The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

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

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Mercy, kindness, "humanity"--as we quite justifiably call it,--is a very
young virtue, growing with social growth. Cruelty was once the rule;
now the exception. The more inextricably our lives are interwoven in
the social fabric, the more we need the mutual love which is the natural
state of social beings; and this feeling becoming a necessity, it also
becomes a virtue. Similarly, as our lives depend on the presence and
service of other animals we need to be kind to them; and in our highest
development so far, kindness to animals has been elected virtue.

But of all virtues made of necessity, none is more glaringly in evidence
than the one we call "virtue" itself,--chastity. We call it "virtue"
because it is _the_ quality--and the only quality--which has been a
necessity to the possessor--woman. Her life depended absolutely on man.
He valued her in one relation, and in that relation demanded this one
thing;--that she serve him alone.

Because of this demand, to her an absolute necessity, we have developed
the virtue of chastity, and praised it above all others--in woman! But
in men it was not even considered a virtue, much less demanded and
enforced.

Could anything be clearer proof that virtue was made of necessity?

What we need to study now is the chief necessity of modern life. When
we have found that out we shall be able to rearrange our scale of
virtues.

ANIMALS IN CITIES

A city is a group residence for human beings. There is no room in it
for any animal but one--_Genus Homo._ At present we make a sort of
menagerie of it.

Genus Homo is the major factor, bus he shares his common home with many
other beasts, _genus equus,_ _genus canis,_ _genus felis,_ and members
of others whose Latin names are not so familiar.

The horse is most numerous. He is a clean animal, a good friend and
strong servant where animals belong--in the country. In the city he is
an enemy. His stable is a Depot for the Wholesale Distribution of
Diseases.

The services of the horse, and the tons upon tons of fertilizing
material produced by him, are financially valuable; but the injury from
many deaths, the yearly drain from long sickness, and all the doctors
and druggists bills, amounts to a far greater loss.

There is no horse work in a city that cannot be done by machine. The
carriage, wagon, truck and dray, can take his place as workers; and they
_breed no flies._

We are learning, learning fast, how large a proportion of diseases
spring from minute living things which get inside of us and play havoc
with our organism. And very lately we are learning further, that of all
the benevolent distributors of disease none are more swift and sure than
certain insects; insects which are born and bred in and upon the bodies
and excreta of animals.

It is true that our kitchen garbage furnishes another popular nursery
for flies, but the unclean stable is the other breeding place.

Next in number to the horse come the dog and cat. These creatures are
not healthy and not happy in a city. They cannot be kept there without
injury to them; and the injury is more than revenged upon their keepers.
The dog furnishes his quota of deaths from hydrophobia, as well as
plain "assault and battery;" he defiles our sidewalks, and the fruits
and vegetables exposed upon our sidewalks; he keeps us awake by his
forlorn howling; he has diseases of his own which we may receive from
him; and he has fleas.

The flea, as well as the fly, is a valiant and industrious purveyor of
disease. From beast to beast they hop, carrying their toxic germs with
them: and the dog, displeased with his persecutors, scratches them off
upon our carpets.

The same applies to cats. A cat in the country is clean and safe; a cat
in the city is neither--if it has any freedom. If a young kitten,
cleansed and flealess, were reared in a lofty apartment, it would be
clean, doubtless; but the usual cat is free on intersecting fences; and
in the contact of warfare, or of gentler feelings, the flea is free to
travel and exchange.

The rat and mouse come under the same condemnation; they have fleas.
They make dirt. They tend to increase and maintain our insect pests and
terrors. They penetrate to all unsavory places. They acquire disease
themselves, or carry the germs of it in their blood or on their fur.
Their parasites gather them up and give them to us. The rats will leave
a sinking ship, the fleas will leave a sinking rat, and among their
millions some of them come to us.

When we build cities clean and tight from basement to roof,--all
concrete, brick, stone, metal, and plaster; when the holes for pipes of
all sorts are scaled as they enter the home; when the kitchen is
eliminated by 90 per cent. and replaced by the food laboratories; when
no animal but man is allowed within city limits--and he is taught to
keep clean; we can then compare, for antiseptic cleanliness with a fine
hospital--and have few hospitals to compare with!

WHAT DIANTHA DID

XI.

THE POWER OF THE SCREW.

