The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

C >> Charlotte Perkins Gilman >> The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62

"I could make it keep us, anyhow," he would plan to himself; "and I
could get at that guinea pig idea. Or maybe hens would do." He had a
theory of his own, or a personal test of his own, rather, which he
wished to apply to a well known theory. It would take some years to
work it out, and a great many fine pigs, and be of no possible value
financially. "I'll do it sometime," he always concluded; which was cold
comfort.

His real grief at losing the companionship of the girl he loved, was
made more bitter by a total lack of sympathy with her aims, even if she
achieved them--in which he had no confidence. He had no power to change
his course, and tried not to be unpleasant about it, but he had to
express his feelings now and then.

"Are you coming back to me?" he wrote. "How con you bear to give so
much pain to everyone who loves you? Is your wonderful salary worth
more to you than being here with your mother--with me? How can you say
you love me--and ruin both our lives like this? I cannot come to see
you--I _would_ not come to see you--calling at the back door! Finding
the girl I love in a cap and apron! Can you not see it is wrong,
utterly wrong, all this mad escapade of yours? Suppose you do make a
thousand dollars a year--I shall never touch your money--you know that.
I cannot even offer you a home, except with my family, and I know how
you feel about that; I do not blame you.

"But I am as stubborn as you are, dear girl; I will not live on my
wife's money--you will not live in my mother's house--and we are
drifting apart. It is not that I care less for you dear, or at all for
anyone else, but this is slow death--that's all."

Mrs. Warden wrote now and then and expatiated on the sufferings of her
son, and his failing strength under the unnatural strain, till Diantha
grew to dread her letters more than any pain she knew. Fortunately they
came seldom.

Her own family was much impressed by the thousand dollars, and found the
occupation of housekeeper a long way more tolerable than that of
house-maid, a distinction which made Diantha smile rather bitterly.
Even her father wrote to her once, suggesting that if she chose to
invest her salary according to his advice he could double it for her in
a year, maybe treble it, in Belgian hares.

_"They'd_ double and treble fast enough!" she admitted to herself; but
she wrote as pleasant a letter as she could, declining his proposition.

Her mother seemed stronger, and became more sympathetic as the months
passed. Large affairs always appealed to her more than small ones, and
she offered valuable suggestions as to the account keeping of the big
house. They all assumed that she was permanently settled in this well
paid position, and she made no confidences. But all summer long she
planned and read and studied out her progressive schemes, and
strengthened her hold among the working women.

Laundress after laundress she studied personally and tested
professionally, finding a general level of mediocrity, till finally she
hit upon a melancholy Dane--a big rawboned red-faced woman--whose
husband had been a miller, but was hurt about the head so that he was no
longer able to earn his living. The huge fellow was docile, quiet, and
endlessly strong, but needed constant supervision.

"He'll do anything you tell him, Miss, and do it well; but then he'll
sit and dream about it--I can't leave him at all. But he'll take the
clothes if I give him a paper with directions, and come right back."
Poor Mrs. Thorald wiped her eyes, and went on with her swift ironing.

Diantha offered her the position of laundress at Union House, with two
rooms for their own, over the laundry. "There'll be work for him, too,"
she said. "We need a man there. He can do a deal of the heavier
work--be porter you know. I can't offer him very much, but it will help
some."

Mrs. Thorald accepted for both, and considered Diantha as a special
providence.

There was to be cook, and two capable second maids. The work of the
house must be done thoroughly well, Diantha determined; "and the food's
got to be good--or the girls wont stay." After much consideration she
selected one Julianna, a "person of color," for her kitchen: not the
jovial and sloppy personage usually figuring in this character, but a
tall, angular, and somewhat cynical woman, a misanthrope in fact, with a
small son. For men she had no respect whatever, but conceded a grudging
admiration to Mr. Thorald as "the usefullest biddablest male person" she
had ever seen. She also extended special sympathy to Mrs. Thorald on
account of her peculiar burden, and the Swedish woman had no antipathy
to her color, and seemed to take a melancholy pleasure in Julianna's
caustic speeches.

