Part 5 (1/2)
Eggs and b.u.t.ter disposed of at the store helped to pay for sugar, salt, and spices. New incentives to larger production came with the extension of markets. When wood and hay could be s.h.i.+pped to a distance on the railroad, when a milk route in the neighborhood or a milk-train to the city made dairy products more profitable, or when market gardening became possible on an extensive scale, better methods of distribution were provided to take care of the more numerous products.
71. =Social and Economic Changes in the Family.=--The fundamental principles that govern the economic activities of the family are the same as they used to be. Industry, thrift, and co-operation are still the watchwords of prosperity. But with the development of civilization and the improvements in manufacture, communication, and transportation, the economic function of the family has changed.
Instead of producing all the crops that he may need or the tools of his occupation, the farmer tends to produce the particular crops that he can best cultivate and that will bring him the largest returns.
Because of increasing facilities of exchange he can sell his surplus and purchase the goods that will satisfy his other needs. The farmer's wife no longer spins and weaves the family's supply of clothing; the men buy their supply at the store and often even she turns over the task of making up her own gowns to the village dressmaker. Where there is a local creamery she is relieved of the manufacture of b.u.t.ter and cheese, and the cannery lays down its preserves at her door. Household manufacturing is confined almost entirely to the preparation of food, with a varying amount of dressmaking and millinery. In the towns and cities the needs of the family are even more completely supplied from without. Children are relieved of all responsibility, women's care are lightened by the stock of material in the shops, and the bakery and restaurant help to supply the table. Family life loses thereby much of its unity of effort and sympathy. The economic task falls mainly upon the male producer. Even he lives on the land and in the house of another man; he owns not the tools of his industry and does business in another's name. He hires himself to a superior for wage or salary, and thereby loses in a measure his own independence. But there is a gain in social solidarity, for the chain of mutual dependence reached farther and binds more firmly; there is gain in community co-operation, for each family is no longer self-sufficient.
READING REFERENCES
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 221-227, 324-333.
THOMAS: _s.e.x and Society_, pages 123-146.
SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages 105-108.
MASON: _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture._
WEEDEN: _Economic and Social History of New England_, I, pages 324-326.
CHAPTER IX
CHANGES IN THE FAMILY
72. =Causes of Changes in the Family.=--The family at the present time is in a transition era. Its machinery is not working smoothly. Its environment is undergoing transformation. A hundred years ago the family was strictly rural; not more than three per cent of the people lived in large communities. Now nearly one-half are cla.s.sified as urban by the United States census of 1910, and those who remain rural feel the influences of the town. There is far less economic independence on the farm than formerly, and in the towns and cities the home is little more than a place in which to sleep and eat for an increasing number of workers, both men and women. The family on the farm is no longer a perfectly representative type of the family in the more populous centres.
These changes are due mainly to the requirements of industry, but partly at least to the desire of all members of the family to share in urban life. The increasing ease of communication and travel extends the mutual acquaintance of city and country people and, as the city is brought nearer, its pull upon the young people of the community strengthens. There is also an increasing tendency of the women folk to enter the various departments of industry outside of the home. It is increasingly difficult for one person to satisfy the needs of a large family. This tends to send the family to the city, where there are wider opportunities, and to drive women and children into socialized industry; at the same time, it tends to restrict the number of children in families that have high ideals for women and children.
Family life everywhere is becoming increasingly difficult, and at the same time every member of the family is growing more independent in temper. The result is the breaking up of a large number of homes, because of the departure of the children, the separation of husband and wife, the desertion of parents, or the legal divorce of married persons. The maintenance of the family as a social inst.i.tution is seriously threatened.
73. =Static vs. Dynamic Factors.=--There are factors entering into family life that act as bonds to cement the individual members together. Such are the material goods that they enjoy in common, like the home with its comforts and the means of support upon which they all rely. In addition to these there are psychical elements that enter into their relations and strengthen these bonds. The inheritance of the peculiar traits, manners, and customs that differentiate one family from another; the reputation of the family name and pride in its influence; an affection, understanding, and sympathy that come from the intimacy of the home life and the appreciation of one another's best qualities are ties that do not easily rend or loosen.
On the other hand, there are centrifugal forces that are pus.h.i.+ng the members of the family apart. At the bottom is selfish desire, which frets at restriction, and which is stimulated by the current emphasis upon personal pleasure and individual independence. The family solidarity which made the sons Democrats because their father voted that party ticket, or the daughters Methodists because their mother's religious preferences were for that denomination, has ceased to be effective. Every member of the family has his daily occupations in diverse localities. The head of the household may find his business duties in the city twenty miles away, or on the road that leads him far afield across the continent. For long hours the children are in school. The housewife is the only member of the family who remains at home and her outside interests and occupations have multiplied so rapidly as to make her, too, a comparative stranger to the home life.
Modern industrialism has laid its hand upon the women and children, and thousands of them know the home only at morning and night.