Your car is too big for one person to stir--
Your chauffeur is a little man, too;
Yet he lifts that machine, does the little chauffeur,
By the power of a gentle jackscrew.

Diantha worked.

For all her employees she demanded a ten-hour day, she worked fourteen;
rising at six and not getting to bed till eleven, when her charges were
all safely in their rooms for the night.

They were all up at five-thirty or thereabouts, breakfasting at six, and
the girls off in time to reach their various places by seven. Their day
was from 7 A. M. to 8.30 P. M., with half an hour out, from 11.30 to
twelve, for their lunch; and three hours, between 2.20 and 5.30, for
their own time, including their tea. Then they worked again from 5.30
to 8.30, on the dinner and the dishes, and then they came home to a
pleasant nine o'clock supper, and had all hour to dance or rest before
the 10.30 bell for bed time.

Special friends and "cousins" often came home with them, and frequently
shared the supper--for a quarter--and the dance for nothing.

It was no light matter in the first place to keep twenty girls contented
with such a regime, and working with the steady excellence required, and
in the second place to keep twenty employers contented with them. There
were failures on both sides; half a dozen families gave up the plan, and
it took time to replace them; and three girls had to be asked to resign
before the year was over. But most of them had been in training in the
summer, and had listened for months to Diantha's earnest talks to the
clubs, with good results.

"Remember we are not doing this for ourselves alone," she would say to
them. "Our experiment is going to make this kind of work easier for all
home workers everywhere. You may not like it at first, but neither did
you like the old way. It will grow easier as we get used to it; and we
_must_ keep the rules, because we made them!"

She laboriously composed a neat little circular, distributed it widely,
and kept a pile in her lunch room for people to take.

It read thus:

UNION HOUSE
Food and Service.

General Housework by the week . . . $10.00
General Housework by the day . . . $2.00
Ten hours work a day, and furnish their own food.
Additional labor by the hour . . . $ .20
Special service for entertainments, maids and waitresses, by the hour .
. . $ .25
Catering for entertainments.
Delicacies for invalids.
Lunches packed and delivered.
Caffeteria . . . 12 to 2

What annoyed the young manager most was the uncertainty and irregularity
involved in her work, the facts varying considerably from her
calculations.

In the house all ran smoothly. Solemn Mrs. Thorvald did the laundry
work for thirty-five--by the aid of her husband and a big mangle for the
"flat work." The girls' washing was limited. "You have to be
reasonable about it," Diantha had explained to them. "Your fifty cents
covers a dozen pieces--no more. If you want more you have to pay more,
just as your employers do for your extra time."

This last often happened. No one on the face of it could ask more than
ten hours of the swift, steady work given by the girls at but a fraction
over 14 cents an hour. Yet many times the housekeeper was anxious for
more labor on special days; and the girls, unaccustomed to the three
free hours in the afternoon, were quite willing to furnish it, thus
adding somewhat to their cash returns.

They had a dressmaking class at the club afternoons, and as Union House
boasted a good sewing machine, many of them spent the free hours in
enlarging their wardrobes. Some amused themselves with light reading, a
few studied, others met and walked outside. The sense of honest leisure
grew upon them, with its broadening influence; and among her thirty
Diantha found four or five who were able and ambitious, and willing to
work heartily for the further development of the business.

Her two housemaids were specially selected. When the girls were out of
the house these two maids washed the breakfast dishes with marvelous
speed, and then helped Diantha prepare for the lunch. This was a large
undertaking, and all three of them, as well as Julianna and Hector
worked at it until some six or eight hundred sandwiches were ready, and
two or three hundred little cakes.

Diantha had her own lunch, and then sat at the receipt of custom during
the lunch hour, making change and ordering fresh supplies as fast as
needed.

The two housemaids had a long day, but so arranged that it made but ten
hours work, and they had much available time of their own. They had to
be at work at 5:30 to set the table for six o'clock breakfast, and then
they were at it steadily, with the dining rooms to "do," and the lunch
to get ready, until 11:30, when they had an hour to eat and rest. From
12:30 to 4 o'clock they were busy with the lunch cups, the bed-rooms,
and setting the table for dinner; but after that they had four hours to
themselves, until the nine o'clock supper was over, and once more they
washed dishes for half an hour. The caffeteria used only cups and
spoons; the sandwiches and cakes were served on paper plates.

