Co-operative Housekeeping, Romance in Domestic Economy/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
The Probable Effect of Co-operative Housekeeping on the Retail Trade.
IN discussing the probable effects of co-operative housekeeping upon the community, I will begin with the retail dealers, since, whatever the rest of the world may think of it, from them it can expect only unanimous opposition. And no doubt, were it to be suddenly and universally adopted, it would cause this large body of men great embarrassment, if not suffering and ruin,—though whether their share of these latter could possibly equal what they yearly inflict on the world is a question. But in truth the change, if it ever take place, will probably be a very gradual one. For in whatever town it is started, I do not think it could get properly under way in less than several years. Our servants are now too unskilful, and we ourselves too ignorant of business, too limited and superficial in our knowledge of dress-making and cooking, to venture on becoming suddenly responsible for the clothing and meals of several hundred persons. If the criticisms of a single husband upon over-done meat or under-done vegetables are enough to drive a luckless housekeeper to despair, how could she endure the anathemas of fifty hungry husbands hurled at her at once! It is evident that there must be no slips in co-operative housekeeping. Punctual as the stars, perfect and unassailable as they, must it be in all its courses; and therefore each officer would have to qualify herself faithfully and seriously in some one department, as for a life-long vocation, so that whatever she undertook to superintend and provide for, she would understand in an exhaustive and masterful manner,—a study which might require from one to three years.[1]
The rich and prosperous everywhere will probably be a long time coming into co-operation, since they have very great comfort now, and will be loth to try experiments which might at first entail some sacrifice of it.
In country villages, where grocers and mercers are always from the "first families" and among the "solid men" of the place, their wives would not for long dream of supplanting them.
In our largest cities, where neighbours are strangers to each other, and acquaintances are often widely scattered, where, too, the retail trade is of gigantic dimensions, and in fact the basis of relation between large classes of the population, co-operative housekeeping could perhaps make but very slow headway.
A generation, then, is the least time that can be allowed for co-operative housekeeping to become general,[2] but even this, in our country of easily and constantly shifting business relations, would give ample time to our shopkeepers to find other avenues for their energies, and, in particular, some occupation more suited to their sex than the effeminate surroundings of a dry-goods store.
Men are very fond of twitting us women with desiring to leave our own "sphere" in order to lord it over theirs in a high-handed manner. I believe that nothing would induce the majority among us to enter their dusty, noisy, blood-stained precincts; but we should be exceedingly obliged if they would just step out of ours. Back, sirs, back! For shame! this unmanly intrusion into the women's apartments. Vast numbers, in the guise of clerks and small shopkeepers, have so long played at the spinning Achilles and Hercules that they have quite forgotten their natural vocation, and have degenerated, in too many instances, into downright Sardanapali. To make their imitation of the self-degradation of the Oriental monarch complete, nothing is wanting but the chignon, crinoline, and train,—which by law they should be compelled to wear,—as they stand measuring ribbons and tapes so daintily to their women customers. If the tailor who made clothes for his own sex were correctly valued by the doughty old standard, as only "the ninth part of a man," what a mere shred must he be who busies himself about the clothes of women! And, in truth, the excessive smallness, meanness, and cunning of many of the faces among the men in the dry-goods stores must be admitted by everybody who gives them a moment's attention. How can our sturdy farmers allow their young sons to go into such a contemptible business! When modern manhood falls so utterly below its proper level, why should modern womanhood be blamed? Mrs. Jameson said well concerning the thirty thousand man-milliners of London, "Where are their thirty thousand sisters?" Where indeed? Let the women do women's work. Give us the yard-stick, heroes, and let us relieve you behind the counter, that you may go behind the plough and be off to those fields where truest glory is to be won in wresting from Dame Nature her treasures of golden grain and sweet-smelling hay. Thus, each in a fitting sphere, shall we make a good fight for the world.
