Society: Its Origin and Development Part 5

Eggs and b.u.t.ter disposed of at the store helped to pay for sugar, salt, and spices. New incentives to larger production came with the extension of markets. When wood and hay could be s.h.i.+pped to a distance on the railroad, when a milk route in the neighborhood or a milk-train to the city made dairy products more profitable, or when market gardening became possible on an extensive scale, better methods of distribution were provided to take care of the more numerous products.

71. =Social and Economic Changes in the Family.=--The fundamental principles that govern the economic activities of the family are the same as they used to be. Industry, thrift, and co-operation are still the watchwords of prosperity. But with the development of civilization and the improvements in manufacture, communication, and transportation, the economic function of the family has changed.

Instead of producing all the crops that he may need or the tools of his occupation, the farmer tends to produce the particular crops that he can best cultivate and that will bring him the largest returns.

Because of increasing facilities of exchange he can sell his surplus and purchase the goods that will satisfy his other needs. The farmer's wife no longer spins and weaves the family's supply of clothing; the men buy their supply at the store and often even she turns over the task of making up her own gowns to the village dressmaker. Where there is a local creamery she is relieved of the manufacture of b.u.t.ter and cheese, and the cannery lays down its preserves at her door. Household manufacturing is confined almost entirely to the preparation of food, with a varying amount of dressmaking and millinery. In the towns and cities the needs of the family are even more completely supplied from without. Children are relieved of all responsibility, women's care are lightened by the stock of material in the shops, and the bakery and restaurant help to supply the table. Family life loses thereby much of its unity of effort and sympathy. The economic task falls mainly upon the male producer. Even he lives on the land and in the house of another man; he owns not the tools of his industry and does business in another's name. He hires himself to a superior for wage or salary, and thereby loses in a measure his own independence. But there is a gain in social solidarity, for the chain of mutual dependence reached farther and binds more firmly; there is gain in community co-operation, for each family is no longer self-sufficient.

READING REFERENCES

BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 221-227, 324-333.

THOMAS: _s.e.x and Society_, pages 123-146.

SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages 105-108.

MASON: _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture._

WEEDEN: _Economic and Social History of New England_, I, pages 324-326.

CHAPTER IX

CHANGES IN THE FAMILY

72. =Causes of Changes in the Family.=--The family at the present time is in a transition era. Its machinery is not working smoothly. Its environment is undergoing transformation. A hundred years ago the family was strictly rural; not more than three per cent of the people lived in large communities. Now nearly one-half are cla.s.sified as urban by the United States census of 1910, and those who remain rural feel the influences of the town. There is far less economic independence on the farm than formerly, and in the towns and cities the home is little more than a place in which to sleep and eat for an increasing number of workers, both men and women. The family on the farm is no longer a perfectly representative type of the family in the more populous centres.

These changes are due mainly to the requirements of industry, but partly at least to the desire of all members of the family to share in urban life. The increasing ease of communication and travel extends the mutual acquaintance of city and country people and, as the city is brought nearer, its pull upon the young people of the community strengthens. There is also an increasing tendency of the women folk to enter the various departments of industry outside of the home. It is increasingly difficult for one person to satisfy the needs of a large family. This tends to send the family to the city, where there are wider opportunities, and to drive women and children into socialized industry; at the same time, it tends to restrict the number of children in families that have high ideals for women and children.

Family life everywhere is becoming increasingly difficult, and at the same time every member of the family is growing more independent in temper. The result is the breaking up of a large number of homes, because of the departure of the children, the separation of husband and wife, the desertion of parents, or the legal divorce of married persons. The maintenance of the family as a social inst.i.tution is seriously threatened.

73. =Static vs. Dynamic Factors.=--There are factors entering into family life that act as bonds to cement the individual members together. Such are the material goods that they enjoy in common, like the home with its comforts and the means of support upon which they all rely. In addition to these there are psychical elements that enter into their relations and strengthen these bonds. The inheritance of the peculiar traits, manners, and customs that differentiate one family from another; the reputation of the family name and pride in its influence; an affection, understanding, and sympathy that come from the intimacy of the home life and the appreciation of one another's best qualities are ties that do not easily rend or loosen.

