Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 11

WOMAN'S RESPONSIBILITY

There are about 40,000,000 women and girls in the United States. About 14,000,000 live in the country and have a direct and compelling power over the life of the community.

In rural agricultural districts the home-keeper is the provider. She practically requisitions from farm and garden what she deems necessary for the family table. To an extent she makes the clothing and sews the house linen. She also exchanges her perquisites, egg money, perhaps, for furniture and ornaments. The itinerant peddler brings the world's wares to her door; the mail-order houses do the rest.

"The ideal home is a social and cooperative society in which all of its members unite their efforts for the common good. This ideal is realized most nearly in the country home, where even the smallest child has opportunity to be and generally is a contributor to the family support. It has come to be a recognized fact that boys and girls, healthy, industrious, frugal, capable, intelligent, self-supporting, cheerful, and patriotic, abound in country homes, and that the prevalence there of these high qualities is largely due to the family life, which requires each individual from his earliest years to bear his proportionate share in providing for the maintenance of the home. By bringing within the reach of the country people educational advantages suited to their needs, rural life becomes more attractive, country homes are multiplied, and the valuable qualities which these homes develop become the possession of a correspondingly larger number of the citizens.h.i.+p of the state."[16]

[16] I. H. Hamilton, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Circular 85.

The government has recognized the need and the possibilities of meeting it in the recognition it has given to Farmers' Inst.i.tutes for women, in which, by lectures, demonstration, and short winter courses at the colleges, the interest of the woman in her occupation is aroused. She is not only given help in details of her daily work, but she is shown how much the efficiency of the farm life depends upon her capability and intelligence. She is encouraged in the using of all mechanical and scientific appliances, is introduced to the means of mental growth; but, best of all, she is given the stimulus of social recognition. In the year 1908 there were held 832 such meetings in the several states. In the year 1910 the number will be nearly or quite doubled.

In no other form of society is the power of the woman for good or ill so paramount as in rural life, in no other mode of living is the family so much at her mercy.

In suburban and city life the family can in a measure escape from insufficient care and uncomfortable conditions. That they do so escape, any student of social tendencies will testify. The great increase of restaurants, of clubs and hotels of all grades, shows one phase of the unattractiveness of home life. The city woman is only half a housekeeper; she has only one-eighth of a house as compared with her rural sister. Her control is therefore curtailed until she feels her helplessness in the hands of her landlord. She sighs and turns to other interests. To her must be brought the knowledge of her power as a social factor if she will but use the knowledge she can easily gain.

The city woman has amused herself because she has seen nothing better to do with her time. The utilization of her ability is all that is needed to regenerate city life. Without it all efforts will prove fruitless. Education of all women in the principles of sanitary science is the key to race progress in the twentieth century.

As an economic factor, the influence of the housewife is of the greatest moment. Production on the farm is only one phase. The city and suburban dweller is a buyer, not a producer. In suburban and city life the housekeeper has more temptations to buy needless articles, food out of season, to go often to the shops, especially on bargain days. She thinks her taste is educated, when it is only aroused to notice what others like. She is led to strive after effects without knowing how to attain them. It has been estimated by advertising experts that ninety per cent of the purchases of the community are determined by women, not always according to their judgment, but by a suppression of it. Woman is made to think that she must buy certain lines of goods. The power of suggestion has been referred to in a preceding chapter.

When civilization, as it is called, persuaded woman to give up manufacture and to become a buyer, the first step in the disintegration of the home as a center of information, as well as of industry, was taken. The housewife and mother were made to look to the dealer, and thus to feel their helplessness. This sense of ignorance, this subconscious loss of power over things, only increased the effect of that fatalism which the control of machinery was leading man out from under.

It is barely fifty years since woman began to ask questions and insist upon knowing, to claim freedom of movement, a chance to breathe. The time between has been a time of plowed fields, often muddy, usually stony, but the furrows are turning green and the harvest will prove the wisdom of the plowing.

Woman had to struggle for right to private judgment and public action.

Some pioneers had to enter the field of research, of investigation, in order that they might call to those below that the way was open. This vast company, which has been nearly untouched by the scientific spirit, was warned off the field of investigation, and society is paying the penalty of its own blindness.

In the very field where applied science can most serve human welfare, scarecrows have been set up most prominently. Not until society avails itself of those qualities of mind sorely needed in the field of sanitary science, patient attention to detail, strong, practical sense directed by a profound interest in the subject, will it begin to show what height it is capable of scaling.

The intrusting of so many great fortunes to women shows an increasing confidence in their judgment of social needs. It shows that woman's education has pa.s.sed the selfish stage, that it has given a wider vision of the whole horizon.

It may be said without fear of contradiction that the future well-being of society is largely in the hands of woman. What will she do with it? Responsibility is always sobering.

Let her once realize her position and woman will rise to the task.

Instances are not wanting of groups attacking scientific and administrative problems in the true spirit, without sentimental charity, to which in the past women have been p.r.o.ne.