As for the large dealers, many of them have wholesale departments in their establishments already, and they would keep them; but it is very evident that if women combine to purchase their own stuffs, and in every co-operative association employ two or three of their own number at high salaries to choose them, the importers and manufacturers will no longer find it for their interest, if, indeed, they find it possible, to manufacture so much worthless material merely to "sell." Women now buy these things and throw away their money, because, in the first place, as soon as a fabric acquires a reputation among us, advantage is taken of that to deteriorate it; and, in the second place, so many new fabrics are constantly thrown upon the market that we are bewildered and unable to judge between them. But the agents of our co-operative associations will soon become expert in judging of the value of goods. They will know too, of course, just what the women for whom they are choosing need and prefer, and, in consequence, they will not put anything upon their shelves that is not desirable in itself and good of its kind. Hence the placing of high-toned women as the medium of exchange between the great merchants and manufacturers and the consumers would not only be an economy to the community, but would tend to make trade more honest.
The Probable Effect on Agriculture.
I have exalted the harvests of the American continent, but, splendid as they are, they are not, in my opinion, half abundant enough; and I will now speak of the immense impetus I believe co-operative housekeeping would give to farming, and the revolution it would bring about in it.
The town and the country are now two separate worlds, each knowing but little about the other, and furthermore estranged by the enemies of both, the middle men, who stand between them, and render their only existing relation—namely, that interchange of values known as buying and selling—a base system of mutual extortion, which has finally reached a point perfectly unendurable. The American business principle, that cheating all round is no cheating at all, must be given up, for none but the rich can stand it. It will be the first aim of the co-operative housekeepers then, I trust, as it was with the Rochdale Pioneers (who, like ourselves, were sufferers from the speculations of middle men in the necessaries of life), to secure for each society a landed interest of its own. The first investment of their profits should be in a farm, whence they could procure their own milk, butter, eggs, vegetables, apples, etc., at first prices. Now, with all the town housekeepers interested in farming, and many of the ex-clerks and shopkeepers compelled to go into it, it is evident that an amount of capital, enterprise, and invention will be attracted to agriculture, such as has no parallel in modern history.
And why should it not be so? Is it not perfectly well understood that all material comfort, happiness, and wealth come first out of the ground? What do all the nations want above everything? Food. The voluptuary finds his most unalloyed enjoyment, the beggar his greatest solace, society its fullest expression of good fellowship, home its most gladsome union, the church its highest act of worship, in eating and drinking. In truth, we are so made that not only we cannot live without some food, but we cannot be well and good-tempered, happy, or comely, without pleasant and abundant food. And yet, instead of trying to get it, the whole world seems mad to make clothes, for these grow cheaper and cheaper,[3] while that grows dearer and dearer. Capitalists expend the strength of their resources in manufactures, and procure iniquitous tariffs to protect them, while poor suffering humanity faints by the wayside for want of "bread to strengthen its heart, wine to make it glad, and oil (or its substitute, butter) to make it a cheerful countenance." Two hundred years ago the manufacturing swarms of Europe did not exist. See what they are now! But we, instead of founding a civilization that will eventually seat every man under his own vine and under his own fig-tree, seem trying to secure for our country, by the year 2000, a town population, the breath of whose miserable life is similarly dependent on the caprices of fashion.
I think no one can read that splendid prose-poem, Guyot's Earth and Man, wherein he characterizes the position and products of the American continents, without feeling that they ought to be the food producers of the world. They are the seat, he says, of excessive vegetable, as the continents of the Eastern hemisphere are of the noblest animal, development. Let us, then, rather set ourselves to carry out the grand design of Nature than to go against it. I am tired of the stories about Western farmers burning their corn. Let the dry-goods clerks be set to work on the railroads and canals to bring it to the seaboard, then. With butter at sixty cents and beefsteak at forty cents a pound, and flour at eighteen dollars a barrel, as they are in Boston at this present writing (May 1868), it is absurd to say that we are producing enough for home consumption and for exportation too. Many and many a poor family have given up butter and sugar and juicy meat within these last eight years. The fact that a paper dollar is but two-thirds of a gold dollar cannot account for provisions being two or three times their former price. No, the real trouble is that the American hates farming and loves trading, partly because he is physically undeveloped, and therefore physically lazy; partly because farming is lonely and stupid, and without any of the stimulus of human companionship to which his childhood at the district school accustoms him; partly because at that school he got no knowledge nor love of nature, but only the trading ideas instilled by six years of drill in the dollar-and-cent examples of the arithmetic; and last, though not least, because farming kills his wife, takes all the bloom, flesh, and vitality away from her at forty. Very often, even if she can afford one, she cannot get a servant; so that she is in truth, next to an Indian squaw, the greatest drudge on the American continent.