On the other hand, there are centrifugal forces that are pus.h.i.+ng the members of the family apart. At the bottom is selfish desire, which frets at restriction, and which is stimulated by the current emphasis upon personal pleasure and individual independence. The family solidarity which made the sons Democrats because their father voted that party ticket, or the daughters Methodists because their mother's religious preferences were for that denomination, has ceased to be effective. Every member of the family has his daily occupations in diverse localities. The head of the household may find his business duties in the city twenty miles away, or on the road that leads him far afield across the continent. For long hours the children are in school. The housewife is the only member of the family who remains at home and her outside interests and occupations have multiplied so rapidly as to make her, too, a comparative stranger to the home life.

Modern industrialism has laid its hand upon the women and children, and thousands of them know the home only at morning and night.

74. =The Strain on the Urban Family.=--The rapid growth of cities, with the increase of buildings for the joint occupancy of a number of families, tends to disunity in each particular family and to a reduction in the size of families. The privacy and sense of intimate seclusion of the detached home is violated. The modern apartment-house has a common hall and stairway for a dozen families and a common dining-room and kitchen on the model of a hotel. The tenements are human incubators from which children overflow upon the streets, boarders invade the privacy of the family bedroom, and even sanitary conveniences are public. Home life is violated in the tenement by the pressure of an unfavorable environment; it perishes on the avenue because of a compelling desire to gain as much freedom as possible from household care.

The care of a modern household grows in difficulty. Although the housekeeper has been relieved of performing certain economic functions that added to the burden of her grandmother, her responsibilities have been complicated by a number of conditions that are peculiar to the modern life of the town. Social custom demands of the upper cla.s.ses a far more careful observance of fas.h.i.+on in dress and household furnis.h.i.+ngs, and in the exchange of social courtesies. The increasing cost of living due to these circ.u.mstances, and to a constantly rising standard of living, reacts upon the mind and nerves of the housewife with accelerating force. And not the least of her difficulties is the growing seriousness of the servant problem. Custom, social obligations, and nervous strain combine to make essential the help of a servant in the home. But the American maid is too independent and high-minded to make a household servant, and the American matron in the main has not learned how to be a just and considerate mistress.

The result has been an influx of immigrant labor by servants who are untrained and inefficient, yet soon learn to make successful demands upon the employer for larger wages and more privileges because they are so essential to the comfort and even the existence of the family.

Family life is increasingly at the mercy of the household employee. It is not strange that many women prefer the comfort and relief of an apartment or hotel, that many more hesitate to a.s.sume the responsibility of marriage and children, preferring to undertake their own self-support, and that not a few seek divorce.

75. =Family Desertion.=--While the burden of housekeeping rests upon the wife, there are corresponding weights and annoyances that fall upon the man. Business pressure and professional responsibility are wearying; he, too, feels the strain upon his nerves. When he returns home at evening he is easily disturbed by a worried wife, tired and fretful children, and the unmistakable atmosphere of gloom and friction that permeates many homes. He contrasts his unenviable position with the freedom and good-fellows.h.i.+p of the club, and chafes under the family bonds. In many cases he breaks them and sets himself free by way of the divorce court. The course of men of the upper cla.s.s is paralleled by that of the working man or idler who meets similar conditions in a home where the servant does not enter, but where there is a surplus of children. He finds frequent relief in the saloon, and eventually escapes by deserting his family altogether, instead of having recourse to the law. This practice of desertion, which is the poor man's method of divorce, is one of the continual perplexities of organized charity, and const.i.tutes one of the serious problems of family life. There are gradations in the practice of desertion, and it is not confined to men. The social b.u.t.terfly who neglects her children to flutter here and there is a temporary deserter, little less culpable than the lazy husband who has an attack of _wanderl.u.s.t_ before the birth of each child, and who returns to enjoy the comforts of home as soon as his wife is again able to a.s.sume the function of bread-winner for the growing family. From these it is but a step to the mutual desertion of a man and a woman, who from incompatibility of temper find it advisable to separate and go their own selfish ways, to wait until the law allows a final severance of the marriage bond.

It is indisputable that this breaking up of the home is reacting seriously upon the moral character of the present generation; there is a carelessness in a.s.suming the responsibility of marriage, and too much s.h.i.+rking of responsibility when the burden weighs heavily. There is a weakening of real affection and a consequent lack of mutual forbearance; there is an increasing feeling that marriage is a lottery and not worth while unless it promises increased satisfaction of s.e.xual, economic, or social desires and ambitions.

