Chapter XXV: Part II: , being for British Colonies; and Reports of the Laws of (4)

The family, it is alleged, is in danger of disintegration through the tendency to individualism which in many ways is so striking a characteristic of the age.[783] Within the family itself there are, indeed, signs that a rapid transition from status to contract is taking place in a way which Maine scarcely contemplated; for he appears to have imagined that precisely in this sphere the process was already virtually complete. The bonds of paternal authority are becoming looser and looser. In America in particular young men and even young women earlier than elsewhere tend to cut their parental moorings and to embark in independent business careers. So also more and more clearly the wife is showing a determination to escape entirely from _manu viri_--still sustained by the relics of mediæval law and sentiment--and to become in reality as well as in name an equal partner under the nuptial contract. The state also has intervened to abridge the parental authority. Minor children are no longer looked upon as the absolute property of the father. For the purpose of education, society removes them for a considerable part of the period of nonage from home and immediate parental control; and, on the other hand, it forbids their employment in mines, factories, or other injurious vocations during their tender years. Under child-saving laws they may even be removed from home, when they are cruelly treated or exposed to vicious influences, and placed under the protection of the state. Thus, little by little, to use the phrase of a thoughtful writer, the original "coercive" powers of the family under the patriarchal _régime_ have been "extracted" and appropriated by society. In the education of the young the family retains the lesser part. "The state has here interfered in the private ordering of the household by taking the child from its parents for one-third of its waking hours, and has introduced order and system into the training of children, together with the assertion of rights on their part. The family becomes therefore less a coercive institution, where the children serve their parents, and more a spiritual and psychic association of parent and child based on persuasion. A more searching interference on the part of the state, together with a new set of governmental organizations for its enforcement, is found in the boards of children's guardians, the societies for the prevention of cruelty to children, orphans' asylums, state public schools, with their investigating and placing-out agents, empowered under supervision of the courts to take children away from parents and to place them in new homes. A large part of the unlimited coercion of the _patria potestas_ is here extracted from the family and annexed to the peculiar coercive institution where it is guided by notions of children's rights, and all families are thereby toned up to a stronger emphasis on persuasion as the justification of their continuance."[784] Here we catch a glimpse of the direction of future evolution in the family. At the same time it appears that the disintegration of paternal and marital coercive power is not a serious menace to the family. It has cleared the way for a higher and nobler spiritual domestic life. The real danger is that the family and the home will surrender an undue share of their duty and privilege to participate in the culture and training of the young. This function for the good of society may be vastly developed, though mainly on new lines bearing directly on the nature of marriage and the family. Of this function some further mention will presently be made.

[783] PEABODY, "The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Family,"
in his _Jesus Christ and the Social Question_, 129 ff.; DIKE,
"Problems of the Family," _Century_, XXXIX, 392, 393; _idem_,
_Some Aspects of the Divorce Question_, 177 ff.; _idem_, _Perils
of the Family_; MULFORD, _The Nation_, 276-83; BUSHNELL, "The
Organic Unity of the Family," in his _Christian Nurture_, 90-122;
HENDERSON, _Social Elements_, 71 ff.; ALLEN, "Divorces in New
England," _North Am. Rev._, CXXX, 559 ff.; POTTER, "The Message
of Christ to the Family," in his _Message of Christ to Manhood_;
SALTER, _The Future of the Family_; MATHEWS, "The Family," _Am.
Journal of Sociology_, I, 457-72; PEARSON, "The Decline of the
Family," in his _National Life and Character_, 227 ff.; and the
reply of MUIRHEAD, "Is the Family Declining?" _Int. Jour, of
Ethics_, Oct., 1896, 33 ff.; ROSS, _Social Control_, 405, 433.
The ablest appreciation of the value of individualism is that of
MILL, _On Liberty_ (2d ed.), 100 ff.

[784] COMMONS, "The Family," in his "Sociological View of
Sovereignty," in _Am. Jour. of Sociology_, V, 683 ff., 688,
689. On the future of the family compare SPENCER, _Principles
of Sociology_, I, 737 ff., 788; LETOURNEAU, _L'évolution du
mariage_, 444 ff.; PEARSON, "The Decline of the Family," in his
_National Life and Character_, 255, 256; MUIRHEAD, "Is the Family
Declining?" _Int. Jour. of Ethics_, Oct., 1896, 53-55; TILLIER,
_Le mariage_, 283 ff., 316.

More threatening to the solidarity of the family is believed to be the individualistic tendencies arising in existing urban and economic life.[785] With the rise of corporate and associated industry comes a weakening of the intimacy of home ties. Through the division of labor the "family hearth-stone" is fast becoming a mere temporary meeting-place of individual wage-earners. The congestion of population in cities is forcing into being new and lower modes of life. The tenement and the "sweating system" are destructive of the home. Neither the lodging-house, the "flat," nor the "apartment" affords an ideal environment for domestic joys. In the vast hives of Paris, London, or New York even families of the relatively well-to-do have small opportunity to flourish--for self-culture and self-enjoyment. To the children of the slum the street is a perilous nursery. For them squalor, disease, and sordid vice have supplanted the traditional blessings of the family sanctuary. The cramped, artificial, and transient associations of the boarding-house are a wretched substitute for the privacy of the separate household.[786] For very many men club life has stronger allurements than the connubial partnership. Prostitution advances with alarming speed. For the poor, sometimes for the rich, the great city has many interests and many places more attractive than the home circle. The love of selfish indulgence and the spirit of commercial greed, not less than grinding penury, restrain men and women from wedlock. Yet the urban environment has also the opposite effect. In the crowded, heterogeneous, and shifting population of the great towns marriages are often lightly made and as lightly dissolved. Indeed, the remarkable mobility of the American people, the habit of frequent migration, under the powerful incentives of industrial enterprise, gold-hunting, or other adventure, and under favor of the marvelously developed means of swift transportation, will account in no small degree for the laxity of matrimonial and family ties in the United States. May not one gather courage even from this untoward circumstance? Assuredly the present thus clearly appears to be an age of transition to a more stable condition of social life. Furthermore, the perils to the family of the kind under review need not be fatal. They are inherent mainly in economic institutions which may be scientifically studied and intelligently brought into harmony with the requirements of the social order. Already in great municipal centers, through improved facilities for rapid transit, the evils resulting from dense population are being somewhat ameliorated. Of a truth, every penny's reduction in street-railway fares means for the family of small means a better chance for pure air, sound health, and a separate home in the suburbs. The dispersion of the city over a broader area at once cheapens and raises the standard of living. Every hour's reduction in the period of daily toil potentially gives more leisure for building, adorning, and enjoying the home.

