WOMEN

AND ECONOMICS

A Study of the Economic Relation

Between Men and Women as a Factor
in Social Evolution

By
Charlotte Perkins Stetson

Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
1898
 Copyright 1898
By Small, Maynard & Company

v ati I u
330

/Vw s/" George H. Ellis, Boston, U. S. A.

 PROEM
In dark and early ages, through the primal
forestsfaring,
Ere the soul came shining into prehistoric night,
Twofold man was equal ; they were comrades
dear and daring,
Living wild and free together in unreasoning
delight.
Ere the soul was born and consciousness came
Ere
slowly,
the soul was born, to man and woman, too,

Ere hefound the Tree of Knowledge, that awful

tree and holy,
Ere he knew he felt, and knew he knew.
Then said he to Pain, " I am wise now, and I
Noknow
moreyou
will! I suffer while power and wisdom

Then
last
willsaid
!show
'" heyou
to Pleasure, " / am strong, and I

That the will of man can seize you,— aye, and

holdyou fast ! "
Food he ate forpleasure, and wine he drank for
And
gladness.
woman ? Ah, the woman ! the crown of

His
allnow,—
delighthe
! knew it! He was strong to

In madness
that early dawning after prehistoric night.

His, — his forever ! That glory sweet and ten

der !
iii
Ah, but he would love her! And she should
love but him !
He would work and struggle for her, he would
shelter and defend her, —
She should never leave him, never, till their
eyes in death were dim.
Close, close he bound her, that she should leave
Weak
him still
neverhe; kept her, lest she be strong to flee ;

And the faintingflame of passion he kept alive

With
forever
all the arts and forces of earth and sky

and sea.
And, ah, the long journey ! The slow and awful
ages
They have labored up together, blind and crip
pled, all astray !
Through what a mighty volume, with a million
shameful pages,
From the freedom of the forests to the prisons of
to-day !
Food he ate for pleasure, and it slew him with
diseases !
Wine he drank for gladness, and it led the way
to crime !
And woman f He will hold her,— he will have
her when he pleases, —
And he never once hath seen her since the pre
historic time !
Gone the friend and comrade of the day when
life was younger,
iv
She who rests and comforts, she who helps and
Still
saves.
he seeks her vainly, with a never-dying

Alone
hunger
beneath
; his tyrants, alone above his slaves !

Toiler, bent and weary with the load of thine

own making!
Thou who art sad and lonely, though lonely all
Who
in vain
hast !sought to conquer Pleasure and have

herfor the taking,

Andfound
for Pain that
— Pleasure only was another name

Nature hath reclaimed thee, forgiving disposses

sion !
God hath not forgotten, though man doth still
forget !
Thetransgression—
woman-soul is rising, in despite of thy

Loose
theeher
yet now,
! and trust her ! She will love

Love thee ? She will love thee as only freedom

knoweth !
Love thee f She will love thee while Love it
self doth live !
Fear not the heart of woman ! No bitterness it
showeth !
The ages of her sorrow have but taught her to
forgive !

v
 PREFACE
This book is written to offer a simple and
natural explanation of one of the most common
and most perplexing problems of human life, — a
problem which presents itself to almost every
individualfor practical solution, and which de
mands the most serious attention of the moralist,
the physician, and the sociologist —
To show how some of the worst evils under
which we suffer, evils long supposed to be inher
ent and ineradicable in our natures, are but the
result of certain arbitrary conditions of our own
adoption, and how, by removing those condi
tions, we may remove the evils resultant —
To point out how far we have already gone in
the path of improvement, and how irresistibly
the social forces of to-day are compelling us
further, even without our knowledge and against
our violent opposition, — an advance which may
be greatly quickened by our recognition and
assistance —
To reach in especial the thinking women of
to-day, and urge upon them a new sense, not
only of their social responsibility as individuals,
but of their measureless racial importance as
makers of men.
It is hoped also that the theory advanced will
prove sufficiently suggestive to give rise to such
further study and discussion as shall prove its
error or establish its truth.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON.

vii
 I.

Since we have learned to study the devel

opment of human life as we study the evolu
tion of species throughout the animal kingdom,
some peculiar phenomena which have puzzled
the philosopher and moralist for so long, begin
to show themselves in a new light. We begin
to see that, so far from being inscrutable prob
lems, requiring another life to explain, these
sorrows and perplexities of our lives are but the
natural results of natural causes, and that, as
soon as we ascertain the causes, we can do much
to remove them.
In spite of the power of the individual will
to struggle against conditions, to resist them for
a while, and sometimes to overcome them, it re
mains true that the human creature is affected
by his environment, as is every other living
thing. The power of the individual will to re
sist natural law is well proven by the life and
death of the ascetic. In any one of those
suicidal martyrs may be seen the will, misdi
rected by the ill-informed intelligence, forcing
the body to defy every natural impulse,— even
to the door of death, and through it.
But, while these exceptions show what the
human will can do, the general course of life
shows the inexorable effect of conditions upon
 Women and Economics
humanity. Of these conditions we share with
other living things the environment of the
material universe. We are affected by climate
and locality, by physical, chemical, electrical
forces, as are all animals and plants. With the
animals, we farther share the effect of our own
activity, the reactionary force of exercise. What
we do, as well as what is done to us, makes us
what we are. But, beyond these forces, we come
under the effect of a third set of conditions
peculiar to our human status ; namely, social
conditions. In the organic interchanges which
constitute social life, we are affected by each
other to a degree beyond what is found even
among the most gregarious of animals. This
third factor, the social environment, is of enor
mous force as a modifier of human life.
Throughout all these environing conditions,
those which affect us through our economic
necessities
Without are
touching
most marked
yet uponin the
their
influence
influence.
of

the social factors, treating the human being

merely as an individual animal, we see that he
is modified most by his economic conditions, as
is every other animal. Differ as they may in
color and size, in strength and speed, in minor
adaptation to minor conditions, all animals that
live on grass have distinctive traits in com
mon, and all animals that eat flesh have distinc-
2
 Economic Environment
tive traits in common,— so distinctive and so
common that it is by teeth, by nutritive appa
ratus in general, that they are classified, rather
than by means of defence or locomotion. The
food supply of the animal is the largest passive
factor in his development ; the processes by
which he obtains his food supply, the largest
active factor in his development. It is these
activities, the incessant repetition of the exer
tions by which he is fed, which most modify
his structure and develope his functions. The
sheep, the cow, the deer, differ in their adapta
tion to the weather, their locomotive ability,
their means of defence ; but they agree in main
characteristics, because of their common method
of nutrition.
The human animal is no exception to this rule.
Climate affects him, weather affects him, ene
mies affect him ; but most of all he is affected,
like every other living creature, by what he does
for his living. Under all the influence of his
later and wider life, all the reactive effect of
social institutions, the individual is still inexora
bly modified by his means of livelihood : " the
hand of the dyer is subdued to what he works
in." As one clear, world-known instance of the
effect of economic conditions upon the human
creature, note the marked race-modification of
the Hebrew people under the enforced restric
3
 Women and Economics
tions of the last two thousand years. Here is
a people rising to national prominence, first as
a pastoral, and then as an agricultural nation ;
only partially commercial through race affinity
with the Phoenicians, the pioneer traders of the
world. Under the social power of a united
Christendom — united at least in this most un
christian deed — the Jew was forced to get his
livelihood by commercial methods solely. Many
effects can be traced in him to the fierce press
ure of the social conditions to which he was
subjected : the intense family devotion of a peo
ple who had no country, no king, no room for
joy and pride except the family ; the reduced
size and tremendous vitality and endurance of
the pitilessly selected survivors of the Ghetto ;
the repeated bursts of erratic genius from the
human spirit so inhumanly restrained. But more
patent still is the effect of the economic condi
tions,— the artificial development of a race of
traders and dealers in money, from the lowest
pawnbroker to the house of Rothschild ; a spe
cial kind of people, bred of the economic environ
ment in which they were compelled to live.
One rough but familiar instance of the same
effect, from the same cause, we can all see in
the marked distinction between the pastoral, the
agricultural, and the manufacturing classes in any
nation, though their other conditions be the same.
4
 The Dependence of Women
On the clear line of argument that functions
and organs are developed by use, that what we
use most is developed most, and that the daily
processes of supplying economic needs are the
processes that we most use, it follows that,
when we find special economic conditions affect
ing any special class of people, we may look for
special results, and find them.
In view of these facts, attention is now called
to a certain marked and peculiar economic con
dition affecting the human race, and unparalleled
in the organic world. We are the only animal
species in which the female depends on the male
for food, the only animal species in which the
sex-relation is also an economic relation. With
us an entire sex lives in a relation of economic
dependence upon the other sex, and the eco
nomic relation is combined with the sex-relation.
The economic status of the human female is
relative to the sex-relation.
It is commonly assumed that this condition
also obtains among other animals, but such is
not the case. There are many birds among
which, during the nesting season, the male
helps the female feed the young, and partially
feeds her ; and, with certain of the higher carniv-
ora, the male helps the female feed the young,
and partially feeds her. In no case does she
depend on him absolutely, even during this sea
5
 Women and Economics
son, save in that of the hornbill, where the female,
sitting on her nest in a hollow tree, is walled in
with clay by the male, so that only her beak
projects ; and then he feeds her while the eggs
are developing. But even the female hornbill
does not expect to be fed at any other time.
The female bee and ant are economically de
pendent, but not on the male. The workers are
females, too, specialized to economic functions
solely. And with the carnivora, if the young
are to lose one parent, it might far better be the
father : the mother is quite competent to take
care of them herself. With many species, as in
the case of the common cat, she not only feeds
herself and her young, but has to defend the
young against the male as well. In no case is
the female throughout her life supported by the
male.
In the human species the condition is perma
nent and general, though there are exceptions,
and though the present century is witnessing
the beginnings of a great change in this respect-:
We have not been accustomed to face this fact't
beyond our loose generalization that it was,
"natural," and that other animals did so, too. )
To many this view will not seem clear at
first ; and the case of working peasant women
or females of savage tribes, and the general
household industry of women, will be instanced
6
 Women's Labor not Their Own
against it. Some careful and honest discrimina
tion is needed to make plain to ourselves the
essential facts of the relation, even in these
cases. The horse, in his free natural condition,
is economically independent. He gets his liv
ing by his own exertions, irrespective of any
other creature. The horse, in his present con
dition of slavery, is economically dependent.
He gets his living at the hands of his master ;
and his exertions, though strenuous, bear no
direct relation to his living. In fact, the horses
who are the best fed and cared for and the
horses who are the hardest worked are quite
different animals. The horse works, it is true ;
but what he gets to eat depends on the power
and will of his master. His living comes through
another. He is economically dependent. So
with the hard-worked savage or peasant women.
Their labor is the property of another : they
work under another will ; and what they receive
depends not on their labor, but on the power
and will of another. They are economically
dependent. This is true of the human female
both individually and collectively.
In studying the economic position of the sexes
collectively, the difference is most marked. As
a social animal, the economic status of man rests
on the combined and exchanged services of vast
numbers of progressively specialized individuals.
7
 Women and Economics
The economic progress of the race, its mainte
nance at any period, its continued advance,
involve the collective activities of all the trades,
crafts, arts, manufactures, inventions, discoveries,
and all the civil and military institutions that go
to maintain them. The economic status of any
race at any time, with its involved effect on all
the constituent individuals, depends on their
world-wide labors and their free exchange.
Economic progress, however, is almost exclusively
masculine. Such economic processes as women
have been allowed to exercise are of the earliest
and most primitive kind. Were men to perform
no economic services save such as are still per
formed by women, our racial status in econom
icsTo
would
takebefrom
reduced
any community
to most painful
its male
limitations.
workers

would paralyze it economically to a far greater

degree than to remove its female workers. The
labor now performed by the women could be
performed by the men, requiring only the setting
back of many advanced workers into earlier
forms of industry ; but the labor now performed
by the men could not be performed by the
women without generations of effort and adapta
tion. Men can cook, clean, and sew as well as
women ; but the making and managing of the
great engines of modern industry, the threading
of earth and sea in our vast systems of transpor-
8
 No Inherent Disability of Sex
tation, the handling of our elaborate machinery
of trade, commerce, government,— these things
could not be done so well by women in their
present degree of economic development.
This is not owing to lack of the essential
human faculties necessary to such achievements,
nor to any inherent disability of sex, but to the
present condition of woman, forbidding the devel
opment of this degree of economic ability. The
male human being is thousands of years in ad
vance of the female in economic status. Speak
ing collectively, men produce and distribute
wealth ; and women receive it at their hands.
As men hunt, fish, keep cattle, or raise corn, so
do women eat game, fish, beef, or corn. As men
go down to the sea in ships, and bring coffee
and spices and silks and gems from far away, so
do women partake of the coffee and spices and
silks and gems the men bring.
The economic status of the human race in
any nation, at any time, is governed mainly by
the activities of the male : the female obtains
her share in the racial advance only through him.
Studied individually, the facts are even more
plainly visible, more open and familiar. From
the day laborer to the millionnaire, the wife's
worn dress or flashing jewels, her low roof or
her lordly one, her weary feet or her rich equi
page,— these speak of the economic ability of
9
 Women and Economics
the husband. The comfort, the luxury, the ne
cessities of life itself, which the woman receives,
are obtained by the husband, and given her by
him. And, when the woman, left alone with no
man to " support " her, tries to meet her own
economic necessities, the difficulties which con
front her prove conclusively what the general
economic status of the woman is. None can
deny these patent facts,— that the economic
status of women generally depends upon that
of men generally, and that the economic status
of women individually depends upon that of
men individually, those men to whom they are
related. But we are instantly confronted by
the commonly received opinion that, although it
must be admitted that men make and distribute
the wealth of the world, yet women earn their
share of it as wives. This assumes either that
the husband is in the position of employer and
the wife as employee, or that marriage is a
"partnership," and the wife an equal factor
with the husband in producing wealth.
Economic independence is a relative condition
at best. In the broadest sense, all living things
are economically dependent upon others,— the
animals upon the vegetables, and man upon
both. In a narrower sense, all social life is
economically interdependent, man producing
collectively what he could by no possibility pro-
10
 Marriage not a Partnership
duce separately. But, in the closest interpreta
tion, individual economic independence among
human beings means that the individual pays
for what he gets, works for what he gets, gives
to the other an equivalent for what the other
gives him. I depend on the shoemaker for
shoes, and the tailor for coats ; but, if I give the
shoemaker and the tailor enough of my own
labor as a house-builder to pay for the shoes and
coats they give me, I retain my personal inde
pendence. I have not taken of their product,
and given nothing of mine. As long as what I
get is obtained by what I give, I am economi
cally independent.
Women consume economic goods. What
economic product do they give in exchange
for what they consume? The claim that mar
riage is a partnership, in which the two per
sons married produce wealth which neither of
them, separately, could produce, will not bear
examination. A man happy and comfortable
can produce more than one unhappy and uncom
fortable, but this is as true of a father or son as
of a husband. To take from a man any of the
conditions which make him happy and strong
is to cripple his industry, generally speaking.
But those relatives who make him happy are
not therefore his business partners, and entitled
to share his income.
ii
 Women and Economics
Grateful return for happiness conferred is
not the method of exchange in a partnership.
The comfort a man takes with his wife is not in
the nature of a business partnership, nor are her
frugality and industry. A housekeeper, in her
place, might be as frugal, as industrious, but
would not therefore be a partner. Man and
wife are partners truly in their mutual obli
gation to their children,— their common love,
duty, and service. But a manufacturer who
marries, or a doctor, or a lawyer, does not
take a partner in his business, when he takes a
partner in parenthood, unless his wife is also a
manufacturer, a doctor, or a lawyer. In his
business, she cannot even advise wisely without
training and experience. To love her husband,
the composer, does not enable her to compose ;
and the loss of a man's wife, though it may
break his heart, does not cripple his business,
unless his mind is affected by grief. She is tyi
no sense a business partner, unless she con
tributes capital or experience or labor, as a\
man would in like relation. Most men would
hesitate very seriously before entering a busi
ness partnership with any woman, wife or not.
If the wife is not, then, truly a business part
ner, in what way does she earn from her hus
band the food, clothing, and shelter she receives
at his hands ? By house service, it will be
12
 House Service as a Livelihood
instantly replied. This is the general misty
idea upon the subject,— that women earn all
they get, and more, by house service. Here we
come to a very practical and definite economic
ground. Although not producers of wealth,
women serve in the final processes of prepara
tion and distribution. Their labor in the house
hold has a genuine economic value.
For a certain percentage of persons to serve
other persons, in order that the ones so served
may produce more, is a contribution not to be
overlooked. The labor of women in the house,
certainly, enables men to produce more wealth
than they otherwise could ; and in this way
women are economic factors in society. But so
are horses. The labor of horses enables men
to produce more wealth than they otherwise
could. The horse is an economic factor in
society. But the horse is not economically in
dependent, nor is the woman. If a man plus a
valet can perform more useful service than he
could minus a valet, then the valet is perform
ing useful service. But, if the valet is the
property of the man, is obliged to perform this
service, and is not paid for it, he is not eco
nomically independent.
The labor which the wife performs in the
household is given as part of her functional
duty, not as employment. The wife of the
13
 Women and Economics
poor man, who works hard in a small house,
doing all the work for the family, or the wife
of the rich man, who wisely and gracefully
manages a large house and administers its func
tions, each is entitled to fair pay for services
rendered.
To take this ground and hold it honestly,
wives, as earners through domestic service, are
entitled to the wages of cooks, housemaids,
nursemaids, seamstresses, or housekeepers, and
to no more. This would of course reduce
the spending money of the wives of the rich,
and put it out of the power of the poor man
to " support " a wife at all, unless, indeed, the
poor man faced the situation fully, paid his
wife her wages as house servant, and then she
and he combined their funds in the support of
their children. He would be keeping a servant :
she would be helping keep the family. But no
where on earth would there be " a rich woman "
by these means. Even the highest class of
private housekeeper, useful as her services are,
does not accumulate a fortune. She does novt
buy diamonds and sables and keep a carriage!
Things like these are not earned by house serviced
But the salient fact in this discussion is that,!
whatever the economic value of the domestic
industry of women is, they do not get it. The
women who do the most work get the least '
14 I
 Women as Mothers
money, and the women who have the most
money do the least work. Their labor is
neither given nor taken as a factor in economic
exchange. It is held to be their duty as women
to do this work ; and their economic status
bears no relation to their domestic labors, un
less an inverse one. Moreover, if they were
thus fairly paid,— given what they earned, and
no more,— all women working in this way would
be reduced to the economic status of the house
servant. Few women — or men either — care
to face this condition. The ground that women
earn their living by domestic labor is instantly
forsaken, and we are told that they obtain
their livelihood as mothers. This is a peculiar
position. We speak of it commonly enough,
and often with deep feeling, but without due
analysis.
In treating of an economic exchange, asking
what return in goods or labor women make
for the goods and labor given them,— either to
the race collectively or to their husbands indi
vidually,— what payment women make for their
clothes and shoes and furniture and food and
shelter, we are told that the duties and services
of the mother entitle her to support.
If this is so, if motherhood is an exchangeable
commodity given by women in payment for
clothes and food, then we must of course find
*5
 Women and Economics
some relation between the quantity or quality of
the motherhood and the quantity and quality of
the pay. This being true, then the women who
are not mothers have no economic status at all ;
and the economic status of those who are must
be shown to be relative to their motherhood.
This is obviously absurd. The childless wife
has as much money as the mother of many,—
more ; for the children of the latter consume
what would otherwise be hers ; and the ineffi
cient mother is no less provided for than the
efficient one. Visibly, and upon the face of it,
women are not maintained in economic prosper
ity proportioned to their motherhood. Mother
hood bears no relation to their economic status.
Among primitive races, it is true,— in the patri
archal period, for instance, —there was some truth
in this position. Women being of no value
whatever save as bearers of children, their favor
and indulgence did bear direct relation to mater
nity ; and they had reason to exult on more
grounds than one when they could boast a son.
To-day, however, the maintenance of the woman
is not conditioned upon this. A man is not
allowed to discard his wife because she is barren.
The claim of motherhood as a factor in eco
nomic exchange is false to-day. But suppose it
were true. Are we willing to hold this ground,
even in theory? Are we willing to consider
16
 Motherhood and Economic Production
motherhood as a business, a form of commercial
exchange? Are the cares and duties of the
mother, her travail and her love, commodities to
be exchanged for bread ?
It is revolting so to consider them ; and, if we
dare face our own thoughts, and force them to
their logical conclusion, we shall see that noth
ing could be more repugnant to human feeling,
or more socially and individually injurious, than
to make motherhood a trade. Driven off these
alleged grounds of women's economic indepen
dence ; shown that women, as a class, neither
produce nor distribute wealth ; that women, as
individuals, labor mainly as house servants, are
not paid as such, and would not be satisfied with
such an economic status if they were so paid ;
that wives are not business partners or co-pro
ducers of wealth with their husbands, unless
they actually practise the same profession ; that
they are not salaried as mothers, and that it
would be unspeakably degrading if they were,
— what remains to those who deny that women
are supported by men ? This (and a most
amusing position it is),— that the function of
maternity unfits a woman for economic produc
tion, and, therefore, it is right that she should be
supported by her husband.
The ground is taken that the human female
is not economically independent, that she is fed
17
 Women and Economics
by the male of her species. In denial of this,
it is first alleged that she is economically inde
pendent,— that she does support herself by her
own industry in the house. It being shown
that there is no relation between the economic
status of woman and the labor she performs in
the home, it is then alleged that not as house
servant, but as mother, does woman earn her
living. It being shown that the economic status
of woman bears no relation to her motherhood,
either in quantity or quality, it is then alleged
that motherhood renders a woman unfit for
economic production, and that, therefore, it is
right that she be supported by her husband.
Before going farther, let us seize upon this ad
mission,— that she is supported by her husband.
Without going into either the ethics or the
necessities of the case, we have reached so much
common ground : the female of genus homo is
supported by the male. Whereas, in other spe
cies of animals, male and female alike graze and
browse, hunt and kill, climb, swim, dig, run, and
fly for their livings, in our species the female
does not seek her own living in the specific ac
tivities of our race, but is fed by the male.
Now as to the alleged necessity. Because of
her maternal duties, the human female is said to
be unable to get her own living. As the mater
nal duties of other females do not unfit them
18 !
 Modification to Maternity
for getting their own living and also the livings
of their young, it would seem that the human
maternal duties require the segregation of the
entire energies of the mother to the service of
the child during her entire adult life, or so large
a proportion of them that not enough remains
to devote to the individual interests of the
mother.
Such a condition, did it exist, would of course
excuse and justify the pitiful dependence of the
human female, and her support by the male.
As the queen bee, modified entirely to maternity,
is supported, not by the male, to be sure, but by
her co-workers, the "old maids," the barren
working bees, who labor so patiently and lov
ingly in their branch of the maternal duties of
the hive, so would the human female, modi
fied entirely to maternity, become unfit for any
other exertion, and a helpless dependant.
Is this the condition of human motherhood ?
Does the human mother, by her motherhood,
thereby lose control of brain and body, lose
power and skill and desire for any other work ?
Do we see before us the human race, with all
its females segregated entirely to the uses of
motherhood, consecrated, set apart, specially de
veloped, spending every power of their nature
on the service of their children ?
We do not. We see the human mother
l9
 Women and Economics
worked far harder than a mare, laboring her life
long in the service, not of her children only, but
of men ; husbands, brothers, fathers, whatever
male relatives she has ; for mother and sister
also ; for the church a little, if she is allowed ;
for society, if she is able ; for charity and edu
cation and reform,— working in many ways that
are not the ways of motherhood.
It is not motherhood that keeps the housewife
on her feet from dawn till dark ; it is house ser
vice, not child service. Women work longer
and harder than most men, and not solely in
maternal duties. The savage mother carries the
burdens, and does all menial service for the
tribe. The peasant mother toils in the fields,
and the workingman's wife in the home. Many
mothers, even now, are wage-earners for the
family, as well as bearers and rearers of it. And
the women who are not so occupied, the women
who belong to rich men, — here perhaps is the
exhaustive devotion to maternity which is sup
posed to justify an admitted economic depend
ence. But we do not find it even among these
Women of ease and wealth provide for their
children better care than the poor woman can ;
but they do not spend more time upon it them
selves, nor more care and effort. They have
other
In spite
occupation.
of her supposed segregation to mater-

20
 The Truth of the Matter
nal duties, the human female, the world over,
works at extra-maternal duties for hours enough
to provide her with an independent living, and
then is denied independence on the ground that
motherhood prevents her working !
If this ground were tenable, we should find a
world full of women who never lifted a finger
save in the service of their children, and of men
who did all the work besides, and waited on the
women whom motherhood prevented from wait
ing on themselves. The ground is not tenable.
A human female, healthy, sound, has twenty-five
years of life before she is a mother, and should
have twenty-five years more after the period of
such maternal service as is expected of her has
been given. The duties of grandmotherhood
are surely not alleged as preventing economic
independence.
The working power of the mother has always
been a prominent factor in human life. She is the
worker par excellence, but her work is not such
as to affect her economic status. Her living, all
that she gets,— food, clothing, ornaments, amuse
ments, luxuries,— these bear no relation to her
power to produce wealth, to her services in the
house, or to her motherhood. These things
bear relation only to the man she marries, the
man she depends on,— to how much he has and
how much he is willing to give her. The women
 Women and Economics
whose splendid extravagance dazzles the world,
whose economic goods are the greatest, are often
neither houseworkers nor mothers, but simply
the women who hold most power over the men
who have the most money. The female of
genus homo is economically dependent on the
male. He is her food supply.
 II.

Knowing how important a factor in the

evolution of species is the economic relation,
and finding in the human species an economic
relation so peculiar, we may naturally look
to find effects peculiar to our race. We may
expect to find phenomena in the sex-relation
and in the economic relation of humanity of
a unique character,— phenomena not tracea
ble to human superiority, but singularly deroga
tory to that superiority ; phenomena so marked,
so morbid, as to give rise to much speculation
as to their cause. Are these natural inferences
fulfilled ? Are these peculiarities in the sex-re
lation and in the economic relation manifested
in human life? Indisputably these are,— so
plain, so prominent, so imperiously demanding
attention, that human thought has been occu
pied from its first consciousness in trying some
way to account for them. To explain and relate
these phenomena, separating what is due to nor
mal race-development from what is due to this
abnormal sexuo-economic relation, is the purpose
of the line of study here suggested.
As the racial distinction of humanity lies in
its social relation, so we find the distinctive
gains and losses of humanity to lie also in its
social relation. We are more affected by our
23
 Women and Economics
relation to each other than by our physical
environment.
Disadvantages of climate, deficiencies in food
supply, competition from other species,— all
these conditions society, in its organic strength,
is easily able to overcome or to adjust. But in
our inter-human relations we are not so success
ful. The serious dangers and troubles of human
life arise from difficulties of adjustment with
our social environment, and not with our physi
cal environment. These difficulties, so far, have
acted as a continual check to social progress.
The more absolutely a nation has triumphed
over physical conditions, the more successful it
has become in its conquest of physical enemies
and obstacles, the more it has given rein to the
action of social forces which have ultimately
destroyed the nation, and left the long ascent to
be begun again by others.

There is the moral of all human tales :

Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,—
First Freedom, and then Glory ; when that fails,
Wealth, Vice, Corruption,— barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page. *

The path of history is strewn with fossils

and faint relics of extinct races,— races which
* Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV., cviii.
24
 The Troubles of Life
died of what the sociologist would call internal
diseases rather than natural causes. This, too,
has been clear to the observer in all ages. It has
been easily seen that there was something in
our own behavior which did us more harm than
any external difficulty; but what we have not
seen is the natural cause of our unnatural
conduct, and how most easily to alter it.
Rudely classifying the principal fields of hu
man difficulty, we find one large proportion lies
in the sex-relation, and another in the economic
relation, between the individual constituents of
society. To speak broadly, the troubles of life
as we find them are mainly traceable to the
heart or the purse. The other horror of our lives
— disease — comes back often to these causes,—
to something wrong either in economic relation
or in sex-relation. To be ill-fed or ill-bred, or
both, is largely what makes us the sickly race we
are. In this wrong breeding, this maladjust
ment of the sex-relation in humanity, what
are the principal features ? We see in social
evolution two main lines of action in this de
partment of life. One is a gradual orderly
development of monogamous marriage, as the
form of sex-union best calculated to advance
the interests of the individual and of society.
It should be clearly understood that this is a
natural development, inevitable in the course of
25
 Women and Economics
social progress ; not an artificial condition, en
forced by laws of our making. Monogamy is
found among birds and mammals : it is just as
natural a condition as polygamy or promiscuity
or any other form of sex-union ; and its perma
nence and integrity are introduced and increased
by the needs of the young and the advantage to
the race, just as any other form of reproduction
was introduced. Our moral concepts rest pri
marily on facts. The moral quality of monoga
mous marriage depends on its true advantage to
the individual and to society. If it were not
the best form of marriage for our racial good, it
would not be right. All the way up, from the
promiscuous horde of savages, with their miscel
laneous matings, to the lifelong devotion of ro
mantic love, social life has been evolving a
type of sex-union best suited to develope and
improve the individual and the race. This is an
orderly process, and a pleasant one, involving
only such comparative pain and difficulty as al
ways attend the assumption of new processes
and the extinction of the old ; but accompanied
by far more joy than pain.
But with the natural process of social advance
ment has gone an unnatural process,— an
erratic and morbid action, making the sex-rela
tion of humanity a frightful source of evil. So
prominent have been these morbid actions and
26
 An Illogical Philosophy
evil results that hasty thinkers of all ages have
assumed that the whole thing was wrong, and
that celibacy was the highest virtue. Without
the power of complete analysis, without knowl
edge of the sociological data essential to such
analysis, we have sweepingly condemned as a
whole what we could easily see was so allied
with pain and loss. But, like all natural phe
nomena, the phenomena of sex may be studied,
both the normal and the abnormal, the physio
logical and the pathological ; and we are quite
capable of understanding why we are in such
evil case, and how we may attain more healthful
conditions.
So far, the study of this subject has rested on
the assumption that man must be just as we
find him, that man behaves just as he chooses,
and that, if he does not choose to behave as he
does, he can stop. Therefore, when we discov
ered that human behavior in the sex-relation
was productive of evil, we exhorted the human
creature to stop so behaving, and have con
tinued so to exhort for many centuries. By
law and religion, by education and custom, we
have sought to enforce upon the human individ
ual the kind of behavior which our social sense
so clearly showed was right.
But always there has remained the morbid
action. Whatever the external form of sex
27
 Women and Economics
union to which we have given social sanction,
however Bible and Koran and Vedas have offered
instruction, some hidden cause has operated
continuously against the true course of social
evolution, to pervert the natural trend toward
a higher and more advantageous sex-relation ;
and to maintain lower forms, and erratic phases,
of a most disadvantageous character.
Every other animal works out the kind of sex-
union best adapted to the reproduction of his
species, and peacefully practises it. We have
worked out the kind that is best for us,— best
for the individuals concerned, for the young re
sultant, and for society as a whole ; but we do
not peacefully practise it. So palpable is this
fact that we have commonly accepted it, and
taken it for granted that this relation must be
a continuous source of trouble to humanity.
"Marriage is a lottery," is a common saying
among us. "The course of true love never
did run smooth." And we quote with unction
Punch's advice to those about to marry,—
" Don't ! " That peculiar sub-relation which
has dragged along with us all the time that
monogamous marriage has been growing to be
the accepted form of sex-union — prostitution —
we have accepted, and called a "social neces
sity." We also call it "the social evil." We
have tacitly admitted that this relation in the
28
 The Usefulness of Sex
human race must be more or less uncomfortable
and wrong, that it is part of our nature to have
it so.
Now let us examine the case fairly and
calmly, and see whether it is as inscrutable and
immutable as hitherto believed. What are the
conditions ? What are the natural and what
the unnatural features of the case ? To dis
tinguish these involves a little study of the
evolution of the processes of reproduction.
Very early in the development of species it
was ascertained by nature's slow but sure ex
periments that the establishment of two sexes
in separate organisms, and their differentiation,
was to the advantage of the species. Therefore,
out of the mere protoplasmic masses, the float
ing cells, the amorphous early forms of life,
grew into use the distinction of the sexes,—
the gradual development of masculine and fem
inine organs and functions in two distinct or
ganisms. Developed and increased by use, the
distinction of sex increased in the evolution of
species. As the distinction increased, the attrac
tion increased, until we have in all the higher
races two markedly different sexes, strongly
drawn together by the attraction of sex, and ful
filling their use in the reproduction of species.
These are the natural features of sex-distinction
and sex-union, and they are found in the human
29
 Women and Economics
species as in others. The unnatural feature
by which our race holds an unenviable distinction
consists mainly in this,— a morbid excess in the
exercise of this function.
It is this excess, whether in marriage or out,
which makes the health and happiness of hu
manity in this relation so precarious. It is this
excess, always easily seen, which law and religion
have mainly striven to check. Excessive sex-
indulgence is the distinctive feature of humanity
in this relation.
To define " excess " in this connection is not
difficult. All natural functions that require our
conscious co-operation for their fulfilment are
urged upon our notice by an imperative desire.
We do not have to desire to breathe or to digest
or to circulate the blood, because that is done
without our volition ; but we do have to desire
to eat and drink, because the stomach cannot
obtain its supplies without in some way spur
ring the whole organism to secure them. So
hunger is given us as an essential factor in our
process of nutrition. In the same manner sex-
attraction is an essential factor in the fulfilment
of our processes of reproduction. In a normal
condition the amount of hunger we feel is
exactly proportioned to the amount of food we
need. It tells us when to eat and when to stop.
In some diseased conditions "an unnatural
30
 Differentiation of Sex
appetite " sets in ; and we are impelled to eat
far beyond the capacity of the stomach to
digest, of the body to assimilate. This is an
excessive hunger.
We, as a race, manifest an excessive sex-
attraction, followed by its excessive indulgence,
and the inevitable evil consequence. It urges
us to a degree of indulgence which bears no
relation to the original needs of the organism,
and which is even so absurdly exaggerated as
to react unfavorably on the incidental gratifica
tion involved ; an excess which tends to per
vert and exhaust desire as well as to injure
reproduction.
The human animal manifests an excess in sex-
attraction which not only injures the race through
its morbid action on the natural processes of
reproduction, but which injures the happiness of
the individual through its morbid reaction on his
own desires.
What is the cause of this excessive sex-attrac
tion in the human species ? The immediately
acting cause of sex-attraction is sex-distinction.
The more widely the sexes are differentiated,
the more forcibly they are attracted to each
other. The more highly developed becomes the
distinction of sex in either organism, the more
intense is its attraction for the other. In the
human species we find sex-distinction carried to
31
 Women and Economics
an excessive degree. Sex-distinction in human
ity is so marked as to retard and confuse race-
distinction, to check individual distinction, seri
ously |to injure the race. Accustomed as we
are simply to accept the facts of life as we find
them, to consider people as permanent types
instead of seeing them and the whole race in
continual change according to the action of
many forces, it seems strange at first to differ
entiate between familiar manifestations of sex-
distinction, and to say : " This is normal, and
should not be disturbed. This is abnormal, and
should be removed." But that is precisely what
must be done.
Normal sex-distinction manifests itself in all
species in what are called primary and second
ary sex-characteristics. The primary are those
organs and functions essential to reproduction ;
the secondary, those modifications of structure
and function which subserve the uses of reproduc
tion ultimately, but are not directly essential,—
such as the horns of the stag, of use in sex-com
bat ; the plumage of the peacock, of use in sex-
competition. All the minor characteristics of
beard or mane, comb, wattles, spurs, gorgeous
color or superior size, which distinguish the male
from the female,— these are distinctions of sex.
These distinctions are of use to the species
through reproduction only, the processes of race-
32
 Sex and Humanity
preservation. They are not of use in self-pres
ervation. The creature is not profited personally
by his mane or crest or tail-feathers : they do
not help him get his dinner or kill his enemies.
On the contrary, they react unfavorably upon
his personal gains, if, through too great develop
ment, they interfere with his activity or render
him a conspicuous mark for enemies. Such
development would constitute excessive sex-dis
tinction, and this is precisely the condition of
the human race. Our distinctions of sex are
carried to such a degree as to be disadvantageous
to our progress as individuals and as a race. The
sexes in our species are differentiated not only
enough to perform their primal functions ; not
only enough to manifest all sufficient secondary
sexual characteristics and fulfil their use in giv
ing rise to sufficient sex-attraction ; but so much
as seriously to interfere with the processes of
self-preservation on the one hand ; and, more
conspicuous still, so much as to react unfavora
bly upon the very processes of race-preservation
which they are meant to serve. Our excessive
sex-distinction, manifesting the characteristics
of sex to an abnormal degree, has given rise to
a degree of attraction which demands a degree
of indulgence that directly injures motherhood
and fatherhood. We are not better as parents,
nor better as people, for our existing degree
33
 Women and Economics
of sex-distinction, but visibly worse. To what
conditions are we to look for the developing
cause of these phenomena ?
Let us first examine the balance of forces by
which these two great processes, self-preserva
tion and race-preservation, are conducted in the
world. Self-preservation involves the expendi
ture of energy in those acts, and their ensuing
modifications of structure and function, which
tend to the maintenance of the individual life.
Race-preservation involves the expenditure of
energy in those acts, and their ensuing modifica
tions of structure and function, which tend to
the maintenance of the racial life, even to the
complete sacrifice of the individual. This pri
mal distinction should be clearly held in mind.
Self-preservation and race-preservation are in
no way identical processes, and are often
directly opposed. In the line of self-preserva
tion, natural selection, acting on the individual,
developes those characteristics which enable it
to succeed in "the struggle for existence," in
creasing by use those organs and functions
by which it directly profits. In the line of race-
preservation, sexual selection, acting on the in
dividual, developes those characteristics which
enable it to succeed in what Drummond has
called " the struggle for the existence of others,"
increasing by use those organs and functions
34
 The Peacock's Tail
by which its young are to profit, directly or
indirectly. The individual has been not only
modified to its environment, under natural selec
tion, but modified to its mate, under sexual
selection, each sex developing the qualities de
sired by the other by the simple process of
choice, those best sexed being first chosen, and
transmitting their sex-development as well as
their racial development.
The order mammalia is the resultant of a
primary sex-distinction developed by natural
selection ; but the gorgeous plumage of the
peacock's tail is a secondary sex-distinction de
veloped by sexual selection. If the peacock's
tail were to increase in size and splendor till it
shone like the sun and covered an acre,— if
it tended so to increase, we will say,— such ex
cessive sex-distinction would be so inimical to
the personal prosperity of that peacock that
he would die, and his tail-tendency would perish
with him. If the pea-hen, conversely, whose
sex-distinction attracts in the opposite direction,
not by being large and splendid, but small and
dull,— if she should grow so small and dull as to
fail to keep herself and her young fed and de
fended, then she would die; and there would
be another check to excessive sex-distinction.
In herds of deer and cattle the male is larger
and stronger, the female smaller and weaker;
35
 Women and Economics
but, unless the latter is large and strong enough
to keep up with the male in the search for food
or the flight from foes, one is taken and the
other left, and there is no more of that kind of
animal. Differ as they may in sex, they must
remain alike in species, equal in race-develop
ment, else destruction overtakes them. The
force of natural selection, demanding and pro
ducing identical race-qualities, acts as a check
on sexual selection, with its production of dif
ferent sex-qualities. As sexes, they perform
different functions, and therefore tend to de-
velope differently. As species, they perform the
same functions, and therefore tend to develope
equally.
And as sex-functions are only used occasion
ally, and race-functions are used all the time,—
as they mate but yearly or tri-monthly, but eat
daily and hourly,— the processes of obtaining
food or of opposing constant enemies act more
steadily than the processes of reproduction, and
produce greater effect.
We find the order mammalia accordingly pro
ducing and suckling its young in the same
manner through a wide variety of species which
obtain their living in a different manner. The
calf and colt and cub and kitten are produced
by the same process ; but the cow and horse,
the bear and cat, are produced by different
36
 Altering the Balance of Forces
processes. And, though cow and bull, mare
and stallion, differ as to sex, they are alike in
species ; and the likeness in species is greater
than the difference in sex. Cow, mare, and cat
are all females of the order mammalia, and so
far alike ; but how much more different they
are than similar !
Natural selection develops race. Sexual se
lection develops sex. Sex-development is one
throughout its varied forms, tending only to
reproduce what is. But race-development rises
ever in higher and higher manifestation of
energy. As sexes, we share our distinction
with the animal kingdom almost to the begin
ning of life, and with the vegetable world as
well. As races, we differ in ascending degree ;
and the human race stands highest in the scale
of life so far.
When, then, it can be shown that sex-distinc
tion in the human race is so excessive as not
only to affect injuriously its own purposes, but
to check and pervert the progress of the race, it
becomes a matter for most serious consideration.
Nothing could be more inevitable, however,
under our sexuo-economic relation. By the
economic dependence of the human female upon
the male, the balance of forces is altered. Natu
ral selection no longer checks the action of sex
ual selection, but co-operates with it. Where
37
 Women and Economics
both sexes obtain their food through the same
exertions, from the same sources, under the
same conditions, both sexes are acted upon
alike, and developed alike by their environment.
Where the two sexes obtain their food under
different conditions, and where that difference
consists in one of them being fed by the other,
then the feeding sex becomes the environment
of the fed. Man, in supporting woman, has be
come her economic environment. Under natu
ral selection, every creature is modified to its
environment, developing perforce the qualities
needed to obtain its livelihood under that en
vironment. Man, as the feeder of woman, be
comes the strongest modifying force in her
economic condition. Under sexual selection
the human creature is of course modified to its
mate, as with all creatures. When the mate be
comes also the master, when economic necessity
is added to sex-attraction, we have the two great
evolutionary forces acting together to the same
end ; namely, to develope sex-distinction in the
human female. For, in her position of economic
dependence in the sex-relation, sex-distinction is
with her not only a means of attracting a mate,
as with all creatures, but a means of getting
her livelihood, as is the case with no other
creature under heaven. Because of the eco
nomic dependence of the human female on her
38
 Excessive Modification
mate, she is modified to sex to an excessive
degree. This excessive modification she trans
mits to her children ; and so is steadily implanted
in the human constitution the morbid tendency
to excess in this relation, which has acted so uni
versally upon us in all ages, in spite of our best
efforts to restrain it. It is not the normal sex-
tendency, common to all creatures, but an ab
normal sex-tendency, produced and maintained
by the abnormal economic relation which makes
one sex get its living from the other by the ex
ercise of sex-functions. This is the immediate
effect upon individuals of the peculiar sexuo-
economic relation which obtains among us.

