We are beginning to see some glimmering of new truth concerning the art of suggestion.
Here is some one with a strong will who imposes upon you a definite idea—"This napkin is a peach; a luscious, ripe peach," insists the hypnotizer; and the hypnotized bites at the napkin with every appearance of delight.
It is said that those once thoroughly hypnotized, surrendering their own observation and judgement and submitting absolutely to the ideas impressed upon their minds by others, become thereafter less able to think and act for themselves, and more and more open to suggestion.
We begin to see this of the individual mind, but we have not yet seen its application to the race mind.
Suggestion is a force acting upon us all, as is well known to the politician and the advertiser, but it acts most strongly upon the weak and those unaccustomed to using their own minds, as is completely shown in children.
It is the susceptibility to suggestion which makes children so easily swayed by the influence of their companions; so ready to follow the leader who says "let's play" this or that: nearly all join in, and a group of children used to such leadership will stand about rather helplessly if deprived of it.
It is that extreme susceptibility which makes the church say "Give us the first five years of a child's life, and he will never outgrow our influence!" Children, of all people, are most open to the power of suggestion.
Now observe the cumulative action of this power, applied to the youth of humanity, and in each generation further applied to each individual youth. Certain ideas first grasped in ages of dark savagery, or even previous to that, and then believed to be of supreme importance, were forcibly impressed upon the minds of children, all children, generation after generation. To select one simple instance, observe the use of the fear-motive in controlling the young.
Among animals there are two main modifiers of conduct, desire and fear.They act either to gratify a desire or to avoid a danger.
The young animal does not know his dangers, and it is imperative that he should know them. In those higher species where parental education is developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the grass; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied bugaboos to terrorize the young; through ancient and modern races; through the warrior mothers and nurses using "Napoleon" or "The Black Douglas" as the impending danger, to the same primitive, ignorant custom to-day—"The Goberlins 'll git yer, if you don't watch out"!
The "pain economy" and "fear economy" of the beast and savage are long left behind, but we preserve and artificially enforce the fear instinct—by suggestion. We hypnotize our children generation after generation, with disciplinary dread, and rely so wholly upon it to enforce good behavior that our citizens see no preventive of crime except fear of punishment.
Similarly we impress on the helplessly receptive minds of our children, whose earliest years are passed under the influence of uneducated house-servants, the ancient, foolish prejudices and misconceptions of our dark past. If the expanding mind of the little child could be surrounded by the influences of our highest culture, instead of our lowest; and above all things be taught touse its own power—to observe, deduce, and act accordingly, and be carefully shielded from the cumulative force of age-old falsehood and folly, we should have a set of people who would look at life with new eyes. We could see things as they are, and judge for ourselves what conduct was needed, whereas now we see things as we have been taught they are; and believe, because we have been told so, that we cannot alter conditions.
It is not lack of mental capacity which blinds us; not lack of power which chains us; but we are hypnotized—and have been for a thousand thousand years—with carefully invented lies.
"You can't alter human nature." Who says so?Is it true?Is there no difference between the nature of the modern American and the nature of a Fiji Islander? Do they respond alike under the same conditions? Are their impulses and governing tendencies the same?
Human nature has altered from its dim beginnings, under the action of changed conditions, just as dog-nature has altered from fierce wolf and slinking jackal to the dear loved companion of mankind.
There are some properties common to all natures; some common to each race and species; some common to special strains and families; but of all "natures" human nature, the broadest, most complex, most recent, ismost easilyalterable.
Let that sink in. Be hypnotized the other way for awhile!
You Can Alter Human Nature!
We are naturally displeased with human nature as we see it about us. It so inert—so subservient—so incredibly dull.
Put yourself in the place of a bright youngster, two hundred years hence, looking back at these suffering times. Suppose he is studying "ancient history," and has been given pictures and books describing the life of our day. "Butwhydid they live so?" he will ask. "Weren't they people like us? Couldn't they see—hear—feel? Hadn't they arms and hands and brains? Here's this—this—what do you call it? 'Overcrowding in cities.' What made them overcrowd?" Then the professor will have to explain. "It was their belief that governed them. They believed that economic laws necessitated all that kind of thing. Everybody believed it."
"But howcouldthey believe it? They had intelligence; look at the things they invented, the scientific discoveries they made, the big businesses they managed! Whatmadethem believe it?" And unless the professor understands the peculiar effect of race-hypnotism he will be pushed for an answer.
What indeed makes us believe that so many human beings have to remain inferior to so few; that this kind of animal cannot be improved and elevated like any other kind? What makes us believe that because one man is inferior to another, therefore the other must take advantage of him? What makes us believe that while the wide earth responds submissively to our modifying hand; while we master arts and sciences, develop industries, probe mysteries, achieve marvels; we are, and must ourselves remain a set of helpless, changeless undesirables?
"But," the professor will say to the child, "theyfeltthus and so, you see." "Felt!" that sturdy son of the future will say, "Didn't they know that feeling could be changed as easy as anything?"
It will be hard indeed, when human nature is altered a little more, to make it patient with the besotted conviction of unalterableness that paralyzes it now.
A baby's opening mind should be placed among the most beautiful and rational conditions, specially arranged for easy observation and deduction. It should be surrounded by persons of the best wisdom now ours; and whatever it may lack of what we do not yet know to be true, it should be religiously guarded from what we do know to be false.
Every college should have its course in Humaniculture, and the most earnest minds should be at work to steadily raise the standard of that new science.
New concepts, broad and beautiful, should be implanted in each young mind; this mighty power of suggestion being used by the highest, to lift us up, instead of by the lowest, to keep us down.
What a simple process! What a blessed change! At present the child mind is entrusted to the most ignorant, and taught the oldest lies. Soon we shall entrust it only to the most wise and teach it the newest truths.
[Untitled]
Sit up and think!The life in you is Life—unlimited!You rose—you'll sink—But Life goes on—that isn't dead.
The ills that flesh is heir to are not all entailed.
We used to think that diseases were special afflictions sent by God, to be borne with meek endurance. Now we have learned that some of them grow in us like plants in a garden, that some we give to one another as presents, and some we keep as pets.
Many little go-betweens we have discovered, with legs and wings, who operate as continual mischief-makers, and among these at last looms large and deadly, that most widespread and intimate of pests—the Common Fly.
