CHAPTER XIV.
The Struggle of Women for Education.

1.—The Revolution in Domestic Life.

Although the change in the position of women is obvious to all who go through life with open eyes, we still continue to hear the idle talk that the home and the family are woman’s natural sphere. This cry is most loudly raised wherever women attempt to enter the learned professions to become teachers at higher institutions of learning, physicians, lawyers, scientists, etc. The most ridiculous objections are resorted to and defended in the guise of scientific arguments. In this respect, as in many others, supposedly learned men base their arguments on science to defend what is most ridiculous and absurd. Their main objection is, that women are intellectually inferior to men; that in the realm of intellectual activity they cannot attain any noteworthy achievements. Most men are so prejudiced in regard to the professional abilities of women, that whoever resorts to arguments of this sort is sure to meet with approval. As long as the general status of culture and knowledge is as low as at present, new ideas will always be met with rigorous opposition, especially when it is in the interest of the ruling classes to limit culture and knowledge to their own strata. Therefore new ideas are at first upheld only by a small minority, and this small group is subjected to ridicule, slander and persecution. But if the new ideas are good and rational, if they have sprung up as a natural consequence of existing conditions, they will be disseminated, and the minority will eventually become the majority. It was thus with every new idea in the course of human history, and the idea of obtaining woman’s true and complete emancipation will meet with the same success. Were not the believers in Christian faith at one time a small minority? Was the reformation not ushered in by a small and persecuted group? Did not the modern bourgeoisie contend with overwhelmingly powerful opponents? Nevertheless they were victorious. Or was Socialism destroyed in Germany by twelve years of persecution by exceptional laws? The victory of Socialism was never more certain than when it was thought to be destroyed.

The assertion that housekeeping and child-rearing is woman’s natural sphere is as intelligent as the assertion that there must always be kings, because there have been kings as long as there has been a history. We do not know how the first king originated, just as we do not know where the first capitalist appeared. But we do know that monarchy has been greatly transformed in the course of thousands of years, that it is the tendency of evolution to diminish the power of kings more and more and that the time will come—and that time is not far distant—when kings will be quite superfluous. Just as monarchy, so every institution of state and society is subjected to changes and transformations and ultimate destruction. In the historical expositions of this book we have seen, that the present form of marriage and the position of woman have by no means always been what they are to-day. We have seen that both are the product of an historical line of development that is still in progress. About 2,350 years ago Demosthenes could assert that woman had no other vocation but to give birth to legitimate children and to faithfully guard the house. To-day this conception has been overcome. No one could dare to defend this standpoint to-day without being accused of contempt of women. Indeed there are some even to-day who secretly share the view of the ancient Athenian, but no one would dare to express publicly what one of the foremost men of ancient Greece asserted freely and openly as a matter of course. Herein lies the progress.

Now, although modern development has undermined millions of marriages, it has on the other hand influenced the evolution of marriage favorably. Only a few decades ago it was a matter of fact in every citizen’s and peasant’s home, that women not only sewed, knitted, washed, cooked, etc., but that they also baked the bread, spun and weaved, and bleached, brewed beer and manufactured tallow candles and soap. Running water, lighting and heating by gas—not to speak of electricity—besides numerous other modern housefurnishings were unknown in those days. Antiquated conditions persist even to-day, but they are exceptions. The majority of women are relieved from many occupations that were inevitable formerly, because many things can be made better and cheaper industrially than by the individual housewife. Thus, within a few decades a great revolution has taken place in our domestic life to which we pay so little heed, only because we take it for granted. People do not notice transformations even when they take place under their very eyes as long as they are not sudden and disturb the accustomed order, but they resent new ideas that threaten to interfere with their treading of the beaten path. This revolution in our domestic life that is still going on, has considerably changed the position of woman in the family in still another respect. Our grandmother could not and would not think of visiting theatres, concerts and places of amusement even on week days. Nor would any woman in the good old days have dared to bother about public affairs as so many do to-day. At present women organize and join clubs pursuing the most varied, aims, they found newspapers, subscribe to them and edit them and hold conventions. As working women they organize industrially and attend the men’s meetings. In some localities of Germany they even possessed the right to elect members to courts of trade, but of this right the reactionary majority in the diet deprived them again in the year of the Lord, 1890. Although these altered conditions have their dark sides too, the bright sides predominate, and not even any reactionary would wish to abolish them again. The women themselves, regardless of the conservative character of most of them, have no inclination either to return to the old, patriarchal conditions.

