Image not available: WOMAN’S BUILDING.WOMAN’S BUILDING.
loved one to the burial ground of the paupers is one of the terrible experiences which are very common in large cities. Some of them cannot afford even the small time necessary to do that much; so, with many tears and prayers, perhaps sometimes with many curses upon the hard luck to which fate or fortune has reduced them, the remains are quietly carried to the river-side at night and there dropped from sight, though not from memory. A few years ago a newspaper attaché, attending one of the large excursions given by charitable persons to children of the poor, overheard a mother and daughter talking about a sick babe which the daughter was to carry on board the boat. The mother could not go. She had to work or the family must starve. She took her child in her arms, again and again kissed it, cried over it, and then began a skilful conversation with her daughter leading up to the possibility and advisability, in case of death during the trip, of dropping the little darling’s remains overboard, saying that the deep, clean sea was a cleaner burial place than the dark ground in the cemetery. The child listened with wondering face and finally agreed with her mother. As for the reporter, he was so horrified that he was utterly unfit for work for a year after, although he imagined himself hardened to scenes of suffering.
The wildest imagination cannot possibly exceedsome actual facts of tenement-house life. The story has been told again and again, until there is no novelty in it, of families crowded together so closely that all the decencies of life were forgotten, because it was impossible to observe them, of bad associations formed, of children wilting and weakening unto death because the air they breathed was unfit to support life, of food purchased at cheaper and cheaper prices until that finally used was little better than poison to those who ate it, of poverty induced by payments deferred, of the wretchedness and semi-starvation that exist through some of the long strikes of some of the laboring classes; but none of it fully equals the truth. There are happy, virtuous, well-fed, well-clothed families in tenement houses, and it is probably fair to say that these are perhaps in the majority, but the minority is so numerous that the heart is appalled at contemplating it. Out of their wretched homes these people cannot go. There is no other place for them. While a man and his wife are young and before they have children, they may roam about if they choose as tramps in pleasant summer weather, until some happy chance finds work for one or the other in the rural districts. But once anchored in the city by a family of children, and the opportunities of the laboring man of small income to ever change his condition are almost nothing. Some men say that the influence ofreligion is declining. The strongest refutation, and an absolute one, of this statement is that the miserable people in large cities do not arise in frenzied mobs and destroy everything which they cannot steal. The long, patient and then despairing struggle against the inevitable is enough to reduce any man to frenzy, were it not, as Longfellow says, that poverty
“Crushes into dumb despairOne-half the human race.”
“Crushes into dumb despairOne-half the human race.”
“Crushes into dumb despairOne-half the human race.”
It nevertheless is true that as large a proportion of these people as of any other class in the city are religious by instinct, training and practice. The churches which they attend are more crowded on Sundays than those of the better classes, and the painter who wishes to find models of patience and resignation and determination can find them better at the doors of these churches than anywhere else in the world.
Still the misery goes on. It increases. The tenement-house population grows larger and larger every year. The accommodations become smaller because the tendency of the rents of such property is steadily upward. There is no way of escape. Little by little the parents of the family of young children prevail upon themselves to allow children to help support the family. There is no cruelty about it in the intention of the parents. The children have little enough tointerest them. Their parents are too busy to talk with them or answer any of their questions. During the day the children are in the way, and to the father and mother comes the suggestion that if the entire family were at work together there might be a closer family life. The children are quite willing to take part in whatever their parents are doing. Indeed, it is hard to keep them from doing so. So the transition for children from utter indolence to child labor is very short and easy.
There are a great many businesses in a large city in which children may help their parents. Among these, the most prominent probably will be found among the clothing manufacturers and the makers of that much-abused article, the tenement-house cigar. It isn’t necessary for the reader to be frightened at the idea that cigars are made in tenement-houses, because a respectable man or woman with their children are less likely to have any habits or surroundings which will make the tobacco leaf deleterious than the workman in any famous factory in Havana. There are diseases among the operatives in Cuban cigar factories of which the less said the better. Whatever other ailments there may be in tenement-house life, these particular diseases are not to be found there. Nevertheless the idea of a man and woman and several children working ten or twelve or fourteen hours a day in a roomten feet square with a lot of decaying vegetable matter—which is exactly what leaf tobacco in the course of manufacture really is—to pollute the atmosphere about them, is not a pleasant thing. Tobacco has powerful medicinal qualities, most of which are of a poisonous nature. A small amount of nicotine, the essential principle of tobacco, has been powerfully effective either as a narcotic, or stimulant, or a germicide. The effect upon persons who handle it incessantly during a full half of every day can consequently be imagined. Every one in the room becomes irritable unless the food supply is abundant and carefully selected; every one finally becomes extremely nervous. Men and women do not well endure the life of tobacco manufacturers. To children the constant handling of the leaf is frequently poisonous. Nevertheless, a certain amount of money ought to be earned every day by the family; the father and mother are not able to do it; the children help; the family earnings are as much for the child’s sake as for the parents, and so the work goes on.
In the manufacture of clothing the details, so far as they affect human life, are not so injurious. But one commercial result is always perceptible in a short time. Those operatives who can avail themselves of child labor are enabled to underbid their associates, who are also their competitors. Consequently it is a very short time before theincome of the family is no larger than it already had been, while the number of persons occupied in earning it has doubled and perhaps trebled.
Just think a moment what all this really implies. A number of people are excluded from all possibility of exercise or recreation and exciting themselves to the utmost to accomplish a given amount of work in a specified time. Children are quicker than grown people to respond to any exciting influence, and the most enthusiastic workers in tenement-house rooms will always be found to be the children. Sometimes this amuses the parents, occasionally it interests them, but more often it is extremely pathetic. To see a child at an early age absorbed in the details of the battle of life would horrify any one of us, yet 100,000 children of this kind can be found in the city of New York, and a large number of them can be found in any one of forty or fifty specified blocks.