The House Fly is his most familiar name, but that should be changed. He is not of his own nature a parlor fly, nor a library fly, nor a bedroom fly; an attic fly nor a hall and stair fly; but he ispar excellencethe Kitchen Fly.
Flies are not perennial bloomers. They have to be born—hatched from eggs, and the resultant larva have to have a Congenial Medium to be born in. The careful mother fly does not leave her little flock on a mahogany center table. Flies have to eat; they eat all the things we do, and many that we don't!
There are two main nurseries for the Common Fly in all our cities, yes, and in our country homes as well—the Stable and the Kitchen.
Unless stables are kept with the most absolute cleanliness flies are bred there.
Unless kitchens are kept in the most absolute cleanliness flies are bred there—or therefrom! Moreover the smell of hot food draws flies from afar; a kitchen even though spotless and screened is a constant bait for flies.
I was once visiting in a fine clean summer camp in the Adirondacks, where friends in combination did the work. In the main room of this place was a wide long window—one great picture, framing the purple hills. It was a good deal of work to clean that window, and we took turns at it. One day this window was laboriously polished inside and out by an earnest gentleman of high ideals. Then—in the kitchen—some one cooked a cabbage. Forthwith that front-room window was black with flies—big, bumping, buzzing, blue-bottle flies. To slay them was a carnage—and they were carried out by the dustpanful.
In the country, by screening every window and door, by constant watch upon each article of food to keep it covered, one may keep one's own flies bumping vainly on the outside of one's own house—except when people go in and out, and the ever-ready buzzer darts in before the swing-door shuts.
But in the city, where a million homes maintain their million fly-baiting kitchens, and each kitchen maintains its garbage pail, the problem becomes more serious.
Let us face this fact. In the residence part of a city the kitchen is almost the only source of dirt.
The kitchen-stove furnishes its quota of coal-dust, coal-gas and coal ashes. But for the kitchen a heating plant could warm many blocks of houses, and keep that source of dirt at a minimum, thus clearing our streets of the ash-can and ash-cart nuisances.
The kitchen is wholly responsible for the garbage pail; each area or alley gate offering for inspection and infection its unsavory receptacle; and beyond that, the kitchen is in large measure responsible for the stable. In the quiet streets where people live, the horses which defile those streets, which break the quiet, wear the pavement, and wring the hearts of lovers of animals, are almost all kitchen horses.
At early dawn the milkman's horse—many milkmen's horses. Then the baker's horse—many bakers' horses. Then the iceman's horse, the fishman's horse, the market man's horse, the vegetable man's horse, the grocer's horse, the confectioner's horse; with, of course, the ashman's horse, the garbage man's horse, and the coal man's horse. All these horses and their various stables, help to maintain the breeding of flies; and the kitchen maintains them.
Nobody ever liked flies. The rigorous housewife has long pursued them with waving towel and flapping paper; dark plates of fly poison are set on high places where the children can only occasionally get it; and the dreadful "tanglefoot" hangs here and there, agonizing our ears with the frantic buzzing of its slow-dying victims.
The housewife objected to the fly because he made work for her, speckling all things offensively; and the house-husband objected to him because he walked on his face, or his bald spot, and woke him from needed slumber.
Also no one likes flies floating dankly in the soup, disguised as currants, or sacrificing their legs to the butter. But these distastes are as nothing to the new Terror of the Fly. He is now seen to be a purveyor of disease—we might saythepurveyor of disease.
The cat and the dog, the rat and the mouse and their small parasites are responsible for some diseases. The deadly Anopheles only brings malaria, even the Stegonyia has but one fever in his gift, albeit a yellow one; but Musca Domestica deposits on our food, on our clothing, on our pillows, on our very faces, according to the N. Y. Medical Journal, the germs of "tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, summer diarrhea of children, plague, carbuncle, yaws, tapeworm, swine-plague and typhoid fever."
Now that is a nice beast to have in the house! And more especially that is a nice beast to breed in the house, to maintain, feed, shelter, and encourage.
When shall we be willing to face the simple fact that the preparation of food is not a suitable process for the home?
The vegetarian will say that if we eliminate meat all will be well; let him read again my tale of the Cabbage and the Bluebottle. But meat is unquestionably the worst of our food supply as far as flies are concerned. The fly delights in the voluminous cow, even while alive; thrives in her stable, makes free with her milk, and follows her from steak to soup with ceaseless interest. If we had no meat, no fish, no milk, no cheese, no butter, no eggs, we should reduce our bait a little; but there would still remain plenty of fly provender, and also the horses to bring it to our myriad doors.
Why not keep the food and leave out the fly?
Let us for once fairly face the possibility of a home without a kitchen.
Look at it—a real house, in no way different from any other house in front. But it does differ in the back—for it has no back! Its back is another front, just as pretty, just as dignified, just asclean.There is a dining-room in this house, cool, sweet, well-screened from passing, vagrant winged things, but that is all; no kitchen, no kitchen-sink, no raw meat coming in and garbage going out, no grease, no smell of frying.
But how shall we get our food into our dining-rooms?
It will be delivered, cooked, in shining aluminium receptacles hot and steaming, cold and fresh—all thishas been done.And it and its dishes, will go away again, tight-closed, leaving you to brush up the crumbs and fold the tablecloth. If you want your own elaborate sets of china enough to wash dishes, that is quite permissible, a butler's pantry will take care of that.
There is no more reason why a civilized family should cook its own food in its own kitchen than kill its own pig in its own backyard.
Then rises the pathetic cry about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially hard to change.
But I can tell you who will like it—that is the woman who is tired of planning meals, tired of ordering meals, tired of managing servants, or tired—deadly tired—of her own cooking.
And one generation of children, growIng up in kitchenless homes, eating food that is prepared by trained experts and not by "greenhorns," used to science and art in the food supply instead of affection and ignorance—they will like it.
We like what we are used to, and if we have been used to it for a thousand years we like it more intensely. But that proves nothing at all except that we are used to it. It does not prove the thing is good for us—nor that we can not get used to something better and like that, in course of time, just as devotedly. One would think, observing the attitude of most of us toward any proposed change, that so far we had never changed at all.
But with all history behind us; with that long, long flight of little steps we took so many centuries to climb, and then, closer, the swiftly heightening large steps we have been taking in these later years ever more swiftly; what then accounts for our always clinging so desperately to the one behind, and resisting so furiously being forced up one more!