39
 III.

In establishing the claim of excessive sex-dis

tinction in the human race, much needs to be
said to make clear to the general reader what is
meant by the term. To the popular mind, both
the coarsely familiar and the over-refined, " sex
ual " is thought to mean " sensual " ; and the
charge of excessive sex-distinction seems to be
a reproach. This should be at once dismissed,
as merely showing ignorance of the terms used.
A man does not object to being called "mascu
line," nor a woman to being called "feminine."
Yet whatever is masculine or feminine is sexual.
To be distinguished by femininity is to be dis
tinguished by sex. To be over-feminine is to
be over-sexed. To manifest in excess any of
the distinctions of sex, primary or secondary, is
to be over-sexed. Our hypothetical peacock,
with his too large and splendid tail, would be
over-sexed, and no offence to his moral char
acter !
The primary sex-distinctions in our race as in
others consist merely in the essential organs
and functions of reproduction. The secondary
distinctions, and this is where we are to look
for our largest excess — consist in all those dif
ferences in organ and function, in look and
action, in habit, manner, method, occupation,
40
 Sex Distinctions
behavior, which distinguish men from women.
In a troop of horses, seen at a distance, the
sexes are indistinguishable. In a herd of deer
the males are distinguishable because of their
antlers. The male lion is distinguished by his
mane, the male cat only by a somewhat heavier
build. In certain species of insects the male
and female differ so widely in appearance that
even naturalists have supposed them to belong
to separate species. Beyond these distinctions
lies that of conduct. Certain psychic attributes
are manifested by either sex. The intensity of
the maternal passion is a sex-distinction as much
as the lion's mane or the stag's horns. The
belligerence and dominance of the male is a sex-
distinction : the modesty and timidity of the
female is a sex-distinction. The tendency to
" sit " is a sex-distinction of the hen : the ten
dency to strut is a sex-distinction of the cock.
The tendency to fight is a sex-distinction of
males in general : the tendency to protect and
provide for, is a sex-distinction of females in
general.
With the human race, whose chief activities
are social, the initial tendency to sex-distinction
is carried out in many varied functions. We
have differentiated our industries, our responsi
bilities, our very virtues, along sex lines. It
will therefore be clear that the claim of exces
4i
 Women and Economics
sive sex-distinction in humanity, and especially
in woman, does not carry with it any specific
" moral " reproach, though it does in the larger
sense prove a decided evil in its effect on human
progress.
In primary distinctions our excess is not so
marked as in the farther and subtler develop
ment ; yet, even here, we have plain proof of it.
Sex-energy in its primal manifestation is exhib
ited in the male of the human species to a
degree far greater than is necessary for the proc
esses of reproduction,— enough, indeed, to sub
vert and injure those processes. The direct
injury to reproduction from the excessive indul
gence of the male, and the indirect injury
through its debilitating effect upon the female,
together with the enormous evil to society pro
duced by extra-marital indulgence,— these are
facts quite generally known. We have recog
nized them for centuries, and sought to check
the evil action by law, civil, social, moral. But
we have treated it always as a field of voluntary
action, not as a condition of morbid develop
ment. We have held it as right that man should
be so, but wrong that man should do so. Nature
does not work in that way. What it is right to
be, it is right to do. What it is wrong to do, it
is wrong to be. This inordinate demand in the
human male is an excessive sex-distinction. In
42
 An Episode : A History
this, in a certain over-coarseness and hardness,
a too great belligerence and pride, a too great
subservience to the power of sex-attraction, we
find the main marks of excessive sex-distinction
in men. It has been always checked and offset
in them by the healthful activities of racial life.
Their energies have been called out and their
faculties developed along all the lines of human
progress. In the growth of industry, commerce,
science, manufacture, government, art, religion,
the male of our species has become human, far
more than male. Strong as this passion is in
him, inordinate as is his indulgence, he is a far
more normal animal than the female of his
species,— far less over-sexed. To him this field
of special activity is but part of life, — an in
cident. The whole world remains besides. To
her it is the world. This has been well stated
in the familiar epigram of Madame de Stael,—
"Love with man is an episode, with woman
a history." It is in woman that we find most
fully expressed the excessive sex-distinction of
the human species, — physical, psychical, social.
See first the physical manifestation.
To make clear by an instance the difference
between normal and abnormal sex-distinction,
look at the relative condition of a wild cow and
a " milch cow," such as we have made. The wild
cow is a female. She has healthy calves, and
43
 Women and Economics
milk enough for them ; and that is all the fem
ininity she needs. Otherwise than that she is
bovine rather than feminine. She is a light,
strong, swift, sinewy creature, able to run, jump,
and fight, if necessary. We, for economic uses,
have artificially developed the cow's capacity for
producing milk. She has become a walking
milk-machine, bred and tended to that express
end, her value measured in quarts. The secre
tion of milk is a maternal function,— a sex-
function. The cow is over-sexed. Turn her
loose in natural conditions, and, if she survive
the change, she would revert in a very few
generations to the plain cow, with her energies
used in the general activities of her race, and
not all running to milk.
Physically, woman belongs to a tall, vigorous,
beautiful animal species, capable of great and
varied exertion. In every race and time when
she has opportunity for racial activity, she de-
velopes accordingly, and is no less a woman for
being a healthy human creature. In every race
and time where she is denied this opportunity,
— and few, indeed, have been her years of free
dom,— she has developed in the lines of action
to which she was confined ; and those were al
ways lines of sex-activity. In consequence the
body of woman, speaking in the largest general
ization, manifests sex-distinction predominantly.
44
 The Eternal Feminine
Woman's femininity — and "the eternal fem
inine" means simply the eternal sexual — is
more apparent in proportion to her humanity
than the femininity of other animals in propor
tion to their caninity or felinity or equinity.
" A feminine hand " or " a feminine foot " is
distinguishable anywhere. We do not hear of
"a feminine paw" or "a feminine hoof." A
hand is an organ of prehension, a foot an organ
of locomotion : they are not secondary sexual
characteristics. The comparative smallness and
feebleness of woman is a sex-distinction. We
have carried it to such an excess that women
are commonly known as "the weaker sex."
There is no such glaring difference between
male and female in other advanced species. In
the long migrations of birds, in the ceaseless
motion of the grazing herds that used to swing
up and down over the continent each year, in the
wild, steep journeys of the breeding salmon,
nothing is heard of the weaker sex. And
among the higher carnivora, where longer
maintenance of the young brings their condition
nearer ours, the hunter dreads the attack of
the female more than that of the male. The
disproportionate weakness is an excessive sex-
distinction. Its injurious effect may be broadly
shown in the Oriental nations, where the female
in curtained harems is confined most exclusively
45
 Women and Economics
to sex-functions and denied most fully the ex
ercise of race-functions. In such peoples the
weakness, the tendency to small bones and
adipose tissue of the over-sexed female, is trans
mitted to the male, with a retarding effect on
the development of the race. Conversely, in
early Germanic tribes the comparatively free and
humanly developed women — tall, strong, and
brave — transmitted to their sons a greater
proportion of human power and much less of
morbid sex-tendency.
The degree of feebleness and clumsiness
common to women, the comparative inability to
stand, walk, run, jump, climb, and perform other
race-functions common to both sexes, is an
excessive sex-distinction ; and the ensuing trans
mission of this relative feebleness to their chil
dren, boys and girls alike, retards human de
velopment. Strong, free, active women, the
sturdy, field-working peasant, the burden-bear
ing savage, are no less good mothers for their
human strength. But our civilized "feminine
delicacy," which appears somewhat less delicate
when recognized as an expression of sexuality
in excess,— makes us no better mothers, but
worse. The relative weakness of women is a
sex-distinction. It is apparent in her to a de
gree that injures motherhood, that injures wife
hood, that injures the individual. The sex-use-
46
 Unreasoning Devotion
fulness and the human usefulness of women,
their general duty to their kind, are greatly in
jured by this degree of distinction. In every
way the over-sexed condition of the human
female reacts unfavorably upon herself, her
husband, her children, and the race.
In its psychic manifestation this intense sex-
distinction is equally apparent. The primal in
stinct of sex-attraction has developed under
social forces into a conscious passion of enor
mous power, a deep and lifelong devotion,
overwhelming in its force. This is excessive
in both sexes, but more so in women than in
men,— not so commonly in its simple physical
form, but in the unreasoning intensity of emo
tion that refuses all guidance, and drives those
possessed by it to risk every other good for this
one end. It is not at first sight easy, and it may
seem an irreverent and thankless task, to dis
criminate here between what is good in the
" master passion " and what is evil, and espe
cially to claim for one sex more of this feeling
than for the other ; but such discrimination can
be made.
It is good for the individual and for the race
to have developed such a degree of passionate
and permanent love as shall best promote the
happiness of individuals and the reproduction of
species. It is not good for the race or for the
47
 Women and Economics
individual that this feeling should have become
so intense as to override all other human facul
ties, to make a mock of the accumulated wis
dom of the ages, the stored power of the will ;
to drive the individual — against his own plain
conviction — into a union sure to result in evil,
or to hold the individual helpless in such an evil
union, when made.
Such is the condition of humanity, involving
most evil results to its offspring and to its own
happiness. And, while in men the immediate
dominating force of the passion may be more
conspicuous, it is in women that it holds more
universal sway. For the man has other powers
and faculties in full use, whereby to break loose
from the force of this ; and the woman, specially
modified to sex and denied racial activity, pours
her whole life into her love, and, if injured here,
she is injured irretrievably. With him it is
frequently light and transient, and, when most
intense, often most transient. With her it is a
deep, all-absorbing force, under the action of
which she will renounce all that life offers, take
any risk, face any hardships, bear any pain. It
is maintained in her in the face of a lifetime of
neglect and abuse. The common instance of
the police court trials — the woman cruelly
abused who will not testify against her husband
— shows this. This devotion, carried to such a
48
 Women as Persons
degree as to lead to the mismating of individuals
with its personal and social injury, is an exces
sive sex-distinction.
But it is in our common social relations that
the predominance of sex-distinction in women is
made most manifest. The fact that, speaking
broadly, women have, from the very beginning,
been spoken of expressively enough as " the
sex," demonstrates clearly that this is the main
impression which they have made upon observers
and recorders. Here one need attempt no
farther proof than to turn the mind of the
reader to an unbroken record of facts and feel
ings perfectly patent to every one, but not
hitherto looked at as other than perfectly natu
ral and right. So utterly has the status of
woman been accepted as a sexual one that it
has remained for the woman's movement of the
nineteenth century to devote much contention
to the claim that women are persons ! That
women are persons as well as females, — an un
heard of proposition !
In a " Handbook of Proverbs of All Nations,"
a collection comprising many thousands, these
facts are to be observed : first, that the proverbs
concerning women are an insignificant minority
compared to those concerning men ; second,
that the proverbs concerning women almost in
variably apply to them in general,— to the sex.
49
 Women and Economics
Those concerning men qualify, limit, describe,
specialize. It is "a lazy man," " a violent man,"
"a man in his cups." Qualities and actions are
predicated of man individually, and not as a sex,
unless he is flatly contrasted with woman, as in
" A man of straw is worth a woman of gold,"
" Men are deeds, women are words," or " Man,
woman, and the devil are the three degrees of
comparison." But of woman it is always and
only " a woman," meaning simply a female, and
recognizing no personal distinction : " As much
pity to see a woman weep as to see a goose go
barefoot." "He that hath an eel by the tail
and a woman by her word hath a slippery
handle." " A woman, a spaniel, and a walnut-
tree,— the more you beat 'em, the better they
be." Occasionally a distinction is made between
" a fair woman " and " a black woman " ; and
Solomon's "virtuous woman," who commanded
such a high price, is familiar to us all. But in
common thought it is simply " a woman " al
ways. The boast of the profligate that he
knows " the sex," so recently expressed by a
new poet,— " The things you will learn from the
Yellow and Brown, they'll 'elp you an' 'eap
with the White " ; the complaint of the angry
rejected that "all women are just alike!"— the
consensus of public opinion of all time goes to
show that the characteristics common to the
5°
 Race-Attributes and Sex-Attributes
sex have predominated over the characteristics
distinctive of the individual,— a marked excess in
sex-distinction.
From the time our children are born, we use
every means known to accentuate sex-distinction
in both boy and girl ; and the reason that the
boy is not so hopelessly marked by it as the girl
is that he has the whole field of human expres
sion open to him besides. In our steady insist
ence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have
grown to consider most human attributes as
masculine attributes, for the simple reason that
they were allowed to men and forbidden to
women.
A clear and definite understanding of the dif
ference between race-attributes and sex-attributes
should be established. Life consists of action.
The action of a living thing is along two main
lines,— self-preservation and race-preservation.
The processes that keep the individual alive,
from the involuntary action of his internal organs
to the voluntary action of his external organs,—
every act, from breathing to hunting his food,
which contributes to the maintenance of the
individual life,— these are the processes of self-
preservation. Whatever activities tend to keep
the race alive, to reproduce the individual, from
the involuntary action of the internal organs
to the voluntary action of the external organs ;
51
 Women and Economics
every act from the development of germ-cells to
the taking care of children, which contributes
to the maintenance of the racial life,— these are
the processes of race-preservation. In race-
preservation, male and female have distinctive
organs, distinctive functions, distinctive lines of
action. In self-preservation, male and female
have the same organs, the same functions, the
same lines of action. In the human species our
processes of race-preservation have reached a
certain degree of elaboration ; but our processes
of self-preservation have gone farther, much
farther.
All the varied activities of economic produc
tion and distribution, all our arts and industries,
crafts and trades, all our growth in science, dis
covery, government, religion,— these are along
the line of self-preservation : these are, or should
be, common to both sexes. To teach, to rule,
to make, to decorate, to distribute,— these are not
sex-functions : they are race-functions. Yet so
inordinate is the sex-distinction of the human
race that the whole field of human progress has
been considered a masculine prerogative. What
could more absolutely prove the excessive sex-
distinction of the human race ? That this differ
ence should surge over all its natural boundaries
and blazon itself across every act of life, so that
every step of the human creature is marked
52
 Masculine and Feminine
"male" or "female,"— surely, this is enough to
show our over-sexed condition.
Little by little, very slowly, and with most
unjust and cruel opposition, at cost of all life
holds most dear, it is being gradually established
by many martyrdoms that human work is
woman's as well as man's. Harriet Martineau
must conceal her writing under her sewing when
callers came, because " to sew " was a feminine
verb, and " to write " a masculine one. Mary
Somerville must struggle to hide her work from
even relatives, because mathematics was a " mas
culine " pursuit. Sex has been made to dom
inate the whole human world,— all the main
avenues of life marked " male," and the female
left to be a female, and nothing else.
But while with the male the things he fondly
imagined to be "masculine" were merely hu
man, and very good for him, with the female the
few things marked "feminine" were feminine,
indeed ; and her ceaseless reiterance of one
short song; however sweet, has given it a con
spicuous monotony. In garments whose main
purpose is unmistakably to announce her sex;
with a tendency to ornament which marks ex
uberance of sex-energy, with a body so modified
to sex as to be grievously deprived of its natural
activities ; with a manner and behavior wholly
attuned to sex-advantage, and frequently most
53
 Women and Economics
disadvantageous to any human gain ; with a
field of action most rigidly confined to sex-rela
tions ; with her overcharged sensibility, her
prominent modesty, her " eternal femininity," —
the female of genus homo is undeniably over
sexed.
This excessive distinction shows itself again
in a marked precocity of development. Our
little children, our very babies, show signs
of it when the young of other creatures are
serenely asexual in general appearance and
habit. We eagerly note this precocity. We
are proud of it. We carefully encourage it by
precept and example, taking pains to develope
the sex-instinct in little children, and think no
harm. One of the first things we force upon
the child's dawning consciousness is the fact
that he is a boy or that she is a girl, and that,
therefore, each must regard everything from a
different point of view. They must be dressed
differently, not on account of their personal
needs, which are exactly similar at this period,
but so that neither they, nor any one beholding
them, may for a moment forget the distinction
of sex.
Our peculiar inversion of the usual habit of
species, in which the male carries ornament and
the female is dark and plain, is not so much a
proof of excess indeed, as a proof of the peculiar
54
 Boys and Girls
reversal of our position in the matter of sex-se
lection. With the other species the males com
pete in ornament, and the females select. With
us the females compete in ornament, and the
males select. If this theory of sex-ornament is
disregarded, and we prefer rather to see in mas
culine decoration merely a form of exuberant
sex-energy, expending itself in non-productive
excess, then, indeed, the fact that with us the
females manifest such a display of gorgeous
adornment is another sign of excessive sex-dis
tinction. In either case the forcing upon girl-
children of an elaborate ornamentation which
interferes with their physical activity and un
conscious freedom, and fosters a premature sex-
consciousness, is as clear and menacing a proof
of our condition as could be mentioned. That
the girl-child should be so dressed as to require
a difference in care and behavior, resting wholly
on the fact that she is a girl, — a fact not other
wise present to her thought at that age,— is a
precocious insistence upon sex-distinction, most
unwholesome in its results. Boys and girls are
expected, also, to behave differently to each
other, and to people in general,—a behavior
to be briefly described in two words. To the
boy we say, " Do " ; to the girl, " Don't." The
little boy must " take care " of the little girl,
even if she is larger than he is. " Why ? "
55
 Women and Economics
he asks. Because he is a boy. Because of sex.
Surely, if she is the stronger, she ought to take
care of him, especially as the protective instinct
is purely feminine in a normal race. It is not
long before the boy learns his lesson. He is a
boy, going to be a man ; and that means all. " I
thank the Lord that I was not born a woman,"
runs the Hebrew prayer. She is a girl, " only
a girl," " nothing but a girl," and going to be a
woman,— only a woman. Boys are encouraged
from the beginning to show the feelings sup
posed to be proper to their sex. When our in
fant son bangs about, roars, and smashes things,
we say proudly that he is " a regular boy ! "
When our infant daughter coquettes with visitors,
or wails in maternal agony because her brother
has broken her doll, whose sawdust remains
she nurses with piteous care, we say proudly
that " she is a perfect little mother already ! "
What business has a little girl with the instincts
of maternity? No more than the little boy
should have with the instincts of paternity.
They are sex-instincts, and should not appear
till the period of adolescence. The most nor
mal girl is the " tom-boy,"— whose numbers in
crease among us in these wiser days,— a
healthy young creature, who is human through
and through, not feminine till it is time to be.
The most normal boy has calmness and gentle-
56
 The Normal Child
ness as well as vigor and courage. He is a
human creature as well as a male creature, and
not aggressively masculine till it is time to be.
Childhood is not the period for these marked
manifestations of sex. That we exhibit them,
that we admire and encourage them, shows our
over-sexed condition.

57
 IV.

Having seen the disproportionate degree of

sex - distinction in humanity and its greater
manifestation in the female than in the male,
and having seen also the unique position of the
human female as an economic dependant on the
male of her species, it is not difficult to establish
a relation between these two facts. The gen
eral law acting to produce this condition of
exaggerated sex-development was briefly referred
to in the second chapter. It is as follows :
the natural tendency of any function to increase
in power by use causes sex-activity to increase
under the action of sexual selection. This
tendency is checked in most species by the
force of natural selection, which diverts the
energies into other channels and developes race-
activities. Where the female finds her economic
environment in the male, and her economic ad
vantage is directly conditioned upon the sex-
relation, the force of natural selection is added
to the force of sexual selection, and both together
operate to develope sex-activity. In any animal
species, free from any other condition, such a
relation would have inevitably developed sex to
an inordinate degree, as may be readily seen in
the comparatively similar cases of those insects
where the female, losing economic activity and
 The Balance of Power
modified entirely to sex, becomes a mere egg-sac,
an organism with no powers of self-preservation,
only those of race-preservation. With these
insects the only race-problem is to maintain
and reproduce the species, and such a condition
is not necessarily evil ; but with a race like ours,
whose development as human creatures is but
comparatively begun, it is evil because of its
check to individual and racial progress. There
are other purposes before us besides mere main
tenance and reproduction.
It should be clear to any one accustomed to
the working of biological laws that all the ten
dencies of a living organism are progressive in
their development, and are held in check by the
interaction of their several forces. Each living
form, with its dominant characteristics, repre
sents a balance of power, a sort of compromise.
The size of earth's primeval monsters was lim
ited by the tensile strength of their material.
Sea monsters can be bigger, because the medium
in which they move offers more support. Birds
must be smaller for the opposite reason. The
cow requires many stomachs of a liberal size, be
cause her food is of low nutritive value ; and she
must eat large quantities to keep her machine
going. The size of arboreal animals, such as
monkeys or squirrels, is limited by the nature of
their habitat : creatures that live in trees cannot
59
 Women and Economics
be so big as creatures that live on the ground.
Every quality of every creature is relative to its
condition, and tends to increase or decrease ac
cordingly ; and each quality tends to increase in
proportion to its use, and to decrease in propor
tion to its disuse. Primitive man and his female
were animals, like other animals. They were
strong, fierce, lively beasts ; and she was as nim
ble and ferocious as he, save for the added
belligerence of the males in their sex-competi
tion. In this competition, he, like the other male
creatures, fought savagely with his hairy rivals ;
and she, like the other female creatures, com
placently viewed their struggles, and mated with
the victor. At other times she ran about in the
forest, and helped herself to what there was to
eat as freely as he did.
There seems to have come a time when it
occurred to the dawning intelligence of this
amiable savage that it was cheaper and easier to
fight a little female, and have it done with, than
to fight a big male every time. So he instituted
the custom of enslaving the female ; and she,
losing freedom, could no longer get her own
food nor that of her young. The mother ape,
with her maternal function well fulfilled, flees
leaping through the forest,— plucks her fruit
and nuts, keeps up with the movement of the
tribe, her young one on her back or held in one
60
 Food and Defence
strong arm. But the mother woman, enslaved,
could not do this. Then man, the father, found
that slavery had its obligations : he must care for
what he forbade to care for itself, else it died on
his hands. So he slowly and reluctantly shoul
dered the duties of his new position. He began
to feed her, and not only that, but to express in
his own person the thwarted uses of maternity :
he had to feed the children, too. It seems a
simple arrangement. When we have thought
of it at all, we have thought of it with admira
tion. The naturalist defends it on the ground
of advantage to the species through the freeing
of the mother from all other cares and confining
her unreservedly to the duties of maternity.
The poet and novelist, the painter and sculptor,
the priest and teacher, have all extolled this
lovely relation. It remains for the sociologist,
from a biological point of view, to note its effects
on the constitution of the human race, both in
the individual and in society.
When man began to feed and defend woman,
she ceased proportionately to feed and defend
herself. When he stood between her and her
physical environment, she ceased proportion
ately to feel the influence of that environment
and respond to it. When he became her im
mediate and all - important environment, she
began proportionately to respond to this new
61
 Women and Economics
influence, and to be modified accordingly. In
a free state, speed was of as great advantage to
the female as to the male, both in enabling her
to catch prey and in preventing her from being
caught- by enemies ; but, in her new condition,
speed was a disadvantage. She was not allowed to
do the catching, and it profited her to be caught
by her new master. Free creatures, getting
their own food and maintaining their own lives,
develope an active capacity for attaining their
ends. Parasitic creatures, whose living is ob
tained by the exertions of others, develope
powers of absorption and of tenacity,— the
powers by which they profit most. The human
female was cut off from the direct action of
natural selection, that mighty force which here
tofore had acted on male and female alike
with inexorable and beneficial effect, developing
strength, developing skill, developing endur
ance, developing courage, — in a word, developing
species. She now met the influence of natural
selection acting indirectly through the male,
and developing, of course, the faculties required
to secure and obtain a hold on him. Needless
to state that these faculties were those of sex-
attraction, the one power that has made him
cheerfully maintain, in what luxury he could,
the being in whom he delighted. For many,
many centuries she had no other hold, no other
62
 Personal Profit and Sex Relations
assurance of being fed. The young girl had
a prospective value, and was maintained for
what should follow ; but the old woman, in
more primitive times, had but a poor hold on
life. She who could best please her lord was
the favorite slave or favorite wife, and she ob
tained the best economic conditions.
With the growth of civilization, we have
gradually crystallized into law the visible ne
cessity for feeding the helpless female ; and even
old women are maintained by their male rela
tives with a comfortable assurance. But to
this day — save, indeed, for the increasing army of
women wage-earners, who are changing the face
of the world by their steady advance toward
economic independence — the personal profit of
women bears but too close a relation to their
power to win and hold the other sex. From
the odalisque with the most bracelets to the
debutante with the most bouquets, the relation
still holds good,— woman's economic profit
comes
Whenthrough
we confront
the power
this fact
of boldly
sex-attraction.
and plainly

in the open market of vice, we are sick with

horror. When we see the same economic rela
tion made permanent, established by law, sanc
tioned and sanctified by religion, covered with
flowers and incense and all accumulated senti
ment, we think it innocent, lovely, and right.
63
 Women and Economics
The transient trade we think evil. The bargain
for life we think good. But the biological effect
remains the same. In both cases the female
gets her food from the male by virtue of her
sex-relationship to him. In both cases, perhaps
even more in marriage because of its perfect ac
ceptance of the situation, the female of genus
homo, still living under natural law, is inexo
rably modified to sex in an increasing degree.
Followed in specific detail, the action of the
changed environment upon women has been in
given instances as follows : In the matter of
mere passive surroundings she has been imme
diately restricted in her range. This one factor
has an immense effect on man and animal alike.
An absolutely uniform environment, one shape,
one size, one color, one sound, would render life,
if any life could be, one helpless, changeless
thing. As the environment increases and varies,
the development of the creature must increase
and vary with it ; for he acquires knowledge and
power, as the material for knowledge and the
need for power appear. In migratory species
the female is free to acquire the same knowl
edge as the male by the same means, the same
development by the same experiences. The
human female has been restricted in range from
the earliest beginning. Even among savages,
she has a much more restricted knowledge of
64
 Reducing the Area of Environment
the land she lives in. She moves with the
camp, of course, and follows her primitive indus
tries in its vicinity ; but the war-path and the
hunt are the man's. He has a far larger habitat.
The life of the female savage is freedom itself,
however, compared with the increasing constric
tion of custom closing in upon the woman, as
civilization advanced, like the iron torture cham
ber of romance. Its culmination is expressed in
the proverb : " A woman should leave her home
but three times,— when she is christened, when
she is married, and when she is buried." Or this :
"The woman, the cat, and the chimney should
never leave the house." The absolutely sta
tionary female and the wide-ranging male are
distinctly human institutions, after we leave be
hind us such low forms of life as the gypsy
moth, whose female seldom moves more than a
few feet from the pupa moth. She has aborted
wings, and cannot fly. She waits humbly for
the winged male, lays her myriad eggs, and dies,
— a fine instance of modification to sex.
To reduce so largely the mere area of envi
ronment is a great check to race-development ;
but it is not to be compared in its effects with
the reduction in voluntary activity to which the
human female has been subjected. Her re
stricted impression, her confinement to the four
walls of the home, have done great execution, of
65
 Women and Economics
course, in limiting her ideas, her information,
her thought-processes, and power of judgment ;
and in giving a disproportionate prominence and
intensity to the few things she knows about ; but
this is innocent in action compared with her re
stricted expression, the denial of freedom to act.
A living organism is modified far less through
the action of external circumstances upon it and
its reaction thereto, than through the effect of
its own exertions. Skin may be thickened
gradually by exposure to the weather ; but it is
thickened far more quickly by being rubbed
against something, as the handle of an oar or of
a broom. To be surrounded by beautiful things
has much influence upon the human creature :
to make beautiful things has more. To live
among beautiful surroundings and make ugly
things is more directly lowering than to live
among ugly surroundings and make beautiful
things. What we do modifies us more than
what is done to us. The freedom of expression
has been more restricted in women than the
freedom of impression, if that be possible.
Something of the world she lived in she has
seen from her barred windows. Some air has
come through the purdah's folds, some knowl
edge has filtered to her eager ears from the talk
of men. Desdemona learned somewhat of
Othello. Had she known more, she might have
66
 Women and Work
lived longer. But in the ever-growing human
impulse to create, the power and will to make,
to do, to express one's new spirit in new forms,—
here she has been utterly debarred. She might
work as she had worked from the beginning,— at
the primitive labors of the household ; but in
the inevitable expansion of even those indus
tries to professional levels we have striven to
hold her back. To work with her own hands,
for nothing, in direct body-service to her own
family,— this has been permitted,— yes, com
pelled. But to be and do anything further from
this she has been forbidden. Her labor has
not only been limited in kind, but in degree.
Whatever she has been allowed to do must be
done in private and alone, the first-hand indus
tries of savage times.
Our growth in industry has been not only in
kind, but in class. The baker is not in the
same industrial grade with the house-cook,
though both make bread. To specialize any
form of labor is a step up : to organize it is an
other step. Specialization and organization are
the basis of human progress, the organic meth
ods of social life. They have been forbidden to
women almost absolutely. The greatest and
most beneficent change of this century is the
progress of women in these two lines of ad
vance. The effect of this check in industrial
67
 Women and Economics
development, accompanied as it was by the con
stant inheritance of increased racial power, has
been to intensify the sensations and emotions of
women, and to develope great activity in the
lines allowed. The nervous energy that up to
present memory has impelled women to labor
incessantly at something, be it the veriest folly
of fancy work, is one mark of this effect.
In religious development the same dead-line
has held back the growth of women through all
the races and ages. In dim early times she
was sharer in the mysteries and rites ; but, as
religion developed, her place receded, until Paul
commanded her to be silent in the churches.
And she has been silent until to-day. Even
now, with all the ground gained, we have but
the beginnings — the slowly forced and disap
proved beginnings — of religious equality for the
sexes. In some nations, religion is held to be
a masculine attribute exclusively, it being even
questioned whether women have souls. An
early Christian council settled that important
question by vote, fortunately deciding that they
had. In a church whose main strength has
always been derived from the adherence of
women, it would have been an uncomfortable
reflection not to have allowed them souls. An
cient family worship ran in the male line. It
was the son who kept the sacred grandfathers
68
 The Influence of Heredity
in due respect, and poured libations to their
shades. When the woman married, she changed
her ancestors, and had to worship her husband's
progenitors instead of her own. This is why
the Hindu and the Chinaman and many others
of like stamp must have a son to keep them in
countenance,— a deep-seated sex-prejudice, com
ing to slow extinction as women rise in eco
nomic importance.
It is painfully interesting to trace the gradual
cumulative effect of these conditions upon
women : first, the action of large natural laws,
acting on her as they would act on any other
animal ; then the evolution of social customs
and laws (with her position as the active cause),
following the direction of mere physical forces,
and adding heavily to them ; then, with in
creasing civilization, the unbroken accumulation
of precedent, burnt into each generation by the
growing force of education, made lovely by art,
holy by religion, desirable by habit ; and, stead
ily acting from beneath, the unswerving pres
sure of economic necessity upon which the
whole structure rested. These are strong modi
fying conditions, indeed.
The process would have been even more
effective and far less painful but for one impor
tant circumstance. Heredity has no Salic law.
Each girl child inherits from her father a cer
69
 Women and Economics
tain increasing percentage of human develop
ment, human power, human tendency ; and
each boy as well inherits from his mother the
increasing percentage of sex-development, sex-
power, sex-tendency. The action of heredity
has been to equalize what every tendency of
environment and education made to differ.
This has saved us from such a female as the
gypsy moth. It has held up the woman, and
held down the man. It has set iron bounds to
our absurd effort to make a race with one sex
a million years behind the other. But it has
added terribly to the pain and difficulty of
human life,— a difficulty and a pain that should
have taught us long since that we were living
on wrong lines. Each woman born, re-human
ized by the current of race activity carried on
by her father and re-womanized by her tradi
tional position, has had to live over again in her
own person the same process of restriction, re
pression, denial; the smothering "no" which
crushed down all her human desires to create,
to discover, to learn, to express, to advance.
Each woman has had, on the other hand, the
same single avenue of expression and attain
ment ; the same one way in which alone she
might do what she could, get what she might.
All other doors were shut, and this one always
open ; and the whole pressure of advancing
70
 The Young Man and the Young Woman
humanity was upon her. No wonder that young
Daniel in the apocryphal tale proclaimed : " The
king is strong ! Wine is strong ! But women
are stronger ! "
To the young man confronting life the world
lies wide. Such powers as he has he may use,
must use. If he chooses wrong at first, he may
choose again, and yet again. Not effective or
successful in one channel, he may do better
in another. The growing, varied needs of all
mankind call on him for the varied service in
which he finds his growth. What he wants to
be, he may strive to be. What he wants to get,
he may strive to get. Wealth, power, social
distinction, fame,— what he wants he can try
for.
To the young woman confronting life there is
the same world beyond, there are the same
human energies and human desires and ambi
tion within. But all that she may wish to have,
all that she may wish to do, must come through
a single channel and a single choice. Wealth,
power, social distinction, fame,— not only these,
but home and happiness, reputation, ease and
pleasure, her bread and butter,— all, must
come to her through a small gold ring. This
is a heavy pressure. It has accumulated be
hind her through heredity, and continued about
her through environment. It has been subtly
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 Women and Economics
trained into her through education, till she her
self has come to think it a right condition, and
pours its influence upon her daughter with in
creasing impetus. Is it any wonder that women
are over-sexed ? But for the constant inheri
tance from the more human male, we should
have been queen bees, indeed, long before this.
But the daughter of the soldier and the sailor,
of the artist, the inventor, the great merchant,
has inherited in body and brain her share of his
development in each generation, and so stayed
somewhat human for all her femininity.
All morbid conditions tend to extinction.
One check has always existed to our inordinate
sex-development,—nature's ready relief, death.
Carried to its furthest excess, the individual has
died, the family has become extinct, the nation
itself has perished, like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Where one function is carried to unnatural ex
cess, others are weakened, and the organism
perishes. We are familiar with this in individ
ual cases,— at least, the physician is. We can
see it somewhat in the history of nations.
From younger races, nearer savagery, nearer the
healthful equality of pre-human creatures, has
come each new start in history. Persia was
older than Greece, and its highly differentiated
sexuality had produced the inevitable result of
enfeebling the racial qualities. The Greek
72
 The Perfect Civilization
commander stripped the rich robes and jewels
from his Persian captives, and showed their un
manly feebleness to his men. " You have such
bodies as these to fight for such plunder as this,"
he said. In the country, among peasant classes,
there is much less sex-distinction than in cities,
where wealth enables the women to live in abso
lute idleness ; and even the men manifest the
same characteristics. It is from the country
and the lower classes that the fresh blood pours
into the cities, to be weakened in its turn by
the influence of this unnatural distinction until
there is none left to replenish the nation.
The inevitable trend of human life is toward
higher civilization ; but, while that civilization is
confined to one sex, it inevitably exaggerates
sex-distinction, until the increasing evil of this
condition is stronger than all the good of the
civilization attained, and the nation falls. Civil
ization, be it understood, does not consist in the
acquisition of luxuries. Social development is
an organic development. A civilized State is
one in which the citizens live in organic indus
trial relation. The more full, free, subtle, and
easy that relation ; the more perfect the differ
entiation of labor and exchange of product, with
their correlative institutions,— the more perfect
is that civilization. To eat, drink, sleep, and
keep warm,—these are common to all animals,
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 Women and Economics
whether the animal couches in a bed of leaves
or one of eiderdown, sleeps in the sun to avoid
the wind or builds a furnace-heated house, lies
in wait for game or orders a dinner at a hotel.
These are but individual animal processes.
Whether one lays an egg or a million eggs,
whether one bears a cub, a kitten, or a baby,
whether one broods its chickens, guards its
litter, or tends a nursery full of children, these
are but individual animal processes. But to
serve each other more and more widely ; to live
only by such service ; to develope special
functions, so that we depend for our living on
society's return for services that can be of no
direct use to ourselves,— this is civilization, our
human glory and race-distinction.
All this human progress has been accom
plished by men. Women have been left be
hind, outside, below, having no social relation
whatever, merely the sex-relation, whereby they
lived. Let us bear in mind that all the tender
ties of family are ties of blood, of sex-relation
ship. A friend, a comrade, a partner,— this is a
human relative. Father, mother, son, daughter,
sister, brother, husband, wife,— these are sex-
relatives. Blood is thicker than water, we say.
True. But ties of blood are not those that ring
the world with the succeeding waves of progres
sive religion, art, science, commerce, education,
74
 Women and Human Growth
all that makes us human. Man is the human
creature. Woman has been checked, starved,
aborted in human growth ; and the swelling
forces of race-development have been driven
back in each generation to work in her through
sex-functions alone.
This is the way in which the sexuo-economic
relation has operated in our species, checking
race-development in half of us, and stimulating
sex-development in both.

