Women of the Future

by Meta Stern Lilienthal

WOMEN⁠
OF THE
⁠⁠FUTURE

 

BY
META STERN LILIENTHAL

(Translator of Bebel's "Woman")
Author of
FROM FIRESIDE TO FACTORY

 

PUBLISHED BY
THE RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
140 East 19th Street, New York City

The Socialist Party Needs You

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But it needs you trained in the best way of doing things and educated in the knowledge of International Socialism.

Every State, every city is calling for organizers, speakers, writers and secretaries. Sometimes these positions are compensated, sometimes not. Do you want to respond to the call?

The day of fighting capitalism with a few devoted soap-boxers is past. Now we must prepare ourselves to meet their methods with equally good methods. Capitalism has all the money it needs to train its agents. The Socialist Party has not.

But in a few months' work at the Rand School of Social Science, you can equip yourself to respond to the call of the workers' militant movement. In our six months' Full-Time Course we give you courses in the theory of Socialism and all Social Problems and also practical courses in Organization Methods, in English and Public Speaking.

The Courses begin immediately after elections and ends the last of April. Begin to prepare now for next year. Send for full information to

 

THE RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

140 EAST 19TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY

Women of the Future

 

BY
META STERN LILIENTHAL

(Translator of Bebel's "Woman")
Author of
"FROM FIRESIDE TO FACTORY"

Copyright 1916
by
RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
New York City.

Foreword

"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to gain."

These words, written by Karl Marx, the founder of scientific Socialism, have since become the slogan of Sociatists the world over. When this slogan was first uttered, few of those who voiced it included women in their appeal. Women had only just begun to exchange their age-long domestic work for wage work, and were, therefore, still regarded as a negligible factor in public life. But since the rapid development of industry has brought millions of women out of the home into the world, women have become a factor of increasing importance in the public life of all nations, and the question of their social, civic and political rights has become one of the most important of the present time. With the sweeping change in the position of women, Socialists have given more and more attention to the woman question, and have found that "Workers of the world, unite" means women as well as men. They have found that the glowing appeal, "You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to gain," applies to the toiling women of the world even more than to the men, because they have been even more oppressed and their oppression has been of longer duration. Therefore, it has become a matter of interest to both Socialists and non-Socialists what the probable position of woman under Socialism will be. But, before we can consider Socialism in its relation to women we must briefly examine the nature of Socialism itself.

Women of the Future

 

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WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

It is not lawlessness, violence and the destruction of all tender human relations. It is not one of those terrible things that you, dear reader, may have suspected it of being.

Socialism is a social and economic theory, founded on historical development. It is science applied to practical life. Its object is to hasten human progress and to make this world of ours a better place to live in.

Socialism stands for the social ownership of all things that are socially used. It does not stand for the social ownership of things that are privately used. Socialism does not deny my right to own my dress and my watch, my desk and my fountain-pen. These things are used by me personally, and my private ownership of them does not cause any suffering to my fellowmen and women. But Socialism does deny my right to own a piece of land or a mine, a railroad or a factory, because these things are not used by me personally. Alone by my individual labor, I could accomplish nothing with the land and the mine, the railroad and the factory. Only by the help of great numbers of my fellowmen and women can the land be cultivated, can the railroad be run, can the mine and the factory be operated. Because the joint labors of millions of human beings are required to conduct modern industry, commerce and agriculture, Socialism denies the right of individuals to own that which is produced by the millions and whereby the millions must live.

To-day the millions cannot work in the factories and the mines, on the railroads and the land, unless the owners allow them to work. An expert weaver cannot weave unless the owners of a textile mill employ him. Yet, that weaver's wife and child may shiver for the want of cloth that he could weave. Yet, that weaver's brother may be overworked at weaving for the want of his assistance.

Socialism says: Let the nation own the land and the railroads, the factories and the mines, and let them be operated, not for the profits of individuals, but for the common benefit of all the people! Socialism says that when the means of production and distribution are publicly owned there will be employment for all, but overwork for none; all will have to perform socially useful labor, but none will be lacking the necessities of life. Socialism says that the social ownership of all things that are socially used will abolish poverty, and will abolish many evils that are a direct result of poverty: ignorance and intemperance, most social diseases, and many crimes.

Some people will tell you that Socialism is impossible because things have always been what they are at present and will always remain so. This statement is false. Things are not what they have been nor will they remain what they are. All life is marked by change. Indeed, change is the very essence of life. Mankind has struggled up from tribes of naked savages to nations of civilized men, and civilization will not stop at its present stage. It will move forward and onward to ever higher and better stages. Just as the feudalism of the middle ages was displaced by modern capitalism, so will capitalism be displaced by the coming order of society: Socialism.

The Socialistic order of society will be the first to recognize that labor is the most important and honorable function of human life. Former societies were established upon the principle of physical force. The soldiers and great war-lords of the world were the typical representatives of these past social orders. The state was a military organization. Present-day society rests on the power of wealth. Capitalists and the great captains of industry are its typical representatives. The state is an organization for the protection of property. The society of the future will be built upon the solid, broad foundation of human labor. The workers will be its representatives. The state will be an organization for the protection and promotion of human life and happiness.