If civic authorities felt that women's leagues were informed bodies of women whose suggestions they would make no error in adopting, more legislation could be effected. Too often city councils are approached by those who favor some whim or fad, and so ALL women's demands are cla.s.sed together. Much harm has been done to the cause by indiscreet, pus.h.i.+ng women with only a glimmer of knowledge. The question is not WOMAN, but ability and women. It is better, as a rule, to work out ideas through existing organizations.

All the problems of environment which we have been considering would be solved in half the time, yes, in one-quarter, if all housewives would combine in carrying out the knowledge which some of them have and which all may have.

Infant mortality is controllable through the training of the mother and nurse. Unsanitary houses are the results of careless housekeeping, usually a product of apathetic fatalism. Landlords a.s.sume that the woman will submit. When she has a woman sanitary inspector to appeal to, matters will take on a different aspect.

Unsanitary alleys exist because the ab.u.t.ters do not complain loudly enough to the right authorities. Dirty markets have been so long tolerated because women buyers carried the same fatalism to the stalls--"what is, has to be."

Society is only just beginning to realize that it has at its command today for its own regeneration a great unused force in its army of housewives, teachers, mothers, conscious of power but uncertain how to use it. Perhaps the most progressive movement of the times is one led by women who see clearly that cleanness is above charity, that moral support must be given to those who know but do not dare to do right, and that knowledge must be brought to the ignorant. Nothing can stop this most notable progress but a relapse into apathy and fatalism of the vast army of women now being enlisted to fight disease.

The opportunity has come, the responsibility is woman's hereafter. No one can take it from her; she has knowledge. The door has opened, she has taken the weapons in hand, is learning to use them. Will she falter on the eve of victory simply because it involves some sacrifice of prejudice or tradition? Must she not boldly accept the twentieth century challenge and fight her way to victory, even at some aesthetic sacrifice? In another hundred years, then, Euthenics may give place to Eugenics, and the better race of men become an actuality.

The keeping of the house, the laundry work, the cleaning, the cooking, the daily oversight, must have for its conscious end the welfare of the family. It cannot be done without labor, but the labor in this as in any process may be lightened by thought and by machinery.

Knowledge of labor-saving appliances is today everywhere demanded of the successful establishment EXCEPT of the family home. Is it not time that it came in for its share? If the housewife would use wisely the information at her hand today, it is safe to say that in six cases out of ten she could cut in half the housekeeping budget and double the comfort of living.

As conditions are, the twentieth century sees a strange phenomenon--the most vital of all processes, the raising of children, carried on under adverse conditions; human labor and life being held of as little account as in the days of building the pyramids.

Women may be trained to become the economic leaders in the body politic. It is doubtful if life will be anything but wasteful until they are trained to realize their responsibility.

The housewife was told that she must stay at home and do her work.

This was preached _at_ her, written _at_ her, but no one of them all, save, perhaps, the Englishmen Lecky and H. G. Wells, saw the problem in its social significance, saw that the work of home-making in this engineering age must be worked out on engineering principles, and with the cooperation of both trained men and trained women. The mechanical setting of life is become an important factor, and this new impulse which is showing itself so clearly today for the modified construction and operation of the family home is the final crown or seal of the conquest of the last stronghold of conservatism, the home-keeper.

Tomorrow, if not today, the woman who is to be really mistress of her house must be an engineer, so far as to be able to understand the use of machines and to believe what she is told. Your ham-and-eggs woman was of the old type, now gone by in the fight for the right to think.

The emergence from the primitive condition was slow because the few of us who did show our heads were beaten down and told we did not know.

It has required many college women (from some 50,000 college women graduates) to build and run houses and families successfully, here one and there another, until the barrel of flour has been leavened.

Society _is_ being reorganized, not in sudden, explosive ways, but underneath all the froth and foam the yeast has been working. The world is going to the bad only if one believes that material progress is bad. If we can see the new heaven and the new earth in it, then we may have faith in the future.

The human elements of love and sacrifice, of foresight and of faith, are going to persist, and any apparent upheaval is only because of settling down into a more solid condition, a readjustment to circ.u.mstances. As Caroline Hunt has said[17]: "We may disregard the popular fear that the home will finally take upon itself the characteristics of a public inst.i.tution.... Human intelligence, which suits means to ends, and which is ever coming to the aid of human affection, will prevent that. So long as affection lasts it will seek satisfactory expression in home life, and so long as intelligence endures it will stand in the way of the extension of the borders of the home beyond the possibilities of the mutual helpfulness to its members."

[17] Home Problems from a New Standpoint, p. 140.

The persistent efforts of the farsighted to secure a place in education for the subjects fundamental to the modern home are now respectfully listened to.

It is, perhaps, not strange that the first successes in modern housekeeping were gained in public inst.i.tutions, for there accounts were kept and saving told. When one hospital saved $12,000 in one year by an expenditure of $2,000 for a trained woman, trustees began to take notice. When large state inst.i.tutions were reorganized and made over from unsavory scandals into reputable and life-saving establishments, even legislators took notice. The trained woman superintendent proved not only more competent but less affected by perquisites.

