easily have been two or three times its present
size, but that would have meant a publication too expensive to reach
the thousands of readers of moderate means to whom this work is an
immediate, special appeal. Future editions of this Anthology will be
revised and enlarged until we finally shall have a perfect volume which
will take its place in every home as a standard household classic, along
with those other books of strong human appeal which every home possesses.
Much of the material in “Woman’s Voice” is covered by copyright, and
special permission has been granted the editor to reproduce it here.
Many very good things were taken from exchanges (more or less obscure
publications), and in such cases the original source of their appearance
was difficult to trace. However, in each instance attempt has been made
to give credit where it is due, and the editor hopes she has made no
serious failures in this respect.
The many publishers and publications, as well as authors and artists
represented here, have been very kind in their co-operation to make
“Woman’s Voice” a success, by granting permission to use these selections
from their output. Special mention is given them elsewhere.
It is the editor’s hope that this volume will circulate very largely in
the small towns and country districts of our nation. I want the millions
of women who are feeling, and thinking, but who are as yet inarticulate
upon the larger affairs of life, to find their need and their voice in
this volume. I want that great isolated sisterhood, many of whom have
never read a book by a woman on social questions, to have this volume
in their homes—and always near at hand; on the sewing table, or in the
kitchen cabinet, where it may be referred to between cake-baking and
bread-making times. I hope the children in these homes will memorize
the verses in this book, and recite them at the Friday afternoon
“Literaries,” in their schools.
I hope the club women will make constant use of this volume in their club
work—in the preparation of programs, and in roll calls. For the things
quoted here deal with the most vital issues of the times, as well as
with the most intimate personal emotions and needs of the individual,
and are presented by responsible and capable women. Also, they show the
growth of race progress through woman’s efforts—how she has struggled and
won educational rights; how she has struggled and won political rights;
how she has struggled and won matrimonial rights, and rights for her
children, and for the world’s workers. How she is struggling still to
bring about an ever higher and fuller life for today and for the future.
And in all this she needs your help, you in your isolated corners; for
not until every nook and cranny is active and comes to the front, can our
nation attain to those heights for which our womankind is so valiantly
working.
When woman’s voice is heard the world around, mankind will hearken to her
cries and heed them.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
PAGE
Adams, Abigail, 32
Addams, Jane, 28, 61
Alexander, Mrs. R. P., 90
Allen, Carrie W., 168
Allen, Elizabeth Akers, 111
Anthony, Katherine, 1
Anthony, Susan B., 33
Archer, Ruby, 102, 254
Atherton, Gertrude, 44, 273
Austin, Mary, 160
Bachi, Mme, 163
Barker, Elsa, 268
Barnard, Anne Morton, 104, 161
Barnes, Florence Elberta, 189
Barnhart, Nora Elizabeth, 158
Barnum, Gertrude, 5
Barr, Amelia E., 163, 164
Bartlett, Lucy Re, 51
Barton, C. Josephine, 81, 121
Bass, Mrs. George, 38, 252
Beacon, Virginia Cleaver, 278
Beals, May, 272
Beard, Mary Ritter, 1, 204
Belmont, Mrs. O. H. P., 15
Birney, Elizabeth Cherrill, 192
Blackwell, Elizabeth, 199
Bloomer, Amelia, 286
Bocage, Mme. du, 163
Booth, Eva Gore, 184
Brandreth, Paulina, 278
Breshkovskaya, Catherine, 270
Brewer, Grace D., 132
Brower, Pauline Florence, 83
Brown, Rev. Antoinette, 35
Brown, Marion, 225
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 104, 241
Burr, Amelia Josephine, 155
Butler, Josephine, 157, 171
Cairo, Mona, 119
Campbell, Helen, 85
Cannon, Ida M., 264
Carbutt, Mary E., 103
Carr, Edna Elliott, 223
Cipriani, Charlotte, 207
Cleyre, Voltairine de, 237
Clifford, Mrs. W. K., 161
Cobb, Frances Power, 292
Cockran, Mrs. Burke, 15
Colet, Louise, 164
Colquhoun, Ethel Maude, 145, 172, 182
Comer, Cornelia A. P., 141
Conger, M. Josephine, 46, 177
Cook, Coralie Franklin, 2
Cook, Elizabeth, 56
Cooper, Elizabeth, 206
Cotton, Mrs. R. R., 36
Daggett, Mable Potter, 6, 88, 226
Dargan, Olive Tilford, 215
Davies, Mary Carolyn, 139, 283
Deardorf, Neva R., 4
De Ford, Miriam Allen, 37
Deland, Margaret, 294
Dick, Mrs. Fred, 62
Dix, Beulah Marie, 233
Dix, Dorothy, 159
Dorr, Rheta Childe, 123
Doty, Madeline Z., 218
Douglas, Winona, 115
Downing, Agnes, 294
Downy, June E., 287
Edgar, Mary S., 243
Eliot, George, 161, 162
Eulalia, Infanta, 274
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 263
Fee, Mme, 293
Field, Mary, 217
Flahaut, Mme. de, 163
Flexner, Hortense, 107
Fuller, Gertrude Breslau, 36, 108, 171
Gaffny, Fannie Humphrey, 2
Gage, Matilda Jocelyn, 15, 289
Gale, Zona, 24
Garrison, Theodosia, 155, 182, 291
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 120, 142, 280
Girardin, Mme. de, 161
Grove, Lady, 85
Gruenberg, Sidonie Matzner, 89
Guerin, Eugenie de, 293
Haile, Margaret, 244
Haines, Marion Gertrude, 192
Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson, 16
Hallam, Julia Clark, 116
Hamilton, Cicily, 45
Harland, Marion, 112
Harper, Ida Husted, 34
Harrison, Elizabeth, 91
Hartley, C. Gasquoine, 124, 154, 211
Henry, Alice, 72, 160, 203
Higgs, Mary, 65, 182
Hillis, Mrs. Newell Dwight, 142
Hoblitt, Margaret, 237
Hollins, Dorothea, 266
Holly, Marietta, 25
H. R. H., 274
Houdetot, Comtesse d’, 161
Houston, Margaret Belle, 100
Hoyt, Helen, 137
Hultin, Ida C., 170
Hutchins, Emily J., 5, 204
Irwin, Inez Haynes, 272
Israels, Belle Lindner, 36, 186
Jameson, Anna, 164
Kassimer, Ada M., 114
Keller, Helen, 53, 209, 265
Kelly, Florence, 86
Kenton, Edna, 71, 268
Key, Ellen, 83, 125, 143, 189, 234, 248
Kiper, Florence, 84, 171
Knowles, Josephine Pitcairn, 148, 208
La Follette, Mrs. Belle Case, 22, 69
Lagerlof, Selma, 52
Laidlaw, Mrs. James Lees, 47
Lambert, Mme. de, 162
LaMotte, Ellen N., 228
Lathrop, Julia, 91
Laughlin, Clara E., 68, 169, 264
Lawrence, Mrs. Pethick, 126, 180
Lazarovick-Hrebelianovich, 240
Lebedeff-Kropotkin, Sarah, 224
L’Enclos, Le, 161
Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 293
Lewis, Lena Morrow, 23
Lloyd, Caro, 63
Lowe, Caroline A., 19
Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 267
Lyttleton, Hon. Mrs. Arthur, 51, 205, 253
MacLean, Annie Marion, 175
Macy, Mrs, 210
May, Florence, 260
Maintenon, de, 161
Maley, Anna A., 227
Malkiel, Theresa, 44
Marsden, Dora, 186
Martin, Mrs. John, 274
Marwedel, Emma, 210
McCracken, Elizabeth, 69, 90
McCulloch, Catherine Waugh, 43
McDowell, Mary, 249
McKeehan, Irene P., 285
Meynell, Alice, 31
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 138
Miller, Emily Huntington, 116
Monroe, Harriet, 94, 180
Montefiore, Dora B., 20
Montessori, Maria, 195, 249
Morgan, Angela, 167
Morgan, Lady, 17, 201
Morton, Honnor, 185
Mott, Lucretia, 146
Motteville, Mme. de, 164
Natahlie, Countess, 162
Necker, Mme, 164, 293
Newman, Pauline M., 251
Nichols, Clarina Howard, 150
Nordica, Mme, 183
Norton, Grace Fallow, 176
O’Hare, Kate Richards, 119, 183
O’Reilly, Mary, 258
“Ouida”, 3, 113, 162, 202
Pankhurst, Sylvia, 12
Parce, Lida, 74, 174
Parker, Adella M., 152
Parsons, Elsie Clews, 170, 248
Pease, Leonora, 79
Peck, Mary Gray, 39
Pethick-Lawrence, 126, 180
Peyser, Ethel R., 30
Philip, Elizabeth, 142
Pompadour, Mme. de, 164
Porter, Mrs. C. E., 68, 133
Potter, Frances Squire, 255
Powers, Rose Mills, 231
Putnam, Alice H., 116
Putnam, Emily James, 184
Putnam, Helen G., 69, 86
Repplier, Agnes, 79
Reyband, Mme, 164
Richards, Ellen H., 184
Richardson, Bertha June, 202
Ridge, Lola, 193
Rieux, Mme. de, 163
Robins, Elizabeth, 42
Robins, Margaret Dreier, 180
Robinson, Ethel Blackwell, 81
Royle, Emily Taplin, 185
“Ruth”, 277
Sage, Mrs. Russell, 3, 170
Sand, George, 163
Schoff, Mrs. Frederick, 87
Schreiner, Olive, 41, 172, 289
Sellers, Sarah, 289
Shaw, Anna Howard, 1, 51
Simmons, Laura, 117, 277
Snow, Mary, 191
Sonza, Mme. de, 293
Sorringe, Katherine Parrott, 11
Stael, Mme. de, 164
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 206, 248
Stern, Meta L., 11, 250, 286
Stewart, Anna Bigoney, 194
Stewart, Ella S., 34
Stobart, Mrs. St. Clair, 55, 144
Stone, Lucy, 147
Stoner, Winifred Sackville, 71
Swanwick, Mrs. H. W., 205, 264
Tarbell, Ida, 63, 124, 195, 266
Teichner, Miriam, 39
Thomas, M. Carey, 10, 102, 149, 176, 208, 262
Thomas, Mrs. Leonard, 80
Turczynowicz, Laura de, 227
Tweedie, Mrs. Alec, 126, 162, 206, 286
Twining, Luella, 23
Valois, Margaret de, 162, 163, 293
Van de Water, Virginia Terhune, 91
Van Vorst, Mrs. John, 57, 96
Varnhagen, Rachel, 138
Wald, Lillian D., 70
Warwick, Countess of, 253
Wedgewood, Julia, 47
Wentworth, Eleanor, 245
Wentworth, Marion Craig, 215
Wharton, Edith, 73, 294
Widdemer, Margaret, 144, 156, 242
Wilcox, Louise Collier, 7
Wilde, Lady, 262
Wilkinson, Margaret O. B., 151, 173
Willard, Emma, 196
Willard, Frances E., 250
Wilson, Marjorie, 221
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 37, 87, 121, 146, 274
Young, Laura P., 62, 67
Zetkin, Clara, 222
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
PAGE
BOOK I
THE WOMAN MOVEMENT
A Generation Ago, Deardorf, 4
A Great Life, Harper, 34
A Lady Rebel, Adams, 32
A Pageant of Great Women, Hamilton, 45
A Prisoner in Bow, Pankhurst, 12
A Spade’s a Spade, Peyser, 30
A Woman’s Question, Thomas, 10
Allegory on Wimmin’s Rights, Holly, 25
All Methods Employed, Belmont, 15
Because They Cannot Vote, Stern, 11
Call to Social Service, Bass, 38
Clearing Up the Muss, Fuller, 36
Coming Into Her Own, Gaffny, 2
Feminism a Tree, Forbes-Robertson Hale, 16
For Woman Suffrage, Addams, 28
Freedom of the Women, Wilcox, 7
From “The Convert”, Robins, 42
Gibraltar of Our Cause, Anthony, 33
Glory in Power, Cockran, 15
He Shall See the New Woman, Daggett, 6
Legislative Responsibility, Hutchins, 5
Man Cannot Represent Woman, Brown, 35
Mankind Our Neighbor, Cotton, 36
Most Brilliant Period, Shaw, 1
New Woman, Montefiore, 20
Our Common Interests, Lewis, 23
Out of the Dark, Gage, 15
Plea of the Women, Sorringe, 11
Prayer of the Modern Woman, Conger, 46
Price of Liberty, Peck, 39
Revolt of Women, “Ouida”, 3
Rights, Privileges and Capacities, McCulloch, 43
Sisterhood of Women, Cook, 2
Submission, Teichner, 39
Story of Katie Malloy, Lowe, 19
Suffrage a Means to an End, Stewart, 34
To Raise the Standards of Life, Barnum, 5
Unanimity of Needs, Anthony, 1
Universality, Israels, 36
What Is This Government? La Follette, 22
Wisdom Comes with Freedom, Wollstonecraft, 37
Woman’s Awakening, Beard, 1
Woman Has Helped, Twining, 23
Woman Has Justified Herself, Morgan, 17
Woman on the Scaffold, Meynell, 31
Woman’s Right, Schreiner, 41
Woman’s Weak Dependency, Atherton, 44
Women, Gale, 24
Women to Men, De Ford, 37
Women’s Qualifications for Suffrage, Sage, 3
Working Woman’s Awakening, Malkiel, 44
BOOK II
THE HOME
Cannot Replace the Home, Wald, 70
Child at Home, The, McCracken, 69
Domestic Home Destroyed, Parce, 74
Domestic Strife, La Follette, 69
Home, The, Young, 62
Home Influence, Tarbell, 63
Home of the Workingman, Henry, 72
Honest Partnership in the Home, Dick, 62
Hotel “Home”, The, Wharton, 73
Immorality and the Home, Laughlin, 68
Inefficient Home, The, Young, 67
Lovers of Home, Shaw, 51
Man, Woman and the Home, Kenton, 71
Market Value of Home Labor, Putnam, 69
Mother and Child-Character, Stoner, 71
Perpetuate the Ideal, Porter, 68
Poor and Good Housing, Cook, 56
Spirit of the Home, Bartlett, 51
Then—Back to the Home, Lloyd, 63
War and the Home, Addams, 61
Where She Lived, Van Vorst, 57
Woman and the Primitive Home, Stobart, 55
Woman’s High Achievement, Lagerlof, 52
Woman’s Place, Lyttleton, 51
Woman’s Sphere the Home, Keller, 53
Women’s Lodging Houses, Higgs, 65
BOOK III
THE CHILD
Announce Her Maturity, Barnard, 104
Blot on Civilization, Lathrop, 91
Call of the Unborn, The, Robinson, 81
Child, The, Repplier, 79
Child and Parental Youth, McCracken, 90
Child Labor, Archer, 102
Children Innumerable, Kiper, 84
Child Slavery, Fuller, 108
Children’s Ward, Flexner, 107
Consideration for Others, Alexander, 90
Cotton Mill Child, The, Van Vorst, 96
Crusade of the Children, Houston, 100
Cry of the Children, Browning, 104
Equality in Fitness, Putnam, 86
Factory Child, Monroe, 94
Fettered Little Children, Carbutt, 103
Fewer and Better Children, Campbell, 85
For Father’s Amusement, Harrison, 91
Government and Child Life, Schoff, 87
Ideals of the Child, Gruenberg, 89
Little Beloved, Pease, 79
More Woman’s Work, Thomas, 80
My Little Son, Brower, 83
Need the Vote for Children, Thomas, 102
Nursery A University, Barton, 81
Parental Duty, Key, 83
Quantity Versus Quality, Grove, 85
Reason and the Child, Wollstonecraft, 87
Rising Value of a Baby, The, Daggett, 88
Teaching the Child Citizenship, Van de Water, 91
Where Women Have Voted, Kelly, 86
BOOK IV
THE MOTHER
Adolescent Child, Hallam, 116
A Good Mother, Wollstonecraft, 121
Ancient and Modern Mother, Tweedie, 126
Collective Motherhood, Dorr, 123
Companion Mother, Tarbell, 124
Factory Worker and Motherhood, O’Hare, 119
Fatherhood Cannot Be Motherhood, Kassimer, 114
Functions Identical, Putnam, 116
I am the Mother-Heart, Brewer, 132
Mother, Simmons, 117
Mother, a Creator, Barton, 121
Mother’s Influence, “Ouida”, 113
Mother, The, Pethick-Lawrence, 126
Mother, The, Harland, 112
Mothers, Gilman, 120
Parental Respect for Rights of Child, Key, 125
Passionate Instinct, Miller, 116
Rock Me to Sleep, Allen, 111
Price, The, Douglas, 115
Wise Mothers, Cairo, 119
Woman and Mother, Hartley, 124
BOOK V
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
A Man Never Gets Over It, Comer, 141
A New Stimulus to Marriage, Stobart, 144
A Possible Utopia, Knowles, 148
Art of Loving, Key, 143
Ashes of Life, Millay, 138
Confidante, The, Barnhart, 158
Cry of Man to Woman, Hartley, 154
Flirt, The, Burr, 155
Greatest Love, Varnhagen, 138
I Can Go to Love Again, Widdemer, 156
Love that Pales, Wollstonecraft, 146
Love Songs, Davies, 139
Marriage a Partnership, Hillis, 142
Marriage and the Labor Market, Thomas, 149
Marriage Laws of 1850, Nichols, 150
Marriage Not an Assurance of Support, Henry, 160
Marriage of the Friends, Mott, 146
Marriage the Sole Means of Maintenance, Butler, 157
Mirandy on the Monotony of Domesticity, Dix, 159
Old Suffragist, Widdemer, 144
One of the Best Things, Gilman, 142
Overheard in the Marriage Congress, Parker, 152
Postponing Marriage, Colquhoun, 145
Preventive of Divorce, A, Wilkinson, 151
Price of Love, Austin, 160
To Love on Feeling Its Approach, Hoyt, 137
What Is Love? Philip, 142
When Love Went By, Garrison, 155
When Marriage Meant Bondage, Stone, 147
BOOK VI
WOMAN AND LABOR
Bondwomen, Marsden, 186
Changed Condition of Tomorrow, Wilkinson, 173
Development Through the Choice of Work, Kiper, 171
Economics and the Home, Colquhoun, 182
Exploitation of Workingwomen, O’Hare, 183
Housewife, Morgan, 167
How Is She Housed? Higgs, 182
Lady, Putnam, 184
Left-Over Women, Colquhoun, 172
Morality and Woman in Industry, Laughlin, 169
One-Fifth of the Woman Population at Work, Thomas, 176
Orchards, Garrison, 182
Sex-Parasitism, Schreiner, 172
Simple Right to Live, Robins, 180
Sisterhood in Labor, Hultin, 170
Song of the Working Girls, Monroe, 180
Success Through Work, Nordica, 183
Unequal Distribution of Labor, Morton, 185
Wasted Energy and Talent, Sage, 170
Woman and Social Betterment, Richards, 184
Woman and the Dinner Pail, Gore-Booth, 184
Woman in the Home, Allen, 168
Woman’s Awakening, Conger, 177
Woman’s Demand for Work, Butler, 171
Woman’s Place, Fuller, 171
Woman’s Wages, Pethick-Lawrence, 180
Woman’s Work in Woman’s Way, Parce, 174
Women Are Going to Work, Parsons, 170
Women Who Sit at Ease, Norton, 176
Women Workers in New England, MacLean, 175
Working Woman Speaks, Royle, 185
BOOK VII
EDUCATION
Aim and End of Education, Ridge, 193
A Moral Crusade, Blackwell, 199
A Plan for Improving Female Education, Willard, 196
Democratization of Learning, Cipriani, 207
Educating Children, Montessori, 195
Educating the Daughter, Knowles, 208
Education and Votes For Women, Cooper, 206
Essentials in Education, Snow, 191
Equal Advantages of Education, Stanton, 206
Greatness of Froebel, Haines, 192
History of Woman’s Education, Beard, 204
Intellect Wins, Tweedie, 206
Intellectual Women of Rome, Morgan, 201
Mothers’ Library, Birney, 192
Mother’s Task, The, Tarbell, 195
Old and New Schools, Barns, 189
Plan for Improving Female Education, Willard, 196
Power of Education, “Ouida”, 202
Professions Educational, Lyttleton, 205
Social Education Important, Keller, 209
Soul Murder in the Schools, Key, 189
Standards Raised by Women Teachers, Stewart, 194
To Reach the Divine, Marwedel, 210
Traditions Upset, Hutchins, 204
Vision Realized, The, Richardson, 202
Vocational Training for Girls, Henry, 203
Woman’s Struggle for Educational Rights, Swanwick, 205
World of Scholarship a Man’s World, Thomas, 208
BOOK VIII
WAR AND PEACE
Babies Bred for War, Field, 217
Breeding Machines, Wentworth, 215
Deserter, The, LaMotte, 228
Devonshire Mother, Wilson, 221
Early Morning Funeral, Carr, 223
Last Racial War, Zetkin, 222
Prayer of the Toilers, Powers, 231
Prussians in Poland, Turczynowicz, 227
Red Easter, Brown, 225
Righteous Wars, Dix, 233
Rising Value of a Baby, Daggett, 226
Russian Women in Time of War, Kropotkin-Lebedeff, 224
These Latter Days, Dargan, 215
War Cripples, Doty, 218
Wars Will Cease, Maley, 227
BOOK IX
CLASSES
Abolish “Dependent Classes”, Lowell, 267
After the Fight, O’Reilly, 258
Breadth of Woman Suffrage, Fawcett, 263
Break Down the Wall, Key, 248
Breaking Up in Violence, Laughlin, 264
Breshkovskaya, Barker, 268
Class Intolerance Passing, Parsons, 248
Class Legislation, Thomas, 262
Despair, Lady Wilde, 262
Enslaved, The, Warwick, 253
Factories Instead of Homes, McDowell, 249
Fool’s Christmas, The, May, 260
Glad Day of Universal Brotherhood, The, Willard, 250
God and the Strong Ones, Widdemer, 242
Happy Warrior, Hollins, 266
Inequality for Women, Lyttleton, 253
Lore of the Woods, Archer, 254
Moses, the Strike Leader, Potter, 255
My Sister’s Heritage, Edgar, 243
New Sense of Justice, Stanton, 248
Of What Use Is It? Cannon, 264
Old Comrade, Beals, 272
Organized Woman Labor, Bass, 252
Our New Aristocracy, Atherton, 273
Outcasts, Wentworth, 245
Out of the Darkness, de Cleyre, 237
Poet’s Task, Hoblitt, 237
Poor Sex, Swanwick, 264
Revolutionist, Breshkovskaya, 270
Servant Class, Kenton, 268
Servitude, Montessori, 249
Socialist Prayer, Haile, 244
Two Sides of the Shield, Lazarovick-Hrebelianovich, 240
Voice of Labor, The, Irwin, 272
Voteless Sex, Stern, 250
Woman’s Labor Organizations, Tarbell, 266
Women and the Oppressed, Browning, 241
Worker’s Right, Keller, 265
Working Girls Must Cooperate, Newman, 251
BOOK X
MISCELLANEOUS
Contrast, A, Simmons, 277
Custom, Sellers, 289
Dare We Judge? Brandreth, 278
Difference, The, Schreiner, 289
Doomed Men’s Message, Davies, 283
Dress Reform, Bloomer, 286
Giving Up Her Name, Tweedie, 286
I Heard the Spirit Singing, Downy, 287
In Passing, “Ruth”, 277
Mary and Magdalene, Beacon, 278
Purse and the Soul, Stern, 286
Road Song, McKeehan, 285
Sheaf of Quotations, 293
Thanksgiving, Garrison, 291
The Unfair Status, Gage, 289
Two Storks, Gilman, 280
Women Run in Molds, Cobb, 292
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The American people today may be likened to the onlookers of a great
drama. A drama so tremendous, so spectacular, so tragic, that it
surpasses anything the mind of man has hitherto conceived. The onlookers
of this drama naturally are absorbed with its immediate movements. With
its broad meanings they are intensely concerned, but beyond these they
have no interest. Their vision for detail is clouded by the flare and
vastness of the apparent. What lies beneath, above, about, are only
incidentals and of no immediate consequence to them.
But the “incidentals” of the present war are, for the careful observer,
to say nothing of the professional drama critic, the chips which show
what is taking place as the result of the flare and the noise, and the
tragedy. One of these incidents is the coming of woman into realms of
activity which not for a million years—that is to say, never before—have
been opened to her.
Under the stress involved in winning a world peace, this fact is scarcely
noted, and is not understood in its full meaning. But the moment peace is
declared it will become a question of vital importance, involving as it
does all lines of human endeavor—labor, commerce, philosophy, literature,
agriculture, law, education, and the crafts as well as the arts.
The conservative mind, freed from the absorption of war, will turn with
startled gasp to discover that one half of the race has been shaken out
of the rut of ages, and is spilling itself helter-skelter, into every
department of social achievement. And the conservative mind will ask with
child-like frankness if the women are equal to the responsibility and the
opportunity which has been thrust upon them.
“Woman’s Voice” has been compiled in anticipation of this awakening on
the part of the multitude, as an answer to its wondering inquiry.
That women have themselves long yearned toward the broader paths of
effort and usefulness is manifest in the utterances of those who have
learned the art of self-expression. That they fully comprehend the
meaning, hardships and blessings of the broader life, is plainly shown in
their wide-spread printed word. “Woman’s Voice” is an effort to collect,
in what may be called at once a brief and an exposition of woman’s
entrance into the world of general endeavor, the wisdom of the women who
have studied conditions with an earnestness and efficiency which renders
them peculiarly fitted to speak for themselves upon the questions most
closely touching themselves and their children.
For ages untold only the voice of man has dictated the conditions under
which the rest of the world should live, including women and children.
All the poetry, all the philosophy, all the wisdom of the ages was
presented in man’s words, and from man’s standpoint. Woman, dumb,
untutored, and handicapped by an adverse public opinion, another creation
of the solely masculine mind, held to her chimney corner as helpless in
the face of petty and colossal injustices as the children she bore.
“Woman’s Voice” portrays the effort of women to get away from this now
apparent social mistake. Women have spoken and will continue to speak,
for, if we are to proceed speedily and with the least possible resistance
into the new order of things, education is still essential. There are
millions to whom the apparent is not apparent, and whose eyes must be
opened before the democracy for which the world is paying in blood and
agony can become a reality.
I believe “Woman’s Voice” should be in every home in the nation, and
in all nations where society is affected by the conditions which have
brought women away from the hearth-stone into the market-place. As a
digest of the best thought of representative women the world over, it
will be read when the multiplicity of volumes from which it is quoted
are passed by. It will be read not only for its seriousness, but for its
poetic sentiment, and its sprightly comment on the every-day things of
life. Its usefulness to club members and to workers in the equal suffrage
campaigns will be invaluable, but it is to the average housewife and
mother that I trust it will make its strongest appeal. To the women who
have more or less dimly felt, but who have not as yet found a voice or
an avenue through which to develop or express this feeling about things
which so much concern them and their children. I am hoping, also, that it
will fall into the hands of thousands of theorists who are opposing, for
no reason except their own ignorance about it, the advance of women in
the coming world-democracy.
Briefly, but earnestly, I wish to thank the publishers, editors and
writers who have made this Anthology possible through their permission to
reprint from books, magazines and articles the matter contained herein. I
have endeavored in all instances to give full credit to all of these, and
if errors happen to occur in this regard they are unintentional, and only
the result of the initial publishing of a work as new and comprehensive
as this one. Also, if any name has been omitted whose observations should
have appeared in this book, it is only because it was impossible for a
very busy editor to fail to miss some very worthy writers. In future
editions these can be gathered up, until we have a volume or many volumes
which may be perfectly representative of the woman’s voice of the world.
JOSEPHINE CONGER
Compiler “Woman’s Voice”
BOOK I
The Woman Movement
THE WOMAN MOVEMENT
The Most Brilliant Period
By Anna Howard Shaw
(American contemporary. Former president of the National American
Suffrage Association. From a series of articles in “The Metropolitan.”)
The winning of the suffrage states, the work in the states not yet won,
the conventions, gatherings and international councils in which women of
every nation have come together, have all combined to make this quarter
of a century the most brilliant period for women in the history of the
world.
Woman’s Awakening
By Mary Ritter Beard
The awakening of women to the low social status of their sex is the most
encouraging fact of the century.
Unanimity of Needs
By Katherine Anthony
(Author of “Mothers Who Must Earn,” and “Feminism in Germany and
Scandinavia,” from which the following is taken.)
The woman movement of the civilized world wants much the same thing in
whatever language its demands are expressed. In more or less unconscious
cooperation, the women of the civilized nations have from the first
worked for similar ends and common interests. Beyond all superficial
differences and incidental forms, the vision of the emancipated woman
wears the same features whether she be hailed as _frau_, _fru_, or
_woman_. The disfranchisement of a whole sex, a condition which has
existed throughout the civilized world until a comparatively recent date,
has bred in half the population an unconscious internationalism. The man
without a country was a tragic exception; the woman without a country
was the accepted rule. The enfranchisement of the women now under way
has come too late to inculcate in them the narrow views of citizenship
which were once supposed to accompany the gift of the vote. Its effect
will rather be to make the unconscious internationalism of the past the
conscious internationalism of the future.
Coming Into Her Own
By Fanny Humphrey Gaffny
(American contemporary. President National Council of Women. From a
speech delivered at the celebration of Miss Anthony’s 80th birthday.)
The Christian world reckoned by centuries is just coming of age.
Therefore women are beginning to put away childish things and to realize
the greatness of womanhood.
The Sisterhood of Women
By Coralie Franklin Cook
(From a speech delivered at the 80th birthday celebration of Susan B.
Anthony.)
Not until the suffrage movement had awakened woman to her responsibility
and power, did she come to appreciate the true significance of Christ’s
pity for Magdalene as well as of his love for Mary; not till then was the
work of Pundita Ramabai in far away India as sacred as that of Frances
Willard at home in America; not till she had suffered under the burden of
her own wrongs and abuses did she realize the all-important truth that no
woman and no class of women can be degraded and all womankind not suffer
thereby.
The Revolt of Women
“Ouida” in Lippincott’s
(See page 113)
The whole human race is involved in the results of the present revolt and
reaction amongst women; if turned back upon itself by mockery it will
burn and bite on unseen, and find its issue in mad sins, wild frivolity,
and all the anarchy of voluptuous abandonment; if rightly met, if rightly
guided, it may become the noblest and highest revolution that has ever
broken the chains of effete prejudices, and let out human souls from the
darkness of ignorance into the light and glory of a day of liberty.
Women’s Qualifications for Suffrage
By Mrs. Russell Sage
(See page 170)
Twenty years ago I did not think that women were qualified for suffrage,
but the strides they have made since then in the acquirement of business
methods, in the management of their affairs, in the effective interest
they have evinced in civic matters, and the way in which they have
mastered parliamentary methods, have convinced me that they are eminently
fitted to do men’s work in all purely intellectual fields.
A Generation Ago
By Neva R. Deardorf, Ph. D.
(Department Public Health and Charities, Philadelphia. From “Annals of
the American Academy.”)
Woman’s place in the crowd of a generation ago was immediately back
of her masculine kinsfolk. Here she enjoyed protection from the rough
elbowing of the crowd, though in return for this shelter she forfeited
her liberty and was expected to devote all of her physical strength and
mental energy to pushing some particular masculine protector to the
front. Some times her efforts were appreciated, frequently they were
taken for granted, since etiquette favored a covert manner of pushing.
But the rules of the game have changed. Partners and co-laborers are
taking the place of lords and masters. Farmers, professors, clergymen,
politicians, in fact, husbands of every calling are coming to see the
advantage of having a wife beside, instead of behind, them. They now take
pride in a wife who enjoys an outlook on the world which enables her
to help far more intelligently and effectively than did the wife of a
generation ago.
To Raise the Standards of Life
By Gertrude Barnum
(American newspaper woman. Speaker and writer in the cause of organized
labor.)
The attitude of men toward women, economic, social, political, reacts
upon man and society. In recognizing this, the man with the scythe is
a length ahead of the man with the cap and gown, the cassock or the
check book. The awakening to a sense of the economic interdependence and
fellowship of men and women, has made the trade unionist the first to
recognize the justice and wisdom of “universal suffrage,” and annually in
convention the American Federation of Labor declares:
“That the best interests of labor require the admission of women to
full citizenship—not only as a matter of justice to them, but also as a
necessary step toward insuring and raising the American standards of life
for all.”
Legislative Responsibility
By Emily J. Hutchins
(See page 204)
The most obvious effect of the vote is that it puts women upon a plane
of political equality with other normal adults.... Universal suffrage
stands for a certain recognition of the stake that all human beings,
irrespective of sex, have in the general welfare, and destroys a false
sense of sex limitations. By virtue of their new standing in the
community women assume an equal responsibility with men, for both good
and bad legislation.
He Shall See the New Woman
By Mabel Potter Daggett
(From “What the War Means to Woman,” in “Pictorial Review.”)
You see, when her country called her, it was destiny that spoke. Though
no nation knew. Governments have only thought they were making women
munition workers and women conductors and women bank-tellers and women
doctors and women lawyers and women citizens and all the rest. I doubt
if there is a statesman anywhere who has learned to unlock a door of
opportunity to let the woman movement by, who has realized that he was
but the instrument in the hands of a higher power that is re-shaping the
world for mighty ends, rough-hewn though they be today from the awful
chaos of war.
But there is one who will know. When the man at the front gets back
and stands again before the cottage rose-bowered on the English downs,
red-roofed in France and Italy, blue-trimmed in Germany, or ikon-blessed
in Russia, or white-porched off Main Street in America, he will clasp her
to his heart once more. Then he will hold her off, so, at arm’s length
and look long into her eyes and deep into her soul. And lo, he shall see
there the New Woman. This is not the woman whom he left behind when he
marched away to the Great World War. Something profound has happened to
her since. It is woman’s coming of age.
The Freedom of the Women
By Louise Collier Wilcox
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
When woman knew that on her strength devolved the care of race,
She crept into her cave to sleep and told her man to face
The prowling outer dangers, and the dark and fearful odds,
The thunder, beasts, and lightning, and the wrath of all the gods;
For at her heart she carried the future and its cares,
And the freedom that she needed was more precious far then theirs.
So she watched her babe’s eyes open, and the little limbs grow straight,
And she taught him all the lore she’d learned, and what to love and
hate;
And she trained the little body, and she led the little soul,
Till another woman took him to lead further toward the goal;
Then the mother smiled in anguish, though she laughed at age and cares,
For the freedom that she wanted was a longer one than theirs.
When the work of life grew harder and men bowed beneath the yoke,
Of needs too great to master, and lusts too deep to choke,
She worked and slaved and tended, she wrestled with the dearth;
She harnessed up herself to beasts, to till the barren earth;
And she planted in her garden and she weeded out the tares,
For the freedom that she wanted was more beautiful than theirs.
But when she saw man bestial and content with earthly things,
She scourged herself in cloisters, and she wept and prayed for wings.
Then she nurtured heavenly visions and she held aloft the cross,
To show eternal values amid life’s gain and loss.
And she pointed to the radiance round the crown the god-man wears,
For the freedom that she wanted was a holier one than theirs.
Then she smiled from out her shelter while her men coped with the world;
Her strength she made of weakness, and about her heart she curled
The tendrils of dependence and his little children’s love;
And she showed him what a home was in her gathered treasure trove.
All the time her eyes were smiling with the smile the seer wears,
For the freedom that she wanted was the freedom of his heirs.
Still her heart grew great and greater, and her eyes she would not blind
To the suffering of the victims, to the needs of all mankind.
And she knew her safety futile and her children’s stronghold weak,
Till the least, last one is sheltered, and there’s none astray to seek.
So she looked far down the ages to the good that all man shares,
For the freedom that she wanted was a broader one than theirs.
And she knew her man short-sighted, since he had not borne the pain,
The slavery, drudgery, darkness, the glory and the stain
Of womanhood and motherhood. How could he love the race?
As she who bore and nurtured, God’s instrument of grace?
So she ceased to coax and wheedle, and commanded as one dares
Whose only love of freedom is a higher one than theirs.
...
She stands, now, hand upon the helm, to help him govern life,
And she steers her world, his equal, in love, in peace, in strife;
She owns her strength and wisdom; and he may read who runs,
That she must demand her freedom from his daughters and his sons.
Neither beneath nor over, but equal in her place,
The freedom that she’ll die for, is the freedom of the race.
A Woman’s Question
By M. Carey Thomas
(A contemporary. President of Bryn Mawr College. From an address at the
College Evening of the National American Suffrage Association.)
Woman suffrage is first of all a woman’s question. We cannot remain
indifferent. The issues involved are so overwhelmingly important, first
of all, to us as women caring as we must for all other women’s welfare,
and second, to us as citizens of the modern industrial state. I am
sure as the result of repeated experiment that it is only necessary
for generous and unprejudiced women to realize the present economic
independence of millions of women workers, and the swiftly coming
economic independence of millions upon millions more women workers for
woman suffrage to seem to them inevitable from that moment.
No one can maintain by serious arguments—that is, by arguments that are
not pure and simple distortion of fact—that the ballot will not aid
women workers, as it has aided men workers, to obtain fairer conditions
and fairer wages. All working men and all men of every class regard the
ballot as their greatest protection against the oppression and injustice
of other men. It is only necessary to ask ourselves what would be the
fate of any political party whose platform contained a plank depriving
laboring men of the right to vote.
