r THE"" AMERICAN IDEA L-K- COMMANDER C>3 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library HQ 751.C73 The American idea does the national tend Dat< 3 1924 021 853 027 MAY29 | W6^a PRINTED IN T¥W 'A <3S NO. 23233 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021853027 THE AMERICAN IDEA THE AMEK1UAN IDEA BY LYDIA KINGSMILL COMMANDER DOES THE NATIONAL TENDENCY TOWARD A SMALL FAMILY POINT TO RACE SUICIDE OR RACE DEVELOPMENT ? NEW YOKE A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 1907 COPYRIGHT 1907 BY A. S. BARNES & COMPANY All rights reserved February 3^^/CB X Cm^ DEDICATION. This book — a sincere study of a grave social prob- lem — is dedicated to THEODORE ROOSEVELT who first aroused the nation to the danger of "race suicide," and who has been the only American President to recognize officially the supreme im- portance of those questions that directly concern the family and the home. PREFACE. No American Problem, in recent years, has awakened such sudden and lively interest as that of "race suicide." It has become a theme of conversation in our homes and a subject of debate in our halls and universities. We are told of it constantly, in editorials, sermons, lectures, dramas, and Presidential messages. And so we have been building up a national structure of opinion which may or may not be of solid and well-chosen materials. As usually happens, when a new problem con- fronts a nation, theories arrive before facts. Each theory, as a rule, is based upon its originator's personal experience — inevitably so, because of the lack of data on the subject. Such has been the case, to a remarkable degree, in the discussion of the "race suicide" question. Naturally, a nation as young and vigorous as ours could not foresee the coming of such a contingency — one which has hitherto occurred only in older countries. We have been taken by surprise. This book, therefore, is not the elaboration of a new theory, but an assembling of facts and opinions from widely varying sources. It is an attempt to represent American opinion as a whole, PREFACE. and to call attention to the large social causes which have created this opinion. While reference is made, to a moderate extent, to the extensive historic literature on the popula- tion question, the substance of this book is mainly first-hand material gathered from the great representative body of the ordinary men and women of the country in the course of three years' observation, search and interview. The endeavor has been to fairly present the American Idea on this subject, and to do so in a popular and readable way. To focus it into a single sentence, the question which is now thrown upon the table for discussion is this: Does the determination of the American people to establish a small family ideal, point to race suicide or race development? CONTENTS. Chapter I. Has the Small Family Become an American Ideal? I Disappearance of the large family — Low birth- rate among college graduates — Two children the average — Contrary evidence — Children in flat- houses — "Never take children or dogs" — Opinions of physicians — The American ideal is two — Poor people also wish to limit family — Foreigners adopt American idea — Opinions of women — Men do not wish many children — Social disapproval of large families — Physicians teach control— Conclusions. Chapter II. Another Form of Race Suicide .... 46 Increase by immigration — The American race — Its origin — Its characteristics — Rise of immigra- tion — Decline of the birthrate — Racial differences and divisions — Northern and Southern peoples — Americans, Northern — Early immigration similar — Coming of Southern races — The results. Chapter III. Not Degeneracy 68 The population question in foreign countries — Unique nature of the problem in the United States — Our national energy and prosperity — No signs of decay or senility — Vast difference between Ameri- ica and France — Distinctive features of our civil- ization. ix x CONTENTS Chapter IV. The New Power to Decide 78 Childlessness not compulsory, but voluntary, in the United States — Waning influence of religion — Birthrate among Hebrews, Protestants, and Roman Catholics — Conflicting advice of clergy — Women gaining in knowledge and will-power — The doctor as an influential factor. Chapter V. American Self-Preservation 93 Children as a handicap — Abnormal social pres- sure in the United States — Our higher standards of living — A self-conscious nation — Greater par- ental responsibility — Opinions of physicians and mothers — Greater appreciation of education — Struggle for existence intensified by immigration — Growth of large cities and the factory system — Our pay-envelope masses — The direction of in- dustrial evolution. Chapter VI. The Larger Womanhood 126 The changed status of women — From kitchen to factory— Passing of hand-labor — Trades and pro- fessions now followed by women — Their business ability — Growth of idle women — Women in public life — Shall married women work? — Evolution of feminine virtues — Disappearance of the meek and submissive type — The new marriage of equality. Chapter VII. The Price of Motherhood 152 The two principal reasons why women avoid child-bearing — Changed attitude towards pain — The new desire for freedom — Increase of individ- uality among women — The self-reliant woman — CONTENTS 3d How children curtail liberty and the comradeship of marriage — Maternal instinct checked by reason and analysis — A rebellious mother — Unpopularity of the domestic woman — How children complicate the divorce problem — Decline of child-bearing among wage-earning women — Fifteen children in fifteen blocks — Idle women have fewest. Chapter VIII. The Nation and the Child . ' . . . .199 A large population no guarantee of progress — Comparisons of countries — High birthrate and high mortality — Quality better than quantity — Small families and civilization — Two not enough — Causes of restriction — The American standard — Equipping children for life — Over-indulgence — Child-life held lightly — Uncertainty of business — The production of defectives — A breathing spell — The duty of society — Suggestions for encourage- ment of parents — Problems of Capital and Labor. Chapter IX. The Race Suicide of Immigration . . . 226 Views of advocates of immigration — Of oppo- nents — The right to regulate — Our duty to pre- serve civilization — New immigration — Restriction and distribution. Chapter X. Must Mothers Suffer? 235 Belief in "the curse" — Pain Nature's warning — A baby not a disease — Savage women suffer less than civilized — The nervous modern woman — Lives are too short — Sins of the mothers visited on daughters — The profligacy of men — Training the young — Growing interest in hygiene — Overworked mothers. xii CONTENTS Chapter XI. Social Motherhood 247 Housework a disappearing industry — The Past in the Present — The apartment hotel — Two new classes of women — The idle woman a luxury — Motherhood is founded in altruism — Dogs pre- ferred to children — Women the world's first burden bearers — Working women desire children — The strain of factory-life — The problem of combining motherhood and industry — Sex and humanity — Working with others or alone — Why punish our ambitious women? — No joy in useless labor — Charity work suggested — Lost labor means lost wealth — Working babies and idle women — Views of Dr. Patten and Professor Giddings — A social Problem. Appendix 285 Bibliography 333 The American Idea CHAPTER I Has the Small Family Become an American Ideal ? The decline in the American birthrate has, for some years, been of considerable interest to those who are quick to discern national tendencies. But it was only when President Roosevelt sent out his trumpet-blast protest against what he termed "race suicide" that the nation, as a whole, be- came aware of the importance of the population question. That the large family of the early days of this country has disappeared, every one is aware. Benjamin Franklin was one of fourteen children, a number far from uncommon at that time but scarcely to be met twice in a lifetime now. Franklin said, referring to his own day: "One and all considered each married couple in this country produces eight children." Figuring on that basis he foresaw for this country a popula- tion of 100,000,000 by 1900. ■ 1 2 THE AMERICAN IDEA Jefferson said that by 1875 the population must be 80,000,000. Yet there was little immigration then; until 1830 the population grew principally by native increase. Instead, however, of the 100,- 000,000 suggested by Franklin, we have 76,000,000, of whom 9,000,000 are negroes, Mongolians, and Indians; 10,000,000 are foreign-born; and 15,- 000,000 the children of one or both foreign parents. Indeed, only about 35,000,000 less than half the number Franklin predicted have descended from the early American stock. So far from eight be- ing now, as in Franklin's day, the average fam- ily, that number is considered astonishingly large. The large family has disappeared, to give place to three, two, one, or, in many cases, to the om- inous none. Many a woman can tell a tale of a grandmother with ten, a mother with five, and offer an only child as her sole contribution to the race. Fre- quently we find an old couple the parents of ten children, all married, who have only five or six grandchildren. "There were eleven in my father's family," a New England woman told me; "eight married, making nineteen adults. Among us we can show just five grandchildren. I have two and three of my sisters have one apiece." "I had ten children," said a New York German THE SMALL FAMILY 3 woman who is enjoying a peaceful old age, "and raised seven. They are all married happily now, I'm glad to say." "And how many grandchildren have you?" "Four — all pretty well grown, and fine chil- dren." There again fourteen adults were replaced by only four. Another family of nine, of whom seven reached maturity and five married, produced ten in the third generation, and so far only one in the fourth, though four are married, three over forty and single, and only three under thirty and single, and therefore liable to marry. Occasionally one comes across an instance such as that of an old couple in a prosperous country district whose children number ten, grandchil- dren thirty-eight, and great grandchildren sixty- two. Yet even there the increase is not as great as at first sight appears. It must be remembered that nine of the first generation married, making nineteen adults, from whom sprang thirty-eight, of whom twenty-five married. Thus in this gen- eration fifty adults have produced just sixty-two children. Every one can duplicate these facts from his or her own experience. These are only a few of many cases which are known to me. So marked has this tendency become that it has 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA of recent years been attracting considerable atten- tion among the thoughtful. Even yet there is a general impression that the falling off in popula- tion is almost entirely confined to the well-to-do, and particularly to those who have had higher education. This impression is fostered by sta- tistics offered by President Eliot, of Harvard. He, through the class secretaries of six Harvard classes, more than twenty-five years out of college, found that the number of surviving children born to members of those classes averaged almost exactly two to each family. 