The Feminist Movement/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
A MODERN MOVEMENT
'What in the world are women coming to,' exclaimed a bewildered onlooker, as a great procession of women, fifty thousand strong, marched past with quick, firm step and banners gaily flying.
'There doesn't seem to be very much wrong with them,' replied a second citizen as he contemplated the fine physique and good clothes of the majority of the marchers, with a distinct tone of envy in his voice and envy in the glance of his eye.
'It's husbands they're after, you bet,' chuckled the lanky, anæmic youth on the edge of the pavement, turning to his neighbour with a knowing wink. And thus speculation busied itself with the meaning of it all, whilst the procession marched on, in never-ending columns, in glad and confident anticipation of the future.
The average man is not to be blamed for his feeling of wonder and mystification. He is a good husband and father, kind to all women, a respectable citizen of sober judgment and sound common sense. Though not a man of culture, he has read or heard enough to know that the burdens which women carry and the wrongs from which they suffer, in this country at least, are not to be compared, for weight and cruelty, with the burdens and wrongs of the women of the dark ages. History does not record that any considerable number of the women of the past have organised to protest against any specific wrong to their sex. They appear to have borne with surprising equanimity the really cruel tortures they were called upon to endure. There may, of course, be sufficient reasons for this. Perhaps the physical strength of their male conquerors was too much for them. Or perhaps they were, for reasons of their own, genuinely content to suffer. Perhaps custom, tradition, and religion had too firm a hold upon them, so that, whilst they groaned, they yielded.
What the plain man cannot understand, and what he wants to know, is exactly why this century and the last have been chosen for the organisation of masses of women on their own behalf; why the women's movement should choose to emerge at a time and in a world where more freedom is enjoyed by a larger number of women than during any previous period of the history of woman.
To reply to this question is an obligation which lies upon every sincere supporter of feminism, since it is only with the approval and by the consent of the public, of which each inquiring citizen forms a part, that reforms won by women can be retained by them.
To make clear one reason for the grave discontent amongst women it is necessary to go back in thought to the dawn of the world, and to understand the relation which men and women separately bore to that condition of their existence, human labour. It is not a misuse of language to speak of labour as one of the most precious things in the world. By many people it is still regarded as the primal curse placed upon Adam and Eve for their sin. By others it is regarded as a brand of inferiority, and the stupid boast still lingers amongst the foolishly proud that they never worked nor their ancestors for many generations behind them. Labour, to the healthy man and woman, is as vitally necessary as food and drink; yet some there are whose highest ambition it is to be able to try to do without it.
It must, of course, be congenial labour. The man with the brain of a Newton might reasonably curse his labour if condemned to the plough for all his waking hours. The woman with the genius of a Marian Evans might be excused for disliking to wash other people's clothes for a livelihood. Labour physics pain, but it must be the labour we delight in. Labour brings joy and satisfaction, but it must be the labour we can do. Labour educates, elevates, and refines when blessed by public opinion and honoured with public esteem. More than all, through labour only can the race exist, through labour only can it develop. Those individuals who cease to work, either with their muscle or with their brains, either for themselves or for the community, are bringing their own doom upon their heads and upon the heads of their offspring a curse. It is with nations as with individuals, they cannot grow unless they labour. It is with a sex as with a race and with an individual, it degenerates unless it works.
Far back in the dim days of the past, farther back than the mind and imagination of most can properly travel, when the human race had just emerged from the slime in which its animal progenitors had wallowed, when the tiger and the ape were king, and when the new-born soul of man struggled with the spirit of the jungle for its earliest expression, the two halves of humanity were equally endowed. The strength of muscle, the swiftness of limb, the brightness of eye necessary for the satisfaction of their rude needs were the enjoyment of man and woman alike. Like the lioness of the African desert, the mate of the first man was his equal partner in the game of life. Together they roamed the woods, gathering the fruits and nuts upon which they lived. Together, with flints and stones, they strove against the predatory wild beasts by which they were surrounded. She bore the child, and he, with her, fed and protected it in the way in which, at present, this responsibility is shared by the higher types of the animal creation. Life then was difficult because of its dangers, but simple because of the simplicity of its needs.
When ages of time had done their work, bringing new experiences to the awakening human spirit, teaching it new thoughts and new ways of living, developing the social instinct, and bringing men and women together in small village communities, the new life required a new social arrangement. Then came a change into the life of the woman. She began to stay in one place, the better to bear and rear her young brood, and for their protection she turned herself to various pursuits within the shadow of the home she built with her own hands. She it was who domesticated fire, up to that time the enemy of her kind, teaching it how to become a good servant, and by its means cooking the food she had prepared.
