# Socialism and the Home

No. 28 in the Pocket Library of Socialism
PRICE FIVE CENTS
Socialism and the Home
BY
MAY WALDEN
Pocket Library of Socialism, No. 28
80
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY (CO-OPERATIVE)
page
SOCIALISM AND THE HOME
As a rule women have not been, and are not, much interested in the study of Socialism. They think that it is "all politics" and they do not know anything about politics and they care less. If you will read this booklet through carefully you will find in it the reason why we must be "in politics" before we can have socialism, and you will also find why women ought to be socialists and work right along beside their husbands, brothers, fathers and friends. You will find that the only way to solve the woman question is through socialism. And by "woman question" I mean everything which has to do with a woman's happiness, in the home or out of it. Every question which deals with human happiness deals with the home, for the home reflects the condition of society, the state, the nation, the world. You may think I have a broad subject, and I have. I cannot pretend to deal with all sides of this question, but I do mean to try to say a few things about that which we women think the most of; the things which come to us and help to make or mar the happiness of our daily lives. What is necessary to a truly happy home—the kind we all want? First, we must have food, clothing and shelter.
FOOD.
We must have plenty to eat; pure, healthful food that makes us strong and keeps us well. Now-a-days doctors are paying much more atten​tion to the kind of food people have than they used to do.
There is much advice as to what will best nourish us, and many experiments and observations are made upon pupils in schools and reformatories and upon workingmen and women in different occupations to see how much food we need each day. This is all right if the knowledge is not used to force the workers to live upon just enough to keep them alive and to keep up the human race. But this study will never in itself FURNISH enough pure food for everybody.
Why isn't ALL food pure and wholesome? The people who sell us food have to make money in order to live,—in other words they must make a profit on their goods.
There are many people in this business of getting food ready for themselves and others to eat—so there is much competition among them as to who shall get the most trade and make the most money. The ones that offer their goods the cheapest are sure of the custom. They find they can undersell their rivals if they can do one or both of two things. They can adulterate their goods, or get cheaper help, or both. Dr. Wiley, who has been chief chemist for the U. S. Department of Agriculture for the past twenty-five years says that "practically everything that we eat and drink is adulterated." The man who says this is a capitalist official and would not wish to make things seem worse than they really are, so we may believe what he tells us. Some of these adulterations are very harmful, such as the adulterations of baking powder and the preservatives which are used in meat and milk, canned goods and the like.
We are told that the way to prevent this adulteration is to buy only the goods which are known to be pure, from firms that spend much in advertising, because they have reputations to keep up and there is no danger of their selling dishonest goods. This is possible for people who ​have plenty of money to spend, but what about the ones who must buy where they can get things the cheapest? Besides I have personal knowledge of the fact that one of the best known wholesale grocery firms in Chicago, whose reputation for honesty is supposed to be first class, employs men to put harmless adulterations into their goods.
The most harm, however, comes from the supply of impure milk. Of all the children born in the United States over half die before they are five years old, and many of the deaths are caused by impure milk. Think of the little lives sacrificed and the homes desolated through this one cause alone—and one that can easily be prevented. H. W. Conn, professor of biology at Wesleyan University, tells us in an article "Cheap milk is poor milk," how easily milk is tainted and how much disease is caused by the germs of typhoid and scarlet fevers, diphtheria and consumption being carried in it. He tells us that the milk for babies must be given while fresh, and kept in a cool place. I wonder if he knows about the ice famine which was created in New York City one summer for the benefit of the Ice Trust, which caused the death of thousands of babies? He tells us that the babies are made sick by the filth falling from the cow's bodies into the milk pails when the milking is done, and says that the farmers must keep their cows clean and we must pay more for our milk so the farmers can hire more help to clean the cows. But he doesn't tell us how we are to get the money! He says: "We hear occasionally of the wisdom of inaugurating dairy inspection, by which the method of milk production should be under supervision, for the protection of the public," but he doesn't tell us how to get about it nor who is willing to have it done. Many pure food laws have been made and passed; health departments have compiled reports saying that "the limit of adulteration should be governed by a commission," but the laws if passed are never en​forced and will not be so long as the food supply is run by private owners for the sake of profit.
No matter who earns the food, whether man, woman or child, generally the woman has to get it ready to eat. So, wives, mothers and daughters, it is your concern as much or more than that of any one else that the food be fresh and nourishing.
