Part 4 (2/2)

It is not necessary to go outside the white European race to find evidences of the reality of this historical factor of the question before us. It would appear that at the dawn of European civilisation women were taking a leading part in the evolution of human progress. Various survivals which are enshrined in the myths and legends of cla.s.sic antiquity show us the most ancient deities as G.o.ddesses; and, moreover, we encounter the significant fact that at the origin nearly all the arts and industries were presided over by female, not by male, deities. In Greece, as well as in Asia Minor, India, and Egypt, as Paul Lafargue has pointed out, woman seems to have taken divine rank before men; all the first inventions of the more useful arts and crafts, except in metals, are ascribed to G.o.ddesses; the Muses presided over poetry and music long before Apollo; Isis was ”the lady of bread,” and Demeter taught men to sow barley and corn instead of eating each other. Thus even among our own forefathers we may catch a glimpse of a state of things which, as various anthropologists have shown (notably Otis Mason in his _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture_), we may witness in the most widely separated parts of the world. Thus among the Xosa Kaffirs, as well as other A-bantu stocks, Fritsch states that ”the man claims for himself war, hunting, occupation with cattle; all household cares, even the building of the house, as well as the cultivation of the ground, are woman's affair; hardly in the most laborious work will a man lend a hand.”[2] So that when to-day we see women entering the most various avocations, that is not a dangerous innovation, but perhaps merely a return to ancient and natural conditions.

It is not until specialisation becomes necessary and until men are relieved from the constant burden of battle and the chase that the frequent superiority of woman is lost. The modern industrial activities are dangerous, when they are dangerous, not because the work is too hard--for the work of primitive women is harder--but because it is an unnaturally and artificially dreary and monotonous work which stifles the mind, depresses the spirits, and injures the body, so that, it is said, 40 per cent. of married women who have been factory girls are treated for pelvic disorders before they are thirty. It is the conditions of women's work which need changing in order that they may become, like those of primitive women, so various that they develop the mind and fortify the body. This, however, is an evil which will be righted by the development of the mechanical side of industry, for machines tend constantly to become larger, heavier, speedier, more numerous and more automatic, requiring fewer workers to tend them, and these more frequently men.[3]

It may be added that the early predominance of woman in the work of civilisation is altogether independent of that conception of a primitive matriarchate, or government of women, which was set forth some fifty years ago by Bachofen, and has since caused so much controversy. Descent in the female line, not uncommonly found among primitive peoples, undoubtedly tended to place women in a position of great influence; but it by no means necessarily involved any gynecocracy, or rule of women, and such rule is merely a hypothesis which by some enthusiasts has been carried to absurd lengths.

We see, therefore, that when we are approaching the question of the mental differences of the s.e.xes among ourselves to-day, it is not impossible to find certain guiding clues which will save us from running into extravagance in either direction.

Without doubt the only way in which we can obtain a satisfactory answer to the numerous problems which meet us when we approach the question is by experiment. I have, indeed, insisted on the importance of these preliminary biological and historical considerations mainly because they indicate with what safety and freedom from risk we may trust to experiment. The s.e.xes are far too securely poised by organic const.i.tution and ancient tradition for any permanently injurious results to occur from the attempt to attain a better social readjustment in this matter. When the experiment fails, individuals may to some extent suffer, but social equilibrium swiftly and automatically rights itself. Practically, however, nearly every social experiment of this kind means that certain restrictions limiting the duties or privileges of women are removed, and when artificial coercions are thus taken away it can merely happen, as Mary Wollstonecraft long ago put it, that by the common law of gravity the s.e.xes fall into their proper places. That, we may be sure, will be the final result of the interesting experiments for which the laboratory to-day is furnished by all the belligerent countries.

