The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1909-01-09
WOMEN SLAVES ARE ~ %
NOT REAL WIVES
Mrs. Gilman Says True Marriage De-
ponds on: Economic Independence ;
Property Instinct Denounced.

Atlantic City, N. j., Jan. 1.-THE
Industrial conditions Of the modern
home are such as to delay and often
prevent marriage" declared aMrs.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, of New
York, in talk on How Do Home
Conditions React on tine Family" at
a recent session of the American Soci-
illogical Society.
Continuing Mrs. Gilman said:
Since the home is supposed to
arise only from marriage, it looks as
though the situation were frankly
suicidal. So far, not seeing these
things, we have merely followed our
world old habits of blaming the wo-
man. She used to be content with
these conditions, we say-she ought
to be now-back to nature! The
woman refuses to go back-the home
refuses to go forward-and marriage
waits.
THE initial condition of ownership,
even without servitude, reacts unfa-
vorably upon the kind of marriage
most desired. A woman slave is not
a wife. The more absolutely a woman
is !ner own mistress, in accepting her
husband and her life with him, the
higher is the grade of love and COM
partnership open to them. Again the
economic dependence of the woman
initiates against true marriage in
that the element of the economic profit
degrades and commentaries love and
SO Injuries the family. The higher
marriage toward which we are tend
ing requires a full grown woman, no
ones property or servant. Such mar
riage will find expression in a very
different home"
Speaking of motherhood, Mrs. Gill
man said:
I'm poverty the overworked woman
breads maternity and avoids it if she
can. If she cannot, her unwelcome
and too frequent children are not
what is needed to build up our peo-
pie. In wealth. the woman becomes
a perpetual child, greedy anu ire
spOnslble, breads maternity and
avoids it if she can Her children are
few and often frail. Neither the con-
ditions Of the poor home nor Of the
rich tend to joyous and competent
maternity.
TN this one respect the home
under present conditions is proven an
unfit vehicle for the family. In it
self it tends to reduce the birthrate,
or to lower the quality of the most
| numerous children; and all of them
inherit the limitations of a servile or
All irresponsible motherhood.
I'm America today in one family
out of sixteen the man is able to hire
other women to wait upon him; but
his wife is merely raised to tine posi-
ton of sort of section boss; she still
manages the service Of the house for
him. This woman service has no re-
lation to the family in the vital sense.
1t is a relic Of the period of woman
slavery in the patriarchial; it exhibits
not the evolution of a true monogamy,
but merely the ancien industrial POLY
gamous shorn down to one lingering
female slave".
Professor Charles Zueblin, of Bos-.
ton, declared that property in
stinct' handed from former ages,
| when men held their wives ais chat
tells, was the basic cause of murders
by outraged husbands rather than
affection or love for their wives.
Even refined men who may love the
| objects Of their devotion take the law
into their own hands at times" ne
said, in discussing the growth OF
crimes under the unwritten law, 'but
it is not an attribute Of affection to
do this, but rather because the prop
erty instinct is stung."
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