# Co-operative Housekeeping, Romance in Domestic Economy/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V.
Womanhood Suffrage a Moral Influence only, not a Controlling Force.
IN a preceding chapter I surmised that co-operative housekeeping would so accustom women to act together, and so bring them into direct relations with the eager and powerful world of men, that they would find it necessary, for their protection and advancement, to maintain representative assemblies of their own sex, who could fulfil in the state the same persuasive office that every woman does now in the family for herself and her daughters,—plead for the feminine interests and happiness against the involuntary but engrossing selfishness of men. I have said that the feminine vote could express, by its very nature, opinion only, not power, and therefore that its real strength (as well as, in my judgment, its glory) would be in its coming before the world simply in its true character of the Collective Woman's Voice. For then, perhaps, while men were ruling the nations, this still, small voice might often be heard instructing them how; but were its soft tones, its delicate accents, to be mingled with their fierce shouts in war or their hoarse political cries in peace, surely they would be utterly lost. There is no weakness so fatally weak as pretension. If men not only voted us the vote,—if they voted every vote of ours to count five of theirs,—what would it avail us if some day they voted to take it away again? So I am against this making of treaties and defining ​of rights between the all-powerful and the all-weak. Like the international relation between the United States and the Indians, it could only be a sham and a mockery, a political lie, and therefore containing the seeds of political disease and death. Let us have some self-respect. We have not tried yet to influence the world as women; why, then, should we demand to do it as men? Should the former fail, it will be time then for the latter. But the fundamental difference between the sexes is not that men have "rights" and women have none. It is that men are organized among themselves while women are not, and the very fact that we are begging them for rights shows that they are not rights at all, but favours. Therefore I would rather take my stand on that which, as they have not given, so they could hardly take away,—on the solidarity of our sex,—on the moral weight of a united womanhood.
And, in truth, is there not brute force enough in the world already? Why should we aspire to be the governing power of society instead of its ameliorating influence? Too long has that poor, obstinate traveller, Humanity, been blown upon by the gusts of arrogant authority from this quarter and from that. Let us try, rather, what the sweet sunshine of truth can do with him. Smiling, let us hold up a mirror before his passion-ploughed and tear-stained face, instead of clamouring for a seat among the rulers whose one idea is to lash him into the image of his Creator,—for so shall we make him much more anxious to fashion himself after the Divine beauty.
Some such gentle and gracious attitude as this, it seems to me, would better befit women in regard to public affairs, than that actual taking sides aud fighting in the battles of the political arena, to which the exercise of manhood suffrage would compel us. Should we ever assume it, however, we should never lose sight of the fact that our feminine legislatures, having no material force to back them, and pretending to no authority, must rest all their hopes of respect and influence upon the excellence of their suggestions. Their functions in the world will be mainly those ​of advice and criticism,—two things that men hate so mortally from women, that, unless the advice be wise, and the criticism temperate, we may be sure that they will not listen to us; or if, heeding us, and we persuade them into a mistake, their contempt will be something terrific. Before committing themselves, therefore, our legislatures will need on many topics all the enlightenment they can gain. Wisdom does not come by instinct to women any more than to men. It grows by knowledge and experience, and in order that the sex may possess it, may understand what it is about when it attempts to influence the law-making power, the co-operative housekeepers would do well to encourage the few among them who are fitted for such pursuits to devote their attention to the principles and problems of jurisprudence, and of the other studies whose objects are the regulation and happiness of humanity.—The Council-Hall should be the centre of our palace, but communicating with it must be the Courts of Law and the Bureaus of Charity, of Medicine, and of Education.
Law.
It may seem the last outrage of strong-minded-femaleism to suggest that women should study and practise law; since, though there have been stray members of the sex in almost every other masculine profession, no one of them has yet invaded, or asked to invade, this. But, to say nothing of the daughter of the Italian professor who was ​so learned in the law that she used to lecture to her father's students for him, and so beautiful that she had to sit behind a screen lest they should ponder her face more than her instruction, still, every little while, one hears of some woman whose determination, acuteness, and technical knowledge have brought her off first-best in some legal battle, even against the most desperate odds. Such a case is that of the celebrated Mrs. Gaines, now in such honourable possession of her immense property; and if women without a regular legal training can so well help themselves, it is probable that they could with that training help each other. I have known the daughters of lawyers who seemed to me fitted for nothing but the law themselves, and as every co-operative housekeeping association must have a lawyer to keep it from getting into trouble, I think, though no doubt every one will laugh at the suggestion, that its members might do worse than employ one of their own sex in that capacity. When, too, women prepare measures for recommendation to the State legislatures or to Congress, they might present as sorry a figure as the legislators do, unless some of them understood the subject enough to judge of the actual working of old statutes, and of the probable working of new ones. Who will instruct women in the law, however, I cannot guess, for if it has been such a struggle for a few of them to gain a medical education, when the care of the sick is so naturally a feminine occupation, what would it be in the case of this profession,—the immemorial prerogative of men?
Charity.