Definitely formulated statistical data of these results are scarcely yet available. But we may study the action of this natural process on one great practical experiment in mental s.e.xual differences which has been going on for some time past. At one time in the various administrations of the International Postal Union there was a sudden resolve to introduce female labour to a very large extent; it was thought that this would be cheaper than male labour and equally efficient. There was consequently a great outcry at the ousting of male labour, the introduction of the thin end of a wedge which would break up society. We can now see that that outcry was foolish. Within recent years nearly all the countries which previously introduced women freely into their postal and telegraph services are now doing so only under certain conditions, and some are ceasing to admit them at all. This great practical experiment, carried out on an immense scale in thirty-five different countries, has, on the whole, shown that while women are not inferior to men, at all events within the ordinary range of work, the subst.i.tution of a female for a male staff always means a considerable increase of numbers, that women are less rapid than men, less able to undertake the higher grade work, less able to exert authority over others, more lacking both in initiative and in endurance, while they require more sick leave and lose interest and energy on marriage. The advantages of female labour are thus to some extent neutralised, and in the opinions of the administrations of some countries more than neutralised, by certain disadvantages. The general result is that men are found more fitted for some branches of work and women more fitted for other branches; the result is compensation without any tendency for one s.e.x to oust the other.

It may, indeed, be objected that in practical life no perfectly satisfactory experiments exist as to the respective mental qualities of men and women, since men and women are never found working under conditions that are exactly the same for both s.e.xes. If, however, we turn to the psychological laboratory, where it is possible to carry on experiments under precisely identical conditions, the results are still the same. There are nearly always differences between men and women, but these differences are complex and manifold; they do not always agree; they never show any general piling up of the advantages on the side of one s.e.x or of the other. In reaction-time, in delicacy of sensory perception, in accuracy of estimation and precision of movement, there are nearly always s.e.xual differences, a few that are fairly constant, many that differ at different ages, in various countries, or even in different groups of individuals. We cannot usually explain these differences or attach any precise significance to them, any more than we can say why it is that (at all events in America) blue is most often the favourite colour of men and red of women. We may be sure that these things have a meaning, and often a really fundamental significance, but at present, for the most part, they remain mysterious to us.

When we attempt to survey and sum up all the variegated facts which science and practical life are slowly acc.u.mulating with reference to the mental differences between men and women[4] we reach two main conclusions. On the one hand there is a fundamental equality of the s.e.xes. It would certainly appear that women vary within a narrower range than men--that is to say, that the two extremes of genius and of idiocy are both more likely to show themselves in men. This implies that the pioneers in progress are most likely to be men. That, indeed, may be said to be a biological fact. ”In all that concerns the evolution of ornamental characters the male leads; in him we see the trend which evolution is taking; the female and young afford us the measure of their advance along the new line which has to be taken.”[5] In the human sphere of the arts and sciences, similarly, men, not women, take the lead. That men were the first decorative artists, rather than women, is indicated by the fact that the natural objects designed by early pre-historic artists were mainly women and wild beasts, that is to say, they were the work of masculine hunters, executed in idle intervals of the chase. But within the range in which nearly all of us move, there are always many men who in mental respects can do what most women can do, many women who can do what most men can do. We are not justified in excluding a whole s.e.x absolutely from any field. In so doing we should certainly be depriving the world of some portion of its executive ability. The s.e.xes may always safely be left to find their own levels.

On the other hand, the mental diversity of men and women is equally fundamental. It is rooted in organisation. The well-intentioned efforts of many pioneers in women's movements to treat men and women as identical, and, as it were, to force women into masculine moulds, were both mischievous and useless. Women will always be different from men, mentally as well as physically. It is well for both s.e.xes that it should be so. It is owing to these differences that each s.e.x can bring to the world's work various apt.i.tudes that the other lacks. It is owing to these differences also that men and women have their undying charm for each other. We cannot change them, and we need not wish to.

[1] See, for instance, Blair Bell's _The s.e.x Complex_, 1916, though the deductions drawn in this book must not always be accepted without qualifications.

[2] G. Fritsch, _Die Eingeborene Sud-Afrikas_, 1892, p. 79.

[3] 1 D.R. Malcolm Keir, ”Women in Industry,” _Popular Science Monthly_, October, 1913.

[4] See, for many of the chief of these, Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, 5th Edition, 1914.

[5] W.P. Pycraft, _The Courts.h.i.+p of Animal_, p. 9.

