THE UNREST OF WOMEN BY Edward Sandford Martin Author of 'The Luxury of Children," "Windfalls of Observation," "The Reflections of a Beginning Husband," etc. New York and London D. Appleton and Company •^- 45531 ^5 2 9 Copyright, 1913, bt D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Copyright, 1912-1913, by the CcBTia Pdblishinq Co. Copyright, 1913, by the Life Publishing Co. Printed in the United States of America V4q> CONTENTS PAGE ) I. The Feminine Unrest ... 3 ^ II. The Disquiet of Miss Thomas . 25 III. The Agitation of Mrs. Bel- mont 47 IV. The Admirable Miss Addams . 69 V. Self-supporting Wives ... 93 VI. Feminism and the Dual Stand- ard 115 VII. The Cause and the Cure . . 127 I THE FEMININE UNREST THE FEMININE UNREST THERE is a great deal in print about "the feminine un- rest." Whether it is much more prevalent than usual, or only- more vocal, it presses on attention and has to be considered. Parents of girls want to know their duty; want to know to what sort of em- ployments and responsibilities they must bring their daughters up. Girls still in school or lately out grope to discover what is expected of them. Are they to be helpers at home or workers independent of their families? Are they to be do- [3] THE UNREST OF WOMEN mestie or extraparietal ? Are they to find an outside job for the sak^ of their own development, or only seek one if they need the wage it wilL bring them ? Shall they go to college if they can, and if not what shall! they do next ? Shall thej^ marry, and if so whom, and on what terms? What is the life to which they are to adjust themselves? Is it the life of women in the Nineteenth Century,- or a new and different life, calling for new plans and proceedings? These are real questions. All the girls nowadays are more or less con- fronted by them. Most of them seem to feel more or less uncertain about their destiny; uncertain not as to particulars, but as to generals; un- certain not as to which man and when and where, but whether they must [4] THE FEMININE UNREST try to be such women as their moth- ers were, or shape themselves by- some new pattern the outHnes of which are not yet clear. So it seems rather a hard time for girls; but the trouble is hardly a trouble at all, for what chiefly makes the disturbance is enlargement of opportunity. Girls have a wider choice than they used to have. Besides the old-time call- ings of dressmaking, millinery, teach- ing school and getting married, they can — let's see, let's see — work in fac- tories, laundries, stores; be cashiers; be stenographers or typewriters; be trained nurses or doctors; be tele- phone girls, indispensable office workers, actresses, writers, librarians, social workers, deans and presidents of colleges; or go into some other business not done at home. [5] THE UNREST OF WOMEN Not many mothers of contempo- rary girls tried any of these latter employments. The typewriter and the telephone were only invented yesterday; trained nurses belong for the most part to the last quarter- century; "salesladies" are no older. That makes these new fashions in employments for women the more experimental. The wisdom of mothers, a body of knowledge de- rived from instinct, experience and observation, and of enormous value to human life, is a good deal baffled by them. Indeed it is current doc- trine that the live-at-home mothers are not up to the task of looking after all these outworking girls, and that the law — the Government — must undertake it. That is consider- ably true. This great force of fac- [61 THE FEMININE UNREST tory-working, office-keeping, mer- chandising women is a new feature of civilization, and there must, of course, be proper laws for its regulation and protection. The girls, as they come along and see this great body of outworking women, say to themselves: "That is what woman's life is coming to be. That is what I must face and pre- pare for. The old domestic life of housekeeping is going the way of the distaff. What is important now for me is to be qualified to hold a worth- while place in this new life that is and is to be." That also is considerably true. But it is not the whole truth. There is a huge body of women in the away- from-home employments, but they are almost all helpers. The princi- [7] THE UNREST OF WOMEN pals and ruling workers are almost all men. Lawyers' offices are full of women, extremelj'' competent and useful, but there are few woman law- yers; there are many trained nurses, but comparatively few woman doc- tors; there are girls galore on the floors of the department stores, and some women hold excellent positions in them, but a woman in the firm is a great rarity. Women are admirable helpers in business, cheaper than men, more tractable, often more agreeable, but thej^ do not stand on the same level with men in these un- domestic employments. What is the reason? Does it mean that women have not yet got their full dues in in- dustry? It does mean that, no doubt, to [8] THE FEMININE UNREST some extent; but that is not the rea- son. Does it mean that women are not the equals of men? No; it does not mean that. They are equal. The reason is this : that all this out- of-the-home work is to man his voca- tion, but to woman at large no more than her avocation. Her great vo- cation is motherhood. It is in that that she is indispensable and un- rivaled ; and in that is the basis of her complete equality with man. In that she is the principal, not only in bear- ing children, but in rearing and train- ing them as well. That is by so much the most important calling to which women must look forward that for the general run of women all the other employments are of negligible [9] THE UNREST OF WOMEN moment in comparison with it and have to be considered on a basis of their relation to it. To that calhng the great mass of women in due time find their way. They marry and have children. The extraparietal wage-earning work that some of them do before marriage may be com- pared with the years of military serv- ice which young men have to give in France and Germany. It is a tem- porary employment, necessary and often very valuable as a training, but in a field of endeavor from which they expect to withdraw as soon as they can. Like the young soldiers learn- ing the rudiments of war a large ma- jority of the women wage-earners are young girls serving their time in the industrial army, but expecting later to earn their discharge and pro- [10] THE FEMININE UNREST ceed to their real business in life. To marry and have children and raise them is the natural destiny of women ; the same now that it always was and always will be. It is for that, primar- ily, that girls should be trained; to that that they should be encouraged to look forward; and their training should be such as will help them to marry wisely, to have children that are worth raising, and to raise them well.^ Then what is the unrest all about? For one thing it is an imrest that waits on readjustment. This great intrusion of woman, especially be- tween the ages of seventeen and twenty-seven, in the out-of-the-house employments is a new thing, and a big thing full of problems. In hundreds of thousands of families thought has to be taken not only 3 [11] THE UNREST OF WOMEN about the training of daughters for their ultimate destiny of motherhood, and putting them in the way to real- ize it, but also about their training for this intermediate work which is for so many of them a necessary pref- ace to marriage, and which will de- termine a good deal, by their experi- ence in it, what sort of marriages they will make. It is necessary in such families to plan for a girl's wage- earning employment as though it were to be, as it may be, her life's work, and to do it with the knowl- edge, as a rule, that it ought not to be her life's work, and with the ex- pectation that it won't be. That makes a troublesome problem, and parents' minds and daughters' minds, in the strain of solving it, are apt to let the immediate need cloud their [121 THE FEMININE UNREST vision of the remoter and more im- portant destiny. It looks important for a girl to get a good place where she will like her work and do well, but it is much more important that the work shall like her, and that she shall escape from it in time, while she is still capable of fulfilling wom- an's greater destiny and has not yet become an office fixture. Moreover it is an unrest that is a part of a great unrest that is affect- ing all the world, that puts the Young Turks in charge of Turkey, starts a republic in China, and gives power to Asquith and Lloyd-George in England, and that put a third party into our politics last summer. This unrest is a general reaching out for more: for more liberty, more jus- tice, more opportunity, more to eat, [13] THE UNREST OF WOMEN more money to spend, more fun, more leisure, more knowledge. In the masses of the people of the earth there moves a great longing for a better chance and a fuller life. That is a great phenomenon, and, of course, women have their full share of it. The people moved by this general unrest don't know precisely what they want nor how to get it. They don't know at all accurately what is right and what is wrong in the way the world is run at present, nor what resources are available to satisfy their yearnings, nor what instrumentalities of government and justice are defec- tive or obsolete, nor who, nor what, is to blame for distresses or wants or restrictions that they chafe under. Every innovator, every mover for new methods, every vaunter of a new [14] THE FEMININE UNREST remedy, finds his opportunity in this prevaihng temper of men. Listen to Debs, lately the Socialist candidate for President, in his speech accepting the nomination: "Capitalism is rushing blindly to its impending doom. All the signs portend the inevitable breakdown of the existing order. Deep-seated dis- content has seized upon the masses. Poverty, high prices, unemployment, child slavery, widespread misery and haggard want in a land bursting with abundance ; prostitution and insanity, suicide and crime; these in solemn numbers tell the tragic story of capi- talism's saturnalia of blood and tears and shame as its end draws near." When that sort of discourse en- gages the sympathies of millions, of course there is unrest among women. [15] THE UNREST OF WOMEN There is unrest among women be- cause there is unrest in the air they breathe, but, naturally, it takes its own special forms. The form that is most conspicuous is the aspiration for the suffrage. A certain proportion of women — how large no one j^et knows — have reached the conclusion that they want the vote. That seems to stand in their minds as the evidence of equal- ity with man. Give them the vote and they will see to it that women are paid the same wages as men for the same work, that the factory laws are what thc}^ should be, that white slavery is abolished, that child labor is duly guarded and restricted, and, and, and, and. Not only are the suf- fragists restless themselves, but thej'- also force disturbance on the women, [16] THE FEMININE UNREST apparently a large majority, who have found their vocation in life and are fairty satisfied with it, or else see no cure in suffrage for what they don't like, and fear its drawbacks more than they anticipate its bene- fits. Such women find themselves threatened with political obligations which they think do not belong to them, and which they do not wish to incur, unless they organize their op- position and make it felt. And this some of them are doing, and with energy, though not with much joy in the combat. For, much as they dislike the duty, it is not one that can safel}^ be neglected by women who believe that political government will remain in the hands of men anyhow, and that it is better that the respon- sibility should go with the power. [171 THE UNREST OF WOMEN Most women still prefer that it should so remain. Most women prefer, other things being equal, government