XVIION THE OUTLOOK
What, then, of the woman of to-morrow? What part will she play in affairs of public interest? What will she do with the home? What will she do and be as an individual?
As I write, the robins and orioles and bobolinks are singing around the house, out in the orchard. Mingled with their notes comes the strain of a catbird, the “northern mocking-bird.” They are all beautiful, and combine to make a perfect harmony of music in the May sunshine; but it is the catbird’s song that the ear strains to follow, with its sweet and sudden changes, its low guttural notes and its pure, uplifted tones as it tries to catch and mimic the strain of the bluebird, the thrush, the oriole. And I willingly forget the others in trying to keep count of her bewitching changes. And I wonder if it doesnot typify the modern woman. The others, lovely, melodious little creatures, are woman as she has been for years, woman of whom we know what to expect. But the catbird! Here we have the woman of to-day outdoing all the others, catching their song, putting forth all their captivating graces, and making herself heard and felt wherever she goes. It is the unexpectedness of her song, the spontaneous uncertainty of it combined with the knowledge that it will be well worth listening to, that holds us captive, as with strained ear we watch for what she will do next. And if she puts forth guttural or harsh notes now and again we can forgive and forget them for the sake of the sweet, entrancing ones that we know are sure to follow.
It is so with the work woman is doing outside of the home. She is doing everything and doing it in her own way, imitative, perhaps, but still so different from men’s way or from her sisters of the day before yesterday as to render her and her methods always an object of interest. She is establishing libraries, improving streets and villages and municipalities, raising the standard of education, fighting against oppression in the form of sweatshops and child labor, and gettingbills introduced to legislative bodies—and still she is the same captivating, lovable and loving woman as of yore. We flatter ourselves that women have done a great deal for the public good, but fifty years hence shall we not look back at our achievements of to-day as the merest beginnings—a thing of shreds and patches? For so long as the world stands its women are going to do their best to uplift humanity. They have found out that the mere stayer at home, content with theLaissez faireof other days, helps only those in her immediate circle (let us hope she always does that!). To-day the woman who helps reaches across the State with her libraries and her child-labor bills; even clear across the continent is modern associated womanhood stretching her influence. The women of Massachusetts send books and money to establish schools in Georgia; the women of Minnesota and Michigan scatter literature and manual training across the plains of Arizona. If the woman of to-day cannot go over into Mesopotamia in person, she can send the cheering word, the helpful dollar, the influence of thousands of good women across the intervening spaces. It is the sisterhood of women awakening to a senseof what humanity requires of them. And when this is fully awakened the way is made clear for the woman of to-morrow; a way she is sure to follow and will, and make to blossom as the rose while she is about it.
But while she extends her work out and beyond she will not forget the home. Let extremists advise as they will, they can never make the ordinary, home-loving woman, born with all the primal instincts of womanhood, believe that in fulfilling her natural duties as wife and mother and daughter and teacher she is wasting her life in drudgery. The woman of to-morrow will fall in love and marry and have children just as the woman of yesterday did; only let us hope she will be more careful about whom she falls in love with, at what age she marries and how she brings up her children. In this time of steam-driven spindles, cutting and sewing machines and the general lightening of labor, more leisure comes to the average woman which she will not be content to fill with mere selfish or social pleasures. She will wake to the knowledge of how to use her time most wisely. With greater leisure and greater wealth and comfort we may expect more and not less of the sharing with others ofthe best we have. Great economic changes are taking place in the home life. The family, at one time almost a self-sufficient economic unit, now satisfies fewer and fewer direct economic wants. It is not so many years since there were well-to-do New England families in rural districts which did not spend fifty dollars a year for the satisfaction of family wants. They produced everything themselves, raised and prepared for use all their food supply, even the materials for clothing, the tools for their work, the furniture for their homes, and they provided within themselves all the essential services for the social and educational life of the home. All is different now, even in the most primitive rural districts. The farmer buys all his clothing, no longer makes his shoes or clothes, buys a large part of his food supply, even many of the most common farm products, such as milk, butter and eggs. The farmer’s wife buys her dresses and children’s clothes ready-made, and too often does not bake her own bread or pastry. Laundry work is given out, and in many cases all the washing as well, and the good Hausfrau has no longer an excuse for irritability on two days of the week. Ladies’ tailoring promises fair toeliminate the necessity for periodical family disturbances caused by the visits of the dressmaker and seamstress. Is not the increase of family goods and services not long since provided within the family itself, and constituting the bulk of the time-consuming burden of the wife and mother and daughters in each individual home, but now provided for by organized effort outside the home, really remarkable? All these economic changes more directly affect the life of women than that of men. And we can but remark that in the resultant increase in leisure, women as a class have been relatively greater gainers than men, partly because in the shifting of their activities somewhat of their economic productive functions have been undertaken by men. It is a matter of congratulation, however, that all the economic changes in the position and work of women have been accompanied by the most remarkable expansion this country has ever witnessed, an expansion alongside of which our political expansion is a mere bagatelle, an expansion in woman’s educational interests and aspirations. The higher education and a more diversified education has brought woman inevitably into the arena of public duties and large socialresponsibilities, and must needs lead her to demand a specific training and equipment for social service.