Now it seems very strange that, when manufactures and commerce are so largely carried on by companies, agriculture should still proceed altogether, or nearly so, on the old plan of each man for himself; and I cannot but think that this is the reason why, as compared with any other way of making money, it is hard and distasteful to the American. Our public schools accustom children to work and play together toward identical aims and ends, and it is inevitable that they should grow up with the gregarious instinct very strongly developed. This is why I believe women are much better prepared for co-operative housekeeping than may generally be supposed. There is already a continual feminine yearning for common action which manifests itself in the sewing circles, fairs, and festivals so frequent among them; so that, after an unusual period of lull from these excitements, you will hear them say to each other, "Do let us get up something." It is because unconsciously they are bored and wearied with their disconnected interests; and if this be true of them, of course it must be still more largely true of men, since combined action has become with them almost second nature.
How much easier and pleasanter, then, farming might be, if co-operation were the fundamental principle of the industrial community? Suppose a dozen farmers were to form a joint-stock company, and in the centre of their farm of two or three thousand acres were to range their dozen cottages crescent-fashion on a wide lawn of pleasant grass and trees (with, as they grew rich, a fountain and a statue or two). Behind them would be a common kitchen, laundry, dairy, smoke-house, etc., in one of which every farmer's wife would have her own domestic function, and attend to that only. A quarter of a mile distant would be the barns and out-houses, and also the cottages of the labourers, whose wives would be the servants of the common kitchen and laundry. The labourers and their families would have their meals in common in a dining-room opening out of the kitchen, which might also serve them as a sort of club-room in the evening, if they wished it, while the meals of the farmers and their wives should be sent them from the kitchen, as in the town co-operative societies. No sewing excepting mending need be done on the farm, for all the farmers' wives would be members of a co-operative clothing-house in the nearest town, and they would not take their sewing home unless they chose. Opposite the middle of the crescent, and half the length of its diameter, should be the little Gothic school-house and chapel. Thus all would go merry as a marriage-bell (of course, since it is the scheme of this writer!) The town women and the country women would be brought into close relationship with and knowledge of each other, and there would be a mutual stimulus to the production of whatever either needed most. Eventually a great part of the town population would stream into the country in the summer, and in winter the visit would be returned. Awkwardness and rusticity would disappear in one, in the other snobbishness and artificiality; and at last we should have introduced into our hard and dry American routine some of the healthful features and sweet influences of the life of the English country gentry,—last relic, as it almost is, of the old patriarchal system, which in many respects was so tranquil, so beneficent, and so beautiful.
I should apologize to the farmer or the business man who may happen to read the above for its probable exaggeration of statement and of idea. Agriculture is not my sphere, and I have no time to study it. But as a housekeeper of moderate means, anxious for the comfort and happiness of her family, I cannot help wishing good food were cheaper; and as a woman I wish to wake up compassion for the many farmers' wives whom I believe to be now worked beyond their strength.
Where can Co-operative Housekeeping most appropriately be started?
In the East, I should say, among those who, according to the ideal of Agur the prophet, have "neither poverty nor riches;" and perhaps the greatest proportion of this class, so far as New England and the Middle States are concerned, is to be found in towns of from ten to thirty thousand inhabitants. In these, people are not all on a level, as in country villages, so there would be fewer small jealousies to contend with; and yet they are not so distinctly divided into sets and circles as in the great cities; the various feminine social elements of such towns, therefore, would more easily and spontaneously play into each other's hands than either in very large or very small communities.
