Part 4 (1/2)
Wilson, head of the biological department of the Philadelphia Normal School. With a thousand girls of high school grade, under the leaders.h.i.+p of a scientific woman, the only science courses given in the school are those in domestic science. The reason is that the girls, most of them not being candidates for a degree, will not take up science work, though they form strong cla.s.ses in literature and languages.
If, from such general facts of observation, one turns to exact comparisons, where quant.i.ties can be measured, the results are all the same. Of students enrolled in cla.s.sical departments of universities, colleges and technical schools reporting to the United States Bureau of Education, in 1910, 36.5% were women, while of those enrolled in general science courses, but 17.2% were women. In 1,511 public and private high schools and seminaries, reporting to the Bureau of Education in 1909-1910, a larger percentage of boys than of girls was enrolled in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, physical geography, civil government and rhetoric, which is a scientific study of language.
A larger proportion of girls enrolled in Latin, French, German, English literature and history, and there was a slightly greater enrollment of girls in botany, zoology and physiology.
In the further discussion of this subject it will then be taken for granted that in education, feminization means emphasis on languages, literature and history, as opposed to mathematics, physics, chemistry and civics. For the elementary schools we have no data capable of reduction to figures, but general observation, backed by an examination of courses of study and textbooks, will compel any one to say that in twenty years we have made wonderful progress in reading, language, stories, mythology, biography and history; while all our efforts to bring nature work into vital relation with the schools have borne little fruit. Our country schools need lessons in agriculture, and the children should gain a deep sense of country life. But how can celibate young women, longing toward the towns, give this? Any subjects well taught are sure to be increasingly taught, and it takes no extended study to see that our elementary schools are being feminized in the direction of literature. This is the more striking when we remember that these twenty years have been dominated, in the larger world, by scientific interests.
In the high schools and seminaries, we have fairly complete returns showing the number of students enrolled in certain subjects since 1890.
The pupils taking Latin have increased 15%; French, 4%; German, 13%; English literature has increased in ten years 7% (there is no record for this subject before 1898); and European history, 27%. There has also been an increase of 11% in algebra and 10% in geometry, probably partly due to vocational need and to the emphasis laid on these subjects for admission to college. But physics, in the twenty years under consideration, has fallen off 7%; chemistry, 3%; physical geography, 5%; physiology, 15%; and civics, 7%.[30] A careful study of these figures must convince any fair-minded person that our school curriculum, even in the secondary field, where women's control is least complete, is moving rapidly in the direction of what we have called feminization.
[30] _Report of the United States Commissioner of Education_, 1910, Vol.
II, p. 1139.
The schools, too, must increasingly do something more than train the intellect; and in all physical activity involuntary suggestion is very powerful. Playgrounds are laboratories of conduct, and they should not only give physical exercise, but should also furnish standards and ideals. There can be no doubt that women are physically more restrained, retiring, non-contesting, and graceful than men; but can dancing, marching, and gymnastics take the place of more aggressive, direct and violent contests in the training of boys? So in industries, women are more given to conserving, arranging and beautifying, more given to clerking and recording, while men are more creative, disbursing, more given to mining, agriculture and commerce. Even granting equal understanding and experience, the tradition of the race must count for much; and it would seem that at every stage of growth, boys and girls alike should feel the impulse to imitate men who have an instinct to make and unmake, to trade and carry. It is no justification of existing conditions to say that the men now in the teaching profession lack these qualities; if they do, let us get rid of them and have real men.
And for purposes of political life, does it not seem strange to bring up a generation of boys and girls who are to be the future citizens of a democracy under the exclusive leaders.h.i.+p of people who have never been encouraged to think about political life nor allowed to partic.i.p.ate in it? Let us by all means enfranchise women; but even then they cannot hope to quickly catch up with those who have some thousands of years the start, even after allowing for the fact that girls inherit from both father and mother.
Most of these differences which we have been discussing seem to rest in the fact that women are more personal in their interests and judgments than men are. This may be due to their education for thousands of years; but that makes it no less true. Women certainly, in a great majority of cases, are more interested in a case than in a const.i.tution; in a man than in a mission; in a poem that in a treatise; in equity than in law.
In a generation when everything is tending toward great aggregations, consolidated industries, segregated wealth, and new syntheses of knowledge, both boys and girls should have such training as will fit them to play their part in these larger units.
As to the feminizing influence of exclusively women teachers on manners and morals and general att.i.tude toward life there can be no real doubt.