[785] _Cf._ PEABODY, _Jesus Christ and the Social Question_,
162-79; MUIRHEAD, _Is the Family Declining?_ 35.

[786] In the great centers of Germany, we are assured, the
family of the blood-kindred has yielded to the family composed
of kindred and strangers. For lack of space in the closely
packed districts people are forced to live almost in common:
GÖHRE, _Drei Monate Fabrikarbeiter_, 12 ff., 37 ff. _Cf._
BEBEL, _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_, 123, 124; and RADE, _Die
sittlich-religiöse Gedankenwelt unserer Industriearbeiter_, 117
ff.; STEWART, _Disintegration of the Families of the Workingmen_;
HENDERSON, _Social Elements_, 73.

To the socialist the monogamic family in its present form is decidedly a failure. "To those who would substitute common ownership for industrial liberty, the institution of the family presents one of the most persistent obstacles. Domestic unity is inconsistent with the absolute social unity vested in the state."[787] The larger social body must be composed of individual members, free and equal; and it will not tolerate within itself a smaller body with special group-interests of its own, much less with any vestige of coercive authority over its constituent parts. There must be no _imperium in imperio_. Writers like Engels[788] seek consolation and support in Bachofen's theory of a universal stage of mother-right before the monogamic family with the institution of private property had brought domestic slavery into the world. They "hold that the monogamic family is a relic of decaying civilization. All ideas on which it rests, the subordination and dependence of women, the ownership of children, the belief in the sacredness of marriage as a divine institution, above all respect for the individual ownership of property and the rights of inheritance as permanent elements in our social organization--have been undermined. The foundations are sapped and the superstructure is ready to topple in."[789]

[787] PEABODY, _op. cit._, 140.

[788] See ENGELS, _Der Ursprung der Familie_, 4 ff.; and his
follower, BEBEL, _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_, 1 ff., 93 ff.

[789] MUIRHEAD, _Is the Family Declining?_ 37.

Woman in particular has been the devoted victim of the greed of individual possession upon which the monogamic family rests. "Far back in history," according to Edward Carpenter, "at a time when in the early societies the thought of inequality had hardly arisen, it would appear that the female, in her own way--as sole authenticator of birth and parentage, as guardian of the household, as inventress of agriculture and the peaceful arts, as priestess and prophetess or sharer in the councils of the tribe--was as powerful as man in his, and sometimes even more so. But from thence down to today what centuries of repression, of slavehood, of dumbness, of obscurity have been her lot!"[790]

[790] CARPENTER, _Love's Coming of Age_; quoted from MUIRHEAD,
_op. cit._, 37. The views of various socialists regarding woman
and marriage are criticised by HERTZBERG, _Der Beruf der Frau_,
43-57.

Under socialism, declare Morris and Bax, marriage and the family will be affected "firstly in economics and secondly in ethics. The present marriage system is based on the general supposition of economic dependence of the woman on the man, and the consequent necessity of his making provision for her." In the new social order this degrading condition must disappear. "Property in children would cease to exist, and every infant that came into the world would be born into full citizenship, and would enjoy all its advantages, whatever the conduct of its parents might be. Thus a new development of the family would take place, on the basis, not of a predominant life-long business arrangement, to be formally and nominally held to, irrespective of circumstances, but on mutual inclination and affection, an association terminable at the will of either party." Thus a higher morality would be sanctioned. There would be no "vestige of reprobation for dissolving one tie and forming another."[791]

[791] MORRIS AND BAX, _Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome_, 299,
300.

A similar demand for liberty is made by Laurence Gronlund. Economically "the coming commonwealth" will place woman "on an equal footing with man." But she will be "equal," not "alike;" for in the new society the sexes will no longer be free industrial competitors, but each will have its special vocation. Physiological differences will not be ignored. "Woman will become a functionary, she will have suitable employment given her, and be rewarded according to results, just the same as men." Like men she will have suffrage, not as a right or a privilege, but as a trust. "The new order will necessarily, by the mere working of its economic principles, considerably modify" the marriage relation; and "is that relation such an ideal one now, that it would be a sacrilege to touch it? Is marriage not now, at bottom, an establishment for the support of woman? Is not maintenance the price which the husband pays for the appendage to himself? And because the supply generally exceeds the demand--that is, the effective demand--has woman not often to accept the offer of the first man who seems able to perform this pecuniary obligation?" If it be objected that this is taking "rather a commercial view" of the "holy" relation, is not, "as a matter of fact, marriage regarded by altogether too many as a commercial institution? Do not, in fact, the total of young women form a matrimonial market, regulated by demand and supply?" "Now the Co-operative Commonwealth will dissipate this horror," enabling every healthy adult man and woman to find a mate. Thus, contrary to false charges, socialists are not trying to destroy the family: "they want to enable every man and woman to form a happy family!" Modern democracy revolts against the patriarchal constitution of the family, upon whose model all feudal and ancient societies were organized. In the "very nature of things family-supremacy will be absolutely incompatible with an interdependent, a solidaric, commonwealth; for in such a state the first object of education must be to establish in the minds of the children an indissoluble association between their individual happiness and the good of all."[792]

[792] GRONLUND, _The Co-operative Commonwealth_, 193-206.