bj'- men to govern- ment by women. And that seems a sound preference, for though it might seem natural that women should side Avith women against men, and men with men against women, that is not so natural as it seems and usually does not hap^ pen. It is woman, not man, that is indispensable to man, and he is no- toriouslj^ prone to take the side of a woman against a man; and it is man, not woman, that is indispen- sable to woman, and at a pinch she will usually cleave to her own as against her like. The suffrage has come in some countries and in some of our own [18] THE FEMININE UNREST States. Let it be tried in the experi- ment stations. We do not do well to be too much afraid of it. If it belongs to come we shall have it. If it belongs to stay it will stay. Cali- fornia is trying it. Let us see whether the woman voters will con- tinue to like it and to use it, whether it helps matters, whether the feminine unrest is allayed or increased by it. Colorado has had it for nineteen years, and its value and the expe- diency of it seem to be as much dis- cussed and disputed in that State as ever, and with just as much un- certainty of conclusion. It does not appear that "poverty, high prices, unemployment, child slavery, wide- spread misery and haggard want, prostitution, insanity, suicide and crime" are so much scarcer in Colo- [19] THE UNREST OF WOMEN rado than in other States of like eco- nomic conditions as to furnish an example of the magical value of women's votes. Women's votes seem to be much like men's votes. When a row of pianos make a concert then the voters will make a millennium. At present it is not the pianos, but the players who play on them, who make the concert; and it is not the voters, but the poets, prophets and statesmen who inspire and enlist them, that secure millennial improve- ments in legislation and government. It does not seem to matter greatly who votes if only all the social groups are fairly represented. But a pianist can make no concert without his piano, and the political reformer must have some instrument on which to play and through which to express [20] THE FEMININE UNREST himself and achieve his performances. Our reformers have such an instru- ment as it is, an instrument that not only responds to the player, but has, too, the property of the aeolian harp, in that it catches what is in the air and is harmonious to it. The feminine unrest stirs a certain proportion of the women to organize to get the vote, and to hope when they have got it to achieve great things. Other women, stirred by the same promptings, care nothing for the vote and will not organize to get it. But not a bit the less they reach out to satisfy the new needs of which they have become conscious, and to adjust themselves to the changes in their world and meet the new de- mands that life makes of them. II THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS II THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS NOT all the nice women nor all the wise ones are on either side of the suffrage question. One sees ladies with a pathetic inef- fectuality of the wits campaigning and even "soap-boxing" for the bal- lot, and conveying at every word and turn involuntary evidence of their own incapacity to do good with it. Other ladies, hearty supporters of the other side, disclose by their speech, their aspects, the very way they put one foot before the other, that the life they live and the world [25] THE UNREST OF WOMEN they live it in are neither of them quite real, and that their view of things is a rear-platform view that we are all rapidly speeding away from. "Equal suffrage" is a big is- sue and important, but it is only a detail of the woman problem and the woman movement. Given, it may prove a biscuit thrown to a whale. Organized unrest, encouraged by the evidence that it can get what it tries for, may be expected to proceed to the next thing. And so it is important to know what else besides suffrage is in the minds of the more important suf- fragists. The vote, of course, is only a tool by which women can express their political desires. Any notion that we can get of their ideals of a world improved by women for women [26] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS will be helpful in clearing the issues and giving individual judgment a chance to be exercised on the question whether or not such ideals are sound. President Thomas, of Bryn Mawr, is a notable woman and an ardent suffragist. Perhaps from her ad- dress at the anniversary of the found- ing of Mount Holyoke College, on "Woman's Part in the Future," we may get an idea of her notion of what would make the world more accept- able to women. Miss Thomas says that women now have almost equal opportunities for study, but have not yet won the rewards of studjs that they are "still shut out from the incentives to schol- arship." Even in the low^er public schools, she saj^s, the most responsible and highly paid positions are still re- 3 [27] THE UNREST OF WOMEN served for men, and only in a few women's colleges may women com- pete with men for full professorships. Enlarging upon that she goes on to say that women scholars have another and still more cruel handicap. "They may have spent half a lifetime in fit- ting themselves for a scholar's work and then may be asked to choose be- tween it and marriage. No one can estimate the number of women who remain unmarried in revolt before such a horrible alternative." "How many men scholars," she asks, "would there be if we compelled them to make such an inhuman choice? As a result every civilized country contains a large and ever-in- creasing body of celibate women and men. The best women, and many of the best men, are unable to marry be- [28] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS cause of lack of means to found a f amity." It is already clear, JMiss Thomas believes, that this transformation of society, of which universal woman suffrage is only one small part, will give women equal opportunity in every field of human effort, includ- ing teaching and research. "Wher- ever women are already part of the electorate they receive equal pay for equal work, and are equally eligible with men for all State and municipal positions. Wherever women vote, which will soon be everywhere in the United States and in all European countries, women will be elected equally with men on all school and university boards. Education is women's pecular public interest. As an immediate consequence there [29] THE UNREST OF WOMEN will be free competition for all State- supported university professorships. Nor will marriage any longer dis- qualify women from following their life work. Women will not deprive other women of a livelihood or of a dearly loved profession because they wish to marry. This has been done in the past only because men do not yet understand that women, like themselves, find their greatest happi- ness in congenial work." r In these words of Miss Thomas there is the suggestion that marriage is not in itself a sufficient career for able and educated women, and that it should not interfere with other work, especially of research and teaching, to which such women have been trained, any more than it does with the work of trained men. [30] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS If marriage is long enough de- layed, there need be no considerable interference with the outside career of the wife. If there are to be no children, the woman may as well go along with the employments of her spinsterhood if she likes them, and if she and her husband are content with a marriage on those terms. But if there are children, the mother's out- side work will be interrupted, not onl}^ for the intervals needed to let the children be born, but also because they are far more than a spare-hour occupation after they are born. In- dian mothers strap their newborn pa- pooses on their shoulders, and go on. Working women put their babies in a day nursery and go out to their work. Mothers who must, put the matches out of reach and leave their [31] THE UNREST OF WOMEN young children at home with such care or substitutes for care as they can provide, and go out to earn wages. That is better than breaking up a family, but is it an ideal condi- tion to be imitated by young mothers because they love their outside work? Of course marriage is a greater im- pediment to a woman's outside career than it is to a man's ! Votes for wom- en cannot change that. "At Br}^n Mawr," says Miss Thomas, "we have never closed the engagement of a woman professor be- cause of marriage"; and she adds: "Several j^ears ago I persuaded a. young woman scholar, whose husband was called to Brj^n Mawr, to take up college teaching again. She told me afterward that it was like paradise on earth to shut herself into her study [S2] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS in the college library among her books for long hours of intellectual effort." If the young- woman scholar had no engrossing young domestic dis- tractions and was bored, of course she did well to put her mind on some- thing that gave it wholesome employ- ment. JNIerel}^ to keep a man amused and fed and his clothes mended is not in itself a sufficient career for an able woman. There are men who must be carried or they will fall down, and whether they are worth carrying or not they often appeal successfully to the motherliness of able women whose hearts are lonely and who shoulder them and trudge on. There are men of talent and a fine spirit geared to incapacity in practical affairs (like the painter in [33] THE UNREST OF WOMEN Arnold Bennett's "Buried Alive") who are well worth mothering in this fashion, and there are analogous cases of hardworking and able self- supporting women who need the com- panionship of men and take husbands sometimes to get it, going on with their work of course. That is their right, and no one should gi'udge them the exercise of it, and whether husbands so acquired can support them or not is unimportant if only somehow the family bills are paid. But these are all cases outside of common experience. Perhaps Miss Thomas's women scholars who "have spent half a lifetime in fitting them- selves for a scholar's work" should also be classed as persons to whom common experience should not give rules. "Half a lifetime" is thirty- [34] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS five years. Surely women who wait as long as that to marry ought to be left to make for themselves the most satisfactory terms they can. No sal- vage of domestic happiness should be grudged them, and no obstacle put in the way of their readjustment. They should hold their professor- ships, if thc}^ need them, as long as thej^ can do their work and then, if they have qualified for pensions, they should have them, married or not. Nevertheless, not all women teach- ers or professors will regard as a * 'horrible alternative" a marriage acceptable in other respects, which diverts them from teaching and re- search and earning salaries. If a woman is willing to marry a man at all, she will usually be willing to live on his earnings, provided he can earn [35] THE UNREST OF WOMEN enough, and sometimes even when he can't. The women teachers and pro- fessors are not all so in love with their work that married life without it looks "horrible" to them. Some of them are delighted at the prospect of being relieved from wage-earning and of having a home, a husband and a famil3^ I have known of such cases. Miss Thomas does not disclose any knowledge of them. The fault, as I see it, that is to be found with her kind of unrest is that it over- values independence for women, overv^alues the wage-earning, untram- meled cafeer, and undervalues the career that goes with marriage and domestic life. It is to admire and respect Miss Thomas for what she has done and is doing. For the rather stupid peo- [36] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS pie who need to