At the West, I should think all the upspringing towns and villages would go into it, if from nothing else than the scarcity and unskilfulness and insubordination of their servants. Western women, too, are so young, so energetic, so fearless of obstacles, so eager after new ideas, and so friendly and social among themselves, that co-operative housekeeping would seem to be the only appropriate expression of their good-fellowship and public spirit
And as for the South, with her old labour system broken up, with the house-servants trained under it accustomed to do only one thing, and unwilling to attempt the variety that we exact from the Irish, with a terrible impoverishment that everywhere forces her delicate daughters into the coarsest tasks, and with rich fields going back into forest because there is neither capital nor organization wherewith to cultivate them,—surely, if there is a corner of the globe to which co-operation at this time seems especially appropriate, it is there. It cannot be a greater contrast to the old plan than the one the Southerners are struggling to learn now, and it might prove far better than either. Cease then, young gentlemen, this crowding into the towns, glad to be there as conductors, clerks, policemen, anything. With your diminished means and your single right arm, of course, you cannot farm your great estates. But let even half of them lie fallow, if need be,—they will not run away,—and meantime band yourselves in companies of twelve or more together. Throw your capital, implements, horses, cattle, and part of your land, into a common stock, and start co-operative plantations. Try to induce the freedmen, or, if they will not, the freedwomen, to make common cause with you in tilling the fields. Pay them wages, but also sell or advance them a share of the stock, and make them feel that in working for you they are in fact working for themselves. Build the cottages for your wives and sisters all near together, so that they can help each other, and make the most of what service from the negro women they can get. Similarily, let the ladies in the towns combine their housekeeping, and so save to the community the expense of the retail trade. Connected with their co-operative kitchens, they could easily have preserving rooms for the preparation of the sweetmeats and other delicacies peculiar to their climate, and which, if made by the quantity, could be thrown upon the market as cheaply as the Shaker and English and French and India preserves, and so compete for an equal sale with them. Perhaps no women in the world are so fitted at this moment to attempt co-operative housekeeping as the impoverished women of the South; their sufferings and hardships have united them to an extraordinary degree. There is a spirit of mutual help and sacrifice and generosity among them that is just the spirit needed for such an enterprise; and though they may be as yet ignorant of the rules of business, they are rapidly acquiring its habits and its ambition, since all who can are working for their daily bread, teaching, sewing, embroidering and preserving,—doing anything that will bring them money.
I now leave general considerations, which I am in truth too ignorant properly to discuss, and return to the effect of co-operative housekeeping upon the household.
The Servants.
In the first place, as all the cooking and washing are to be done out of the house, and as much of the sewing also as the mistress chooses, no cook or laundress or seamstress will ever come into it. Housework and table-work only will remain to be attended to; and as this can easily be undertaken by one person, many families that have hitherto kept three servants will now keep only one, while those that have kept one or two, by employing a woman to come in for a few hours in the morning, to put the house in order, need keep none at all.
Co-operative housekeeping, then, will almost entirely blot out from our domestic life the servant element! Those outrageous little kingdoms of insubordination, ignorance, lying, waste, sloth, carelessness, and dirt, that we unhappy home-queens have to subdue afresh every day, and every day more unsuccessfully, will all be merged as the good-for-nothing little German States are being swallowed by Prussia into a thoroughly organized, well-balanced central despotism, whose every department is arranged, down to its minutiæ, with the most scrupulous exactness, and where lynx-eyed matrons and officers have nothing else to do but to note that each servant does exactly the right thing at the right moment, and knows the place for everything and puts everything in its place.
Present Servitude a Relic of Slavery.