The manifold social evils which take their rise directly or indirectly in marriage as it is--be the actual causes what they may--have always justly aroused the unsparing criticism of socialistic writers. Thus to Robert Owen--whose pure life was unreservedly and courageously devoted to the social good, as he understood it--marriage was a member of his "trinity of causes of crime and immorality among mankind."[793] With almost the fanatical zeal of an apostle of a new religion, he railed at the "single" family.[794] He proclaimed the glad tidings of the swift approach of the new moral order. Then "the imaginative laws of the marriages of the priesthood must be among the first to be abolished, by reason of their extended injurious influence upon human nature, poisoning all the sources of the most valuable qualities which Nature has given to infant man. These marriages have dried up the fountain of truth in human nature; they perpetually insinuate that man can love and hate at his pleasure, and that to be virtuous he must live according to the dictates of the laws and ceremonies devised by the priesthood, that he must hate according to the same dictation, and that if he does not thus love and hate, he is vicious, and he will be eternally punished in another world," while on earth he will suffer from the human laws and by the public opinion which priests have inspired.[795] Under the new moral order all this will be changed. Marriages will be more lasting than now. "Every individual will be trained and educated, to have all his powers cultivated in the most superior manner known; cultivated too under a new combination of external objects, purposely formed, to bring into constant exercise the best and most lovely qualities only of human nature." Wealth for all will be "produced in superfluity." Therefore all will be "equal in their education and condition," and without any distinction except as to age. "There will be then no motive or inducement for any parties to unite, except from pure affection arising from the most unreserved knowledge of each other's character.... There will be no artificial obstacles in the way of permanent happy unions of the sexes; for ... the affections will receive every aid which can be devised to induce them to be permanent;" and the wedded pair "will be placed as far as possible in the condition of lovers during their lives." In "some partial instances," however, happiness might not even thus be secured. In such event, "without any severance of friendship between the parties, a separation may be made, the least injurious to them and the most beneficial to the interests of society."[796] In fine, Robert Owen's book, although often vague in expression and violent in tone, contains in its statements, and still more in its suggestions, practically the whole program of later socialistic writings on the subject of marriage and the family, except the argument based on historical evolution.[797]

[793] OWEN, _Marriages of the Priesthood of the Old Immoral
World_, 54: "I resume the subject of marriage because it is
the source of more demoralization, crime, and misery, than any
other single cause, with the exception of religion and private
property; and these three together form the great trinity of
causes of crime and immorality among mankind." For examples
of the bitter denunciations which Owen's doctrines naturally
provoked see the tract of BRINDLEY, _The Marriage System of
Socialism_ (Chester, 1840); and that of BOWES, _The 'Social
Beasts'_ (Liverpool, 1840).

[794] For examples see _Marriages of the Priesthood_, 41, 43, 44,
81.

[795] OWEN, _op. cit._, 81.

[796] _Ibid._, 86, 87, giving an extract from his six lectures
delivered at Manchester in 1837.

[797] Owen's book was written in 1835, just before the passage
of the new civil-marriage law; and the violence of its tone may
in part have been provoked by the injustice and intolerance
sanctioned by the Hardwicke act of 1753, at that time in force.
In 1840 he declared, as regards the _form_ of marriage, that the
law of 1836 had "exactly" met his "ideas and wishes;" and that
all which he then desired was "to see another law enacted, by
which _Divorces_, under wise arrangements, and on principles of
common sense, may be obtained equally for rich and poor."--_Op.
cit._, 90. He himself outlines marriage and divorce laws which
possess some excellent features: _ibid._, 88-90.

Robert Dale Owen followed in his father's footsteps. He finds even the Haytian institution of "placement"--an informal union made and dissolved at the pleasure of the contracting persons--far superior in its morality and its stability to the sacramental marriage which exists by its side.[798]

[798] ROBERT DALE OWEN, "Marriage and Placement," _Free
Inquirer_, May 28, 1831; and his letter to Thomas Whittemore,
editor of the Boston _Trumpet_, May, 1831; both quoted by BESANT,
_Marriage_, 23, 24, 26, 27. The _Free Inquirer_ was founded in
New York city by Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright in 1829:
JOHNSON, _Woman and the Republic_, 121.

August Bebel, in his able book on _Woman and Socialism_, draws a powerful indictment of matrimonial relations under the existing order. To this source, in his view, may be traced the prevalence of sexual crimes and the most dangerous tendencies now threatening the integrity of society. Infanticide, abortion, and prostitution; the decline in the birth and marriage rates; the increase in the number of divorces; the subjection of woman--all these, he says, are due mainly to the influence of the present "coercive marriage." This is so because that "marriage is an institution bound up in the closest way with the existing social order and with it must stand or fall." Coercive marriage is the creature of economic conditions, the "normal marriage" of the present bourgeois society; and with that society it is already in process of disruption. "Since all these unnatural conditions, being especially harmful to woman, are grounded in the nature of the bourgeois society and are growing with its duration, that society is proving itself incapable of remedying the evil and of emancipating woman. Another social order is therefore needful for this purpose." In the new state, economically and socially, woman will be entirely independent. She will no longer be the subject of authority and of exploitation; but, free and equal by man's side she will become "mistress of her own destiny."[799]

[799] BEBEL, _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_, 93 ff., 175, 176,
427 ff., 431; or the same in WALTHER'S translation, 43 ff., 229
ff. Compare KARL PEARSON'S discussion of "Socialism and Sex" in
his _Ethic of Free Thought_, 427-46; and CAIRD, _Morality of
Marriage_, 123-27.

Whatever may be thought of the remedy suggested by socialistic writers, whether or not our only hope lies in the co-operative commonwealth, it is certain that they have rendered an important public service. They have earnestly studied and set forth the actual facts. With unsparing hand they have laid bare the flaws in our domestic institutions as they really exist. They have clearly proved that the problems of marriage and the family can be solved only by grasping their relations to the economic system. They have shown that progress lies along the line of the complete emancipation of woman and the absolute equality of the sexes in marriage. In accomplishing all this they have in effect done much to arouse in the popular mind a loftier ideal of wedded life.