have it demonstrated that girls can learn whatever there is in books, she has provided one of the most effectual demonstrations. But might she not have done all that and run a nunnery with nuns for teachers? Is that what she would like ? She seems to complain of mar- riage because it is slow to adjust it- self to the processes of Bryn Mawr, but she is confident that when women vote the adjustment will be perfected. Can it be that Miss Thomas inclines to feel that life is for study rather than study for life? She seems to approve of marriage, but says it must not interfere with the careers of scholars. When Miss Thomas says the best women are unable to marry she must mean the best in scholarship. Other- [37] 45531 THE UNREST OF WOMEN wise it is a saying that miist look for its defence, not to living people but to the might-have-been born that were not and never will be. It may be that these accomplished ladies will marry more generally when their sal- aries are larger and surer, but it takes strong faith to be hopeful of that. When wife and man both earn wages, of course the family income is in- creased. Marriage may seem prac- ticable where both partners are wage- earners when it wouldn't be other- wise. But what would it mean when wife and man both went out to work and had to hold their positions? It would usually mean childlessness while it lasted. The ideal which seems to exist in the back part of Miss Thomas's mind of a coming marriage where the wife will earn her [38] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS own living and go her own gait does not seem to me to be sound. It may do, however, to temper that other, very old-fashioned idea that a woman belongs to her husband and shall do as he says. She does belong to him, certainly; but no more than he be- longs to her. She should do as he says in some things; he should do as she says in others; both maintain- ing in many concerns entire freedom of individual action. People get along in the married state not so much by having separate incomes as by finding out what their business is and minding it. It is already appre- ciated by the intelligent that it is a part of the business of the head man in a family to secure to all the women in it the utmost freedom of action that is consistent with family life. [39] THE UNREST OF WOMEN Women may get equal pay for equal work whether they vote or not, and notwithstanding that the pay of a grown man is adjusted to the ex- pectation that he will share it with a woman; but one may doubt if any transformation of society ever will or ever can "give women equal op- portunity in every field of human ef- fort." And yet it may if "opportunity" is not meant to imply capacit}'^ or in- clination to embrace it. Even now opportunity is open enough to wom- en in many fields that they do not enter because they are not attracted to them, or because in those fields men do better. They might be presi- dents of railroads and banks, and mistresses of counting rooms and great industrial enterprises. There is [40] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS no law to hinder it. A good many women, as it is, are active in direction in various lines of trade, but they are exceptional w^omen. The more valu- able women do not turn to these em- ployments except under compulsion, and the only visible reason to think that they ever will is that the compul- sion seems to be growing stronger, and, perhaps because men fail in their duties, more and more women seem to be pushed out of domestic life. Do we want to cultivate that com- pulsion or, if possible, to lessen it? Do we want women to shoulder an increased share of the hard manual labor of the world? Mrs. Schreiner, apparently, would have them do so. Do we want them to do an in- [41] THE UNREST OF WOMEN creased share of the harder mental wage-earning work, like managing railroads, that is now done by men? Miss Thomas apparently would have them do so. Is not that implied by "equal opportunity in every field of human effort"? If women, with unimpaired power to do the things that women alone can do, could compete successfully with men in the rest of the employ- ments, they would be far superior creatures to men. Once, when "mental photograph" books were the fashion, there was a question in them: "What do you most admire in woman?" The an- swer to it that one man wrote was: "Milk." Maybe he was a doctor; maybe he was just a man of experi- ence in raising a family. Taken lit- [42] THE DISQUIET OF MISS THOMAS erally it was an answer with which there will be sympathizers, but taken broadly it was full of philosophy and appreciation of our human problems Women are the fountain and the great feeders of life. They nourish mankind, body and spirit. They not only actually bear and rear the chil- dren, but they are also sustainers of men. And some of the childless women have been the greatest moth- ers of all. There are close analogies between body and spirit; between bodily and mental or spiritual functions. There is not much milk in men. They are better for achievement, but not so good for sustenance. Ill THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT Ill THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT MOST men are conscious, I suppose, of an impression that it is a sort of imperti- nence for a man to have opinions of his own on the question of whether or not women should vote. He is the judge in the matter and the jury. I suppose he may be employed with- out impropriety as advocate on either side; but he is neither plaintiff nor defendant. Here are the mothers of the land before him, part of them de- claring that votes belong to women and that it is his duty to grant them, [47] THE UNREST OF WOMEN part of them protesting that votes for women will be a mere embarrass- ment, and not of use enough either to women or to the country to off- set the disturbance that will result from doubling the electorate. Poor man ! It is a Solomon's decision that is required of him, to say which of these two lots of mothers love their country and humanity the most. Complaint is made of those male persons who say that women will get the vote as soon as a majority of them want it. The suffragists seem to feel that such persons are timorous — that is, they are afraid to have a definite opinion or take a pronounced stand either way. But is not their attitude fairly seemly for men sitting as a court to determine what are the rights [48] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT of a great question? Whether they incline one way or the other, and few men are without leaning in the mat- ter, their minds should be fairly hos- pitable to argument and open to con- viction. It is a mistake to think by whole- sale of the anti-suffrage men as per- sons who grudge to women their full share of whatever advantage these progressive times hold out. No doubt some of them are Bourbons who hold with the past at all odds, but the mass of them are just the natural al- lies of the anti-suffrage women. They are not men opposed to gratifying women their desires, but contestants that the majority of women shall have what they still seem to want: freedom to go about their business without having added to it any more [49] THE UNREST OF WOMEN responsibility about general politics than they have already. The mental attitude of men toward women is not determined by their opinions about the expediency of the suffrage. There is extraordinary confusion of argument over the whole woman question and especially the suf- frage; a constant offering of reasons that are personal and particular for action that would be political and general, and a constant citation, as reasons for the suffrage, of facts and situations which the suffrage seems unlikely to affect; and, as reasons against the suffrage, of facts and situations which, seen from a different angle, argue for it. As an example in this latter class there is the old cry about the danger of the "bad woman" vote, [50] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT a cry which has pretty well passed out among the echoes. I mention it to make good Mrs. Belmont's asser- tion that "men in speaking of women voting always refer to the prostitute." The argument used to be that the prostitutes were allied with evil, and would always vote and always sell their votes to the wickedest buyer. But the truth is that the very exist- ence of prostitution inclines some men toward woman suffrage because they want to see if women's votes could at all avail to clean prostitu- tion up. And as for the poor "bad women" themselves, of course they would not be a political peril, for, by daylight at least, they are retiring persons. They are not the enemies of society, but its victims, and as the most pathetic sufferers by the present [51] THE UNREST OF WOMEN order, as of every known order that has preceded it, they might well be allowed even now half a dozen votes apiece, so that their deplorable case might stand the better chance of get- ting effective attention. And speaking of Mrs. Belmont, no doubt she has political gifts, but is she truly persuasive in exhorta- tion? I don't find her so. Still there are two branches of the suffrage dec- lamation. One aims to persuade men to give the suffrage to women, the other to excite women to want votes like anything, and to rise up and get them anyhow. Miss Addams is persuasive, but it seems to be the second branch of suffragist activity that engages Mrs. Belmont. When she speaks, prudent men go and get behind something and consider in [52] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT which direction they can get away- best. So probably Mrs. Behnont speaks more with an eye to women than to men. I have been reading an address by her, but it does not per- suade me to her views. When she says the Constitution should repre- sent the will of all the people, not one-half, she forgets, no doubt, that our Constitution is acceptable enough to most of the women as well as to the men, so that it represents perhaps three-fourths or seven-eighths of the will of the people, which is really pretty good for a constitution. I never heard of one that represented the will of all the people, or even all the men. Usually constitutions are adopted with difficulty and against much opposition. And when Mrs. Belmont says in [53] THE UNREST OF WOMEN that same address that "a document that divides the people by the arbi- trary line of sex is not in touch with modern growth," where is she? That was the way the Creator divided the people, and if He is not in touch with modern growth it behooves modern growth to connect with Him at its early convenience. Until it does it will not prosper. And there, or thereabouts, is the real hitch in Mrs. Belmont's pro- gram. She thinks that when wom- en get the vote they are going to be different. "As a whole," she says, "women will some day emerge from the mere physical sex facts that now hinder them." That was the Wood- huU-Claflin idea, and one of the sis- ters wrote a book elaborately imput- ing a large share of the physical sex [54] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT facts of women to the meddlesome- ness of men. I guess not. Women have been women a long time, and their physical sex facts are not an invention on which the patent seems about to expire. Mrs. Belmont does not seem to see things quite as they are. "When the women vote," she says, "an entirely different body will deal with the ex- ecutive and the judiciary. The blind struggle will be over; there will be light where there is now darkness. Order will be brought out of chaos." Now is not that remarkable? The body that deals with the executive and the judiciary is only very slightly different when women vote. Look about! Look at the women and the men ; all of the same substance, physi- [55] THE UNREST OF WOMEN cal and mental, with difference of sex, to be sure, but of precisely the same human quality. It's like dip- ping