(I do not vouch for the universal maintenance of this high standard when women managers have had longer experience; but so far conscience and sterling integrity have been attributes of all my expert women, even if they have now and then disappointed me in endurance or in ability. Is not this a fact of great social significance?)

It is universally conceded today, only a few willfully blind or croaking pessimists dissenting, that home-keeping under modern conditions requires a knowledge of conditions and a power of control of persons and machines obtained only through education or through bitter experience, and that education is the less costly.

When social conditions become adjusted to the new order, it will be seen how much gain in power the community has made, how much better worth the people are. Have faith in the working out of the destiny of the race; be ready to accept the unaccustomed, to use the radium of social progress to cure the ulcers of the old friction. What if a few mistakes are made? How else shall the truth be learned? Try all things and hold fast that which is good.

The Home Economics Movement is an endeavor to hold the home and the welfare of children from slipping over the cliff by a knowledge which will bring courage to combat the destructive tendencies. Is not one of the distinctive features of our age a forcible overcoming of the natural trend of things? If a river is by natural law wearing away its bank in a place we wish to keep, do we sit down and moan and say it is sad, but we cannot help it? No, that att.i.tude belonged to the Middle Ages. We say, Hold fast, we cannot have that; and we cement the sides and confine or turn the river.

The ancient cities whose ruins are now being explored in Asia seem to have been abandoned because of failure of the water supply as the earth became desiccated; so was the home of our own Zunis. Does such a possibility stop us? No, we bring water from hundreds of miles. Will man, who has gained such control over nature, sit down before his own problems and say, "What am I going to do about it?"

What if the apparent motion is toward cells to sleep in, and clubs to play bridge in, and amus.e.m.e.nts for evenings, and a strenuous business life, run on piratical principles, into which the women are drawn as decoy ducks? Because this _is_, is it going to be, as soon as a good proportion of the thinking people stand face to face with the problem? I believe it is possible to solve the problem, but only if the aid of scientifically trained women is brought into service to work in harmony with the engineer who has already accomplished so much.

Household engineering is the great need for material welfare, and social engineering for moral and ethical well-being. What else does this persistent forcing of scientific training to the front mean? If the State is to have good citizens, productive human beings, it must provide for the teaching of the essentials to those who are to become the parents of the next generation. No state can thrive while its citizens waste their resources of health, bodily energy, time and brain power, any more than a nation may prosper that wastes its natural resources.

The teaching of domestic economy in the elementary school and home economics in the higher is intended to give the people a sense of _control_ over their _environment_ and to avert a panic as to the future.

The economics of consumption, including as it does the ethics of spending, must have a place in our higher education, preceded in earlier grades by manual dexterity and scientific information, which will lead to true economy in the use of time, energy, and money in the home life of the land. Education is obliged to take cognizance of the need, because the ideal American homestead, that place of busy industry, with occupation for the dozen children, no longer exists.

Gone out of it are the industries, gone out of it are ten of the children, gone out of it in large measure is that sense of moral and religious responsibility which was the keystone of the whole.

The methods of work imposed by housing conditions are wasteful of time, energy, and money, and the people are restive, they know not why. As was said earlier, shelter was found by early students of social conditions to be most in need of remedy, so we see that

"In the first place the state is beginning to offer positive aid to secure a suitable home for each family. A communistic habitation forces the members of a family to conform insensibly to communistic modes of thought. Paul Goehre, in his keen observations printed in 'Three Months in a German Workshop,' interpreted this tendency in all clearness. The architecture of a city tenement house is to blame for the silent but certain transformation of the home into a sty. Instead of accepting this condition as inevitable, like a law of nature, and accepting its consequences, all experience demands of those who believe in the monogamic family, that they make a united and persistent fight on the evil which threatens the slowly acquired qualities secured in the highest form of the family. It would be unworthy of us to permit a great part of a modern population to descend again to the animal level from which the race has ascended only through aeons of struggle and difficulty. When we remember that very much, perhaps most of the progress has been dearly purchased at the cost of women, by the appeal of her weakness and need and motherhood, we must all the more firmly resolve not to yield the field to a temporary effect of a needless result of neglect and avarice. As the evil conditions are merely the work of unwise and untaught communities, the cure will come from education of the same communities in wisdom and science and duty. What man has marred, man can make better."[18]

[18] C. R. Henderson, Proceedings Lake Placid Conference, 1902.

It is not impossible to furnish a decent habitation for every productive laborer in all our great cities. Many really humane people are overawed by the authority, the pompous and powerful a.s.sertions of "successful" men of affairs; and they often sleep while such men are forming secret conspiracies against national health and morality with the aid of legal talent hired to kill. Only when the social mind and conscience is educated and the entire community becomes intelligent and alert can legislation be secured which places all compet.i.tors on a level where humanity is possible.