It is like the old story of the liberal-minded Grandma and the combination suit. She visited her daughter in New York, resolved to keep up with Progress.
They took her to hear Ignatius Donnelly with his Baconian theory;Ingersoll hammering at Moses, and Jenness-Miller with her ReformedClothes for Women.
Then the old lady broke away and returned to her rural home. "They took away my Shakespeare, and they took away my God," said she; "but when they took away my chemise I couldn't stand it."
We have seen the home robbed and depleted as years have passed; with struggle and objection, no doubt, but inevitably shrinking. Out went the shears and the carders, out went the dye tub and the spinning-wheels; big wool wheel, little flax wheel, all gone. Out went the clattering loom; out went the quilting-frame, the candle-mould, the little mallet to break up the tall blue-papered "sugar loaves."
Some of us have seen all these. In long remote places they are still to be found. In the neighborhood of Chicago's Hull House was found a woman to whom the spinning-wheel was a wonderful modern invention! She spun with a spindle—like Clotho.
Now why do reasoning people, seeing all this behind them, so dread and resist the next step before them—the eliminating of the kitchen? Shall we never learn, that as a means of feeding the world it is not a success? It does not bring health and happiness. Every competent woman is not a competent cook and never will be; any more than every man is a competent carpenter. The preparation of food is too important a task to be left to a private servant—whether hired or married.
There are reasons, many, and good, why the kitchen must go; reasons of health, of economy, of happiness; but this last reason is a good accelerator—the Horror of the Fly.
Here he is by millions and millions: Here She is, by trillions. Their hairy feet, their whiskered probosces, slop and paddle in every foul and nauseous thing. They sit twiddling their paws on the pauper's sickbed; and then twiddle those same paws on our warm chocolate-cake.
And every home that keeps a kitchen, with its attendant stables, helps to maintain and disseminate this scourge of humanity, this universal purveyor of infectious disease—The Kitchen Fly.
Have those in monstrous hats no glimmering dreamOf the high beauty of the human head,House of the brain: seat of the sentient soul;Haloed for sainthood; crowned for royalty;Bright-ringed with roses, wreathed with noble bays,Most beautifully bound with shining hair.
Alas for the soft glory they have lost!Alas for the Ashantee wigs they wear!Nor plait nor coil nor ringlet, but a massOf shorn dead hair from poorer women's heads.Of bulging wire and hard, stiff, glittering bands.A heap no loving hand would long to touch.
This body is the glory of the world;The head the body's crown; but we on thisPlant like a fool's-cap these preposterous forms.Alas for women's folly; and alasFor man, who likes his women to be fools,And carefully has bred them to this end.
She saw the pleasant living creatures; bright birds, scattering music in the air, fish like darting lights in the dark water; beasts with soft eyes and softer fur. Therefore to her house she brought them, in chains and cages and glaring jails of glass she kept them, prisoners and exiles all.
Out of the plenteous, pure water, freshened by free air, darkened by shadowing leaves and hidden ledges; away from pleasant chase of food desired; come the gold-red fish she loves; come to foul airless water, scant and warm, where they gasp faintly to and fro, in dim distress; come to the stale monotonous food that falls to them inert; come with their lidless eyes to the round high-placed globe of glass, set in a window in the sun, reflecting and refracting the fierce light from every side;—even as the Carthaginians tortured their prisoners she tortures the gold-red fish she loves.
Out of the billowing green boughs of the forest, the endless oceans of bright air, the refreshing rain, the winds that lift and rush and fill with wild rejoicing; out of the whispering darkness of deep leaves, the wide sweet light of sunlit hill and valley; away from pleasant chase of food desired; come the yellow song birds which she loves; come over land and sea in small tight wicker cells; come to prisons of gilded wires scarce larger; come to the smothering house air, the dull constant dreary walls, the sick heat, the smell of coal gas and the smoke of oil; to such stale monotonous food as falls to them inert; to hop and hop and hop, to sing madly to no end, and dream of flight,—to this come the birds she loves.
Out of his long wild past; lifted to be assistant in the chase, house guardian, brother shepherd; comes the friend of man to be the pet of woman. Down, down, he sinks; no shepherd, no hunter, no guardian now; far from the pleasant chase of food desired; only a pet, her pet. Dwarfed, distorted, feeble; a snub-nosed monsterling; ears cropped, tail cut, hair shaved in ludicrous patches; collared and chained; basketed, blanketed, braceleted,dressed,—O last and utter ignominy!—stuffed on unnatural food till he waddles grossly, panting and diseased; so comes the dog she loves.
Of bird and beast and fish, her pets, what sacrifice is asked? They must first lose freedom, the essential joy of every life; fresh air, fresh water, the daily need of every life. They must lose the search and chase of natural food, the major occupation of every animal, deprived of which they are deprived of function; nerve, muscle, brain,—all must deteriorate, disused. They must lose the joy of long adaptation to environment; no few generations in houses can overcome the longings bred in countless ages for sky and river, forest and plain and hill.
They must lose—and has the mother of the world no pity?—the free use of nature's overwhelming instincts, they must be denied the strongest desire of life. The sorrowful mother of drowned kittens mourns under the caressing hand that robbed her; the tumbling puppies are gone and their mother finds no comfort, the little hen bird frets over a scattered thread or feather, vainly striving to build a useless nest; the little yellow-feathered lover shrills his heart out for the mate he never sees.
The piercing clamor of bachelorhood enforced makes our nights hideous with voices of sufferers free on roof and fence, or chained in yard and kennel; and even—exquisite outrage! we surgically prepare for their high position the pets we love.
Men, too, have pets, sometimes; men who are invalids, prisoners, dwellers in lonely cabins; but not free human beings, working gladly in a free human world.
"We are weak!" said the Sticks, and men broke them;"We are weak!" said the Threads, and were torn;Till new thoughts came and they spoke them;Till the Fagot and the Rope were born.
For the Fagot men find is resistant,And they anchor on the Rope's taut length;Even grasshoppers combined,Are a force, the farmers find—In union there is strength.
Ross Warden endured his grocery business; strove with it, toiled at it, concentrated his scientific mind on alien tasks of financial calculation and practical psychology, but he liked it no better. He had no interest in business, no desire to make money, no skill in salesmanship.