There isn't a problem on earth we cannot solve if we set about it; now how shall we begin on this? You remember we found that the cause of adulterated food was the desire for profits by the people who produce and market it. So we must get our food without its being necessary for the producers to live by profits.
To do this we must ALL own the food, and own ALL the things that are necessary to produce it and distribute it. That means that we shall own the seeds, the ground, the farm machinery, the farm animals, the dairies, the ice, the bakeries, and factories, the market places, the gas, electricity, oil wells and coal mines, the railroads, steamboats and everything else that is used in producing, preparing and distributing our food. A system will then be perfected so that we shall each have enough to eat and none will have a great deal more than they need. The food will be produced under conditions that are healthful, so that it will not be possible for us to be made sick because of eating or drinking infected or adulterated food. Our babies will be furnished pure milk, and the ice will not be kept in storage until prices go up, but we shall have our food and all other things we need at what it costs to produce them.
CLOTHING.
Our next necessity is clothing. We must not only have plenty of it in order to keep clean, but it must be comfortable and pleasing to us. We cannot have much self-respect when our clothing is dirty, ragged and ill-fitting. Yet so common is ​it for some of us to be illy clothed that our garments more than anything else have come to be marks of the class to which we belong. Those who cannot afford lo be well dressed are looked down upon and made fun of. Women much more than men make these distinctions against each other, and I want you to think seriously what the cause is and how to change things so all may have plenty of comfortable, artistic clothing—for it is natural and right that every one should wish to have good clothes, We all love beautiful things and we all try to show that love by putting upon our bodies the best things we can get. That this leads to a rivalry between women for other reasons we all know, and we will notice that in another place. What we want to consider now is that one of the necessities for a happy home is that each member of the family shall be properly clothed and the reason why this is not now possible. The children cannot go to school nor run errands if they are taunted all the time by better dressed companions, I think one who has not suffered from this taunting can never measure the ache which the sensitive little hearts hold, nor sympathize with the bitter rebellion against poverty which the young girl feels when her girl friends, or worse, the young men, smile scornfully at her shabby clothing. Even if her clothes are not worn but only "out of style" she suffers from knowing she has on old-fashioned things and attracts attention thereby. She does not understand why a dress should have balloon sleeves one winter and coat sleeves the next. It is a matter very easy to explain and to understand when one remembers that there is a rich class and a poor class. That the people in the rich class have little to do but adorn themselves and hunt for something new which will be so different from what others hare as to be called "exclusive"; and that all the others down the social scale try to keep up appearances and make believe they are ​in the "exclusive" set too, until the poorest class is reached which must content itself with "misfits," imitations and shoddy goods.
This chasing after the fashions is one of the best evidences of class divisions that women have. It is safe to say that more time, energy and wear and tear of the nerves is due to our trying to keep in style, or to finding out what "they" wear, than any other one occupation of a woman's life. "They"—meaning the leaders of fashion—are usually such libertines as King Edward VII., or mistresses of his, who rival each other in dress in order to win his favor, or that of some other leader of the "fast set." Then come others who dress as near like the "leaders" as possible, in order to make believe they belong in the same set and have just as much money to spend. Then follow others who must put up with goods made to look like the best, but "cut from the same patterns as the most expensive fabrics" as the advertisements say, and so on until the garments which the poor can afford to buy are the shoddiest that a manufacturer ever made profits on. Every woman wants to get the most she can for her money and so she must go shopping on the days when special bargains are offered. Any one who has been in one of the stores and formed a part of the struggling, sweating crowd, hauling and pulling goods over trying to find something that suits both taste and pocketbook, will be ready to exclaim as I heard one shop girl do to another, "Don't it make you sick!" Doesn't it make you sick, my fellow women, to think of thousands of our class pinching, scraping, drudging in order to ape the fashions of those drones for whom we slave and whom we support in their idleness and folly? We have done it and our forefathers and foremothers have done it because we did not know a better way. We are learning now that we do not have to keep on this way.
Notice how a woman's form has been padded ​here and hollowed there until it is tortured into any shape except the one nature intended it to be! Go to the art galleries on a day when they are free to our class and look at the beautiful forms shown in the sculptures and paintings there. Realize if you can that people once lived in a free state who had perfect bodies like those, then look around the rooms at your fellow creatures and notice the cramped, ill-shapen, ungraceful figures, and know that they are made so from being the slaves of the classes above them!