The day has passed when Martin Luther could say: “No gown or garment worse becomes a woman than when she would be wise.” Women must educate themselves to-day, not merely for their own sakes, but for the sakes of others, for whether they will or not they must educate others. Let them keep high ideals and live up to them, for as wife and mother, sister and daughter, an influence indirect and perhaps unconscious is shaping some character and building for the weal or woe of our country. Benjamin Rush once said: “A philosopher decided, ‘Let me make the ballads of a country and I care not who makes its laws.’” He might with more propriety have said: “Let the ladies of a country be educated properly and they will not only make and administer its laws, but form its manners and character.”
We have not yet taken kindly to the earnest suggestion of the greatest philosopher of the ancient Greek world to farm out our children (more recently adapted by Mrs. Stetson-Gilman), nor is there any monopolistic combinationfor the propagation and perpetuation of the race. Barring the increasing activities of the home in its care for the welfare of its children, activities increasing in importance and in their demands proportionately with the advance of civilization, find women with more time for the larger life and more inclination to learn how to use it wisely and effectively. As to the character and kind of this outside work, it seems to me that it will be best directed along these lines:
The promotion of public health and sanitation.
The protection of the highest attainable standard or plane of living for the various classes in society.
The attainment of a progressively better type of education for all, guaranteeing a better adjustment to both our economic and social environment.
The enlargement of our sympathies and of our general moral and spiritual outlook as expressed in our ideals of conduct and life.
The housekeeper of the future, too, will know how to make the best use of her time and understand how to save her strength. She will discriminate between what is necessary work andwhat unnecessary. It is inevitable that our twentieth century women will make good wives. They will understand their husbands’ business and regulate their expenditures accordingly. At the table the talk will not be limited to complaints about servants and gossip about friends and neighbors, but topics of the day will be intelligently discussed, and the husband will receive the intelligent coöperation of his wife in all his affairs.
We are all interested in public health and sanitation, in the prevention of the spread of disease, in the lowering of the death rate, in immunity from exposure to disease, in the protection of the sources of our water supply, of our milk supply and of the meat diet offered in our markets. In all of these things women are by nature and experience better qualified to lead than men, and not until women do undertake their full share of such social work will our community standards of health and cleanliness compare with those that woman has evolved in the home, and will those of the home be still further improved. Still, the average workingman’s cottage to-day is in a better sanitary condition than the palaceof the rich was fifty years ago, and the ordinary artisan’s family lives with more consideration for the rules of hygiene. This is, of course, due to the development of science, but it is also due to the awakening of womankind. But in no other way is woman heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time than in her motherhood. With all that child study has discovered, with all the experience of her mother and grandmother to draw from, with all the discoveries of science at her womanhood, and with a fuller sense of her moral responsibility than ever before, good mothers are inevitable.
God designed women primarily to be mothers of the race, and all the talk of the ultra reformer, all the cryings of pessimists, will not change this unalterable fact. In this connection I wish to second most heartily the wish uttered recently by a prominent Western woman of wide experience:
“I wish every childless home might be filled with homeless little children who lack a father’s loving care and a mother’s fond devotion—that immortal souls that are perishing in helplessness, want and vice might be rescued and loved andtrained to virtue. On this beautiful earth there should never be a homeless child, there should not be so many foundlings’ homes and orphan asylums, as beautiful as those charities are! The most precious gift of God, a fresh and innocent soul to love, to rear and train for usefulness, is not given to every woman, but there is none among us so busy, so burdened by care or lack of means, who would not be the better for such an angel ministrant in her home, for such a check upon the self-absorption or selfishness that men and women grow into without the loving pranks and clinging caresses of innocent little children.
“Alas! for the starved heart of a woman who expends all her mother love and tenderness upon a pampered pug or an elongated dachshund.
“Alas! for the stifled soul who, for love of ease, can pass by unheeding the need of Christ’s little ones who are denied by circumstances the right to be well born and well bred. How many luxurious mansions never hear the music of childhood’s voices! How many homes of comparative comfort in the middle classes never resound with the tread of childish feet, or know the gladness of the trusting love of a little child, sweetestof earthly joy! Is it a risk to take an alien child or introduce strange blood into the family which may produce ingratitude or disobedience? One may meet the same faults in their own children who develop strange traits of character from long-forgotten ancestors, or wring a parent’s heart with unkindness, indifference or neglect. I would say, take the risk, leaving the issues to God, and do your duty faithfully for some other mother’s darling, as faithfully and even more so than if your own, and your later years will be brightened and blessed by grateful affection and devoted filial care.”
And if this were done the problems of the poor and the degeneracy of the race would be far on toward solution.
Then let us be brave women and true, with no taint of unfairness or dishonor in our methods or ambitions, but the resolve that we who have been privileged to be alive to-day, and privileged to march with the great army of those who serve, will strive to share what we possess, whether of wealth, intellect or affection, with those who are our sisters in God’s family.
