FEMINISM IN GERMANY PAD eter NID) NENT Wi KATHARINE ANTHONY HO \GAD AbQ Coruell University Library BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF . * ewe W. Sage ee ‘1891 BS TB og [A.5¢5 e241 iets aera WTR) 1b... 9306 FRAGILE PAPER Please handle this book with care, as the paper is brittle. ; MM CASE PRINTEDINU.S.A. FEMINISM IN GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA BY KATHARINE ANTHONY Author of “ Mothers Who Must Earn” NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1915 EM. Lag ree A,no54%9 Coryzicat, 1915, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published October, 1915 PREFACE This book is an attempt to bring some of the main aspects of German and Scandinavian feminism into closer touch with the woman movement of the English-speaking countries. For want of adequate accounts and specific reports of feminist activities abroad, there is a mistaken impression in this country that the German woman, for instance, still sleeps si- lently in a home-spun cocoon. The belief ex- ists, even in enlightened suffrage circles, that the German women are a leaderless and hope- lessly domesticated group and are content to remain so. This impression is due to our meager knowledge. English translations of the literature of continental feminism are few, and almost the only foreign echoes which have gained currency in this country are obviously misrepresentative; such as, what the German Emperor regards as woman’s sphere, what the German Empress thinks of woman suffrage, and what Schopenhauer has written against the sex. This is as if the American suffrage movement were to be represented abroad by ili iv PREFACE quotations from Mr. Elihu Root and Senator Bowdle. It therefore seemed desirable that the opinions of these ex-officio anti-feminists should at least be balanced by some account of the feminist movement abroad according to representative sources. For the historical aspects, I have drawn largely upon the comprehensive “Handbuch” of the international woman’s movement, edited by Helene Lange and Gertrud Baumer. De- velopments since 1901 were traced through periodicals and monographs of recent date. As interpretation, rather than criticism, was my aim, it may sometimes seem as if I have given too much praise to the German and Scandinavian women and their way of doing things. Perhaps so; but they have, for many years, set the bad example of giving us more praise than we deserve. Certainly we have as much to learn from the European feminists as they have to learn from us. The suffrage movement in this country is approaching a successful climax; the hour- glass must be turned promptly. Otherwise the continuity of the feminist advance will be broken and the acquired momentum squan- dered. These chapters from the work of the other feminists may offer some suggestions as PREFACE v to the activities which should engage the col- lective attention of the American woman movement when it has at last been released from the long struggle for political rights. KatTHaRINE ANTHONY. New Fairfield, Connecticut. July 28, 1915. CHAPTER CONTENTS Tur COALESCENCE OF THE EUROPEAN WomeEN II. ScHoots aND THE WoMAN TII. Some Rearizations 1In Dress Rerorm IV. Tse Morrerscuvurz Ipra V. Srate Maternity INSURANCE VI. Recuamine tHE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD in Norway VII. Tue Economic RENAISSANCE OF THE German WoMEN Vili. Tae Vauxyrriz Vote IX. Tue Partosopuy or Feminism . BIBLIOGRAPHY TNDEK 45. 4 Yaa Woe Be PAGE Q7 53 83 117 142 169 205 230 253 257 FEMINISM IN GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA FEMINISM IN GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA CHAPTER I THE COALESCENCE OF THE EUROPEAN WOMEN I The woman movement of the civilized world wants much the same things in whatever lan- guage its demands are expressed. In more or less unconscious codperation, the women of the civilized nations have, from the first, worked for similar ends and common interests. Beyond all superficial differences and inci- dental forms, the vision of the emancipated woman wears the same features, whether she be hailed as frau, fru, or woman. The disfran- chisement of a whole sex, a condition which has existed throughout the civilized world un- til a comparatively recent date, has bred in half the population an unconscious internation- alism. The man without a country was a 3 4 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN tragic exception; the woman without a country was the accepted rule. The enfranchisement of women now under way has come too late to inculcate in them the narrow views of citizen- ship which were once supposed to accompany the gift of the vote. Its effect will rather be to make the unconscious internationalism of the past the conscious internationalism of the future. There are, however, two main currents of the woman’s movement whose differences can- not be ignored. But in these differences lies no real conflict. Their relation is supplemen- tary. They function together like the right eye and the left eye in a single act of vision. In- deed, the three inches of difference in point of view between the right and left orbs are said to represent one of the most brilliant pieces of nature’s engineering on record. The two main branches of the woman movement, which find their expression respectively in the Anglo- American groups and the Teuto-Scandinavian groups, are each incomplete without the other. For certain historical reasons, which need not be discussed here, the feminist movement of England and America has developed along other lines than the feminist movement of con- _ tinental Europe. Among the feminists of the COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 5 Germanic and the Scandinavian states, there exists a natural concert of ideas—an intellec- tual neighborliness which corresponds to the geographical neighborliness of their positions. On the other hand, the feminists of England and America have, through their possession of a common language, arrived at a certain kin- ship of thought and community of emphasis which mark them off as a group from the fem- inists of the European continent. So far as the more immediate goals are concerned, con- tinental feminism and Anglo-American fem- inism seem to have adopted a definite division of labor. The difference is most strikingly brought out ‘in the two most famous slogans of twentieth century feminism. These are the English slo- gan, “Votes for Women,” and the German slogan, “Mutterschutz.” Neither phrase is wholly translatable into the language of the other, for each carries in the original a world of emotional appeal which is incapable of a foreign rendering. The “protection of moth- erhood” is a colorless transcription of Mutter- schutz, and no possible combination of German words can give the note of hastening solidarity that rings to-day in “Votes for Women.” “We are sick of slogans,” said a prominent 6 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN woman leader in Germany recently, “we are past all that.”” What she expressed was only a natural and promising reaction against the period of high enthusiasm in which all great movements are born and which must be followed up by in- defatigable constructive work if the great idea is not to remain sterile. Nevertheless, the value of a successful slogan to the movement which produces it cannot be denied, and without doubt feminism owes a substantial debt to the inventors of two of the most familiar rallying cries of the new century. They have proved to be the most powerful carriers of the dominating ideas of the modern woman’s movement—the emancipation of woman both as a human-being and as a sex-being. Their origin is worth re- counting, not only because of their accelerating influence on the woman movement but also for the reason that they were contributed by two courageous and effective leaders, who have suffered public ignominy on behalf of their ideals and thereby helped to show just how lit- tle the big gods of respectability are to the really brave woman. The fact that Emmeline Pankhurst, a highly cultivated woman, has served a jail sentence seems to have no influ- ence on her social position; and the fact that Ruth Bré, another cultivated woman, has pub- COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 7% licly acknowledged herself to be an illegiti- mate daughter, has had equally little influence on her public standing. II Ruth Bré, the author of the phrase “Mutter- schutz,” and the organizer of the Union for the Protection of Motherhood (Bund fiir Mut- terschutz) writes: I call to mind the 12th of November, 1904, which is to be regarded as the birthday of the Mutter- schutz movement. Several weeks before I had sent out a call through the Press: “Unmarried mothers who are seeking a place in the world where they can keep their children with them and rear them them- selves can find a home and occupation immediately in the country.” Whereupon so many mothers pre- sented themselves that I did not know what to do with them. But supporters and friends also ap- peared. Together with the two first supporters, for it takes three to make an Alliance, on the 12th of November, 1904, in Leipzig, at the Hotel Sachsen- dorf, I founded the “Bund fiir Mutterschutz.” On that occasion, the word “Mutterschutz”? was coined —coined by myself. In her recently published autobiography, Mrs. Pankhurst tells how the “Votes for + Mutterschutz in Theorie und Prazis, by Ernst Rudolphi, with a preface by Ruth Bré, p. 4. 8 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN Women” slogan originated in the English po- litical campaign in the fall of 1905. She writes: We determined to address ourselves to the men who were likely to be in the Liberal Cabinet, demanding to know whether their reforms were going to include justice to women. We laid our plans to begin this work at a great meeting to be held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, with Sir Edward Grey as the prin- cipal speaker. We intended to get seats in the gal- lery, directly facing the platform, and we made for the occasion a large banner with the words, “Will the Liberal Party Give Votes for Women?” We were to let this banner down over the gallery rails at the moment when our speaker rose to put the question to Sir Edward Grey. At the last moment, however, we had to alter the plan because it was im- possible to get the gallery seats we wanted. There was no way in which we could use our large banner, so, late ‘in the afternoon on the day of the meeting, we cut out and made a small banner with the three- word inscription, “Votes for Women.” Thus, quite accidentally, there came into existence the present slogan of the suffrage movement round the world.? The Manchester meeting, at which the wom- en questioners were mishandled and militancy was born, took place on October 13, 1905, less ? My Own Story, by Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 45. COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 9 than a year following the inauguration of the Mutterschutz propaganda in Germany. The struggle for the franchise and for the protec- tion of maternity were long-standing issues, but the events of 1905 ushered in a decade of momentum and cohesion such as the woman movement had never before known. Searching back a little farther into the origin of the twin campaigns of the modern woman’s movement, we find that Mrs. Pankhurst re- ceived her inspiration from an American, and Frau Bré from a Scandinavian. The visit of Susan B. Anthony to England in 1902, and her stay in Manchester aroused Mrs. Pank- hurst and her daughters to take up the political struggle which the aged American leader was about to leave unfinished. Similarly, Ruth Bré was handed the torch by a foreign hand. The great popularity of Ellen Key’s writings in Germany, and especially the German edition of Love and Marriage, which appeared early in the year 1904, was the timely stimulus to the movement which resulted in the formation of the “Union for the Protection of Motherhood.” The overwhelming effect of Ellen Key’s ideas in Germany, as well as in her own country, the passionate for-and-against which has raged round her as a center, makes it hard to under- 10 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN stand the extremely platonic attitude of Eng- lish and American feminists toward the whole Ellen Key program. It is still true that the spirit of Susan B. Anthony guides the woman movement of this country to the exclusion of all foreign influence. In short, the struggle for political liberty has fallen to the share of the English and American women and the fight for moral au- tonomy has fallen to the share of the German and Scandinavian women. The extreme fem- inists of both groups have pushed on into fields of controversy which have estranged the more conservative spirits of their own ranks but which have nevertheless been the logical out- growth of the self-same faith. The feminism of the English-speaking countries has culmi- nated in the militancy of the English suffra- gettes, and the feminism of the German-speak- ing countries has culminated in the literary propaganda—much abused but little under- stood in this country—for a “new morality” (Die Neue Ethik). So completely have we, the political column of the woman movement, accepted our spe- cialty that people are just now beginning to discover that feminism means more than suf- fragism; that the ballot for the ballot’s sake COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 11 is not the whole meaning of the suffrage agi- tation; that the political demands of women are inseparable from the social, educational, and economic demands of the whole feminist movement. It is a familiar charge of the anti- suffragists that suffrage is a cloak for fem- inism. Correspondingly, continental femi- nism is associated with revolutionary educa- tional and moral ideas rather than with the agi- tation for the franchise. A heated anti-femi- nist orator, addressing a Berlin audience, ex- posed what he called the secret aim of feminism, What these emancipated women really were after, he said impressively, was the vote! Til To the American observer there is much food for reflection in the outspoken feminism of the continental movement. One sees very little evidence of truckling to narrow-minded criticism. All questions of importance are thrashed out in the open, at conventions and in the feminist press. The consequence is that the foreign movement has developed a very | strong power of self-direction and a keen, steady consciousness of woman’s varied inter- ests as a Sex. a 12 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN One cause, though not the only one, of their more aggressive self-expression is the con- sciousness of being in the majority. On the continent, as well as in England, the “surplus women” were already a problem before the out- break of the war. In Germany, there were 800,000 superfluous women, and in Austria- Hungary 600,000, making: a total of 1,400,000. Likewise, in the four Scandinavian states, Nor- way, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, the women outnumber the men by nearly 300,000. That grave social changes must result from this disturbance of the natural balance of the sexes is a foregone conclusion. The impetus thus given to the woman movement will be no less powerful because it is not of their own seeking. The industrial revolution also gave a great im- petus to the woman movement, which was not of its own seeking, but the impetus is none the less powerful and cumulative. The greater autonomy of the European woman movement is most definitely seen in the number and kind of periodicals which in- terpret the movement to the public. That the women who write the leaders and articles in a dozen or two of fortnightly and monthly journals should have no voice in the councils of the nation is an official betrayal by the German COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 13 government of that on which it professes, as a state, to place the highest moral value—Kul- tur. These feminist periodicals correspond in purpose to the American suffrage journals. But in no sense are they to be compared with the so-called women’s magazines, the commer- cialized monthly journals which really exploit,. , with cold-blooded cunning, all the immaturities in woman which feminism is trying so labori- ously to remove. On the continent, however, the woman’s press has attained substantial dimensions. Be- ginning with Neue Bahnen (New Paths) in 1867, it has steadily increased in volume and excellence, mirroring in its various journals the progress of the age of reason in the wom- an’s world. All phases of feminism are dis- cussed in their columns, and their intellectual hospitality and devotion to free speech are evi- denced by the range of subjects treated, em- bracing, as it does, everything from the serv- ant problem to the new morality. Even the special organ of the “moderates,” Die Frau, has opened its columns from time to time to the exponents of the new ethics propaganda, though its teachings have been definitely re- pudiated by the organized Frauen-Bewegung of Germany. But to stifle discussion and pro- 14 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN nounce the taboo is not the way the feminist journals have chosen. Besides the Neue Bahnen, edited at present by Dr. Gertrud Baumer, other well-known periodicals are Die Frau (Woman), edited by Helene Lange; Die Frauenfrage (The Wom- an Question), edited by Marie Stritt; Die Frauen Bewegung (The Woman Movement), edited by Minna Cauer; Die Gleichheit (Equality), edited by Clara Zetkin; Mutter- schutz, edited by Helene Stocker; Frauen- Kapital (Woman’s Capital), edited by Marie Raschke; Die Frau der Gegenwart (The Woman of To-day), edited by Marie Wegner; Frauen-Kultur und Frauen-Kleidung (Wom- an’s Culture and Woman’s Clothing), edited by Clara Sander and Else Wirminghaus; Deutsche Hausfrauenzeitung (German Housewives’ Paper) edited by Lina Morgen- stern. In Zirich is published the Frauen- Stimmrecht (Woman Suffrage), edited by Gilonne Briistlein, the most prominent woman lawyer of Switzerland, and counting among its contributors Olive Schreiner, Ellen Key, and others whose fame is not only continental but international. In Vienna the Arbeiterinnen- Zeitung (Working Woman’s Paper) is ed- COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 15 ited by Adelheid Popp; the Nylaende (The New Ground), edited by Gina Krog, inter- prets the woman movement in Norway; the Hertha, edited by Ellen Kleman, is the organ of the woman movement in Sweden; and the Nutid (New Era), edited by Annie Fiirii- hjelm, is the organ of the Finnish woman movement. It is not to be inferred that the various branches of the German woman’s movement operate with insipid unanimity and thoughtless agreement. On the contrary, there are the socialist-feminists and the bourgeois-feminists ; the conservative feminists, the moderate fem- inists, and the radical feminists; the Christian- feminists and the neutral-feminists; the “Old Feminists” and the “Young Feminists”; the suffrage-feminists and the feminist-feminists. These divisions mean an appreciable amount of pull and strain within the movement, a lively flow of internal discussion, and a multitude of mutually corrective attacks. After all, such things are only the growing pains of a healthy coalescence. Despite all evidences of heterogeneity, the will to organize is strong in both Germany and Scandinavia—the will and the skill. During 16 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN the past twenty years, the German women have built up a great Union of Women’s Clubs (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine). The Union now embraces 2,290 Associations and has a membership of half a million women. The es- tablishment of the union grew directly out of the International Congress of Representative Women held at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Taking for their model the organization of the American Women’s Clubs, the German women formed their union in 1894. At first it was simply a loose federation of women’s as- sociations, mainly philanthropic in character. To-day it is a self-conscious, self-directing or- ganization for the furtherance of all the aims of the woman movement. It is true that the knitting processes of the intervening twenty years have proceeded very slowly and une- qually. At times it looked as if disruption were imminent, but always the new sense of co- hesion triumphed and the union grew. His- tory shows that the sense of cohesion is a thing of slow growth even among the men of the hu- man race. How much slower and more diffi- cult must it be among women, the unsocialized sex, individuals who dwell in the superisolation of married life. ‘He has enslaved them well: they will not even hear of freedom; he has sep- COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 1% arated them well: they are angry with the strong ones of their own sex.” * The present leader of the Union is Dr. Ger- trud Baumer, who is also the associate editor of Die Hilfe, a well-known social and literary weekly. Speaking before the Union on the oc- casion of its twentieth anniversary, Dr. Baumer said: Is there, on the whole, anything unified, anything common in the multiplicity of our federation? From society to society, from tendency to tendency, from individual to individual—what a difference of views, of individual aims, of ideals of life and work, of ways of looking at our movement. And yet we should not wish it otherwise. We rejoice that women are de- veloping a decided and positive variety of views and temperaments. We desire no vaguely blended unity, based upon mere indistinctness of differences; we wish to exhibit unity, in spite of complete and con- scious recognition of all that separates us. That is certainly not easy... . And yet we have always succeeded. Not by arti- ficial means, and by laboriously tacking about, but because our unity is something living and real. Wherein, then, does it consist? In the first place, in our common joy in growing, in every increase of capacity, of independence, of creative ability. It is the shared experience of that which our charter so 3 Das Rdisol Weib, by Kaethe Schirmacher, p. 55. 18 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN dryly and technically describes as “the uplifting of the female sex,” and which is a great and unique thing in the history of humanity. We feel, as we look back upon the history of our Union, that we are members, in it and with it, we have shared in this great growth. Through the consciousness of this coming forward, which every one carries within herself, and which we possess in common with our movement,—a feeling which is like the spring mood of these days,—we shall always be stronger than our opponents; for they only resist and obstruct, but we create and grow into something new, we have positive aims. Our unity consists, however, in something else be- sides this growing in common. We have a common philosophy of life. In spite of the entire gamut of opinions which our union represents from left to right, we all believe in the value of responsibility. For us all, life becomes richer in that degree in which it receives its accent through work. And this work seems to us the greater and more significant the more it is intellectually controlled, thoroughly conscious of itself, built from within outward. To conquer and realize this ideal of work for women also is the ultimate meaning of our movement, from which all our separate aims are derived. And this meaning is shared by us all. And finally, we have a common enemy. If the other holds us together inwardly, so the enemy binds us outwardly strongly together, so strongly that the COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 19 anti-feminist is always being forced to take painful recognition of the fact.* IV The first organization whose avowed purpose was the emancipation of women to be formed in Germany was the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein (General Woman’s Union). This association, founded in 1865, is still the strongest subdivision of the Federation (Bund). From the beginning, it adopted a pro-woman attitude. Its history is practically the history of the German woman movement. It is, in many ways, the most representative of all the associations which have combined to form the great half-million woman party. In 1905, the same year in which moral and politi- cal militancy startled the world, the General Woman’s Union issued a program which is of the utmost importance to the student of the woman movement. This program fixes the threshold of Euro- pean feminism. Its demands are the minimum demands of the twentieth century woman movement. Anything less than this program would be something less than feminism, just as anything more would be pioneerism, and * Die Frauenfrage, April 1, 1914, 20 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN pioneerism requires no platform. Conceiving, then, that the time for organization on a grand scale had come, the makers of the program for 1905 set out to produce a document which should serve as an instrument of amalgamation for as many sex-conscious women as possible. They took over the political demands of the nineteenth century feminists but rejected their insistent emphasis on woman solely as a human being. They adopted Ellen Key’s idea of to- tal sex differentiation but rejected the matri- archal program which she built upon it. The practical demands of the declaration, however, are the groundwork of the practical feminist movement of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and are valid, on whatever basis of abstract theory, always and everywhere, until they shall have been canceled by the necessary social reforms. As we shall see in the follow- ing chapters, some of the demands of the pro- gram have been so canceled in Germany and Scandinavia during the ten years which have elapsed since its drawing up. GOALS AND TASKS OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT The Woman’s Movement has chosen its goals and tasks irrespective of all political and religious parties. It works for the women of all classes and parties. COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 21 The demands of the Woman’s Movement are based on the existence of thoroughgoing mental and phys- ical differences between the sexes. It deduces from this fact that only by the codperation of men and women can all the possibilities of cultural progress be realized. The Woman’s Movement, therefore, sets for itself this aim: To bring the cultural influence of women to its complete development and free social effective- ness. The opportunity for the full development and ef- fectiveness of woman’s influence is not contained in the social and economic conditions of the present. Much more is it true that modern life has, on the one hand, limited the sphere of influence of the wom- an within the home, and on the other hand, thrust her into active participation in economic and social life, without providing her with the inward equip- ment and the outward mobility for it. The Woman’s Movement seeks, therefore, a trans- formation of ideas and conditions in the fields of : 1. Education. 