Woman and the Socialist Movement/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
WOMAN UNDER CAPITALISM.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MACHINE.
During the past three centuries there has been such development of social-economic forces as to cause complete revolutions in every relation of human life. It began with the great development in navigation, which resulted in the discovery of vast continents and the opening of world-wide markets for the manufacturing and trading classes. It blossomed out in the development of the great science of chemistry and the manifold discoveries and inventions consequent thereupon. It finally culminated in the discovery of steam and electricity as motive powers. The development of all these branches has forced on and in turn been forced on by the wonderful inventions and improvements in the means of production. A machine is an appliance by which the actual performance of the working process is taken out of the hands of man and is accomplished by the mechanism. In the handicraft period the operative process was limited to the use of a tool in man's own hand and the duration of the workday was subjected to man’s physical capacity within the twenty-four hours. Stretch this as they might, man had to eat and sleep even be he denied all further recreation.
But the machine is a different "animal." There is no limit to the number of "hands" with which it may perform the working process. There is no limit to its hours of activity. Twenty-four hours are as good as eight. It needs either rest nor sleep nor recreation. It indulges in no vices that unfit it for work. It gets no "lazy feelings" nor "cranky notions." Modern machinery is well nigh ideal perfection as far as the performance of the labor process is concerned.
PRODUCTION OF COMMODITIES.
The modern system of production differs essentially from previous modes of production. Formerly the production of goods, whether actual necessities of life or luxuries, was carried on for the immediate need of the producer himself, or of his economic master. Exchange of products was spasmodic and accidental and what was exchanged was the surplus only, that which was produced over and above what was needed at home. Commerce, therefore, was not a world-wide general institution but a branch by which the surplus articles of some were brought within reach of those whose wealth allowed them to consume more than they produced. The general contempt in which the early trading classes were held arose from the fact that they added no wealth to society but lived by buying cheap from the producer who had to sell and selling dear to the consumer who desired to buy.
Under modern capitalism it is different. No one consults his own needs in the production of wealth. A man may spend a lifetime in producing a single kind of goods. A man may never consume an iota of his own products. What is produced to-day is commodities that must go to the markets and be sold before they can be consumed.
APPROPRIATION OF LABOR.
In the handicraft period when the tools were hand tools end the actual process of labor was performed by the human agent, there could be no question to whom the products of labor belonged. The man who owned the tools was himself the worker, and as a matter of course the product was his. When he employed apprentices or journeymen they worked not ultimately to receive wages but to learn the trade and become masters themselves. If, therefore, they gave value to the master's product they received the other value of learning from him. Under capitalism this is altered. The tool has grown into a machine that very seldom can be operated by one man alone. Moreover, the division of labor has extended to the individual products. In the modern labor process one person does not produce a finished product, only a part of a product, sometimes only a fiftieth or a hundredth part. A single machine therefore could make no person independent. The labor process is co-operative. But as an inheritance of earlier stages, the means of production have remained individual property, and as an inheritance of this property right the products of labor have remained the property of the owner of the machine. Capitalism, therefore, is co-operative labor and individual appropriation of the products of labor.
CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH.
The very nature of the machine has demanded concentration. Individual ownership was an impossibility. Even scattered ownership was against its nature. In the beginning of capitalism it was a maxim that "competition is the life of trade." But free competition, if it means anything, means success to the successful; and this in turn means sure death to competition itself. The unsuccessful would ever be crowded out and have to join the wage working class. The keener the competition the fewer were the successful ones, and the larger and more costly the means of production became, the fewer were the favored ones that could enter the "free" race at all. Capitalism, therefore, means the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands with a corresponding increase of the wage working class, the class of the people that owns no wealth in means of production but depends for a living on the sale to the owners of the means of production of its physical and mental capacity to labor. Capitalism therefore means the division of society into two classes, the owners of the means whereby to produce the necessities of life, and the actual producers of the necessities of life.
THE CAPITALIST CLASS.
As capitalism developed, the capitalist class became gradually entirely divorced from the labor process. So far is that true that few capitalists know or care in what kind of a factory their capital is actually invested, and fewer still have the slightest idea of the actual technical process of the factory in which their capital "works." Their "work," as far as they perform any, consists in business schemes and tricks of trade. A portion of the capitalist class has even got beyond the scheming stage. They are mere useless idlers who waste in riotous living the tremendous surplus fleeced from labor.
PROFITS.
We have seen that under the capitalist system no one engages in production of commodities for his own use. On the contrary capitalists often manufacture things of which they never consume an iota themselves. The end in view is quite different. It is simply and ultimately to reap profits, to draw cut of an investment more capital than has been put into it.
It is a maxim that labor produces all wealth. It is utterly impossible to conceive of wealth without the labor process. As the capitalists have been divorced from the labor process, as their only "work" is non-productive, it is self-evident that they add no wealth to society. Their capital is wealth in the first place appropriated from labor. When, however, they from year to year draw dividends on their investments, when their plants are becoming ever more valuable, when their personal fortunes increase apace, then it ought to be plain to everyone that the capitalist method: of appropriating labor's products is thoroughly successful.