2 "If it be asured," he declared, "that the sur- viving children are about one-half males, it fol- lows that these six classes have by no means reproduced themselves; that they have indeed fallen 28 per cent, short of it. Twenty-eight per cent, of the members of these classes are unmar- ried, and those who are married have, on the aver- age, only two surviving children; so that the mar- ried pairs just reproduce themselves on the aver- age. It is obvious from these figures that the entering classes of Harvard College and the Law- rence Scientific School to-day can be recruited from sons of the sons of Harvard graduates only in small degree. If the graduates of the six classes named could send all their sons to Harvard College within the six years, 1902 to 1907, inclu- THE SMALL FAMILY 5 sive, they would only supply 100 freshmen a year, or possibly one-seventh of the total number who will enter. "The table suggests, further, that the highly educated part of the American people does not increase the population at all, but, on the con- trary, fails to reproduce itself." President Hadley, of Yale, expresses the opin- ion that statistics of families of graduates of that university would be somewhat more favorable. Evidently his information is not precise and exten- sive, but so far as the returns go, he says, they indicate an average of three children to a family instead of the two children each of the married Harvard graduates of the period named. No basis for any safe generalization is afforded by such statistics. Of the Harvard classes, 28 per cent., or 247 out of a total of 881 graduates, had not married, and we have no comparative statis- tics of the kind from Yale. Moreover, these returns relate to a very limited number of the great body of college graduates in this country. Against women college graduates Professor Eliot quotes the record of the Bryn Mawr class of '89, of which one child was the net production in four- teen years of a class of twenty-six, ten of whom married. This is, however, conceded to be excep- tional. 6 THE AMERICAN IDEA Statistics obtained by the women's colleges are much more extensive, and they tend to confirm the suggestion of President Eliot that the "highly educated" part of the community is not increas- ing the population. Records of the Boston Asso- ciation of Collegiate Alumnae, including grad- uates of twenty-three colleges, indicate that not much more than a quarter are married. Of the women graduates from Barnard Col- lege, in New York, during the eleven years of its existence, only about II per cent, are reported as married, though they are all of an age when mar- riage is most frequent, or between twenty and thirty. Of the 1,847 graduates of Smith College, at Northampton, in Massachusetts, since 1879 only 500 have married. Of the single class of 1883, out of 48 members, only twenty have married, and the married have forty-nine surviving children. 3 Professor Edward Thorndike, head of the department of psychology in the Teachers' Col- lege of Columbia University, found by statistics gathered at the New York University that about seven-eighths as many college men marry as do- native-born white males. He also discovered the fact that the ratio of college women who marry, to the average, is as "four or five to eight." THE SMALL FAMILY 7 Professor Thorndike said that he had been unable to prepare any accurate statistics of the ratio of reproduction of male college graduates as compared with the rank and file of men, and he was at first surprised at the startling extent of President Eliot's discovery. « "It cannot be denied that fewer highly edu- cated people marry than do the average, and that the production of children is less," he said. "I have given considerable time to this question, especially in the case of women college graduates. I have never been as successful as President Eliot in securing birth statistics. I have, however, been deeply interested in that class of 1889 of twenty-six girl graduates from Bryn Mawr. That probably exaggerates the entire condition, but it is at least a fact. "In Copenhagen, Denmark, if my memory serves me correctly, a record has been kept for many years showing comparisons between the results of marriages of uneducated artisans and the highly cultured classes. " It was found that in ten generations, I believe, the families of the educated classes became entirely extinct, while those of the artisans multiplied nor- mally and the children of the latter rose to the professions, sciences, and arts." Of college women, some of Professor Thorn- 8 THE AMERICAN IDEA dike's conclusions are: "The living graduates of Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley furnish us with a representative body of several thousand college women whose conjugal relations I have ascer- tained from alumnae catalogues. I find that of graduates from 1880 through 1884, 55 per cent, married. Of graduates from 1898 through 1899 only 5.5 married. I find that the proportion of college women who marry has been growing smaller and smaller in the last twenty years. "About 45 per cent, of all women college grad- uates marry, while of the female population at large who reach forty, 90 per cent, marry." That this state of affairs is not confined to the larger women's colleges is shown by statistics of a small country town college in Middlebury, Ver- mont, of which Professor Thorndike gives the following record s : Number Year Children Counted 1803-1809 5.6 64 1810-1819 4.8 161 1820-1829 4.1 163 1830-1839 3.9 189 1840-1849 3.4 83 1850-1859 2.9 90 1860-1869 2.8 114 1870-1874 2.3 50 1875-1879 1.8 32 But while, according to these records, the mar- riage rate and birthrate fall below the average THE SMALL FAMILY g among college graduates, Dr. George J. Engle- man gives evidence to the contrary. 6 He says the Harvard marriage rate, 71.4 is unusually low. Brown is 88.7, and Bowdoin, 87. Five other col- leges average 754. The average of sixteen classes from Brown, Bowdoin, Yale, and Princeton, twenty-five years out of college, was 81.4, a rate higher than the average of Massachusetts. Moreover, though the college graduate is less prolific than the average, he contributes more largely to the population, as more of his children survive. The average native family of Massa- chusetts is 2.6; but of these 28 per cent, die, leaving 1.9 surviving. The college graduate's family is 2.3, but only 10 per cent, die, leaving 2.1 surviving. Dr. Englemann, in the Journal of the Amer'can Medical Association," 8 says that the number of births in American families has been steadily declining since 1800, and is now rapidly approach- ing the statistical level of France. His observa- tions are based upon 1,700 cases in private and dispensary practice in St. Louis, and the study of 2,038 cases from the genealogical records of Massachusetts. 8 Dr. George F. Shrady, the famous New York physician, has given the subject much attention. He declares the size of the family has steadily io THE AMERICAN IDEA decreased generation by generation from early American times to the present. 9 Every large city shows evidence of the disap- pearance of the big family, and its unpopularity. In fact, about the time of the President's famous utterance, my attention was especially called to this question by the exclusion from a number of New York flat houses of two families, the one containing seven and the other five children, on no other charge than that the families were too numerous to be desirable as tenants. » » Apropos of these incidents, I made some inves- tigations and found that New York landlords had decided prejudices against children, and that there was a striking absence of them in the better neigh- borhoods of the city. Six real estate agents, con- trolling flats renting at from $50 to $100 a month, in locations from about Eightieth Street to One Hundred and Fortieth Street, on the West Side of the city, practically refused to take more than two children, and plainly indicated that even they were not desired. In visiting buildings it became evident that either the landlords will not take children or there are few to take in the well-to-do sections of the city. In a house on the Boulevard containing suites renting from $400 to $800, there were sixty families and only five children. Another, with THE SMALL FAMILY u rents from $700 to $900, had forty families and six children. In another, among thirty-five fam- ilies there was only one child, a month-old baby. In sixteen eleven-room suites in the next block only four children were found. Two houses, side by side, each contained twelve eight-room flats. These were especially large apartments, there being one hundred feet of pri- vate hall running from the rear of the drawing- room to the front of the dining-room. The for- mer room was twenty-three by twenty-one, and the latter almost as large. The rents ranged from $800 to $1,200, indicative of incomes from $4,000 to $6,000; yet in one house there were three chil- dren, in the other, none. Altogether, I visited twenty-two apartment houses, containing 485 families, in which were just fifty-four children, or about one child to every nine families. In downtown apartment houses, between Fortieth and Tenth Streets, I was re- peatedly asked, "Have you any children or dogs ?" and informed, "We never take either." Four landlords said: "The only tenants I will accept are married couples without children." It indi- cates the existence of a numerous class of child- less couples, when large apartment houses are built and equipped for the express purpose of catering to them and to no one else. But even i2 THE AMERICAN IDEA in the less expensive part of the city the family without children is preferred. In a house with fifteen flats renting from sixteen dollars to eighteen dollars a month, the janitor proudly assured me there was not a child in the house." * ' To discover the causes lying at the basis of these conditions I visited forty-six New York physicians, men and women, practicing in dif- ferent parts of the city, and gathered their opin- ions upon the question. Physicians are in a posi- tion to understand this matter because they get the confidence of their patients as no other class can. These doctors based their opinions on expe- rience covering, in many instances, thousands of cases. Of the forty-six whom I visited, several declined to discuss the question at all, and others were extremely guarded in their remarks. But thirty-eight had facts and opinions which they gave me frankly, with the understanding that their names were not to be quoted. Of the thirty-eight physicians who were willing to discuss the matter, I asked: "What do you find to be the ideal American family ?" Thirty said, "Two children, a boy and a girl." Six said, "One child." One said, "Having a family is not an American ideal," and one said, "Five or six." The last, whose report varied so entirely from every other, said she had not discovered any objec- THE SMALL FAMILY 13 tion to family on the part of Americans. But she qualified her statement by the explanation that her position was possibly exceptional, her practice being in the upper part of the Bronx among peo- ple who have moved to that locality because their families are too large to live comfortably in the more crowded parts of the city. She said, too: " Probably my desires color the expression of the wishes of my patients. As I always strongly advo- cate five or six children, it may lead women to agree with me, at least during conversation. Be- sides, my views being well known, I probably attract women of similar opinions. I am inclined to think this is true, because when I commenced to practice, I was frequently consulted in regard to the size of the family, whereas now I seldom am." The physician who claimed that having a fam- ily was not an American idea (Dr. A. W.,) has been practicing for fourteen years on the West Side in the upper Sixties. Her patients are women living in apartments on incomes ranging from $3,000 to $5,000. She said, "Among my patients I find that the majority do not want any children; cer- tainly not more than one. I should say that as a rule the second is an accident, the third is a mis- fortune, and the fourth a tragedy. In all my practice, and it is a large one, this," taking from i 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA her desk a photograph of three children, "is my largest family, and the only one of the size. I once had a patient who had three children and adopted three of her brother's, left orphaned; but she was not a New Yorker, and she is the only one like that of whom I have ever even heard." A few blocks distant is Dr. D., a physician of twenty years' experience, and a specialist in gyne- cology. Her patients are similar in financial posi- tion to those of Dr. W., but the women are rather more domestic and less fond of society. She said : "Most Americans want one child or two; two, if a boy and a girl, are probably