75
 V.

The facts stated in the foregoing chapters

are familiar and undeniable, the argument
seems clear ; yet the mind reacts violently from
the conclusions it is forced to admit, and tries
to find relief in the commonplace conditions of
every-day life. From this looming phantom of
the over-sexed female of genus homo we fly
back in satisfaction to familiar acquaintances
and relatives,— to Mrs. John Smith and Miss
Im©gene Jones, to mothers and sisters and
daughters and sweethearts and wives. We feel
that such a dreadful state of things cannot be
true, or we should surely have noticed it. We
may even perform that acrobatic feat so easy
to most minds,— admit that the statement may
be theoretically true, but practically false !
Two simple laws of brain action are responsi
ble for the difficulty of convincing the human
race of any large general truths concerning
itself. One is common to all brains, to all nerve
sensations indeed, and is cheerfully admitted to
have nothing to do with the sexuo-economic
relation. It is this simple fact, in popular
phrase,— that what we are used to we do not no
tice. This rests on the law of adaptation, the
steady, ceaseless pressure that tends to fit the
organism to the environment. A nerve touched
76
 The Effect of Custom
for the first time with a certain impression feels
this first impression far more than the hun
dredth or thousandth, though the thousandth be
far more violent than the first. If an impres
sion be constant and regular, we become utterly
insensitive to it, and only respond under some
special condition, as the ticking of a clock, the
noise of running water or waves on the beach,
even the clatter of railroad trains, grows im
perceptible to those who hear it constantly.
It is perfectly possible for an individual to be
come accustomed to the most disadvantageous
conditions, and fail to notice them.
It is equally possible for a race, a nation, a class,
to become accustomed to most disadvantageous
conditions, and fail to notice them. Take, as an
individual instance, the wearing of corsets by
women. Put a corset, even a loose one, on a
vigorous man or woman who never wore one,
and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid con
sciousness thereof. The healthy muscles of the
trunk resent the pressure, the action of the
whole body is checked in the middle, the stom
ach is choked, the process of digestion inter
fered with; and the victim says, "How can
you bear such a thing ? "
But the person habitually wearing a corset
does not feel these evils. They exist, assuredly,
the facts are there, the body is not deceived ;
77
 Women and Economics
but the nerves have become accustomed to
these disagreeable sensations, and no longer re
spond to them. The person " does not feel it."
In fact, the wearer becomes so used to the
sensations that, when they are removed,— with
the corset,— there is a distinct sense of loss
and discomfort. The heavy folds of the cravat,
stock, and neckcloth of earlier men's fashions,
the heavy horse-hair peruke, the stiff high collar
of to-day, the kind of shoes we wear,— these
are perfectly familiar instances of the force of
habit in the individual.
This is equally true of racial habits. That
a king should rule because he was born, passed
unquestioned for thousands of years. That the
eldest son should inherit the titles and estates
was a similar phenomenon as little questioned.
That a debtor should be imprisoned, and so en
tirely prevented from paying his debts, was
common law. So glaring an evil as chattel
slavery was an unchallenged social institution
from earliest history to our own day among the
most civilized nations of the earth. Christ him
self let it pass unnoticed. The hideous injus
tice of Christianity to the Jew attracted no
attention through many centuries. That the
serf went with the soil, and was owned by the
lord thereof, was one of the foundations of so
ciety in the Middle Ages.
78
 Social conditions,
Familiarity
like by
individual
Use conditions,

become familiar by use, and cease to be ob

served. This is the reason why it is so much
easier to criticise the customs of other persons
or other nations than our own. It is also the
reason why we so naturally deny and resent
the charges of the critic. It is not necessarily
because of any injustice on the one side or dis
honesty on the other, but because of a simple
and useful law of nature. The Englishman
coming to America is much struck by Amer
ica's political corruption ; and, in the earnest
desire to serve his brother, he tells us all
about it. That which he has at home he does
not observe, because he is used to it. The
American in England finds also something to
object to, and omits to balance his criticism by
memories of home.
When a condition exists among us which
began in those unrecorded ages back of tra
dition even, which obtains in varying degree
among every people on earth, and which begins
to act upon the individual at birth, it would
be a miracle past all belief if people should
notice it. The sexuo - economic relation is
such a condition. It began in primeval sav
agery. It exists in all nations. Each boy
and girl is born into it, trained into it, and
has to live in it. The world's progress in
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 Women and Economics
matters like these is attained by a slow and
painful process, but one which works to good
ends.
In the course of social evolution there are
developed individuals so constituted as not to
fit existing conditions, but to be organically
adapted to more advanced conditions. These
advanced individuals respond in sharp and
painful consciousness to existing conditions,
and cry out against them according to their
lights. The history of religion, of political
and social reform, is full of familiar instances
of this. The heretic, the reformer, the agi
tator, these feel what their compeers do not,
see what they do not, and, naturally, say
what they do not. The mass of the people
are invariably displeased by the outcry of
these uneasy spirits. In simple primitive
periods they were promptly put to death.
Progress was slow and difficult in those days.
But this severe process of elimination de
veloped the kind of progressive person known
as a martyr; and this remarkable sociological
law was manifested : that the strength of a
current of social force is increased by the sac
rifice of individuals who are willing to die in
the effort to promote it. "The blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the church." This is
so commonly known to-day, though not formu-
80
 Personalizing and Generalizing
lated, that power hesitates to persecute, lest it
intensify the undesirable heresy. A policy of
"free speech " is found to let pass most of the
uneasy pushes and spurts of these stirring
forces, and lead to more orderly action. Our
great anti-slavery agitation, the heroic efforts
of the "women's rights" supporters, are fresh
and recent proofs of these plain facts : that
the mass of the people do not notice existing
conditions, and that they are not pleased with
those who do. This is one strong reason why
the sexuo-economic relation passes unobserved
among us, and why any statement of it will
be so offensive to many.
The other law of brain action which tends
to prevent our perception of general truth is
this : it is easier to personalize than to gener
alize. This is due primarily to the laws of
mental development, but it is greatly added
to by the very relation under discussion. As
a common law of mental action, the power to
observe and retain an individual impression
marks a lower degree of development than the
power to classify and collate impressions and
make generalizations therefrom. There are
savages who can say "hot fire," "hot stone,"
"hot water," but cannot say "heat," cannot
think it. Similarly, they can say "good
man," "good knife," "good meat"; but they
81
 Women and Economics
cannot say "goodness," they cannot think it.
They have observed specific instances, but are
unable to collate them, to generalize there
from. So, in our common life, individual in
stances of injustice or cruelty are observed
long before the popular mind is able to see
that it is a condition which causes these
things, and that the condition must be altered
before the effects can be removed. A bad
priest, a bad king, a bad master, were long ob
served and pointedly objected to before it began
to be held that the condition of monarchy or
the condition of slavery must needs bear fruit,
and that, if we did not like the fruit, we might
better change the tree. Any slaveholder
would admit that there were instances of cru
elty, laziness, pride, among masters, and of
deceit, laziness, dishonesty, among slaves.
What the slaveholder did not see was that,
given the relation of chattel slavery, it inevi
tably tended to produce these evils, and did
produce them, in spite of all the efforts of the
individual to the contrary. To see the indi
vidual instance is easy. To see the general
cause is harder, requires a further brain devel
opment. We, as a race, have long since
reached the degree of general intelligence
which ought to enable us to judge more
largely and wisely of social questions; but
82
 The Sex Relation Personal
here the deteriorating effect of the sexuo-eco-
nomic relation is shown.
The sex relation is intensely personal. All
the functions and relations ensuing are in
tensely personal. The spirit of "me and my
wife, my son John and his wife, us four, and
no more," is the natural spirit of this phase
of life. By confining half the world to this
one set of functions, we have confined it abso
lutely to the personal. And man that is born
of woman is reared by her in this same at
mosphere of concentrated personality, and
afterward spends a large part of his life in it.
This condition tends to magnify the personal
and minimize the general in our minds, with
results that are familiar to us all. The diffi
culty of enforcing sanitary laws, where per
sonal convenience must be sacrificed to general
safety, the size of the personal grievance as
against the general, the need of "having it
brought home to us," which hinders every
step of public advancement, and our eager
response when it is " brought home to us," —
these are truisms. So far as a comparison
can be made, women are in this sense more
personal than men, more personally sensitive,
less willing to "stand in line" and "take
turns," less able to see why a general restric
tion is just when it touches them or their
83
 Women and Economics
children. This is natural enough, inevitable
enough, and only mentioned here as partially
explaining why people do not see the general
facts as to our over-sexed condition. Yet they
are patent everywhere, not only patent, but
painful. Being used to them, we do not notice
them, or, forced to notice them, we attribute
the pain we feel to the evil behavior of some
individual, and never think of it as being the
result of a condition common to us all.
If we have among us such a condition as
has been stated, — a state of morbid and ex
cessive sex-development, — it must, of course,
show itself in daily life in a thousand ways.
The non -observer, not having seen any such
manifestation, concludes that there is none,
and so denies the alleged condition, — says it
sounds all right, but he does not see any
proof of it ! Having clearly in mind that, if
such proof exists, such commensurate evil in
common life as would naturally result from an
abnormal sex-distinction, these evils must be
so common and habitual as to pass unobserved ;
and, farther, that, when forced upon our notice,
we only see them as matters of personal behav
ior, — let us, in spite of these hindrances, see
if the visible results among us are not such as
must follow such a cause, and let us seek them
merely in the phenomena of every-day life as
84
 Innocence and Ignorance
we know it, not in the deeper sexual or social
results.
A concrete instance, familiar as the day,
and unbelievable in its ill effects, is the atti
tude of the mother toward her children in
regard to the sex-relation. With very few ex
ceptions, the mother gives her daughter no
warning or prevision of what life holds for
her, and so lets innocence and ignorance go
on perpetuating sickness and sin and pain
through ceaseless generations. A normal
motherhood wisely and effectively guards its
young from evil. An abnormal motherhood,
over-anxious and under-wise, hovers the child
to its harm, and turns it out defenceless to
the worst of evils. This is known to millions
and millions personally. Only very lately
have we thought to consider it generally.
And not yet do we see that it is not the fault
of the individual mother, but of her economic
status. Because of our abnormal sex-develop
ment, the whole field has become something
of an offence, — a thing to be hidden and ig
nored, passed over without remark or explana
tion. Hence this amazing paradox of mothers
ashamed of motherhood, unable to explain it,
and — measure this well — lying to their chil
dren about the primal truths of life, — mothers
lying to their own children about motherhood !
85
 Women and Economics
The pressure under which this is done is an
economic one. The girl must marry : else how
live? The prospective husband prefers the
girl to know nothing. He is the market, the
demand. She is the supply. And with the
best intentions the mother serves her child's
economic advantage by preparing her for the
market. This is an excellent instance. It
is common. It is most evil. It is plainly
traceable to our sexuo-economic relation.
Another instance of so grossly unjust, so pal
pable, so general an evil that it has occasion
ally aroused some protest even from our dull
consciousness is this: the enforced attitude
of the woman toward marriage. To the young
girl, as has been previously stated, marriage
is the one road to fortune, to life. She is
born highly specialized as a female: she is
carefully educated and trained to realize in all
ways her sex-limitations and her sex-advan
tages. What she has to gain even as a child
is largely gained by feminine tricks and
charms. Her reading, both in history and
fiction, treats of the same position for women ;
and romance and poetry give it absolute pre
dominance. Pictorial art, music, the drama,
society, everything, tells her that she is she,
and that all depends on whom she marries.
Where young boys plan for what they will
86
achieve and attain,Anyoung
Anomaly
girls plan for whom

they will achieve and attain. Little Ellie

and her swan's nest among the reeds is a fa
miliar illustration. It is the lover on the red
roan steed she planned for. It is Lancelot
riding through the sheaves that called the
Lady from her loom at Shalott : "he" is the
coming world.
With such a prospect as this before her;
with an organization specially developed to
this end ; with an education adding every
weight of precept and example, of wisdom and
virtue, to the natural instincts; with a social
environment the whole machinery of which is
planned to give the girl a chance to see and to
be seen, to provide her with "opportunities " ;
and with all the pressure of personal advantage
and self-interest added to the sex-instinct, —
what one would logically expect is a society
- full of desperate and eager husband-hunters,
regarded with popular approval.
Not at all ! Marriage is the woman's proper
sphere, her divinely ordered place, her natural
end. It is what she is born for, what she is
trained for, what she is exhibited for. It is,
moreover, her means of honorable livelihood
and advancement. But — she must not even
look as if she wanted it ! She must not turn
her hand over to get it. She must sit passive
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 Women and Economics
as the seasons go by, and her "chances"
lessen with each year. Think of the strain on
a highly sensitive nervous organism to have so
much hang on one thing, to see the possibility
of attaining it grow less and less yearly, and to
be forbidden to take any step toward securing
it ! This she must bear with dignity and
grace to the end.
To what end ? To the end that, if she does
not succeed in being chosen, she becomes a
thing of mild popular contempt, a human
being with no further place in life save as an
attachee, a dependant upon more fortunate rela
tives, an old maid. The open derision and
scorn with which unmarried women used to be
treated is lessening each year in proportion to
their advance in economic independence. But
it is not very long since the popular proverb,
"Old maids lead apes in hell," was in common
use; since unwelcome lovers urged their suit
with the awful argument that they might be
the last askers; since the hapless lady in the
wood prayed for a husband, and, when the owl
answered, "Who? who?" cried, "Anybody,
good Lord!" There is still a pleasant ditty
afloat as to the "Three Old Maids of Lynn,"
who did not marry when they could, and could
not when they would.
The cruel and absurd injustice of blaming
88
 The Delicacy of Woman's Position
the girl for not getting what she is allowed
no effort to obtain seems unaccountable; but
it becomes clear when viewed in connection
with the sexuo-economic relation. Although
marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not
honest employment where one can offer one's
labor without shame, but a relation where the
support is given outright, and enforced by law
in return for the functional service of the
woman, the "duties of wife and mother."
Therefore no honorable woman can ask for it.
It is not only that the natural feminine in
stinct is to retire, as that of the male is to
advance, but that, because marriage means
support, a woman must not ask a man to sup
port her. It is economic beggary as well as
a false attitude from a sex point of view.
Observe the ingenious cruelty of the ar
rangement. It is just as humanly natural for
a woman as for a man to want wealth. But,
when her wealth is made to come through the
same channels as her love, she is forbidden to
ask for it by her own sex-nature and by busi
ness honor. Hence the millions of mis-
made marriages with "anybody, good Lord!"
Hence the million broken hearts which must
let all life pass, unable to make any attempt
to stop it. Hence the many "maiden aunts,"
elderly sisters and daughters, unattached
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 Women and Economics
women everywhere, who are a burden on their
male relatives and society at large. This is
changing for the better, to be sure, but chang
ing only through the advance of economic in
dependence for women. A " bachelor maid "
is a very different thing from "an old maid."
This, then, is the reason for the Andromeda
position of the possibly-to-be-married young
woman, and for the ridicule and reproach
meted out to her. Since women are viewed
wholly as creatures of sex even by one an
other, and since everything is done to add to
their young powers of sex-attraction ; since
they are marriageable solely on this ground,
unless, indeed, "a fortune" has been added
to their charms, — failure to marry is held a
clear proof of failure to attract, a lack of sex-
value. And, since they have no other value,
save in a low order of domestic service, they
are quite naturally despised. What else is the
creature good for, failing in the functions for
which it was created? The scorn of male and
female alike falls on this sexless thing: she
is a human failure.
It is not strange, therefore, though just as
pitiful, — this long chapter of patient, voice
less, dreary misery in the lives of women;
and it is not strange, either, to see the marked
and steady change in opinion that follows the
90
 Marriage with Independence
development of other faculties in woman be
sides those of sex. Now that she is a person
as well as a female, filling economic relation
to society, she is welcomed and accepted as a
human creature, and need not marry the wrong
man for her bread and butter. So sharp is
the reaction from this unlovely yoke that there
is a limited field of life to-day wherein women
choose not to marry, preferring what they call
"their independence," — a new-born, hard-
won, dear-bought independence. That any
living woman should prefer it to home and
husband, to love and motherhood, throws a
fierce light on what women must have suffered
for lack of freedom before.
This tendency need not be feared, however.
It is merely a reaction, and a most natural
one. It will pass as naturally, as more and
more women become independent, when mar
riage is not the price of liberty. The fear
exhibited that women generally, once fully
independent, will not marry, is proof of how
well it has been known that only dependence
forced them to marriage as it was. There will
be needed neither bribe nor punishment to force
women to true marriage with independence.
Along this line it is most interesting to
mark the constant struggle between natural
instinct and natural law, and social habit and
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 Women and Economics
social law, through all our upward course.
Beginning with the natural functions and in
stincts of sex, holding her great position as
selecter of the best among competing males,
woman's beautiful work is to improve the
race by right marriage. The feeling by
which this is accomplished, growing finer as
we become more civilized, developes into that
wide, deep, true, and lasting love which is the
highest good to individual human beings.
Following its current, we have always rever
enced and admired "true love"; and our ro
mances, from the earliest times, abound in
praise of the princess who marries the page
or prisoner, venerating the selective power in
woman, choosing "the right man " for his own
sake. Directly against this runs the counter-
current, resulting in the marriage of con
venience, a thing which the true inner heart
of the world has always hated. Young Loch-
invar is not an eternal hero for nothing. The
personified type of a great social truth is sure
of a long life. The poor young hero, hand
some, brave, good, but beset with difficulties,
stands ever against the wealth and power of the
bad man. The woman is pulled hither and
thither between them, and the poor hero wins
in the end. That he is heaped with honor and
riches, after all, merely signifies our recogni-
92
 The Increasing Difficulty of Marriage
tion that he is the higher good. This is bet
ter than a sun-myth. It is a race-myth, and
true as truth.
So we have it among us in life to-day, end
lessly elaborated and weakened by profuse
detail, as is the nature of that life, but there
yet. The girl who marries the rich old man
or the titled profligate is condemned by the
popular voice; and the girl who marries the
poor young man, and helps him live his best, is
still approved by the same great arbiter. And
yet why should we blame the woman for
pursuing her vocation ? Since marriage is her
only way to get money, why should she not try
to get money in that way? Why cast the
weight of all self-interest on the "practical "
plane so solidly against the sex-interest of the
individual and of the race? The mercenary
marriage is a perfectly natural consequence of
the economic dependence of women.
On the other hand, note the effect of this
dependence upon men. As the excessive
sex-distinction and economic dependence of
women increase, so do the risk and difficulty
of marriage increase, so is marriage deferred
and avoided, to the direct injury of both
sexes and society at large. In simpler re
lations, in the country, wherever women have
a personal value in economic relation as well
93
 Women and Economics
as a feminine value in sex-relation, an early
marriage is an advantage. The young farmer
gets a profitable servant when he marries.
The young business man gets nothing of the
kind, — a pretty girl, a charming girl, ready
for "wifehood and motherhood" — so far as
her health holds out, — but having no economic
value whatever. She is merely a consumer,
and he must wait till he can "afford to marry. "
These are instances frequent everywhere, and
familiar to us all, of the palpable effects in
common
If therelife
is of
oneour
unmixed
sexuo-economic
evil in human
relation.
life,

it is that known to us in all ages, and popularly

called "the social evil," consisting of promis
cuous and temporary sex-relations. The in
herent wrong in these relations is sociological
before it is legal or moral. The recognition
by the moral sense of a given thing as wrong
requires that it be wrong, to begin with. A
thing is not wrong merely because it is called
so. The wrongness of this form of sex-rela
tion in an advanced social state rests solidly
on natural laws. In the evolution of better
and better means of reproducing the species,
a longer period of infancy was developed.
This longer period of infancy required longer
care, and it was accordingly developed that
the best care during this time was given by
94
 A Coincidence
both parents. This induced a more perma
nent mating. And the more permanent mat
ing, bound together by the common interests
and duties, developed higher psychic attributes
in the parents by use, in the children by hered
ity. That is why society is right in demand
ing of its constituent individuals the virtue of
chastity, the sanctity of marriage. Society is
perfectly right, because social evolution is as
natural a process as individual evolution ; and
the permanent parent is proven an advanta
geous social factor. But social evolution,
deep, unconscious, slow, is one thing; and
self-conscious, loud-voiced society is another.
The deepest forces of nature have tended to
evolve pure, lasting, monogamous marriage in
the human race. But our peculiar arrangement
of feeding one sex by the other has tended to
produce a very different thing, and has produced
it. In no other animal species is the female
economically dependent on the male. In no
other animal species is the sex-relation for sale.
A coincidence. Where, on the one hand,
every condition of life tends to develope sex
in women, to crush out the power and the
desire for economic production and exchange,
and to develope also the age-long habit of
seeking all earthly good at a man's hands and
of making but one return ; where, on the other
95
 Women and Economics
hand, man inherits the excess in sex-energy,
and is never blamed for exercising it, and
where he developes also the age-long habit of
taking what he wants from women, for whose
helpless acquiescence he makes an economic
return, — what should naturally follow? Pre
cisely what has followed. We live in a world
of law, and humanity is no exception to it.
We have produced a certain percentage of
females with inordinate sex-tendencies and in
ordinate greed for material gain. We have
produced a certain percentage of males with
inordinate sex-tendencies and a cheerful will
ingness to pay for their gratification. And,
as the percentage of such men is greater than
the percentage of such women, we have worked
out most evil methods of supplying the de
mand. But always in the healthy social heart
we have known that it was wrong, a racial
wrong, productive of all evil. Being a man's
world, it was quite inevitable that he should
blame woman for their mutual misdoing.
There is reason in it, too. Bad as he is, he
is only seeking gratification natural in kind,
though abnormal in degree. She is not only
in some cases doing this, but in most cases
showing the falseness of the deed by doing it
for hire, — physical falsehood, — a sin against
nature.
96
 A Sin against Nature
It is a true instinct that revolts against
obtaining bread by use of the sex-functions.
Why, then, are we so content to do this in
marriage? Legally and religiously, we say
that it is right ; but in its reactionary effect on
the parties concerned and on society at large it
is wrong. The physical and psychical effects
are evil, though modified by our belief that
it is right. The physical and psychical
effects of prostitution were still evil when the
young girls of Babylon earned their dowries
thereby in the temple of Bela, and thought it
right. What we think and feel alters the
moral quality of an act in our consciousness as
we do it, but does not alter its subsequent
effect. We justify and approve the economic
dependence of women upon the sex-relation in
marriage. We condemn it unsparingly out of
marriage. We follow it with our blame and
scorn up to the very doors of marriage, — the
mercenary bride, — but think no harm of the
mercenary wife, filching her husband's pockets
in the night. Love sanctifies it, we say: love
must go with it.
Love never yet went with self-interest.
The deepest antagonism lies between them :
they are diametrically opposed forces. In the
beautiful progress of evolution we find constant
opposition between the instincts and processes
97
 Women and Economics
of self-preservation and the instinct and proc
esses of race-preservation. From those early
forms where birth brought death, as in the
flowering aloe, the ephemeral may-fly, up to
the highest glory of self-effacing love; these
two forces work in opposition. We have tied
them together. We have made the woman,
the mother, — the very source of sacrifice
through love, — get gain through love, — a hid
eous paradox. No wonder that our daily lives
are full of the flagrant evils produced by this
unnatural state. No wonder that men turn
with loathing from the kind of women they
have made.

98
 VI.

The peculiar combination of functions

which we are studying has not only an imme
diate effect on individuals through sex-action,
and through the sex-affected individuals upon
society, but also an effect upon society through
economic action, and through the economically
affected society upon the individual.
The economic aspect of the question brings
it prominently forward to-day as influencing
not only our private health and happiness and
the processes of reproduction, but our public
health and happiness and the processes of
social economics as well. Society is con
fronted in this age with most pressing prob
lems in economics, and we need the fullest
understanding of the factors involved. These
problems are almost wholly social rather than
physical, and concern not the capacity of a
given society to produce and distribute enough
wealth for its maintenance, but some malad
justment of internal processes which checks
that production and distribution, and developes
such irregular and morbid processes of innu
trition, malnutrition, and over-nutrition as
continually to injure the health and activity
of the social organism. Our difficulty about
wealth is not in getting it out of the earth,
99
 Women and Economics
but in getting it away from one another. We
have phenomena before us in the development
of social economic relations analogous to those
accompanying
In the original
our development
constituents in
of sex-relation.
society, the

human animal in its primitive state, eco

nomic processes were purely individual. The
amount of food obtained by a given man bore
direct relation to his own personal exertions.
Other men were to him merely undesirable
competitors for the same goods ; and, the fewer
these competitors were, the more goods re
mained for him. Therefore, he killed as many
of his rivals as possible. Given a certain
supply of needed food, as the edible beasts
or fruits in a forest, and a certain number of
individuals to get this food, each by his own
exertions, it follows that, the more numerous
the individuals, the less food to be obtained by
each ; and, conversely, the fewer the individ
uals, the more food to be obtained by each.
Wherefore, the primitive savage slew his fel
low-man at sight, on good economic grounds.
This is the extreme of individual competition,
perfectly logical, and, in its time, economically
right. That time is forever past. The basic
condition of human life is union; the organic
social relation, the interchange of functional
service, wherein the individual is most advan-
ioo
 Wealth a Social Product
taged, not by his own exertions for his own
goods, but by the exchange of his exertions
with the exertions of others for goods produced
by them together. We are not treating here
of any communistic theory as to the equitable
division of the wealth produced, but of a clear
truth in social economics, — that wealth is a
social product. Whatever one may believe as
to what should be done with the wealth of the
world, no one can deny that the production
of this wealth requires the combined action of
many individuals. From the simplest combi
nation of strength that enables many men to
overcome the mammoth or to lift the stone —
an achievement impossible to one alone .— to
the subtle and complex interchange of highly
specialized skilled labor which makes possible
our modern house; the progress of society rests
upon the increasing collectivity of human
labor.
The evolution of organic life goes on in
geometrical progression : cells combine, and
form organs; organs combine, and form or
ganisms; organisms combine, and form or
ganizations. Society is an organization.
Society is the fourth power of the cell. It
is composed of individual animals of genus
homo, living in organic relation. The course
of social evolution is the gradual establish-
IOI
 Women and Economics
ment of organic relation between individuals,
and this organic relation rests on purely eco
nomic grounds. In the simplest combination
of primordial cells the force that drew and
held them together was that of economic ne
cessity. It profited them to live in combina
tion. Those that did so survived, and those
that did not perished. So with the appearance
of the most elaborate organisms : it profited
them to become a complex bundle of members
and organs in indivisible relation. A creat
ure so constructed survived, where the same
amount of living matter unorganized would
have perished. And so it is, literally and ex
actly, in a complex society, with all its elab
orate specialization of individuals in arts and
crafts, trades and professions. A society so
constructed survives, where the same number
of living beings, unorganized, would perish.
The specialization of labor and exchange of
product in a social body is identical in its
nature with the specialization and exchange of
function in an individual body. This process,
on orderly lines of evolution, involves the
gradual subordination of individual effort fo^
individual good to the collective effort for the
collective good, — not from any so-called "al
truism," but from the economic necessities of
the case. It is as natural, as "selfish," for
1 02
 A Counter-force
society so to live, the individual citizens work
ing together for the social good, as for one's
own body to live by the hands and feet, teeth
and eyes, heart and lungs, working together
for the individual good. Social evolution
tends to an increasing specialization in struct
ure and function, and to an increasing inter
dependence of the component parts, with a
correlative decrease through disuse of the once
valuable process of individual struggle for suc
cess; and this is based absolutely on the ad
vantage to the individual as well as to the
social body.
But, as we study this process of development,
noting with admiration the progressive changes
in human relation, the new functions, the ex
tended structure, the increase of sensation in
the socialized individuals with its enormous
possibilities of joy and healthful sensitiveness
to pain, we are struck by the visible presence
of some counter -force, acting against the nor
mal development and producing most disad
vantageous effects. As in our orderly progress
in social sex-development we are checked by
the tenacious hold of rudimentary impulses
artificially maintained by false conditions, so
in our orderly progress in social economic
development we see the same peculiar sur
vival of rudimentary impulses, which should
103
 Women and Economics
have been long since easily outgrown. It is
no longer of advantage to the individual to
struggle for his own gain at the expense of
others: his gain now requires the co-ordinate
efforts of these others; yet he continues so to
struggle.
In this lack of adjustment between the indi
vidual and the social interest lies our eco
nomic trouble. An illustration of this may
be seen in the manufacture of prepared foods.
This is a process impossible to the individual
singly, and of great advantage to the individ
ual in collective relation, — a perfectly natural
economic process, advantageous in proportion
to the amount and quality of the food manu
factured. This we constantly find accompa
nied by a morbid process of dilution and adul
teration, by which society is injured, in order
that the individual concerned in the manufact
ure may be benefited. This is as though one
of the organs of the body — the liver, for in
stance — should deliberately weaken or poison
its quota of secretion, in order that by giving
less it might retain more, and become large
and fat individually. An organ can do so,
does do so ; but such action is morbid action,
and constitutes disease. The body is injured,
weakened, destroyed, and so ultimately the
organ perishes also. It is a false conception
104
 The Hidden Spring
of gain, and the falsehood lies in not recog
nizing the true relation between individual
and social interests. This failure to recog
nize or, at least, to act up to a recognition of
social interests, owing to the disproportionate
pressure of individual interests, is the under
lying cause of our economic distress. As so
ciety is composed of individuals, we must look
to them for the action causing these morbid
social processes; and, as individuals act under
the pressure of conditions, we must look to the
conditions affecting the individuals for the
causes of their action.
In general, under social law, men develope
right action ; but some hidden spring seems
to force them continually into wrong action.
We have our hand upon this hidden spring in
the sexuo-economic relation. If we had re
mained on an individual economic basis, the
evil influence would have had far less ill
effect ; but, as we grow into the social eco
nomic relation, it increases with our civiliza
tion. The sex-relation is primarily and finally
individual. It is a physical relation between
individual bodies; and, while it may also ex
tend to a psychical relation between individ
ual souls, it does not become a social relation,
though it does change its personal development
to suit social needs.
*°5
 Women and Economics
In all its processes, to all its results, the
sex-relation is personal, working through in
dividuals upon individuals, and developing in
dividual traits and characteristics, to the great
advantage of society. The qualities developed
by social relation are built into the race
through the sex-relation, but the sex-relation
itself is wholly personal. Our economic
relation, on the contrary, though originally
individual, becomes through social evolution
increasingly collective. By combining the
human sex-relation with the human economic
relation, we have combined a permanently in
dividual process with a progressively collec
tive one. This involves a strain on both,
which increases in direct proportion to our
socialization, and, so far, has resulted in the
ultimate destruction of the social organism
acted upon by such irreconcilable forces.
As has been shown, this combination has af
fected the sex-relation of individuals by bring
ing into it a tendency to collectivism with
economic advantage, best exhibited in our dis
tinctive racial phenomenon of prostitution.
On the other hand, it has affected the eco
nomic relation of society by bringing into it a
tendency to individualism with sex-advantage,
best exhibited in the frequent practice of sac
rificing public good to personal gain, that the
106
 Supporting One's Family
individual may thereby "support his family."
We are so used to considering it the first duty
of a man to support his family that it takes a
very glaring instance of bribery and corruption
in their interests to shake our conviction ; but,
as a sociological law, every phase of the pros
titution of public service to private gain, from
the degradation of the artist to the exploita
tion of the helpless unskilled laborer, marks
a diseased social action. Our social status
rests upon our common consent, common
action, common submission to the common
will. No individual interests can stand for
a moment against the interests of the common
weal, either when war demands the last sacri
fice of individual property and life or when
peace requires the absolute submission of in
dividual property and life to common law, —
the fixed expression of the people's will. The
maintenance of "law and order" involves the
very spirit of socialism, — the sinking of per
sonal interest in common interest. All this
rests upon the evolution of the social spirit,
the keen sense of social duty, the conscien
tious fulfilment of social service; and it is
here that the excessive individualism main
tained by our sexuo-economic relation enters
as a strong and increasingly disadvantageous
social factor. We have dimly recognized the
107
 Women and Economics
irreconcilability of the sex-relation with eco
nomic relations on both sides, — in our sharp
condemnation of making the sex-functions
openly commercial, and in the drift toward
celibacy in collective institutions. Bodies of
men or women, actuated by the highest relig
ious impulses, desiring to live nobly and to
serve society, have always recognized some
thing antagonistic in the sex-relation. They
have thought it inherent in the relation itself,
not seeing that it was the economic side which
made it reactionary. Yet this action was
practically admitted by the continued existence
of communal societies where the sex-relation
did exist, in an unacknowledged form, and with
out the element of economic exchange. It is
admitted also by the noble and self-sacrificing
devotion of married missionaries of the Protes
tant Church, who are supported by contribu
tions. If the missionary were obliged to earn
his wife's living and his own, he could do
little mission work.
The highest human attributes are perfectly
compatible with the sex-relation, but not with
the sexuo-economic relation. We see this
opposition again in the tendency to collectivity
in bodies of single men, — their comradeship,
equality, and mutual helpfulness as compared
with the attitude of the same men toward one
1 08
 Virtue and Vice
another, when married. This is why the
quality of "organizability " is stronger in men
than in women; their common economic inter
ests force them into relation, while the iso
lated and even antagonistic economic interests
of women keep them from it. The condition
of individual economic dependence in which
women live resembles that of the savage in
the forest. They obtain their economic
goods by securing a male through their indi
vidual exertions, all competing freely to this
end. No combination is possible. The nu
merous girls at a summer resort, in their atti
tude toward the scant supply of young men,
bear an unconscious resemblance to the emu
lous savages in a too closely hunted forest.
And here may be given an economic reason for
the oft-noted bitterness with which the virtu
ous women regard the vicious. The virtuous
woman stands in close ranks with her sisters,
refusing to part with herself — her only eco
nomic goods — until she is assured of legal
marriage, with its lifelong guarantee of sup
port. Under equal proportions of birth in the
two sexes, every woman would be tolerably
sure of obtaining her demands. But here
enters the vicious woman, and offers the same
goods — though of inferior quality, to be sure
— for a far less price. Every one of such ille
109
 Women and Economics
gitimate competitors lowers the chances of the
unmarried women and the income of the mar
ried. No wonder those who hold themselves
highly should be moved to bitterness at being
undersold in this way. It is the hatred of the
trade-unionist
On the woman's
for "scab
side we
labor."
are steadily main

taining the force of primitive individual com

petition in the world as against the tendency
of social progress to develope co-operation in
its place, and this tendency of course is in
herited by their sons. On the man's side the
same effect is produced through another feat
ure of the relation. The tendency to individ
ualism with sex-advantage is developed in man
by an opposite process to that operating on the
woman. She gets her living by getting a hus
band. He gets his wife by getting a living.
It is to her individual economic advantage to
secure a mate. It is to his individual sex-
advantage to secure economic gain. The
sex-functions to her have become economic
functions. Economic functions to him have
become sex-functions. This has confounded
our natural economic competition, inevitably
growing into economic co-operation, with the
element of sex-competition, — an entirely
different force.
Competition among males, with selection by
1 10
 Choosing the Winner
the female of the superior male, is the process
of sexual selection, and works to racial im
provement. So far as the human male com
petes freely with his peers in higher and
higher activities, and the female chooses the
winner, so far we are directly benefited. But
there is a radical distinction between sex-com
petition and marriage by purchase. In the
first the male succeeds by virtue of what he
can do; in the second, by virtue of what he
can get. The increased power to do, trans
mitted to the young, is of racial advantage.
But mere possessions, with no question as to
the method of their acquisition, are not neces
sarily of advantage to the individual as a
father. To make the sexual gain of the male
rest on his purchasing power puts the im
mense force of sex-competition into the field
of social economics, not only as an incentive
to labor and achievement, which is good, but
as an incentive to individual gain, however
obtained, which is bad; thus accounting for
our multiplied and intensified desire to get, —
the inordinate greed of our industrial world.
The tournament of the Middle Ages was a
brutal sport perhaps, with its human injury,
pain, and death, under the cry of: "Fight on,
brave knights ! Fair eyes are looking on
you!" but it represents a healthier process
in
 Women and Economics
than our modern method of securing the
wherewithal to maintain the sex-relation. As
so beautifully phrased by Jean Ingelow : —
" I worked afar that I might rear
A happy home on English soil ;
I labored for the gold and gear,
I loved my toil.
" Forever in my spirit spake
The natural whisper, ' Well 'twill be
When loving wife and children break
Their bread with thee I ' "

Or, put more broadly by Kipling: —

." But since our women must walk gay,
And money buys their gear,
The sealing vessels filch this way
At hazard, year by year."

The contest in every good man's heart

to-day between the "ought to" and the
"must," between his best work and the "pot
boiler," is his personal share of this incessant
struggle between social interest and self-inter
est. For himself and by himself he would be
glad to do his best work, to be true to his
ideals, to be brave in meeting loss for that
truth's sake. But as the compromising capi
talist says in "Put Yourself in His Place,"
when his sturdy young friend — a bachelor —
wonders at his giving in to unjust demands,
112
 Getting Things and Doing Things
"Marriage makes a mouse of a man." To
the young business man who falls into evil
courses in the sex-relation the open greed of
his fair dependant is a menace to his honesty,
to his business prospects. On the same man
married the needs of his wife often operate in
the same way. The sense of the dependence
of the helpless creature whose food must come
through him does not stimulate courage, but
compels submission.
The foregoing distinction should be clearly
held in mind. Legitimate sex-competition
brings out all that is best in man. To please
her, to win her, he strives to do his best.
But the economic dependence of the female
upon the male, with its ensuing purchasabil-
ity, does not so affect a man : it puts upon
him the necessity for getting things, not for
doing them. In the lowest grades of labor,
where there is no getting without doing and
where the laborer always does more than he
gets, this works less palpable evil than in the
higher grades, the professions and arts, where
the most valuable work is always ahead of the
market, and where to work for the market in
volves a lowering of standards. The young
artist or poet or scientific student works for
his work's sake, for art, for science, and so
for the best good of society. But the artist or
"3
 Women and Economics
student married must get gain, must work for
those who will pay; and those who will pay
are not those who lift and bear forward the
standard of progress. Community of interest
is quite possible with those who are working
most disinterestedly for the social good; but
bring in the sex-relation, and all such soli
darity disintegrates, — resolves itself into the
tiny groups of individuals united on a basis of
sex-union, and briskly acting in their own
immediate interests at anybody's or every
body's expense.
The social perception of the evil resultant
from the intrusion of sex- influence upon racial
action has found voice in the heartless proverb,
"There is no evil without a woman at the
bottom of it." When a man's work goes
wrong, his hopes fail, his ambitions sink,
cynical friends inquire, "Who is she?" It
is not for nothing that a man's best friends
sigh when he marries, especially if he is a
man of genius. This judgment of the world
has obtained side by side with its equal faith
in the ennobling influence of woman. The
world is quite right. It does not have to
be consistent. Both judgments are correct.
Woman affecting society through the sex-
relation or through her individual economic
relation is an ennobling influence. Woman
114
 Marriage without Purchase
affecting society through our perverse combi
nation of the two becomes a strange influence,
indeed.
One of the amusing minor results of these
conditions is that, while we have observed the
effect of marriage upon social economic rela
tion and the effect of social economic relation
upon marriage, — seeing that the devoted ser
vant of the family was a poor servant of soci
ety and that the devoted servant of society
was a poor servant of the family, seeing the
successful collectivity of celibate institutions,
— we have jumped to the conclusion that col
lective prosperity was conditioned upon celi
bacy, and that we did not want it. That is
why the popular mind is so ready to associate
socialistic theories with injury to marriage.
Having seen that marriage makes us less col
lective, we infer conversely that collectivity
will make us less married, — that it will
" break up the home," "strike at the roots of
the family. "
When we make plain to ourselves that a
pure, lasting, monogamous sex-union can exist
without bribe or purchase, without the man
acles of economic dependence, and that men
and women so united in sex-relation will still
be free to combine with others in economic
relation, we shall not regard devotion to hu
"5
 Women and Economics
manity as an unnatural sacrifice, nor collective
prosperity as a thing to fear.
Besides this maintenance of primeval indi
vidualism in the growing collectivity of social
economic process and the introduction of the
element of sex-combat into the narrowing field
of industrial competition, there is another side
to the evil influence of the sexuo-economic
relation upon social development. This is in
the attitude of woman as a non-productive con
sumer.
In the industrial evolution of the human
race, that marvellous and subtle drawing out
and interlocking of special functions which
constitute the organic life of society, we find
that production and consumption go hand in
hand; and production comes first. One can
not consume what has not been produced.
Economic production is the natural expression
of human energy, — not sex-energy at all, but
race-energy, — the unconscious functioning of
the social organism. Socially organized hu
man beings tend to produce, as a gland to
secrete : it is the essential nature of the rela
tion. The creative impulse, the desire to
make, to express the inner thought in outer
form, "just for the work's sake, no use at all
i' the work ! " this is the distinguishing char
acter of humanity. "I want to mark!" cries
116
 Women and Production
the child, demanding the pencil. He does
not want to eat. He wants to mark. He is
not seeking to get something into himself,
but to put something out of himself. He
generally wants to do whatever he sees done,
— to make pie-crust or to make shavings, as it
happens. The pie he may eat, the shavings
not; but he likes to make both. This is the
natural process of production, and is followed
by the natural process of consumption, where
practicable. But consumption is not the
main end, the governing force. Under this
organic social law, working naturally, we have
the evolution of those arts and crafts in the
exercise of which consists our human living,
and on the product of which we live. So
does society evolve within itself — secrete as
it were — the social structure with all its
complex machinery ; and we function therein
as naturally as so many glands, other things
being equal.
But other things are not equal. Half the
human race is denied free productive expres
sion, is forced to confine its productive human
energies to the same channels as its reproduc
tive sex-energies. Its creative skill is con
fined to the level of immediate personal bodily
service, to the making of clothes and preparing
of food for individuals. No social service is
117
 Women and Economics
possible. While its power of production is
checked, its power of consumption is inordi
nately increased by the showering upon it of
the "unearned increment" of masculine gifts.
For the woman there is, first, no free produc
tion allowed; and, second, no relation main
tained between what she does produce and
what she consumes. She is forbidden to
make, but encouraged to take. Her industry
is not the natural output of creative energy,
not the work she does because she has the
inner power and strength to do it; nor is her
industry even the measure of her gain. She
has, of course, the natural desire to consume ;
and to that is set no bar save the capacity or
the will of her husband.
Thus we have painfully and laboriously
evolved and carefully maintain among us an
enormous class of non-productive consumers,
— a class which is half the world, and mother
of the other half. We have built into the
constitution of the human race the habit and
desire of taking, as divorced from its natural
precursor and concomitant of making. We
have made for ourselves this endless array
of "horse-leech's daughters, crying, Give!
give!" To consume food, to consume
clothes, to consume houses and furniture and
decorations and ornaments and amusements, to
118
 The Results of Repression
take and take and take forever, — from one
man if they are virtuous, from many if they
are vicious, but always to take and never to
think of giving anything in return except their
womanhood, — this is the enforced condition of
the mothers of the race. What wonder that
their sons go into business "for what there is
in it"! What wonder that the world is full
of the desire to get as much as possible and
to give as little as possible ! What wonder,
either, that the glory and sweetness of love are
but a name among us, with here and there a
strange and beautiful exception, of which our
admiration proves the rarity !
Between the brutal ferocity of excessive
male energy struggling in the market-place as
in a battlefield and the unnatural greed gener
ated by the perverted condition of female en
ergy, it is not remarkable that the industrial
evolution of humanity has shown peculiar
symptoms. One of the minor effects of this
last condition — this limiting of female indus
try to close personal necessities, and this ten
dency of her over-developed sex-nature to
overestimate the so-called "duties of her
position" — has been to produce an elaborate
devotion to individuals and their personal
needs, — not to the understanding and devel
oping of their higher natures, but to the inten
119
 Women and Economics
sification of their bodily tastes and pleasure.
The wife and mother, pouring the rising tide
of racial power into the same old channels that
were allowed her primitive ancestors, con
stantly ministers to the physical needs of her
family with a ceaseless and concentrated in
tensity. They like it, of course. But it
maintains in the individuals of the race an
exaggerated sense of the importance of food
and clothes and ornaments to themselves,
without at all including a knowledge of their
right use and value to us all. It developes
personal selfishness.
Again, the consuming female, debarred from
any free production, unable to estimate the
labor involved in the making of what she so
lightly destroys, and her consumption limited
mainly to those things which minister to
physical pleasure, creates a market f,or sensu
ous decoration and personal ornament, for all
that is luxurious and enervating, and for a
false and capricious variety in such supplies,
which operates as a most deadly check to true
industry and true art. As the priestess of the
temple of consumption, as the limitless de-
mander of things to use up, her economic in
fluence is reactionary and injurious. Much,
very much, of the current of useless produc
tion in which our economic energies run waste
 The Harm that Women do
— man's strength poured out like water on the
sand — depends on the creation and careful
maintenance of this false market, this sink
into which human labor vanishes with no re
turn. Woman, in her false economic position,
reacts injuriously upon industry, upon art,
upon science, discovery, and progress. The
sexuo-economic relation in its effect on the
constitution of the individual keeps alive in us
the instincts of savage individualism which
we should otherwise have well outgrown. It
sexualizes our industrial relation and com
mercializes our sex-relation. And, in the ex
ternal effect upon the market, the over-sexed
woman, in her unintelligent and ceaseless de
mands, hinders and perverts the economic
development of the world.