We mistresses who try to regulate independently these creatures who come to us we know not whence, and flit we know not where, little realize that we are bearing up the heavy fag-end of the once universal system under which not only domestic labour, but every possible species of agricultural and manufacturing art, was carried on in the houses or on the estates of their owners by slaves who could no more dream of giving their mistresses warning and leaving the following week, if they disapproved her arrangements, than they could hope to reverse the decrees of fate itself,—running away when there was nothing but slavery elsewhere to run to, not holding out those rosy inducements that of late the North did to the Southern bondwoman. Serfdom was at its last gasp in Queen Elizabeth's day, but the tradition of bondage remained for a hundred years or more. In Cromwell's time servants were only paid a few dollars a year; they seldom left their places, and were glad to transmit them to their children after them. But the disorganization begun by emancipation has culminated in our American chaos, where from its very foundation the domestic temple sways and fluctuates uneasily on its ever-changing basis of ill-trained and unprincipled service, creating an antagonistic feeling which renders the relation of mistress and servant but a cold-blooded bargain, formed in suspicion and dissolved with pleasure on the slightest provocation.
All our trouble comes because we are going against the spirit of the age, which revolts against submission to an individual will, but freely subjects itself to the despotism of an organization. American-born girls, as we all know, have long abandoned domestic service for the factory, the shop, and the district school; and the Irish girls are following their example, so that under the present system it is a grave question where, when Irish emigration ceases, the servants of the next generation are to come from. Even without this problem to trouble us, however, with the American idea deeply implanted in servants that the maid is as good as the mistress, it is absurd to hope for obedience and respect, and the only way to control them is by the unalterable laws and regulations of an organized corporation. The community would need fewer of them, their wages would be higher, and as service would then be as "respectable" and "independent" as factory work, and (owing to the good meals and lodgings we could easily provide for them) far more comfortable, a much better class of women would go into it than we ever see in our families, while even those who do so badly in private houses, by the accurate division of labour, and the having only one kind of thing to attend to all day long, would reach a higher standard of perfection than with their present diversity of duties they are capable of.
Reform of the Mistresses.
The new system would also bring about a reform in the mistresses, for we are scarcely less to blame than the servants. Often we do not understand work ourselves, and expect more off them than is reasonable. Lounging over a magazine or a piece of fancy-work, and making less downright exertion in a week than they do in a day, we complain of their indolence and inefficiency, forgetting that practically they are our slaves from morning until night, while, from some inscrutable and unjust arrangement of things, we, as far as they can discover, have nothing to do but to enjoy ourselves, and to spend constantly on the merest trifle of pleasure or adornment the sum which it costs them a whole week of incessant toil to earn. Worst of all, we take no care either of their happiness or their morals. We frown on their going out, on their having visitors, and are shocked if they go to a dance or the theatre; but we do nothing at all for their pleasure. If they are ill, we send them to the hospital; if they get into disgrace, we are but too apt to abandon them to the horrors of an unspeakable fate.
Did we employ them co-operately, however, all this could be improved. Seeing their mistresses actively engaged for the good of the community, and accepting labour as the natural and inevitable lot of woman, they would no longer have before their eyes that demoralizing ideal of indolent and luxurious fine-ladyism which has ruined so many pleasure-loving unfortunates, and must always be discouraging even to the industrious and sober-minded among them, but they would take heart in their work, and have a pride that their function of the great domestic organism should be perfectly fulfilled also. In turn, we could provide for their pleasure and improvement. We could give them a ball four times a year, celebrate their weddings, instruct them in the evenings, watch over them in sickness, rescue them from temptation, and, if they fell, help them back to respectability and virtue. When they married, by extending to their families the benefits of corporation (either by making themselves members, or by some other arrangement), we should often be able to continue them in the service of the association; and thus the same kind solicitude, life-long help and trust, and feeling of mutual interest which subsisted between mistress and servant under the old slave system, and veiled many of its deformities, might return, to make both happier and better than in the lawless selfishness of the present arrangement is possible.
The Present Housekeepers.