76. =Feminism.=--There can be no question that the growing independence of woman has complicated the family situation. In reaction against the long subjection that has fallen to her lot, the modern woman in many cases rebels against the control of custom and the expectations of society, refuses to regard herself as strictly a home-keeper, and in some cases is unwilling to become a mother. She seeks wider a.s.sociations and a larger range of activities outside of the home, she demands the same rights and privileges that belong to man, and she dreams of the day when her power as well as her influence will help to mould social inst.i.tutions. The feminist movement is in the large a wholesome reaction against an undeserved subserviency to the masculine will. Undoubtedly it contains great social potencies. It deserves kindly reception in the struggle to reform and reconstruct society where society is weak.

The present situation deserves not abuse, but the most careful consideration from every man. In countless cases woman has not only been repressed from activities outside of the family group, but has been oppressed in her own home also. America prides itself on its consideration for woman in comparison with the general European att.i.tude toward her, but too often chivalry is not exercised in the home. Often the wife has been a slave in the household where she should have been queen. She has been subject to the pa.s.sion of an hour and the whim of a moment. She has been servant rather than helpmeet.

Upon her have fallen the reproaches of the unbridled temper of other members of the family; upon her have rested the burdens that others have s.h.i.+rked. Husband and children have been free to find diversion elsewhere; family responsibilities or broken health have confined her at home. Her husband might even find s.e.x satisfaction away from home, but public opinion would be more lenient with him than with her if she offended. The time has come when it is right that these inequalities and injustices should cease. Society owes to woman not only her right to her own person and property, but the right to bear, also, her fair share of social responsibility in this modern world.

Yet in the process of coming to her own, there is danger that the wife will forget that marriage is the most precious of human relations; that the home has the first claim upon her; that motherhood is the greatest privilege to which any woman, however socially gifted, can aspire; and that social inst.i.tutions of tried worth are not lightly to be cast upon the rubbish heap. It is by no means certain that society can afford or that women ought to demand individualistic rights that will put in jeopardy the welfare of the remainder of the family. The average woman has not the strength to carry properly the burden of home cares plus large political and social responsibilities, nor has she the money to employ in the home all the modern improvements of labor-saving devices and skilled service that might in a measure take her place. Nor is it at all certain that the granting of individual rights to women would tend to purify s.e.x relations, but it is quite conceivable that the old moral and religious sanctions of marriage may disappear and the State a.s.sume the task of caring for all children. It is clear that the rights and duties of women const.i.tute a very serious part of the problem of family life.

77. =Individual Rights vs. Social Duties.=--The greatest weakness to be found in twentieth-century society is the disposition on the part of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the Renaissance and the Reformation. It has forced political changes until absolutism has been yielding everywhere to democracy. It has extended social privileges until it has become possible for any one with push and ability to make his way to the top rung of the ladder of social prestige. It has permitted freedom to profess and practise any religion, and to advocate the most bizarre ideas in ethics and philosophy. It has brought human individuals to the place where they feel that nothing may be permitted to stand between them and the satisfaction of personal desire. The disciples of Nietzsche do not hesitate to stand boldly for the principle that might makes right, that he who can crush his compet.i.tors in the race for pleasure and profit has an indisputable claim on whatever he can grasp, and that the principle of mutual consideration is antiquated and ridiculous.

Such principles and privileges may comport with the elemental instincts and interests of unrestrained, primitive creatures, but they do not harmonize with requirements of social solidarity and efficiency. Social evolution in the past has come only as the struggle for individual existence was modified by consideration for the needs of another, and social welfare in the future can be realized only as men and women both are willing to sacrifice age-long prejudice or momentary pleasure and profit to the permanent good of the larger group.

READING REFERENCES

COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 356-371.

BRANDT AND BALDWIN: _Family Desertion._

DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 85-95, 109-118.

GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Inst.i.tution_, pages 456-477.

HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Inst.i.tutions_, III, pages 239-250.

CHAPTER X

DIVORCE

78. =The Main Facts About Divorce.=--An indication of the emphasis on individual rights is furnished by the increase of divorce, especially in the United States, where the demands of individualism and industrialism are most insistent. The divorce record is the thermometer that measures the heat of domestic friction. Statistics of marriage and divorce made by the National Government in 1886 and again in 1906 make possible a comparison of conditions which reveal a rapid increase in the number of divorces granted by the courts. Certain outstanding facts are of great importance.