There is only one end to this sort of thing. Persistent stimulation and entire lack of recreation or exercise must have a debasing and dangerous effect upon any physique. Much more must this be the case regarding children. Boys and girls are not driven to work as they were in England forty or fifty years ago. They are not flogged if they do not accomplish a certain amount of work in a given time, as they used to be under the good old English customs. But theyare just as thoroughly destroyed, physically and mentally, as if they were under taskmasters who were not their own parents.
Children in the country frequently work very hard. A farmer’s life is hard at best, and between necessity and sympathy his children early learn to take part in their father’s endeavors. They rise early in the morning and work perhaps quite late in the night, but they are in pure air even while they are at work. They have an abundance of food and they always see something before them, just as their parents do. Perhaps it is that there is a war abroad and the price of wheat will probably go up a few cents a bushel. Or a railroad is coming in the vicinity of the farm, and acres which have been devoted to common crops and pasture are expected suddenly to attain to the dignity of town lots. There are evening festivities in which all the children take part, and there is also the great and comforting and uplifting American sentiment that each one of them is as good as any one of their richest neighbors, and the fact that they may live in a poorly-built house and not wear quite as good clothes on Sunday as some of their associates can always be overlooked in view of the possibilities of the near future. But before the children of the poor in the large cities there is no prospect whatever of advancement or pleasure or recreation. The old dullgrind goes on day by day. While every one is well and every one is at work, the family probably has enough to eat and has a roof over its head; and to that extent it can congratulate itself, for some of their acquaintances and neighbors are not so well off. But the first day that sickness comes into the family the entire aspect of things changes. The work must go on or there will be nothing to live on at the end of the week. The invalid may be put to bed in one of the little closets which are dignified by the name of rooms, but the adult members of the family must continue to work, and so must all who are old enough to assist. If there is a sewing-machine in the room it must go on clicking, no matter if some member of the family is dying. There is no lack of sympathy, no lack of affection, no lack of longing; but all these put together do not take the place of proper medical attendance, pure air and good food. If in any single town of the United States the death rate were as large as it is in the city of New York, the best citizens would pack up their things and run away, no matter at what cost. But New York can lose thirty or forty of every thousand of its inhabitants every year, and the only comment of those who know best about it is that it is a mercy of heaven that the loss is no greater.
The customary way of city people, in avoidingresponsibility and deep thought on this subject, consists in saying that the people who live in this way are of low organizations any way, and that they can exist and flourish and grow fat amid surroundings which would kill any decent person. There is some truth in this so far as certain low organizations are concerned. Unfortunately, however, there is no race, sex, nationality or creed among the very poor in the large city. All of them are people who either were born very poor or who, having been reduced to poverty, are endeavoring to make the best of their lot. There are Americans of good name and good family now serving in the commoner mechanical capacities in the city of New York, and only a little while ago it was discovered that the wife of a gallant Major-General, who served the United States faithfully during the late unpleasantness, was “living out” as a domestic servant. It is not a result of poverty, misfortune, sickness or anything of the kind. All those horrors are the results, first of all, of city life, of living where no one knows his own neighbors and where the person who falls into embarrassments or is overwhelmed by misfortune has no one to whom to turn, and takes to anything at short notice and in utter desperation, to keep the wolf from the door.
Cities should be suppressed, but that is impossible. They should be properly policed by personscompetent to discover and report those most in need of assistance; but that also seems impossible. The only chance left seems to be that the larger the city the greater shall be the missionary work done in it by all denominations. When Jesus was alive and was anxious to secure the attention of the people, he did not bemoan their sad condition, but on one occasion, when some thousands of them followed him, he himself supplied them with food. The servant is not greater than the master, and religious people, regardless of differences of creed, can find no better work in large cities than to search out the needy and endeavor to lift their feet out of the mire and put them in a dry place, to quote from the inspired psalmist in one of his most eloquent passages.
One good and pressing reason—though a selfish one—for closer and more sympathetic attention to the poor of large cities, is that the great mass of criminals come from the poorer classes, and that when criminals are once made it is hard to unmake them. The famous Inspector Byrne, of New York, the man most feared by wrongdoers everywhere, spends annually a great deal of his hard-earned money in trying to persuade criminals not to drop back into their old ways, but he believes that he only retards their return to crime—not that he effects any reformations. The following words from a manof his stern experience and sympathetic nature are terrible in their warning against neglect of the class from which most criminals spring:
“My personal opinion is that it is utterly impossible to reform criminals. There are certain fancy measures pursued in this city for the reformation of criminals, but they are all bosh; they do not reform the outlaws. To some extent such efforts are made for the purpose of public notoriety. I know people in this city who claim that they want to reform thieves. They get hold of notorious scoundrels when they come out of state-prison, and so long as the thief is a good ‘star-actor,’ and goes from place to place and tells all sorts of things that are villanous and bad about himself (no matter whether they be lies or the truth), he is lauded around by these people as a great attraction. The moment he discontinues that kind of performance they throw him out in the street because he is of no use to them; he doesn’t ‘draw.’
“So far as the efforts of religious people are concerned in this matter of criminal reformation, I say that their efforts are laudable. They certainly mean well. They devote time and money to the work; but they have no practical experience with criminals, and their efforts count for very little. It is sometimes claimed that, under the influence of prayers and preaching, the criminal’s heart is touched, he sees the error of hisways, he is converted; I do not believe it. As the word ‘reformation’ is ordinarily used, I know there is no such experience among thieves.”
It will not do to dispose of the subject by saying that there must be criminals in the world, and that we pay policemen to take care of them. No police force can entirely suppress crime; there are too many evil-doers to be watched, and each has his own style. Inspector Williams, of New York, an officer almost as widely known as Inspector Byrne, and who has had charge of the most dangerous precincts in the city, wrote recently:
“The general public, who look upon criminals as a class by themselves, are apt to think that one criminal is very much like another. This is not a fact. I have been a policeman for nearly a quarter of a century, and I have never seen two criminals who were very nearly alike in character. A Siamese-twinship in the annals of crime is unknown. When we enter the criminal world and seek to deal with its members from any point of view, we must look upon them individually, not collectively.”