But there were five mouths at home; sweet affectionate feminine mouths no doubt, but requiring food. Also two in the kitchen, wider, and requiring more food. And there were five backs at home to be covered, to use the absurd metaphor—as if all one needed for clothing was a four foot patch. The amount and quality of the covering was an unceasing surprise to Ross, and he did not do justice to the fact that his womenfolk really saved a good deal by doing their own sewing.
In his heart he longed always to be free of the whole hated load of tradesmanship. Continually his thoughts went back to the hope of selling out the business and buying a ranch.
"I could make it keep us, anyhow," he would plan to himself; "and I could get at that guinea pig idea. Or maybe hens would do." He had a theory of his own, or a personal test of his own, rather, which he wished to apply to a well known theory. It would take some years to work it out, and a great many fine pigs, and be of no possible value financially. "I'll do it sometime," he always concluded; which was cold comfort.
His real grief at losing the companionship of the girl he loved, was made more bitter by a total lack of sympathy with her aims, even if she achieved them—in which he had no confidence. He had no power to change his course, and tried not to be unpleasant about it, but he had to express his feelings now and then.
"Are you coming back to me?" he wrote. "How con you bear to give so much pain to everyone who loves you? Is your wonderful salary worth more to you than being here with your mother—with me? How can you say you love me—and ruin both our lives like this? I cannot come to see you—Iwouldnot come to see you—calling at the back door! Finding the girl I love in a cap and apron! Can you not see it is wrong, utterly wrong, all this mad escapade of yours? Suppose you do make a thousand dollars a year—I shall never touch your money—you know that. I cannot even offer you a home, except with my family, and I know how you feel about that; I do not blame you.
"But I am as stubborn as you are, dear girl; I will not live on my wife's money—you will not live in my mother's house—and we are drifting apart. It is not that I care less for you dear, or at all for anyone else, but this is slow death—that's all."
Mrs. Warden wrote now and then and expatiated on the sufferings of her son, and his failing strength under the unnatural strain, till Diantha grew to dread her letters more than any pain she knew. Fortunately they came seldom.
Her own family was much impressed by the thousand dollars, and found the occupation of housekeeper a long way more tolerable than that of house-maid, a distinction which made Diantha smile rather bitterly. Even her father wrote to her once, suggesting that if she chose to invest her salary according to his advice he could double it for her in a year, maybe treble it, in Belgian hares.
"They'ddouble and treble fast enough!" she admitted to herself; but she wrote as pleasant a letter as she could, declining his proposition.
Her mother seemed stronger, and became more sympathetic as the months passed. Large affairs always appealed to her more than small ones, and she offered valuable suggestions as to the account keeping of the big house. They all assumed that she was permanently settled in this well paid position, and she made no confidences. But all summer long she planned and read and studied out her progressive schemes, and strengthened her hold among the working women.
Laundress after laundress she studied personally and tested professionally, finding a general level of mediocrity, till finally she hit upon a melancholy Dane—a big rawboned red-faced woman—whose husband had been a miller, but was hurt about the head so that he was no longer able to earn his living. The huge fellow was docile, quiet, and endlessly strong, but needed constant supervision.
"He'll do anything you tell him, Miss, and do it well; but then he'll sit and dream about it—I can't leave him at all. But he'll take the clothes if I give him a paper with directions, and come right back." Poor Mrs. Thorald wiped her eyes, and went on with her swift ironing.
Diantha offered her the position of laundress at Union House, with two rooms for their own, over the laundry. "There'll be work for him, too," she said. "We need a man there. He can do a deal of the heavier work—be porter you know. I can't offer him very much, but it will help some."
Mrs. Thorald accepted for both, and considered Diantha as a special providence.
There was to be cook, and two capable second maids. The work of the house must be done thoroughly well, Diantha determined; "and the food's got to be good—or the girls wont stay." After much consideration she selected one Julianna, a "person of color," for her kitchen: not the jovial and sloppy personage usually figuring in this character, but a tall, angular, and somewhat cynical woman, a misanthrope in fact, with a small son. For men she had no respect whatever, but conceded a grudging admiration to Mr. Thorald as "the usefullest biddablest male person" she had ever seen. She also extended special sympathy to Mrs. Thorald on account of her peculiar burden, and the Swedish woman had no antipathy to her color, and seemed to take a melancholy pleasure in Julianna's caustic speeches.
Diantha offered her the place, boy and all. "He can be 'bell boy' and help you in the kitchen, too. Can't you, Hector?" Hector rolled large adoring eyes at her, but said nothing. His mother accepted the proposition, but without enthusiasm. "I can't keep no eye on him, Miss, if I'm cookin' an less'n you keep your eye on him they's no work to be got out'n any kind o' boy."
"What is your last name, Julianna?" Diantha asked her.
"I suppose, as a matter o' fac' its de name of de last nigger I married," she replied. "Dere was several of 'em, all havin' different names, and to tell you de truf Mis' Bell, I got clean mixed amongst 'em. But Julianna's my name—world without end amen."
So Diantha had to waive her theories about the surnames of servants in this case.
"Did they all die?" she asked with polite sympathy.
"No'm, dey didn't none of 'em die—worse luck."
"I'm afraid you have seen much trouble, Julianna," she continued sympathetically; "They deserted you, I suppose?"
Julianna laid her long spoon upon the table and stood up with great gravity. "No'm," she said again, "dey didn't none of 'em desert me on no occasion. I divorced 'em."
Marital difficulties in bulk were beyond Diantha's comprehension, and she dropped the subject.
Union House opened in the autumn. The vanished pepper trees were dim with dust in Orchardina streets as the long rainless summer drew to a close; but the social atmosphere fairly sparkled with new interest. Those who had not been away chattered eagerly with those who had, and both with the incoming tide of winter visitors.
"That girl of Mrs. Porne's has started her housekeeping shop!"
"That 'Miss Bell' has got Mrs. Weatherstone fairly infatuated with her crazy schemes."
"Do you know that Bell girl has actually taken Union House? Going to make a Girl's Club of it!"
"Did you everhearof such a thing! Diantha Bell's really going to try to run her absurd undertaking right here in Orchardina!"
They did not know that the young captain of industry had deliberately chosen Orchardina as her starting point on account of the special conditions. The even climate was favorable to "going out by the day," or the delivery of meals, the number of wealthy residents gave opportunity for catering on a large scale; the crowding tourists and health seekers made a market for all manner of transient service and cooked food, and the constant lack of sufficient or capable servants forced the people into an unwilling consideration of any plan of domestic assistance.