2. Economic Life. 8. Marriage and the Family. 4. Public Life in Community and State. EDUCATION The Woman’s Movement holds the opinion that the education of girls in its present form does not show sufficient consideration either for the develop- 22 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN ment of personality in woman or for her future do- mestic, vocational, and civic duties. It demands from state and community the manifestation of the same interest in the education of girls as in that of boys. It makes especially the following demands: 1. Obligatory continuation schools for girls after their dismissal from the public schools. 2. Reorganization of the secondary schools for girls, so that the latter, without hurt to their spe- cial adaptation to women’s sphere, shall be made equal to the secondary schools for boys. It must be made possible for girls to prepare themselves, either within the frame-work of their own secondary schools or by admission to the boys’ secondary schools, to enjoy their rights in the higher institu- tions of learning. 3. The unconditional admission of properly quali- fied and prepared women to all universities and tech- nical schools. ECONOMIC LIFE The Woman’s Movement regards as the primary and immediate occupation of the married woman the sphere of duties involved in marriage and mother- hood. The satisfactory performance of this voca- tion must be secured in the interest of society by all the means of education, of economic reform, and of legal protection. The work of women in the per- formance of this vocation shall be valued, economi- cally and legally, as a competent cultural service. COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN 23 In view of the great number of women who remain unmarried and the still greater number of those who cannot find an adequate provision in marriage, the vocational work of women is an economic and moral necessity. But the Woman’s Movement also regards the vocational work of women, in a broader sense and independently of every outward necessity, as a cultural value, for women may be the possessors of a specific talent, and with the full and free develop- ment of their capacities may find, in many fields of intellectual and material activity, tasks which by reason of their nature they can perform better than men. In respect to the economic valuation of women’s vocational work, the Woman’s Movement stands for the principle: Equal pay for equal work. In consequence of this view of the economic side of the Woman question, the Woman’s Movement makes the following demands: 1. It lays upon parents, and, in a deeper sense, upon society, the obligation to give every girl the opportunity to learn an occupation according to her inclination and capacity. 2. It strives to broaden the range of women’s occupations, especially by the furtherance and im- provement of the vocational training of girls. 3. It supports all forms of vocational organiza- tion as a primary means of elevating women’s work, especially its economic valuation. 4. It works towards the continuous broadening 24 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN and the efficient execution of the laws protecting working women as well as toward the extension of state insurance in the sense of greater economic pro- tection of the mother. 5. It seeks for women participation in the rights which are conferred upon certain classes of business (Merchants’ Courts, Trade Courts, and so forth). MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY The Woman’s Movement sees in the sacredness of marriage the essential guarantee of the physical and spiritual welfare of posterity and the fundamental condition of public health. With regard to sexual morality, it lays upon men and women alike the same duties and combats the double standard of morals which, on the one hand, grants to the man a sexual freedom fatal in every respect and, on the other hand, strikes the woman with unjust harshness. It demands for the woman, as the guardian of the home and the educator of the children, that she shall bear, in harmony with the dignity of her obli- gation and the value of her activities, the same legal responsibility as the man in all the affairs of mar- riage and of family life. From the foregoing we derive the following aims: 1. The Woman’s Movement combats prostitution with all the means at its command and sees in the legal sanction of vice, expressed by the existing sys- tem of regimentation, a social and moral danger. 2. It demands a reform of the marriage laws, by COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN) 25 which both parents shall be assured of the same rights of decision in all personal affairs and the same responsibilities and rights in their joint affairs, es- pecially the same share in parental authority. It demands statutory reforms concerning the rights of illegitimate children, reforms which shall lay upon the illegitimate father greater responsibilities toward mother and child. PUBLIC LIFE, COMMUNITY AND STATE The Woman’s Movement represents the conviction that our economic, social, and intellectual progress must have as a consequence the increasing participa- tion of women in the public life of community and state. It demands the enlistment of women in the duties and rights of communal and political citizen- ship. It demands this primarily for the sake of women. For, in the modern state, the economic and cultural interests of women can only be lastingly se- cured by the acquisition of these rights. Also the exclusion of women from national life and social re- sponsibility, together with the inevitable narrowing of her domestic sphere of influence, must result in the retarding of her development as a personality as well as in the lowering of her social position. The Woman’s Movement makes this demand in the second place for the sake of the public welfare, be- cause the codperation of women is indispensable to state and community in the solution of all their modern social-political problems. 26 COALESCENCE OF EUROPEAN WOMEN In particular, the Woman’s Movement seeks the following goals, according to the possibilities given by the stage of social development: 1. Admission of women to responsible offices in community and state, primarily to such as stand in a particularly close relation to the interests of women (the education of girls, social-political ad- ministration of state and community, the problems concerning working women, courts of law, and so forth). 2. Enlistment of women in the representation of the laity in legal proceedings (justice of the peace and jury members). 3. Removal of all limitations placed on women’s right to combine. 4. The extension of the church franchise to women. 5. The extension of the community franchise to women. 6. The extension of the political franchise to women. CHAPTER II SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN I “Arma virumque cano”—‘“T sing of arms and the man.” Thus Vergil began his chron- icle of a far-away, force-ruled world. And de- spite the passage of centuries and the supposed advance of civilization, the modern war corre- spondent is still harping away on the same old theme. We must let him be; it is his depart- ment. But fortunately for the hopes of civ- lization, there are other departments of mod- ern life which are essentially unfriendly to the vaunt of force. The cult of “arms and the man” must reckon with a newer cult, that of “schools and the woman.” Schools, which ex- alt brains above brawn, and women, who ex- alt life-giving above life-taking, are the nat- ural allies of the present era. Knowledge is to men the slow up-hill corrective of their hereditary faith in arms, but knowledge is to women the welcome confirmation of their hered- a7 28 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN itary faith in peace. And since progress with- out peace is impossible, it would seem self-evi- dent progress to give knowledge to women and let the world swing on. But the giving of knowledge to women has proceeded by such slow and reluctant install- ments that the process can scarcely be called “giving” in any real sense of the term. The masculine half of civilization has guarded with the same degree of jealousy its triple posses- sions: property, franchise, and education. The knowledge-hungry woman has been compelled to overcome the most stubborn resistance at every step. Her present footing in the schools of the world has cost her many an arduous and bitter struggle. In Scandinavia and America, her efforts have been rewarded with their greatest suc- cesses. Women enjoy their maximum educa- tional opportunity in these countries. But the right to learn has been long regarded in Ger- many as a masculine prerogative, and until re- cently the male students enjoyed a monopoly of all the first-class schools in the country. The school question has therefore challenged the best energies and the most brilliant leaders of the German movement. Education may be re- garded as the storm-center of the middle class SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 29 woman’s revolt, and conversely the woman movement must be regarded as the chief factor in the reform of the girls’ school system. Un- til the feminist organizations began to assert themselves, the state was naively content with an educational system in which the girls trav- eled second-class while their brothers fared first-class. The woman’s invasion of Kuropean schools began at the top. The first victory was the winning of the Universities. This fact seems to be characteristic of monarchical societies, in which women may be Queens before they are allowed to vote and doctors of philosophy be- fore they are allowed to have the same common- school education as boys. The aristocracy of birth or intellect is the only thing strong enough to help them overcome their sex-limita- tions. Among the Germanic peoples, there has al- ways existed the tradition of a small, excep- tional group of women dedicated to the intel- lectual life, either in the form of medieval learning or ancient mysticism. The earliest representatives of this class were the priestesses of the Teutonic tribes. They were succeeded by the learned nuns of the Middle Ages. The next incarnation of the type was the nineteenth 30 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN century bluestocking, who eventually presented herself at the university and declared her wish to be made a doctor of philosophy. The oppo- sition she encountered was tempered by the consideration that the bluestocking was a tour de force of nature and didn’t matter very much to women as they go. If she wanted thus to unsex herself she was supported, after all, by some tradition in favor of a small class of celi- bate, intellectual females. And so the univer- sities gave way, graciously extending their privileges,—including that of being allowed to pay exactly the same university fees as the men,—to all women who had, by means of a very expensive private instruction, managed to prepare themselves for university study. The result was the twentieth century doctor of phil- osophy who is neither a nun nor a bluestocking, but that most pestiferous and alarming of mod- ern dangers, a woman who wishes to earn her own living. II At present, the Scandinavian and German Universities are practically all open to women. In 1873, women were given permission to take the entrance examinations for the Swedish Uni- versities. In 1883, the first doctorate was con- SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 31 ferred upon a woman graduate. In 1884, the first woman profesesor, Sonja Kovalevsky, was called to Stockholm. In 1914, the Swedish Academy elected its first woman member, Selma Lagerlof. The Norwegian Universi- ties have admitted women on the same terms as men since 1884. The first women students of Germany were compelled to cross the border for their scien- tific training. The Swiss Universities had be- gun to admit women even before the Swedish, and as the Swiss institutions were mainly Ger- man-speaking, they offered the young woman from beyond the Rhine a substitute that was “just as good” as the native variety. In 1889, a school was established in Berlin for the pur- pose of preparing young women for the Swiss universities. At last, stimulated doubtless by the example of its Swiss neighbors, the Uni- versity of Heidelberg began to admit women as so-called “Horerinnen” (guests) in 1891. In 1901, the universities of Baden, Heidelberg, and Freiburg gave women all the rights of full matriculation, and in 1903 the technical schools of Baden admitted them. In 1908, the universities of Bavaria were opened; in 1904, the University of Wiirtemberg; in 1905, the technical schools of Bavaria; in 1906, Saxony 82 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN (the kingdom) ; in 1907, Saxony (the grand- duchy) ; in 1908, Prussia, Reichsland, and Hes- sen; and in 1909, Mecklenburg. Even after the beginning had been made by Heidelberg and Freiburg, it took almost a dec- ade for all the other German universities to fall into line. It will be remembered that Germany is acongeries of states, and reforms must spread from state to state, just as in the united Ameri- can commonwealth. The obstructionists who succumb to-day in one quarter may reappear to-morrow in another, and so on until the list of possibilities is exhausted. The position of the Baden universities at the gateway of the new century is that of honorable and self-re- specting leadership. The position of Prussia and its subsidiary states is rather slinking by comparison. One can hardly see how the proud- est of the German states would consent to play such a reluctant and ineffectual part in the his- tory of educational progress. Registered in the German universities in the summer semester of 1914 were 4,117 wom- en students. There are no special universities for women, and there are no universities which may legally refuse to accept properly quali- fied women students. In this respect, at least, they represent a more liberal policy than the SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 33 exclusively male universities of the Eastern States of America. III For the real scene of reaction in Germany, we must look at the secondary schools for girls. The opening of the Universities brought into sudden and high relief the conditions of the knowledge-famine below. All the famous sec- ondary schools of Germany, which prepared for the universities, existed for the use of boys only. An anomalous condition arose, by which the universities welcomed the women and the preparatory schools refused the girls. The work of the feminist movement was cut out. The task was twofold,—to give young girls the opportunity to prepare for university study and to give the far more numerous daughters of middle-class families who leave school for good at sixteen or eighteen some real educa- tion instead of the esthetic pabulum of the Hohere Tochterschule. Again it was Prussia who primarily championed the cause of unles- soned girlhood and threw down the gauntlet to the feminist demands. There are three kinds of high schools which prepare young men for university study and the technical institutes,—the Gymnasium, the 34 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN Real-Gymnasium, and the Ober-Realschule. The first step taken by the woman movement was to establish and maintain with private funds duplicate high schools for girls. By means of these girls’ high schools, known as Studien-Anstalten, girls were given an equal right with boys to the study of Latin. A storm of opposition arose, in which two objec- tions obtained great familiarity. In the first place, girls couldn’t learn Latin. There are German schoolmasters still living to whom nothing in life is half so comical as a young girl declining a Latin noun. It has happened, within the last few years, that whole conven- tions of them have been thrown into uproarious merriment at the mere idea. Gentlemen of this type must, of course, be taken seriously by the feminist leaders, for many of them are in posi- tions of influence. I do not know how they explain the development of the Latin language into a secondary masculine sex characteristic since the days when it was the mother tongue of Cornelia and Virginia, whose character as womanly women cannot be questioned. The second objection was a much more seri- ous one. It amounts to this: The European gymnasium is a musty old relic of scholasticism anyhow, and, if women are by way of establish- SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 35 ing a whole new series of high schools for girls, there is no need of duplicating all the faults of the institutions already existing. The prevail- ing educational system of Germany is one- sided and ill-balanced, say the critics, and its tendency is towards over-intellectualization. Therefore they reproach the new woman bit- terly for her failure to seize the opportunity of creating a better and more human type of adolescent education. The feminists urge, in reply, that the current criticism of the mascu- line standards is irrelevant to their purpose. “We cannot spring over a whole stage of de- velopment, land on the other side, and take up the leadership. The history of ideas shows that such is not the course of evolution in human progress,” they say very frankly. “We are by no means in a position to make experiments ourselves; and to allow others to make them upon us, that is the last thing we should do.” * In 1914, there were in Prussia 540 high schools preparing boys for the university and 43 schools of corresponding grade for girls. These numbers speak for themselves. The slow development of high schools for girls is partly due to the fact that the Prussian government deliberately hung a millstone around their + Paula Schlodtmann at the Kassel Congress in 1907. 86 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN necks by the same order which sanctioned them. The bill which permitted the Studien-Anstalt also established the so-called Frauenschule, or Woman’s School. It stipulated, furthermore, that the university-preparatory schools should only be established in towns where a Woman’s School already existed. The latter proposed to give a two years’ course in the home-making arts to young women who did not intend to study or to earn their living. The faults of the Woman’s School, as pointed out by feminist critics, were funda- mental. It is not possible to divide sixteen- year-old girls into those who will marry and those who will not. In so far as it is neces- sary to train girls for their future duties as housewives and mothers, it is necessary to train all girls and not a segregated class. The mod- ern woman movement cannot approve of a system of education which postulates a celi- bate class of women any more than it can ap- prove of the state regulation of prostitution. On the other hand, the surest method for the development of character, which is said by the government to be a main purpose of the Wom- an’s School, is training for an occupation.’ Lacking this purpose, the school can only cul- 2 Lydia Sticker at the Kassel Congress of 1907. SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 37 tivate dilettanteism and superficiality. All these objections on the part of the feminists have been vindicated by the character of the Woman’s Schools founded. In 1909, the Prussian government executed a second anti-feminist coup by appointing for women a special path to the universities. It had always been posited by the German fem- inists that “women should be admitted to uni- versity study only under the same conditions as men, as every exceptional ruling for women would inevitably impose upon their study the stamp of inferiority.”* Nevertheless, a special ruling was issued by the educational ministry in providing that the young women graduates of the Ober-Lyzeum, or teacher’s seminary, should be admitted ipso facto to the universities. They are permitted to study in special departments only and receive a special degree. For twenty years the woman move- ment had struggled to obtain for girls the same type of preparatory schools as the three exist- ing types for boys. The establishment of the “Fourth Way” (Der Vierte Weg) is an in- stance of the sham liberality with which a bu- reaucratic government accomplishes reaction. The Prussian ruling can best be explained by * Paula Schlodtmann at Kassel Congress, 1907. 38 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN reference to an American parallel. The Board of Education of New York City refused as long as possible to grant maternity leave to married teachers, and when at last compelled by public opinion to give up this negative dic- tatorship, tried to enforce a compulsory leave of absence of two years. It is hard to explain either the Prussian or New York City ruling as anything but a retaliatory measure. Iv The simplest solution of the preparatory school problem would, of course, have been the same as the solution of the university problem: to admit girls to the existing boys’ schools. The gymnasial schools of Baden admitted girls as early as 1900, as the only consistent thing to do if the universities were going to admit women. Wiirttemberg, Alsace-Lorraine, Sax- ony, and the lesser German states also have co- educational high schools. But the dual alliance against coeducation, Prussia and Bavaria, still refuse to yield on principle. In Scandinavia, coeducation is a well-estab- lished fact. The Norwegian mixed school has gradually taken the place of the segregated school, so that the children of Norway are being educated together from seven years onward. SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 39 The Swedish public schools are coeducational, but the daughters of upper-class families usu- ally attend a special type of girls’ school cor- responding to the Prussian girls’ schools. The Swedish girls’ schools, however, long ago ac- cepted their logical task of preparing for the university, and in this respect they do not at all resemble the Prussian girls’ schools which have served the bureaucratic government as in- struments of obstruction against the higher ed- ucation of women. Sweden also has coedu- cational high schools, the Palmgren school in Stockholm having gone ahead with this prece- dent as early as 1876. In Finland, 1883, co- education was introduced as a result of the woman movement. Denmark established co- education officially in 1903, and the ministerial order based the new departure definitely on principle. The order further specified that the pupils, as far as possible, should be treated alike as children and not as boys and girls. Supported by all these precedents, as well as by the example of the American public schools, the Union of German Women’s Clubs demanded in their 1912 convention that, wher- ever the educational opportunity for girls was not equal to that for boys, the girls should at- tend the existing schools for boys. This de- 40 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN mand is still regarded by the Prussian gov- ernment and the Prussian schoolmen as ex- tremely revolutionary. Prussia already edu- cates two-thirds of her common-school pupils in mixed schools, but the same condition is re- garded as very dangerous for the more ad- vanced schools and the more lettered classes. The inconsistency of attitude should not be incomprehensible to American observers. Does not Harvard University find coeducation high- ly desirable in summer and highly undesirable in winter? Does not Yale University find co- education desirable for graduate students but undesirable for undergraduates? Does not Columbia University find coeducation desirable in the philosophy department but undesirable in the law department? Indeed, if the people who believe in segregation could agree on some one good consistent reason for it, it would im- prove their case immensely. In the meantime, the practice of segregation has been so long established in the bourgeois schools of Prussia that it has little need to jus- tify itself by reason or logic. It is imbedded in the very matrix of the educational system. The hohere Tochterschule (higher daughters’ school) may confidently hope to stand for many decades, by sheer weight of custom if for no SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 41 other reason. The feminists have therefore decided that it would be impossible to merge the girls’ school into the boys’ and have bent their energies towards raising the standard of education for girls. After twenty years of hard labor, they have achieved comparative suc- cess in the form of the modern Lyceum, which has at last replaced the old-fashioned Tochter- schule. The dearly bought Lyceum is only one instance of the high cost of even the mod- erate reforms accomplished by the woman movement. Vv The original evil genius of the segregated girls’ schools was the celebrated Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose influence on the development of pedagogical ideas was greater in Germany than anywhere else. The picture which he drew of the ideal “Sophie” stung Mary Woll- stonecraft into an act of almost superhuman courage, the writing of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Sophie was seriously of- fered by her creator as the result of his mature reflections on the education of women. Mary Wollstonecraft correctly describes her as the result of Rousseau’s lascivious imaginings. But Mary Wollstonecraft was a voice crying 42 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN in the wilderness and Jean Jacques’s opinions on the education of girls only helped to reén- force the current opinion of the scholastic world. Sophie served as the figure-head of the nineteenth century girls’ schools, created by men and by men alone. We need not go into a full description of Sophie’s qualities. Her picture had at least one virtue, that of consist- ency, and a sample quality or two will be suf- ficient to indicate all the rest of her abject make-up. Whether I consider the peculiar destination of the sex, observe their inclinations, or remark their du- ties, all things equally concur to point out the pecul- iar method of education best adapted to them. Woman and man were made for each other, but their mutual dependence is not the same. The men de- pend on the women only on account of their desires ; the women on the men both on account of their de- sires and their necessities. We could subsist better without them than they without us. . . . Opinion is the grave of virtue among men, but its throne among women. ... On women also depend our manners, our passions, our tastes, our pleasures, and even our happiness itself. For this reason, the edu- cation of the women should always be relative to the men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, and to take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 43 us, to render our lives easy and agreeable—these are the duties of women at all times and what they should be taught in their infancy. So long as we fail to re- cur to this principle, we run wide of the mark, and all the precepts which are given them contribute neither to their happiness nor our own. Thus the Citizen of Geneva in 1762. A hun- dred years later the Weimar conference of German schoolmasters was still ringing the ancient chimes. “It is our object,” they sol- emnly recorded, “to make possible for the wom- an an education which in breadth of method and interests is equal to the intellectual devel- opment of the man, in order that the German man may not find his domestic life rendered tedious by the intellectual shortsightedness and narrow-mindedness of his wife and his inclina- tion toward the higher interests hampered by her; that his wife shall rather stand at his side with an understanding of these interests and a warmth of feeling for them.” * And yet again, in 1907, Herr Studt, minis- ter of education, speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, declared that the new education bill was planned to give young women an oppor- tunity “of broadening and deepening their cul- ture, so that they might be sympathetic com- * Handbuch der Frauenbewegung, Vol. III, p. 111. 44, SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN panions of cultivated men and intelligent edu- cators of their children.” In prescribing courses of study for girls, the schoolmasters went on the assumption that cer- tain studies cultivate the essentially feminine qualities and others the essentially masculine qualities. ‘They skimped the girls on mathe- matics, history, and natural sciences. Noth- ing was taught with scientific thoroughness. The whole emphasis of the school was laid on pretty manners, on manageability, and on do- cility. Helene Lange describes the pliant product of these schools as “a creature who never quite grows out of childhood, who never loses the charm of the unfinished, from whom skepticism and, consequently, real knowledge, are far removed.” ® The first serious criticism of the girls’ schools was made by the woman movement. Little could be said in their defense, because the pseudo-education of girls had come to be a recognized evil,—the “hohere Tochter” was a common joke on the vaudeville stage and a national disgrace to the German ideal of thor- oughness. Everybody admitted that some- thing must be done. The feminists said quite plainly that the necessary something was to * Helene Lange at the Kassel Congress. SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 45 carry over bodily into the girls’ schools the courses of study prescribed for the boys’ schools (the Real-Schulen). At once, the old cry was heard against the materialism of the Realschule, and so forth. The feminists could only reply that the materialism of the boys’ schools could not possibly be worse than the emotionalism and the estheticism of the girls’ schools. Once combined and equalized, the schools could work out better forms for both. At present the girls’ schools ought to have the same aims as the boys’ schools, including the preparation for an occupation. Whether the girl goes to work or not, she should not be a stranger to the economic world in which she lives. VI Until a comparatively recent date, the teach- ing profession has been the prerogative of the male sex in Germany. The principle of seg- regation did not mean that girls could not be taught by men; it only meant that they could not be taught in the company of boys. The rise of a woman-teacher class has therefore in- terfered with the economic preserves of the German schoolmaster. This antagonism for- mulated itself and resulted in a so-called wom- 46 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN an-teacher problem (Lehrerinnen-Frage). The influx of the women into the elementary schools and the lower-paid positions was tol- erated, or at least only silently opposed. But when it became apparent that women were qualifying themselves by university study to become teachers in the girls’ higher schools, the male teachers formally organized against them. The same government order which re- fused coeducation in the high schools stipulated that at least one-third of the teachers in the girls’ high schools should be men. It did not stipulate, however, that the principal should be a man, so that it is now legally possible for a woman to be the principal of a girls’ school in Germany. Practically, it is not possible as yet, because the men teachers have combined to boycott women as directors. Twenty thousand Prussian schoolmasters signed a public protest, of which the keynote was, “It cannot be ex- pected of a man of character that he should work under a woman.” The outspoken sex-egoism of such a decla- ration scarcely needs comment. The high- handed disregard of women’s interests, both as pupils and as professional women, is, from the point of view of the woman movement, the most favorable form that opposition can take. SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 47 Tyranny as naive as this outrages even the most elementary sense of justice, and, after all, an elementary sense of justice is all that can be expected of a sex which is just emerg- ing from subjection. The anti-feminist school- man has done a great deal to weld together the diverse forces of the woman movement and create support among intelligent men for the feminist case. The position of the woman teacher, demand- ing her place in the leadership of the girls’ schools, has been clearly and finally stated by Dr. Baumer. So long as one system of schools for girls and another for boys is the rule, wom- en must be allowed to control the girls’ schools just as men have been allowed and still are to control the boys’ schools. This demand is not necessarily based on the belief that women can understand the psychology of the grow- ing girl better than the man, but on the his- torical fact that the schools of the past which men alone have provided for the education of girls have proved to be an “Unding,” a not- thing. It is an undeniable fact that all the recent reforms in the girls’ schools have been brought about by the woman movement. It is also undeniable that these reforms were brought about only by the most laborious and 48 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN difficult methods. It was necessary for the women, first of all, to win public opinion in order that public opinion might eventually in- fluence the schoolmasters to make the improve- ments needed. The women must therefore have representation in the higher teaching pro- fession and occupy positions of influence as the heads of schools. The snarl of competition has no terrors for the present generation of path- finding women, and the less independent spirits who follow after are being driven by economic pressure to go almost as far as if they, too, fol- lowed the vision. VII Under the compulsory education law of Ger- many, the daughters of the poor, like their brothers, go to school until the age of fourteen. Moreover, coeducation is the rule in the ele- mentary schools of Germany as well as of Scandinavia. In the lowest stratum of Ger- man society, where education is reduced to its legal minimum, we have for the first time some- thing like equality of opportunity between the sexes. Yet, even here, the domestic conscription of the girl begins. For instance, in the small number of segregated schools (about one-tenth SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 49 of the children are in such schools) there is a tendency to reduce the arithmetic lesson and substitute needlework for the girls. This is a gratuitous deprivation. All the arithmetic the workingwoman can learn in her brief school years will not be too much to help her keep the meager budget of the workingman’s family. The second form of domestic conscription to which the girl is subjected is absence from school. She has duties at home which her brother has not, and the school gives her back to the home as far as the law allows. The comparative absences of boys and girls in the schools attended by poor children show this. In the year 1898-1899, a study of attendance in the public schools of Austria showed that the girls had 2,559,990 half days of absence and the boys 1,992,756 half days. Thus early in her life, the workingwoman begins the double duty of domestic and extra-domestic work which always serves to keep down her wages in the extra-domestic field. What is the situation in the supplementary, or continuation, schools? These semi-schools were devised to carry on the education of four- teen- to eighteen-year-old workers. They are ®° Handbuch der Frauenbewegung, Vol. III, p. 170. Re- ported by Auguste Fickert. 50 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN occupational in character, require four to six hours’ attendance a week, and the employer is required to release the young worker to the schoo] for that length of time. Many cities have made continuation schools compulsory for boys, while the corresponding facilities for girls were only struggling into existence through private and cooperative support. The demand for compulsory continuation schools for girls was made a vital part of the program of the woman movement. Recently some progress has been made in this direction, accompanied, however, by the usual reaction which attends woman at every step of the way toward eco- nomic independence. Berlin introduced compulsory continuation schools for all girls between seventeen and eight- een in trade and mercantile employment in 1913. The order requires that, of her regular six hours, one and a half shall be devoted to the study of domestic science. In other cities it has happened through the influence of the Men’s Mercantile Union that the continuation classes for young women shop assistants were entirely converted into housekeeping classes. It is plainly unfair that the continuation school should give to the young man a training that increases his value to his employer and to the SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN 51 young woman a training in which her immedi- ate employer has not the slightest interest. The result is that the young saleswoman and office- worker is placed at a great disadvantage as compared with her male colleague. The con- trivers of reaction in this field are the members of an avowed anti-feminist organization known as the Business Assistants’ Union (Deutscher Handlungsgehilfen Verein) , which vies with the Schoolmasters’ organizations in the invention of ways to prevent young women from earning their living. For, as I said before, the young woman who wants to earn her living represents an active social danger. She forecasts the twi- light of many ancient gods. Beyond her lies a day when even the services of the wife do not belong to the husband but to herself. Next to the Mutterschutz propaganda, the educational field has been for many years the most important work of the German woman’s movement. It has rightly been estimated as the basic problem of feminism. Speaking at the Kassel Congress, Marie Martin said, “So long as woman was to be only ‘the sympathetic com- panion of the cultivated man,’ just so long did she live, platonically and also un-platonically honored and praised, in seemingly comfortable and protected peace. That she threatened at 52 SCHOOLS AND THE WOMAN the same time to sink into a sad lack of com- prehension for the serious interests of the man and the great tasks of the present time, that she fell into unemployment and miserable de- pendency on another’s will—that was not for a long time admitted. And behind this fact lies much woman’s misery and girl’s distress, which come to light in isolated symptoms: in the home-work question, the woman-teacher question, the Mutterschutz question, and, dark- est and most baneful of all, the prostitution question. All this wretchedness is inseparably connected with the question of woman’s edu- cation. Here, therefore, is where we women begin.” CHAPTER III SOME REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM I The task of feminism is to capture and, if necessary, to remold for woman’s use the ordi- nary symbols of society. The struggle cen- ters with varying degrees of intensity around three of the most familiar symbols of life— dress, money, and the vote. Of these three, “votes for women” has had the widest appeal, perhaps because the franchise is viewed by women themselves in the light of an acquisition and not of a readjustment. The struggle for money, the “dollars for women” movement, has met with a more considered enthusiasm, for here the necessity of readjustment in women’s familiar habits and forms of life is a retarding motive. New arrangements regarding money threaten to alter the foundations of daily liv- ing and to introduce change into woman’s im- mediate environment, the sphere where ancient precedent is most cherished—the home. Last and least of the three symbols, if we may judge 53 54 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM from its distinctly minor position in the whole feminist propaganda, is the most intimate and universal of all, dress. To reconstruct woman’s dress for woman’s use requires a crusade against the rule of a fashion which lays upon her all the outward marks of an inferior sex. Her external appear- ance is the most concrete, and the least assail- able, symbol of her subjection. Yet the wom- an movement has been notably slow to act against the complex forces of fashion. Suf- frage congresses and suffrage demonstrations furnish striking evidence of the small gains achieved in this direction even by the most ad- vanced of their sex. The feeling is neverthe- less increasing that the neglected sphere of woman’s dress is the Achilles heel of feminism, and that dress reform is an indispensable con- dition of woman’s emancipation. At present, the only vigorous dress reform movement in existence is that of the German women and its related branches in Switzerland, Holland, and Scandinavia. This movement is well past the sporadic and experimental stage and well advanced in the stage of practical realization. It has twenty years of positive his- tory and an ever-widening clientéle among practical-minded women. Its success is due REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 55 to the organization of women who have asserted their actual needs and held the balance between hygienic ugliness and esthetic inconvenience. The same practical and well-balanced policy has characterized its leadership; for the spon- sors of the reform dress have chosen to limit their demands to the smallest number of indis- pensable changes and thus to widen their ap- peal to the largest possible number of women. Between the point of view of Frau Margarete Pochhammer, who founded the reform move- ment in Berlin in 1896, and the beautiful and rebellious Louise Aston, who shocked the Ber- lin of the forties by wearing trousers in public, yawns an enormous gulf. The twentieth cen- tury German woman has adopted a “Trevision- ist” rather than a “rebel” line of action, and this fact together with her talent for organiza- tion has enabled her to accomplish a great deal for the physical comfort of her sex. It was Frau Pochhammer’s idea that the new organization should confine its efforts to winning an influence on the fashions. This ob- ject was achieved in a surprisingly short space of years, though the victory which has so far been gained has its equivocal features. Just as Bismarck, the arch-enemy of socialism, bor- rowed socialist ideas for his reforms, Poiret also 56 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM borrowed the ideas of the dress reformers for his own supreme “creations.” For the last ten years, the fashion encyclicals from Paris have drawn liberally upon the inventions of the German dress reformers. By this route, the loose-fitting, one-piece dress has become an international staple. In her interesting book on the dress reform movement of Germany, Else Wirminghaus speaks of this unexpected turning of the tables and utters a word of warning: “However much we may rejoice in the success by which the transition to the modern garment is made easier for numberless women, we must not be deceived by it or allow ourselves to reduce the amount of our organized efforts. Fashion has not turned to the modern dress-system out of inward principle or fundamental needs, but it has merely taken over, for lack of original ideas, some superficial ear-marks. Just as swiftly as it came, this apparently rational tendency can vanish again. In ever growing numbers, then, women should refuse to wear tightly- laced clothing again, after they have once had the opportunity of a more comfortable gar- ment. Whether the new dress-system will de- velop henceforth in harmony with, or in op- position to, the prevailing modes will de- REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 57 pend entirely on the future course of the latter.” 7 II The present dress reform movement inherits its direction from two essential sources, the hy- gienic and the esthetic. Pioneers on the hy- gienic side were, of course, the doctors and the object of their especial attack was the corset. In the middle ages the corset was devised for the use of nuns as a means of concealing the feminine sex characteristics. But in time it came to be used for just the opposite purpose, to exaggerate instead of to conceal the lines of the female body. In both cases, whether as an instrument to mortify the flesh or to invite it, it was equally unhygienic. A succession of more or less famous doctors fulminated against its obvious damage to women’s health for sev- eral generations before the reform movement was born, and since the organization came into existence, doctors have always been active in its councils. Some of the new dress-makers have even adopted the slender steel measuring tape of the doctor’s kit, which seems a happy omen of a future time when the dress-maker’s 1 Else Wirminghaus: De Frau und die Kultur des Kérpers, p. 66. 58 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM wares may have some relation to the normal fe- male body and its muscular expression. From the earliest times, there have been Ger- man artists who have taken a serious interest in the subject of woman’s dress. Diirer made designs of a house dress, a church dress, and a ball dress for the Nuremberg woman of 1500. Holbein also influenced the styles of his day by producing a series of costume studies which may still be seen in the Basel Museum. Many modern artists have been enlisted in the reform dress movement, the work of Anna Muthesius of Dresden being particularly famous. With- out their help, the new raiment would have made slower progress, for the mere woman nat- urally looked with suspicion upon a campaign for health’s sake and for that alone. It was necessary for some one to represent the claims of beauty. The strongest of all artistic influences, how- ever, came from the national revival of arts and crafts, the inimitable “Kunstgewerbe” of Ger- many. Everywhere in that country the evi- dences of an era of good taste in house furnish- ing and decoration are apparent. The house- wife moves in a domestic setting in which art has had its say. Her kitchen ware of enamel and china, the books on her shelves, her linen REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 59 and carpets and furniture all bear the marks of the new industrial art. Imitation materials, artificial effects, and senseless patterns have been largely supplanted by reality, simplicity, and utility in structure and design. The last of the common every-day objects to respond to the influence of the new national taste was woman’s dress. The orthodox dress- maker still violates every principle of indus- trial art, but a wholly new kind of dress-maker has come forward to present the claims of a wholly new kind of dress-making. Her aim is simply to carry over from the furnishings of the home to the dress of its mistress an idea of beauty already popular. An incidental development of the organized dress revolt was the occupational opportunity it offered to women. Its success is largely due to the talented and enterprising character of the women who saw this opportunity and took it. One of the earliest adventurers into the un- tried field was Emmy Schoch, who was in- spired by Margarete Pochhammer to adopt as her career the introduction of the reform dress. As a lecturer and as a crafts woman, Frau Schoch’s services to the movement have been invaluable. The same is true of the brilliant Hedwig Buschmann, who, in her threefold réle 60 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM of lecturer, designer, and manufacturer, is one of the most effective pioneers of the new dress revolt. Lisbeth Maas, Marie Pose, and Elisa- beth Viertel are only a few of a long list of women who have helped by their skill and talent to make the reform dress a familiar and accessible fact. III The main strength of the propaganda has been the work of the “Deutscher Verband fiir Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur” (German Union for the New Clothing for Women and Women’s Culture). The union has branches in the following cities: Aachen, Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Breslau, Dresden, Diis- seldorf, Eberbach, Elberfeld-Barmen, Essen, Flensburg, Freiburg, Gorlitz, Halle, Ham- burg, Hannover, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Co- logne, Leipzig, Munich, Pforzheim, Stuttgart, Vienna, Wertheim, and Witten. The associa- tion holds a general congress once every two years and maintains a journal, edited by Clara Sander and Else Wirminghaus. The local societies carry on a variety of ac- tivities. Information is given out, books are loaned, exhibitions of reform garments are held, lectures are exchanged, gymnastic exer- REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 61 cises are cultivated, and often cutting and fit- ting by the new method are taught. The at- tempt to extend their influence in the com- munity has sometimes brought a local society in conflict with business and industrial inter- ests. The corset-makers, naturally, objected to the anti-corset propaganda, and when the women went so far as to hold public meetings in the school buildings and city halls the corset industry was decidedly aggrieved. Repre- sentatives of the trade sent formal protests to the city departments which in any way seemed to encourage the reform dress movement. This occurrence is typical of the attitude of the fash- ion-mongers and corset-purveyors, who assume that women should blindly submit to disfigura- tion in order that the business of disfiguration may prosper. In the meantime, it has been one of the chief aims of the society to enlighten the domestic woman especially concerning her economic re- sponsibility as a consumer. The executive committee published at the beginning of the year 1913 in all the women’s journals a clothes manifesto. “To the women of Germany!” it ran. “We are living in a troubled period, a time of rising prices and congested occupa- tions. ‘Though hundreds of thousands are un- 62 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM certain of their daily bread, the tendency to luxury increases, especially in women’s dress. We are trying to combat the high cost of liv- ing and bad housing conditions by legal meas- ures and codperative associations, although as yet we have made scarcely more than a begin- ning. In the clothing problem, however, neither laws nor codperation can help. The main responsibility rests with the woman as the chief agent of consumption, and she must show that she understands how to balance the ex- penditures for housing, food, and clothing. But the fashion industry of to-day does its utmost by exaggerated demands to force the cost of women’s dress up to a level out of all proportion to the other expenses of the budget. And the worst of the situation is this: The fashion industry, with its allies of the press, its cleverly planned exhibits and seductive fashion plates, speculates upon the intellectual imma- turity of women and exploits their lack of understanding of the requirements of sound economics.” ? IV In the earliest stages of their movement the dress reformers realized that their task was not ? Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur, January, 1913. REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 63 merely the negative one of combating the ex- cesses of style and the evils of corset-worship. The positive side of their endeavors shaped it- self partly as a program of physical culture. The effort to create a rational dress for women necessarily implied the restoration of the nor- mal female body. Blunted in its activities and deformed in its proportions, the figure of the nineteenth century woman furnished very de- fective standards for the new ideals of the fe- male exterior. She was thoroughly blighted in torso and limb. High heels, tight waists, long skirts—now narrow and now voluminous— high collars, binding sleeves, and all the rest of the refined torments inflicted in the name of fashion had done their worst. So far advanced was the process of degeneration that it was im- possible for many women, especially those of middle age, to give up the use of corsets. The muscles of the abdomen and the back refused to do their proper work, and the body which had grown accustomed to a steel-and-whale-bone cast could not keep itself erect without an ar- tificial support. The further the dress reform movement went in the production of a ra- tional attire, the more revelations it called forth of the sorry physical estate of the modern woman. 