Because They Cannot Vote
By Meta L. Stern
(See page 250)
Industrial organization and political activity constitute the two
powerful arms of the labor movement. Men are free to use both their arms.
Women are struggling with one arm tied.
The Plea of the Women
By Katherine Parrott Sorringe
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
Standing before you with suppliant hands,
Mothers and wives and daughters, we
Sue for the justice long denied;—
Give us the vote that makes us free!
She who went down to the gates of death,
Joyful, to fling the life-doors wide,
Mother of statesman, soldier, saint—
Set this crown on her patient pride!
She, your comrade, who steadfast stood
Shoulder to shoulder, through storm and night,
Held up your hands till victory pealed—
Grant her this prize of well-fought fight.
Who trips laughing across your life,
Light of your love, your soul made fair?
Give her this pledge of a father’s faith,
Flower o’ freedom to deck her hair!
Mothers and wives and daughters, we,
Shall we ask in vain, with suppliant hand?
We, who are children of the free!
We, who are builders in the land!
A Prisoner in Bow
By Sylvia Pankhurst
(A leader of the Suffragette movement of England. The following, quoted
from “The Woman’s Journal,” is an account of one of her imprisonments in
the London jails.)
My eight days’ license had expired. The police were massed outside the
Bromley Public Hall where I was speaking, waiting to arrest me. Numbers
of detectives in plain clothes within were amongst the audience; the
people hissed and howled at them and they threatened them with sticks.
At the close of the meeting, the people, declaring that I should not be
arrested, crowded down the stairs and out in a thick mass with men in
the center of them all. The police rushed at us, striving to break our
ranks and to force a way through to me.... Policemen were on every side
of me. Two of them gripped and bruised my arms, dragging me along. The
crowd followed, calling to me.... The policemen dug their fingers into my
flesh. One of them took out his truncheon and grasped it tight against my
hand and arm. The back of my left hand was bruised from it all next day.
Several women rushed up to me and were arrested, and one girl who did
not know any of us, or what the trouble was about, called out: “Oh, you
should not hurt her,” and was taken into custody. They dragged me into a
Cannon Row police station....
So, hatless, and without so much as a brush or comb, I was taken back to
gaol to begin my hunger, thirst and sleep strike. When I reached my cell,
the same cell in the hospital in which during February and March I had
been forcibly fed for five weeks, I began to pace up and down.
A woman officer came to me and said I must not make a noise.... I took a
blanket from the bed and spread it on the floor to deaden the sound of my
footsteps, lest any of the other women prisoners should hear them and be
kept awake.
Then I walked on and on, five short steps across the cell and five short
steps back, on and on, and on.... As the hours dragged their slow way I
stumbled often over the blanket that wrinkled up and caught in my feet.
Often I stooped with dizzy brain to straighten it. The walking, the
ceaseless walking, when I was so tired, made me grow sick and faint. I
was stumbling, falling to my knees, clutching, as one drowning, at the
bed or chair. Sometimes I think I slept an instant or two as I lay, for
sleep seemed to be dogging as I walked.
It was cold, cold and colder, as the morning came, as the sombre yellow
faded and the gray sky turned to violet—such a strange brilliant violet,
almost startling it seemed through those heavy bars. Then the violet died
into the bleak white chill of early day.
In the day time I still walked, but sometimes I had to rest in the hard,
wooden chair, and then I would be startled to feel my head nod heavily to
one side. My legs ached, the soles of my feet were swollen. They burned,
and I thought of the women of the past who were made to walk on red hot
plough shares for their faith. After the first few days I remembered that
tramps rubbed soap on their feet to prevent their getting sore. I rubbed
soap on mine and found that it eased them a good deal. Each time I took
my stocking off to do this I noticed that my feet had grown more purple.
My hands, too, were purple as they hung at my sides. My throat was
parched and dry. My lips were cracked. On Wednesday I fainted twice, and
afterwards there came and stayed till I was released, a strange pressure
in the head, especially in the ears. There was a sharp pain across my
chest. That evening I asked to see a doctor from the home office. On
Thursday afternoon he came. On Friday there was no more likelihood of my
sleeping. I lay on the bed most of the day burning hot, with cold shivers
that seemed to pass over me as though a cold wind was blowing on my face.
In the afternoon I was released and came back to the little red-roofed
house under St. Stephen’s church and the kind hearts of Bow.
Out of the Dark
By Matilda Jocelyn Gage
(From “Woman, Church and State.”)
Although England was Christianized in the fourth century, it was not
until the tenth that the Christian wife of a Christian husband acquired
the right of eating at table with him.
All Methods Employed
By Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont
(In “Harper’s Bazar.” President of the Political Equality Association of
New York, a leading spirit in the Congressional Union, an organization
whose tactics have caused it to be called the militant wing of the
suffrage movement.)
Woman suffrage is a war on ignorance, prejudice and vice. To attack
certain gigantic forces, a people must take any and every line open to
them. If the Germans had attacked Warsaw from but one side, that great
city would still be under Russian rule. I believe, therefore, that women
in fighting for their suffrage should use all lines approaching the
enemy. I personally am working along all roads of attack, for I feel that
where one method may fail, another may succeed.
Glory in Power
By Mrs. Burke Cockran
(In “Harper’s Bazar.”)
Suffragists are born, not made. There are many women whose brains will
never respond to suffrage argument.... And yet I am convinced that these
women, when they do receive the vote, will not only use their power
judiciously and conscientiously, but will eventually glory in it.
Feminism a Tree
By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
(Well-known English actress. Author of “What Women Want,”[1] from which
the following is taken.)
... Feminism is a tree, and woman suffrage merely one of its many
branches. Some of these branches are essential to the life of the tree,
others are not. Some grow strong and put forth shoots in their turn,
others blossom prematurely, wither young, and drop from the trunk.
Meanwhile the tree towers up into the sun with its crown of sturdy
growths, and its abortive shoots lie forgotten in the shadow below,
leaving hardly a scar upon the great stem to mark their death. Only few
people see this tree as a unit. All who do know that woman suffrage is
one of its essential growths. But the majority still concentrate their
gaze upon one branch or another, whichever seems to them most fair, and
the parent tree is lost to sight amid the multiplicity of its offspring’s
leaves. Suffrage has rallied to its march thousands of conservative women
who are indifferent, or even opposed, to some newer branches of the tree,
while those who are absorbed in certain later and eccentric growths are
sometimes amusingly contemptuous of the older limbs. They forget that the
topmost crown could not flourish if the wide boughs below did not help
the tree to breathe. They are sometimes, too, in danger of forgetting
that if the great roots of the trees were not anchored deep in the soil
of woman’s nature itself, in her motherhood, her strong tenderness, and
her service, the whole growth would perish.
[1] Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Woman Has Justified Herself
By Lady Morgan
(English. From “Woman and Her Master,” published in Paris, in a
“Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors,” 1840.)
Notwithstanding her false position, woman has struggled through all
disabilities and degradations, has justified the intentions of Nature
in her behalf, and demonstrated her claim to share in the moral agency
of the world. In all outbursts of mind, in every forward rush of the
great march of improvement she has borne a part; permitting herself
to be used as an instrument, without hope of reward, and faithfully
fulfilling her mission, without expectation of acknowledgment. She has,
in various ages, given her secret service to the task-master, without
partaking in his triumph, or sharing in his success. Her subtlety has
insinuated views which man has shrunk from exposing, and her adroitness
found favor for doctrines which he had the genius to conceive, but not
the art to divulge. Priestess, prophetess, the oracle of the tripod, the
sibyl of the cave, the veiled idol of the temple, the shrouded teacher
of the academy, the martyr or missionary of a spiritual truth, the armed
champion of a political cause, she has been covertly used for every
purpose, by which man, when he has failed to reason his species into
truth, has endeavored to fanaticize it into good; whenever mind has
triumphed by indirect means over the hearts of the masses.
In all moral impulsions, woman has aided and been adopted; but, her
efficient utility accomplished, the temporary part assigned her for
temporary purposes performed, she has ever been hurled back into her
natural obscurity, and conventional insignificance.... Alluded to, rather
as an incident, rather than a principle in the chronicles of nations, her
influence, which cannot be denied, has been turned into a reproach; her
genius, which could not be concealed, has been treated as a phenomenon,
when not considered as a monstrosity!
But where exist the evidences of these merits unacknowledged, of these
penalties unrepealed? They are to be found carelessly scattered through
all that is known in the written history of mankind, from the first to
the last of its indited pages. They may be detected in the habits of the
untamed savage, in the traditions of the semi-civilized barbarian! And
in those fragments of the antiquity of our antiquity, scattered through
undated epochs,—monuments of some great moral debris, which, like the
fossil remains of long-imbedded, and unknown species, serve to found a
theory or to establish a fact.
Wherever woman has been, there has she left the track of her humanity, to
mark her passage—incidentally impressing the seal of her sensibility and
wrongs upon every phase of society, and in every region, “from Indus to
the Pole.”
The Story of Katie Malloy
By Caroline A. Lowe
(Well-known as a speaker on the Socialist and labor platforms. From a
speech before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives,
Sixty-Second Congress.)
The need of the ballot for the wage-earning woman is a vital one. No plea
can be made that we have the protection of the home or are represented by
our fathers or brothers....
What of the working girls, who through unemployment are no longer
permitted to sell the labor of their hands and are forced to sell their
virtue?
I met Katie Malloy under peculiar circumstances. It was because of this
that she told me of her terrible struggles during the great garment
workers strike in Chicago. She had worked at H——’s for five years and had
saved $30. It was soon gone. She hunted for work, applied at the Young
Women’s Christian Association and was told that so many hundreds of girls
were out of work that they could not possibly do anything for her. She
walked the streets day after day without success. For three days she had
almost nothing to eat. “Oh,” she said, with the tears streaming down her
cheeks, “there is always some place where a man can crowd in and keep
decent, but for us girls there is no place, no place but one, and it is
thrown open to us day and night. Hundreds of girls—girls that worked by
me in the shop—have gone into houses of impurity.”
Has Katie Malloy and the five thousand working girls who are forced into
lives of shame each month no need of a voice in a Government that should
protect them from this worse than death!
The New Woman
By Dora B. Montefiore
(In “The Progressive Woman.” English Contemporary. Writer and speaker on
woman and labor problems.)
Pausing on the century’s threshold,
With her face toward the dawn,
Stands a tall and radiant presence;
In her eyes the light of morn,
On her brow the flush of knowledge
Won in spite of curse and ban,
In her heart the mystic watchword
Of the Brotherhood of Man.
She is listening to the heartbeats
Of the People in its pain;
She is pondering social problems
Which appeal to heart and brain.
She is daring for the first time
Both to think—and then to act;
She is flouting social fictions,
Changing social lie—for Fact.
Centuries she followed blindfold
Where her lord and master led;
Lived his faith, embraced his morals;
Trod but where he bade her tread.
Till one day the light broke round her,
And she saw with horror’s gaze,
All the filth and mire of passion
Choking up the world’s highways.
Saw the infants doomed to suffering,
Saw the maidens slaves to lust,
Saw the starving mothers barter
Souls and bodies for a crust.
Saw the workers crushed by sweaters,
Heard the cry go up, “How long?”
Saw the weak and feeble sink ’neath
Competition’s cursed wrong.
For a moment paused she shuddering;
Hers in part the guilt, the blame—
Untrue to herself and others,
Careless to her sister’s shame.
Then, she rose—with inward vision
Nerving all her powers for good;
Feeling one with suffering sisters
In a perfect womanhood.
Rising ever ’bove the struggle
For this mortal fleeting life;
Listening to the God within her
Urging Love—forbidding Strife.
Love and care for life of others
Who with her must fall or rise.
This the lesson through the ages
Taught to her by Nature Wise.
She had pondered o’er the teaching,
She had made its truths her own;
Grasped them in their fullest meaning,
As “New Woman” she is known.
’Tis her enemies have baptized her
But she gladly claims the name;
Hers it is to make a glory
What was meant to be a shame.
Thinking high thoughts, living simply,
Dignified by labor done;
Changing the old years of thraldom
For new freedom—hardly won.
Clear-eyed, selfless, saved through knowledge,
With her ideals fixed above,
We may greet in the “New Woman”
The old perfect Law of Love.
What Is This Government?
By Mrs. Belle Case La Follette
(American contemporary. Wife of the United States Senator, Robert La
Follette. The following is from a speech on suffrage, given in Boston.)
What is this government that we women have been taught to think of as
something so remote from our interests, so unrelated to the immediate
personal preoccupations of our daily lives? There are three great matters
in which we are all concerned: religion, education and government. In
religion men and women share equally (indeed, men sometimes are content
that women should do more than their share). In education it has come to
pass that both men and women participate equally, though that was not
always so. It is less than two generations that our universities and even
our high schools have been open to women upon the same terms as to men.
But government is considered as man’s exclusive province—a limitation
that has narrowed the lives of the women, that has robbed the children,
and that has reacted most injuriously upon the State. For with what
matters does government concern itself? Why, with matters that touch
intimately home happiness and home prosperity, with laws and regulations
that guard and further human lives.
Woman Has Helped
By Luella Twining
Woman always has figured prominently in every movement and transformation
that has changed the conditions of human life.
Our Common Interests
By Lena Morrow Lewis
(American contemporary. Writer. Speaker. Former member of the National
Executive Committee of the Socialist Party. Editor “The Seattle Call.”)
Every argument in behalf of man suffrage applies with equal force to
woman suffrage. Men and women have more in common as members of the same
species, belonging to the same human family, than they have differences,
because of the incident of sex. To deny woman the ballot because of her
sex is virtually to repudiate her right and claim as a human being. That
a difference does exist between men and women is on the other hand a
strong argument in behalf of woman suffrage. The giving of the ballot to
woman will not rob man of his just rights. The admission of woman into
the political arena will do away with male supremacy, which is injurious
to man, breeds tyranny and results in injustice to woman. Justice to
woman does not mean injustice to man. Our common interests as human
beings, and our differences as men and women both demand political power
and social rights for women the same as for men.
Women
By Zona Gale
(Contemporary American writer and suffragist. In “The American Magazine.”)
They looked from farm house window;
Their joyless faces showed
Between the curtain and the sill—
You saw them from the road.
They looked up while they churned and cooked
And washed and swept and sewed.
Some could die and some just lived, and many a one went mad,
But it’s “Mother be up at four o’clock,” the menfolk bade.
They looked from town-house windows,
A shadow on the shade
Rose-touched by colorful depths of room
Where harmonies were made.
Within, the women went and came,
And delicately played.
Some could grow, and some could work, but many of them were dead.
“We must be gowned and gay tonight when the men come home,” they said.
They looked from factory windows
Where many an iron gin
Drew in their days and ground their days
On the black wheels within,
Drew in their days and wove their days
To a web exceeding thin.
And they suffered what women have suffered over and over again.
And it’s “Double your speed for a living wage, ye mothers and wives of
men!”
They looked from brothel windows,
And caught the curtain down.
A piteous, beckoning hand thrust out,
To summon or clod, or clown.
They named them true, they named them true,
The Women of the Town.
Some could live and some just died, and most of them none could know,
And it’s “What if the fallen women vote?” from the men who keep them so.
Allegory on Wimmin’s Rights
By Josiah Allen’s Wife (Marietta Holly)
(American contemporary. A philosopher who uses the humorous story to
carry her message to the reading public.)
“Wimmin haint no business with the laws of the country,” said Josiah.
“If they haint no business with the law, the law haint no business with
them,” said I warmly. “Of the three classes that haint no business with
the law—lunatics, idiots and wimmin—the lunatics and idiots have the best
time of it,” says I with a great rush of ideas into my brain that almost
lifted up the border of my head-dress. “Let a idiot kill a man; ‘What of
it?’ says the law. Let a luny steal a sheep; again the law murmurs in a
calm and gentle tone, ‘What of it? They haint no business with the law,
and the law haint no business with them!’
“But let one of a third class, let a woman steal a sheep, does the law
soothe her in those comfortin’ tones? No; it thunders to her in awful
accents: ‘You haint no business with the law, but the law has a good deal
of business with you, vile female; start for state’s prison! You haint
nothin’ at all to do with the law, only to pay all the taxes it tells you
to, embrace a license bill that is ruinin’ to your husband, give up your
innocent little children to a wicked father if it tells you to, and a few
other little things, such as bein’ dragged off to prison by it, chained
up for life, and hung, and et cetery.”
“‘Methought I once heard the words,’ sithes the female, ‘True government
consists in the consent of the governed. Did I dream them, or did the
voice of a luny pour them into my ear?’
“‘Haint I told you,’ frowns the law on her, ‘that that don’t mean wimmin?
Have I got to explain again to your weakened female comprehension, the
great fundymental truth that wimmin haint included and mingled in the law
books and statutes of the country, only in a condemnin’ and punishin’
sense as it were?’
“‘Alas!’ sithes the woman to herself, ‘would that I had the sweet rights
of my wild and foolish companions, the idiots and lunys!’
“‘But,’ says she, ‘are the laws always just, that I should obey them thus
implicitely?’
“‘Idiots, lunatics! and wimmin! Are they goin’ to speak?’ thunders the
law. ‘Can I believe my noble right ear? Can I, bein’ blindfolded, trust
my seventeen senses? I’ll have you understand that it haint no woman’s
business whether the laws are just or unjust; all you have to do is just
to obey ’em. So start off for prison, my young woman.’
“‘But my housework,’ pleads the woman. ‘Woman’s place is the home. It
is her duty to remain, at all hazards, within its holy and protectin’
precincts. How can I leave its sacred retirement to moulder in state’s
prison?’
“‘Housework!’ and the law fairly yells the words, he is so filled with
contempt at the idea. ‘Housework! Jest as if housework is goin’ to
stand in the way of the noble administration of the law! I admit the
recklessness and immorality of her leavin’ that holy haven long enough
to vote; but I guess she can leave her housework long enough to be
condemned, and hung, and so forth.’
“‘But I have got a infant,’ says the woman, ‘of tender days. How can I
go?’
“‘That is nothin’ to the case,’ says the law in stern tones. ‘The
peculiar conditions of motherhood only unfits a female woman from ridin’
to town in a covered carriage once a year, and layin’ her vote on a pole.
I’ll have you understand it’s no hinderence to her at all in a cold and
naked cell, or in a public court room crowded with men.’
“As the young woman totters along to prison is it any wonder that she
sithes to herself—
“‘Would that I were an idiot! Alas is it not possible that I may become
even now, a luny? Then I should be respected!’”
For Woman Suffrage
By Jane Addams
(From speech favoring a suffrage amendment to the Constitution, before
the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-Second
Congress. Prior to the enfranchisement of the Illinois women.)
As I have been engaged for a number of years in various philanthropic
undertakings, perhaps you will permit me, for only a few moments, to
speak from experience. A good many women with whom I have been associated
have initiated and carried forward philanthropic enterprises, which were
later taken over by the city, and thereupon the women have been shut out
from the opportunity to do the self-same work which they have done up to
that time. In Chicago the women for many years supported school nurses
who took care of the children, both made them comfortable and kept them
from truancy. When the nurses were taken over by the health department of
the city the same women who had given them their support and management
were shut out from doing anything more in that direction. And I think
Chicago will bear me out when I say that the nurses are not now doing as
good work as they did before.
I could also use the illustration of the probation officers in Chicago
who are attached to the juvenile court. For a number of years women
selected and supported these probation officers. Later, when the same
officers, paid the same salary, were taken over by the county and paid
from the county funds, the women who had had to do with the initiation
and beginning of the probation system, and with the primary and early
management of the officers, had no more to do with them. At the present
moment the juvenile court in Chicago has fallen behind its former
position in the juvenile courts of the world. I think the fair-minded men
of Chicago will admit that it was a disaster for the juvenile court when
the women were disqualified, by their lack of the franchise, to care for
it.
The juvenile court has to do largely with delinquent and dependent
children, and I think there is no doubt that on the whole women can deal
with such cases better than men, because their natural interests lie in
that direction....
The establishment of a sanitarium for the care of tubercular patients in
Chicago was begun by some philanthropic women, and later on, when these
also were put under the care of the city, these women were shut out,
save as they were permitted to do some work through the courtesy of the
officials. Sometimes the officials are very courteous to them and glad to
have their assistance; sometimes they quite resent the suggestions from
them, claiming it is “up to” them to take care of the city affairs, and
that women are only interfering when they try to help.
So, it seems fair to say, if women are to keep on with the work which
they have done since the beginning of the world—to continue with
their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly being taken over by
the Government, and often not properly administered, that the women
themselves will have to have the franchise.
The franchise is only a little bit of mechanism which enables the voter
to say how much money shall be appropriated from the taxes, of which
women pay so large a part. When a woman votes, she votes in an Australian
ballot box, very carefully guarded from roughness, and it seems to us
only fair to the State activities which are so largely humanitarian that
women should have this opportunity.
A Spade’s A Spade
By Ethel R. Peyser
(In “Judge.”)
She’s treated by him like a queen,
She’s helped across the streets,
She’s given every courtesy
That every woman greets;
And yet he thinks the vote for her
Would signal grave defeats.
She trained and reared his able sons,
She helped him make his cash,
She advised him in his business,
She made him act less rash;
And yet he thinks the vote for her
Would be “just so much trash.”
She answers all his business notes
In a manner quite “parfait,”
She does all his stenography
And seems to have great sway;
And yet he thinks the vote for her
Would bring “naught but dismay.”
She knows the whys of stocks and bonds,
She knows statistics dull,
She keeps him up on markets
And knows the price to cull;
And yet he thinks the vote for her
“Would be an awful mull.”
She’s placed on rate commissions,
She takes part in great debates,
She is asked for her opinion,
She knows causes, bills, and dates;
And yet he thinks the vote for her
Would cause the fall of States.
She’s the brains of large conventions,
She knows well the social trend,
She has written books of civics,
She has made great forces blend;
And yet the vote for such as she
He cannot comprehend!
Woman on the Scaffold
By Alice Meynell
(English contemporary. Poet and essayist. From “The Bookman.”)
See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the
Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the
fortunes of a party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems
a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political
death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her
living hours; but to the hour of her death was granted no part in the
largest interests, social, national, international. The blood with which
she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in
the tribune was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins....
Women might be, and were, duly silenced when, by the mouth of Olympe de
Gougas, they claimed a “right to concur in the choice of representatives
for the formation of the laws,” but in her person, too, they were
liberally allowed to bear responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de
Gougas was guillotined. Robespierre then made her public and complete
amends.
A Lady Rebel
By Abigail Adams
(Wife of one president of the United States, and mother of another. A
brilliant correspondent, her letters showing her to be a woman unusual in
breadth of interest, and general culture. The following extract is from
a letter written to her husband in 1774, during the session of the First
Continental Congress.)
I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in the new
code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I
desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable
to them than your ancestors.... If particular care and attention is
not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and
will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or
representation.
“The Gibraltar of Our Cause”
By Susan B. Anthony
(From a speech delivered at the Suffrage Convention held at Syracuse, N.Y.
September 8, 1852. Quoted from “Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.”[2])
The claims we make at these conventions are self-evident truths. The
second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons
and earnings. Is that not self evident? Yet the common law, which
regulates the relations of husband and wife, and is modified only in a
few instances, gives the “custody” of the wife’s person to the husband,
so that he has a right to her, even against herself. It gives him her
earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how
greatly she may need them for herself or her children. It gives him a
right to her personal property, which he may will entirely away from
her, also the use of her real estate, and in some of the states married
women, insane persons and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make
a will, so that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in
common with the pauper, the right of maintenance. Indeed, when she has
taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases. And what is
our position politically? The foreigner, the negro, the drunkard, all are
entrusted with the ballot, all are placed by men higher than their own
mothers, wives, sisters and daughters!
The woman, who, seeing this, dares not maintain her rights is the one to
hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal rights—the
right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law:
these are “the Gibraltar of our Cause.”
[2] The Bowen Merrill Co.
A Great Life
By Ida Husted Harper
(Biographer of Susan B. Anthony. From Introduction to the “Life and Works
of Susan B. Anthony.”)
Those who follow the story of this life will confirm the assertion that
every girl who enjoys a college education; every woman who has the chance
of earning an honest living in whatever sphere she chooses; every wife
who is protected by law in the possession of her person and property;
every mother who is blessed with the custody and control of her own
children—owes these sacred privileges to Susan B. Anthony beyond all
others.
Suffrage a Means to an End
By Ella S. Stewart
(Contemporary. Ex-President the Illinois Equal Suffrage
Association—Former Secretary “National American Suffrage Association.”)
Suffrage is not an end in itself, but a means to an end....
The opposition of the liquor forces is not gauged by the number of women
actively engaged in temperance work. That number is still comparatively
small. It takes no comfort from the fact that suffrage associations are
non-partisan on all questions except suffrage. It would fear and fight
off the enfranchisement of women if every temperance organization were to
disband today. Therein it unconsciously pays its high tribute to woman
and confesses its own lack of moral defense.... The forces of evil fear
for woman’s vote.
Man Cannot Represent Woman
By Rev. Antoinette Brown
(The first woman ordained to preach in the United States. The following
extract is from a speech delivered at the Suffrage Convention at
Syracuse, N. Y., Sept. 8, 1852.)
Man cannot represent woman. They differ in their nature and relations.
The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed by man. The
framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the masculine standpoint
of observation, to the thoughts, feelings and biases of man. The law
then can give us no representation as women, and therefore no impartial
justice, even if the law makers were intent upon this, for we can be
represented only by our peers.... When woman is tried for crime, her
jury, her judges, her advocates, are all men; and yet there may have
been temptations and various palliating circumstances connected with her
peculiar nature as woman, such as man cannot appreciate. Common justice
demands that a part of the law-makers and law-executors should be of her
own sex. In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer
than life, both parties in the contract are entitled to an equal voice.
Universality
By Belle Lindner Israels
(From the Introduction to “The Upholstered Cage.”)
There can be no problem of women anywhere without aspects of universality.
Mankind Our Neighbor
By Mrs. R. R. Cotton
(In “Social Service Review.”)
The day is past when we deluded ourselves with the thought that our
responsibilities ceased with the performance of our individual duties. We
are jointly responsible for the existing conditions, and only by a joint
effort can they be improved. Our neighbor’s welfare is our business, and
our neighbor is mankind.
Clearing Up the Muss
By Gertrude Breslau Fuller
(American contemporary. Prominent as a Lyceum speaker on social
questions.)
You say politics are too corrupt for women to mix up in? Well, they are
pretty bad, there is no doubt about that. You have laid almost everything
under heaven onto the women, but this one thing that has been under your
own exclusive, masculine domain.
Don’t you know that the principal business of women, all down the ages,
has been to go along after the men and clear up the everlasting muss
they made? Well, we are still at the same task. Our politics are no more
corrupt than our housekeeping would be if we let you run it alone.
Wisdom Comes with Freedom
By Mary Wollstonecraft
(See page 121)
In France or Italy have the women confined themselves to domestic life?
Though they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet have they
not illicitly had great sway, corrupting themselves and the men with
whose passions they played? In short, in whatever light I view the
subject, reason and experience convince me that the only method of
leading women to fulfill their peculiar duties is to free them from all
restraint by allowing them to participate in the inherent rights of
mankind.
Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men
become more so, for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice
which one-half of the race are obliged to submit to retorting on their
oppressors, the virtue of men will become worm-eaten by the insect whom
he keeps under his feet.
Women to Men
By Miriam Allen De Ford
(In “The Woman Voter.”)
We are they that wept at Babylon,
And still are they that weep;
We have watched the cradles of the world,
And hushed its sick to sleep;
We have served your folly and desire,
And drunk your cruel will;
You have smiled on us with far content:—
Are you smiling still?
We were slaves most fit for Solomon,
That now can call you kin;
It was strength of soul and many years
That changed us so within;
The strength of those you killed with scorn,
The years you could not kill;
Steep were the stairs to climb and hard:—
Are you smiling still?
We have shared your salt of loyalty,
And eaten of its bread;
We have died with you for Freedom’s sake,
And gained it, being dead:
You have drawn from out our breasts your life,
The life you use so ill:
We are they that bore you in the night:—
Are you smiling still?
The Call to Social Service
By Elizabeth (Mrs. George) Bass
(American contemporary. Former president of the Woman’s City Club,
Chicago. Chairman Chicago-Biennial Board, General Federation of Women’s
Clubs. From editorial in “Life and Labor.”)
The call to social service and action has brought the modern club woman
along an ever broadening path to the high, wind-swept levels, where she
sights limitless opportunity for expression and action; and two things
she has come to see clearly, first, that she needs the ballot to do this,
her natural work, more effectively; and second, that the Commonwealth
needs her.
Submission
By Miriam Teichner
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
Submission? They have preached at that so long,
As though the head bowed down would right the wrong;
As though the folded hands, the coward heart,
Were saintly signs of souls sublimely strong;
As though the man who acts the waiting part
And but submits, had little wings a-start.
But may I never reach that anguished plight,
Where I at last grow weary of the fight!
Submission? “Wrong of course, must ever be
Because it ever was. ’Tis not for me
To seek a change; to strike the maiden blow.
’Tis best to bow the head and not to see;
’Tis best to dream, that we need never know
The truth—to turn our eyes away from woe.”
Perhaps. But, ah! I pray for keener sight.
And—may I not grow weary of the fight!
The Price of Liberty
By Mary Gray Peck
(In “Life and Labor.” Chairman Committee on Drama, General Federation of
Women’s Clubs.)
“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty
or give me death.”
Patrick Henry, when he said that, was not asking that liberty come as a
free gift. No race or class ever has attained it so cheaply. Fifty years
after the battle of Gettysburg, the negro is still fighting for the
liberty which the bloodiest war in history could not confer on him. He
must get it for himself.
Women have been fighting longer than that for freedom.
It is the glory of the women’s labor movement that working women struck
the first blow for women’s liberty in this country.
For a hundred years, working women have made straight the way for
all women to follow. It was the women in the mills and the shops and
factories who made it possible sixty years ago for women to enter the
schools and the professions.
Today, in the ultimate analysis, it is the women in the mills of commerce
who gave women the ballot in the suffrage states. It is they who are
paying the price. _Their strikes are all hunger strikes; not a hunger for
bread alone, but a hunger for life and the liberty of soul._
Not till these strikes end in victory, not till the last burning-factory
martyr has rendered up her life as a sacrifice necessary to the
destruction of the system which thrives on factory fires, can we count
the price which working women have paid to make all women free.
“No people can long endure half slave and half free.”
If the working women had consented to be slaves, there would have been
no woman movement. More than that—without the woman’s trade unions there
could be no organized labor movement. Theirs is the strategic point in
the conflict in which the whole world is lining up. Around them will rage
the fiercest fight; but the stars in their courses fight for them.
Woman’s Right
By Olive Schreiner
(South African novelist. Contemporary. Author of “An African Farm,”
“Three Dreams in a Desert,” “Woman and Labor,” etc. The following is from
“Woman and Labor.”[3])
Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that
the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life
flow backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning wheels be again
resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old
grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake
himself entirely to his province of war and the chase, leaving to us
all domestic and civil labor. We do not even demand that society shall
immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may again be a child
bearer (deep and overmastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every
virile woman’s heart!); neither do we demand that the children we bear
shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we know,
cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone forever; no
will of man can recall them. But _this_ is our demand: We demand that, in
that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman,
where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes
and relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of
honored and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labor of
the Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and will take
nothing less. _This is our WOMAN’S RIGHT!_
[3] Frederick A. Stokes Co.
From “The Convert”
By Elizabeth Robins
(English contemporary. Actress, playwright, novelist. Author of “Way
Stations,” “The Convert,” etc. The following is from a suffrage speech by
one of her characters, Miss Claxton, in “The Convert.”)
What, women don’t want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think
because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else
ought to like subservience, too?... The women who are made to work
over hours—they want the vote. To compel them to work over hours is
illegal. But who troubles to see that laws are fairly interpreted for
the unrepresented.... I know a factory where a notice went up yesterday
to say that the women employed there will be required to work 12 hours a
day for the next few weeks.... Much of woman’s employment is absolutely
unrestricted except that they may not be worked on Sunday. And while
all this is going on, comfortable gentility sit in arm chairs and write
alarmist articles on the falling birth-rate and the horrible amount of
infant mortality. Here and there we find a man who realizes that the
main concern of the State should be its children, and that you can’t get
worthy citizens when the mothers are sickly and enslaved. The question
of statecraft rightly considered always reaches back to the mother. That
State is most prosperous that most considers her. No State that forgets
her can survive. The future is rooted in the real being of women. If you
rob the women, your children and your child’s children pay. Men haven’t
realized it—your boasted logic has never yet reached so far. Of all the
community the women who give the next generation birth, and who form its
character, during the most impressionable years of its life—of all the
community, these mothers now, or mothers to be, ought to be set free from
the monstrous burden that lies upon the shoulders of millions of women.
Rights, Privileges and Capacities
By Catherine Waugh McCulloch
(American contemporary. Former President Illinois Woman Suffrage
Association, and practicing attorney. The following is from a pamphlet,
“Illinois Laws Concerning Women,” issued by the I. W. S. A.)
We read that no person shall be denied any political rights, privileges,
or powers on account of religion. The word sex should have been added.
People may change their religion, but never their sex. Rights, privileges
and capacities ought never to depend on color of eyes or hair, cast of
features, sex or any other accident for which a person is not to be
blamed and which a person can never overcome. Any other qualification
demanded of a voter may be acquired by one’s own exertion, or the
lapse of time. Property may be earned, minority out-grown, education
secured, sanity regained, alienage removed, imprisonment outlived. But no
industry, no age, no brilliancy, no morality, can change sex. Sex should
be made less a disgrace instead of more of a disgrace than poverty,
minority, alienage, insanity and criminality.
The Working Woman’s Awakening
By Theresa Malkiel
(In “The Progressive Woman.” American contemporary. Socialist. Speaker
and writer on woman, child and labor problems.)
Unconsciously, with closed eyes, driven, perhaps, by the herd instinct
that makes her follow the others, the working woman is rising at last
from her long slumber....
The solution of the problem of existence is pressing upon her more and
more. Even the mantle of marriage does no longer save her from it. The
patient sufferer cannot and will not see her children destitute and
hungry. She wants some of the celestial promises to be realized here on
earth. Hence this general unrest of womanhood the world over.
Woman’s Weak Dependency
By Gertrude Atherton
(American contemporary. Said by the London critics to be the most
brilliant of American women novelists. The following is from “Julia
France and Her Times.”)
No wonder so few women had left an impression on history. How could any
brain, even if endowed with true genius, reach the highest order of
development while the character remained placid in its willing dependence
upon the reigning sex? And man had despised woman through the ages,
even when most enslaved by her, knowing that on him depended her very
existence. He had the physical strength to wring her neck, and the legal
backing to treat her as partner or servant, whichever he found convenient.
A Pageant of Great Women
By Cicily Hamilton
A dramatic poem of power and beauty. Woman contends with prejudice in an
argument before the throne of Justice, calling a pageant of the world’s
great women to justify her claims. She wins her freedom and speaks to man
as follows:
I have no quarrel with you, but I stand
For the clear right to hold my life my own:
The clear, clean right. To mould it as I will,—
Not as you will, with or apart from you
To make of it a thing of brain and blood,
Of tangible substance and of turbulent thought—
No thin, gray shadow of the life of man!
Your love, perchance, may set a crown on it;
But I may crown myself in other ways—
(As you have done, who are in one flesh with me).
I have no quarrel with you; but, henceforth
This you must know: The world is mine as yours—
The pulsing strength and passion and hurt of it:
The work I set my hand to, woman’s work,
Because I set my hand to it.
The Prayer of the Modern Woman
By Josephine Conger
(Published in various Suffrage Journals.)
(See page 177)
Unbind our hands. We do not ask for favor in this fight
Of human souls for human needs. We ask for naught but right,
That we may throw the burden from our backs, and from our brains
The thrall of servitude. We are so weary of the pains
That crush our hearts and cramp our wills, reducing all desires
To childish whims, while great hopes lie like smould’ring fires
Within our brains, or burst distorted from some weak, unguarded point,
Leaving ruin and anguish in their track. With woman bound, the whole
world’s out of joint,
For women are the mothers of the race. We cannot boast
Of natural rights, of liberty, while mothers of the host
Must know they’re classed in common law with idiots and slaves,
Must stand aside with criminals, with imbeciles and knaves.
The sturdy sons nursed at their breast cannot be wholly free,
For what the mother is, the child will in a measure be.
You are not granting Favor when you give us equal power;
The shame is, you’ve withheld from us so long our dower
Of earth’s inheritance. We do not beg for alms, for charity.
We do not want our rights doled out; we want full liberty
To grow, to be, to do our part, as Nature meant we should.
We want a perfect sister-, as well as brother-hood.
By Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw
(Chairman of the New York City Suffrage Party. In “Harper’s Bazar.”)
The getting of votes has been to us like the saving of souls.
By Julia Wedgewood
(English writer. From an essay, “Female Suffrage, Considered Chiefly with
Regard to Its Indirect Results.”)
Of course, if women are either exactly like men, or simply men minus
something or other, they could add no light to that already possessed by
a male constituency, but I know of no one who seriously believes either
of these things.
BOOK II
The Home
THE HOME
“The Woman’s Place”
By The Hon. Mrs. Arthur Lyttleton
(English contemporary. The following is taken from “Women and Their
Work.”)
“The woman’s place is the home.”
Such is a very common reply to those who propound any new schemes for
educating or helping women. No one would deny the statement. It is true
that those who make it sometimes forget that now-a-days a considerable
number of women have no homes, and that therefore the remark by no means
meets the whole case.
