Kitabı oku: «The Art of Living», sayfa 13

There is no more beautiful and refining influence in the world than that of an attractive and noble woman. Unselfishness, tenderness, aspiring sentiment, long-suffering devotion, grace, tact, and quickly divining intelligence are her prerogatives, and she stands an ever-watchful guardian angel at the shoulder of man. The leading poetic and elevating associations of life are linked with her name. The lover’s passion, the husband’s worship, the son’s reverential affection are inspired by her. The strong man stays his hand and sides with mercy or honor when his mother speaks within him. In homelier language, she is the keeper of the hearth and home, the protector and trainer of her children, the adviser, consoler, and companion of her husband, father, son, brother, or other masculine associates.

Now, the modern woman, up to this point, has been disposed, on the whole, to regard this as the part which she is to play in the drama of life. At least she has not materially deviated from it. Her progress has been simply in the way of enabling her to play that part more intelligently and worthily, and not toward usurpation, excepting that she claims the right to earn her daily bread. Higher education in its various branches has been the most signal fruit of her struggle for enlightenment and liberty, and this is certainly in entire keeping with the eternal feminine, and to-day seems indispensable to her suitable development. By means of education similar to that lavished upon man she has been enabled, it is true, to obtain employment of various kinds hitherto withheld from her, but the positions of professor, teacher, nurse, artist, and clerk, are amplifications of her natural aptitudes rather than encroachments. She has, however, finally reached the stage where she will soon have to decide whether the hearth and the home or down-town is to be the principal theatre of her activity and influence. Is she or is she not to participate with man in the tangible, obvious management of the affairs of the world?

II

The mystic oracles of the women’s clubs do not give a straightforward answer to this question. Yet there are mutterings, mouthings, and signs from them which tend to arouse masculine suspicions. To use a colloquialism, woman fancies herself very much at present, and she spends considerable time in studying the set of her mind in the looking-glass. And her serenity is justified. In spite of ridicule, baiting, and delay for several generations, she has demonstrated her ability and fitness to do a number of things which we had adjudged her incapable of doing. She can almost take care of herself in the street after dark. She has become a most valuable member of committees to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the sick, and the insane. She has become the president and professors of colleges founded in her behalf. The noble and numerous army of teachers, typewriters, salesladies, nurses, and women doctors (including Christian Scientists), stands as ample proof of her intention and capacity to strike out for herself. No wonder, perhaps, that she is a little delirious and mounted in the head, and that she is tempted to exclaim, “Go to, I will do more than this. Why should I not practise law, and sell stocks, wheat, corn, and exchange, control the money markets of the world, administer trusts, manage corporations, sit in Congress, and be President of the United States?”

The only things now done by man which the modern woman has not yet begun to cast sheep’s eyes at are labor requiring much physical strength and endurance, and military service. She is prepared to admit that she can never expect to be so muscular and powerful in body as man. But this has become rather a solace than a source of perplexity to her. Indeed, the women’s clubs are beginning to whisper under their breath, “Man is fitted to build and hew and cut and lift, and to do everything which demands brute force. We are not. We should like to think, plan, and execute. Let him do the heavy work. If he wishes to fight he may. Wars are wicked, and we shall vote against them and refuse to take part in them.”

If woman is going in for this sort of thing, of course she needs the ballot. If she intends to manage corporations and do business generally, she ought to have a voice in the framing of the laws which manifest the policy of the state. But to earn one’s living as a college professor, nurse, typewriter, saleslady, or clerk, or to sit on boards of charity, education, or hygiene, is a far remove from becoming bank presidents, merchants, judges, bankers, or members of Congress. The one affords the means by which single women can earn a decent and independent livelihood, or devote their energies to work useful to society; the other would necessitate an absolute revolution in the habits, tastes, interests, proclivities, and nature of woman. The noble army of teachers, typewriters, nurses, and salesladies are in the heels of their boots hoping to be married some day or other. They have merely thrown an anchor to windward and taken up a calling which will enable them to live reasonably happy if the right man does not appear, or passes by on the other side. Those who sit on boards, and who are more apt to be middle-aged, are but interpreting and fulfilling the true mission of the modern woman, which is to supplement and modify the point of view of man, and to extend the kind of influence which she exercises at home to the conduct of public interests of a certain class.