64 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM It was therefore not a diversion but an inten- sifying of its energies when the Dress Unions began to cultivate an interest in physical cul- ture and gymnastics among its members. They have helped materially to create the Ger- man atmosphere which seems peculiarly favor- able to esthetic gymnastics. Realizing that the physical salvation of women depends upon a healthy revival of bodily exercise, they became the strong allies of every German effort in this direction. And not content to stop with native resources, they borrowed stimulus and example from other countries. Among the German women students, ski-running in winter and mountain climbing in summer are the most popular sports. In addition to these, the vari- ous societies of the reform movement befriend- ed English tennis and Swedish gymnastics. They also helped to popularize the art of the American Isadora Duncan and the Swiss Jaques Dalcroze. The system of gymnastics most favored is the Swedish. This consists of a set of muscular exercises, performed without apparatus and designed to develop all parts of the body to an equal degree. Not only these specific exercises but the whole character and temper of the mod- ern gymnastics revival in Sweden have sup- REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 65 plied the German movement with a scientific and dignified background. Next to the Swedish gymnastics, the system most used is the Mensendieck system. Frau Mensendieck is an American woman, like Isa- dora Duncan, who has found her field of action in a foreign country. Her book on the “Kor- perkultur des Weibes” (Physical Culture of Woman) is the favorite handbook of exercises among the educated classes of German women. Teachers of the “Mensendieck System” are greatly in demand by women’s clubs and spe- cial classes. The culmination of this whole gymnastic movement was the revival of the dance, pri- marily in the forms of Isadora Duncan’s Greek dances and the rhythmical gymnastics of Dal- croze. The Duncan school at Darmstadt and the Dalcroze school at Hellerau are evidences of the deep roots struck by these two extraor- dinary artists in German soil. The dress re- form movement has derived its own peculiar benefits from their success. The encouraging example of Isadora Duncan, who defied the reigning ballet and won distinction with her classic dances, has not been without its effect on the new group of dress-artists who have risen up to defy the fashions. When Hedwig 66 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM Buschmann exhibited her first costumes in the Artists’ House at Berlin, a newspaper critic called attention to the fact that Isadora Dun- can had made her début on the same stage, and suggested that the neo-Greek dress might play as great a part in the history of the dress- maker’s art as Duncan’s appearance has played in the history of the dance. Certainly, the new conception of feminine beauty which is being created by the Hellerau dancers can only help to reveal the absurdities and falsities of the Longchamps modes. Vv It must not be inferred from what has now been said about the earnest temper of the new dress movement that a stereotyped raiment is in prospect. This is by no means the case. There is no attempt to place all women in a uniform. On the contrary, the new dress pro- gram leaves plenty of room for the play of individual taste and even accepts the necessity for changing fashions. The human desire for variety will have to be satisfied, but the ter- rific tempo of the changing styles will cer- tainly have to be abated. It results in an enor- mous waste of time, material, and energy, and the loss inevitably affects both the industry and REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 67 the consumer. But outside of the German dress reform movement, scarcely a voice is raised in protest against these conditions. While the housewife is constantly warned agcinst waste in food materials, there is an all engrossing silence concerning the universal bad economy in clothing materials. As an ex- ample of sheer, conscienceless waste, the ward- robe of the “society lady”’ who relegates a dress after wearing it but once or twice can hardly be surpassed. She is, of course, an extreme instance, but there are few women who do not discard their dresses according to the number of times they have been worn, and not at all according to their condition. The designers of the new “Frauentracht” are producing a great variety of experimental garments, but there are certain qualities which are agreed upon as indispensable in a rational dress. To begin with, the dress must allow the utmost breathing space and limb action. The new dress-maker measures her customer with inflated Jungs and fixes the waist line around the ribs and not around the soft and yielding parts of the trunk. The one-piece dress hung from the shoulders is the most usual type, but the suspension of certain kinds of garments from the hips is recognized as having its ad- 68 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM vantages. So far as possible, petticoats are eliminated, and the “Reform-Hose” (full trousers very much like “bloomers’’) is sub- stituted. Frau Wirminghaus, one of the editors of the dress reform magazine, has drawn up a sched- ule of dress for children, girls, and women, which shows how very simple the whole prob- lem of dress becomes when reason is applied to it. Let me note also, that all the articles men- tioned in the schedule, underwear and over- wear, are easily attainable in Germany in ready-made or partly ready-made form. There is a shop in Karlsruhe which deals in reform underwear alone. And any woman can write to the nearest information bureau of the dress reform organization for advice or ad- dresses and obtain the new woman’s wear by parcel post. For children up to about 10 years: a. Union suit. Under-body. Reform-drawers buttoned to under-body. Dress in frock- style. Socks. b. Shirt. Under-body. White drawers, but- toned to under-body or buttoned inside of reform-drawers. Reform-drawers, buttoned to under-body. Dress in frock-style. Socks. REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 69 For girls: a. Union-suit of light material. Hip stocking- supporter. Reform-drawers supported by hips, preferably with narrow border and of jersey-material. Dress with washable under- waist. b. Union-suit of light material. Under-body. Hip stocking-supporter. Reform-drawers supported by hips with narrow border (or buttoned to under-body with wide border). Dress. For women: a. (Simplest clothing.) Union-suit of light ma- terial. Hip stocking-supporter. Reform- drawers supported by hips, preferably with narrow border and of jersey-material. Dress with washable under-waist. b. Union-suit of light material. Hip stocking- supporter. Under-body. Reform-drawers supported by hips (or buttoned to under- body, with wide border). Dress. ce. Union-suit of light material. Abdominal belt with stocking-supporter. Reform-drawers supported by hips (or buttoned to under- body). Dress with washable under-waist. d. Union-suit of light material. Under-body. Abdominal belt with stocking-supporter. Re- form-drawers supported by hips (or buttoned to under-body). Dress. 70 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM VI One distinguishing mark of the modern dress which especially deserves to be mentioned is the kind of fastening used. The conven- tional dress-maker is bound beyond all else to conceal the closing of the dress; this is accom- plished by means of an intricate system of in- visible hooks and eyes and usually by open- ing the dress in the back. The result is that the wearer is not able to fasten and unfasten her own clothes and must depend on somebody else to help her in dressing and undressing. It is a farcical custom and has been advertised ad nauseam by the jokes in the comic papers. These jokes always feature the sufferings of the innocent husband or the impropriety of the situation in which the casual stranger is ap- pealed to to perform this intimate service. The real impropriety of the situation is something quite different. That an independent, self- supporting woman, for instance, should ever succumb to the kind of garb which she cannot put on without help is the real wonder. The only explanation is that the difficulties of op- posing the ordained custom were too great, and it is a significant fact that the first reform dress-maker who had sufficient acumen to ad- REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 71 vertise that she guaranteed a garment which could be put on without help found a mass of customers ready to take advantage of her offer. All this emphasis on the practical side of the garment question does not mean, however, that the claims of gracefulness and beauty are over- looked. It is a fundamental principle of dec- orative art that an object which entirely fails to serve its purpose is not really beautiful. A hand-painted shovel or a carved marble Bible is not beautiful; neither is a dress in which a woman cannot walk or breathe. The extension of this law of decoration to woman’s dress sim- ply means that as it becomes more satisfactory from the practical standpoint it will also be- come more satisfactory from the zsthetic stand- point. One of the most interesting of the modern dress forms is that devised by Hedwig Busch- mann in Berlin. Her plan for these garments grew out of the lectures of Doctor Jolles, an archeologist who is an authority on Greek and Medieval costumes. Doctor Jolles emphasizes the superiorities of the Greek clothing art, es- pecially in its regard for the quality and beauty of the material. His ideas fired Frau Busch- mann with a resolution to reproduce these gar- ments, as far as possible, for the women of to- 72 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM day. She set to work in her shop and in a very short time had discovered the changes which were necessary to convert the Hellenic garment into one which should meet the requirements of a Northern climate and modern habits of life. Her first presentation of these garments before a Berlin audience took place under sci- entific auspices, for it was prefaced by a lec- ture by Dr. Jolles giving the historical devel- opment of the primitive clothing forms upon which the new garment was based. The simplicity of the new wear is extreme. Frau Buschmann takes a piece of goods of a rectangular or circular shape, cuts a square or round hole for the neck, drapes it with a gir- dle and lo! the costume is finished. The idea of reviving the antique costume and the beau- tiful garments from the Buschmann workshop, as they were exhibited in a series of German cities, found favor in a very short time. The proof of the venture was its commercial suc- cess. It showed how the whole dress reform cause had prospered in Germany when a style of garment could afford to bruit its extreme simplicity as its chief attraction. From the ever-practical critics in the reform movement came the objection that the new gar- ment leaned rather too far toward the esthetic REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM ‘3 side; that it was better adapted for evening wear than for street wear; and that it presented too much surface for the accumulation of dirt. None of these faults, however, seem to be- long to the simple shift-form, opening in the front, which is the standard foundation of most of these new garments. In its faithful ad- herence to the one-piece idea, this method de- parts as far as possible from the methods of the Parisian tailor, whose favorite tool is the scissors. First the fabric, no matter how costly, is ruthlessly dissected into many sepa- rate pieces and then these are again pieced to- gether in laborious and artificial patterns. The amount of time consumed in this process is no- torious. And this orgy of tailoring for tailor- ing’s sake has cost the women who have sup- ported it a pretty penny. VII To tell the story of all the able women who have found a field of work in the dress reform movement would take too long. There is one woman, however, who should not go unmen- tioned in a report of this movement. Gunda Beeg typifies in her personality and her work some of its most admirable qualities. Her grandfather was the Baron Aufsess, the 74 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM founder of the Germanic Museum in Nurem- berg, and her father was the director of the Nuremberg Museum of Industrial Arts (Kunstgewerbe). Her mother founded the School for Women’s Work in Nuremberg, in which Gunda Beeg received a thorough train- ing. The daughter was, in her turn, one of the founders of the first German organization for the improvement of women’s dress. She brought into its counsels a fund of artistic ap- preciation, technical training, and practical judgment. It seems characteristic of her, and of the movement which she so well represents, that her name should be associated with the new uniform worn by the women in the civil serv- ice rather than with any special style of court costume. The introduction of the Gunda Beeg blouse in the telephone and postal service is a typical feat of the clothing reformers. There are em- ployed in this service, which is administered en- tirely by the government, 25,000 women. When on duty they are required to wear a uniform similar to that used by the men of the service. Americans who have traveled in Ger- many are familiar with the dark blue blouse, with colored piping and brass buttons, worn by the young women in the postal and telegraph REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 75 offices. The cut of this blouse, as originally prescribed, required the wearing of a corset. In 1912, the newly formed “Union of Women Telephone and Telegraph Employees” united with the Berlin branch of the dress reform or- ganization and sent a petition to the manage- ment for the introduction of a more hygienic blouse. Accompanying the petition was a med- ical brief drawn up by a well-known woman physician, and a model of the proposed blouse, designed and executed by Gunda Beeg. Such thoroughness of method might be ex- pected to have its influence with the central management, and it did. The reform blouse was tried out for a year in one of the large tele- phone exchanges, by making it an optional al- ternative to the old-fashioned “squeezer.”’ The young women preferred it so overwhelmingly that it was officially adopted as a civil service uniform at the end of the trial year. This offi- cial acknowledgment of the dress reform idea was no small victory, for it added a great deal to the prestige and influence of the campaign for common sense in the dress question.* The next uniform which is slated for regen- eration is the nurse’s uniform. Among the dif- ferent classes of trained nurses, there is only 5 Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur, May, 1914. %6 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM one group, the so-called “free sisters,” who have taken any steps toward the relegation of the corset. The long hours and the heavy re- sponsibilities of the nurse’s work require espe- cially that her uniform shall also be sanitary in the sense that it does not exaggerate her fa- tigue by its starched and corseted confinement. In this direction, however, the dress reform idea has not made very great headway. Much easier was its entrance into the gymna- sium of the girls’ public schools. The reform gymnasium suit has been very widely adopted. The Leipzig society for dress reform designed the gymnasium suit which is the standard pat- tern for the public schools of the city. It is also through the schools that the reformers have tried to obtain an influence on another strategic article of apparel—the confirmation dress. This is the all-important dress for the Ger- man school girl corresponding to the “gradua- tion dress” of her American sister. Custom decrees that it shall be of purest white and it has much the symbolism of detail that distin- guishes the bridal dress. The interesting fact for the dress reformers, however, is that con- firmation comes along about the time when the corset first begins to threaten. The mother de- cides, perhaps, that the new dress, which is a REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM ‘7 “grand” garment and must be used for a very long time, had better be fitted over a corset and the girl’s bodily bondage begins. Realiz- ing the domestic background of this situation, the dress reformers decided that it was worth while to spend a great deal of energy in cul- tivating the general taste for simple and cor- setless confirmation styles. They distributed leaflets in the schools, with suggestive and at- tractive designs. Some of the local societies went so far as to supply confirmation dresses free of charge for the young girls of the poorer families. VIIt The main want of the woman of to-day is a practical street dress and a “business” dress. The woman who is busy earning her living or caring for her family finds in the orthodox fashion magazines a strange and irrelevant pic- ture of life. Evening dress, reception gown, and June brides succeed each other from page to page and are emphasized out of all propor- tion to the part they play in actual life. For her activities in the home and in her profession, for her goings and comings through the streets, there is very little regard. The one saving ex- ception is the suit,—the coat, blouse, and skirt. 78 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM The determination with which women have held on to this practical costume since its first ap- pearance many years ago is an evidence that they are capable of considerable self-assertion against the whims of fashion. This type of garment was for many years almost the only wear for students and profes- sional women and for street use generally. It had one disadvantage, however, and that was the difficulty of keeping blouse and skirt to- gether without a corset as the connecting link. The one-piece reform dress, by removing this difficulty, was the first effective rival of the suit. For this reason it has been popular with students and with professional and business women. Outside of Germany, it has been in- troduced in Switzerland, Holland, and Scandi- navia. In the forefront of the reform movement stands that problem of a suitable professional or business dress. The philosophy of the work- ing-dress is aptly put by Else Wirminghaus: “In earlier times, the different social classes were separated from each other by their differ- ent manner of dress, and ‘fashion was the mark of belonging to a class.’ It served a frankly exclusive purpose. Though we are demanding to-day a working dress, our demand is based REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM ‘79 on just the opposite conception. We have no intention to separate different occupations from each other, but we do have the intention of recognizing work as such. So the demand for working clothing results from a democratic view of things.” * The production of this type of dress is a primary task of present and future dress re- form. In the shops to-day, enthusiastic dress designers are working away at the production of rational standards and their inventions are advertized under names which are a frank avowal of their practical character. One of the latest inventions, launched by a firm of feminist dress-makers and announced in the suffrage journals, is trade-marked the “Every-Day Dress” (Alltagskleid). Of course, these de- sirable new models must be made accessible by increased factory production and cheapened prices, and this forms one of the problems with which women’s organizations must prepare to deal. But when the standards are once achieved, their multiplication will easily fol- low. Just what the emancipated dress must be like will still have to be worked out. The most * Wirminghaus: Die Frau und die Kultur des Kérper, p. Qa7, 80 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM that the reforms so far have accomplished does not include the creation of a satisfactory model, but it does include the creation of an independ- ent attitude among women toward the fash- ions, and this is the really promising achieve- ment. The use of common sense replaces more and more the anxious subservience to the mode de rigueur. The art of dressing is approaching a plastic state, women are themselves in a mood of transition, and conditions are ripening for the successful introduction of a really rational garment. The essential qualities of such a garment are not all embodied in the present reform dress, and no one knows this better than its makers. They have released the woman’s trunk from the corset, but they have not wholly succeeded in freeing her arms and they have postponed the attempt to free her legs until public opinion should be more hospitable. It is true, of course, that any garment necessarily hampers the body’s movements to some degree, but this is all the more reason for eliminating the confining features as far as possible. The kimono sleeves, for which much may be said on the esthetic side, do not solve the sleeve problem. They confine both arms in a sort of cloth yoke, analogous in structure to that which REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM 81 a pair of oxen wears, and no matter how lib- eral the dimensions are, the arrangement is un- yielding. The Russian blouse sleeve, with its generous arm hole, is equally esthetic and much more practical. While the dress reformers have not dis- pensed with the top skirt, they have waged a very successful campaign against petticoats. Instead, a pair of full trousers of a practical color are worn. The gradual development of this undergarment into an over-garment is not very difficult to foresee. Already they are making and advertising a type of costume which holds much promise. It consists of a pair of full trousers, a coat of about the same length, and leggings. These clothes are used for walking excursion by the “Wander vogel” and for traveling, and there is absolutely no reason why they should offend in the street. The second half of the reform program re- lates, as we have already said, to the gymnastic movement. The most important task of this half concerns the physical training of the girls in the public schools. Though the physical ed- ucation of girls has had far less attention than that of boys in the past, a great improvement is this respect has been observed in recent years. In the reform of the Prussian girls’ schools, 82 REALIZATIONS IN DRESS REFORM the new educational program contained, as a statement of principle, that the physical cul- ture of girls should receive the same attention and strive for the same ends as that of boys. The increased attention now paid in Germany to the physical culture of girls is partly due to the widespread interest in gymnastics and the dance. The work of the dress union has helped to make vague ideals into realities, for it has often been able to influence the local educa- tional authority to take definite action. They have been active with petitions for the exclu- sion of the corset from the girls’ gymnasium and have furthered the adoption of sensible school dresses for pupils of all ages. By these and similar efforts they hope to avert the in- fluences of malformation at their earliest sources; to prepare the way for a future woman who shall be fully emancipated in body as well as in soul,—strong for her task of child-bearing and rejoicing in freedom of motion. CHAPTER IV THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA I Stimulated mainly by Ellen Key, the move- ment to reform the institution of marriage is decidedly the most important work of Euro- pean feminism. The marriage problem is ap- proached by the continental critics from an an- gle as yet little known in our American discus- sions. In America, the faults of the marriage institution are seen in the prevalence of di- vorce. The fact that one out of every twelve marriages ends in divorce is the outstanding feature of the marriage situation in this coun- try. In Europe, on the other hand, the failure of the institution of marriage is seen in the prevalence of illegitimacy. By a curious statis- tical coincidence, it happens that in Germany one out of! every twelve babies born is illegiti- mate. This mass of illegitimacy is just as dis- concerting to the European moralist as the cor- responding mass of divorce is to the American moralist. The effect on public discussion is 88 84 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA strikingly prominent. The question of divorce, which occupies so much attention in America, falls into the background in Europe and the question of illegitimacy, which has scarcely been broached in public in this country, is one of the most widely-discussed public questions of the day in foreign countries.’ The illegitimate children born in Germany yearly number 180,000. In Sweden, they num- ber 18,000, and in Norway 5,000. Moreover, to get a true picture of the number of individ- uals concerned, we must double these numbers, because each case of illegitimacy means an out- lawed pair, the unmarried mother and the il- legitimate child. It is apparent that the fate of so large a group of persons cannot be a mat- ter of indifference to society or state. It is also apparent that the sole form of marriage le- gally sanctioned in these countries is not that practiced by a considerable portion of the pop- ulation. Hither something is wrong with this large group of human beings or something is wrong with marriage. According to church and state, nothing can be wrong with the form of sex union defined as legal marriage. To 1 There are, unfortunately, no statistics of illegitimacy in this country to show us where we stand by comparison with European countries. THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 85 its official sponsors, it represents the highest ideal of sex morality that has yet been attained, or ever will be attained, by civilization. But according to the woman movement and the Mutterschutz movement, something is wrong with the institution of marriage. The woman movement approves of its monogamic basis, but attacks its proprietary rights. Monogamy purified of proprietary rights is the ideal of the main guard of European feminism, the sub- stance of the marriage reforms demanded by the 1905 Program. The Mutterschutz move- ment goes further. It not only demands the abolition of proprietary rights in marriage, but questions the eternal validity of monogamy itself, if not as ideal morality at least as prac- tical morality. The high rate of illegitimate births is indi- rectly encouraged by the number of surplus women in Europe. Owing to emigration and colonial expansion, industrial accident and war, the women find themselves in the unsought po- sition of the majority. This fact serves to de- crease the expectation of marriage among women in general and increases the disposition to put up with an irregular instead of a regu- lar union. The man who wishes to evade the burdens and responsibilities of life-long mar- 86 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA riage finds it easier to do so. In the colonies, on the other hand, the situation is reversed. The men form the majority of the population and become the competing sex. The woman may name the terms of the sex union and ex- act the topmost price, life-long support. It is clear that the surplus women gathered together in the centers of European civilization cannot exact this topmost price, even if the woman movement had not taught them to question the morality of a marriage for support. Besides the number of surplus women, social and economic conditions help to lower the ex- pectation of marriage among women. Social opinion requires a respectable young man to support his wife and family and economic con- ditions make it impossible for him to do so. He has no choice but to withdraw from the lists until he is economically adequate to the obligations of marriage. The higher critics of monogamy did not fail to call public attention to this fact. “The moral outlawry of the un- married mother,” reads one of the Mutter- schutz leaflets, “would be easier to understand if we lived under economic and social conditions which made it possible for every one to marry soon after the arrival of sexual maturity, so that the involuntary marriagelessness of adult THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 87 persons would be an abnormal condition. In times like the present, however, when no less than 45 per cent. of all women of child-bearing age are unmarried and those who actually marry only do it at a comparatively advanced age, one must label as untenable the point of view which thrusts from society as an outcast like the lowest criminal the unmarried woman who gives life to a child and surrenders herself to desperation.” II The organization known as the “Bund fiir Mutterschutz” has carried on the most revolu- tionary sexual reforms since the days of Lu- ther. In attacking celibacy, Luther attacked what was then regarded as the highest form of sexual morality. His marriage, the marriage of a monk with a nun, flouted the church and outraged the public opinion of his time. Nev- ertheless, his teaching and example eventually became the sex code of Protestant Germany and Sweden. Not celibacy but the Lutheran marriage became the highest ideal of sexual ethics. Its supremacy was not questioned un- til the beginning of the twentieth century brought forth an organized movement which encouraged skepticism toward the Lutheran 88 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA sex code and championed the victims of this code, the unmarried mother and the illegitimate child. The Mutterschutz idea was the natural historical corrective of an exclusively theologi- cal and proprietary marriage. The founding of this society in 1905 was the most important historical event in the history of the woman movement since the American Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. An account of the Berlin convention which appeared in one of the leading women’s journals of the day ? shows how convinced and determined this phase of young-feminism was from the very day when it entered upon its public work. \ The giant placards on the Litfass-columns, with the names of the men and women signers, must have previously told even those farthest away from the newest movement that the convention was to be one of extraordinary significance. The mere convening and conferring of the Bund fiir Mutterschutz is for us the valuable fact, more valuable than the speeches themselves among which there were several which suffered from unnecessary prolixity. It would be desirable, in the repetition of such sessions, to aim for the greatest possible precision and brevity, in order that more time might be given to the resulting 2 Frauenrundschau, March 9, 1905. THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 89 discussion which alone is able to find the way from theory to practice. On the last Sunday the speakers were, among oth- ers, Ruth Bré, Dr. Helene Stécker, Marie Lischnew- ska, Ellen Key, Lily Braun, Adele Schreiber, and Messrs. Dr. Marcuse, Dr. Bloch, Professor Bruno Meyer, and others. .. . As the first speaker, Ruth Bré developed the thought that the present contempt of illegitimate motherhood robbed the child not only of a father but also of a mother, since she must board the child out, often conceal it, and finally give it away, thus with her separation from the child losing her best main- stay and sinking the more easily into prostitution. This is why we must protect the mother, the unmar- ried, but also the married. The speaker urged that health certificates be required as a condition for mar- riage and that the laws concerning contagious dis- ease should be changed. Children are the nation’s wealth. At present the mother suffers from the ex- istence of the illegitimate child and the child from the existence of the mother. How bitter such a lot may be, the speaker continued, could only be meas- ured by one who had experienced it. She herself was an illegitimate child who had only lately found the courage to own her mother and rescue her from a life of misery. This confession was received by the convention with deep emotion. Ellen Key,® who has been so much discussed and * Ellen Key speaks in German as well as in Swedish. 