The Spirit of the Home
By Lucy Re Bartlett
(English contemporary. Author of “Toward Liberty,” from which the
following is taken.)
By all means let most women choose the home for their sphere, if they
will, and even severely avoid politics for the moment, if they be so
minded. But whether in the home, or outside it, let all women consider
well what be the spirit they are bringing into life—whether it be one
which liberates and uplifts, or one which makes, instead, for bondage.
Lovers of Home
By Dr. Anna Howard Shaw
(In “The Metropolitan Magazine.”)
Every suffragist I have ever met has been a lover of home; and only the
conviction that she is fighting for her home, her children, for other
women, for all of these, has sustained her in her public work.
Woman’s High Achievement
By Selma Lagerlof
(Swedish contemporary. Prominent in literary and progressive circles.
From an address delivered before the Sixth Congress of the International
Suffrage Alliance in Stockholm, entitled “Woman the Savior of the State.”)
Have women done nothing which entitles us to equal rights with man? Our
time on earth has been long—as long as his. Have we created nothing of
incontestable worth to life and civilization? Besides this, that we have
brought human beings into the world, have we contributed nothing of use
to mankind?... I look at paintings and engravings, pictures of old women,
of olden times. Their faces are haggard and stern; their hands rough and
bony. They had their struggles and their interests. What have they done?
I place myself before Rembrandt’s old peasant woman, she of the thousand
wrinkles in her intelligent face, and I ask myself why she lived?
Certainly not to be worshipped by many men, not to rule a state, not to
win a scholar’s degree! And yet the work to which she devoted herself
could not have been of a trivial nature. She did not go through life
stupid and shallow! The glances of men and women rest rather upon her
aged countenance than upon that of the fairest young beauty. Her life
must have had a meaning.
We all know what the old woman will reply to my question. We read the
answer in her calm and kindly smile: “All that I did was to make a good
home.”
And look you! That is what the women would answer if they could rise
from their graves generation after generation, thousands upon thousands,
millions upon millions: “All that we strove for was to make a good home.”
We know that if we were to ask the men, could we line them up, generation
after generation, thousands and millions in succession, it would not
occur to one of them to say that he had lived for the purpose of making a
good home....
We know that it is needless to seek further. We should find nothing. Our
gift to humanity is the home—that, and nothing else....
For the home we have been great; for the home we have been petty. Not
many of us have stood with Christina Gyllenstierna on the walls of
Stockholm and defended a city; still fewer of us have gone forth with
Jeanne D’Arc to battle for the Fatherland. But if the enemy approached
our own gate, we stood there with broom and dish rag, with the sharp
tongue and clawing hand, ready to fight to the last in defense of our
creation, the home. And this little structure which has cost us so much
effort, is it a success or a failure? Is this woman’s contribution to
civilization inconsiderable or valuable? Is it appreciated or despised?
Woman’s Sphere the Home
By Helen Keller
(From “Out of the Dark.”[4])
(See page 209)
Woman’s sphere _is_ the home, and the home, too, is the sphere of man.
The home embraces everything we strive for in this world. To get and
maintain a decent home is the object of all our best endeavors. But what
is the home? What are its boundaries? What does it contain? What must we
do to secure and protect it?
In olden times the home was a private factory.... Home and industrial
life were one.... Once the housewife made her own butter and baked her
own bread; she even sowed, reaped, threshed, and ground the wheat. Now
her churn has been removed to great cheese and butter factories. The
village mill, where she used to take her corn, is today in Minneapolis;
her sickle is in Dakota. Every morning the express company delivers her
loaves to the local grocer from a bakery that employs a thousand hands.
The men who inspect her winter preserves are chemists in Washington. Her
ice box is in Chicago. The men in control of her pantry are bankers in
New York. The leavening of bread is somehow dependent upon the culinary
science of congressmen, and the washing of milk cans is a complicated art
which legislative bodies, composed of lawyers, are trying to teach the
voting population on the farms.
It would take a modern woman a lifetime to walk across her kitchen floor;
and to keep it clean is an Augean labor. No wonder that she sometimes
shrinks from the task and joins the company of timid, lazy women who do
not want to vote. But she _must_ manage her home; for, no matter how
grievously incompetent she may be, there is no one else authorized or
able to manage it for her. She _must_ secure for her children clean food
at honest prices. Through all the changes of industry and government she
remains the baker of bread, the minister of the universal sacrament of
life.
[4] Doubleday Page & Co.
Woman and the Primitive Home
By Mrs. St. Clair Stobart
(See page 144)
(From “War and Woman.”)
In the days when such proverbs as “The woman, the cat and the chimney
should never leave the house”, “_Bonne femme est oiseau de cage_”, “A
wife and a broken leg are best left at home”, were current in every
household, there was some reason why women should remain at home. For
_within the home_ were conducted—by women—all the industries of life.
In those days women not only made jams and pickles, cured the hams and
bacon, concocted wines and medicines, they also designed and embroidered
all the curtains, tapestries and carpets; the making of beautiful
laces, the spinning, the weaving, the sewing and the knitting of all
the garments was committed to the charge of women. In those days when
the control of all that made life worth living was with woman, she did
not need, nor did she seek, outside occupations, which indeed consisted
chiefly of the less intellectual pursuits of hunting and fishing. There
was plenty of scope _within_ doors for the intellectual, industrial,
and artistic faculties of every active-minded woman. If it is true that
woman was more honored at that time when she remained indoors than she is
now, this was _not because_ she remained at home, but because all the
arts and crafts of life were in her hands—_within the home_. But now all
this is changed, through no fault of the woman herself, and, except for
the young wife and mother who has plenty of occupation in the rearing of
her family, there is not enough work _within the home_ for additional
active-minded and able-bodied women, the numerous daughters, sisters,
cousins, aunts, who need occupation, but who have no family of their own
because there are not enough men to go round.
The Poor and Good Housing
By Elizabeth Cook
(From Speech on “Housing and Morals in Richmond.” Quoted from “Woman’s
Work in Municipalities.”)
Can children raised in Jail Bottom, whose only outlook is a mountain-like
dump of rotting and rusty tin cans on the one side, and on the other a
stream which is an open sewer, smelling to heaven from the filth which
it carries along, or leaves here and there in slime upon its banks,
have any but debasing ideas? Can parents inculcate high moral standards
when across the street or down the block are houses of the “red light”
district? Is the world so small that there is no room left for the
amenities of life? Are ground space and floor space of more value than
cleanliness and health and morality?... It is certainly a fallacy that
the poor do not want good housing.
Where She Lived
By Mrs. John Van Vorst
(American contemporary writer on Child Labor Problems. The following is
taken from her book, “The Cry of the Children.”)
The cotton-mill “folks” wear unwittingly a badge which distinguishes
them far and wide. As I came along down over the hillside I met a child
holding in her arms another smaller child; both were covered, their hair,
their clothes, their very eyelids, with fine flakes of lint, wisps of
cotton, fibres of the great web in which the factories imprison their
victims.
“Hello,” I said, “do you work in the mill?”
“Yes, meaum.” The voice was gentle and the manner friendly. And giving
a sidewise hitch to the baby, who had a tendency to slip from her tiny
mother’s arms, this little worker showed me one of her fingers done up in
a loose, dirty bandage.
“I cut my finger right smart,” she drawled, “so I’m takin’ a day off.”
“How old are you?”
“Tweaulve.”
“Got any brothers or sisters?”
“I’ve got him.... And I’ve got one brother in the mill.”
“How old is he?”
“Tweaulve.”
“Twins?” I asked.
She smiled and shook her head. “He’s tweaulve in the mill, and he’s
teayun outside.”
This little bit of humanity, taking a day off as mother of a still tinier
being, seemed a promising sponsor, and I suggested that we walk along
together. She could not go to the mill with me, she explained, without
first consulting her mother, so we proceeded to the settlement in which
she lodged, along with eighty or a hundred families, who man the mill in
which she was a hand.
“That’s where we live.”
Her fleet little bare feet picked a way deftly over the stony path, and
she kept a hand free—when it was not laid on the baby’s back—to point
out the turns in the road that led to “where she lived.” Her home was
one of a group of frame one-story houses, perched on a slant of ground.
Each house was encircled by a wooden veranda, and the order of the
housekeeping described itself before the eyes, as a whisk of the broom
which carried all the dirt from the kitchen onto the porch, and another
whisk which landed it on the slant of ground, bedecked, in consequence,
with old tin cans, decayed vegetables, pieces of dirty paper, rags and
chicken feathers.
It was to the more intimate quarters, however, that I penetrated with my
guide. The inside court, or square upon which these “homes” opened their
back doors, was a large mud puddle overhung with the collective wash
of the neighborhood. In and out of the mud puddle wallowed the younger
members of the mill families, receiving from time to time admonition and
reprimand from a gently irate parent, who swished her long cotton wrapper
over the court, drawling to her offspring: “I sure will whip you if
you-all don’t quit.”
“That-a-ways where we live,” said my little companion, stepping onto
the porch and depositing her load, as she opened the door to announce
a visitor to her mother. The woman turned listlessly from her sewing
machine over which she was bent.
“Won’t you come in?” she called to me, dragging out a chair by the fire,
without getting up. “Lookin’ for work?” she asked.
I took a seat, glancing at the interior which my little friend called
“home.” The outer room was a kitchen—though it might, except for the
stove, have been mistaken for a hen coop. The chickens pecked their way
about the dirty floor, venturing as far, even, as the table upon which
stood the meagre remains of a noonday meal. The second and the inner room
had each a bed;—an unmade bed, I was going to say, but how, indeed, could
a bed be made without either sheets or pillows? Two grimy counterpanes
were flung in disorder across the mattresses; a few chairs, a bureau and
the sewing machine completed the house furnishings.
As the listless woman talked with me in a kindly manner about work,
the baby, who had crawled in from the porch, and arrived as far as his
mother’s skirts, now tugged at these, to be taken up. His tiny hands had
served as propellers across the filthy floor. The piece of lemon candy
had added to the general stickiness of the dirt, with which both hands
and face were smeared. As a soldier shoulders a gun—the burden to which
he is most accustomed—this mother swung her baby into her arms, and,
while she talked on, giving items about the cost of living, and factory
wages, she loosened her cotton jacket—evidently the only garment she had
on—and folding the baby to her breast, she lulled its whimperings.
“Yes,” she said, “we pay $1.50 a week for three rooms. That’s a little
over six a month. I call it high. We don’t get no runnin’ water. Every
drop we use’s got to be drawed in the yard; an’ we don’t get no light,
either, nuthin’ but lamps.”
The baby, comfortable and contented, let his hand stray over the mother’s
throat, with little spasmodic caresses which left in their trail smears
of dirt, flecked with tiny scarlet streaks where the sharp nails had
caught in the pale, withered flesh.
“I reckon you-all might be cold,” she said, directing the older child
to put more wood on the open grate fire, thinking apparently nothing of
herself. “We don’t like it here first-rate. Maybe we’ll move on. I sure
do crave traveling. Well, honey,” this was addressed to the baby, who had
sat up with a jerk and began to whine. The candy picked up from the floor
where it had fallen and restored to its owner’s mouth, did not seem the
desired thing. The mother looked at me with a knowing smile.
“I reckon I can guess what ails him. He wants his babies.” And at this,
always without getting out of her chair before the machine, she reached
behind her and drew from a shelf over her head two white rats. These were
apparently what the baby wanted. In the game that ensued between him and
his pets, his chief delight seemed to be in seeing the rats disappear
through the open throated gown of his mother, and making the tour of
her bodice, wriggling, burrowing, crawling, to emerge finally from
her collar at the nape of her neck. Sometimes they diversified their
gyrations, proceeding upward into her hair and down again by way of her
ears onto easier climbing ground. Impassable, unmoved, she talked on in
her gentle voice, giving no sign whatever that she noticed the animals.
It was only when the baby plunged his short nails into the white rat’s
side that she ejaculated mercifully:
“Quit that! You-all ’ll hurt them babies.”
I was somewhat dazed as I proceeded presently with my little girl guide
from this interior to the mill. The squalor and disorder of what I had
seen, the ignorance and the insensibility, contrasted strangely with the
courtesy that had been shown me, the friendly concern about any intention
I might have to get work, the desire to help me on my way, the strange
lethargic tenderness which took the form of pity for even rats.
“Like animals,” my friend had told me. That we must wait to see.
The War and the Home
By Jane Addams
(See page 28)
This war is destroying the home unit in the most highly civilized
countries in the world to an extent which is not less than appalling....
At the present moment women in Europe are being told: bring children
into the world for the benefit of the nation; for the strengthening of
future battle lines; forgetting everything that you are taught to hold
dear; forgetting your struggles to establish the responsibilities of
fatherhood; forgetting all but the appetite of war for human flesh. It
must be satisfied and you must be the ones to feed it, cost what it may;
this is war’s message to the world of women.
The Home
By Mrs. Laura P. Young
It is the home, and specifically the mother, who, with taste and tact,
experience and wisdom, and above all, with love and faith, must guide
and steady and inspire these lives. If we want our boys and girls to be
free from discontent, free from hard commercialism, free from vulgarity
and false ideals, we must enter their lives and quietly guide them into a
youthful brotherhood and sisterhood of service.
Honest Partnership in the Home
By Mrs. Fred Dick
(From speech before Congress on Welfare of the Child.)
The homemaking of the future ... must be founded in this day and
generation on financial independence. The girl of the past used to go
from financial dependence in the girlhood home, to financial dependence
as wife. She now goes from the independence of a wage earner to financial
dependence as a wife, which relationship creates friction, and leads
to incompatibility and divorce. There should be an adjustment of the
responsibilities of home life before marriage on the basis of honest
partnership. The children coming into the home should be taken into
partnership financially and occupationally. They should be paid for
their work on the basis that “If you don’t work you can’t eat,” and held
responsible for their share in the home-making.
The Home Influence
By Ida Tarbell
(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”[5])
(See page 266)
Every home is perforce a good or bad educational center. It does its
work in spite of every effort to shirk or supplement it. No teacher can
entirely undo what it does, be that good or bad. The natural, joyous
opening of a child’s mind depends on its first intimate relations.
These are, as a rule, with the mother. It is the mother who “takes an
interest,” who oftenest decides whether the new mind shall open frankly
and fearlessly. How she does her work depends less upon her ability to
answer questions, than her effort not to discourage them; less upon her
ability to lead authoritatively into great fields than her efforts to
push the child into those which attract him. To be responsive to his
interests is the woman’s greatest contribution to the child’s development.
[5] McMillan Publishers.
Then—Back to the Home!
By Caro Lloyd
(American contemporary writer. Sister of Henry Demarest Lloyd, and
author of his Biography. The following was taken from an article in “The
Progressive Woman.”)
Search any woman’s heart, no matter how “emancipated”, how “modern”,
she may be, and you will find there the love of home, of a lover, of a
child, either realized or hoped for. How far this love is being denied to
women today needs no showing. Women are being forced from the home into
industry at a faster rate than the birth rate. Those still in the home
are beginning to realize the interdependence of the modern social order
and to see that only by extending their home-making out into the larger
life of the community are their own circles safe.
As they go out into this wider service and struggle, women will take the
spirit of the home with them. There are already signs that the faith,
honesty, cleanliness, kindness of the home are to become the qualities
of future society. We are to forsake our present régime with its cruel
hostilities, and to build an order which shall meet the needs of all
its children with the tenderness of father and mother, which shall
institutionalize sisterhood and brotherhood. In this reconstruction
women, the home-makers, will do a valiant share.
Then, having battled for their emancipation and won, and having used
their new powers to join in the crusade for a higher civilization and
won, women will go back into the home. Back to the home! But it will be
as free women to a free home, under whose roof justice, equality and
security will be sheltered. At last there will be an era of peace, and
the morning rays of the golden age will tint the hilltops.
Women’s Lodging Houses
By Mary Higgs
(English contemporary. Author of “The Master,” “How to Deal With the
Unemployed,” “Glimpses Into the Abyss,” etc. The following extract is
taken from the last named book.)
We sat watching until we were weary, between 11 and 12, and then went to
our bedroom. The same beds were reserved, and one woman who was said to
work for her living, and had a very bad cough, was already in bed. We
were speedily in bed also, and for awhile were quiet. The room was very
stuffy, in spite of two ventilators; the sheets were not very clean,
but still fairly so. The beds were filled by degrees all but one, that
previously occupied by the Scotch woman. One girl who came in late said
she was not on the streets; that she had begged money for her lodging,
as she was out too late to return to her place. It was holiday time,
being Whit week. One girl came in late and had had drink, which made her
talkative, said she was a servant, and had just left a place where she
had been ten months.... She meant to “enjoy herself” over the holiday and
go to service again.
One girl who had been in before grumbled that her bed had been slept in
and was dirty; but her own underlinen was far from clean. No one seemed
to possess a nightgown; all slept in their underlinen.
We had the door a little ajar, and far into the night the doorbell kept
ringing, and girls were admitted, and laughter and conversation drifted
up the stairs. Our room settled down sometime past midnight, but the
girl who was drunk several times tried to begin a conversation. At last
we all slept. Two, however, had bad coughs. I woke at intervals through
the night, and finally at 6.30. I was longing for fresh air, so put on
a skirt and went down to enquire the time, and decided to go out for a
quiet stroll. The bath room was empty, the bath had old papers in it, and
did not look as if it was often used. There was a table with a looking
glass, and a good deal of rouge about. The wash basin was very small,
and no soap was provided. There was a roller towel for everybody. We had
learned by experience to take our own soap and towel, and we lent the
soap several times....
I slipped out to the brightness of a May morning, and walked in the
direction of the park. The park was not open, as it was not yet seven,
but just outside I found a resting place. What a contrast to the fresh
budding life of the trees was that perversion and decay of budding
womanhood I had left behind me! A tree cut down in its prime to make way
for building furnished me with a parallel. What _artificial_ conditions
of man’s making, are pressing on those young lives, sapping them off from
true use to rottenness and decay?...
Is there even at the back an _organized_ system, seeking victims and
preying on them? This much is certain: that there is room for an
allowance of greed and wickedness against defenseless womanhood. For if a
woman cannot get work, where is she to go? What is she to do? Can all our
homes and shelters together prevent many from drifting “on the streets”?
Do we not need a national provision for migration, and temporary
destitution among women?
The Inefficient Home
By Mrs. Laura P. Young
(From a paper read at the Third International Congress on “Welfare of the
Child.”)
At present the chief reason I see for the fostering of a recreative
social relationship among high school students is the inefficiency of the
average home....
For instance, there is the home where the father may assume the attitude
that after working all day at his own necessary pursuits, he cannot be
annoyed by a riotous lot of youngsters all over the place in the evening.
This is the short-sighted home....
There is the home in which the mother values her housekeeping above her
home-making, the mother who cannot have her cherished lares and penates
marred or displaced by visiting young people or indeed even by her own.
This is the home of things, not of children....
And an especially pitiful type of inefficient home is that materially
prosperous one in which the parents are too absorbed in their own
affairs, social and business, to encourage home social life in their
children. This type flourishes in many so-called exclusive suburban
districts.
From whatever type of home a child goes to school, it is in that home
that his standards of conduct and ideals of life are formed, and it is
these that he carries to his association with his fellow-pupils.
Immorality and the Home
By Clara E. Laughlin
(Contemporary—Author of “The Evolution of a Girl’s Ideal,” “Everybody’s
Lonesome,” “The Work-a-Day Girl.” The following extract is from “The
Work-a-Day Girl.”)
What is the relation between domestic service and criminality and
immorality? Between erring girls and their own homes as nurseries of
weakness and wilfulness? It is this: housework as a sad majority of women
perform it, is the most unsystematized, unstandardized, undisciplinary,
unsocial and uninteresting work in the world. And family relations, as a
sad majority of our citizens comprehend them, are the most unregulated
relations in the world; there are a few standards below which the social
conscience of the community will not allow a parent to fall in the
treatment of a child, or a mistress to fall in the treatment of a maid;
but they are standards so low that almost any other human relationship
is better regulated by law and by public sentiment. The home is the most
haphazard institution of our day.... Of the twelve or fifteen million
homes in the country, probably not one million would pass an efficiency
test based on the way they are run and the quality of their output.
Perpetuate the Ideal
By Mrs. C. E. Porter
If every man and woman held in their hearts a definite home ideal,—a
lofty conception of their united lives, the highest function of
parenthood would then, too, be perfect. There is little credit in simply
perpetuating either a condition or a race.
Market Value of Home Labor
By Helen G. Putnam, M. D., LL. D.
If the labors which the great majority of women are putting in homes were
estimated at market rates like those of men—and domestic arts are coming
to have high values—husband’s incomes in a great majority of cases could
not secure either the quality or the quantity. This, the largest single
field of industries, is not enumerated by the census. Accurate valuation
would put an end to the shibboleth, “The husband supports the wife”;
would give self-respect to millions of women, and so inspire them; would
remove the unsound impression of women’s comparative irresponsibility and
men’s comparative dependability, whose psychologic effect is disastrous.
Domestic Strife
By Mrs. Belle Case La Follette
(See page 22)
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
Where do we find strife amid civilization? In the homes where husband and
wife have not had mutual interests, where they have grown apart, and one
has outstripped the other in development.
The Child at Home
By Elizabeth McCracken
(See page 90)
In one of the letters of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, to her mother,
Queen Victoria, she writes: “I try to give my children in their home what
I had in my childhood’s home. As well as I am able, I copy what you did.”
There is something essentially British in this point of view. The English
mother, whatever her rank, tried to give her children in their home what
she had in her childhood’s home; as well as she is able, she copies what
her mother did. The conditions in her life may be entirely different from
those of her mother, her children may be unlike herself in disposition;
yet she holds to tradition in regard to their upbringing; she tries to
make their home a reproduction of her mother’s home.
The American mother, whatever her station, does the exact opposite—she
attempts to bestow upon her children what she did not possess; and she
makes an effort to imitate as little as possible what her mother did....
Her ambition is to train her children, not after the mother’s way, but in
accordance with “the most approved method”. This is apt, on analysis, to
turn out to be merely the reverse of her mother’s procedure.
Cannot Replace the Home
By Lillian D. Wald
(Of Henry Street Settlement, New York.)
We acknowledge the inability and the inefficiency of the parents and the
home to control the fortunes of the child when we substitute for them the
parental function of government; nevertheless, the strongest of education
remains in the home, and the school and the settlement and other agencies
that hover over it cannot replace that home.
Man, Woman, and the Home
By Edna Kenton
(American contemporary writer. The following quotation is from “The
Militant Women—and Women,” in “The Century Magazine.”)
There is a rising revolt among women against the unspeakable dullness
of unvaried home life. It has been a long, deadly routine, a life of
servitude imposed on her for ages in a man-made world. No honest woman
will deny—man’s opinion is valueless here—that there is nothing in the
home alone to satisfy woman’s human longing for variety, adventure,
romance. But any man will tell you strongly that home is not enough to
fill a human being’s life—_if that human being is to be himself_.
Mother and Child-Character
By Mrs. Winifred Sackville Stoner
(Of the University of Pittsburgh, and noted specialist in Child Culture.)
As you know, the ancients believed that a mother had a great deal to do
with the character of her children, and this is true, for no mother has
the right to bring children into this world and not give them the best of
care and attention. I believe that every child born into this world has
the trinity of mental, physical and moral elements, and it is up to the
mother to develop this trinity....
I believe more good can be accomplished by proper training right from the
cradle than all the corporal punishment in the world. I have ten rules,
and they are:
1. Never say “don’t.” The very atmosphere of some homes is fairly reeking
with “don’t”.
2. Never scold. A scolding mother is worse than a spanking mother.
3. Never give corporal punishment.
4. Never say “must”.
5. Never allow a child to lose its self-respect or respect for its
parents.
6. Never frighten a child.
7. Never refuse to answer questions.
8. Never ridicule a child or tease him.
9. Don’t banish the fairies.
10. Don’t let a child ever think there is any more attractive place than
its own home.
The Home of the Workingman
By Alice Henry
(See page 203)
I look forward to a time I believe to be rapidly approaching, when the
home of the workingman, like everyone else’s home, will be truly a home,
the happy resting-place, the sheltering nest of father, mother and
children, and when, through the rearrangement of labor, the workingman’s
wife will be relieved from her monotonous existence of unrelieved
domestic drudgery and overwork, disguised under the name of wifely
and maternal duties, when the cooking and the washing, for instance,
will be no more part of the home life in the humblest home than in the
wealthiest. The workingman’s wife will then share in the general freedom
to occupy part of her time in whatever occupation she is best fitted
for, and, along with every other member of the community, she will share
in the benefits arising from the better organization of domestic work.
The Hotel “Home”
By Edith Wharton
(Contemporary American Novelist. From “The House of Mirth.”)
The environment in which Lily found herself was as strange to her as its
inhabitants. She was unacquainted with the world of the fashionable New
York hotel—a world over-heated, over-upholstered, and over-fitted with
mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements,
while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a
desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as
richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits
or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity
from restaurant to concert hall, from palm-garden to music-room,
from “art-exhibit” to dressmaker’s opening. High-stepping horses or
elaborately equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into vague
metropolitan distances, whence they returned, still more wan from the
weight of their sables, to be sucked back into the stifling inertia of
the hotel routine. Somewhere behind them in the background of their
lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities;
they themselves were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent
energies, diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet
they had no more real existence than the poet’s shades in limbo.
Lily had not been long in this pallid world without discovering that Mrs.
Hatch was its most substantial figure.... The details of her existence
were as strange to Lily as its general tenor. The lady’s habits were
marked by an Oriental indolence and disorder peculiarly trying to her
companion. Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together outside
the bonds of time and space. No definite hours were kept; no fixed
obligations existed: night and day floated into one another in a blur
of confused and retarded engagement so that one had the impression of
lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often merged in the noisy
after-theater supper which prolonged Mrs. Hatch’s vigil until daylight.
Through this jumble of futile activities came and went a strange throng
of hangers-on—manicures, beauty-doctors, hairdressers, teachers of
bridge, of French, of “physical development”.... Mrs. Hatch swam in a
haze of interminate enthusiasms, of aspirations culled from the stage,
the newspapers, the fashion-journals, and a gaudy world of sport still
more completely beyond her companion’s ken.
The Domestic Home Destroyed
By Lida Parce
(From “Economic Determinism.”[6])
(See page 174)
We have seen how the ties of mutual interest and common experience are
disrupted by the transference of industry from the home to the factory.
We have seen members of the family forsake the roof-tree in pursuit
of work. We have seen the wife and child receiving their pay from the
corporation, in definite, fixed wages.... The home shifts from time
to time. Light, food, air, space, all are inadequate or polluted. The
parents are irritable from the constant friction and anxiety of the
predicament in which they live. Naturally, none of them can love “the
home” very deeply. The children feel little reverence for the parents
whose helplessness exposes the family to such a life. There are few
common activities and interests between the members of the family,
hence, there are few strong ties. The companions of the alleyways and
streets form the social circle of the young, and the cheap theatres
which offer their attractions at short intervals along the city streets
fill up that vacuum in their experience which the nature of man abhors.
Children living in these conditions do not have a reasonable chance to
grow up with strong minds in sound bodies. Nor can this kind of youthful
life develop those ideas of fair and right conduct, that honorable and
dignified attitude of mind which are essential to good citizenship. Born
into such a world, growing up in such an environment, why should they
respect anything or any body? They do not. And the family disintegrates
as soon as the children are old enough to declare their independence.
Society has deprived the family of the means of securing normal living
conditions for its future citizens. It is now confronted by the immediate
and urgent problem of providing those conditions outside the family. The
domestic home having been destroyed, a social one must be provided.
[6] Kerr Publishing Company.
BOOK III
The Child
THE CHILD
Child
By Agnes Repplier
This is so emphatically the children’s age that a good many of us are
thankful that we were not born in it. The little girl who said she wished
she had lived in the time of Charles II because then “education was much
neglected” wins our sympathy. It is a doubtful privilege to have the
attention of the civilized world focussed upon us both before and after
birth.
Little Beloved
By Leonora Pease
(In “The Progressive Woman.”)
I hold by man’s hand for thy sake,
Little Beloved.
Of the large human life, in thy being I partake,
Little Beloved.
My heart’s to the lowly, the weary and frail,
Who shall fail,
For they step up and enter thy place;
Lift thy face,
Little Beloved.
My soul fellowships in thy name,
Little Beloved.
Man’s overcoming is mine, his wrong is my shame,
Little Beloved.
Thy image for me stamps the low and the high,
As a die,
And thou, of thy kind, one with all,
Mount or fall,
Little Beloved.
When sounds the alarm of disaster,
Little Beloved,
For the swift prayer of my heart runneth faster,
Little Beloved.
Thou, too, imperiled, fashioned as they,
Of the clay;
Thou, too, who shalt walk in the way,
Or astray,
Little Beloved.
I would disentangle in vain,
Little Beloved,
Thy one shining, delicate thread from the skein,
Little Beloved.
For Fate’s fast-running loom all the strands doth enmesh,
Of the flesh,
And her intricate pattern unroll,
As a whole,
Little Beloved.
More Woman’s Work
By Mrs. Leonard Thomas
The child from its birth is more woman’s work than man’s.
The Call of the Unborn
By Ethel Blackwell Robinson
(Author of “The Religion of Joy,” and “A Child’s Glimpse of God, for
Grown-Up Children”—from which the following is taken.)
Oh, smile up your heart for me, mother,
Be happy, be buoyant, be mild;
Oh, smile up your heart, for I’m coming!
You’ll make me a lovelier child.
I’ll bud as a gay little lassie,
Or bloom as a cheery young lad;
So, smile up your heart, mother darling,
You’ll always be grateful and glad.
The Nursery a University
By C. Josephine Barton
(See page 121)
If your child is rightly born, with no prenatal drapery to untangle from,
you need concern yourself about his proper guidance, only past the infant
age. He will educate, without your insistence. He will be showing you new
points wherein your old rhetoric is at fault, or your mental philosophy
behind the times. If you are wise, you will get vast lessons from him.
Froebel said: “The nursery was my university.” The child receives there
indelible lessons, nor does he judge as to whether a thing is literal or
figurative. It is all fact to him. Plato says it is most important that
tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thought.
The highest and grandest that could be said of that strange phase of
human experience, the Flesh-birth phase, was said by Friedrich Froebel,
substantially as follows: “With the beginning of every new family there
is issued to mankind and to each individual human being, the call to
represent humanity in _pure development_; to represent man in his _ideal
perfection_.” Froebel was broad in saying also, “The destiny of nations
lies far more in the hands of women, the mothers, than in the possessors
of power, or of those innovators who, for the most part, do not
understand themselves! We _must cultivate women_, who are the educators
of the race, else the new generation cannot accomplish its task.”
Now Froebel was not contending for woman’s rights, but for the _race_.
He speaks of woman, because he saw that _her element_ in the cause of
civilization was in need of accentuation. He was seeking in the race that
_balance_ which is imperative in the promotion of perfect conditions....
Froebel spoke of women because men have held the reins of education in
the past. Even in the matter of bringing children into the world....
Above all things do not encourage the child to occupy his time with
trivialities, to the neglect of the grand phenomena of nature—the beauty
and poetry everywhere, along the dewy borders of the country road, the
hedges and fields, the rocks and imbedded fossils, insects and plants.
To study botany, geology, physiology and even psychology in youth, is
excellent occupation.
Parental Duty
By Ellen Key
(Swedish contemporary. From “Love and Marriage.”)
Children begotten under a sense of duty would ... be deprived of a number
of essential conditions of life; among others that of finding in their
parents beings full of life and radiating happiness which constitutes the
chief spiritual nourishment of children—and it may be added that parents
who live entirely for their children are seldom good company for them.
My Little Son
By Pauline Florence Brower
(American contemporary poet. From “Century Magazine.”)
We were so very intimate, we two,
Even before I knew
The outline of the little face I love,
Or bent above
The small, sweet body made so strong and fair;
For we had learned to share
The silences that are more than speech,
Before your cry could reach
My listening heart, or I could see
The miracle made manifest to me.
My little son,
Most glad, most radiant one,
Too soon, too soon, the hour must be cried
That draws you from my side!
In life’s exultant hands is lifted up
This newly molded cup.
The tangled vineyard of the world demands
Your toiling hands.
Look deep, and in all women that you meet
Your searching gaze will greet
This mother of the child that used to be;
Beholding women, oh, remember me!
Children Innumerable
By Florence Kiper
(In “The Forum.”)
Our age, it is true, is not a very reverential age, a sceptical age,
one questioning the traditions. It is doubting the dignity in the lot
of a soldier driven to martial courage by conscription. It is finding
attenuated beauty in unwilling motherhood, though submission be in the
name of God or Social Duty. It has asked itself this question and the
answers are perturbing—For what and for whom are we breeding humanity if
it be not for humanity itself?... Indeed, it is unbelievable that there
should be a cry for breeding, when children innumerable crowd the city
slums, deprived of air and spiritual breathing place, or in small towns
and little farm houses grow dull and vicious through lack of appeal to
the imagination and the intellect. Society as a whole cannot be too
thankful for those women, who, celibate in body, have given themselves to
the rearing of this “child material below par”, in the belief that the
world is not for its superman but for the many.
Quantity vs. Quality in Children
By Lady Grove
(English contemporary. From “Fortnightly Review.”)
Is not the quality, rather than the quantity, of children the thing to
be aimed at? If, then, by improving woman’s status the breed improves,
as improve it must, is not this preferable to the “plenty” in their
present very mixed condition? Has no one sufficient imagination to see in
the mind’s eye a race that would be incapable of breeding this mass of
“undesirable aliens”, who are tossed about from shore to shore, welcome
nowhere, and a curse to themselves?
Fewer and Better Children
By Helen Campbell
(In “The Arena.”)
Slowly, how slowly, has dawned the thought that something more than mere
numbers is the need of the family. Man found out long ago what laws
must be studied and carried out in breeding for the high results in
animal life; the brood mare or other animal rested and skillfully fed.
For the woman, such thought never entered the mind of either husband or
wife. The formula “God wills it”, lifted the burden of responsibility
for defectives, or diseased, deformed or crippled children.... “Fewer
and better”, has its own mission, till the day comes when a trained
motherhood and fatherhood will ensure to the state an order of citizens
for whom that war cry is no longer needed. The old phrase “God’s will”,
is to fill with new meaning. God’s will and man’s, more and more with
every step forward in the knowledge of what life was meant to bring to
every child of man.
Equality in Fitness
By Helen G. Putnam, M. D. LL. D.
It makes no difference to the child’s inheritance which parent is unfit.
Neither should be. It makes no difference to the child whether, after
birth, the ignorance, evil instruction, contagious blighting of him
come from a man or from a woman; from domestic conditions (said to be
women’s work), or from municipal conditions (said to be man’s work). The
responsibility cannot be divided. Before this ideal—the child’s well
being—these sexes are on an equal footing, nor is one sex justified in
wronging the child because the other says or does so. Nature forgives no
spurious reasoning. The child and the race suffer the consequences.
Where Women Have Long Voted
By Florence Kelly
Never before in human history has the right of the young to pure living,
the claim of the adolescent to guidance and restraint, the need of
the child for nurture at the hands of father, mother, school and the
community been recognized as in Colorado today.
Reason and the Child
By Mary Wollstonecraft
(See page 121)
Few parents think of addressing their children in the following manner,
though it is in this reasonable way that Heaven seems to command the
whole human race:—It is your interest to obey me till you can judge for
yourself; and the Almighty Father of all has implanted an affection in me
to serve as a guard to you whilst your reason is unfolding; but when your
mind arrives at maturity, you must only obey me, or respect my opinions,
so far as they coincide with the light that is breaking in on your mind.
A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind; and Mr.
Locke very judiciously observes, that “if the mind be curbed and humbled
too much in children; if their spirits be abased and broken much by too
strict a hand over them, they lose all their vigor and industry.” ...
On the contrary, the parent who sets a good example, patiently lets that
example work, and it seldom fails to produce its natural effect—filial
reverence.
The Government and Child Life
By Mrs. Frederick Schoff
(National President Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teachers Association.
From speech delivered at Third International Congress of the Association.)
The Government’s interest in children shown to all the world has
stimulated every nation to deeper study of its own conditions as they
relate to child life and the effect has been more far-reaching than can
be estimated.
America, which is the Mecca for every nation, which has within its
borders over 100,000 children of foreign birth and one-quarter of whose
children are of foreign parentage, can claim a wider interest in the
children of every nation than can any other nation on the globe, for
within the boundaries of the United States may be found children of every
race and every clime.
The Rising Value of a Baby
By Mabel Potter Daggett
(In “Pictorial Review.”)
Only a mother counted her jewels yesterday, you see. Today, States count
them, too. Even Jimmie Smith in, we will say, England, who before the
war might have been regarded as among the least of these little ones,
has become the object of his country’s concern. Jimmie came screaming
into this troublous world in a borough of London’s East End, where there
were already so many people that you didn’t seem to miss Jimmie’s father
and some of the others who had gone to the war. Jimmie belongs to one of
those three hundred thousand London families who are obliged to live in
one- and two-room tenements. Five or six, perhaps it was five, little
previous brothers and sisters, waited on the stair landing outside the
door until the midwife in attendance ushered them in to welcome the new
arrival. Now Jimmie is the stuff from which soldiers are made, either
soldiers of war or soldiers of industry. And however you look at the
future, his country’s going to need Jimmie. He is entered in the great
new ledger which has been opened by his government. The Notification of
Births Act, completed by Parliament in 1915, definitely put the British
baby on a business basis. Every child must now, within thirty-six hours
of its advent, be listed by the local health authorities. Jimmie was.