In a year's deliberate effort Diantha had acquainted herself with the rank and file of the town's housemaids and day workers, and picked her assistants carefully. She had studied the local conditions thoroughly, and knew her ground. A big faded building that used to be "the Hotel' in Orchardina's infant days, standing, awkward and dingy on a site too valuable for a house lot and not yet saleable as a business block, was the working base.
A half year with Mrs. Weatherstone gave her $500 in cash, besides the $100 she had saved at Mrs. Porne's; and Mrs. Weatherstone's cheerfully offered backing gave her credit.
"I hate to let you," said Diantha, "I want to do it all myself."
"You are a painfully perfect person, Miss Bell," said her last employer, pleasantly, "but you have ceased to be my housekeeper and I hope you will continue to be my friend. As a friend I claim the privilege of being disagreeable. If you have a fault it is conceit. Immovable Colossal Conceit! And Obstinacy!"
"Is that all?" asked Diantha.
"It's all I've found—so far," gaily retorted Mrs. Weatherstone. "Don't you see, child, that you can't afford to wait? You have reasons for hastening, you know. I don't doubt you could, in a series of years, work up this business all stark alone. I have every confidence in those qualities I have mentioned! But what's the use? You'll need credit for groceries and furniture. I am profoundly interested in this business. I am more than willing to advance a little capital, or to ensure your credit. A man would have sense enough to take me up at once."
"I believe you are right," Diantha reluctantly agreed. "And you shan't lose by it!"
Her friends were acutely interested in her progress, and showed it in practical ways. The New Woman's Club furnished five families of patrons for the regular service of cooked food, which soon grew, with satisfaction, to a dozen or so, varying from time to time. The many families with invalids, and lonely invalids without families, were glad to avail themselves of the special delicacies furnished at Union House. Picnickers found it easier to buy Diantha's marvelous sandwiches than to spend golden morning hours in putting up inferior ones at home; and many who cooked for themselves, or kept servants, were glad to profit by this outside source on Sunday evenings and "days out."
There was opposition too; both the natural resistance of inertia and prejudice, and the active malignity of Mrs. Thaddler.
The Pornes were sympathetic and anxious.
"That place'll cost her all of $10,000 a year, with those twenty-five to feed, and they only pay $4.50 a week—I know that!" said Mr. Porne.
"It does look impossible," his wife agreed, "but such is my faith inDiantha Bell I'd back her against Rockefeller!"
Mrs. Weatherstone was not alarmed at all. "If sheshouldfail—which I don't for a moment expect—it wont ruin me," she told Isabel. "And if she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk almost anything to prove Mrs. Thaddler in the wrong."
Mrs. Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable. She used what power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition. He never argued with his wife—she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make against him, which mode him angrily silent. He was convinced in a dim way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even in their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain and discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it, naturally.
"That Diantha Bell is a fine girl," he said to himself. "A damn fine girl, and as straight as a string!"
There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were. His Grandmother, finding Mrs. Thaddler invincible with this new weapon, and what she had so long regarded as her home now visibly Mrs. Weatherstone's, had retired in regal dignity to her old Philadelphia establishment, where she upheld the standard of decorum against the weakening habits of a deteriorated world, for many years.
As Mr. Thaddler thought of this sweeping victory, he chuckled for the hundredth time. "She ought to make good, and she will. Something's got to be done about it," said he.
Diantha had never liked Mr. Thaddler; she did not like that kind of man in general, nor his manner toward her in particular. Moreover he was the husband of Mrs. Thaddler. She did not know that he was still the largest owner in the town's best grocery store, and when that store offered her special terms for her exclusive trade, she accepted the proposition thankfully.
She told Ross about it, as a matter well within his knowledge, if not his liking, and he was mildly interested. "I am much alarmed at this new venture," he wrote, "but you must get your experience. I wish I could save you. As to the groceries, those are wholesale rates, nearly; they'll make enough on it. Yours is a large order you see, and steady."
When she opened her "Business Men's Lunch" Mr. Thaddler had a still better opportunity. He had a reputation as a high flyer, and had really intended to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship by patronizing and praising this "undertaking" at any cost to his palate; but no sacrifice was needed.
Diantha's group of day workers had their early breakfast and departed, taking each her neat lunch-pail,—they ate nothing of their employers;—and both kitchen and dining room would have stood idle till supper time. But the young manager knew she must work her plant for all it was worth, and speedily opened the dining room with the side entrance as a "Caffeteria," with the larger one as a sort of meeting place; papers and magazines on the tables.
From the counter you took what you liked, and seated yourself, and your friends, at one of the many small tables or in the flat-armed chairs in the big room, or on the broad piazza; and as this gave good food, cheapness, a chance for a comfortable seat and talk and a smoke, if one had time, it was largely patronized.
Mr. Thaddler, as an experiencedbon vivant,despised sandwiches. "Picnicky makeshifts" he called them,—"railroad rations"—"bread and leavings," and when he saw these piles on piles of sandwiches, listed only as "No. 1," "No. 2" "No. 3," and so on, his benevolent intention wavered. But he pulled himself together and took a plateful, assorted.
"Come on, Porne," he said, "we'll play it's a Sunday school picnic," and he drew himself a cup of coffee, finding hot milk, cream and sugar crystals at hand. "I never saw a cheap joint where you could fix it yourself, before," he said,—and suspiciously tasted the mixture.
"By jing! That's coffee!" he cried in surprise. "There's no scum on the milk, and the cream's cream!" Five cents! She won't get rich on this."
Then he applied himself to his "No. 1" sandwich, and his determined expression gave way to one of pleasure. "Why that's bread—real bread! I believe she made it herself!"
She did in truth,—she and Julianna with Hector as general assistant. The big oven was filled several times every morning: the fresh rolls disappeared at breakfast and supper, the fresh bread was packed in the lunch pails, and the stale bread was even now melting away in large bites behind the smiling mouths and mustaches of many men. Perfect bread, excellent butter, and "What's the filling I'd like to know?" More than one inquiring-minded patron split his sandwich to add sight to taste, but few could be sure of the flavorsome contents, fatless, gritless, smooth and even, covering the entire surface, the last mouthful as perfect as the first. Some were familiar, some new, all were delicious.
The six sandwiches were five cents, the cup of coffee five, and the little "drop cakes," sweet and spicy, were two for five. Every man spent fifteen cents, some of them more; and many took away small cakes in paper bags, if there were any left.