All of which means that the only way to lessen the number of criminals is to see to it that wretchedness of the masses of population in our large cities shall not be allowed to send new recruits to the ranks.
OURS is the most religious country on the face of the earth. There are more churches to the square mile of city and village area than any other part of the world, not excepting the grand old city of Rome. They may not be all of the same denomination, but their attendants worship the same God. They may quarrel a great deal about points of faith, but on essentials they are, if not exactly one, so closely related that there is room for any amount of hope. About baptism and regeneration and sanctification and adoption and perhaps damnation they may differ frightfully; but all of them base their belief upon the Apostles’ Creed, and look for their spiritual inspiration to the law of the Old and New Testament, preferably that of the four gospels.
Religion is a life, whatever else it may or may not be. No person who makes any pretence of being religious declines to admit that his creed is the basis of the life which he would like to lead, whether or not he may succeed in making his practice conform to his principles.
That religion consists in proper life with a view to a life to come, or at least that it is so regarded, is proved by the custom which becomes more and more prevalent of judging men and women according to their religious professions.
There was a time when, if a man assented to a given form of faith, his life might be almost anything he pleased; and some of the most active “Defenders of the Faith,” as they styled themselves, whether they were Catholics, Protestants, Trinitarians or Unitarians, have been found among men who would nowadays not be considered fit to introduce into respectable society. The time when such things were has departed, and shows not the faintest sign of ever returning again. To-day a man’s religious profession is regarded as an assertion by himself of what he would have his life, and what he proposes that his life shall be judged by.
A cheering sign of the earnestness and sincerity of religion in modern times is that there is very little proselyting now. People who smile cheerfully at one another during six days of the week, do not glare and frown at one another on Sunday, as they used to do when meeting on their ways to their respective churches, and from the manners of members of different denominations meeting in business or polite society, no one could imagine or discern to what particular creed any one of those people subscribed. The Methodist,the Baptist, the Catholic, the Episcopalian, meet each other cheerily in business and in society, their families intermarry, they have business relations with each other, and no one in indorsing or cashing a business man’s note ever thinks of asking to what particular church he may belong.
In a number of country towns this fraternal feeling has been largely stimulated and strengthened by what are called “union meetings,” in which all the members of all the congregations in the town unite at appointed dates in general services of prayer and worship. Occasionally the pastor of some church in the vicinity may object to taking part in such services, but pastors in congregations are frequently like Congressmen and the people—the followers are ahead of the leader. Only a little while ago a Catholic priest of high repute in his own denomination, and held in high esteem by the entire community in which he was known, ascended the platform at a western camp-meeting, in which denominations differing from his own had united, and made a most earnest undenominational and spiritual address to the entire audience before him.
Revival meetings, however they may be laughed at by the more refined and fastidious of church people, have had the effect in late years of attracting a great many thousands of people toward religious life. The most noted of these wereconducted, as every one knows, by Messrs. Moody and Sankey, two men who were never regularly ordained as clergymen by any authority whatever—they are simple laymen and undenominational workers. Yet these men never went to any city or town to begin their peculiar system of work until all, or nearly all, the pastors of churches had united in calling them and had promised to assist to the best of their ability. No effort was made by these men to make converts for any denomination whatever. Their sole purpose was to cause men and women to change their manner of life from that of the ordinary every-day selfishness of the unregenerate man and to compel him to recognize an over-ruling Providence who should also be the guide of his daily life in every respect. Mr. Moody, however “shaky” he may have been according to any theological test, was earnest and sincere enough to say to all the clerical fraternity of any town in which he worked, that he came only to sow seed and that it was the business of others to reap the harvest, and that he cared not into whose flock the lambs were led, so long as they were rescued from the wilderness. The Moody and Sankey movement is open to a great deal of criticism, and probably no one has regarded it with more jealous eye than newspaper editors, yet the editorial fraternity throughout the country has been compelled to admit that the agitationbegun by these men had a marked influence for good on whatever community it was exerted.
Such a movement would have been utterly impossible fifty years ago, perhaps twenty-five years ago. To attempt to lead men to God without outlining a road which traversed a great many other roads said to lead in the same direction would have united against the leader all the churches in the vicinity.
There are no fights between denominations now-a-days. A church may fight within its own borders as furiously as a gang of worried dogs, but for the occupants of several different pulpits in any given town or in any portion of a great city to call each other bad names and intimate that the followers of any one but the speaker would find themselves after death in a most uncomfortable and irremediable condition of soul and body is no longer the case. The principal feeling now excited by large success in any particular congregation is one of emulation. If one church holds a successful mission or revival meeting or series of special efforts, and succeeds in persuading a number of people to enroll themselves formally among any band of persons professing to be Christians, the only competitive result that can be seen or heard of is an effort of the neighboring churches to go and do likewise.
Why, it is no longer necessary for churches tobe built solely by those who are members of the congregation which is endeavoring to erect the edifice. A subscription for the building fund of a church of any denomination is passed around among people of all faiths and no faith, and money is subscribed as freely and as unreservedly as if the effort was being made simply for the relief of some individual in embarrassment. It has come to be considered in the United States that a church, no matter of what denomination, is a good thing to have in the neighborhood, and the more churches the better. Any man of public spirit or Christian feeling who has any money to spare can be depended upon to subscribe to the erection of a church of any denomination, the Mormon church always excepted.