preferred. No one criticises that number or considers it too small. There is no doubt the large family has disappeared, never to return." Altogether twelve physicians, practicing among people in comfortable circumstances, and general- izing in all from many thousands of cases, expressed practically these opinions — viz., that the large fam- ily does not exist and is not desired. Nor do those doctors whose patients are less fortunately situated, financially, give a different report. Of nineteen physicians, the majority of whose patients follow the better paid trades and clerical work, such as bookkeeping, etc., with from twenty dollars to thirty-five dollars a week, all agreed that no desire for large families is to be found. THE SMALL FAMILY 15 Dr. J., has practiced for eight years mainly among women. He said: "Most of my patients are people in the middle class financially. They have $1,000 to $1,800 a year. They are just the class always declared to be the bulwark of a nation. They have the vices of neither the rich nor the poor. They are steady, industrious, respectable, and live comfortably. They do not want big families, though, and they will not have them. They generally want one or two, but never more." Dr. R., who has been practicing for eighteen years among all classes, said: "I think most of my patients want children. I am often consulted by childless women who wish for family. But they never want more than one or two. I cannot recall in all my experience a woman who wished for and sought to have a family of five or six." Dr. I., practicing twelve years among intelligent but not very prosperous people on the upper East Side, said: "I find few who wish to be childless. Most people want one or two children. A very few are willing to have three, and fewer still, four. More than that is considered too many. During my entire experience I have been looking for women willing to have all the children nature would send, and have, in twelve years, found only one woman." The reports were all practically repetitions of 16 THE AMERICAN IDEA this, variously worded. Nor was I able to dis- cover that the poor were more eager to add to the population. It appears that they do so more inadvertently than through intention. Nearly all the doctors I consulted either are now attending free clinics or have done so at some time in the past and are, therefore, familiar with the attitude of mind of the women forced through poverty to seek free medical attention. Dr. G. M., has been practicing for six years and has a free clinic for women every afternoon. She has been especially interested in this question, and has kept exact records of cases. She said: "The desire to limit or eliminate family is universal. Chil- dren are no more, or scarcely more, desired among the poor than among the rich, though the poor are often less successful in avoiding them. I am con- sulted professionally in regard to this every day." Dr. A. L., who has done free clinic work for ten years, seeing an average of eighteen patients daily, said: "Whenever the woman of the poorer classes is the least bit above the lowest level, she desires to cease having children. No request is made of me oftener in the clinic than for advice along these lines." Fourteen other physicians having clinic experience, confirmed these opin- ions. There seems to be a general impression that THE SMALL FAMILY i 7 our foreign population are entirely free from the influence of this tendency to restrict family; that they accept all that come without question. Dr. Shrady, while he deplores the falling birthrate among native Americans, says: "The Irish, the Germans, and the Italians go ahead and have children. We are depending on our poor foreign element for our population." The Sun, of February 13, 1903, while discuss- ing the question editorially, said: "The statis- tics of births in the United States are notoriously defective. It may be assumed, however, that the rate is much higher among the foreign-born than the native." Yet even among the foreigners who land upon our shores the opposition to large families soon appears, and the first generation raised in this country are often as much opposed to having many children as American stock of three generations. Dr. Englemann, previously quoted, states that the proportion of childless married women among the foreign-born is over half as large as among native born. I discussed this point with a number of physi- cians practicing either partly or principally among foreign-born people. The consensus of opinion was that the birthrate among such people falls decidedly below European standards, and that 1 8 THE AMERICAN IDEA the majority of immigrants when only a short time in this country imbibe the idea of limiting family. The small family appears to be an American ideal which immigrants accept as they do other American ideals. Just as they learn to prize free schools, manhood, suffrage, free speech, and good wages, they adopt methods for limiting reproduction. It is a part of the process of natu- ralization. The rapidity with which they do this appears to vary, as with Americans, according to the grade of intelligence. Dr. A., was educated in Europe, practiced there two years, and has practiced in New York for over ten years. Her patients are very intelligent but not especially well-to-do foreigners; princi- pally Germans and Russian Jews. She said: "It is thoroughly American to restrict the popu- lation. It is a mistake to suppose the foreign people keep up the population after they come here. To limit the family is one of the first things they learn. As soon as men and women have become thoroughly imbued with the American spirit they will not have large families. I believe fewer foreigners than Americans are content to be childless, but they accept the American idea of one or two, and think three or four a great plenty. Even the woman who was in the midst of contentedly bearing a large family in Europe, THE SMALL FAMILY 19 will stop short once she gets to this country. She will have perhaps one or two after she lands, but by that time she will have learned the American lesson, and there will be no more." Dr. P., has practiced six years in Russia, two years in a dispensary in New York, and several years in. private practice. Her patients in Russia were Jews in moderate circumstances, wjth a few rich. Her New York dispensary work was among the very poor of all nationalities. At present her patients are Russian Jews, with incomes from ten dollars to thirty dollars a week. She said: "Jew- ish men still desire children, but some Jewish women are as anxious to avoid them as Gentiles. They are, I believe, not quite so much opposed to children. Very few, though some, want none. Many want only one, do not mind two, but object to more than three. Among the poorer I often find five or six, and the mothers of such families seem satisfied." " Did you find this tendency among your patients in Russia ?" I asked. "Scarcely at all," she replied. "A very few, among the wealthy, who had been to Paris, caught the idea. The rest never heard of such a thing. Yet women in the same class of life here restrict their families as a matter of course. Some of the same women, who were having large families in 20 THE AMERICAN IDEA Russia, have come out here and quit at once. The mother of six said to me: £ I wish I had come to America sooner; I shouldn't have had so many children.'" Dr. R. E., who has a mixed practice, partly American, partly foreign, intelligent people in moderate circumstances, said: "As far as I can see the difference between foreign and native-born is that the Americans grow up to the idea and for- eigners have to learn it. In the interval between landing and getting the notion they are naturally adding to the population. But once they become Americanized, they are as opposed to indiscrimi- nate reproduction as Americans. Intelligent for- eigners adopt that idea sooner than ignorant ones." Twelve physicians with experience among for- eigners agreed with the views of those quoted. The only physicians who gave me reports of unrestricted reproduction had patients among the unintelligent poor, or the really pauper class. A physician with a large practice among the very poor, said : " Only the tenement woman, who has no sense of responsibility, and no care for her chil- dren after they are here, has children without re- gard to numbers." Dr. H. M., has been practicing for six years as a charity physician for a mission church on the East Side. She has under her care about two THE SMALL FAMILY 21 hundred families, the majority Germans, with a few Irish and English. All the families get occa- sional help; some almost live on charity. Dr. M., said: "There is no 'race suicide,' numerically speaking, among these people. They are indif- ferent how many children they have. The most prolific couples on my list are a few Irish and low English, who are almost entirely maintained by charity, yet they continue to produce. When I remonstrated with such a woman recently, she said: 'It's too bad. I wouldn't have believed I could have been that way but how could I help it ?' I believe she prefers to have a baby always in arms as a good excuse for doing nothing! / find that as the sense of responsibility lessens, the family increases." Dr. Shrady says that neither the wealthy nor the middle class will have children. "Only the poorest classes, who would not know what the word economic means, go ahead and have all the children that Nature sends them." > 2 A young woman who was a teacher in the Free Kindergarten Association of New York for over seven years, said: "The better class of mothers whom I encountered in my work, tried to limit their families, but the poorest, the least fit to rear children, always went on having them. It seemed as if they deliberately had babies as an excuse for asking charity," 22 THE AMERICAN IDEA A woman in a prominent position in the charity organizations of New York added similar evidence : "The persistent mendicants, who appear to have no self-respect, have the largest families. Those who are only driven to ask occasional assistance in an emergency, but expect to be self-supporting, strive to limit the number of their children." Three other physicians doing charity work gave similar experience. That the lower the grade of the foreigner the slower is the adoption of restric- tion, was confirmed by the testimony of several physicians of experience among the poorest and least ambitious of our immigrant population. Dr. W., has practiced in the Italian quarter of New York for seven years. She says: "The Italians have not adopted American ideas to any extent. They do not value our institutions, and they herd in their tenements regardless of com- fort. The bareness and lack of conveniences in their homes would be unendurable to Americans. They seem content to live in a cellar or a garret like animals. In regard to family they are as natural as animals. I never knew one to ask for no children or even for fewer. They have from twelve to sixteen children and some as many as twenty-two. Even the second generation, Ameri- can raised, have not yet learned to look for means of limiting their families. Yet for all that, there THE SMALL FAMILY 23 is a falling off even among them, for they marry later, which of itself checks population." A physician connected with a charitable organi- zation said: "My patients are largely foreign and are distressingly prolific. Still those who begin to learn self-respect and American ideas invariably try also to restrict their families. The foreigners who produce incessantly and without attempt at check, are always a class that we would better have excluded from the country. They are the poorest imaginable material for making Americans." Personally, I have questioned foreigners of various countries and have found the evidence so gathered to agree with that given by these physi- cians, who, of course, generalized from much experience. Mrs. I. K., a Russian, who came to this country with two boys and has had no children since, said : " I don't want any more. What is the use ? My husband doesn't make any too much for us now." "Would you have had more if