When we say workers to-day we picture a definite social class. In the military societies of the past the workers were looked down upon as the lowest social class. The soldier regarded the producer as being very inferior to himself. The peasant who tilled the soil that fed knight-errant and feudal baron was the last and lowest member of that carefully graded order of caste in feudal society. In the world's most ancient civilizations, Egypt, Greece and Rome, the worker was not only an inferior creature, but an absolute slave. All productive labor was performed by slaves—and by women. The women and the male workers of the world have borne a common lot through the ages. They who supplied the world's needs, on whose quiet labor all human progress depended, have been the most despised and subjected members of human society. Therefore it was not mere chance but a natural result of historical development that the workers and the women awoke to a consciousness of their wrongs at the same time; that they began almost simultaneously to voice their demands for greater social justice; that the present-day labor movement and the present-day woman movement are closely linked.

It was the machine, it was the factory with steam power and electricity and socialized methods of production, it was the industrial revolution that gave the worker and the woman a new power and importance in human society and made their liberation possible. In our present capitalistic society, labor is no longer despised as it was among the patricians of Rome and the lords and knights of medieval Europe. But still labor is the hand-maid of capital, and still the laborer is the social inferior of the capitalist. Even the smallest, most insignificant capitalist who feeds on rents and profits considers himself superior to the man who works for wages. The propertied classes, by virtue of their property, also have the social superiority of knowledge, education and culture, of a better environment, larger opportunities, and a greater chance for life, health and happiness. The worker, though no longer slave or serf, it still the step-child of humanity. Workingman and working woman are still terms applied to the representatives of an inferior social class. In the Socialistic society of the future the terms workingman and working woman may go out of usage altogether because they will no longer designate any special class or part of the population. All men and all women will be workers. All human beings, except the sick and feeble, except children and the aged, will be social producers.

HUMAN WORK

Under Socialism all men and women will be workers. Let the reader consider this statement in its full significance. That all men will be workers under Socialism is readily accepted by all who begin to understand Socialism; but that all women will be workers also is a revelation to many. The wildest confusion still prevails in many minds in regard to woman's future relation to labor. Many persons assume that under a higher social order women will be entirely released from the necessity of working. Others hold that women will devote all their intelligence and ability to a more perfect performance of their purely feminine and domestic functions; that they will again limit their activity to the service of the family and the home. Both assumptions are false, because they are directly opposed to the trend of development. Both are false because they are not in keeping with human evolution, but would mean the return to a lower social order.

If, under Socialism, women would be entirely released from the necessity of working, it would not mean progress but the worst kind of retrogression. It would reduce all womanhood to the level of the harem woman. It would make Socialism impossible, or-if it were possible—it would lead to the speedy degeneration and ultimate extinction of the human race. If, under Socialism, women would again devote all their energy and skill to the family and the home it would place them exactly where they have been before the age of machinery, steam-power and electricity. It would cut them loose from public life; it would suppress all their manifold interests and abilities; it would sacrifice their social usefulness, and maintain them in economic dependence. It would not mean freedom; it would not mean equality; it would not mean opportunity. It would only mean an old slavery in a new garb. Moreover, it would be impossible for the women of the future to limit their activities to the home and the family because there would not be enough work to keep all healthy women usefully employed. Already the home is stripped of most of those industrial occupations that used to keep our grandmothers busy from morning till night; already the education of children has become largely a social function. As progress marches on all industries will be socialized more and more, and public education will become ever better and more highly developed. Woman's work has moved out of the home into the store and the factory, the office and the laboratory, the school and the university. It has ceased to be woman's work and has become human work. There is not enough work left in the home to-day to keep all women in it; there will be less in the future. As surely as the machine will never again be exchanged for the manual tool, as surely as the electric lamp will never again be discarded for the home-made tallow candle, so surely will woman never again abandon her larger social life for a narrow domestic one. To assume that women wilt not work under Socialism, or that they will be limited to any special kind of work, implies a grave misunderstanding of the logic and the natural applicability of Socialism.

Who are the women who do not work to-day? They are a small, insignificant group of useless members of society, the parasite women, whose very uselessness and self-indulgence leads to childlessness and degeneration. Who are the women who work? All women except the parasites. In office, store and factory, in school, college and university, in kitchen and nursery, on the field and in the farm-yard, in public and private life all women are working, Not only are almost all women working to-day, but all women have worked since the dawn of human existence. Women were workers before men. They were the pioneers and originators of all industry. They were producers, makers of things, at a time when men were only fighters, destroyers of things. Woman and labor have been inseparably linked throughout the ages of social evolution. How could we believe that this unbroken line of evolution should suddenly be interrupted and reverted by so rational and wholesome an order of society as the one proposed by Socialism?

Women of the future will work as surely as women of the past and present. They only will work differently, just as men will work differently. Their work will be lighter, more pleasant, more rational, more conducive to human health and happiness than the work of the majority of people is at present. A society resting on the recognition that labor is the most important and honorable function of human life, since all life depends upon labor, will supply work for all, and will adapt its methods of work to the needs and requirements of all. There will be no men and women out of a job. There will be no men and women deprived of the necessities of life because their labor power is not wanted. Neither will there be men and women aged before their time, broken in health and spirit, unfit for social usefulness and for a normal perpetuation of the race by the dull grind of incessant drudgery. The workshops and the tools will be socially owned and, therefore, will be conducted, not for the profit of the few but for the benefit of all. We may well picture the factory of the future, the place where socially necessary labor is performed, conducted like the public school of the present time, the place where socially necessary knowledge is acquired. The school and its implements are publicly owned to-day. Therefore the school is not conducted for private gain but for public benefit. The welfare of the pupils is the main consideration. Sanitary conditions are assured; hours of study are limited according to hygienic requirements; there is time for work and time for play, and the child's physical as well as mental development is taken into consideration. The same principles could be readily applied to the publicly-owned factory. The welfare of the workers would be the main consideration. Sanitary conditions would be assured; hours of work would be limited according to hygienic requirements, and each worker would find his life rationally divided into time for work and time for amusement, self-culture and a free, personal existence. In such factories, socially-owned and socially-directed, men and women will work as naturally, as contentedly, as boys and girls study in the socially-owned and conducted schools of to-day.