90 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA so generously honored in her visit of the last few weeks, made a strong impression as she ascended the | podium and expressed her admiration that the Ger- man women had taken the initiative in founding the Bund fiir Mutterschutz and in this respect had gone ahead of all other countries, including the Scandi- navian North. With the establishment of this society, the Mutterschutz Idea became a system. It had already been partly formulated by individuals and leaders, primarily by Ellen Key and Lily Braun. But a society now existed, based on the Mutterschutz Idea, with international con- nections and systematized activities. Its pur- pose was stated to be the reform of sexual eth- ics and the protection of motherhood. It soon developed that among their other ac- tivities, they had to carry on a ceaseless cru- sade against hypocrisy. They had to reckon not so much with conventional consciences as with guilty consciences. That the latter formed the chief contingent of the opposition was soon discovered by those who did the practical work of the organization. The rapidly accu- mulating statistics held a mirror up to the social station of the unwedded parents, showing how overwhelmingly ill-matched these parents were. The mother belonged to a humble class, THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 91 mainly the serving class, while the father not unusually belonged to middle class circles. Frequently he was a person of unquestioned respectability. In type and social class, he cor- responded to the kind of citizen who volun- teered in greatest numbers to defend society against the Mutterschutz peril. This explains why the literature of the movement contains so many polemics against hypocrisy. These writers have done much to arouse popular dis- taste of hypocrisy in all its manifestations—a distaste which constitutes almost a mental sta- ple in the continental habit of thought while it still remains a rare luxury in popular Anglo- Saxon ethics. Tir The whole campaign of the Mutterschutz movement may be divided for convenience into three groups of constructive demands in the field of sex: the demand for new ethical ideals, the demand for new social customs relating to sex, and the demand for legislative enactments. In the organ of the movement, called at first “Mutterschutz” but later taking the title of “Die Neue Generation,” all sides of the move- ment were frankly discussed. What is morality in the sex-relation? The 92 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA inquirers placed themselves before this ques- tion as if it had not been answered once for all by the Catholic Church in the earliest centuries and again once for all by Martin Luther some thousand years later. They submitted that sexual ethics, as well as other branches of eth- ics, could not be settled once for all, but must be revised from age to age by the light of hu- man and social experience. They felt that it was time that certain new ideas should be em- bodied in the accepted sex code, and these new ideas they called the New Ethics (Die Neue Ethik) over which so much ink has been spilled in the last decade. The movement was denounced as a menace to the family, the church, and the state. That women should come before the public and dis- cuss such subjects was peculiarly resented. But for the fact that they were so ably cham- pioned by such continental celebrities as Pro- fessor August Forel of Switzerland, Dr. Rut- gers of Holland, Dr. Sigmund Freud of Aus- tria, and Minister of Justice Castberg of Nor- way, the feminine contingent would have had a much thornier path to tread than they ac- tually did. Much of the criticism took rather low ground, resembling that of the gentleman who sat next to Dr. Helene Stocker at a din- THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 93 ner and whose outraged feelings exploded in the remark: “You talk as if you thought that all women should sow their wild oats and all men should be chaste.” Ellen Key was per- haps more severely punished in her country for her doctrines than was Dr. Stocker in hers. In one place Ellen Key’s biographer naively re- marks that the possession of the doctor’s title might have helped her somewhat. She was de- nounced as a seducer and corrupter of youth. For a long time opinion wavered between the hemlock cup and the laurel crown. Even- tually, however, the crown was extended and she was honored by the Swedish government with the gift of the beautiful stretch of seaside land which is now her home. Briefly explained, the New Ethicists are practical evolutionists. They proceed from the fundamental principle that some system of ap- plied evolution is the only possible ethical guide in the matter of sex relationships. For the old ascetic conscience, they would substi- tute the modern eugenic conscience. In the matter of ethical laws and institutions, as well as other laws and institutions, change cannot be prevented and so the only way to rationalize the inevitable changes is to control them in the light of the teachings of the science of evolu- 94 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA tion. Popular ideals of sexual ethics are es- pecially backward as they have been kept so long in the darkest cellar of the human con- sciousness. The first condition of progress in sexual reform is a general enlightenment as to existing sexual conditions,—the accepted sex- ual code, its observances and its evasions,— in the most civilized of modern states. Women especially must participate in this era of sexual] enlightenment (Sexuelle Aufklérung) be- cause the innocence-fetich has kept them igno- rant in this regard. The first commandment of the New Ethics has been taken from Nietzsche. “Thou shalt not propagate, but elevate, the race.” This principle is opposed to all casual parentage; sex must be placed at the service of evolution. Volitional breeding must take the place of accidental breeding, quality of off- spring must take the place of blind numbers. Here we recognize the teachings of the new eugenics movement as well, whose principles are one with that phase of the woman move- ment which seeks to liberate and empower the mother in woman. As a prophet of evolution, Nietzsche could not help placing a high value on the mother, just as his hatred of democracy made it impossible for him to do justice to the THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 95 woman. The foreign woman movement has been confronted in Nietzsche by a pro-mater- nal philosopher and an anti-feministic philos- opher. It has accordingly bisected his philos- ophy, taken therefrom what they liked and dis- carded what they didn’t. Of Nietzsche and the suffragists, we shall have to speak in an- other chapter. According to Ellen Key, the New Morality gives a new definition of chastity. “Chastity consists in the harmony between the soul and the senses, and no sexual relationship is moral without such relationship.” * Lack of chastity may degrade the legalized union as well as the unlegalized one, and chastity may justify the sex union which the state and church have not sanctioned. Ethically, there is nothing to choose between the conscience-marriage of a George Eliot and Henry Lewes and the legal marriage of an Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Although many of the followers of the New Ethics (all of them in fact so far as I have been able to follow their writings) be- lieve that the monogamous union is the high- est ideal of marriage, they protest against its exclusive adoption as an ethical standard. This is the kernel of the New Ethics. It will * Renaissance of Motherhood, p. 89. 96 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA be seen that it is not so much a proclamation of an actual new ethics as it is a questioning and criticism of the old ethics, the “‘official eth- ics” as its critics callit. To the American read- ers of Ellen Key’s works these ideas are al- ready familiar. Their importance for Euro- pean feminism lies in the currency they have _ achieved through organization and propa- ganda. IV The progressive features of the Scandina- vian divorce laws unquestionably reflect the in- fluence of these ideas. Little by little the laws of Sweden and Norway have been altered in recent years to a form which now permits di- vorce by mutual consent. The Norwegian law, for instance, divides the procedure into two stages, separation and divorce. When the sep- aration is demanded by both parties, it is grant- ed without question. If, at the end of a year, both parties agree in claiming a divorce, this also is granted by the magistrate without ques- tion. No reasons need be given in either case. If the separation is claimed by one of the parties only, it may be granted against the pro- test of the other party on grounds of drunken- hess or gross neglect of conjugal duty; or if THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 97 the relation between husband and wife has grown so unfriendly that the continuance of the married state would be inimical to the wel- fare of the parents and the children. The de- cree of divorce may only be granted after two years of separation, if one of the parties has contested it. The Crown may grant a divorce at the claim of one of the parties without a legal separation having taken place if an actual separation has existed for a period of three years or if the other party has been insane for that period of time. In all cases of separation and divorce, the magistrate must sanction the agreement made between husband and wife regarding the custody and support of the children or settle their differences regarding the same. It is strictly forbidden that divorce cases should be reported in the newspapers and the question of cost plays very little part. Divorce is cheap, and for the poor it is practically free.® Vv The right to motherhood is another ethical idea freely agitated by the Mutterschutz move- ment. There would seem to be little need to ° Legal Position of Women in Norway, by J. Castberg, in The Nineteenth Century, February, 1912, ‘ ‘ 98 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA defend a human right so manifest. Yet popu- lar opinion is still far away from assimilating the idea of motherhood as a right. I need scarcely say, the vindication of this particular right has been theoretical rather than practical. Needless to say, also, that section of the public which was most aghast at the idea of the right to motherhood was most alarmed at the falling birth-rate. The woman movement was held re- sponsible for both phenomena, and not alto- gether unjustly. While the falling birth-rate is due to many and complex causes, it is true that the branch of the woman movement which we are considering in this chapter has recently made a definite stand for the right of the mar- ried woman to limit her family. On the other hand, it has stood even longer for the woman’s right to motherhood. To all but the most hysterical alarmists it ought to be clear that the existence of these two demands side by side is evidence of a natural and healthy revolt of the child-bearing sex. It is the direct effort of the maternal instinct to find its own way between compulsory sterility and enforced over-breeding. And I may say here that I mean an inward maternal impera- tive, which women, as yet, can scarcely account for to themselves and of which men, with all THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 99 their lip-worship of the maternal instinct, can have noidea. For men are, after all, the womb- less sex. 'To those women, on the other hand, whé believe in the future of their sex the ulti- mate triumph of volitional motherhood over sex slavery is one of the indispensable conditions of that future. The defense of the right to motherhood, then, naturally led to the defense of the right to birth-control. To the comparatively small body of women who entered the field of sex reform and took the high risks of pioneering, too much credit cannot be given. One of these is Frau Marie Stritt, the editor of the Frauen- frage. Frau Stritt is President of the Woman Suffrage Union of Germany and Vice-Presi- dent of the International Malthusian League. For a great many years, she has stood high in the councils of the suffrage movement and the Mutterschutz movement. She is therefore equally interested in the political and the sex emancipation of women and the relation of both to the broader feminist movement as a whole. She feels that the time has come for the woman movement to take up the question of birth-control as it is undeniably one of the most important, if not the most important, of all public questions affecting women. This 100 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA position of Frau Stritt’s is not likely to be weakened but rather to be strengthened by the bloody course of events in Europe. Even be- fore the war, the population question had forced itself into the forefront of discussion, and it is likely to assume a still more prominent place in the wake of so much organized and wholesale bloodshed. Whatever has been its position in the past, the organized woman movement will no longer be able to stand aside from the discussion of the population question.® One of the most important contributions to the continental Malthusian movement is a book by a Dutch physician, Dr. Rutgers. The Ger- man edition has been translated by Martine Kramers, and together with the introduction by Marie Stritt can be owned by any woman ®° The Journal of American Medicine for April 10, 1915, re- ports that “The year 1914 in Berlin closed with a birth-rate which was 3,500 less than that of the preceding year. The five years from 1909 to 1913 produced 45,960, 44,188, 43,201, 49,581, 40,832 living births. The year 1914, on the other hand, showed only about 37,300. The figures for 1914 are a tem- porary estimate, but it might be increased at the most on ac- count of delayed reports by a few dozen. The mortality in- creased in 1914 by about 1,600. For 1914, a current estimate gives 29,650 births without still-births, The excess of births over deaths for the years 1909-1913 amounted to 14,116, 14,036, 10,894, 12,600, 12,767, but for 1914 only about 7,650. In 1914, the excess of births was about 5,100 less than for 1913, that is, about 40 per cent.” THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 101 who has fifty cents. In her introduction to the book, Frau Stritt analyzes the relation of the problem to the woman question. It is not as if “Rassenverbesserung” represented purely feministic tendencies, or as if it proceeded in its treatment of this most important of modern cul- tural problems exclusively from the woman’s stand- point. On the contrary, just because the book il- lumines the population problem on all sides, in its individual and social, its economic and hygienic bear- ings; just because it is to be regarded as the confes- sion of faith of an intelligent social-politician as well as the imperative demand of an ethical and humani- tarian thinker, as the result of the scientific investi- gation of an expert and the practical experience of a widely-active physician; and because, from all these standpoints, and many others, with irresistible logic, he comes to the same conclusion, the only conclusion which can also be a satisfactory conclusion of one of the most burning of the woman questions—exactly this is what makes the book so valuable for our cause. One would think that the demand of Neo-Malthusi- anism expressed therein: the voluntary regulation of the number of children by the mother” would be the fundamental, self-evident demand of those who assert on women’s behalf all the subjective and objective 7 The voluntary regulation of the family by the father has been for many years sanctioned by the Catholic Church of France. 102 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA rights of personality. One would think that the bare suggestion that her most intimate concern should be stripped of free will and personal respon- sibility and left to blind chance and sex-slavery alone would outrage all the advocates of the woman move- ment. However, this has not hitherto been the case. There are still few in our ranks who dare to draw the same conclusion for all, and openly to confess their allegiance. The cause may be partly a certain shrinking from the public discussion of these sub- jects, although they touch the most vital interests of women—simply mean for them their To-Be or Not- To-Be; it may partly be the not unfounded fear of giving offense in many circles, for one is still not al- lowed “vor keuschen Ohren nennen, was keusche Herzen nicht entbehren kénnen,” ® and it may partly be perhaps the defective knowledge and frequently mistaken impressions about this subject and about the physiological and psychological condition of motherhood. As the strongest factor, however, still another must be taken into consideration. The question of family limitation in our country is still handled in a purely academic way; people sit around the discussion table and exchange opinions, without reckoning at all with the most important factor in their discussion, the mothers immediately concerned. . . . The idea is emphatically rejected for the great masses of the people, though practical 8 “To name before chaste ears, what chaste hearts cannot do without.” THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 103 Malthusianism is winning ground from day to day in educated circles, that is, the people around the dis- cussion table. The humor of this naive self-glorifica- tion and this curious contradiction between theory and practice has not been noticed by our masculine or even—more’s the pity—by our feminine social- politicians. This is not especially remarkable. The gates of the sanctuaries of science have but just been opened to women. Not yet can, or dare, they go their own way; thankfully they must follow in the path of their leaders, thankfully accept here also what the man’s conception of the official man’s world offers them. Thus they accept in the questions of population policies, as the only correct stand- point, the sole standardized view hitherto, that of men; and try to reconcile themselves to the deepest distress of their own sex-comrades with the weak concession that family limitation may be desirable for the individual woman in the individual case but would be harmful to society for certain economic reasons. The criticism which the woman, from the woman’s standpoint, does not yet dare to lay upon the ac- cepted population policies, is practiced by Dr. Rut- gers all the more severely from all standpoints, al- though always in a scientific and dignified tone. With startling surety of aim, he strikes one weapon after the other from the hands of the theorists who speak for a limitless increase of the population. By a quantity of examples from the past and present and 104 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA a wealth of statistical material, he proves the falsity of their economic and hygienic assumptions and con- clusions. Let it be their own affair to reckon with Dr. Rutgers. It is scarcely to be assumed that he will convince them, since contradictory philosophies that make understanding difficult may also exert their influence here. But one ventures to hope that at least the feminine theorists will not persistently turn their backs on his arguments, as it relieves them of the sad alternative before which they see them- selves placed to-day. They do not need to sacrifice any longer to the population policy, the individual welfare and the self-determinism of their sex-com- rades, if the two no longer oppose each other but coincide... . To the many million practicants—if I may use this term for those who have felt and still feel in their own lives the wretchedness of undesired and unwilled motherhood, for them the Rutgers book speaks a saving word; it speaks the last word in the woman movement. The woman question is not a spinsters’ question as perhaps one was formerly inclined to re- gard it. It concerns itself with the complete human being, all the rights of personality of the full-grown woman. Only short-sighted blindness can lend itself to the delusion that this can be achieved without the emancipation of woman as a sex-being. All her other achievements in the economic, social, and intellectual fields, and together with them, all her general cul- tural achievements, remain illusory, or at best lim- THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 105 ited to a comparatively small group, so long as women do not have the responsibility of their lives as mothers:—so long as, in this most fundamental point of the woman’s sphere, they leave the dominion in the hands of blindly swaying natural forces which civilized man masters in all other spheres and yokes in the service of his own will and purposes. Thus the question here unrolled includes for all those who have learned to think their thoughts to the end the veal innermost core of the woman question. Thus in a certain sense the population question is to be regarded as the woman question, and at the same time as the economic and social, as the vocational, legal, moral, and last but not least as the educational problem. “Henceforth the woman will not sigh beneath her fertility as beneath the curse of the lost paradise; through physiological knowledge she has again come to be the mistress of her own body and of her own fate.” These brave words of Dr. Rutgers are al- ready partly true for the educated and possessing classes, thanks to the means of medical science in the last three decades and the practical Malthusianism founded thereupon which has been growing more and more at home in our own country. In view of this fact, however, it is a pressing, an undeniable duty of the middle class woman movement which embraces all these circles, to share its blessings, primarily by means of a general educational propaganda, with those who need them even more, for whom they are 106 ' THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA a life-and-death question—the weary and heavy- laden mothers of the working people. VI The sex reform movement early made a con- centrated attack on two social conventions in particular. One of these was the convention that childhood and youth should be kept as long as possible in ignorance of all matters concerning sex. The second convention was that married and unmarried women should be socially differentiated by separate titles. These two demands, sex instruction for the young and the unity-title for women, were furthered by organized resistance to lazy sex customs. In the campaign for sex instruction for the young, a drama by Frank Wedekind, a Ger- man poet, played a very important part. We are not accustomed in this country to regard the stage as an ally of social reforms or indeed as the medium for the expression of ideas, but the European stage is quite a different matter. Ibsen’s contribution to feminism, Hauptmann’s contribution to socialism, and Wedekind’s contribution to sexual reform were not the odd scraps of the artists’ work- shops but the very soul and purpose of their dramatic thinking. And just as the Doll’s THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 107 House showed the reverse side of masculine chivalry, so Spring’s Awakening showed the reverse side of youthful innocence. It was a merciless arraignment of parents and educa- tors for their self-complacent neglect of one of their most important duties. It pictures with extraordinary fidelity of physiological and emotional detail, a group of boys and girls meeting the experiences of adolescence without a word of protective explanation from their elders. “I have gone through Meyer’s Little Encyclopedia from A to Z,” declared one of the lads. “Words—nothing but words and words! Not a single plain explanation. Oh, this feeling of shame!