121
 VII.

A Condition so long established, so wide

spread, so permanent as the sexuo-economic
relation in the human species could not have
been introduced and maintained in the course
of social evolution without natural causes and
uses. No wildest perversion of individual
will could permanently maintain a condition
wholly injurious to society. Church and
State and social forms move and change with
our growth, and we cannot hinder them long
after the time has come for further progress.
Once it was of advantage to society that the
sexuo-economic relation should be established.
Now that it is no longer of advantage to so
ciety, the "woman's movement" has set in;
and the relation is changing under our eyes
from year to year, from day to day, in spite of
our traditional opposition. The change con
sidered in these pages is not one merely to
be prophesied and recommended : it is already
taking place under the forces of social evolu
tion ; and only needs to be made clear to our
conscious thought, that we may withdraw the
futile but irritating resistance of our mis
guided will.
The original necessity for this distinctive
human phenomenon lies very deep among the
 Common Interest and Common Consciousness
primal forces of social life. The relations re
quired to develope individual organisms failed
in the further development of the social organ
ism of organization. Co-ordination requires
first a common interest, and then the estab
lishment of a common consciousness. It was
for the common interest of the individual cells
to obtain food easily, and this drew them into
closer relation. That relation being estab
lished, their co-existence became a unit, an
entity, a thing with a conscious life of its
own. In the fullest development of the most
elaborate organisms, this holds good. There
must be a common interest to be served by all
this co-ordinate activity; and there must be a
common consciousness established, whereby
to serve most easily the common interest.
When the component cells in our tissues
shrink and fail for lack of nutrition, when the
several organs weary of inaction and fretfully
demand their natural exercise, the man does
not say, "My tissues need replenishment" or
"My organs need exercise": he says, "lam
hungry." And that "I," the personal con
sciousness directing the smooth interaction of
all its parts, goes to work to get food. Social
evolution rests on this common interest. In
dividual men are profited by social relation ;
and, therefore, they enter into social relation.
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 Women and Economics
Such relation requires a common conscious
ness, through which the co-ordinate action may
take place; and the whole course of social de
velopment is marked by the constant extension
of this social consciousness and its necessary
vehicles. Language is our largest common
medium, and leads on into literature, which is
but preserved speech. The brain of man is
the social organ, the organ of communication.
Through it flows the current of thought,
whereby we are enabled to work together. By
so much as our brains hold in common, we can
understand each other; and, therefore, some
degree of common education is essential to
free social development.
At the very beginning of this process, when
the human animal was still but an animal, —
but an individual, — came the imperative
demand for the establishment of a common
consciousness between these hitherto irrecon
cilable individuals. The first step in nature
toward this end is found in the relation be
tween mother and child. Where the young,
after birth, are still dependent on the mother,
the functions of the one separate living body
needing the service of another separate living
body, we have the overlapping of personality,
the mutual need, which brings with it the
essential instinct that holds together these in-
124
 The Development of Love
teracting personalities. That instinct we call
love. The child must have the mother's breast.
The mother's breast must have the child.
Therefore, between mother and child was born
love, long before fatherhood was anything more
than a momentary incident. But the common
consciousness, the mutual attraction between
mother and child, stopped there absolutely.
It was limited in range to this closest relation ;
in duration, to the period of infancy.
The common interest of human beings must
be served by racial faculties, not merely by
the sex-functions of the female, or the duties
of mother to child. As the male, acting
through his natural instincts, steadily en
croached upon the freedom of the female until
she was reduced to the state of economic
dependence, he thereby assumed the position
of provider for this creature no longer able to
provide for herself. He was not only com
pelled to serve her needs, but to fulfil in his
own person the thwarted uses of maternity.
He became, and has remained, a sort of man-
mother, alone in creation in his remarkable
position. By this common interest, existing
now not only between mother and child, but
between father, mother, and child, grew up a
wider common consciousness. And, as the
father served the child not through sex-function,
125
 Women and Economics
but through race-function, this service was open
to far wider development and longer duration
than the mother's alone could ever have reached.
Maternal energy is the force through which
have come into the world both love and indus
try. It is through the tireless activity of this
desire, the mother's wish to serve the young,
that she began the first of the arts and crafts
whereby we live. While the male savage was
still a mere hunter and fighter, expressing
masculine energy, the katabolic force, along
its essential line, expanding, scattering, the
female savage worked out in equally natural
ways the conserving force of female energy.
She gathered together and saved nutrition for
the child, as the germ-cell gathers and saves
nutrition in the unconscious silences of nat
ure. She wrapped it in garments and built a
shelter for its head as naturally as the same
maternal function had loved, clothed, and
sheltered the unborn. Maternal energy, work
ing externally through our elaborate organism,
is the source of productive industry, the main
current of social life.
But not until this giant force could ally
itself with others and work co-operatively,
overcoming the destructive action of male
energy in its blind competition, could our
human life enter upon its full course of racial
126
 The Maternalizing of Man
evolution. This is what was accomplished
through the suppression of the free action of
maternal energy in the female and its irresist
ible expression through the male. The two
forces were combined, and he was the active
factor in their manifestation. It was one of
nature's calm, unsmiling miracles, no more
wonderful than where she makes the guileless,
greedy bee, who thinks he is merely getting
his dinner, serve as an agent of reproduction
to countless flowers. The bee might resent it
if he knew what office he performed, and that
his dinner was only there that he might fulfil
that office. The subjection of woman has in
volved to an enormous degree the maternalizing
of man. Under its bonds he has been forced
into new functions, impossible to male energy
alone. He has had to learn to love and care
for some one besides himself. He has had
to learn to work, to serve, to be human.
Through the sex-passion, mightily overgrown,
the human race has been led and driven up the
long, steep path of progress, over all obstacles,
through all dangers, carrying its accompanying
conditions of disease and sin (and surmounting
them), up and up in spite of all, until at last
a degree of evolution is reached in which the
extension of human service and human love
makes possible a better way.
127
 Women and Economics
By the action of his own desires, through
all its by-products of evil, man was made part
mother; and so both man and woman were
enabled to become human. It was an essen
tial step in our racial progress, a means to an
end. It should not be considered as an ex
treme maternal sacrifice, but as a novel and
thorough system of paternal sacrifice, — the
male of genus homo coerced by sex-necessity
into the expression of maternal energy. The
naturally destructive tendencies of the male
have been gradually subverted to the conserva
tive tendencies of the female, and this so
palpably that the process is plainly to be
observed throughout history. Into the male
have been bred, by natural selection and un
broken training, the instincts and habits of
the female, to his immense improvement.
The female was dependent upon the male in
individual economic relation. She was in a
state of helpless slavery. She was treated
with unspeakable injustice and cruelty. But
nature's processes go on quite undisturbed
among incidents like these. To blend the
opposing sex-tendencies of two animals into
the fruitful powers of a triumphant race was
a painful process, but that does not matter.
It was essential, and it has been fulfilled.
There should be an end to the bitterness of
128
 Union of Male and Female Qualities
feeling which has arisen between the sexes in
this century. Right as is the change of atti
tude in the woman of to-day, she need feel no
resentment as to the past, no shame, no sense
of wrong. With a full knowledge of the
initial superiority of her sex and the sociologi
cal necessity for its temporary subversion, she
should feel only a deep and tender pride in the
long patient ages during which she has waited
and suffered, that man might slowly rise to
full racial equality with her. She could afford
to wait. She could afford to suffer.
It is high time that women began to under
stand their true position, primarily and eter
nally, and to see how little the long years of
oppression have altered it. It was not well
for the race to have the conservative processes
of life so wholly confined to the female, the
male being merely a temporary agent in re
production and of no further use. His size,
strength, and ferocity — admirable qualities
in maintaining the life of an individual ani
mal — were not the most desirable to develope
the human race. We needed most the quality
of co-ordination, — the facility in union, the
power to make and to save rather than to spend
and to destroy. These were female qualities.
Acting from his own nature, man could not
manifest traits that he did not possess.
129
 Women and Economics
Throned as woman's master, chained as her
servant, he has, through this strange combina
tion of functions, acquired these traits under
the heavy law of necessity. Originally, the
two worked on divers lines, he spending and
scattering, she saving and building. She was
the deep, steady, main stream of life, and he
the active variant, helping to widen and
change that life, but rather as an adjunct than
as an essential. Races there were and are
which reproduce themselves without the mas
culine organism, — by hermaphroditism and
parthenogenesis.
As the evolution of species progressed, we
find a long series of practical experiments in
males, — very tiny, transient, and inferior de
vices at first, but gradually developed into
fuller and fuller equality with the female.
In some of the lower forms, as in rotifers,
insects, and crustaceans, are found the most
inferior males, often none at all ; and, where
they do exist, they have no use save as an
agent in reproduction. The most familiar
instance of this is among the bees, where the
drone, after fulfilling his functions, dies or
is destroyed by the sturdy co-mothers of the
hive. The common spider, too, has a tiny
male, who tremblingly achieves his one brief
purpose, and is then eaten up by his mate.
130
 The Evolution of Male Equality
She is the spider, a permanent flycatcher.
He is merely a fertilizing agent. The little
green aphis, so numerous on our rose-hushes,
can reproduce parthenogenetically so long as
conditions are good, — while it is warm and
there is enough to eat ; but, when conditions
grow hard, males are developed, and the dual
method of reproduction is introduced.
In the two great activities of life, self-pres
ervation and race-preservation, the female in
these lower species is better equipped than the
male for the first, and carries almost the whole
burden of the second. His short period of
functional use is as nothing compared to her
long period of gestation, and the services she
performs, in many cases, in providing for her
young after their birth. Race-preservation
has been almost entirely a female function,
sometimes absolutely so. But it has been
proven better for the race to have two highly
developed parents rather than to have one.
Therefore, sexual equality has been slowly
evolved, not only by increasing the importance
of the male element in reproduction, but by
developing race-qualities in the male, so long
merely a reproductive agent. The last step of
this process has been the elevation of the male
of genus homo to full racial equality with the
female, and this has involved her temporary
131
 Women and Economics
subjection. Both her physical and psychical
tendencies have been transplanted into the
organism of the male. He has been made the
working mother of the world. The sexuo-
economic relation was necessary to raise and
broaden, to deepen and sweeten, to make more
feminine, and so more human, the male of the
human race. If the female had remained in
full personal freedom and activity, she would
have remained superior to him, and both
would have remained stationary. Since the
female had not the tendency to vary which
distinguished the male, it was essential that
the expansive forces of masculine energy be
combined with the preservative and construc
tive forces of feminine energy. The expan
sive and variable male energy, struggling
under its new necessity for constructive labor,
has caused that labor to vary and progress more
than it would have done in feminine hands
alone. Out of her wealth of power and pa
tience, liking to work, to give, she toils on
forever in the same primitive industries. He,
impatient of obstacles, not liking to work,
desirous to get rather than to give, splits his
task into a thousand specialties, and invents
countless ways to lighten his labors. Male
energy made to expend itself in performing
female functions is what has brought our in-
132
 Israel and Egypt
dustries to their present development. With
out the economic dependence of the female,
the male would still be merely the hunter
and fighter, the killer, the destroyer; and she
would continue to be the industrious mother,
without change or progress.
" What the children of Israel delighted in making
The children of Egypt delighted in breaking,"

runs the old rhyme; but there is small gain in

such a process. In her subordinate position,
under every disadvantage, through the very
walls of her prison, the constructive force of
woman has made man its instrument, and
worked for the upbuilding of the world. As
his energy was purely individualistic, and
only to be controlled by the power of sex-
attraction, it needed precisely this form of
union, with its peculiar exaggeration of sex-
faculty, to hold him to his task. Woman's
abnormal development of sex, restrained and
imprisoned by every law, has acted like a
coiled spring upon the only free agent in
society, — man. Under its intense stimulus he
has moved mountains. All the world has seen
it; and we have always murmured admiringly,
"Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love that makes
the world go round." It has done so, indeed,
or, at least, has driven man round the world
i33
 Women and Economics
in one long range of struggle and conquest, of
work and war. And every man who loves,
and says, "I am yours: do with me what you
will," knows the power, and honors it.
Human development thus far has proceeded
in the male line, under the force of male
energy, spurred by sex-stimulus, and by the
vast storage battery of female energy sup
pressed. Women can well afford their period
of subjection for the sake of a conquered
world, a civilized man. In spite of the agony
of the process, the black, long ages of shame
and pain and horror, women should remember
that they are still here; and, thanks to the
blessed power of heredity, they are not so far
aborted that a few generations of freedom will
not set them abreast of the age. When the
centuries of slavery and dishonor, of torture
and death, of biting injustice and slow, suffo
cating repression, seem long to women, let
them remember the geologic ages, the millions
and millions of years when puny, pygmy,
parasitic males struggled for existence, and
were used or not, as it happened, like a half-
tried patent medicine. What train of wives
and concubines was ever so ignominiously
placed as the extra husbands carried among
the scales of the careful female cirriped, lest
she lose one or two ! What neglect of faded
i34
 The Meaning of the Sacrifice
wives can compare with the scorned, unnoticed
death of the drone bee, starved, stung, shut
out, walled up in wax, kept only for his
momentary sex-function, and not absolutely
necessary for that ! What Bluebeard tragedy
or cruelty of bride-murdering Eastern king can
emulate the ruthless slaughter of the hapless
little male spider, used by his ferocious mate
"to coldly furnish forth a marriage break
fast " ! Never once in the history of humanity
has any outrage upon women compared with
these sweeping sacrifices of helpless males in
earlier species. The female has been domi
nant for the main duration of life on earth.
She has been easily equal always up to our
own race; and in our race she has been sub
jugated to the male during the earlier period
of development for such enormous racial gain,
such beautiful and noble uses, that the sacrifice
should never be mentioned nor thought of by
a womanhood that knows its power. For the
upbuilding of human life on earth she could af
ford to have her own held back; and — closer,
tenderer, lovelier service — for the raising of
her fierce sex-mate to a free and gentle brother
hood, for the uplifting of the human soul in her
dear son, she could have borne not only this,
but more, — borne it smilingly, ungrudgingly,
gladly, for his sake and the world's.
J35
 Women and Economics
And now that the long strain is over, now
that the time has come when neither he nor
the world is any longer benefited by her sub
ordination, now that she is coming steadily
out into direct personal expression, into the
joy of racial action in full freedom, of power
upon the throne instead of behind it, it is
unworthy of this supreme new birth to waste
one regret upon the pain that had to be.
Thus it may be seen that, even allowing for
the injury to the individual and to society
through the check to race-development and the
increase of sex-development in woman, with
its transmitted effects; allowing, further, that
our highly specialized motherhood cannot be
shown to be an advantage to humanity, — still
it remains true that our sexuo-economic rela
tion, with its effect of carrying on human life
through the male side only, in activities
driven by intensified sex - energy, has re
acted to the benefit of the individual and of
the race in many ways, as already suggested :
in the extension of female function through the
male; in the blending of faculties which have
resulted in the possibility of our civilization;
in the superior fighting power developed in the
male, and its effects in race-conquest, military
and commercial ; in the increased productivity
developed by his assumption of maternal func-
136
 The Timefor Change
tion; and by the sex-relation becoming mainly
proportioned to his power to pay for it. Even
motherhood has been indirectly the gainer in
that, although the mother herself has been
checked in direct maternal service, serving
the race far more through her stimulation of
male activities than through any activities of
her own; yet the child has ultimately profited
more by the materno-paternal services than
he would have done by the maternal services
alone.
All this may be granted as having been true
in the past. And many, reassured by this
frank admission, will ask, if it is so clear
that the subjection of woman was useful, that
this evil-working, monstrous sexuo-economic
relation was after all of racial advantage, how
we know that it is time to change. Princi
pally, because we are changing. Social de
velopment is not caused by the promulgators
of theories and by the writers of books. When
Rousseau wrote of equality, free France was
being born, — the spirit of the times thrilled
through the human mind ; and those who had
ears to hear heard, those who had pens to
write wrote. The condition of chattel slavery,
working to its natural end, roused Garrison and
Phillips and Harriet Beecher Stowe. They
did not make the movement. The period of
r37
 Women and Economics
women's economic dependence is drawing to a
close, because its racial usefulness is wearing
out. We have already reached a stage of
human relation where we feel the strength of
social duty pull against the sex-ties that have
been for so long the only ties that we have
recognized. The common consciousness of
humanity, the sense of social need and social
duty, is making itself felt in both men and
women. The time has come when we are open
to deeper and wider impulses than the sex-
instinct; the social instincts are strong enough
to come into full use at last. This is shown
' by the twin struggle that convulses the world
to-day, — in sex and economics, —the "woman's
movement" and the "labor movement."
Neither name is wholly correct. Both make a
class issue of what is in truth a social issue, a
question involving every human interest. But
the women naturally feel most the growing
healthful pain of their position. They person
ally revolt, and think it is they who are most
to be benefited. Similarly, since the "laboring
classes" feel most the growing healthful pain
of their position, they as naturally revolt
under the same conviction. Sociologically,
these conditions, which some find so painful
and alarming, mean but one thing, — the in
crease of social consciousness. The progress
138
 Social Consciousness
of social organization has produced a corre
sponding degree of individualization, which has
reached at last even to women, — even to the
lowest grade of unskilled labor. This higher
degree of individualization means a sharp per
sonal consciousness of the evils of a situation
hitherto little felt. With this higher growth
of individual consciousness, and forming a part
of it, comes the commensurate growth of so
cial consciousness. We have grown to care
for one another.
The woman's movement rests not alone on
her larger personality, with its tingling sense
of revolt against injustice, but on the wide,
deep sympathy of women for one another. It
is a concerted movement, based on the recog
nition of a common evil and seeking a common
good. So with the labor movement. It is not
alone that the individual laborer is a better
educated, more highly developed man than the
stolid peasant of earlier days, but also that
with this keener personal consciousness has
come the wider social consciousness, without
which no class can better its conditions. The
traits incident to our sexuo-economic relation
have developed till they forbid the continuance
of that relation. In the economic world, ex
cessive masculinity, in its fierce competition
and primitive individualism ; and excessive
J39
 Women and Economics
femininity, in its inordinate consumption and
hindering conservatism ; have reached a stage
where they work more evil than good.
The increasing specialization of the modern
woman, acquired by inheritance from the
ceaselessly specializing male, makes her grow
ing racial faculties strain against the primi
tive restrictions of a purely sexual relation.
The desire to produce — the distinctive human
quality — is no longer satisfied with a status
- that allows only reproduction. In our present
stage of social evolution it is increasingly diffi
cult and painful for women to endure their
condition of economic dependence, and there
fore they are leaving it. This does not mean
that at a given day all women will stand forth
free together, but that in slowly gathering
numbers, now so great that all the world can
see, women in the most advanced races are so
standing free. Great advances along social
lines come slowly, like the many-waved prog
ress of the tide : they are not sudden jumps
over yawning chasms.
But, besides this first plain perception that
our strange relation is coming to an end, we
may see how in its own working it developes
forces which must end it or us. The method
of action of our peculiar cat's-paw combination
of the sexes — the mother-father doing the
140
 The Menace of Present Conditions
work of the helpless creature he carries on his
back ; the parasite mate devouring even when
she should most feed — has been this, as re
peatedly shown : because of sex-desire the male
subjugates the female. Lest he lose her, he
feeds her, and, perforce, her young. She, ob
taining food through the sex-relation, becomes
over-sexed, and acts with constantly increas
ing stimulus on his sex-activities; and, as
these activities are made economic by their
relation, she so stimulates industry and all
progress. But, — and here is the natural end
of an unnatural position, a position that serves
its purpose for a time, but holds in itself
the seeds of its own destruction, — through the
unchecked sex-energy, accumulated under the
abnormal pressure of the economic side of
the relation, such excess is developed as tends
to destroy both individual and race; and such
psychic qualities are developed as tend also to
our injury and extinction.
A relation that inevitably produces abnor
mal development cannot be permanently main
tained. The intensification of sex-energy as
a social force results in such limitless exag
geration of sex-instinct as finds expression
sexually in the unnatural vices of advanced
civilization, and, socially, in the strained eco
nomic relation between producer and consumer
141
 Women and Economics
which breaks society in two. The sexuo-eco
nomic relation serves to bring social develop
ment to a certain level. After that level is
reached, a higher relation must be adopted, or
the lifting process comes to an end; and either
the race succumbs to the morbid action of its
own forces or some fresher race comes in, and
begins the course of social evolution anew.
Under the stimulus of the sexuo-economic
relation, one civilization after another has
climbed up and fallen down in weary succes
sion. It remains for us to develope a newer,
better form of sex-relation and of economic
relation therewith, and so to grasp the fruits
of all previous civilizations, and grow on to
the beautiful results of higher ones. The true
and lasting social progress, beyond that which
we have yet made, is based on a spirit of
inter-human love, not merely the inter-sexual ;
and it requires an economic machinery or
ganized and functioned for human needs, not
sexual ones. The sexuo-economic relation
drives man up to where he can become fully
human. It deepens and developes the human
soul until it is able to conceive and fulfil the
larger social uses in which our further life
must find expression. But, unless the human
soul sees these new forces, feels them, gives
way to them in loyal service, it fails to reach
142
 The Hope for the Future
the level from which all further progress must
proceed, and falls back. Again and again
society has so risen, so failed to grasp new
duties, so fallen back.
To-day it will not so fall again, because
the social consciousness is at last so vital a
force in both men and women that we feel
clearly that our human life cannot be fully
lived on sex-lines only. We are so far indi
vidualized, so far socialized, that men can
work without the tearing spur of exaggerated
sex-stimulus, work for some one besides mate
and young; and women can love and serve
without the slavery of economic dependence,
— love better and serve more. Sex-stimulus
begins and ends in individuals. The social
spirit is a larger thing, a better thing, and
brings with it a larger, nobler life than we
could ever know on a sex-basis solely.
Moreover, it should be distinctly understood,
as it is already widely and vaguely felt, that
the higher development of social life follow
ing the economic independence of women
makes possible a higher sex-life than has ever
yet been known. As fast as the human indi
vidual rises in social progress to a certain
degree of development, so fast this primitive
form of sex-union chafes and drags: it is felt
to be unsatisfying and injurious. This is a
M3
 Women and Economics
marked feature in modern life. The long,
sure, upward trend of the human race toward
monogamous marriage is no longer helped, but
hindered by the economic side of the relation.
The best marriage is between the best individ
uals; and the best individuals of both sexes
to-day are increasingly injured by the eco
nomic basis of our marriage, which produces
and maintains those qualities in men and
women and their resultant industrial condi
tions which make marriage more difficult and
precarious every day.
The woman's movement, then, should be
hailed by every right-thinking, far-seeing man
and woman as the best birth of our century.
The banner advanced proclaims "equality be
fore the law," woman's share in political
freedom ; but the main line of progress is and
has been toward economic equality and free
dom. While life exists on earth, the eco
nomic conditions must underlie and dominate
each existing form and its activities; and so
cial life is no exception. A society whose
economic unit is a sex-union can no more de-
velope beyond a certain point industrially than
a society like the patriarchal, whose political
unit was a sex-union, could develope beyond a
certain point politically.
The last freeing of the individual makes
144
 Independence and Liberty
possible the last combination of individuals.
While sons must bend to the will of a pa
triarchal father, no democracy is possible.
Democracy means, requires, is, individual lib
erty. While the sexuo - economic relation
makes the family the centre of industrial ac
tivity, no higher collectivity than we have
to-day is possible. But, as women become
free, economic, social factors, so becomes pos
sible the full social combination of indi
viduals in collective industry. With such
freedom, such independence, such wider union,
becomes possible also a union between man
and woman such as the world has long dreamed
of in vain.

145
 VIII.

In the face of so vital and radical a change

in human life as this change of economic base
in the position of women, it is well to call
attention more at length to the illustrations
of every-day facts in our common lives, which
he who runs may read, if he knows how to
read. We do not, as a rule, know how to read
the most important messages to humanity, —
the signs of the times. Historic crises, which
have been slowly maturing, burst upon us in
sudden birth before the majority of the people
imagine that anything is going on. The first
gun fired at Fort Sumter was an extreme sur
prise to most of the citizens of the Union.
The Boston Tea Party was, no doubt, an un
accountable piece of insolence to many
worthy Britons. When "the deluge" did
pour over the noblesse of France, few had been
really foreseeing enough to avoid it.
Fortunately, the laws of social evolution do
not wait for our recognition or acceptance:
they go straight on. And this greater and
more important change than the world has
ever seen, this slow emergence of the long-
subverted human female to full racial equality,
has been going on about us full long enough to
be observed. It is seen more prominently in
146
 The Martyr and the Pioneer
this country than in any other, for many
reasons.
The Anglo-Saxon blood, that English mixt
ure of which Tennyson sings, — "Saxon and
Norman and Dane though we be," — is the
most powerful expression of the latest current
of fresh racial life from the north, — from those
sturdy races where the women were more like
men, and the men no less manly because of it.
The strong, fresh spirit of religious revolt in
the new church that protested against and
broke loose from the old, woke and stirred the
soul of woman as well as the soul of man, and
in the equality of martyrdom the sexes learned
to stand side by side. Then, in the daring and
exposure, the strenuous labor and bitter hard
ship of the pioneer life of the early settlers,
woman's very presence was at a premium ; and
her labor had a high economic value. Sex-
dependence was almost unfelt. She who
moulded the bullets, and loaded the guns
while the men fired them, was co-defender of
the home and young. She who carded and
dyed and wove and spun was co-provider for
the family. Men and women prayed together,
worked together, and fought together in com
parative equality. More than all, the devel
opment of democracy has brought to us the
fullest individualization that the world has
i47
 Women and Economics
ever seen. Although politically expressed by
men alone, the character it has produced is
inherited by their daughters. The Federal
Democracy in its organic union, reacting upon
individuals, has so strengthened, freed, em
boldened, the human soul in America that we
have thrown off slavery, and with the same
impulse have set in motion the long struggle
toward securing woman's fuller equality before
the law.
This struggle has been carried on unflag-
gingly for fifty years, and fast nears its victo
rious end. It is not only in the four States
where full suffrage is exercised by both sexes,
nor in the twenty-four where partial suffrage
is given to women, that we are to count prog
ress; but in the changes legal and social,
mental and physical, which mark the advance
of the mother of the world toward her full
place. Have we not all observed the change
even in size of the modern woman, with its
accompanying strength and agility ? The Gib
son Girl and the Duchess of Towers, — these
are the new women ; and they represent a noble
type, indeed. The heroines of romance and
drama to-day are of a different sort from the
Evelinas and Arabellas of the last century.
Not only do they look differently, they behave
differently. The false sentimentality, the
148
 The Dropping of the Bars
false delicacy, the false modesty, the utter
falseness of elaborate compliment and servile
gallantry which went with the other false
hoods, — all these are disappearing. Women
are growing honester, braver, stronger, more
healthful and skilful and able and free, more
human in all ways.
The change in education is in large part a
cause of this, and progressively a consequence.
Day by day the bars go down. More and more
the field lies open for the mind of woman to
glean all it can, and it has responded most
eagerly. Not only our pupils, but our teachers,
are mainly women. And the clearness and
strength of the brain of the woman prove con
tinually the injustice of the clamorous con
tempt long poured upon what was scornfully
called "the female mind." There is no fe
male mind. The brain is not an organ of sex.
As well speak of a female liver.
Woman's progress in the arts and sciences,
the trades and professions, is steady; but it
is most unwise to claim from these relative
advances the superiority of women to men,
or even their equality, in these fields. What
is more to the purpose and easily to be shown
is the superiority of the women of to-day to
those of earlier times, the immense new de
velopment of racial qualities in the sex. No
149
 Women and Economics
modern proverbs, if we expressed ourselves in
proverbs now, would speak with such sweep
ing, unbroken contumely of the women of
to-day as did those unerring exhibitors of
popular feeling in former times.
The popular thought of our day is voiced
in fiction, fluent verse, and an incessant play
of humor. By what is freely written by most
authors and freely read by most people is
shown our change in circumstances and change
in feeling. In old romances the woman was
nothing save beautiful, high-born, virtuous,
and perhaps "accomplished." She did noth
ing but love and hate, obey or disobey, and be
handed here and there among villain, hero,
and outraged parent, screaming, fainting, or
bursting into floods of tears as seemed called
for by the occasion.
In the fiction of to-day women are contin
ually taking larger place in the action of the
story. They are given personal characteristics
beyond those of physical beauty. And they
are no longer content simply to be: they do.
They are showing qualities of bravery, endur
ance, strength, foresight, and power for the
swift execution of well - conceived plans.
They have ideas and purposes of their own ;
and even when, as in so many cases described
by the more reactionary novelists, the efforts
 The Meaning of the New Woman
of the heroine are shown to be entirely futile,
and she comes back with a rush to the self-
effacement of marriage with economic depend
ence, still the efforts were there. Disap
prove as he may, use his art to oppose and
contemn as he may, the true novelist is forced
to chronicle the distinctive features of his
time; and no feature is more distinctive of
this time than the increasing individualization
of women. With lighter touch, but with
equally unerring truth, the wit and humor of
the day show the same development. The
majority of our current jokes on women turn
on No
their
sociological
"newness,"change
their advance.
equal in importance

to this clearly marked improvement of an

entire sex has ever taken place in one century.
Under it all, the crux of the whole matter, goes
on the one great change, that of the economic
relation. This follows perfectly natural lines.
Just as the development of machinery con
stantly lowers the importance of mere brute
strength of body and raises that of mental
power and skill, so the pressure of industrial
conditions demands an ever-higher specializa
tion, and tends to break up that relic of the
patriarchal age, — the family as an economic
unit.
Women have been led under pressure of
ISI
 Women and Economics
necessity into a most reluctant entrance upon
fields of economic activity. The sluggish and
greedy disposition bred of long ages of depend
ence has by no means welcomed the change.
Most women still work only as they "have
to, " until they can marry and " be supported. "
Men, too, liking the power that goes with
money, and the poor quality of gratitude and
affection bought with it, resent and oppose the
change; but all this disturbs very little the
course of social progress.
A truer spirit is the increasing desire of
young girls to be independent, to have a career
of their own, at least for a while, and the
growing objection of countless wives to the
pitiful asking for money, to the beggary of
their position. More and more do fathers
give their daughters, and husbands their wives,
a definite allowance, — a separate bank ac
count, — something which they can play is all
their own. The spirit of personal indepen
dence in the women of to-day is sure proof
that a change has come.
For a while the introduction of machinery
which took away from the home so many in
dustries deprived woman of any importance as
an economic factor; but presently she arose,
and followed her lost wheel and loom to their
new place, the mill. To-day there is hardly
152
 The Women Workers
an industry in the land in which some women
are not found. Everywhere throughout Amer
ica are women workers outside the unpaid
labor of the home, the last census giving three
million of them. This is so patent a fact,
and makes itself felt in so many ways by so
many persons, that it is frequently and widely
discussed. Without here going into its im
mediate advantages or disadvantages from an
industrial point of view, it is merely instanced
as an undeniable proof of the radical change
in the economic position of women that is
advancing upon us. She is assuming new
relations from year to year before our eyes;
but we, seeing all social facts from a personal
point of view, have failed to appreciate the
nature of the change.
Consider, too, the altered family relation
which attends this movement. Entirely aside
from the strained relation in marriage, the
other branches of family life feel the strange
new forces, and respond to them. "When I
was a girl," sighs the gray-haired mother,
"we sisters all sat and sewed while mother
read to us. Now every one of my daughters
has a different club ! " She sighs, be it ob
served. We invariably object to changed con
ditions in those departments of life where we
have established ethical values. For all the
'53
 Women and Economics
daughters to sew while the mother read aloud
to them was esteemed right ; and, therefore, the
radiating diffusion of daughters among clubs
is esteemed wrong, — a danger to home life.
In the period of the common sewing and read
ing the women so assembled were closely
allied in industrial and intellectual develop
ment as well as in family relationship. They
all could do the same work, and liked to do it.
They all could read the same book, and liked
to read it. (And reading, half a century ago,
was still considered half a virtue and the
other half a fine art.) Hence the ease with
which this group of women entered upon their
common work and common pleasure.
The growing individualization of democratic
life brings inevitable change to our daughters
as well as to our sons. Girls do not all like
to sew, many do not know how. Now to sit
sewing together, instead of being a harmoniz
ing process, would generate different degrees
of restlessness, of distaste, and of nervous
irritation. And, as to the reading aloud, it is
not so easy now to choose a book that a well-
educated family of modern girls and their
mother would all enjoy together. As the race
become more specialized, more differentiated,
the simple lines of relation in family life draw
with less force, and the more complex lines of
154
 The Strain of the Change
relation in social life draw with more force;
and this is a perfectly natural and desirable
process for women as well as for men.
It may be suggested, in passing, that one of
the causes of "Americanitis " is this increas
ing nervous strain in family relation, acting
especially upon woman. As she becomes
more individualized, she suffers more from the
primitive and indifferentiated conditions of
the family life of earlier times. What "a
wife" and " a mother " was supposed to find
perfectly suitable, this newly specialized wife
and mother, who is also a personality, finds
clumsy and ill-fitting, — a mitten where she
wants a glove. The home cares and indus
tries, still undeveloped, give no play for her
increasing specialization. Where the embry
onic combination of cook - nurse - laundress-
chambermaid-housekeeper - waitress - governess
was content to be "jack of all trades" and
mistress of none, the woman who is able to be
one of these things perfectly, and by so much
less able to be all the others, suffers doubly
from not being able to do what she wants to
do, and from being forced to do what she does
not want to do. To the delicately differen
tiated modern brain the jar and shock of
changing from trade to trade a dozen times a
day is a distinct injury, a waste of nervous
 Women and Economics
force. With the larger socialization of the
woman of to-day, the fitness for and accom
panying desire for wider combinations, more
general interest, more organized methods of
work for larger ends, she feels more and more
heavily the intensely personal limits of the
more primitive home duties, interests,
methods. And this pain and strain must in
crease with the advance of women until the
new functional power makes to itself organic
expression, and the belated home industries
are elevated and organized, like the other
necessary labors of modern life.
In the meantime, however, the very best and
foremost women suffer most; and a heavy
check is placed on social progress by this diffi
culty in enlarging old conditions to suit new
powers. It should still be remembered it is
not the essential relations of wife and mother
which are thus injurious, but the industrial
conditions born of the economic dependence of
the wife and mother, and hitherto supposed to
be part of her functions. The change we are
making does not in any way militate against
the true relations of the family, marriage, and
parentage, but only against those sub-rela
tions belonging to an earlier period and now
in process of extinction. The family as an
entity, an economic and social unit, does not
iS6
 Individual Expression
hold as it did. The ties between brother
and sister, cousins and relatives generally, are
gradually lessening their hold, and giving
way under pressure of new forces which tend
toward better things.
The change is more perceptible among
women than among men, because of the longer
survival of more primitive phases of family
life in them. One of its "most noticeable
features is the demand in women not only for
their own money, but for their own work for
the sake of personal expression. Those who
object to women's working on the ground that
they should not compete with men or be
forced to struggle for existence look only at
work as a means of earning money. They
should remember that human labor is an exer
cise of faculty, without which we should cease
to be human ; that to do and to make not only
gives deep pleasure, but is indispensable to
healthy growth. Few girls to-day fail to man
ifest some signs of this desire for individual ex
pression. It is not only in the classes who are
forced to it : even among the rich we find
this same stirring of normal race-energy. To
carve in wood, to hammer brass, to do "art
dressmaking," to raise mushrooms in the
cellar, — our girls are all wanting to do some
thing individually. It is a most healthy state,
iS7
 Women and Economics
and marks the development of race-distinction
in women with a corresponding lowering of
sex-distinction to its normal place.
In body and brain, wherever she touches
life, woman is changing gloriously from the
mere creature of sex, all her race-functions
held in abeyance, to the fully developed human
being, none the less true woman for being
more truly human. What alarms and dis
pleases us in seeing these things is our funny
misconception that race-functions are mas
culine. Much effort is wasted in showing
that women will become "unsexed " and
" masculine " by assuming these human duties.
We are told that a slight sex-distinction is
characteristic of infancy and old age, and that
the assumption of opposite traits by either
sex shows either a decadent or an undeveloped
condition. The young of any race are less
marked by sex-distinction ; and in old age the
distinguishing traits are sometimes exchanged,
as in the crowing of old hens and in the grow
ing of the beard on old women. And we are
therefore assured that the endeavor of women
to perform these masculine economic func
tions marks a decadent civilization, and is
greatly to be deprecated. There would be
some reason in this objection if the common
racial activities of humanity, into which
15*
 Functions and Femininity
women are now so eagerly entering, were
masculine functions. But they are not.
There is no more sublimated expression of our
morbid ideas of sex-distinction than in this
complacent claiming of all human life-proc
esses as sex-functions of the male. "Mas
culine " and " feminine " are only to be pred
icated of reproductive functions, — processes
of race-preservation. The processes of self-
preservation are racial, peculiar to the species,
but common to either sex.
If it could be shown that the women of
to-day were growing beards, were changing as
to pelvic bones, were developing bass voices,
or that in their new activities they were man
ifesting the destructive energy, the brutal
combative instinct, or the intense sex-vanity
of the male, then there would be cause for
alarm. But the one thing that has been
shown in what study we have been able to
make of women in industry is that they are
women still, and this seems to be a surprise
to many worthy souls. A female horse is no
less female than a female starfish, but she has
more functions. She can do more things, is a
more highly specialized organism, has more
intelligence, and, with it all, is even more
feminine in her more elaborate and farther-
reaching processes of reproduction. So the
*59
 Women and Economics
" new woman " will be no less female than the
" old " woman, though she has more functions,
can do more things, is a more highly special
ized organism, has more intelligence. She
will be, with it all, more feminine, in that
she will develope far more efficient processes
of caring for the young of the human race than
our present wasteful and grievous method, by
which we lose fifty per cent, of them, like a
codfish. The average married pair, says the
scientific dictator, in all sobriety, should have
four children merely to preserve our present
population, two to replace themselves and two
to die, — a pleasant method this, and redound
ing greatly to the credit of our motherhood.
The rapid extension of function in the
modern woman has nothing to do with any
exchange of masculine and feminine traits : it
is simply an advance in human development of
traits common to both sexes, and is wholly
good in its results. No one who looks at the
life about us can fail to see the alteration
going on. It is a pity that we so fail to esti
mate its value. On the other hand, the
growth and kindling intensity of the social
consciousness among us all is as conspicuous
a feature of modern life as the change in
woman's position, and closely allied therewith.
Never before have people cared so much
160
 The Unity of Mankind
about other people. From its first expression
in greater kindliness and helpfulness toward
individual human beings to its last expression
in the vague, blind, groping movements toward
international justice and law, the heart of the
world is alive and stirring to-day. The whole
social body is affected with sudden shudders
of feeling over some world calamity or world
rejoicing. When the message of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin " ran from heart to heart around
the world, kindling a streak of fire, the fire of
human love and sympathy which is latent in
us all and longing always for some avenue of
common expression, it proved that in every
civilized land of our time the people are of one
mind on some subjects. Nothing could have
so spread and so awakened a response in the
Periclean, the Augustan, or even the Eliza
bethan age; for humanity was not then so far
socialized and so far individualized as to be
capable of such a general feeling.
Invention and the discoveries of science are
steadily unifying the world to-day. The state
ment is frequently advanced that the minds of
the men of Greece or of the great thinkers of
the Middle Ages were stronger and larger
than the minds of the men of to-day. Perhaps
they were. So were the bodies of the mega
therium and the ichthyosaurus stronger and
161
 Women and Economics
larger than the bodies of the animals of to-day.
Yet they were lower in the scale of organic
evolution. The ability of the individual is
not so much the criterion of social progress
as that organic relation of individuals which
makes the progress of each available to all.
Emerson has done more for America than
Plato could do for Greece. Indeed, Plato has
done more for America than he could do for
Greece, because the printing-press and the
public school have made thought more freely
and easily transmissible.
Human progress lies in the perfecting of
the social organization, and it is here that the
changes of our day are most marked. Whereas,
in more primitive societies, injuries were only
felt by the individual as they affected his own
body or direct personal interests, and later his
own nation or church, to-day there is a grow
ing sensitiveness to social injuries, even to
other nations. The civilized world has suf
fered in Armenia's agony, even though the
machinery of social expression is yet unable
fully to carry out the social feeling or the
social will. Function comes before organ
always; and the human heart and mind, which
are the social heart and mind, must feel and
think long before the social body can act in
full expression.
162
 Women and Social Interests
Social sympathy and thought are growing
more intense and active every day. In our
cumbrous efforts at international arbitration,
in the half-hearted alliances and agreements
between great peoples, in the linking of hu
manity together across ocean and mountain
and desert plain by steam and electricity, in
the establishment of such world-functions as
the international postal service, — in these,
externally, our social unity has begun to act.
In the more familiar field of personal life,
who has not seen how unceasingly many of us
are occupied in the interests of the commu
nity, even to the injury of our own ? The
rising manifestations of social interest among
women were covered with ridicule at first,
through such characters as Mrs. Jellyby or Mrs.
Pardiggle, although a few women who were so
great and so identified with religion and phi
lanthropy as to command respect, women like
the saintly Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightin
gale, and Clara Barton, escaped. But both
belong to the same age, are part of the same
phenomena. To-day there is hardly a woman
of intelligence in all America, to say nothing
of other countries, who is not definitely and
actively concerned in some social interest, who
does not recognize some duty besides those
incident to her own blood relationship.
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 Women and Economics
The woman's club movement is one of the
most important sociological phenomena of the
century, — indeed, of all centuries, — marking
as it does the first timid steps toward social
organization of these so long unsocialized
members of our race. Social life is abso
lutely conditioned upon organization. The
military organizations which promote peace,
the industrial organizations which maintain
life, and all the educational, religious, and
charitable organizations which serve our higher
needs constitute the essential factors of that
social activity in which, as individuals, we
live and grow; and it is plain, therefore, that
while women had no part in these organiza
tions they had no part in social life. Their
main relation to society was an individual one,
an animal one, a sexual one. They produced
the people of whom society was made, but they
were not society. Of course, they were indis
pensable in this capacity ; but one might as
well call food a part of society because people
could not exist without eating as to call
women a social factor because people could not
exist without being born. Women have made
the people who made the world, and will
always continue so to do. But they have
heretofore had a most insignificant part in the
world their sons have made.
164
 Women and the Church
The only form of organization possible to
women was for long the celibate religious
community. This has always been dear to
them ; and, as to-day many avoid undesired
marriage for the sake of "independence," so
in earlier times many fled from undesired
marriage to the communal independence of the
convent. The fondness of women for the
church has been based, not only on religious
feeling, but on the force of the human longing
for co-ordinate interest and activities ; and
only here could this be gratified. In the
church at least they could be together. They
could feel in common and act in common, —
the deepest human joy. As the church has
widened its activities, it has found everywhere
in women its most valuable and eager workers.
To labor together, together to raise funds for
a common end, for a new building or a new
minister, for local charities or for foreign
missions, — but to labor together, and for
other needs than those of the family relation,
— this has always met glad response from the
struggling human soul in woman. When it
became possible to work together for other
than religious ends, — when large social service
was made possible to women, as in our sanitary
commission during the last war, — women
everywhere rose to meet the need. The rise
165
 Women and Economics
and spread of that greatest of women's organi
zations, the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, has shown anew how ready is the heart
of woman to answer the demands of other than
personal relations.
And now the whole country is budding into
women's clubs. The clubs are uniting and
federating by towns, States, nations : there are
even world organizations. The sense of human
unity is growing daily among women. Not to
see it is impossible. Not to watch with pleas
ure and admiration this new growth in social
life, this sudden and enormous re-enforcement
of our best forces from the very springs of
life, only shows how blind we are to true
human advantage, how besotted in our fond
ness for sex-distinction in excess.
One of the most valuable features of this
vast line of progress is the new heroism it is
pouring into life. The crumbling and flat
tening of ambitions and ideals under pressure
of our modern business life is a patent fact.
We are growing to surrender taste and con
science and honor itself to the demands of
business success, prostituting the noblest
talents to the most ignoble uses with that last
excuse of cowardice, —"A man must live."
Into this phase of life comes a new spirit, —
the spirit of such women as Elizabeth Cady
166
 The Vanguard
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony ; of Dr. Eliza
beth Blackwell and her splendid sisterhood ; of
all the women who have battled and suffered
for half a century, forcing their way, with sac
rifices never to be told, into the field of free
dom so long denied them, — not for themselves
alone, but for one another. We have loudly
cried out at the injury to the home and family
which are supposed to follow such a course.
We have unsparingly ridiculed the unattractive
and unfeminine among these vanguard workers.
But few have thought what manner of spirit
it must take to leave the dear old easy paths
so long trodden by so many feet, and go to
hew out new ones alone. The nature of the
effort involved and the nature of the opposition
incurred conduced to lessen the soft charms
and graces of the ultra-feminine state; but the
women who follow and climb swiftly up the
steps which these great leaders so laboriously
built may do the new work in the new places,
and still keep much of what these strenuous
heroes had to lose.
It is not being a doctor that makes a woman
unwomanly, but the treatment which the first
women medical students and physicians re
ceived was such as to make even men un
manly. That time is largely past. The
gates are nearly all open, at least in some
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 Women and Economics
places; and the racial activities of women
are free to develope as rapidly as the nature
of the case will allow. The main struggle
now is with the distorted nature of the creat
ure herself. Grand as are the women who
embody at whatever cost the highest spirit of
the age, there still remains to us the heavy
legacy of the years behind, — the innumer
able weak and little women, with the aspi
rations of an affectionate guinea pig. The
soul of woman must speak through the long
accumulations of her intensified sex-nature,
through the uncertain impulses of a starved
and thwarted class. She must recognize that
she is handicapped. She must understand her
difficulty, and meet it bravely and firmly.
But this is a matter for personal volition,
for subjective consciousness. The thing to
see and to rejoice in is that, with and without
their conscious volition, with or without the
approval and assistance of men, in spite of that
crowning imbecility of history, — the banded
opposition of some women to the advance of
the others, — the female of our race is making
sure and rapid progress in human develop
ment.