Justice has so much to learn from mercy, that, next to a knowledge of the law, women have most need of large illumination on the subject of charity and reform. Our generosity is now so thoughtless and unsystematic, our sympathy so shallow, sentimental, and even silly, that it is to be feared much of it is no better than thrown away. But co-operative housekeeping could change all this by organizing in every society a charitable department, and giving it in charge to that woman of the association (and there is always one such in every circle) who takes more interest in the poor, and knows more about them, than any other person. Then, instead of each housekeeper's giving foolishly away at the door, or to her servants, subscribing at haphazard to this wise or that wasted charity, she could send all she had to bestow of food or clothing or money to the general Almoner. Women of like sympathies with herself would naturally cluster about her (if our churches were rightly organized, they would be the deaconesses of every parish), until in every community there would be a compact working body, ready to suggest and carry out the best methods for the relief and reform of all the poor and degraded of the neighbourhood. If they found their means and powers inadequate for their designs, they could lay the case before the town-meeting, when, perhaps, it would occur to the tax-payers that, after all, the cheapest and most efficient overseers of the poor might be found among Christian ladies! Is it not likely that the sexes together could devise a better plan for the relief of lowly misery than the almshouse system,—so cold, so hard, so distasteful to the poor as it is, and therefore so inadequate to the work it undertakes!
Health.
After what I have already said about the responsibilities of women in regard to the study and practice of medicine, ​it follows that I should hope to see a great stimulus given to it by co-operative housekeeping; for then, if any woman possessed a peculiar gift for it, the association could take care of the bulk of her domestic concerns for her until she had received a regular medical training, and was qualified to be put in charge of the health department. Should she, out of respect to the resident physicians, decline to practise medicine, still she will have a noble function in the prevention of disease and physical deterioration, and in the assisting of physical development. She will keep a strict eye on everything that goes out of the kitchen and clothing-house, to see that nothing injurious to health, either in food or clothing, be ignorantly adopted by the community, and that whatever is necessary to bodily well-being and beauty be in constant use in every family. Defective teeth, thin hair, pale cheeks, flat and narrow chests, spindling legs and arms, boniness and wrinkles instead of roundness and dimples,—all this melancholy physical deficiency that haunts society and makes home unhappy, exists because we do not know how to live physically; because we are ignorant what elements should preponderate in food and drink, in order to counteract the effects of our dry and stimulating climate; because we do not make our own and our children's muscular development in gymnasium and in the open air a solemn duty, or care what hours we keep, and what injurious customs we follow. The judicious head of the health department will, however, gradually change all this; and when the new generation grows up she will point with pride to the blooming Hebes and Junos all about as the just results of her enlightened physical teaching. Even before the children are born, she will watch over the expectant mothers, that the formation of the new human beings may go on with every favourable concurrence; and I suppose that in this connection a mass of phenomena is waiting to be studied by acute and experienced doctresses, of which the medical world little dreams. Another function of the co-operative doctress would be the training of her staff of nurses. It is in sickness, indeed, that perhaps ​co-operative housekeeping would shine the brightest. Some of these nurses will, no doubt, be ladies who love the work for its own sake, and it would be well if each congregation represented in the association could have one or two of such Nursing Sisters, as they might be called, trained and ready to their pastor's need. The pillow of many a poor sufferer is stuffed with thorns, as she reflects on the dirt and waste that may be running riot down stairs in her absence, or on the discomfort that may be added to the anxieties of the husband whom she loves. In co-operation, however, neither sickness nor health would make any difference in the clock-like workings of the great domestic machine. The Sisters would be trained not only in nursing, but in family management and the care of children, so that in case no relative of a sick mother could be called upon, her little ones would still be attended to. And I really think one angelic office of the co-operative kitchen would be the preparation of food for the sick. What exquisite delicacies would be sent in to tempt the fainting appetite! What wines and cordials would there be within the reach of all! and when the patient grew better, how easy to give her the needed daily ride in the carriage that would be kept by the association especially for its invalids!
Education.