To be a perfect housekeeper under the present system requires not only forethought, judgment, and incessant mental activity, but also practical knowledge and skill in various complicated industries wholly differing from each other,—for certainly there is no more affinity between sewing and cooking, for example, than there is between fruit-growing and house-building. Thus the mistress of a family must in fact be many persons in one; but this is more than ought to be expected of any body, and far more than civilized men ask of each other. Hence the general result is just what we see to-day,—ill-regulated or extravagant households, or harassed and over-worked mistresses, while hotels and boarding-houses are full to repletion with victims from both classes, and are constantly enlarging their borders. Here and there some woman of remarkable practical ability succeeds in compassing the whole difficulty with apparent ease to herself; but even then it is generally at the neglect of the aesthetic and intellectual elements of modern feminine culture, or by the sacrifice of the geniality, hospitality, and charity of social intercourse. In short, fix it how we may, in some direction the humanities and amenities are suffering all the time.
The Co-operative Housekeepers.
With the exit of the servant element from our families, however, and the lifting from the minds of their mistresses of all the load of care about the family meals, the family clothing, and the thousand indispensable trifles that go to make up domestic comfort and well-being, would come a great calm and freedom of spirit. The house would be, as it were, empty, swept, and garnished, and ready for all pleasant spirits to enter in and dwell there, and for all busy and beneficent enterprises to be conceived and energized there. The wife would no longer be obliged to neglect her charities, her accomplishments, or her Mends. All excuse for the present prevailing feminine superficiality would be taken away, and there would be no reason why every woman should not now select her own specialty and perfect herself in it. In the quiet and peace of the new order of things the house-mistress would have so much time on her hands, that, though at first, with genuine feminine timidity and distrust of what is untried, she might have declined taking any "active part" in co-operation beyond buying her membership share of stock, ordering her meals and clothing, and paying for them when they were delivered, yet eventually the practical housewifely spirit of the association would communicate itself to her, and she would find it for her happiness to spend two or three hours of every day in company with her friends and acquaintance, like them doing her best in co-operative kitchen or laundry or sewing-room to promote the domestic comfort and social happiness of the community.
And I believe that not the smallest part of her pleasure in her work would be the sense that she was sure to be paid for it in money whatever it was worth. The labours of married women are now compensated very differently and very unjustly. Here will be seen a woman slaving herself to death, with one servant or none at all, up early and down late, keeping her house neat, her table supplied, her children tastefully dressed, saving and economizing in every direction, and getting for it all only the simplest food, furniture, and dress, together with an excellent chance of a quiet grave at forty; while there one of her acquaintance, perhaps not half so clever or so industrious as she, saunters through life surrounded with every luxury, and even looks down with contempt on her less fortunate sister. I say that now scarcely any woman stands among her own sex on her own merits, but in co-operative housekeeping this would in a measure be done away. One or two excellent housekeepers have said to me, when suggesting it as the true plan for perfect housewifery, "Ah yes! but it is the faithful and energetic few who would do all the work, and the indolent or incompetent majority would reap all the benefit." Even supposing this to be true, still it is the faithful ones who work the hardest now. They would work no harder, to say the least, in a co-operative association than they do at home to-day. The difference would be that the whole community would join in paying them a just price for their skill and effort, instead of its being a chance, as at present, whether their husbands can or will do so.
Thus co-operative housekeeping, not only by "accumulating capital for each member," but also by paying each officer a salary, would necessarily make women partially independent of men in money matters, and in so far would shelter them from the misfortunes and cruel reverses to which they are now so helplessly exposed by the financial mistakes or ruin of their masculine protectors, and which form certainly one of the hardest features of the feminine lot. For they would then have two sources of support,—one, the natural maintenance accorded to every woman by her husband or father, and which often expresses more and often less than her value to him; the other, the estimate put upon her services to the co-operative association by its members, the value of which must depend wholly on her own efforts and qualifications. Then, if some selfish or shiftless man—or, more pitiful still, some faithful and half-starved minister of Christ—is able to give his bright, enterprising wife no more than six hundred or a thousand dollars a year for household expenses, she will not as now have to degrade herself into a maid-of-all-work, and toil from fourteen to sixteen hours a day in order to live on it; but, besides the third saved to the family by co-operation, she might receive, as one of the able and energetic officers of the association, from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars a year.[4] If here is not a stimulus to feminine industry and ambition, I know not where one is to be found. Its consequences are incalculable.