Occupations will be even more varied and diversified than they are at present, because human needs will increase still further with increasing civilization, and human skill, ingenuity and genius, set free by economic security and wholesome conditions of life, will continue to discover, invent and create without limitation. Instead of restricting individuals or groups of individuals to any definite kind of work, the development of individuality will be given full play. It has been said that in present-day society many a genius may perish unknown beside a machine. During the ages of woman's subjection how many geniuses among women may have perished unknown beside their family altar, the cooking stove? Under the present system few people have the freedom of choice. Countless abilities, talents and lofty aspirations are sacrificed day by day in silent tragedies because the lash of hunger and the grind of toil frequently make the development of talents and the realization of lofty aspirations impossible. Under Socialism there will be the largest freedom of choice for both men and women. Every talent and ability, every inventive and creative faculty will be given the fullest opportunity for development because it will be valued as a social asset. Even if the Socialistic state should be compelled to insist upon the performance of certain kinds of disagreeable but necessary work that no one would be anxious to perform, the hours allotted to this work would necessarily be made so short and the conditions surrounding it so attractive that the workers in such a trade would still find ample time and opportunity for more congenial occupations.

In regard to work performed by women there will undoubtedly be some restrictions in an industrial democracy, but only such restrictions as will be necessary for the welfare of the human race. Mothers and potential mothers will not be permitted to operate heavy machinery, to stand for hours in succession, or to do any kind of work that may injure their reproductive functions. Motherhood will be guarded and protected as never before. Though women will be treated as human beings first and foremost, the fact that they are the bearers and nourishers of the coming generation will be given far more consideration than it is at present.

EDUCATION

In Socialistic society every worker, no matter what his or her task may be, will be adequately trained to perform that task. In present-day society inefficiency drags many workers down because industrial conditions often compel them to go from one job to another without becoming skilled at any. This is especially true of women. Most of them come into wage earning occupations young and without any training for their work, and after a few years pass out of them again to perform other work, as housekeepers, for which they are equally untrained. In an industrial democracy one of the prime demands will be efficiency of all its workers. But not only will men and women be trained to work, they also will be trained to an understanding of science, of art, of literature, of human life; they will be endowed with an education and a general culture that at the present time is possible only for the leisure class. That the education of all its members is one of the most important functions of organized society is not a Socialistic discovery. Present-day society recognizes the principle of general education and endeavors to realize it. In our own country the principle of free education is generally established. Theoretically every boy and girl of the working class, as well as the sons and daughters of the rich, can go from kindergarten through elementary school, high school and college at the expense of the community. But in actual life the vast majority of working class boys and girls do not get beyond the elementary school. The heed of their entering a wage earning occupation just as soon as the law will allow drives them out of the school into the store or the factory when they are barely half educated, according to modern standards. While sons and daughters of the rich, often listless, lazy and without ambition, are driven through college just because their families can afford to give them a college education, sons and daughters of the poor, though intelligent and eager to improve their minds, are taken out of school at fourteen and even younger, and are set to perform one monotonous, mind-killing task for the greater part of their lives. Present-day society provides the means for education without furnishing the opportunity. It also is contented with merely feeding the mind while starving the body. The little children who are sent to school every morning cold, because they are poorly clothed and poorly housed, hungry because they are habitually underfed, tired because they must labor beside studying, make our present system of education a farce to thousands upon thousands of human beings who might become educated, efficient citizens. Socialism will feed the body as well as the mind. By driving the demon poverty out of the world forever it will produce a race physically fit for a higher and nobler mental development. It is self-understood that educational facilities and opportunities will be the same for both sexes under Socialism. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the mental training of women was completely neglected. Not even a common school education was available for girls. At present, and particularly in the United States, women have larger opportunities to become educated than men because there are more women than men in the leisure class. Sufficient time and leisure for a general, broad education will be available for all in the future.

It may be assumed that obligatory school attendance will be prolonged in the coming society. Instead of girls and boys being put to work at fourteen, their education may extend to the eighteenth or twentieth year. This assumption is entirely in keeping with the general line of progress in the past and the present. Among primitive people, children mature more rapidly than among highly developed races. In simple societies education is a much shorter process than in complex and highly organized societies. A society that will assume the responsibility for the physical, mental and moral education of its young people, and will train them for work as well as for general knowledge and culture, will find it necessary to extend the period of education still further. Not until they are matured in body and mind will the young men and maidens of the future go forth to perform the world's work together, just as they studied and played together.