A kindred and indeed necessarily associate spirit with the heads of the charitable and health departments will be the president of the co-operative boards of education. This lady will probably be chosen for her luminous mind and extensive reading, and all the women teachers within the circle of the association, and all who have been teachers, will sit on the board with her. Their duty will be to discuss text-books, the methods of study, the systems and requirements of schools, public and private, and to make known their conclusions to the mothers of the association. ​Then, at last, will our whole bloodless, heartless, soulless public-school system be brought before the bar of intelligent womanhood, and the sense or nonsense, the kindness or cruelty, of the regulations of the present school committees criticised by those whom God made the natural guardians and teachers of children. I can understand the ignoring of women by men in almost everything else, but how it is possible that they have not seen the absolute necessity of placing them on school committees, I cannot conceive. The consequence is a routine so dry, mechanical, and one-sided, that it has got either to be wholly reformed or given up; for better no national education at all, than one which disposes us to be only a race of cheating traders. The feminine board of education will also have to decide the scarcely less important question of how much longer girls are to be kept out of the universities, and, in case they ought to be admitted, in what manner and by what means the sex had best attempt to bring it about. For myself, I think that the offer by women of half a million of dollars to either Harvard, Yale, Michigan, or Cornell, as the price of our admission, should precede all appeal, argument, or protest in the matter. I cannot echo the lofty tone of those who claim that women have a "right" to a university education, and that men have no "right" to keep them out of it. I really hope I shall live to see the day when the confusion of the American mind on the subject of "right"—one of the many baleful gifts of false France—is cleared up. How any one can have a right to a thing that he or she has never possessed, I cannot imagine. I can maintain that a woman has a natural right to her life or her honour, because these are her original possessions from her Maker. So, too, a native-born, white American citizen has a right to vote, because it is an inheritance from his father, upon which he legally enters when he is twenty-one years of age. But no other person has a "natural ​right" to the American manhood suffrage, nor any right at all, until he acquire it by purchase, gift, or conquest from the supreme American authority. It is the same with education. The whole realm of knowledge has been reclaimed and cultivated by men alone; it is they who have founded and sustained the great institutions of learning. Certainly, then, they, and not we, have a "right" to say who shall enter them, and if we wish to reap intellectually where we have not sown, why should we not be willing to pay for the privilege what indeed would be but a trifling sum, compared with all that men have expended in the gigantic labour! I would as soon think of demanding as a "right" that the miner, who with toil and struggle had hewn out the golden ore while I stood nerveless by, should halve it with me, as of claiming a right of entrance into the universities for women; nay, sooner, by as much as wisdom is more precious than gold. Compared with education the vote is a trifle indeed, as many of us realize in our minds cramped on every side by ignorance of the things we would so gladly have known, had we been permitted "to go to college." But still we were deprived of a liberal education as much by the supineness of our own sex as by the illiberality of the other. Had women at large possessed any generous love, or faith in, knowledge for its own sake, the rich among them might long ago have founded professorships and scholarships in the universities for the culture of the sex. As for the "female seminary," and every development and outgrowth of it, I abhor it. To begin with, where can professors be obtained for it? for there are no college-bred women, and men of the first rank will not accept the chairs in a "female college." Even could they be found, however, the intellectual results of such an institution would be as unsatisfactory as are the present moral and æsthetical results of those composed exclusively of men. The highest development and prosperity of humanity in any direction cannot consist with the divorce of the sexes. In truth, it almost makes one laugh to see Harvard, for example, congratulating herself that she is ​now a "University," when the curriculum of her studies is wanting in only about half of the circle of the arts and sciences, and when also she shuts out the best minds of half the human race. No university proper has ever yet existed or can exist, until every department of human knowledge is represented in it, and until mind is free to come there for culture as mind simply, and not as mind plus a particular sex. But to this noble end, since women would reap half the benefit, I would have women contribute to the utmost of their power. The Rochdale Pioneers always devote two per cent. of their profits to education, and their example should be imitated by co-operative housekeepers, for so not only schools and colleges could be enriched, but individual cases of great talent stimulated and developed.
When these various important educational questions are considered by the mothers of the community, we may hope that at last the most important of them all,—their fearful responsibility in regard to the morals of society,—may be brought home to them also, so that they will realise how much of the ruin of their own sex now wrought and handed on continually from one set of young men to another is due to their own neglect of duty. It is too often the case that parents train their boys in every virtue save those of chastity and honour to the other sex. I have said that a great agent in reforming society would be the possibility and encouragement of early marriage, and the demand of a higher morality from men than young girls now venture to make. But this is only the last half of the work. The first half must come from education, from early discipline. Mothers must teach their young sons to control their selfish impulses, not only as regards theft, violence, lying, deceit, drinking, the seeds of all of which can often be detected even in little ​children, but also in regard to that passion which, the most universal and now the most ungoverned of them all, causes more shame, misery, disease, and unspeakable agony, than all the rest of them put together. It seems almost incredible that, with the history of her own sex before her, with the crimes of society all about her, any mother can fail to fortify her son against temptation, or forbear to teach him to respect that womanhood of which she is to him the most sacred representative. So it is, however; and of all the sins of omission accumulating for judgment against women, surely there is none comparable to this!
Finally, when all the women who crave, and who are worthy of, a liberal education have received it, teaching will not, as now, be limited to those who are obliged to follow it for a living whether they have capacity for it or not. Co-operative housekeeping would develop the principle of "natural selection" in this as in so many other feminine avocations. The woman who had the talent for it would undertake it, whether married or single, rich or poor, since, if she could teach better than she could superintend cooking or sewing, her fellow-housekeepers would find it for their highest interests even to entreat her to instruct their children. And what a great thing it would be for the manners and ambition of the young, could they feel that their teachers were always the social equals and honoured friends of their parents! The present disadvantage of the profession in this respect is immense.
The Press.
If co-operation, as I suppose, should give to women an organized interest in legislation, in charity, in medicine, in education, they will, of course, need journals wherein they can read news of each other. Then do not forget, housekeepers, to provide among the stately apartments of your edifice a modest sanctum for your editress. For if among your number you count a restless spirit with an irresistible desire to inaugurate all possible and impossible reforms, ​from dusting the great organ in the Boston Music Hall (and how dusty it is!) to sweeping the cobwebs off the sky, be sure that she will try to give you an excellent newspaper, with a perfectly independent platform, with all the latest items you ought to know about, with all the good old principles, and all the new ideas, with no fear or favour shown to anybody nor any anonymous editorials, but with a decent respect "for the powers that be," and a loyal recognition of truth and faithfulness wherever they be found.