The Effect of Co-operation upon Unskilful Housekeepers.
And, in truth, the whole moral and industrial influence of the association will so quicken and develop the feminine powers that no "indolent or incapable majority" need be feared at all. Women are naturally busy, and that more of them are not now perfect housekeepers is because modern housewifery is too complicated in its details; because so much comfort, luxury, and elaboration is demanded in every department, that few minds are equal to the strain. But when co-operative housekeeping gives us the boon of the division of labour, something will be found suited to every capacity, and many who cannot carry on a whole house satisfactorily will succeed in a special function thoroughly well.
Co-operation would utilize all the Unmarried Women of Society.
The housekeepers really incapable of being useful in any department of co-operation are then so few that they need not be counted at all. It is rather the invalids and nursing mothers for whom we must find substitutes. Now, since by Article II. of the constitution the housekeepers may select their officers and agents from the whole range of their feminine acquaintance, here will be a chance for the widows and the unmarried women over eighteen—nearly all of whom are dependent—to become honourable and self-supporting members of society. Those under twenty-five, and who have left school, could fill the minor offices and clerkships of the association; while the older ones, as they have fewer home cares and ties than the mistresses of families, could, if they chose, give to business more than the daily three hours before recommended, and thus not only gain larger salaries, but be in fact among the most valuable officers of the association. How much better, too, would it be for the girls who now waste the most precious years of their lives in mere waiting for marriage, to take their places by the side of their mothers or aunts in carrying on the serious business of the community, and thus learn beforehand how to be in their turn, also, co-operative housekeepers. In truth, the employment of this expensive, and now nearly useless, class would not only be a vast economy to society, but would go far to solve its most perplexing problem, and assist in curing its worst evil.
The Inferences that determine Woman's present Development.
For its worst evil is the social evil, and its most perplexing problem is how to make early marriages prudent; since it is the difficulty of the latter which is made the chief excuse for the former. Now, while there is no doubt that the social evil is greatly enhanced by the unnatural lateness of marriage throughout the civilized world, yet the history of all other crime and lawlessness proves clearly enough that it exists in its present dimensions chiefly because there is no public opinion against it. Who is to create this opinion? Not the men, for obvious reasons. Only the sex which is its real victim can be expected to begin the crusade against it; but this women cannot do successfully unless they are a power in society, which now I deny them to be. The real powers in society are the young men, and they are its despots; while the young girls (and their mothers too) are their cringing suppliants and flatterers, and this to such an extent that they dare not be independent in their characters, their pursuits, or even their principles.[5] They see that those among them who dress the best, dance the best, and are the most sweetly complacent to the other sex, also marry the best and the soonest. With what justice, then, do the newspapers keep up this perpetual scolding at them because they find the serious business of their lives in trimming their hats and walking-suits, and dancing the German, when yet their fate turns so much upon these very externals? Not the bright, original, self-devoted girl is the popular belle, but the faultlessly appointed floating statue, whose mind is given over to rust and sloth, but whose perfect use of the meaning smile and the meaningless laugh throws such deep witchery over the severe commonplaces of her conversation. This product of high conventional art the young men are not "afraid" of. She does not "know too much;" she is "feminine;" she is a "success;" and some fine fellow soon leads her to the altar in white satin and vapoury veil, while the poor child of nature, who tried to live for something higher than clothes, either never marries at all, or, after a long time, drops quietly off with some insignificant person that nobody ever heard of.
Obstacles to Woman's Independence.