All this is immensely encouraging to men who regard religion as the greatest moral influence of life, as well as a promise of things less seen yet more important in which the majority of people believe more or less blindly. The change has come about through the different pulpit method that has come in vogue within a very few years. Men have learned to look upon religion of any kind as infinitely preferable to no religion at all. No man who keeps his eyes open has failed to see changes, such as can be accounted for by no other theory, as to the possibilities of human nature, suddenly and quietly achieved through the practice of religious life as indicated by someparticular creed. So far as changes in the lives of individuals are concerned, creed seems to make very little difference. Within the lines of all denominations men can be found who, according to every rule and precedent of human nature, should be dishonest, indolent, vile, and brutal, yet who have suddenly become respectable and in all things visible entirely decent. Any attempts to break down religion, as such, are stoutly combated by the entire intelligent portion of the community, barring the few dilettanti who are not certain about anything, and least of all about whatever will make themselves amenable to the moral law. Colonel Bob Ingersoll can draw a large crowd in a large city, but never in his life has he had as large an audience as can be found any Sunday in any one of twenty churches in the city of New York, and were he to enter some of our smaller towns he would find himself with the same proportion of hearers. Most religious people who think—and most of them do think—have periods of doubt on a great many topics which in the earlier portion of their new life seemed to them essentials. Nevertheless they have learned by experience not to change their faith, much less to abandon it, because of some things which they do not understand. Since religion has become a life instead of a mere belief, all men who sincerely practice it have learned that there is a great unknown of human experiencebeyond which their own lives cannot reach except at certain times and under certain influences, and to abandon what they doubt would mean to them to also forego the fruits of what they already know and believe.
There is not the slightest fear that the United States will become an irreligious nation. Some church pews may be empty, some men may go very seldom to service, or confession, but that most men think and feel the influence of religion upon the young and upon the family circle is too well known and established to admit of any doubt. The heads of families who are most careless about their own personal lives are often most earnest in urging upon their families all the ministrations of whatever churches they may chance to attend. It matters no longer from what denomination is selected the clergyman who shall ask grace at a large public dinner, or open a solemn public gathering with prayer, or as to what may be the creed of the spiritual teacher who may be asked to take part in deliberations upon grave moral interests of the community.
All this is immensely encouraging, and promises lasting good to the nation.
FOR a whole generation the public has been hearing a great deal of woman’s rights. Already, however, woman has secured one of the greatest rights in the world. She has the right to labor in any capacity in which men hitherto have been employed.
Some close observers have dignified this change by calling it the liberation of woman. But closer observers realize that it is also the liberation of man. Woman is doing a great deal of work which man used to do and which it was supposed only man was competent to do, but woman has stepped in and done it just as well as man ever did, and men, sometimes with thanks and occasionally with curses, have retired to other kinds of labor more fit for strong arms.
The opinion of men on this subject would probably receive no consideration from the gentler sex, but a journal recently started specially to advance the interests of women, declares that at the present time there are over three hundred occupations in the United States, aside fromhousekeeping, in which women find abundant and remunerative employment. What woman has said, man would be a brute to unsay.
There has been a decided gain to the world by this change, but the greatest gain has been to the sex to which the world has been, if not cruel, certainly indifferent. Woman has been the slave, the plaything, the toy of man so long that it is hard to get out of the public mind the idea that woman is simply an appendage to the ruder being, and that whatever she is or is to have depends upon the generosity of man. The generosity of man is no more to be depended upon by the gentler sex than it is by men themselves. All men are generous when they are not likely to lose anything by it. All men also are selfish, and woman would not now have her present chance in the United States were it not that men saw a gain for themselves in the change.
Woman may not be getting as much money for some kinds of work as man would were he doing the same work himself. But the beginning counts for a great deal in this world. Everybody knows the old saying that the first step is half the battle, and woman has taken the first step. According to the authority above quoted she has taken over three hundred of them, which is more than man can say for himself during the same period.
No matter what may be said by the men whohave been displaced by women in the various departments of business; no matter what may be said by unpardonable gossips about women stepping aside from the family circle to do work which has no appearance of domesticity about it, the truth is that the appearance of women in the business world has been of immense service to the gentler sex, and indirectly of great benefit to the lords of creation. It is absolutely necessary to the civilization of the world that the great mass of mankind should realize that woman is something better than a mere dependent on man, and there is no quicker way of teaching this lesson than that of demonstrating that woman is quite competent to take care of herself if she has a fair chance.
A fair chance has been offered. It has been embraced, and some hundreds of thousands of women in the United States are doing for themselves far better than they would have been done for by the men into whose power they would have fallen under the old custom of making a woman’s maintenance and existence entirely dependent upon the male members of her own family.
A large department of industry in which women are employed, outside of household duties, is that of work at the government offices at Washington. Irresponsible newspaper paragraphers used to write a great many ugly things about treasury clerks and pension office clerksand other feminine employés of the government. But that sort of writing has gone entirely out of practice. Seeing is believing, and the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who have yearly visited the national capital are satisfied from their own observation and still more by their personal acquaintance with attachés of the different departments that woman not only knows how to work, but can prolong her efforts and maintain regular hours quite as well as any man; and, to put it mildly, that she is quite as respectable as man.
Still more important, woman has not yet found it necessary to go out to drink. It is a severer joke and comment upon the stronger sex than any man yet has been willing to admit that, while clerks in all departments of the government service at the national capital may be found who deem it necessary to stimulate themselves during business hours, women work the customary hours prescribed, do their work well, and find no need of artificial stimulation.
Does this mean that for sixty centuries the world has been mistaken as to which of the two sexes is the stronger? This is a good conundrum to think over when you have some spare time on your hands.
It has also been reported by the aforesaid irresponsible paragrapher that women clerks at Washington have very little to do, and that thework with which they are charged could be attended to by men with equal celerity and accuracy; but the fact seems to be, according to Cabinet officers of half a dozen successive administrations, that the men work neither so fast nor so well, and cost a great deal more money.
More money probably will come in time. No slave can shake off all his chains at a single blow. Old Samson himself, when he had broken the manacles that bound him, was still blind and had to be led about by the hand. And woman, perhaps, may yet need some instruction and friendly counsel, but where in a single city a great many thousands of the gentler sex are performing arduous labor and living up to exacting restrictions, it is far too late to say anything whatever about the incapacity of woman for persistent labor.