The workers own nothing but their power to labor. A worker must find work or he will starve and suffer. To find work means plainly the sale of one's labor-power to the owner of the machine. When a worker gets work he agrees to work for a certain wage for a certain number of hours a day. During those hours his labor belongs to the employer. It is the worker's duty to give his employer all there is in him, regardless of the wages he receives. Whatever wealth the worker creates during the hours of work belongs to the employer regardless of the wages he pays. It is plain, therefore, that the less the employer pays in wages and the more the worker produces the greater is the surplus wealth that flows to the capitalist. For example, if a man can produce $5 worth of wealth in a day and he receives $2.50 in wages, $2.50 goes to the capitalist. But 1f his wages are only one dollar, $4 goes to the capitalist. Or, if by improving the labor process or other means the $2.50 man can produce $10 instead of $5 worth of wealth, then the capitalist gets $7.50. To arrange all manners of ways so that the worker can be skinned of as much as possible belongs to the schemes and tricks of the successful capitalist and his mental hirelings. It is this "work" that keeps them busy at all hours and earns for them the titles of "industrious," "smart," "thrifty," etc.
The capitalist system is a refined method by which the ruling class robs the producing class out of the product of its toil without the workers realizing it. Even when they see stupendous fortunes amassed in the hands of a few men they have no idea how it all happens. Capital is unpaid labor. Profits, interests and dividends are unpaid labor. All the wealth and luxury squandered by the capitalist idlers represents unpaid labor. Capitalism appropriates for a few all the inventions and discoveries of past ages. It claims for its favorites the fruits of the toil and experience of past generations. By so doing it holds the power over the present generation and robs it from day to day of the fruits of its toil.
Wage labor is the modern and refined method of slavery by which the worker is forced to carry himself to the market from day to day and sell himself piece-meal in order to live.
ADVENT OF CAPITALISM.
It is perhaps a peculiar trick of fate that the first machine to play any part in the revolutionizing of industry should go down the ages with a woman's name—the spinning "Jenny." Should we perhaps take it as a token of woman's worse enslavement by the machine? Or does it forebode the dawn of her freedom? Certainly, it is the first for the factory girl of to-day! But evolution points to the machine as the emancipator of the woman of the future!
The spinning jenny was closely followed by the machine loom and a number of other appliances that completely revolutionized the textile industry. The manufacture of cloth had been woman's occupation throughout the ages. Already during the handicraft period had she commenced to do this work for a livelihood. The competition soon became impossible. The revolution in the weaving industry took this branch of work from the home and made it an industrial pursuit. It became factory work. In England with the development of this industry, and the opening of the world's markets for the products, the demand for wool greatly increased. Merrie England that had been dotted with independent homes was converted into a great sheep pasture. When the process of concentration was too slow the people were forcibly evicted from the land. Home industry was extinguished. The victimized peasants congregated in towns to seek employment. Men, women, and children alike sought refuge from starvation in the factory. The conditions of labor were beyond description. The workers were poor, ignorant and unorganized. Every advantage could be taken of them. The workshops were unsanitary and degrading. The wages were as low as misery could make them and there were practically no limits to the hours of labor. The degradation of the population defies description. The women and children being the weaker ones, suffered the most bitterly. But in proportion as they crowded into the workshops men were also crowded out. Thousands of men sought the highways as tramps and became a menace to the owners of property. Stringent laws were made against them, and it went so far that men were even hanged for vagrancy. That is the manner in which capitalism announces its advent upon the world's stage. Thus did England become the workshop of the world and the Mistress of the Sea, and on the misery of the workers did the English capitalists grow into wealthy lordlings.
"THE NEW WOMAN."
Bearing in mind that it is the economic relations that determine the social relations, we may now trace woman's position in existing society. What remains of the economic foundation of the middle-age home? We may well say, absolutely nothing! All the good old womanly occupations are to-day industrial pursuits. The economic foundation of the woman at home has for a second time been entirely knocked from under her. This time it is the factory with its machine production that has made home labor unprofitable. Woman has no post in the home unless she remains there merely as mother or as housekeeper on a small scale for the man who is lucky enough to afford the luxury. But the very restlessness of the women demonstrates the instability of their position. They get "lonesome," a disease unknown among our busy grandmothers. The upper class woman drowns her lonesomeness by delving headlong into society. "Society" is another name for balls and suppers and dissipations and high living and strong drinks and exciting gambling and genteel cigarette smoking. The middle class woman tries to dispel her lonesomeness at the "club." The working woman's restlessness turns to finding work. Even when not actually driven thereto by necessity her mind turns towards work. The work in the little home is insufficient and non-productive. It does not give satisfaction. Daughters, sisters, and often wives desirous of having the family "get on" better go to the factory, store or office to seek work. To learn a trade and find an occupation is nowadays as much the thought of the girls as of the boys. Marriage is not the rule nor is it the haven to which woman looks for her support. It is incidental. The work is the rule and the means whereby she feels surest to be able to live. It is time enough to learn housekeeping when a girl is married. There is not much to learn anyhow in these days of canned goods and bakers' kitchens. For that matter, it is found to be about as cheap not to keep house.
With this change in the economic relations came inevitably the corresponding changes in social relations, in manners, customs and ideas. Not only has the upper class woman broken loose in "society," not only has the middle class woman broken loose in the club, but the working woman also has broken the narrow bonds that were the result of a narrow social horizon. The woman's activity no longer being confined to the home her pleasures and associations could of course not remain confined to it. She can be seen on the street, alone or in company any hour out of the twenty-four without being considered indecent. Early hours and late hours, day work and night work have taken care of that. Being an independent wage earner woman would of course soon seek and pay for her own pleasures too. In these days of bachelor maidens it is too tedious a process to wait for the lover to take one out. So woman can go alone to balls, concerts, theaters, etc., without shocking the "decency" and "modesty" of the community. The commandment of the early Christian apostle that woman must not be heard in public is no longer recognized even by the most devout worshipers of the gospel themselves. Women are very much heard from in the fashionable churches and the Salvation lassies have done us the service of dispelling the last remnants of old fashioned modesty and backwardness.