you had stayed in Russia ?" I asked. "Oh, Russia! That is different. What did I know there ? I'd have been like my mother, with nine." The Germans have always been prolific, and still keep well to the front in that line. At the 24 THE AMERICAN IDEA 1903 Convention of the Dutch Reformed Church in Jersey City, two distinctively German congre- gations showed big baptismal records. In one numbering 253 families there had been 158 bap- tisms within a year, while another of 104 families showed 91 births. > 3 I have come in contact with people in all walks of life who share the desire to limit or eliminate family. » * It appears to be universal. Mrs. B. is a German peasant who came to this country when twenty, married a drinking man, and is the mother of one grown daughter. She is at present janitress in a cheap flat-house. She said: "I'm glad I have only one and I'd have been better off if I had none. Mrs. S., (a newly-married friend) is crazy for a baby, but if she knew when she was well off, she'd quit before she started." A young woman laundress, working out by the day said: "When I get married I'll never have any children. Mame (her married sister) has three and I see enough of them. Mame knows she has one too many, herself, though of course, she wouldn't part from it now." These are certainly people of the poorer classes, but they are of the self-respecting order, always self-supporting. The wives of a policeman, a postman, a music teacher, five small store-keepers, a coachman, three trolley conductors, two paint- THE SMALL FAMILY 25 ers, three butchers, and a number of others in a similar condition of life, have expressed similar views to me. Some had no children, some one, two, or three, and one or two, more; but all thought more than two a misfortune and a number considered a woman fortunate who had none. One woman, who waited on customers in her husband's shop, selling painters' supplies, had four children, and lived in constant terror of hav- ing a fifth. She asked every woman with whom she had the slightest chatting acquaintance for advice in regard to avoiding family. Another, the keeper of a delicatessen shop, who has only one child, said: "There is nothing I am asked so often as how I keep from having more children. Everybody asks me how I am so lucky." Mrs. C, wife of a piano-player in a New York music hall, is the mother of one child, five years old. "I wouldn't have another for the world," she said. "I had Lucy when I was first married and didn't know any better." A short time after- ward Mrs. P., a newly-married sister of Mrs. C, from Boston, came to New York on a visit. Mrs. C, reported to me on the sister's prospects: "Nell has a lovely husband. He says he doesn't want her to have any children. That's what I call a 26 THE AMERICAN IDEA good, kind-hearted man, and it shows he's really fond of her." I have heard the same sentiments from wives of doctors, lawyers, manufacturers, merchants — in fact, from women in every social grade, from washwomen to women of great wealth. The rich and educated are by no means alone in the avoid- ance of large families, nor in the belief that they are undesirable. Many women, however, consider it a misfor- tune to have no children, but almost invariably they advocate only one or two. A number of physicians said they were constantly consulted by childless women desirous of having family, but always the desire was only for one or two. Mrs. M., is a trained nurse who is an enthusias- tic advocate of children and constantly asserts that no life is complete without them, yet she thinks one enough to make a couple happy, two better for the children's sake, but deprecates more. Mrs. S. T., married four years, exhibited with pride her three-months-old infant, and said: "I kept putting off having a baby, but I'm so glad I finally decided to do so. I think it is a woman's duty to have children and she is so much happier when she is a mother." "How many do you intend having?" I asked. "Oh, I think one will do me! Though, if we THE SMALL FAMILY 27 get along very well I may have another in a few years. Still, I'm satisfied now." Here was a woman who persistently advocated family and strongly disapproved of childlessness, yet she thought one child enough and two was the outside number she considered. Mrs. J., the wife of a New England minister, is always eulogizing motherhood and giving utter- ance to the most approved sentiments in regard to it. She condemns strongly a childless sister, and feels that she herself is above reproach. Yet her family consists of just two children, five years apart in age, and she says she will not have any more. Mrs. S., wife of a shoe merchant, has a strong maternal nature, is always expatiating on the joys of parenthood and constantly urges maternity upon her childless friends. She says her children are the joy of her life, the hope of her future, the dearest bond between herself and her husband, and the center about which all their interests clus- ter. Yet she has just the typical, ideal American family — a boy and a girl, and says nothing would induce her to have more. Mrs. G., is the mother of one daughter of six- teen, yet goes around with the proud conscious- ness of duty performed and happiness attained, preaching the necessity and obligation resting 28 THE AMERICAN IDEA upon women to become mothers. One childless wife said in remonstrance: "But Grant Allen says every woman should have six, and I haven't the courage to attempt such a brood." "Six, indeed!" retorted the self-satisfied Mrs. G. "Have one, or at the outside two. I believe in a family, but not in a regiment!" Miss I. J., a trained nurse said: "I know more people with one child or none than with more, though I believe people generally think they should have two. It is better for the children." "And what of three or four or five ?" I asked. "Oh, that is worse again. Children have to be raised, and very few can do justice to so many." Mrs. F., a Milwaukee woman, says: "It is a mistake not to have children. It is well enough while people are young, but the time comes when nothing will satisfy you but your own children. A family is the greatest of life's blessings." " How many would you suggest for perfect happiness ?" I inquired. "I think two; a boy and girl, the ideal family" she said. "But one will answer all needs. The two are nice because it gives you both sexes. I have a boy and a girl but I wouldn't have cared for two of either kind." Another woman, discussing President Roose- velt's utterance, said: "I can't understand how THE SMALL FAMILY 29 women can forego the pleasures of motherhood. My children are everything to me. I find such happiness in seeing them develop, and studying their different dispositions." "How many have you?" I asked, fancying I had caught a suggestion of a numerous family. "Three," she replied. "Two girls and a boy. I had the third," she explained, "because my sec- ond was another girl, and I was so anxious to have both kinds." Again, two was evidently the ideal, and the third was half apologized for. One physician, Dr. L., referred to before, alone stated that a number of her patients desired large families. As previously explained, her practice represented rather an exceptional class, and in addition her ideas probably color the expressions of her patients. Also it is only fair to state that Dr. L. counts herself among those who desire and intend to have five or six children, though, as she* is a woman of about forty, married several years, and with just one child, it is manifestly in the high- est degree improbable that she will ever reach the number. It might be supposed that the older generation of women, who were themselves the mothers of large families, would look with strong disapproval upon the present restriction of population. Some 30 THE AMERICAN IDEA do, it is true. One old lady, the mother of seven, whose grandchildren numbered only three, said quite indignantly: "I don't see what's got into the folks with their picking and choosing and say- ing whether they'll have babies and when they'll have babies. In my day no such thing was heard of. It wouldn't have been thought decent to be planning and counting about such things. We just took what the Lord sent when He sent them and asked no questions." Another old lady, listening to her granddaugh- ter's complaint at the arrival of a third child, said; "Well, Nell, if you didn't want children you'd no call to get married. I never thought of making a fuss when your father was coming, and I'd seven before I ever saw him." But many of the older women feel quite differ- ently. Mrs. D. H., had ten children, of whom five grew to maturity, and married. One of her chil- dren has two, the others one each. I commented upon the difference between her family and theirs. Whereupon she made vigorous defence, not of her- self, but of them. "Indeed, they have no such families as I had," she cried, "and I'm glad of it. I don't want my daughters or daughters-in-law either to be tied down like I was. They are all free to have a good time. Not one of them has a dead child, either. THE SMALL FAMILY . 31 Wouldn't I better have had five that all lived than to have ten and bury half of them ? Of course I knew no better — married at seventeen and no one to tell me anything. It wasn't the fashion in my day for girls to know anything. But I think the young women do just right to have small fam- ilies." It is worthy of notice that this woman was over seventy, a German, and a Jewess; yet, though she had borne ten children she thoroughly ap- proved the American idea of very small families. Another German woman of about the same age, born Christian, but non-religious, who was the mother of eight, said: "All my children are mar- ried, but none of them have more than two chil- dren. They can live. I had eight, and what pleasure could I ever have ? I had to work all the time and sleep for years with one eye open. All along I waited, thinking it would be over some time, but when that day came I was an old woman. I was no worse off than others — it was the way when I was young- — but I am glad my girls know better. I never lived, but they do." A New England woman of about forty, the mother of two, said: "My mother had ten chil- dren. None of us has more than two, and no one is better pleased than mother. She says the great- est comfort of her old age is that none of her girls 32 TEE AMERICAN IDEA ever struggled with big families, as she did, and that none of her grandchildren are ever apt to." A Wisconsin woman in middle life, of German parents, who came to this country at the time of their marriage, said: "My mother was one of the few women in her generation who had only two children. My parents were very advanced people and thought then about population as the majority of us do now. My mother was very much envied by her neighbors when we were young, but few women had any choice in the mat- ter. My father was particularly fond of my mother and could not bear to have her broken down and always weary, as he had noticed the mothers of large families to be. She always now ascribes her exceptionally happy married life to the smallness of her family." A number of New York physicians said they had found that almost universally older women approved of small families for their children. So far, I have spoken exclusively of women, in relation to the checking of population, as they are the ones most intimately and immediately con- cerned. But it does not appear that American men are more desirous than women of large fam- ilies or to any considerable extent oppose the pres- ent tendency. Dr. John L. Moffatt, of Brooklyn, speaking at THE SMALL FAMILY 33 Albany ' 'before the State Homoeopathic Medical Society, of which he is President, said that the decrease in the American birthrate was." due to a determination of both sexes to have no offspring." President Eliot's accusation was leveled against Harvard men. Dr. Octavius White, of New York, who has made a special study of this sub- ject, says: "It is unfair to hold the women more responsible than the men for the low birthrate." ' 6 Dr. Englemann says "It is considered that the wife is mainly at fault, whilst in truth