Reference has been made quite freely in this screed to the feminine employés of the government at the national capital, but only because this is the most prominent instance and illustration of the capacity of women to work. Any observer, however, can satisfy himself, if he will, on the subject by looking through prominent business houses in any large city. Where once every desk had a man behind it and all the sales-counters were lined with masculine salesmen, the word now in New York and some other cities is that no man shall be employed at any work forwhich a woman can be found. Woman has some qualities especially attractive to the management of a large business. She never gets drunk, she seldom goes into speculation, and still less frequently does she look around for something else to do. Male clerks and salesmen are continually on the lookout for something better. They are likely to put their savings into Wall street or some other gambling den. They expect to make a great career in business somewhere, somehow, some time; but woman has the superior quality, or so it seems to her employer, of being satisfied to do well what work she has in hand, and look for nothing else. Consequently, marriage is almost the only influence that can ever remove her from whatever may be her chosen sphere of duty.
But woman no longer is satisfied to work for poor wages. There are in the United States thousands of feminine physicians. There are a few female lawyers, and indeed two or three pulpits have been satisfactorily filled for a number of years by women. Other women can be found as principals of large business enterprises. Everybody in Wall street knows Mrs. Hetty Green, one of the sharpest and most successful speculators in railroad securities that Wall street ever has known. If she has made any losses nobody knows of them. On the other side her gains may be counted by millions by any broker on the street. She and her husband were mutually interestedin a large railroad enterprise. Her husband has dropped out of sight. The wife remains, and no broker or operator who is not very new at the business ever attempts to get the better of Mrs. Green. Her fortune has been rolling up steadily until it is estimated almost as high as that of any but the three most prominent men in Wall street, and it continues to roll up. If she has any outside advisers, nobody has ever been able to discover who they are. Her methods are so quiet and straightforward that she mystifies the very elect among railroad men.
The business of editing a newspaper is supposed to call for at least as high a combination of intellectual qualities as that of being President of the United States, and there are men who imagine that the first-class editor would let himself down were he to accept the Presidency. Yet several prominent newspapers in the United States are not only edited, but managed in their business departments by women. They are not those most talked about; nevertheless their stock is not in the market, and it seldom changes hands.
Woman is said to be of quicker sensibilities than man. No one will doubt it who has seen a woman count currency at the Treasury Department at Washington, or handle a type-writing machine in an office in a large city. Recently there have been some exciting contests betweentype-writers, and most of the winners have been women. In the city of Cincinnati, which contains more artistic furniture probably than the city of London or Paris, the work has been done almost entirely by the eyes and hands of women.
A few years ago Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” was quoted as frequently in America as it once was in England, but nowadays only the stupidest of women, or those caught most suddenly in embarrassments and without any preparation for the battle of life, give themselves to the needle. Men do that sort of work now. Reduced gentlewomen who support themselves by sewing still exist, but they are not easy to find. Instead of making shirts or other cheap clothing at starvation wages, the woman out of employment nowadays turns herself to some specialty of needlework if she knows no other tool or method, and there are “exchanges” at which her work may be displayed and at which orders are given according to the samples shown and at prices which would astonish the old-time slaves of the needle. Women are in all the telegraph offices. They are clerks in thousands of business houses. They are mechanics, artisans and artists all over the country. It has become so much the fashion for women to work that nowadays there are signs in London, Paris and New York of common business enterprises presided over by women with titles. The Princess de Sagan, one of the brilliantlights of the court of the last Napoleon, manages a dress-making establishment in Paris and New York. Other ladies, equally illustrious, are well known in trade circles in London and on the Continent.
All this looks strongly like the emancipation of women, but it does not at first sight convey its full meaning to the observer or reader. The most important result of it all is that woman is thus made independent of man. A woman of brains no longer needs to marry in order to have a home. It would be difficult to suggest the proportion of unhappy marriages which have been due to the fact that admirable women have been utterly unable to care for themselves in the world, and consequently have attached themselves for prudential reasons, although by a revered form and sacrament, to some man. But no longer is this necessary. There are all kinds of women as well as all kinds of men in business, but it is far safer in society to attempt a romantic flirtation with a woman than to make similar attempts in any business circles where women are employed. There are a great many handsome and spirited women in the departments at Washington, but no sentimental young man is fool enough to lounge about these places with the hope of getting up a flirtation. The woman who knows how to support herself is not going to be in haste to marry. When she marries she is going to have a husband,in fact as well as in name, as well as a home. She can afford to wait. She has entire control of her own destiny and she cannot be taken at a disadvantage. Instead of marrying for a home, the tables have been so turned that nowadays a large number of men are on the lookout for women who can give them a home. Plenty of men can be found who are desirous of marrying in order to be supported, instead of marrying for the purpose of supporting somebody else.
The gain to woman in this change of affairs is simply inestimable. It is unnecessary to call any one’s attention to the comparative greatness of risk which woman sustains in entering the marriage relation now, and the helplessness in which she found herself under the old rule, when man was the only wage-earner. Women are working for themselves, even married women, all over the United States. In many of the New England manufacturing towns there are hundreds, and in some of them thousands, of women, already married, working at the same trades as their husbands, but keeping their own separate bank accounts at the savings banks. A man can no longer afford to abuse a woman because she is dependent upon him, and dare not complain, for fear of losing her source of maintenance. A woman of any brains in any industry can care for herself quite as well as any husband is likelyto care for her. The consequence is that divorces are very infrequent in New England manufacturing towns. If either member of a married couple is given to lounging and bad habits, it is likely to be the man. It is only fair to say in man’s favor that the temptations are principally on the masculine side. Women have not yet to any extent taken to drink, billiards and politics. They do not bet on horse-races or buy pools on sparring matches or go on excursions to neighboring towns for the sake of indulging habits which are unsafe to make public at home; so the woman of the house is far less likely to be out of work or to be away from her post than her husband.