And he was thereby automatically linked up with the great national
child-saving campaign. Since then, so much as a fly in his milk is a
matter of solicitude to the borough council. If he sneezes, it’s heard in
Westminster. And it’s at least worried about there.
Ideals of the Child
By Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
(American Contemporary. From “Your Child To-day and To-morrow.”)
We should make a special effort to discover our children’s ideals, for
several reasons. First of all, by knowing what the girl or boy has
nearest the heart we shall be able to enter into closer sympathy with
the child, we shall be able to understand much of the conduct that would
otherwise baffle as well as annoy us....
It is very easy to ridicule the ideals and ambitions of children when
they seem to us too high flown or futile. But a person’s ideals stand
too close to the center of his character to be treated so rudely. It is
better to ignore the many trifling flights of fancy that are not likely
to have any permanent effect, and to throw the child into circumstances
that will force the emergence of more deep-seated or far-reaching
ambitions.
The Child and Parental Youth
By Elizabeth McCracken
(American contemporary. From “The American Child.”)
A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their
children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked,
“But does that not make the children old before their time?”
So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young
after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer
and fewer grandmothers who are “sweet old ladies,” and more and more who
are “charming elderly women.” We hear less and less about the “older” and
the “younger” generations; increasingly we merge two, and even three,
generations into one.
Consideration for Others
By Mrs. R. P. Alexander
(Official Delegate to National Mothers’ Council from Tokio, Japan.)
A Japanese child is rarely punished and never whipped, but the strong
influence of the home training makes the average child obedient and
self-controlled at a comparatively early age. He is taught to conceal his
grief with the thought that if he does not, he will give pain to others.
A Blot on Civilization
By Julia Lathrop
(Head of The National Children’s Bureau)
Infant mortality is a blot on civilization. If it is worth while to spend
millions to safeguard farm products which are, after all, only raised to
serve the needs of each generation of children in turn, is it not worth
while to spend the necessary sums to popularize the methods by which the
lives of children themselves may be safe-guarded?
Teaching the Child Citizenship
By Virginia Terhune Van de Water
(From “Little Talks with Mothers of Little People.”[7])
One cannot begin too early to teach boys the duties of citizenship. There
are many men who are educated, intelligent gentlemen who do not “take the
trouble to vote,” and are not ashamed of the fact. When such things are
true, is it any wonder that we have cause to complain of corruption or
misgovernment? How can it be otherwise when some of our citizens neglect
their duty to their country?
[7] D. Estes & Company, Publishers.
For Father’s Amusement
By Elizabeth Harrison
(Author of “A Study in Child-Nature,” “Two Children of the Foot-Hills,”
“Some Silent Teachers,” “In Storyland,” etc. From “Misunderstood
Children.”[8])
I was strolling through a neighboring park one breezy September day when
it occurred. It took less than ten minutes from beginning to end—but did
it _end_ then?
There had been a shower the night before, and the city’s dust had been
washed from the leaves on trees and shrubbery. All nature seemed in
fine mood and had filled me, along with the rest of the town-imprisoned
mortals, with some of her exuberance and life.
This keen enjoyment of mere existence, which nature alone can give,
was particularly noticeable in the buoyant movements of a little
three-year-old child, who was dancing in and out of the shadows of
the tall trees, now running, now skipping, now jumping in the joyous
exhilaration of mere animal life. Ever and anon he looked back at his
father and his father’s friend, who were strolling along in a more sedate
enjoyment of the fresh air and glittering sunshine. The fact that each
of them carried a tennis racket showed that they, too, were out for a
holiday.
The child’s delight in all the freshness and freedom about him quickened
his senses, as it always will quicken a healthy child. In a few moments
his attention was attracted by the bending, swaying branches of a nearby
clump of willow trees. The fascination of the lithe, graceful movement of
the boughs was so strong that he stooped and stood with upturned face,
gazing at them until the two men approached him. Then catching hold of
his father’s hand he exclaimed, “See! See!” pointing to the nodding tree
branches. His face was full of happiness, and his eyes were looking into
his father’s eyes expecting sympathy in this new-found wonder of nature.
But the father gave no heed to what was interesting the boy. Instead,
he began playfully slapping him on his skirts with the tennis racket, at
the same time saying, “Will you be good?” “No,” answered the child in
high glee. It was evidently a familiar pastime between them. “Will you be
good?” repeated the father, in mock threat lifting the tennis racket as
if to strike the child over the head. “No, I won’t! No, I won’t!” shouted
the boy as he scampered off over the grass. This created a chase in which
the father playfully spanked the captured boy as with make-believe wrath
he dragged him back to the side-walk. Having returned to the starting
point of the chase he released the boy with the words, “There now, I’ll
spank you hard if you are not a good boy!” He had scarcely let go his
hold on the youngster’s arm before the latter again ran off, shouting
in high glee, “No, I won’t! No, I won’t be good!” Again came the chase
and again the playful spanking and dragging back and the release with an
admonition that he would get a beating this time if he was not a good
boy. The tone in which the words were said were an invitation to the
child to renew the game.
The third time he started off, however, the other man decided that he,
too, would take part in the sport. So he quickly put his tennis racket in
front of the boy, thus obstructing his path. The child manfully struggled
to push it aside, but could not. Soon his “No, I won’t,” in answer to his
father’s “Will you be good?” had in it a note of fretfulness or, rather,
resentment. He was contending now with two grown men and his strength
was not equal to the strain. He pushed angrily against the racket in
front while trying at the same time to avoid the light blows from the
one in the rear. With cat-like agility the man in front would withdraw
his obstructing tennis racket until the boy started forward and then
check—would come the racket just in front of him. The very movement of
his arm was like that of a cat regaining his hold on an escaping mouse.
A peal of laughter from him each time he caught the exasperated child
showed how much he was enjoying the sport. The father seemed equally
amused and joined heartily in thwarting the efforts of the boy to escape.
The little fellow’s face grew red, and he was soon short of breath from
his struggles, and there was the angry sob of defeat in his voice. The
scene ended by the child’s getting into a towering rage.
When they passed out of sight the father had seized him by the arm and
was forcing him along, the boy kicking and struggling, but powerless to
help himself. The two men were laughing heartily.
The child’s blood had been poisoned by the heat of anger, he had
exhausted his physical vitality and his nervous system had been
disarranged, not to speak of his moral standards—but then, the father and
his friend had been amused.
[8] Central Publishing Company.
The Factory Child
By Harriet Monroe
(In “The Century.”)
Why do the wheels go whirling round,
Mother, mother?
Oh, mother, are they giants bound,
And will they growl forever?
Yes, fiery giants underground,
Daughter, little daughter.
Forever turn the wheels around,
And rumble, grumble ever.
Why do I pick the threads all day?
Mother, mother?
While sunshine children are at play,
And must I work forever?
Yes, factory-child; the live-long day,
Daughter, little daughter,
Your hands must pick the threads away,
And feel the sunshine never.
Why do the birds sing in the sun,
Mother, mother,
If all day long I run and run—
Run with the wheels forever?
The birds may sing till day is done,
Daughter, little daughter,
But with the wheels your feet must run—
Run with the wheels forever.
Why do I feel so tired each night,
Mother, Mother?
The wheels are always buzzing bright;
Do they grow sleepy never?
Oh, baby thing, so soft and white,
Daughter, little daughter,
The big wheels grind us in their might,
And they will grind forever.
And is the white thread never spun,
Mother, mother?
And is the white cloth never done—
For you and me done never?
Oh, yes, our thread will all be spun,
Daughter, little daughter,
When we lie down out in the sun,
And work no more forever.
And when will come that happy day,
Mother, mother?
Oh, shall we laugh and sing and play
Out in the sun forever?
Nay, factory child, we’ll rest all day,
Daughter, little daughter,
Where green peas grow and roses gay,
There in the sun forever.
The Cotton-Mill Child
By Mrs. John Van Vorst
(From “The Cry of the Children.”[9])
(See page 57)
The first child to whom I spoke stood waiting, without work, for the
machinery to start up. He had on a cloth cap, overalls, and a blue cotton
shirt open at the throat. His face was wan, his eyes blue, with an
intense blue streak beneath them. His mouth was full of tobacco, which
had collected in a dingy crust about his lips. As he leaned back, one
foot crossed over the other, expectant for the spindles to begin their
whirling, he presented in his attitude and gestures, the appearance, not
of a child, but of a gaunt man shrunk to diminutive size. Going over to
where he sat, I started conversation with him about his work.
“How many sides do you run a day?” I asked.
“Three to four,” he answered.
“How much do you make?”
“About $2.40 a week.”
Then hastily I put the question: “How old are you!”
“Goin’ on tweayulve,” he responded. “I’ve been workin’ about four years.
I come in here when I was seayvun.”
“Ever been to school?”
He shook his head. “No, meayum. I don’t know if I would like it. I reckon
I’d as soon work here as be in school.”
“How many hours do you work here a day!”
“From six until six.”
The noise of the machine was distracting, and as I bent over him to
catch his answer piped in a shrill, nasal voice, I could not but notice
how fine and delicate his features were; the deep eyes, the high arched
nose, the slender lips were placed in the oval face as features only can
be placed by the unerring mold that breeding casts. Observing, also, the
miniature shoulders that seemed to have been oppressed by some iron hand,
I said:
“Don’t you get very tired?”
There was a pause which made more marked the honesty of his response.
“Why, I don’t never pay much attention whether I get tired or not.”
“You have an hour at noon?”
Here he brushed the cloth cap onto the back of his head, and sent a long,
wet, black line from his mouth to the floor.
“Well,” he said (it was the man who spoke, his arms akimbo, his body
warped in the long tussle for existence), “they aim to give us an hour,
but we don’t never get more’n twenty-five minutes. We all live right
up there.” He nodded toward the square of houses clustered around the
mud-puddle on the brink of the slovenly hillside. Then the bobbins began
to revolve slowly, and the boy started back to his work.
“You can’t loaf much,” he explained, “when the machine’s a runnin’.”
Up and down he plied on his monotonous beat—lone little figure....
Evidently waiting to join in the conversation, a small boy, I noticed,
was standing beside me. His dark eyes sparkled merrily in his colorless
face; he was dirty and covered with lint.
“What’s your job?”
“Sweepin’,” he grinned.
“How much do you make a day!”
“Twenty cents.”
“How old are you!”
“Seayvun.”
The boy at the machine, making bands for the spindles, was “goin’ on
tayun.” He earned twenty cents a day. Others, I learned, were eight, nine
and ten, and occasionally there was one as old as twelve.
As I walked on now through the mills talking with a twelve-year-old
red-headed girl who had been four years at work, my eyes suddenly fell
upon a strange couple. I could not take my attention from the tinier of
the tiny pair; the boy’s hands appeared to be made without bones, his
thumb flew back almost double as he pressed the cotton to loosen it from
the revolving roller in the spinning frame; they no longer moved, these
yellow, anemic hands, as though directed in their different acts by a
thinking intelligence; they performed mechanically the gestures which had
given them their definite form.
The red-headed girl laughed and nodded in the direction of the dwarfs.
“He’s most six,” she said. “He’s been here two years. He come in when he
was most four. His little brother most four’s workin’ here now.”
“Yes? Where?”
“Oh, he works on the night shift. He comes in ’beaout half-a-past five
and stays till six in the mornin’.”
I went over to the other dwarf of the couple, older, evidently, than
the boy “most six.” Below her red cotton frock hung a long apron which
reached to the ground. Her hair was short and shaggy, her face bloated,
her eyes like a depression in the flesh, and about her mouth trailed
streaks of tobacco. It seemed absurd to question her. Oblivion was the
only thing that could have been mercifully tendered—even the peace of
death could hardly have relaxed those tense features, cast in the dogged
mould of suffering.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you earn?”
She shook her head again.
Her fingers did not for a moment stop in their swift manipulation of the
broken thread. Then, as if she had suddenly remembered something, she
said:
“I’ve only been workin’ here a day.”
“Only one day?”
“I’ve been on the night shift till neow.”
Dwarfs? Ah, yes; dwarfs indeed. But would that those who affirm it might
catch sight of the expression that lowered under the brows of those two
miniature victims. Like a menace, threatening, terrible, it seemed to
presage the storm that shall one day be unchained by the spirits too long
pent up in service to the greed of man.
[9] Moffett, Yard & Company.
The Crusade of the Children
By Margaret Belle Houston
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
O’er the grind of the wheels of traffic,
Through the strident scream of the mart,
Soundeth a muffled tramping,
Like the faltering beat of a heart.
But only the ear hath heard it
That low on the earth is laid—
The stumbling tread of the children,
As they go on their long crusade!
Oh, some that are rosy as blossoms
Sing with the singing rills,
Wade through the sun-lit shadows
And clamber the violet hills.
But these are the paler children
That move with the sad footfalls,
And dark is the road they follow,
Tunneled through iron walls.
They hear the song of the others
Ring sweet in the outer air,
But they may not run in the sunlight
With the load their shoulders bear.
They may not weave bright blossoms
Though nimble their fingers be;
But the Master hath not forgotten—
“Let the little ones come to me!”
Well have ye planned and shaped it,
The road that the children plod,
Yet it leads, for all your delving,
Straight to the throne of God.
And there shall they lay their burdens,
And there will they loose their bands;
They will lift up their twisted fingers,
To Him of the nail-marked hands.
They will cry, “Like Thee, O Father,
We come with the marks of men!”
Nor all the gold of their toiling
Will spare you His answer then!
Better the nether millstone
And the depths of the darkest seas!
Ye have wounded Christ the Avenger,
Who wounded the least of these!
Child Labor
By Ruby Archer
(See page 254)
Poor little children that work all day—
Far from the meadows, far from the birds,
Far from the beautiful, silent words
The hills know how to say!
Laughter is gone from your old-young eyes—
Gone from the lips with the dimples sweet,
Gone with the song of the little feet—
As light in winter dies.
Evening—with only the years at ten?
Where was the morning, where was the noon?
Did the day turn back to the night so soon,
Children—women—and—men?
Parts of the monster things that turn;
Less than a lever, less than a wheel!
Pity you were not wrought of steel,
To save the pence you earn!
Add the columns, aye, foot the gain—
Ye that barter in children’s lives!
How will the reckoning end, that strives
To balance gold and pain?
Need the Vote for the Children
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 149)
Women need a vote for the sake of children. No state, modern or ancient,
has ever cared properly for its children. Children are at the present
time horribly neglected in every country, even when they are not, as in
many states of the United States, horribly abused. All women whatever
their nationality care more than all men for the welfare of all children.
This is true even of female animals in the animal world. It is supremely
true in our human world. Children are, and always will be, the special
interest of women. Wherever women already vote, their influence is felt
immediately and persistently in ameliorative measures for the protection,
reformation, and education of little children. No one with any knowledge
of the facts can deny that the political power of women is exercised on
behalf of children. We are now learning that children should be the chief
concern of our present civilization because in them lies the hope of the
future. For the sake of children, women must vote.
Fettered Little Children
By Mary E. Carbutt
(In “The Progressive Woman.” Contemporary. Prominent California Club
Woman.)
Oh blind and cruel nation,
In your selfish race for wealth,
You have fettered your young children
With chains that drag to death.
To the wheel of toil you’ve bound them,
In their young and tender years;
And when they cry in anguish,
You do not heed their tears.
They drag out their days in sorrow;
They grow old before their time;
All the joy of their young childhood
You have stifled by your crime.
The children, wan and pallid,
With wasted frames and weary hands,
Turn in their defenseless sorrow
To the mothers of the land.
You, fond and tender mothers,
Happy children at your knee,
Will you hear their silent pleading—
Will you rise and set them free?
Announce Her Maturity
By Anne Morton Barnard
As woman has always mothered the race she should now refuse to be its
child.
The Cry of the Children
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861
(English. Foremost among the world’s poets. Lived with her husband,
Robert Browning, for many years in Italy, championing the cause of the
Italian people toward liberty.)
Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—
And _that_ cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest:
The young fawns are playing in the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow
Why their tears are falling so?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago;
The old tree is leafless in the forest,
The old year is ending in the frost,
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man’s hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy;
“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary,
Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak;
Few paces we have to ken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old”....
“For oh,” say the children, “we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap;
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our eyelids heavy drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For all day long we drag our burden tiring
Through the coal-dark, underground,
Or, all day we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
“For, all day the wheels are droning, turning;
Their wind comes in our faces,
Till our hearts turn, our head, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places:
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
Turns the light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And all day, the iron wheels are droning,
And sometimes we could pray,
‘O ye wheels,’ (breaking out in a mad moaning)
‘Stop! be silent for today!’”....
They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For they mind you of the angels in their places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,—
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.”
Children’s Ward
By Hortense Flexner
(In “The Survey.”)
She had been sent for—visiting hours were past—
The Lithuanian woman with the blue,
Still eyes. The child’s bed was the last
In the row. She stood beside it, white—she knew,
And watched! Her broad, young shoulders drooped
Beneath the hooded gown that visitors wear;
The nurse had left her—suddenly she stooped,
The hood slipped back and showed her braided hair.
There was no cry. The Russians weep and pray,
Italians beat their breasts. This mother turned,
Asked for his clothes—tearless and calm and gray—
The doctor told her they had all been burned.
So she was gone—only her great eyes said
What thing is lost, when a small child is dead!
Child Slavery
By Gertrude Breslau Fuller
(See page 36)
(There are 1,700,000 children working in the mills, mines and factories
of the United States.)
Generations of the past have been responsible for certain iniquitous
practises, but it remained for the present century to shut the little
ones up in factories, stunting physical and mental growth. Because of
child labor today the future generation of men and women will suffer.
Their career will bear the stamp of human brutality.
BOOK IV
Mother
MOTHER
Rock Me to Sleep
By Elizabeth Akers Allen
(An old familiar poem. My mother often sang it to me when she rocked me
to sleep as a child. Taken from her scrap book.—“Editor”)
Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears—
Toil without recompense—tears all in vain—
Take them and give me my childhood again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay—
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap;
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between;
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;
Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!
Over my heart in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shown;
No other worship abides and endures,—
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours;
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul or the world-weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead tonight,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last listened your lullaby song;
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
The Mother
By Marion Harland
(Well-known magazine writer. The following is from “The Independent.”)
She has never ceased out of the land. That she seems to be more in
evidence now than she was sixty years ago may be but one more expression
of Feminism....
In every well-appointed household the mother is the controlling
influence. In a large percentage of homes her acknowledged sovereignty
is a dictatorship. If she be a woman of intelligence and refinement, she
virtually supervises her girl’s education and molds her views of life,
morals and manners. The father is, at most, Prince Consort, playing an
insignificant part in the selection of associates and instructors, and no
part at all in the regulation of deportment, speech and dress. “My mother
thinks,” and “My mother says,” are cast-iron formulas that make an end of
all controversy while the girl is in short skirts and wears her unshorn
locks between her shoulders. With the lengthened skirts, and trussed
hair, comes entrance upon the school or college world, and the beginning
of individual life.
The Mother’s Influence
By “Ouida”
(Mlle. Louise de la Ramee, Author of “Under Two Flags,” “A Dog of
Flanders,” etc. Died Jan. 28, 1908. The following is from one of a series
of articles written and sold to Lippincott’s 28 years ago with the
request that they be not published until after her death. The articles
appeared in the May, June, and July, 1909, issues.)
When we reflect on the enormous weight which the woman’s influence has
on the growing child; when we consider the incurable superstitions, the
unreasonable fables, the illogical deductions, the warped and stifled
judgments, which millions of young boys learn in education and religion
at their mothers’ knees in infancy,—it is impossible to over-rate the
invaluable consequences of any introduction of _geist_ into the minds of
women. But for the backward pressure of woman—woman ever conservative,
ever _reculante_, ever wedded to form and precedent, and to tradition—the
world of men would have forsaken many a _cultus_ built on fable, many
a dominion of priestcraft, many a limbo of worn-out and oppressive
credulity. The evil mental influence of women is fully as great as can
be the good moral influence of the best of their sex. Wars hounded
on; fetters freshly riveted; the withes of dead beliefs binding down
the free action of living limbs; the pressure of narrow ties, and of
egotisms deified to virtue, forcing men aside from paths of greatness or
justice—all those, and much more, are due to the baleful intellectual
influence of women.
Fatherhood Cannot Be Motherhood
By Ada M. Kassimer
(From Introduction to “Representative Women.”)
Womanhood now as always recognizes motherhood as its highest duty, its
greatest obligation; and the present awakened womanhood sees its mission
of motherhood—not only in the narrowed home immediately about it, but in
the large human family, in the world of activity, it sees how the affairs
of men, women and children need the true mother instinct, which in every
phase of nature is one of unselfish devotion, of unlimited service, of
freedom from combat for financial, social and personal supremacy. The
inherent attributes of motherhood must combine with those of fatherhood
to square the balance of justice for childhood.
The world needs woman, her ideas, her way of reasoning, her insight, her
sense of justice, her tender hands and her loving heart. The children
of the world need her; for a long time they have been governed by the
masculine mind which has made laws for them, established educational
plans for them, opened juvenile courts for them, founded factories,
mills, mines, in which little hands have hardened, little bodies have
dwarfed, young minds and hearts grown prematurely old—and this, not
because the masculine mind and the masculine heart would intentionally
be drastic, but because men are not women, and fatherhood cannot be
motherhood.
The Price
By Winona Douglas
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
Sleep, little dream child, in mother’s arms;
Cuddle yet closer and take your rest,
Eyelids now hiding the blue eyes since laughing,
Laughing in glee here on mother’s breast.
Dear are the moments with you I am spending;
Toil is forgotten in comfort and calm.
Together we are, wee one, in the gloaming,
Evening blessed,—my babe’s coo is a psalm.—
You were my dream child, and I must awaken,
My arms are empty, sweet babe unborn,
For me the lone quiet, while night is fast darkening;
Darkening now, and there’s toil on the morn.
The days come and go, toil is ever supreme;
Motherhood smother, the thought is vain.
Forget it, indeed, for wheels must be turning,
Turning incessantly—more wealth to gain!
Passionate Instinct
By Emily Huntington Miller
(From “Parents and Their Problems.”)
What could atone to a multitude of children for the misfortune of having
been born, but the passionate instinct that takes no account of lack of
beauty, grace or intellectual gift, but clings to its own with deathless
devotion?
Functions Identical
By Mrs. Alice H. Putnam
(From “Parents and Their Problems.”)
In one respect, at least, the functions of mother and teacher should be
identical.... The teacher and parent must take their charge “for better,
for worse.”
The Adolescent Child
By Julia Clark Hallam
(From “Studies in Child Development.” American contemporary. Instructor
in the University of Chicago.)
It goes without saying that every mother has an imperative duty toward
her son as he approaches this important period in his development.
Nature has done her part in preparing the boy’s body, the mother must be
doing her part in preparing his mind for all of these new experiences.
There are many things which a mother can do because she is the mother,
and because her mind is mature while the mind of the boy is yet immature.
The mother, through her study, comes to see that the adolescent boy is
about to acquire new powers. Before, he was simply an individual. Now
he is becoming a part of the race, because he is acquiring the power
of conserving it. To the mother who has duly prepared herself for her
child’s adolescence, its appearance will bring the same mysterious thrill
which she felt when she first saw the child as a new-born babe. It has
been said in this connection, “When a baby is to be born, preparations
for its advent are carefully made. But when, in future years, the most
critical time comes when the child is to be re-born, a man or a woman, it
is rare that intelligent suggestions or wise words of counsel tell him or
her of the importance of the period.”
Mother
By Laura Simmons
(In the “Boston Herald.”)
Oh, Mother—hands of balm and gracious healing,
And cool, soft fingers that could heal and bless!
So sure to charm the aching and the fever
With magic spell and soothing tenderness.
Oh, Mother—feet that grew so very tired
Treading Life’s pavements and its burning sands!
Have they found rest at last, and cooling waters
Where they may stop to loose their earthly bands?
Oh, Mother—eyes so keen to probe the sorrows!
So quick to see the hurt and understand!
Do they not shine tonight from highest Heaven
Bright with the old-time courage, high and grand?
Oh, Mother—heart so wise and tender—
That has not died, nor failed, but lived and wrought
In deeds and words—in daily work and action—
In lovely memory and blessed thought!
Oh, Mother—love that lives past death and parting!
That reaches still to bless and guard and guide,
To hold me from the snare undreamed and waiting—
To point the refuge where I yet may hide!
And, oh—the things my heart hath yearned to utter!
The joys that thrilled—the pain that seared and scarred!
But I must wait—I, too—till sunset’s splendor
Shall hold for me its shining gates unbarred.
Past joy, past sorrow, past the driving torrent
Of tears, I see her stand and watch for me;
And clear the sweet old Mother-question cometh:
“Oh, child—dear child! And is all well with thee?”
Wise Mothers
By Mona Cairo
(From “The Morality of Marriage.”)
We shall never have really good mothers until women cease to make
motherhood the central idea of their existence. The woman who has no
interest larger than the affairs of her children is not a fit person to
train them.
The Factory Worker and Motherhood
By Kate Richards O’Hare
(American contemporary. Well-known Socialist speaker and writer. From
“The Sorrows of Cupid.”)
I spent six months one winter in the various factories of New York in
order to get information by actual experience. I can truthfully and
conservatively say that not more than one out of two girls employed
in the factory trades for a year or more are physically fitted to be
wives and mothers, not considering their fitness mentally, morally or
spiritually. There are six million women workers in the United States. If
fifty per cent., not ninety, are made physically, mentally and morally
unfit for wife and motherhood by doing work unsuited to their strength,
then the wage-system must be weighed and “found wanting” indeed. Economic
conditions which force women to work in unsuitable industrial occupations
are not only a fruitful cause for divorce, but an outrage against
humanity as well.
Mothers
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(See page 280)
(From “The Forerunner.”)
We are mothers. Through us in our bondage,
Through us with a brand in the face,
Be we fettered with gold or with iron,
Through us comes the race.
See the people who suffer, all people!
All humanity wasting its powers
In the hand-to-hand struggle—death-dealing—
All children of ours!
Shall we bear it? we mothers who love them?
Can we bear it? we mothers who feel
Every pang of our babes and forgive them
Every sin when they kneel?
Dare ye sleep while your children are calling?
Dare ye wait while they clamor unfed?
Dare ye pray in the proud-pillared churches
While they suffer for bread?
Rise now in the power of the woman!
Rise now in the power of our need!
The world cries in hunger and darkness!
We shall light! We shall feed!
In the name of our ages of anguish!
In the name of the curse and the slain!
By the strength of our sorrow we conquer!
In the power of our pain!
A Good Mother
By Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
(English. The mother of Mary, wife of the poet Shelley. One of the
earliest advocates of the right of woman to education, and political
rights.)
To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and that independence of
mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their
husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their
children to love them best, and take their part, in secret against the
father, who is held up as a scarecrow. When chastisement is necessary,
though they have offended the mother, the father must inflict the
punishment; he must be the judge in all disputes; ... I ... mean to
insist that unless the understanding of woman is enlarged, and her
character rendered firm, but being allowed to govern her own conduct,
she will never have sufficient sense or command of temper to manage her
children properly.
The Mother a Creator
By C. Josephine Barton
(Contemporary. Formerly associate editor and publisher “The Life,” author
of “An Interlude,” “Evangel Ahvallah,” “The Mother of the Living,” etc.)
Thoughts are the blocks out of which children are made.... Your
child’s thoughts will flow in the trenches you open for it. During the
impressible first few months it will cultivate that which you cultivate.
If you love, it will love; if you hate, it will hate. If you have the
measles, it will have it; the child will rejoice at your rejoicing, and
will weep when you weep. (This is one instance wherein if you “weep you
will _not_ weep alone”! Anger indulged in by you will make the foetus
helpless in Anger’s toils! Love humanity, find and faithfully perform
your work, and your unborn child will one day be a philanthropist....
Two brothers manifested the same criminality their father had been
guilty of when begetting them, and they became even worse men, because
their weak, unresisting mother took no control over them during the
months most important, and their passions developed. Thus the design and
form of temple unwittingly carved out in the brain of their two sons,
developed the phrenological bumps, criminal protuberances to match the
design marked out for them by their father in his unenlightened Temple
of Thought. This condition could not have been altered by any process
known except that of the mother’s thought-action during the period of
pliability in the atom. But being incompetent, unable to systematize
her thoughts and purify her heart, or cultivate the philosophical and
rational, the begotten shape developed with all the qualities about it
that had so blighted the begetter....
It is with pleasure I turn from the above picture and point out to
you the laws leading up to the beautiful character of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton—one of the bravest of leaders in the cause of woman’s
emancipation. Daniel Cady was a distinguished lawyer, a New York judge,
later elected to Congress. Though a man of fine qualities, unimpeachable
integrity, he was sensitive and modest to a marked degree; while her
mother, Margaret Livingston, had the military idea of government, was
tall and queenly, self-reliant and at her ease under all circumstances.
She was the daughter of Colonel Livingston, who, at West Point, when
Arnold made the attempt to betray that stronghold into the enemy’s hands,
in the absence of his superior officer, took the responsibility of firing
into the Vulture, a suspicious looking British vessel that lay at anchor
on the opposite side of the river, leaving Andre, the British spy, with
his papers to be captured.
The foregoing shows the result of the influence of two united energies
in the production of a powerful woman. To modify the effect of her
begetter’s modesty, the mother’s military ideas stood in good place;
and to supplement his embarrassment, she was full of courage; so that
even if her father had implanted the foundation for the cultivation of
an over-modest child, the mother made up the happy balance during her
supervision, and it resulted in the freedom of individuality in the
beautiful woman who has blessed the race with light, in the dispelling of
many clouds. The loving and faithful mother of seven children, she found
time to fill a noble sphere in public, one in which they could rise up to
call her blessed.
Collective Motherhood
By Rheta Childe Dorr
(American contemporary. Author of “What Eight Million Women Want.” From
an article in “Good Housekeeping.”)
We have the ideal of collective motherhood expressing itself through
the women’s clubs, through consumer’s leagues, through mothers’
congresses, through a dozen like agencies. We have the ideal for a
collective fatherhood also, but this is waiting to express itself through
organizations, which can be formed only by men. Of the details of
children’s lives the average man knows infinitely less than do women. Of
the interrelationship of children and the whole structure of society most
men know nothing at all.
Woman and Mother
By C. Gasquoine Hartley
(Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan)
(See page 154)
Any stigma attached to women is really a stigma attached to their
potentiality as mothers, and we can only remove it by beginning with the
emancipation of the actual mother.
The Companion Mother
By Ida Tarbell
(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”)
A woman never lived who did all she might have done to open the mind of
her child for its great adventure. It is an exhaustless task. The woman
who sees it knows she has need of all the education the college can give,
all the experience and culture she can gather. She knows that the fuller
her individual life, the broader her interests, the better for the child.
She should be a better person in their eyes. The real service of the
“higher education,”—the freedom to take part in whatever interests or
stimulates her—lies in the fact that it fits her intellectually to be a
companion worthy of a child.
Parental Respect for Right of Children
By Ellen Key
(From “The Century of the Child.”)
(See page 143)
A mother happy in the friendship of her own daughter, said not long ago
that she desired to erect an asylum for tormented daughters. Such an
asylum would be as necessary as a protection against pampering parents
as against those who are overbearing. Both alike torture their children
though in different ways, by not understanding the child’s right to have
his own point of view, his own ideal of happiness, his own proper tastes
and occupations. They do not see that children exist as little for their
parents’ sake as parents do for their children’s sake.... Family life
would have an intelligent character if each one lived fully and entirely
his own life and allowed the others to do the same. None should tyrannize
over, none should suffer tyranny from, the other. Parents who give their
homes this character can justly demand that children shall accommodate
themselves to the habits of the household as long as they live in it.
Children on their part can ask that their own life of thought and feeling
shall be left in peace at home, or that they shall be treated with the
same consideration that would be accorded to a stranger. When the parents
do not meet these conditions they themselves are the greater sufferers.
The Ancient and Modern Mother
By Mrs. Alec Tweedie
(English contemporary. Author of “America As I Saw It,” “Mexico As I Saw
It,” “Sunny Sicily,” etc. From “Women the World Over.”)
The ancient mother and the modern mother are two very different beings.
The very ancient mother fought for her child like the tigress for her
young cubs. The mother of past generations gave her entire life to her
children to the absolute neglect of her husband. The modern mother,
although she sometimes neglects her children for her fads and frivolities
is really a much more sane person, for she lives three lives; one part
she gives to her husband, one part to her children, and a third part to
herself. Instead of entirely obliterating herself, as the ancient mother
did, she believes in self-culture, self-advancement, and is a thinking,
human being; she is therefore more of a companion to her husband, and
more capable of educating her offspring.
The Mother
By Mrs. Emmaline Pethick-Lawrence
(In “Votes for Women.”)
(See page 180)
In a small room, dimly lighted, sat a woman making collars. Above the
humming of her sewing machine the clock of a neighboring church struck
ten. The woman lifted her head, and, gathering up her work, folded it
together. She crossed the room and looked down upon the faces of two boys
sleeping. “Christmas Eve!” she sighed.
She went back to cover up the machine. Sitting wearily, she leant her
weight upon it and her head sank upon her arms. Last year it had all
been so different! She had to be both father and mother now, since the
bread-winner had been cut down by the hand of death falling with an awful
suddenness. And within her body there slept, soon to waken to life, a
child. “Pray God it be a boy,” she moaned. “If not, pray God it may die!
It is too terrible to be a woman.”
She thought of the girl on the second floor who had been taken that day
to the workhouse infirmary; she knew her story. The girl had been a
waitress in a tea shop. She earned her food and five shillings a week.
She could not live alone in the world on that wage. She had accepted the
“protection” of a man more than twice her age. When her trouble came he
had tired of her. He had left her. She did not know where he was now.
Would that child who was to be born in the workhouse be a girl, too? She
hoped not. She prayed that it might be a boy.
She remembered the old woman who had tried to drown herself last week.
The old woman’s husband had died; that was a year ago. The widow had
taken in work for an army clothing establishment. But the money she
earned had hardly paid the rent. The case had made something of a
sensation in the police court. The papers had taken it up for a day or
two. The employer said it was the Government that was to blame. The
Government would not allow its contracts to be carried out by the sweated
labor of men, but the sweating of women did not matter. Women did
not seem to matter to anybody. When her husband was alive she had not
realized it. She realized it now. She remembered, though, that even in
these days—
Suddenly her room seemed full of light. Afar off she heard a burst of
song. It came nearer. Never had she listened to such music. The woman
lifted her head. The window was gone, the whole of the outside wall had
fallen noiselessly away, and the sky was filled with a glory that was not
of the sun nor of the moon. The light seemed to come from a cloud, and
the singing, too. No, it was not a cloud, it was a host of radiant forms,
for, as she looked, those shining ones came nearer to her, and she could
hear their voices: “Good tidings of great joy!”
So that was what they were singing! Where had she heard it before? The
words seemed so familiar to her that, though she wondered, she was
not overwhelmed with surprise. Then came a rapturous outburst: “They
that dwell in the land of the shadow of death—upon them hath the light
shined.” The light! How wonderful it was! How amazing! It seemed to the
woman like a glorious sea upon which her spirit floated—a flood which
drowned her senses, so that for a moment or two she lost consciousness
of all else. Then once again her attention was arrested by the singing,
because she heard these words: “For unto us a child is born.” “Pray God
it is a boy,” she murmured.
She wanted to hear more, and listened breathlessly now. Nearer and
nearer to her came the voices, and she heard a new refrain that seemed to
fill both heaven and earth with ringing joy: “To set at liberty—them that
are bruised.”
Suddenly that triumphant chanting became a lament. “No room! No room!”
wailed that multitude of voices. “The door of the mother’s heart is shut.
She prays that the child may die!” Then the woman knew that it was the
child who stirred within her, whose coming the angels had heralded. The
woman child! Yes, for she had prayed that it might die, and her heart
stood still with fear.
And it seemed to the woman that the wall had been built up and the room
was dark again, save for the light of one small lamp. But in her heart
she heard still the echo of the song: “They that dwell in the land of the
shadow of death”—that was the girl in the workhouse infirmary; that was
the old woman in the police court charged with attempted suicide; that
was herself—upon them “hath the light shined.” “For unto us a child is
born, a Saviour, which”—Then she understood. It was her own child. The
child that moved under her heart. What was it came next? Ah! It came back
to her now; she seemed to hear again that burst of joy that filled the
sky with song: “To set at liberty them that are bruised.”
Who were the bruised? Some one had told her a story a few hours ago. It
was about the poor creature at the corner of the street; her husband
had come back last Saturday and demanded money; had knocked her down
and kicked her; the magistrate had made a joke about it in court, and
everybody had laughed except the woman. She had wept bitterly. But nobody
seemed to care. “To set at liberty them that are bruised.” The poor thing
was horribly bruised, they said. But was she not “at liberty?” No, she
was in bondage—cruel bondage. Were all women in bondage? If so, some of
the fetters were made of gold. Were fetters of gold light? Some one was
going to break the fetters. And that some one was—her own child. “No!
No!” she cried, in agony. “It is she—my child—who will be broken! Rather
let her die now, before she has become acquainted with grief.”