Strange as it may seem, there is a reason for these fashionable deformities which change from year to year. They are marks that show to which class the wearer belongs. In China among the upper classes the feet of the girl babies are bandaged in such a way that they cannot grow, and when they are women the feet are from 2½ to 5 inches long. They cannot walk except with the help of a servant on each side. The lower classes, on the other hand, have well-developed feet because it is necessary that they work. The Chinese show in this way that their ladies are high born, and do not have to earn their living. Among the Thlinkects, all the FREE-BORN female children have a slit cut in the upper lip in which a wire, piece of shell or wood is placed to distend the lip. The older she grows the larger the lip block is made and the more important is her place in society. But the female SLAVES are not allowed to wear a lip ornament.
The flat heads of American Indians and of other tribes are considered by them a sign of nobility, or social caste, and if through sickness or any other reason the head is not flattened in infancy these children can never become influential in the tribe and are often sold as slaves.
Trailing skirts, pointed shoes, a pinched-up waist, and anything else that keeps a woman from doing free, active, healthy work is a sign of leisure, dependence and inactivity; hence these are ​adopted by the ladies of the upper classes. We have many of these badges of supposed superiority existing and changing from season to season.
Accept the mark of your class, dear worker, and refuse to follow a fashion which is unhealthful, ungraceful and a badge of indolence. It is not possible for any woman to be thoroughly healthy unless her body in all its parts is fully developed and so clothed that she may get about with the same freedom as a man. She might as well have one arm if she must hold up her skirt all the time. She might as well have consumption as to cramp up her lungs in a tight-fitting corset—and as a matter of fact many women die of consumption because they cannot use their lungs properly. She might as well be born a cripple as to make herself one by wearing shoes three sizes too small. A woman who has not freed herself from these marks of indolence and frivolity can have no idea of the independence, exhilaration and energy of mind and body that come from adopting a rational mode of dress. We workers, men and women, must join ourselves together to rid the world of this system which gives a few rich people so much leisure and many poor ones too much hard work; and which makes it necessary for the rich class, whether willingly or not, to own another class by owning the things they must use to earn a living. As you go about on the street cars, or in a crowd, study the pinched, care-worn faces about you, made unbeautiful by want and drudgery. Listen to the remarks their owners make about the things they would like and cannot afford, then try to believe if you can that there is "prosperity enough to go around" and that "the working people of the United States produce two thousand millions of dollars more each year than they can consume." So long as a child has to stay out of school because its clothes are not warm enough or whole enough to comfort its little body, it is not true that we make more than we can consume. So ​long as there is a girl in the United States who wants a ribbon and can't have it (and I know of some who never have had one) so long it is not true that we are suffering from over-production!
What is the matter with us then? Why is it that thousands of people work in sweat-shops making clothes that they can never wear because they haven't enough money to pay for them? It didn't cost these manufacturers much to have the clothes made, that is certain. Why is it that thousands of other workers stand over counters day in and day out, selling this sweat-shop clothing, and do not and cannot earn enough to keep soul and body together without selling their virtue too? It is because of profits, my dear friends, profits! The workers are not paid what they earn. They are paid only enough to keep themselves alive. They get only one-fifth of what they produce. They are not supposed to want or to need luxuries, such as eight or nine hours sleep every night, three good meals a day, new clothes frequently, and homes of their own! No, such things are for the rich people—the upper classes.
We are told that one way to prevent the evil of the sweat-shops and the adulterations of food and other goods is to establish Consumers' Leagues. These are made up of the middle and capitalist classes, and the object is self-protection. They promise to buy goods only at such places as are healthful, so the consumers may not run the risk of disease from eating and wearing things that have been made in foul places. This protects the upper classes—about one-fourth of the people. But how about the poor people who are three times as many? They must buy where things are sold cheapest and certainly that is not where the best materials are used. So all of the Consumers' Leagues in creation will not REMOVE THE CAUSE of this evil.