The liberation of woman in every one of its aspects profoundly involves the destiny of the family. It signifies in all the larger activities of life the relative individualization of one-half of human kind. This means, of course, a weakening of the solidarity of the family group, so far as its cohesion is dependent on the remnants of mediæval marital authority. Will the ultimate dissolution of the family thus become the price of equality and freedom? Or rather, is it not almost certain that in the more salubrious air of freedom and equality there is being evolved a higher type of the family, knit together by ties--sexual, moral, and spiritual--far more tenacious than those fostered by the régime of subjection? How remarkable, in England as well as in America, is the revolution already accomplished! Few facts in social history are more instructive than the change which has taken place in the tone of the literature dealing with woman and her relations to marriage and the family. In the eighteenth century and until far down into the nineteenth it is for the most part utterly frivolous or sentimental. Vapid satire abounds. Erotic or facetious verse at the expense of the "fair sex" or "wedded love" finds ready popular response. Even in what is meant for earnest discussion woman is treated as a helpless being, to be petted, cajoled, or corrected, not too harshly, by her superior lord; or else she is edified with endless lectures on the sacred duty of guarding her virtue--a fact which throws a lurid and unintentional light on the moral standards of the age. Imagine an _Essay on Old Maids_,[800] tediously spun out in three volumes; or a book like Eliza Haywood's _Female Spectator_,[801] which, although in four volumes, had already reached its seventh edition in 1771.

[800] _A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids,
by a Friend of the Sisterhood_ (London, 1785). Some of the
gleanings from history in the second and third volumes are not
entirely devoid of permanent interest.

[801] HAYWOOD, _The Female Spectator_ (7th ed., London, 1771).
This is a fairly representative compilation of gossip and
literary anecdote regarding woman, but without a trace of
sociological perception.

For examples of the lighter productions referred to see _An
Essay on Marriage, in a cautionary Epistle to a Young Gentleman,
wherein the Artifices and Foibles of the Fair_, etc. (London,
1750); _The Deportment of a Married Life: Laid down in a
Series of Letters ... to a Young Lady ... lately Married_
(2d ed., London, 1798; 3d ed., 1821); _Boone_, _The Marriage
Looking-Glass: written as a Manual for the Married and a Beacon
to the Single_ (London, 1848); GUTHRIE, _Wedded Love_ (London,
1859), a volume of sentimental verse. Some of them have a pious
or theological tone: _The Advantages and Disadvantages of the
Married State ... under the Similitude of a Dream_ (5th ed.,
London, 1760); _Conjugal Love and Duty_ (4th ed., Dublin and
London, 1758); _Reflections on Celibacy and Marriage, in Four
Letters to a Friend_ (London, 1771); SANDEMAN, _The Honour of
Marriage opposed to all Impurities_ (London, 1777); BEAN, _The
Christian Minister's Affectionate Advice to a New Married Couple_
(4th ed., London, 1809). Others contain valuable passages, while
vividly reflecting the contemporary view regarding woman's
inferior position: "Philogamus," _The Present State of Matrimony_
(London, 1739); _The Art of Governing a Wife; with Rules for
Batchelors_ (London, 1747).

Nevertheless, the beginning of an efficient agitation for woman's rights was then made. As early as 1696 appeared Mary Astell's vigorous _Defense of the Female Sex_, further developing views which she had expressed two years earlier.[802] The next year Defoe, advocating an "academy for women," made a strong plea for the equal education of the sexes.[803] A singularly clear and incisive exposure of the _Hardships of the English Laws in relation to Wives_ was published in 1735. The writer, apparently a woman, while protesting that her adversaries for want of arguments resort to "points of wit, smart jests, and all-confounding laughter," presents many striking proofs from judicial annals and elsewhere to show that in England the "estate of wives is more disadvantageous than slavery itself;" that they "may be made prisoners for life at the discretion of their domestick governors;" and that they "have no property, neither in their own persons, children, or fortunes."[804] In 1739 an anonymous writer, signing herself "Sophia," produced a forceful _Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem with the Men_, in which, appealing to "rectified reason," she urged that difference in sex relates to the "propagation of human nature," whereas in "soul there is no sex," and diversity must therefore come from education and environment.[805] Mary Wollstonecraft's better known and much more elaborate _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_,[806] published in 1792, was therefore not without helpful predecessors. But it is immensely superior to them in its literary power and its intellectual grasp. The fearless, direct, and unaffected way in which the subject is handled, especially the questions of sex and education, discloses the dawn of a new era of discussion. More clearly than ever before the liberation of woman appears as a sociological problem of the greatest moment to mankind. True, much space is devoted to combating objections which may now seem trivial; but to the average mind of Mary Wollstonecraft's day they were by no means trivial, and they had to be cleared away before the full light could come in.

[802] ASTELL, _An Essay in Defense of the Female Sex_ (London,
1696; 3d ed., 1697). _Cf._ her _Serious Proposal to the Ladies_
(London, 1694; 3d ed., 1697); and her _Reflections upon Marriage_
(London, 1700; 4th ed., 1730).

[803] DEFOE, _An Essay upon Projects_ (London, 1697).

[804] _The Hardships of the English Laws in relation to Wives_
(London, 1735), 4 ff.

[805] "SOPHIA," _Woman not Inferior to Man; or, A short and
modest Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a
perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem with the Men_
(London, 1739; 2d ed., 1740). This tract was answered by a
"GENTLEMAN," _Man Superior to Woman; or, a Vindication of Man's
Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman_ (London,
1739), insisting that woman was not created at all, but is "a
sort of after-produced being" who must not "presume to call in
question the great duty of vassalage" to man, under penalty of
the withdrawal of his heart from her power. To this "SOPHIA"
rejoined in _Woman's Superior Excellence over Man_ (London, 1740).