168
 IX.

The main justification for the subjection of

women, which is commonly advanced, is the
alleged advantage to motherhood resultant
from her extreme specialization to the uses
of maternity under this condition.
There are two weak points in this position.
One is that the advantage to motherhood can
not be proved : the other, that it is not the
uses of maternity to which she is specialized,
but the uses of sex-indulgence. So far from
the economic dependence of women working in
the interests of motherhood, it is the steadily
acting cause of a pathological maternity and
a decreasing birth-rate.
In simple early times there was a period
when women were economically profited by
child-bearing; when, indeed, that was their
sole use, and, failing it, they were entitled to
no respect or profit whatever. Such a con
dition tended to increase the quantity of
children, if not the quality. With industrial
development and the increasing weight of eco
nomic cares upon the shoulders of the man,
children come to be looked upon as a burden,
and are dreaded instead of desired by the hard-
worked father. They subtract from the family
income; and the mother, absolutely dependent
169
 Women and Economics
upon that income and also overworked in her
position of unpaid house-servant, is not im
pelled to court maternity by any economic
pressure. In the working classes — to which
the great majority of people belong — the
woman is by no means " segregated to the
uses of maternity." Among the most intel
ligent and conscientious workingmen to-day
there is a strong feeling against large families,
and a consistent effort is made to prevent
them.
Lest this be considered as not bearing di
rectly upon the economic position of women,
but rather on the general status of the work
ing classes, let us examine the same condition
among the wealthy. It is here that the eco
nomic dependence of women is carried to its
extreme. The daughters and wives of the rich
fail to perform even the domestic service ex
pected of the women of poorer families. They
are from birth to death absolutely non-produc
tive in goods or labor of economic value, and
consumers of such goods and labor to an extent
limited only by the purchasing power of their
male relatives. In this condition the eco
nomic advantage of the woman, married or
unmarried, not merely in food and clothes,
but in such social advantage as she desires, lies
in her power to attract and hold the devotion
170
 Maternity and Economic Advantage
of men ; and this power is not the power of
maternity. On the contrary, maternity, by
lowering the personal charms and occupying
the time of the mother, fails to bring her the
pleasure and profit obtainable by the woman
who is not a mother. It is through the sex-
relation minus its natural consequence that
she profits most; and, therefore, the force of
economic advantage acts against maternity in
stead of toward it.
In the last extreme this is clear to all in
the full flower of the sexuo-economic relation,
— prostitution, than which nothing runs more
absolutely counter to the improvement of the
race through maternity. Specialization to
uses of maternity, as in the queen bee, is one
thing. Specialization to uses of sex without
maternity is quite another. Yet this popular
opinion, that we as a race are greatly bene
fited by having all our women saved from
direct economic activity, and so allowed to
concentrate all their energies on the beautiful
work of motherhood, remains strong among us.
In The Forum for November, 1888, Lester
F. Ward published a paper called "Our Bet
ter Halves," in which was clearly shown the
biological supremacy of the female sex. This
naturally aroused much discussion ; and in an
answering article, "Woman's Place in Nat
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 Women and Economics
ure" (The Forum, May, 1889), Mr. Grant
Allen very thoroughly states the general view
on this subject. He says of woman: "I be
lieve it to be true that she is very much less
the race than man ; that she is, indeed, not
even half the race at present, but rather a part
of it told specially off for the continuance of
the species, just as truly as drones or male
spiders are parts of their species told off for
the performance of male-functions, or as 'ro
tund ' honey ants are individual insects told
off to act as living honey jars to the com
munity. She is the sex sacrificed to repro
ductive necessities."
Since biological facts point to the very
gradual introduction and development of the
male organism solely as a reproductive neces
sity, and since women are sacrificed not to
reproductive necessities, but to a most unnec
essary and injurious degree of sex-indulgence
under economic necessity, such a statement as
Mr. Grant Allen's has elements of humor.
The opinion is held, however, not only by the
special students of biology and sociology, but
by the general public, and demands most care
ful attention. Those holding such a view may
admit the over-development of sex consequent
upon the economic relation between men and
women, and the train of evils, individual
172
 The Specialized Sex
and social, following that over-development.
They may even admit, further, something of
the alleged injury to economic evolution. But
they will claim in answer that these morbid
conditions are essential to human progress,
and that the good to humanity through the
segregation of the female to the uses of ma
ternity overbalances the evil, great as this
is; also, conversely, that the gain to the indi
vidual and to society to be obtained by the
economic freedom of the female would be
more than offset by the loss to the race caused
by the removal of our highly specialized
motherhood.
To meet this, it is necessary to show that
our highly specialized motherhood is not so
advantageous as believed; that it is below
rather than above the efficacy of motherhood
in other species; that its deficiency is due to
the sexuo-economic relation; that the restora
tion of economic freedom to the female will
improve motherhood; and, finally, to indicate
in some sort the lines of social and individual
development along which this improvement
may be "practically" manifested.
In approaching this subject, we need some
thing of special mental preparation. We
need to realize that our ideas upon this theme
are peculiarly colored by prejudice, that in
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 Women and Economics
no other field of thought are we so blinded by
our emotions. We have felt more on this
subject than on any other, and thought less.
We have also felt much on the relation
of the sexes; but it has been made a sub
ject of study, of comparison, of speculation.
There are differences of feeling on the sex
question, but as to motherhood none. Here
and there, to be sure, some isolated philoso
pher, a Plato, a Rousseau, dares advance some
thought on this ground; but, on the whole, no
theme of commensurate importance has been
so little studied. More sacred than relig
ion, more binding than the law, more habitual
than methods of eating, we are each and all
born into the accepted idea of motherhood and
trained in it; and in maturity we hand it
down unquestioningly. A man may question
the purposes and methods of his God with
less danger of outcry against him than if he
dare to question the purposes and methods of
his mother. This matriolatry is a sentiment
so deep-seated, wide-spread, and long-estab
lished as to be dominant in every class of
minds. It is so associated with our religious
instincts, on the one hand, and our sex-in
stincts, on the other, both of which we have
long been forbidden to discuss, — the one
being too holy and the other too unholy, —
r74
 A Cumulative Instinct
that it is well-nigh impossible to think clearly
and dispassionately on the subject. It is easy
to understand why we are so triple-plated with
prejudice in the case.
The instinct that draws the child to its
mother is exactly as old as the instinct that
draws the mother to her child; and that dates
back to the period when the young first needed
care, — among the later reptiles, perhaps.
This tie has lasted unbroken through the
whole line of progression, and is stronger with
us than with any other creature, because in
our social evolution the parent is of advantage
to the child not only through its entire life,
but even after death, by our laws of inheri
tance. So early, so radically important, so
long accumulated an animal instinct, added
to by social law, is a great force. Be
sides this, we must reckon with our long
period of ancestor worship. This finally
changed the hideous concepts of early idola
ters into the idea of parental divinity; for,
having first made a god of their father, they
then made a father of God, and this deep
religious feeling has added much to the heavy
weight of instinct. Parental government,
too, absolute in the patriarchal period, has
added further to our devout, blind faith in
parenthood until it is lese-majest/ to ques
i7S
 Women and Economics
tion its right fulfilment. Two most interest
ing developments are to be noted along this
line. One is that the height of filial devotion
was reached in the patriarchal age; when the
father was the sole governor and feeder of the
family, and could slay or sell his child at will;
and that this relic of ancestor worship has
steadily declined with the extension of govern
ment, until, in our democracy, with the fullest
development of individual liberty and respon
sibility, is found the lowest degree of filial
reverence and submission. Its place is taken,
to our great gain, by such familiar, loving
intercourse between parent and child as was
utterly incompatible with the grovelling atti
tude of children in earlier times.
The other is the gradual swing from supreme
devotion to the father, "the author of my
being," as the child used to consider him,
to our modern mother-worship. The dying
soldier on the battlefield thinks of his mother,
longs for her, not for his father. The trav
eller and exile dreams of his mother's care,
his mother's doughnuts. The pathos of the
popular tale to-day is in bringing the prodigal
back to his mother, not to his father. If the
original prodigal had a mother, she was prob
ably busy in cooking the fatted calf. If
to-day's prodigal has a father, he is merely
176
 The Centre of Reverence
engaged in paying for the veal. Our ten-
derest love, our deepest reverence, our fiercest
resentment of insult, all centre about the
mother to-day rather than about the father;
and this is a strong proof that the recognition
of woman's real power and place in life grow
upon us just as our minds grow able to per
ceive it. Nothing can ever exceed the truth
as to the value of the mother. Our instinct is
a right one, as all deep-seated social instincts
are; but about it has grown up a mass of
falsehoods and absurdities such as always tend
to confuse and impede the progress of great
truths.
As the main agent in reproduction, the
mother is most to be venerated on basic physi
ological grounds. As the main agent in de
veloping love, the great human condition, she
is the fountain of all our growth. As the
beginner of industry, she is again a source of
progress. As the first and final educator, she
outwardly moulds what she has inwardly
made; and, as she is the visible, tangible,
lovable, living type of all this, the being in
whose person is expressed the very sum of
good to the individual, it is no wonder that
our strongest, deepest, tenderest feelings clus
ter about the great word "mother."
Fully recognizing all this, it yet remains
177
 Women and Economics
open to us to turn the light of science and the
honest labor of thought upon this phase of
human life as upon any other; to lay aside our
feelings, and use our reason ; to discover if
even here we are justified in leaving the most
important work of individual life to the
methods of primitive instinct. Motherhood
is but a process of life, and open to study as
all processes of life are open. Among uncon
scious, early forms it fulfils its mission by a
simple instinct. In the consciousness and
complexity of human life it demands far more
numerous and varied forces for its right fulfil
ment. It is with us a conscious process, — a
process rife with consequences for good or
evil. With this voluntary power come new
responsibility and a need for new methods, — a
need not merely to consider whether or not we
will enter upon the duties of maternity, but
how best we can fulfil them.
Motherhood, like every other natural proc
ess, is to be measured by its results. It is
good or evil as it serves its purpose. Human
motherhood must be judged as it serves its
purpose to the human race. Primarily, its
purpose is to reproduce the race by reproduc
ing the individual ; secondarily, to improve
the race by improving the individual. The
mere office of reproduction is as well per-
178
 The Measure of Right Motherhood
formed by the laying of eggs to be posthu
mously hatched as by many years of exquisite
devotion ; but in the improvement of the
species we come to other requirements. The
functions of motherhood have been evolved as
naturally as the functions of nutrition, and
each stage of development has brought new
duties to the mother. The mother bird must
brood her young, the mother cow must suckle
them, the mother cat must hunt for them ; and,
in every varied service which the mother
gives, its value is to be measured by its effect
upon the young. To perform that which is
most good for the young of the species is the
measure of right motherhood, and that which
is most good for the young is what will help
them to a better maturity than that of their
parents. To leave in the world a creature
better than its parent, this is the purpose of
right motherhood.
In the human race this purpose is served
by two processes : first, by the simple individ
ual function of reproduction, of which all care
- and nursing are but an extension ; and, second,
by the complex social function of education.
This was primarily a maternal process, and
therefore individual; but it has long since be
come a racial rather than an individual func
tion, and bears no relation to sex or other
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 Women and Economics
personal limitation. The young of the human
race require for their best development not
only the love and care of the mother, but the
care and instruction of many besides their
mother. So largely is this true that it may be
! said in extreme terms that it would be better
for a child to-day to be left absolutely with
out mother or family of any sort, in the city
of Boston, for instance, than to be supplied
with a large and affectionate family and be
planted with them in Darkest Africa.
Human functions are race-functions, social
functions; and education is one of them. The
duty of the human mother, and the measure
of its right or wrong fulfilment, are to be
judged along these two main lines, reproduc
tion and education. As we have no species
above us with which to compare our mother
hood, we must measure by those below us.
We must show improvement upon them in this
function which we all hold in common.
Does the human mother succeed better than
others of her order, mammalia, in the repro
duction of the species? Does she bring forth
and rear her young more perfectly than lower
mothers? They, being less conscious, act
simply under instinct, mating in their season,
bringing forth young in their season, nursing,
guarding, defending as best they may; and
180
 " The Gates of Death "
they leave in the world behind them creatures
as good, or better, than their mothers. Of
wild animals we have few reliable statistics,
and of tame ones it is difficult to detach their
natural processes from our interference there
with. But in both the simple maintenance of
species shows that motherhood at least repro
duces fairly well; and in those we breed for
our advantage the wonderful possibilities of
race-development through this process are
made apparent. How do we, with the human
brain and the human conscience, rich in the
power and wisdom of our dominant race, — how
do we, as mothers, compare with our fore
runners ?
Human motherhood is more pathological
than any other, more morbid, defective, irreg
ular, diseased. Human childhood is similarly
pathological. We, as animals, are very in
ferior animals in this particular. When we
take credit to ourselves for the sublime devo
tion with which we face "the perils of mater
nity," and boast of "going down to the gates
of death" for our children, we should rather
take shame to ourselves for bringing these
perils upon both mother and child. The gates
of death? They are the gates of life to the
unborn ; and there is no death there save
what we, the mothers, by our unnatural lives,
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 Women and Economics
have brought upon our own children. Gates
of death, indeed, to the thousands of babies
late-born, prematurely born, misborn, and still
born for lack of right motherhood. In the
primal physical functions of maternity the
human female cannot show that her supposed
specialization to these uses has improved her
fulfilment of them, rather the opposite. The
more freely the human mother mingles in the
natural industries of a human creature, as in
the case of the savage woman, the peasant
woman, the working-woman everywhere who
is not overworked, the more rightly she fulfils
these functions.
The more absolutely woman is segregated
to sex-functions only, cut off from all eco
nomic use and made wholly dependent on the
sex-relation as means of livelihood, the more
pathological does her motherhood become.
The over-development of sex caused by her
economic dependence on the male reacts un
favorably upon her essential duties. She is too
female for perfect motherhood ! Her exces
sive specialization in the secondary sexual char
acteristics is a detrimental element in he
redity. Small, weak, soft, ill - proportioned
women do not tend to produce large, strong,
sturdy, well-made men or women. When
Frederic the Great wanted grenadiers of great
182
 A Loss of Efficiency
size, he married big men to big women, — not
to little ones. The female segregated to the
uses of sex alone naturally deteriorates in
racial development, and naturally transmits
that deterioration to her offspring. The
human mother, in the processes of reproduc
tion, shows no gain in efficiency over the
lower animals, but rather a loss, and so far
presents no evidence to prove that her special
ization to sex is of any advantage to her young.
The mother of a dead baby or the baby of a
dead mother; the sick baby, the crooked baby,
the idiot baby; the exhausted, nervous, pre
maturely aged mother, — these are not uncom
mon among us; and they do not show much
progress in our motherhood.
Since we cannot justify the human method
of maternity in the physical processes of re
production, can we prove its advantages in the
other branch, education? Though the mother
be sickly and the child the same, will not her
loving care more than make up for it? Will
not the tender devotion of the mother, and
her unflagging attendance upon the child, ren
der human motherhood sufficiently successful
in comparison with that of other species to
justify our peculiar method ? We must now
show that our motherhood, in its usually ac
cepted sense, the "care" of the child (more
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 Women and Economics
accurately described as education), is of a su
perior nature.
Here, again, we lack the benefit of compari
son. No other animal species is required to
care for its young so long, to teach it so much.
So far as they have it to do, they do it well.
The hen with her brood is an accepted model
of motherhood in this respect. She not only
lays eggs and hatches them, but educates and
protects her young so far as it is necessary.
But beyond such simple uses as this we have
no standard of comparison for educative
motherhood. We can only study it among
ourselves, comparing the child left mother
less with the child mothered, the child with
a mother and nothing else with the child
whose mother is helped by servants and
teachers, the child with what we recognize as
a superior mother to the child with an inferior
mother. This last distinction, a comparison
between mothers, is of great value. We have
tacitly formulated a certain vague standard of
human motherhood, and loosely apply it, es
pecially in the epithets "natural" and "un
natural " mother.
But these terms again show how prone we
still are to consider the whole field of mater
nal action as one of instinct rather than of
reason, as a function rather than a service.
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 Motherhood in Education
We do have a standard, however, loose and
vague as it is; and even by that standard it is
painful to see how many human mothers fail.
Ask yourselves honestly how many of the
mothers whose action toward their children
confronts you in street and shop and car and
boat, in hotel and boarding-house and neigh
boring yard, — how many call forth favorable
comment compared with those you judge un
favorably? Consider not the rosy ideal of
motherhood you have in your mind, but the
coarse, hard facts of motherhood as you see
them, and hear them, in daily life.
Motherhood in its fulfilment of educational
duty can be measured only by its effects. If
we take for a standard the noble men and
women whose fine physique and character we
so fondly attribute to " a devoted mother,"
what are we to say of the motherhood which
has filled the world with the ignoble men and
women, of depraved physique and character?
If the good mother makes the good man, how
about the bad ones? When we see great men
and women, we give credit to their mothers.
When we see inferior men and women, — and
that is a common circumstance, — no one pre
sumes to question the motherhood which has
produced them. When it comes to congenital
criminality, we are beginning to murmur some
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 Women and Economics
thing about "heredity"; and, to meet gross
national ignorance, we do demand a better sys
tem of education. But no one presumes to
suggest that the mothering of mankind could
be improved upon ; and yet there is where the
responsibility really lies. If our human
method of reproduction is defective, let the
mother answer. She is the main factor in
reproduction. If our human method of educa
tion is defective, let the mother answer. She
is the main factor in education.
To this it is bitterly objected that such a
claim omits the father and his responsibility.
When the mother of the world is in her right
place and doing her full duty, she will have no
ground of complaint against the father. In
the first place, she will make better men. In
the second, she will hold herself socially re
sponsible for the choice of a right father for
her children. In the third place, as an eco
nomic free agent, she will do half duty in
providing for the child. Men who are not
equal to good fatherhood under such conditions
will have no chance to become fathers, and will
die with general pity instead of living with
general condemnation. In his position, doing
all the world's work, all the father's, and half
the mother's, man has made better shift to
achieve the impossible than woman has in
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 The Mother's Duty
hers. She has been supposed to have no work
or care on earth save as mother. She has
really had the work of the mother and that of
the world's house service besides. But she
has surely had as much time and strength to
give to motherhood as man to fatherhood ; and
not until she can show that the children of the
world are as well mothered as they are well
fed can she cast on him the blame for our
general deficiency.
There is no personal blame to be laid on
either party. The sexuo-economic relation
has its inevitable ill-effects on both mother
hood and fatherhood. But it is to the mother
that the appeal must be made to change this
injurious relation. Having the deeper sense
of duty to the young, the larger love, she must
come to feel how her false position hurts her
motherhood, and for her children's sake break
away from it. Of man and his fatherhood
she can make what she will.
The duty of the mother is first to produce
children as good as or better than herself ; to
hand down the constitution and character of
those behind her the better for her steward
ship; to build up and improve the human race
through her enormous power as mother; to
make better people. This being done, it is
then the duty of the mother, the human
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 Women and Economics
mother, so to educate her children as to com
plete what bearing and nursing have only
begun. She carries the child nine months in
her body, two years in her arms, and as long as
she lives in her heart and mind. The educa
tion of the young is a tremendous factor in
human reproduction. A right motherhood
should be able to fulfil this great function per
fectly. It should understand with an ever
growing power the best methods of developing,
strengthening, and directing the child's facul
ties of body and mind, so that each genera
tion, reaching maturity, would start clear of
the last, and show a finer, fuller growth, both
physically and mentally, than the preceding.
That humanity does slowly improve is not
here denied; but, granting our gradual im
provement, is it all that we could make?
And is the gain due to a commensurate im
provement in motherhood ?
To both we must say no. When we see how
some families improve, while others deteri
orate, and how uncertain and irregular is such
improvement as appears, we know that we
could make better progress if all children had
the same rich endowment and wise care that
some receive. And, when we see how much
of our improvement is due to gains made in
hygienic knowledge, in public provision for
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 Motherhood and Racial Advance
education and sanitary regulation, none of
which has been accomplished by mothers, we
are forced to see that whatever advance the
race has made is not exclusively attributable
to motherhood. The human mother does less
for her young, both absolutely and proportion
ately, than any kind of mother on earth. She
does not obtain food for them, nor covering,
nor shelter, nor protection, nor defence. She
does not educate them beyond the personal
habits required in the family circle and in her
limited range of social life. The necessary
knowledge of the world, so indispensable to
every human being, she cannot give, because
she does not possess it. All this provision
and education are given by other hands and
brains than hers. Neither does the amount of
physical care and labor bestowed on the child
by its mother warrant her claims to superi
ority in motherhood : this is but a part of our
idealism of the subject.
The poor man's wife has far too much of
other work to do to spend all her time in
waiting on her children. The rich man's wife
could do it, but does not, partly because she
hires some one to do it for her, and partly
because she, too, has other duties to occupy
her time. Only in isolated cases do we find
a mother deputing all other service to others,
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 Women and Economics
and concentrating her energies on feeding,
clothing, washing, dressing, and, as far as
may be, educating her own child. When
such cases are found, it remains to be shown
that the child so reared is proportionately ben
efited by this unremittent devotion of its
mother. On the contrary, the best service
and education a child can receive involve the
accumulated knowledge and exchanged activi
ties of thousands upon thousands besides his
mother, — the fathers of the race.
There does not appear, in the care and edu
cation of the child as given by the mother,
any special superiority in human maternity.
Measuring woman first in direct comparison
of her reproductive processes with those of
other animals, she does not fulfil this function
so easily or so well as they. Measuring her
educative processes by inter-personal com
parison, the few admittedly able mothers
with the many painfully unable ones, she
seems more lacking, if possible, than in the
other branch. The gain in human education
thus far has not been acquired or distributed
through the mother, but through men and
single women ; and there is nothing in the
achievements of human motherhood to prove
that it is for the advantage of the race to have
women give all their time to it. Giving all
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 " The Maternal Sacrifice "
their time to it does not improve it either in
quantity or quality. The woman who works is
usually a better reproducer than the woman
who does not. And the woman who does not
work is not proportionately a better educator.
An extra-terrestrial sociologist, studying
human life and hearing for the first time of
our so-called "maternal sacrifice" as a means
of benefiting the species, might be touched
and impressed by the idea. "How beauti
ful!" he would say. "How exquisitely pa
thetic and tender! One-half of humanity
surrendering all other human interests and
activities to concentrate its time, strength,
and devotion upon the functions of maternity !
To bear and rear the majestic race to which
they can never fully belong ! To live vicari
ously forever, through their sons, the daugh
ters being only another vicarious link! What
a supreme and magnificent martyrdom ! " And
he would direct his researches toward discover
ing what system was used to develope and per
fect this sublime consecration of half the race
to the perpetuation of the other half. He
would view with intense and pathetic interest
the endless procession of girls, born human as
their brothers were, but marked down at once
as "female — abortive type — only use to pro
duce males." He would expect to see this
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 Women and Economics
"sex sacrificed to reproductive necessities,"
yet gifted with human consciousness and in
telligence, rise grandly to the occasion, and
strive to fit itself in every way for its high
office. He would expect to find society com
miserating the sacrifice, and honoring above
all the glorious creature whose life was to be
sunk utterly in the lives of others, and using
every force properly to rear and fully to fit
these functionaries for their noble office. Alas
for the extra-terrestrial sociologist and his
natural expectations ! After exhaustive study,
finding nothing of these things, he would
return to Mars or Saturn or wherever he came
from, marvelling within himself at the vast-
ness of the human paradox.
If the position of woman is to be justified
by the doctrine of maternal sacrifice, surely
society, or the individual, or both, would
make some preparation for it. No such prep
aration is made. Society recognizes no such
function. Premiums have been sometimes
paid for large numbers of children, but they
were paid to the fathers of them. The elab
orate social machinery which constitutes our
universal marriage market has no department
to assist or advance motherhood. On the
contrary, it is directly inimical to it, so that
in our society life motherhood means direct
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 The Untrained Sex
loss, and is avoided by the social devotee.
And the individual ? Surely here right provi
sion will be made. Young women, glorying
in their prospective duties, their sacred and
inalienable office, their great sex-martyrdom
to race-advantage, will be found solemnly
preparing for this work. What do we find?
We find our young women reared in an atti
tude which is absolutely unconscious of and
often injurious to their coming motherhood, —
an irresponsible, indifferent, ignorant class of
beings, so far as motherhood is concerned.
They are fitted to attract the other sex for
economic uses or, at most, for mutual gratifi
cation, but not for motherhood. They are
reared in unbroken ignorance of their supposed
principal duties, knowing nothing of these
duties till they enter upon them.
This is as though all men were to be sol
diers with the fate of nations in their hands;
and no man told or taught a word of war or mil
itary service until he entered the battle-field !
The education of young women has no de
partment of maternity. It is considered in
delicate to give this consecrated functionary
any previous knowledge of her sacred duties.
This most important and wonderful of human
functions is left from age to age in the hands
of absolutely untaught women. It is tacitly
*93
 Women and Economics
supposed to be fulfilled by the mysterious
working of what we call "the divine instinct
of maternity." Maternal instinct is a very
respectable and useful instinct common to
most animals. It is "divine" and "holy"
only as all the laws of nature are divine and
holy; and it is such only when it works to
the right fulfilment of its use. If the race-
preservative processes are to be held more
sacred than the self-preservative processes, we
must admit all the functions and faculties of
reproduction to the same degree of reverence,
— the passion of the male for the female as
well as the passion of the mother for her
young. And if, still further, we are to honor
the race-preservative processes most in their
highest and latest development, which is the
only comparison to be made on a natural basis,
we should place the great, disinterested, social
function of education far above the second-
selfishness of individual maternal functions.
Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is
unworthy of our superstitious reverence. It
should be measured only as a means to an
end, and valued in proportion to its efficacy.
Among animals, which have but a low de
gree of intelligence, instinct is at its height,
and works well. Among savages, still in
capable of much intellectual development, in-
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 Instinct and Intelligence
stinct holds large place. The mother beast
can and does take all the care of her young by
instinct; the mother savage, nearly all, sup
plemented by the tribal traditions, the educa
tive influences of association, and some direct
instruction. As humanity advances, growing
more complex and varied, and as human intel
ligence advances to keep pace with new func
tions and new needs, instinct decreases in
value. The human creature prospers and pro
gresses not by virtue of his animal instinct,
but by the wisdom and force of a cultivated
intelligence and will, with which to guide his
action and to control and modify the very in
stincts which used to govern him.
The human female, denied the enlarged
activities which have developed intelligence in
man, denied the education of the will which
only comes by freedom and power, has main
tained the rudimentary forces of instinct to the
present day. With her extreme modification
to sex, this faculty of instinct runs mainly
along sex-lines, and finds fullest vent in the
processes of maternity, where it has held un
broken sway. So the children of humanity
are born into the arms of an endless succession
of untrained mothers, who bring to the care
and teaching of their children neither educa
tion for that wonderful work nor experience
i95
 Women and Economics
therein : they bring merely the intense accu
mulated force of a brute instinct, — the blind
devoted passion of the mother for the child.
Maternal love is an enormous force, but force
needs direction. Simply to love the child
does not serve him unless specific acts of ser
vice express this love. What these acts of
service are and how they are performed make
or mar his life forever.
Observe the futility of unaided maternal
love and instinct in the simple act of feeding
the child. Belonging to order mammalia, the
human mother has an instinctive desire to
suckle her young. (Some ultra-civilized have
lost even that.) But this instinct has not
taught her such habits of life as insure her
ability to fulfil this natural function. Failing
in the natural method, of what further use is
instinct in the nourishment of the child ? Can
maternal instinct discriminate between Mar
row's Food and Bridge's Food, Hayrick's
Food and Pestle's Food, Pennywhistle's Ster
ilized Milk, and all the other infants' foods
which are prepared and put upon the market
by-— men ! These are not prepared by instinct,
maternal or paternal, but by chemical analysis
and physiological study; and their effect is
observed and the diet varied by physicians,
who do not do their work by instinct, either.
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 A Criminal Failure
If the bottle-baby survive the loss of
mother's milk, when he comes to the table,
does maternal instinct suffice then to adminis
ter a proper diet for young children ? Let the
doctor and the undertaker answer. The wide
and varied field of masculine activity in the
interests of little children, from the peculiar
human phenomenon of masculine assistance in
parturition (there is one animal, the obstetric
frog, where it also appears) to the manufacture
of articles for feeding, clothing, protecting,
amusing, and educating the baby, goes to
show the utter inadequacy of maternal instinct
in the human female. Another thing it shows
also, — the criminal failure of that human fe
male to supply by intelligent effort what in
stinct can no longer accomplish. For a rea
soning, conscious being deliberately to under
take the responsibility of maintaining human
life without making due preparation for the
task is more than carelessness.
Before a man enters a trade, art, or profes
sion, he studies it. He qualifies himself for
the duties he is to undertake. He would be
held a presuming impostor if he engaged in
work he was not fitted to do, and his failure
would mark him instantly with ridicule and
reproach. In the more important professions,
especially in those dealing with what we call
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 Women and Economics
"matters of life and death," the shipmaster or
pilot, doctor or druggist, is required not only
to study his business, but to pass an examina
tion under those who have already become past
masters, and obtain a certificate or a diploma
or some credential to show that he is fit to
be intrusted with the direct responsibility for
human life.
Women enter a position which gives into
their hands direct responsibility for the life or
death of the whole human race with neither
study nor experience, with no shadow of prep
aration or guarantee of capability. So far as
they give it a thought, they fondly imagine
that this mysterious "maternal instinct" will
see them through. Instruction, if needed,
they will pick up when the time comes: expe
rience they will acquire as the children appear.
"I guess I know how to bring up children!"
cried the resentful old lady who was being
advised: "I've buried seven!" The record
of untrained instinct as a maternal faculty in
the human race is to be read on the rows and
rows of little gravestones which crowd our
cemeteries. The experience gained by prac
tising on the child is frequently buried with it.
No, the maternal sacrifice theory will not
bear examination. As a sex specialized to
reproduction, giving up all personal activity,
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 An Argument without Basis
all honest independence, all useful and pro
gressive economic service for her glorious con
secration to the uses of maternity, the human
female has little to show in the way of results
which can justify her position. Neither the
enormous percentage of children lost by death
nor the low average health of those who sur
vive, neither physical nor mental progress, give
any proof of race advantage from the maternal
sacrifice.