soup out of a tureen ; one ladle- ful: that's the men's votes; another ladleful: that's the women's votes. And the main result is more soup in the plate and not so much in the tu- reen. And the main contention against the suffrage is that one ladle- ful of soup is enough, and the main contention for it is that it seems fairer to have two, now that the country has such a large appetite. The executive and the judiciary have only a little to do with blind struggle. They are not so bad now in this country as to be a determining cause of chaos. At their best they can no more than contribute a little to bring order out of it, and there [56] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT is no considerable probability that women's votes would expedite the improvement of either of them. They might, in some places, in some details. If Miss Addams had all the working women of voting age (about half the total number) in Chicago organized and ready to vote as she advised, I suppose they would be a power in Chicago and Illinois politics, and while she exercised that power it might do good. But how long she could hold the power, and into what hands it would fall when it divided, as it surely would ; and to what ends, wise or detrimental, it would be used, who can say? Happily the advance- ment of women and the improvement of the conditions of life are not tied up to woman suffrage, and will go on as long as civilization goes forward, [571 THE UNREST OF WOMEN whether women vote or not. Of course there is no more guarantee that women will vote wisely than that men will, and, what is more, there is no more certainty, not a bit, that they will vote to improve the condition of women than that men will do so. Men usually do vote for anything that the best of the advanced women want. They are deliberate about it, but they ought to be. If women voted laws with much less delibera- tion than men do, there would be more snarls in the statute books for the courts to disentangle. If the suffrage wins in New York, and Mrs. Belmont organizes a "hall" and goes into city politics, she will have a lot of fun, of course, and it will be a fine field for her abilities. But her dream of bringing order out [58] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT of chaos by the women's vote would be subject to disturbance by the cer- tainty that for every woman she could enlist for her policies two or three would get up early to take the other side. What's the gain of hav- ing woman "stand free," as Mrs. Bel- mont says, "her chains and shackles loosened, fallen at her feet," if after all she troops off and votes with Mrs. Dodge? And that, to a considerable and perhaps preponderant extent, is what she would do. It would be some fun, though. Politics don't make invariably for righteousness, but they make considerably for en- tertainment, and the argument that women are entitled to their share of that, is better than most of the suf- fragists' arguments. In the suffrage parade in New 5 [59] THE UNREST OF WOMEN York after election there was a trans- parency that said that one hundred and forty-six girls — if that was the number — were killed in the Triangle Shirt Waist fire, and that nothing ef- fectual was done about it. And it asked if that would have been true if the killed had been voters ? In so far as it was true at all, of course it would. A woman killed makes a greater impression on our public mind than a man killed. A lost or stolen child stirs up more feel- ing than either, yet a child has no vote. In the same amusing line is Mrs. Belmont's suggestion that though oil has risen in price since the Oil Trust was dissolved, cigarettes and tobacco have not gone up since the Tobacco Trust was dissolved, because the con- [00] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT sumers of cigarettes and tobacco are voters. It was the famous three tailors of Tooley Street who began their proc- lamation: "We, the people of Eng- land." Some of the suffrage ladies, Mrs. Belmont among them, remind one of those tailors when they speak for all the women of the United States. Nevertheless their voices are not raised in vain, for these are revolutionary times, in which adjust- ment to new conditions of life presses hard, and a voice is a voice even though its arguments are vulnerable. The other morning, in the lobby of a Fifth Avenue hotel, two men and a woman were sitting on a lounge facing the office counter. One of the men was smoking, the woman [01] THE UNREST OF WOMEN was sewing something and they were all talking together. You couldn't say more for the men than that they were decent looking. The woman seemed a lady. Her gown was violet silk, very nice but entirely simple, not a gown she was exhibiting, but a frock in which she seemed comfort- able and looked well. She had a lot of rings on her hands, and a clean, fresh face, but she was not a particu- larly pretty woman. Yet to see her there with her hat off, sewing in the hotel lobby and talking to her men, was a very pleasing sight. You no- ticed it because it was a little out of common. Here, you thought, was a woman who had a standard of living in her own head, and lived it as she went along; who neither neglected nor overemphasized appearance, who [G2] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT kept her fingers busy and her mind tranquil, and who was a companion to her men. She domesticated the whole lobby, so that you wanted to sit down and rest in it. You thought better of the hotel because she was sitting there, and better of the two men because they had sense enough to like her company, and had had sense enough back in their lives to make her like theirs. And because she seemed to feel at home anywhere in that hotel, and didn't seem con- strained to run off to her bedroom to take a stitch, you set her down somehow as a free woman. It is delightful to see women free in that way, and at ease in their world, and companionable with their men. That's the way it is going to be, the suffragists think, after women [63] THE UNREST OF WOMEN get the vote. The vote may help; I don't know. But that's the way it is now with the women who have found themselves and their world. They are not waiting for a vote. They are going ahead and living un- der the laws of the kingdom within them. One sees them about every- where, in good clothes, in bad clothes, clean and not so clean, rich, well-to- do, poor, and sometimes very poor. There is peace in their faces. Back in their minds somewhere is some- thing in which they find mental rest, and by aid of which their tasks, how- ever complicated, however heavy, are not too heavy for their strength. In a car of the Elevated I saw just such a wonderful woman, sitting bare- headed, in poor clothes, between two roughly dressed workingmen, talk- [64] THE AGITATION OF MRS. BELMONT ing earnestly with both, grave, tran- quil, sweet, and with true Madonna- like breadth of brow and simple sweep of dark hair. It rested one to watch her. I look and look and look at the women in the street. [^There are just two kinds: those who have found themselves and their world, and those who haven't. These last are abun- dantly represented among the suffra- gists; a masterless lot they are, out of a job and practicing to produce a masterless world. But the master they need is not a man, for some of them have men already, but an inner governor, who shall look out of their eyes and see truth and duty, and strengthen their hands to seize them. IV THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS IV THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS PEOPLE hold views, not so much because of the facts in sight, as because of the faith or lack of it that is in them. The papers quoted Dr. Forbes Winslow as saying, in the Eugenics Congress in London last summer, that there would be more lunatics than sane people in the world three hundred years from now. Probably he said it with qualifications that were lost out in transit, or else his definition of lunacy is more comprehensive than ours. Dr. Lombroso, learning that [69] THE UNREST OF WOMEN madness increases in this country three times as fast as population, left behind an opinion (so the newspaper says) that in a hundred years or so we would all have passed beyond the help of mere alcohol, and be taking ether or morphia. But these learned men took som- ber views. We don't feel so about it. We have faith to think that, long before we all take to morphine or before half of us have gone crazy, we shall get the machinery of life running better, so that the strain will be less. Neither the suffragists nor the antis are at all favorable to the sort of progress that Dr. Forbes Winslow (as quoted) and Dr. Lombroso have anticipated. The suffragists feel that when women get the vote the world's [701 THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS machinerj^ will run smoother, and the women opposed feel that when women have to vote the whirl will be worse than ever and the current to- ward the mad-house stronger. But neither of them want the strain of living increased. I don't see that either of these views is closely related to facts. A suffragette has been defined by an observer, lacking, possibly, in sym- pathy, as a woman who wants some- thing and thinks it's the vote. That seems a fairly sound definition, for it is manifest to observers that be- hind the general suffragist desire for the vote there are vastly different attitudes of mind. There are women who want the vote as a suitable per- sonal attribute, as they might covet a pearl necklace, or house, or a frock, [71] THE UNREST OF WOMEN or something that they would look well in, or that would add to their personal luster or distinction. There are others who want it as an instru- ment of power. They want some- thing either for themselves, or for societ}?^, which, they think, women's votes will help them to get. There is Miss Addams. She never seems to be reaching out for the vote for any use of personal embellishment, or to add to distinction or importance, which in her case would be hard. She seems to want it, incidentally, for women, because of other things which she wants for them and all mankind, and which, she thinks, would come sooner if women had the suffrage. These things that she wants belong to honest government by capable officers, and include such things as [72] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS clean milk, limited hours of work especially for women, restriction of child labor, protection from un- guarded machinery and industrial diseases, old age insurance, the diver- sion of the pay of convicts from the pockets of contractors to the support of the convicts' dependent families, and the extirpation, if possible, of prostitution. Miss Addams, when she talks of these matters, talks of them in a fashion, and with a breadth of view and precision of instance, that make you feel that whatever Miss Addams is is right, and when she looms up as a suffragist, that, too, becomes right, by inclusion. Since Mrs. Howe died. Miss Addams has become the strongest argument the suffragists have. Why? [73] THE UNREST OF WOMEN Because her self-effacing person- ality, and the manner of her life, and her spirit and her achievements at- tach people to her, and to her opin- ions. But so far as I know, which is very likely not far enough, the chief basis of her sentiment as a suffragist is that when women vote it will be easier to induce the Illinois legisla- ture to pass suitable statutes, and the courts to confirm, and the administra- tion to enforce, them, and easier to induce Congress to piece them out where necessary with Federal legis- lation, and easier generally to com- pel indecent people to behave de- cently. Time was when if a person became conscious of sin, he repented. Now he tries to get a bill through the legis- [74] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS lature. The old way had good points, but it is the fashion