The movements of women are freer than ever before in class society. Indeed we might almost say they are free. Therein consists the upward step in her evolution, no matter what other degrading influences may be at work.
Such are the changes in ethics and morals, customs and ideas wrought among the women of the last century! What would the women of the revolutionary days, if they suddenly came to earth, think of the Twentieth Century Woman?
WOMAN'S INVASION OF INDUSTRY.
When society's economic foundation was removed from the home, we saw that the women of the working class naturally drifted to the shop and the factory. There they found the doors open for them. The division of labor has done away with skill and consequently the long period of apprenticeship. The workers are machine tenders, feeders of the mechanism or receivers of the finished product, packers, pasters, labelers, etc. What is entirely needed in some branches are nimble fingers, close application to work, patience and submission.
The first result of the introduction of machinery was the increased competition among men for jobs. That lowered wages. Then machinery simplified the labor process. That opened the field for women and children, which threw still more workers into the field of competition for jobs. That lessened the chance for marriage and the raising of families. To-day, it takes the combined effort of the adult members of a family—and often even of the children—to keep the family alive. When they succeed in more than merely keeping "the wolf from the door" the demand of civilization is ever for better things and tastes are cultivated, To satisfy these tastes, the workers are perfectly willing to work. Especially is that true of the younger generation that would almost rather never have been born than not to be "up to the times."
The capitalist class is ever after profits. Therefore, they are ever after cheap and easily exploited labor. Therefore do they joyfully employ women and children whenever possible. That women are cheaper than men there can be no denying. Why it should be so even when they perform the same work ought not in the least to cause any wonder. There is almost a world's history behind that. Traditionally they are not the bread winners. Even to-day thousands of them work only to help the family eke out, or to earn for themselves clothes and pin-money. They have never been the fighters of the world and are therefore more easily subdued and imposed upon by their bosses. They have never moved en masse and are therefore unused to organization and generally remain unorganized.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.
There is one phenomenon peculiar to modern society which perhaps more than actual starvation is responsible for driving all the members of the family into the nets of capitalist exploitation. That is the uncertainty of things. The sceptre of want is as dreadful as want itself. The introduction of labor-saving machinery throws thousands of workers out of employment from time to time. No one knows whose turn it is next. Neither the most skilful mechanic nor the almost exclusive brainworker is out of reach of the competition of the machine. The division of labor and technical and modern methods make it ever possible to substitute cheap labor for dear labor.
Moreover, the tremendous magnitude and increased speed of modern production and transportation and the perpetual attempt on the part of the capitalists to increase their profits by neglecting to install costly safety appliances and proper means of precaution make modern production ever more precarious. The industrial field is a battlefield strewn with the corpses of the working class. He who leaves for work in the morning can never be sure that he will not return a cripple, or even that he will return alive, at all. The poet sings of man's inhumanity to man in past ages of brutality. Wars have always been destructive. The healthy, able-bodied men have been killed off and women have been left widows and children orphans. At such times the women have often had to buckle down to hard work and drudgery. There is less of that sort of warfare to-day, but the industrial battle is far more destructive. More people perish annually upon it than were killed in the world's greatest battles. Just at this writing (December, 1907), the civilized world should experience a thrill of horror, if the commonness of such things had not long ago worn off the effect at several most dreadful mine disasters. Does the civilized world of our "democratic government" ever give a thought as to what becomes of, what suffering has to be gone through by the widows and orphans of the miners whose charred bodies are now being excavated from several mines?
Society is becoming more and more reckless as to its expenditure of human life. Everybody, therefore, is anxious "to look out. for a rainy day" and it is sure to "rain" sometime, but the worst is that it generally "rains" long before the workers have had chance to prepare for it. Herein lies one reason why girls are very anxious to learn a trade or office work, because "no one knows but it may come in handy sometime." "Something may happen to father," or if she expects to get married the day may yet come when she may have to support herself and her children. This uncertainty, too, makes marriage less attractive. It far from furnishes a girl a safe and sure asylum for the future. On the other hand, it mirages the prospect of a family for which she may have to care.
With continual disquietude about the future, who can wonder that a perfect mania for work takes possession of man, woman and child in civilized society?
FACTORY LIFE.
Employment is to-day the rule for women. Marriage is incidental. Old maids and old bachelors have grown apace during the last fifty years. In the factory districts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut there are whole "she towns." In the mining, lumber and railroad camps of Pennsylvania, Ohio and the far West are whole "he towns." "Everybody works but father," sing the songsters of a New England textile town.
There are those who hail with joy the freedom and independence of the industrial woman worker. That is almost to add insult to injury. Capitalism has torn the home asunder: has broken all the ties of family relationship; has made tramps out of thousands of men; has created arduous toil for the women; has taken the children from the home, the school and the playground; has thrown each into competition with all and ground their brains, bones, and sinews into profits. Wage slavery spells the very opposite of freedom and independence. Of what brand is the freedom of the thousands of girls who go to the factory of a morning for a long day's toil? Those hours mean misery, slavery, and degradation to them. The atmosphere is unhealthy, mentally, morally and physically. Though the work is simplified and easy its continual sameness is wearisome and hard. Lond standing on her feet destroys a woman's health. The whole combination of circumstances unsexes her and makes her unfit to become a wife and mother. It stunts her mentally and makes her stupified and coarse. It forces on moral degradation in the same degree that it destroys healthy family life and physical and mental culture. Nothing is more repugnant than the unsexed, boldfaced, rude, masculine girl, unless it be the weazened, physically deteriorated, effeminate man. Capitalist society produces a plentiful group of each. A likeness is produced between the sexes, but likeness is not equality. Boldness is not independence. To be rude and tough and do as one pleases is not to be free and strong and a person of character and will.