it is the husband to an equal and even a greater extent, according to my observation. In defence of the American woman it is but right to call attention to this fact, and to correct the false impressions which are prevalent." > > Fewer men than women seem to be satisfied with no children, but few, if any, desire a large family. Dr. D., who has been practicing for twenty years among a well-to-do class of people, said: " I believe the majority of men are pleased to have one child or two providing their wives are willing, but they do not want many children any more than the wives. I never knew a man who would wish to have six or eight children to support. Some might take them without complaint if they came, but more would be very much disconcerted 34 THE AMERICAN IDEA by every arrival over three or four. A great many men who would otherwise like to have children are willing to go without to please their wives." Dr. P., quoted before, said: "Among Jewish men the desire for children is still very strong, but I cannot say that I think it any indication of stronger natural instincts or greater affection in men than in women. It is simply the result of a desire to have what other men have. The wives tell me, 'If I can keep my husband from seeing children, he is satisfied, but if he sees any one else with them he wants them too.'" Dr. A., practicing among a class of rich women, living easy luxurious lives and notwishingfamily > 8 said: "I find that most men like a child or two, but not more. Yet the American man of to-day has no horror of a childless life. He is not domes- tic and patriarchal like European men. Of course the very rich want heirs, but the average man is satisfied with or without, and would much prefer none at all to an old-fashioned eight or ten." Dr. S., practicing eight years among people in comfortable circumstances, incomes ranging from $1,500 to $4,000 said: "Men probably on the whole desire children more than women. Natur- ally they would; they get all the pride and miss the pain. But in my experience they are usually THE SMALL FAMILY 35 satisfied with two or three — often with one. Sometimes men welcome a large family and will seem pleased over every additional arrival, but they are the exceptions." Dr. J., a specialist in gynecology, said: "I don't think men are as much interested in the question as women — as indeed they naturally could not be. I have to get my opinions of them through their wives and the reports vary. Some men are eager for family, some indifferent, and some utterly opposed. I have even had several cases of women who desired children but whose hus- bands would not consent. I do not think there is any considerable sentiment in favor of large families among men. President Roosevelt would find himself in a minority even among his own sex." The majority of women with whom I have personally come in contact confirm this evidence of physicians. Many men are content with one child, if a boy, though even that matters less to Americans than to any other people. Dr. G., a physician in a Western city, who has one child, a daughter, frankly acknowledges that he is desirous of a large family, but could be content if he had a boy. I wouldn't care how many there were," he said, "if a baby came every two years it would get a welcome from me, and I'd be the happiest man living to have one more, a 36 THE AMERICAN IDEA boy; but my wife had such a hard time with this one that she'll never consent to have any more." "Indeed I never will," said his wife. "The Doctor says he'd give a thousand dollars for a boy, but not ten times the money would induce me to have it." On the other hand, there are plenty of men who have no desire for any family. Mrs. T. J., the wife of a New York carpenter earning good wages, who, after five years of married life had her first baby, said: "I couldn't persuade my husband to consent to my having a child before. I thought he never would agree with me on that point, and he only did so when I solemnly prom- ised to be content with one." Mrs. B. C, the wife of a telegraph operator in a small town in Ohio, who had two small children, said: "My husband was not pleased about the first, and he was angry about the second, which was a pure accident. He was mad at me, as if it was all my fault." Professor C, one of the faculty of a small college in a New York town of about 20,000 people, asked if he had children, replied: "No, I've not got that sin to answer for. I've never added to the miserable wriggling mass called humanity. Have you ?" he added, turning to an editorial writer on one of the New York big dailies. THE SMALL FAMILY 37 "Not I," returned the editor, "I'm clear too. I'd like to see something done for those that are here before any more come." The most strenuous opponent of family I have ever met, a person in whom that sentiment almost amounts to a mania, is a man who has been a practicing physician for twelve or fourteen years in a small New Jersey town. He not only has no children himself, but he laments over every child of whose coming he hears. He thinks only childless couples are sensible and considers a large family a worse plague than cholera or smallpox. He is a man of exceptional intellect, has travelled widely, and read much, is interested in plans of social betterment, is a good citizen, and a true friend. He is comfortably situated finan- cially and happily married to a woman whose tastes and ideas are congenial to him, and who shares his views on children. A man in New York, business manager of a big firm, and a Russian Jew, who is the father of two children, said to two childless couples who were calling at his home: "You are the sensible people. Stay the way you are and you will have nothing to regret. If my wife and I had it to do over we would be the same as you." A New York physician, a German, who has been practicing for eighteen years, and is well- 38 THE AMERICAN IDEA to-do, was expatiating on the evils of "race suicide" and condemning women for late mar- riages and few children. Presently I asked the size of his family. "I have one little girl, five years old," he said. "Personally, that is all I want." As he was apparently forty-five he must himself have married late, and his family was as small as it could possibly be and have existence. I could not help wondering how many of the women he was criticising had husbands like him. Such inconsistencies are by no means uncommon among men. Mr. H. S., expressed to me the strongest disapproval of childlessness or small families. "I think there is something revolting in the sight of a childless couple. They seem to me unnatural. Even a small family irritates me. I have the strongest affinity for large fam- ilies. Nothing pleases me better than to see them." Yet he was a bachelor of about thirty, in perfect health and financially able to marry. One of the most insistent and persuasive advo- cates of large families is the editorial writer on one of the largest New York dailies. He con- stantly presents moving arguments in favor of numerous progeny, and condemns the childless man or woman as an unpardonable social sinner. Yet he is a bachelor of about forty-five, with an THE SMALL FAMILY 39 income as large as that of the President of the United States. Mrs. K., the wife of a New York bookkeeper, told me her one grief was that her husband would not agree to her having a child. Mrs. G., whose husband has a meat market, doing a prosperous business, said: "I should like to have children but my husband doesn't want any. He wants peace and quietness when he comes home." Altogether it appears that while men are prob- ably less responsible than women for the declin- ing American birth rate, there is no essential antagonism between them and the Women of the country upon the subject. The opposition to large families is not only individual but social. Not only do people object to large families for themselves, they do not want others to have them. Americans disapprove of the large family as a social institution. They dis- like to see it and condemn its existence. The producers of large families are considered rather in the light of social enemies than social bene- factors. A physician who has practiced in New York for over twenty years among well-off Americans, as well as having done a great deal of clinic work, said: "The large family is never anything but an unintentional misfortune at the present. Now- 4 o THE AMERICAN IDEA adays, the mother of a large family feels humili- ated. She is really an object of ridicule. People laugh at her at best, and blame her if she is poor. Society does not approve of many children. Unless people have plenty of money we do not excuse them for having a large family. We know that only ample means will enable parents to do jus- tice to many children." Another doctor who has practiced for six years among different classes of people, said: "I often have women say, ' Doctor, I can't have another. I'm getting such a family I'm ashamed. I don't like to be laughed at." A shoemaker in New York, the father of eight children, was calling the attention of a postman's wife, the mother of one, to President Roose- velt's strictures upon the small family. "Indeed," she replied contemptuously, "you're only glad to get an excuse for yourself. I'd be ashamed to put such a family on the country. What are you, that you think we want so many like you ? My child will have every chance and in the end she'll be worth all yours, twice over." In a small village in the Catskills I found just two large families, one numbering eight, the other ten. Among the villagers they are regarded with universal disapproval and spoken of either with ridicule and contempt or annoyance. THE SMALL FAMILY 41 An aunt of the father of one family said of his wife: "I don't like Ellen, I never did. Not that she ever did me any harm, but I can't help laying it up to her that she has such a lot of children. And she don't seem to think anything of it, either: She holds up her head so brassy and brags of them — and them as poor as poverty and the young ones growing up anyhow. I wish they were no kin of mine." An elderly Southern woman was recommending a childless young matron not to miss the joys of family life. "And how many should I have ?" questioned the young woman. "Ten?" "God forbid!" exclaimed the older woman earnestly, "I don't want to get the public down on you." A German woman who has been in this country over twenty years and has raised two children, said: "It makes me mad to see people making fools of themselves getting a lot of children they can't do right by. Raising paupers for the rest of us to feed — that's what they're doing. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. I don't mind one or two. Most folks can feed and clothe that many. But when it comes to five and six and eight, it's a disgrace and a shame. There's lots here that have no right to be born." 42 THE AMERICAN IDEA A German Jewess in New York, whose hus- band is a prosperous merchant, is the mother of eight children. She told me their number rather defiantly, and added: "I don't see but what I had a right to have them. We're able to care for them. Of course, people laugh at me, but maybe I can laugh at them some day." Evidently she had felt herself under the ban of social disapproval, even though able to provide amply for her family. In a woman's club in New York, President Roosevelt's opinions on race suicide were dis- cussed and his attitude generally condemned. Of thirty-four present only two agreed with Mr. Roosevelt. The remaining thirty-two indorsed the statement of one of the members: "There are thousands born that have no business to be born." At a recent Mother's Congress the women who had borne ten or more children were seated in the front of the hall, as deserving special honor. A well-known woman who has been engaged in public work for nearly forty years said, in refer- ence to that: "I should ask every mother of a large family, 'How many have you living?' 'How many are useful, honorable citizens ?' 'How many are strong, healthy, and clever?' 