"I don't see how you can do it, and make a profit," urged Mr. Eltwood, making a pastorial call. "They are so good you know!"
Diantha smiled cheerfully. "That's because all your ideas are based on what we call 'domestic economy,' which is domestic waste. I buy in large quantities at wholesale rates, and my cook with her little helper, the two maids, and my own share of the work, of course, provides for the lot. Of course one has to know how."
"Whenever did you find—or did you create?—those heavenly sandwiches?" he asked.
"I have to thank my laundress for part of that success," she said. "She's a Dane, and it appears that the Danes are so fond of sandwiches that, in large establishments, they have a 'sandwich kitchen' to prepare them. It is quite a bit of work, but they are good and inexpensive. There is no limit to the variety."
As a matter of fact this lunch business paid well, and led to larger things.
The girl's methods were simple and so organized as to make one hand wash the other. Her house had some twenty-odd bedrooms, full accommodations for kitchen and laundry work on a large scale, big dining, dancing, and reception rooms, and broad shady piazzas on the sides. Its position on a corner near the business part of the little city, and at the foot of the hill crowned with so many millionaires and near millionaires as could get land there, offered many advantages, and every one was taken.
The main part of the undertaking was a House Worker's Union; a group of thirty girls, picked and trained. These, previously working out as servants, had received six dollars a week "and found." They now worked an agreed number of hours, were paid on a basis by the hour or day, and "found" themselves. Each had her own room, and the broad porches and ball room were theirs, except when engaged for dances and meetings of one sort and another.
It was a stirring year's work, hard but exciting, and the only difficulty which really worried Diantha was the same that worried the average housewife—the accounts.
(A Picture by Paul Dougherty.)
Who dares paint daylight?The bright white light of flaming noon?No blur of shadow, mist or haze,Just the whole unobstructed blazeOf hot mid-June.
No screen of leafage;The keen clean green of summer sea;Dazzle of surf in mid-day light,The very sound of the surges' fight,Broad—open—free.
The earth all stillness,Noon hush on the pastures' height;Turf topped cliffs with faces bare,Bones of the earth unveiled to air,Heat—breakers—light.
OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN~MADE WORLD
It is easy to assume that men are naturally the lawmakers and law-enforcers, under the plain historic fact that they have been such since the beginning of the patriarchate.
Back of law lies custom and tradition. Back of government lies the correlative activity of any organized group. What group-insects and group-animals evolve unconsciously and fulfill by their social instincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill by arbitrary systems called laws and governments. In this, as in all other fields of our action, we must discriminate between the humanness of the function in process of development, and the influence of the male or female upon it. Quite apart from what they may like or dislike as sexes, from their differing tastes and faculties, lies the much larger field of human progress, in which they equally participate.
On this plane the evolution of law and government proceeds somewhat as follows:—The early woman-centered group organized on maternal lines of common love and service. The early combinations of men were first a grouped predacity—organized hunting; then a grouped belligerency,—organized warfare.
By special development some minds are able to perceive the need of certain lines of conduct over others, and to make this clear to their fellows; whereby, gradually, our higher social nature establishes rules and precedents to which we personally agree to submit. The process of social development is one of progressive co-ordination.
From independent individual action for individual ends, up to interdependent social action for social ends we slowly move; the "devil" in the play being the old Ego, which has to be harmonized with the new social spirit. This social process, like all others, having been in masculine hands, we may find in it the same marks of one-sided Specialization so visible in our previous studies.
The coersive attitude is essentially male. In the ceaseless age-old struggle of sex combat he developed the desire to overcome, which is always stimulated by resistance; and in this later historic period of his supremacy, he further developed the habit of dominance and mastery. We may instance the contrast between the conduct of a man when "in love" and while courting; in which period he falls into the natural position of his sex towards the other—namely, that of a wooer; and his behavior when, with marriage, they enter the, artificial relation of the master male and servile female. His "instinct of dominance" does not assert itself during the earlier period, which was a million times longer than the latter; it only appears in the more modern and arbitrary relation.
Among other animals monogamous union is not accompanied by any such discordant and unnatural features. However recent as this habit is when considered biologically, it is as old as civilization when we consider it historically: quite old enough to be a serious force. Under its pressure we see the legal systems and forms of government slowly evolving, the general human growth always heavily perverted by the special masculine influence. First we find the mere force of custom governing us, themoresof the ancient people. Then comes the gradual appearance of authority, from the purely natural leadership of the best hunter or fighter up through the unnatural mastery of the patriarch, owning and governing his wives, children, slaves and cattle, and making such rules and regulations as pleased him.
Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must. In the household, that stunted, crippled rudiment of the matriarchate, where alone we can find what is left of the natural influence of woman, the laws and government, so far as she is responsible for them, are fairly simple, and bear visible relation to the common good, which relation is clearly and persistently taught.
In the larger household of city and state the educational part of the law is grievously neglected. It makes no allowance for ignorance. If a man breaks a law of which he never heard he is not excused therefore; the penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a mother making solemn rules and regulations for her family, telling the children nothing about them, and then punishing them when they disobeyed the unknown laws!
The use of force is natural to the male; while as a human being he must needs legislate somewhat in the interests of the community, as a male being he sees no necessity for other enforcement than by penalty. To violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the earth, to triumph in loud bellowings of savage joy,—these are the primitive male instincts; and the perfectly natural social instinct which leads to peaceful persuasion, to education, to an easy harmony of action, are contemptuously ranked as "feminine," or as "philanthropic,"—which is almost as bad. "Men need stronger measures" they say proudly. Yes, but four-fifths of the world are women and children!
As a matter of fact the woman, the mother, is the first co-ordinator, legislator, administrator and executive. From the guarding and guidance of her cubs and kittens up to the longer, larger management of human youth, she is the first to consider group interests and co-relate them.
As a father the male grows to share in these original feminine functions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized while motherhood has not, he does the best he can, alone, to do the world's mother-work in his father way.
In study of any long established human custom it is very difficult to see it clearly and dispassionately. Our minds are heavily loaded with precedent, with race-custom, with the iron weight called authority. These heavy forces reach their most perfect expression in the absolutely masculine field of warfare. The absolute authority; the brainless, voiceless obedience; the relentless penalty. Here we have male coercion at its height; law and government wholly arbitrary. The result is as might be expected, a fine machine of destruction. But destruction is not a human process—merely a male process of eliminating the unfit.