In the hand-cart methods of small housekeeping it is impossible to exact
the swift precision of such work, but not in the standardized tasks and
regular hours of such an establishment as this.

Diantha religiously kept her hour at noon, and tried to keep the three
in the afternoon; but the employer and manager cannot take irresponsible
rest as can the employee. She felt like a most inexperienced captain on
a totally new species of ship, and her paper plans looked very weak
sometimes, as bills turned out to be larger than she had allowed for, or
her patronage unaccountably dwindled. But if the difficulties were
great, the girl's courage was greater. "It is simply a big piece of
work," she assured herself, "and may be a long one, but there never was
anything better worth doing. Every new business has difficulties, I
mustn't think of them. I must just push and push and push--a little
more every day."

And then she would draw on all her powers to reason with, laugh at, and
persuade some dissatisfied girl; or, hardest of all, to bring in a new
one to fill a vacancy.

She enjoyed the details of her lunch business, and studied it carefully;
planning for a restaurant a little later. Her bread was baked in long
cylindrical closed pans, and cut by machinery into thin even slices, not
a crust wasted; for they were ground into crumbs and used in the
cooking.

The filling for her sandwiches was made from fish, flesh, and fowl; from
cheese and jelly and fruit and vegetables; and so named or numbered that
the general favorites were gradually determined.

Mr. Thaddler chatted with her over the counter, as far as she would
allow it, and discoursed more fully with his friends on the verandah.

"Porne," he said, "where'd that girl come from anyway? She's a genius,
that's what she is; a regular genius."

"She's all that," said Mr. Porne, "and a benefactor to humanity thrown
in. I wish she'd start her food delivery, though. I'm tired of those
two Swedes already. O--come from? Up in Jopalez, Inca County, I
believe."

"New England stock I bet," said Mr. Thaddler. "Its a damn shame the way
the women go on about her."

"Not all of them, surely," protested Mr. Porne.

"No, not all of 'em,--but enough of 'em to make mischief, you may be
sure. Women are the devil, sometimes."

Mr. Porne smiled without answer, and Mr. Thaddler went sulking away--a
bag of cakes bulging in his pocket.

The little wooden hotel in Jopalez boasted an extra visitor a few days
later. A big red faced man, who strolled about among the tradesmen,
tried the barber's shop, loafed in the post office, hired a rig and
traversed the length and breadth of the town, and who called on Mrs.
Warden, talking real estate with her most politely in spite of her
protestation and the scornful looks of the four daughters; who bought
tobacco and matches in the grocery store, and sat on the piazza thereof
to smoke, as did other gentlemen of leisure.

Ross Warden occasionally leaned at the door jamb, with folded arms. He
never could learn to be easily sociable with ranchmen and teamsters.
Serve them he must, but chat with them he need not. The stout gentleman
essayed some conversation, but did not get far. Ross was polite, but
far from encouraging, and presently went home to supper, leaving a
carrot-haired boy to wait upon his lingering customers.

"Nice young feller enough," said the stout gentleman to himself, "but
raised on ramrods. Never got 'em from those women folks of his, either.
He _has_ a row to hoe!" And he departed as he had come.

Mr. Eltwood turned out an unexpectedly useful friend to Diantha. He
steered club meetings and "sociables" into her large rooms, and as
people found how cheap and easy it was to give parties that way, they
continued the habit. He brought his doctor friends to sample the lunch,
and they tested the value of Diantha's invalid cookery, and were more
than pleased.

Hungry tourists were wholly without prejudice, and prized her lunches
for their own sake. They descended upon the caffeteria in chattering
swarms, some days, robbing the regular patrons of their food, and sent
sudden orders for picnic lunches that broke in upon the routine hours of
the place unmercifully.

But of all her patrons, the families of invalids appreciated Diantha's
work the most. Where a little shack or tent was all they could afford
to live in, or where the tiny cottage was more than filled with the
patient, attending relative, and nurse, this depot of supplies was a
relief indeed.

A girl could be had for an hour or two; or two girls, together, with
amazing speed, could put a small house in dainty order while the sick
man lay in his hammock under the pepper trees; and be gone before he was
fretting for his bed again. They lived upon her lunches; and from them,
and other quarters, rose an increasing demand for regular cooked food.

"Why don't you go into it at once?" urged Mrs. Weatherstone.