In a society, founded upon the socially productive labor of all its adult, able-bodied men and women. there will be no room for child labor. Neither will there be room for the labor of the aged, unless it be labor that they love, and from which they accordingly refuse to be separated. There are old men and women to-day who have congenial work they would not abandon. But the hopeless drudgery to which millions of old workingmen and women are subjected because they must keep on working in order to keep on living, is a disgrace even to the present civilization. In the humane, truly civilized state of the future every old man and woman will be as economically secure and free from care without the necessity of working as every child. As modern states provide for their veteran soldiers, so the future state will provide for its veteran workers. Elie Metchnikoff, the eminent Russian scientist, has suggested that in the future old people may be entrusted with important public offices, requiring experience and ripe judgment. It is very likely that Socialistic society will carry out this suggestion. According to Frederick Engels, pioneer Socialist and co-worker of Karl Marx, the Socialist state will mean, "not a government of people, but an administration of things." In such a state there will be many offices requiring the services of men and women over sixty, released from the necessity of productive labor, but still vigorous in body and clear in mind.

PUBLIC LIFE

The administration of things and whatever other functions the state of the future may have to perform, will of course be jointly conducted by men and women. In the Socialist state sex privilege will be as inconceivable as class privilege. In fact, the political equality of women, one of the present-day demands in the platforms of all Socialist parties, will be one of the corner-stones in the foundation of the new social order. A perfect political democracy will have to be realized before an industrial democracy will become possible. In the Socialist state women will vote on all public questions, will be eligible to all offices, and will enjoy the equal rights and perform the equal duties of unrestricted citizenship. No work for the public good will be regarded as too high or too low to be performed by any citizen suited to the task, be it man or woman.

In the military states of the past public service meant first and foremost to be a soldier and to fight for one's country. The military basis of citizenship was a prime reason for the exclusion of women. When we speak of public service at the present time we think of building hospitals and reforming prisons, of increasing educational facilities, establishing play-grounds, and improving hygienic conditions. We think of all the numerous endeavors to save life and improve life far more than of the one endeavor to destroy life. In the performance of the numerous peaceful ministrations that constitute public service to-day there is room for women; indeed there is a crying need for the labors of women. That is why the most progressive countries of the world are fast admitting their women to equal citizenship.

The fundamental principle of Socialistic society will be universal peace. The greed of gain, the desire to rob one's fellowmen, has been a prime cause of almost all wars past and present. Whether savage tribes fight for the best hunting ground or civilized nations fight for the control of diamond mines, oil wells, desirable harbors, and foreign markets, it is always the greed of gain that impels men to murder one another.

The European War, that has hurled the foremost nations of Europe back into a state of primordial savagery, was forced upon the people by their rulers and exploiters solely from the greed of gain. The workers of Europe had no cause for conflict. They were driven into the slaughter in the name of that vicious patriotism that means profit, power and glory to the ruling classes, and suffering, misery and death to the dumb, submissive masses. Neither did the women of Europe have any cause for conflict. The best, noblest, most progressive women among all the belligerent nations even continued to exchange pledges of sympathy and good will while their men were engaged in mutual destruction. But the women were not consulted. They were merely compelled to suffer and to sacrifice. In the name of patriotism they were exhorted to bear heavier burdens of toil and increased burdens of maternity, When the workers of all nations, who have no interest in the objects of war, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by it, will be the rulers of their fate, then the end of war will be at hand.

When all will be workers and all will enjoy the fruits of their labors, there will be no incentive to rob one's fellowmen. Warfare will be stripped of all its romance and glory, and will be recognized in all its naked horror and bestiality. The toiling nations of the world will refuse to slaughter one another, and militarism will die a natural death when private ownership of the means of subsistence has been abolished. That will be the woman's hour. She, whose sphere throughout the ages has been one of peaceful productivity, wilt come into her own at last in a world where universal peace will reign, and where productive labor will be the basis of organized life.

The coming changes and adjustments in the position of women are being foreshadowed in the many changes and adjustments going on in present-day society. Ever since industry was taken out of the home and socialized, women have gone forth and become social producers. They have continued to become social producers in steadily increasing numbers during a century of industrial development, and we still see their numbers swelling constantly, irresistibly. It is only a natural, logical conclusion, therefore, that some time in the future all women will be social producers. Ever since a larger industrial life led to the need for greater educational opportunities, women have begun their conquest of learning. It is self-understood, therefore, that in the future all women, as well as all men, will be educated according to the higher educational standards of a more advanced civilization. Ever since the industrial and social transformation in the position of women led them into public life, a struggle for the political equality of women has taken shape. At the present time we behold this struggle rapidly approaching its goal. It cannot be doubted, therefore, that in the future the political equality of women will be fully established. But woman's future position as a worker and a citizen does not puzzle us nearly so much as her future position as wife, mother and home-maker. How will woman's social and civic responsibilities harmonize with her conjugal relation and her maternal duties? How will her socially productive labor be adjusted to her domestic functions?

WILL SOCIALISM DESTROY THE HOME AND
THE FAMILY?