to abandon all the old retail ways and go in for wholesale methods. That fashion is not all good. Misconduct is bad, but legislation is an awful thing. But you don't think so when Miss Addams talks about the need of en- forcing proper statutes in Chicago. Beveridge's Federal child-labor law provided for denial of transshipment from State to State of commodities produced in factories in which child labor was not properly limited and guarded. Miss Addams seems to have approved that bill (which to me seems scandalous ) , as did most of the social workers. State rights and the fabric of government seem to be nothing to her, and even parental and family rights seem to be very little, 6 [75] THE UNREST OF WOMEN so much she has seen them abused; so much the duties that should go with them neglected. Her politics is clean milk, the protection of the young, conditions of life that are not incompatible with honest and whole- some living. But when it comes to connecting these things with women's votes, where is she ? The relation be- tween them is entirely speculative. "In women as voters," says Miss Addams's fellow - townsman, Mr. Floyd Dell, "we shall have an ele- ment impatient of restraint, straining at the rules of procedure, cynical of excuses for inaction; not always, by any means, on the side of progress; making every mistake possible to ig- norance and self-conceit." And yet he wants them to vote, for he goes on: "but transforming our politics [70] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS from a vicious end to an efficient means — from a cancer into an or- gan." Why does he think that? If Miss Addams is a true representative of womankind, one maj^ think of wom- en's votes transforming our poHtics from a vicious end to an efficient means, but so you could think of men's votes doing if Robert de Forest or Jacob Riis were representative men. Mr. Dell finds Mrs. Pank- hurst much more representative of womankind than Miss Addams. Mrs. Pankhurst, he says, "has enabled us to see what women really are like, just as Miss Addams has, by her magnificent anomalies, shown us what women are not like." But I guess Mr. Dell generalizes too much. Mrs. Pankhurst looks [771 THE UNREST OF WOMEN quite as unusual as Miss Addams. Neither of them is representative, but there is in Miss Addams a spirit that is more than hers; that was not born with her, nor will die with her, that knows neither sex nor race, nor depends on votes or laws, but works imperishably and with great rewards for the healing of the nations. Wom- en's votes may help Miss Addams's causes or they may not. Her opin- ion of their usefulness seems to be a matter of pure faith. But somehow the causes have got to win, and if women don't make them win, the men will have to. To be sure it is nothing against an opinion that it rests on faith more than on computable facts. I suppose that most of the great opinions that move the world have faith for their [78] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS basis. Faith seems to be a higher intelhgence than reason — "the sub- stance of things hoped for, the evi- dence of things unseen." Certainly it is an ill-furnished soul that would not swap his computable expecta- tions for his hopes. Anybody that has this mysterious confidence in the efficacy of women's votes ought to want them as Miss Addams does, and strive, and do battle, and soap- box for them as so many other ladies do. For my part — and I speak hum- bly as a man should, professing no more than inability to see that wom- en's votes will be any better than men's — I should be in a more glori- ous state of expectation of benefits to follow the triumph of the suffrage if domestic service was in a some- [79] THE UNREST OF WOMEN what more popular case. Mrs. Ath- erton is a suffragist, but less excited about it than some ladies. She sees a need of it in England, but as to these States she speaks in a news- paper of the servant question as far more important than the question whether a woman should vote or not. To be sure the servant question is important, and it is a matter almost entirely controlled by women. It is a great domestic industry that ma- chinery has not much affected, that increases in its demands with the wealth of the country, and that is better spread out over the country than any other paid occupation that engages women. It enormously af- fects the comfort and happiness of life, it is pretty well paid, it calls for skill, judgment, brains and training, [80] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS and personality counts in it very much indeed. You hire nimble fin- gers and a capacity for consistent spelling to run your typewriter, and nimble fingers and some other lim- ited capacity to tend a loom, but to live in your house and cook or wash or sweep and make beds, you hire a whole woman. There is money enough spent on domestic service to make it an attractive calling. If it were an attractive calling, it would relieve very much more than it does now the pressure that drives girls to the shops and factories in numbers that cheapen their labor. But it is not sufficiently attractive. Girls don't like it because its industrial standing is not good; because it re- stricts their freedom too much, is too indefinite in its demands, and, I fear, [81] THE UNREST OF WOMEN because they don't like to work for women. It is to laugh at that, but isn't it true? I am told that domestic serv- ice has not yet wholly severed its connection with feudalism. I suppose the average woman employer of servants is strong on control and somewhat weak on liberty, is inclined to think of servants as persons of "that class," and suffers from some involuntary inability to deal with them on the basis of a common hu- manity. To be sure it is a consider- able achievement to deal with all people on that basis ; to perceive that the offices of life have their various conventions and conditions of service, but that all the people who fill them are the children of the King. But, as it is, domestic service is under the [82] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS control of women, and if they had been able to make it more attractive I should have livelier hopes of what women's votes may achieve for the conditions of life outside of the house. Miss Addams, of course, under- stands all that. She has complained that the lives of too many domestic servants are dull rounds of drudgery, she has said that domestic service is the occupation that furnishes more prostitutes than any other, and she has quoted Tolstoi's words: "We constantly think that there are cir- cumstances in which a human being can be treated without affection, and there are no such circumstances." Two lots of men seem to me to be a little beside the mark in the aim of their energies; those who rush to [83] THE UNREST OF WOMEN trade in their birth-right as voters for the approval of the suffrage seeking women, and those who exhibit trem- ors of apprehension at the thought that the world is going to be femin- ized. There are some men who have woman-suffrage in the blood; want it; always did; believe in it, advocate it. There are others who think they see it coming and aspire to be on the reception committee when it arrives. The good suffragists are welcome to all the members of this latter group. There is nothing men value more than women's favor, probably noth- ing they value so much, but their at- tainment of it is quite apt to be in- versely to their direct efforts. What the best women like best in men is manhood. It is not always to be had, and then, of course, they have to [84] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS make the best of what semblance of it is obtainable. And as for the men who fear feminism, they show a curious dis- trust of the powers that are male. The only sound claim the male crea- ture has to be boss of the universe is based on divine right. If the Creator intended that he should be boss and equipped him with the facilities proper to that office, boss he will be and nothing can stop him. Votes of women will have no more effect on his mastership than so many boiled peas. He may be gentle, he may be patient, he may study to serve, he may shape himself to controlled sub- mission, but if natural mastership is in him, master he will be. If it was not Nature's gift to him, and is not a necessary incident of progressive [851 THE UNREST OF WOMEN human life, then the sooner he finds his place the better. Anyhow, he can do very little about it either way except to be himself, and the best man he can. Petty tyrannies over women, dogmatic denial to women of anything on earth or in life that they want and can attain and handle, will avail not a jot to keep man in power. Women are very enduring creatures who grow strong, and have distinctly grown to their present robust expan- sion, on petty tyrannies and silly proscriptions. For centuries in China they bound the women's feet to keep women in their place. And what did it finally come to? To Tsi-Ann, the woman autocrat! What the insur- gent women nowadays are after seems to be not so much power — for they have a vast deal of that already [86] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS — as advertisement. That is a com- modity that is not very filling at the price, and is very apt to prove in- compatible with power itself. When a car wheel thrashes they take it off, when a machine goes noisily it goes to the shop; advertisement is noise; it makes for jealousy, competition, hostility and retirement. The ladies are welcome to it if they like it, but it will not increase their power. Individual incidents may have a feminist cast, and scare the timid. The equalization of the salaries of men and women in the public schools of New York has had the immediate effect of a waiting list of teachers with no names of men on it. That is bad. There are no men teachers waiting at the bottom of the line. But the schools must have a proper [87] THE UNREST OF WOMEN proportion of men teachers and some- how, presently, will get them. But another effect the raising of the wom- en's salaries has had is amusing and instructive. I hear that the enriched women-teachers have been getting married by shoals. I guess there is nothing that women can get but what men will promptly share. A woman's natural use of what she has seems to be to confer it on a man, and cer- tainly a man's natural use of what he can get is to confer it on a woman. So let us try to be easy in our minds and await whatever is coming to women and men with fortitude and due philosophy. "No one tries to grind us down," Mr. Wilson says, "but we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless." And behind that economic system is [88] THE ADMIRABLE MISS ADDAMS Nature, forever seeking her ends and vindicating her laws, and fairly ruth- less in her proceedings. Perhaps we shall be able to inculcate benevolence into our economic system, but Na- ture owns the road and will walk down the middle of it till the crash of doom, and run over anything that gets in the way without so much as saying "Honk, honk!" V SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES V SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES IT is quite a help, in discussing things Hke the unrest of women, to get hold of a fact. A fact comes out of the mist of theory like one of those red buoys a steamer picks up as it feels its way into port on a foggy morning. The biggest fact about the modern woman dis- cussion is the sight of women in all the shops and offices. That is a con- stant reminder that there are deep economic reasons behind and below all the current disturbance. Seeing all the army of office-keeping women [93] THE UNREST OF WOMEN doing what so lately was men's work, how can we wonder at anything any- body thinks about the imminence of an entire change in the relation of women to life ? To the office men the office women are hands, eyes, ears and speech, and of