Now, some one must keep house. Some one must cook, wash, dust, sweep, darn, look after the children, and in general grease the wheels of domestic activity. If women are to become merchants, and manage corporations, who will bring up our families and manage the home? The majority of the noble army referred to are not able to escape from making their own beds and cooking their own breakfasts. If they occupied other than comparatively subordinate positions they would have to call Chinatown to the rescue; for the men would decline with thanks, relying on their brute force to protect them, and the other women would toss their heads and say “Make your own beds, you nasty things. We prefer to go to town too.” In fact the emancipation of women, so far as it relates to usurpation of the work of man, does not mean much in actual practice yet, in spite of the brave show and bustle of the noble army. The salesladies get their meals somehow, and the domestic hearth is still presided over by the mistress of the house and her daughters. But this cannot continue to be the case if women are going to do everything which men do except lift weights and fight. For we all know that our mothers, wives, and sisters, according to their own affidavits, have all they can do already to fulfil the requirements of modern life as mothers, wives, and sisters in the conventional yet modern sense. Many of them tell us that they would not have time to vote, to say nothing of qualifying themselves to vote. Indisputably they cannot become men and yet remain women in the matter of their daily occupations, unless they discover some new panacea against nervous prostration. The professions are open; the laws will allow them to establish banks and control corporate interests; but what is to become of the eternal feminine in the pow-wow, bustle, and materializing rush and competition of active business life? Whatever a few individuals may do, there seems to be no immediate or probably eventual prospect of a throwing off by woman of domestic ties and duties. Her physical and moral nature alike are formidable barriers in the way.

Why, then, if women are not going to usurp or share to any great extent the occupations of men, and become familiar with the practical workings of professional, business, and public affairs, are they ever likely to be able to judge so intelligently as men as to the needs of the state? To hear many people discuss the subject, one would suppose that all the laws passed by legislative bodies were limited to questions of ethics and morality. If all political action were reduced to debates and ballots on the use of liquor, the social evil, and other moral or humanitarian topics, the claim that women ought to be allowed and encouraged to vote would be much stronger – that is, assuming that she herself preferred to use her influence directly instead of indirectly. But the advocates of female suffrage seem to forget that three-fifths of the laws passed relate to matters remotely if at all bearing upon ethics, and involve considerations of public policy from the point of view of what is best for the interests of the state and the various classes of individuals which compose it. We do not always remember in this age of afternoon teas and literary papers that the state is after all an artificial body, a form of compact under which human beings agree to live together for mutual benefit and protection. Before culture, æstheticism, or even ethics can be maintained there must be a readiness and ability to fight, if the necessity arises, and a capacity to do heavy work. Moreover, there must be ploughed fields and ship-yards and grain-elevators and engines and manufactories, and all the divers forms and phases of industrial and commercial endeavor and enterprise by which men earn their daily bread. If woman is going to participate in the material activities of the community she will be fit to deal with the questions which relate thereto, but otherwise she must necessarily remain unable to form a satisfactory judgment as to the merits of more than one-half the measures upon which she would be obliged to vote. Nor is it an argument in point that a large body of men is in the same predicament. Two evils do not make a benefit. There is a sufficient number of men conversant with every separate practical question which arises to insure an intelligent examination of it. The essential consideration is, what would the state gain, if woman suffrage were adopted, except an enlarged constituency of voters? What would woman, by means of the ballot, add to the better or smoother development of the social system under which we live?