What the effect of this change in the industrial outlook may be upon children is yet unknown. But it is a fair question, whether the woman whose daily hours are employed at mechanical or clerical occupations is likely to bring up her children worse than the woman whose leisure moments are consumed in small talk and social dissipation. No child can be less cared for than that of the society queen. The commonest washer-woman, who leaves her home at early dawn and does not return until dark, can give her offspring more attention than can be expected by the children of many ladies whose names appear in the fashionable columns of newspapers which give considerable space to thatsort of thing. Whether each family should not contain one member whose duties and interests are entirely confined to the home circle, is also a question upon which a great deal can be said upon both sides. But the fact to be brought into prominence at the present time is that woman has already acquired the right to earn her own living and is doing it, to the extent of some hundreds of thousands of women, most admirably. Women are presidents of large colleges in the United States; colleges, it is true, intended solely for the education of members of their own sex; nevertheless the course of study and the subsequent social and literary standing of the graduates shows that the work done in these institutions is well done. The best proof of this is in the better colleges for girls in the United States. The demand for scholarships far exceeds the supply, and there are millionaires in this country who have not yet been able to put their daughters in any one of the three or four best feminine colleges in the land.
In literature woman has made her way to an extent which every one knows, if he reads at all. Our most popular novels are all written by women. Women write a great deal of our poetry. It is impossible to find a first-class magazine which does not contain a number of contributions by women, and those contributions are quite as much talked about and quite as
Image not available: SEALS OF THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL STATES. MARYLAND MASSACHUSETTS PENNSYLVANIA DELAWARE NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW JERSEY VIRGINIA SOUTH CAROLINA GEORGIA NORTH CAROLINA NEW YORK RHODE ISLAND CONNECTICUTSEALS OF THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL STATES.MARYLANDMASSACHUSETTSPENNSYLVANIADELAWARENEW HAMPSHIRENEW JERSEYVIRGINIASOUTH CAROLINAGEORGIANORTH CAROLINANEW YORKRHODE ISLANDCONNECTICUT
frequently read as anything written by the most prominent masculine minds in the land. As a novelist, the young woman is immeasurably the superior of the young man. No young man ever wrote a novel as famous as “Charles Auchester” at as early an age (seventeen years) as that of the young lady who is the author of this still much-read book; and our publishers are flooding the market with other novels by women who have not yet reached their majority. If quick perception, facility of expression, and piquant comment are sufficient to make the novelist, our future novels must be written principally by young women. That they make some dreadful blunders is very true. Some of the most abominable books that have been inflicted upon a much-suffering public during the past year have been from the pens of young women who ought to have known better, if they had known anything at all. Nevertheless, it is a great deal easier in literature to tone down than to tone up, and somehow the necessity for toning down has not been apparent to any great extent in fiction and poetry written by young men.
The “restraining force,” to which social philosophers attribute the sudden rise of some family, nation and tribe, may account for the sudden prominence and brilliancy of women in many departments of life. There may be such a thing as inheritance by sex, and a sex long suppressed,as woman certainly has been, in all but the domestic virtues, may have a great deal to give the world and then suddenly fade out of prominence. But at present all odds are in favor of woman. She has made her way so rapidly, though unobtrusively, and so pleasantly, that every man who has the proper manly heart within him will be glad to see her go a great deal further, and believe that she is quite competent to do it.
AMERICANS are the greatest readers on earth. Any one can tell you this—any one from a college president down to the newsboy on a railway train.
They read pretty much everything, and never are at a loss for ways of obtaining something to read.
Books are cheaper here than anywhere else in the world, thanks to immunity from arrest and punishment for theft of literary property. We can take the brains of all Europe, as expressed in printed pages on the other side of the Atlantic, and reprint them here without fear of the sheriff, and what man can do without fear of the law he is likely to do so long as he sees any money in it.
There is no section, State or town so poor that its people cannot find something to read when they want it. The inhabitants of a township whose centre is nothing but a post-office, a store and a blacksmith shop, may be too poor to buya paper of pins, unless they have credit with the storekeeper, but they always are able to find something to read. If there is nothing else, they can fall back upon the Sunday-school books, and nowadays Sunday-school libraries are not as bad as they used to be. Almost any book that is respectable and has any feature of interest can be worked into a Sunday-school library by an enterprising publisher. A Methodist parson, who was congratulated a short time ago on his great success in organizing a Sunday-school in a sparsely settled district in one of the Western States, said, with a long sigh: “These children don’t come here to learn the truths of the Gospel; they come to get books for their families to read during the week.” Perhaps the old man was right in his fear that the religious work of his parish was not going on as well as he wished; he certainly was entirely correct regarding the demand for the books. Children who were dull and listless while the prayers and singing and lessons were going on brightened up quickly when the librarians came in to distribute the books which had been asked for, and the worst boys in town would cheerfully forego base-ball, swimming parties, watermelon stealing, cock-fighting and card-playing for an hour or two on Sunday for the sake of borrowing a book upon which to spend the spare hours of the week that was to follow. A good many people were drawnto Jesus by the loaves and fishes, but books are the most successful bait of the modern church.
But the Sunday-school library is the most modest of the many sources from which the poorer class of Americans draw their reading matter. There are at least a dozen series of novels being published in the United States at the present time on a plan which enables the publishers to dodge the postal laws regarding printed matter by assuming to be serial publications. Under the law any book sent out by a publisher should pay postage at the rate of half a cent an ounce; but a library, so called, may send out its publications under the rules governing serials of every kind, which can be paid for at the post-office at the rate of two cents per pound; consequently for several years there has been an absolute inundation of fiction. Stimulated by this feature of the law, a number of enterprising men have reprinted all the standard novels of the past century in cheap form and distributed them broadcast over the entire country; and, to do them justice, have also issued a number of histories and other standard works in the same manner, and as people have purchased them, it is reasonable to suppose that they have read them.