course brains, too, in a measure. Any observer has a good prima-facie case in arguing that this enormous supersession of men clerks by women marks the progress of a movement to the control of all business by women. It does mean some increase of control, no doubt, but nowhere are the words of Saint Paul, so much reprobated, about the woman being created for the man, better justified than in the shops and offices. But it is a fact that the shops and offices nowadaj^s are full of [94] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES women working for wages. Those I see seem happy in their employ- ment, and their example is not lost on those who stay at home. But there have always heen uses for un- married women who would go out to work. The schools have long been full of spinster teachers, honored in their vocation, and the dwelling- houses have been full of unmarried woman servants. We have been used to seeing these women when they married give up their outside voca- tions. But here we run up against more facts. One of them is the in- creased cost of living. Another is that the women who have gone into the shops and offices have competed in the labor market with the clerks, secretaries and salesmen, and the wages of the male workers of that [95] THE UNREST OF WOMEN sort have either fallen off or have failed to increase in proportion to the increased cost of living. Ellen Key thinks that men grow less and less able to support women, and so far as concerns the general run of office-working men at least, that may be true. But a woman who is a wage-earner, and is sure of her position, will marry if her own wages, or hers and the man's combined, are enough to provide a satisfactory sup- port. That is the case of the school- teachers in New York, who may hold their places whether they marry or not. And there comes along another fact, in the application, much dis- cussed in the newspapers at this writ- ing, of a Brooklyn school-teacher to the Board of Education for a year's [961 SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES leave, without pay, to give time for her expected baby to be born and started in life. The application was refused on the ground that the Board did not have authority to grant it. It has been usual to grant leaves of several months to married teachers in similar cases where the reason of the application was not stated, and the Board's by-laws permit the ab- sence of a teacher for a year when the object of the vacation is study. But no by-law names maternity as an acceptable reason for a year's ab- sence, and the refusal of the Board was promptly followed by the circu-. lation of a petition for a change in the by-laws. That petition is interesting because it aims to put upon the city, as em- ployer, a measure of responsibility [97] THE UNREST OF WOMEN for the incidents of marriage in a married woman whom it employs. The general understanding about marriage has been that the husband should support his wife, and that un- less he could, or the woman had pri- vate means, she should not marry him. This petition aims to give the approval of a very important Board to the proposition that a woman is justified in getting married on the income she herself earns, and to pro- vide which she must continue to be a wage-earner. Miss Thomas, of Bryn Mawr, in her Mount Holyoke address seemed to approve that proposition, and pro- tested earnestly against the idea that a woman teacher must abandon her profession merely because she gets married. I notice that Ellen Key [98] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES does not see eye to eye with Miss Thomas in this matter. In her latest book she does not shrink from criti- cizing some effects of the influence of the woman movement on marriage. And while she knows that women, married or single, must be supported, and must support themselves if no one else supports them, she is not pleased to see married women under- take obligations that should rightly fall on their husbands. "No woman," she says, "has ever been at the same time all that a wife can be to her husband, a mother to her children, a housewife to her house, a working- woman to her work." Of course that is true. A great many women have been compelled to try to do all these things, and some of them have made wonderful per- [991 THE UNREST OF WOMEN formances, but to recognize that necessity often compels and misfor- tune constrains is one thing, and to accept as suitable, and approve, a plan of life that includes continuous, outside wage-earning for a married woman is another. Of some marriages Ellen Key speaks, where man and wife both work at suitable employments, and where the domestic life is happy and the work progresses easily as long as there are no children. But "when children arrive then there begins for the wife, even in such marriages, a life beyond her strength." To save the mother's strength, and keep it for the work that needs it most, Ellen Key would have "society recompense the vocation of mother." That is a solution provided society can afford [100] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES it, but the proposal to have society take care of its able-bodied and re- sponsible people — and others should hardlj^ be encouraged to have chil- dren — must always have something of the flavor of a proposal that we shall lift ourselves up by the boot- straps. If society must have children and they cannot be had except by recompensing the mothers, no doubt the mothers will be recompensed; but, as it is, society hereabouts schools the children and has assumed so large a number of other duties that used to be parental, that it will hesitate long to undertake this new expense. I am told that this plan of recom- pensing mothers was followed in the days of the Roman Empire, and for the reason that more children were needed. The natural inquiry is: [101] THE UNREST OF WOMEN "Did it come when the Roman civili- zation was in its dechne?" And the answer I got was "Yes." It seems a sort of provision that would be tried when natural sentiments and standards were failing, when, either because society had outrun its eco- nomic machinery or because of de- generacy of morals, men had lost their pride of birth and scrambled to get the satisfactions of life from any hand at any cost. There may be conditions of society when oppor- tunity has been monopolized, and law and government have failed to pro- tect life, when ordinary men, without fault of their own, may become very helpless as wage-earners, and the market for labor may be more favor- able to women. There is no novelty in a local condition where a woman [102] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES can get work and a man cannot; no novelty in women supporting men who cannot get work or cannot do it; no novelty in women supporting men who do not wish to work or who are drunken or impractical; no nov- elty even in the farming out of women for infamous uses by in- famous men who live on their tragic earnings. For this last grade of men, of whom we have lately heard so much, of course every decent person favors root-and-branch methods, the law, the lash, the stock — anything that will reach them and wipe their ac- tivities out of an earth that they de- file. But it is mighty hard to do it, chiefly because their women are usu- ally loth to destroy the only men they have. [103] THE UNREST OF WOMEN That is true, also, of better and more fortunate and abler women. They are terribly tolerant and long suffering with men ; will usually stick to them when they seem not worth sticking to, and support them if they can when they seem not worth sup- porting. Men seem to be extremely necessary to their happiness, and they do not readily give them up alto- gether; and besides a great many of them are very subject to the sense of duty. That is something that Nature has arranged, and we had better respect it, and not dispute that it is a valu- able arrangement. But we need not go so far as to help in riveting by law, or even by by-law, on the so- ciety of which we are a part, provi- sions looking to the support of [104] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES husbands by married women. That will be done too much in ordinary course without formal provision for it. Some of the suffragists, or the feminists — for suffrage hasn't much to do with it — have a vision of man and wife starting out with dinner- pails in the morning, either together or separately, and doing a wage- earning day's work, and coming home at night, and raising the necessary number of children, and being happy, prosperous and contented in that lib- erated and independent condition. That vision is nine-tenths delusion. It will work at an extreme pinch where the alternative is no bread, and it will work more or less in the case of childless people. But for the gen- eral run of families and people the [105] THE UNREST OF WOMEN old apportionment is right; one to earn wages and one to keep the home. That apportionment still governs, I suppose, in an enormous proportion of existing families, for those girls in the shops and offices are not yet all the women there are. And where women continue to earn daily wages after marriage the apportionment will tend still to continue. Somebody must keep the home. The wife has been used to do it for the laboring husband. But where the wife goes out to work for the family support she needs to have it done for her. She needs some one to think for her, to sustain her, to amuse and soothe and rest her. She needs a wife, and since she cannot conveniently take a wife she will be apt to treat herself to a husband to be a wife to her. [106] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES There is no great scarcity of women nowadays who are hard driv- en by professional or business cares and labors. They all need wives; all need to be supplemented by some one who has time and strength to think about the things they cannot spare thought for. If they get hus- bands who do for them what women commonly do for men — orderly, dutiful husbands — they are lucky, and nobody should grudge them the companionship they gain, and no one should scoff at the successful hus- bands of working-women. It is a hard job to be that. It calls for those saintlike qualities which — so much to the displeasure of some feminists — are thought to be characteristic of women. The husband of the wage- earner must learn to sink himself in 8 [107] THE UNREST OF WOMEN her, to be a helper, an accessory, a nurse, a buffer, a keeper of accounts and speaker at the telephone. He must know every nerve she has and respect it. He must know how she should be fed, and see that she is so fed. It can be done ; it has been done ; it is no more than millions of women do or have done for men. Honor a man who can do it for a woman! But there are few such men. Some of them there have been, fine crea- tures ; but there are few, though men often have got wonderful discipline from their wives; have been wonder- fully perfected in patience, long suf- fering, gentleness, the withholding of inopportune speech and all the em- bellishments recommended by Saint Paul for the adornment and perfec- tion of character. [108] SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES And of course the boot is often on the other foot, about as often, I sup- pose. In all the apportionment of good and bad in character, men and women, taken by and large, show about alike. Women are much bet- ter in some particulars of virtue, men in others, but they are both the same stuff, precisely the same, and have no general differences of ethical quality. Sex — the body — is only the garment of personality, a garment strangely clinging and constraining, but be- neath it is the soul, the same soul for man or woman. A man may make of himself a fair substitute for a wife for a working- woman, but it takes a rarer talent still for him to make a competent mother for her children. That calls for