The girls must be dull indeed on whom the frequent recurrence of the above phenomena makes no impression, and it does mischievously impress many of the best of them, so that I have frequently remarked girls of noble powers purposely living down to the stultified idea of their social monarchs. A young lady belonging to the most fashionable and exclusive circle of Boston society once showed me a humorous poem she had written as a school-girl; and when I praised it, and asked her why she did not cultivate her literary talent, she replied, "O, I feel I could do a great deal, I could do anything if I were only encouraged to it. But it is all the other way. Why, it is perfect death to a girl in society to care for such things." The phrase may have been an exaggeration, and I leave fashionable young ladies to explain it; but if it could be said of "intellectual" Boston, what must be the requisite mental feebleness of the belles in other cities?
Whence, then, the fatal spell that compels young girls, even when they naturally prefer higher things, to spend the freest, freshest, most beautiful years of their lives in trifles and the chase after butterflies, content if they are "favourites with gentlemen," if they are considered "jolly," and if they "have a good time?" A writer in the Nation has justly remarked that girls seem to be educated with the view of pleasing young men at the age when these are the least worthy of being pleased. But why must they please young men? Primarily, because they do not earn their own living. They are burdens at home upon their fathers, and when they marry, they will be burdens upon their husbands. The young man therefore holds in his gift for the young girl, not only what she too keeps for him, love, but also support, position, social consideration and dignity, enjoyment,—in short, the whole of that ordinary human success which she cannot achieve for herself, but must receive from him alone. She is the trembling, silken courtier before the absolute despot, and with so much at stake, she cannot venture to exact anything from him. I repeat it, I believe young men to be so immoral principally because women are in no condition to insist on their virtue; because, let them run almost what private career of vice they please, they know well enough that they can marry whenever they like, and almost whom they like, and that no questions will be asked or conditions demanded, no, not even by the girls' own mothers!
How Independence may be attained.
When, however, every yoimg girl, on leaving school, begins at once to support herself in the co-operative association; when she knows that she could be married to-morrow, and be no additional burden to her husband; when, too, as the member of a great industrial organization, she has a thousand eager and absorbing interests along with the married and unmarried of her own sex, so that life is not a dull craving after a change or an excitement, but a round of healthy mental and physical activity all the time,—then she will begin to look on the young man with different eyes, not as the lawless arbiter of her destiny, but as a being to be loved and chosen according to his real value. Her acquaintance with him will not be that of the "German" merely,—astute social device for getting young people alone together in a crowd,—but the cool morning hours will also bring her into practical business relations with him (since ladies will not go to the importers and manufacturers, but they or their agents will send samples to them). Thus she will learn something of him as a man, instead of meeting him only as a beau; and, knowing her own worth, she will come to demand worth in him. The dignity and sacredness of wise and gracious womanhood will at length assert itself; and as the maiden gradually rises into a true aid and companion for man in his advanced intellectual and material condition, so the youth will have to make, and will rejoice in making, greater moral sacrifices to win her,—will scorn all baser passion, and fling himself a stainless knight at his shining lady's feet. Then no more will girlish hope and freshness fade, or manly ardour and purity perish while waiting until they can "afford"—lamentable word!—to marry; but early marriage, the crown of human bliss, the safeguard of society, and the only cure for its direst ill, will return to bless the earth with all its old triumphant fruits of Love and Joy.
- ↑ Gouffé, the great chef of the Paris Jockey Club, has lately published a magnificent cookery book, of which the soups alone number two hundred! How many soups does any ordinary housekeeper who reads these pages understand? Four, or perhaps six.
- ↑ Judging from the little impression that the co-operative store movement—begun twenty-five years ago—has made upon society, it will take indefinitely longer.
- ↑ Not that dress as a whole is cheaper, for fashion tries to make up the difference to the poor over-crowded artisans by compelling us all to put much more cloth into our garments, and to have many more of them than formerly.
- ↑ I heard, the other day, that the "cutter" in a large clothing establishment in Boston receives a salary of three thousand dollars. I doubt if there is a woman in the country, in any capacity, who receives such a salary.
- ↑ If this be disputed, witness the "round dance" question alone, which the young men have so successfully carried against the disapproval of the mothers and the scruples of the daughters simply by neglecting the young ladies who refused to join in such dances.