The Arts.
But our palace must be beautiful as well as ample, and to make it so we must send also from their housewifery all the gifted feminine artists we have, that they may carve the slender pillar and fling the graceful arch, paint the rich ceilings and inlay the mosaic borders; while the music swells and falls, and the poetesses from their airy towers survey the wide world like the watching sister in the nursery tale, and tell of all the new hopes that appear on the horizon.
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.
In co-operative housekeeping we shall all save so much money, and earn so much money, that we shall feel comparatively rich, and will raise our eyes to delights of which now we do not dream. Among others, we shall all want paintings on our walls and frescoes on our ceilings; then we must not let our feminine artists waste themselves on sewing, but persuade them to beautify our homes for us. Such artistic talent as is now buried in housekeeping! Shall I ​ever forget my schoolmate the tall and robust Jocunda?—bubbling well of laughter and fun and good nature—who never had a bit of paper in her hand that it was not presently broad with caricature, or tender and graceful with the sweetest little flower-thoughts of babies and fairies and angels and all imaginable ethereal feminine things. But she is married! Women may never produce a Raphael.—but it if quite enough for me to look through the exquisite illustrations of "The Story without an End," by the Hon. Mrs. Boyle, an English lady, to know that women cannot be spared from the world of art,—for these designs are sui generis,—I think no man could have imagined them. Art associations among our women, painting and sketching clubs, proper notice and encouragement given to girlish talent, would eventually produce a feminine School of Art in America, as they have already done in England,—but another instance among several which ought to humiliate us, of how much American women talk, and how much English women do. Whether it is that they have indeed more genius, or that so many of their gentlewomen are obliged to support themselves, or that so many of them being unmarried, they are forced into self-development for want of occupation, I know not; but certain it is, that while the mass of English women strike Americans as tame and conventional, most of the best work of the feminine world for the last twenty years has been done by them.
For sculpture American girls seem to have an odd, independent sort of instinct, though they have not shown any strictly independent thought in it yet, that I know of. But this is inevitable. All feminine attempts in any new direction will at first be servile, if not weak, copies of the masculine models. But when women have fairly learned to use their wings, they will shape their flight for themselves, discover their own truths, draw their own conclusions, conceive their own ideals,—a proposition which I consider proven by the history of the English feminine novel, which, beginning with the gross masculine ​imitations of Mrs. Aphra Behn, after a progressive development of two hundred years is now apparently culminating in the magnificent achievements of George Eliot,—a writer so extraordinary that she sits alone, while there is only one, perchance unattainable, height to which any future woman may ever soar above her.
But if American girls are trying sculpture, no woman of us all, I believe, has attempted architecture, which is strange; for little girls often find the greatest amusement in making ground-plans on the slate, and ladies frequently suggest the whole idea of their houses to the architect, and sometimes complain bitterly of the mistakes of the builders in carrying it out. So, whether they would ever aspire to cathedrals or not, I am sure women would succeed in planning the loveliest and completest of homes. Houses without any kitchens and "backyards" in them! How fascinating! Think how much more beautiful city architecture will now be! The houses, instead of being built round a square, could be set in the middle of it, with only an alleyway for ventilation, and grasses, trees, and flowers all about the outside. Every tenth block would contain the kitchen and laundry and clothing-house; and for these domestic purposes the Oriental style could be adopted, of interior court-yards with fountains and grass, secluded from the street. Should not this also be the plan for all the public-school buildings?
Horticulture.
With their unlimited passion for flowers, and their universal success in cultivating them, why is it that women never have any floral societies? How ugly our streets and roadsides are, too, without a hundredth part of the trees that ought to be planted there! and alas, how expensive fruit is! It is said that the English ladies are many of them great florists and botanists, and also practical farmers, so that they understand thoroughly the management of their estates and gardens. Should co-operative housekeeping have that effect upon farming which I have before ​indicated, I trust American women will begin to imitate their English cousins in these respects. Are we never to begin to prepare the earth for the coming of the Lord? To think that one small sect of semi-Christians only,—the Shakers,—out of all the millions of Christendom, should cherish this beautiful hope, and put a part of their religion into every tree they plant and every field they sow! When, indeed, is the wilderness going to blossom as the rose? At least, let us set our feminine civilization in the midst of grass and flowers, of vines and trees, so that even every humble home may be adorned, and every table spread with "all the gracious words that proceed out of the mouth of God."
Music and the Drama.