Factory life is the very opposite of freedom. It is wage slavery. There never was a worse slave-driver than the exacting, ignorant, overbearing boss of to-day. Work and toil and worry and strife can only destroy the mental faculties, and freedom can only come from knowledge and understanding. The road to freedom may indeed lead through the industrial workshop, but the goal is not reached until humanity has made the machine its slave, instead of being a slave to it and the few owners thereof.
EDUCATION.
[t is not only factory work that woman has invaded, but she is probably an even more formidable competitor of man in the educational and professional branches of work. Every such occupation has been invaded by woman. She has taken the pulpit and the professor’s chair. The majority of teachers in the grammar grades and high schools are women. Of clerks, bookkeepers, stenographers, typewriters, there are more women than men.
With the development of a general and complicated system of commerce such as capitalist distribution necessitated, the demand increased greatly for persons to perform this kind of work. Moreover, branches of industry sprung up in which the workers required knowledge, or at least scraps of knowledge of sciences such as chemistry, mathematics, drawing, languages, etc. In every previous social stage, education has been a special privilege enjoyed only by a favored and exclusive class. This class was strong by its power of knowledge and enjoyed high privileges. But with the development of the chemical, technical and clerical branches of industry, capitalism demanded that knowledge and brain as well as brawn and muscle should be mere commodities. An article in such demand could not remain a special privilege of a favored élite. Therefore, it has come about that the institutions of education and learning have grown apace. Therefore, too, no doubt, it is that the instinct of capitalist "philanthropists" leads them to establish libraries and universities and trades schools with such "tainted money" as can be well spared from the field of exploitation and riotous society life. Schooling has been cheapened so that it is within reach of almost anyone. Moreover, it has been extended to both sexes alike. Girls can acquire education equally with the boys, and as a natural consequence women can enter old and new branches of such work in equal competition with men.
But not only was education cheapened as concerns its acquirements. It was actually reduced in quality. It has become thin and watery, so to speak. It is true indeed that a ten-year-old child to-day knows, almost by intuition, many common rules of science that were disputed or even wholly unknown to the greatest philosophers and students of ancient times. But for all that a college student to-day is not necessarily either a philosopher or scientist. Philosophers and scientists, developed or in embryo, are as scarce to the pro rata of population to-day as ever before in the world's history. Common education to-day is routine knowledge of specific technical branches. It is a stuffing process rather than an assimilating process. It produces specialists, quick at performing routine work but who possess little knowledge outside of it. It has reduced education to a mere commodity. It has created an educated proletariat that upon the labor market has exactly the same standing as the industrial proletariat.
But for all that, even poor education is a step in advance of no education. Capitalism has in this as in many other respects proven itself a great equalizer. While the mass of students and scholars to-day are in learning far below the students and learned men of yesterday, they are however in knowledge and education infinitely above the mass of people, even the wealthy and economically favored people, of every previous stage of history. At the same time, while the supercilious lament the decline in the status of learning because of generalization and specialization, there can be no doubt that the world to-day has its ample quota of eminent scholars in every branch of learning, and that science, art and literature are on a higher plane than ever before.
Capitalism is a transition period to a higher status of society. Equality is a corollary of high development. By throwing the educational institutions open, on the one hand, to the working class, and on the other hand to both sexes alike, capitalism has fulfilled a great mission to the human race. Knowledge breeds thirst for knowledge. Thorough and sound education must follow poor and specialized education. Once the human race has learned enough to realize how infinitely little it really knows and how many grand and wonderful things there are to learn, then the greatest avenue to knowledge has been opened. Once the women have entered this avenue with equal opportunities with the men they will be quite sure to try to keep up the pace. In women of science and knowledge and determination the rising generation will find quite different educators and companions than in the supercilious, society-hunting, flighty and ignorantly egotistic women of to-day. The child will acquire almost as his birth-right, principles of knowledge and science and rules of health that to-day are difficult to inculcate even in the best of people.
Once such people are on the earth there is little room for slavery and oppression! Freedom and equality of all humanity, must at last prevail!
"THE SERVANT PROBLEM."
It is scarcely possible to expostulate on woman's troubles and tribulations without stumbling upon this much disputed ground. Of all the worries of the society woman, the problem of controlling her menials is probably a little the worst. The lackeys, that is, the genuine hangers-on of plutocracy, constitute at the present time a large class of people. The more riotous the society life of plutocracy becomes the larger grows the army that they draw in their wake. The train must needs be long to make a splendid show, equal or over and above, their society rivals. They keep whole such retinues for mountain homes, seaside homes and city homes, homes in the south and homes in the north. Some fit out whole floating palaces and make cruises around the world, waited on and bowed to at every turn. Some have nurses for their poodles and flunkies that take them for an airing.