Diantha offered her the place, boy and all. "He can be 'bell boy' and
help you in the kitchen, too. Can't you, Hector?" Hector rolled large
adoring eyes at her, but said nothing. His mother accepted the
proposition, but without enthusiasm. "I can't keep no eye on him, Miss,
if I'm cookin' an less'n you keep your eye on him they's no work to be
got out'n any kind o' boy."

"What is your last name, Julianna?" Diantha asked her.

"I suppose, as a matter o' fac' its de name of de last nigger I
married," she replied. "Dere was several of 'em, all havin' different
names, and to tell you de truf Mis' Bell, I got clean mixed amongst 'em.
But Julianna's my name--world without end amen."

So Diantha had to waive her theories about the surnames of servants in
this case.

"Did they all die?" she asked with polite sympathy.

"No'm, dey didn't none of 'em die--worse luck."

"I'm afraid you have seen much trouble, Julianna," she continued
sympathetically; "They deserted you, I suppose?"

Julianna laid her long spoon upon the table and stood up with great
gravity. "No'm," she said again, "dey didn't none of 'em desert me on
no occasion. I divorced 'em."

Marital difficulties in bulk were beyond Diantha's comprehension, and
she dropped the subject.

Union House opened in the autumn. The vanished pepper trees were dim
with dust in Orchardina streets as the long rainless summer drew to a
close; but the social atmosphere fairly sparkled with new interest.
Those who had not been away chattered eagerly with those who had, and
both with the incoming tide of winter visitors.

"That girl of Mrs. Porne's has started her housekeeping shop!"

"That 'Miss Bell' has got Mrs. Weatherstone fairly infatuated with her
crazy schemes."

"Do you know that Bell girl has actually taken Union House? Going to
make a Girl's Club of it!"

"Did you ever _hear_ of such a thing! Diantha Bell's really going to
try to run her absurd undertaking right here in Orchardina!"

They did not know that the young captain of industry had deliberately
chosen Orchardina as her starting point on account of the special
conditions. The even climate was favorable to "going out by the day,"
or the delivery of meals, the number of wealthy residents gave
opportunity for catering on a large scale; the crowding tourists and
health seekers made a market for all manner of transient service and
cooked food, and the constant lack of sufficient or capable servants
forced the people into an unwilling consideration of any plan of
domestic assistance.

In a year's deliberate effort Diantha had acquainted herself with the
rank and file of the town's housemaids and day workers, and picked her
assistants carefully. She had studied the local conditions thoroughly,
and knew her ground. A big faded building that used to be "the Hotel'
in Orchardina's infant days, standing, awkward and dingy on a site too
valuable for a house lot and not yet saleable as a business block, was
the working base.

A half year with Mrs. Weatherstone gave her $500 in cash, besides the
$100 she had saved at Mrs. Porne's; and Mrs. Weatherstone's cheerfully
offered backing gave her credit.

"I hate to let you," said Diantha, "I want to do it all myself."

"You are a painfully perfect person, Miss Bell," said her last employer,
pleasantly, "but you have ceased to be my housekeeper and I hope you
will continue to be my friend. As a friend I claim the privilege of
being disagreeable. If you have a fault it is conceit. Immovable
Colossal Conceit! And Obstinacy!"

"Is that all?" asked Diantha.

"It's all I've found--so far," gaily retorted Mrs. Weatherstone. "Don't
you see, child, that you can't afford to wait? You have reasons for
hastening, you know. I don't doubt you could, in a series of years,
work up this business all stark alone. I have every confidence in those
qualities I have mentioned! But what's the use? You'll need credit for
groceries and furniture. I am profoundly interested in this business.
I am more than willing to advance a little capital, or to ensure your
credit. A man would have sense enough to take me up at once."

"I believe you are right," Diantha reluctantly agreed. "And you shan't
lose by it!"

Her friends were acutely interested in her progress, and showed it in
practical ways. The New Woman's Club furnished five families of patrons
for the regular service of cooked food, which soon grew, with
satisfaction, to a dozen or so, varying from time to time. The many
families with invalids, and lonely invalids without families, were glad
to avail themselves of the special delicacies furnished at Union House.
Picnickers found it easier to buy Diantha's marvelous sandwiches than to
spend golden morning hours in putting up inferior ones at home; and many
who cooked for themselves, or kept servants, were glad to profit by this
outside source on Sunday evenings and "days out."