​When competition is entirely removed, shopping will be done in a different way from the strength-absorbing, nerve-distracting manner we are familiar with. When the department stores are all owned by one large trust (which finally will be absorbed into the Co-operative Commonwealth) there will be no need of advertising in the way they do now, and there will no longer be "bargain days," but each article will have the same price in every place. Then we can order our goods by looking at a catalogue or going to the small store nearest us where samples are kept, and have the things sent us the way they are now, or by the parcels post. Rural delivery is to be established all over the United States as fast as possible, and the small shopkeepers are wasting time and energy in trying to stop it. It is a great help to the farmers' wives and before long the old way of shopping will be another relic of capitalism.
HOUSING.
How many of the laboring people own their homes? Almost none. And yet these laborers are always blamed by the upper classes for their shiftlessness because they do not own homes. Let us look into this a little and see what the trouble is. In the first place what do we want homes for? Why aren't we satisfied to look at the outside of rich people's homes? It is because we are human beings and because we have the same love for little ones and for a place to brood them in that is natural to most creatures. It has been said over and over again that the dearest spot in the world is home, but now let us add that the dearest hope of the homeless is to possess one some day. Think of the home. sick, heartsick wanderers to-day, and wonder why it is so. Wonder why they are called tramps, outcasts, lazy vagabonds! A man with no property is looked down upon as the scum of the ​earth by the people who have inherited some, or have skinned their fellow creatures, or have acquired it under the conditions which capitalism gives.
Suppose by working and scrimping it could be possible for you to buy a home, would it be best to do it? With the present system of living where we must beg for a chance to work, I should say "no." Factory owners try to get their "hands" to buy homes near the factory so they will not be able to move away. They want them to have their money tied up in property so they will have to stay. The factory owners have the "hands" at their mercy then, and can cut down wages, or lengthen hours as much as possible, and the "hands" cannot leave to hunt other places. The following dispatch from Memphis, Ind., came to my notice as I was writing this, referring to a fire at that place and reads: "Two large heading and stave factories were totally destroyed. It is not probable the place will be rebuilt, since most of the people were laborers and carried no insurance on their dwellings and are unable to rebuild. Many will seek employment elsewhere." These laborers are worse off than the ones that only rented the houses they lived in. However, few laborers own their homes, or think of doing so, because they have a hard struggle to pay rent.
Most of us know what kind of houses the working people are forced to live in, but probably none of those who put up with the frightful conditions know that there is a way out. They do not know that it is not a necessary condition and that they can change it for a better one just as soon as they are a mind to by combining together and working together to have things to suit themselves, instead of fixing them to suit their masters—the capitalists. But let us look into the housing problem a little further. It is not hard to pick out the houses of the capitalists ​from those of the laborers. The former are beautiful mansions on the boulevards, neatly and healthfully kept; the latter are rows of tiny cottages, or of apartment houses in the dirtiest and most disagreeable part of the city. Unthinking people say, "Well, they must love the dirt and filthy smell, or they wouldn't stay here—but they get used to it, I suppose, and wouldn't appreciate anything better if they had it." It never ours to the passer-by that people live in these wretched. unhealthful hovels because they MUST and not because they want to. It has been found that many families pay out nearly a third of what they earn for the one item of rent. Landlords find that the old tenements without any improvements bring in the most profits, so they rent these year after year until they become uninhabitable. The high rents which the working people pay must be raised in some way, so they take lodgers and boarders. The family and boarders are crowded together into two or three rooms in such a way that cleanliness and decency are impossible.
One can see at a glance the connection between this miserable housing and the public health. Plenty of sunshine, pure air and sanitary conditions are absolutely necessary to good health. We all know these are not to be found in rear tenements and unhealthy basements. Epidemics of typhoid and other fevers, diphtheria and other contagious diseases are bred in these places and the disease germs are carried by clothing and other products made in these sweaters' dens, from them to be sown broadcast over the country. When it is once understood that all such diseases are preventable and that we, the wives, mothers and daughters of the common people, have it in our power to put a stop to the wholesale murder of our dear ones by doing away with these conditions, I am sure we will band ourselves together at once to do it.
​"But your remedies are so far away," some one says to me: "you do not even touch the spot you want to heal." We do not need to; we believe in purifying the system, then these plague spots will go away naturally. Most women, if they have half a chance, are good housekeepers. And these questions of sanitary conditions and the public health are simply questions of good housekeeping. Under socialism when men and women elected to office look faithfully to their duties instead of squandering the public money, as is done now under capitalism, there will be put into use systems of engineering and scientific and economical methods of caring for the disposal of waste matter so that this suicidal way of poisoning our lake and river water and using it again for household purposes will be quickly abolished. We must have sound bodies before we can have sound minds, and the cleaner people are physically the healthier they are mentally and the purer they are morally.