"I want to establish the day service first," said Diantha. "It is a
pretty big business I find, and I do get tired sometimes. I can't
afford to slip up, you know. I mean to take it up next fall, though."

"All right. And look here; see that you begin in first rate shape.
I've got some ideas of my own about those food containers."

They discussed the matter more than once, Diantha most reluctant to take
any assistance; Mrs. Weatherstone determined that she should.

"I feel like a big investor already," she said. "I don't think even you
realize the _money_ there is in this thing! You are interested in
establishing the working girls, and saving money and time for the
housewives. I am interested in making money out of it--honestly! It
would be such a triumph!"

"You're very good--" Diantha hesitated.

"I'm not good. I'm most eagerly and selfishly interested. I've taken a
new lease of life since knowing you, Diantha Bell! You see my father
was a business man, and his father before him--I _like it._ There I
was, with lots of money, and not an interest in life! Now?--why,
there's no end to this thing, Diantha! It's one of the biggest
businesses on earth--if not _the_ biggest!"

"Yes--I know," the girl answered. "But its slow work. I feel the
weight of it more than I expected. There's every reason to succeed, but
there's the combined sentiment of the whole world to lift--it's as heavy
as lead."

"Heavy! Of course it's heavy! The more fun to lift it! You'll do it,
Diantha, I know you will, with that steady, relentless push of yours.
But the cooked food is going to be your biggest power, and you must let
me start it right. Now you listen to me, and make Mrs. Thaddler eat her
words!"

Mrs. Thaddler's words would have proved rather poisonous, if eaten. She
grew more antagonistic as the year advanced. Every fault that could be
found in the undertaking she pounced upon and enlarged; every doubt that
could be cast upon it she heavily piled up; and her opposition grew more
rancorous as Mr. Thaddler enlarged in her hearing upon the excellence of
Diantha's lunches and the wonders of her management.

"She's picked a bunch o' winners in those girls of hers," he declared to
his friends. "They set out in the morning looking like a flock of sweet
peas--in their pinks and whites and greens and vi'lets,--and do more
work in an hour than the average slavey can do in three, I'm told."

It was a pretty sight to see those girls start out. They had a sort of
uniform, as far as a neat gingham dress went, with elbow sleeves, white
ruffled, and a Dutch collar; a sort of cross between a nurses dress and
that of "La Chocolataire;" but colors were left to taste. Each carried
her apron and a cap that covered the hair while cooking and sweeping;
but nothing that suggested the black and white livery of the regulation
servant.

"This is a new stage of labor," their leader reminded them. "You are
not servants--you are employees. You wear a cap as an English carpenter
does--or a French cook,--and an apron because your work needs it. It is
not a ruffled label,--it's a business necessity. And each one of us
must do our best to make this new kind of work valued and respected."

It is no easy matter to overcome prejudices many centuries old, and meet
the criticism of women who have nothing to do but criticize. Those who
were "mistresses," and wanted "servants,"--someone to do their will at
any moment from early morning till late evening,--were not pleased with
the new way if they tried it; but the women who had interests of their
own to attend to; who merely wanted their homes kept clean, and the food
well cooked and served, were pleased. The speed, the accuracy, the
economy; the pleasant, quiet, assured manner of these skilled employees
was a very different thing from the old slipshod methods of the ordinary
general servant.

So the work slowly prospered, while Diantha began to put in execution
the new plan she had been forced into.

While it matured, Mrs. Thaddler matured hers. With steady dropping she
had let fall far and wide her suspicions as to the character of Union
House.

"It looks pretty queer to me!" she would say, confidentially, "All those
girls together, and no person to have any authority over them! Not a
married woman in the house but that washerwoman,--and her husband's a
fool!"

"And again; You don't see how she does it? Neither do I! The expenses
must be tremendous--those girls pay next to nothing,--and all that broth
and brown bread flying about town! Pretty queer doings, I think!"

"The men seem to like that caffeteria, don't they?" urged one caller,
perhaps not unwilling to nestle Mrs. Thaddler, who flushed darkly as she
replied. "Yes, they do. Men usually like that sort of place."

"They like good food at low prices, if that's what you mean," her
visitor answered.

"That's not all I mean--by a long way," said Mrs. Thaddler. She said so
much, and said it so ingeniously, that a dark rumor arose from nowhere,
and grew rapidly. Several families discharged their Union House girls.
Several girls complained that they were insultingly spoken to on the
street. Even the lunch patronage began to fall off.