Music is an angel from heaven which should dwell in every household. Then the best amateurs of the association must devise how to get and keep her there,—must observe the musical talent in the young, and have it properly trained by means of thorough teachers, choral societies, amateur concerts and operas in every community. I cannot express what exquisite musical capacity I have known remain undeveloped through the ignorance or indifference of parents,—what players, what singers, lost! And, on the other hand, I suppose no estimate can be made of the money sunk in trying to teach music to those who cannot learn it; for it is one of the most complicated and difficult of arts, and not one parent in twenty-five knows whether her children are succeeding in it or not. The true plan would be to give each child in the community a certain amount of careful elementary instruction, after which it should be examined by a competent musical committee, who could inform the parents of the probabilities of the case, and thus save them either from ignorantly flinging away a jewel, or from trying to make one out of a pebble. Finally, when ​all other women are earning their living, I trust it will no longer be considered derogatory for a "lady" to sing or play for money. If God creates an exceptional voice for the joy of multitudes, what is to be said of the conventionality that confines the magnificent tones to the limits of a fashionable drawing-room? I knew a glorious song-bird, that, from the farthest heights of the musical empyrean, might have ravished a listening world. She floods her gilded cage with melody; but does it fill her yearning heart? Still she is but a slave where she might have been a queen.
A great gift for acting stands in the same category with a great voice. Both should be used for the delight of mankind, and for the benefit of its possessor. I never see the refined and brilliant performance in private theatricals of these young ladies and gentlemen who rehearse together only a few weeks, and play together only a few times, without thinking what a pity it is that the stage is not a pure and honourable calling, and the dramatic talent not yet recognized as one implanted by the Creator to be developed for his glory and for human happiness as much as any other. I believe Brigham Young's theory and practice on this point the true one; and, humiliating as it may be to learn anything from a Mormon, yet, since Christianity cannot keep people away from the theatre, had it not better go there itself? Would the guilty intrigue be represented, the coarse joke applauded, the immodest dance tolerated, if good and noble men and women organized the stage and "catered for the public,—if ladies and gentlemen of honourable position and spotless name brought acting up to their own level of respectability as a profession, and, as an art, carried it far beyond into regions where it has never
​yet soared? At all events, I believe, with Mrs. Stowe, that the experiment is worth trying. A true civilization should overlook none of the marked tendencies of humanity; and should women ever form associations among themselves for the higher culture of other æsthetic branches, I hope they will by no means leave out the drama.
Society Reformed.
And what shall be the golden roof, the crown of our new civilization? Surely, a splendid society, presided over by ladies famous for their beauty, their wit, or their tact, where every graceful element of human achievement may have free play, and every kindly impulse of human feeling full encouragement, because none "look on their own things, but all look also on the things of others." I confess I fear it is not to exist on this side of the New Jerusalem. For a perfect society is one wherein every person composing it is fitly placed; whereas in such a world of inequalities in wealth, in attractiveness, in pride, in culture, it is difficult to get more than half a dozen persons together who feel precisely on the same footing.
Still, it is to be hoped that not then the women whose husbands have the most money, but the wise and stately matrons who are at the head of the co-operative kitchen, of the sewing-house, of the charitable and other departments, will be in some sort the acknowledged social leaders; for so we might eventually have what the women of rank give to society abroad,—a recognized standard of fine manners to which young people would be expected to conform. Thus American society would be taken out of the hands of the few brainless and generally intensely selfish young men who, with their chosen belles, "lead the German," and the intolerable rudeness and crudeness of our contemporary boy and girl régime would be abolished.
Its Religious Aspect.
The plan of our palace is complete. There is a place in ​it for every feminine power, and scope for every feminine aspiration. "But is there to be no hallowed shrine within our walls?" some deep, religious heart may ask; "no solemn sanctuary wherein we alone may gather together to worship God?" Alas! even had we such a chapel, in this age of many religions, to which of them all should we confide it? or how could we make ourselves priestesses where the Lord himself made none, and his apostles absolutely forbade them? Let men alone bear the responsibility of further divisions in the Church of Christ. If they are so anxious about the forms and reforms of Christianity that they have altogether lost sight of its spirit, let us not fall into the same error.
Nevertheless, though I would not organize women's congregations, lest evils that we know not of should grow out of them, yet I would have such women as feel themselves called to it distinctly recognized by the Christian Church as trained and trusted and commissioned servants, to whom she committed, first, the educating of the young,—not weekly, as in the mere makeshift (so thoroughly do I know its deficiencies that I had almost said the mere humbug) of the modern Sunday school,—but daily, in the precepts and practice of religion; second, the ministering to the poor and the sick; third, and must difficult of all, the comforting of the afflicted and the troubled, and the reformation of the guilty; and these women, as I have before indicated, would hold rank among the most valued officers of all co-operative associations! I myself am an Episcopalian, and cannot wonder enough that, when deaconesses were an integral part of the organization of that pure primitive Church which the Anglican Communion and her American daughter pretend to take for their model, our clergy and bishops are so content to ignore the value of the patient and devoted labours of Christian women, and to withhold official recognition from them. I do not think it necessary, in order to be a deaconess, that a woman should come out and be separate from her home and kindred, any more than that a man should do so in order to be eligible to the priesthood ​or the episcopate. If a married woman wishes to be a deaconess, and is of suitable age and qualifications, she ought to be ordained as one by the bishop, that she may be a recognized assistant of her pastor wherever she goes. Only, in order to be sure that none but women of the right tact and temper were consecrated, I would have her credentials signed by twelve matrons of the congregation. I give it as my experience, that, though I have been more or less engaged in church work all my life long, it has been always at a conscious disadvantage. Nothing gives any one any right to interest one's self in this, that, or the other, and if one chooses to do so, it is at the cost of being thought officious, forward, or overbearing, or of being obliged to play the complacent, see things go all wrong, yet still say nothing. What is true of the Episcopal Church I suppose to be true of all Protestant churches. The priests of them all more or less, in true masculine fashion, ignore half the human race, while the conventual system of the Romish Church is worse still,—though the Roman Sisters of Charity, were it not for their enforced celibacy and general want of breadth and culture, not to say ignorance, would perfectly represent one of the noblest types of deaconess.