These places with the rich are desirable refuges for men and women who can curb their entire individuality and become mere mummies and lickspittles. There is no indignity to which the typical flunky will not stoop. Often, however, the servant gets the mastery over the master. They are the go-betweens in dissipations and secret adventures. If these are to remain secret the servant must be bought. But one that can be bought for silence can also be bought to talk. Thus these inevitable evils to a useless and corrupt class become the scourge and menace of their good master or mistress, who often becomes entirely tyrannized by them. In most of the great scandals the servant plays a formidable part as a witness. But it depends on which side can buy, whether he is silent or talks. The rumors and small gossip that are always afloat concerning various society people mostly come through the servants' hall. There is no doubt that society ardently wishes that we still lived in the age when the servant class could be reduced to dumb mutes and eunuchs.
The lackey class furnishes no field for Socialist propaganda. They ave hangers-on of the rich and are as a rule ardent upholders of the system that furnishes them with a parasite upon whom they in turn prey. The richer and the more lavish and extravagant the master class the better are the pickings that fall to the lackey. They therefore stand firmly by the rich in all their folly and extravagance. They hate the industrial proletariat by nature and instinct as opponents of the class that furnishes them with their lazy good-for-nothing lives. In turn they are most heartily despised by the industrial proletariat. Lackey and flunky have become terms of actual contempt.
Of all the subjects of discussion in the middle class woman's club, this one of the servant has probably been the most difficult to solve. They have lost all patience with the factory and store. It has taken the girls away from the domestic service and made them too "proud" and "independent" to be domineered over by an overbearing mistress. Girls nowadays do not care much to give up their evenings and Sundays and don't want to ask anybody when they can go or when they shall return when the work is once done. In short, it is the employment of women in the factory that has created this ticklish servant problem.
The middle class loves to ape the manners of the plutocracy. They cannot, of course, come up to it on account of the expense. But they will imitate as near as they can. The modern servant is a great obstacle in their way. They have not the wealth with which to buy obedience, cringing and crawling. The servile servant somehow manages sooner or later to get into the family of the rich. The independent servant is a holy terror to the middle class woman. If she is no good the house is turned topsy-turvy. If she is worth while keeping she becomes almost a household tyrant that can neither be domineered or dogged around. Girls are not kept in middle class homes to strut and flunky around. Their serving is no sinecure. They are there to work, they "are hired for it" and expect it. But being able and willing to work they stand not much of a lady's funny work. As a rule they are as ready to go as they were to come, and if they cannot get suitable servant work they look to the factory for employment. I have known of girls who quit their service because it was demanded of them to wear silly little caps on their heads such as no civilized person would put on. I have personally known a girl who left a splendid position as nurse of two little girls and took much harder and more disagreeable work because the mistress, who had very plutocratic notions, demanded that she should wear an apron on the street. She had never dressed that way and refused, insisting that her clothing was her own business, and so they parted. This girl was a refined, educated girl with the finest faculty for entertaining children. As a psychological study we took special pains to become acquainted with her successor and found her to be a coarse-grained, ignorant, foul-mouthed, slovenly girl, the mere association with whom would ruin any child. But she wore an apron and would have worn six to satisfy the mistress for whom she smirked and cringed to her face and roundly abused to her back.
Outside of the lackey and flunky, problems which remain for the rich to settle as best they can, the servant problem is being absorbed into the general industrial problem. The middle class home has very much a tendency to disappear, The apartment house and family hotel are taking its place. The "impudence" of the modern servant has much to do to hasten the course. That is proven again by the fact that this tendency is much less in evidence on the Pacific Coast where servile Japanese and Chinese servants can be had than in the East, where most the servants are Irish, German or Scandinavian girls who become much too quickly Americanized and will look for other work if the service does not suit.
Many of the old time servants' tasks have become real industrial pursuits. The cook, the waiter, the porter, the cab-man, the barber and even the bootblack are industrial proletarians. The "servant problem" therefore does not concern the Socialist. It will take care of itself in the happy course of social evolution.
MURDEROUS SOCIETY
In investigating the condition of woman there is one phenomenon that is striking and becomes more so as it is peculiar to modern society; that is, the growing frequency of the female cripple. We do not here have reference to the cripple by birth or from illness, but the industrial cripple, the otherwise healthy and able person maimed at her work. In a general way, the great recklessness of modern society as to its expenditure of human life on the industrial field has been referred to. But for that matter, human society has always been lavish in the expenditure of human life, if not upon one battlefield surely upon another. The marvel may well be that there are any human beings left to tell the tale of destruction, so vigorous have they been about it.
But in every previous society man has fought to protect the women and children of his own class or nation. On the industrial battle field, however, there is no protection afforded anybody. The strong cannot shield the weak. It is rather a scramble of all against all in a helpless jungle. Women have to take their share of the danger equally with men and often perish on the field. Whole factories have been blown up by combustible oils and gases and the corpses of women have been mingled with those of men. Dangerous conflagrations have broken out in workshops and both men and women have perished together or have jumped from upper stories together only to be maimed for life or killed.
Writers from the southern cotton mill districts tell us that it is a common thing to see little chlidren with their fingers and often their whole hands cut off. Women get arms and legs cut off by machinery of late with shocking frequency in every industrial state. The poets sing pretty airs to woman's finest adornment, her crown of luxuriant hair and the "equality" woman who cut it off to be like man did not stay in style very long and was never popular. But this very adornment has caused many women the most fearful torture It has caught in the machine at which they were working and they have been scalped as clean as if the most skilful redskin had done it with his knife. These cases are becoming common. Within the last few weeks five such cases have been reported in the papers that have come to my individual notice—three in the east, one in the middle west and one on the Pacific coast. Women's clothing also furnishes a particular source of danger. Many are the unfortunates whose dresses have been caught in the machinery and who have thus been hurled to an instantaneous death. While we scarcely would fall in line with the advocates of the bloomers as the only sure road to the millennium, we do unhesitatingly pronounce it criminal not to have proper safety appliances where women have to work in danger of such shocking deaths.