[806] A new edition of this book, with an introduction by
MRS. FAWCETT, appeared in London in 1890. _Cf._ PENNELL, "A
Century of Women's Rights," _Fort. Rev._, XLVIII, 408 ff.;
RAUSCHENBUSCH-CLOUGH, _A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the
Rights of Woman_; OSTROGORSKI, _The Rights of Women_, 40;
RICHTER, _Mary Wollstonecraft die Verfechterin der "Rechte der
Frau."_

The foundations were thus laid upon which, chiefly during the last half-century,[807] a vast literary superstructure--controversial, historical, and scientific--has been erected; a many-sided literature worthily embodying the thought of a great transitional stage in social progress. The opponents of woman's liberation have been forced to choose new weapons. Satire and mockery are no longer in vogue. Both sides are very much in earnest. The tone of present discussion is nothing if not serious. Moreover, while the battle for sexual equality in the family and in the state is very far from being yet fought out, the ultimate victory seems already assured.

[807] In Germany DOROTHEA CHRISTINE ERXLEBEN, in her _Gründliche
Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das weibliche Geschlecht vom
Studium abhalten_ (Berlin, 1742); _Vernünftige Gedanken vom
Studiren des schönen Geschlechts_ (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1749);
and HIPPEL, _Bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber_ (Berlin,
1792); followed by his _Nachlass über weibliche Bildung_
(Berlin, 1801), were already beginning the agitation for woman's
liberation. A remarkably clear and incisive essay in defense
of woman, entitled _De l'égalité des deux sexes_, appeared in
Paris in 1673. CONDORCET, _Lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven à
un citoyen de Virginie_ (1787) compressed into a few sentences
the basic arguments for the movement. In the same year appeared
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT'S _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_,
a forerunner of her _Vindication_ five years later. During the
next fifty years a few earnest champions of woman's freedom came
forward. First was MARY ANNE RADCLIFFE, _Female Advocate, or an
attempt to recover the Rights of Women from Male Usurpation_
(London, 1799); followed by HANNAH MATHER CROCKER, _Observations
on the Real Rights of Women_ (Boston, 1818); WILLIAM THOMPSON
AND MRS. WHEELER, _Appeal ... of Women_ (London, 1825), a book
written in reply to a statement in JAMES MILL'S article on
_Government_, and possibly influencing John Stuart Mill's later
thoughts on the subject; SARAH M. GRIMKE, _Letters on Equality
of the Sexes_ (Boston, 1838); LADY SYDNEY MORGAN, _Woman and her
Master_ (London, 1840); MRS. ELLIS, _Woman's Rights and Duties_
(London, 1840). The movement took organic form in 1848, when the
first convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York. This was
followed in 1850 by conventions in Ohio and Massachusetts. In
1851 MRS. JOHN STUART MILL'S powerful article in the July number
of the _Westminster Review_ on the "Enfranchisement of Women"
supplied the agitation with a definite program. See FAWCETT, _The
Woman Question in Europe_, 273, note; STANTON, ANTHONY, AND GAGE,
_Hist. of Woman Suffrage_, I, 70 ff.; OSTROGORSKI, _Rights of
Women_, 54 ff.; JOHNSON, _Woman and the Republic_, 39 ff.; WADE,
_Women, Past and Present_, 247.

It would, indeed, be very strange if some incidental harm should not result from the veritable revolution in the condition of American women which little more than a generation has produced. This is the inevitable penalty which social progress has always to pay. Yet in the present case the transitional loss to the family or to the larger social body is exceedingly slight compared even with the immediate gain. This is especially true of woman's new intellectual life with all its manifold activities. It matters not whether she is showing herself mentally man's equal. If any justification of her new rôle were needed it might suffice to affirm that she has precisely the same right as man to free and unhampered self-development in whatever direction and in whatever manner she herself shall find most conducive to her happiness. But it is amply justified by its social results. It cannot be seriously doubted that woman's admission to equal privilege of higher education is enabling her better to share with man in doing the world's work. Besides, in spite of the vain imaginings of misogynistic philosophers,[808] the problem of special sexual function in its relation to mental capacity is being settled in woman's favor. "Science," declares Lourbet, in completing his valuable survey, "is incapable of demonstrating the 'irremediable' mental inferiority of woman.... The pretended antagonism between mental power and sexual power, which does not withstand rigorous analysis, appears definitively to be destroyed by experience, by the tangible facts which incessantly strike the eye."[809] Herbert Spencer reaches the conclusion that "were liberties to be adjusted to abilities, the adjustment, even could we make it, would have to be made irrespective of sex."[810]

[808] According to HARTMANN, _The Sexes Compared_, 3, 6 ff.,
there is between man and woman a fundamental and irremovable
distinction: The woman rules sexually and therefore "we must, by
way of compensation, uphold the legal superiority of man." In
establishing sexual equality the progress of culture receives
a severe blow. More wonderful is the teaching of SCHOPENHAUER.
"Women," he says, "are directly adapted to act as the nurses
and educators of our childhood, for the simple reason that they
themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted--in a word
are big children all their lives, something intermediate between
the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the
word."--_On Women_: in DIRCKS'S _Essays of Schopenhauer_, 65; or
his _Sämmtliche Werke_, III, 649 ff.

[809] LOURBET, _La femme devant la science contemporaine_, 157,
161. See especially BEBEL, _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_, 233 ff.

[810] SPENCER, _Justice_, 186. For an elaborate discussion of
woman's mental capacity see MILL, _Subjection of Women_, 91-146.