Unless the eternal feminine is to be sacrificed or to suffer, it seems to me that her sole influence would be an ethical or moral one. There are certainly strong grounds for the assumption that she would point the way to, or at least champion, the cause of reforms which man has perpetually dilly-dallied with and failed to do battle for. To be sure, many of her most virtuous endeavors would be likely to be focussed on matters where indulgences and weaknesses chiefly masculine were concerned – such as the liquor problem; but an alliance between her vote and that of the minority of men would probably be a blessing to the world, even though she showed herself somewhat a tyrant or a fanatic. Her advocacy of measures calculated to relieve society of abuses and curses, which have continued to afflict it because men have been only moderately in earnest for a change, could scarcely fail to produce valuable results. Perhaps this is enough in itself to outweigh the ignorance which she would bring to bear on matters which did not involve ethical or humanitarian principles; and it is indisputably the most legitimate argument in favor of woman suffrage. The notion that women ought to vote simply because men do is childish and born of vanity. On the other hand, if the state is to be a gainer by her participation in the perplexities of voting, the case takes on a very different aspect.

I have been assuming that the influence of woman would be in behalf of ethics, but my wife Barbara assures me that I am thereby begging the question. She informs me that I have too exalted an idea of woman and her aims. She has confided to me that, though there is a number of noble and forceful women in every community, the general average, though prolific of moral and religious advice to men by way of fulfilling a sort of traditional feminine duty, is at heart rather flighty and less deeply interested in social progress than my sex. This testimony, taken in connection with the reference of Julius Cæsar to the disillusioning effect of a crowd of women in a drygoods store, introduces a new element into the discussion. Frankly, my estimate of women has always been high, and possibly unduly exalted. It may be I have been deceived by the moral and religious advice offered into believing that women are more serious than they really are. Reflection certainly does cause one to recollect that comparatively few women like to dwell on or to discuss for more than a few minutes any serious subject which requires earnest thought. They prefer to skim from one thing to another like swallows and to avoid dry depths. Those in the van will doubtless answer that this is due to the unfortunate training which woman has been subjected to for so many generations. True, in a measure; but ought she not, before she is allowed to vote, on the plea of bringing benefit to the state as an ethical adviser, to demonstrate by more than words her ethical superiority?

We all know that women drink less intoxicating liquor than men, and are less addicted to fleshly excesses. Yet the whole mental temper and make-up of each sex ought to be taken into account in comparing them together; and with all the predisposition of a gallant and susceptible man to say the complimentary thing, I find myself asking the question whether the average woman does not prefer to jog along on a worsted-work-domestic-trusting-religious-advice-giving basis, rather than to grapple in a serious way with the formidable problems of living. At any rate I, for one, before the right of suffrage is bestowed upon her, would like to be convinced that she as a sex is really earnest-minded. If one stops to think, it is not easy to show that, excepting where liquor, other women, and rigid attendance at church are concerned, she has been wont to show any very decided bent for, or interest in, the great reforms of civilization – that is, nothing to distinguish her from a well-equipped and thoughtful man. It is significant, too, that where women in this country have been given the power to vote in local affairs, they have in several instances shown themselves to be more solicitous for the triumph of a religious creed or faction than to promote the public welfare.

It is extremely probable, if not certain, that the laws of all civilized states will eventually be amended so as to give women the same voice in the affairs of government as men. But taking all the factors of the case into consideration, there seems to be no pressing haste for action. Even admitting for the sake of argument that woman’s apparent lack of seriousness is due to her past training, and that she is really the admirably earnest spirit which one is lured into believing her until he reflects, there can assuredly be no question that the temper and proclivities of the very large mass of women are not calculated at present to convict man of a lack of purpose by virtue of shining superiority in persevering mental and moral aggressiveness. Not merely the drygoods counter and the milliner’s store with their engaging seductions, but the ball-room, the fancy-work pattern, the sensational novel, nervous prostration, the school-girl’s giggle, the tea-pot without food, and a host of other tell-tale symptoms, suggest that there is a good deal of the old Eve left in the woman of to-day. And bless her sweet heart, Adam is in no haste to have it otherwise. Indeed, the eternal feminine seems to have staying qualities which bid fair to outlast the ages.