'How many are well educated and fit for the struggle of THE SMALL FAMILY 43 life ?' If one had let her children die, or grow up sickly, or had turned them out ignorant and unfit for life, or had raised failures and incompe- tents, I'd say — 'Go back to the end of the hall and sit there and be ashamed of yourself for put- ting a burden upon your country.'" A short time ago a woman appeared before a police magistrate in a large city charged with some trifling offense and thinking to soften the heart of her judge burst into tears pleading that she was the mother of seventeen children. She only harmed her case. "That's enough to con- demn you," said the judge. "A woman who would have seventeen children would commit any crime." > » this was, of course, a brutal exag- geration, but serves to show the drift of public opinion. A physician practicing for six or seven years in New York among poor people, and those moder- ately comfortable, said: "I am often asked to help women do away with unborn children, which I never do. But I make a point of telling them howrto avoid any more. I can't see any benefit to society in large families and use my influence to check them." Another doctor practicing among the very poor said: "Whenever I find a woman of any intelli- gence I teach her how to check her family. I 44 SHE AMERICAN IDEA have to be careful, as we are not supposed to tell anything of that kind, but I think it is a sin and a shame to see those poor ignorant women increas- ing the population. We have too many of their sort already." Over twenty physicians told me they made a practice of informing patients how to avoid hav- ing children because they considered large families a misfortune both to the parents and to the coun- try. "We don't want the kind of people that usually come in large families," said one. And that was the general opinion, variously expressed. Mrs. May Wright Sewall, ex-President of the International Council of Women, has expressed the opinion that it is not size, but quality, that is needed in families. And Ida Husted Harper argues 2 ° that the advance of civilization can be best served by checking the birth rate and devel- oping the people already here and the resources of the country for their benefit. A professor in one of the smaller colleges of New York State, discussing the sociological condi- tions, said: "Nothing can be done to better things radically till we can get this flood of children stopped." A review of the evidence gathered points to these conclusions: THE SMALL FAMILY 45 1. That the size of the American family has diminished. 2. That the decline is greatest among the rich and educated, but also exists, to a marked extent, among the middle class and the intelligent poor. 3. That only the most ignorant and irresponsi- ble make no effort to limit the number of their children. 4. That not only has the large family disap- peared, but it is no longer desired. 5. That the prevailing American ideal, among rich and poor, educated and uneducated, women and men, is two children. 6. That childlessness is no longer considered a disgrace or even a misfortune; but is fre- quently desired and voluntarily sought. 7. That opposition to large families is so strong an American tendency that our immigrants are speedily influenced by it; even Jews, famous for ages for their love of family, exhibiting its effects. 8. That the large family is not only individ- ually, but socially, disapproved, the parents of numerous children meeting public censure. CHAPTER II. Another Form of "Race Suicide." When Americans, President Roosevelt included, speak of "race suicide," they usually allude simply to the decline in the birthrate. » If race suicide in America meant only a diminishing birth rate we should have a condition similar to that of France — ■ a steadily decreasing population. But our popu- lation, instead of diminishing is rapidly growing. From 1880 to 1890 it rose from fifty millions to nearly seventy-six millions — an increase of more than 50 per cent. A large part of this seventy-six millions is the result not of natural increase but of immigration. The last census shows that we have over ten mil- lions of foreign-born and fifteen millions more, one or both of whose parents are foreign-born. Since the census 3,833,998 immigrants have entered the country of whom probably 3,000,000 have neither died nor returned. Over half our population then consists of immigrants received since 1835, and their descendants. Since immigration began in 1820, nearly twenty-three millions (to be exact 22,932,905) of foreigners have entered the country; and they are coming now at the rate of a million a year. 2 46 ANOTHER FORM 47 In discussing immigration one frequently hears the remark "we are all foreigners; the only Ameri- cans are the Indians." Or, on the other hand, a man of alien speech, customs and race will, by virtue of naturalization papers, proclaim and be- lieve himself as much an American as any whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. But it must not be forgotten that there is an American race which had been a century and a half in the making and had language, character- istics, customs, religious beliefs and a form of government before immigration began in 1820. The thirteen Colonies which in 1776 declared their independence and united to take a place among the nations of the earth, separated from what was literally the Mother Country. The new United States was a young England. It had rebelled at leading strings and had broken from the nursery, but that did not alter its racial heredity. With the exception of a few thousand Dutch in New York and Pennsylvania and a less number of Swedes in Delaware and New Jersey, the people of the thirteen Colonies were "mainly of the same English race; mainly Puritans in religion." 5 The settlement of America by English Puritans was the culmination of a long series of events, all tending to assert the rights of the individuals and to defy organized authority. It began with 48 THE AMERICAN IDEA " the crusades and the invention of gunpowder, which led to the downfall of feudalism. It was strengthened by the Black Death, which by slay- ing millions raised the value of the workingman and first gave to him liberty to seek, by change of habitation and employer, to better his condition. Interwoven with the feudal system was the domina- tion of the church, many of her highest dignitaries being also feudal lords. Above all feudal sov- ereigns she reigned the supreme power. Closely associated with the decline of feudal power was the revolt against ecclesiastic domina- tion. Luther's defiant, "Here I stand," flung in the face of an authoritative church, voiced the growing sense of personal importance. The Re- formation was the spiritual declaration of inde- pendence. It asserted the rights of the individual soul. The invention of printing had made possible the next logical step — the opening of schools for the common people. If each man might and should be able to interpret the Bible for himself he must be able to read it. In this continuous movement towards liberty and personal rights, England held a foremost place. In the original mixing of races that por- duced the English, the Anglo-Saxon, powerful, fearless and enterprising, always remained domi- ANOTHER FORM 49 nant. The original Celt was slaughtered or driven back into Wales, Scotland or Ireland; the Roman withdrew; the Norman modified but did not essentially alter the Anglo-Saxon characteris- tics of the English people. For centuries England has pursued her present policy of offering an open door and a welcome to the political and religious exiles of Europe, the men too clever and too progressive to endure the bigotry and oppression of less enlightened coun- tries. Such an admixture has raised the English average of intelligence, self-respect and devotion to freedom. By no country was the Reformation so thorough- ly accepted as by the liberty-loving English. King and people united to throw off the yoke of a foreign hierarchy and establish religious self- government. Nor could the new spirit of protestant-ism be checked. Under its impetus, ideas of political as well as religious liberty quickly developed. This ferment found its most intense expression in the founding of a new England, a half a world away from the too-unyielding motherland. The set- tlers were " those who in religion and politics were literally 'protestants' and who possessed the in- telligence, manliness and public spirit which urged them to assert for themselves the inalienable rights 5 o THE AMERICAN IDEA which the church or the state of their time had arrogated to itself." * That such a people, expanding in the freedom of a new country and separated by at least two months of hazardous travel from the home govern- ment should before long demand and obtain in- dependence was inevitable. By so doing they simply demonstrated their kinship with the Mother Country. By 1650, the very earliest date nameable for the beginnings of an American people, the English had already be- headed a King and inaugurated a commonwealth. Before the close of the Seventeenth Century, they had deposed the last monarch to claim the throne by "Divine right" and had firmly established the principle that the Sovereign of England reigns by the will of the people. 5 During Colonial days the common blood, insti- tutions and traditions which constantly tended to unite the English colonists, served equally to separate them from the French oh the north, in Canada, and the Spanish settlements on the south, in Florida. Though the two latter belonged to England at the time of the Revolution, neither took part in it. Both were alien in origin and ideas, and therefore lacked sympathy with the ambitions of the English colonists. The earliest English settlements in America ANOTHER FORM 51 displayed that spirit of independence and love of self-government which eventually led to the Revo- lution and which are basic in American character and institutions. In 16 1 9 Virginia organized a House of Burgesses, an example followed before long by the other colo- nies. In 1633, in Dorchester, originated the New England Town Meeting, the most democratic form of government ever yet established. The first "little red school house" dates back to 1640 in Salem and to 1642 in Boston; and by 1647 Massachusetts had a system of common and grammar schools superior to any existing in Europe at that time. The University of Harvard was founded in 1638 with a grant of £400 — an immense sum from a small, struggling colony. It seems, then, not too much to say that 1650 saw the beginning of an American people. By that date the second generation had reached man- hood and womanhood. That an American feeling had already begun to develop was shown in the constant collisions of purpose and interest between the home government and the colonies. A strong uniting power was the continuous warfare against the Indians. Later " King George's War," with the taking of Louisburg from the French, taught the Colonists the power to be gained by union. 52 THE AMERICAN IDEA The ante-Revolutionary history of this country is a continuous story of the growth of national sentiment and of the spirit of independence. When Patrick Henry declared: "The distinctions be- tween Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, I am an American," it was an announce- ment of the fact that an American people already existed. Nor was this American people identical with the English, although its direct offspring. Born of the Mother England it yet was growing up in a new land. The first settlers were not only English but "represented socially and intellectually much of what was best in the mother country; men of as high a mould as ever settled a state." 