199
 Although the superior maternity of the
human female is so difficult to prove, so open
to heavy charges of inadequacy, so erratic and
pathological, there remain intact our devout
belief in it, our reverence, our unshaken con
viction that it is the one perfect thing. The
facts as to our carelessness and ignorance in
the fulfilment of this function are undeniable:
the rate of infant mortality and children's dis
eases, — those classed by physicians as "pre
ventable diseases," namely, — these mortal
errors and failures confront us everywhere ; but
we ignore them all, or attribute them to any
and every reason save deficient motherhood.
One of the most frequent excuses, among
those who have gone far enough to admit that
excuse is needed, is that the father is to blame
for these conditions. His vices, it is alleged,
weaken the constitution of the race. His
failure to provide prevents the mother from
giving the proper care. He is held responsi
ble for what evil we see in our children; and
still we worship the mother for the physical
process of bearing a child, — now considered
an act of heroism, — and for the "devotion"
with which she clings to it afterward, irre
spective of the wisdom or effectiveness of this
200
 Fixing the Responsibility
devotion. A healthy and independent mother
hood would no more think of taking credit to
itself for the right fulfilment of its natural
functions than would a cat for bringing forth
her kittens or a sheep her lambs. The com
mon fact that the women of the lower social
grades bear more children and bear them more
easily than the women of higher classes ought
to give pause to this ridiculous assumption,
but it does not. The more women weaken
themselves and their offspring, and imperil
their very lives by anti-maternal habits, the
more difficulty, danger, and expense are asso
ciated with this natural process, the more do
women solemnly take credit to themselves and
receive it from others for the glorious self-
sacrifice with which they risk their lives (and
their babies' lives!) for the preservation of
humanity. As to the father and his share in
the evil results, nothing that he has ever done
or can do removes from motherhood its primal
responsibility.
Suppose the female of some other species,
ignoring her racial duty of right selection,
should mate with mangy, toothless cripples, —
if there were such among her kind, — and so
produce weak, malformed young, and help
exterminate her race. Should she then blame
him for the result? An entire sex, sacredly
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 Women and Economics
set apart for maternal functions so superior as
to justify their lack of economic usefulness,
should in the course of ages have learned how
to select proper fathers. If the only way in
which the human mother can feed and guard
her children is through another person, a pro
vider and protector on whom their lives and
safety must depend, what natural, social, or
moral excuse has she for not choosing a good
one?
But how can a young girl know a good pro
spective father, we ask. That she is not so
educated as to know proves her unfitness for
her great task. That she does not think or care
proves her dishonorable indifference to her great
duty. She can in no way shirk the responsibility
for criminal carelessness in choosing a father for
her children, unless indeed there were no choice,
— no good men left on earth. Moreover, we are
not obliged to leave this crucial choice in the
hands of young girls. Motherhood is the work of
grown women, not of half-children ; and, when
we honestly care as much for motherhood as we
pretend, we shall train the woman for her duty,
not the girl for her guileless manoeuvres to
secure a husband. We talk about the noble
duties of the mother, but our maidens are edu
cated for economically successful marriage.
Leaving this field of maternal duty through
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 The Sanctuary of the Home
sex-selection, there remains the far larger ground
to which the popular mind flees in triumph : that
the later work of the mother proves the suc
cess of our racial division of labor on sex-
lines, that in the care of the child, the education
of the child, the beautiful life of the home
and family, it is shown how well our system
works. This is the last stronghold. Solidly in
trenched herein sits popular thought, safe in
the sacred precincts of the home. " Every man's
home is his castle," is the common saying. The
windows are shut to keep out the air. The cur
tains are down to keep out the light. The doors
are barred to keep out the stranger. Within are
the hearth fire and its gentle priestess, the
initial combination of human life,— the family
in the home.
Our thrones have been emptied, and turned
into mere chairs for passing presidents. Our
churches have been opened to the light of
modern life, and the odor of sanctity has been
freshened with sweet sunny air. We can see
room for change in these old sanctuaries, but
none in the sanctuary of the home. And this
temple, with its rights, is so closely interwound
with the services of subject woman, its altar
so demands her ceaseless sacrifices, that we find
it impossible to conceive of any other basis of
human living. We are chilled to the heart's
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 Women and Economics
core by the fear of losing any of these ancient
and hallowed associations. Without this blessed
background of all our memories and foreground
of all our hopes, life seems empty indeed. In
homes we were all born. In homes we all die
or hope to die. In homes we all live or want to
live. For homes we all labor, in them or out of
them. The home is the centre and circumfer
ence, the start and the finish, of most of our
lives. We love it with a love older than the
human race. We reverence it with the blind
obeisance of those crouching centuries when its
cult began. We cling to it with the tenacity
of every inmost, oldest instinct of our animal
natures, and with the enthusiasm of every latest
word in the unbroken chant of adoration which
we have sung to it since first we learned to
praise.
And since we hold that our home life, just as
we have it, is the best thing on earth, and that
our home life plainly demands one whole woman
at the least to each home, and usually more, it
follows that anything which offers to change
the position of woman threatens to " under
mine the home," "strikes at the root of the
family," and we will none of it. If, in honest
endeavor to keep up to the modern standard of
free thought and free speech, we do listen,—
turning from our idol for a moment, and saying
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 The Castle Keep
to the daring iconoclast, "Come, show us any
thing better!" — with what unlimited derision
do we greet his proposed substitute ! Yet every
where about us to-day this inner tower, this
castle keep of vanishing tradition, is becoming
more difficult to defend or even to keep in repair.
We buttress it anew with every generation ; we
love its very cracks and crumbling corners ; we
hang and drape it with endless decorations ;
we hide the looming dangers overhead with
fresh clouds of incense ; and we demand of
the would-be repairers and rebuilders that they
prove to us the desirability of their wild plans
before they lift a hammer. But, when they
show their plans, we laugh them to scorn.
It is a difficult case to meet. To call atten
tion to existing conditions and to establish the
relation between them and existing phenomena
is one thing. To point out how a change of
condition will produce new phenomena, and how
these phenomena will benefit us, is quite another.
Yet this is the task that is always involved in
the conscious progress of the human race.
While that progress was unconscious, it was
enough that certain individuals and classes
gradually entered into new relations in process
of social evolution, and that they forced their
conditions upon the reluctant conservatives
who failed so to evolve.
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 Women and Economics
In the quite recent passage from the feudal
to the monarchical system, no time was wasted
in the endeavor to persuade and convince the
headstrong barons of their national duty. The
growing power of the king struggled with and
survived the lessening power of the barons,—
that was all. Had a book been written then to
urge the change, it could have proved clearly
enough the evils of the feudal system ; but, when
it tried to portray the glories of national peace
and power under a single monarch, it would
have had small weight. National peace and
power, which had been hitherto non-existent,
would have failed to appeal to the sturdy lords
of the soil, whose only idea of peace and power
was to sit down and rest on their prostrate
neighbors. Had their strength run in the line
of argument, they would have scouted the
" should be's " and " will be's " of the author,
and defied him to prove that the new condition
would be developed by the new processes ; and,
indeed, he would have found it hard.
So to-day, in questioning the economic status
of woman and her position in the home and in
the family, it is far easier to prove present evil
than future good. Yet this is what is most ex-
actingly demanded. It is required of the advo
cate of social reform not only that he convince
the contented followers of the present system
206
 The Duty of Life
of its wrong, but that he prove to their satis
faction the superiority of some other system.
This, in the nature of the case, is impossible.
When people are contented, you cannot make
them feel that what is is wrong, or that some
thing else might be better. Even the discon
tented are far more willing to refer their troubles
to some personal factor than to admit that their
condition as a whole inevitably produces the gen
eral trouble in which they share. Even if con
vinced that a change of condition will remove
the source of injury, they, like the fox with the
swarm of flies, fear to be disturbed, lest their
last state be worse than their first. In the face
of this inevitable difficulty, however, the task
must be undertaken.
Two things let us premise and agree upon be
fore starting. First, that the duty of human
life is progress, development ; that we are here,
not merely to live, but to grow,— not to be
content with lean savagery or fat barbarism or
sordid semi-civilization, but to toil on through
the centuries, and build up the ever-nobler forms
of life toward which social evolution tends. If
this is not believed, if any hold that to keep alive
and reproduce the species is the limit of our
human duty, then they need look no farther
here. That aim can be attained, and has been
attained, for irrefutable centuries, through many
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 Women and Economics
forms of sex-relation and of economic relation.
Human beings have lived and brought up chil
dren as good as their parents in free pro
miscuity and laziness, in forced polygamy and
slavery, in willing polyandry and industry, and in
monogamy plus prostitution and manufactures.
Just to live and bear children does not prove the
relative superiority of any system, either in sex
or economics. But, when we believe that life
means progress, then each succeeding form of
sex-relation or economic relation is to be meas
ured by its effect on that progress.
It may be necessary here to agree on a defini
tion of human progress. According to the gen
eral law of organic evolution, it may be defined as
follows : such progress in the individual and
in his social relations as shall maintain him in
health and happiness and increase the organic
development of society.
If we accept such a definition of human prog
ress, if we agree that progress is the duty of
society, and that all social institutions are to be
measured by it, we may proceed to our second
premise. This is not to be ranked with the
first in importance : it should be too commonly
understood and accepted to be dragged into such
a prominent position. But it is not commonly
understood and accepted. In fact, it is mis
understood and denied to so general a degree
208
 Things Natural and Things Right
that no apology is needed for insisting on it
here.
The second premise is this : our enjoyment of
a thing does not prove that it is right. Even
our love, admiration, and reverence for a thing
does not prove that it is right ; and, even from
an evolutionary point of view, our belief that a
thing is " natural " does not prove that it is right.
A thing may be right in one stage of evolution
which becomes wrong in another. For instance,
promiscuity is "natural"; the human animal,
like many others, is quite easily inclined thereto.
Monogamy is proven right by social evolution :
it is the best way to carry on the human race
in social relation ; but it is not yet as " natural "
as could be desired.
So, to return to our second premise, which is
admittedly rather a large one, to show that any
custom or status of ours is " natural " and en
joyable does not prove that it is right. It does
not of course prevent its being right. Right
things may be enjoyed, may be loved, admired,
and reverenced, may even be " natural " ; but
so may wrong things. Even that subhuman
faculty called instinct is only a true guide to
conduct when the conditions are present which
originally developed that instinct. The instinct
that makes a modern house-dog turn around
three times before he lies down is not worthy of
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 Women and Economics
much admiration to-day, though it served its
purpose on the grassy plains and in the leafy
hollows where it was formed. If these two
premises are granted, that the duty of human
life is progress, and that a given condition is
not necessarily right because we like it, we may
go on.
Is our present method of home life, based on
the economic dependence of woman in the sex-
relation, the best calculated to maintain the in
dividual in health and happiness, and develope in
him the higher social faculties ? The individual
is not maintained in health and happiness,— that
is visible to all ; and how little he is developed
in social relation is shown in the jarring irregu
larity and wastefulness of our present economic
system.
Economic independence for women neces
sarily involves a change in the home and family
relation. But, if that change is for the advantage
of individual and race, we need not fear it. It
does not involve a change in the marriage rela
tion except in withdrawing the element of
economic dependence, nor in the relation of
mother to child save to improve it. But it does
involve the exercise of human faculty in women,
in social service and exchange rather than in
domestic service solely. This will of course re
quire the introduction of some other form of
 The New Order
living than that which now obtains. It will
render impossible the present method of feed
ing the world by means of millions of private
servants, and bringing up children by the same
hand.
It is a melancholy fact that the vast majority
of our children are reared and trained by do
mestic servants,— generally their mothers, to be
sure, but domestic servants by trade. To be
come a producer, a factor in the economic activi
ties of the world, must perforce interfere with
woman's present status as a private servant.
House mistress she may still be, in the sense of
owning and ordering her home, but housekeeper
or house-servant she may not be — and be any
thing else. Her position as mother will alter,
too. Mother in the sense of bearer and rearer
of noble children she will be, as the closest and
dearest, the one most honored and best loved ;
but mother in the sense of exclusive individual
nursery-maid and nursery-governess she may
not be — and be anything else.
It is precisely here that the world calls a halt.
Nothing, it says, can be better than our homes
with their fair priestesses. Nothing can be
better for children than the hourly care of their
own mothers. It is the position of the feudal
baron over again. We can perhaps be made to
see the evils of existing conditions : we cannot
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 Women and Economics
be made to see any possibility of improving on
them. Nevertheless, it may be tried.
Let us deliberately set ourselves to imagine,
by sheer muscular effort as it were, a better
kind of motherhood than that of the private
nursery governess, a better way to feed and
clean and clothe the world than by the private
house servant.
Here is felt the need of our second premise ;
for we enjoy things as they are (that is, some
of us do, sometimes, and the rest of us think
that we do). We love, admire, and reverence
them ; and it is "natural " to have them so. If
it can be shown that human progress is better
served by other methods, then other methods will
be proven right ; and we must grow to enjoy and
honor them as fast as we can, and in due course
of time we shall find them natural. If it can be
shown that our babies would be better off if
part of their time was passed in other care
than their mothers', then such other care would
be right ; and it would be the duty of mother
hood to provide it. If it can be shown that we
could all be better provided for in our personal
needs of nutrition, cleanliness, warmth, shelter,
privacy, by some other method than that which
requires the labor of one woman or more to each
family, then it would be the duty of womanhood
to find such method and to practise it.
 Marriage and the Family
Perhaps it is worth while to examine the nat
ure of our feeling toward that social institution
called "the family," and the probable effect
upon it of the change in woman's economic
status.
Marriage and " the family " are two institu
tions, not one, as is commonly supposed. We
confuse the natural result of marriage in chil
dren, common to all forms of sex-union, with
the family,— a purely social phenomenon. Mar
riage is a form of sex-union recognized and
sanctioned by society. It is a relation between
two or more persons, according to the custom
of the country, and involves mutual obligations.
Although made by us an economic relation, it is
not essentially so, and will exist in much higher
fulfilment after the economic phase is out
grown.
The family is a social group, an entity, a little
state. It holds an important place in the evolu
tion of society quite aside from its connection
with marriage. There was a time when the
family was the highest form of social relation,—
indeed, the only form of social relation,— when
to the minds of pastoral, patriarchal tribes there
was no conception so large as "my country,"
no State, no nation. There was only a great
land spotted with families, each family its own
little world, of which Grandpa was priest and
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 Women and Economics
king. The family was a social unit. Its inter
ests were common to its members, and inimical
to those of other families. It moved over the
earth, following its food supply, and fighting
occasionally with stranger families for the grass
or water on which it depended. Indissoluble
common interests are what make organic union,
and those interests long rested on blood relation
ship.
While the human individual was best fed and
guarded by the family, and so required the
prompt, correlative action of all the members
of that family, naturally the family must have
a head ; and that form of government known
as the patriarchal was produced. The natural
family relation, as seen in parents and young of
other species, or in ourselves in later forms, in
volves no such governmental development : that
is a feature of the family as a social entity
alone.
One of the essentials of the patriarchal family
life was polygamy, and not only polygamy,
but open concubinage, and a woman slavery
which was almost the same thing. The highest
period of the family as a social institution was a
very low period for marriage as a social institu
tion, — a period, in fact, when marriage was but
partially evolved from the early promiscuity of the
primitive savage. The family seems indeed to
214
 A Disappearing Survival
be a gradually disappearing survival of the still
looser unit of the horde, which again is more
closely allied to the band or pack of gregarious
carnivora than to an organic social relation.
A loose, promiscuous group of animals is not a
tribe ; and the most primitive savage groups
seem to have been no more than this.
The tribe in its true form follows the family,
— is a natural extension of it, and derives its es
sential ties from the same relationship. These
social forms, too, are closely related to economic
conditions. The horde was the hunting unit ;
the family, and later the tribe, the pastoral unit.
Agriculture and its resultant, commerce and
manufacture, gradually weaken these crude blood
ties, and establish the social relationship which
constitutes the State. Before the pastoral era
the family held no important position, and since
that era it has gradually declined. With social
progress we find human relations resting less
and less on a personal and sex basis, and more
and more on general economic independence.
As individuals have become more highly special
ized, they have made possible a higher form of
marriage.
| The family is a decreasing survival of the ear
liest grouping known to man. Marriage is an
increasing development of high social life, not
fully evolved. So far from being identical with
"5
 Women and Economics
the family, it improves and strengthens in in
verse ratio to the family, as is easily seen by the
broad contrast between the marriage relations of
Jacob and the unquenchable demand for lifelong
single mating that grows in our hearts to-day.
There was no conception of marriage as a per
sonal union for life of two well-matched individ
uals during the patriarchal era. Wives were val
ued merely for child-bearing. The family needed
numbers of its own blood, especially males ; and
the man-child was the price of favor to women
then. It was but a few degrees beyond the
horde, not yet become a tribe in the full sense.
Its bonds of union were of the loosest,— merely
common paternity, with a miscellaneous mater
nity of inimical interests. Such a basis forever
forbade any high individualization, and high indi
vidualization with its demands for a higher mar
riage forbids any numerical importance to the
family. Marriage has risen and developed in
social importance as the family has sunk and
decreased.
It is most interesting to note that, under the
comparatively similar conditions of the settle
ment of Utah, the numerical strength and
easily handled common interests of many people
under one head, which distinguish the polyga
mous family, were found useful factors in that
great pioneering enterprise. In the further de-
216
 The Development of Marriage
velopment of society a relation of individuals
more fluent, subtle, and extensive was needed.
The family as a social unit makes a ponderous
body of somewhat irreconcilable constituents, re
quiring a sort of military rule to make it work
at all ; and it is only useful while the ends to be
attained are of a simple nature, and allow of the
slowest accomplishment. It is easy to see the
family extending to the tribe by its own physical
increase ; and, similarly, the father hardening
into the chief, under the necessities of larger
growth. Then, as the steadily enlarging forces
of national unity make the chief an outgrown
name and the tribe an outgrown form, the
family dwindles to a monogamic basis, as the
higher needs of the sex-relation become differ
entiated from the more primitive economic
necessities of the family.
And now, further, when our still developing
social needs call for an ever-increasing delicacy
and freedom in the inter-service and common
service of individuals, we find that even what
economic unity remains to the family is being
rapidly eliminated. As the economic relation
becomes rudimentary and disappears, the sex-
relation asserts itself more purely ; and the de
mand in the world to-day for a higher and nobler
sex-union is as sharply defined as the growing
objection to the existing economic union.
217
 Women and Economics
Strange as it may seem to us, so long accus
tomed to confound the two, it is precisely the
outgrown relics of a previously valuable family
relation which so painfully retard the higher
development of the monogamic marriage relation.
Each generation of young men and women
comes to the formation of sex-union with higher
and higher demands for a true marriage, with
ever-growing needs for companionship. Each
generation of men and women need and ask
more of each other. A woman is no longer
content and grateful to have " a kind husband " :
a man is no longer content with a patient Gri-
selda ; and, as all men and women, in marrying,
revert to the economic status of the earlier
family, they come under conditions which
steadily tend to lower the standard of their
mutual love, and make of the average marriage
only a sort of compromise, borne with varying
ease or difficulty according to the good breeding
and loving-kindness of the parties concerned.
This is not necessarily, to their conscious knowl
edge, an "unhappy marriage." It is as happy
as those they see about them, as happy perhaps
as we resignedly expect " on earth" ; and in
heaven we do not expect marriages. But it is
not what they looked forward to when they
were young.
When two young people love each other, in
218
 Love's Young Dream
the long hours which are never long enough for
them to be together in, do they dwell in ecstatic
forecast on the duties of housekeeping ? They
do not. They dwell on the pleasure of having
a home, in which they can be " at last alone " ;
on the opportunity of enjoying each other's so
ciety ; and, always, on what they will do to
gether. To act with those we love,— to walk
together, work together, read together, paint,
write, sing, anything you please, so that it be
together,— that is what love looks forward to.
Human love, as it rises to an ever higher
grade, looks more and more for such companion
ship. But the economic status of marriage
rudely breaks in upon love's young dream. On
the economic side, apart from all the sweetness
and truth of the sex-relation, the woman in mar
rying becomes the house-servant, or at least the
housekeeper, of the man. Of the world we may
say that the intimate personal necessities of the
human animal are ministered to by woman.
Married lovers do not work together. They
may, if they have time, rest together : they may,
if they can, play together ; but they do not make
beds and sweep and cook together, and they do
not go down town to the office together. They
are economically on entirely different social
planes, and these constitute a bar to any higher,
truer union than such as we see about us.
 Women and Economics
Marriage is not perfect unless it is between
class equals. There is no equality in class be
tween those who do their share in the world's
work in the largest, newest, highest ways and
those who do theirs in the smallest, oldest, low
est ways.
Granting squarely that it is the business of
women to make the home life of the world true,
healthful, and beautiful, the economically de
pendent woman does not do this, and never can.
The economically independent woman can and
will. As the family is by no means identical
with marriage, so is the home by no means
identical with either.
A home is a permanent dwelling-place,
whether for one, two, forty, or a thousand, for
a pair, a flock, or a swarm. The hive is the
home of the bees as literally and absolutely as
the nest is the home of mating birds in their
season. Home and the love of it may dwindle
to the one chamber of the bachelor or spread
to the span of a continent, when the returning
traveller sees land and calls it " home." There
is no sweeter word, there is no dearer fact, no
feeling closer to the human heart than this.
On close analysis, what are the bases of our
feelings in this connection ? and what are their
supporting facts ? Far down below humanity,
where " the foxes have holes, and the birds of the
 The Consciousness of Home
air have nests," there begins the deep home
feeling. Maternal instinct seeks a place to
shelter the defenceless young, while the mother
goes abroad to search for food. The first sharp
impressions of infancy are associated with the
sheltering walls of home, be it the swinging
cradle in the branches, the soft dark hollow in
the trunk of a tree, or the cave with its hidden
lair. A place to be safe in ; a place to be
warm and dry in ; a place to eat in peace and
sleep in quiet ; a place whose close, familiar
limits rest the nerves from the continuous hail
of impressions in the changing world outside;
the same place over and over,— the restful
repetition, rousing no keen response, but healing
and soothing each weary sense,— that "feels like
home." All this from our first consciousness.
All this for millions and millions of years. No
wonder we love it.
Then comes the gradual addition of tenderer
associations, family ties of the earliest. Then,
still primitive, but not yet outgrown, the grop
ing religious sentiment of early ancestor-worship,
adding sanctity to safety, and driving deep our
sentiment for home. It was the place in which to
pray, to keep alight the sacred fire, and pour liba
tions to departed grandfathers. Following this,
the slow-dying era of paternal government gave
a new sense of honor to the place of comfort and
221
 Women and Economics
the place of prayer. It became the seat of gov
ernment also,— the palace and the throne.
Upon this deep foundation we have built a
towering superstructure of habit, custom, law ;
and in it dwell together every deepest, oldest,
closest, and tenderest emotion of the human in
dividual. No wonder we are blind and deaf to
any suggested improvement in our lordly pleas
ure-house.
But look farther. Without contradicting any
word of the above, it is equally true that the
highest emotions of humanity arise and live out
side the home and apart from it. While re
ligion stayed at home, in dogma and ceremony,
in spirit and expression, it was a low and narrow
religion. It could never rise till it found a new
spirit and a new expression in human life out
side the home, until it found a common place
of worship, a ceremonial and a morality on a
human basis, not a family basis. Science, art,
government, education, industry,— the home is
the cradle of them all, and their grave, if they
stay in it. Only as we live, think, feel, and
work outside the home, do we become humanly
developed, civilized, socialized.
The exquisite development of modern home
life is made possible only as an accompani
ment and result of modern social life. If the
reverse were true, as is popularly supposed, all
 Society vs. the Home
nations that have homes would continue to
evolve a noble civilization. But they do not.
On the contrary, those nations in which home
and family worship most prevail, as in China,
present a melancholy proof of the result of the
domestic virtues without the social. A noble
home life is the product of a noble social life.
The home does not produce the virtues needed
in society. But society does produce the virtues
needed in such homes as we desire to-day. The
members of the freest, most highly civilized and
individualized nations, make the most delightful
members of the home and family. The mem
bers of the closest and most highly venerated
homes do not necessarily make the most delight
ful members of society.
In social evolution as in all evolution the
tendency is from "indefinite, incoherent homo
geneity to definite, coherent heterogeneity " ;
and the home, in its rigid maintenance of a per
manent homogeneity, constitutes a definite limit
to social progress. What we need is not less
home, but more ; not a lessening of the love of
human beings for a home, but its extension
through new and more effective expression. And,
above all, we need the complete disentanglement
in our thoughts of the varied and often radically
opposed interests and industries so long supposed
to be component parts of the home and family.
223
 Women and Economics
The change in the economic position of
woman from dependence to independence must
bring with it a rearrangement of these home in
terests and industries, to our great gain.

224
 XI.

As a natural consequence of our division of

labor on sex-lines, giving to woman the home
and to man the world in which to work, we have
come to have a dense prejudice in favor of the
essential womanliness of the home duties, as
opposed to the essential manliness of every other
kind of work. We have assumed that the prep
aration and serving of food and the removal of
dirt, the nutritive and excretive processes of the
family, are feminine functions ; and we have
also assumed that these processes must go on in
what we call the home, which is the external
expression of the family. In the home the hu
man individual is fed, cleaned, warmed, and gen
erally cared for, while not engaged in working
in the world.
Human nutrition is a long process. There's
many a ship 'twixt the cup and the lip, to para
phrase an old proverb. Food is produced by the
human race collectively,— not by individuals for
their own consumption, but by interrelated
groups of individuals, all over the world, for the
world's consumption. This collectively produced
food circulates over the earth's surface through
elaborate processes of transportation, exchange,
and preparation, before it reaches the mouths
of the consumers ; and the final processes of
225
 Women and Economics
selection and preparation are in the hands of
woman. She is the final purchaser : she is the
final handler in that process of human nutrition
known as cooking, which is a sort of extra-
organic digestion proven advantageous to our
species. This department of human digestion
has become a sex-function, supposed to pertain
to women by nature.
If it is to the advantage of the human race
that its food supply should be thus handled by
a special sex, this advantage should be shown in
superior health and purity of habit. But no
such advantage is visible. In spite of all our
power and skill in the production and prepara
tion of food we remain " the sickest beast alive "
in the matter of eating. Our impotent out
cries against adulteration prove that part of the
trouble is in the food products as offered for
purchase, the pathetic reiteration of our nu
merous cook-books proves that part of the trouble
is in the preparation of those products, and the
futile exhortations of physicians and mothers
prove that part of the trouble is in our morbid
tastes and appetites. It would really seem as
if the human race after all its long centuries
had not learned how to prepare good food, nor
how to cook it, nor how to eat it,— which is
painfully true.
This great function of human nutrition is
226
 Women and the Food Supply
confounded with the sex-relation, and is con
sidered a sex-function : it is in the helpless hands
of that amiable but abortive agent, the economi
cally dependent women ; and the essential in
capacity of such an agent is not hard to show.
In her position as private house-steward she is
the last purchaser of the food of the world, and
here we reach the governing factor in our incred
ible adulteration of food products.
All kinds of deceit and imposition in human
service are due to that desire to get without
giving, which, as has been shown in previous
chapters, is largely due to the training of women
as non-productive consumers. But the partic
ular form of deceit and imposition practised by
a given dealer is governed by the intelligence
and power of the buyer. The dilution and
adulteration of food products is a particularly
easy path to profit, because the ultimate pur
chaser has almost no power and very little in
telligence.
at short intervals
The individual
and in small
housewife
quantities.
must This
buy i

operates to her pecuniary disadvantage, as is

well known ; but its effect on the quality of her
purchases is not so commonly observed. Not
unless she becomes the head of a wealthy
household, and so purchases in quantity for
family, servants, and guests, is her trade of
sufficient value to have force in the market.
227
 Women and Economics
The dealer who sells to a hundred poor women
can and does sell a much lower quality of food
than he who sells an equal amount to one pur
chaser. Therefore, the home, as a food agency,
holds an essentially and permanently unfavor
able position as a purchaser ; and it is thereby
the principal factor in maintaining the low
standard of food products against which we
struggle with the cumbrous machinery of legis
lation.
Most housekeepers will innocently prove their
ignorance of these matters by denying that the
standard of food products is so low. Let such
offended ladies but examine the statutes and
ordinances of their own cities,— of any civilized
city,— and see how the bread, the milk, the
meat, the fruit, are under a steady legislative
inspection which endeavors to protect the igno
rance and helplessness of the individual pur
chaser. If the private housekeeper had the
technical intelligence as purchaser which is
needed to discriminate in the selection of foods,
if she were prepared to test her milk, to detect
the foreign substance in her coffee and spices,
rightly to estimate the quality of her meat and
the age of her fruit and vegetables, she would
then be able at least to protest against her sup
ply, and to seek, as far as time, distance, and
funds allowed, a better market. This technical
228
 Practising on the Family
intelligence, however, is only to be obtained by
special study and experience ; and its attain
ment only involves added misery and difficulty
to the private purchaser, unless accompanied by
the power to enforce what the intelligence de
mands.
As it is, woman brings to her selection from
the world's food only the empirical experience
gained by practising upon her helpless family,
and this during the very time when her growing
children need the wise care which she is only
able to give them in later years. This experi
ence, with its pitiful limitation and its practical
check by the personal taste and pecuniary stand
ing of the family, is lost where it was found.
Each mother slowly acquires some knowledge of
her business by practising it upon the lives and
health of her family and by observing its effect
on the survivors ; and each daughter begins
again as ignorant as her mother was before her.
This " rule of thumb " is not transmissible. It
is not a genuine education such as all important
work demands, but a slow animal process of
soaking up experience,— hopelessly ineffectual
in protecting the health of society. As the
ultimate selecting agent in feeding humanity, the
private housewife fails, and this not by reason
of any lack of effort on her part, but by the es
sential defect of her position as individual pur
229
 Women and Economics
chaser. Only organization can oppose such evils
as the wholesale adulteration of food ; and
woman, the house-servant, belongs to the lowest
grade of unorganized labor.
Leaving the selection of food, and examining
its preparation, one would naturally suppose that
the segregation of an entire sex to the fulfilment
of this function would insure most remarkable
results. It has, but they are not so favorable
as might be expected. The art and science of
cooking involve a large and thorough knowledge
of nutritive value and of the laws of physiology
and hygiene. As a science, it verges on pre
ventive medicine. As an art, it is capable of
noble expression within its natural bounds. As
it stands among us to-day, it is so far from
being a science and akin to preventive medi
cine, that it is the lowest of amateur handicrafts
and a prolific source of disease ; and, as an art,
it has developed under the peculiar stimulus of
its position as a sex-function into a voluptuous
profusion as false as it is evil. Our innocent
proverb, " The way to a man's heart is through
his stomach," is a painfully plain comment on
the way in which we have come to deprave our
bodies and degrade our souls at the table.
On the side of knowledge it is permanently
impossible that half the world, acting as ama
teur cooks for the other half, can attain any
230
 Women as Cooks
high degree of scientific accuracy or technical
skill. The development of any human labor
requires specialization, and specialization is for
bidden to our cook-by-nature system. What
progress we have made in the science of cook
ing has been made through the study and ex-
per ience of professional men cooks and chemists,
not through the Sisyphean labors of our endless
generations of isolated women, each beginning
again where her mother began before her.
Here, of course, will arise a pained outcry
along the " mother's doughnuts " line, in an
swer to which we refer to our second premise
in the last chapter. The fact that we like a
thing does not prove it to be right. A Missouri
child may regard his mother's saleratus biscuit
with fond desire, but that does not alter their
effect upon his spirits or his complexion. Cook
ing is a matter of law, not the harmless play
of fancy. Architecture might be more sportive
and varied if every man built his own house, but
it would not be the art and science that we have
made it ; and, while every woman prepares food
for her own family, cooking can never rise be
yond the level of the amateur's work.
But, low as is the status of cooking as a
science, as an art it is lower. Since the wife-
cook's main industry is to please,— that being
her chief means of getting what she wants or
231
 Women and Economics
of expressing affection, — she early learned to
cater to the palate instead of faithfully studying
and meeting the needs of the stomach. For
uncounted generations the grown man and the
growing child have been subject to the constant
efforts of her who cooked from affection, not
from knowledge,— who cooked to please. This
is one of the widest pathways of evil that has
ever been opened. In every field of life it is an
evil to put the incident before the object, the
means before the end ; and here it has produced
that familiar result whereby we live to eat in
stead of eating to live.
This attitude of the woman has developed
the rambling excess called " fancy cookery," —
a thing as far removed from true artistic develop
ment as a swinging ice-pitcher from a Greek
vase. Through this has come the limitless un
healthy folly of high living, in which human
labor and time and skill are wasted in produc
ing what is neither pure food nor pure pleasure,
but an artificial performance, to be appreciated
only by the virtuoso. Lower living could hardly
be imagined than that which results from this
unnatural race between artifice and appetite, in
which body and soul are both corrupted.
In the man, the subject of all this dining-
room devotion, has been developed and main
tained that cultivated interest in his personal
232
 The Seeds of Self-indulgence
tastes and their gratification,— that demand for
things which he likes rather than for things
which he knows to be good, wherein lies one of
the most dangerous elements in character known
to the psychologist. The sequences of this
affectionate catering to physical appetites may
be traced far afield to its last result in the un
checked indulgence in personal tastes and
desires, in drug habits and all intemperance.
The temperament which is unable to resist
these temptations is constantly being bred at
home.
As the concentration of woman's physical
energies on the sex-functions, enforced by her
economic dependence, has tended to produce
and maintain man's excess in sex-indulgence, to
the injury of the race ; so the concentration of
woman's industrial energies on the close and
constant service of personal tastes and appetites
has tended to produce and maintain an excess in
table indulgence, both in eating and drinking;
which is also injurious to the race. It is not
here alleged that this is the only cause of our
habits of this nature ; but it is one of primal im
portance, and of ceaseless action.
We can perhaps see its working better by a
light-minded analogy than by a bold statement.
Suppose two large, healthy, nimble apes. Sup
pose that the male ape did not allow the female
233
 Women and Economics
ape to skip about and pluck her own cocoanuts,
but brought to her what she was to have. Sup
pose that she was then required to break the
shell, pick out the meat, prepare for the male
what he wished to consume ; and suppose, fur
ther, that her share in the dinner, to say noth
ing of her chance of a little pleasure excursion
in the treetops afterward, was dependent on his
satisfaction with the food she prepared for him.
She, as an ape of intelligence, would seek,
by all devices known to her, to add stimulus
and variety to the meals she arranged, to select
the bits he specially preferred to please his taste
and to meet his appetite ; and he, developing
under this agreeable pressure, would gradually
acquire a fine discrimination in foods, and would
look forward to his elaborate feasts with increas
ing complacency. He would have a new force
to make him eat, — not only his need of food,
with its natural and healthy demands, but her
need of — everything, acting through his need
of food.
This sounds somewhat absurd in a family of
apes, but it is precisely what has occurred in
the human family. To gratify her husband has
been the woman's way of obtaining her own
ends, and she has of necessity learned how to do
it; and, as she has been in general an unedu
cated and unskilled worker, she could only seek
234
 The Heart and the Stomach
to please him through what powers she had, —
mainly those of house service. She has been
set to serve two appetites, and to profit accord
ingly. She has served them well, but the
profit to either party is questionable.
On lines of social development we are pro
gressing from the gross gorging of the savage
on whatever food he could seize, toward the dis
criminating selection of proper foods, and an
increasing delicacy and accuracy in their use.
Against this social tendency runs the cross-cur
rent of our sexuo-economic relation, making the
preparation of food a sex function, and confusing
all its processes with the ardor of personal affec
tion and the dragging weight of self-interest.
This method is applied, not only to the husband,
but, in a certain degree, to the children ; for,
where maternal love and maternal energy are
forced to express themselves mainly in the
preparation of food, the desire properly to feed
the child becomes confounded with an unwise
desire to please, and the mother degrades her
high estate by catering steadily to the lower
tastes of humanity instead of to the higher.
Our general notion is that we have lifted and
ennobled our eating and drinking by combining
them with love. On the contrary, we have
lowered and degraded our love by combining it
with eating and drinking ; and, what is more, we
235
 Women and Economics
have lowered these habits also. Some progress
has been made, socially ; but this unhappy min
gling of sex-interest and self-interest with normal
appetites, this Cupid-in-the- kitchen arrangement,
has gravely impeded that progress. Professional
cooking has taught us much. Commerce and
manufacture have added to our range of supplies.
Science has shown us what we need, and how
and when we need it. But the affectionate
labor of wife and mother is little touched by
these advances. If she goes to the cooking
school, it is to learn how to make the rich
delicacies that will please rather than to study
the nutritive value of food in order to guard the
health of the household. From the constantly
enlarging stores opened to her through man's
activities she chooses widely, to make " a
variety" that shall kindle appetite, knowing
nothing of the combination best for physical
needs. As to science, chemistry, hygiene,—
they are but names to her. "John likes it so."
"Willie won't eat it so." "Your father never
could bear cabbage." She must consider what
he likes, not only because she loves to please
him or because she profits by pleasing him, but
because he pays for the dinner, and she is a
private servant.
Is it not time that the way to a man's heart
through his stomach should be relinquished for
236
 The Need of Expert Service
some higher avenue ? The stomach should be
left to its natural uses, not made a thoroughfare
for stranger passions and purposes ; and the
heart should be approached through higher
channels. We need a new picture of our over
worked blind god, — fat, greasy, pampered with
sweetmeats by the poor worshippers long forced
to pay their devotion through such degraded
means.
No, the human race is not well nourished by
making the process of feeding it a sex-function.
The selection and preparation of food should be
in the hands of trained experts. And woman
should stand beside man as the comrade of his
soul, not the servant of his body.
This will require large changes in our method
of living. To feed the world by expert service,
bringing to that great function the skill and ex
perience of the trained specialist, the power of
science, and the beauty of art, is impossible in
the sexuo-economic relation. While we treat
cooking as a sex-function common to all women
and eating as a family function not otherwise
rightly accomplished, we can develope no farther.
We are spending much earnest study and hard
labor to-day on the problem of teaching and
training women in the art of cooking, both the
wife and the servant ; for, with our usual habit
of considering voluntary individual conduct as
237
 Women and Economics
the cause of conditions, we seek to modify con
ditions by changing individual conduct.
What we must recognize is that, while the
tered.
conditions
Anyremain,
trade the
or profession,
conduct cannot
the develop
be al

ment of which depended upon the labor of

isolated individuals, assisted only by hired ser
vants more ignorant than themselves, would
remain at a similarly low level.
So far as health can be promoted by public
means, we are steadily improving by sanitary
regulations and medical inspection, by profes
sionally prepared "health foods" and by the
literature of hygiene, by special legislation as to
contagious diseases and dangerous trades ; but
the health that lies in the hands of the house
wife is not reached by these measures. The
nine-tenths of our women who do their own
work cannot be turned into proficient purchasers
and cooks any more than nine-tenths of our
men could be turned into proficient tailors
with no better training or opportunity than
would be furnished by clothing their own fam
ilies. The alternative remaining to the women
who comprise the other tenth is that peculiar
survival of earlier labor methods known as
"domestic service."
As a method of feeding humanity, hired
domestic service is inferior even to the service
238
 Cooking as a Profession
of the wife and mother, and brings to the art of
cooking an even lower degree of training and
a narrower experience. The majority of do
mestic servants are young girls who leave this
form of service for marriage as soon as they are
able ; and we thus intrust the physical health of
human beings, so far as cooking affects it, to
the hands of untrained, immature women, of
the lowest social grade, who are actuated by no
higher impulse than that of pecuniary necessity.
The love of the wife and mother stimulates at
least her desire to feed her family well. The
servant has no such motive. The only cases in
which domestic cooking reaches anything like
proficiency are those in which the wife and
mother is " a natural-born cook," and regales her
family with the products of genius, or those in
which the households of the rich are able to
command the service of professionals.
There was a time when kings and lords re
tained their private poets to praise and enter
tain them ; but the poet is not truly great until
he sings for the world. So the art of cooking
can never be lifted to its true place as a human
need and a social function by private service.
Such an arrangement of our lives and of our
houses as will allow cooking to become a pro
fession is the only way in which to free this
great art from its present limitations. It should
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 Women and Economics
be a reputable, well-paid profession, wherein
those women or those men who were adapted to
this form of labor could become cooks, as they
would become composers or carpenters. Nat
ural distinctions would be developed between
the mere craftsman and the artist ; and we
should have large, new avenues of lucrative and
honorable industry, and a new basis for human
health and happiness.
This does not involve what is known as " co
operation." Co-operation, in the usual sense, is
the union of families for the better performance
of their supposed functions. The process fails
because the principle is wrong. Cooking and
cleaning are not family functions. We do not
have a family mouth, a family stomach, a family
face to be washed. Individuals require to be
fed and cleaned from birth to death, quite irre
spective of their family relations. The orphan,
the bachelor, the childless widower, have as
much need of these nutritive and excretive proc
esses as any patriarchal parent. Eating is an
individual function. Cooking is a social function.
Neither is in the faintest degree a family func
tion. That we have found it convenient in early
stages of civilization to do our cooking at home
proves no more than the allied fact that we have
also found it convenient in such stages to do our
weaving and spinning at home, our soap and
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 A Social Function
candle making, our butchering and pickling, our
baking and washing.
As society developes, its functions specialize ;
and the reason why this great race-function of
cooking has been so retarded in its natural
growth is that the economic dependence of
women has kept them back from their share in
human progress. When women stand free as
economic agents, they will lift and free their ar
rested functions, to the much better fulfilment
of their duties as wives and mothers and to
the vast improvement in health and happiness
of the human race.
Co-operation Is not what is required for this,
but trained professional service and such ar
rangement of our methods of living as shall
allow us to benefit by such service. When
numbers of people patronize the same tailor or
baker or confectioner, they do not co-operate.
Neither would they co-operate in patronizing
the same cook. The change must come from
the side of the cook, not from the side of the
family. It must come through natural func
tional development in society, and it is so
coming. Woman, recognizing that her duty
as feeder and cleaner is a social duty, not a
sexual one, must face the requirements of the
situation, and prepare herself to meet them.
A hundred years ago this could not have been
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 Women and Economics
done. Now it is being done, because the time
is ripe for it.
If there should be built and opened in any of
our large cities to-day a commodious and well-
served apartment house for professional women
with families, it would be filled at once. The
- apartments would be without kitchens ; but
there would be a kitchen belonging to the
house from which meals could be served to the
families in their rooms or in a common dining-
room, as preferred. It would be a home where
the cleaning was done by efficient workers, not
hired separately by the families, but engaged by
the manager of the establishment ; and a roof-
garden, day nursery, and kindergarten, under
well-trained professional nurses and teachers,
would insure proper care of the children. The
demand for such provision is increasing daily,
and must soon be met, not by a boarding-house
or a lodging-house, a hotel, a restaurant, or any
makeshift patching together of these ; but by
a permanent provision for the needs of women
and children, of family privacy with collective
advantage. This must be offered on a business
basis to prove a substantial business success ;
and it will so prove, for it is a growing social
need.
There are hundreds of thousands of women
in New York City alone who are wage-earners,
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 The Need of Specialization
and who also have families ; and the number in
creases. This is true not only among the poor
and unskilled, but more and more among busi
ness women, professional women, scientific,
artistic, literary women. Our school-teachers,
who form a numerous class, are not entirely
without relatives. To board does not satisfy
the needs of a human soul. These women want
homes, but they do not want the clumsy tangle
of rudimentary industries that are supposed to
accompany the home. The strain under which
such women labor is no longer necessary. The
privacy of the home could be as well maintained
in such a building as described as in any house
in a block, any room, flat, or apartment, under
present methods. The food would be better,
and would cost less ; and this would be true of
the service and of all common necessities.
In suburban homes this purpose could be
accomplished much better by a grouping of adja
cent houses, each distinct and having its own yard,
but all kitchenless, and connected by covered
ways with the eating-house. No detailed proph
ecy can be made of the precise forms which
would ultimately prove most useful and pleasant ;
but the growing social need is for the specializ
ing of the industries practised in the home and
for the proper mechanical provision for them.
The cleaning required in each house would be
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 Women and Economics
much reduced by the removal of the two chief
elements
Meals could
of household
of course
dirt,—
be served
greaseinand
the ashes.
house

as long as desired ; but, when people become

accustomed to pure, clean homes, where no
steaming industry is carried on, they will gradu
ally prefer to go to their food instead of having
it brought to them. It is a perfectly natural
process, and a healthful one, to go to one's
food. And, after all, the changes between liv
ing in one room, and so having the cooking
most absolutely convenient ; going as far as the
limits of a large house permit, to one's own
dining-room ; and going a little further to a din
ing-room not in one's own house, but near by,—
these differ but in degree. Families could go
to eat together, just as they can go to bathe to
gether or to listen to music together ; but, if it
fell out that different individuals presumed to
develope an appetite at different hours, they
could meet it without interfering with other
people's comfort or sacrificing their own. Any
housewife knows the difficulty of always getting
a family together at meals. Why try ? Then
arises sentiment, and asserts that family affec
tion, family unity, the very existence of the
family, depend on their being together at meals.
A family unity which is only bound together
with a table-cloth is of questionable value.
244
 The Division of Labor
There are several professions involved in
our clumsy method of housekeeping. A good
cook is not necessarily a good manager, nor a
good manager an accurate and thorough cleaner,
nor a good cleaner a wise purchaser. Under
the free development of these branches a woman
could choose her position, train for it, and be
come a most valuable functionary in her special
branch, all the while living in her own home;
that is, she would live in it as a man lives in his
home, spending certain hours of the day at
work and others at home.
This division of the labor of housekeeping
would require the service of fewer women for
fewer hours a day. Where now twenty women
in twenty homes work all the time, and insuffi
ciently accomplish their varied duties, the same
work in the hands of specialists could be done
in less time by fewer people ; and the others
would be left free to do other work for which
they were better fitted, thus increasing the pro
ductive power of the world. Attempts at co
operation so far have endeavored to lessen the
existing labors of women without recognizing
their need for other occupation, and this is one
reason for their repeated failure.
It seems almost unnecessary to suggest that
women as economic producers will naturally
choose those professions which are compatible
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 Women and Economics
with motherhood, and there are many profes
sions much more in harmony with that function
than the household service. Motherhood is not
a remote contingency, but the common duty
and the common glory of womanhood. If women
did choose professions unsuitable to mater
nity, Nature would quietly extinguish them by
her unvarying process. Those mothers who
persisted in being acrobats, horse-breakers, or
sailors before the mast, would probably not pro
duce vigorous and numerous children. If they
did, it would simply prove that such work did
not hurt them. There is no fear to be wasted
on the danger of women's choosing wrong pro
fessions, when they are free to choose. Many
women would continue to prefer the very kinds
of work which they are doing now, in the new
and higher methods of execution. Even clean
ing, rightly understood ,and practised, is a use
ful, and therefore honorable, profession. It
has been amusing heretofore to see how this
least desirable of labors has been so innocently
held to be woman's natural duty. It is woman,
the dainty, the beautiful, the beloved wife and
revered mother, who has by common consent
been expected to do the chamber-work and
scullery work of the world. All that is basest
and foulest she in the last instance must handle
and remove. Grease, ashes, dust, foul linen,
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 Socializing the Household Industries
and sooty ironware,— among these her days
must pass. As we socialize our functions, this
passes from her hands into those of man. The
city's cleaning is his work. And even in our
houses the professional cleaner is more and
more frequently a man.
The organization of household industries will
simplify and centralize its cleaning processes,
allowing of many mechanical conveniences and
the application of scientific skill and thorough
ness. We shall be cleaner than we ever were
before. There will be less work to do, and far
better means of doing it. The daily needs of a
well-plumbed house could be met easily by each
individual in his or her own room or by one
who liked to do such work ; and the labor less
frequently required would be furnished by an
expert, who would clean one home after another
with the swift skill of training and experience.
The home would cease to be to us a workshop
or a museum, and would become far more the
personal expression of its occupants — the place
of peace and rest, of love and privacy — than it
can be in its present condition of arrested in
dustrial development. And woman will fill her
place in those industries with far better results
than are now provided by her ceaseless struggles,
her conscientious devotion, her pathetic igno
rance and inefficiency.
247
 XII.