In the United States, society is organized along bourgeois lines also, but it is not burdened with old European prejudices and antiquated institutions, and is therefore much more inclined to adopt new institutions and ideas if they hold promise of advantage. There, since quite some time, the position of woman is regarded differently than in Europe. Among wealthy circles women have been relieved not only of baking and brewing, but of cooking as well, and the one kitchen of an apartment hotel replaces many individual kitchens. Our army officers, who are no Socialists or Communists, have a similar method. In their casinos they form a sort of housekeeping community, appoint a manager, whose business it is to purchase the food wholesale, and to draw up the menus, and the food is cooked by steam in the kitchen of the barracks. They live far more cheaply than they could in a hotel, and their food is at least as good. Thousands of wealthy families live in boarding houses or hotels all year or part of the year without missing their domestic cooking. They, on the contrary, regard it as a great comfort to be relieved of the private kitchen. The general aversion of rich and wealthy women against kitchen work does not seem to signify that this occupation is a part of woman’s “natural sphere.” Indeed, the fact that rich families and large hotels employ male cooks makes it appear as if cooking were man’s work. Let these facts be noted by men who cannot conceive woman except surrounded by pots and pans.

Nothing could be simpler than to combine a central laundry with a central kitchen—as has already been done in all large cities by wealthy private residents or speculators—and to make the institution general. With the central kitchen, central heating, hot water supply, etc., might be connected, and much troublesome work entailing a great waste of time and effort would be abolished. Large hotels, many private houses, hospitals, schools, barracks and other public buildings have these and other modern improvements, as electric light, bathing establishments, etc. The mistake is that only public institutions and wealthy persons profit by these improvements. If made accessible to all, they would save a tremendous amount of time, effort, labor and expense, and would considerably heighten the general well being. In the summer of 1890 German newspapers published reports of progress being made in the United States in regard to central heating and ventilation. In these reports, among other things, the following was stated: “Experiments that have recently been made, especially in North America, to heat entire blocks or portions of a city from one centrally located place, have been successful in no small degree. The construction has been so carefully planned and so practically applied, that the favorable results and financial advantages will undoubtedly lead to an extension of this system. Recently further experiments have been made to provide not only the heating but also the ventilation of entire districts from centrally located places.”

Many of these contemplated improvements have since been realized and further improved. Narrow-minded philistines shrug their shoulders when such and similar plans are discussed; and yet in Germany, too, we are in the midst of a new industrial revolution, whereby the individual kitchen and other housework will become as superfluous as labor by manual tools became superfluous by the introduction of modern machinery. As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, even a Napoleon could deride as a crazy idea the project of moving a vessel by steam. People who were considered intelligent, regarded the plan of building a railroad as an absurdity; they claimed that no one could live in a vehicle travelling at such high speed. In the same manner many new ideas are dealt with to-day. If some one had told our women a century ago that they should get their water from a faucet in the kitchen instead of drawing it from the well, he would have been accused of seeking to encourage laziness in housewives and servants.

But the great technical revolution along all lines is in full swing. Nothing can stay its progress. It is the historical mission of bourgeois society that has ushered in this revolution, to lead it to its climax, and everywhere to bring to light the germs of transformation, which a society organized on a new basis will merely need to generalize and to make the common property of all.

The development of our social life does not tend to lead woman back to the home and hearth, a state that fanatics on domesticity desire, and for which they clamor as the Jews in the desert clamored for the lost flesh-pots of Egypt. It demands the release of woman from her narrow sphere of domestic life, and her full participation in public life and the missions of civilization. Laveleye is right when he says[147]: “With the growth of what we call civilization, the feelings of piety toward family life decrease and its bonds become looser and have less influence on the actions of men. This fact is so general that it may be regarded as a law of social development.” Not only has the position of woman in the family changed, but also the position of son and daughter in their relation to the family. They have gradually obtained a degree of independence that was unheard of formerly. This is especially so in the United States, where young persons are educated to become self-reliant and independent to a far greater extent than in Europe. The dark sides that are incidental to this form of development also are not necessarily connected with it, but are rooted in the social conditions of our time. Bourgeois society does not produce any new and pleasing phenomena that do not have a dark side as well. As Fourier already pointed out with much perspicacity, all its progress is double-edged. Like Laveleye, Dr. Schaeffle also recognizes the changed nature of the modern family as a result of social development. He says:[148] “Thruout history we find the tendency of the family to return to its specific functions. The family abandons one provisionally and temporarily maintained function after another and, inasmuch as it only filled out the gaps in social functions, it yields to the independent institutions of law, order, power, divine service, teaching, industry, etc., as soon as such institutions are developed.”