You might as well face the fact, dear reader, that Socialism will destroy the home and the family as they exist to-day. But wait! Don't condemn Socialism on a half truth, hear the whole truth! You need not fear for one minute that Socialism will abolish any of those elements of home life and family life that are dear to your heart and mine. The privacy that we all desire, the cherished intimacy with those we love, the ever sacred and ever beautiful affection between husband and wife and between parent and child, Socialism will not and cannot destroy. The very contrary is true. Economic security, a larger freedom, and a more general culture and refinement that will come with Socialism, will only increase and cultivate the charm and beauty of those ideals. The only home that Socialism will destroy is the home as a workshop. The only family that Socialism will break up is the family founded on the economic dependence of women, Nor will this breaking-up process be achieved by Socialism alone. Capitalism began it more than a century ago, and is continuing it at the present time in an unbroken process of evolution. When the first machinery for spinning and weaving went into operation, when the first domestic industries were transferred from the home to the factory, capitalism began to break up the home as a workshop, the traditional home of countless generations. When the first women spinners and weavers left their unpaid domestic labor and entered the factories as wage workers, capitalism began to destroy the family, the traditional family supported and controlled by its male head. But the transformation brought about by capitalism is still incomplete. Although most industries have been taken out of the home, some remnants of domestic industry still linger that necessitate the continuous presence of women working in a primitive way. Although women have been given the opportunity to become economically independent, this independence is still supposed to terminate with marriage, the economic status of wives is still supposed to be one of dependence upon their husbands. Socialism will merely lead the present trend of development to its rational and inevitable conclusion by taking the last domestic industries out of the home and socializing them like all others, and by giving all women economic independence, regardless of their marital relation. Let us first consider the home as it is likely to be under Socialism.

THE HOME

The reader will admit that a home does not become less pleasant and desirable because no industrial occupation is performed within its walls. Surely the home that is only a place for peace and comfort is more attractive to the tired man or woman after the day's work is done, than the home that is also a workshop. If spinning and weaving, tailoring and dressmaking, pickling and serving, baking and brewing were to be done in all the individual homes again we would not thereby obtain better and more desirable homes. The only domestic industries that remain in our day are cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. But to these we have become so accustomed that we cling to them as if they were the spirit and the purpose of the home itself, Many of us cannot picture a home without a cooking stove and a washtub, and many also cannot picture the wife or mother in any other capacity than as a domestic worker. Yet a cooking stove and a washtub are not any more essential to domestic happiness than a spinning-wheel and a hand-loom, nor does a wife and mother become less lovable for being engaged in other than domestic labors. Even at the present time it would be quite possible to have homes without cooking stoves and washtubs. The wonderful mechanical devices that are already in existence and the detailed division and organization of labor as applied in other industries could give us such homes without delay. But under capitalism, machinery is not applied and labor is not specialized and organized unless there are profits to be gotten. The great mass of people, who are the great mass of home-makers, are not in a position to apply modern inventions and modern methods in their own homes to provide for their own comfort, convenience and happiness. But in a society organized for the collective benefit of all its members, new inventions and improved methods will be applied to every kind of human labor, and nothing will be done individually and with antiquated tools that can be done socially and with machinery.

Instead of keeping twenty women in twenty homes confined to their twenty individual kitchens, a well-ordered society will employ three or four women to đo the cooking collectively for those twenty families. Their workshop will be a centrally located kitchen, equipped with every known device to save time, lighten labor, and obtain the best possible results. The cooks themselves will not be amateurs, cooking from a sense of devotion to their families, but highly skilled professional workers. They will be trained for their occupation as carefully as the physician is trained for his, since the health of a community depends upon its cooks as much as upon its doctors. In social standing as well as in professional knowledge those cooks of the future will differ radically from the cooks of to-day. Instead of being ignorant persons looked down upon as domestic servants, they will be educated persons respected as social servants. Their important profession, specialized and socialized, will be valued as highly as every other honorable work, But the greatest social gain achieved by the reform of cooking will be a greatly improved state of public health. As advanced medical knowledge is gradually overcoming numerous diseases of dirt and ignorance, so advanced culinary knowledge will gradually overcome the countless unnecessary ailments of humanity's much-abused digestive organs.

The three other domestic occupations, washing, ironing and cleaning, will be socialized just like cooking. The central kitchen will be supplemented by a central laundry, supplying the neigbborhood with immaculate linen, and the laundry, like the kitchen, will be conducted by experts; the laundress, like the cook, will be a skilled worker at her trade, and will labor with the aid of the most advanced, mechanical devices. As surely as stoves, pots and pans, washtubs, and ironing-boards will disappear from the individual homes, so also will brooms, dust-pans, feather-dusters and other antiquated implements of house cleaning disappear. Skilled workers, equipped with vacuum cleaners and other machinery perhaps still to be invented, will enter the homes at fixed hours of each day and will remove every speck of dust by the quickest and simplest methods. It does not even require a great stretch of imagination to picture this socialized house cleaning. Why should dust removal be less of a social concern than garbage removal is even to-day?

With industry completely removed from the home, with every domestic occupation specialized and socialized, the homes of the future will be just homes in the best and sweetest sense of the word. They will be healthful, cheerful, pretty abodes, places for physical and mental comfort, peace and rest, giving each individual perfect privacy, or undisturbed intimacy with those who are nearest and dearest. Whether these homes of the future will be just groups of rooms in huge buildings like our modern apartments, or whether they will be little cottages in gardens, is a matter that the coming generations will have to work out for themselves. But whatever their individual style and character may be, they will be far more desirable than our present-day homes, maintained by the unskilled labor of housewives or domestic servants.