Diantha was puzzled--a little alarmed. Her slow, steady lifting of the
prejudice against her was checked. She could not put her finger on the
enemy, yet felt one distinctly, and had her own suspicions. But she
also had her new move well arranged by this time.

Then a maliciously insinuating story of the place came out in a San
Francisco paper, and a flock of local reporters buzzed in to sample the
victim. They helped themselves to the luncheon, and liked it. but that
did not soften their pens. They talked with such of the girls as they
could get in touch with, and wrote such versions of these talks as
suited them.

They called repeatedly at Union House, but Diantha refused to see them.
Finally she was visited by the Episcopalian clergyman. He had heard her
talk at the Club, was favorably impressed by the girl herself, and
honestly distressed by the dark stories he now heard about Union House.

"My dear young lady," he said, "I have called to see you in your own
interests. I do not, as you perhaps know, approve of your schemes. I
consider them--ah--subversive of the best interests of the home! But I
think you mean well, though mistakenly. Now I fear you are not aware
that this-ah--ill-considered undertaking of yours, is giving rise to
considerable adverse comment in the community. There is--ah--there is a
great deal being said about this business of yours which I am sure you
would regret if you knew it. Do you think it is wise; do you think it
is--ah--right, my dear Miss Bell, to attempt to carry on a--a place of
this sort, without the presence of a--of a Matron of assured standing?"

Diantha smiled rather coldly.

"May I trouble you to step into the back parlor, Dr. Aberthwaite," she
said; and then;

"May I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Henderson Bell--my
mother?"

*

"Wasn't it great!" said Mrs. Weatherstone; "I was there you see,-- I'd
come to call on Mrs. Bell--she's a dear,--and in came Mrs. Thaddler--"

"Mrs. Thaddler?"

"O I know it was old Aberthwaite, but he represented Mrs. Thaddler and
her clique, and had come there to preach to Diantha about propriety--I
heard him,--and she brought him in and very politely introduced him to
her mother!--it was rich, Isabel."

"How did Diantha manage it?" asked her friend.

"She's been trying to arrange it for ever so long. Of course her father
objected--you'd know that. But there's a sister--not a bad sort, only
very limited; she's taken the old man to board, as it were, and I guess
the mother really set her foot down for once--said she had a right to
visit her own daughter!"

"It would seem so," Mrs. Porne agreed. "I _am_ so glad! It will be so
much easier for that brave little woman now."

It was.

Diantha held her mother in her arms the night she came, and cried tike a
baby.

"O mother _dear!_" she sobbed, "I'd no idea I should miss you so much.
O you blessed comfort!"

Her mother cried a bit too; she enjoyed this daughter more than either
of her older children, and missed her more. A mother loves all her
children, naturally; but a mother is also a person--and may, without
sin, have personal preferences.

She took hold of Diantha's tangled mass of papers with the eagerness of
a questing hound.

"You've got all the bills, of course," she demanded, with her anxious
rising inflection.

"Every one," said the girl. "You taught me that much. What puzzles me
is to make things balance. I'm making more than I thought in some
lines, and less in others, and I can't make it come out straight."

"It won't, altogether, till the end of the year I dare say," said Mrs.
Bell, "but let's get clear as far as we can. In the first place we must
separate your business,--see how much each one pays."

"The first one I want to establish," said her daughter, "is the girl's
club. Not just this one, with me to run it. But to show that any group
of twenty or thirty girls could do this thing in any city. Of course
where rents and provisions were high they'd have to charge more. I want
to make an average showing somehow. Now can you disentangle the girl
part front the lunch part and the food part, mother dear, and make it
all straight?"

Mrs. Bell could and did; it gave her absolute delight to do it. She
set down the total of Diantha's expenses so far in the Service
Department, as follows:

Rent of Union House . . . $1,500
Rent of furniture . . . $300
One payment on furniture . . . $400
Fuel and lights, etc. . . . $352
Service of 5 at $10 a week each . . . $2,600
Food for thirty-seven . . . $3,848
-----
Total . . . $9,000

"That covers everything but my board," said Mrs. Bell.

"Now your income is easy--35 x $4.50 equals $8,190. Take that from your
$9,000 and you are $810 behind."