The female process is to select the fit; her elimination is negative and painless.
Greater than either is the human process, todevelop fitness.
Men are at present far more human than women. Alone upon their self-seized thrones they have carried as best they might the burdens of the state; and the history of law and government shows them as changing slowly but irresistably in the direction of social improvement.
The ancient kings were the joyous apotheosis of masculinity. Power and Pride were theirs; Limitless Display; Boundless Self-indulgence; Irresistable Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed before them, subjects obeyed them, captive women filled their harems. But the day of the masculine monarchy is passing, and the day of the human democracy is coming in. In a Democracy Law and Government both change. Laws are no longer imposed on the people by one above them, but are evolved from the people themselves. How absurd that the people should not be educated in the laws they make; that the trailing remnants of blind submission should still becloud their minds and make them bow down patiently under the absurd pressure of outgrown tradition!
Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves—or will be when it is really attained.
In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game. The rules of human conduct are for our own happiness and service—any child can see that. Every child will see it when laws are simplified, based on sociology, and taught in schools. A child of ten should be considered grossly uneducated who could not rewrite the main features of the laws of his country, state, and city; and those laws should be so simple in their principles that a child of ten could understand them.
Teacher: "What is a tax?"
Child: "A tax is the money we agree to pay to keep up our common advantages."
Teacher: "Why do we all pay taxes?"
Child: "Because the country belongs to all of us, and we must all pay our share to keep it up."
Teacher: "In what proportion do we pay taxes?"
Child: "In proportion to how much money we have." (Sotto voce: "Of course!")
Teacher: "What is it to evade taxes?"
Child: "It is treason." (Sotto voce: "And a dirty mean trick.")
In masculine administration of the laws we may follow the instinctive love of battle down through the custom of "trial by combat"—only recently outgrown, to our present method, where each contending party hires a champion to represent him, and these fight it out in a wordy war, with tricks and devices of complex ingenuity, enjoying this kind of struggle as they enjoy all other kinds.
It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority;—never thinking that it is the common good, the common welfare, that government should represent.
It is the inextricable masculinity in our idea of government which so revolts at the idea of women as voters. "To govern:" that means to boss, to control, to have authority; and that only, to most minds. They cannot bear to think of the woman as having control over even their own affairs; to control is masculine, they assume. Seeing only self-interest as a natural impulse, and the ruling powers of the state as a sort of umpire, an authority to preserve the rules of the game while men fight it out forever; they see in a democracy merely a wider range of self interest, and a wider, freer field to fight in.
The law dictates the rules, the government enforces them, but the main business of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one long fierce struggle; each man seeking for himself. To deliberately legislate for the service of all the people, to use the government as the main engine of that service, is a new process, wholly human, and difficult of development under an androcentric culture.
Furthermore they put forth those naively androcentric protests,—women cannot fight, and in case their laws were resisted by men they could not enforce them,—thereforethey should not vote!
What they do not so plainly say, but very strongly think, is that women should not share the loot which to their minds is so large a part of politics.
Here we may trace clearly the social heredity of male government.
Fix clearly in your mind the first head-ship of man—the leader of the pack as it were—the Chief Hunter. Then the second head-ship, the Chief Fighter. Then the third head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then the long line of Chiefs and Captains, Warlords and Landlords, Rulers and Kings.
The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. The Fighter enriched himself with the spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch lived on the labor of women and slaves. All down the ages, from frank piracy and robbery to the measured toll of tribute, ransom and indemnity, we see the same natural instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his hands the government is a thing to sap and wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse to want something very much; to struggle and fight for it; to take all he can get.
Set against this the giving love that comes with motherhood; the endless service that comes of motherhood; the peaceful administration in the interest of the family that comes of motherhood. We prate much of the family as the unit of the state. If it is—why not run the state on that basis? Government by women, so far as it is influenced by their sex, would be influenced by motherhood; and that would mean care, nurture, provision, education. We have to go far down the scale for any instance of organized motherhood, but we do find it in the hymenoptera; in the overflowing industry, prosperity, peace and loving service of the ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most highly socialized types of life, next to ours, and they are feminine types.
We as human beings have a far higher form of association, with further issues than mere wealth and propagation of the species. In this human process we should never forget that men are far more advanced than women, at present. Because of their humanness has come all the noble growth of civilization, in spite of their maleness.
As human beings both male and female stand alike useful and honorable, and should in our government be alike used and honored; but as creatures of sex, the female is fitter than the male for administration of constructive social interests. The change in governmental processes which marks our times is a change in principle. Two great movements convulse the world to-day, the woman's movement and the labor movement. Each regards the other as of less moment than itself. Both are parts of the same world-process.
We are entering upon a period of social consciousness. Whereas so far almost all of us have seen life only as individuals, and have regarded the growing strength and riches of the social body as merely so much the more to fatten on; now we are beginning to take an intelligent interest in our social nature, to understand it a little, and to begin to feel the vast increase of happiness and power that comes of real Human Life.
In this change of systems a government which consisted only of prohibition and commands; of tax collecting and making war; is rapidly giving way to a system which intelligently manages our common interests, which is a growing and improving method of universal service. Here the socialist is perfectly right in his vision of the economic welfare to be assured by the socialization of industry, though that is but part of the new development; and the individualist who opposes socialism, crying loudly for the advantage of "free competition" is but voicing the spirit of the predacious male.
So with the opposers to the suffrage of women. They represent, whether men or women, the male viewpoint. They see the woman only as a female, utterly absorbed in feminine functions, belittled and ignored as her long tutelage has made her; and they see the man as he sees himself, the sole master of human affairs for as long as we have historic record.
This, fortunately, is not long. We can now see back of the period of his supremacy, and are beginning to see beyond it. We are well under way already in a higher stage of social development, conscious, well-organized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall be simple and founded on constructive principles instead of being a set of ring-regulations within which people may fight as they will; and in which the government shall be recognized in its full use; not only the sternly dominant father, and the wisely servicable mother, but the real union of all people to sanely and economically manage their affairs.
There is a fine article in the June Popular Science Monthly, by Dr.Thomas W. Salmon on "Two Preventable Causes of Insanity."