If, in the coming social order, three or four women will perform the labor that is performed by twenty women to-day, there will be a tremendous release of labor power that is being wasted under the present unorganized, antiquated system of keeping house. If four women can cook for twenty families in a centrał kitchen more economically and more efficiently than twenty women in their individual kitchens, then the sixteen women who are no longer engaged in cooking will be released for other socially necessary labor. In our present, capitalistic society the release of labor power as a result of new inventions or improved methods of work usually means increased competition on the labor market, more unemployment, and harder conditions of work. In Socialistic society the release of new labor power will mean a shorter workday. Women, released from individual, domestic labor, will help to shorten the general workday by their socially productive labor.

If all women of the future are going to work, not as unpaid domestic workers, but as well-paid social workers, then it is obvious that all women will be self-supporting. This brings us to the profound change that Socialism will bring about in the marriage relation.

MARRIAGE

Mutual love of husband and wife and a happy marriage relation is a condition to be most ardently desired for the benefit of individuals as well as for the welfare of society. But this desirable condition does not depend upon the economic basis of marriage as we know it. A marriage is not made better or happier because the wife needs the husband to support her or because the husband needs the wife to keep house. On the contrary. Those marriages in which husband and wife have separate incomes and do not need one another for any economic reasons are often the best and most ideal even in our present society. But at present economic independence of wives is often dearly bought by work that is injurious to their motherhood, by unduly long separation from their families, by lack of proper provision for their young children, and by the added burden of household labor that women of our day cannot escape. Under present conđitions the economic independence of married women, gained by wage-work, is hardly a condition to be desired for the women themselves nor for their children; and yet married women are being forced into bread-winning occupations in growing numbers, and those to whom marriage and motherhood bring the greatest burdens are the very ones who must help to support their families. Under capitalism there is no escape from dependence and drudgery for the overwhelming mass of women. Either they are dependent upon wage slaves or they are wage słaves themselves. In either case they are not even assured of the bare necessities of life for themselves and their children in return for the hardest, incessant labor.

Women of the future will not be compelled to choose between wage slavery and marrying for a home. They will not know wage slavery. They will only know honorable labor performed under wholesome conditions for a very limited number of hours each day, assuring them of a decent livelihood and permanent economic security. They will not know marriage for any ulterior motives. To them marriage will only mean the perfect, physical and mental union with the men of their choice. The young maidens of the future, healthy in body and mind, will go forth from educational institutions to perform their life's work in their chosen trades and professions. Be they cooks or laundresses, weavers or dressmakers, type- writers or telephone operators, teachers or physicians,—they will be assured of a decent livelihood and of the wholesome enjoyments of life in return for their services to society. They will be young as few are young to-day, even among the favored classes. They will work and enjoy themselves and live with an amount of youthful energy and enthusiasm that is rarely met with in our present enfeebled, over-worked, poverty-stricken world. The haggard faces, anaemic complexions and drooping shoulders that are so prevalent among the working girls of to-day that the average city dweller fails to notice them, will disappear like the white plague and other preventable curses of humanity. Bright eyes, ruddy complexions, and straight, strong bodies will be the inalienable right of youth. We know that health and strength and vigor are not only possible but natural to youth. Young savage women, untouched by the evils of civilization, show it, and the athletic daughters of the propertied classes, spared from the evils of civilization, show it also. The maidens of the future, strong, healthy, active and educated, will be physically and mentally fit for wifehood and motherhood as not one in a hundred is to-day. Eventually every Jill will find her Jack, sooner or later, according to individual needs and circumstances; but economic causes will not retard marriages or prevent those who love one another from joining their lives. Jill will not ask, "Can Jack support me," because she will be fully able to support herself, and Jack will not inquire whether Jill can make good pies—unless pie-making be her trade—because he will be able to get all the pies he wants, even better than "mother used to make." Instead, they will ask themselves seriously, intelligently, questions such as these: "Do we love deeply and truly?" "Are we well mated?" "Is our union likely to endure?" With economic obstacles removed, and with a general diffusion of the health that comes with knowledge and right living, it is very likely that the marriage rate will rise under Socialism, and that people will marry somewhat younger than they do at present. It would be natural and desirable that people should marry as birds mate, in spring time; that is, in the spring time of their lives. What laws will regulate marriage relations, what ceremonies, if any, will initiate them, cannot be foretold and is quite immaterial. The general tendency during modern times has been to simplify laws and to diminish ceremonies, and this tendency is likely to be carried still further in the future. It is quite probable that ceremonies will be abolished altogether as useless and ridiculous, and that a mere declaration of the contracting parties, with the recognition of certain obligations toward each other and their offspring, will be all the law will require. The fact is that laws have little influence and ceremonies still less influence in securing marital happiness and fidelity. The person who utters a solemn marriage vow is not likely to be more faithful than the one who merely signs a paper as a matter of form, and the young couple who have been joined in the pompous ceremony of a church wedding are not likely to go forth on their honeymoon any more blissfully and romantically than the pair who have been quietly united in a simple office by a municipal judge. Marriage is made not by its outward form, but by its inward worth. Forms change with changing social orders, but the need of the sexes for one another remains, their relation only becoming more idealized and more beautiful with increasing civilization.