The woman of this period was the first agriculturalist, working in the fields for the raising of crops. To the woman also belongs the beginnings of medical science, for, to restore her man or her children when in ill-health, she skilfully prepared the herbs and simple things of her own growing. Small wonder that, for a period, the man was content to be governed by the woman. During this period the family took the name of the woman, inheritance was through the female line only. Holding in their charge the health of the community, and being, as they were, its sole builders, farmers, spinners, weavers, and manufacturers, they held as high a place in the little community as they did in their individual homes. The sole, though important, work of the man was to kill the animals required for food by his family, and to protect them against the depredations of marauding tribes.
Ages passed, and again the social order changed. Not all the grown men of the village were required for fighting. Some might work, or get others to work for them. The province of agriculture was taken from the women by the men, who confined the women within the house, there to devote themselves to indoor occupations. To this confinement of women is to be attributed the real decay in the physical strength of their half of the race, and the consequent power to enslave them which was so freely and so arbitrarily used. Women became valuable as child-bearers and slaves, and their helplessness at the child-bearing period offered the opportunity for complete domination. They became the property of the masters who had purchased, stolen, or captured them, and they lived their dull, heavily-burdened lives at the whim and pleasure of their lords.
Time passed: civilisations rose and fell. One part of the human family rose against another, and enslaved it. The development of the rich natural resources of the world, the growth of the mind of man, the use of his inventive genius in the making of tools, instruments, weapons of defence, houses, ships, public buildings; his industry in the raising of crops, the making of roads, the building of bridges, the discovery of the arts and the rudiments of science, all contributed to a state in which property took a new and large significance. Wealth meant power, the power to command other men and women; and so the slowly-developing spirit of man sought power, admiration, worship. The value of woman as property, in these days of destructive wars, lay chiefly in her power to bear children. For this she was fed and protected, for this she was permitted a certain amount of freedom, though within clearly defined limits and in strict seclusion, unless she were a slave. In the number of his slaves a man's wealth was, in part, estimated; but the greater the number of the slaves, the less there remained for the man and his wife to do. He, however, devoted himself to public works, either as artist, soldier, or statesman. She had the direction of the work of the household slaves, who, along with their mistress, engaged in the domestic arts of spinning and weaving.
To pass swiftly from the days of Roman glory to the days of the eighteenth century in this country is a leap indeed; but it is to the events of the latter part of the eighteenth century in Great Britain that the inquirer must look most carefully for an understanding of the modern women's movement. Let it be remembered that in all ages there have been free women, free individuals. The queens of the earth have been as great as the kings thereof. Women have ruled with wisdom as abbesses and prioresses. Women had a well-known share in the promotion and guidance of the Reformation. The women of the Renaissance are as famous as the men. Women have been great landed proprietors, governors of schools and colleges, guardians of the poor, statesmen, soldiers, poets, and artists.
Women taught, trained, healed, preached, prophesied, governed, led armies to battle, and did a thousand other things long before the feminist movement made its appearance. But let it be remembered that where this has been true in the days that are gone, it has either been true of exceptional women, whose genius and capacity would not be repressed, and who frequently had to pay with their lives for flying in the face of the conventions of their times; or it will be found that they fought by the side of men in a struggle for their common freedom. In times of peace and plenty, throughout the world and in all the ages, the position of the average normal woman has been lower than that of the average normal man.
The fact that needs to be emphasised is that, for most of them, this position was a satisfactory one; or, at least, they seldom, even as individuals, rebelled against what they believed to be a divinely ordered state of being; and never, before comparatively modern times, did they organise themselves in great numbers with the exclusive object of securing equality with men. What, then, is the reason for this?
It matters very little for the purposes of this recital when and by whom the discovery of the power of steam was made. As a matter of simple fact the man to make the discovery known in this country was James Watt, who, by watching the movement of the lid of a kettle of boiling water, came to the knowledge which has since revolutionised the whole of industry and society. The latter part of the eighteenth century was rich in the discovery of mechanical appliances, such as the spinning-jenny, the weaving machine, the printing machine, which, by making production easier and cheaper, have brought undreamt of wealth into the country and heaped unheard of benefits upon mankind. The steamship improved the means of communication with foreign lands, and compelled the ends of the earth to contribute their share to the poor man's breakfast table. The railway train broke down the boundaries of high hill and dangerous bog, of deep river and robber-haunted heath, which had effectually separated the majority of the dwellers in small communities from one another. Large cities began to make their sombre appearance all over the land. The industrial parts of the country became covered with factories. A new era opened, and the power to produce wealth promised much for the community at large.
But these promised benefits the people did not at once receive. A time of great economic change is always a time of stress and suffering. The most ardent lover of the motor-car, bowling along in luxurious speed to his destination, cannot forget the misery of the poor cabman whom the newer invention has robbed of his work. The cheapening of production by the introduction of machinery which could do ten, twenty, or a hundred times as much work as one man, caused widespread unemployment, with consequent starvation and misery. In their blind, ignorant rage the men smote the machines, thinking that these dumb, insensate things were the cause of all their woe. Education, gained partly in the public schools, much more in the school of life, and in particular through the realisation of the value of co-operation gained in the workshop, has taught men a much better way. Now their efforts towards the solution of the problem of the workless man are on the lines of the legal minimum wage, a shorter working day, national insurance against unemployment, and kindred measures. Along these lines will the working woman's problem also be solved.