As self-conscious creatures, to whom is al

ways open the easy error of mistaking feeling for
fact, to whose consciousness indeed the feeling-
is the fact,— a further process of reasoning being
required to infer the fact from the feeling,—
we are not greatly to be blamed for laying such
stress on sentiment and emotion. We may per
haps admit, in the light of cold reasoning, that
the home is not the best place in which to do so
much work in, nor the wife and mother the best
person to do it. But this intellectual conviction
by no means alters our feeling on the subject.
Feeling, deep, long established, and over-stimu
lated, lies thick over the whole field of home
life. Not what we think about it (for we never
have thought about it very much), but what we
feel about it, constitutes the sum of our opinion.
Many of our feelings are true, right, legitimate.
Some are fatuous absurdities, mere dangling
relics of outgrown tradition, slowly moulting
from us as we grow.
Consider, for instance, that long-standing
popular myth known as "the privacy of the
home." There is something repugnant in the
idea of food cooked outside the home, even
though served within it ; still more in the
going out of the family to eat, and more yet in
248
 " The Privacy of the Home "
the going out of separate individuals to eat.
The limitless personal taste developed by " home
cooking " fears that it will lose its own particu
lar shade of brown on the bacon, its own hot
test of hot cakes, its own corner biscuit.
This objection must be honestly faced, and
admitted in some degree. A menu, however
liberally planned by professional cooks, would
not allow so much play for personal idiosyn
crasy as do those prepared by the numerous
individual cooks now serving us. There would
be a far larger range of choice in materials, but
not so much in methods of preparation and ser
vice. The difference would be like that between
every man's making his own coat or having his
women servants make it for him, on the one
hand, and his selecting one from many ready
made or ordering it of his tailor, on the other.
In the regular professional service of food
there would be a good general standard, and the
work of specialists for special occasions. We
have long seen this process going on in the
steady increase of professionally prepared food,
from the cheap eating-house to the fashionable
caterer, from the common " cracker " to the
delicate " wafer." " Home cooking," robbed of
its professional adjuncts, would fall a long way.
We do not realize how far we have already pro
gressed in this line, nor how fast we are going.
249
 Women and Economics
One of the most important effects of a steady
general standard of good food will be the eleva
tion of the popular taste. We should acquire a
cultivated appreciation of what is good food, far
removed from the erratic and whimsical self-
indulgence of the private table. Our only
standard of taste in cooking is personal appetite
and caprice. That we "like" a dish is enough
to warrant full approval. But liking is only
adaptation. Nature is forever seeking to modify
the organism to the environment ; and, when it
becomes so modified, so adapted, the organism
"likes" the environment. In the earlier form,
" it likes me," this derivation is plainer.
Each nation, each locality, each family, each
individual, " likes," in large measure, those
things to which it has been accustomed. What
else it might have liked, if it had had it, can
never be known ; but the slow penetration of
new tastes and habits, the reluctant adoption of
the potato, the tomato, maize, and other new
vegetables by old countries, show that it is quite
possible to change a liking.
In the narrow range of family capacity to
supply and of family ability to prepare our food,
and in our exaggerated intensity of personal
preference, we have grown very rigid in our
little field of choice. We insist on the superi
ority of our own methods, and despise the
250
 Cooking, Scientific and Emotional
methods of our neighbors, with a sublime igno
rance of any higher standard of criticism than
our own uneducated tastes. When we become
accustomed from childhood to scientifically and
artistically prepared foods, we shall grow to
know what is good and to enjoy it, as we learn
to know good music by hearing it.
As we learn to appreciate a wider and higher
range of cooking, we shall also learn to care
for simplicity in this art. Neither is attainable
under our present system by the average person.
As cooking becomes dissociated from the home,
we shall gradually cease to attach emotions to
it ; and we shall learn to judge it impersonally
upon a scientific and artistic basis. This will
not, of course, prevent some persons' having
peculiar tastes ; but these will know that they
are peculiar, and so will their neighbors. It
will not prevent, either, the woman who has a
dilettante fondness for some branch of cookery,
wherewith she loves to delight herself and her
friends, from keeping a small cooking plant
within reach, as she might a sewing-machine or
a turning-lathe.
In regard to the eating of food we are still
more opposed by the " privacy of the home "
idea, and a marked — indeed, a pained — disincli
nation to dissociate that function from family
life. To eat together does, of course, form
251
 Women and Economics
a temporary bond. To establish a medium
of communication between dissimilar persons,
some common ground must be found,— some
rite, some game, some entertainment,— some
thing that they can do together. And, if the
persons desiring to associate have no other
common ground than this physical function, —
which is so common, indeed, that it includes
not only all humanity, but all the animal king
dom,— then by all means let them seek that.
On occasions of general social rejoicing to cel
ebrate some event of universal importance, the
feast will always be a natural and satisfying in
stitution.
To the primitive husband with fighting for
his industry, the primitive wife with domestic
service for hers, the primitive children with no
relation to their parents but the physical,— to
such a common table was the only common tie ;
and the simplicity of their food furnished a
medium that hurt no one. But in the higher
individualization of modern life the process of
eating is by no means the only common interest
among members of a family, and by no means
the best. The sweetest, tenderest, holiest
memories of family life are not connected with
the table, though many jovial and pleasant ones
may be so associated. And on many an occa
sion of deep feeling, whether of joy or of pain,
252
 The Stomach as a Family Tie
the ruthless averaging of the whole group three
times a day at table becomes an unbearable
strain. If good food suited to a wide range of
needs were always attainable, a family could go
and feast together when it chose or simply eat
together when it chose ; and each individual
could go alone when he chose. This is not to
be forced or hurried ; but, with a steady supply
of food, easy of access to all, the stomach need
no longer be compelled to serve as a family tie.
We have so far held that the lower animals
ate alone in their brutality, and that man has
made eating a social function, and so elevated
it. The elevation is the difficult part to prove,
when we look at humanity's gross habits, mor
bid tastes, and deadly diseases, its artifice, and
its unutterable depravity of gluttony and intem
perance. The animals may be lower than we
in their simple habit of eating what is good for
them when they are hungry, but it serves their
purpose well.
One result of our making eating a social func
tion is that, the more elaborately we socialize it,
the more we require at our feasts the service of
a number of strangers absolutely shut out from
social intercourse,— functionaries who do not
eat with us, who do not talk with us, who must
not by the twinkling of an eyelash show any in
terest in this performance, save to minister to
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 Women and Economics
the grosser needs of the occasion on a strictly
commercial basis. Such extraneous presence
must and does keep the conversation at one
level. In the family without a servant both
mother and father are too hard worked to make
the meal a social success ; and, as soon as ser
vants are introduced, a limit is set to the range
of conversation. The effect of our social eat
ing, either in families or in larger groups, is not
wholly good. It is well open to question
whether we cannot, in this particular, improve
our system of living.
When the cooking of the world is open to full
development by those whose natural talent and
patient study lead them to learn how better and
better to meet the needs of the body by delicate
and delicious combinations of the elements of
nutrition, we shall begin to understand what
food means to us, and how to build up the
human body in sweet health and full vigor. A
world of pure, strong, beautiful men and women,
knowing what they ought to eat and drink, and
taking it when they need it, will be capable of
much higher and subtler forms of association
than this much-prized common table furnishes.
The contented grossness of to-day, the persistent
self-indulgence of otherwise intelligent adults,
the fatness and leanness and feebleness, the
whole train of food-made disorders, together
254
 Paradoxical Privacy
with all drug habits,— these morbid phenomena
are largely traceable to the abnormal attention
given to both eating and cooking, which must
accompany them as family functions. When
we detach them from this false position by un
tangling the knot of our sexuo-economic rela
tion, we shall give natural forces a chance to
work their own pure way in us, and make us
better.
Our domestic privacy is held to be further
threatened by the invasion of professional
cleaners. We should see that a kitchenless
home will require far less cleaning than is
now needed, and that the daily ordering of
one's own room could be easily accomplished
by the individual, when desired. Many would so
desire, keeping their own rooms, their personal
inner chambers, inviolate from other presence
than that of their nearest and dearest. Such
an ideal of privacy may seem ridiculous to those
who accept contentedly the gross publicity of
our present method. Of all popular paradoxes,
none is more nakedly absurd than to hear us
prate of privacy in a place where we cheerfully
admit to our table-talk and to our door service —
yes, and to the making of our beds and to the
handling of our clothing — a complete stranger,
a stranger not only by reason of new acquaint
ance and of the false view inevitable to new
255
 Women and Economics
■ eyes let in upon our secrets, but a stranger by
birth, almost always an alien in race, and, more
hopeless still, a stranger by breeding, one who
can never truly understand.
This stranger all of us who can afford it
summon to our homes,— one or more at once,
and many in succession. If, like barbaric kings
of old or bloody pirates of the main, we cut their
tongues out that they might not tell, it would
still remain an irreconcilable intrusion. But, as
it is, with eyes to see, ears to hear, and tongues
to speak, with no other interests to occupy their
minds, and with the retaliatory fling that follows
the enforced silence of those who must not " an
swer back,"— with this observing and repeating
army lodged in the very bosom of the family,
may we not smile a little bitterly at our fond
ideal of " the privacy of the home " ? The swift
progress of professional sweepers, dusters, and
scrubbers, through rooms where they were
wanted, and when they were wanted, would be
at least no more injurious to privacy than the
present method. Indeed, the exclusion of the
domestic servant, and the entrance of woman on
a plane of interest at once more social and more
personal, would bring into the world a new con
ception of the sacredness of privacy, a feeling
for the rights of the individual as yet unknown.
Closely connected with the question of clean-
256
 The Tyranny of Bric-a-Brac
ing is that of household decoration and fur
nishing. The economically dependent woman,
spending the accumulating energies of the race
in her small cage, has thrown out a tangled
mass of expression, as a large plant throws out
roots in a small pot. She has crowded her lim
ited habitat with unlimited things, — things use
ful and unuseful, ornamental and unornamental,
comfortable and uncomfortable ; and the labor
of her life is to wait upon these things, and
keep them clean.
I The free woman, having room for full individ
ual expression in her economic activities and
in her social relation, will not be forced so to
pour out her soul in tidies and photograph
holders. The home will be her place of rest,
not of uneasy activity ; and she will learn to
love simplicity at last. This will mean better
sanitary conditions in the home, more beauty
and less work. And the trend of the new con
ditions, enhancing the value of real privacy and
developing the sense of beauty, will be toward
a delicate loveliness in the interiors of our houses,
which the owners can keep in order without
undue exertion.
Besides these comparatively external condi
tions, there are psychic effects produced upon
the family by the sexuo-economic relation not
altogether favorable to our best growth. One
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 Women and Economics
is the levelling effect of the group upon its
members, under pressure of this relation. Such
privacy as we do have in our homes is family
privacy, an aggregate privacy ; and this does not
insure — indeed, it prevents — individual privacy.
This is another of the lingering rudiments of
methods of living belonging to ages long since
outgrown, and maintained among us by the
careful preservation of primitive customs in the
unchanged position of women. In very early
times a crude and undifferentiated people could
flock in family groups in one small tent without
serious inconvenience or injury. The effects of
such grouping on modern people is known in
the tenement districts of large cities, where
families live in single rooms ; and these effects
are of a distinctly degrading nature.
The progressive individuation of human be
ings requires a personal home, one room at least
for each person. This need forces some recog
nition for itself in family life, and is met so far
as private purses in private houses can meet it ;
but for the vast majority of the population no
such provision is possible. To women, especi
ally, a private room is the luxury of the rich
alone. Even where a partial provision for per
sonal needs is made under pressure of social
development, the other pressure of undeveloped
family life is constantly against it. The home
258
 Aggregate Privacy
is the one place on earth where no one of the
component individuals can have any privacy.
A family is a crude aggregate of persons of dif
ferent ages, sizes, sexes, and temperaments,
held together by sex-ties and economic neces
sity ; and the affection which should exist be
tween the members of a family is not increased
in the least by the economic pressure, rather it
is lessened. Such affection as is maintained by
economic forces is not the kind which humanity
most needs.
At present any tendency to withdraw and
live one's own life on any plane of separate
interest or industry is naturally resented, or at
least regretted, by the other members of the
family. This affects women more than men,
because men live very little in the family and
very much in the world. The man has his in
dividual life, his personal expression and its
rights, his office, studio, shop : the women and
children live in the home — because they must.
For a woman to wish to spend much time else
where is considered wrong, and the children
have no choice. The historic tendency of
women to "gad abroad," of children to run away,
to be forever teasing for permission to go and
play somewhere else ; the ceaseless, futile, well-
meant efforts to " keep the boys at home," —
these facts, together with the definite absence
259
 Women and Economics
of the man of the home for so much of the time,
constitute a curious commentary upon our pa
tient belief that we live at home, and like it.
Yet the home ties bind us with a gentle drag
ging hold that few can resist. Those who do
resist, and who insist upon living their individual
lives, find that this costs them loneliness and
privation ; and they lose so much in daily com
fort and affection that others are deterred from
following them.
There is no reason why this painful choice
should be forced upon us, no reason why the
home life of the human race should not be such
as to allow — yes, to promote — the highest de
velopment of personality. We need the society
of those dear to us, their love and their compan
ionship. These will endure. But the com
mon cook-shops of our industrially undeveloped
homes, and all the allied evils, are not essential,
and need not endure.
To our general thought the home just as it
stands is held to be what is best for us. We im
agine that it is at home that we learn the higher
traits, the nobler emotions,— that the home
teaches us how to live. The truth beneath this
popular concept is this : the love of the mother
for the child is at the base of all our higher love
for one another. Indeed, even behind that lies
the generous giving impulse of sex-love, the
260
 The Sexuo-economic Home
out-going force of sex-energy. The family re
lations ensuing do underlie our higher, wider
social relations. The " home comforts " are
essential to the preservation of individual life.
And the bearing and forbearing of home life,
with the dominant, ceaseless influence of con
servative femininity, is a most useful check
to the irregular flying impulses of masculine
energy. While the world lasts, we shall need
not only the individual home, but the family
home, the common sheath for the budded leaf
lets of each new branch, held close to the par
ent stem before they finally diverge.
Granting all this, there remains the steadily
increasing ill effect, not of home life per se, but
of the kind of home life based on the sexuo-
economic relation. A home in which the rightly
dominant feminine force is held at a primitive
plane of development, and denied free partici
pation in the swift, wide, upward movement of
the world, reacts upon those who hold it down by
holding them down in turn. A home in which
the inordinate love of receiving things, so long
bred into one sex, and the fierce hunger for pro
curing things, so carefully trained into the other,
continually act upon the child, keeps ever before
his eyes the fact that life consists in getting
dinner and in getting the money to pay for it,
getting the food from the market, working for
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 Women and Economics
ever and ever to cook and serve it. These are
the prominent facts of the home as we have
made it. The kind of care in which our lives
are spent, the things that wear and worry us,
are things that should have been outgrown long,
long ago if the human race had advanced evenly.
Man has advanced, but woman has been kept
behind. By inheritance she advances, by ex
perience she is retarded, being always forced
back to the economic grade of many thousand
years ago.
If a modern man, with all his intellect and
energy and resource, were forced to spend all
his days hunting with a bow and arrow, fishing
with a bone-pointed spear, waiting hungrily on
his traps and snares in hope of prey, he could
not bring to his children or to his wife the up
lifting influences of the true manhood of our
time. Even if he started with a college educa
tion, even if he had large books to read (when
he had time to read them) and improving con
versation, still the economic efforts of his life,
the steady daily pressure of what he had to do
for his living, would check the growth of higher
powers. If all men had to be hunters from day
to day, the world would be savage still. While
all women have to be house servants from day to
day, we are still a servile world.
A home life with a dependent mother, a
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 The Servant-wife
servant - wife, is not an ennobling influence.
We all feel this at times. The man, spreading
and growing with the world's great growth,
comes home, and settles into the tiny talk and
fret, or the alluring animal comfort of the
place, with a distinct sense of coming down.
It is pleasant, it is gratifying to every sense, it
is kept warm and soft and pretty to suit the
needs of the feebler and smaller creature who is
forced to stay in it. It is even considered a
virtue for the man to stay in it and to prize it, to
value his slippers and his newspaper, his hearth
fire and his supper table, his spring bed, and his
clean clothes above any other interests.
The harm does not lie in loving home and in
staying there as one can, but in the kind of
a home and in the kind of womanhood that it
fosters, in the grade of industrial development
on which it rests. And here, without prophe
sying, it is easy to look along the line of
present progress, and see whither our home life
tends. From the cave and tent and hovel up
to a graded, differentiated home, with as much
room for the individual as the family can afford ;
from the surly dominance of the absolute pa
triarch, with his silent servile women and
chattel children, to the comparative freedom,
equality, and finely diversified lives of a well-
bred family of to-day ; from the bottom grade of
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 Women and Economics
industry in the savage camp, where all things
are cooked together by the same person in the
same pot,— without neatness, without delicacy,
without specialization,— to the million widely
separated hands that serve the home to-day in a
thousand wide-spread industries, — the man and
the mill have achieved it all ; the woman has
but gone shopping outside, and stayed at the
base of the pyramid within.
And, more important and suggestive yet,
mark this : whereas, in historic beginnings, noth
ing but the home of the family existed ; slowly,
as we have grown, has developed the home of
the individual. The first wider movement of
social life meant a freer flux of population, —
trade, commerce, exchange, communication.
Along river courses and sea margins, from
canoe to steamship, along paths and roads as
they made them, from " shank's mare to the
iron horse," faster and freer, wider and oftener,
the individual human beings have flowed and
mingled in the life that is humanity. At first
the traveller's only help was hospitality,— the
right of the stranger ; but his increasing func
tional use brought with it, of necessity, the or
ganic structure which made it easy, the transi
tory individual home. From the most primitive
caravansary up to the square miles of floor-
space in our grand hotels, the public house has
264
 The Movement of the Family
met the needs of social evolution as no private
house could have done.
. To man, so far the only fully human being
of his age, the bachelor apartment of some sort
has been a temporary home for that part of his
life wherein he had escaped from one family
and not yet entered another. To woman this
possibility is opening to-day. More and more
we see women presuming to live and have a
home, even though they have not a family. The
family home itself is more and more yielding to
the influence of progress. Once it was station
ary and permanent, occupied from generation to
generation. Now we move, even in families,—
move with reluctance and painful objection and
with bitter sacrifice of household gods ; but move
we must under the increasing irritation of irrec
oncilable conditions. And so has sprung up
and grown to vast proportions that startling
portent of our times, the " family hotel."
Consider it. Here is the inn, once a mere
makeshift stopping-place for weary travellers.
Yet even so the weary traveller long since
noted the difference between his individual free
dom there and his home restrictions, and cheer
fully remarked, " I take mine ease in mine inn."
Here is this temporary stopping-place for single
men become a permanent dwelling-place for
families ! Not from financial necessity. These
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 Women and Economics
are inhabited by people who could well afford
to "keep house." But they do not want to
keep house. They are tired of keeping house.
It is so difficult to keep house, the servant prob
lem is so trying. The health of their wives is
not equal to keeping house. These are the
things they say.
But under these vague perceptions and ex
pressions is heaving and stirring a slow, upris
ing social tide. The primitive home, based on
the economic dependence of woman, with its un
organized industries, its servile labors, its smoth
ering drag on individual development, is be
coming increasingly unsuitable to the men and
women of to-day. Of course, they hark back
to it, of necessity, so long as marriage and child-
bearing are supposed to require it, so long as
our fondest sentiments and our earliest mem
ories so closely cling to it. But in its practical
results, as shown by the ever-rising draught
upon the man's purse and the woman's strength,
it is fast wearing out.
We have watched the approach of this con
dition, and have laid it to every cause but the
real one. We have blamed men for not staying
at home as they once did. We have blamed
women for not being as good housekeepers as
they once were. We have blamed the children
for their discontent, the servants for their in-
266
 Home Life in Town and Country
efficiency, the very brick and mortar for their
poor construction. But we have never thought
to blame the institution itself, and see whether
it could not be improved upon.
On wide Western prairies, or anywhere in
lonely farm houses, the women of to-day, con
fined absolutely to this strangling cradle of the
race, go mad by scores and hundreds. Our
asylums show a greater proportion of insane
women among farmers' wives than in any other
class. In the cities, where there is less " home
life," people seem to stand it better. There
are more distractions, the men say, and seek
them. There is more excitement, amusement,
variety, the women say, and seek them. What
is really felt is the larger social interests and
the pressure of forces newer than those of the
home circle.
Many fear this movement, and vainly strive
to check it. There is no cause for alarm. We
are not going to lose our homes nor our fami
lies, nor any of the sweetness and happiness that
go with them. But we are going to lose our
kitchens, as we have lost our laundries and bak
eries. The cook-stove will follow the loom and
wheel, the wool-carder and shears. We shall
have homes that are places to live in and love
in, to rest in and play in, to be alone in and to
be together in ; and they will not be confused
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 Women and Economics
and declassed by admixture with any industry
whatever.
In homes like these the family life will have
all its finer, truer spirit well maintained; and
the cares and labors that now mar its beauty
will have passed out into fields of higher fulfil
ment. The relation of wife to husband and
mother to child is changing for the better with
this outward alteration. All the personal rela
tions of the family will be open to a far purer
and fuller growth.
Nothing in the exquisite pathos of woman's
long subjection goes deeper to the heart than
the degradation of motherhood by the very con
ditions we supposed were essential to it. To
see the mother's heart and mind longing to go
with the child, to help it all the way, and yet to
see it year by year pass farther from her, learn
things she never was allowed to know, do things
she never was allowed to do, go out into "the
world " — their world, not hers — alone, and
" To bear, to nurse, to rear, to love, and then to lose ! "

this not by the natural separation of growth

and personal divergence, but by the unnatural
separation of falsely divided classes,— rudimen
tary women and more highly developed men.
It is the fissure that opens before the boy is ten
years old, and it widens with each year.
268
 World-servants and House-servants
A mother economically free, a world-servant
instead of a house-servant ; a mother knowing
the world and living in it,— can be to her chil
dren far more than has ever been possible be
fore. Motherhood in the world will make that
world a different place for her child.

269
 XIII.

In reconstructing in our minds the position

of woman under conditions of economic inde
pendence, it is most difficult to think of her as
a mother.
We are so unbroken ly accustomed to the old
methods of motherhood, so convinced that all
its processes are inter-relative and indispensa
ble, and that to alter one of them is to en
danger the whole relation, that we cannot con
ceive of any desirable change.
When definite plans for such change are
suggested, — ways in which babies might be
better cared for than at present, — we either
deny the advantages of the change proposed
or insist that these advantages can be reached
under our present system. Just as in cook
ing we seek to train the private cook and to
exalt and purify the private taste, so in baby-
culture we seek to train the individual mother,
and to call for better conditions in the private
home; in both cases ignoring the relation be
tween our general system and its particular
phenomena. Though it may be shown, with
clearness, that in physical conditions the pri
vate house, as a place in which to raise chil
dren, may be improved upon, yet all the more
stoutly do we protest that the mental life, the
270
 A Change of Basis
emotional life, of the home is the best possi
ble environment for the young.
There was a time in human history when
this was true. While progress derived its
main impetus from the sex-passion, and the
highest emotions were those that held us to
gether in the family relation, such education
and such surroundings as fostered and intensi
fied these emotions were naturally the best.
But in the stage into which we are now grow
ing, when the family relation is only a part of
life, and our highest duties lie between indi
viduals in social relation, the child has new
needs.
This does not mean, as the scared rush of
the unreasoning mind to an immediate oppo
site would suggest, a disruption of the family
circle or the destruction of the home. It does
not mean the separation of mother and child,
— that instant dread of the crude instinct of
animal maternity. But it does mean a change
of basis in the family relation by the removal
of its previous economic foundation, and a
change of method in our child-culture. We
are no more bound to maintain forever our
early methods in baby - raising than we are
bound to maintain them in the education of
older children, or in floriculture. All human
life is in its very nature open to improvement,
27 1
 Women and Economics
and motherhood is not excepted. The rela
tion between men and women, between hus
band and wife, between parent and child,
changes inevitably with social advance; but
we are loath to admit it. We think a change
here must be wrong, because we are so con
vinced that the present condition is right.
On examination, however, we find that the
existing relation between parents and children
in the home is by no means what we unques-
tioningly assume. We all hold certain ideals
of home life, of family life. When we see
around us, or read of, scores and hundreds of
cases of family unhappiness and open revolt,
we lay it to the individual misbehavior of the
parties concerned, and go on implicitly be
lieving in the intrinsic perfection of the insti
tution. When, on the other hand, we find
people living together in this relation, in
peace and love and courtesy, we do not con
versely attribute this to individual superiority
and virtue; but we point to it as instancing
the innate beauty of the relation.
To the careful sociological observer what
really appears is this: when individual and
racial progress was best served by the close
associations of family life, people were very
largely developed in capacity for family affec
tion. They were insensitive to the essential
272
 Discomfort and Uneasiness
limitations and incessant friction of the rela
tion. They assented to the absolute authority
of the head of the family and to the minor
despotism of lower functionaries, manifesting
none of those sharply defined individual char
acteristics which are so inimical to the family
relation.
But we have reached a stage where individ
ual and racial progress is best served by the
higher specialization of individuals and by
a far wider sense of love and duty. This
change renders the psychic condition of home
life increasingly disadvantageous. We con
stantly hear of the inferior manners of the
children of to-day, of the restlessness of the
young, of the flat treason of deserting parents.
It is visibly not so easy to live at home as it
used to be. Our children are not more per
versely constituted than the children of earlier
ages, but the conditions in which they are
reared are not suited to develope the qualities
now needed in human beings.
This increasing friction between members
of families should not be viewed with condem
nation from a moral point of view, but studied
with scientific interest. If our families are
so relatively uncomfortable under present con
ditions, are there not conditions wherein the
same families could be far more comfortable?
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 Women and Economics
No : we are afraid not. We think it is right to
have things as they are, wrong to wish to change
them. We think that virtue lies largely in
being uncomfortable, and that there is special
virtue in the existing family relation.
Virtue is a relative term. Human virtues
change from age to age with the change in
conditions. Consider the great virtue of loy
alty, — our highest name for duty. This is a
quality that became valuable in human life the
moment we began to do things which were not
instantly and visibly profitable to ourselves.
The permanent application of the individual
to a task not directly attractive was an indis
pensable social quality, and therefore a virtue.
Steadfastness, faithfulness, loyalty, duty, that
conscious, voluntary attitude of the individual
which holds him to a previously assumed rela
tion, even to his extreme personal injury, — to
death itself, — from this results the cohesion
of the social body : it is a first principle of
social existence.
To the personal conscience a social neces
sity must express itself in a recognized and
accepted pressure, — a force to which we bow,
a duty, a virtue. So the virtue of loyalty
came into early and lasting esteem, whether
in the form of loyalty to one's own spoken
word or vow —" He that sweareth to his hurt,
274
 The Growth of Loyalty
and doeth it " — to a friend or group of friends
in temporary union for some common purpose,
or to a larger and more permanent relation.
The highest form is, of course, loyalty to the
largest common interest; and here we can
plainly trace the growth of this quality.
First, we see it in the vague, nebulous,
coherence of the horde of savages, then in
the tense devotion of families, — that absolute
duty to the highest known social group. It
was in this period that obedience to parents
was writ so large in our scale of virtues. The
family feud, the vendetta of the Corsicans, is
an over-development of this force of family
devotion. Next came loyalty to the chief,
passing even that due the father. And with
the king — that dramatic personification of a
nation, "Lo! royal England comes!" — loy
alty
dencebecame
of every
a very
virtue,passion.
with good
It took
reasonprece
; for

it was not, as was supposed, the person of the

king which was so revered : it was the em
bodied nation, the far-reaching, collective in
terests of every citizen, the common good,
which called for the willing sacrifice of every
individual. We still exhibit all these phases
of loyalty, in differently diminishing degrees ;
but we show, also, a larger form of this great
virtue peculiar to our age.
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 Women and Economics
The lines of social relation to-day are
mainly industrial. Our individual lives, our
social peace and progress, depend more upon
our economic relations than upon any other.
For a long time society was organized only on
a sex-basis, a religious basis, or a military
basis, each of such organizations being com
paratively transient; and its component indi
viduals labored alone on an economic basis of
helpless individualism.
Duty is a social sense, and developes only
with social organization. As our civil organ
ization has become national, we have devel
oped the sense of duty to the State. As our
industrial organization has grown to the world-
encircling intricacies of to-day, as we have
come to hold our place on earth by reason of
our vast and elaborate economic relation with
its throbbing and sensitive machinery of com
munication and universal interservice, the un
erring response of the soul to social needs
has given us a new kind of loyalty, — loyalty
to our work. The engineer who sticks to his
engine till he dies, that his trainload of pas
sengers may live; the cashier who submits to
torture rather than disclose the secret of the
safe, — these are loyal exactly as was the ser
vitor of feudal times, who followed his master
to the death, or the subject who gave up all
276
 The Opposition of Home and Society
for his king. Professional honor, duty to
one's employers, duty to the work itself, at
any cost, — this is loyalty, faithfulness, the
power to stay put in a relation necessary to the
social good, though it may be directly against
personal interest.
It is in the training of children for this
stage of human life that the private home has
ceased to be sufficient, or the isolated, primi
tive, dependent woman capable. Not that the
mother does not have an intense and over
powering sense of loyalty and of duty ; but it
is duty to individuals, just as it was in the
year one. What she is unable to follow, in
her enforced industrial restriction, is the
higher specialization of labor, and the honora
ble devotion of human lives to the develop
ment of their work. She is most slavishly
bound to her daily duty, it is true; but it does
not occur to her as a duty to raise the grade of
her own labor for the sake of humanity, nor
as a sin so to keep back the progress of the
world by her contented immobility.
She cannot teach what she does not know.
She cannot in any sincerity uphold as a duty
what she does not practise. The child learns
more of the virtues needed in modern life —
of fairness, of justice, of comradeship, of col
lective interest and action — in a common
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 Women and Economics
school than can be taught in the most perfect
family circle. We may preach to our chil
dren as we will of the great duty of loving
and serving one's neighbor; but what the baby
is born into, what the child grows up to see
and feel, is the concentration of one entire
life — his mother's — upon the personal ag
grandizement of one family, and the human
service of another entire life — his father's
— so warped and strained by the necessity of
"supporting his family" that treason to so
ciety is the common price of comfort in the
home. For a man to do any base, false work
for which he is hired, work that injures pro
ducer and consumer alike; to prostitute what
power and talent he possesses to whatever
purchaser may use them, — this is justified
among men by what they call duty to the fam
ily, and is unblamed by the moral sense of
dependent women.
And this is the atmosphere in which the
wholly home-bred, mother-taught child grows
up. Why should not food and clothes and the
comforts of his own people stand first in his
young mind? Does he not see his mother,
the all -loved, all -perfect one, peacefully
spending her days in the arrangement of these
things which his father's ceaseless labor has
procured? Why should he not grow up to
278
 High and Low Forms of Service
care for his own, to the neglect and willing
injury of all the rest, when his earliest, deep
est impressions are formed under such exclu
sive devotion ?
It is not the home as a place of family life
and love that injures the child, but as the
centre of a tangled heap of industries, low in
their ungraded condition, and lower still be
cause they are wholly personal. Work the
object of which is merely to serve one's self
is the lowest. Work the object of which is
merely to serve one's family is the next low
est. Work the object of which is to serve
more and more people, in widening range, till
it approximates the divine spirit that cares for
all the world, is social service in the fullest
sense, and the highest form of service that we
can reach.
It is this personality in home industry that
keeps it hopelessly down. The short range
between effort and attainment, the constant
attention given to personal needs, is bad for
the man, worse for the woman, and worst for
the child. It belittles his impressions of life
at the start. It accustoms him to magnify the
personal duties and minify the social ones,
and it greatly retards his adjustment to larger
life. This servant-motherhood, with all its
unavoidable limitation and ill results, is the
279
 Women and Economics
concomitant of the economic dependence of
woman upon man, the direct and inevitable
effect of the sexuo-economic relation.
The child is affected by it during his most
impressionable years, and feels the effect
throughout life. The woman is permanently
retarded by it; the man, less so, because of his
normal social activities, wherein he is under
more developing influence. But he is injured
in great degree, and our whole civilization is
checked and perverted.
We suffer also, our lives long, from an
intense self-consciousness, from a sensitive
ness beyond all need ; we demand measure
less personal attention and devotion, because
we have been born and reared in a very hot
bed of these qualities. A baby who spent
certain hours of every day among other babies,
being cared for because he was a baby, and not
because he was "my baby," would grow to
have a very different opinion of himself from
that which is forced upon each new soul that
comes among us by the ceaseless adoration of
his own immediate family. What he needs to
learn at once and for all, to learn softly and
easily, but inexorably, is that he is one of
many. We all dimly recognize this in our
praise of large families, and in our saying
that " an only child is apt to be selfish." So
280
 A Baby's Impressions
is an only family. The earlier and more
easily a child can learn that human life means
many people, and their behavior to one an
other, the happier and stronger and more use
ful his life will be.
This could be taught him with no difficulty
whatever, under certain conditions, just as he
is taught his present sensitiveness and egotism
by the present conditions. It is not only tem
perature and diet and rest and exercise which
affect the baby. " He does love to be no
ticed," we say. " He is never so happy as
when he has a dozen worshippers around him. "
But what is the young soul learning all the
while? What does he gather, as he sees and
hears and slowly absorbs impressions? With
the inflexible inferences of a clear, young
brain, unsupplied with any counter-evidence
until later in life, he learns that women are
meant to wait on people, to get dinner, and
sweep and pick up things; that men are made
to bring home things, and are to be begged of
according to circumstances; that babies are
the object of concentrated admiration ; that
their hair, hands, feet, are specially attractive;
that they are the heated focus of attention, to
be passed from hand to hand, swung and
danced and amused most violently, and also
be laid aside and have nothing done to them,
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 Women and Economics
with no regard to their preference in either
case.
And then, in the midst of all this tingling
self-consciousness and desire for loving praise,
he learns that he is " naughty " ! The grief,
the shame, the anger at injustice, the hopeless
bewilderment, the morbid sensitiveness of
conscience or the stolid dulling of it, the
gradual retirement of the baffled brain from all
these premature sensations to a contentment
with mere personal gratification and a grow
ing ingenuity in obtaining it, — all these ex
periences are the common lot of the child
among us, our common lot when we were chil
dren. Of course, we don't remember. Of
course, we loved our mother, and thought her
perfect. Comparisons among mothers are diffi
cult for a baby. Of course, we loved our
homes, and never dreamed of any other way
of being "brought up." And, of course,
when we have children of our own, we bring
them up in the same way. What other way is
there? What is there to be said on the sub
ject? Children always were brought up at
home. Isn't that enough ?
And yet, insidiously, slowly, irresistibly,
while we flatter ourselves that things remain
the same, they are changing under our very
eyes from year to year, from day to day.
282
 The Loosening of Tradition
Education, hiding itself behind a wall of
books, but consisting more and more fully in
the grouping of children and in the training
of faculties never mentioned in the curriculum,
— education, which is our human motherhood,
has crept nearer and nearer to its true place,
its best work, — the care and training of the
little child. Some women there are, and
some men, whose highest service to humanity
is the care of children. Such should not con
centrate their powers upon their own children
alone, — a most questionable advantage, — but
should be so placed that their talent and skill,
their knowledge and experience, would benefit
the largest number of children. Many women
there are, and many men, who, though able to
bring forth fine children, are unable to edu
cate them properly. Simply to bear children
is a personal matter, — an animal function.
Education is collective, human, a social func
tion.
As we now arrange life, our children must
take their chances while babies, and live or
die, improve or deteriorate, according to the
mother to whom they chance to be born. An
inefficient mother does not prevent a child
from having a good school education or a
good college education ; but the education of
babyhood, the most important of all, is wholly
283
 Women and Economics
in her hands. It is futile to say that mothers
should be taught how to fulfil their duties.
You cannot teach every mother to be a good
school educator or a good college educator.
Why should you expect every mother to be a
good nursery educator? Whatever our ex
pectations, she is not; and our mistrained
babies, such of them as survive the maternal
handling, grow to be such people as we see
about us.
The growth and change in home and family
life goes steadily on under and over and
through our prejudices and convictions; and
the education of the child has changed and
• become a social function, while we still imag
ine the mother to be doing it all.
In its earliest and most rudimentary mani
festations, education was but part of the indi
vidual maternal function of the female animal.
But no sooner did the human mind begin to
show capacity for giving and receiving its
impressions through language (thus attaining
the power of acquiring information through
sources other than its own experience) than
the individual mother ceased to be the sole
educator. The young savage receives not
only guidance from his anxious mother, but
from the chiefs and elders of his tribe. For
a long time the aged were considered the only
284
 From Age to Youth
suitable teachers, because the major part of
knowledge was still derived from personal ex
perience; and, of course, the older the person,
the greater his experience, other things being
equal, and they were rather equal then. This
primitive notion still holds among us. People
still assume superior wisdom because of supe
rior age, putting mere number of experiences
against a more essential and better arranged
variety, and quite forgetting that the needed
wisdom of to-day is not the accumulation of
facts, but the power to think about them to
some purpose.
With our increased power to preserve and
transmit individual experience through litera
ture, and to disseminate such information
through systematic education, we see younger
and younger people, more rich in, say, chemi
cal or electrical experience than "the oldest
inhabitant" could have been in earlier times.
Therefore, the teacher of to-day is not the
graybeard and beldame, but the man and
woman most newly filled with the gathered
experience of the world. As this change
from age to youth has taken place in the
teacher, it has also shown itself in the taught.
Grown men frequented the academic groves of
Greece. Youths filled the universities of the
Middle Ages. Boys and, later, girls were
*85
 Women and Economics
given the increasing school advantages of pro
gressive centuries.
To-day the beautiful development of the
kindergarten has brought education to the
nursery door. Even our purblind motherhood
is beginning to open that door ; and we have
at last entered upon the study of babyhood, its
needs and powers, and are seeing that educa
tion begins with life itself. It is no new and
daring heresy to suggest that babies need bet
ter education than the individual mother now
gives them. It is simply a little further ex
tension of the steadily expanding system of
human education which is coming upon us,
as civilization grows. And it no more in
fringes upon the mother's rights, the mother's
duties, the mother's pleasures, than does the
college or the school.
We think no harm of motherhood because
our darlings go out each day to spend long
hours in school. The mother is not held neg
lectful, nor the child bereft. It is not called
a " separation of mother and child." There
would be no further harm or risk or loss in
a babyhood passed among such changed sur
roundings and skilled service as should meet
its needs more perfectly than it is possible
for the mother to meet them alone at home.
Better surroundings and care for babies,
286-
 Planningfor Character
better education, do not mean, as some
mothers may imagine, that the tiny monthling
is to be taught to read, or even that it is
to be exposed to cabal istical arrangements of
color and form and sound which shall mysteri
ously force the young intelligence to flower.
It would mean, mainly, a far quieter and more
peaceful life than is possible for the heavily
loved and violently cared for baby in the busy
household; and the impressions which it did
meet would be planned and maintained with
an intelligent appreciation of its mental
powers. The mother would not be excluded,
but supplemented, as she is now, by the
teacher and the school.
Try and imagine for yourself, if you like, a
new kind of coming alive, — the mother breast
and mother arms there, of course, fulfilling
the service which no other, however tender,
could supervene; but there would be other
service also. The long, bright hours of the
still widening days would find one in sunny,
soft-colored rooms, or among the grass and
flowers, or by the warm sand and waters.
There would be about one more of one's self,
others of the same size and age, in restful,
helpful companionship. A year means an
enormous difference in the ages of babies.
Think what a passion little children have for
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 Women and Economics
playmates of exactly their own age, because in
them alone is perfect equality; and then think
that the home-kept baby never has such com
panionship, unless, indeed, there are twins!
In this larger grouping, in full companion
ship, the child would unconsciously absorb
the knowledge that "we" were humanity,
that "we" were creatures to be so fed, so
watched, so laid to sleep, so kissed and cud
dled and set free to roll and play. The
mother-hours would be sweetest of all, per
haps. Here would be something wholly one's
own, and the better appreciated for the con
trast. But the long, steady days would bring
their peaceful lessons of equality and common
interest instead of the feverish personality of
the isolated one-baby household, or the in
numerable tyrannies and exactions, the forced
submissions and exclusions, of the nursery full
of brothers and sisters of widely differing ages
and powers. Mothers accustomed to consider
many babies besides their own would begin,
on the one hand, to learn something of mere
general babyness, and so understand that stage
of life far better, and, on the other, to out
grow the pathetic idolatry of the fabled crow,
— to recognize a difference in babies, and so to
learn a new ideal in their great work of
motherhood.
288
 A Wider Maternity
This alone is reason good for a wider ma
ternity. As long as each mother dotes and
gloats upon her own children, knowing no
others, so long this animal passion overesti
mates or underestimates real human qualities
in the child. So long as this endures, we
must grow up with the false, unbalanced opin
ion of ourselves forced upon us in our infancy.
We may think too well of ourselves or we
may think too ill of ourselves; but we think
always too much of ourselves, because of this
untrained and unmodified concentration of
maternal feeling. Our whole attitude toward
the child is too intensely personal. Through
all our aching later life we labor to outgrow
the false perspective taught by primitive
motherhood.
A baby, brought up with other babies,
would never have that labor or that pain.
However much his mother might love him,
and he might enjoy her love, he would still
find that for most of the time he was treated
precisely like other people of the same age.
Such a change would not involve any greater
loss to home and family life than does the
school or kindergarten. It would not rob the
baby of his mother nor the mother of her baby.
And such a change would give the mother cer
tain free hours as a human being, as a member
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 Women and Economics
of a civilized community, as an economic pro
ducer, as a growing, self-realizing individual.
This freedom, growth, and power will make
her a wiser, stronger, and nobler mother.
After all is said of loving gratitude to our
unfailing mother-nurse, we must have a most
exalted sense of our own personal importance
so to canonize the service of ourselves. The
mother as a social servant instead of a home
servant will not lack in true mother duty.
She will love her child as well, perhaps bet
ter, when she is not in hourly contact with it,
when she goes from its life to her own life,
and back from her own life to its life, with
ever new delight and power. She can keep
the deep, thrilling joy of motherhood far
fresher in her heart, far more vivid and open
in voice and eyes and tender hands, when the
hours of individual work give her mind an
other channel for her own part of the day.
From her work, loved and honored though it
is, she will return to the home life, the child
life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure,
cleansed of all the fret and friction and wear
iness that so mar it now.
The child, also, will feel this beneficent
effect. It is a mistake to suppose that the
baby, more than the older child, needs the
direct care and presence of the mother. Care-
290
 A Broader Relationship
ful experiment has shown that a new-born
baby does not know its own mother, and that
a new-made mother does not know her own
baby. They have been changed without the
faintest recognition on either side.
The services of a foster-mother, a nurse,
a grandma, are often liked by a baby as well
as, and perhaps better than, those of its own
mother. The mere bodily care of a young
infant is as well given by one wise, loving
hand as another. It is that trained hand that
the baby needs, not mere blood-relationship.
While the mother keeps her beautiful preroga
tive of nursing, she need never fear that any
other will be dearer to the little heart than
she who is the blessed provider of his highest
known good. A healthy, happy, rightly occu
pied motherhood should be able to keep up
this function longer than is now customary, —
to the child's great gain. Aside from this
special relationship, however, the baby would
grow easily into the sense of other and wider
relationship.
In the freedom and peace of his baby bed
room and baby parlor, in his easy association
with others of his own age, he would absorb
a sense of right human relation with his
mother's milk, as it were, — a sense of others'
rights and of his own. Instead of finding life
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 Women and Economics
a place in which all the fun was in being car
ried round and "done to" by others, and a
place also in which these others were a tyr
anny and a weariness unutterable; he would
find life a place in which to spread out, un
hindered, getting acquainted with his own
unfolding powers of body and mind in an
atmosphere of physical warmth and ease and of
quiet peace of mind.
Direct, concentrated, unvarying personal
love is too hot an atmosphere for a young
soul. Variations of loneliness, anger, and
injustice, are not changes to be desired. A
steady, diffused love, lighted with wisdom,
based always on justice, and varied with rapt
urous draughts of our own mother's depth of
devotion, would make us into a new people in
a few generations. The bent and reach of
our whole lives are largely modified by the
surroundings of infancy; and those surround
ings are capable of betterment, though not to
be attained by the individual mother in the
individual home.
There are three reasons why the individual
mother can never be fit to take all the care of
her children. The first two are so commonly
true as to have much weight, the last so abso
lutely and finally true as to be sufficient in
itself alone.
292
 A Succession of Amateurs
' First, not every woman is born with the
special qualities and powers needed to take
right care of children : she has not the talent
for it. Second, not every woman can have
the instruction and training needed to fit her
for the right care of children : she has not the
education for it. Third, while each woman
takes all the care of her own children herself,
no woman can ever have the requisite experi
ence for it. That is the final bar. That is
what keeps back our human motherhood. No
mother knows more than her mother knew : no
mother has ever learned her business; and our
children pass under the well-meaning experi
ments of an endless succession of amateurs.
We try to get "an experienced nurse."
We insist on "an experienced physician."
But our idea of an experienced mother is sim
ply one who has borne many children, as if
parturition was an educative process !
To experience the pangs of child-birth, or
the further pangs of a baby's funeral, adds
nothing whatever to the mother's knowledge
of the proper care, clothing, feeding, and
teaching of the child. The educative depart
ment of maternity is not a personal function:
it is in its very nature a social function ; and
we fail grievously in its fulfilment.
The economically independent mother, wi
» 293
 Women and Economics
dened and freed, strengthened and developed,
by her social service, will do better service
as mother than it has been possible to her
before. No one thing could do more to ad
vance the interests of humanity than the wiser
care and wider love of organized human
motherhood around our babies. This nobler
mother, bearing nobler children, and rearing
them in nobler ways, would go far toward
making possible the world which we want to
see. And this change is coming upon us
overpoweringly in spite of our foolish fears.