The Conduct of Life

I

Now that more than a century has elapsed since our independence as a nation was accomplished, and we are sixty million strong, what do we stand for in the world? What is meant by the word American, and what are our salient qualities as a people? What is the contribution which we have made or are making to the progress of society and the advancement of civilization?

There certainly used to be, and probably there is, no such egregiously patriotic individual in the world as an indiscriminately patriotic American, and there is no more familiar bit of rhetoric extant than that this is the greatest nation on earth. The type of citizen who gave obtrusive vent to this sentiment, both at home and abroad, is less common than formerly; nevertheless his clarion tones are still invariably to be heard in legislative assemblies when any opportunity is afforded to draw a comparison between ourselves and other nations. His extravagant and highfalutin boastings have undoubtedly been the occasion of a certain amount of seemingly lukewarm patriotism on the part of the educated and more intelligent portion of the American public, an attitude which has given foreigners the opportunity to declare that the best Americans are ashamed of their own institutions. But that apparent disposition to apologize already belongs to a past time. No American, unless a fool, denies to-day the force of the national character, whatever he or she may think of the behavior of individuals; and on the other hand, is it not true that every State in the Union has a rising population of young and middle-aged people who have discovered, Congress and the public schools to the contrary notwithstanding, that we do not know everything, and that the pathway of national progress is more full of perplexities than our forests were of trees when Daniel Boone built his log cabin in the wilds of Kentucky? In short, the period of unintelligent jubilation on one side, and carping cynicism on the other, have given place to a soberer self-satisfaction. We cannot – why should we? – forget that our territory is enormous, and that we soon shall be, if we are not already, the richest nation on earth; that the United States is the professed asylum and Mecca of hope for the despondent and oppressed of other countries; and that we are the cynosure of the universe, as being the most important exemplification of popular government which the world has ever seen. At the same time, the claims put forth by our progenitors, that American society is vastly superior to any other, and that the effete world of Europe is put to the blush by the civic virtues of the land of the free and the home of the brave, are no longer urged except for the purposes of rodomontade. The average American of fifty years ago – especially the frontiersman and pioneer, who swung his axe to clear a homestead, and squirted tobacco-juice while he tilled the prairie – really believed that our customs, opinions, and manner of living, whether viewed from the moral, artistic, or intellectual standpoint, were a vast improvement on those of any other nation.

But though most of us to-day recognize the absurdity of such a view, we are most of us at the same time conscious of the belief that there is a difference between us and the European which is not imaginary, and which is the secret of our national force and originality. International intercourse has served to open our eyes until they have become as wide as saucers, with the consequence that, in hundreds of branches of industry and art, we are studying Old World methods; moreover, the pioneer strain of blood has been diluted by hordes of immigrants of the scum of the earth. In spite of both these circumstances, our faith in our originality and in the value of it remains unshaken, and we are no less sure at heart that our salient traits are noble ones, than the American of fifty years ago was sure that we had the monopoly of all the virtues and all the arts. He really meant only what we mean, but he had an unfortunate way of expressing himself. We have learned better taste, and we do not hesitate nowadays to devote our native humor to hitting hard the head of bunkum, which used to be as sacred as a Hindoo god, and as rife as apple-blossoms in this our beloved country.