But as thousands upon thousands have gone under in humanity's onward course and thousands upon thousands: have been sacrificed upon the altar of progress, so these women are the sacrificed victims on the altar of a woman's broader life and approaching emancipation.
Woman's economic emancipation is necessary to her social and general emancipation. The road to economic emancipation leads through the factory. The old had to be entirely broken up to give room for the new. But in the process of transition, thousands are ground down with excessive toil, thousands suffer misery and degradation, others are maimed and murdered; but above all there is one bright star, the star of the emancipation of the human race from all forms of slavery.
UPWARD AND DOWNWARD TENDENCIES.
In the process of evolution in our age there are at work two decided tendencies, an upward and a downward one. Capitalist society discards yearly thousands of unfortunates from the real race of life. The slums grow apace. Women and men equally are the recruits for the slums. To the slums belong not only the unfortunates that live by begging, petty stealing, and other immoral practices. To them belong the whole useless degraded hanging-on element in: society. The female sex furnishes the tremendous army of professional prostitutes, and there are those in lace, silk and diamonds as well as in rags and tatters. Thieves, frauds, confidence men, horse racers, professional gamblers, and every other kind of fraud and "sport" are recruited from both sexes alike.
These are society's offscourings. It is a large class that may have to be reckoned with in time of social disturbances. They always swing to the side of the rich, from whose crumbs they live. In Russia to-day they are furnishing the reaction's "Black Hundred," the scourge of the revolutionary movement and the dread of the working class. They furnish no field for Socialist propaganda. They are themselves beyond redress and have no future generation for which to hope and work.
Even among the workers proper, those that remain within the realms of usefulness, there are downward tendencies. The intense and brainstunning work in the factory degrades the worker to a mere drudge. There remains no interest or incentive beyond work, eat and sleep. The men often drown their misery in drink. Who can blame them when one is really fair about it! Sometimes the women do the same, but then they are dangerously near the brink of the slums. Oftener they become crabid, stupified, reckless of personal appearances, narrow and peevish. The moral atmosphere in the factory is so polluted that both in word and deed the girls often hover on the brink of slum life. The thing that Roosevelt has designated as race-suicide has a most deteriorating influence on the womanly virtues of the women of to-day. Innocence, love, and virtue fall before it. Kindness, sympathy and motherly love are blunted. But it is on the increase, and the most strenuous presidential exertion cannot stop it. It is born in capitalist society from the uncertainty of a livelihood and the corresponding decline of healthy, happy, prosperous family life.
But the entire picture of modern society is not dark. It has some very bright spots indeed. There be those, mostly of the intellectual class or those that live by taking advantage of the ignorance of the workers, who declaim on the ignorance and stupidity of the workers and say that nothing can ever be done with them. These people are either dishonest or do not in the least comprehend the spirit of the working class.
It cannot be too carefully born in mind what the working class is—that it has been an enslaved class since the day man evolved out of barbarism. We bear on our backs as our birthright the marks of ages of slavery and servitude. For centuries the oppressed class has been whipped into submission. The most progressive, those that have ever dared to rebel, have been ruthlessly murdered. The tale is the same from the first uprising of slaves to the Paris Commune, Red Sunday or the Idaho and Colorado Bull Pens.
But in spite of all it has suffered, the working class to-day is educating itself the world over and is organizing for its emancipation. There are decided upward tendencies at work. The general and common education of both sexes has already been treated. The demand for an eight hour day is growing. With an eight hour day there is always some time for leisure and improvement. The right of the workers to organize is to-day at least morally conceded, however much it is contested in fact. The free association of boys and girls, men and women is probably one of the most uplifting tendencies. It creates a good natured rivalry that stimulates both sexes onward and it has the tendency to inspire each with what is good in the other.
On the whole we have great cause to rejoice at human progress. It has ever been only a small minority that led the human race onward and upward. That minority is proportionally ever so much larger to-day than ever before in history. Progress is far more general as it has penetrated all layers of society and is carrying with it its pro rata of the female sex that has been in the background throughout the ages.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
That so great and sudden economic changes and the corresponding changes in woman's position as took place with the introduction of capitalism should bring forth womanly abnormalities is not surprising. Some, drunk with their newly acquired freedom of action, were bound to make themselves ridiculous, over-bearing and domineering. They denounced all mankind and roundly upbraided man for what they termed his tyranny and oppression.
Artemus Ward, America's greatest humorist and satirist in the days of the breaking up of the old régime and the beginning of the new, has turned his pen to caricature the "Woman's Rightsist," as he caricatured and upbraided every sham and upstart in society. As "a wandering showman" he frequently runs across her and once when he has had an exceptionally hard tilt with numbers of the "Bumkumville Female Moral Reformin' & Wimin's Rite's Associashun" he exclaims: "O, woman, woman! you are a angle when you behave yourself; but when you take off your proper appairel & (mettyforically speakin')—get into pantyloons—when you desert your firesides, & with your heds full of wimin's rites noshuns go round like roarin lyons, seking whom you may devour someboddy—in short, when you undertake to play the man, you play the devil and air an emfatic noosance."
For some time this sort of a woman was very much in evidence. Woman imagined herself trampled upon and abused by man, but invariably when this sort of woman's rights were sifted down, they were inspired by a desire to rule and domineer, themselves. Some went so far as to deck themselves out in most ridiculous costumes, oftenest in imitation of man which went to prove that what they most desired was the place of him whom their envy caused them to abuse.