INVENTIONS.
Not many years ago much of the work which is now done by machinery was done by hand, or by small tools that each family either owned or borrowed from their neighbors. Very rapidly new inventions have been made so that fewer people are needed to produce a certain amount. The machines were simplified and the men who attended them were displaced by women who would work cheaper. Finally now the machines are made so simple that tiny children of eight and ten years of age can attend them and they are taking the places of women and working for a few cents a day.
A few instances of how machinery has displaced individual workers may be given as follows. One man with a machine can make as many nails as a thousand men used to do. Three people with machinery can mold twenty thousand loaves of ​bread in a day. One man and two boys can spin as much cotton as a thousand spinners used to do. Examples might be multiplied by the hundreds, but you all understand that with men and women being constantly thrown out of employment by new inventions few can take the responsibility of a family upon themselves.
LOW WAGES.
Besides the uncertainty of work caused by new inventions, wages are lowered by these same machines which should make our living easier. For example, a machine for making tin cans has been invented which a child can run. He feeds the machine at one end with sheets of tin; at the other end sixty-four cans drop out every minute. No manufacturer will pay a man regular wages for doing what a child can and will do for a much less amount. So wages drop to the level of a child's subsistence. Can you not see that it is impossible to make a home under such circumstances, or to keep one on such wages? The men, married or unmarried, must look elsewhere for work. They go to the Klondike, to the huge wheat farms, or any other place where the slightest chance offers. Wages are not enough to support a family, so the idea of marriage is given up and in many cases the family is abandoned. The man who has been the support of the family must go. The home is broken up.
The remedy which capitalism would apply to the man who thus deserts his family is to arrest him for "vagrancy" and put him in jail! Think of doing that to a man who tramps miles a day and begs for work at every place he passes! If you glance over the daily papers you will scarcely fail to find from one to three records of suicide with the words "despondent from lack of work," or "anxiety" given as the cause. Volumes of misery are bound up in those few words, yet we pay little attention to them, or refuse to read them because they are frequent and make us ​so miserable. To what depths of despair must the man or woman be brought who seeks a violent death at his or her own hands! And each of these poor creatures was at one time a member of a home.
SPECIALIZATION OF INDUSTRY.
By means of those great inventions which I have just spoken of many industries are being specialized. Instead of spinning-wheels in the homes we have factories where the women and children work from ten to fourteen hours a day for a mere pittance. We have mills where the underwear which used to be always made at home is now knit better and cheaper. The small shop of the milliner and dressmaker which used to be common thirty years ago is being displaced by sweat-shops where seamstresses and finishers are working ten hours a day, six days in the week for starvation wages! This change in methods of production has forced women and children to leave the home for the shop and factory. According to the United States census for 1900 women employed in "gainful occupations" was nearly 5,000,000.
"But are not these factories and mills a good thing? Would you go back to hand labor?" I am asked. By no means. I would have all things produced well and economically. But I would have them produced under different conditions. I would raise the wages and give the workers the full benefit of what they make. I would shorten the hours. I would make the shops and factories healthful places. I would see that each worker had plenty of time to develop a healthy body, opportunity to enrich the mind by study, travel and recreation, and these conditions would create a code of ethics better than the world has yet dreamed of. I would do this by making these means of production the common property of all.
​Many are the evils which come from his system of private ownership. One of them is the large number of crimes which at present are frightening the people. The "hold-ups," the burglaries, the kidnapping, the murders committed for money, the threatening letters demanding bags of coin, the robbing of postoffices, banks and government and private offices. Do you think if these men had always had a chance to work at something that would give them all that they earned, they would have become thieves and murderers? I do not think they would. "But," you say, "these men wouldn't work if they had a chance; they want to get rich without working. They would rather rob and murder and run the risk of being caught than do any useful work." In doing that I do not think they are worse than the owners of coal mines who do not take care to prevent accidents in their mines where hundreds of men are killed every little while because they must work there or starve. Nor are these outlaws any worse than the factory owners who get rich on the profits taken from their poorly-paid "hands." But the outlaws commit these crimes only when driven to desperation. We want to get rid of all of these evil things and I think you can see the way to do it is to give every human being a chance to earn a decent living.