But whether men ever give the few among us official recognition or not, the great fact for us to remember is this: that, in whichever of the countless chapels of the universal cathedral we worship, the majority of us are knit and covenanted together in the fellowship of the body and blood of Christ. Most women are "members" of some church. Publicly, therefore, we have taken Jesus for our Head. Call him God or man, still we are ranged under his leadership, and if we strive to be faithful followers, or, deeper still, true members of his mystical body, our work must grow up with his inspiration. Not one comer of our civilization, simply, should be set aside for a sanctuary, but the whole of it should be the yearning irrepressible, the upgrowth and outgrowth of our devotion to his glad-tidings preached for the renewing of this blind and diseased and suffering human congregation, into an image of the glorious ​hierarchies of Heaven. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." Millions of Christian women make this petition every day, but how many of us exert a single intelligent energy to bring it about? Who of us understands "give us this day our daily bread" to mean "give it to us whether we strive for it or not?" Not one: and so, perhaps, we may pray unnumbered ages in this stupid and sluggish spirit for Christ's kingdom to come; but it never will come until, with all our feminine powers and all our mighty love, we do our share towards hastening it.
"Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it." The wretched history of so many masculine nationalities that go stubbornly along in their own way shows but too well how lost! Yet, even granting that strong men could do without the Gospel, weak women cannot. Jesus was our first, as he is still our best and truest, Friend. In the depths of the unutterable degradation to which paganism had reduced the sex, he alone saw what was in us, and raised us up. If in anything at all we are better or happier than the women of heathen nations, we owe it all to him; and whatever remains to be accomplished of our elevation must come through devotion to his teaching. I believe that, except as Christians, "bearing all things" with each other, "believing all things" possible to each other, "hoping all things" for each other, "enduring all things" from each other,—and all for our Master's glory,—women can do nothing. For we care very little for ourselves or for each other; nearly all we attempt is for some outside object,—for some child, or some man, or some God. Were men, for instance, to tell us to undertake this reform, we should accomplish it quickly and gladly enough. I think they will tell us no such thing; but, in view of all the interests that depend on it, can we not believe that HE who loves us, and whom we love beyond men, asks us to do it for his sake and for humanity's sake? It may not be an easy task, and to succeed in it we shall need our intensest energy, and more than all our present self-command. But what we lack ourselves I believe to exist in the Gospel in ​all its plenitude. By beginning and continuing perfectly in the spirit of Christ, the Heavenly Powers themselves must be our builders. We need only strive to be living stones in the hand of the Divine Architect. Then all "our walls will be salvation, and all our gates praise," and we shall need "no temple therein, for the Lamb will be its temple."
Man and Woman Face to Face.
There is a wonderful land called The Future, and somewhere in that land stands the structure of the feminine civilization,—its golden domes glittering in the sunshine,—its airy pinnacles springing into the ether,—bright contrast to the vast, time-worn towers and sombre splendours of its frowning brother. Silently and swiftly it rose, in fewer years than that was centuries in building, for the secrets and results that men by little and little so painfully wrought out for themselves were ready to our requirement; and now the perfume of its gardens streams over the sea, its music vibrates round the land, troops of lovely children play over its grassy lawns, and an exquisite girlhood clusters within its deep, sculptured porches. Is it an opposing citadel, or a true home, created by love, whither every man may come to find refreshing, peace, and joy? Beautiful it stands, but, against the crowded cannon of the grim masculine battlements, as defenceless as the child's bubble that an instant rests upon the sward. Will they ever open upon its crystal walls? nay, will they even dare to thunder against each other as they have done through so many bloody generations? The roar alone would shatter its delicate pillars and fairy arches, and bury their builders in the fall.—The builders? yes, the women builders, the beloved, the wives and mothers of men. See them winding in endless procession from their council-hall, more "terrible" in their suppliance than "an army with banners," and bearing a petition to the nations as they are about to rush forth to their wild work of war and wasting. What says ​the petition? Only this: War murders you, and ruins us.
War—Its Effects on Woman.
The solemn sentence speaks too much for them not to deliberate over it, and at last they recognize that, be what loss or gain it may to men, to women war never is nor can be anything but incalculable ill. I tell the women of this generation that they may take sides, as pleases the passion of their unthinking sympathy, with this or that masculine war, but there is no war, especially no great or long-continued or expensive war, that does not grind a stratum of the feminine community to powder, and, by just so much, lower all the rest; and that not alone the women of the country which happens to be the scene of the contest,—their miseries and degradation are too fearful for contemplation,—but the women of the unscathed, of the winning side, Ruskin spoke even deeper than he meant, when he said that on the breaking out of a war all the women should go into black. They should go into mourning, yea, into sackcloth and ashes, for into worse than this must the war, before it ends, bring many a now innocent wife and maiden.