It is singular what acute anxiety is felt by adherents of the old régime[811] lest woman's new intellectual life should prove disastrous to her physical constitution, unmindful of the fact that even now for the majority of married women the burdens of the orthodox "natural sphere" are far more harmful. The tables are decidedly turned by a radical writer who with truth declares that "evidence is rapidly accumulating which makes it almost impossible to deny that the feminine constitution has been disastrously injured during the long ages of patriarchal rule, and that this beloved 'sphere' of woman, where she was thought so safe and happy, has, in fact, been a very seed-bed of disease and misery and wrong;" that "through these ages of overstrain of every kind--physical, emotional, nervous--one set of faculties being in perpetual activity while the others lay dormant, woman has fallen into a state that is more or less ailing and diseased; that upon her shoulders has been laid the penalty of the injustice and selfishness of men."[812] Even if the participation of woman in the mental activities and the public vocations which men have hitherto monopolized should prove harmful to her, has she not a right to discover the fact by experience? "I consider it presumptuous," said John Stuart Mill in the outset of the organized emancipation movement, "in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised, and no one can safely pronounce that if woman's nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves."[813]

[811] For example, see DR. STRAHAN, "The Struggle of the Sexes:
its Effect upon the Race," _Humanitarian_, III (Nov., 1893),
349-57; replying to an article entitled "Sex Bias" in the same
journal for July of that year; EDSON, "Women of Today," _North
Am. Rev._, CLVII, 440-51; who is criticised by ICHENHAEUSER, _Die
Ausnahmestellung Deutschlands in Sachen des Frauenstudiums_, 8
ff.; an article entitled "'Woman's Rights' Question Considered
from a Biological Point of View," _Quart. Jour. of Sci._, XV,
469-84; which is effectually disposed of by WARD, "Our Better
Halves," _Forum_, VI, 266-75. Ward is attacked by ALLEN, "Woman's
Place in Nature," _Forum_, VII, 258-63. ROMANES, "Mental
Differences of Men and Women," in _Pop. Sci. Monthly_, XXXI,
383-401, takes a conservative or intermediate position. A liberal
view is held by BROOKS, "The Condition of Women Zoölogically,"
_ibid._, XV, 145 ff., 347 ff.; and by WHITE, "Woman's Place in
Nature," _ibid._, VI, 292-301.

[812] CAIRD, _Morality of Marriage_, 13, 174, 175.

[813] Quoted by CAIRD, _op. cit._, 14. For a trenchant discussion
of this point compare MILL, _Subjection of Women_, 38-52, 111
ff., _passim._

It is vain for "scientific optimism" to seek in "nature" a justification for woman's sexual subjection. "Independently ... of its false facts and false premises, this pretended scientific defense of the undue inequality of the sexes in man is fundamentally unsound in resting upon a thoroughly false assumption, which is only the more pernicious because widely prevalent. It assumes that whatever exists in nature must be the best possible state.... The only practical use to which we put science is to _improve upon nature_, to control all classes of forces, social forces included, to the end of bettering the conditions under which we inhabit the earth. This is true civilization, and all of it."[814]

[814] WARD, _Dynamic Sociology_, I, 662.

The fear that the education of woman, in connection with her growing economic independence, will prove harmful to society through her refusal of matrimony or maternity appears equally groundless. According to Dike, "the demand for her enfranchisement, either as a right or on the ground of expediency, grows out of this way of treating her as an individual whose relations to society are less a matter of condition and more of personal choice. And this principle is carried into a sphere entirely her own. A partial loss of capacity for maternity has, it is said, already befallen American women; and the voluntary refusal of its responsibilities is the lament of the physician and the moralist."[815] It is true that the birth-rate is falling.[816] So far as this depends upon male sensuality, a prevalent cause of sterility; upon selfish love of ease and luxury--of which men even more than women are guilty; or upon the disastrous influence of the present extremes of wealth and poverty--of which women as well as men are the victims--it is a serious evil which may well cause us anxiety; but so far as it is the result of the desire for fewer but better-born children--for which, let us hope, the advancing culture of woman may in part be responsible--it is in fact a positive social good.[817] It is true also that, while fewer and fewer marriages in proportion to the population are taking place, men as well as women are marrying later and later in life.[818] Here again, for the reasons just mentioned, the results are both good and bad. Certain it is that early marriages and excessive child-bearing have been the twin causes of much injury to the human race. "To the superficial observer," declares a writer very conservative as to the effects of woman's emancipation, "it may appear that every marriage must enrich the state, and that early marriages must lessen the amount of sexual immorality, but inquiry will prove conclusively how fallacious are those views. Early marriages certainly tend to the production of large families, but then a family, to be a source of wealth to the state, must at least be self-supporting, which is exactly what the feeble, degenerate children of the great mass of our early marriages are not. They are brought forth ill-developed and unhealthy; their immature, improvident parents are unable to either feed or educate them as they ought to be fed and educated; hence, instead of being a source of wealth to the state, they prove a serious drain upon her resources. A large percentage of these miserable children succumb during infancy, but a great number drag out a pitiful existence, only to become inmates of our workhouses and infirmaries, our asylums and prisons, and, after being supported at the public expense for a longer or shorter period, to die prematurely, leaving the state poorer than they found it and no better. It is indeed a small percentage of the children of the immature that ever become robust useful, self-supporting citizens."[819]

[815] DIKE, "Some Aspects of the Divorce Question," _Princeton
Rev._, March, 1884, 180. Compare ALLEN, "The New England Family,"
_New Englander_, March, 1882, 146 ff.; CREPAZ, _Die Gefahren der
Frauen-Emancipation_, 24 ff.

[816] KUCZYNSKI, "Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born Pop.
of Mass.," _Quart. Jour. of Economics_, XVI, 1-36; CRUM, "The
Birth-Rate in Mass.," _ibid._, XI, 248-65; DUMONT, "Essai sur le
natalité en Mass.," _Jour. de la soc. stat. de Paris_, XXXVIII
(1897), 332-53, 385-95; XXXIX (1898), 64-99; MOLINARI, "Decline
of the French Population," _Jour. of the Royal Stat. Soc._, LIII,
183-97; MAYO-SMITH, _Statistics and Sociology_, 67 ff.; USSHER,
_Neo-Malthusianism_, 137-64; EDSON, "Women of Today," _North Am.
Rev._, CLVII, 446 ff.