—What good to me is an encyclopedia that won’t answer me concerning the most important question in life?” This play is called a Children’s Tragedy, but it might more accurately be described as a tragedy of youth’s sex curiosity. Little Wendla dies as the result of an abortion com- mitted with her mother’s consent and Melchior is sent by his father to a House of Correction. Both children owed their tragedy to the twist- ing and thwarting of a natural curiosity which is far more normal, when properly guided, than the state of innocence in which this mis- 108 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA taken father and easy-going mother would fain have kept them. Though this play had been published in book form in the early nineties, it was scarcely known until the sex reformers popularized it for propaganda purposes. At first the “Pol- izei” refused to permit its performance, but Professor Eric Schmidt of the Berlin Uni- versity interceded in person and the depart- ment gave its permission. A private per- formance was given in Nuremberg, sponsored by the Women’s Clubs. The book ran through many editions; and its influence has helped to lift the silence which custom decrees as the only form of sex education suitable for the young. Parents and teachers have gone ahead in voluntarily assuming their responsibility, and in persuading the educational authorities that sex instruction should be regularly im- parted in the schools. VII The second convention attacked by the Bund fiir Mutterschutz was one which seemed to many people of minor importance. The use of Fraulein in German-speaking countries and of Fréken in Scandinavian for unmarried women is a custom which has nestled so long THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 109 in the subconscious mind of the public that any attempt to focus attention upon it was bound to be violently resisted. Habits are even harder to change than laws. However, as soon as the speaker becomes at all conscious of the meaning of these diminutive forms, they have a belittling effect which is far from com- plimentary. In short, a Fraulein is an unde- veloped, an unfulfilled being who can only at- tain maturity by the favor of a member of the opposite sex. It is a point of view which has inspired many a flowery epithalamium. A classic among marriage hymns is that com- posed by John Donne, the English clergyman- poet, with the refrain, “To-day put on perfec- tion and a woman’s name.” The original intention of the unity-title was to protect the unmarried mother. In her case, the epithet “Fraulein” invites the social per- secution and social revenge to which she is always exposed. To shield her, groups of women began to repudiate for themselves the title “Fraulein” and to assume the adult title “Frau.” In Switzerland, a petition was drawn up and signed by 10,000 women asking the government for the official introduction of this change. In point of fact, there is no legal reinforcement of this custom to be overcome— 110 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA only the custom itself. Therefore, many wom- en have simply assumed without further cere- mony the title “Frau” and gone about their business. When Frau Rosika Schwimmer was asked during her visit to America why she had taken the title of “Frau,” she replied, “I was thirty-five last year and thought it was time.” This campaign was greatly stimulated by the use of the phrase, “Kinheits-Titel.” It aroused an emotional echo in the growing sense of solidarity among women and symbolized a whole group of feelings in the modern woman which she is seeking for means to express. An organization was formed, the “Propaganda Bund fiir den Einheits-Titel,” and a systematic literary campaign was instituted. Among the new recruits were university graduates, doc- tors of philosophy and doctors of medicine, who held the opinion that a university degree ought to be as good a certificate of maturity as a marriage license. As practical psychologists and students of social psychology, they have learned too much to be put off with the idle query: “What’s in a name?” The form of address is, of course, a measure of popular feeling and the separate title custom is inti- mately bound up with the double standard of morals. It is part of the same deeply sugges- THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 111 tive nomenclature according to which the words “honor” and “virtue” have one meaning for men and another for women. Professor Forel has given the unity-title movement a prominent place in his program of sex-reforms and social reforms. “Civilization must strive before all else that every child, whether legitimate or illegitimate, is given the same regard and the same rights, and that the illegitimate children are not placed beyond the pale by a different system of naming. Against this nothing can help but the naming of all children after the maternal line. Equally in- famous is the idea of the “Fraulein’-mother, which in turn can only be helped by the unifi- cation of the title for women. We have no “Herrlein” and “Herren” and we should not have “Fraulein” and “Frauen.” *° VIII The practical work of the Bund fiir Mutter- schutz includes the maintenance of stations where information and hospital addresses are given to women approaching confinement. It sometimes happened that the applicant arrived ° The much talked of Norwegian project, discussed in the following chapter, solves the problem another way. Kulturbestrebungen der Gegenwart, by August Forel. Miinchen, 1910. 112 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA at the office only after the labor pains had be- gun. Time and again one hears a report of a young and ignorant girl who, concealing her condition from her employers, gives birth to her baby in some dark, hidden corner without human aid. Maternity under such conditions reproduces all too truly the solitude, darkness, and agony of the cave-mother’s childbirth vigil. In the history of the development of human sympathies, the long indifference of women, of the feminist movement, and of the so-called “good” women in the movement and out of it, to the conditions under which the so-called “pad” woman, whose “badness” partly consists in having a child without having a legal refuge, will be the hardest of all to explain. Of all woman’s inhumanities to woman, this is with- out doubt the most inhuman. Although the society does not call itself a philanthropic organization, much of its work is necessarily of that character. An important branch of its work is to provide legal aid for the women who need such advice. It also helps the mother to find employment for herself and ahome for the child. At the Mutterschutzhaus near Berlin, children whose mothers must be necessarily separated from them are kept until the age of six. In every way, the society seeks THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA 113 to strengthen the bond between the mother and the child, which like all other human bonds is susceptible to shaping, and thus to prevent the mother from definitely committing herself to a life of prostitution. It is known that the ma- ternity wards and hospitals are a source for recruits to the brothel population of the great cities. This is vividly brought out in Else Jerusalem’s psychological novel dealing with brothel life. The author describes the way in which Madame Goldscheider managed to ar- ticulate her establishment with the maternity hospitals. Madame Goldscheider had opened yet a last and more certain source from which she could procure, with impunity, girls whom she took into her school, trained, and exploited. This source was the public maternity hospitals and institutes. She maintained friendly and well-paid relations with the porters and attendants and could depend upon it with certainty that she would be immediately informed as soon as any material of her sort had been admitted. They were for the most part social outcasts, crea- tures harassed by adverse fate, to whom it was a burden to go on living, and they listened with avidity to the descriptions and promises of a care-free life. From the lips of the attendants there flowed, sweeter than honey, the story of how glorious the place Was, 114 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA how fine and pleasurable the days as they passed. Then after her path had thus been smoothed, Ma- dame Goldscheider came and removed the last resist- ance with a resolute hand; that is, she provided for the child with one of the country women who were daily at hand and it was clear that most of the girls were heartily glad to be relieved of the overwhelming burden. For them all, motherhood was the cruel awakening after a frivolous and pleasure-loving dream of the senses. There they lay in the iron bed-steads between the coarse gray linen sheets, governesses beside servant- maids, working women beside middle-class girls who had forsaken their native provinces, and wholly im- mature proletarian children, from fourteen to six- teen years old, who lay pale and wasted in their beds, glad to have a roof above their misery. On these and similar business excursions, Milada was required to accompany her Madame; she sat beside the driver and contemplated the meager luggage which the recruit carried with her. From the interior of the carriage she heard at the start continuing wails and outcries but the voice of Madame Goldscheider went on speaking with friendly calmness, so that by the time they arrived at Carlotta’s or the Red House the eyes of the “fresh” girls brightened with eager ex- pectation. This very direct and undeniable gravita- tion of Madame Goldscheider toward medium types, who might maintain their place between the paid prostitute and the respectable girl, gave her salon its THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA = 115 | individuality and the “nuances” which attracted great attention in the smart world.™! Ix In the field of Legislation the Bund fiir Mutterschutz has been continuously active. By helping to shape the legislation for the protec- tion of mothers in industry and also the devel- opment of the maternity insurance system, they have rendered a far-reaching and solid service to millions of women. For their move- ment, which is strongly emotional at the core and often dithyrambic in its literature, has nevertheless carried on the soberest and most scientific of medical and legislative work. Long ago the German author, Lessing, taught his countrymen in his Laokoon that stoicism and strength were not necessarily one and the same; that the Greeks were great just because they were capable of strong emotion and of strong determination at the same time. This teaching of Lessing’s seems to be espe- cially exemplified in the character of the move- ment for maternity protection. It reminds us of the Greeks who could both weep and con- quer. The cooler-headed Anglo-Saxon femin- “ Der Heilige Scarabaeus, by Else Jerusalem. Berlin, 1911, p. 130. 116 THE MUTTERSCHUTZ IDEA ists who distrust the emotionalism of the ma- ternity protection movement should not there- fore conclude that its ideas are impractical nor their advocates mere sentimentalists. A glance at the recent legislative enactments and pend- ing legislative projects of Germany, Sweden, and Norway will furnish very positive proof to the contrary. CHAPTER V STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE I The development of state maternity insur- ance in Europe forms one of the most signifi- cant chapters in the history of the changing status of women. With its introduction, the economic valuation of maternity becomes a possible conception. The principle of state- supported motherhood is admittedly the basis of even the most inadequate maternity insur- ance. It recognizes maternity as a service to the state, and entitles the wife to claim support, nominal though the payment may be in the initial stages of maternity imsurance, from some other source besides her husband. This recognition is one of the most substantial vic- tories of the German and Scandinavian woman movement. On the other hand, the foreign feminists have no desire to stress the economic valuation of maternity to a degree which would mean the denial of the mother’s right to work, or her 117 118 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE exclusion from the ordinary wage-earning oc- cupations. But they do maintain that her hard-won and dear-bought economic independ- ence shall not be sacrificed as a condition for maternity. Ellen Key’s program requires the state to support the mother and child for a period of three years. Henriette Fiirth, whose demands are tied down to the essentially prac- tical, merely asks that the mother shall be re- imbursed for the wages she loses and for a period of six to eight weeks following her con- finement and eight weeks preceding it. Along these lines, the emancipation of the mother from sex-slavery becomes a practical and feasi- ble prospect and not a Utopian dream. The payment of a definite sum directly to the mother as maternity insurance marks the beginning of her transition from a use-value world to an exchange-value world. Hitherto, maternity has never been organized into the economic world at all. Its value was subjec- tive only and the mother’s affection was its own reward. This is why many people, women especially, dislike the thought that child-bear- ing and child-rearing should be associated with any schedule of money payments. The moth- er’s care of her child is something whose psy- chological and spiritual value is inestimable; STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 119 it is, admittedly, one of the greatest of cultural influences. It is a tremendous contribution, but it cannot be bought. All this, of course, is very true. But if we consider the number of paid vocations to-day which were once their own reward,—the paid minister of the gospel, the paid teacher, the paid social worker,—we almost wonder why paid maternity was not long ago the rule in civilized states. Certainly a state which professes to place as high a value on its cultural influences as Germany professes to do, should see to it that the natural guard- ians of infancy should be protected from want. After all, we live in an economic world and not in a Paul-and-Virginia paradise. A great stimulus to maternity insurance in Germany was the falling birth-rate. 'The era of a diminishing birth-rate began in the year 1877. It has been accompanied, of course, by a diminishing death-rate, according to the gen- eral law of population. In Germany’s case, the death-rate has fallen so much faster than the birth-rate that the surplus of the living has continued to increase. Nevertheless, at the turn of the birth-rate, maternity takes on a new aspect for the state. It may be the most inti- mate concern of a woman’s life, but in a state which has grown population-conscious, child- 120 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE bearing cannot continue to be an altogether in- dividual matter. For if, as the economists teach us, population is wealth, then the mothers who create the population must become an eco- nomic factor, whether they will or no. II The beginning of maternity insurance in Germany antedates by many years the begin- ning of the Mutterschutz movement. In its earliest form, it was a minor detail in the com- plex system of industrial insurance with which Bismarck tried to stanch the flow of socialistic opinion. The socialists decided to accept Bis- marck’s half-a-loaf and the social-democratic women carried on an unremitting propaganda for the maternity insurance idea. However, the movement never got under way until the beginning of the twentieth century. Frau Lily Braun, one of the ablest of the women socialists, stimulated the agitation greatly with her writings. In her Frauenfrage (Woman Question), published in 1901, she took up the discussion of the subject and in 1906 she pub- lished her Mutterschaftsversicherung (Mater- nity Insurance), devoted to this one phase of the woman question. In the meantime, the socialist woman’s journal, with Clara Zetkin STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 121 at the head, carried on the campaign so auspi- ciously inaugurated by Lily Braun in 1901. In the pages of this journal, Henriette Fiirth has worked out the practical economic details of maternity insurance with unquestioned ex- pertness. Through Frau Alice Bensheimer, the Bund deutscher Frauenvereine, that is, the organized middle-class woman’s movement, became inter- ested in maternity insurance and gave it con- tinuous support. Dr. Alice Saloman, whose writings are authoritative among social re- formers and philanthropists in more countries than her own, has contributed much to the Ger- man movement. And finally, the entrance of the Bund fiir Mutterschutz completed the mus- ter of all branches of the feminist movement on the side of at least one unanimous demand, state maternity insurance. The socialist wom- an’s movement, the middle-class woman’s movement, and the new morality movement have been one in regard to this issue. III The basis of maternity insurance was sick insurance. Childbed was compensated, under the law, in the same way as other illnesses. The allowance was called “confinement benefit” 122 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE (Wochengeld) instead of sick-benefit (Krank- engeld), but it was measured out in the same way. The arguments for thus classing con- finement among the sicknesses entitled to com- pensation were based on the high maternal mortality and infant mortality rates. The maternal mortality rates of the Euro- pean countries are by no means so well worked out as the infant mortality rates. Such investi- gations as have been made have not achieved any wide publicity or popular discussion. There is no evidence that the death rate of women from childbirth has caused the govern- ing classes many sleepless nights though the infant mortality rate has begun to do so. The woman movement is in great need of further investigation and greater publicity concerning the physical conditions of child-bearing. As a matter of fact, neglect of maternity and neg- lect of infancy go hand in hand, and the wel- fare and health of both the mother and the child are promoted by the same means. Yet it happens rarely, in the crisis of childbirth, that a choice must be made between the mother’s life and the child’s and in these cases it is an accepted principle of medical ethics that the mother’s life is preferred. It is told of Na- poleon that he was asked, during the difficult STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 123 birth of the little King of Rome, whether the mother’s life or the child’s should be saved if the choice became necessary. His reply was, “The mother’s. It is her right.” Certainly Napoleon cannot be accused of a leaning toward feministic doctrines, yet even he recog- nized the right of the mother to this extent. There is, indeed, no question but that the child- bearer shall be protected against all prevent- able disease and accident, and that the respon- sibility for such protection rests upon the state. The persistent neglect of this duty is not jus- tifiable by any reason; it is but the lingering influence of an oriental fatalism which invented the myth of the curse of Eve. This myth has taught men to stand aside and regard with complacent neutrality this immemorial battle of woman with nature, and woman herself to submit to many preventable evils. The statistics of maternity mortality in Ger- many are summarized by Henriette Fiirth in her comprehensive study of maternity insur- ance published in 1911. Between 1892 and 1895, the deaths from childbirth amounted to four-tenths per cent. of the number of births; between 1896 and 1905, the percentage was three-tenths, thus indicating a decrease in a comparatively short space of time. Here we 124 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE have marked out the small number of fatal childbirths in relation to the whole number of successful childbirths. But when the number of deaths from child- birth is compared with the number of deaths from other causes, the resulting figures are far from reassuring. In Prussia, between 1891 and 1900, 11 per cent. of the deaths of all women between the ages of twenty-five and forty years occurred in childbirth. Dr. von Franqué estimates that 10,000 women die every year in Germany from parturition or its con- sequences. This yearly loss is compared by Henriette Fiirth with the German losses in the Franco-Prussian war, which amounted to 40,- 000 lives on the German side. During forty years of peace, Germany lost 400,000 mothers’ lives, that is, ten times what she lost in soldiers’ lives in the campaign of 1870 and 1871. That it is possible to reduce the amount of maternal mortality is seen from the fact that advances in medical science and aseptic meth- ods have already done so to some extent. In Saxony, the mortality from childbirth fell from 7.4 per thousand in 1883 to 5.4 per thousand in 1904. Of the 10,000 yearly deaths estimated by von Franqué, 7,000 are due to childbed fever. These facts show that it is possible to STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 125 reduce the existing amount of maternal mor- tality, if, instead of citing for the mother’s con- solation the “judgment of Eve,” she is given the scientific care which her condition requires. This is mainly an economic problem. The neg- lected mothers of the working class suffer by uncounted thousands from abdominal weak- nesses and other consequences of their lack of ability to pay for proper care. Even the small sum now measured out to them by the German government is a great resource against neglect and want. With regard to the infant mortality rate, Germany has been a chief offender among the European nations. In the years between 1891 and 1900, the average mortality of children less than one year of age was 21.7 per cent. Between 1901 and 1905, the rate fell to 19.9 per cent. By 1912, it had fallen to 14.7 per cent. In Scandinavia, the infant death-rate has never been so high as in Germany. In Sweden, between 1891 and 1900, the average was but 10.2 per cent. and fell to 9.2 per cent. for the years between 1901 and 1905. In Norway, the rate for 1891-1900 was 9.7 per cent. and for 1901-1905, 8.1 per cent. The low Norwegian figure was almost ideal from the German point of view; it fixed a goal which 126 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE the advocates of maternity protection hoped to reach but hardly dared to hope to pass. However, a decade of Mutterschutz and sev- eral decades of maternity insurance have en- couraged them in their campaign for the con- servation of infancy and there is every sign that the government’s ear has grown increasingly hospitable to suggestions for maternity pro- tection. Germany still has half a million baby funerals a year, and no better argument for the insurance of motherhood is needed. IV The past history of the maternity insurance acts of Germany may be divided, for conven- ience, into three stages. It began in 1878 with a law which prohibited the industrial employ- ment of women for three weeks following a confinement. This law, which provided no compensation for the mother, was of course a dead letter. Recently, similar laws were en- acted in this country in the states of New York and Massachusetts. These laws forbid the mother to work for four weeks after her con- finement and ignore the question of compensa- tion. After four years of such a law, Ger- many discovered her mistake and decreed that one-half the woman’s wages should be paid her STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 127 during the enforced maternal recess. The ob- ligatorium, as the rest-period was called, was now bound up with the compensation idea and the one could no longer be extended without the other. In 1891, the period was extended to four weeks and in 1908, to six weeks. The law now provided that women engaged in certain em- ployments, who had been insured for six months previous to their confinement, were en- titled to a confinement benefit for six weeks. Local societies were permitted by this act to establish, according to their financial ability, a pregnancy benefit, payable for six weeks also. But very few societies made use of the option. The growth of the compulsory maternity in- surance system has occurred in such a way that the optional features of each stage became the new compulsory features of the succeeding stage. With the year 1911, maternity insurance was again enlarged. The much-heralded revision contained the legal recognition of pregnancy insurance. The obligatorium was now extend- ed to eight weeks, of which only six were re- quired to follow the confinement. Two weeks of paid vacation in the last stage of pregnancy —well, it is something! The law still allowed 128 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE the local society at its option to extend the pregnancy-leave and pregnancy-benefit to six weeks. It furthermore permitted the introduc- tion of a nursing premium to be paid for twelve weeks and equal to half of the confinement benefit. This law also extended the insured circles very considerably by including all wage- earning women whose yearly income was less than $500 (2,000 marks). This brought in, besides the factory workers, agricultural work- ers, domestic servants, home-workers, and mer- cantile employees. On the other hand, it was limited to women who were themselves wage- earners and did not apply to the wives of wage- earners, though the latter might insure them- selves voluntarily if they liked. Vv The practice of allowing a nursing premium has made great progress in the German cities. This idea found favor because of the publicity which had been given to the statistics showing that breast-fed babies have a much better chance of life than the artificially-fed. The mortality of breast-fed babies is to that of bot- tle babies as 1 is to 7. This means, Henriette Fiirth points out, that four-fifths of the total infant mortality might be avoided if all babies STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 129 received their natural feeding. In 1907, 212,- 000 babies died in Prussia alone. Of these, 160,000 might have been saved by natural, in- stead of artificial, feeding. Dr. Bittmann found that out of every 100 artificially-fed babies who die during the hot summer months of diarrhea, the rich mothers furnish two-tenths per cent., the middle-class mothers, five per cent., and the working-class mothers, 94.73 per cent. This does not mean that the poorer German mothers employ artificial feeding more com- monly than the well-to-do mothers. In fact, the contrary is true. A study was made in Berlin which showed that in spite of the large proportion of wage-earning mothers in the working-class, it is not this class which fur- nishes the largest proportion of non-nursing mothers. In this study, the mothers who lived in two and three rooms furnished the largest percentage of nursing mothers and those who lived in six-room homes and over furnished the smallest percentage. What does happen, however, is that the pov- erty baby who is deprived of the breast has to fall back upon a nourishment immensely infe- rior in quality to that which the well-to-do baby can afford. As a breast-fed baby, however, 180 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE he has almost an equal chance of life with the richest baby in the country, provided the rich- est baby is breast-fed too. This is seen in the results of an investigation by Neumann which showed that 95.1 per cent. of the breast-fed babies of poor mothers survived the first year of life and 97.4 per cent. of the breast-fed babies of well-to-do mothers. Allowing for all the other things which are so notoriously un- equal in the environment of the poverty baby and the well-to-do baby, these figures seem to show an extraordinary equality in the natural food-supply of both. The working-class mother may be overworked and undernourished and yet her milk-supply is better for her baby than the most expensive substitute. The cities which have introduced the nurs- ing premiums, have attempted to prevent its being regarded as acharity. The city of Leip- zig gives a nursing-premium of from 3 to 6 marks ($.75 to $1.50) a week for 13 weeks. Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Nuremberg, Freiburg, and others have a system of nursing-premiums. Berlin paid in 1907, 5,090 such premiums. Each of these mothers received, on an average, 19 marks ($4.75). This by no means covers the scattered and empirical beginnings of nurs- ing insurance which existed in Germany at the STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 131 outbreak of the war, for the system was spring- ing up everywhere even though it had not yet been made a part of the official insurance pro- visions. VI The summer of 1914 and the European war gave a new stimulus to maternity insurance. It was suddenly widened to embrace the wives of all wage-earning men who were themselves eligible to the insurance benefit and who were enlisted for military service. The soldier’s wife was entitled to free medical service, con- finement benefit, and nursing premium. She was allowed one mark ($.25) a day for eight weeks, and an additional half-mark a day for twelve weeks as nursing premium. She was allowed a free doctor, or thirty-five marks ($8.75) towards the expense of a doctor. In short, the soldier’s wife was given more than the self-insured woman had as yet received; and consequently in order to prevent discon- tent, it was necessary to raise the entire stand- ard of allowance for the whole group of the insured. After the war, it will not be easy for the government to withdraw the increased benefit, so far as it applies to the wage-earning mother, for it was not so much an emergency 182 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE measure as the unexpected arrival of the next step. However, the whole maternity insurance system of Germany, now standing at its high- est point, only insures the wage-earning mother and the soldier’s wife, the one because she is attached to national industry and the other be- cause she is attached to the national defense. The insurance of the mother as such has not yet arrived and that is now the logical next step of state maternity insurance. Until it does come, the largest group of child-bearing women within the working class are excluded from the maternity benefit of which they most especially stand in need. Indeed, we may expect to see considerable growth in the maternity insurance provisions of Germany during the next few years. Of course the government will have to find its own reasons for going ahead, good masculine rea- sons which the masculine mind will understand. The spectacle of official diplomacy working out official reasons for granting a feminist de- mand is an exhibition from which watchful feminists may learn a great deal, if indeed it doesn’t make them too furious to think. Still, it pays to keep one’s head and listen while the men, as Kaethe Schirmacher says, are talking STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE § 133 out of school. “He has revealed himself, unre- servedly, in his world,’—and especially, one might add, in his newspapers. The German newspapers, for instance, are able to advocate maternity insurance in such a way that the most instructed feminist would scarcely recognize that the mother has any in- terest in such a measure. The German press announced the maternity grant to soldiers’ wives with approval and with patriotic leaders. They said it was but right that the soldier who risked his life at the front should have his mind relieved by the assurance that his wife should have every care in her hour of trial. They said, also, that the heavy loss of human life occasioned by the war made it incumbent on the government to conserve and strengthen by all possible means the new generation. They said the soldier must be kept contented and the population must be replenished. They said a great deal more of the same tenor—to such dizzy heights can enlightened masculinity ascend! VII The extension of maternity insurance to the unmarried mother was due to the activity of the Bund fiir Mutterschutz. As usual, they 134 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE worked through statistics. They showed that the illegitimate infant has less expectation of life and the illegitimate adult a greater tend- ency to crime, prostitution and pauperism than any other class of citizens. It is thus that the illegitimate population avenges itself in the end on the society which has sought to banish the immorally born from the close fellowship of the legitimate population. The untoward history of the illegitimate off- spring begins in its infancy. The death-rate of babies born out of wedlock is dispropor- tionately high. In 1905, when the mortality of legitimate babies was but 19.4 per cent., the mortality of illegitimate babies was 32.6 per cent. In 1912, there were born in Germany 183,857 illegitimate children. Of these, 41,027 died under one year of age. This was a mor- tality rate of 22 per cent., and, as we have al- ready seen, the total infant mortality rate for that year was 14.7 per cent. In Prussia, it is found that four-fifths of the legitimate infants survive the first year and only two-fifths of the illegitimate infants. In other European countries the same rule holds true. Children born out of wedlock have been subjected to murderous conditions to which society closed its eyes. The social condemna- STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 135 tion of the unmarried mother is so frightful in its unanimity that the terrified girl not infre- quently prefers suicide or infanticide as a refuge. At the best, the child must be hidden away in an environment in which it cannot thrive. The next strategic age at which to observe this sad little pilgrim’s progress is at the year of compulsory military service. While one- half of all the children born reach the military year, only one-fifth of the illegitimate children are still surviving. Two-fifths of the illegiti- mate children survived infancy and but one- fifth lived on to reach adolescence. Those who are enrolled for military service are found to be of a measurably inferior physique. Such revelations are bound to make a military coun- try very thoughtful as to whether the morality which exacts absolute chastity of women is worth all this sacrifice of human material. Our next encounter with the illegitimate child is at the jail gates. Criminologists have found that small as is the number of such chil- dren surviving to reach adult life, they furnish an undue proportion of the inmates of re- formatories and prisons. An investigation of a Nuremberg prison reported that 33 per cent. of the first-offense thieves and 38 per cent. of 186 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE the habitual thieves were illegitimately born. A census of all the girls in the correctional institutions of Bavaria in 1905 reported 30 per cent. of them as of illegitimate birth. Another study of nearly two thousand delinquent youths discovered that 41 per cent. of them were ille- gitimately born.? If we followed up the re- ports of public and private charities, we should find that illegitimacy there too was unduly represented. VIII In the face of such overwhelming figures, there was no very great public opposition to the extension of the maternity benefit to un- married mothers. It was argued by some, of course, that such a step would increase immo- rality. Yet no one could seriously believe that the small sums squeezed out of the government in the form of maternity insurance would be any inducement to young working girls to commit maternity. The principle admitted by the extension of the insurance to the unmar- ried was the real crux of the matter. And there can be no doubt that this single legal detail was the first rift in the perfect, unquali- fied social condemnation of unmarried ma- ? Justice Landsberg in Die Frau, June, 1914. STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 187 ternity. Many anxious moralists believed that this victory of the Mutterschutz movement would soon bring a swarm of illegitimate chil- dren upon the country. But the friends of the outcast children replied that the amount of illegitimacy in Germany had been fairly steady for thirty years and more; all the frightful power of the established morality had not been sufficient to reduce it, far less to wipe it out. On the other hand, under the teachings of the old morality the artificial conditions of mar- riage had grown to be all important and its eugenic purpose of no account. The “illegiti- mate” child is the reductio ad absurdum of civilization. “There is one radical method,” writes one of their essayists, “which would bring our ideas back upon the right track and many a sincere friend of the cause must have already wished it,—that illegitimate births might occur right often. For rights and laws, as they are, were not revealed by an unalterable cosmic order but framed by the temporary majority. And the majority is always right—even when it is wrong! Every century has a different law and one need not be a Utopian to assume that, after so and so many decades or centuries, the idea of illegitimate motherhood hitherto cultivated 138 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE may be transformed into its exact opposite. The more illegitimate births there are to record, the nearer comes that time. In strict practice, one could not advise this radical measure, but it should at least remind the prophets in the wilderness that their morality endures but for its day. And they who to-day excite them- selves will appear to-morrow to their children’s children an exemplum abstractum. The young succeeds the old—the old morality gives way to the new.” Ix Those who prophesied ten years ago that maternity insurance and the new morality would bring a swarm of illegitimate children into the country have been amply refuted by the course of events. What the new morality has not done, however, the most ancient of all immoralities, war, has suddenly accomplished. Illegitimacy has been forced into the fore- ground of public attention. To-day, as always, war is the greatest known promoter of acci- dental breeding. But the results of accidental breeding, the children, can no longer be con- signed to outer darkness and social neglect by a public opinion which has been quickened by the new morality movement of recent years. STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 139 In this crisis, the German government has had to depend on the Bund fiir Mutterschutz for a program. Though it has not met all the demands of this organization, it has granted a series of petitions without hesitation and shown a strong tendency to accept the advice of the one anathematized movement. The first petition was submitted and granted in August, 1914, immediately upon the outbreak of war. It concerned the unmarried mothers of children whose fathers were at the front. In all cases where the soldier’s paternity had been estab- lished or admitted, the child was placed on the same footing as the legitimate child and re- ceived the same weekly support as long as the father was doing military service. The friends and protectors of such children saw to it that this order was carried into effect, and before the end of the year 1914, 1,000 illegitimate children in Leipzig alone were receiving the governmental allowance. The second petition of the Bund fiir Mutterschutz asked that these children should receive the same treatment in case of the father’s death as the other soldiers’ children. The government also granted this petition provisionally. The magnitude and seriousness of these un- dertakings on the part of the state is seen in 140 STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE the fact that there were one million illegitimate children under fourteen years of age in Ger- many at the outbreak of the war. Toward all these children whose natural fathers have been called to the front, the state has already ac- knowledged its responsibility, and a strong de- mand has grown out of this step that the state should go further and extend its care and pro- tection to the rest of these half-parented chil- dren. In view of the strong spirit of state- socialism which characterizes modern German policy, it would not be unreasonable to expect some thorough-going collective action on the part of the state as a parent. At this point, however, we need to remem- ber that the successive steps towards state-sup- ported childhood should not result in causing the individual father to fade into the back- ground. It has been said repeatedly, and truly, concerning illegitimate children, that every means should be employed to strengthen the bond between the mother and the child. It needs also to be said that means should even be found to strengthen the bond between the father and the child. In Scandinavia, this necessity is being realized and made the sub- ject of legislative action. The normal supple- ment of the highly developed maternity insur- STATE MATERNITY INSURANCE 141 ance system of Germany is the newest Nor- wegian legislation which emphasizes the re- sponsibilities of the individual father. CHAPTER VI RECLAIMING THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD IN NORWAY I To find the most enlightened laws concern- ing the unmarried mother and the illegitimate child, we must look to Scandinavia. It surely is not without significance that the native land of Ellen Key has gone ahead in this respect. The Swedish writer has said that she was bet- ter understood and more influential in Ger- many than in Sweden. But recent legislative advances in all three of the Scandinavian coun- tries have put Germany decidedly in the sec- ond place as a champion of illegitimate chil- dren. To Norway must be given the credit for having produced actual constructive legis- lation and practical statesmanship in a field which has been too long neglected. It was Germany, as we have seen, which invented ma- ternity insurance; but it is Norway which now stands out among the countries of modern Europe as the nation which has done the most 142 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 143 toward rehabilitating the unmarried mother and reclaiming the illegitimate child for so- ciety. The disabilities of illegitimacy, so far as this overwhelming misfortune can be analyzed, may be divided into three different kinds: the poor economic outlook, anonymous paternity, and the social stigma. The last offers little chance for direct legal betterment. But the legal improvement of the first two of these handicaps is entirely feasible, and would re- lieve considerably the fell action of the social stigma. Besides, the history of illegitimacy in the past shows that it has not been uniformly stig- matized by the social orders of yesterday and the day before and teaches one to believe that it will not be uniformly stigmatized by the social orders of to-morrow and the day after. For instance, according to the ancient Swedish law, there were two degrees of illegitimacy, the child of a slave woman being even lower than the child of a free woman. But the intro- duction of Christianity brought the freedom of the slaves and placed all illegitimate children on the same footing, a footing which was, how- ever, lower than slavery itself. The illegiti- mately born could not belong to a trade guild 144 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD or become a minister. In time, these disabili- ties were removed but the social stigma per- sisted with undiminished power. The illegiti- mate child was branded by the church as the “fruit of sin” and was condemned from his birth to be a member of an unclean caste. From the point of view of modern ethics this identification of the child with the “sin” of his parents becomes increasingly unjustifiable. It is not ethical to visit upon the child the punish- ment for the fault of others; and if it is not ethical, we certainly cannot admit that it is in- evitable. The inevitability of injustice does not accord with post-Christian ethics, which de- part still farther from fatalism than the Chris- tian view of life. A survey of the condition of the illegitimate children of Norway showed that the work of reclaiming them was very much needed. Aside from sentimentality, aside even from the value or worthlessness of the “new morality,” here was a social disorder of the most incriminating sort, a condition of misrule which challenged the government. In Norway there are born on an average every year about 5,000 illegitimate children: 3,000 in the country districts and about 2,000 in the cities. These children form 7 per cent. of the total number of children born THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 145 each year. The percentage is slightly lower than the percentage of illegitimacy in Ger- many. Norway also, as we have seen, has a lower infant mortality than Germany and in this respect has long served as a model to the other European countries. The condition of its illegitimate children, on the other hand, has been extremely open to criticism. During the last twenty years, while the total infant mortality rate has been falling, the mor- tality of illegitimate children has been increas- ing. This peculiarity extends to the other Scandinavian states as well, Sweden and Den- mark. In Denmark, the illegitimate infant deaths are 213 per cent. of the legitimate deaths; in Norway, they are 199 per cent.; and in Sweden, they are 178 per cent. In the dif- ferent German states, the illegitimate infant deaths vary from 1388 per cent. to 154 per cent. of the legitimate deaths, except in Prussia, where it rises to 187 per cent. In the capital of Norway, Christiania, the mortality statistics for the years 1901-1905 showed that 20 per thousand of legitimate in- fants died of intestinal disorders in the first year of life and 64 per thousand of illegitimate infants. The meaning of these figures is that the child of the unmarried mother is more often 146 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD deprived of its natural nourishment and is therefore more subject to death as the indirect result of artificial feeding. A confirmation of this interpretation is found in the records of the Christiania health authorities, which show that within a period of ten years the number of children boarded out with, or given away to, foster parents has increased from 680 to 1,296. Furthermore, the vital statistics show that the illegitimate babies die more frequently in the second month than the first and more fre- quently in the third than in the second. From these statistics, it is evident that the chief cause of death of these children is defective nutrition and the chief cause of the defective nutrition is simply that the mother is compelled to “put the child away” with strangers. It is not strange that these tell-tale figures became quite unbearable to Norwegian social reformers. ‘The wholesale sacrifice of infant life presented itself as a social injustice in com- parison with which the private morality of the children’s parents sank into a place of minor importance. The problem of securing justice for illegitimate children became more and more a burning public question, and in the year 1909 it was made the subject of governmental discussion. THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 147 II In that year a bill was laid before the Nor- wegian Storthing whose simple but revolu- tionary intention was to give every child two parents. It aimed to equalize illegitimate chil- dren and legitimate children before the law, that is, to give the illegitimate child the right to a father. Such a bill could not be expected to go through at once or without controversy. At the beginning of the European war the bill was still pending, though it had already been made the subject of such widespread discus- sion that its terms were well incorporated in the public thought and the sociological litera- ture of the Germanic and Scandinavian coun- tries. In the spring of 1915 it came up for the final reading in the Storthing and was adopted as a law. The real father of the bill is the former Min- ister of Justice of Norway, Johan Castberg. It was framed by the Department of Justice with great care and deliberation and only reached the Storthing when it had attained a form of which the sponsors could say, “Here we take our stand; we can do no other.” The Department of Justice had the assistance of two women experts in the preparation of the 148 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD draft. They were Fru Regina Kloumann of Christiania, supervisor of the city’s placed-out children for the Health Department, and Fru Martha Thynas, Prefect’s Assistant in Chris- tiania. The draft of the bill was submitted in ad- vance to the women’s clubs and organizations of Norway, to the various charitable organiza- tions, and the various labor organizations. It was indorsed by the National Women’s Coun- cil of Norway, by the women’s division of the Labor movement, and by the Labor Party of Norway. The support of the Labor move- ment, of the men as well as of the women, is due to the fact that the cause of the unmarried mother is also a working-class cause to a great extent. The deserted unmarried mother usu- ally belongs to the poorer classes, and her eco- nomic misery adds to the sum total of poverty and aggravates the existing economic inequal- ity which the Labor movement is seeking to remove. ‘This is, of course, only one of the many instances in which the interests of the possessionless sex and the possessionless class tend to coincide. The Castberg document was intentionally so framed as to avoid the use of the phrase “illegitimate child.” According to its title, it THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 149 is a “Law Concerning Children Whose Par- ents Have Not Married Each Other.” An- other peculiarity of phrasing which likewise expresses the innermost intention of the bill is the frequent use of the word “impregnation” in places where the word “conception” has been usually employed in similar discussions. Its principal propositions are summarized in the following paragraphs. A child whose parents have not married each other has a right to the surname of the father. The child is entitled to demand from his parents support and education in accordance with the financial circumstances of the one who is economically the better situated of the two. The parent with whom the child does not live discharges his obligations by paying a sum of money, the amount to be fixed by the court. In general, the child is entitled to receive from his father and mother the same kind of sup- port as if he were a legitimate child. The amount to be paid by the parent with whom the child does not live, or by both parents in case the child lives with neither but with some other person, shall be fixed by the author- ity designated for that purpose. The cost of the child’s education shall fall so far as pos- sible on both parents. If one of them dies 150 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD without leaving any property, the other must assume the full responsibility. Also, if one of the parents is unable to pay his share and the other is in a position to bear the whole expense, the latter may be required to do so. The child is entitled to support and educa- tion until the age of sixteen. However, the authority may extend this period if he is men- tally or physically incompetent, or if there is reason for continuing the child’s education and the parents are able to afford it. The father is required to pay the expenses of the mother’s confinement. This is also ob- ligatory in the case of a still-birth. The father is further required to maintain the mother, if, by reason of pregnancy or confinement, she is compelled to give up her work. She is entitled to this maintenance only during three months of pregnancy and six weeks following confine- ment. But if the mother keeps the child with her and nurses it for nine months, the support may be continued for this length of time. In case it is not possible to determine who is the father of the child, the foregoing parental obligations shall rest upon the person who has had sex intercourse with the mother at such a time that in the course of nature he may be the father of her child. If it happens that sev- THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 151 eral persons answer to this definition, then each of them must contribute to the child’s support, the amount paid by each to be determined by the authority prescribed. The same pro rata rule applies to the payment of the mother’s confinement expenses. The court has full power to clear up doubt- ful paternity by inquiry and the summoning of the necessary evidence. If the man whom the mother has named as the father is found to have had sex intercourse with her at the probable time of the impregnation and if there is no reason to suppose that any other man has had sex intercourse with her during this period, the court may declare the man to be the father. If the court continues in doubt of the actual paternity of the child, the man is stili held responsible for the child’s support. In all those cases in which actual paternity has been established and the court’s final deci- sion to that effect has been made, the child whose parents have not married each other has exactly the same rights of inheritance as the legitimate child. TIT This is the gist of the Castberg bill, the most rational and thoroughgoing attack on the 152 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD double standard of morals known in modern legislation. A lengthy memorandum accom- panied the draft, in which all of the most fa- miliar objections were considered and answered by the Department of Justice. We cannot do better than review these objections, along with the arguments which were given in reply. A certain Socratic flavor is not wholly lacking in the Castberg document, which reminds one of an ethical discussion rather than a legislative enactment. The law will encourage the formation of loose unions. As far as the man is concerned, this can scarcely be the case. If he is aware that his possible child, though born out of wed- lock, can assert all of the rights of a legitimate child toward its father, that knowledge will certainly be a reason for refraining from a union with a woman whom he would be unwill- ing to marry. As far as the woman is con- cerned, the law does not favor her personally, only in as much as the child’s welfare depends upon her during