The separating of the hitherto jumbled interests and responsibilities of the two sexes would make these truths so apparent, that one great result of feminine co-operation and consultation would be the abandoning the national system of warfare, which is as senseless, as wasteful, and more wicked than the private wars of the old feudal barons which kept the world back for six hundred years. For they were ignorant, but we say "we see," therefore we "have no cloak for our sin." An international court where the disputes of nations could be adjusted, and an international police of married soldiers to enforce its decisions, are the only agencies whereby the extravagance and demoralization of war can be prevented, and the problem of the applicatipu of brute force in government solved for the world at large, as law and courts of justice and constables have solved it for the world's separate communities.
Two Final Considerations.
At the close of these papers I would say to the women who may have been so kind as to read them, that I place little stress on the particular plan they propose. Co-operative Housekeeping may be wholly practicable or wholly visionary. But two things women must do somehow, as the conditions not only of the future happiness, progress, and elevation of their sex, but of its bare respectability and morality.
1st. They must earn their own living.
2d. They must be organized among themselves.
To accomplish these imperative results in the quickest and easiest way has alone been my object in trying to stimulate them to throw themselves, as it were, upon their own resources; that is, combine together on the capital furnished them by men for their domestic expenditures, on such a system as to bring a part, at least, of the retail trade into their hands, and so gain the independent and responsible handling of money, with all its incalculable stimulus to invention, enterprise, and independence of thought.
One question is. Is such a feminine development possible? for to many the dream will seem as extravagant as an opium vision. I answer, to those who know that to the faint beginnings of trade among the squalid serfs of the Dark Ages Europe owes her powerful middle class, her commerce, her manufactures, her constitutional liberties, her greatest geniuses,—ourselves, her mighty offspring,—my imaginings concerning the future unfolding of womanhood will seem reasonable enough. Close-shut bud that it has remained amid the national storms of ages, who can tell, indeed, what forms and colours it will assume when at length the Sun of Righteousness pours down upon it unintercepted his gracious beams!
Man and Woman Intellectually and Morally Different.
The other question is, Whether, in case such a feminine development be possible, it is desirable? This every man and woman must decide for themselves. It depends upon a single consideration. If manhood is commensurate with humanity, and womanhood is only an accident, a temporary provision of physical nature for the perpetuation of the race, then it is probable that nothing worth while would follow from organizing the world of women. This of course is, and always has been, the prevailing sentiment, otherwise there is no adequate explanation of the contempt men always express for possible feminine achievement and the distrust that, in consequence, women themselves have hitherto felt of it.
"'They hunt old trails,' said Cyril, 'very well;
But when did women ever yet invent?'"
This is the whole thing in a sentence. Because women do not originate, their practical and mental power is esteemed worthless. And yet the great mystery of Nature might teach us a very different lesson. Granted that all the vitalizing mental power of the race resides with men: the analogy from the physical world seems to show that the results may be barren enough without true feminine co-workers to complete what they can only begin. Therefore I, for one, cheerfully surrender to them the point of originality; I may know nothing in the whole realm of thought or invention that they have not started. But I also know nothing that they have perfected. Their learning, arts, and sciences are all one-sided; their churches inadequate; their governments and societies at once incomplete and rotting into dilapidation and decay. One after another their melancholy civilizations rise, return upon themselves, and are not. To judge what men alone can avail for humanity, it is quite enough to read an article in a recent number of the North British Review called "The Social Sores of Britain." With all their genius and all their energy, that ​festering community is the best that the greatest masculine race the world ever saw can show, after trying a thousand years! while the rapid downward rush of American politics and morals is filling every thoughtful mind with terror.
Observing all these disorders and shortcomings in the masculine administration of affairs, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there is a missing element somewhere; and as there is no element in humanity beside the two, that it must be the feminine element. I think, then, that women may very gently say to their brethren, without the least disrespect or self-conceit:
"Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Adam. We will not meddle with your concerns, but, if you please, we will just help you by attending to our own, which you have, indeed, most kindly tried to manage for us, but have simply got into the worst confusion. We deny, altogether, being 'the lesser man,' and are tired of the rôle of little brother. We are not an accident of nature, we are a necessity of Eternity. Our souls stamp the sex upon our bodies, not our bodies upon our souls. Feminine these are, and feminine they will remain for ever. Why, then, are we to wait for Heaven before we begin our proper development? Do you think that giving a young girl, for a time, the diet and exercise of a prize-fighter would turn her into a man? It would only help to make her a physically strong and perfect woman. So, too, the feminine mind and heart cannot be made masculine by any abundance of education, freedom, and responsibility, but will round, through their means, into curves of beauty and harmony, expressive of force and health indeed, but from these very qualities only the more enchanting. It is not womanhood you get, O men, by the conventional repressing process, but childhood; and thus it is that to this day there is no true marriage of the sexes on the earth, but a lonely and cruel lord stalks through the neglected and unfinished apartments of his ever-widening palace, while she who should be his friend, his love, his wife, drudges with his menials in the basement, or feebly ​amuses him in the drawing-room,—always a subject, generally a servant, too often a sycophant and a slave."