294
 XIV.

The changes in our conception and expres

sion of home life, so rapidly and steadily
going on about us, involve many far-reaching
effects, all helpful to human advancement.
Not the least of these is the improvement in
our machinery of social intercourse.
This necessity of civilization was unknown
in those primitive ages when family inter
course was sufficient for all, and when any
further contact between individuals meant
war. Trade and its travel, the specialization
of labor and the distribution of its products,
with their ensuing development, have pro
duced a wider, freer, and more frequent move
ment and interchange among the innumerable
individuals whose interaction makes society.
Only recently, and as yet but partially, have
women as individuals come to their share of
this fluent social intercourse which is the
essential condition of civilization. It is not
merely a pleasure or an indulgence : it is the
human necessity.
For women as individuals to meet men and
other women as individuals, with no regard
whatever to the family relation, is a growing
demand of our time. As a social necessity,
it is perforce being met in some fashion; but
295
 Women and Economics
its right development is greatly impeded by
the clinging folds of domestic and social cus
toms derived from the sexuo-economic rela
tion. The demand for a wider and freer
social intercourse between the sexes rests,
primarily, on the needs of their respective
natures, but is developed in modern life to
a far subtler and higher range of emotion than
existed in the primitive state, where they had
but one need and but one way of meeting it;
and this demand, too, calls for a better ar
rangement of our machinery of living.
Always in social evolution, as in other evo
lution, the external form suited to earlier
needs is but slowly outgrown ; and the period
of transition, while the new functions are
fumbling through the old organs, and slowly
forcing mechanical expression for themselves,
is necessarily painful. So far in our develop
ment, acting on a deep-seated conviction that
the world consisted only of families and the
necessary business arrangements involved in
providing for those families, we have conscien
tiously striven to build and plan for family
advantage, and either unconsciously or grudg
ingly have been forced to make transient pro
vision for individuals. Whatever did not
tend to promote family life, and did tend to
provide for the needs of individuals not at the
296
 Between the Old and the New
time in family relation, we have deprecated in
principle, though reluctantly forced to admit it
in practice.
To this day articles are written, seriously
and humorously, protesting against the in
creasing luxury and comfort of bachelor apart
ments for men, as well as against the pecun
iary independence of women, on the ground
that these conditions militate against marriage
and family life. Most men, even now, pass
through a period of perhaps ten years, when
they are individuals, business calling them
away from their parental family, and business
not allowing them to start new families of
their own. Women, also, more and more
each year, are entering upon a similar period
of individual life. And there is a certain
permanent percentage of individuals, " odd
numbers" and " broken sets," who fall short
of family life or who are left over from it;
and these need to live.
The residence hotel, the boarding-house,
club, lodging-house, and restaurant are our
present provision for this large and constantly
increasing class. It is not a travelling class.
These are people who want to live somewhere
for years at a time, but who are not married
or otherwise provided with a family. Home
life being in our minds inextricably connected
297
 Women and Economics
with married life, a home being held to imply
a family, and a family implying a head,
these detached persons are unable to achieve
any home life, and are thereby subjected to
the inconvenience, deprivation, and expense,
the often inhygienic, and sometimes immoral
influences, of our makeshift substitutes.
What the human race requires is permanent
provision for the needs of individuals, discon
nected from the sex-relation. Our assump
tion that only married people and their imme
diate relatives have any right to live in com
fort and health is erroneous. Every human
being needs a home, — bachelor, husband, or
widower, girl, wife, or widow, young or old.
They need it from the cradle to the grave,
and without regard to sex-connections. We
should so build and arrange for the shelter and
comfort of humanity as not to interfere with
marriage, and yet not to make that comfort
dependent upon marriage. With the indus
tries of home life managed professionally,
with rooms and suites of rooms and houses
obtainable by any person or persons desiring
them, we could live singly without losing
home comfort and general companionship, we
could meet bereavement without being robbed
of the common conveniences of living as well
as of the heart's love, and we could marry in
298
 Marriage without Housekeeping
ease and freedom without involving any change
in the economic base of either party concerned.
Married people will always prefer a home
together, and can have it; but groups of
women or groups of men can also have a home
together if they like, or contiguous rooms.
And individuals even could have a house to
themselves, without having, also, the business
of a home upon their shoulders.
Take the kitchens out of the houses, and
you leave rooms which are open to any form
of arrangement and extension; and the occu
pancy of them does not mean " housekeep
ing." In such living, personal character and
taste would flower as never before; the home
of each individual would be at last a true per
sonal expression ; and the union of individuals
in marriage would not compel the jumbling
together of all the external machinery of their
lives, — a process in which much of the deli
cacy and freshness of love, to say nothing of
the power of mutual rest and refreshment, is
constantly lost. The sense of lifelong free
dom and self-respect and of the peace and per
manence of one's own home will do much to
purify and uplift the personal relations of life,
and more to strengthen and extend the social
relations. The individual will learn to feel
himself an integral part of the social struct
299
 Women and Economics
ure, in close, direct, permanent connection
with the needs and uses of society.
This is especially needed for women, who
are generally considered, and who consider
themselves, mere fractions of families, and
incapable of any wholesome life of their own.
The knowledge that peace and comfort may
be theirs for life, even if they do not marry, —
and may be still theirs for life, even if they
do, — will develope a serenity and strength in
women most beneficial to them and to the
world. It is a glaring proof of the insufficient
and irritating character of our existing form
of marriage that women must be forced to it
by the need of food and clothes, and men by
the need of cooks and housekeepers. We are
absurdly afraid that, if men or women can
meet these needs of life by other means, they
will cheerfully renounce the marriage rela
tion. And yet we sing adoringly of the
power
In reality,
of lovewe! may hope that the most val

uable effect of this change in the basis of

living will be the cleansing of love and mar
riage from this base admixture of pecuniary
interest and creature comfort, and that men
and women, eternally drawn together by the
deepest force in nature, will be able at last to
meet on a plane of pure and perfect love. We
300
 Knowing One's Children
shame our own ideals, our deepest instincts,
our highest knowledge, by this gross assump
tion that the noblest race on earth will not
mate, or, at least, not mate monogamously,
unless bought and bribed through the common
animal necessities of food and shelter, and
chained by law and custom.
The depth and purity and permanence of
the marriage relation rest on the necessity
for the prolonged care of children by both
parents, — a law of racial development which
we can never escape. When parents are less
occupied in getting food and cooking it, in
getting furniture and dusting it, they may find
time to give new thought and new effort to
the care of their children. The necessities
of the child are far deeper than for bread and
bed: those are his mere racial needs, held in
common with all his kind. What he needs
far more and receives far less is the compan
ionship, the association, the personal touch,
of his father and mother. When the common
labors of life are removed from the home, we
shall have the time, and perhaps the inclina
tion, to make the personal acquaintance of our
children. They will seem to us not so much
creatures to be waited on as people to be
understood. As the civil and military protec
tion of society has long since superseded the
301
 Women and Economics
tooth -and -claw defence of the fierce parent,
without in the least endangering the truth and
intensity of the family relation, so the eco
nomic provision of society will in time super
sede the bringing home of prey by the parent,
without evil effects to the love or prosperity
of the family. These primitive needs and
primitive methods of meeting them are un
questionably at the base of the family rela
tion ; but we have long passed them by, and
the ties between parent and child are not
weakened, but strengthened, by the change.
The more we grow away from these basic
conditions, the more fully we realize the
deeper and higher forms of relation which are
the strength and the delight of human life.
Full and permanent provision for individual
life and comfort will not cut off the forces
that draw men and women together or hold
children to their parents; but it will purify
and intensify these relations to a degree which
we can somewhat foretell by observing the
effect of such changes as are already accom
plished in this direction. And, in freeing the
individual, old and young, from enforced asso
ciation on family lines, and allowing this
emergence into free association on social
lines, we shall healthfully assist the develop
ment of true social intercourse.
302
 The Strain on Personality
The present economic basis of family life
holds our friendly and familiar intercourse in
narrow grooves. Such visiting and mingling
as is possible to us is between families rather
than between individuals; and the growing
specialization of individuals renders it increas
ingly unlikely that all the members of a given
family shall please a given visitor or he
please them. This, on our present basis,
either checks the intercourse or painfully
strains the family relation. The change of
economic relation in families from a sex-basis
to a social basis will make possible wide in
dividual intercourse without this accompany
ing strain on the family ties.
This outgoing impulse among members of
families, their growing desire for general and
personal social intercourse, has been consid
ered as a mere thirst for amusement, and dep
recated by the moralist. He has so far main
tained that the highest form of association was
association with one's own family, and that
a desire for a wider and more fluent relation
ship was distinctly unworthy. " He is a good
family man," we say admiringly of him who
asks only for his newspaper and slippers in
the evening; and for the woman who dares
admit that she wishes further society than that
of her husband we have but one name. With
3°3
 Women and Economics
the children, too, our constant effort is to
"keep the boys at home," to "make home
attractive," so that our ancient ideal, the
patriarchal ideal, of a world of families and
nothing else, may be maintained.
But this is a world of persons as well as of
families. We are persons as soon as we are
born, though born into families. We are per
sons when we step out of families, and per
sons still, even when we step into new fami
lies of our own. As persons, we need more
and more, in each generation, to associate
with other persons. It is most interesting to
watch this need making itself felt, and getting
itself supplied, by fair means or foul, through
all these stupid centuries. In our besotted
exaggeration of the sex-relation, we have
crudely supposed that a wish for wider human
relationship was a wish for wider sex-relation
ship, and was therefore to be discouraged, as
in Spain it was held unwise to teach women
to write, lest they become better able to com
municate with their lovers, and so shake the
foundations of society.
But, when our sex-relation is made pure
and orderly by the economic independence
of women, when sex-attraction is no longer a
consuming fever, forever convulsing the social
surface, under all its bars and chains, we shall
3°4
 The Need of Being Together
not be content to sit down forever with half
a dozen blood relations for our whole social
arena. We shall need each other more, not
less, and shall recognize that social need of
one another as the highest faculty of this the
highest race on earth.
The force which draws friends together is
a higher one than that which draws the sexes
together, — higher in the sense of belonging
to a later race-development. " Passing the
love of women" is no unmeaning phrase.
Children need one another : young people need
one another. Middle-aged people need one
another: old people need one another. We
all need one another, much and often. Just
as every human creature needs a place to be
alone in, a sacred, private "home" of his
own, so all human creatures need a place to
be together in, from the two who can show
each other their souls uninterruptedly, to the
largest throng that can throb and stir in
unison.
Humanity means being together, and our
unutterably outgrown way of living keeps us
apart. How many people, if they dare face
the fact, have often hopelessly longed for
some better way of seeing their friends, their
own true friends, relatives by soul, if not by
body !
3 °S
 Women and Economics
Acting always under the heated misconcep
tions of our over sexed minds, we have pict
ured mankind as a race of beasts whose only
desire to be together was based on one great,
overworked passion, and who were only kept
from universal orgies of promiscuity by being
confined in homes. This is not true. It is
not true even now in our over-sexed condition.
It will be still less true when we are released
from the artificial pressure of the sexuo-
economic relation and grow natural again.
Men, women, and children need freedom to
mingle on a human basis; and that means to
mingle in their daily lives and occupations, not
to go laboriously to see each other, with no
common purpose. We all know the pleasant
acquaintance and deep friendship that springs
up when people are thrown together naturally,
at school, at college, on shipboard, in the
cars, in a camping trip, in business. The
social need of one another rests at bottom on a
common, functional development; and the
common, functional service is its natural op
portunity.
The reason why friendship means more to
men than to women, and why they associate so
much more easily and freely, is that they are
further developed in race-functions, and that
they work together. In the natural association
306
 The Isolation of Women
of common effort and common relaxation is
the true opening for human companionship.
Just to put a number of human beings in the
same room, to relate their bodies as to cubic
space, does not relate their souls. Our pres
ent methods of association, especially for
^ women, are most unsatisfactory. They arise,
and go to " call " on one another. They sol
emnly "return" these calls. They prepare
much food, and invite many people to come
and eat it ; or some dance, music, or enter
tainment is made the temporary ground of
union. But these people do not really meet
one another. They pass whole lifetimes in
going through the steps of these elaborate
games, and never become acquainted. There
is a constant thirst among us for fuller and
truer social intercourse; but our social ma
chinery
Men provides
have satisfied
no meansthis for desire
quenching
in large
it.

measure; but between women, or between

men and women, it is yet far from accomplish
ment. Men meet one another freely in their
work, while women work alone. But the
difference is sharpest in their play. " Girls
don't have any fun!" say boys, scornfully;
and they don't have very much. What they
do have must come, like their bread and but
ter, on lines of sex. Some man must give
3°7
 Women and Economics
them what amusement they have, as he must
give them everything else. Men have filled
the world with games and sports, from the
noble contests of the Olympic plain to the
brain and body training sports of to-day, good,
bad, and indifferent. Through all the ages
the men have played; and the women have
looked on, when they were asked. Even the
amusing occupation of seeing other people do
things was denied them, unless they were
invited by the real participants. The "queen
of the ball-room " is but a wall-flower, unless
she is asked to dance by the real king.
Even to-day, when athletics are fast opening
to women, when tennis and golf and all the
rest are possible to them, the two sexes are
far from even in chances to play. To want
a good time is not the same thing as to want
the society of the other sex, and to make a
girl's desire for a good time hang so largely on
her power of sex-attraction is another of the
grievous strains we put upon that faculty.
That people want to see each other is con
strued by us to mean that " he " wants to see
"her," and "she" wants to see "him."
The fun and pleasure of the world are so in-
terwound with the sex-dependence of women
upon men that women are forced to court
" attentions," when not really desirous of any
308
thing but amusement;
He andand,
She as we force the

association of the sexes on this plane, so we

restrict it on a more wholesome one.
Even our little children in their play are
carefully trained to accentuate sex; and a
line of conduct for boys, differing from that
for girls, is constantly insisted upon long
before either would think of a necessity for
such difference. Girls and boys, as they as
sociate, are so commented on and teased as to
destroy all wholesome friendliness, and induce
a premature sex-consciousness. Young men
and women are allowed to associate more or
less freely, but always on a strictly sex-basis,
friendship between man and woman being
a common laughing-stock. Every healthy boy
and girl resents this, and tries to hold free,
natural relation ; but such social pressure is
hard to resist. She may have as many
"beaux" as she can compass, he may " pay
attention " to as many girls as he pleases; but
that is their only way to meet.
The general discontinuance of all friendly
visiting, upon the engagement of either party,
proves the nature of the bond. Having chosen
the girl he is to marry, why care to call upon
any others? having chosen the man she is to
marry, why receive attention from any others ?
these " calls " and " attentions " being all in
3°9
 Women and Economics
the nature of tentative preliminaries to pos
sible matrimony. And, after marriage, the
wife is never supposed to wish to see any
other man than her husband, or the husband
any other woman than his wife. In some
countries, we vary this arrangement by in
creasing the social freedom of married people;
but the custom is accompanied by a commen
surate lack of freedom before marriage, which
causes questionable results, both in married
life and in social life. In the higher classes
of society there is always more freedom of
social intercourse between the sexes after mar
riage; but, speaking generally of America,
there is very little natural and serious ac
quaintance between men and women after the
period of pre-matrimonial visiting.
Even the friendship which may have existed
between husband and wife before marriage is
often destroyed by that relation and its eco
nomic complications. They have not time to
talk about things as they used : they are too
near together, and too deeply involved in the
industrial and financial concern of their new
business. This works steadily against the
development of higher and purer relations
between men and women, and tends to keep
them forever to the one primitive bond of sex-
union.
 A Dilemma
A young man goes to a city to live and
work. He needs the society of women as
well as of men. Formerly he had his mother,
his sisters, and his sisters' friends, his school
mates. Now he must face our constrained
social conditions. He may visit two kinds of
women, — those whom we call "good," and
those whom we call " bad." (This classifica
tion rests on but one moral quality, and that
a sexual one.) He naturally prefers the good.
The good are divided, again, into two kinds,
— married and single. If he visit a married
woman frequently, it is remarked upon : it
becomes unpleasant, he does not do it. If
he visit an unmarried woman frequently, it is
also remarked upon ; and he is considered to
have "intentions." His best alternative is
to visit a number of unmarried women, and
distribute his attentions so cautiously that no
one can claim them as personal.
Here he enters on the first phase of our
sexuo-economic relation : he cannot even visit
girls freely without paying for it. Simply to
see the girl by calling on her in the family
circle is hardly what either wants of the other.
One does not meet half a dozen people of vari
ous ages and of both sexes as one meets a
friend alone. To seek to see her alone is
an "attention." To "take her out" costs
 Women and Economics
money, and he cheerfully pays it. But he
cannot do this too often, or he will become
involved in what is naturally considered a
"serious" affair; and every step of the ac
quaintance is watched and commented upon
from a sexual point of view.
There is no natural, simple medium of
social intercourse between men and women.
The young man can but learn that his popu
larity depends largely on his pocket-book.
The money that he might be saving for mar
riage is wasted on these miscellaneous pre
liminaries. As he sees what women like
and how much it costs to please them, his
hope of marriage recedes farther and farther.
The period during which he must live as an
individual grows longer; and he becomes ac
customed to superficial acquaintance with
many women, on the shallowest side of life,
with no opportunity for genuine association
and true friendship. What wonder that the
other kind of woman, who also costs money,
it is true, but who does not involve permanent
obligation, has come to be so steady a factor
in our social life? The sexuo-economic rela
tion promotes vice in more ways than one.
The economic independence of woman will
change all these conditions as naturally and
inevitably as her dependence has introduced
312
 A Humanly Related World
them. In her specialization in industry, she
uality;
will develope
and this
more
will
personality
lower theand
pressure
less sex
on

this one relation in both women and men.

And, in our social intercourse, the new char
acter and new method of living will allow of
broad and beautiful developments in human
association. As the private home becomes
a private home indeed, and no longer the
woman's social and industrial horizon; as the
workshops of the world — woman's sphere as
well as man's — become homelike and beauti
ful under her influence; and as men and
women move freely together in the exercise of
common racial functions, — we shall have new
channels for the flow of human life.
We shall not move from the isolated home
to the sordid shop and back again, in a world
torn and dissevered by the selfish production
of one sex and the selfish consumption of the
other; but we shall live in a world of men
and women humanly related, as well as sex
ually related, working together, as they were
meant to do, for the common good of all.
The home will be no longer an economic
entity, with its cumbrous industrial machin
ery huddled vulgarly behind it, but a peaceful
and permanent expression of personal life as
withdrawn from social contact ; and that social
 Women and Economics
contact will be provided for by the many com
mon meeting-places necessitated by the organ
ization of domestic industries.
The assembling-room is as deep a need of
human life as the retiring-room, — not some
ball-room or theatre, to which one must be
invited of set purpose, but great common
libraries and parlors, baths and gymnasia,
work-rooms and play-rooms, to which both
sexes have the same access for the same needs,
and where they may mingle freely in common
human expression. The kind of buildings
essential to the carrying out of the organiza
tion of home industry will provide such places.
There will be the separate rooms for individ
uals and the separate houses for families; but
there will be, also, the common rooms for all.
These must include a place for the children,
planned and built for the happy occupancy of
many children for many years, — a home such
as no children have ever had. This, as well
as rooms everywhere for young people and old
people, in which they can be together as
naturally as they can be alone, without effort,
question, or remark.
Such an environment would allow of free
association among us, on lines of common in
terest ; and, in its natural, easy flow, we
should develope far higher qualities than are
3U
 A New Estimate of Manhood
brought out by the uneasy struggles of our
present "society" to see each other without
wanting to. It would make an enormous dif
ference to woman's power of choosing the
right man. Cut off from the purchasing
power which is now his easiest way to com
pass his desires, freely seen and known in his
daily work and amusements, a woman could
know and judge a man as she is wholly unable
to do now. Her personality developed by a
free and useful life, clear-headed and open-
eyed, — a woman still, but a personality as
well as a woman, — the girl trained to eco
nomic independence, and associating freely
with young men in their common work and
play, would learn a new estimate of what con
stitutes noble manhood.
The young man, no longer able to cover all
his shortcomings with a dress-coat, and to
obtain absolution for every offence by the
simple penance of paying for it, unable really
to do much that was wrong for lack of the old
opportunity and the old incentive, constantly
helped and inspired by the friendly presence
of honest and earnest womanhood, would have
all the force of natural law to lift him up
instead of pulling him heavily downward, as
it does now.
With the pressure of our over-developed
315
 Women and Economics
sex-instinct lifted off the world, born clean
and strong, of noble-hearted, noble-minded,
noble-bodied mothers, trained in the large
wisdom of the new motherhood, and living
freely in daily association with the best
womanhood, a new kind of man can and will
grow on earth. What this will mean to the
race in power and peace and happiness no eye
can foresee. But this much we can see: —
that our once useful sexuo-economic relation
is being outgrown, that it now produces many
evil phenomena, and that its displacement by
the economic freedom of woman will of itself
set free new forces, to develope in us, by their
natural working, the very virtues for which
we have striven and agonized so long.
This change is not a thing to prophesy and
plead for. It is a change already instituted,
and gaining ground among us these many
years with marvellous rapidity. Neither men
nor women wish the change. Neither men
nor women have sought it. But the same
great force of social evolution which brought
us into the old relation — to our great sorrow
and pain — is bringing us out, with equal
difficulty and distress. The time has come
when it is better for the world that women be
economically independent, and therefore they
are becoming so.
316
 Setting the Forces Free
It is worth while for us to consider the case
fully and fairly, that we may see what it is
that is happening to us, and welcome with
open arms the happiest change in human con
dition that ever came into the world. To free
an entire half of humanity from an artificial
position ; to release vast natural forces from
a strained and clumsy combination, and set
them free to work smoothly and easily as they
were intended to work ; to introduce condi
tions that will change humanity from within,
making for better motherhood and fatherhood,
better babyhood and childhood, better food,
better homes, better society, — this is to work
for human improvement along natural lines.
It means enormous racial advance, and that
with great swiftness; for this change does not
wait to create new forces, but sets free those
already potentially strong, so that humanity
will fly up like a released spring. And it is
already happening. All we need do is to
understand and help.

3i7
 XV.

As We learn to see how close is the connec

tion of that which we call the soul with our ex
ternal conditions, how the moral sense and the
behavior of man are modified by the environ
ment, we must of course look for marked results
in psychic development arising from so import
ant a condition as our sexuo-economic relation.
The relation of the sexes, in whatever form,
has always been observed to affect strongly the
moral nature of mankind ; and this is one rea
son why we have placed such disproportionate
stress upon the special virtues of that relation.
The word "moral" in common use means
"chaste"; and, in the case of women, the
word "virtue" itself simply implies the one
virtue of chastity. Large, popular concep
tions are never baseless. They are rooted in
deep truths, felt rather than seen, and, how
ever false and silly in external interpretation,
may be trusted in their general trend. It is
not that the virtue of chastity is so much more
important to the race than the virtue of hon
esty, the virtue of courage, the virtues of
cheerfulness, of courtesy, of kindness, but
that upon the sex-relation in which we live
depends so much of the further development
and arrangement of our whole moral nature.
318 V.
 The Grades of Virtue
What we call the moral sense is an intel
lectual recognition of the relative importance
of certain acts and their consequences. This
appears vaguely and weakly among early sav
ages, and was for long mainly applied to a
few clearly defined and arbitrary rites and
ceremonies, set rules in a game of priest-and-
people. But the habit of associating a sense
of worthiness with certain acts by which came
praise and profit grew in the childish soul, and
the range of moral deeds widened. It has
been widening ever since, growing deeper and
higher and far more subtle, developing with
the other social qualities.
No human distinction is more absolutely
and exclusively social than the moral sense.
Ethics is a social science. There is no ethics
for the individual. Taken by himself, man is
but an animal; and his conduct bears relation
only to the needs of the animal, — self-preser
vation and race-preservation. Every virtue,
and the power to see and strive for it, is a
social quality. The highest virtues are those
wherein we best serve the most people, and
their development in us keeps pace with the
development of society. It is the social rela
tion which calls for our virtues, and which
maintains them.
A simple instance of this is in the prompt
 Women and Economics
lapse to barbarism of a man cut off from his
kind, and forced to live in conditions of sav
agery. Even a brief and partial change in
condition changes conduct at once, as is shown
by the behavior of the most pious New Eng
enders when in mining camps. It is shown,
also, by the different scale of virtue in the
different classes and industries.
Every social relation has its ethics; and the
general needs of society, as a whole, are the
basis of ethics. In every age and race this
may be studied, and a clear connection estab
lished always between the virtues and vices of
a given people and their local conditions.
The principal governing condition in the de
velopment of ethics is the economic environ
ment. This may seem strange to one accus
tomed to consider moral laws as not of this
world, and to see how often virtue costs its
possessor dear. The relative behavior of a
given number of people depends, first, upon
the existence of those people. Such conduct
as should tend to exterminate them would
exterminate their ethics. Such conduct as
should tend to preserve and increase them is
the only conduct of which ethical value can
be predicated. Ethics is, therefore, abso
lutely conditioned upon life and the mainte
nance thereof. From the lowest and narrow-
320
 Right and Wrong
est view which calls an act right or wrong,
according to its immediate effects upon one's
present life, to the clear vision of ultimate
results which calls a course of conduct right
or wrong, according to its final effects upon
one's eternal life, our ethics, small and great,
is the science of human conduct measured by
its results.
It is inevitable, then, that in all races we
should find those acts whereby men live con
sidered right, and should see a high degree of
approval awarded to him who best performs
them. In the hunting and fighting period the
best hunter and fighter was the best man,
praised and honored by his tribe. The virtues
cultivated were such as enabled the possessor
to hunt and kill most successfully, to maintain
himself and be a credit and a help to his
friends. Savage virtues are the simple re
flection of savage conditions. To be patient
and self-controlled was an economic necessity
to the hunter : to bear pain and arduous exer
tion easily was a necessity to the fighter.
Therefore, the savage, by precept and exam
ple, cultivated these virtues.
In the long agricultural and military periods
we see the same thing. In the peasant the
virtues
it takesofindustry
industry and
and patience
patience were
to raise
extolled
corn.:

321
 Women and Economics
In the soldier the virtues of courage and obe
dience were extolled, and in every one the
virtue of faith was the prime requisite of the
existing religion. It took a great deal of
faith to accept the religions of those times.
The importance of faith as a virtue declines
as religion grows more intelligible and appli
cable to life. It requires no effort to believe
what you can understand and do. Slowly the
industrial era dawned and grew, from the
weak, sporadic efforts of the cringing pack
man and craftsman, the common prey of the
dominant fighting class, to our colossal in
dustrial organization, in which the soldier is
ruthlessly exploited to some financial interests.
With this change in economic conditions has
changed the scale of virtues.
Physical courage has sunk : obedience, pa
tience, faith, and the rest do not stand as they
did. We praise and value to-day, as always,
the virtues whereby we live. Every animal
developes the virtues of his conditions: our
human distinction is that we add the power of
conscious perception and personal volition to
the action of natural force. Not only in our
own race, but in others, do we call "good"
and "bad" those qualities which profit us;
and the beasts that we train and use develope,
of necessity, the qualities that profit them, —
322
 Changing Standards
as, for instance, in our well-known friend, the
dog.
The dog is an animal long since cut off
from his natural means of support, and de
pending absolutely on man for food. As a
free, wild dog, he was profited by a daring
initiative, courage, ferocity. As a tame, slave
dog, he is profited by abject submission, by
a crawling will-lessness that grovels at a blow,
and licks the foot that kicks it. We have
quite made over the original dog; and his
moral nature, his spirit, shows the change
even more than his body. The force which
has accomplished this is economic, — a change
of base in the source of supplies and the proc
esses of obtaining them.
Let us briefly examine the distinctive virt
ues of humanity, their order of introduction
and development, and see how this one pecul
iar relation has affected them.
The main distinction of human virtue is
in what we roughly describe as altruism, —.
"otherness." To love and serve one an
other, to care for one another, to feel for and
with one another, — our racial adjective, " hu
mane," implies these qualities. The very ex
istence of humanity implies these qualities in
some degree, and the development of humanity
is commensurate with their development.
323
 Women and Economics
Our one great blunder in studying these
things lies in our failure to appreciate the
organic necessity of such moral qualities in
human life. We have assumed that the prac
tice of these social virtues involved a personal
effort and sacrifice, and that there is an irrec
oncilable contest between the cosmic process
of development and the ethical process, as
Huxley puts it. Social evolution brings with
it the essential qualities of social relation, and
these are our much boasted virtues. The nat
ural processes of human intercourse and inter
relation develope the qualities without which
such intercourse would be impossible; and
this development is as orderly, as natural, as
" cosmic," as the processes of organic activity
within the individual body. It is as natural
for an industrial society to live in peace as for
a hunting society to live in war; and this
peace is not the result of heroic and self-sac
rificing effort on the part of the industrial
society; it is the necessity of their condition.
The course of evolution in human ethics is
marked by a gradual extension of our percep
tion of common good and evil as distinct from
our initial perception of individual good and
evil. This becomes very keen in the more
socialized natures among us, as in the far-
seeing devotion of statesmanship, patriotism,
324
 Recognizing the Next Man
and philanthropy. Each of these words shows
in its construction that the quality described
is social, — the statesman, one who thinks and
works for the State; the patriot, one who
loves and labors for his country; the philan
thropist, one who loves mankind. All these
qualities, in their extreme and in their first
beginnings, are a mere recognition of the
equal right of the next man, common " fair
play ' ' and courtesy ; they are but the natural
product of social conditions acting on the
individual through primal laws of economic
necessity. The individual, in the absolute
economic isolation of the beast, is profited
by pure egoism, and he developes it. The
individual, in the increasing economic inter
dependence of social relation, is profited by
altruism ; and he developes it.
All our virtues can be so traced and ac
counted for. The great main stem of them
all, what we call " love," is merely the first
condition of social existence. It is cohesion,
working among us as the constituent particles
of society. Without some attraction to hold
us together, we should not be able to hold
together; and this attraction, as perceived by
our consciousness, we call love. The virtue
of obedience consists in the surrender of the
individual will, so often necessary to the com
325
 Women and Economics
raon good; and it stands highest in military
organization, wherein great numbers of men
must act together against their personal inter
ests, even to the sacrifice of life, in the ser
vice of the community.
As we have grown into fuller social life,
we have slowly and experimentally, painfully
and expensively, discovered what kind of
man was the best social factor. The type of
a satisfactory member of society to-day is a
man self - controlled, kind, gentle, strong,
wise, brave, courteous, cheerful, true. In the
Middle Ages, strong, brave, and true would
have satisfied the demands of the time. We
now require for our common good a larger
range of qualities, a more elaborate moral
organization. All this is a simple, evolution
ary process of social life, and should have
involved no more confusion, effort, and pain
than any other natural process.
But the moral development of humanity is
a most tempestuous and contradictory field of
study. Some virtues we have developed in
orderly fashion, hardly recognizing that they
were virtues, because they came so easily into
use. Accuracy and punctuality are qualities
which were unknown to the savage, because
they were not needed in his business. They
have been developed in us, because they
326
 Harmful Survivals
were required, and so have been gradually as
sumed under pressure of economic necessity.
Obedience, even in its extreme form of self-
sacrifice, has been produced in the soldier;
and no quality is more altruistic, more un
natural, or more difficult of adoption by the
sturdy individual will. The common, law-
abiding citizen does not consider himself a
hero; yet he is manifesting a high degree of
social
But virtue,
in other
often
virtues
at great
we have
personal
not progressed
sacrifice.

so smoothly. In the ordinary economic rela

tions of life, and in our sex-relations, we are
distinguished by peculiar and injurious quali-
- ties. Our condition may be described as con
sisting of a tenacious survival of qualities
which we ought, on every ground of social
good, to have long since outgrown ; and an in
cessant struggle between these rudimentary
survivals and the normal growth. This it is
which has so forcibly assailed our conscious
ness since its awakening, and which we call
the contest between good and evil. We have
felt within ourselves the pull of diverse ten
dencies, — the impulse to do what was imme
diately good for ourselves, but which our
growing social sense knew was bad for the
community, and therefore wrong; and the
impulse to do what might be immediately bad
327
 Women and Economics
for ourselves, but which the same social sense
knew was good for the community, and there
fore right. This we felt, and cast about in
our minds for an explanation of the way we
behaved: we knew it was peculiar. The
human brain is an organ that must have an
explanation, if it has to make one. We
made one.
The belated impulses of the individual
beast — good in him because he needed them,
bad in us because we were becoming human
and had other needs — we lumped together,
and, with our facile, dramatic, personifying
tendency, called them "the devil." And, as
these evil promptings were usually along the
lines of physical impulse, we considered our
own bodies, and nature in general, as part and
parcel of the wrong, — " the world, the flesh,
and the devil." We felt, also, within us the
mighty stirrings of new powers and strange
tendencies, that led us out of ourselves and
toward each other, new loves and hopes and
wishes, new desires to give instead of to take,
to serve instead of to fight ; and, realizing,
with true social instinct, that this impulse
tended to help us most, was really good for
us, we called it the will of God, the voice of
God, the way to God. The tearing con
test between these ill-adjusted impulses and
328
 " The Root of All Evil"
tendencies, with our growing power of self-
conscious decision and voluntary adoption of
one or another course of action, — this process
in psychic evolution has given us the greatest
world-drama ever conceived, the struggle be
tween good and evil.
And, fumbling vaguely at the sources of
our pain so far as we could trace them, judg
ing always by persons, and not by conditions,
— as a child strikes the chair he bumps his
head upon, — race after race has located the
cause of the trouble in woman. Not that she
primarily invented all the evil, and brought it
upon us, — our vague devil was the remoter
cause, — but that woman let the trouble in.
Pandora did not make the mischief-box; but
she perversely opened it, even against the
wise man's advice. Eve did not plant that
apple-tree; but she ate of it, and tempted the
superior man. It seems a childish and clumsy
guess, but there is something in it. Nothing
of the unspeakable blame and shame with
which man has blackened the face of his
mother through all these centuries, but a
sociological truth for all that.
Not woman, but the condition of woman,
has always been a doorway of evil. The
sexuo-economic relation has debarred her from
the social activities in which, and in which
329
 Women and Economics
alone, are developed the social virtues. She
was not allowed to acquire the qualities
needed in our racial advance; and, in her
position of arrested development, she has
maintained the virtues and the vices of the
period of human evolution at which she was
imprisoned. At a period of isolated economic
activity, — mere animal individualism, — at a
period when social ties ceased with the ties of
blood, woman was cut off from personal activ
ity in social economics, and confined to the
functional activities of her sex.
In keeping her on this primitive basis of
economic life, we have kept half humanity
tied to the starting-post, while the other half
ran. We have trained and bred one kind of
qualities into one-half the species, and an
other kind into the other half. And then we
wonder at the contradictions of human nature !
For instance, we have done all we could, in
addition to natural forces, to make men brave.
We have done all we could, in addition to
natural forces, to make women cowards. And,
since every human creature is born of two
parents, it is not surprising that we are a
little mixed.
We have trained in men the large qualities
of social • usefulness which the pressure of
their economic conditions was also develop-
33°
 A Race of Psychic Hybrids
ing; and we have done this by means of con
scious praise and blame, reward and punish
ment, and with the aid of law and custom.
We have trained in women, by the same
means, the small qualities of personal useful
ness which the pressure of their economic
conditions was also developing. We have
made a creature who is not homogeneous,
whose life is fed by two currents of inheri
tance as dissimilar and opposed as could be
well imagined. We have bred a race of
psychic hybrids, and the moral qualities of
hybrids are well known.
Away back in that early beginning, by
dividing the economic conditions of women
and men, we have divided their psychic devel
opment, and built into the constitution of the
race the irreconcilable elements of these di
verse characters. The incongruous behavior
of this cross-bred product is the riddle of
human life. We ourselves, by maintaining
this artificial diversity between the sexes,
have constantly kept before us the enigma
which we found so hard to solve, and have
preserved in our own characters the confusion
and contradiction which is our greatest diffi
culty in life.
The largest and most radical effect of
restoring women to economic independence
33i
 Women and Economics
will be in its result in clarifying and harmon
izing the human soul. With a homogeneous
nature bred of two parents in the same degree
of social development, we shall be able to feel
simply, to see clearly, to agree with our
selves, to be one person and master of our own
lives, instead of wrestling in such hopeless
perplexity with what we have called "man's
dual nature." Marry a civilized man to a
primitive savage, and their child will natu
rally have a dual nature. Marry an Anglo-
Saxon to an African or Oriental, and their
child has a dual nature. Marry any man of
a highly developed nation, full of the special
ized activities of his race and their accom
panying moral qualities, to the carefully pre
served, rudimentary female creature he has
so religiously maintained by his side, and you
have as result what we all know so well, — the
human soul in its pitiful, well-meaning efforts,
its cross-eyed, purblind errors, its baby fits of
passion, and its beautiful and ceaseless up
ward impulse through all this wavering.
We are quite familiar with this result, but
we have not so far accurately located the
cause. We have had our glimmering percep
tion that woman had something to do with it;
and she has been treated accordingly, by
many simple races, to her further injury, and
332
 " The Vices of the Slave "
to that of the whole people. What we need
to see is that it is not woman as a sex who is
responsible for this mis-mothered world, but
the economic position of woman which makes
her what she is. If men were so placed, it
would have the same effect. Not the sex-
relation, but the economic relation of the
sexes, has so tangled the skein of human life.
Besides the essential evils of an unbalanced
nature, many harmful qualities have been de
veloped in human characters by these condi
tions. For countless centuries we have sought
to develope, by selection and education, a
timid submission in woman. When there did
appear "a curst shrew," she was left unmar
ried; and her temper perished with her, or she
was "tamed" by some Petruchio. The de
pendence of women on the personal favor of
men has produced an exceeding cleverness in
the adaptation of the dependent one to the
source of her supplies. Under the necessity
of pleasing, whether she wished or no, of in
terceding for a child's pardon or of suing for
new pleasures for herself, "the vices of the
slave" have been forever maintained in this
housemaid of the world.
Another discord introduced by the condition
of servitude is that between will and action.
A servant places his time and strength at the
333
 Women and Economics
disposal of another will. He must hold him
self in readiness to do what he is told ; and the
mere physical law of conservation of energy,
to say nothing of his own conscious judgment,
forbids wasting nerve-force in planning and
undertaking what he may not be able to ac
complish. This produces a condition of in
activity, save under compulsion, and, on the
other side, a perverse, capricious wilfulness in
little things, — the reaction from a forced sub
mission.
A more insidious, disintegrating force to
offset the evolution of human character could
hardly be imagined than this steady training
of the habits of servitude into half the human
race, — the mother of all of it. These results
have been modified, of course, by the different
education and environment of men, developing
in them opposite qualities, and transmitting
the contradictory traits to the children indis
criminately.
Heredity has no Salic law. The boy in
herits from his mother, as well as from his
father; the girl from her father, as well as
from her mother. This has prevented the full
evil of the results that might have ensued, but
has also added to the personal difficulties of
each of us, and retarded the general progress
of the race.
334
 The UndevelopedJudgement
Worse than the check set upon the physical
activities of women has been the restriction of
their power to think and judge for themselves.
The extended use of the human will and its
decisions is conditioned upon free, voluntary
action. In her rudimentary position, woman
was denied the physical freedom which under
lies all knowledge, she was denied the mental
freedom which is the path to further wisdom,
she was denied the moral freedom of being
mistress of her own action and of learning by
the merciful law of consequences what was
right and what was wrong; and she has re
mained, perforce, undeveloped in the larger
judgment of ethics.
Her moral sense is large enough, morbidly
large, because in this tutelage she is always
being praised or blamed for her conduct. She
lives in a forcing-bed of sensitiveness to moral
distinctions, but the broad judgment that
alone can guide and govern this sensitiveness
she has not. Her contribution to moral prog
ress has added to the anguish of the world the
fierce sense of sin and shame, the desperate
desire to do right, the fear of wrong; without
giving it the essential help of a practical wis
dom and a regulated will. Inheriting with
each generation the accumulating forces of our
social nature, set back in each generation by
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the conditions of the primitive human female,
women have become vividly self-conscious
centres of moral impulse, but poor guides as
to the conduct which alone can make that
impulse useful and build the habit of morality
into the constitution of the race.
Recognizing her intense feeling on moral
lines, and seeing in her the rigidly preserved
virtues of faith, submission, and self-sacrifice,
— qualities which in the Dark Ages were held
to be the first of virtues, — we have agreed of
late years to call woman the moral superior of
man. But the ceaseless growth of human life,
social life, has developed in him new virtues,
later, higher, more needful ; and the moral
nature of woman, as maintained in this rudi
mentary stage by her economic dependence, is
a continual check to the progress of the human
soul. The main feature of her life — the re
striction of her range of duty to the love and
service of her own immediate family — acts
upon us continually as a retarding influence,
hindering the expansion of the spirit of social
love and service on which our very lives de
pend. It keeps the moral standard of the
patriarchal era still before us, and blinds our
eyes to the full duty of man.
An intense self-consciousness, born of the
ceaseless contact of close personal relation;
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 Women's Psychic Qualities
an inordinate self-interest, bred by the con
stant personal attention and service of this
relation ; a feverish, torturing, moral sensi
tiveness, without the width and clarity of
vision of a full-grown moral sense; a thwarted
will, used to meek surrender, cunning evasion,
or futile rebellion; a childish, wavering,
short-range judgment, handicapped by emo
tion; a measureless devotion to one's own sex
relatives, and a maternal passion swollen with
the full strength of the great social heart, but
denied social expression, — such psychic qual
ities as these, born in us all, are the inevi
table result of the sexuo-economic relation.
It is not alone upon woman, and, through
her, upon the race, that the ill-effects may be
observed. Man, as master, has suffered from
his position also. The lust for power and
conquest, natural to the male of any species,
has been fostered in him to an enormous
degree by. this cheap and easy lordship. His
dominance is not that of one chosen as best
fitted to rule or of one ruling by successful
competition with " foemen worthy of his
steel"; but it is a sovereignty based on the
accident of sex, and holding over such help
less and inferior dependants as could not ques
tion or oppose. The easy superiority that
needs no striving to maintain it ; the tempta
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tion to cruelty always begotten by irrespon
sible power; the pride and self-will which
surely accompany it, — these qualities have
been bred into the souls of men by their side
of the relation. When man's place was main
tained by brute force, it made him more bru
tal : when his place was maintained by pur
chase, by the power of economic necessity,
then he grew into the merciless use of such
power as distinguishes him to-day.
Another giant evil engendered by this re
lation is what we call selfishness. Social life
tends to reduce this feeling, which is but
a belated individualism ; but the sexuo-eco-
nomic relation fosters and developes it. To
have a whole human creature consecrated to
his direct personal service, to pleasing and
satisfying him in every way possible, — this
has kept man selfish beyond the degree inci
dental to our stage of social growth. Even in
our artificial society life men are more for
bearing and considerate, more polite and kind,
than they are at home. Pride, cruelty, and
selfishness are the vices of the master; and
these have been kept strong in the bosom of
the family through the false position of
woman. And every human soul is born, an
impressionable child, into the close presence
of these conditions. Our men must live in
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the ethics of a civilized, free, industrial, dem
ocratic age ; but they are born and trained in
the moral atmosphere of a primitive patri
archate. No wonder that we are all some
what slow to rise to the full powers and privi
leges of democracy, to feel full social honor
and social duty, while every soul of us is
reared in this stronghold of ancient and out
grown emotions, — the economically related
family.
So we may trace from the sexuo-economic
relation of our species not only definite evils
in psychic development, bred severally in men
and women, and transmitted indifferently to
their offspring, but the innate perversion of
character resultant from the moral miscegen
ation of two so diverse souls, — the unfailing
shadow and distortion which has darkened and
twisted the spirit of man from its beginnings.
We have been injured in body and in mind by
the too dissimilar traits inherited from our
widely separated parents, but nowhere is the
injury more apparent than in its ill effects
upon the moral nature of the race.
Yet here, as in the other evil results of the
sexuo-economic relation, we can see the ac
companying good that made the condition nec
essary in its time; and we can follow the
beautiful results of our present changes with
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comforting assurance. A healthy, normal
moral sense will be ours, freed from its exag
gerations and contradictions; and, with that
clear perception, we shall no longer conceive
of the ethical process as something outside of
and against nature, but as the most natural
thing in the world.
Where now we strive and agonize after
impossible virtues, we shall then grow natu
rally and easily into those very qualities; and
we shall not even think of them as especially
commendable. Where our progress hitherto
has been warped and hindered by the retarding
influence of surviving rudimentary forces, it
will flow on smoothly and rapidly when both
men and women stand equal in economic re
lation. When the mother of the race is free,
we shall have a better world, by the easy right
of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces
of social evolution.

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