But books are not all that is read by that great portion of our people who have a great deal of leisure time and no sufficient means ofenjoying it beyond reading. A million magazines are circulated every month, and twice as many weeklies. Some time ago the newspapers began to realize this fact, and straightway they supplemented their Saturday or Sunday editions with additional sheets containing miscellaneous reading-matter of all kinds, some of it as good as any that appears in the magazines. The worst of it is quite as good as the majority of current novels; and as the highest price of a newspaper in the United States is five cents per copy, and the supplementary sheets of some papers contain as much as an entire magazine, there is no lack of reading matter for any one who has the price of a glass of beer or a cheap cigar.
Not only is the supply of printed matter great, but the demand is being increased in many ways that are entirely admirable. There are now several societies which at a very trifling cost advise people what to read, and in what order to take certain books in hand. Some of them—notably the well-known Chautauqua Society—have reading circles under advice and partial supervision which number as many people as the students of all the colleges in the country. A number of societies of similar purpose are scattered about the country, each with its list of books which its members are advised to read—books which are carefully selected by men whose literary judgmentwould be accepted in any intelligent circle in the Union.
One result of the American avidity for reading matter is that the guild of American authors is becoming quite as numerous as that of any other country in the world. The American who does not write a book is almost a curiosity at the present time, and generally thinks it necessary to explain why he has not already done something of the kind, and when and how he would be able to do it. The stories which are published in cheap form in the United States are largely from foreign pens, but it is known to those who observe the subject closely that the number of American authors is increasing more rapidly than in any other country. Any one here who knows anything on a particular subject, or who has any reputation or prominence for any reason whatever, is asked to write a book, and such invitations are very seldom declined; for if the man cannot write, he can at least hire some one to put his thoughts into words. Men who in older countries would be ashamed to take pen in hand at all to produce anything for publication, have here received enormous compensation for single volumes on subjects with which they merely were acquainted, not those upon which they had any reason to be quoted as authority.
Even in the serious department of history wehave recently seen numerous books from men notoriously unfit in point of judgment to inflict anything of the sort upon a confiding public. But money is offered as an inducement, pen and ink are cheap, type-writers are plentiful, so the work goes merrily on, and it may need all the wisdom of another generation to correct the mistakes which have been made in print by writers of the present time.
Nevertheless, the steady demand which seems to be profitable to both authors and publishers is inciting the intelligent and educated class to efforts which once would have been impossible except to the very small number who were sufficiently well off to regard their literary work as a labor of love, and to expect no compensation except what might come from approving consciences. The modern novelist frequently gets more for a single volume than the elder Hawthorne received for all the books of his incomparable series. Literature has become a business as well as an intellectual occupation. Mr. Bancroft probably expended more money upon his well-known “History of the United States” than was received by those who sold his books at retail, but nowadays the writer of an alleged history can count upon as much pay for a hastily prepared book as a prominent lawyer would expect to receive for handling a case requiring long study and effort.
These things being true—and authors and publishers will assure the public that they are—it is entirely safe to assume that we are soon to have a highly successful and valuable class of writers in the United States. “The coming book,” an expression which must soon go out of date, may be a history, a poem, a biography or a novel, but there will be so many more books than heretofore, that a work of great merit in any department of literature will possibly have to wait until another generation for proper recognition. There is so much to read that no book-worm can keep pace with the publishers’ presses. The last new novel may be very good or very bad, but whichever may be the case the general public stands very little chance of knowing, for before it has had time to reach the hands of many readers a dozen more have come from the press, and it is only chance or an exceptional degree of merit, which it is unfair to expect of any one more than once in a century, that will bring a book properly to notice.
For instance, some years ago Gen. Lew Wallace wrote a story entitled “Ben-Hur,” which sold fairly for a little while, but made no great excitement in the literary world. Fortunately for the author and the book, which certainly was an original and meritorious production, Gen. Wallace had an immense host of personal friends who little by little had the book brought to theirnotice; they read it and talked about it, until finally, by this unsolicited and unpaid advertising, his story became famous and is now in its third hundredth thousand of circulation, with a promise of going on perhaps indefinitely.
Two years ago Mr. Edward Bellamy wrote his “Looking Backward.” It was a thoughtful, able story, touching many of the nearest interests of humanity, but it sold only a few thousand copies, and seemed making its way to the backs of booksellers’ shelves, when two or three essays upon the general subject recalled attention to it. The people of a single city—which, of course, was Boston—took it up first as a fad, and afterwards as a serious study, and now the book is in general demand and promises to renew and widely stimulate public discussion of a very old subject which must come to the surface once in a little while until perhaps it becomes a recognized principle of human conduct and existence.
These are merely two of many books of great value, or at least great interest, which have been saved from the general literary deluge by means which seem merely accidental. Of the many which have been lost perhaps irrevocably the public has no idea. Hawthorne himself, to whom allusion has already been made, was not read one-twentieth as much by the people of his own day as now. Carlyle, who probably is more read in America than inEurope, owes his popularity here and the great sale of his works to the personal efforts of his friend, Mr. Emerson, who insisted that the book should be published in this country, but who would not have succeeded had not his own publishers had reasons for wishing to oblige him personally.
These facts regarding literature are not peculiar to America. Many years ago an Englishman named Charles Wells wrote a dramatic poem which did not pass its first edition of a few hundred copies. About a quarter of a century later Swinburne chanced upon a copy of the book, and wrote a review of it, which set all lovers of dramatic poetry to looking for the poem itself, and now it is making its way through edition after edition. Only ten years ago Browning’s latest long poem, whatever it may have been, was refused successively by nearly all reputable American publishers, yet the Browning craze is now a matter of history.
The meaning of all this is that books come from the press far more rapidly than people can read them, but the ease of circulation of literature in the United States promises to change all that. There is now scarcely a town of two thousand people in the United States which has not its circulating library, and which has not also some people who are thoughtful, intelligent and influential. A book getting into such a libraryis sure, sooner or later, to find a large number of readers. The individual reader is the best advertisement that either author or publisher can ask for, and though the first edition may be very small, so small that the publisher hesitates to reprint, nevertheless in time a book of any value is sure to be brought properly to the attention of the public.