What is the matter with men, that they do not wish us to be noble, that they are not noble toward us? It is that they have no faith in the absoluteness of our sex. The "feminine," the "beautiful" in us constitutes our highest value to them. And seeing our modes of life so different from their own, they imagine that the secret of the charm is in this, and they cannot bear any suggestion of change. Then we ourselves must be softly brave against their prejudices and distrust; must insist that women can very easily combine the beautiful and the useful, the real and the ideal; must show them that, not so much the pursuit itself, but the manner of it, is feminine or unfeminine; must take care, above all, while we try to advance, that we do not throw aside, as some in the van too rashly have, the graces, the harmonies, and the reserves of gentle, traditional, adorable womanhood.
Conclusion.
"Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new!" How profound are the words, and how women hate them! The feminine sphere that for ages stood so immovable beneath our feet, the mighty mechanical powers are rolling, rolling away from under us. In great part it is already gone, and sewing-machines, washing-machines, machines for every smallest office, are taking from us the little that is left of the old manual labour by which we once fed and clothed the world, and whose shadow we yet cling to so desperately. Crowding us together on the fast-lessening area, it would seem as though men were determined that women should have no longer a serious interest or an earnest occupation in the universe. But, in truth, a wider, freer, sunnier orb, that they themselves have created for us, is moving beside us, though all unseen by our timid and reluctant eyes. Their mills and factories by thousands heap up food and clothing for the world, but ​unless it is distributed it is useless. At a ruinous expense both to them and to us they accomplish it; but by planning our lives as I have indicated, we can assume this useful and profitable office, and thus become again what in the beginning we were created, helps, meet for men in their new circumstances, and be in reality, what now we are only in name, "Ladies,"—that is "Loaf-givers," almoners of their bounty, not only to our own families, but to all the needy, the destitute, the wretched of the whole race.
The leap is wide, and it must be taken together, but it is our best chance of uniting the grand and true old feminine functions of house-ordering, of food-preparing, and of clothes-providing, with the noble modern elements of taste and culture and freedom.
"Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own work praise her in the gates."
O, when upon the immortal warp, stamped with the simple and majestic figure of the Virtuous Woman, shall we moderns weave in with glowing thread the still more resplendent feminine ideal, that all the knowledge and advantages of this happier age should teach us?
When indeed?
"Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us."
* ↑ The late petition of some New York women in the case of Hester Vaughan, so coldly received by the governor of Pennsylvania, so severely commented upon by the press, is a case in point of how well-weighed any public request by women should be, in order to have effect. Such hasty and ill-judged acts will not be frequent, however, when those who really r&present the sex shall deliberate for it. Enthusiasts, acting from their own impulses, are very different from the well-informed and responsible matrons, who I hope, will one day speak for their fellows, when their general or individual interests require it. The part womanhood will probably play in public affairs should be judged, not by a sporadic mistake like this, but by the long, steady, faithful, yet unobtrusive work of the women of the Sanitary Commission.
* ↑ I understand it to be now not uncommon in large firms for one of the partners either to be a lawyer, or to study law as a necessary part of the preparation for a business cai'eer ; and this, not only in order to save the expense of lawyer's fees to the company, but also because great sums are often lost for want of due legal knowledge beforehand.
* ↑ Since writing the above, I see by the papers that a young lady has been admitted as a student into the Law School of Washington College, St. Louis.
* ↑ I would say "thorough scholarship," but that as yet we have so very few scholars among us.
* ↑ Since writing the above I have heard that in Worcester, Mass., a lady was to be appointed a member of the School Committee. The world moves.
* ↑ But let us not wait for co-operative housekeeping, which may never have an existence, before attempting to enlarge the education of women. What rich woman will give ten thousand dollars toward half a million to be tendered to Harvard University, in case she will admit women to her examinations and degrees, and furnish tutors to prepare them? Who will give five hundred, one hundred, fifty, or even ten dollars to it?
* ↑ Lest any should take fright at what has just been said, and suppose that co-operative housekeeping would end by making all women doctors, lawyers, etc., I will quiet their fears by saying that by the census of 1850, out of nearly six millions of male citizens, only about two hundred thousand were engaged in professional or other pursuits requiring education. At the very worst, therefore, not more than the same proportion of women would be called to forsake the traditional occupations of their sex.
* ↑ For the sake of giving honour where honour is due, I will say that, with the beautiful natural voices of our country, it will be a shame if we do not erelong produce a supreme prima donna, for we have now among us one of the great singing- teachers of the world,—Madame Emma Seiler, a German, who has achieved an exhaustive study of the human voice, and completed the most perfect theory of the vocal art ever attempted. She is at present giving private lessons in Philadelphia. But her only true position is at the head of a vocal conservatory for the education of artists and teachers; and I hope the musical world will soon combine to place her there.