Then the woman felt herself folded in a purple mantle, so that she could
not see, but she was not afraid, rather comforted, as if with a sense of
deep security. “I am destiny,” she heard; “your child will be safe with
me. I will cover her with my arm. I will hide her in the secret place of
the Most High. She shall break in pieces the fetters of those who are in
bondage.”
“Then she shall not herself be broken?” faltered the mother.
“She shall be broken,” answered Destiny, “yet not her spirit. That shall
return victorious to God, who sends it forth.”
“Tell me one thing,” pleaded the mother, “Shall the joy of my child
outweigh her sorrow?”
“The angels sang at the birth of One who was destined to be crucified for
the world. Did the joy of the crucified outweigh the sorrow?”
“I do not know,” she answered.
“According to her strength her joy shall be like unto His joy, and her
sorrow like unto His sorrow.”
And the mother said, “God’s will be done.”
And when the veil was removed it seemed as though the little room was
full of those shining presences who had drawn near to her from the
singing hosts of heaven.
“I am Wisdom,” said one, and laid a hand upon the woman’s head. “I give
to your child what is mine.” “I am Vision,” cried another, kissing her
eyes, saying, “For the child’s sake.” And Love was revealed, as Love
reverently touched the child where she lay beneath the mother’s heart,
saying: “It is I who give to women the courage that amazes strong men.”
“Take from me for the child that shall be born, my double-edged sword,
the spirit and the word,” said one: “My name is Inspiration.”
Then once more there was wafted upon the air the singing of the heavenly
host—and the outside wall had disappeared again, and the garret was open
to the sky. And the heart of the woman sang with the joy of the angels:
“For unto us a child is born.” ...
A peal of bells rang out from the church. One of the boys stirred, sat
up, and cried out, “Mother!” She lifted her head. “Hush!” she said,
“Hush, the angels are singing.” She rose and walked to the window,
drawing aside the curtain. A star shone brilliantly; it seemed to shoot
a shaft of light into the room. The Christmas chimes clamored their
tidings. She went back and knelt by the startled child. “Kiss mother,”
she said, as she put her arms about him. “It is Christmas morning.”
I Am the Mother-Heart
By Grace D. Brewer
(In “The Progressive Woman.”)
I am the Mother-heart of this nation.
I have loved and nourished its little ones in age-long mother fashion;
have swelled with pride when the nation has protected them from disease;
come nearly to bursting with unuttered gratitude when happiness has come
to the youth of the land.
I have spent many long, sleepless nights weeping over the fate of
millions of my babies, forced from home, school and mother, to the
factories and shops of the cities, and all night have wondered “why” and
“how long?”
I am haunted by the childish protestations, desirous glances from faded,
childish eyes, and bleed anew when I see my children marching from the
factory door, their bent and bony figures clad in rags.
I, the Mother-heart of the nation have been deceived, tricked and
defrauded.
I believed that modern industry, with all the improvements, could provide
for my infants; believed the mighty labor-saving machines would not
require the help of my babies to feed the world; believed the children
would be given plenty of time in which to grow healthy bodies.
I have, however, awakened to existing conditions. No longer will I be
submissive.
I have ever been a power for good, but seldom rebellious.
I am now pulsing red blood. I will temper my mother-love with human
justice and stand only for right.
I will help restore to my babies the privileges of their years.
I can labor for justice and hover my young flock.
I no longer send out purely love throbs, but send warnings to those who
have been blinded by gold.
I beat in harmony with the masses struggling for freedom, feeling
confident of results. I beat with will and determination, a glorious
future before me.
I know the day will come when the Mother-heart of all nations will be
content because of the reign of justice.
I realize my responsibility and beat the faster.
I am the Mother-heart of this nation.
By Mrs. C. E. Porter
(Vice President National Congress of Mothers.)
Let no one fear the loss of womanliness so long as woman is a willing
slave to her mother instinct.
BOOK V
Love and Marriage
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
To Love on Feeling Its Approach
By Helen Hoyt
(In “The Masses.”)
Love is a burden, a chain,
Love is a trammel and tie;
Love is disquiet and pain
That slowly go by.
O why should I bind my heart
And bind my sight?
Love is only a part
Of all delight.
Let me have room for the rest,—
To find and explore!
Love is greatest and best?
But love closes the door.
And closes us off so long from the ways
And concernments of men;
And owns us, and hinders our days.
O love, come not again!
I have walked with you all my mile,
Now let me be free, be free!
O now a little while
Love, come not back to me!
Ashes of Life
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
(In “The Forum.”)
Love has gone and left me, and the days are all alike;
Eat I must and sleep I will,—and would that night were here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!
Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through—
There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.
Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
There’s this little street and this little house.
The Greatest Love
By Rahel Varnhagen
(From “Life and Letters of Rahel Varnhagen.”)
Only one in the whole world recognizes my claim to the personality, and
does not wish merely to use and swallow up some part or other of me;
loves me as nature created me, and fate distorted me; understands this
fate; is willing to leave me the remainder of my life, and to gladden it
and draw it nearer to heaven; and, for the happiness of being my friend,
will be, do, and leave all for me. This is the man who is called my
bridegroom.
Love-Songs
By Mary Carolyn Davies
What is love?
Love is when you touch me;
Love is a noise of stars singing as they march;
Love is a voice of worlds glad to be together;
What is love?
There is a strong wall about me to protect me:
It is built of the words you have said to me.
There are swords about me to keep me safe:
They are the kisses of your lips.
Before me goes a shield to guard me from harm:
It is the shadow of your arms between me and danger.
All the wishes of my mind know your name,
And the white desires of my heart
They are acquainted with you.
The cry of my body for completeness,
That is a cry to you.
My blood beats out your name to me, unceasing, pitiless—
Your name, your name.
My body talks about you in the night,
My hand says soft, “His hand is like a shield.”
My cheek grows warm, remembering your lips.
My arms reach blindly out into the dark;
My pulses say, “We cannot beat without him;”
And my eyes do not speak at all, for what they know is beyond being said.
My body talks about you all night long.
I cannot sleep, my body talks so loud.
See, I lead you to my heart,
It is a winding way, the way to my heart;
It is thorn-beset and very long;
It is walled and buttressed; it is sentineled,
And none could ever find the way alone.
So take my hand,
And I will lead you to my heart.
Our hearts lie so close
That when your heart trembles,
Mine will be afraid.
Our hearts beat so near
That when your heart stirs,
Mine will hear it.
Our hearts speak so loud
That all the world must know.
I have lost track of what world I am living in
Or what day I am seeing;
I only know that there is blue about—
The blue of your eyes;
I only know that there is music somewhere—
Words quick and broken that you have said.
Your parted lips hard on mine,
Your sudden arms crushing heaven into my heart,
Your broken words that tell me nothing and everything—
When God is thundering the last world into oblivion,
And quenching the farthest star,
And putting blackness around,
We two will cling to each other.
A Man Never Gets Over It
By Cornelia A. P. Comer
(From “The Wealth of Timmy Zimmerman,” in the “Atlantic Monthly.”)
“I mean to have a swell home, if I am a bachelor,” boasted Timmy. “I feel
like I wanted it. It’s just another game, I guess. But I’ll play a lone
hand—I don’t reckon a man can be ready for matrimony when it sends cold
shivers down his spine just to think of it, do you?”
Kid lowered his voice.
“Timmy, listen a minute. I’ll tell you something—_a man never gets over
feelin’ that way about it_. He just has to kind of chloroform them
feelings and hurry along with it. Because there ain’t no doubt it’s the
thing to do.”
Marriage, a Partnership
By Mrs. Newell Dwight Hillis
(American contemporary. From “The American Woman and Her Home.”)
There is a sense in which marriage is a contract, at the same time
business, moral and social....
Marriage is looked upon often as the consummation of the romance of life,
whereas, it is simply its beginning. It is called a matter of the heart,
which it should be, but it should also be an affair of the intellect.
It is fortunate that the day of early marriage has passed, since the
early marriage implied a choice guided almost wholly by the emotions, as
the intellect is slower in its development than the heart. But marriage
should involve both heart and brain and fulfill the chief desire of both.
One of the Best Things
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(From “The Duty of Surplus Women,” in “The Independent.”)
(See page 280)
If marriage laws are wrong, mend them. If marriage customs offend, change
them. If other people’s marriages do not please, improve on them. But
marriage itself remains a good thing—one of the best things in the world.
What Is Love?
By Elizabeth Philip
(English contemporary. Quoted from “Women the World Over.”)
What is Love, that all the world
Should talk so much about it?
What is Love, that neither you
Nor I can do without it?
What is Love that it should be
As changeful as the weather?
Is it joy or is it pain
Or is it both together?
Love’s a tyrant and a slave,
A torment and a treasure.
Having it, you know no peace,
Lacking it, no pleasure.
Would I shun it if I could?
Faith, I almost doubt it.
No, I’d rather bear its sting,
Than live my life without it.
The Art of Loving
By Ellen Key
(Contemporary Norwegian writer. From “Love and Marriage.”[10])
Every developed modern woman wishes to be loved not _enmale_, but _en
artiste_. Only a man whom she feels to possess an artist’s joy in her,
and who shows this joy in discreet and delicate contact with her soul as
with her body, can retain the love of the modern woman.
[10] J. G. Stokes Co., Pub.
A New Stimulus to Marriage
By Mrs. St. Clair Stobart
(See page 55)
As concerns marriage, if it should indeed be true that women, who can
find practical work in life outside marriage, would no longer be so eager
to marry, this would not necessarily be an evil, for it would probably
act as an additional incentive to man to desire marriage. Marriage has
been regarded for women as a profession in which failure involves, as
in other professions, humiliation. Women are trained, therefore, under
the present régime, to employ all the arts at their disposal to ensure
success in their profession.... If women were absorbed in professions
and occupations, such as farming, architecture, territorial service,
and the like, and only desired marriage when and because they loved, we
would have the loss in the woman of the wiles and artificialities which
formerly stimulated the man, and marriage would be counterbalanced by a
more healthy emulation on the part of the man, who would be desirous to
obtain something of value which was difficult to get.
The Old Suffragist
By Margaret Widdemer
(See page 156)
She could have loved—her woman passions beat
Deeper than theirs, or else she had not known
How to have dropped her heart beneath their feet
A living stepping-stone.
The little hands—did they not clutch her heart?
The guarding arms—was she not very tired?
Was it an easy thing to walk apart,
Unresting, undesired?
She gave away her crown of woman-praise,
Her gentleness and silent girlhood grace
To be a merriment for idle days,
Scorn for the market-place:
She strove for an unvisioned, far-off good,
For one far hope she knew she would not see:
These—not _her_ daughters—crowned with motherhood,
And love and beauty—free.
Postponing Marriage
By Ethel Maud Colquhoun
(See page 172)
A very important question in this connection is whether, in promising
fidelity to one woman, a lover is really undertaking more than he can
perform. When he postpones marriage to the latest possible moment man is
certainly not offering to his bride that gift of a life-long devotion
which is part of the ideal of true love.
Marriage of the “Friends”
By Lucretia Mott
(One of the early leaders in the Woman Suffrage, Anti-Slavery, and other
progressive movements of her time. A member of the Society of Friends—a
Quaker. The following is from a letter written in 1869 to Josephine
Butler, of England.)
In the Marriage union, no ministerial or other official aid is required
to consecrate or legalize the bond. After due care in making known their
intentions, the parties, in presence of their friends, announce their
covenant, with pledge of fidelity and affection, invoking Divine aid
for its faithful fulfilment. There is no assumed authority or admitted
inferiority, no _promise_ of obedience. Their independence is equal,
their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal. This of course
has had its influence on married life and the welfare of families. The
permanence and happiness of the conjugal relation among us have ever
borne a favorable comparison with those of other denominations.
The Love That Pales
By Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
(See page 121)
Youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of
thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more important
years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation. But Rousseau,
and most of the male writers who have followed his steps, have warmly
inculcated that the whole tendency of female education ought to be
directed to one point—to render them pleasing.
Let me reason with the supporters of this opinion who have any knowledge
of human nature. Do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude
of life? The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that
her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect
on her husband’s heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is
past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into
herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? Or is it not
more rational to expect that she will try to please other men, and, in
the emotions raised by the expectations of new conquests, endeavor to
forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When the husband
ceases to be a lover, and the time will inevitably come, her desire
of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness;
and love, perhaps the most evanescent of all passions, gives place to
jealousy or vanity.
When Marriage Meant Bondage
By Lucy Stone
(Probably the most brilliant and effective of the early woman suffrage
orators. Is said to have possessed a beautiful speaking voice, and great
personal charm. The founder, with her husband, Henry Blackwell, of “The
Woman’s Journal.” From “Susan B. Anthony, Her Life and Work.”)
The common law, which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and is
modified only in a few instances by the statutes, gives the “custody” of
the wife’s person to the husband, so that he has a right to her even
against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness
they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or
her children. It gives him a right to her personal property which he may
will away from her, also the use of her real estate, and in some of the
states, married women, insane persons and idiots are ranked together as
not fit to make a will; so that she is left with only one right, which
she enjoys in common with the pauper, the right of maintenance. Indeed,
when she has taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases.
A Possible Utopia
By Josephine Pitcairn Knowles
(From “The Upholstered Cage.”)
Nothing is permanent, there is going on always a continual shuffling of
the cards of public opinion; trends of thought, standards of conduct
come and go; and so when the day comes that women are more economically
independent, then they will go on strike and sweep away all the unworthy
suitors and declare that they will only mate with the physically and
mentally sound, and then all considerations but love and respect will
go by the board. This will appear but a distant and unrealizable Utopia
to many who read this; nevertheless it will happen; all changes seem
incredible from the distance, but when they crystallize themselves in
fact nothing appears more natural or suitable. Every prophecy since the
commencement of history has been scouted in its first inception, but
when in time it has fulfilled itself it is seen to be the very thing
awaited, natural and obvious, and a direct result of the past sequence of
events.
Marriage and the Labor Market
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 10)
Recent investigations of the after lives of college women and of their
sisters who have not been to college have shown us that only about
one-half of the daughters of men of the professional business classes
who do not inherit independent fortunes can look forward to marriage.
Statistics seem to prove that only fifty per cent. of the women of these
classes marry. What are the other fifty per cent. to do except work or
starve? Most women of independent means marry because their inherited
fortunes enable them to contribute to the support of the family. Women of
the working classes marry because they too, can help by their labor to
support the family. It is only the dowerless women who are prevented by
social usage from engaging in paid work outside the home, or in manual
labor inside the home, after marriage, who remain unmarried. All other
women are married and at work.
Is it well for the great middle classes of our civilized nations that is,
for the classes that are not very poor or very rich, to contain these
ever increasing number of celibate men and women? To such a question
there can be only one reply. If it is ill, as we all admit, why do we
not encourage the women of these middle classes to work and marry like
the women of the poorer classes who are practically all married? Why in
England and Germany and the United States are there these thousands upon
thousands of unmarried women teachers, a celibate class like the monks
and nuns of the Middle Ages, and like them an ever present menace to the
welfare of the state? Why in Italy, on the other hand, are so many of the
women public school teachers married? Because in Germany and England and
the United States women teachers lose their positions when they marry,
and marry and starve they cannot. Because in Italy women teachers are
allowed to marry and teach. Is it inconceivable that the state of the
future in which women as well as men will vote will deprive women of
bread because they wish to marry?
Marriage Laws in 1850
By Clarina Howard Nichols
(From speech at Woman’s Suffrage Convention in 1852. Quoted from “Life of
Susan B. Anthony.”)
If a wife is compelled to get a divorce on account of the infidelity
of the husband, she forfeits all right to the property which they have
earned together, while the husband, who is the offender still remains the
sole possession and control of the estate. She, the innocent party, goes
out childless and portionless by decree of law, and he, the criminal,
retains the home and children by favor of the same law. A drunkard takes
his wife’s clothing to pay his rum bills, and the court declares that the
action is legal because the wife belongs to the husband.
A Preventive of Divorce
By Margaret O. B. Wilkinson
(From “Parents and Their Problems.”)
(See page 173)
And here we come to the most potent of all causes of divorce—the
conventionally enforced idleness of many married women—parasitism, Mrs.
Schreiner calls it—and the overwork of many of our men.... The rush of
our present life comes to bear most heavily on our most chivalrous. It
wears them out physically and mentally and discourages them spiritually
before they are fifty years of age. It gives them only time enough to
nourish a vague doubt of the womanhood that is content to fatten their
toil, instead of laboring staunchly with them as healthy women should
do. They find their usefulness limited, their powers exhausted, and
wonder why. And then, sometimes in utter weariness they throw off the
yoke and try to begin again. But the women are not always wholly to
blame for this condition. Sometimes with a perfectly unreasoning “I can
support a wife” pride, a man will insist that a woman give up once and
forever the only work in which she takes an interest, and leaves her a
choice between idleness and housework in his home (which always, with or
without fitness, a man will permit a woman to do)! But if a woman should
say to her husband before, or soon after marriage, “John, it does not
please me that you should be a lawyer—you must become a stock broker,” or
“James, when you marry me you must give up the art you love and become a
carpenter,” would we not be quick to decry her injustice? Yet there are
men who still say to their wives, “The work you love you must give up.
You may do the work I provide or none at all.”
Of course, motherhood brings to women certain limitations, but the thing
we do not recognize is that these limitations are temporary. And, if,
in the ages past, women were able to combine with motherhood the most
arduous physical labors, it seems probable, that, in the present and
future when the demands of maternity are less rigorous, women should be
able, with gain to the race, to enter new fields of labor and accomplish
laudable results.
Surely there is no greater safeguard for man and woman than the work in
which mind and body can delight.
Overheard in the Marriage Congress
By Adella M. Parker
(From the Suffrage Edition of the “Daily News,” Tacoma, Wash.)
Once upon a time all the men in the world gathered together to make
the laws of marriage. And the women, learning of this, gathered also,
protesting and saying:
“A woman is one of the parties to every contract of marriage. Why do we
also not make the laws of marriage?”
“Woman’s place is at home,” said the men.
“But,” said the women, “the marriage agreement is the very basis of the
home.”
“Yes,” said the men, “but woman’s place is at home. It is not her place
to create the conditions that make the home.”
“For how long is the marriage contract?” asked the women.
“Forever,” said the men. Then the women said:
“Suppose we should insist upon helping to make the contracts we enter
into?”
“It wouldn’t be lawful,” said the men.
“Who makes the laws?” said the women.
“We do,” said the men.
“And do the men make the laws concerning the rights of children?” asked a
woman with a babe in her arms, and another at her heels.
“Oh yes,” said the men.
“And the laws concerning a woman’s rights with respect to her own child?”
“Yes,” said the men, “the women bear the children, but the men determine
their legal control.”
“Can the marriage contract ever be broken?” asked the bravest one of the
women.
“No,” said the men, “it can’t be broken except upon facts that can’t be
proved.”
“Do the men keep the marriage vows?” softly asked a woman ’way at the
rear.
“Hush,” said a portly landlord who owned a “restricted district;” “no
respectable woman would ask such a question.” Then a thoughtful woman
earnestly asked:
“Will there not be more murders, and more suicides and more insanity if
the women have not part in settling the terms of marriage?”
But the Lombrosos and the Allen McLane Hamiltons and all the other
criminologists and insanity experts paid no heed to this question.
Finally the women said:
“But suppose we don’t enter into these contracts that you make?”
“Oh, but you will,” said the men.
And they did. But some of the women got even.
The Cry of Man to Woman
By C. Gasquoine Hartley
(From “The Truth About Woman.”)
The cry of man to woman under the patriarchal system has been, and still
for the most part is, “Your value in our eyes is your sexuality; for your
work we care not.” But mark this! The penalty of this false adjustment
has fallen upon men. For women, in their turn, have come to value men
first in their capacity as providers for them, caring as little for man’s
sex value as men for women’s work-value. From the moment when women had
to place the economic considerations in love first, her faculties of
discrimination were no more of service for the selection of the fittest
man. Here we may find the explanation of the kind of men girls have been
willing to marry—old men, the unfit fathers, the diseased.... And it is
the race that has suffered.
When Love Went By
By Theodosia Garrison
(In “The Woman’s Home Companion.”)
When Love went by I scarcely bent
My eyes to see the way he went.
Life had so many joys to show,
What time I had to watch him go,
Or bid him in, whom folly sent.
But when the day was well nigh spent,
From out the casement long I leant,
Ah, would I had been watching so
When Love went by!
Gray day with dismal nights are blent,
Lonely and sad and discontent;
I would his feet had been more slow.
Oh, heart of mine, how could we know
Or realize what passing meant
When Love went by?
The Flirt
By Amelia Josephine Burr
(From “The Century Magazine.”)
Beautiful Boy, lend me your youth to play with;
My heart is old.
Lend me your fire to make my twilight gay with,
To warm my cold;
Prove that the power my look has not forsaken,
That at my will
My touch can quicken pulses and awaken
Man’s passion still.
The moment that I ask do not begrudge me.
I shall not stay.
I shall have gone, e’er you have time to judge me,
My empty way.
I am not worth remembrance, little brother,
Even to damn.
One kiss—O God! if I were only other
Than what I am!
I Can Go to Love Again
By Margaret Widdemer
(From “The Century Magazine.”)
Now that you are gone, loving hands, loving lips,
Now I can go back to love,
I can free my soul, that was kissed to eclipse,
I can fling my thoughts above.
I can run and stand in the wind, on the hill,
Now that I am lone and free,
Whistle through the dusk and the cleansing chill,
All my red-winged dreams to me.
I had dreamed of love like a wind, like a flame,
I had watched for love, a star;
That was never love that you brought when you came....
Silver cord and golden bar!
I was swathed with love like a veil, like a cloak;
I was bound with love a shroud,
All my red-winged dreams flew afar when you spoke....
Dreams I dared not call aloud.
They are waiting still in the hush, in the light,
Morning wind and leaves and dew,
Whisper of the grass, of the waves, of the night,
Things I gave away for you.
I can speed my soul to its old wonderlands,
Free my wild heart’s wings from chain,
Now that you are gone, loving lips, loving hands,
I can go to love again.
Marriage the Sole Means of Maintenance
By Josephine Butler
(English. Editor of “Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture,” published in
1869. From the Introduction.)
What dignity can there be in the attitude of women in general, and toward
men, in particular, when marriage is held (and often necessarily so,
being the sole means of maintenance) to be the one end of a woman’s life,
when it is degraded to the level of a feminine profession, when those
who are soliciting a place in this profession resemble those flaccid
Brazilian creepers which cannot exist without support, and which sprawl
out their limp tendrils in every direction to find something—no matter
what—to hang upon; when the insipidity or the material necessities of so
many women’s lives make them ready to accept almost any man who may offer
himself? There has been a pretense of admiring this pretty helplessness
of women. But let me explain that I am not deprecating the condition of
dependence in which God has placed every human being, man or woman,—the
sweet interchange of services, the give and take of true affection, the
mutual support and aid of friends or lovers, who have each something to
give and to receive. That is a wholly different thing from the abject
dependence of one entire class of persons on another and a stronger
class. In the present case such a dependence is liable to peculiar
dangers by its complication with sexual emotions and motives, and with
relations which ought, in an advanced and Christian community, to rest
upon a free and deliberate choice,—a decision of the judgment and of the
heart, and into which the admission of a necessity, moral or material,
introduces a degrading element.... Cordelia ... declared, “Love is not
love when it is mingled with respects that stand aloof from the entire
point.” Truly, the present condition of society ... leaves little room
for the heart’s choice.
The Confidante
By Nora Elizabeth Barnhart
(In “The Independent.”)
I let him in and shut the door,
And when the key was turned,
There leapt a look into his face—
A look I had not learned!
Within the four walls of my heart
He sudden stalked a lord,
Possessed of all he did survey,
To hold by might of sword!
Ah! Then how gray and small the room
That I had deemed so fair!
How paltry were its furnishings,
Its wealth of book and chair!
The wide-flung windows seemed to shrink,
That long my stars had framed!
The stretch of daisy fields and hills
Lay startled and ashamed!
And all my little world was his,
Which once had stretched so wide!
He holds the key upon his palm,
And jingles it with pride!
Mirandy on the Monotony of Domesticity
By Dorothy Dix
(Foremost among American humorous writers. In “Good Housekeeping.”)
Dere ain’t nothin’ dull in bein’ married, and dere ain’t no sameness
’bout havin’, a husband which I reckon is de main reason dat most of
us wants one. Hits de ole maids an’ de ole bachelors what ain’t got
nobody to boss ’em an’ dispute ’em, an’ rile ’em, an’ fight wid ’em, dat
gets dull an’ lonesome lak. Not married folks.... Life in one of dese
ole bachelor clubs, or spinsters’ retreats makes me think of my batter
puddin’s. Hit sets well on a weak stomach, but hit aint got no flavor to
hit. Matrimony, hits lak one of de fruit cakes what I bakes at Christmas.
Hits full of ginger an’ spice, an’ plums, an’ raisins, an’ hits mighty
apt to give dem a night mare what partakes of hit, but hit sho has got
taste to hit.
Marriage Not an Assurance of Support
By Alice Henry
(From “The Trade Union Woman.”[11])
It often happens that marriage in course of time proves to be anything
but an assurance of support. Early widowed, the young mother herself may
have to earn her children’s bread. Or the husband may become crippled, or
an invalid, or he may turn out a drunkard or spendthrift. In any of these
circumstances, the responsibility and burden of supporting the family
usually falls upon the wife. Is it strange that the group so often drifts
into undeserved pauperism, sickness and misery, perhaps later on even
into those depths of social maladjustment that bring about crime?
[11] Henry Holt Publishing Co.
The Price of Love
By Mary Austin
(From “Love and the Soul Maker.”[12])
“But love,” Valda insisted, ... “should be free.”
“If it is, Nature didn’t make it so. Automatically the end of loving ties
up with it those who love and the unborn.
“No sooner do we begin upon it than we enter upon certainties of
effecting the happiness of the one who loves with us, and the potential
third. It is so little free, that we can neither go out of it nor into
it on the mere invitation, nor abate by saying so one of the widening
circles of its disaster. Whether for better or worse, love is irrevocably
tied to its consequences.”
By Mme. de Girardin
It is not easy to be a widow; one must resume all the modesty of girlhood
without being allowed even to feign ignorance.
By Comtesse d’ Houdetot
I have seen more than one woman drown her honor in the clear water of
diamonds.
By De Maintenon
Before marriage woman is a queen; after marriage, a subject.
By de l’Enclos
The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more
frequently of her experience.
By Anne Morton Barnard
A prison, plus “love”, is tyranny with its crown carefully hidden.
Mrs. W. K. Clifford
Why should man, who is strong, always get the best of it, and be forgiven
so much; and woman who is weak, get the worst, and be forgiven so little?
By George Eliot
The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till
she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
By Marguerite de Valois
There are few husbands whom the wife cannot win in the long run by
patience and love, unless they are harder than the rocks which the soft
water penetrates in time.
By Countess Natahlie
Love is the association of two beings for the benefit of one.
George Eliot
We look at one little woman’s face we love, as we look at the face of our
mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our yearnings.
By “Ouida”
What is it that love does to woman? Without it, she only sleeps; with it
alone, she lives.
By Mme. de Lambert
It is only the coward who reproaches as a dishonor the love a woman has
cherished for him.
By Amelia E. Barr
The truth is, women are lost because they do not deliberate.
By Mrs. Alec Tweedie
(See page 126)
There will be more marriages, and happier marriages, when women are on an
equal footing with men in education and income.
By Mme. du Bocage
The coquette comprises her reputation, and sometimes even her virtue;
the prude, on the contrary, often sacrifices her honor in private, and
preserves it in public.
By George Sand
A woman cannot guarantee her heart, even though her husband be the
greatest and most perfect of men.
By Mme. de Rieux
In all ill-mated marriages, the fault is less the woman’s than the man’s,
as the choice depended on her the least.
By Marguerite de Valois
There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than
an angel will suit them; hence it comes that they often meet with devils.
By Mme. Bachi
Men bestow compliments only on women who deserve none.
By Mme. de Rieux
Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty, and women their
happiness.
By Mme. de Flahaut
Manners, morals, customs change; the passions are always the same.
By Mme. Necker
The quarrels of lovers are like summer showers that leave the country
more verdant and beautiful.
By Mme. Reyband
To continue love in marriage is a science.
By Anna Jameson
How many women since the days of Echo and Narcissus have pined themselves
into air for the love of men who were in love only with themselves.
By Amelia E. Barr
Cruelly tempted, perplexed and bewildered, when passion is stronger than
reason, women do not think of consequences, but go blindfolded, headlong
to their ruin.
By Louise Colet
Better to have never loved, than to have loved unhappily, or to have
_half_ loved.
By De Pompadour
Love is the passion of great souls; it makes them merit glory, when it
does not turn their heads.
Mme. de Stael
I am glad I am not a man, as I should be obliged to marry a woman.
By Mme. de Motteville
A woman can be held by no stronger tie than the knowledge that she is
loved.
[12] Doubleday, Page and Co.
BOOK VI
Woman and Labor
WOMAN AND LABOR
The Housewife
By Angela Morgan
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
It is she who makes ready the army when day is at hand,
When the bugle of labor is blowing its mighty command,
Oh, fierce are the feet of the workers who answer the call,
But swifter and fiercer the toil that hath weaponed them all.
Do we boast of their brawn? Do we trumpet the cause of the fighter
Who marches at rise of sun?
Lo! Look at the woman! The heat of her labor is whiter;
Ere the work of the world has begun
She is up, and her banners are flying from yard and from alley,
The roofs are a-flutter with eloquent streamers of snow.
Oh, not for a moment her passionate fingers may dally,
Till the soldier is shod and is fed and made ready to go.
Oh, weary the heart of the host when the battle is done,
But the woman is laboring still with the set of the sun!
Does the worker return? She is able and eager with bread.
Does he faint? There is cheer for his soul and delight for his head.
Do we trumpet our gain? Do we sing of our land and its thunder
Of factory, query and mill?
Lo! look to the woman! Her love, her love, it hath compassed the wonder,
And the army swings on at her will.
For hers is the whip, and her spur is the fighter’s salvation—
In the strength of Jehovah she comes.
Her faith is the sword and her thrift is the shield of the nation,
And her courage is greater than drums.
March, march, march, to your victories, O man!
Fight, fight, fight, as you’ve fought since time began.
For she who hath wed you, and fed you and sped you,
Fulfilling Eternity’s laws,
Is she who hath soldiered the Cause!
Woman in the Home
By Carrie W. Allen
(In “The Progressive Woman.”)
It is generally conceded that woman lives in a state of subordination to
man, and nowhere is this more apparent than in that sphere which is said
to be distinctly her own, the home.
The woman in the home renders service which the male wage-earner could
not buy. She is the family economist. She mends and makes the garments,
buys the food and clothing, and by her intelligence and thrift maintains
the head of the house in a state of physical efficiency which enables him
to go out and sell his labor power. The service she renders is priceless.
But, because she brings in no actual money, she is considered an economic
dependent, and treated as a subordinate because of this dependence.
The lot of this woman is desolately pitiable, much worse in many cases
than that of the woman who has gone out into industry.
Morality and Woman in Industry
By Clara E. Laughlin
(See page 68)
There seemed to be a widely prevailing idea that modern industrial
conditions, which take women and girls out of the home are responsible
for a great increase in criminality and immorality. The Government
investigation shows that exactly the reverse is true. The traditional
pursuits of women—housework, sewing, laundry work, nursing, and the
keeping of boarders furnish more than four-fifths of all the feminine
criminals, compared with only about one-tenth furnished by all the
newer pursuits, including mills, factories, shops, offices, and the
professions; and the number of criminals who have never been wage-earners
in any pursuit, but who come directly from their own homes into the
courts and penal institutions, is more than twice as large as that coming
from all the newer industrial pursuits together.
Wasted Energy and Talent
By M. Olivia (Mrs. Russell) Sage
(American contemporary. Millionaire philanthropist. From “The North
American Review.”)
There is an immense amount of feminine talent and energy wasted in the
world every day. This is not due to the indifference or the laziness of
woman, for she is eager to do, to accomplish, to go out into the field of
life and achieve for herself and her kind. But she simply does not know
how. One of the most important movements of the day, therefore, is the
reawakening of woman, the building her up on a new basis of self-help and
work for others. That movement will set loose an amount of talent that
will revolutionize our social life.
Sisterhood in Labor
By Ida C. Hultin
(American contemporary. From speech delivered at the 80th anniversary of
Susan B. Anthony.)
Women have failed to see that the work of every woman touched that of
every other woman. The woman who works with the hand helps her who works
with the brain. Today we know there could be no choice of work until
there was freedom of choice to work.
Women Are Going to Work
By Elsie Clews Parsons
(From “Penalizing Marriage.” In “The Independent.”)
Women are going to work, and they are not going to limit their work to
house service. Let us cease to attempt to make marriage and childbearing
a check upon their work, thereby strengthening their tendencies toward
celibacy and race suicide.... Let us rather adjust work and marriage and
childbearing to a minimum of incompatibility by lifting inherited taboos
on education in sex facts.
Development Through Choice of Work
By Florence Kiper
(In “The Forum.”)
More and more must we demand that woman be freed from unmeaning
drudgery—and from the enervating influences of support in return for sex,
in marriage or out of it. Only by self-assertion and by self-development
through the work which she may elect, will woman come into her own.
Woman’s Place
By Gertrude Breslau Fuller
(See page 36)
A woman’s place is like a man’s place. It is where her work is, wherever
she can do the most good; wherever she serves herself best without
invading any one else.
Woman’s Demand for Work
By Josephine Butler
(From “Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture.”)
(See page 157)
The demand of the women of the humbler classes for bread may be more
pressing, but it is not more sincere than that of the women of the
leisure classes for work. And these two demands coming together, it seems
to me, point to an end so plainly to be discerned, that I marvel that
any should remain blind to it. The latter demand is the attestation of
the collective human conscience that God does not permit any to live
as cumberers of the earth, and that the very conditions of their moral
existence is, that efforts and pains taken by them should answer to some
part of the needs of the community.
The Left-Over Women
By Ethel Maud Colquhoun
(English contemporary. Author “The Vocation of Women,” “Two on Their
Travels,” etc. From “The Vocation of Women.”)
It is practically certain that every discussion on the vocation of woman,
whether among feminists or their opponents, will ultimately lead to the
following problem: woman was obviously intended by nature to become a
mother; modern social requirements make it obligatory that she should
be legally married before doing so; there are not enough husbands to go
round. What do you propose to do with the women who are left over?
Sex-Parasitism
By Olive Schreiner
(From “Woman and Labor.”)
The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different.
The choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labor slip from
her, is not generally or often at the present day the choice between
finding new fields of labor, or death; but one far more serious in its
ultimate reaction on humanity as a whole—it is the choice between finding
new forms of labor or sinking slowly into a condition of more or less
complete and passive _sex parasitism_!
Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures
a certain stage of material civilization has been reached, a curious
tendency has manifested itself for the human female to become more or
less parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms of active
conscious social labor, and to reduce her, like the field-bug, to the
passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the result of this
parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and intelligence of
the female, followed by a longer or shorter period by that of her male
descendants and her entire society.
The Changed Conditions of Tomorrow
By Margaret O. B. Wilkinson
(From “Parents and Their Problems.”)
We must accustom ourselves to another new idea that as marriage is no
longer a duty, for all women, so it is no longer a trade or profession,
requiring all the time and labor of all married women. Some confusion has
arisen on this point because certain labors have been associated with
marriage in the popular mind. But these labors may, in the near future,
come to be considered as trades in themselves, not inseparably connected
with marriage, and the wives of the days to come may be found performing
diverse tasks. For we know that in our own times women may be the best
of wives and good mothers, but with small knowledge of spinning, weaving,
basket-making, pottery-making, agriculture or even baking, although
all of these trades used to be inseparably connected with the lives of
married women. And tomorrow, owing to changed conditions, the woman
doctor or lawyer may seem to be as desirable of a mate as the cook or
seamstress today. So much is possible!
Woman’s Work in Woman’s Way
By Lida Parce
(American contemporary. Educator. Author of “Economic Determinism,” etc.
From “The Progressive Woman.”)
If the economic interest is the important one, then woman’s work has
always been the important work. The loom and the hand mill were strictly
feminine implements, so long as their product was used only to supply
the wants of the people. Only when the products of the loom and the mill
became useful in competition did man take them up; and then for purposes
of exploitation. For thousands of years man has devastated the earth and
drenched it in blood to further that exploitation. Now he is beginning to
find out that, after all, the only safe and proper use that can be made
of goods is in supplying the needs of the people. Man has not yet begun
to learn humility, but he will learn it.
Isn’t it time for women to begin to defend their work, and their way of
doing it? And to make a sober and critical estimate of the part that man
has played in history? I think that women may well take pride in doing
their work in a woman’s way.
Women Workers in New England
By Annie Marion MacLean, Ph. D.
(Professor of Sociology in Adelphi College. From “Wage-Earning Women.”)
It was in New England that women and girls first went out in large
numbers to work with their husbands and fathers and brothers in the
mill. They followed the industries from the fireside to the factory. It
was a natural movement stimulated in many cases by necessity. At that
time public opinion frowned on the idle girl, and work was considered a
crowning virtue; so the factory girl was not commiserated but commended.
Things have changed in the last century, and now we find most people of
humanitarian instincts looking with regret at the spectacle of young
girls marching to the mills. The procession is a long one in the old New
England towns, and it is growing longer with the years....