There was opposition too; both the natural resistance of inertia and
prejudice, and the active malignity of Mrs. Thaddler.

The Pornes were sympathetic and anxious.

"That place'll cost her all of $10,000 a year, with those twenty-five to
feed, and they only pay $4.50 a week--I know that!" said Mr. Porne.

"It does look impossible," his wife agreed, "but such is my faith in
Diantha Bell I'd back her against Rockefeller!"

Mrs. Weatherstone was not alarmed at all. "If she _should_ fail--which
I don't for a moment expect--it wont ruin me," she told Isabel. "And if
she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk
almost anything to prove Mrs. Thaddler in the wrong."

Mrs. Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable. She used what
power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively
malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition. He never
argued with his wife--she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if
it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make
against him, which mode him angrily silent. He was convinced in a dim
way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often
showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even in
their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain and
discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it,
naturally.

"That Diantha Bell is a fine girl," he said to himself. "A damn fine
girl, and as straight as a string!"

There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a
varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the
town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to
Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were. His Grandmother, finding Mrs.
Thaddler invincible with this new weapon, and what she had so long
regarded as her home now visibly Mrs. Weatherstone's, had retired in
regal dignity to her old Philadelphia establishment, where she upheld
the standard of decorum against the weakening habits of a deteriorated
world, for many years.

As Mr. Thaddler thought of this sweeping victory, he chuckled for the
hundredth time. "She ought to make good, and she will. Something's got
to be done about it," said he.

Diantha had never liked Mr. Thaddler; she did not like that kind of man
in general, nor his manner toward her in particular. Moreover he was
the husband of Mrs. Thaddler. She did not know that he was still the
largest owner in the town's best grocery store, and when that store
offered her special terms for her exclusive trade, she accepted the
proposition thankfully.

She told Ross about it, as a matter well within his knowledge, if not
his liking, and he was mildly interested. "I am much alarmed at this
new venture," he wrote, "but you must get your experience. I wish I
could save you. As to the groceries, those are wholesale rates, nearly;
they'll make enough on it. Yours is a large order you see, and steady."

When she opened her "Business Men's Lunch" Mr. Thaddler had a still
better opportunity. He had a reputation as a high flyer, and had really
intended to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship by patronizing
and praising this "undertaking" at any cost to his palate; but no
sacrifice was needed.

Diantha's group of day workers had their early breakfast and departed,
taking each her neat lunch-pail,--they ate nothing of their
employers;--and both kitchen and dining room would have stood idle till
supper time. But the young manager knew she must work her plant for all
it was worth, and speedily opened the dining room with the side entrance
as a "Caffeteria," with the larger one as a sort of meeting place;
papers and magazines on the tables.

From the counter you took what you liked, and seated yourself, and your
friends, at one of the many small tables or in the flat-armed chairs in
the big room, or on the broad piazza; and as this gave good food,
cheapness, a chance for a comfortable seat and talk and a smoke, if one
had time, it was largely patronized.

Mr. Thaddler, as an experienced _bon vivant,_ despised sandwiches.
"Picnicky makeshifts" he called them,--"railroad rations"--"bread and
leavings," and when he saw these piles on piles of sandwiches, listed
only as "No. 1," "No. 2" "No. 3," and so on, his benevolent intention
wavered. But he pulled himself together and took a plateful, assorted.

"Come on, Porne," he said, "we'll play it's a Sunday school picnic," and
he drew himself a cup of coffee, finding hot milk, cream and sugar
crystals at hand. "I never saw a cheap joint where you could fix it
yourself, before," he said,--and suspiciously tasted the mixture.

"By jing! That's coffee!" he cried in surprise. "There's no scum on
the milk, and the cream's cream!" Five cents! She won't get rich on
this."

Then he applied himself to his "No. 1" sandwich, and his determined
expression gave way to one of pleasure. "Why that's bread--real bread!
I believe she made it herself!"