Socialism is frequently accused of favoring free love. Whenever that accusation is made, the person making it should be compelled to define exactly what he means by free love. If free love is supposed to signify promiscuity, a sex relation practiced at the lowest stage of barbarism, then Socialism does not and cannot favor it, because it is quite inconceivable that Socialism should favor anything leading to social retrogression and to race degeneration. But if free love means the removal of artificial and unnecessary restrictions, the greatest possible freedom of choice, and the least possible amount of outside interference, then Socialism can calmly countenance the accusation of favoring free love. As a matter of fact, love has always been free. You can no more bind it than you can bind genius or the spirit of revolt. Despite the most stringent laws of state and church, despite the most cruel punishments. people have always loved illicitly, and those who broke their bonds and loved freely were often the greatest men and women of their age. Even where the body was bound the soul could not be fettered. No human laws could crush the love that kindred spirits felt for one another. It was poured forth in rhyme and music, in sculpture and painting. Some of the loftiest, most enduring works of genius in the world were inspired by free love.

Socialism will set love free by removing the sex relation from all economic considerations and placing it upon the high pedestal of idealism where it properly belongs. Socialism will make for human happiness, and to be happily mated is one of the fundamental conditions of human happiness. Far from encouraging low and loathsome sex relations, a Socialistic society will encourage the pure, honest union between one man and one woman, and will teach its sons as well as its daughters the importance of coming into marriage clean and healthy in body and mind in order to fulfill the sacred function of propagating a healthy race. Only one restriction that advanced society will have to place upon love, a restriction that many thoughtful persons all over the world are advocating to-day. It will have to prevent race propagation by persons who have criminal tendencies or are afflicted with hereditary diseases.

But, the reader may ask, what legal restrictions will keep people married? If young persons who have married for no other motive but love still experience a change of sentiment after some years of living together, what will they do? They will do exactly what thousands of unhappily married couples are doing to-day. They will separate, divorce, or whatever the annulment of the marriage relation may then be called. There will only be one difference. The divorce will be made easy, quick, decent, without notoriety and without mud-slinging. Instead of people being compelled to accuse each other publicly of wrong-doing, often giving the reasons that the law demands instead of the real reasons for their estrangement, they will be permitted to part quietly, peaceably, with the utmost consideration for each other's feelings. But here the free love ghost crops up again. It is claimed that if divorce is made so easy that people can have it for the asking, there will be a general breaking up of marital ties. Wicked human nature, unrestrained, will cause men and women to rush from one marriage into another, until one cannot tell from one day to the next which man's wife a woman is, and children will not know their own parents. Let us ask ourselves seriously: Is it human nature, civilized human nature, to desire promiscuity? Would all people, or even a majority of people, seek a constant variety in the object of their affections if the law did not restrain them? One need not wait for Socialism nor even more liberal divorce laws to answer these questions in the negative. Every reader of these pages knows at least some happily married couples among his acquaintances. Let him go to any such happily married pair and ask them whether they would rush apart to-morrow and seek new mates if they were not bound by the law. The persons so questioned may laugh or may get angry, according to their dispositions, but, at any rate, they will declare that no change in the laws could change their relation; that it is not the law which holds them together, but love, comradeship, habit, common interest and common memories, all those tender little bonds of intimacy that make up married life. Those who are well mated will remain together, regardless of the laws, and those who are not well mated, who suffer from being tied to one another and make life miserable for each other accordingly, ought to be parted, in the interest of society as well as in their own.

MOTHERHOOD

What provisions will the co-operative commonwealth make for its children? How will the freely working and freely mating men and women of the future shoulder the responsibilities of parenthood? If women are going to continue at their socially productive labor outside the home after marriage, how will they be able to care for their little ones? In regard to children as in regard to marriage the most grotesque misconceptions of Socialism prevail. The assertion sometimes made by Socialist speakers that under Socialism the state will take care of the children, causes gruesome pictures to loom up before the mental vision of the unenlightened, pictures of great, state-owned orphan asylums, in which all the children will be herded together while public officials go about the country robbing mothers of their babes. This utterly ridiculous idea that Socialists advocate separating children from their parents has caused many women, particularly those with strong, maternal feelings, to oppose Socialism without ever knowing what Socialism is. But this spectre of the breaking of parental hearts melts away before rational investigation of what Socialism really stands for, just like the spectre of free love. The fact is that the state is caring for its children even now, without injuring family relations, by means of its public schools, its kindergartens and its playgrounds, and that state care under Socialism will only mean a further development and extension of these beneficent, desirable institutions. If Socialism means anything it means consideration for the welfare of the coming generation, Those who devote their lives to the service of Socialism to-day know that they themselves will never reap the fruit of their toil, but that they are merely sowing and planting that posterity may reap, and the whole philosophy of Socialism is one of altruism and human service. It is a noteworthy fact that wherever and whenever Socialists have come into power, even under the capitalistic system, provisions for the benefit of children were among their first, official actions. That every child has a right to be well born and to be reared in an atmosphere of health, happiness and love, will be a fundamental principle in Socialistic society. The co-operative commonwealth will be the paradise of childhood.