But, in the meantime, the majority of women are not working women in the industrial sense. There were in 1901 12,500,000 women over twenty in the United Kingdom. Of these, about 5,300,000 are women industrially employed. The remainder are engaged in professional occupations and in home-making. By far the larger number of the women of this country, and it is true of the women of all other countries, are home-makers. But what, in these modern days, does the term home-maker connote. There are about 8,000,000 married women in the country, whilst every woman is a potential wife. What definition of their sphere, their work in life, their special contribution to the general good would be satisfactory to them and leave them their self-respect?
The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century was hard upon the humbler classes of men. It was doubly hard upon women, and it was, in a sense, harder upon the women of the richer classes than upon the women of the poorer part of society.
The industrial revolution was responsible for robbing women of their work, at least of all that part of their work not directly concerned with the bearing of children. In the days preceding this economic change it was the custom of women of all ranks to work, and, in most cases, to work hard. In the earlier stages of human history women worked far harder than men, and the number of their duties was infinitely greater. When it became less important for a woman of means to work so hard, she nevertheless directed th∴e energies of the women of her household, and did not think it a sacrifice of dignity to engage in household duties herself. By her the household was fed and clothed. She baked the bread and cakes, made the jams and marmalades, brewed the beer, milked the cows, made the butter and cheese, prepared the herbs, and dressed the game. She, with her subordinates, spun the flax and the wool, which she wove into linen for table and bed, or into warm garments for husband and child. She made the candles which lit the household, and every piece of soap used by her family was usually made by her. She tended the animals and collected the honey from the bees, and the eggs from the fowls. If she did not actually accomplish all these feats of skill and endurance herself, they were done under her direction by the women of her household, and there was not one task which the average woman of her times could not have done, and did not do, herself if and when the need arose.
Of most of these interesting and important duties the industrial revolution has robbed her, and is robbing her, for the days of profound economic change are not yet over. Those huge steam-driven machines, those ugly factories swallowed the work in which the busy wife and mother, maid and daughter, had found their happiness and their pride. Now everything is made in the workshop, in huge quantities, and by machinery. Soap, candles, beer, bread, sheets, blankets, boots, clothes, everything, apparently, that the human family requires can be made by men outside the home, where once they were made by the women of the household.
Competition for employment caused work to be given to the people who could do it for the least payment. Those women and girls without means were compelled to follow their work into the factory. By offering themselves for less money they secured work. To this extent they were in a better position than the woman of means, for whilst they worked they justified their existence, and were able to hold fast to their self-respect. The awful conditions under which they laboured, and frequently died, are another matter, to be treated later. For the present, let it be noted that their labour saved them from the deadly perils of idleness and parasitism.
In the loss of their work by women lie the roots of the modern feminist movement. Those best acquainted with the history of the movement know that the founders were women of the educated middle class, together with one or two women of aristocratic connections. At the present moment, after more than sixty years of strenuous agitation, the women's movement includes women of every class and condition, working women as well as rich, independent women. But the numbers of working women feminists form a very small proportion of the total number of working women as compared with the number of educated middle-class women actively engaged in the work of feminism. This may be due, in part, to the limitation of the working women's opportunities, through the necessity of their earning a livelihood.
This much must be noted, that the motive which consciously or unconsciously inspires the working-woman feminist, is not the same which frequently actuates her better-off comrade. In the first case the demand is for improved conditions of labour, and the vote is sought as a means to that end. In the second case it is for labour itself that she cries, new openings, new spheres of labour, to fill her half-emptied life. She does not ask to go back to the conditions in which her great-grandmother lived her useful, fruitful life. She realises that the present method of producing necessaries is the most economical one, a vast saving of human energy for better ends. She does not cry for wifehood and motherhood, or, as the vulgar youth expressed it, she is not 'after a husband,' though there would be no shame in desiring to obey the law of her being. She asks that, in exchange for the domestic life stolen from her—the happy, busy productive life of the homes of her ancestors—she may have new activities given to her, in which she may minister to the common good as her forebears ministered to their families and their village communities. She would be doctor or lawyer, teacher or preacher. She would take an active part in local and national government. If she may not have children of her own, she would have the power to look after the motherless, suffering, outcast children.
It is as necessary to the modern thinking woman as the sunlight is to the flower that she should find her place in the scheme of things, and be able by her deeds to develop her own character and justify her existence to herself and to the world. The busy working wife, with her limited means, her large brood, her vision frequently limited by the harassing cares and worries of her life, feels little sympathy with the feminist, whose gospel she has never understood. But she too will be a better and a happier woman when the worth of her work is acknowledged and her life has room left for some joy.