She did in truth,--she and Julianna with Hector as general assistant.
The big oven was filled several times every morning: the fresh rolls
disappeared at breakfast and supper, the fresh bread was packed in the
lunch pails, and the stale bread was even now melting away in large
bites behind the smiling mouths and mustaches of many men. Perfect
bread, excellent butter, and "What's the filling I'd like to know?"
More than one inquiring-minded patron split his sandwich to add sight to
taste, but few could be sure of the flavorsome contents, fatless,
gritless, smooth and even, covering the entire surface, the last
mouthful as perfect as the first. Some were familiar, some new, all
were delicious.

The six sandwiches were five cents, the cup of coffee five, and the
little "drop cakes," sweet and spicy, were two for five. Every man
spent fifteen cents, some of them more; and many took away small cakes
in paper bags, if there were any left.

"I don't see how you can do it, and make a profit," urged Mr. Eltwood,
making a pastorial call. "They are so good you know!"

Diantha smiled cheerfully. "That's because all your ideas are based on
what we call 'domestic economy,' which is domestic waste. I buy in
large quantities at wholesale rates, and my cook with her little helper,
the two maids, and my own share of the work, of course, provides for the
lot. Of course one has to know how."

"Whenever did you find--or did you create?--those heavenly sandwiches?"
he asked.

"I have to thank my laundress for part of that success," she said.
"She's a Dane, and it appears that the Danes are so fond of sandwiches
that, in large establishments, they have a 'sandwich kitchen' to prepare
them. It is quite a bit of work, but they are good and inexpensive.
There is no limit to the variety."

As a matter of fact this lunch business paid well, and led to larger
things.

The girl's methods were simple and so organized as to make one hand wash
the other. Her house had some twenty-odd bedrooms, full accommodations
for kitchen and laundry work on a large scale, big dining, dancing, and
reception rooms, and broad shady piazzas on the sides. Its position on
a corner near the business part of the little city, and at the foot of
the hill crowned with so many millionaires and near millionaires as
could get land there, offered many advantages, and every one was taken.

The main part of the undertaking was a House Worker's Union; a group of
thirty girls, picked and trained. These, previously working out as
servants, had received six dollars a week "and found." They now worked
an agreed number of hours, were paid on a basis by the hour or day, and
"found" themselves. Each had her own room, and the broad porches and
ball room were theirs, except when engaged for dances and meetings of
one sort and another.

It was a stirring year's work, hard but exciting, and the only
difficulty which really worried Diantha was the same that worried the
average housewife--the accounts.

"THE OUTER REEF!"

(A Picture by Paul Dougherty.)

Who dares paint daylight?
The bright white light of flaming noon?
No blur of shadow, mist or haze,
Just the whole unobstructed blaze
Of hot mid-June.

No screen of leafage;
The keen clean green of summer sea;
Dazzle of surf in mid-day light,
The very sound of the surges' fight,
Broad--open--free.

The earth all stillness,
Noon hush on the pastures' height;
Turf topped cliffs with faces bare,
Bones of the earth unveiled to air,
Heat--breakers--light.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN~MADE WORLD

X.

LAW AND GOVERNMENT.

It is easy to assume that men are naturally the lawmakers and
law-enforcers, under the plain historic fact that they have been such
since the beginning of the patriarchate.

Back of law lies custom and tradition. Back of government lies the
correlative activity of any organized group. What group-insects and
group-animals evolve unconsciously and fulfill by their social
instincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill by arbitrary systems called
laws and governments. In this, as in all other fields of our action, we
must discriminate between the humanness of the function in process of
development, and the influence of the male or female upon it. Quite
apart from what they may like or dislike as sexes, from their differing
tastes and faculties, lies the much larger field of human progress, in
which they equally participate.

On this plane the evolution of law and government proceeds somewhat as
follows:--The early woman-centered group organized on maternal lines of
common love and service. The early combinations of men were first a
grouped predacity--organized hunting; then a grouped
belligerency,--organized warfare.

By special development some minds are able to perceive the need of
certain lines of conduct over others, and to make this clear to their
fellows; whereby, gradually, our higher social nature establishes rules
and precedents to which we personally agree to submit. The process of
social development is one of progressive co-ordination.

From independent individual action for individual ends, up to
interdependent social action for social ends we slowly move; the "devil"
in the play being the old Ego, which has to be harmonized with the new
social spirit. This social process, like all others, having been in
masculine hands, we may find in it the same marks of one-sided
Specialization so visible in our previous studies.