74. =The Strain on the Urban Family.=--The rapid growth of cities, with the increase of buildings for the joint occupancy of a number of families, tends to disunity in each particular family and to a reduction in the size of families. The privacy and sense of intimate seclusion of the detached home is violated. The modern apartment-house has a common hall and stairway for a dozen families and a common dining-room and kitchen on the model of a hotel. The tenements are human incubators from which children overflow upon the streets, boarders invade the privacy of the family bedroom, and even sanitary conveniences are public. Home life is violated in the tenement by the pressure of an unfavorable environment; it perishes on the avenue because of a compelling desire to gain as much freedom as possible from household care.
The care of a modern household grows in difficulty. Although the housekeeper has been relieved of performing certain economic functions that added to the burden of her grandmother, her responsibilities have been complicated by a number of conditions that are peculiar to the modern life of the town. Social custom demands of the upper cla.s.ses a far more careful observance of fas.h.i.+on in dress and household furnis.h.i.+ngs, and in the exchange of social courtesies. The increasing cost of living due to these circ.u.mstances, and to a constantly rising standard of living, reacts upon the mind and nerves of the housewife with accelerating force. And not the least of her difficulties is the growing seriousness of the servant problem. Custom, social obligations, and nervous strain combine to make essential the help of a servant in the home. But the American maid is too independent and high-minded to make a household servant, and the American matron in the main has not learned how to be a just and considerate mistress.
The result has been an influx of immigrant labor by servants who are untrained and inefficient, yet soon learn to make successful demands upon the employer for larger wages and more privileges because they are so essential to the comfort and even the existence of the family.
Family life is increasingly at the mercy of the household employee. It is not strange that many women prefer the comfort and relief of an apartment or hotel, that many more hesitate to a.s.sume the responsibility of marriage and children, preferring to undertake their own self-support, and that not a few seek divorce.
75. =Family Desertion.=--While the burden of housekeeping rests upon the wife, there are corresponding weights and annoyances that fall upon the man. Business pressure and professional responsibility are wearying; he, too, feels the strain upon his nerves. When he returns home at evening he is easily disturbed by a worried wife, tired and fretful children, and the unmistakable atmosphere of gloom and friction that permeates many homes. He contrasts his unenviable position with the freedom and good-fellows.h.i.+p of the club, and chafes under the family bonds. In many cases he breaks them and sets himself free by way of the divorce court. The course of men of the upper cla.s.s is paralleled by that of the working man or idler who meets similar conditions in a home where the servant does not enter, but where there is a surplus of children. He finds frequent relief in the saloon, and eventually escapes by deserting his family altogether, instead of having recourse to the law. This practice of desertion, which is the poor man's method of divorce, is one of the continual perplexities of organized charity, and const.i.tutes one of the serious problems of family life. There are gradations in the practice of desertion, and it is not confined to men. The social b.u.t.terfly who neglects her children to flutter here and there is a temporary deserter, little less culpable than the lazy husband who has an attack of _wanderl.u.s.t_ before the birth of each child, and who returns to enjoy the comforts of home as soon as his wife is again able to a.s.sume the function of bread-winner for the growing family. From these it is but a step to the mutual desertion of a man and a woman, who from incompatibility of temper find it advisable to separate and go their own selfish ways, to wait until the law allows a final severance of the marriage bond.
It is indisputable that this breaking up of the home is reacting seriously upon the moral character of the present generation; there is a carelessness in a.s.suming the responsibility of marriage, and too much s.h.i.+rking of responsibility when the burden weighs heavily. There is a weakening of real affection and a consequent lack of mutual forbearance; there is an increasing feeling that marriage is a lottery and not worth while unless it promises increased satisfaction of s.e.xual, economic, or social desires and ambitions.
76. =Feminism.=--There can be no question that the growing independence of woman has complicated the family situation. In reaction against the long subjection that has fallen to her lot, the modern woman in many cases rebels against the control of custom and the expectations of society, refuses to regard herself as strictly a home-keeper, and in some cases is unwilling to become a mother. She seeks wider a.s.sociations and a larger range of activities outside of the home, she demands the same rights and privileges that belong to man, and she dreams of the day when her power as well as her influence will help to mould social inst.i.tutions. The feminist movement is in the large a wholesome reaction against an undeserved subserviency to the masculine will. Undoubtedly it contains great social potencies. It deserves kindly reception in the struggle to reform and reconstruct society where society is weak.
The present situation deserves not abuse, but the most careful consideration from every man. In countless cases woman has not only been repressed from activities outside of the family group, but has been oppressed in her own home also. America prides itself on its consideration for woman in comparison with the general European att.i.tude toward her, but too often chivalry is not exercised in the home. Often the wife has been a slave in the household where she should have been queen. She has been subject to the pa.s.sion of an hour and the whim of a moment. She has been servant rather than helpmeet.