CHAPTER XII THE MODERN WOMAN MOVEMENT: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS Woman and the occupations, 493.-Effect of society life and fashion upon women, 509. How home conditions react upon the family, 521.- Woman service, 527. - The economic dependence of women, 528.- The postgraduate mother, 535. [The statutory modifications of the common law, alluded to in the preceding chapter,1 which gradually gave to women a legal personality, with the right to own and control property, make contracts, to sue and be sued, to devise property by will, etc., have been due in large part, no doubt, to the development of an elementary sense of justice toward women, but this was stimulated greatly by the changed economic condition of women brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The transformation of methods of production from the old domestic system to the factory régime, bringing in its train as it necessarily did the transference of millions of unmarried girls and women from the unpaid industry of the old industrial household to the paid work of the factory and shop, is the historical cause of much that is of fundamental significance in the present woman movement. It is one reason, for instance, why the argument for equal suffrage has shifted from the early emphasis on natural rights to the modern plea for suffrage as a social expediency and a social justice in view of the fact that so many millions of women are at work outside the home and under conditions that demand the franchise as a matter of protection. The entrance of women into industry, mercantile and clerical pursuits, and the professions constitutes one of the most profound economic and social changes in history. It has given rise to a set of conditions which it is the task of those actively engaged 1 Page 447. in finding solutions for the many-faceted labor problem to correct -long hours, less than subsistence wages, lack of organization and poor bargaining capacity, unsanitary and unfair conditions of work, and the like. Into these specific matters, despite their present signal importance to the welfare of the working women and to society as a whole, this book does not attempt to enter. The change in woman's economic status has far-reaching consequences, which must carry those who are concerned not only with immediate problems but with the future long-run development and welfare of society far beyond the confines of the question of pecuniary justice. Attention is here therefore the rather directed to certain suggestions as to the social and ethical consequences of the old domestic traditions and of the new industrial opportunities (or lack of them, as the case may be) with regard to the character and ambitions and social economy of girls and women; to the larger psychological and ethical influence of work outside the home; to the deeply important question as to whether it is possible for women in any large number to combine and harmonize the function of maternity with a specialized economic work other than housekeeping; and to the ethics of economic dependence and economic independence, respectively. Thought along these lines should not only make clear the economic and ethical causes which lie back of the power and breadth of the present complex and not wholly unified feminist movement, but lead to some basis of scientific and ethical judgment as to the aim and content of the movement.] 48. WOMAN AND THE OCCUPATIONS 1 The women who are interested in suffrage for their sex, and who have shown themselves keen in utilizing all the arguments in favor of this movement, have grasped at the idea set forth by anthropologists that the women of early society occupied a prominent place in the political life of those times. And it is certainly true that the women of savage and barbarous societies and even 1 By W. I. Thomas. Adapted from the American Magazine, September, 1909, PP. 463-470. the women of our own historical times have sometimes had a more honorable and functional if not a more romantic position than the women of to-day. But I notice that the women who are using this argument for the advancement of woman's suffrage are ignoring the fact that the women had even a more important relation to the occupational than to the political life of those times. It is true that the women of the Wyandot tribe of Indians constituted four fifths of the civil council of that tribe, but they had no voice in the military council, and the recognition which they had was due to the fact that about four fifths of the tribal industries were in their hands, in addition to the main care of the children. Tacitus states that the ancient Germans "consulted their women in all grave matters," but it is also true that in these times the women performed all the labors which built up society, except only the fighting. Before the Roman law had modified the German life, the woman was in possession of all the household goods, and in fact these could be inherited only by women, never by men. In somewhat later times, as we see from a collection of laws called the Sachsenspiegel, the man's goods were his sword, his harness, and his horse. As a further concession he had two dishes, a towel, a tablecloth, and a piece of bedding, which had originally been his war blanket. The women of these times built the houses, cultivated and owned the land, and did the manufacturing, with such assistance as they could get from the men. They created the goods, and men had as yet devised no means of dislodging them from the position of importance to which their labors had elevated them. No one would wish to restore a state of society where the women bore the whole industrial burden, but it is noticeable that the effect of these varied occupational activities on early women was excellent, both in respect to their character and their social position. They were functional, strong, and normal, and they had a dignity and respect worthy of their work. And it is also significant that wherever women have some definite occupational interests in the society of to-day, they still retain this real dignity and respect, and they retain them nowhere else. In colonial and frontier life, and likewise in the poor and the not-very-rich classes of society in general, woman is still functional and is more likely to be accepted as an individual. . . . The most pitiful and the most just cry which I have heard from women comes from peasant Russia. The women of the three villages of Tver recently sent a message to the Duma begging that they should have the same rights as the men. "Till now," they said, "even though we were beaten sometimes, still we decided various matters together. . . . Have pity on us, in the name of God! We had formerly the same rulers as our husbands. Now our husbands are going to write the laws for us." These women are not supported by their husbands and they cannot apprehend why they should be ruled by them. Women have lost their importance in society and their natural character as they have been withdrawn from the real work of society, and they have been particularly and wholly excluded from politics because politics has been and continues to be a continuation of those fighting activities with which women have never had anything to do. And they will regain and maintain their normal position in society in just the proportion that they regain their relation to the activities of society. The glorification of fighting, with its attendant contempt for labor, is one of the worst turns taken in the development of our society. As early as Tacitus the German warrior considered it "a dull and stupid thing to painfully accumulate by the sweat of his brow what might be won with a little blood." And some centuries later we find the sentiment commonly accepted that work was not "honest" in a "gentleman." War was the gentlemanly occupation- the " great game it is constantly called in the old literature — and not only the laborer but the scholar, the "clerk" as they called him, was "a thing of naught." This sentiment was also the direct forerunner of that distemper which we call romanticism toward women. The lines of Guido Guinicelli, Before the gentle heart in Nature's scheme express the general sentiment that refined feeling and passion were a monopoly of the aristocracy, and it was demanded that the women of the aristocracy should be as delicate as this sentiment. The true lady was the prize of the true gentleman, and that must remain her only occupation. But in the meantime our ideas of value have been revolutionized. We now appreciate intelligence more highly than fighting, and creative activity more than "conspicuous leisure," and we have a growing conception of the dignity of labor. In America, particularly, the conception of the value and even the obligation of labor has grown until the son of the rich man is beginning to be ashamed not to work, just as he was formerly ashamed to work. The old feeling has survived only in the tendency to exempt women from labor where this is economically possible, to keep them at any rate as the sign of an aristocratic grade. We are still ashamed of the mention of work in connection with the women for whom we are responsible. At the same time the spirit of democracy and individualism is not a thing of applicability to men alone. Without any logical design we have been educating our girls as well as our boys, and women are beginning to wish to resume their personality in precisely the same way that "the masses" yearned for this and achieved it. Indeed, the well-born or educated women who have so far freed themselves from habit and tradition as to enter the world as individuals, no longer find any serious opposition, and they are succeeding in the arts and professions at least as well as men would succeed if they had been to the same degree deprived of personality and limited in opportunity. But the question of woman's work is no longer one of sentiment alone. Under our individualistic and competitive industrial system men are no longer able to keep their women or even their children at home. Both Mr. Booth and Mr. Rowntree estimate that out of a population of 40,000,000 in Great Britain, 12,000,000 are either under or on the poverty line. The women and even the children are forced to work, because the present organization of society is no longer able to feed them. And just here transpires one of the saddest chapters in human history. The machine which man invented to relieve him of labor and to produce value more rapidly has led to the factory system of |