He shows how much has been done by the popular recognition of cause and effect in checking tuberculosis, malaria and yellow fever, and urges a similar awakening in regard to insanity. At the close of 1908 there were 30,456 patients in the public and private institutions for the insane in New York State, about one in 280 of the general population of the state, he says; and then gives the new admissions for that year as 5,301. Five thousand new lunatics a year is a good many.
Dr. Salmon then shows that of this number there were "664 cases of general paralysis (dependant on syphilis) and 638 cases of alcoholic psychoses (due to intemperance)," ormore than one-fourth of all first admissions due to these two preventable causes.There is a further most interesting fact, that this general paralysis in men is nearly three times as great in cities as in the country, and in women, twice as great; while alcoholic psychosis in women is seven times as great in cities.
Most striking of all is Dr. Salmon's showing that "42 per cent. of all male admissions from cities were for general paralysis and the alcoholic psychoses." As he justly remarks, "Where are 'the nervous tension of the cities' and 'the mad rush of modern life,' of which we speak so glibly, compared with syphilis and drunkenness as the real dangers of city life?" But for these two causes the ratio of insanity would be greater in the country, where, as is well known, the largest percentage of women lunatics comes from the lonely farm house.
Further than this we are told that many other forms of lunacy are indirectly due to syphilis and alcoholism, through parental transmission.
Knowledge is power. Society is but just awakening to a conscious knowledge of itself, its pains and pleasures, and its powers. One man may not be strong enough to resist the influences which pull and push him into these large hells, but when society as a whole,—or even women as a half,—waken to a realization of all this needless suffering, this dreadful waste, then we can prevent it.
*
The gentlemen of France are distressed about the birthrate. It appears that the men of that country do not bear enough children to keep up the population as they desire. Therefore serious measures are proposed "to stimulate the birthrate." They are these:
Additional military service to be imposed on bachelors over twenty-nine.
Marriage to be made obligatory to gentlemen employed by the state, at the age of twenty-five, with supplementary salaries and pension allowances for more than three children.
The law requiring equal distribution of estates among children to be repealed. The dislike of Frenchmen to dividing their property is a frequent cause of restricted families, we are told.
We trust that the gentlemen of France, spurred and encouraged by these incentives, will now produce more children than they have hitherto.
The New YorkTimes, of Friday, June 24, gives an editorial to this news from France,—and no wonder. But it is perfectly serious in its treatment, and offers no criticism of the measures proposed. The writer has apparently small know]edge of biology, for he expresses astonishment that the miserably poor "increase prodigiously" in Russia and elsewhere. "Who shall solve these mysteries or dogmatize upon them?" he says, and speculates further, in a vaguely awe-stricken manner, on the subject, quoting from the vigorous Mr. Roosevelt and the gloomy Dr. Koch.
Do any of our readers, belonging to the negligible side of this race problem see anything to smile at? Let us parallel it:
There is dismay in the poultry yard over a grave falling off in the supply of eggs. A convocation of roosters is called to discuss it, and to take measures to remedy the condition. They propose (a) To make all roosters over six months old do extra scratching for food. (b) To enforce matrimony—or its gallinaceous equivalent—on all roosters employed by the flock. (c) To alter the custom of dividing the worms equally among the chicks.
The simile is strained, we admit: try to apply it to some other case, as a shortage in the milk supply—considered by a convocation of bulls. That seems rather absurd too. Can not some one suggest a parallel which could be taken as seriously as the Times takes this effort on the part of Frenchmen?
*
People in general, peaceably minding their own business, do not give much thought to their subtler enemies. A burglar, creeping in through the window, we can see and scream at; but a Public Poisoner, a whole array of Public Poisoners, creeping through the Legislature, we do not notice.
In the interests of the common good we have our National Health League, working by means of the Owen Bill for a National Department of Health which shall safeguard the people from disease and contamination as the Bureau of Agriculture safeguards our cattle.
Against this measure, one of most needed social service, is rising an organized opposition called the "League for Medical Freedom." This association defends the free practice of healing by unorthodox methods, but its opposition to the Owen Bill is wholly ignorant, if not worse. The Owen Bill, in urging a National Department of Health, does not seek to regulate the practice of medicine. Its work will be to maintain pure food, pure drugs, pure streams, and to study human health and maintain it as assiduously as we now study the health of swine and steers.
This sudden opposition, using great sums of money to advertise in the newspapers, seems based on the big interests of the patent medicines and other profitable health destroyers and life takers.
Our women, within their capacity as mothers and guardians of the home, ought to inform themselves as to the work of the National Health League.
Write to the Committee of One Hundred, Drawer 45 New Haven, Conn.
*
How many of our readers know that superb magazine,The Englishwoman?*
As far as I have seen them it is by far the finest woman's publication in the world. A big, handsome, dignified monthly; 120 pages in large clear type, a joy to the eye; and paper, a joy to the hand; the magazine is three-quarters of an inch thick toThe Century'shalf inch, and weighs ten ounces toThe Century's18. This is not only because there are no pictures, but because of that specially light weight paper, so much more used in England than with us.
Thus pleasing to the eye and to the hand, it gives to the mind a clear, strong, varied presentation of the affairs of the world to-day as they specially affect women. Excellent writers and plenty of them furnish the material; it is good reading straight through.
My special satisfaction in this monthly is in its breadth of view. The need of the ballot is strongly emphasized, and due record is kept of the progress of the equal suffrage movement; but far more ground than that is covered. Studies are given of the previous position of women, of her place in different countries and classes, of her connection with the other stirring questions of the day.
Reading this, we gather an increasing sense of the real world-issues of which the woman's movement is not only in itself an interesting part, but one in the solution of which is shown to be that of many others. People who shrink from "feminism" in its more intense and accentuated forms, will find here a more proportional treatment, enlightening and persuasive.
*"The Englishwoman." Published by Sidgwick & Jackson, 3 Adam St., Adelphi. London, W. C. England. Monthly, 1s. Yearly, 14s. 6d. post free.
*
The Woman's Journal,* so long our best exponent of the equal rights movement in America, is now the official organ of the National American Women suffrage association.
This is as it should be. The association needs an organ, andThe Woman's Journalhas always needed and desired a wider support than the equal suffragists gave it.
*The Woman's Journal. Saturday weekly. $1.00 yearly, No. 585 BoylstonSt., Boston, Mass.
It is the earnest wish ofThe Forerunnerthat every American "equal suffragist" take theWoman's Journal,and so keep in touch with the movement. It is now butone dollar a year,which, for such a weekly, is more than reasonable.