6 They were winnowed men of a winnowed race. As a devout historian said: "God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness." Moreover, they were unfettered by the unfit, unhampered by that residuum of social incompetents and failures which is the invariable accompaniment of long established civilizations. Among the thousands who followed the "May- flower" and settled in the various colonies, all classes of society were represented, from men of title to yeomen and apprentices. But the dangers ANOTHER FORM 53 and hardships incident to the voyage and the struggle in the new country insured the coming of courageous,hardyand enterprising men and women. The nation thus founded rapidly grew in num- bers and developed distinctive characteristics. Bancroft estimates that in 1754 the American population was a million and a half. By 1820 this number had increased to nearly ten millions of which only 250,000 were immigrants. > Frances A. Walker says: "The population of 1790 was almost wholly a native and wholly an acclimated population; and for fifty years afterwards immi- gration remained at so low a rate as to be practi- cally of no account. Yet between 1790 and 1830 the nation grew from four millions to nearly thir- teen millions, an increase, in fact, of 227 per cent., a rate unparalleled in history. That increase was wholly out of the loins of our own people." During this period of growth, the distinctively American character and institutions developed and became clearly defined. Americanism em- braces^ I. Resolute opposition to oppression. This is an English characteristic and was possessed in a high degree by the Pilgrims who preferred self- exile to submission. The success of the War of Independence and the rising power of the young nation confirmed it. 54 THE AMERICAN IDEA II. Energy. Only forceful people will leave a civilized country, with comforts and conveniences, for the primitive conditions of a new land. III. Self-reliance. This quality must be strong in a people who dare untried conditions, neces- sarily accompanied by hardships. Those without faith in themselves would falter. Surmounting difficulties developed still further both energy and self-reliance. IV. The Instinct of Improvement. This is one of the most marked of American traits. It lies at the basis of all our "modern improve- ments" in building, our highly specialized me- chanics, our pre-eminence as inventors. V. Race Pride which is a wider self-respect. This Americans share with the English who have always refused to assimilate with the natives of their foreign possessions. The Spanish have intermarried with Brazilians, Mexicans, West Indians, etc., and produced hybrid races. The French settlers in Canada mingled their blood freely with the Indians. But the American follow- ing the instinct of the Englishman, annihilated or subdued the Indian, reduced the black to slavery and excluded the Chinese. VI. Equality of Opportunity. This sprang nat- urally from early conditions. Of those who came from England, none were really rich and in a new ANOTHER FORM 55 country with abundance of fertile free land, none need remain poor. Manhood, not birth nor rank, was at a premium. VII. Equal Rights. Equality of opportunity brought greater equality of estate. This naturally led to a belief that the differences observable in older civilization were artificial, that men were born equal and were entitled to equal rights. VIII. S elf-Government. A forceful nation be- lieving in equality and opposing authority, could and must govern themselves. IX. Forethought. The power and tendency to think and plan for the future has made the English the great colonizers of the world. The Spanish looked upon the new continent as a treasure-house to be looted. They stole and sailed away. The Pilgrims and those who followed them built homes and towns and established municipal and state institutions. In their present they built for the future. They thought not only of themselves but of generations to be born. Of such forethought Lecky says there is no " better test of the civiliza- tion of a people." 9 In 1820 immigration began with an influx of 8,385'° foreigners. Since then it has been a stead- ily rising tide. Sometimes a small wave will be succeeded by a monster roller, as when the twenty- two thousand of 1831 rose, the year following, to 56 THE AMERICAN IDEA sixty thousand; or when the eighty thousand of 1 841 was succeeded in 1842 by one hundred and five thousand. On the other hand, 1854 brought nearly half a million and the next year only 200,000. Seven years later the figures again fell from one hundred and forty-two thousand to seventy-two thousand. But though the annual waves may vary in size, the tide has been a rising one and there is no present indication of an ebb. Indeed more, and more it looks as if Europe and Asia had determined to come to America to live. It might be supposed that this last unforeseen immigration would upset all forecasts of popula- tion made previous to its commencement. Surely it would from the first not only add largely to the population but give a powerful impulse to natural increase. The American people were, as has been shown, exceptionally prolific. The majority of the immigrants were young men and women in the most productive period of life. Yet in this connection we are met by a curious phenomenon. Coincident with the rise of immi- gration came the decline of the American birthrate. In 1 8 15 Elkanah Watson > "made a forecast of the population based upon the then rate of increase, and making probably slight allowance for immigration of which there was almost none at the time, of the earlier years when immigration was small, Wat- ANOTHER FORM 57 son's forecast was almost correct. In 1820 the population was eight thousand more than Watson had predicted, which might be credited to the eight thousand immigrants who landed that year. But by 1840 it had increased over Watson's estimate, by less than fifty thousand, though nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand prolific immigrants had entered the country during that period. In some way seven hundred thousand Americans were miss- ing and seven hundred thousand immigrants had taken their places. Up to date we have received nearly twenty-three million immigrants. Some of them came three generations ago. Yet the census of 1900 shows a population of less than seventy-six millions, while Watson predicted for 1900 over one hundred mil- lions. More than half our seventy-six millions are shown to be immigrants and their descendants. Thus in spite of the addition of about forty mil- lions of immigrants and their descendants, our population is less by a third than it was expected to be; and the original American stock, instead of being over one hundred millions is less than three- eighths as many. Had the native stock maintained its original rate of increase, the importation of millions of Europeans must still have had significant results. But since the falling native birthrate has made 58 THE AMERICAN IDEA the foreigner such a large proportion of the popula- tion the results must be still more noticeable. The early Americans were an English people, modified by the changed environment of a new land. Following the Pilgrims came men of lower social grades. Yet they were of the same stock and all blended together to make a homogeneous people. But immigration has brought to our shores men and women from all the nations of the earth; and by granting them naturalization papers and calling them Americans, we have professed to believe that we have made them such. We have reasoned thus: One European people came to America and in a spirit of self-reliance with a deep love of liberty, founded democratic institutions. Therefore such a character and such institutions are inherent in the American atmos- phere. All foreign peoples who come here will manifest the same type of character and maintain and develop the same institutions. We have never seemed to believe that a race has within itself, in the very fibre of its body and brain, certain characteristics, and to change them is prac- tically impossible; that if achieved at all it is the slow work of many centuries. We recognize this in relation to the larger racial divisions of mankind. We know that an Indian ANOTHER FORM 59 could never change into a Chinaman even though he wore a queue and peacock feathers, ate rice and learned to write off the outsides of tea chests. We are sure that a negro even though he were edu- cated at Yale, rode in automobiles, practiced a profession, trafficked in real estate or traveled round the world and wrote a book about it would still remain a negro. He would not be a particle the more Caucasian for all his "white" experiences. It is because of the deep and ineradicable racial differences, that we have in this country a negro problem, Indian reservations and Chinese exclu- sion. But the grand divisions of mankind are capable of subdivision. The Caucasian race is made up of a number of sub-races, with distinctive mental and physical qualities. These have been variously divided by ethnologists. Otis T. Mason classifies them as Teutonic, Keltic, Slavonic and Iberic. ' ' Another classification is Baltic, Alpine and Med- iterranean. ' 3 A more general and less scientific is Warne's 14 divison into "English-speaking races and Slavs." Under Mason's classification, be- longing to the Teutonic races are English, German, Scandinavians (Norwegians and Swedes), Dutch, Belgians, Danes and Finns. The Keltic peoples are the Irish, Scotch, Welch, French, North Italian and Armenian. 60 THE AMERICAN IDEA The Slavs are the Russians, Austro-Hungarians.* The Iberian nations are the Portuguese, Spanish, South Italians (including the Corsicans and Sar- dinians), Greeks and Syrians. The division into Nordic or Baltic, Alpine and Mediterranean differs principally in classing the Irish, Scotch and Welsh with the English instead of with the French, and the Syrian with the French instead of with the Spanish. Warne classes Germans, British, Irish, Scand- inavians and Danes (including Dutch-Belgians) as "English-speaking races" i. e., races ethnically akin to the English and easily adopting their language and standards of living. By "Slav" he means Austro-Hungarians, Russians and Italians. Warne's division, though less exact than the others, is based upon the one fundamental point which Americans have to consider in dividing the races coming to this country. Immigrants either re- semble Americans in physique, mentality and ten- dencies; they adopt easily our language, customs and standards of living, and they are capable of conserving and developing American political, religious and educational institutions, or they ♦These two include the Poles, Magyars, Bohemians, Moravians, Croatians, Slovahs, Dalmatians, Roumanians, Bulgarians (?), Lithmanians, Ruthemian, Servians, Monte- negrins, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and the majority of the Hebrew immigrants, ANOTHER FORM 61 differ radically from Americans in body and brain ; they are tenacious of foreign customs and standards of living and they cherish political and religious ideas basically at variance with ours. Our immigration is a question of making Ameri- cans or making over America. Generally speaking Warne's "English-speaking races" are Northern; his Slavs Southern races. For brevity they might be called Saxons and Slavs. The Northern races are large, fair and ruddy. They have long, narrow heads and are self-con- tained and persistent. They are energetic, active, self-reliant, industrious and ingenious. They have been trained by long centuries of northern life to cope with difficulties. This has developed rea- son and the inventive faculties. The Southern races are short and dark, with a short, broad skull. They are emotional, super- stitious, enthusiastic and easily discouraged; lovers of art and music, but indifferent to mechanical or scientific progress. Politically the Northern races have achieved a higher degree of liberty and have displayed a greater power of self-government than the Southern peoples. Among the Northern races Russia can- not be counted. Though her boundaries stretch to the Arctic circle and touch the Baltic Sea, her people are Slavs and essentially alien to the Teutonic. 