Boys and girls cannot spend eight or twelve impressionable years of childhood and youth under the constant daily influence of women without having the ladylike att.i.tude toward life strongly emphasized. To deny this is to repudiate the power of constant involuntary suggestion and a.s.sociation. Whether it is desirable or not, is another question. The change may be all in the direction of advancing civilization; but just as in the a.s.similation of our subject races, the philosophic mind must be distressed by the disappearance of so many varieties of speech, customs, and artistic and industrial products, so in this present a.s.similation, one cannot help regretting the steady disappearance of the katabolic qualities of the human male. One does not need to say that this feminized product is better or worse than what we have had, but it is certainly narrower, and less in harmony with the world's thought and work, than it formerly was.
If we turn from education to the press we have similar conditions.
During these past few years, hundreds of journals have sprung up devoted to women's special interests. They are almost all of them showy, fragmentary, personal, concrete and emotional. It is difficult to find one that represents general or abstract interests. At least one of these journals which boasts a fabulous circulation is supported by its women subscribers and readers to oppose the larger interests of women in education, industry and political life. At least, if it does not oppose these interests, it does not aid them. Imagine a million German women sending the Kaiser one dollar and a half a year to induce him to tell them once a month to go back to their kitchens, churches and children!
The newspapers of America have steadily changed during the last three decades in the same direction. Editorial pages and news columns have been steadily modified in the direction of fragmentary, egoistic, personal and sensational, or at least emotional, appeals. These are the qualities of children's minds and of undeveloped minds everywhere. The change is, of course, a part of the larger democratic movement of our time, and many causes have contributed to bring it about. Had women not been so active, something of the same sort would have happened; but if women were all to forget how to read overnight, there is little doubt that the newspapers would find it advantageous to print more statesmanlike editorials and more general and abstract news.
With the weeklies and monthlies, the change taking place is the same.
The new reading public, brought in by increase in population and by popular education, does not support the _Atlantic_, the _Century_ and _Scribner's,_ but turns to _Munsey's_, _McClure's_ and _Everybody's_.
The very change in names speaks of the new personal and egoistic element that has come into journalism. Of course, such changes are only in part due to the influence of women, but the change is in the direction of the qualities that characterize distinctively women's journals.
In books, the personal and romantic novel has taken precedence over every other form of literature. Many of these are written by women; their circulation, both through libraries and through sales, is much greater with women than with men; and in many of them the personal gossip is as transient as that which fills the evening papers.[31]
[31] _The Feminine Note in Fiction_, by W.L. COURTNEY, London, Chapman & Hall, 1904; the author tries to prove that there is such a thing as a feminine style in fiction.
In the churches, especially in the ritualistic churches, women have long been the faithful attendants. Nowhere, except in the churches which make a rationalistic and abstract appeal, and in the Ethical Societies, does one find a preponderance of men. In 1903, a careful enumeration of all attendants at places of wors.h.i.+p was made in the city of London. The count was taken on fair Sundays in autumn, and covered both morning and evening services. Sixty-one per cent. of all adult attendants were women, 146,372 more women than men pa.s.sing through the doors.
About the same time a similar census was made in the part of New York City lying on Manhattan Island. The women were in excess by 171,749, and formed 69 per cent. of all attendants. Even church service, if not entirely tied to set forms, must seek to interest those who occupy the pews; and no observer can fail to note in both England and America, a movement toward ritualism on the one hand, and on the other, toward popular, personal, concrete and sometimes sensational preaching. The same general changes are taking place in libraries, in the drama, in concerts, in all group activities connected with learning and the fine arts.
But on the other side, if emanc.i.p.ated women had not applied themselves, since 1870, to the direction of education, literature, religion and amus.e.m.e.nts, all these interests must have suffered serious neglect and probable deterioration through the concentrating of the interests of the ablest men in engineering, manufacturing, commerce and other fields of pure and applied science. By popularizing these interests, women have really humanized them, as all similar revolutions have done in the past.
In breaking up old forms and intellectual conventions they have set free new and vital impulses. Whether the historian of the future will consider this period of democratization and feminization a time of advance may be uncertain; but it is certainly a time of liberated energy and of broadening partic.i.p.ation in all that is best in life.
V
The Economic Independence of Women
Nowhere does a human being escape compulsion. Even were he alone in the world he would be forced to obey the physical laws governing gravity, heat, cold, hunger and disease. No matter what his desires might be, he would find himself limited and constrained by fixed laws, the inexorable penalties of which he could escape only by obedience. If the man were not alone, then each one of his companions would limit his freedom, and he would limit each one in the group, if they were to live together in peace and efficiency; and yet each of the man's companions would help to free him from the tyranny of physical forces, from the social pressure of others, and even from the bondage of his own nature.