When Charles Dickens came to America, it was to Lowell he went to see
the cotton-mills in operation, and it was of those mills he wrote his
glowing picture of factory life for women. “They look like human beings,”
he said, “not like beasts of burden.” If he were to come to us to-day
to see the cotton workers, he would, in all probability, be taken to
Fall River first and asked to behold the product of the evolution of two
generations. He would see no beautiful window boxes, no smiling girls
making poetry as they worked, or moving about with songs on their lips.
Life is grim in the Fall River mills, and the women come perilously near
having the mien of “beasts of burden.” The semi-idyllic conditions of the
early New England cotton-mill have given way to a system brutalized by
greed and the exigencies of modern industry.
Women Who Sit at Ease
By Grace Fallow Norton
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
I know a lady in this land
Who carries a Chinese fan in her hand;
But in her heart does she carry a thought
Of her Chinese sister who carefully wrought
The dainty, delicate, silken toy
For her to admire and enjoy?
To shield my lady from chilling draught
Is a Japanese screen of curious craft.
She takes the comfort its presence gives,
But in her heart not one thought lives,
Not even one little thought—ahem!—
For her Japanese sister from over the sea!
One-Fifth of the Women Population at Work
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 10)
Unheralded, with no blare of trumpets, reluctantly emerging into the
light, are millions of women wage-earners thronging every trade and
profession, multiplying themselves beyond all calculation from census
to census in every country of the civilized world. Even in the United
States where fewer women are at work than in any other country about five
millions of women, or about one-fifth of all women of working age, are
supporting themselves outside the home. It is because this industrial
revolution has taken place in our own lifetime that we do not as yet
realize it. Women of my own age, however, need only refer to their own
experience. I can remember when no women at all were employed in business
offices, when the business streets of New York and Philadelphia and
Baltimore were practically deserted by women. Now all the great office
buildings are like rabbit hutches swarming with women typewriters, women
bookkeepers, women secretaries, and business women of every sort, kind
and description. Already everyone who studies the subject is compelled
to recognize that whether we wish it or not the economic independence
of women is taking place before our eyes. Men of the poorer classes
have long been unable to care for their families without the assistance
of women, and men of the classes which formerly supported their wives
and daughters in comfort are now unable to do so and are becoming
increasingly unwilling to marry and assume responsibility which they
cannot meet....
Woman’s Awakening
By Josephine Conger
(Editor “Home Life Magazine.” Formerly editor and publisher “The
Progressive Woman.”)
She wrought, and the world wore on its back the cloth her nimble fingers
wove.
And as she wrought her mind lay blank beneath the thick-coiled tresses
of her hair,
For man had relegated to her that one task of weaving.
And while her mind lay blank, the rulers of the earth reached forth,
and (clad in cloth she wove)
Built for them cities, kingdoms, empires, laws,
And ruled within them to their hearts’ content.
And Woman dreamed and wove, and dreamed and wove,
Monotonously for ages dreamed and wove, apparently content.
Then took the rulers of the earth from out her hands her weaving;
Left the Woman empty-handed in her home;
Gave her universal task to vast machines, to mills, to factories;
Took the dignity of social service from her hearth;
No longer in her handiwork was clad the world.
Then Woman sat in brooding silence, or she served,
Growing dark-browed in rebellion, the wheels that spun the cloth she
erstwhile wove.
Served machines in mills and factories.
Then saw her children serve; the girl-child, tender, soft;
And the small boy who should have played in freedom with his kind.
And when she saw herself who once had clothed the world in dignity
Turned slave to whirring wheels, to harsh, unsympathetic steel and iron,
When the soft children of her mortal agony were murdered inch by inch
and year by year
Before her eyes—when the Woman, bereft, defeated,
Or brooding at her task saw this,
No longer lay her mind asleep. No longer dreamed she
As when she sat beside her ancient tasks at home,
Her children playing near her in the sun.
Awaked the Woman then in every land where slavery to the harsh machine
had come.
Awaked and brushed the cobwebs of tradition from her brain.
Spoke of the unfairness of the rulers in the busy marts.
Asked for place beside them in the making of the laws;
In their execution. Asked for justice for the race,
Including women and the children which they bear.
Awaked the Woman when the pressure of the system
Grew too heavy on her heart, and cried: “We must
Abolish this, O Brother Man;
Together you and I must build a better day, a universal humanhood,
a superworld.”
Awaked the Woman, and the passion of her cry envelopes all the world
today,
As once enveloped human kind the cloth she wove.
The Simple Right to Live
By Margaret Dreier Robins
(American contemporary. Writer and speaker on labor problems, especially
those concerning the woman and child. President of the National Women’s
Trade Union League. In “Life and Labor.”)
Why must young girls pay the price of their youth and forfeit their right
of motherhood at the machine—why must thousands of men and women endure
hardships and sufferings to secure the primitive demands of a living wage
and the right to self-government, to which we as a people stand pledged?
What power makes necessary these terrible struggles for the simple right
to live?
Woman’s Wages
By Emmaline Pethick-Lawrence
(Editor of “Votes for Women,” London. In “Life and Labor.”)
Woman’s industrial life is inseparable from her civic and social status.
The only way to earn equal pay for equal work is to win equal political
rights, equal influence with the legislature.
Song of the Working Girls
By Harriet Monroe
(American contemporary. Editor “Poetry.” In “Life and Labor.”[13])
Sisters of the whirling wheel
Are we all day;
Builders of a house of steel
On Time’s highway,
Giving bravely, hour by hour,
All we have of youth and power.
Oh, lords of the house we rear,
Hear us, hear!
Green are the fields in May-time,
Grant us our love-time, play-time.
Short is the day and dear.
Fingers fly and engines boom
The livelong day,
Through far fields when roses bloom
The soft winds play.
Vast the work is—sound and true
Be the tower we build for you!
Oh, lords of the house we rear,
Hear us, hear!
Green are the fields in May-time,
Grant us our love-time, play-time.
Short is the day and dear.
Ours the future is—we face
The whole world’s needs.
In our hearts the coming race
For life’s joy pleads.
As you make us—slaves or free—
Oh, lords of the house we rear,
Hear us, hear!
Green are the fields in May-time,
Grant us our love-time, play-time.
Short is the day and dear.
[13] Copyright by the “Poetry Publishing Co.”
Economics and the Home
By Ethel Maud Colquhoun
(See page 172)
If woman is to be normally the economic partner of man in the home, it is
a question of first importance that she should be his economic equal.
How Is She Housed?
By Mary Higgs
(From her book, “Practical Housekeeping.”)
(See page 65)
Upon how the woman worker of today is housed, depends, very largely, the
efficiency and productiveness of her work. But, more impelling still,
upon how she is housed depends the efficiency and productiveness of the
future generation. For we must not forget that we have many married and
widowed industrial women, and that large numbers of our working girls
will rear the children of the coming race.
Orchards
By Theodosia Garrison
(In “Everybody’s Magazine.”)
Orchards in the Spring-time! Oh, I think and think of them—
Filmy mists of pink and white above the fresh, young green,
Lifting and drifting—how my eyes could drink of them!
_I’m staring at a dirty wall behind a big machine._
Orchards in the Spring-time! Deep in soft, cool shadows,
Moving all together when the west wind blows
Fragrance upon fragrance over road and meadows—
_I’m smelling heat and oil and sweat, and thick, black clothes._
Orchards in the Spring-time! The clean white and pink of them
Lifting and drifting with all the winds that blow.
Orchards in the Spring-time! Thank God I can think of them!
_You’re not docked for thinking—if the foreman doesn’t know._
The Exploitation of Workingwomen
By Kate Richards O’Hare
(See page 119)
Woman labor in itself is not bad; it is good. It is woman wage-labor
which is the curse. It is not labor, but exploited labor that is a menace
to the womankind of the race.
Success Through Work
By Madame Nordica
(Lillian Norton)
If you work five minutes, you succeed five minutes’ worth; if you work
five hours, you succeed five hours’ worth. Plenty have natural voices
equal to mine, _but I have worked_.
Woman and Social Betterment
By Ellen H. Richards, A. M.
(Author of “The Cost of Living.” From Introduction to “The Woman Who
Spends.”)
Social economics is preeminently a woman’s problem, especially if
Münsterberg’s assertion is widely true that in America it is the women
who have the leisure and the cultivation to direct the development
of social conditions. With this opportunity comes corresponding
responsibilities.
Woman and the Dinner Pail
By Eva Gore-Booth
(From “The Case for Woman Suffrage.”)
The rich may say that women should stay at home and cook the dinner; the
poor know that if women did stay at home there would often be no dinner
to cook.
The Lady
By Emily James Putnam
(American contemporary. The following is from her book, whose title is
self-explanatory—“The Lady.”)
The typical lady everywhere tends to the feudal habit of mind.... She can
renounce the world more easily than she can identify herself with it.
A lady may become a nun in the strictest and poorest order without the
moral convulsion, the destruction of false ideas, the birth of character
that would be the preliminary steps toward becoming an effective
stenographer.
Unequal Distribution of Labor
By Honnor Morton
Obviously, if all women did their share of the world’s work, there would
be no need for the seamstress to slave sixteen hours at a stretch; there
would be no starvation among the poor, and no hysteria among the rich.
The Working Woman Speaks
By Emily Taplin Royle
(In “The Woman’s Journal.” Mrs. John Martin, speaking at an anti-suffrage
meeting in New York, says that women normally need a great deal of
solitude, quiet and sleep and they suffer physically, mentally and
morally, if they do not get it.)
“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”
I stand by the roaring loom
And watch the growth of the silken threads,
That glow in the bare, gray room.
I hurry through darkling streets
In the chill of the wintry day,
That women who talk from their cloistered ease
May rustle in colors gay.
“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”
In the dripping, humid air
I whiten the flimsy laces
That women may be fair;
I clothe my orphan children
With the price my bare hands yield,
That the idle women may walk as fair
As the lilies of the field.
“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”
Is it given to me today,
When I march in the ranks with those who fight
To keep the wolf at bay?
Do my daughters rest in peace
Where a myriad needles yield
Their bitter bread or a sheet of flame,
And the rest of the Potter’s Field?
“Solitude, quiet and sleep!”
To factory, shop and mill,
The feet of the working women go,
While their leisure sisters still
Boast of the home they have never earned,
Of the ease we can never share,
And bid us go back to the depths again,
Like Lazarus to his lair.
Bondwomen
By Dora Marsden
(English contemporary. Editor “The Freewoman,” a brilliant, radical
feminist journal. In “The Freewoman.”)
Feminists would hold that it is neither desirable nor necessary for
women, when they become mothers, to leave their chosen, money-earning
work for any length of time. The fact that they do so, largely rests on
tradition which has to be worn down. In wearing it down vast changes must
take place in social conditions in housing, nursing, kindergarten—in the
industrial world and in the professional.
By Belle Lindner Israels
(From Introduction to “The Upholstered Cage.”)
We know now that the girl without occupation is the girl without mental
growth.
BOOK VII
Education
EDUCATION
Soul Murder in the Schools
By Ellen Key
(From “The Century of the Child.”[14])
(See page 143)
Any one who would attempt the task of felling a virgin forest with a
penknife would probably feel the same paralysis of despair that the
reformer feels when confronted with existing school systems. The latter
finds an impassable thicket of folly, prejudice, and mistakes, where
each point is open to attack, but where each attack fails because of the
inadequate means at the reformer’s command.
[14] J. G. Stokes Co., Pub.
The Old and New Schools
By Florence Elberta Barns
(From “Social Aspects of Industrial Education” in “Education”—a monthly
school magazine.)
The master of the old school looked askance at the master of the new
school, and the following conversation is recorded:
“Young man, in my day, in your day, in the present day, and in the
future day, the three R’s were, are, and will be, the necessary and most
efficient training for our school children. Can you deny the evidence of
generations trained in this way?”
“Nay, my master, I do not dispute that the three R’s are a necessity to
the mental development of the race, but my contention is that besides
this literary culture, and theoretical knowledge, a training for the
hands, and practical ability should be fostered, and included within the
curriculum of our schools. Can you deny the evidence of the present day,
testifying to the need of efficient training in all branches of industry
and business, as well as in the professions and arts? How, dear sir,
are we to meet this pressing need, and prepare our people for a life of
useful labor, if we do not begin to train them from the primary class?”
“And so, sir, you would join the ranks of those who are commercializing
all the fine arts, who are forgetting all else but money in capital
letters?”
“You do not understand, my master. Under the great economic pressure
of the times, waste-labor must be avoided, and training is the only
means of avoidance. Think of the mass of immigrants that flock to our
cities, to be amalgamated with our race. It is a laboring class, and
self-preservation demands that we provide suitable living and working
centers for it and its posterity. And our own people demand the same
consideration in view of the fact that the great majority, poor,
middle-class, and rich, are employed in some art, industrial or fine.
All fine arts, they, if we provide efficient training for skill and fine
workmanship.”
“I am grieved that one of my former pupils should so forget the ideals
of education. If you must, build schools for those who wish industrial
training, but keep our cultural schools undisturbed.”
“Ah, that would not be democratic, my master, and neither would it
be effective. Our idea is to develop both the brain and the hand—in
this way opening the door to the life work which appeals most to each
individual.”
And the master of the old school answered, “Well.”
In the above we find the prevailing controversy between the old and the
new, a controversy which must cease with the progression of thought, and
understanding of the times.
Essentials in Education
By Mary Snow
(Supervisor, Household Arts and Science, Board of Education, Chicago.
From “The Child in the City.”)
Certainly some essential is missing. Children are not dull about
significant truths. They wish to know how to read and to write and to
manipulate number processes. They have wholesome and often keen interest
in the movements and experiences of people and the great figures in
history; they work hard and cheerfully to know somewhat of the countries
of the earth. Musical expression satisfies and delights them. Art
entices them up to the point where they find that it misses practical
application, and then interest dies and with it expression. Then they
begin to reach after further reality with passionate earnestness.
They long to express themselves in tangible ways. They have a right
consciously to experience the sensations of knowing that they know and
knowing that they can do. If opportunity for “doing” has been opened
to them, they will have gained in strength of character through their
authoritative wills commanding their powers, and the purposive and
co-ordinate work of the motor phases of education will have furnished a
kind of test of progress, a mental verification of accomplishment that
can never come through any academic work. They have many measuring rods
in the evaluation of the finished task—the eye, the muscular tension,
judgment, comparison, trial. There is necessary integrity since no amount
of vanity will make the tangible result reveal anything but truth.
William James, with ever brilliant insight, said that manual training
did more for the moral strength of youth than any other subject in the
curriculum.
The Greatness of Froebel
By Marion Gertrude Haines
(In “Home Government.”)
No one before him so ably demonstrated the civic and spiritual wisdom
of Christ’s teachings as did Froebel, in discovering—not devising—the
ways and means of developing man into a self-governed being, obeying
the inner voice of conscience in the face of every temptation to which
flesh is heir, and becoming a voluntary, law-abiding citizen of both the
individual and the national home.
Mothers’ Library
By Elizabeth Cherrill Birney
(First chairman of literature in the National Congress of Mothers. From
“Parents and their Problems.”)
It seems a rather hard condition that though the years when a mother
feels most deeply her need for more knowledge of children she should
usually have least time for reading and study. This would not be so
disastrous if school and college curricula were not framed to embrace
even the slightest preparation for home life. That profession which
demands a knowledge of sanitation, dietetics, and chemistry of cooking,
careful and economic purchasing, artistic and hygienic furnishing, to
say nothing of the care of children, is surely of sufficient dignity to
deserve some preparation.... We can learn no science or art entirely
from books, but when good trails have been blazed by those who have gone
before us, it is foolish to attempt our own untried paths. Every mother
can hang a little book-shelf in her busiest corner, and put on it from
time to time a few books, which will be to her what his Blackstone is to
a lawyer, his Baedeker to a traveler.
The Aim and End of Education
By Lola Ridge
(Former organiser of the Modern School in New York. In “Everyman.”)
What do we imagine to be the end and aim of education? Most people will
say, the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of oneself, of
humanity, of life? If this was the ideal, as conceived by the builders of
the present system, it has not been attained; or perhaps the system, like
a Frankenstein creation, has grown beyond all intent of its sponsors,
exhibiting a diabolic and independent will....
Let us examine the effect of public school education upon the psychology
of the child; then we shall see if we are “wasting our energies.”
In the first place, no gardener would think of giving each plant the
same amount of air and sun, and the same quality of soil. Yet this is
exactly what you are doing to your children, and there are as many
different kinds of children as there are different kinds of flowers.
Why pay more attention to the cultivation of a vegetable than to the
development of a human being? Each child requires individual attention,
individual understanding, and individual mental food.
Standards Raised by Women Teachers
By Anne Bigoney Stewart
(In “The Educational Review.”)
It is due to the perseverance of the women in their poorly paid duty that
teaching is gradually emerging into a regular profession with a proper
stipend and respectable standing, and now when such is the result, we
have men crowding back into the profession grumblingly, complaining of
the poor pay, and throwing up their hands in “holy horror” at the “woman
peril.”
And after all, of what does “the woman peril” consist? That boys are
being feminized; that is, that boys are being trained to decenter
standards of living? That they do not so much drink, or smoke, or, we
hope, “sow wild oats,” that they do not so much regard these acts as
manly, or a necessary part of their upbringing? That war is not a regular
occupation; that peace is desirable and to be sought after?
“That abnormal families in which the mother’s influence is too long
continued and not sufficiently counteracted by masculine control are
notoriously productive of decadence and degeneracy.”
That is certainly a grave charge! “A mother’s influence”! that which has
been the theme of poets, artists, scholars, essayists, the clergy, for
centuries, “productive of decadence and degeneracy.”
It would appear that logically as the masculine mind may think, its logic
is not unassailable.
Educating Children
By Maria Montessori
(From speech delivered in California.)
What shall we say, then, when the question before us is that of educating
children?
We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the teacher, who, in the
ordinary school room, must pour certain cut and dried facts into the
heads of the scholars. In order to succeed in this barren path she finds
it necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and to force their
attention. Prizes and punishments are ever ready and efficient aids to
the master who must force into a given attitude of mind and body those
who are condemned to be his listeners.
The Mother’s Task
By Ida Tarbell
(See page 266)
(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”)
A woman never lived who did all she might have done to open the mind of
her child for its great adventure. It is an exhaustless task. The woman
who sees it knows she has need of all the education the college can
give, all the experience and culture she can gather. She knows that the
fuller her individual life, the broader her interests, the better for
the child. She should be a person in their eyes. The real service of the
“higher education,” the freedom to take part in whatever interests or
stimulates her—lies in the fact that it fits her intellectually to be a
companion worthy of a child.
A Plan for Improving Female Education
By Mrs. Emma Willard
(From a paper read by Mrs. Willard before the members of the New York
Legislature, in behalf of a girl’s seminary, in 1819. Reproduced in
“Woman and the Higher Education,” Distaff Series.)
The object of this address is to convince the public that a reform with
respect to female education is necessary; that it cannot be effected by
individual exertion, but that it requires the aid of the Legislature;
and, further, by showing the justice, the policy and the magnanimity
of such an undertaking, to persuade that body to endow a seminary for
females as the commencement of such reformation.
The idea of a college for males will naturally be associated with that of
a seminary, instituted and endowed by the public; and the absurdity of
sending ladies to college may, at first thought, strike every one to whom
this subject shall be proposed. I therefore hasten to observe that the
seminary here recommended will be as different from those appropriated to
the other sex as the female character and duties are from the male. The
business of the husbandman is not to waste his endeavors in seeking to
make his orchard attain the strength and majesty of his forest, but to
rear each to the perfection of its nature....
1. Females, by having their understandings cultivated, their reasoning
powers developed and strengthened, may be expected to act more from the
dictates of reason, and less from those of fashion and caprice.
2. With minds thus strengthened, they would be taught systems of morality
enforced by the sanctions of religion; and they might be expected to
acquire juster and more enlightened views of their duty, and stronger and
higher motives in its performance.
3. This plan of education offers all that can be done to preserve female
youth from a contempt of useful labor. The pupils would become accustomed
to it, in conjunction with the high objects of literature and the elegant
pursuits of the fine arts; and it is to be hoped that both from habit and
association they might in future life regard it as respectable.
To this it may be added that if housekeeping could be raised to a
regular art, and taught from philosophical principles, it would become
a higher and more interesting occupation; and ladies of fortune, like
wealthy agriculturists, might find that to regulate their business was an
agreeable employment.
4. The pupils might be expected to acquire a taste for moral and
intellectual pleasures which would buoy them above a passion for show and
parade, and which would make them seek to gratify the natural love of
superiority by endeavoring to excel others in intrinsic merit rather than
in the extrinsic frivolities of dress, furniture, and equipage.
By being enlightened in moral philosophy, and in that which teaches the
operation of the mind, females would be enabled to perceive the nature
and extent of that influence which they possess over their children,
and the obligation which this lays them under to watch the formation of
their characters with unceasing vigilance, to become their instructors,
to devise plans for their improvement, to weed out the vices of their
minds, and to implant and foster the virtues. And surely there is that
in the maternal bosom which, when its pleadings shall be aided by
education, will overcome the seductions of wealth and fashion, and will
lead the mother to seek her happiness in communing with her children, and
promoting their welfare, rather than in a heartless intercourse with the
votaries of fashion, especially when with an expanded mind she extends
her views to futurity, and sees her care to her offspring rewarded by
peace of conscience, the blessing of her family, the prosperity of her
country, and, finally, with everlasting pleasure to herself and them....
In calling on my patriotic countrymen to effect so noble an object,
the consideration of national glory should not be overlooked. Ages
have rolled away; barbarians have trodden the weaker sex beneath their
feet; tyrants have robbed us of the present light of heaven, and fain
would take its future. Nations calling themselves polite have made us
the fancied idols of a ridiculous worship, and we have repaid them with
ruin for their folly. But where is that wise and heroic country which
has considered that our rights are sacred, though we cannot defend
them? that, though a weaker, we are an essential part of the body
politic, whose corruption or improvement must affect the whole? and
which, having thus considered, has sought to give us by education that
rank in the scale of being to which our importance entitles us? History
shows not that country. It shows many whose legislatures have sought to
improve their various vegetable productions and their breeds of useful
brutes, but none whose public councils have made it an object of their
deliberations to improve the character of their women.
A Moral Crusade
By Elizabeth Blackwell
(One of the brilliant Blackwell family, to which progress in our country
owes so much. Henry Blackwell married Lucy Stone, and with her became
a pioneer advocate of woman suffrage. Elizabeth took up the study of
medicine, forcing the medical colleges to open their doors to women. From
her letters.)
In the summer of 1847, with my carefully hoarded earnings, I resolved to
seek an entrance into a medical school. Philadelphia was then considered
the chief seat of medical learning in America, so to Philadelphia I
went; taking passage in a sailing vessel from Charleston for the sake of
economy....
Applications were cautiously but persistently made to the four medical
colleges of Philadelphia for admission as a regular student. The
interviews with their various professors were by turns hopeful and
disappointing....
The fear of successful rivalry which at that time often existed in the
medical mind was expressed by the dean of one of the smaller schools, who
frankly replied to the application, “You cannot expect us to furnish
you with a stick to break our heads with;” so revolutionary seemed the
attempt of a woman to leave a subordinate position and seek to obtain
a complete medical education. A similarly mistaken notion of the rapid
practical success which would attend a lady doctor was shown later by one
of the professors of my medical college, who was desirous of entering
into partnership with me on condition of sharing profits over $5,000 on
my first year’s practice.
During those fruitless efforts my kindly Quaker adviser, whose private
lectures I attended, said to me: “Elizabeth, it is no use trying. Thee
cannot gain admission to these schools. Thee must go to Paris and don
masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge.” Curiously enough,
this suggestion of disguise made by good Dr. Warrington was also given
me by Dr. Pankhurst, the Professor of Surgery, in the largest college
in Philadelphia. He thoroughly approved of a woman’s gaining complete
medical knowledge; told me that although my public entrance into the
classes was out of question, yet if I would assume masculine attire and
enter the college he could entirely rely on two or three of his students
to whom he should communicate my disguise, who would watch the class and
give me timely notice to withdraw should my disguise be suspected.
But neither the advice to go to Paris nor the suggestion of disguise
tempted me for the moment. It was to my mind a moral crusade on which
I had entered, a course of justice and common sense, and it might be
pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to
accomplish its end.
Intellectual Women of Rome
By Lady Morgan
(See page 17)
Female amanuenses, or secretaries, or “writers out of books,” were by
no means unusual in Rome. Vespasian had a female amanuesis, Antonio,
whom he greatly esteemed and confided in. Even the Christian fathers
adopted this fashion; and Eusebius asserts that Origen had not only
young men, but young women to transcribe his books, which “they did with
peculiar neatness.” Among the accusations brought against the Roman
women of his own time by Juvenal, is that of their learning; he bitterly
attacks their presumption in studying Greek, their interlarding even
their most familiar conversations with its elegant idioms and phrases;
and, among their other crimes of acquirement, he further accuses them
of encroaching on the exclusive male prerogative of mind, by discussing
philosophical subjects, quoting favorite authors and scholiasts, their
_purism_ in affected exactness of grammar, and by their antiquarian
researches in language. On the word antiquarian, an ancient commentator
observes:—“Antiquaria, one that does refine or preserve ancient books
from corruption, one studious of the old poets and historians, one that
studies ancient coins, statues, and inscribed stones: lastly, such as use
obsolete and antiquated words. All which, though they might be counted
an overplus and curiosity in a woman, yet only the last is absolutely a
fault.”
The Power of Education
By “Ouida”
(See page 113)
That women should, however tardily, awaken to a desire for greater
intellectual light is of the utmost promise. Education cannot confer
genius, but it can do an infinite work in the refinement, the
strengthening, and the enlightening of the mind; in the banishment of
prejudice, and in the correction of illogical judgment. In view of the
manifold superstitions, intolerances and ignorances that prevail in
the feminine intelligence, and of the fearful influence which these in
turn bring to bear upon the children committed in such numbers to their
charge, no crusade that can find favor with them, towards a New Jerusalem
of Culture, can be too early encouraged.
The Vision Realized
By Bertha June Richardson, A. B.
(Holder of the Mary Lowell Stone Fellowship 1903. From “The Woman Who
Spends.”)
When the sweet faced New England woman, living her quiet life in the old
town of Halfield, stretched out her strong, helpful hands to all the
generations of girls to come, by making a woman’s college a possibility,
she was called a dreamer, a visionary woman, who had better be looked
after by some strong-minded man who could put her money to some practical
use. That vision realized has given to hundreds of women ideals and
standards which have made life full and rich.
Vocational Training for Girls
By Alice Henry
(Of Australian birth. For a number of years editor of “Life and Labor,”
the official organ of the “Woman’s Trade Union League.” Well-known
speaker on suffrage and labor problems. Author of “The Trade Union
Woman,”[15] from which the following is taken.)
Harvard was opened in 1636. Two hundred years elapsed before there was
any institution offering corresponding advantages to girls....
If these women have always lagged in the rear as increasing educational
advantages of a literary or professional character have been provided or
procured for boys, it is not strange, when, in reading over the records
of work on the few lines of industrial, educational trade training and
apprenticeship we detect the same influences at work, sigh before the
same difficulties, and recognize the old, weary, threadbare arguments
too, which one would surely think had been sufficiently disproved before
to be at least in this connection....
In such an age of transition as ours, any plan of vocational training
intended to include girls must be a compromise with warring facts,
and will therefore have to face objections from both sides, from
those forward looking ones who feel that the domestic side of woman’s
activities is over emphasized, and from those who still look back,
who will fain refuse to believe that the majority of women have to be
wage-earners for at least a part of their lives. These latter argue that
by affording to girls all the advantages of industrial training, granted,
or which may be granted to boys, we are “taking them out of the home.”
As if they were not out of the home already!
[15] Copyright by Henry Holt Publishing Co.
Traditions Upset
By Emily J. Hutchins
(American contemporary. Instructor in Economics, Barnard College, New
York. From “The Annals of the American Academy.”)
The reaction that women show today to their educational freedom upsets a
lot of the notions we have inherited about the atmosphere of seclusion in
which womanly natures have been supposed to thrive.... Whatever fault may
be found with our educational system, it has at least provided a belated
opportunity for women to share in the social stimulus that men have found
and prized in academic institutions.
The History of Women’s Education
By Mary Ritter Beard
(Quoted from “Woman’s Work in Municipalities.”)
The history of the education of women from the early days, when to
educate “shes” was viewed with horror as an immoral proposition, to the
present time when more “shes” graduate from the high schools than “hes”,
is an interesting record in itself. Even more significant, however, is
the fact that both “hes” and “shes” are educated largely by women in the
secondary schools which are the schools of “the people.”
The Professions Educational
By The Hon. Mrs. Arthur Lyttleton
(From “Women and Their Work.”)
(See page 51)
The habits of application, of concentration and of regularity which
professional training requires will never be out of place in any kind of
life, and women will be the more capable of doing, not only their own
particular kind of work, but all work, better for the experience they
have passed through. It is simply a continuation of their education,
which now very unreasonably ends at eighteen.
Woman’s Struggle for Educational Rights
By Mrs. H. M. Swanwick
(English contemporary. Author of “The Future of the Woman’s Movement,”
from which the following is taken.)
All the world knows of the foundation of the great modern career of
sick-nursing; of the more bitter and prolonged struggle of women to study
medicine and surgery and qualify as practitioners therein.... All these
changes had, to a greater or less degree, to be fought for by those who
desired them.... People resisted them with more or less tenacity, and
used against the reformers the sort of arguments they are still using
against further emancipation.... There are, of course, some Orientalists,
even in England, who think in their hearts that it was a great mistake to
teach women to read. But most people now accept the principle that women
should have the best education available, and only differ as to what that
education should be.
Equal Advantages of Education
By Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Famous leader, with Susan B. Anthony, of the early woman suffrage
movement. From a letter quoted in “Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.”)
Should not all women, living in states where they have the right to hold
property, refuse to pay taxes so long as they are unrepresented in the
governments?...
Man has pre-empted the most profitable branches of industry, and we
demand a place at his side; to this end we need the same advantages
of education, and we therefore claim that the best colleges of the
country be opened to us.... In her present ignorance, woman’s religion,
instead of making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great
principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more certain
and lasting; her degradation more helpless and complete.
Intellect Wins
By Mrs. Alec Tweedie
(See page 126)
A pretty woman has the first innings, but an intelligent woman gets the
most runs. A clever woman catches out her opponents.
Education and Votes for Women
By Elizabeth Cooper
(Author of “My Lady of the Chinese Court Yard,” “Women of Egypt,” “Market
for Souls,” “The Harem and the Purdah,” “Living Up to Billy,” etc. From
“Woman and Education” in “Educational Foundations.”)
That this enlargement of the educational horizon of women in Britain
means necessarily “Votes for Women” may or may not be inferred.
Certain it is that the advancing social and economic arrangements of
modern society will add continually to the allotment to women of tasks
and responsibilities unknown to them in the past. Women will accept
such responsibilities in accordance with their ability and training in
competition with men, and their trained intelligence will become year by
year a more widely recognized fact in the minds of University authorities
and in the adjustment and enlargement of curriculum and University life.
Democratization of Learning
By Charlotte J. Cipriani
(American contemporary. Teacher, writer on educational problems. From
“Elimination of Waste in Elementary Education,” in “Education”—a monthly
magazine.)
Two processes of “democratization” are conceivable in the educational
system of a nation; one consists in lowering educational standards and
aims to the level that makes them readily acceptable and accessible to
the masses; the other consists in gradually raising the intellectual
level of the masses to the level of high and efficient educational
standards. The admission of too early specialized “vocational training”
in a public school system has a dangerous leaning towards the first
process of democratization, which is apt ultimately to defeat its own
end. That the second is of necessity a far lower and more laborious one,
does not invalidate its superiority.
Educating the Daughter
By Josephine Pitcairn Knowles
(From “The Upholstered Cage.”)
The day has now arrived when nature and fairness are proclaiming that
the same expenditure of time and money must be bestowed on the girl as
on the boy, and she should be regarded as an investment in the same way
as the boy now is. It has always been realized that unless he is given
a good education and then started properly in life, that is, given a
“shove off,” as it were, he won’t do much, and so all efforts in a family
of small means are concentrated toward helping launch the boy in life.
The idea, of course, being that he must support himself, and very likely
keep a wife and children, therefore it is more important for him to get
on well than for the girl, who has her parents to keep her until she
marries. There would be nothing against this theory if it were sound;
but where the theory breaks down is that girls and women now _do_ have
to earn their own living, and this necessity is on the increase, and the
point is that the women have often to do it on inadequate material; the
girl earns _her_ living _without_ the previous training, _without_ the
school or college training, _without_ any capital having been spent on
her as a premium, _without_ all the advantages the boy started with.
The World of Scholarship a Man’s World
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 10)
Fifty years ago the world of scholarship was a man’s world in which
women had no share. Now although only one woman in one thousand goes
to college, even in the United States, where there are more college
women than in any other country, the position of every individual woman
in every part of the civilized world has been changed because this
one-tenth of one percent. has proved beyond possibility of question that
in intellect there is no sex. Unwillingly at first but inevitably and
irresistably men have admitted women into intellectual comradeship. The
opinions of educated women can no longer be ignored by educated men.
Social Education Important
By Helen Keller
(Helen Keller, having been born blind, deaf and dumb, is not only
remarkable in that she has mastered many things, including articulate
speech, but also that out of her reading and observations of life, she is
able to construct a philosophy obviously superior to that of the average
human being with normal faculties. The following is from “The Modern
Woman” in “The Metropolitan Magazine,” October, 1912.)
Social ignorance is at the bottom of our miseries, and if the function of
education is to correct ignorance, social education is at this hour the
most important kind of education.
The educated woman, then, is she who knows the social basis of her
life, and of the lives of those whom she would help, her children, her
employers, her employees, the beggar at her door, and her congressman at
Washington....
It is for the American woman to know why millions are shut out from
the full benefits of such education, art, and science as the race has
thus far achieved. We women have to face questions that men alone have
evidently not been able to solve....
We must educate ourselves and that without delay. We cannot wait longer
for political economists to solve such vital problems as clean streets,
decent houses, warm clothes, wholesome food, living wages, safeguarded
mines and factories, honest public schools. These are our questions.
Already women are speaking and speaking nobly, and men are speaking with
us. To be sure, some men and some women are speaking against us; but
their contest is with the spirit of life. Lot’s wife turned back; but she
is an exception. It is proverbial that women get what they are bent on
getting, and circumstances are driving them toward education.
To Reach the Divine
By Emma Marwedel
Froebel learned to recognize in each child a new educational problem, to
be solved according to its nature.... He therefore demands a methodical
unification in education, in order to reach the divine through a
unification of action.
By Mrs. Macy
(The teacher of Helen Keller.)
There is no education except self-education, no government but
self-government.
By C. Gasquoine Hartley
(Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan)
(From “The Truth About Women.”)
To assume, as Schopenhauer and so many others have done ... that woman,
on account of her womanhood is incapable of intellectual and social
development, paying her sole debt of Nature in bearing and caring for
children, is really to state a belief in decay for mankind.
BOOK VIII
War and Peace
WAR AND PEACE
These Latter Days
By Olive Tilford Dargan
(From “Path Flower.”)
Take down thy stars, O God! We look not up.
In vain thou hangest there thy changeless sign.
We lift our eyes to power’s glowing cup,
Nor care if blood make strong that wizard wine,
So we but drink and feel the sorcery
Of conquest in our veins, of wits grown keen
In strain and strife for flesh-sweet sovereignty,—
The fatal thrill of kingship over men.
What though the soul be from the body shrunk,
And we array the temple, but no god?
What though the cup of golden greed once drunk,
Our dust be laid in a dishonored sod,
While thy loud hosts proclaim the end of wars?
We read no sign. O, God, take down thy stars!
Breeding Machines
By Marion Craig Wentworth
(From “War Brides,” a drama of protest, popularized by the Russian
actress, Nazimova.)
HOFFMAN: When we are gone—the best of us,—what will the country do if it
has no children?
HEDWIG: Why didn’t you think of that before?—before you started this
wicked war?
HOFFMAN—I tell you it is a glory to be a war bride. There!
HEDWIG (with a shrug): A breeding machine! (They all draw back). Why not
call it what it is? Speak the naked truth for once?
...
HOFFMAN: That isn’t the question now. We are going away—the best of us—to
be shot, most likely. Don’t you suppose we want to send some part of
ourselves into the future, since we can’t live ourselves? There, that’s
straight; and right, too.
HEDWIG: What I said—to breed a soldier for the empire; to restock the
land. (Fiercely). And for what? For food for the next generation’s
cannon. Oh, it is an insult to our womanhood! You violate all that makes
marriage sacred! (Agitated, she walks about the room). Are we women never
to get up out of the dust? You never asked us if we wanted this war, yet
you ask us to gather in the crops, cut the wood, keep the world going,
drudge and slave, and wait, and agonize, lose our all, and go on bearing
more men—and more—to be shot down! If we breed the men for you, why don’t
you let us say what is to become of them? Do we want them shot—the very
breath of our life?
HOFFMAN: It is for the fatherland.
HEDWIG: You use us, and use us,—dolls, beasts of burden, and you expect
us to bear it forever dumbly; but I won’t! I shall cry out till I die.
And now you say it almost out loud, “Go and breed for the empire.” War
brides! Pah!
HOFFMAN: I never would dream of speaking to Amelia like that. She is the
sweetest girl I have seen for many a day.