There is every reason, therefore, to believe that our native authors, and many people who can write and should write but have not yet felt encouraged to do so, will yet be stimulated to do their best work. A prominent publisher in New York was once asked—the question being suggested by a poor book which he had published on a very interesting subject—why he did not secure a better man to write it? “For the best reason in the world,” said he; “the men who could do justice to the subject are all making their living in some other way and have to pay close attention to their business. They can’t afford to write books.” This lack of financial encouragement is rapidly disappearing. The man who has anything to say in this country and knows how to say it properly can now afford to give time and thought to his subject, with the assurance that, when he is ready to write and to print, he will find readers.
It does not follow that everything written with earnestness and sincerity of purpose is worth attention. “Great minds think alike,” but not allgreat minds are properly educated, and we get an immense number of books, supposed by their authors to be original, whose contents are mere skeletons of what has been better expressed by some one else. The publisher often finds himself in the position of the patent office examiner. It is well known that at the patent office applications in large numbers are received every week for letters patent on supposed inventions which were made long ago by some one else, but of which the latest applicant was entirely ignorant. Men of thoughtful and inventive minds reproduce each other in every clime. There is not a savage tribe on the face of the earth which did not find out for itself the art of making cutting tools, building houses, constructing boats, cooking utensils and whatever else might be necessary to domestic life and its many necessities. The same holds in literature. Certain self-evident truths of philosophy or ethics, certain plots and situations in fiction, are common to all classes of people; and the consequence is that our literature is burdened with material of every kind, from the highest theology to the lowest sensation, which seems mere plagiarism on something which has preceded. Even Longfellow, who is nearer the American heart than any other of our poets, was persistently accused of plagiarism because he expressed thoughts and ideas which had been said as well, sometimes better, by older poets; yetLongfellow was supposed to be a man of wide reading.
But American facilities for reading and for learning all that has been said by the wiser minds and more brilliant wits of other times is bound to change all that, and probably within the lifetime of the present generation. Besides from the incidents, peculiarities and necessities of our own national life, our literature is now extending into all fields heretofore monopolized by the wiser minds of the old world. American essays, poems and novels are now frequently reprinted in Europe and translated into many languages. Many American novels may now be found in several of the older languages of Europe, and the popular author of the present day does not consider his work done until he has sent copies of his original manuscript to at least two European publishers. The FrenchRevue des Deux Mondes, which is supposed to be the most fastidious of foreign publications in its selection of material, has given a great deal of space to American novelists and poets, and again and again English novelists have complained that some upstart American was crowding their books off of the railway station news-stands. Emerson’s essays, Longfellow’s poems, and Howell’s novels may be found in any bookstore in England, and it is not hard to find them on the continent. There are half a dozen different editionsof Poe’s poems in the French language alone. American historical works not entirely on American topics may be found in several European languages, and are held in high esteem by foreign historians. One historical work published in the United States two or three years ago has already been translated into every language of Northern Europe. How many more there may be deponent knoweth not.
All this is cheering, not only to national pride, but because there are features in American literature which are superior to those of any older nation. This is noticeably true of our fiction, in which there are elements of cheerfulness, hope and humor, which are almost entirely lacking in the light literature, so-called, of other countries. When one speaks of a foreign novel from any press but that of Great Britain the supposition naturally is that it relates entirely to the closer relations of the sexes; that the end of it will not be entirely pleasing; and that, however strong its plot and diction, it will not be what is called “entirely proper,”—it will not be a book which one can safely take home without reading and leave on the table of his sitting-room for wife, children and visitors to pick up at random.
Some of that sort of stuff has come from the American press of late years, more’s the pity, but it promises to be rather sporadic and accidental than a prominent feature of our literature. Itresembles an outbreak of yellow fever in a Northern port—something which may get there by accident and do mischief for a little while, but which cannot effect a permanent lodgment. The mass of unclean stories which ventured into the daylight of print after the publication of Amelie Rives’ sensational novel is already beginning to disappear. When for a day or two a city chances to fall under mob law, the world seems turned upside down for the time being; but the better sense and strength of the community soon come to the rescue and the dangerous element is suppressed. A similar result is already being accomplished regarding pernicious fiction. Publishers who have hastily accepted stories which their professional readers pronounced “strong” are beginning to apologize for offering such stuff to the public.
American literature will be marked by a hopeful, cheerful, clean, energetic spirit, and as such it will give our people what they cannot easily obtain from the presses of foreign countries. We have faults enough, of which mention has frequently been made in this book, but lack of respectability and of hopefulness are not among them. Our novels are cleaner than those of any other land; our history in the main is decidedly cheering and stimulating in its influence; our poetry, although perhaps not as elegant as that of Europe, has a great deal more of inspiration in it for readers, and ourfiction is based upon the life of our own people, which is in the main respectable. Incidents and scenes as bad as any that the world can supply may of course be found in American life by those who choose to look for them, but they are not likely to be written up or read to any extent, except by the vulgar classes. Books about which intelligent and cultivated people on the continent will talk freely in social circles are scarcely tolerated here; some of them are reprinted, but the editions as a rule are very small. Translations of continental novels have generally failed dismally in a commercial sense in the United States. There are a few exceptions, but the rule is so distinct that no one of literary taste, ability and intelligence now wastes his time in translating foreign novels in the hope of securing American publishers. The native writer as a rule is not as skilful as his foreign brother, but he successfully tells our people of what they wish to know. He is in sympathy with their thoughts, tastes, customs and aspirations, so his stories and essays are found in all our weekly papers and magazines, while more skilful productions of foreign pens, which might be had for nothing, are generally excluded. There is no longer any question as to whether we shall have a literature of our own. We have it. It is increasing in volume more rapidly than our people can follow it. It is a good sign. It means that we are a “peculiar people”—not perhapsin the sense in which the expression was used regarding the ancient Hebrews, yet in some respects it means the same. Conceit aside, it really means that we are better than other people. Long may we remain so!