What is the recipe for Americanism – that condition of the system and blood, as it were, which even the immigrant without an ideal to his own soul, seems often to acquire to some extent as soon as he breathes the air of Castle Garden? It is difficult to define it in set speech, for it seems almost an illusive and intangible quality of being when fingered and held up to the light. It seems to me to be, first of all, a consciousness of unfettered individuality coupled with a determination to make the most of self. One great force of the American character is its naturalness, which proceeds from a total lack of traditional or inherited disposition to crook the knee to any one. It never occurs to a good American to be obsequious. In vulgar or ignorant personalities this point of view has sometimes manifested itself, and continues to manifest itself, in swagger or insolence, but in the finer form of nature appears as simplicity of an unassertive yet dignified type. Gracious politeness, without condescension on the one hand, or fawning on the other, is noticeably a trait of the best element of American society, both among men and women. Indeed, so valuable to character and ennobling is this native freedom from servility, that it has in many cases in the past made odd and unconventional manner and behavior seem attractive rather than a blemish. Unconventionality is getting to be a thing of the past in this country, and the representative American is at a disadvantage now, both at home and abroad, if he lacks the ways of the best social world; he can no longer afford to ignore cosmopolitan usages, and to rely solely on a forceful or imposing personality; the world of London and Paris, of New York and Washington and Chicago, has ceased to thrill, and is scarcely amused, if he shows himself merely in the guise of a splendid intellectual buffalo. But the best Americanism of to-day reveals itself no less distinctly and unequivocally in simplicity bred of a lack of self-consciousness and a lack of servility of mind. It seems to carry with it a birthright of self-respect, which, if fitly worn, ennobles the humblest citizen.

This national quality of self-respect is apt to be associated with the desire for self-improvement or success. Indeed, it must engender it, for it provides hope, and hope is the touchstone of energy. The great energy of Americans is ascribed by some to the climate, and it is probably true that the nervous temperaments of our people are stimulated by the atmospheric conditions which surround us; but is it not much more true that, just as it never occurs to the good American to be servile, so he feels that his outlook upon the possibilities of life is not limited or qualified, and that the world is really his oyster? To be sure, this faith has been fostered by the almost Aladdin-like opportunities which this great and rich new country of ours has afforded. But whatever the reason for our native energy and self-reliance, it indisputably exists, and is signally typical of the American character. We are distinctly an ambitious, earnest people, eager to make the most of ourselves individually, and we have attracted the attention of the world by force of our independent activity of thought and action. The extraordinary personality of Abraham Lincoln is undoubtedly the best apotheosis yet presented of unadulterated Americanism. In him the native stock was free from the foreign influences and suggestions which affected, more or less, the people of the East. His origin was of the humblest sort, and yet he presented most saliently in his character the naturalness, nobility, and aspiring energy of the nation. He made the most of himself by virtue of unusual abilities, yet the key-note of their influence and force was a noble simplicity and farsighted independence. In him the quintessence of the Americanism of thirty years ago was summed up and expressed. In many ways he was a riddle at first to the people of the cities of the East in that, though their soul was his soul, his ways had almost ceased to be their ways; but he stands before the world to-day as the foremost interpreter of American ideas and American temper of thought as they then existed.

In the thirty years since the death of Abraham Lincoln the country has been inundated with foreign blood. Irish, Germans, English, Poles, and Scandinavians, mainly of the pauper or peasant class, have landed in large numbers, settled in one State or another, and become a part of the population. The West, at the time of the Civil War, was chiefly occupied by settlers of New England or Eastern stock – pioneers from the older cities and towns who had sought fortune and a freer life in the new territory of prairies and unappropriated domain. The population of the whole country to-day bears many different strains of blood in its veins. The original settlers have chiefly prospered. The sons of those who split rails or followed kindred occupations in the fifties, and listened to the debates between Lincoln and Douglas, are the proprietors of Chicago, Denver, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Topeka. Johann Heintz now follows the plough and in turn squirts tobacco-juice while he tills the prairie; and Louis Levinsky, Paul Petrinoff, and Michael O’Neil forge the plough-shares, dig in the mine, or work in the factory side by side with John Smith and any descendant of Paul Revere who has failed to prosper in life’s battle. But this is not all. Not merely are the plain people in the dilemma of being unable to pronounce the names of their neighbors, but the same is getting to be true of the well-to-do merchants and tradespeople of many of our cities. The argus-eyed commercial foreigner has marked us for his own, and his kith and kin are to-day coming into possession of our drygoods establishments, our restaurants, our cigar stores, our hotels, our old furniture haunts, our theatres, our jewelry shops, and what not. One has merely to open a directory in order to find the names in any leading branch of trade plentifully larded with Adolph Stein, Simon Levi, Gustave Cohen, or something ending in berger. They sell our wool; they float our loans; they manufacture our sugar, our whiskey, and our beer; they influence Congress. They are here for what they can make, and they do not waste their time in sentiment. They did not come in time to reap the original harvest, but they have blown across the ocean to help the free-born American spend his money in the process of trying to out-civilize Paris and London. As a consequence, the leading wholesale and retail ornamental industries of New York and of some of our Western cities are in the grip of individuals whose surnames have a foreign twang. Of course, they have a right to be here; it is a free country, and no one can say them nay. But we must take them and their wives and daughters, their customs and their opinions, into consideration in making an estimate of who are the Americans of the present. They have not come here for their health, as the phrase is, but they have come to stay. We at present, in our social hunger and thirst, supply the grandest and dearest market of the world for the disposal of everything beautiful and costly and artistic which the Old World possesses, and all the shopkeepers of Europe, with the knowledge of generations on the tips of their tongues and in the corners of their brains, have come over to coin dowries for their daughters in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Many of them have already made large fortunes in the process, and are beginning to con the pages of the late Ward McAllister’s book on etiquette with a view to social aggressiveness.