(1) The number of divorces in twenty years increased from 23,000 to 72,000, which is three times the rate of increase of the population of the country. If this rate of progress continues, more than half the marriages in the United States will terminate in divorce by the end of the present century.

(2) In the first census it was discovered that the number of divorces in the United States exceeded the total number of divorces in all the European countries; in the second census it was shown that the United States had increased its divorces three times, while j.a.pan, with the largest divorce rate in the world, had reduced its rate one-half.

(3) Divorces in the United States are least common among people of the middle cla.s.s; they are higher among native whites than among immigrants, and they are highest in cities and among childless couples.

(4) Two-thirds of the divorces are granted on the demands of the wife.

(5) Divorce laws are very variable in the different States, but most divorces are obtained from the States where the applicants reside.

79. =Causes of Divorce.=--The causes recorded in divorce cases do not represent accurately the real causes, for the reason that it is easier to get an uncontested decision when the charges are not severe, and also for the reason that State laws vary and that which best fits the law will be put forward as the princ.i.p.al cause. Divorce laws in the United States generally recognize adultery, desertion, cruelty, drunkenness, lack of support, and crime as legitimate grounds for divorce. In the five years from 1902 to 1906 desertion was given as the ground for divorce in thirty-eight per cent of the cases, cruelty in twenty-three per cent, and adultery in fifteen per cent.

Intemperance was given as the direct cause in only four per cent, and neglect approximately the same. The a.s.signment of marital unfaithfulness in less than one-sixth of the cases, as compared with one-fourth twenty years before does not mean, however, that there is less unfaithfulness, but that minor offenses are considered sufficient on which to base a claim; the small percentage of charges of intemperance as the princ.i.p.al cause ought not to obscure the fact that it was an indirect cause in one-fifth of the cases.

It is natural that the countries of Europe should present greater variety of laws and of causes a.s.signed. In England, where the law has insisted on adultery as a necessary cause, divorces have been few. In Ireland, where the church forbids it, divorce is rare, less than one to thirty-five marriages. In Scotland fifty per cent of the cases reported are due to adultery. Cruelty was the princ.i.p.al cause ascribed in France, Austria, and Rumania; desertion in Russia and Sweden. The tendency abroad is to ascribe more rather than less to adultery.

The real causes for divorce are more remote than the specific acts of adultery, desertion, or cruelty that are mentioned as grounds for divorce. The primary cause is undoubtedly the spirit of individual independence that demands its rights at the expense of others. In the case of women there is less hesitancy than formerly in seeking freedom from the marriage bond because of the increasing opportunity of self-support. The changing conditions of home life in the city, with the increasing cost of living, coupled with the ease of divorce, encourage resort to the courts. The unscrupulousness of some lawyers, who fatten their purses at the expense of marital happiness, and the meddlesomeness of relatives are also contributing causes. Finally the restraint of religion has relaxed, and unhappy and ill-mated persons do not shrink from taking a step which was formerly condemned by the church.

80. =History of Divorce.=--The history of divorce presents various opinions and practices. The Hebrews had high ideals, but frequently fell into lax practices; the Greeks began well but degenerated sadly to the point where marriage was a mere matter of convenience; the Romans, noted for their sterling qualities in the early days of the republic, practised divorce without restraint in the later days of the empire.

The influence of Christianity was greatly to restrict divorce. The teaching of the Bible was explicit that the basis of marriage was the faithful love of the heart, and that impure desire was the essence of adultery. Illicit intercourse was the only possible moral excuse for divorce. True to this teaching, the Christian church tried hard to abolish divorce, as it attempted to check all s.e.xual evils, and the Catholic Church threw about marriage the veil of sanct.i.ty by making it one of the seven sacraments. As a sacrament wedlock was indissoluble, except as money or influence induced the church to turn back the key which it alone possessed. Separation was allowed by law, but not divorce. Greater stability was infused into the marriage relation. Yet it is not possible to purify s.e.x relations by tying tightly the marriage bond. Unfaithfulness has been so common in Europe among the higher cla.s.ses that it occasioned little remark, until the social conscience became sensitive in recent decades, and among the lower cla.s.ses divorce was often unnecessary, because so many unions took place without the sanction of the church. In Protestant countries there has been a variable recession from the extreme Catholic ground.