Let us be charitable, believing in the sisterhoodof women. Thoughts are things according to the New Thought, and the law of attraction will bring just what we desire, whether we think charitable, loving thoughts or the reverse.
Let us insist on doing our share of work, and only our share. When we do less we are shirking our duty; when we do more we are letting somebody else shirk. Let us adopt the “I can and I will” motto; but let us use it with discretion and “will” only what is right.
Let us keep a steel-rod vertebra instead of an india-rubber one in our back-bone, especially when we have disagreeable things to do. For back-bone is what too many women—and men, too—lack.
Let us believe there is much more of good than of evil in every human being; and let us help every one with whom we come in contact to bring forth the good.
Let us remember that Evil is but Ignorance, and that to “know all is to forgive all”; and let us think of this every time we are inclined to condemn another woman.
I came across a little poem in a newspaperone day, unsigned and uncredited. I am going to adapt it for every-day use:
“If I should see a sister languishing in distress,And I should turn and leave her comfortless,When I might be a messenger of hope and happiness;If I might share a sister’s load along the dusty wayAnd I should turn and walk the other way;If I could sing a little song to cheer a fainting heartAnd I should sit and seal my lips apart—“How could I kneel at eventide to prayFor light along my own heart-weary way?How could I hope to have my time of grief relievedIf I kept silent when my sister grieved?How could I ask for what I wanted mostIf all these opportunities were lost?“So, Lord, help me to knowThat day is lost wherein I fail to lendA helping hand to some good friend,Or bring a bit of sunshine to some suffering heartThat walks apart.”
“If I should see a sister languishing in distress,And I should turn and leave her comfortless,When I might be a messenger of hope and happiness;If I might share a sister’s load along the dusty wayAnd I should turn and walk the other way;If I could sing a little song to cheer a fainting heartAnd I should sit and seal my lips apart—“How could I kneel at eventide to prayFor light along my own heart-weary way?How could I hope to have my time of grief relievedIf I kept silent when my sister grieved?How could I ask for what I wanted mostIf all these opportunities were lost?“So, Lord, help me to knowThat day is lost wherein I fail to lendA helping hand to some good friend,Or bring a bit of sunshine to some suffering heartThat walks apart.”
“If I should see a sister languishing in distress,And I should turn and leave her comfortless,When I might be a messenger of hope and happiness;If I might share a sister’s load along the dusty wayAnd I should turn and walk the other way;If I could sing a little song to cheer a fainting heartAnd I should sit and seal my lips apart—
“If I should see a sister languishing in distress,
And I should turn and leave her comfortless,
When I might be a messenger of hope and happiness;
If I might share a sister’s load along the dusty way
And I should turn and walk the other way;
If I could sing a little song to cheer a fainting heart
And I should sit and seal my lips apart—
“How could I kneel at eventide to prayFor light along my own heart-weary way?How could I hope to have my time of grief relievedIf I kept silent when my sister grieved?How could I ask for what I wanted mostIf all these opportunities were lost?
“How could I kneel at eventide to pray
For light along my own heart-weary way?
How could I hope to have my time of grief relieved
If I kept silent when my sister grieved?
How could I ask for what I wanted most
If all these opportunities were lost?
“So, Lord, help me to knowThat day is lost wherein I fail to lendA helping hand to some good friend,Or bring a bit of sunshine to some suffering heartThat walks apart.”
“So, Lord, help me to know
That day is lost wherein I fail to lend
A helping hand to some good friend,
Or bring a bit of sunshine to some suffering heart
That walks apart.”
There is no “new woman.” We are all identically the same as Eve and Sarah and Ruth and—I say it with all reverence—Mary, the carpenter’s mother. We have the same natures, the same intuitions, the same love of family and home, the same desire to be of use to others that women have always had; only in these wonderful modern times we have kept pace with the age, and are developing, both as individuals and as a whole. And now that we have stepped forth and won places as physicians and lawyers and ministers, now that we are widening the ranks of every profession as we go forth on the road to higher achievement, it behooves every woman-soul of us to ask ourselves—What haveIto do about it? Am I doing my duty to the rest of mankind? Am I bearing my share of the burden of the world? Or, if this last is denied me, am I possessing my soul in patience and living up to the splendid present? Am I sweet and gentle and strong and helpful? Am I critical of no one but myself? Am I loving towards my family? my neighbor? my friend? my enemy? Am I helping the cause of the woman of to-morrow by working out my own life problem with the child-heart andthe Christ-love to sweeten existence for all around me?
“Life is too short to wasteIn critic peep or cynic bark,Quarrel or reprimand;’Twill soon be dark.Let us up and mind our aim,And God speed the mark!”
“Life is too short to wasteIn critic peep or cynic bark,Quarrel or reprimand;’Twill soon be dark.Let us up and mind our aim,And God speed the mark!”
“Life is too short to wasteIn critic peep or cynic bark,Quarrel or reprimand;’Twill soon be dark.Let us up and mind our aim,And God speed the mark!”
“Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand;
’Twill soon be dark.
Let us up and mind our aim,
And God speed the mark!”
THE END