Despite this infusion of foreign blood, the native stock and the Anglo-Saxon nomenclature are still, of course, predominant in numbers. There are some portions of the country where the late immigrant is scarcely to be found. True also is it that these late-comers, like the immigrants of fifty years ago, have generally been prompt in appropriating the independent and energetic spirit typical of our people. But there is a significant distinction to be borne in mind in this connexion: The independent energy of the Americans of fifty years ago, whether in the East or among the pioneers of the Western frontier, was not, however crude its manifestations, mere bombastic assertiveness, but the expression of a faith and the expression of strong character. They were often ignorant, conceited, narrow, hard, and signally inartistic; but they stood for principle and right as they saw and believed it; they cherished ideals; they were firm as adamant in their convictions; and God talked with them whether in the store or workshop, or at the plough. This was essentially true of the rank and file of the people, no less true and perhaps more true of the humblest citizens than of the well-to-do and prominent.

There can be little doubt that the foreign element which is now a part of the American people represents neither a faith nor the expression of ideals or convictions. The one, and the largest portion of it, is the overflow and riff-raff of the so-called proletariat of Europe; the other is the evidence of a hyena-like excursion for the purposes of plunder. In order to be a good American it is not enough to become independent and energetic. The desire to make the most of one’s self is a relative term; it must proceed from principle and be nourished by worthy, ethical aims; otherwise it satisfies itself with paltry conditions, or with easy-going florid materialism. The thieving and venality in municipal political affairs of the Irish-American, the dull squalor and brutish contentment of the Russian-Pole, and the commercial obliquity of vision and earthy ambitions of the German Jew, are factors in our national life which are totally foreign to the Americanism for which Abraham Lincoln stood. We have opened our gates to a horde of economic ruffians and malcontents, ethical bankrupts and social thugs, and we must needs be on our guard lest their aims and point of view be so engrafted on the public conscience as to sap the vital principles which are the foundation of our strength as a people. The danger from this source is all the greater from the fact that the point of view of the American people has been changed so radically during the last thirty years as a secondary result of our material prosperity. We have ceased to be the austere nation we once were, and we have sensibly let down the bars in the manner of our living; we have recognized the value of, and we enjoy, many things which our fathers put from them as inimical to republican virtue and demoralizing to society. Contact with older civilizations has made us wiser and more appreciative, and with this growth of perspective and the acquirement of an eye for color has come a liberality of sentiment which threatens to debauch us unless we are careful. There are many, especially among the wealthy and fashionable, who in their ecstasy over our emancipation are disposed to throw overboard everything which suggests the old régime, and to introduce any custom which will tend to make life more easy-going and spectacular. And in this they are supported by the immigrant foreigner, who would be only too glad to see the land of his adoption made to conform in all its usages to the land of his birth.