[817] Sometime, it is to be hoped, society may seriously
take in hand the problem of restraining the propagation of
criminals, dependents, and the other unfit: see WARNER, _American
Charities_, 132, 133.

[818] WILLCOX, "A Study of Vital Statistics," in _Pol.
Sci. Quart._, VIII, 76, 77; OGLE, "On Marriage-Rates and
Marriage-Ages," _Jour. of the Royal Stat. Soc._, LIII, 272 ff.;
KUCZYNSKI, "Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born Pop. in
Mass.," _Quart. Jour. of Economics_, XVI, 1-36; MAYO-SMITH,
_Statistics and Sociology_, 103 ff., 124; CRUM, "The Marriage
Rate in Mass.," _Pub. of Am. Stat. Assoc._, IV, 331 ff.; WALLACE,
"Human Selection," _Fort. Rev._, XLVIII, 335 ff.

[819] STRAHAN, _Marriage and Disease_, 245 ff., giving
statistics. _Cf._ EDSON, "The Evils of Early Marriages," _North
Am. Rev._, CLVIII, 230-34; USSHER, _Neo-Malthusianism_, 213
ff.; WALLACE, "Human Selection," _Fort. Rev._, XLVIII, 333 ff.;
LEGOUVÉ, _Hist. morale des femmes_, 74-84.

It is not marriage or maternity which educated women are shunning; but they are declining to view marriage as their sole vocation or to become merely child-bearing animals. Let us not worry about the destiny of college women.[820] It is simply wrong wedlock which they are avoiding. They have, suggests Muirhead, a careful regard for the "kind" of marriage. They are determined to have only "the genuine article." They "look in marriage not only for the old fashioned 'union of hearts,' but for the union of heart and head in some serious interest which will survive the mere attractions of sex and form a solid bond of union even in the absence of others which, like the birth of children, depend on fortune." So "far from being hostile" to the family, "they are only preparing the way for a purer and more beneficent form of family life." The "maternal instinct is happily not confined to the uneducated."[821] The rise of a more refined sentiment of love has become at once a check and an incentive to marriage.[822][820] See especially the excellent paper of MARY ROBERTS SMITH, "Statistics of College and Non-College Women," _Pub. of the Am. Stat. Assoc._, VII, 1-26, whose conclusions support the view taken in the text; and SIDGWICK, _Health Statistics of Women Students of Cambridge and Oxford and Their Sisters_ (Cambridge, 1890), who reaches similar general results. _Cf._ THWING, "What Becomes of College Women?" _North Am. Rev._, CLXI, 546-53, taking a very favorable view of the influence of higher education on woman in her domestic relations; and SHINN, "The Marriage Rate of College Women," _Century_, L, 946-48. Consult also the articles of F. M. ABBOTT, C. S. ANGSTMAN, G. E. GARDNER, and F. FRANKLIN mentioned in the Bibliographical Index, IV; and read CLARA E. COLLET'S "Prospects of Marriage for Women," _Nineteenth Century_, XXXI, 537-52.

[821] MUIRHEAD, "Is the Family Declining?" _Int. Jour. of
Ethics_, Oct., 1896, 47-50.

[822] There are many reasons why all persons do not marry. Among
these is a loftier ideal of love. "Persons often live single a
whole life-time because they are unable to obtain the only one
in the world for whom they can ever experience a throb of pure
passion.... We see then that this more diffused and elevated form
of love becomes at once the greatest incentive and the greatest
barrier to marriage. It differs wholly from the localized passion
in being _selective_. While it is less selfish, it must be called
out by, and exclusively directed toward, one definite object.
From this circumstance it may be called the _objective_ form of
love."--WARD, _Dynamic Sociology_, I, 626.

Long ago Mrs. John Stuart Mill explained how essential are knowledge and equality to render woman the real companion of man in the struggle for existence; how the subjection and ignorance of the wife degrade not only her own character, but that of the husband as well. "There is hardly any situation more unfavorable to the maintenance of elevation of character, or force of intellect, than to live in the society, and seek by preference the sympathy, of inferiors in mental endowments."[823]

[823] MRS. MILL, "Enfranchisement of Women," _Westminster
Review_, July 1851; or _Dissertations and Discussions_, III, 117,
118. "While far from being expedient, we are firmly convinced,
that the division of mankind into castes, one born to rule over
the other, is in this case, as in all cases, an unqualified
mischief; a source of perversion and demoralization, both to the
favored class and to those at whose expense they are favored;
producing none of the good which it is the custom to ascribe to
it, and forming a bar, almost insuperable while it lasts, to
any really vital improvement, either in the character or in the
social condition of the human race."--_Ibid._, 101. _Cf._ MR.
MILL'S masterly discussion of the relative effects of equality
and inequality in marriage, in _Subjection of Women_, 53-90, 146
ff.

If woman's even partnership with man in the nurture of the family and in facing the exigencies of external life depends mainly on equal education, never was such education more urgently required than at the present hour. Social and industrial problems are constantly demanding higher and higher mental training for their solution. The same is true of the problem of the family. It is very largely a question of reform and development in home education. Clearly, then, husband and wife have great need of intelligent sympathy and counsel in the discharge of their joint, yet partially differentiated, tasks. Hence, it should be the high function of public education to promote this healthy companionship in social duty. Furthermore, American experience appears to show that it can best do so by training young men and women together. Indeed, in this regard the sociological value of coeducation is very important. Theoretically it seems reasonable to assume that those who are to work together in later life may gain some advantage by spending the years of study side by side. The practical result of coeducation in the western states, where it has been given the freest opportunity, appears to demonstrate that such is actually the case. The majority of those who have had extended experience, after making all due allowance for special difficulties to be surmounted, are emphatic in their opinion that mentally and morally both sexes are the gainers by it, as compared with training in separate institutions.[824] It is true that eventually marriages very often result from such associations. That is precisely the gist of the matter. Are not the conditions entirely favorable to the fostering of happy unions? Under what better auspices can attachments be formed than when young men and women are learning to gauge each other's character through the varied social and intellectual rivalries of the years of scholastic life?