Not to quote against this woman only the man satirist I quote here also upon the same subject one of the foremost intellectual women of our day, the great actress Olga Nethersole, who says: "I do not sympathize with such of my sex—alas, far too many of us—who selfishly enshroud themselves in a self-pitying cloak of martyrdom and who, by some strange hallucination, imagine the whole world is arrayed against them. For them I entertain nothing but pity. They are invalids, mentally, morally and physically. Thank God, each succeeding generation sees fewer of these undesirables who seem to have been born to make their own and their friends' lives unhappy. They live paradoxically, for they are happiest when most unhappy."
In the progress of evolution the female has been the unfortunate sex. Woman has been selected for faculties good for the community, the nation and the general advance of the race in the struggle for existence, but which at the same time happened to be less in her favor as an individual being. In class society she has been additionally held back by property laws and sexual degradation. But for all that there is not the woman alive, unless she is utterly blinded by prejudices, who will not admit that woman's best friend is man and that her worst enemy is woman herself. Every man admires, and enjoys the society of the intellectual, progressive woman. The average woman, however, holds herself aloof from man's talk, man's views, man's interests and man's society in the full and broad and intellectual sense. If man treats woman as half a child and engages with her in petty, senseless tattle that he never would use among men, it is because woman herself invites it and would be infinitely bored by broad, healthy, vigorous "man talk" on the topics of the day or the interests of the world. It does not take the broad-minded man very many minutes to detect the broad-minded woman who has an interest in, and an understanding of, the world and its topics of interest.
The woman can never reach the level upon which man stands by making a row upon him. It will take vigorous work, unlimited patience, resistless endurance, and the healthy influence of several generations of energetic, educated, broad-minded mothers.
EQUAL SUFFRAGE.
The so-called woman question has, during the last years, boiled down almost entirely to a question of the ballot, the right of equal suffrage for man and woman. As a question of moral right, justice and equality, who but the most pig-headed can have any opposition to woman suffrage? She is part of society, she suffers keenly by its wrongs and she is, or ought to be, deeply interested in its progress. But politics and State rule came into the world with class society and its repression of woman. What is more natural, then, than that woman as a whole should share the fate of the oppressed classes and be prevented from partaking in the political deliberations of the privileged class?
At the present time it is not worth the while of the progressive, at least not of the Socialist, woman, to go one step out of her way to procure the ballot. The struggle to-day is a class struggle. The reforms that might be procured by use of the ballot are insignificant and could only serve to patch up existing society. We Socialists don't want it patched. As far as the ballot is and can be used to abolish the present system, let whosoever has it, use it. The working class is anyhow the immense majority of the population and is more than sufficient numerically to vote out present society when they are educated to do so. The great political battle of the working class is a battle of education. It is carried on with speech and with pen, and in this campaign the capable woman takes her place regardless of capitalistic laws, or of class society's restriction of the ballot.
In a Socialist society the question solves itself. The administration there will have for its aim the direction of industry, of production, and distribution, of education, enjoyment, and health, and will and must be carried out through these various branches. As woman partakes in all these branches of work she will unquestionably assume her part in the administration of them. She will assume this work naturally as her right and duty without either grant or favor.
As a peculiar manifestation of the manner in which progress works it cannot fail to be noted in this connection that it is under the most tyrannic government in the civilized world, in the Czar's domain, over in little Finland, that the women to-day stand out conspicuously with the highest political rights both as to the use of the suffrage and as to actually having been elected to the nation's highest legislative body. There we hail it indeed as progress and cheer it as one of woman's greatest accomplishments of the ages. It is progress indeed over there, as it greatly increases the vote of the oppressed class and the political forces opposed to autocracy. That country is not as yet ready for the Socialist revolution. Every reform lessens the powers of the Czar and the powers of the State. The spirit with which these Finnish women enter into this work is a glorious sign of woman's progress.
TRADES UNIONISM.
Morally it seems to be conceded that women have the same tights as men in the trade unions of the A. F. of L., and many people really think that they have so in fact, if they only took advantage of it. But these unions are capitalistic unions, i. e., they have for their basic principle that the interests of capital and labor are identical. As far as they serve labor it is only the pure self-interest, not the class interest, of a few favored members of a craft. From the nature of these facts they cannot be of much, if any, help to women in their struggle. Capital's interest in women's labor is to get cheap labor, and to interfere with that would be too much against the "mutual" interest. The only union we know that has declared for equal rights and equal wages for women and held strictly to the declaration is the Typographical Union. The result has been, not by any means, that it opened a branch of high paid labor for women but that they have been almost entirely kept out of a trade that they were as well fitted to work in as any other. So we see that the selfish interest of the typos has been served by their "spirit of equality and human rights." Most industries in which women work in great numbers have been entirely ignored by the organizers of the A. F. of L. That is quite consistent with its nature. The A. F. of L. is a graft organization as well as a craft organization. The leaders look for high dues and high initiation fees in order to keep them in high salaries and fat sinecures, and as women's wages are, as a rule, very low, it is a poor field for extortion. Competition, too, is great in women's branches, as the work is generally much simplified, and there would be but poor hope of creating a job monopoly. As a rule, therefore, the women have remained practically unorganized. They have made no efforts themselves and the A. F. of L. unions have made no efforts towards it.