The coersive attitude is essentially male. In the ceaseless age-old
struggle of sex combat he developed the desire to overcome, which is
always stimulated by resistance; and in this later historic period of
his supremacy, he further developed the habit of dominance and mastery.
We may instance the contrast between the conduct of a man when "in love"
and while courting; in which period he falls into the natural position
of his sex towards the other--namely, that of a wooer; and his behavior
when, with marriage, they enter the, artificial relation of the master
male and servile female. His "instinct of dominance" does not assert
itself during the earlier period, which was a million times longer than
the latter; it only appears in the more modern and arbitrary relation.

Among other animals monogamous union is not accompanied by any such
discordant and unnatural features. However recent as this habit is when
considered biologically, it is as old as civilization when we consider
it historically: quite old enough to be a serious force. Under its
pressure we see the legal systems and forms of government slowly
evolving, the general human growth always heavily perverted by the
special masculine influence. First we find the mere force of custom
governing us, the _mores_ of the ancient people. Then comes the gradual
appearance of authority, from the purely natural leadership of the best
hunter or fighter up through the unnatural mastery of the patriarch,
owning and governing his wives, children, slaves and cattle, and making
such rules and regulations as pleased him.

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems,
which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce;
wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to
evade it when he can, obey it when he must. In the household, that
stunted, crippled rudiment of the matriarchate, where alone we can find
what is left of the natural influence of woman, the laws and government,
so far as she is responsible for them, are fairly simple, and bear
visible relation to the common good, which relation is clearly and
persistently taught.

In the larger household of city and state the educational part of the
law is grievously neglected. It makes no allowance for ignorance. If a
man breaks a law of which he never heard he is not excused therefore;
the penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a mother making solemn rules
and regulations for her family, telling the children nothing about them,
and then punishing them when they disobeyed the unknown laws!

The use of force is natural to the male; while as a human being he must
needs legislate somewhat in the interests of the community, as a male
being he sees no necessity for other enforcement than by penalty. To
violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the earth, to triumph in loud
bellowings of savage joy,--these are the primitive male instincts; and
the perfectly natural social instinct which leads to peaceful
persuasion, to education, to an easy harmony of action, are
contemptuously ranked as "feminine," or as "philanthropic,"--which is
almost as bad. "Men need stronger measures" they say proudly. Yes, but
four-fifths of the world are women and children!

As a matter of fact the woman, the mother, is the first co-ordinator,
legislator, administrator and executive. From the guarding and guidance
of her cubs and kittens up to the longer, larger management of human
youth, she is the first to consider group interests and co-relate them.

As a father the male grows to share in these original feminine
functions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized while
motherhood has not, he does the best he can, alone, to do the world's
mother-work in his father way.

In study of any long established human custom it is very difficult to
see it clearly and dispassionately. Our minds are heavily loaded with
precedent, with race-custom, with the iron weight called authority.
These heavy forces reach their most perfect expression in the absolutely
masculine field of warfare. The absolute authority; the brainless,
voiceless obedience; the relentless penalty. Here we have male coercion
at its height; law and government wholly arbitrary. The result is as
might be expected, a fine machine of destruction. But destruction is
not a human process--merely a male process of eliminating the unfit.

The female process is to select the fit; her elimination is negative and
painless.

Greater than either is the human process, to _develop fitness._

Men are at present far more human than women. Alone upon their
self-seized thrones they have carried as best they might the burdens of
the state; and the history of law and government shows them as changing
slowly but irresistably in the direction of social improvement.

The ancient kings were the joyous apotheosis of masculinity. Power and
Pride were theirs; Limitless Display; Boundless Self-indulgence;
Irresistable Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed before them,
subjects obeyed them, captive women filled their harems. But the day of
the masculine monarchy is passing, and the day of the human democracy is
coming in. In a Democracy Law and Government both change. Laws are no
longer imposed on the people by one above them, but are evolved from the
people themselves. How absurd that the people should not be educated in
the laws they make; that the trailing remnants of blind submission
should still becloud their minds and make them bow down patiently under
the absurd pressure of outgrown tradition!