HEDWIG: What will happen to Amelia? Have you thought of that? No; I
warrant you haven’t. Well, look. A few kisses and sweet words, the
excitement of the ceremony, the cheers of the crowd, some days of living
together,—I won’t call it marriage, for Franz and I are the ones who know
what real marriage is, and how sacred it is,—then what? Before you know
it, an order to march. No husband to wait with her, to watch over her.
Think of her anxiety if she learns to love you. What kind of a child
will it be? Look at me. What kind of a child would I have, do you think?
I can hardly breathe for thinking of my Franz, waiting, never knowing
from minute to minute. From the way I feel, I should think my child
would be born mad, I’m that wild with worrying. And then for Amelia to
go through the agony alone! No husband to help her through the terrible
hour. What solace can the state give then? And after that, if you don’t
come back, who is going to earn the bread for her child? Struggle and
struggle to feed herself and her child; and the fine-sounding name you
trick us with—war-bride! Humph! That will all be forgotten then. Only one
thing can make it worth while, and do you know what that is? Love! Well
struggle through fire and water for that, but without it....
Babies Bred for War
By Mary Field
(In “Everyman.”)
Said Prince Bismarck with a shrug of his shoulder to a comment on the
great number of men killed in one of the Franco-Prussian battles, “Oh,
well, we will have another crop in twenty years!”
It is crops of men that governments depend upon. At the outbreak of
the war the military nations of Europe took immediate steps to provide
for the next crop of soldiers. Before the ranks mobilized the seed of
warriors was sown. In Germany all soldiers were urged to marry before
leaving for the front. In many churches hundreds of couples were married
simultaneously that no time might be lost. One of the Emperor’s own sons
set the example which thousands of marriageable men immediately followed.
In some villages “holy matrimony” was recognized as the equivalent of an
engagement. Everywhere throughout the fatherland distinctions between
legitimate and illegitimate have become indistinct. An illegitimate
son receives the support of the government. To bear children for
the fatherland is of greater virtue than that they shall be born of
wedlock, for thrones are greater than altars and exigencies greater than
ceremonies.
War Cripples
By Madeline Z. Doty
(In “The New Republic.”)
France says little and does much. She is proud; she is heroic; she fights
on. But the heart and life of France is being crushed. It is impossible
to see this and do nothing. I offer my services as assistant nurse at the
American ambulance and am accepted....
On the second morning as I hurry down a long hospital corridor I see
a familiar face. A short, dark-haired, dark-eyed young man is coming
toward me. He is one of the wounded and his right arm is gone. His eye
catches mine. He stops bewildered. Then comes recognition. It is Zeni
Peshkoff—Maxim Gorki’s adopted son. Eight years ago when this man was a
boy I had known him in America. I grasp the left hand, and my eyes drop
before the empty right sleeve. But Zeni Peshkoff is still gay, laughing
Zeni. He makes light of his trouble. Not until later do I understand
the terrible suffering there is from the missing arm or realize how he
struggles to use what is not. Peshkoff had been in the trenches for
months. He had been through battles and bayonet charges and escaped
unhurt, but at last his day had come. A bursting shell destroyed the
right arm. He knew the danger, and struggling to his feet, walked from
the battlefield. With the left hand he supported the bleeding, broken
right arm. As he stumbled back past trenches full of German prisoners his
plight was so pitiful, his pluck so great, that instinctively these men
saluted. At the Place de Secours eight hundred wounded had been brought
in. There were accommodations for one hundred and fifty.
All night young Peshkoff lay unattended, for there were others worse
hurt. Gangrene developed, and he watched it spread from fingers to hand
and from hand to arm. In the morning a friendly lieutenant noticed
him. “There’s one chance,” he said, “and that’s a hospital. If you can
walk, come with me.” Slowly young Peshkoff arose. Half fainting he
dressed and went with the lieutenant—first by taxi to the train and then
twelve torturing hours to Paris. As the hours passed the gangrene crept
higher and higher. The sick man grew giddy with fever. At each station
his carriage companions, fearing death, wished to leave him upon the
platform. But the lieutenant was firm. The one chance for life was the
hospital. Finally, Paris was reached; a waiting ambulance rushed him to
the hospital. Immediately he was taken to the operating room and the arm
amputated. A half hour more and his arm could not have been saved. But
this dramatic incident is only one of many. The pluck of the average
soldier is unbelievable. Operations are accepted without question. There
are no protests—only the murmured “_C’est la guerre, que voulez-vous_.”
I asked Zeni Peshkoff, Socialist, what his sensations were when he went
out to kill. “It didn’t seem real, it doesn’t now. Before my last charge
the lieutenant and I were filled with the beauty of the night. We sat
gazing at the stars. Then the command came, and we rushed forward. It
did not seem possible I was killing human beings.” It is this unreality
that sustains men. Germans are not human beings—only the enemy. For
the wounded French soldier will tell you he loathes war and longs for
peace. He fights for one object—a permanent peace. He fights to save his
children from fighting.
The Devonshire Mother
By Marjorie Wilson
(In “The Westminster Gazette.”)
The king have called the Devon lads and they be answering fine—
But shadows seem to hide this way, for all the sun do shine,
For there’s Squire’s son have gone for one, and Parson’s son—and mine.
I mind the day mine went from me—the skies were all aglow—
The cows deep in our little lanes was comin’ home so slow—
“And don’t ’ee never grieve yourself,” he said, “because I go.”
His arms were strong around me, then he turned and went away—
I heard the little childer dear a’ singin’ at their play;
The meanin’ of an achin’ heart is hid from such as they.
And scarce a day goes by now but I set my door ajar,
And watch the road that Jan went up, the time he went to war,
That when he’ll come again to me, I’ll see him from afar.
And in my chimney seat o’ nights, when quiet grows the farm,
I pray the Lord he be not cold, while I have fire to warm—
And give the mothers humble hearts whose boys are kept from harm.
And then I take the Book and read before I seek my rest,
Of how that other Son went forth (them parts I like the best),
And left his mother lone for him she’d cuddled on her breast.
I like to think when nights were dark, and Him at prayer, maybe,
Upon the gurt dark mountain side, or in His boat at sea,
He worried just a bit for her, who’d learnt Him at her knee.
And maybe when He minds her ways, He will not let Jan fall—
I’m thinkin’ He will know my boy, with his dear ways an’ all—
With his tanned face, his eyes of blue, and he so strappin’ tall.
The Last Racial War
By Clara Zetkin
(Well-known Socialist leader of Germany. Many times imprisoned for her
denunciation of the present war. The following is from “Die Gleichheit,”
a woman’s paper, edited by herself.)
Above the horror of this dark hour do we not see the light of certainty
that the longing of the poor and weak for free humanity must again unite
the peoples in one ideal and effort? We women hear the voices which in
this time of blood and iron speak low and painfully, but nobly, of and
for the future. Let us interpret them for our children. Let us guard
against the hollow din which fills our streets today, when cheap racial
pride defeats humanity. In our children we must have a pledge that this
most fearful of all wars is the last racial struggle. The blood of dead
and wounded must have become a stream to divide what present need and
future hope unite. It must be a chain to bind eternally.
The Early Morning Funeral
By Edna Elliott-Carr
(In “The Living Age.”)
One of the sad sights is the early morning funeral to be met almost daily
in the streets of Paris—the lonely journey of a dead hero from his bed of
suffering to the Garden of Sleep.
One sunny morning as I turned from the wide Champs Elysees into a side
street, I found waiting near the back entrance of a large hotel hospital
a small company of gendarmes with bowed heads, their banner bearing the
crêpe ribbons of mourning. Near them a few passers-by were standing
reverently looking on. I waited. The hearse drove closer to the door,
and later bore away the coffin. No military pomp or display! A splendid
hero had given his life for his country, and this was his simple funeral.
Above, on the window balconies, some maids stood looking down, crying,
and wiping their tears away with their aprons. This “colonel” had lain
only four days in the house of suffering, but in so short a time had been
beloved enough to be missed. The gendarmes followed slowly, and in the
rear a motor car bore a military official. That was all!
The sun seemed to cease shining, and the world looked cold and gray. A
taxi cab hovered in sight. I hailed it, and, entering, bade the driver
accompany the solemn cortage slowly. I had a sudden wish to follow this
soldier to his last resting place, and as I did so, my thoughts were sad
ones. How many thousands of such deaths could this war already account
for, and how many thousands of hearts had it broken?
Russian Women in Time of War
By Sarah Kropotkin-Lebedeff
(In “The Outlook” for October 21, 1914. Madame Lebedeff is the daughter
of the Russian Prince, Peter Kropotkin, known the world over for his
brilliant books, and his revolutionary ideas.)
It is not for nothing that the Russian peasant woman is respected by
her men and counted as their equal in all labor. She plows and sows and
reaps with them, rising before the sun and ceasing work only when the
day fades. And the work she has to undertake when her men have gone
to war is no light one. Each family has at least five or six acres to
cultivate. The pasture land the village holds is common. It is usually
the custom in time of stress for the workers to do all the field work in
common. At three in the morning the women, and even the children, turn
out to work; at eleven they have a meal of dry black bread and perhaps
a small cucumber. Then, while the sun is high, they sleep; and from four
o’clock they work again, till sunset.... There is other work for the
women to do—shoeing horses, mending plows, scythes, wheels, and so on.
The blacksmith has gone to the war, the wheelwright also; so the peasant
woman wields the hammer and sends the chips flying with the ax. In the
summer she fells the trees and shears the sheep. And all the winter she
spins and weaves, waiting for her men to come back, hoping always, and
teaching her children to love their country and their father, who has
gone to defend them against a strange foe.
Red Easter
By Marion Brown
(In “Femina.”)
This is a spring that has no Easter Day.
Even the little children must be told
That all the beauty of the world is sold;
And in the grim, gray ranks of war’s array
Christ’s carols turn to knells of loud dismay.
Nor women’s tears nor kingly power nor gold
Can resurrect the forms the trenches hold.
Ah, children murmur softly at your play
Lest your sweet mirth like poisoned darts be sped
Swift to the widowed mother hearts reviled
Twice over as they clasp their still-born dead.
Pray, children, for the world’s unreconciled!
Ye are our only lilies undefiled—
The others are incarnadined too red.
The Rising Value of a Baby
By Mabel Potter Daggett
(From “What the War Really Means to Women” in “Pictorial Review.”)
Thus is explained quite simply over the world to-day the rising value of
a baby. Civilization is running short in the supply of men. We don’t know
exactly how short. There are Red Cross returns that say in the first six
months alone of the war there were 2,146,000 men killed in battle and
1,150,000 more seriously wounded. Figures, however, of cold statistics,
as always, may be challenged. There is a living figure that may not be.
See the woman in black all over Europe, and to-morrow we shall meet her
in Broadway. There are so many of her in every belligerent land over
there that her crêpe veil flutters across her country’s flag like the
smoke that dims the landscape in a factory town. It is the mourning
emblem of her grief, unmistakably symbolizing the dark catastrophe of
civilization that has signaled Parliaments to assemble in important
session. Population is being killed off at such an appalling rate at the
front that the means for replacing it behind the lines must be speeded up
without delay. To-day registrar-generals in every land, in white-faced
panic, are scanning the figures of the birth-rates that continue to show
steadily diminishing returns. And in every house of government in the
world, above all the debates on aeroplanes and submarines and shipping
and shells, there is the rising alarm of another demand. Fill the
cradles! In the defense of the State, men bear arms. It is women who must
bear the armies.
Wars Will Cease
By Anna A. Maley
(Prominent Socialist speaker and writer. Socialist nominee for Governor
of Washington in 1912.)
Wars will cease when the conditions which cause them are abolished.
The present war is no more of an “accident” than have been the wars of
the past. But it is terrible and far-reaching enough in its effects to
warrant a reconstruction of our political and industrial systems.
The Prussians in Poland
By Laura de Turczynowicz
(Nee Blackwell)
(The story of an American woman, the wife of a Polish nobleman, caught in
her home by the floodtide of German invasion of the ancient Kingdom of
Poland. From “When the Prussians Came to Poland.”[16])
“Manya did not come when I rang—for Jacob.... A long time afterward my
cook came. She had difficulty in controlling herself, but finally made me
understand. The doctor had taken Manya—not yet seventeen! God help her!...
“Four days after Manya’s disappearance, news was brought that she was in
the house of an old Jewess, a cigarette maker. Leaving the cook with the
children, and hardly able to drag myself along, I went with Jacob to find
her.... After many difficulties we finally found the place, and paying no
attention to the soldiers about, pushed our way into the room where Manya
was—what _had_ been Manya. When she, poor creature, saw us, she threw
herself on the floor sobbing. An officer came in to ask our business
with the girl.
“She is my maid—stolen! This is her father. I have come to take her home.
“‘I am very sorry, but you are not allowed to take her, she belongs to
the soldiers.’
“Don’t you see, Herr Officer, the girl is dying?
“‘Ill she is, and shall have the best of care. We have doctors to attend
just such cases.’ And I had to leave her! Jacob’s face was without
expression, he seemed to have lost the power to think or feel—his little
girl—!”
[16] Grosset & Dunlap.
The Deserter
By Ellen N. LaMotte
(The story of the human wreckage of the battlefield, as witnessed by an
American hospital nurse a few miles behind the French lines. From “The
Backwash of War.”[17])
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof
of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye,
and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an
ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field
hospital. The journey was made in double quick time, over rough Belgian
roads. To save his life, he must reach the hospital without delay, and
if he was bounced to death jolting along at break-neck speed, it did not
matter. That was understood. He was a deserter, and discipline must be
maintained. Since he had failed on the job, his life must be saved, he
must be nursed back to health, until he was well enough to be stood up
against a wall and shot. This is War. Things like this also happen in
peace time, but not so obviously.
At the hospital he behaved abominably. The ambulance men declared that
he had tried to throw himself out of the back of the ambulance, that he
had yelled and hurled himself about, and spat blood all over the floor
and blankets—in short, he was very disagreeable. Upon the operating table
he was no more reasonable. He shouted and screamed and threw himself
from side to side, and it took a dozen leather straps and four or five
orderlies to hold him in position, so that the surgeon could examine him.
During this commotion his left eye rolled about loosely upon his cheek,
and from his bleeding mouth he shot great clots of stagnant blood, caring
not where they fell. One fell upon the immaculate white uniform of the
_Directrice_, and stained her from breast to shoes. It was disgusting.
They told him it was _La Directrice_, and that he must be careful. For
an instant he stopped his raving, and regarded her fixedly with his
remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and again covered her with his
cowardly blood. Truly it was disgusting.
To the _Medecin Major_ it was incomprehensible, and he said so. To
attempt to kill oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy to die in
honour upon the battlefield, was something he could not understand. So
the _Medecin Major_ stood patiently aside, his arms crossed, his supple
fingers pulling the long black hairs on his bare arms, waiting. He had
long to wait, for it was difficult to get the man under the anesthetic.
Many cans of ether were used, which went to prove that the patient was a
drinking man. Whether he had acquired the habit of hard drink before or
since the war could not be ascertained; the war had lasted a year now,
and in that time many habits may be formed. As the _Medecin Major_ stood
there, patiently fingering the hairs on his hairy arms, he calculated the
amount of ether that was expended—five cans of ether, at so many francs a
can—however, the ether was a donation from America, so it did not matter.
Even so, it was wasteful.
At last they said he was ready. He was quiet. During his struggles he
had broken out two big teeth with the mouth gag, and that added a little
more blood to the blood already choking him. Then the _Medecin Major_
did a very skillful operation. He trephined the skull, extracted the
bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic
eye. After which the man was sent back to the ward, while the surgeon
returned hungrily to his dinner, long overdue. In the ward, he was a bad
patient. He insisted upon tearing off his bandages, although they told
him that this meant bleeding to death. His mind seemed fixed on death.
He seemed to want to die, and was thoroughly unreasonable, although
quite conscious. All of which meant that he required constant watching
and was a perfect nuisance. He was so different from the other patients,
who wanted to live. It was a joy to nurse them. By expert surgery, by
expert nursing, some of these were to be returned to their homes again,
_reformes_, mutilated for life, a burden to themselves and to society;
others were to be nursed back to health, to a point at which they could
again shoulder eighty pounds of marching kit, and be torn to pieces again
on the firing lines. It was a pleasure to nurse such as these. It called
forth all one’s skill, all one’s humanity. But to nurse back to health a
man who was to be court-martialled and shot, truly that was a dead-end
occupation....
Dawn filtered in through the little square windows of the ward. Two of
the patients rolled on their sides, that they might talk to one another.
In the silence of early morning their voices rang clear.
“Dost thou know, _mon ami_, that when we captured that German battery a
few days ago, we found gunners chained to their guns?”
[17] Putnam Sons.
The Prayer of the Toilers
By Rose Mills Powers
(In “The Survey.”)
Lord of the peaceful Toilers, hark to the toiler’s plea:
The kings of the earth assemble, pawns in their hands are we.
Now as the battle thickens, out of the blood and flame,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us; forgive us who play the game.
Lord of the cheerful reapers, the harvest was fair and good.
Hard by our quiet hearth stones, the yellowing wheat fields stood,
But the scythe has become a sabre in meadow and glebe and glen.
Lord of the Toilers, hear us; forgive as we cut down men!
Lord of the cunning craftsmen: The vision of Thee a lad,
Working with plane and measure, kept us content and glad;
Now, as we charge, red-handed, wielding the tools that kill,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us: Forgive us the blood we spill.
Lord of the visioning learners: out of our cloistered halls,
Parchment and tomb abandoned, we march when the bugle calls,
Death and destruction hurling, havoc to babes and wives,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us: Forgive us these broken lives.
Lord of the keen-eyed traders: our vessels went up and down,
Our shores were alive with traffic in village and mart and town,
But our harbors are red with slaughter, the markets in ruins lie,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us; forgive as we strike and die!
Lord of the peaceful Toilers, husbandman, craftsman, clerk,
Student and sage and trader, torn from the world’s good work,
Dead in the King’s arena, pawns who were not to blame,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us: end now the awful game!
Righteous Wars
By Beulah Marie Dix
(From the drama, “Across the Border.”)
THE JUNIOR LIEUTENANT: Children crying—hungry, freezing, tortured.
Hundreds of ’em. Poor little devils! Old women—starving, stumbling,
driven, mumbling their prayers that nobody minds. Mothers crying over
the smashed-up things that were their kids. Ah-h! That’s the horses
screeching. Don’t you hear them? When a shell rips them up they look at
you beseeching. But you can’t waste shot on them.... That’s the chaps in
the hospital now—drying up with typhoid, rotting with dysentery—chaps on
the battlefield, torn and smashed and mangled, two days of it, three days
of it, and the wheels of the big guns grinding them to pulp. Ah-h! That’s
some chaps caught in the granary. It’s burning. The flames are at them.
That’s a train load of wounded, smashing through a bridge, stifling,
drowning, helpless, rats in a trap. Men and women and children,—hundreds
of ’em, thousands of ’em, millions of ’em—O my God! My God! Why don’t
you stop it? Why don’t you stop it?
THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE: Did you do anything to stop it? It’s drifted
through here, that wail of the world, for a long time now. Years.
Centuries. Ages. God hears it. It repented Him that He made the world.
Always the crying comes up to us. Always misery and to spare. But it’s
worse when you are making your righteous wars. For they’re all righteous.
There’s never a man comes here but says, as you said, that his cause
is just and God is on his side. It’s wonderful how many ages through,
as you reckon time, you men have fought your righteous wars to advance
civilization, and you’re advancing it today just the same way you did
when Attilia was king.
By Ellen Key
(See page 143)
If war should stand as an eternal phantom against the horizon of the
world, then all social work for the elevating and purifying of humanity
might as well be laid down forever.
BOOK IX
Classes
CLASSES
The Poet’s Task
By Margaret Hoblitt
(In “Charities and Commons.”)
Wouldst thou be a poet of these latter days?
Turn then thine eye from joy, thine ear from praise!
Go where the city’s pallid millions throng,
And of their sorrows fashion thee a song.
Sing of unending toil,—of childhood’s blight—
Of weary day that dawns on weary night.
Sing, if thou canst, of womanhood in shame,—
Of manhood bartered for a place and name.
Sing of a flower that never knew the sun;
Sing of a virtue dead ere ’twas begun!
Then, lest our hearts break and our faith grow cold,
Sing better things to be, ere time is old.
Sing ’midst the tears, and touch men’s souls with fire,
Till God fulfill through thee His Great Desire.
Out of the Darkness
By Voltairine de Cleyre
(Poet and essayist. Died 1912.)
Who am I? Only one of the commonest common people,
Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul;
What right have I to sing, then? None; and I do not, I cannot.
Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world’s songs with moaning?
I know not—nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter;
Nor why all I touch turns to clashing and clanging and discord;
I know not; I know only this,—I was born to this, live in it hourly,
Go ’round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had
it laughter;
It is my breath—and that breath goes outward from me in moaning.
O you, up there, I have heard you; I am “God’s image defaced”,
“In heaven reward awaits me,” “hereafter I shall be perfect”;
Ages you’ve sung that song, but what is it to me, think you?
If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the
offal,
In the dust, in the mire, in the grime and in the slime, in the hideous
darkness,
How the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and
cursing,
The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves’
whispers,
The laugh of the gambler, the suicide’s gasp, the yell of the drunkard,
If you heard them down here you would cry, “The reward of such is
damnation,”
If you heard them, I say, your song of “rewarded hereafter” would
fail....
Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to _me_
To me as I am,—the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker?
To me upon whom God and science alike have stamped “failure”,
To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt and sorrows?
To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan?
To me as I am—for me as I am—not dying but living;
_Not_ my future—my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no
one?
In the midst of this rushing of phantoms—of Gods, of Science, of Logic,
Of Philosophy, Morals, Religion, Economy,—all this that helps not,
All these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous,
marrowless Fictions,
Is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull
moaning _Me_?
Two Sides of the Shield
By Princess Lazarovick-Hrebelianovich
(Nee, Eleanor Calhoun—Actress of American birth. From an article in
“Century Magazine.”)
Nowhere more than in London does the blazing shield show a dark reverse.
For, along with the splendors of life, that ancient city brought me, too,
the first overwhelming sense of the world’s misery. For sometime my life
took me daily through a large stretch of London. It seemed to me that I
was wandering through vast tides of woe. Age-long tyrannies of ignorance
and vice and suffering have welded a fixity of type in the flesh, binding
enormous segregations into more or less uniform kinds of peoples. The
misery-sodden “lower classes,” as I heard them called, seemed narrowed
and fixed and starved and warped forever. The “lower middle classes” gave
the impression of being jammed in between walls from above and below,
as if all broad or wholesome feeling, or generous enjoyment of beauty
were kept from penetrating to them or issuing from them. The “upper
middle classes” and the “higher classes” appeared to look with horror
upon any real contact with the others, while intermarrying with them was
impossible.... It was the vast crowds of the others, “the wholesale lot”,
that reflected their discouragement in my mind.
Women and the Oppressed
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(From “Aurora Leigh.”)
I call you hard
To a general suffering. Here’s the world half blind
With intellectual light, half brutalized
With civilization, having caught the plague
In silks from Tarsus, shrieking East and West
Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain
And sin too!.... does one woman of you all,
(You who weep easily) grow pale to see
This tiger shake his cage?—does one of you
Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls,
And pine and die because of the great sum
Of universal anguish?—Show me a tear
Wet as Cordelia’s, in eyes bright as yours,
Because the world is mad. You cannot count,
That you should weep for this account, not you!
You weep for what you know. A red-haired child
Sick in a fever, if you touch him once,
Though but so little as with a finger-tip,
Will set you weeping; but a million sick—
You could as soon weep for the rule of three
Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world,
Uncomprehended by you.—Women as you are,
Mere women, personal and passionate,
You give us doting mothers, and perfect wives,
Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!
We get no Christ from you,—and verily
We shall not get a poet, in my mind.
God and the Strong Ones
By Margaret Widdemer
(Contemporary American poet.)
“We have made them fools and weak!” said the Strong Ones:
“We have crushed them, they are dumb and deaf and blind;
We have crushed them in our hands like a heap of crumbling sands,
We have left them naught to seek or find:
They are quiet at our feet,” said the Strong Ones;
“We have made them one with wood and stone and clod;
Serf and laborer and woman, they are less than wise or human!—”
_“I shall raise the weak!” saith God._
“They are stirring in the dark,” said the Strong Ones,
“They are struggling, who were moveless like the dead;
We can hear them cry and strain hand and foot against the chain,
We can hear their heavy upward tread....
What if they are restless?” said the Strong Ones;
“What if they have stirred beneath the rod?
Fools and weak and blinded men, we can tread them down again—”
_“Shall ye conquer Me?” saith God._
“They will trample us and bind!” said the Strong Ones;
“We are crushed beneath the blackened feet and hands;
All the strong and fair and great they will crush from out the state;
They will whelm it with the weight of pressing sands—
They are maddened and are blind,” said the Strong Ones;
“Black decay has come where they have trod;
They will break the world in twain if their hands are on the rein—”
_“What is that to me?” saith God._
_“Ye have made them in their strength, who were Strong Ones,_
_Ye have only taught the blackness ye have known:_
_These are evil men and blind—Ay, but molded to your Mind!_
_How shall ye cry out against your own?_
_Ye have held the light and beauty I have given_
_For above the muddied ways where they must plod:_
_Ye have builded this your lord with the lash and with the sword—_
_Reap what ye have sown!” saith God._
My Sister’s Heritage
By Mary S. Edgar
(In “The Survey.”)
Budding tree and singing bird,
Joy of springtime seen and heard;
All the wealth of all the year,
Scattered by the wayside here.
But oh, little sister of mine in the shadowy places,
Where the wheel turns and the small young fingers ply,
I cannot forget that this is yours, too, to inherit—
The open fields and the streams, and the clear blue sky.
Stirring sap and quickening sod—
Miracles revealing God:
Prophets of the fatherhood,
Speaking from the field and wood.
But oh, little sister of mine in the shadowy places,
Where shoulders droop, eyes dim, and cheeks grow wan,
I yearn for your hand, and a road that leads to the open,
To the commonwealth of the fields, ere the light be gone.
Socialist Prayer
By Margaret Haile
(Contemporary American poet. In “The Vanguard.”)
Give us this day our daily bread, O God!
Not for _my_ bread alone I selfish pray.
Such prayer would never reach Thy loving ear;
Such prayer my human lips refuse to say.
I pray for those whom Thou hast given me here—
All men and women to be one with me,—
To soothe, sustain, and comfort, love and cheer,
And draw in loving service nearer Thee.
My sister suffers in a garret bare,
My brothers labor and grow faint and pine;
My baby wails—for food! I cannot bear it God,
For all the babies in the world are mine!
Father, and they are Thine! I claim Thine aid;
Thou needs must help us in our righteous cause!
Make strong our hands to tear Oppression down,
And build a world according to Thy laws!
I cannot eat my daily bread alone,
Give none to me if these cannot be fed.
With them I stand or fall, for we are one.
Father, give _all_ of us our daily bread.
Outcasts
By Eleanor Wentworth
(In “The International Socialist Review.”)
Outside the Rotunda of the Fine Arts Building of the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition is hunched a gripping, sorrowful figure—a figure
that crouches back amidst the foliage as if humbly seeking to escape
the eye of the passer. Meekly it bears the name of _Outcast_. About it,
fountains ripple; beyond, the sun joyfully sets agleam the somber greens
of olive; chuckling, sprightly Pans, with uptilted pipes, laugh to scorn
the chill atmosphere of the sorrowful one, set so far into the shadows
that the sun never reaches it, leaving its marble surface ghastly.
The figure, with arms clenched and head bowed, in its shadow seclusion
indomitably symbolizes the disowned of the ages—the iron-collared slave,
the branded thief, the wandering disbeliever, the woman scorned, the
helpless debtor. It symbolizes those passive sufferers, who, after
tilling and sowing the fields of life, so that they grow green and cool,
wander begrimed and thirsty in the waste desert stretches. Pitifully it
speaks of those who confidently threw their heart’s sweetest flowers in
the world they loved, receiving no return, living forevermore with barren
hopes. It whispers of those who flung their cries of joy to the winds,
and heard them wafted back as taunts. It speaks of builders, of whose
dream houses no cornerstone or cornice has been realized. Voicelessly it
proclaims the _Slave of the Past_.
And as I looked at it, so hopelessly resigned, I hated it, for all its
powerful symbolism.
Did the world know no other Outcast than this shrinking, unreproachful
figure? Was this symbolism the whole truth? Were there no Outcasts
who dared accuse?—who dared fight for their inheritance? None to cry
dauntlessly, “We will not be cast aside, we who have builded and tilled
and dreamed!” Were there no outcasts with hope—with fighting blood?
In the far recesses of the Japanese Section, where only a few errant
footfalls echo solemnly through the spacious silence, I found that for
which I searched. There I found the symbol of the Outcast I dared hope
to see. A truly courageous figure it is, with Hope and the Spirit to be
Free stamped large upon it. It is the very antithesis of that bowed
figure out among the green vines and laughing Pans, which seem to beg
forgiveness for its very existence. This other figure is called “Strike”,
and proudly it bears its insignia of rebellion. The gaunt outlines and
the eyes overshadowed with a terrible fatigue brand this figure of a man,
as the other, with the marks of the Outcast. A woman leans upon him, and
in turn, a brood of young cling to her skirts. But this Outcast is no
craven. He neither cringes nor sorrows. He stands erect, and through the
shadows of fatigue, his eyes flash defiance out upon the world of the
Self-Satisfied. He seems to cry aloud:
“I suffer, my mate suffers, and our young; but you shall pay—pay in
full! You who stand between us and our inheritance, your time is drawing
near—prepare! For we declare that we, too, shall live, we, the sufferers!”
This Outcast, springing from the depths, flings a challenge where others
have only wept; dares where others have cowered in self-debasement.
This man of courage, standing erect under the scourges of suffering and
deprivation, gazing so steadfastly into the Beyond through overshadowed
eyes—he dares aspire to walk in the green fields of his making; already
he treads them in his imagination. He has sent a barely whispered hope of
joy out upon the winds and it is rushing back to him a mighty symphony of
realization. He dreams of a beautiful world, and builds it as he dreams.
He heralds the day when there will be no Outcasts, but all will be
Well-Beloved.
He is the _Master of the Future_.
The New Sense of Justice
By Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(From a letter to Susan B. Anthony on “Woman and War,” written just prior
to our war with Spain.)
The co-operative will remodel codes and constitutions, creeds and
catechisms, social customs and conventionalism, the curriculum of schools
and colleges. It will give a new sense of justice, liberty and equality
in all the relations of life....
The few have no right to the luxuries of life while the many are denied
its necessities.
Break Down the Wall
By Ellen Key
Men and women, upper and lower classes, are walking on different sides of
a wall. They can stretch their hands over it; the important thing to be
done is to break the wall down.
Class Intolerance Passing
By Elsie Clews Parsons
(See page 170)
Age-class, caste group, family, and race, each has its own closed
circle—but each of these vicious circles the modern spirit has begun to
invade and break down. In the spirit of our time fear of the unlike is
waning and _pari passu_ intolerance.
Servitude
By Maria Montessori
(Quoted from “The Larger Aspect of Socialism,” by Walling.)
Any nation that accepts the idea of servitude and believes that it is an
advantage for man to be served by man admits servility as an instinct,
and indeed we all too easily lend ourselves to obsequious service, giving
to it such complimentary names as courtesy, politeness, charity.
In reality, he who is served is limited in his independence. This concept
will be the foundation of the dignity of the man of the future; “I do
not wish to be served because I am not impotent.” And this idea must be
gained before men can feel themselves to be really free.
Factories Instead of Homes
By Mary E. McDowell
(Head of University Settlement House, Chicago. Writer and speaker for
suffrage, organized labor, etc.)
However earnestly we may deplore the fact that women are in factories
instead of homes, we must squarely face conditions as they exist. There
are hundreds of thousands of helpless, untrained, unorganized women
without the power of legislating for themselves, who are forced by the
stress of circumstances to earn their livelihood, and it is of vital
importance that they be given the chance to be decently self-supporting
under conditions which will unfit them for wifehood and motherhood and
the care of the homes.
The Voteless Sex
By Meta L. Stern
(American contemporary journalist and speaker. From a leaflet on
Suffrage.)
Thousands of women today are working under conditions unfit for human
beings. At unguarded machinery they are risking their nimble fingers,
the only source of income they possess. In firetrap buildings they
are risking their lives. Badly ventilated workrooms, filled with
particles of flying dust, weaken their lungs and make them susceptible
to tuberculosis. Long working hours sap their strength and vitality.
Dangerous occupations make them physical wrecks in a few years and render
them unfit for wifehood and motherhood. In the case of married women
workers an appalling infant mortality is a concomitant of women’s labor.
But with all these sacrifices even the woman who performs a man’s work
does not get a man’s wages. Everywhere we find unequal pay for equal
work. The voteless sex is cheap.
The Glad Day of Universal Brotherhood
By Frances E. Willard
(Great temperance worker; the only woman whose statue is in the Hall of
Fame. From an address at the National W. C. T. U. Convention at Buffalo,
in 1897.)
Look about you; the products of labor are on every hand; you could not
maintain for a moment a well-ordered life without them; every object in
your room has in it, for discerning eyes, the mark of ingenious tools and
the pressure of labor’s hands. But is it not the cruelest injustice for
the wealthy, whose lives are surrounded and embellished by labor’s work,
to have a superabundance of the money which represents the aggregate of
labor in any country, while the laborer himself is kept so steadily at
work that he has no time to acquire the education and refinements of life
that would make him and his family agreeable companions to the rich and
cultured?...
I believe that competition is doomed. The trust, whose single object is
to abolish competition, has proved that we are better without it, than
with it, and the moment corporations control the supply of any product,
they combine. What the Socialist desires is that the corporation of
humanity should control all production. Beloved comrades, this is the
frictionless way; it is the higher way; it eliminates the motives for a
selfish life; it enacts into our every-day living the ethics of Christ’s
gospel. Nothing else will do it; nothing else can bring the glad day of
universal brotherhood.
Working Girls Must Cooperate
By Pauline M. Newman
(Organizer of working women. Former organizer for the International
Garment Workers’ Union. In “Life and Labor.”)
All those who work are aware of the fact that conditions today—insofar as
the working girl is concerned—are not what they should be....
Now, what is wrong? To begin with, the work day is too long, the wages
are too low. Good sanitary conditions are a rarity. Laws to protect the
lives of women and children workers are scarce—in reality.... There are
enough laws on the statute books, but very few are enforced. Labor laws
intended to protect women are constantly being violated. Why? Simply
because the women have, thus far, failed to cooperate with one another in
order to enforce them.
Nearly eight million working women are subjected to the conditions
described above. According to investigators—the writer of these lines
having been one of these—the average wage of these women does not exceed
seven dollars a week. A wage _proven_ insufficient to live on. Such
wages shape the lives of the women, and those dependent upon them. What
kind of a life, then, can they lead? A life which is a mere existence,
that is all. Because they are compelled to do so, they substitute cheap
amusement for something more refined. They live on a five-cent breakfast,
ten-cent lunch, and a twenty-cent dinner; live in a dingy room without
air and without comfort; wear clothes of cheap material, trying hard to
imitate those who are more fortunate than they. Their whole life is cheap
from beginning to end. Deprived of sunshine and fresh air, no time for
recreation, no time for rest, they have only time for _work_.
Organized Woman Labor
By Mrs. George Bass
(See page 38)
Almost every constructive statute of the past two decades that touches
the protection and prevents the exploitation of women and children, owes
its initiation and passage largely to the organized women.
The Enslaved
By The Countess of Warwick
(English contemporary. Once said to be the most beautiful woman in
England. Socialist, writer and speaker on labor and other modern
problems. From “Why I Became a Socialist.” In “Hearst’s Magazine.”)
At present women are the most enslaved part of the human race. They are
paid lower wages even than the average working man. When they are not in
the wage market as industrial workers, or clerks or civil servants, then
they are usually in the unsatisfactory position of being a wife who is,
economically speaking, a dependent on the wishes and purse of her father
or husband. They may work all day at the management of the children and
the home—much harder often, than the worker in the factory—but in return
these wives and mothers do not get, in the ordinary case, a fixed salary
or wage which they can call their own. Neither are the working hours of
the wife and mother fixed, as even in the case of factory workers. There
is in the life of the housewife of the manual laboring class scarcely an
hour a day when she is entirely free to go where she pleases or do what
she pleases. The woman who has not a private income of her own is, in the
general case, the economic dependent of the man, and in that class is the
large majority of my sex.
Inequality for Women
By Mrs. Arthur Lyttleton
(From “Women and Their Work.”)
Here and there throughout history occur instances of women who have been
received as equals by men, but for the mass of women equality could only
be procured by civilization.
Lore of the Woods
By Ruby Archer
(Contemporary. Poet and journalist.)
Go not into the woods for rioting.
But sit thee down alone; lean on a tree,
And read the greatest volume of the world,
Writ in the letters of the leaves and birds.
Mark how the branches draw their fluid life
From the one stem deep nourished in the earth,
And on those boughs how individual leaves
Find neighbor kindness, yielding each to each.
They share the common good, yet with no loss;
What grace there is, unique, in every one!
And the glad birds! Only their nests have they,
And the great heritage of light and love
Which none has need of hoarding, yet not one
But greets the morning with the song, “I live,”
And warbles low at twilight, “Life is sweet.”