X

THE WHITE SLAVE CRUSADE

During recent years we have witnessed a remarkable attempt--more popular and more international in character than any before--to deal with that ancient s.e.xual evil which has for some time been picturesquely described as the White Slave Traffic. Less than forty years ago Professor Sheldon Amos wrote that this subject can scarcely be touched upon by journalists, and ”can never form a topic of common conversation.” Nowadays Churches, societies, journalists, legislators have all joined the ranks of the agitators. Not only has there been no voice on the opposite side, which was scarcely to be expected--for there has never been any anxiety to cry aloud the defence of ”White Slavery” from the house-tops--but there has been a new and noteworthy conquest over indifference and over that sacred silence which was supposed to encompa.s.s all s.e.xual topics with suitable darkness. The banishment of that silence in the cause of social hygiene is, indeed, not the least significant feature of this agitation.

It is inevitable, however, that these periodical fits of virtuous indignation by which Society is overtaken should speedily be spent. The victim of the moral fever finds himself exhausted by the struggle, scarcely able to cope with the complications of the disease, and, at the best, only too anxious to forget what he has pa.s.sed through. He has an uneasy feeling that in the course of his delirium he has said and done many foolish things which it would now be unpleasant to recall too precisely.

There is no use in attempting to disguise the fact that this is what happened in the White Slave Traffic agitation. It became clear that we had been largely misled in regard to the evils to be combated, and that we were seduced into sanctioning various remedies for these evils which in cold blood it is impossible to approve of, even if we could believe them to be effective.

It is not even clear that all those who have talked about the ”White Slave Traffic” have been quite sure what they meant by the term. Some people, indeed, have seemed to think that it meant prost.i.tution in general. That is, of course, an absurd misapprehension. We are concerned with a trade which flourishes on prost.i.tution, but that trade is not itself the trade or (as some prefer to call it) the profession of prost.i.tutes. Indeed, the prost.i.tute, under ordinary conditions and unhara.s.sed by persecution, is in many respects anything but a slave. She is much less a slave than the ordinary married woman.

She is not fettered in humble dependence on the will of a husband from whom it is the most difficult thing in the world to escape; she is bound to no man and free to make her own terms in life; while if she should have a child, that child is absolutely her own, and she is not liable to have it torn from her arms by the hands of the law. Apart from arbitrary and accidental circ.u.mstances, due to the condition of social feeling, the prost.i.tute enjoys a position of independence which the married woman is still struggling to obtain.

The White Slave Traffic, therefore, is not prost.i.tution; it is the _commercialised exploitation of prost.i.tutes_. The independent prost.i.tute, living alone, scarcely lends herself to the White Slave trader. It is on houses of prost.i.tution, where the less independent and usually weaker-minded prost.i.tutes are segregated, that the traffic is based. Such houses cannot even exist without such traffic. There is little inducement for a girl to enter such a house, in full knowledge of what it involves, on her own initiative. The proprietors of such houses must therefore give orders for the ”goods” they desire, and it is the business of procurers, by persuasion, misrepresentation, deceit, intoxication, to supply them. ”The White Slave Traffic,” as Kneeland states, ”is thus not only a hideous reality, but a reality almost wholly dependent on the existence of houses of prost.i.tution,” and as the authors of _The Social Evil_ state, it is ”the most shameful species of business enterprise in modern times.”[1]

In this intimate dependence of the White Slave Traffic on houses of prost.i.tution, there lies, it may be pointed out, a hope for the future.

We are concerned, for the most part, with the more coa.r.s.e-grained part of the masculine population and with the more ignorant, degraded, and weak-minded part of the army of prost.i.tutes. Although much has been said of the enormous extension of the White Slave Traffic during recent years, it is important to remember that that extension is chiefly marked in connection with the great new centres of population in the younger countries. It is fostered by the conditions prevailing in crude, youthful, prosperous, but incompletely blended, communities, which have too swiftly attained luxury, but have not yet attained the more humane and refined developments of civilisation, and among whom women are often scarce.[2] Although there are not yet any very clear signs of the decay of prost.i.tution in civilisation, there can hardly be a doubt that civilisation is unfavourable to houses of prost.i.tution. They offer no inducements to the more intelligent and independent prost.i.tutes, and their inmates usually present little attraction to any men save those whose demands are of the humblest character. There is, therefore, a tendency to the natural and spontaneous decay of organised houses of prost.i.tution under modern civilised conditions; the prost.i.tute and her clients alike shun such houses. Along this line we may foresee the disappearance of the White Slave Traffic, apart altogether from any social or legal attempts at its direct suppression.[3]

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