in- stincts he does not have. It is aston- [109] THE UNREST OF WOMEN ishing how lacking many of the suf- fragist writers are in appreciation of what is done for a family by a com- petent mother. They might have been born from a penny-in-the-slot machine for all the conception they show of the job of mothering, and of the time, the thought, the strength, the leisure and the wit it takes to do it. You would think to read them that a mother's cares did not extend beyond infancy, and that a fairly active nurse girl, with the help of an apothecary's clerk, could easily re- lieve her of all of them. But some of the suffragist writers know better — Ellen Key, for one, who really has a serious-minded, grown-up-woman's knowledge about the woman's end of human life, and comes out of her remarkable divagations after free [1101 SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES love and trial marriage, and Heaven knows what, into admirable discourse about the domestic side of life, and the enormous importance of giving married women a chance to keep their minds on it. Altogether too many of the active suffragists present as their creden- tials for the work of rearranging hu- man life the glaring evidences of their failure to live it successfully as it is. Women who seem to have made a mess of all life's relations are not abashed to offer themselves as pilots to their sex. It is nothing that they do not inspire much confidence in the minds of their more conservative and successful sisters. It is everything if they make an enormous noise, and that they do, and it is a serious factor in disturbance. [Ill] VI FEMINISM AND THE DUAL STANDARD VI FEMINISM AND THE DUAL STANDARD WHAT is a feminist? My twelve-year-old diction- ary does not tell. "Fem- inism: the qualities of females" is the nearest it comes, and that is no help. It is something that has lately broken loose, and we must consult the latest authorities. I find in the February (1913) number of Mc- Clure's Magazine that "the signifi- cant and deep-rooted movement to readjust the social position of women, in its largest general aspects, is termed feminism; in its immediate [115] THE UNREST OF WOMEN political aspects, suffrage." 3Ic- Clure's indorses Miss Inez Milhol- land as a qualified and competent feminist, and Miss Milliolland ex- pounds the faith that is in her in a piece in that magazine. So perhaps if we look into the piece we shall get a notion of what the feminists have got on their minds. Miss INIilholland discusses "the liberation of a sex." Women, for the first time in history, she says, are to have something approaching an equal voice in the administration of human affairs. "They are to sit on juries, to administer public offices, to confer in the high councils of the nation," and "bring directly to the problems of government and of civilization those qualities, in certain respects different from man's, which they have [116] FEMINISM AND DUAL STANDARD hitherto been permitted to employ only indirectly, in the private influ- ence of the individual woman on the man who has acted for himself and her in the world of government and affairs." Please do not smile: this is a seri- ous matter. There are a good many women and they have various minds and opinions, and it is probable that Miss Milliolland does not represent all of them. But some of them prob- ably she does represent more or less, and it may be instructive to search out what details of liberation she and they consider desirable. Forecasting the results which may be expected to attend "this sudden liberation of an entire sex" from "the conditions of bondage and restraint," Miss Milholland finds that "the insti- [117] THE UNREST OF WOMEN tutions most certain to be touched and changed are the institutions in which the sex, as a sex, is most pecu- liarly and vitally interested — the home and marriage itself." She does not say explicitly in this first article how they are to be changed, but she gives notice that "the old reticences are destroyed forever," and she wants us to study what women are printing and saying "in the light of the under- Ijdng body of modern thought from which they are clearly drawing their ideas and their inspiration." So do- ing, she says, we shall arrive at certain rather obvious conclusions, including, it seems, "an assault on the dual standard of morality, and an assertion of sex rights on the part of woman." To illustrate, she quotes from a current play in which a girl riisi FEMINISM AND DUAL STANDARD "has slipped away for a week-end with the son of her father's em- ployer." The fact is discovered. The boy is persuaded to marry her "to save her honor." She refuses. She does not love him. "But you did love me," he insists. "You must have loved me." She turns and asks, "Did you love me?" "No," he replies, "but I'm a man. It was just my fancy of the moment." "Well," is her answer, "I am a woman. It was just my fancy of the moment." All right, Miss INIilholland, all right. One is no better than the other, and that is recognized in the proposal that they marry. They don't! Very well. But if there is a baby, what becomes of the baby, and what becomes of the girl? The dual standard, which cannot be admired [119] THE UNREST OF WOMEN ethically, is based on the very practi- cal consideration that it is the girl, not the man, who has the baby. It has come to be, not for the indulgence of men, but for the protection of girls. The great practical inconve- nience of having babies in the world without fathers, and mothers without husbands, has led to the dual stand- ard and to an extreme reprehension of the indiscretions of women. That reprehension is a good deal mollified in these times, not as a consequence of the "liberation of a sex," but be- cause sentiment in these matters has grown kinder and more just. You may well enough argue that the girl in "Hindle Wakes" did better not to marry the boy if she did not want him, especially if there was no baby. But you cannot argue for a [120] FEMINISM AND DUAL STANDARD liberation of sex that eliminates the dual standard bj^ bringing the chas- tity of women down to the level of the chastity of men. N That seems to be^ what you argue for and predict, and that won't wash. It implies condi- tions that would add to the burdens already incurred in behalf of "unfor- tunate" women, additional cares for the rescue of "unfortunate" men. Chastity in bachelors and chastity in spinsters have different values, a difference based on the fact that when there is a baby it is the woman that must bear it. You may argue that the chastity of men must be prodded up to the level of the chas- tity of women, and in that you will have the support of the morahsts, though the urgency of passion is thought to be far less in normal wom- [121] THE UNREST OF WOMEN en than in normal men. But you will get no support anywhere for social recognition of the kind of "sex rights" that you seem to demand for liberated women. If that is femin- ism, "in its immediate political as- pects, suffrage," verily the fat is in the fire. - And do you mark. Miss Milhol- land, that the dual standard is almost entirely a matter of social sentiment! The law, or the police power, to be sure, is harder on prostitutes than on their patrons, but that accords with a theory that prostitutes, like gam- bling house keepers, are promoters of disorder. Except for women rated as "disorderly," there is no law con- cerning chastity that does not equally apply to men, and for married peo- ple the written law is the same for [122] FEMINISM AND DUAL STANDARD man and wife, and public sentiment sustains it. And who are the upholders and motioners of the dual standard? Women chiefly, Miss Milholland. It is strongly, vehemently, the feeling of mothers that the exercise of what you call "sex rights" is not a privilege to be desired for daughters, and they discourage it, especially in women, wherever it appears, i I don't see how the "readjustment of the social posi- tion of women" is going to change the feelings of mothers on this point, or that it will make a difference if women "sit on juries, administer pub- lic offices and confer in the high coun- cils of the nation." The exercise of "sex rights," except the right to get married, does not seem likely to re- ceive either political or social support, d [123] THE UNREST OF WOMEN but rather to remain, as now, dis- tinctly an individual adventure, as to which the destruction of the old re- ticences will be earnestly deprecated by the adventurer. The combination of the miscellaneous exercise of "sex rights" with advertisement is some- thing that very few civilized women have been able to get away with. Some remarkable women have done it- — Cleopatra, Catherine of Russia, George Sand, and others — but their success, though interesting, is hardly attractive, and the failures that offset it are to be reckoned in millions. VII THE CAUSE AND THE CURE VII THE CAUSE AND THE CURE AFTER all, disturbance is a fine thing. First or last, pretty much all the consider- able good we see about has come along of it. Flies ever the spume from the great waves that great winds have raised. The ocean with- out occasional gales would be dull and probably unwholesome, and hu- man life without occasional disturb- ances would get nowhere. The^ current unrest of women is a big disturbance, but every storm blows out in time, and so will this one.' / [127] THE UNREST OF WOMEN But how will it end and where will it leave us ? In thinking about that, one asks what has caused it. It seems credible enough that it is part of a general disturbance that is epidemic all over the world; a disturbance caused by the uneasiness of great masses of people who find themselves cramped by the limitations, or overstrained by the demands, of the existing appara- tus for the regulation of human life, or in whom the aspirations of an intelligence quickened by popular education demand opportunities and satisfactions that they see but cannot share. In art, in medicine, in busi- ness, in politics, there is the same in- surgent disposition, shared by thou- sands, to smash the existing machine which denies them expression and [128] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE make a new one that will do better. Humanity seems to have outgrown its old collar and to insist on having one of the next larger size. Every considerable historical event in the last fifteen j^ears is a part of that movement. The lesson of "room, brothers, room in the world" was taught to Russia by Japan, was taught by the United States to Spain, was taught by Boers to British and b}^ British to Boers, is proceeding in China, is proceeding strenuously in England, is being taught to all Eu- rope by the Balkan allies, is going forward obscurely and dolorously in Mexico, was lately exhibited some- what himiorously in the Futurist picture-show in New York, is dem- onstrated in medicine by the Osteo- paths and Christian Scientists, and [129] THE UNREST OF WOMEN in law by movements for recall of judges or their decisions, and in the Roman Catholic church by modern- ists, and separation of church from state in Italj% France and Spain. And of all this general ruction the woman movement is a part. It may be right or wrong in directing so much energy toward the attainment of woman suffrage, the arguments of its individual apostles may be often bad and their specific aims mistaken, but there is no use of disparaging the power of the movement, or of denying that it has great underlying causes, or of doubting that it will have an effect on human life. I suppose the underlying causes of it are chiefly economic. The rest- less women would not get so much leadership unless considerable masses [130] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE of women were disturbed, and the considerable masses would not be disturbed nor follow restless, and often mistaken, leaders if they were comfortable. Everj^bod}^ nowadays nibbles at education ; ever