[824] "Yet coeducation wisely managed is almost indispensable
to the training of noble men and women; for education in its
broadest sense takes account of all the influences that go to
form character. It is not wholly intellectual, but is moral
and social, and can best be carried forward, under a proper
_régime_, where young men and women are educated and trained
together."--LIVERMORE, _What Shall We Do with Our Daughters?_ 44
ff. _Cf._ KUHNOW, _Frauenbildung und Frauenberuf_, 7 ff.; and
especially WOLLSTONECRAFT, _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_,
361 ff., 381-413.

Educational equality, however, is but one aspect of the movement for woman's liberation. There are other factors of the ideal partnership of the sexes in the uplifting of society. Intellectual emancipation is proceeding, and necessarily must proceed, hand in hand with political and economic emancipation. The three movements are in large measure blended and interdependent. The participation of woman in the new vocations--industrial, artistic, professional, or administrative--implies a great advance in mental training. It means a distinct unfoldment of faculties and character. "No sociological change equal in importance to this clearly marked improvement of an entire sex has ever taken place in one century."[825] It is a revolution in which one-half of the human race is becoming an equal factor with the other in intellectual and economic production. At last woman is gaining a share in the social consciousness; she is entering into the social organization as a new and regenerative force. Doubtless, in the process of readjusting new functions and conditions to the old some temporary harm may ensue. Yet happily the alarm is subsiding lest by her entrance on the new vocations woman should permanently wreck her physical constitution, refuse to marry, or cause industrial disaster through over-competition.[826] With far greater justice a century ago it was complained that the "intrusion of men-traders" into woman's work was driving her to destitution and thus fostering the "social evil."[827] The callings into which women are charged with "intruding" were, many of them, women's callings before they were men's.

[825] STETSON, _Women and Economics_, 151. On the woman
labor question see the very enlightening discussion of OLIVE
SCHREINER, "The Woman's Movement of Our Day," _Harper's Bazar_,
XXXVI (1902), 3-8, 103-7, 222-27; and her "Woman Question,"
_Cosmopolitan_, XXVIII (1899-1900), 45-54, 182-92, emphasizing
the danger of woman's "sex-parasitism," through her economic
dependence. Compare GÜNTHER, _Das Recht der Frau auf Arbeit_, 6
ff.

[826] The hardships which women as well as men endure under the
present industrial conditions have little connection with their
economic emancipation. "What some call a woman's movement for
industrial liberty is not quite what it is claimed to be. It
is largely an incident in the movement of property, which is
seeking its own ends, caring very little for either sex or age.
In order to find an easier place under the common industrial
yoke that rests upon the neck of every individual, women seek
more and more employments. But it is not so much womanhood as it
is property that is the real impelling cause."--DIKE, "Problems
of the Family," _Century_, XXXIX, 392. _Cf._ LEGOUVÉ, _Hist.
morale des femmes_, 366-90; GRAFFENRIED, "The Condition of
Wage-Earning Women," _Forum_, XV, 68 ff.; EDSON, "American Life
and Physical Deterioration," _North Am. Rev._, CLVII, 440 ff.,
referring to the alleged evil effects of woman's new activities;
DILKE, "Industrial Position of Women," _Fort. Rev._, LIV, 499
ff., discussing the condition of factory workers; PHILLIPPS,
"The Working Lady in London," _ibid._, LII, 193 ff.; BREMNER,
"The Financial Dependence of Women," _North Am. Rev._, CLVIII,
382 ff., protesting against regarding the economic "dependence
of the wife as degradation;" and COLLET, "Official Statistics on
the Employment of Women," _Jour. of the Stat. Soc._, LXI, 216-60.
MRS. MILL, "Enfranchisement of Women," _Dissertation_, III, 109
ff., effectually disposes of the objection based on the alleged
effects of woman's industrial competition with men. _Cf._ the
elaborate discussion of BEBEL, _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_,
202 ff.

[827] MARY ANNE RADCLIFFE, _The Female Advocate_ (London, 1799).
A petition of women to Louis XVI. in 1789 prays "that men may
not ply the trades belonging to women, whether dressmaking,
embroidery, or haberdashery. Let them leave us, at least the
needle and the spindle, and we will engage not to wield the
compass or the square."--OSTROGORSKI, _The Rights of Women_, 26,
27; following LEFAURE, _Le socialisme pendant la révolution_, 122.

It is within the family itself that the growing economic independence of woman is producing the highest sociological results. Under the old domestic régime on both sides of the sea the woman who married entered legally, potentially, upon a life of financial bondage. In the theory of the common law the wife, with her children, her goods, and the fruits of her toil, was the sole property of the husband. Only in 1886 did the mother in England gain legal capacity for the partial custody of her offspring;[828] and in but few of the American states has she been placed on equal footing with the father in this regard.[829] Even now the "husband in England can claim damage from the man who has ruined his family life, but the woman can claim none from the rival who has supplanted her."[830] In both England and the United States notable progress has already been made in equalizing the property rights of the sexes; but the process is yet far from complete. The prevailing conception of marriage as a status in which the wife is "supported" by the husband is degrading in its influence on the woman's character. It tends to deaden her moral perceptions and to paralyze her mental powers. Girls are trained, or they are forced by poverty, to look upon wedlock as an economic vocation, as a means of getting a living. The result is that under the old order marriage tends to become a species of purchase-contract in which the woman barters her sex-capital to the man in exchange for a life-support. The man--not the woman as originally--has become the chooser in sex-selection. In the family, therefore, the sex-motive has become excessively pronounced, thrusting into the background higher social and spiritual ideals.[831] The liberation movement thus means in a high degree the socialization of one-half of the human race. Woman declines longer to be restricted to the dwarfing environment of sexual seclusion; and demands the means and the privilege of engaging in the larger activities of self-conscious society.[832]