There was a time when people opposed public schools on the ground that free public education would undermine parental authority, and would cause parents to shirk their responsibility; and yet the public school system has been established in every civilized country and its benefits to civilization are no longer questioned. Under Socialism public education will mean much more than it does to-day. It will mean that from infancy until maturity the mental and physical development of every child will be a matter of public concern, and that the best society has to offer will be applied to the education of all its children. The public school will be extended in both directions. It will collect all its youths and maidens in higher institutions of learning, in trade schools, and in gymnasiums and on athletic fields providing wholesome sports, not allowing them to become workers until they are fully developed physically, educated mentally, and trained industrially or professionally. On the other hand the public school will reach out among the little ones and provide education for them, long before they begin to learn their A B C's. The kindergarten idea will be developed more and more, in keeping with the progress of pedagogy, and every school will have its kindergarten, and every child of normal health will attend the kindergarten as surely as the higher grades. But even before kindergarten age, there will be provision for the care of the little ones. Model nurseries will constitute the lowest grade of the future public school system. They will be equipped in accordance with the highest requirements of an advanced, enlightened age. They will be better places for babies to be in than the most ideal nursery in the most ideal home of the present day, because public effort can always achieve better results than private effort. Plenty of air and sunshine, absolute cleanliness, peace, order and regularity, wise management by highly trained nurses, and medical supervision will make these nurseries as perfect as human knowledge is able. It cannot be doubted that to such nurseries mothers will take their babies as willingly and cheerfully as they send their older children to school. That will not mean that mothers are going to be separated from their babies, that they will be deprived of the joy of caring for them and playing with them, of watching their little minds and bodies grow. Mothers will not be separated from their babies by having them socially educated at the nursery for a few hours each day, any more than mothers of the present time are separated from their children by having them socially educated at school for five hours daily. The baby's play-day at the nursery will generally coincide with the mother's workday at her trade or profession, and that day will be short. It has been computed by economists that if all adult, healthy members of human society performed socially productive labor, a five-hour workday, six days a week, would suffice to provide humanity, not only with all its necessities, but with all its luxuries as well. As human ingenuity will not come to a standstill with Socialism, but will, on the contrary, be given a stronger impetus, people will go on discovering, inventing and improving the methods of production, and so the socially necessary workday may be shortened further still. But even assuming five hours to be the time every woman will have to give to her trade or profession, six days out of seven, the fact still remains that no mother will have to be separated from her children any longer than we are separated from our children to-day while they are at school. In present-day society mothers of the working class are often separated from their babies for nine and ten hours daily, and no social provision is made to care for their babies during their absence. They must either depend upon the untrained, unreliable care of neighbors or older children, or they must appeal to charity. In Socialistic society there will be no charity babies, no pale, tired little mothers, and no high infant mortality as a result of ignorance and neglect. Neither will there be little children cared for privately by ignorant servants while their idle mothers play bridge. Responsibility toward childhood will be collectively taught and collectively practiced. Every girl will learn the proper care of infants and small children as a part of her public school education, so that every baby will be given a chance to develop healthfully and normally, at home as well as in the nursery.

Although Socialism will extend and increase social responsibility toward childhood, it will not diminish the responsibilty of individual parents. Good parents are not less conscious of their duties to-day, because their home education of their children is supplemented by a public school system. On the contrary, public enlightenment on the subject of education makes individual parents regard their personal responsibilities more seriously. Children of the present day have better, wiser, more enlightened parents than children of centuries ago, before there was any public system of education, and children of the future, brought up under a more extensive system of public education, will have better, wiser, more enlightened parents still. Young men and women will be taught to prepare for parenthood. They will be taught to be healthy, strong and good for the benefit of their unborn children. Young wives will enter upon the pains and burdens of motherhood with a high sense of the importance and sacredness of being a mother.

The importance and sacredness of being a mother will also be given the utmost social consideration, The community can educate the child, but the individual mother must bring it forth. The community can supervise the child's development, but the individual mother must furnish its natural nourishment during the first year of its life. Therefore a rationally organized society will enable every mother to bear and nurse her children in physical well-being and material security. The bearing and nursing of a child will be valued as a service to society, second in importance to none. When a woman is about to become a mother, other considerations will be set aside. If her socially productive labor, her particular trade or profession, is not heavy or in any way injurious, she may be permitted to continue at it until shortly before the birth of her child, for work in itself is not detrimental to motherhood. Many women who are physically active during pregnancy bring forth more vigorous children, and remain healthier themselves, than those who pamper and enfeeble themselves by treating their natural condition like a disease. But any work that could possibly be harmful to either mother or child would instantly be interrupted. From the time a baby is born until the time it is ready to thrive on other food than mother's milk, the mother will have to be excused from socially productive labor. She will have to be given leave of absence from her trade or profession to perform the equally necessary task of motherhood. But this leave of absence, this temporary interruption of her life's work, must not reduce the mother to a state of dependence or economic insecurity. A society that values motherhood as an important social service will remunerate this service accordingly, and will, by a system of motherhood pensions, maintain the woman's economic independence.

So the application of knowledge and humane principles by a civilized society, collectively owning the means of production, will give women security as well as freedom; it will give them a nobler wifehood and a better motherhood as well as equal citizenship. Because women to-day are less free than men, because they are still hampered by social and political restrictions as well as by economic burdens, women have even more to gain than men by a new order of society. Socialism holds out its greatest promise to women.

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You, kind reader, who have patiently read from cover to cover, who have followed me in this tracing of woman's probable future position, if what I have said has interested you, pass this little book along! If you are not a Socialist, do not stop here! Read Socialist books and newspapers; attend Socialist meetings; learn more about this greatest movement of the present day! But if you are a Socialist, if you no longer need to be convinced, then make up your mind that merely being a Socialist is not sufficient. Resolve here and now to become an active worker in this world-wide cause! Help to spread the gospel of Socialism, the hope of humanity!

 

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