CHILD LABOR.
Another one of the evils of capitalism is the necessity for children to carn their own living and help support the family so they never have a chance to go to school, or to play. They know nothing except how to tend a machine. They cannot have strong, healthy bodies because they breathe the bad air of the factory all day long and eat poor food since they cannot afford to buy better. They have no time to study, and are too tired when their day's work is done if they had time; or they want a little fun to make them ​forget their miseries, and they do not feel like studying. They have never had a chance to learn anything but low thoughts and bad words, nor to see any sights but vulgar ones. How can you expect them to grow into healthy, pure-minded men and women and makes homes which shall be foundations of "a glorious country?" Such people are the most dangerous a country can gather. Do not say "Ship them back to the place they came from." They are being made here every hour and minute of the day and night, and the only way to help them and help the country is to give them their liberty from the shop, factory and mine. Turn them loose into the country air, into the free sunshine, and let them run and roll, and teach them from birds and flowers how to grow up into noble, helpful manhood and womanhood. In Chicago alone there are over 15,000 children at work at different occupations, the most of them in factories and workshops. A safe estimate of the number of children in the United States who are obliged to work is two million.
In order to get the most out of life, people must be educated, but the opportunity for a good education comes to few children. "Under our public school system cannot every child get a good education?" No, far from it. Education has become a class distinction. Many children must leave school at the age of twelve or thirteen years, and even younger, in order to help earn money enough to support the family; and they never can go back again for the same reason. In the United States in 1896, out of a total school population of nearly twenty-one million, less than half of that number were in average daily attendance. The average length of the school term is 140 days, so one can imagine the amount of knowledge the laborer's child gets.
The question of education and a discussion of its different sides, including the imperfect sys​tem now in use; the wasteful methods employed, the teaching of "commercialism," and enforcement of capitalistic ideas and ethics, is too vast to be taken up here, so I must leave it, hoping that it may soon be discussed by some one fully competent to handle it.
ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE OF WOMEN.
Another evil of this system of which I speak as boldly and freely as I think is the woman question in all its phases. Thank heaven that I am a woman, with sympathies and experiences which help me to understand all of the wrongs that my sex suffers from to-day! Let us take for an example the wife of any day laborer. You all know plenty such. She has to pinch and serape and plan from early morning until late at night and often far into the night doing work she cannot do when the children are awake—doing her washing, scrubbing, ironing, baking, mending, sewing and what not? With no time for reading, music, visiting or other pleasure; with her nerves worn out by constant wear and tear upon them of never-ending housework and care of children, is it any wonder that she is peevish and irritable at times and lives always with rebellion in her heart that it is so, and that she cannot make it otherwise? Is it any wonder that she blames the husband who is himself ground down by business worries and the responsibilities of his growing family, and thinks to herself, "I wish I had never got married; I wish there was a way I could earn money of my own so I could have a penny to spend when I want it." When she asks for money to get some necessaries, she gets a gruff answer and a few dollars grudgingly given that makes her heart ache for days and weeks afterwards.
Why is it? Is the husband to blame? No, he is no worse than thousands and he is better than hundreds. It is because we have not yet ​found the right way of living. We have made laws that force a woman to be dependent upon a man and that force men to be dependent upon other men for the chance to live.
Let us take another example which has the same solution. Take the daughter of that day laborer. Cramped all her girlhood for pretty things to wear, for chances to see and know something of the world, for books to read, for the companionship of people who know more than she does, she determines to make her own way. She teaches in a country school until she earns enough to study a business course in a larger place. She finishes and gets a position. The pay is small, very small, for there are many other girls who also want to make their own way. Why, the world is full of them! She didn't know it before. She gets sick and loses lier place. When she is well enough she hunts for work. Many weary miles she tramps to find something. She gets a place for a few days and is able to pay up her back board. Her clothes are getting shabby. In despair she goes back to her first employer to see if he cannot find an- other place for her. She doesn't like him, but he always was friendly—too friendly, it seemed to her, but she must do something. She goes and he asks her to meet him at a restaurant for dinner while they talk it over. She has had nothing to eat that day and consents—it is that or starve. He offers after dinner to find her a new boarding place. She refuses and goes back to the old one to be told that after that night she cannot stay, as some one else wants the room. She knows it is because she cannot pay her board, for she was asked if she had found work. Then begins her struggle for life. Day after day she searches for work, and finds nothing. Nothing, did I say? Yes, there is one thing she can still sell—her virtue. She haunts the bridges over the river, thinking she will end it all here. A ​policeman has seen her and tells her to move on. She wanders aimlessly, half delirious, and meets her first employer. He takes her arm and walks along with her. How warm his coat feels to her shivering body. He takes her to a restaurant and orders a hot drink and some food for her. She is stupefied with the comfort of it all and the drink, and the rest is easy. In the morning she awakes to find herself a "fallen woman."