j^body reads and either has ideas or goes through motions of having them, and conse- quently everybody — pretty much — has more than formerly to express, and feels more need of expressing it. Now the natural way for women to express themselves seems to be by means of husbands and children, but somehow a proportion of the women, already large and constantlj^ increas- ing, seem to find that mode of expression either impossible, or so difficult, or so unsatisfactory, that they turn to anj^thing else they can.j A large proportion of the women [131] THE UNREST OF WOMEN nowadays do not seem to look upon marriage as their natural destiny. They plan for it, but merely as a possibility, considerably speculative, and with alternatives that look surer at least, and are more definitely at- tainable by their own efforts. fThe alternatives — the office jobs and fac- tory and shop employments, and nearly all the independent vocations — are all right enough except for one thing, that the women who take to them permanentl}^ might almost as well not be women at all, because they cannot conveniently combine with the service these occupations exact the great and indispensable service of continuing the species.] It was for that indispensable service that women were contrived, and not for office work, nor factory work, nor [132] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE work in shops. To the indispensable service the great mass of women un- doubtedly are true, preferring it and undertaking it when it is reasonably attainable. Then what's the matter ? Machinery for one thing, which, as we are so much told, has upset the old domestic industries, disturbed the conditions of life and multiplied the employments that are alternatives to marriage. For another thing, and partly as a result of machinery, an overwhelming and compelling indus- trialism, engrossed in material prog- ress, and ruthlessly beset to turn the most precious assets of humanity and civilization into material wealth for immediate use. The same industrial- ism that deforests the land, skins' the soil, devours and wastes the coal-beds [1331 THE UNREST OF WOMEN and the iron mines, and squeezes the last drop of mineral oil out of the bowels of Earth, seems ready, with- out any further compunction than a column of figures may signify, to divert the brains and hearts and fin- gers and bodies of women from the service indispensable to life to these temporary, sterile, and incomparably less important uses of commercialism. Somehow, in a world never so rich as now, the men seem less able than they used to be to take care of the women. Everything tends to be commercialized, all the commerciali- zation tends to monopoly, and monopoly makes a machine and the human race must tend it or starve. That is one thing that machinery has done for us. It is nobody's fault in particular. It has just come to [134] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE be because conditions produced it, and because wealth is good, and be- cause if you invent and make and run machines and organizations at all, you've got to do it at a profit. The machinery of contemporary life is wonderful, admirable, marvelously convenient and productive. The trouble is that the human race seem to be caught in the cogs of it, and to be in danger of being ground up. So the women cry out. Something is the matter and they feel it. Driven partly out of their own kingdom in man's, they demand equal rights, privileges, emoluments, in the man's kingdom. That is the old cure by a hair of the dog. It is not much of a cure. The better way is to make the woman's own kingdom habitable again, and to get all the modern im- [135] THE UNREST OF WOMEN provements into it, and win her back to live in it and rule it, or at least check her exodus. / Are the suffragists willing to do that? Not at all. They are working to share the man's kingdom. If the woman's kingdom is to be restored and glorified the men must do it, and it must be done by politics and by re- ligion. By politics? To be sure! The suffragists aim to improve the condition of women by politics, and think that women's votes would help vastly in doing so. It does not seem to me that they would, but. whether there are to be women's votes or not, the improve- ment of the conditions of life, and with them the condition of women, [136] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE is the immediate aim and effort of contemporary politics everywhere. One reads in President Wilson's in- augural address: "We have been proud of our in- dustrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all have fallen pitilessly the years through." It is to lighten and diffuse that dead weight and burden that that speaker and his supporters are dedi- cated. Success in that, if they achieve it, will mean political success and continuance in power; failure in [137] THE UNREST OF WOMEN that will mean a failure in politics, and the transfer of power to other hands that must make this same re- lief the chief good that they practice to obtain. We have passed through a stage of national development when the chief good has seemed to the ablest minds to be the development of business, of transportation, of manufactures; the production of commodities, the construction of an enormous apparatus of civilization. Business has thriven; the railroads have been built, the apparatus has been constructed and commodities in unprecedented volume have been pro- duced. Comes along now all this disquiet and unrest, spreading and increasing until it has come to be more important than gains for the gainful, or commodities for all hands ; [138] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE until indeed it has become the subject that most engages statesmen's minds. The provision of bread and of bath tubs was never so great, but the peo- ple are not fed to their satisfaction, and cannot wash away their aches. They are not satisfied. There never was so efficient an apparatus of life. No one with any sense wants to make it less efficient or check its steady growth to meet increasing needs and cultivated wants. But now attention has been drawn away from apparatus to people. The chief problem is no longer "How can we get more ma- chinery?" but how can the spirits of men be fed? — how can life be made sufficiently satisfying to the mass of the people to induce them to sustain the government? It isn't at all a case of women 10 [139] THE UNREST OF WOMEN alone. It was not women's votes that turned the old Republican party- out, or started the hammering of the trusts, the revision of the tariff and all the incidents of the new politics. It was a general revolt against a politico - industrial apparatus that seemed to have grown oppressive. There is a great problem to be solved in politics, but it is not disproportion- ately a woman-problem, and it will not be solved, disproportionately, by women. * The woman problem is a part, and especialh^ a symptom, of it. The woman's influence and thought will greatly affect the solution of it as they do of every human problem. But it has got to be worked out by the ablest political minds our country can produce, working continuously on it, and the ablest and least dis- riioi THE CAUSE AND THE CURE traded minds for such matters are still the minds of the ablest men. ) The disquiet of the women cannot be allayed separately by anything done for women. It is part of the general disturbance and can only be soothed by measures that will also pacify the rest of societ5^ It should have many good effects. The driv- ing of so many women out into the industrial world cannot, must not, fail of valuable results in training, in development, in demonstrated capac- ity for many new undertakings and employments. At least this great adventure of woman into the man's kingdom is giving to the world a new appreciation of her value, both in those activities into which she has been constrained to intrude, and in that domain from which, in so alarm- [141] THE UNREST OF WOMEN ing a measure, she has been evicted. Women are freer and more powerful and doubtless happier as civilization progresses, as justice grows more kind and reasonable and intelligent and even, and force and brute strength count for less in the transac- tions of life. The interest of women is all for the development and per- fection of civilization and the purifi- cation of politics. We have lots of votes now, amply enough to express every form of discontent. The need is not of more votes but of more dis- passionate intelligence; not of more votes, but of knowing what to vote for. But politics will never do the whole business of pacifying human life and making people content to live it. It never did : it will not now. [142] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE The great agent in that is religion. The great asset of our civilization, incomparably more important than all our astonishing apparatus for promoting physical comfort, is the mind of Christ. That mind pene- trated all the perplexities of human relations and solved the problem of life in all its phases. It is on the spirit of Christ, working through in- dividuals, and shaping and inspiring our politics, that we must count to straighten out the tangles in our af- fairs. That is the only force that is equal to so huge a task ; that, working perpetually to bring justice, sanity and love into human concerns, can make men wise enough to be men and women patient enough to be women. That is the only force that can make labor dulj^ tolerant of capi- [143] THE UNREST OF WOMEN tal and capital duly considerate of labor; that can keep the spiritual in control of the material, and yet leave apparatus free to accumulate, and wealth to increase, and beauty to de- velop, and can bring liberty and op- portunity to all creatures to work out all there is in them that is good. And, since in our day the spirit of Christ is the great fountain of justice and libertj^ it would be an imperti- nence for anj^one to declare that it is opposed to votes for women. It is enough to say that it is patient, continuous and irresistible like the forces of nature, among which, to be sure, it must be reckoned. If the vote as a token of direct participation in politics is something of which woman has been unjustly deprived, then in the larger development and [144] THE CAUSE AND THE CURE ampler liberty that are coming to her she will get it. But if it is something that belongs to the man's part in life, an overrated power, offset by powers inalienably conferred upon her, then the demand for votes for women is a mistake, and in the long run will not prevail. Either way it is not so big an item as it seems. The equality of women, does not depend upon it, but rests on facts and functions that are just as operative where no one has a vote as where suffrage is universal. There is no woman's party; there is no man's party. All the women, suf- fragists and anti-suffragists, who are any worth to any cause are for man, and all the men who are worth any- thing to anybody are for woman, and there is nothing in life that is [145] THE UNREST OF WOMEN more their business, or that more en- gages the attention of the best of them, than to see that she gets her dues, — all of them; all the liberty, opportunity, education and power that should be hers. But however men may try to ac- complish that, the resuft will always be imperfect, no matter what women may achieve. The assignment of be- longings is very inexact in this world, and satisfaction is rare except as spiritual acquisition offsets material defect. That is where religion comes in, teaching and inspiring and con- soling, lifting minds out of despair at faults and shortcomings of men, and bringing them the fortitude and confidence that come from faith in a great plan of a Creator. (3) UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT Oaa^I 3 1158 00798 1 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY F AA 000 984 776