pregnancy and _ lactation. Aside from this, her responsibilities are much heavier than those of the married mother, be- cause she is required by the law to contribute to the child’s support and to share the eco- nomic responsibility which in legal marriage is THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 153 laid upon the father alone. The whole tenor of the law is to assert the rights of the child toward its mother as well as toward its father. Nowhere does it even suggest that the woman in the case is entitled to seduction damages. The law will undermine legal marriage. “The Department does not see,” says the Nor- wegian statesman bitingly, “that the equaliza- tion of illegitimate and legitimate children with respect to the inheritance laws will lessen the general respect for marriage. The De- partment therefore regards it as superfluous to discuss the question whether it would be just, out of respect for the marriage institution, to uphold a legal system which is directly unjust to illegitimate children. If the law really aimed to protect the marriage institution, then it is inconsistent to give to the father the privi- lege of acknowledging an illegitimate child and thus placing it in the same legal position as that of his legitimate children. For then he may, at his own pleasure and by his own act, break down the state’s protection of the mar- riage institution.” The extension of the inheritance rights to illegitimate children will increase immorality. The present inheritance laws, says Minister Castberg, contribute directly to the increase of 154 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD immorality, inasmuch as they compel a man to conceal from his wife and children the fact that he has an illegitimate child. He is there- fore tempted to deny and neglect his own off- spring and to lie to those who are nearest him. He is prevented from doing his duty to all his children equally, while his conscience and the accepted moral customs teach him that such conduct is blameworthy. Consideration for everybody concerned urges that the truth should be known in a situation in which hith- erto lies have been the rule. It will serve to awaken a greater feeling of parental responsi- bility on the father’s side, to lessen his tendency toward casual and transient unions, and to prevent the promises of marriage which he has no intention of fulfilling. It is difficult and sometimes impossible to prove paternity. Regarding this point, the sponsors of the bill have a great deal to say. In the first place, it is not so difficult from the legal point of view, as the defenders of anony- mous paternity like to say it is. The steps which have hitherto been taken on behalf of illegitimate children toward clearing up pater- nity have largely been furthered by members of the legal profession. Past experience has not taught the Department of Justice, says THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 155 Castberg, that it is impossible to establish pa- ternity by a legal inquiry. Furthermore, inso- far as this objection states a truth, it applies to children born within marriage as well as those born outside of it. Legitimate father- hood rests upon belief and conviction. More- over, the present law is willing to accept the written or oral statement of a man that he is the actual father of an illegitimate child and to give the child at his request all of the rights of a legitimate child toward him. These are legal precedents which only need to be ex- tended to the whole class of children born out- side of marriage. Already in Norway, forty per cent. of the illegitimate children receive support from their fathers. In all these cases, paternity had to be established if it was not willingly acknowl- edged. It has been the experience of the courts in former years that the word of the mother under oath is usually a dependable and reliable part of the proof. The very small number of proceedings for damages on the part of men falsely accused of paternity proves this. The law proceeds, then, upon the assumption that the mother is usually in a position to make a correct assignment of paternity, and that her tendency in the past has been rather to sup- 156 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD press this knowledge than to make a false as- signment. For the rest, the proposed law re- quires her to give her oath, and makes her liable to a heavy fine and imprisonment, as well as a suit for damages by the man, if she makes a false accusation. Finally, anonymous paternity is an offense against the child and against the state. The child has a right to know who his father is, a right to be supported by his father, and a right to inherit from his father if the latter is a man of property. Therefore the mother should not be permitted, by concealing the child’s paternity, to connive at its disinherit- ance. The state has the obligation to inquire officially into the circumstances of the child’s birth and to protect him against one of the greatest cruelties to which childhood can be exposed, the suffering which comes from not knowing its parentage. So far from affirming the notorious princi- ple of the Code Napoleon that the inquiry con- cerning paternity is forbidden, the proposed Norwegian code declares that the inquiry con- cerning paternity is compulsory. THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 157 IV If we select, now, from the Norwegian code those propositions which are based on justice rather than precedent we are faced by the fol- lowing bold innovations: The illegitimate child has a right to his father’s surname. 'The law, however, expressly states that the child is not compelled to assume the father’s name. There is no legal stipula- tion in Norway concerning the naming of legitimate children. Hence, the meaning of the new law is simply that, insofar as the latter bear the family name of the father, the illegiti- mate child shall have the same right in vindica- tion of the principle that he belongs to the father’s family as well as to the mother’s, and possesses inheritance rights toward both. The state, and not the mother, mediates be- tween the child and its father. Hitherto the law has required the mother to take the respon- sibility of summoning the father to court and instituting proceedings for support. Thus the child’s future depended upon the initiative of the mother, who was likely to be prevented by ignorance or inexperience, or by the mental shame and physical distress incidental to her condition, from taking any action on the in- 158 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD fant’s behalf. Moreover, it is not in human nature to pass so swiftly from the relation of indulgent mistress to that of public prosecutor. “When they know men they know the state of war: But now they dream like sunlight on a sea.” From her own point of view, the law which invites her to move against the father incites her to an act of revenge. And if she fails to call the man to account, her neglect may be due to the most pardonable of motives. On the other hand, the state is the sponsor of the child, from whom the action in the case should really proceed. The question at stake is that of nur- ture for the helpless young thing and not of support for the mother. The mother must contribute to the child’s support. 'This detail is in line with the most fundamental of feminist demands. It recog- nizes the position of women as wage-earners in the economic world and assumes their economic independence. So much for the principle. In actual point of fact, the earnings of the mother are usually much smaller than those of the father and this must be taken into considera- tion in fixing the amount to be contributed by each parent. The majority of the Norwegian women’s clubs spoke for placing the father’s THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 159 share as more than half, but they did not be- lieve that he should pay all. The highest pro- portion suggested was two-thirds to three- fourths. The prevailing rule in the Danish law is for the father to pay three-fifths of the child’s support. The man of property may not disinherit his illegitimate child. This is the crux of the new law and it is easy to see why it should be so. Long ago it became legal in Norway for an illegitimate child to inherit from its mother and its mother’s family. There was little objection to this reform, because the mother seldom had anything to bequeath and the law had little effect on existing conditions. But the effect of the change just introduced may be consid- erable. And not the least part of this effect will be the impossibility of concealing the ex- istence of a legal heir from the other legal heirs of the same man. This is the most revolutionary change in the Norwegian inheritance laws since 1854, when the admission of daughters to equal inheritance rights with sons was accomplished. No doubt it was then prophesied that the change would destroy the family and wreck the home, just as there are now those in Norway who believe that to increase the number of legal inheritors 160 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD by seven per cent. will bring an increase in the amount of illegitimacy. The defense of “exceptio plurium’” is not allowed. This detail of the law is, by compari- son with the laws of the European countries outside of Scandinavia, almost as radical as the inheritance proposition. But the “exceptio plurium” has already been ruled out of the Swedish and Danish laws where it is only a question of support and not of inheritance. In the opening scene of The Father, written by the Swedish dramatist Strindberg, we have a good illustration of the “exceptio plurium” at work. The episode takes place in the Cav- alry Captain’s parlor and the dialogue is car- ried on by the Captain, the Pastor, and a Trooper who has been called in to answer the charge of illegitimate paternity. Nojd, as the Trooper is called, does not deny that he might be the father of the maid Kmma’s child. On the contrary, he describes the hilarious and un- loosed occasion on which he and Emma to- gether had succumbed to temptation. “Of course the girl was willing. If she isn’t, noth- ing ever comes of it,” and “Of course he told Emma that he would marry her. One always has to say that.” But after all, the Trooper doesn’t feel sure that the child is his, because THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 161 how does one know that Emma did not, on some other occasion perhaps, with his fellow- trooper Ludwig? . . . In short, you never can tell who the father is. Both the Captain and the Pastor find the Trooper’s mode of reason- ing perfectly convincing. “For, just think if he were not the father,” says the Pastor. All three men are fully agreed that “to slave all one’s life for another man’s child isn’t very pleasant,” and so Nojd is dismissed. The Trooper’s rejoinder, “There were oth- ers,” is what the law calls the “exceptio plu- rium.” It still prevails in the German law. If the father can prove that the mother had inter- course with other men beside himself at the time of the impregnation, he is released from all obligation to contribute to the child’s sup- port. Under the Scandinavian law, the only defense allowed is that the man had no sexual intercourse with the mother during a period extending from 302 to 180 days before her con- finement. If the contrary is true, he becomes responsible for the child’s support, which he may bear alone or in partnership with the other men who are also adjudged to be possible fa- thers. Where the court finds it necessary to assign possible paternity to several fathers, the law does not plan to extend the inheritance 162 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD right to the child, whose claims will then be limited to support. To prevent this situation it is therefore incumbent upon the court to use all possible means in its power to ascertain the actual father in each case. If a considerable inheritance is at stake, the necessity for thor- ough investigation is all the more apparent. Vv The force of the example of the Norwegian bill is evidenced by many recent legislative changes relating to illegitimacy in other con- tinental countries. France at last proceeded to action in 1913 regarding the famous Napo- leonic edict, “La recherche de la paternité est interdite.” It was quietly and ingloriously ex- punged in that year, and there were no doubt many who believed that an era of blackmail would ensue as soon as the investigation of paternity was permitted. The history of Al- sace-Lorraine, following its transference to Germany in 1871, showed no increase in black- mail but a decrease of illegitimacy. “The revocation of the Code and the introduction of the duty of support in Alsace,” writes Hen- riette Fiirth, “resulted in a diminution of the frequence of illegitimate births,—a phenom- enon which moreover cannot astonish the psy- THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 163 chologist, because he recognizes in it the in- fluence of the new law which laid a greater material responsibility on the illegitimate fa- ther. The fear of the obligation to support the offspring produces here a welcome inhibition of the masculine sex impulse.” In 1914, following the declaration of war, Austria introduced a number of reforms con- cerning illegitimacy. The changes made fall so far behind the reforms of Norway that we need not recount them here. They serve to demonstrate, however, the general awakening in the European countries to the necessity of action in this field. The removal of one par- ticular sentence from the Austrian code-book was heralded by the feminist press as a belated reform in the same class as the French con- cession of the preceding year. “Illegitimate children are excluded in general from family and relationship rights,’ was the sentence which, dating from 1811, had resisted the most determined feminist attacks. The disappear- ance of that sentence dates from the year in which terrific war losses had taught the govern- ment to consider the necessity of preserving the new generation even to the last and meanest member. In Germany the movement to improve the 164 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD condition of illegitimate children has gained a fresh impetus from the Norwegian successes. The feminists say that the “exceptio plurium” in this country must go. Justice Landsberg writes in Die Frau, “Those who have sex inter- course outside of marriage know what the con- sequences may be and deserve to share in those consequences. It is a matter of taking risks. Society can demand not only that every proved case of blood-relationship shall be recognized by support and education, but that every indi- vidual who is a party to an action which may result in the need for help should share accord- ing to his abilities in giving the help needed. Propagation outside of marriage is no crime. It is, however, an action at one’s own risk and with full knowledge of the consequences. It therefore contradicts, in no respect, the old principles of our law, if each of the parties is made answerable for the full consequences. . .. By doing away with the ‘exceptio plu- rium’ most of the cases of contested support will vanish. Nothing will then be possible but the simple denial of sex intercourse, and this denial cannot ever be absolutely banished. The oath of the mother becomes all the more trust- worthy if she is not entitled to support from the father.” THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 165 If we turn now to England and the United States, we find that the condition of the laws concerning illegitimacy reflect the Anglo- Saxon habit of mind which ignores all social problems arising from the sex relation. The last revision of the English Bastardy Acts was undertaken in 1873, and the English laws con- cerning illegitimacy still aim primarily to legislate the illegitimate child out of society. According to these laws, he is a predestined social pariah. He cannot inherit from his father, and he also cannot inherit from his mother, though the latter is required to sup- port him until his sixteenth year, and may de- mand a very limited allowance from the father. Neither parent can, by publicly acknowledging the child, give it inheritance rights; nor is the child legitimatized by the marriage of its par- ents subsequent to its birth. From this brief outline, it will be seen that the demand for a revision of the illegitimacy laws which have made themselves heard in England for the first time since the “war baby” question arose, are based on a consideration of the backwardness of English legislation in comparison with Ger- manic and Scandinavian legislation on this subject. In the United States, the laws concerning 166 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD illegitimacy were originally derived from the English code and in most of the country ex- hibit the same backwardness. Yet many of the statutes have subsequently modified their terms so that they represent a nearer approach to justice than the prevailing English law of the present. VI There was once a time in humanity’s far dis- tant past when it was not known that children had fathers. The fact of paternity was a com- paratively late discovery. In his work on Primitive Paternity Mr. E. S. Hartland tells us: “For generations and zons the truth that a child is only born in consequence of an act of sexual union, that the birth of a child is the natural consequence of such an act performed in favoring circumstances, and that every child must be the result of such an act and of no other cause, was not realized by mankind.” An inexhaustible number of myths and fables exist to show that childbirth was attributed to the most fantastic sources before the sole nat- ural cause was discovered. In the Hartland collection, a common ver- sion attributes pregnancy to eating and drink- ing. There is a Hottentot legend of a young THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD 167 girl who ate a piece of grass and bore a hero. The founder of the Chinese Empire was the child of a virgin who ate a certain flower which she found on her garment after bathing. A young girl of the Pueblo Indians in America became pregnant from eating two pifion nuts. Another lady—she was an Egyptian—stood by while a tree was being cut down; a splinter flew into her mouth and she had a child. Hun- dreds of legends are extant telling how women were fertilized by the rainfall, by sunshine, or by bathing in a stream. Legends of virgin births are still current among remote tribes in a low state of civiliza- tion, and even in modern civilized countries, the fables die hard. The second stage in the development of the paternity idea was ushered in by the discov- ery of physical fatherhood. This eventually led to the establishment of the institution of marriage, and this in turn to the division of all children into two kinds: legitimate and illegit- imate. The former were the children who had fathers, and the latter were the children who had none. At this stage of development, so- ciety now rests. The next stage, however, as the Norwegian reforms show us, is not very far off. And when that era has been gradually in- 168 THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD troduced by the spread of the Norwegian idea, all children will have fathers. The social an- nunciation of paternity will then be complete. CHAPTER VII THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE OF THE GERMAN WOMEN I The industry of the German women is one of the chief orientating facts about the civili- zation of that country. There is no doubt that they represent a more hard-working strain than the American woman. In this country, certain historical and social conditions have contributed especially to sanction the ideal— however obviously it failed to work out in prac- tice—that women should compose the leisure class. One such influence was the institution of slavery which, persisting up until fifty years ago, created a social system in which idleness was acult. The first generation of Southern women who had to do their own housework suffered keenly from a sense of degradation. Another such influence has arisen from the fact that one is not born in this country to any par- ticular station in life but one belongs to that 169 170 THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE circle whose conventions one keeps. It is an iron-bound convention of the great middle- classocracy that the wife shall not earn, though she may, in the East, the West, and even in the South at present, do her own housework without losing caste. Neither does the Ger- man wife of the middle classes go out to earn as a rule, but the question whether she works or not is not so much determined by respect for convention. In short, the German women have not been taught by slavery to despise do- mestic work or counseled by social ambition to cultivate an appearance of leisure. There is a greater tendency among them to respect work in any form and to wear openly the marks of an occupation. To the Teuton women has been handed down an almost unbroken tradition of work. They have always worked, whether they were paid for it or not. From the days when Tacitus reported that the free German “respects no activity except that of the sword. In peace he lies indolently on the bearskin; sleep, drink, and dice occupy his time. The care of the field, the house, and the hearth is left to the women, who, together with the children, the weak, and the enslaved, carry on the house- keeping,”—down to the present industrial age THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE 171 they have contributed their unrecognized la- bors to the sum of the nation’s effort. In their homes, in the cloisters, in the workshops they have never ceased to work and produce. Even the prostitutes, who followed the medieval ar- mies, washed and cooked and served the sol- diers. But so long as the greater part of women’s labor was performed in the unillumined do- mestic background of society no one took any note of it. Kverybody knew that the domes- tic female army was indispensable, but nobody knew what this invaluable contribution was worth. The law declared that the wife’s serv- ices belonged to her husband and every man believed in his own divine right to domestic service. But how to estimate the value of these services individually or collectively was an un- fathomed mystery, and it still is. As long as the wife works for her husband, or the daugh- ter for her father, she does not figure in the industrial studies of the country. It is only when she begins to work for a third party that she comes face to face with wages for the first time, and the statistical experts begin to en- roll her as a woman with an occupation. The number of women so enrolled by the German Census has increased during recent years at a 172 THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE phenomenal rate. The figures show that, among the unmarried women, wage-earning has almost entirely supplanted father-serving, and even among the married women, wage- earning has begun to make inroads into hus- band-serving. The German industrial census of 1907, found that there were 9,490,000 women wage- earners in the country. They were represent- ed in all of the 207 occupations listed except military service. In 25 occupations, they formed the majority. These numbers showed an enormous increase over the censuses of 1895 and 1882. In 1882 the census reported 4,408,- 000 women wage-earners. This rose to 5,293,- 000 in 1895. Between 1882 and 1907 the num- ber of women wage-earners has doubled itself. Of Germany’s thirty-one million women, one fourth are at work. We are accustomed in this country to consider the number of women workers as very impressive, but they amount only to one-seventh of the female population as compared with the wage-earning quarter of the German women. The exodus of the unmarried women from the home is almost complete. Out of a total of 6,620,000 unmarried women over sixteen, 5,710,000 are wage-earners. Less than a mil- THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE 173 lion are unemployed. Helene Lange points out that this remainder also includes the girls over sixteen who are in training for an occu- pation and estimates that only about 700,000 girls still live at home in the old dependent re- lation. If we now consider the fact brought out by Elisabeth Gnauck-Kiihne and other in- vestigators that the age of marriage for both sexes has been steadily increasing, we see how great must be the bulk of the work of the un- married German women. While waiting for marriage, they work; their wage-earning years are prolonged by the receding age of marriage; and finally there are 900,000 superfluous wom- en in Germany, for whom marriage cannot come into question. The sum total of all this labor is far from negligible. Ir Only the exodus from the home is new. We have to do with an economic renaissance hark- ing back, as we have said, to the very begin- nings of German society. In the middle ages, especially, women were prominent in the eco- nomic scheme. The records show that they were not excluded from any occupation. Spin-- ning and weaving were almost exclusively women’s work. Handicrafts were carried on 174 THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE with great expertness in the medieval cloisters, an environment in which women found careers as well as a religious retreat. They also fol- lowed the intellectual occupations, as docu- ments still in existence show. There were wom- en physicians in Frankfurt am Main in the fif- teenth century, women were members of the guilds, and there were some guilds composed entirely of women, with master-craftswomen at the head and girl apprentices. They were ac- tive as silk-spinners and silk-weavers, yarn- spinners, gold-spinners, hat-makers and em- broiderers; in short, they were quite generally engaged in the highly-skilled production of apparel and tapestries of all kinds. In the fourteenth century the guilds began to exclude women and to limit their work. They discovered that there was an old rule which declared that only those persons could be members who were able to bear arms. This same argument, moldy and musty from the Middle Ages, has been revived in the twentieth century for use against the suffragists. For more than half a millennium it has been the only tangible reason given for the disfranchise- ‘ment of women. And that it has seldom been used sincerely is shown by the fact that it was usually presented as an after-thought, a post- THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE 175 script justification of the arbitrary act. Atany rate, the medieval guilds of Germany, for the most part, did not take the trouble to justify the decisions by which women were deprived at one stroke of the right to work and the right to vote. The terms in which the resolutions were drafted show that no attempt was made to con- ceal the purely competitive and egoistic spirit of the male workers. Frau Becker quotes a series of these guild utterances in her book on the German woman’s movement. One of the orders ran, “Female work by day or night is forbidden under penalty of a fine of two pounds of wax.” *