Who dares blame her? Not I. "But the case is different from most," you say; "few women are driven to such a life. The most of them seek it because they are naturally bad, or because they have fallen through love." Excuse me if I smile at your ignorance. Statistics prove the opposite. It is a well-known fact that in the department stores of the large cities girls are employed for the small sum of $3.50 per week. Even if they live at home without paying board they could not pay their carfare and dress as well as they are obliged to do in order to keep their places. They are frankly told that they have other means of earning a living if they are not satisfied with the wages they get, and none will dispute me in saying that the most of them are obliged to use those means.
To offset the evils caused by starvation wages, the capitalist system has devised an institution which deserves a few words in passing—"Organized Charity." Out of the goodness of their hearts and (as a sop to their consciences) a driblet from their over-filled purses, the women of the leisure class have built "homes" for unfortunate women. Houses of Refuge, etc. Refuge from what, forsooth? The lusts of the leisure class men! "So you do not think it is right to help these 'unfortunates'? Well, neither do I; let them starve." Stop, madam! I think it is perfectly right to help any human creature in distress, be it tramp, drunkard or prostitute! But I think it is damnable to perpetuate a sys​tem which MAKES these unfortunates, and then tries to reform them in a faint-hearted way. I think that "charity" is degrading to both giver and receiver. The giving of charity implies a condition of poverty on the one side, of wealth on the other; it implies class distinction. It shows a spirit of brutal selfishness on the part of one and weak dependence on the part of the other. "Charity" condescends, and expects gratitude. The recipient of "charity" feels injured and rebellious. One of the best things to be said about socialism is that when it is inaugurated there will be no further need for "charity."
MODERN MARRIAGES.
One of the worst things for which the present system is to blame is the commercialism of modern marriage. As I have said before, a man or a woman tries to find a rich partner before entering into the business of founding a home. If a poor woman is attractive enough to have several suitors for her hand, she is always advised to choose the man who can give her the most in the way of food, clothing, shelter and amusements. If she succeeds in attracting and winning such, she is said to have "made a good match"; to have "done well"; to have gotten "a good provider." On the other hand, if it is the woman who has money, she is besieged with offers of marriage from men who would like to better their conditions. So common is this desire to get property through marriage that it has come to be looked upon as the one thing needful for "a match." Then people complain about the sordidness of modern marriage. Think of what it means! a woman being obliged to bargain herself away in order to get the commonest necessities of life which ought to be hers without question from her birth to her death.
All of these evils have one common root, namely, the economic dependence of the weaker members ​of society upon the dominant class. All women are in the same class with the workingmen so far as certain rights and privileges are concerned. All workers are in one class without regard to sex. There is no spot in the United States where a worker without money may take hold and make something without first asking if he or she may do it. If he is refused he is without means to earn his bread and butter. He must either beg it or steal it. It is not just that any man or woman shall be denied the right to earn a living. How shall we make things just? By making these means of production the common property of all the people and letting all have a right to work, and a right to all they make—no more, no less.
Let us sum up now some of the things which go to break up homes under capitalism: Adulterated food, starvation, ragged clothing, unhealthful houses, bad sanitation, epidemics, high death rate, lack of education, low wages, lack of employment, families abandoned, divorces, prostitution, illegitimacy, suicides! Is not this an awful charge to bring against any system? And is not every charge true? Yes, and there are many more I have not made. How dark the world would be if we did not have the hope before us, which is now becoming a surety, that a better time is near! How shall we bring it about? BY THE CLASS STRUGGLE. Socialism is not a theory, it is the next stage in the devolpment of society. In every stage of society the state has been in the hands of the ruling class. And the only way we can control the state is to replace capitalist legislators by those of the working class. "Then the working class will be on top and things will be as bad or worse than before!" No, because in establishing socialism, all will have equal opportunities, and from an economic standpoint all classes will be abolished.