Study the helpful ants; the social bees;
The hovering, unbound insects of the air,
Swaying in cities light as gossamer
Along one sunbeam on one fragrant breeze;
And never dream that man may dare presume
To name himself the king of things create,
Till he shall learn the lessons of the leaves,
The birds, the ants, the bees, the winged dust:
_That life is born of brotherhood_.
Moses, the Strike Leader
By Frances Squire Potter
(American contemporary. Professor of English in the University of
Minnesota. Writer and speaker on labor and political problems.
Corresponding Secretary of the National American Woman’s Suffrage
Association, author “The Ballingtons,” etc. Died March, 1914. In “Life
and Labor.”)
Out of the waters of the Nile, Pharaoh’s daughter drew a Hebrew babe,
condemned to die. As her adopted son, he was taught at court all the
wisdom of the Egyptians. As an Egyptian prince he might have lived
and died in splendor, and his gold-cased mummy might have been on
some museum shelf today, a dead curiosity. An aristocrat, a lawyer, a
capitalist—these are what he was brought up to be.
Egypt was in the full afternoon of her grandeur. A Pharoah was on the
throne whose soul was filled with the ambition to build palaces and
temples and cities such as the world had never seen. His heavy hand fell
upon the free Hebrews in his kingdom, and sent them to the quarries and
the brick-yards to toil with slaves under the lash of merciless foreman.
And as his cities and monuments grew, he became drunk with his own
glory, and the slaves were flogged to ever more inhuman exertions in the
quarries.
“And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went
out to his brethren, and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian
smiting an Hebrew. And he looked this way, and that way, and when he saw
that there was no man, he smote the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”
I do not believe this was the first time he had walked abroad to view
his brother slaves toiling. His wrath had been long smouldering in him.
You notice he did not attack the Egyptian with blind rage. “He looked
this way and that”, and when he saw he was unobserved he deliberately
slew the oppressor and buried the body in the desert sands.
Thus the greatest law-giver in history began his career by committing the
greatest crime known to the law. He was not young. He was forty years of
age. He became a law-breaker only because the laws of Egypt no longer
protected the man who worked from the tyrant who confiscated his labor.
His soul was in rebellion against “the system”.
How did the workers take this “direct action”? Just as the workers of
today would. When he went back the next day, instead of being greeted
as a deliverer, he was repudiated by the Hebrews. They were justly
suspicious of a member of the system who eased his conscience for a
living in the royal family by killing a brutal foreman. “Who made thee a
prince and a judge over us?” was a very pertinent question. Who, indeed,
but Pharoah himself?
But Pharoah on his part was deeply incensed at this rebel in his own
family and Moses fled for his life into the deserts of Arabia, carrying
with him the consciousness of having made his brethren’s lot worse by his
blundering attempt to mend it....
At last, amid the frowning precipices and lonely crags of Mount Sinai,
the cry of his race became too strong for him to resist.... And so Moses
turns his face once more toward the Nile country, and the great moment of
his life is upon him.... From now on the magnificent story represents
the struggle of the enslaved Hebrews for freedom as a duel between two
men—Pharoah on the throne, and Moses, the desert wanderer. The one stands
for entrenched tyranny, the other is a strike leader. Behind Pharoah is
all the power of Egypt, upheld by the armies of the empire. Behind Moses
is the mysterious pillar of cloud and of fire—the destiny of the race.
Between these two colossi cower the race of slaves whose destiny is at
hand....
Just as the Pharoahs of the Colorado coal fields are doing today, Pharoah
of Egypt hardened his heart, until the climax of the struggle came in
his cry of rage, “Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no
more: for in the day thou seest my face, thou shalt die!” And Moses said,
“Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face no more.” ...
So Moses leads his people out into the wilderness of freedom....
Years passed, and the wilderness was whitened with the bones of the
slaves, whose free-born children grew up to higher manhood under their
aged leader’s constant counsels and warnings. At last the time came when
they were fit to take a place among the nations of the earth, and the
pillar of fire and of cloud turns and drifts toward Canaan.
With what longing the old man’s heart looked toward the land of promise,
the first fixed abiding place life seemed to offer, we can gather from
his own confession. But it was not to be. His course was run. He was a
strike leader, a nation-molder, a law-giver, not a military conqueror.
When the tribes reach the desert and look down into the green valley of
the Jordan, they are called together to hear his parting words. On the
slopes of Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, after the antiphonal chanting
of the blessings and curses, and the sounding of the trumpets of the
Levites, the dying leader stands for the last time before his people,
delivers the matchless farewell address recorded in Deuteronomy, blesses
them, and passes from their sight forever, up into the solitude of the
mountain peaks....
“And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab, but no
man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And there hath not arisen a
prophet since in Israel like unto Moses....”
Dear God! The desert wandering is done,
A fixed abode has come to all—but one!
Command the muses of the sacred well
Say paeans for the sons of Israel!
But turn, oh, turn their silent lips away,
While he ascends the solitudes to pray!
Deep valley murmurings rise into peace,
At that still height his mission wins surcease,
And God in mercy lets his eyes undim,
Gaze long on glories that are not for him.
After the Fight
By Mary O’Reilly
(Chicago school teacher. Writer and speaker on labor questions. The
following poem was written for “Life and Labor.”)
A lull in the struggle,
A truce in the fight,
The whirr of machines
And the dearly-bought right
Just to labor for bread,—
Just to work and be fed.
For this we have marched
Through the snow-covered street;
Have borne our dead comrades
While muffled drums beat.
It is thus we have fought
For this boon dearly bought.
We measure our gain
By the price we have paid.
Call the victory great
As the struggle we made.
For we struggled to grow,
And we won. And we know....
Together we suffered
The weary weeks past;
Together we won,
And together at last
As we learn our own might,
We shall win the _great_ fight.
A lull in the struggle,
A truce in the fight,
The whirr of machines
And the dearly-bought right
Just to labor for bread,—
Just to work and be fed!
The Fool’s Christmas
By Florence May
On Christmas eve, the king, disconsolate,
Weary with all the round of pomp and state,
Gave whisper to his Fool: “A merry way
Have I bethought to spend our holiday.
Thou shalt be king, and I the fool will be—
And thou shalt rule the court in drollery
For one short day!” With caper, nod, and grin,
Full saucy replied the harlequin;
“A merry play; and sire, amazing strange
For one of us to suffer such a change!
But thou? Why all the kings of earth” said he,
“Have played the fool and played it skillfully!”
Then the king’s laugh stirred all the arras dim,
Till courtiers wondered at his humor grim.
And so it chanced when wintry sunbeams shone
From Christmas skies, lo! perched upon the throne
Sat Lionel the Fool, in purple drest,
The royal jewels blazing on his breast.
On Christmas morning too, the king arose,
And donned with sense of ease, the silken hose
Of blue and scarlet; then the doublet red
With azure slashed; upon his kingly head
That wearied oft beneath a jeweled crown,
He drew the jingling hood, and tied it down.
All day he crouched among the chill and gloom
None seeking him—within the turret room.
But when calm night with starry lamps came down
Her purple stairs—he crept forth to the town
His scanty cape about his shoulders blew,
Close to his face the screening hood he drew.
He knocked first at a cottage of the poor,
And lo! flew open wide the door—
“We have not much to give, dear fool,” they said,
“But thou art cold; come share our fire and bread!”
With willing hands they freed his cape from snow
And warmed and cheered him ere they let him go.
And so’t was ever: By the firelight dim
Of many a hearth stone poor they welcomed him;
And children who would shun the king in awe,
Would scamper to the door way if they saw
The scarlet peak of Lionel’s red hood.
“Dear fool” they called him loudly, “thou wert good
To bring the frosted cake! Come in and see
Our little Lishelk—hark! she calls for thee!”
And so’t was ever. On his way the king
With softened heart saw many a grievous thing:
But love he found and charity. And when
He crept at dawn through palace gates again,
He knew that he who rules by fear alone
May sit securely on his throne;
But he who rules by love shall find it true
That love, the milder power, is mightier, too.
“Dear fool”, he said, “thou art the king of hearts insooth;
The king of hearts! Today no farce but truth!
For I have seen that thou, beneath my rule,
Hast often played the king,—and I the fool!”
Class Legislation
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 10)
In the past we have no single instance of any class of men with the
ballot legislating fairly for any other class of men without the ballot.
How then can the men of the world all working and all voting protect the
special interests of the voteless women of the world who are emerging
as workers millions strong on the surface of our human bee-hive? They
cannot. If they have in the past done injustice to the disfranchised
classes of their fellow men, they will do far more terrible injustice
in the future to disfranchised classes of working women. If the vote
has been indispensable as a protection in the past, it will be still
more indispensable in the future because modern socialistic legislation
will increasingly control employers and employed. Thousands of English
women are to-day banded together in their suffrage unions demanding with
desperate courage from a reluctant parliament a vote to protect their
labor and their children for whom they labor.
Despair
By Lady Wilde
(Irish poet, mother of Oscar Wilde.)
Before us dies our brother of starvation;
Around are cries of famine and despair!
Where is hope for us, or comfort, or salvation—
Where—oh! where?
If the angels ever harken, downward bending,
They are weeping, we are sure,
At the litanies of human groans ascending
From the crushed hearts of the poor.
We never knew a childhood’s mirth and gladness,
Nor the proud heart of youth free and brave;
Oh, a death-like dream of wretchedness and sadness
Is life’s weary journey to the grave!
Day by day we lower sink, and lower,
Till the God-like soul within
Falls crushed beneath the fearful demon power
Of poverty and sin.
So we toil on, on with fever burning
In heart and brain;
So we toil on, on through bitter scorning,
Want, woe, and pain.
We dare not raise our eyes to the blue heavens
Or the toil must cease—
We dare not breathe the fresh air God has given
One hour in peace.
Breadth of Woman Suffrage
By Millicent Garrett Fawcett
(English contemporary. Introduction to “The Future of the Woman’s
Movement.”)
Other movements toward freedom have aimed at raising the status of a
comparatively small group or class. But the woman’s movement aims at
nothing less than raising the status of an entire sex—half of the human
race—to lift it up to the freedom and valor of womanhood.
The Poor Sex
By Mrs. H. W. Swanwick
(See page 205)
Women are notoriously the poor sex. Even a woman who figures as a rich
woman is often merely an article de luxe for the man who provides for
her, and though he may band her neck with jewels, he does not readily
give her a check for her suffrage society.
Of What Use Is It
By Ida M. Cannon
(Headworker of the Social Service Department Massachusetts General
Hospital.)
If a patient for whom a surgeon orders a back brace starves herself to
pay the bill?
If a workman, cured of rheumatism, goes back to his job in the damp
cellar which caused it?
If a clerk fitted to glasses, returns to the dim desk which crippled her
sight?
If an unmarried girl, delivered of her child, goes from the maternity
ward back to the neighborhood that ruined?
Breaking Up in Violence
By Clara E. Laughlin
(See page 68)
There must be a check on the ever-widening inequality between the richest
and the poorest, or our social structure will not endure; we shall have
revolution, not evolution; cataclysm, not growth.... In some of the old
world countries the inequality is of such long growth that one can
hardly imagine its breaking up without violence. With us it is not yet
adamantine. Pray God it never may be.
The Workers’ Right
By Helen Keller
(See page 209)
(From “Out of the Dark.”[18])
Their cause is my cause. If they are denied a living wage, I also am
defrauded. While they are industrial slaves, I cannot be free. My hunger
is not satisfied while they are unfed. I cannot enjoy the good things of
life which come to me, if they are hindered and neglected. I want all the
workers of the world to have sufficient money to provide the elements
of a normal standard of living—a decent home, healthful surroundings,
opportunity for education and recreation. I want them to have the same
blessings I have. I, deaf and blind, have been helped to overcome many
obstacles. I want them to be helped as generously in a struggle which
resembles my own in many ways.
Surely the things that the workers demand are not unreasonable. It
cannot be unreasonable to ask of society a fair chance for all.... Until
the spirit of love for our fellow men, regardless of race, color or
creed, shall fill the world, making real in our lives and our deeds the
actuality of human brotherhood—until the great mass of the people shall
be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare,
social injustice can never be attained.
[18] Doubleday, Page & Co.
Women’s Labor Organizations
By Ida Tarbell
(American contemporary. Author of “History of Standard Oil,” “The
Business of Being a Woman,” etc.)
Already there are signs that the woman’s labor organizations are willing
to recognize the inherent dignity of household service—and this is as it
should be. The woman who labors should be the one to recognize that all
labor is per se equally honorable—that there is no stigma in honestly
performed, useful service.
If she is to bring to the labor world the regeneration she dreams, she
must begin not by saying that the shop girl, the clerk, the teacher, are
in a higher class than the cook, the waitress, the maid, but that we are
all laborers alike, sisters by virtue of the service we are rendering
society. That is, labor should be the last to recognize the canker in the
caste.
The Happy Warrior
By Dorothea Hollins
(In “The Labor Leader.” J. Keir Hardie, English Labor leader,
Anti-militarist and Member of Parliament. Died September 26, 1915. It is
said the present war broke his heart.)
’Midst the world’s tumult, he lies very still
Humanity’s knight-errant, who ’gainst wrong
Ne’er sheathed his sword, but climbed the perilous long
And lengthening ascent to that far hill
Throning the city of God! What shapes of ill
He met, he recked not, so he might be strong
For the down-trodden at his side. His song
Of Brotherhood each failing heart did fill
With manly comfort, and from Womanhood
He smote the bands of tyranny and ease;
No knight was e’er more dauntless. Devil’s strife
Outbreaking, broke his heart, snapped the worn life,
Yet cannot dim the victory of good
Nor take from Righteousness the kiss of Peace.
Abolish “Dependent Classes”
By Josephine Shaw Lowell
(Quoted from “The Survey.” Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell. Mrs. Lowell
served 13 years as Charity Commissioner in New York, and in many other
ways was engaged in all good causes, municipal as well as philanthropic.)
I object to the term “dependent classes,” unless in speaking of the
insane. That such a class, not included among the insane, does exist
among us is a fact; in more than one county of this great, rich state,
there are families, as you know, who for five generations have been more
or less dependent on their fellow citizens and such families constitute
a class; but yet I protest against the use of this phrase in a way to
suggest that the existence of such a class should be recognized except to
be abolished.
There will always be _persons_ who must be helped, _individuals_ who must
depend upon public relief or on private charity for maintenance, it is
true, but it is a disgrace to any community to have a dependent _class_,
and the fact of its existence is a proof that the community has done its
duty neither to those who compose it, nor to those who maintain it.
The Servant Class
By Edna Kenton
(See page 71)
Women are thinking at last, not in men’s terms, but in their own, and
that in a slave class is always dynamic.... Because it has vision where
the other has archaism, the “lower class” is become the higher class,
self-conscious and self-poised. Not only youth, but childhood, is rebel.
Art has become anarchic, and as mysteriously as Nature works everywhere,
so has she worked with the servant half of the human race, stirring it to
self-consciousness and action; helping to keep alive the tiny torch of
revolt.
Breshkovskaya
By Elsa Barker
(Contemporary American poet and novelist. Author “The Frozen Grail,” etc.
The following is said to be the strongest of her poems. It was written
during Breshkovskaya’s last exile, before the Russian revolution released
her.)
How narrow seems the round of ladies’ lives
And ladies’ duties in their smiling world,
The day this Titan woman, gray with years,
Goes out across the void to prove her soul!
Brief are the pains of motherhood that end
In motherhood’s long joy; but she has borne
The age-long travail of a cause that lies
Still-born at last on History’s cold lap.
And yet she rests not; yet she will not drink
The cup of peace held to her parching lips
By smug Dishonor’s hand. Nay, forth she fares,
Old and alone, on exile’s rocky road—
That well-worn road with snows incarnadined
By blood-drops from her feet long years agone.
Mother of power, my soul goes out to you
As a strong swimmer goes to meet the sea
Upon whose vastness he is like a leaf.
What are the ends and purposes of song,
Save as a bugle at the lips of Life
To sound reveille to a drowsing world
When some great deed is rising like the sun?
Where are those others whom your deeds inspired
To deeds and words that were themselves a deed?
Those who believe in death have gone with death
To the gray crags of immortality;
Those who believed in life have gone with life
To the red halls of spiritual death.
And you? But what is death or life to you?
Only a weapon in the hand of faith
To cleave a way for beings yet unborn
To a far freedom you will never share!
Freedom of body is an empty shell
Wherein men crawl whose souls are held with gyves;
For Freedom is a spirit and she dwells
As often in a jail as on the hills.
In all the world this day there is no soul
Freer than you, Breshkovskaya, as you stand
Facing the future in your narrow cell.
For you are free of self and free of fear,
Those twin-born shades that lie in wait for man
When he steps out upon the wind-blown road
That leads to human greatness and to pain.
Take in your hand once more the pilgrim’s staff—
Your delicate hand misshapen from the nights
In Kara’s mines; bind on your unbent back
That long has borne the burdens of the race,
The exile’s bundle, and upon your feet
Strap the worn sandles of a tireless faith.
You are too great for pity. After you
We send not sobs, but songs; and all our days
We shall walk bravelier knowing where you are.
The Revolutionist
By Catherine Breshkovskaya
(Born to luxury, but casting her lot, when only twenty-six, with the
group of revolutionists who dared hope that the Russian peasantry
might some day arise and rebel against the horrible oppression of the
government. Twice exiled to Siberia, escaping once after serving a
sentence of twenty-one years. Just before the overthrow of the czar
closely guarded in a Siberian prison cell, after a second attempt to
escape. Free once more, she has lived to see part of the realization of
her dreams, the overthrow of Imperialism.)
We put on peasant dress, to elude the police and break down the peasant’s
cringing distrust. I dressed in enormous bark shoes, coarse shirt and
drawers, and heavy cloak. I used acid on my face and hands; I worked
and ate with the peasants; I learned their speech; I travelled on foot,
forging passports. I lived ‘illegally!’
By night I did my organizing. You desire a picture? A low room with mud
floors and walls. Rafters just overhead, and still higher thatch. The
room was packed with men, women and children. Two big fellows sat up
on the high brick stove, with their dangling feet knocking occasional
applause. These people had been gathered by my host, a brave peasant whom
I picked out, and he in turn had chosen only those whom Siberia could
not terrify. I now recalled their floggings; I pointed to those who were
crippled for life; to women, whose husbands died under the lash; and
when asked if men were to be forever flogged, then they would cry out so
fiercely that the three or four cattle in the next room would bellow and
have to be quieted. Again I would ask what chances their babies had of
living, and in reply some peasant woman would tell how her baby had died
the winter before. Why? I asked. Because they had only the most wretched
strips of land. To be free and live, the people must own the land! From
my cloak I would bring a book of fables written to teach our principles
and stir the love of freedom. And then far into the night, the firelight
showed a circle of great, broad faces and dilated eyes, staring with all
the reverence every peasant has for that mysterious thing—a book.
These books, twice as effective as oral work, were printed in secrecy
at heavy expense. But many of us had libraries, jewels, costly gowns
and furs to sell; and new recruits kept adding to our fund. We had no
personal expenses....
In that year of 1874, over two thousand educated people traveled among
the peasants. Weary work, you say. Yes, when the peasants were slow and
dull and the spirit of freedom seemed an illusion. But when that spirit
grew real one felt far from weary....
We may die in exile, and our children may die in exile, and our
children’s children may die in exile, but something must come of it at
last.
The Old Comrade
By May Beals
(In “The Progressive Woman.”)
You have sowed for the world and man
The harvest you cannot reap.
You have won nor fame nor gold nor lands,
But your faith in man you keep.
You have stood for the right alone—
Faced odium, danger, death;
Poverty is your reward and pain,
That shall end with your dying breath.
I, beginning the path you trod,
Love you, so near the end;
Can I, too, conquer the trammeled clod,
Till the higher self ascend?
I know not: Many brave men fall
Ere they reach your brave life’s span.
Old friend, it is due in part to you,
That I keep my faith in man.
The Voice of Labor
By Inez Haynes Irwin
(From “The American Federation of Labor Convention”: An Impression. In
“The Masses.”)
The voice of labor is a roar, deep as though it came from a throat of
iron, penetrating as though it came through lips of silver. One day that
voice will silence all the great guns of the world.
Our New Aristocracy
By Gertrude Atherton
(From “The New Aristocracy,” in “The Cosmopolitan.”)
(See page 44)
Instead of laying away their sense of social supremacy in old rose and
lavendar, our new aristocracy of wealth is often haughty and frigid
in manner, and not only ostentatious in expenditure, but arrogantly
assertive of what it believes to be its superior rights ... frivolity,
selfishness and pride and the constant exercise of these qualities
hardens what, for convenience, we call the heart, and breeds indifference
for the feelings and rights of others. I have been interviewed by women
reporters in almost every country I have visited, and it is only in
America—in New York, to be exact—that they have spoken of their dread
of approaching fashionable or merely rich, women.... Those we have of
ancient lineage,—who have framed their family tree and proved their
seven generations, whose fortunes have kept pace with the times, and
who from the somewhat attenuated backbone of society, in New York, for
instance—are more objectionable in some respects, than the new-rich.
While they ought to know better, they are so uneasily conscious of their
position as real aristocrats in a country too large to give them a
universal recognition, that anxious pride has bleached their very blood,
attenuated their features, narrowed their lips, and practically deprived
them of any distinctive personalities, the best that can be said of them
is that they are not, with one notorious exception, vulgar in the common
use of the word.
By H. R. H.
(The Infanta Eulalia of Spain. In the “Century Magazine.”)
1864-1912
The glitter and magnificence of society can exist only against a
background of misery and starvation.
By Mary Wollstonecraft
(In “Vindication of the Rights of Women.”)
It is the pestiferous purple which renders the progress of civilization a
curse, and warps the understanding, till men of sensibility doubt whether
the expansion of the intellect produces a greater proportion of happiness
or misery.
By Mrs. John Martin
We have a civilization that is bloated at the top and bleeding at the
bottom, and there is decay in both.
BOOK X
Miscellaneous
MISCELLANEOUS
In Passing
By Ruth
(Contemporary Poet.)
Too long have I listened to the voices of men;
They said they would teach me wisdom—
And I am not wise:
And now when I listen for the voice of God—
I cannot hear it.
A Contrast
By Laura Simmons
Across the gloom a shadow flits; I glimpse a sodden face
Wherein the years of sin and care, and toil have left their trace.
A wanton laugh;—I mark no more, for yonder in the glow
One waiteth me—my love! my star! with welcoming, I know.
Tender and fine is she, withal so stately sweet and fair
My grateful heart thrills thanks to heaven to see her standing there.
If this be woman, pure, benign—man’s blessed beacon light—
Then—Christ! What that poor outcast soul that passed me in the night?
Mary and Magdalene
By Virginia Cleaver Beacon
(In “The Coming Nation.”)
Little sister of the street,
Do not hurry by!
There’s a problem we must meet
Together, you and I.
While your head with shame is bowed,
While you shun the day,
Right forbids that I be proud,
Who might have gone your way.
Did you find the road too hard,
Feet untaught must tread?
Was the honest pathway barred,—
To this the other led?
In a world where all is sold
You have sold yourself;
Poor the price the world has doled,
You win not even pelf.
Little sister of the street,
This old wrong must cease!
You and I as women meet
To give the world release.
Dare We Judge?
By Paulina Brandreth
(In “The Survey.”)
What do we know of life,
We, who are housed and fed,
What do we know of strife
Who are so gently led?
Have we dwelt in the slime
Of Poverty’s abode
Have we walked with the crime
Engendered by its load?
Oh, have we ever known
Days of eternal care?
When Hope is turned to stone
And broken by Despair?
Or have we ever raced
And won, and lost again?
And then with failure faced
The cruelty of men?
We have not lived these things,
Our bread and wine is sweet;
We do not know what causes bring
The woman to the street.
Yet, she who wounds her soul
Is better far than we,
Who do our lives control
In self-complacency.
Aye, better far than we,
Who ignorantly dwell,
Lulled with tranquility
Above the wreck of hell.
What do we know of life,
We, who are housed and fed,
Who, sheltered from all strife,
On thornless pathways tread?
Two Storks
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(America’s foremost woman Sociologist. Author of numerous books, and
editor, owner and publisher of “The Forerunner,” a magazine of advanced
thought on the woman question. The following is from “The Forerunner.”)
Two storks were nesting.
He was a young stork—and narrow minded. Before he married he had
consorted mainly with striplings of his own kind, and had given no
thought to the ladies, either maid or matron.
After he married his attention was concentrated on his all-satisfying
wife, upon that triumph of art, labor and love—their nest, and upon
those special creations—their children. Deeply was he moved by the
marvelous instincts and processes of motherhood. Love, reverence, intense
admiration, rose in his heart for her of the well-built nest; her of the
gleaming treasure of smooth eggs; her of the patient brooding breast, the
warming wings, the downy, wide-mouthed group of little ones.
Assiduously he labored to help her build the nest, to help her feed
the young; proud of his impassioned activity in her and their behalf;
devoutly he performed his share of the brooding, while she hunted in her
turn. When he was a-wing he thought continually of her as one with the
brood—his brood. When he was on the nest he thought all the more of her,
who sat there so long, so lovingly, to such noble ends.
The happy days flew by, fair spring—sweet summer—gentle autumn. The young
ones grew larger and larger; it was more and more work to keep their
lengthening, widening beaks shut in contentment. Both parents flew far
afield to feed them.
Then the days grew shorter, the sky grayer, the wind colder; there was
large hunting and small success. In his dreams he began to see sunshine,
broad, burning sunshine, day after day; skies of limitless blue; dark,
deep, yet full of fire; stretches of bright water, shallow, warm—fringed
with tall reeds and rushes, teeming with fat frogs.
They were in her dreams, too, but he did not know that.
He stretched his wings and flew farther every day; but his wings were
not satisfied. In his dreams came a sense of vast heights and boundless
spaces of the earth streaming away beneath him; black water and white
land; gray water and brown land, blue water and green land, all flowing
backward from day to day, while the cold lessened and the warmth grew.
He felt the empty sparkling nights, stars far above, quivering, burning;
stars far below quivering more in the dark water; and felt his great
wings wide, strong, all-sufficient, carrying him on and on!
This was in her dreams, too, but he did not know that.
“It is time to go,” he cried one day. “They are coming! It is upon us!
Yes,—I must go! Goodbye, my wife! Goodbye, my children!” For the passion
of wings was upon him.
She, too, was stirred to the heart. “Yes, it is time to go!” she cried.
“I am ready! Come!”
He was shocked, grieved, astonished. “Why, my dear!” he said, “How
preposterous! You cannot go on the great flight! Your wings are for
brooding tender little ones! Your body is for the wonder of the gleaming
treasure.—Not for days’ and nights’ ceaseless soaring! You cannot go!”
She did not heed him. She spread her wide wings and swept and circled far
and high above,—as, in truth, she had been doing for many days, though he
had not noticed it.
She dropped to the ridge pole beside him, where he was still muttering
objections. “Is it not glorious?” she cried. “Come! They are nearly
ready!”
“You unnatural mother!” he burst forth. “You have forgotten the order of
nature! You have forgotten your children! Your lovely, precious, tender,
helpless little ones!” And he wept, for his highest ideals were shattered.
But the precious little ones stood there on the ridge pole and flapped
their strong young wings in high derision. They were as big as he was,
nearly; for as a matter of fact, he was but a young stork himself.
Then the air was beaten white with a thousand wings; it was like snow and
silver and sea-foam; there was a flash, a whirlwind, a hurricane of wild
joy and then the army of the sky spread wide in due array and streamed
southward.
Full of remembered joy and more joyous hope, finding the sunlight better
than her dreams, she swept away to the far summerland; and her children,
mad with the happiness of the first flight, swept beside her.
“But you are a mother!” he panted, as he caught up with them.
“Yes,” she cried, joyously, “but I was a stork before I was a mother! and
afterward!—and all the time!”
And the storks were flying.
The Doomed Men’s Message
By Mary Carolyn Davies
(In “The Survey.”)
Three doomed men in the death house write
A word like a torch from their night to my night.
Three doomed men in Sing Sing wait
Through the fading black of the night, a fate
That I made for them, I—
I said “You must die.”
They will die at dawn. But before they go
They write me a word, that I, too, may know.
They sit and write, the three doomed men,
(They three never will write again—)
Three doomed men in Sing Sing write
A word like a torch from their night to my night.
And this is the word: “Are you justified?
We would give our lives for the men who died—
Who died—by our hand. But it would not aid.
And out of two wrongs can a right be made?”
It is thus they plead, the three doomed men—
They three never will plead again.
They must die at dawn. As a brave man faces
The death he fears, they will take their places.
They will smile, perhaps, they will maybe jest.
They will be dust then. Perhaps that’s best;
But even so, what good am I
To say to three other men, “You must die?”
Three doomed men in the death house pray
Forgiveness. And I, do I ever pray?
Three doomed men confess their sin
And die as they watch a day begin.
Jealousy—anger through drink—and they
Go to their death at the break of day!
Jealousy, anger through drink—and I
A free man, walk down the street. Why, why?
Did I scorn them? Well, we are brothers now,
I and the three, or will be soon.
When day blots out this fading moon,
I shall have killed, no matter how,
Then, murderers all, take heed of me!
They killed but one.
When my deed is done,
My hands will be stained with the blood of three!
They sit and write, the three doomed men,
They three never will write again—
But I still shall hear, with fear and dread,
What the three doomed men in Sing Sing said.
Road Song
By Irene P. McKeehan
(In “The Century Magazine.”)
I have lived in the garden with Adam,
And eaten the fruit of the tree;
I have hidden, ashamed, from the face of God,
For I dreamed that He could not see.
The flaming sword of the Angel of Wrath
Has driven me over the earth;
I am marked with the mark of the murderer Cain;
I have travailed at death and at birth.
With patriarch, priest and prophet, I seek for a promised land,
Lead me, brother; follow, me, brother; brother, oh, take my hand!
I am moving onward, and ever on, O brother, I may not stand!
I have made my children the slaves of trade,
And scarred their backs with the rod;
For a bag of gold, with a sword of steel
I have broken the laws of God.
But whenever a cause demands my life,
I have laid it down with a will;
For honor and love and a heart-wrung cry
I can play the hero still.
My feet are firm on the steep, straight way, though I doubt if
I understand;
Whether you lead or follow me brother, let us go hand in hand!
And stay not behind, dear brother of mine, on the road to the
Promised Land.
Dress Reform
By Amelia Bloomer
(Editor of “The Lily.” An advocate in the ’50s, of dress reform.
Introduced the bifurcated skirt which popular acclaim at once called “The
Bloomer.” A woman personally modest, who suffered because of the sneers
and attacks at her efforts to have women dress sensibly. From “Life and
Work of Susan B. Anthony.”)
I feel that if all of us were less slaves to fashion we would be nobler
women, for both our bodies and minds are now rendered weak and useless
from the unhealthy and barbarous style of dress adopted, and from the
time and thought in making it attractive. A change is demanded and if I
have been the means of calling the attention of the public to it and of
leading only a few to disregard old customs and for once to think and act
for themselves, I shall not trouble myself about the false imputations
that may be cast upon me.
Giving Up Her Name
By Mrs. Alec Tweedie
(See page 126)
Another handicap that falls to the lot of woman is in her loss of
individuality and family through giving up her own name in marriage.
Purse and the Soul
By Meta L. Stern
(See page 250)
(In “The Comrade.”)
The soul doth sow and the purse doth reap
The purse doth feed while the soul doth weep—
Oh, such is the world’s strange way.
Power and honor the purse doth bring—
Worship of trader and priest and king
While souls are as cheap as clay.
O, such is the bitter way of life;
A way of unending toil and strife—
Our heritage but a curse.
So must it be till the knell we toll
Of senseless greed that gives to the soul
Less honor than to the purse.
I Heard the Spirit Singing
By June E. Downy
(In “The Independent.”)
I heard the spirits singing in the ancient caves of work;
“You are playing, man-child, playing, where the evil demons lurk.
Yet I would not have you falter, or count the awful cost,
Lest your heart grow old within you, and your zest for sport be lost.
“So toss the ball of empire, with its fatal coat of fire;
And dig for gilded nuggets, with the pangs of hot desire;
And blow your filmy bubbles in the bright face of the sun,
Tho’ you know they will tarnish, vanish, ere your playing day is done.
“Go, spin your humming-top of thought, or brood with sullen lip,
As you scrawl upon the canvas, or load the merchant ship;
Come, tell some old, old story, or rehearse some ancient creed,
Or with many a lisp of wonder, draw the music from the reed.
“Let your playful hand in cunning devise a giant eye;
And in long hours of frolic, guess the secrets of the sky;
Or peer with curious longing in the busy under-bourne,
Where microscopic beings are playing in their turn.
“And raise Love’s swaying ladder to the dizzy heights of woe;
And walk o’er desert places where the thorns and thistles grow,
When the man-child gropes and stumbles and holds his quivering breath,
As he meets within the shadows his last playfellow, “Death.”
I heard the Spirit singing: “Laughter is the strongest prayer,
And the zest of faith is measured by the mirth that toys with care;
And he who plays the hardest and dares to sing aloud,
Beyond the shadows’ caverns may some day work with God.”
The Difference
By Olive Schreiner
(From “Woman and Labor.”)
To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the female, blood,
anguish and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the few yet important
differences between man and woman as such.
The Unfair Status
By Matilda Jocelyn Gage
(From “Woman, Church and State.”)
Under French law, woman is a perpetual minor under the guardianship of
her own, or that of her husband’s family. Only in the case of the birth
of an illegitimate child is she treated as a responsible being, and then
only that discomfort and punishment may fall upon her.
Custom
By Sarah Sellers
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
I was dreaming
And I saw the children,
The babies from heaven;
The mothers of the future
Who will nurse us and rear us.
Who will teach us, and guide us;
Straight from heaven, I saw them,
Beautiful to look on;
And I heard a voice:
“Bring the chains, the chains of custom.”
The chains were golden,
And fine as a baby’s hair,
And the beautiful children
Were wound in them.
I was dreaming;
And I saw the maidens,
Strong and straight,
With the beauty of youth in their faces,
With the promise of years before them;
And I heard a voice:
“Bring the chains, the chains of custom.”
And the new chains were brought,
Beautiful and golden;
And the maidens did not know
They were chains.
I was dreaming,
And the mothers stood before me,
With their children around them;
And a voice said:
“Bring the chains, the chains of custom.”
And the mothers were bound
With chains not golden,
And the links held them
With the strength of years.
The mothers knew they were chained;
And they looked at their children.
A Thanksgiving
By Theodosia Garrison
(One of America’s leading contemporary poets.)
For the friendship of women, Lord, that hath been since the world had
breath,
Since a woman stood at a woman’s side to comfort through birth and
death,
You have made as a bond of mirth and tears to last forever and aye,—
For the friendship of true woman, Lord, take you my thanks today.
Many the joys I have welcomed, many the joys that have passed,
But this is the good unfailing, and this is the peace that shall last;
From love that dies and love that lies, and love that must cling and
sting,
Back to the arms of our sisters we turn, for our comforting.
For the friendship of true women, Lord, that has been and shall ever be,
Since a woman stood at a woman’s side at the cross of Calvary;
For the tears we weep and the trust we keep, and the self-same prayers
we pray—
For the friendship of true women, Lord, take you my thanks today.
Women Run in Molds
By Frances Power Cobb
(From “Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture,” a compilation of essays
published in 1869, in London.)
Of all the theories current concerning women, none is more curious than
the theory that it is needful to make a theory about them. That a woman
is a Domestic, a Social, or a Political creature; that she is a Goddess,
or a Doll; the “Angel in the House,” or a Drudge, with a suckling of
fools and a chronicaling of small beer for her sole privileges that she
has, at all events, a “Mission,” or a “Sphere,” or a “Kingdom,” of some
sort or other, if we could but agree on what it is,—all this is taken
for granted. But, as nobody ever yet sat down and constructed analogous
hypotheses about the other half of the human race, we are driven to
conclude, both that a woman is a more mysterious creature than a man,
and also that it is the general impression that she is made of some more
plastic material, which can be advantageously manipulated to fit our
theory about her nature and office, whenever we have come to a conclusion
as to what that nature and office may be. “Let us fix our own Ideal in
the first place,” seems to be the popular notion, and then the real Woman
in accordance thereto will appear in due course of time. We have nothing
to do but to make round holes and women will grow round to fill them;
or square holes, and they will become square. Men grow like trees, and
the most we can do is to lop or clip them, but women run in molds, like
candles, and we can make them long-threes, or short-sixes, whichever we
please.
A Sheaf of Quotations
By Mme. Necker
Woman’s tongue is her sword which she never lets rust.
By Marguerite de Valois
A woman of honor should never suspect another of things she would not do
herself.
By Mme. de Sonza
It is vanity that renders the youth of women culpable and their old age
ridiculous.
By Mdlle. de Lespinasse
A woman would be in despair if Nature had formed her as fashion makes her
appear.
Mme. Fee
Do not take women from the bedside of those who suffer; it is their post
of honor.
By Eugenie de Guerin
A mother’s tenderness and caresses are the milk of the heart.
By Margaret Deland
The best things of our nature fashion themselves in silence.
By Edith Wharton
Life’s just a perpetual piecing together.
By Agnes H. Downing
(In “The Progressive Woman.”)
The woman is censured with the idea of protecting morality. And the
man is let go; why? Nobody knows why. Because he is a man and no one
ever thought of punishing a man for a little thing like that.... Would
you avoid tragedies? Then advocate sex-equality. We will always have
individual and social tragedy so long as the woman is stoned and the man
goes free.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN'S VOICE ***
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