The Shoe Workers, Textile and Laundry employees, however, have large mixed organizations. In them, however, have gone on the grossest fakirdom and hugest extortions. Their efforts have been mostly discouraging and all of their strikes have been defeated. The last Fall River textile strike can almost be said to have been disastrous, so much suffering and misery did ensue during it and from it, among these workers.
There have of course never been any efforts to equalize the wages of men and women in these trades, much less to bring women's wages up to what is considered "a fair wage," in the average organized craft. Women workers, whether organized or unorganized, have remained very poorly paid throughout. If craft unionism has failed to better materially the workers' condition even in the most favored craft, and if where wages ave been advanced it has been only by means of high dues and initiation fees that have kept other workers from the field of competition, how could it be expected that it could do anything for the trades where men, women and children ere pitted against each other in factories where the most improved and perfected machinery has simplified the labor process and made competition keen?
The action of women in the trade union movement has mostly boiled down to auxiliaries and Label Leagues. As these have for their purpose to help union labor by special efforts as purchasers on the field of distribution after the capitalist is through skinning the worker in the workshop, their efforts have been valueless and the interest has ever been small. There are few women that go out to trade with the workers' small purse who do not have far greater interests in the bargain counter than in the union label.
THE DOWNFALL OF CAPITALISM.
Capitalist society is working its own downfall. The concentration of wealth points to the fact that in the near future all industry in this country will be controlled by a very few men. It has been the historic mission of capitalism to improve and concentrate the means of production. The struggle of the individual capitalist on the industrial field has forced on the improvement of the machine as well as concentration itself. But this has created that which is bound to work the ultimate downfall of capitalism itself—namely, the Industrial Working Class. When the means of production grew too large for the owner himself to operate, he hired help. When his employees became numerous his profits grew large and so he could ultimately himself withdraw from the labor process and give his time either to financial schemes or pure enjoyment. All the work fell to wage labor, which really means that all the machines fell into the hands of wage workers. Not only do wage workers perform the actual process of physical labor, but every position in an industry, from manager and bookkeeper to the errand boy, is filled by wage workers. Then the scattered workshop has disappeared. The industry has arisen. Thousands of workers are collected under one roof, many thousands into one community. The division of labor has made one person dependent upon another, one labor process upon another, not only in one industry, but industry is interdependent upon industry. The shoe. worker for an example cannot make shoes without the machine which requires a number of industries, from the miner to the metal polisher, nor without raw material which requires a number more, nor without light, fuel and power which take in some more again, nor without food, clothin and shelter which come near taking in, directly or indirectly all the rest.
The process of labor is co-operative in the fullest sense of the word. The workshop only is private property. Thousands of workers have never seen their employer and often do not know who he is, still some one, somewhere, owns the machines and appropriates the product. It is, under such circumstances, only natural that the co-operative process of labor should point to the co-operative ownership of the machine and the products.
It is only on account of the wrong vision of the working class that it submits to this exploitation. They imagine that the capitalist gives the workers work and that they therefore are dependent upon the capitalists. It can be only a matter of time until the workers must realize their illusion, and then the real truth will appear plainly, namely that it is they who give up the products of their labor and that, therefore, it is the capitalists who are dependent upon the workers. They will then realize the necessity of the machines becoming collective property, and as they already are in reality in possession of the machines, it will be an easy matter to oust the present owners.
But the capitalist class, like every other ruling class, will try to perpetuate its power to the very last. So they set race against race and man against woman in order to blur the class struggle. Through the press and other mouth-pieces they declaim loudly against the Mongolians, but the capitalist class see to it that they get plenty of cheap and easily exploited Mongolians into the country. Through the same organs they tell about women being the competitor of man and how she lowers his wages and his standard of living, but they joyfully hire women and exploit them to the very last notch. The capitalists never take themselves seriously. It is only the workers that are supposed to take them seriously!
But you cannot fool all the people all the time. It is only a matter of time until the mass of workers will realize the iniquities of capitalism even as the Socialists already do. The process of evolution is inevitable. It points to the co-operative ownership of the already co-operatively operated means of production. The capitalist system his reached its fullest development. It has fulfilled its mission. Society can progress no farther capitalistically. If progress is to continue, Socialism is inevitable. But systems may retrograde. There have been long periods of retrogression in history. After the downfall of the Roman Empire there followed five centuries of dark ages in Europe. Progress had to work out through side streets and by-ways, so to speak. But the revival came in the fullness of time. It had to come. Human progress cannot be indefinitely stopped.
To-day it depends upon the working class whether progress shall continue in the direct road which evolution points out to the human race. The working class is the class of progress. It operates the means of production. It must be the future owner. Class rule must disappear and the whole people must be co-owners and co-workers. Before this can be accomplished, however, it takes much education of the workers. They must become class conscious, self-reliant and able to manage industry through their industrial administration. If the workers cannot rise to that point, however, then the course of wealth points inevitably towards imperialism, to the capitalist-feudal rule of a few and the absolute enslavement of the masses. There is no middle way. Wealth production and distribution are the determining factors of the status of the people, of freedom or slavery, of customs, ideas and laws. The to-morrow of the world is Socialism and freedom, or capitalist imperialism and coolie slavery!
Can the women of the working class, can any woman indeed, afford to ignore this? Woman's first instinct is as mother. For her child she is willing to sacrifice all. How can she stand lazily by while the dear little ones of to-day, the men and women of the future are threatened with slavery and oppression? Is it not worth a woman's while to spend a few short hours to learn about Socialism? Is it not her place to join hands with the workingmen for its accomplishment?