HOW CAN WOMAN HELP?
Is not this a political movement? She cannot vote. Yes, this is a political movement; we mean to win at the ballot box, and there are many ways by which she can help. It will depend upon what your occupation is, and what your own temperament is, as to the way in which you shall work, my friend. Primarily, your work is to create a sentiment in favor of the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth. There is at present a tremendous amount of energy wasted in church work and "charity." The most of this is foolish and impracticable. Do not misunderstand me. I would not have you give up your "church work" if you are active in it now. I would have you study so thoroughly the question of how we are to live better, that you will be able to work intelligently in the church, and not serve the cause of capitalism by your work. In your Sunday school class search out the capitalist ethics in the lessons and study how to supplant them by socialist ethics—the kind that Jesus really taught. If you are a Christian Scientist, or a follower of any similar philosophy, study the philosophy of socialism until you have mastered it; then compare it with yours, then APPLYING THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIALISM, work, "demonsrate," and create harmony among the workers.
If you are a housekeeper, too worried and busy to find room for a new thought (as one housekeeper told me she was) simplify your housework in every possible way that you may find time to realize this one statement—that your lot, more than that of anybody else, will be made easier and pleasanter under socialism. Open your house to neighbors in order to talk over this matter with them. Avoid gossip and all talk about petty household affairs. If you have any one near you who is interested in socialism and knows ​anything about it, ask questions and then repeat the facts you have learned to your neighbor or your children. It will fix the matter in your own mind to do this, for we never know how little we understand a subject until we try to tell some one else about it. If you are a shop or factory girl, a clerk or bookkeeper, or have any similar work, learn yourself and then teach your associates that your interests and hers are identical with those of every other hand and brain worker in the world, no matter what nationality, color or sex. Learn to look upon all other workers as comrades, and neither scorn nor envy them. Remember that you need their help and they need yours to liberate the working class from slavery. If you are a school teacher, be thankful for your opportunity and teach history to the young people under your care, not from the capitalist standpoint, but from the standpoint of a class-conscious wage-worker; teach that a good character is more to be desired than great riches; teach lofty aims and ideals instead of the principles of commercialism. Teach that we are not here to make profit out of our fellow creatures, but to love and mutually serve and benefit each other. Among your fellow teachers, arouse a sentiment in favor of free text books, free lunches, free clothing, less wasteful methods of education, consolidated schools for the rural districts, free transportation and the like.
There is work for all, whatever talent or ability you may possess, and to the limit of your enthusiasm and endurance. Work in the way that suits you best, by talking, singing, speaking, writing or thinking, only remembering the three principles of International Socialism which are to be mastered and never forgotten. These are:
1. ECONOMIC DETERMINISM—that people are molded by the conditions which surround them; hence we must provide the best conditions possible to every human being, giving each one ​equal opportunity for education and development.
2. THE LAW OF SURPLUS VALUE. If each human being worked alone, with only such tools as he could make, to produce things he needs, he could barely produce enough to keep himself alive. By working together with improved machinery, each worker produces a large SURPLUS VALUE over and above what he needs to keep himself alive. This surplus is now taken from him by the capitalist class; we propose to abolish that class and let each worker keep for himself and his loved ones the surplus value that he creates.
The conflict between the working class and the capitalist class for control of this Surplus Value, is called
3. THE CLASS STRUGGLE. This struggle has been in existence since the first form of slavery began. Socialists recognize it and hope to free mankind from economic slavery by it. To be a Class-Conscious Socialist is to understand that the interests of the workers are directly opposed to the interests of the capitalists; and also to understand that we must work together in the Socialist Party, without wavering, or shadow of turning to any other party, until we get political control of the State.
Women, more than men, need this understanding, for we are double enslaved. We are dependent, as men are, upon the owning class for a chance to earn our living. We are without the ballot, as they are not, to protect our rights. We are sex slaves, bound by law and custom, to social usages that we are learning to despise. What reasons more shall I urge upon you for your emancipation?
Arouse, ye slaves, and fight for your freedom and your homes!
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1960, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 63 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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