62 THE AMERICAN IDEA The Irish, too, would resent being classed as Saxons though they are as certainly not Slavs. They partake somewhat of the characteristics of both North and South. They fight so readily that they are famous for their pugnacity. But unlike the Northern countries generally, their struggles have been for the most part futile. During seven centuries of the hated English rule, though never submissive, they have lacked the purpose and power to win freedom. In spite of oppression they have never lost their sense of racial identity, but they have expended their fitful energy in bursts of fruitless rage against the powerful race that has held them in control. They would never submit yet they could never conquer. They have the quick, fiery temper, the gaiety of heart, the instabil- ity of nature, the love of pleasure and the supersti- tion that distinguish Southerners. Yet in chastity — a Northern virtue — they excel other people. Politically they are non-conformist, being steadily, if sometimes unreasoningly against the established order. But religiously they have always bowed unquestioningly to authority. Usually the Irish are classed with the English in immigration reports. This is as unscientific as classing together North Italians, who are Keltic, and South Italians, who are Iberx; or as associat- ing negroes, Indians and Mongolians under one ANOTHER FORM 63 heading — colored— as is done in some government tables. Yet in a general division of races, based upon ability to become Americanized, the Irish must be classed with the Northern peoples, with English, Germans and Scandinavians. They will therefore in this book be counted as Saxons in contradistinction to Slavs. To the Northern peoples, or Saxons, the Ameri- can race as English in origin belongs. To it then are directly akin the Germans, including Dutch and Belgians, and the Scandinavians, including Finns. The earliest immigration came principally from Britain, Ireland and Germany— hence was easily as- similated. It was American raw material. Such peo- ple, thoroughly assimilated, could become genuine Americans, filling the places of those who had not been born because of the declining birthrate. True, upon this country lay the burden of training these immigrants into American citizen- ship. They were raw material, and America had to shape and mould them into the finished product. But, on the other hand, having been so trained and taught, intermarriage would quickly blend them with the American race, swelling its numbers but not essentially changing its characteristics or its institutions. Not only was this early immigration racially akin to the American people, it was composed 64 THE AMERICAN IDEA of a type of people similar to those who first set- tled the country. As late as 1850 the trip from Europe to America was still long, hazardous and expensive. To emigrate meant in most cases a final breaking of the ties of family and of native land. It meant leaving a home endeared by years, perhaps by generations, of association, on the chance of building a better one in a new land. It meant the exchange of friends for strangers. It meant learning new habits of life and thought and in some cases the mastering of a foreign tongue. To face all these difficulties undismayed required courage, self-reliance, energy, physical and mental, and a desire for freedom and larger opportunities. It was by coming in large numbers in those early days that the Irish proved their courage and enterprise and demonstrated that North was stronger than South in their blood; that they were more Saxon than Slav. It was not until 1880 that the weight of immi- gration shifted from North to South and the essen- tially foreign peoples began to pour into America. By that date we had received nearly seven mil- lions of Saxons and less than half a million Slavs. A quarter of a million Chinese had come over, but they were so plainly alien in nature, so evi- dently impossible of assimilation that in 1883 the stream was stopped by the Chinese Exclusion Act. ANOTHER FORM 65 Since 1880 the half million Slavs have swelled to six and a quarter millions, almost as many as the Saxons that came during the same period. So far, the immigration stands about thus: Saxons, fourteen and a half millions. Slavs, six and three quarters millions. But though the Saxons who have come to America are now more than twice as numerous as the Slavs, this proportion will not long continue. The Slav immigration is increasing more rapidly than the Saxon. The immigration from Italy in 1905 was almost eighteen times as great as in 1880. Just twice as many Russians arrived in 1880 as in 1878, IS but in 1905 we received over twenty-five times as many as in 1880. The Italian immigration of 1880 equalled that of the three previous years combined, > « but by 1900, the record of 1880 was multiplied by 17.7. The Austro-Hungarian immigration suddenly tripled in 1880, ■ > but it was sixteen times as great in 1905 as in 1880. Meanwhile the German immigration which reached its height in 1882, with a quarter of a mil- lion, » 8 in 1905 was only one-sixth that number. The English and the Scandinavian immigration has fallen off one-half as has also the Irish. Thus a few years will rob the Saxon of his lead and throw the balance to the Slav. This growth 66 THE AMERICAN IDEA of a truly foreign element in the nation will be hastened by the greater prolificacy of the Slav. In Americanizing, the Saxon immigrant adopts the American ideas of natural increase. The Slav remains to a greater extent foreign in that respect as in many others. But the Saxon immigration has not only de- creased in quantity, it has lowered in quality. The trip to America is now cheap, short and easy. Agents of the steamship lines are found in every city and village in Europe, smoothing the path of the would-be immigrant. It is almost easier to come to America than to stay at home. There is now a beaten path. The United States is no longer a strange, new country. There are many friends here and no change of language or customs, is, as formerly, obligatory. Hence the vast immi- gration of the easy-going, unenergetic Southern peoples. Hence, also, the coming of the shiftless, indolent and unsuccessful men and women of the Northern countries, those who under harder con- ditions stayed at home. In early days emigrat- ing to America was like climbing a mountain. Now it is like slipping down a toboggan slide. This advent in large numbers of fundamentally alien races must eventuate in one of three ways. (i) Such foreigners may form and maintain colonies within the country, preserving their sep- ANOTHER FORM 67 arate national characteristics and customs, ulti- mately becoming so numerous and powerful as to obtain control, and by another American Revolu- tion, silent and bloodless, turn this into a new and different nation. (2) Lacking the power to gain control, they may exist as inferior and subject races dominated by an American stratum above. Under such conditions the American democracy would disappear. It might be succeeded by a republic similar to Ancient Greece. (3) They may be assimilated, but their char- acteristics being so dissimilar, they must, with Americans, produce a mixed people, a blend of both but exactly like neither. Institutions, cus- toms and ideas would undergo a similar trans- formation. The original American and his ideals would vanish before a new people and a new government. In any case, the American race, as now known, will cease to exist, as the result of a deliberately permitted influx of essentially alien races. This then is "race suicide." CHAPTER III. Not Degeneracy. To ascribe such a widespread movement as that outlined in the first chapter to mere individual perversity, would be to make a serious blunder. Social tendencies have social causes, and to under- stand social phenomena we must discover the underlying causes. The problem of population is not new on the face of the earth. In fact, seldom is any nation, tribe or people entirely satisfied with its rate of increase. Sometimes there are too many babies, sometimes too few. Attempts to either check 1 or increase the infant population are as old as humanity. 2 Few are the tribes that have not at some period practiced child murder, particularly the destruction of female infants, with their promise of future fecundity. Even China, the oldest civilized coun- try in the world, still seeks that method of setting bounds to its too numerous population. » To destroy all weaklings, regardless of sex, as did Sparta, has been the common practice of war- like tribes. On the other hand, nations have at times been driven to extremes in the effort to build up a falling 68 NOT DEGENERACY 69 population. Early in the Christian era the Roman Empire enacted legislation offering bribes and offi- cial appointments to fathers of families and dis- criminating severely against the childless. The speech of Augustus to his knights in the year 9 A.D. stands almost alone for violence of invective and bitterness of censure. He condemned the child- less as "murderers of their race," "destroyers of their country" and "deadlier enemies of their nation than brigands or wild beasts." The Athenians also paid their highest honors to parents, and old bachelors were sunk in disgrace. Repeatedly children have been greeted with either prizes 4 or fines, as they have been judged desirable or the reverse. To-day France s , taking an opposite view to China, is encouraging population, and this country is realizing that it is dependent upon immigration for much of its growth. Yet only a century ago Malthus 6 shook England with his attack upon the too great productiveness of the human race, and urged Anglo-Saxons, in the interests of future prosperity, to check the flood tide of population at its source. President Roosevelt, like the Emperor Augustus, has made strenuous opposition to the present tendency. Yet it appears that the action of this nation, like that of the Roman people, is against 70 THE AMERICAN IDEA him. Even while Augustus thundered the knights besought him to repeal the legislation against the childless; while in the face of the President's utterances came forth a torrent of protests from those whom he condemns. But there is a wide difference in condition be- tween the ancient civilizations that deplored their falling birthrate, and the United States of to-day. In all cases the former had reached the zenith of their power and were already declining in might and vigor. This, on the contrary, is a young country, a nation not yet in its prime, full of the joy of living and the enthusiasm of action. We are reaching out, trying our powers, rejoicing in our strength, seeking new and wider fields of activity. Far, far from us, far in the future, is the decrepi- tude of national decay, the senility of national old age. Nor have we a run-down and wornout country, a land of wasted and spent resources. The fields of Rome lay idle while her agricultural population crowded to the cities to be fed on imported corn. Only charity stood between her populace and starvation. Systematic tyranny and extortionate taxation had robbed her citizens of manhood and ambition. The United States, on the contrary, so far from importing bread or oil or wine to keep her people NOT DEGENERACY 71 alive, pours out her products in a lavish stream upon all the earth. Her vineyards and her fields produce enough and to spare. Hers is the com- mercial supremacy of the world and her products are in every port. The farmers of Rome were impoverished, then ruined. Ours are prosperous, self-respecting, in- telligent. The United States to-day has the finest rural population any country of the world has ever produced. Our farmers live in big brick and stone houses, with bathrooms, furnaces, awnings, pianos, pictures and handsome furniture. They own banked barns and pedigreed stock. They use modern machinery in cultivating their fields and reaping their harvests. They are intelligent. They have daily mails and read the newspapers as regularly as the city dwellers. They have libraries in their homes and public libraries in adjacent towns. Their children go to school and to high school, and many of them to college. Their calling is one of dignity. There are fifty agricultural colleges in the country and three hun- dred papers and magazines devoted to farming. Our farmers are a strong, substantial, prosper- ous, intelligent class of people, and from them come many of the men and women who rise to positions of distinction and influence in every department of our national life. 72 THE AMERICAN IDEA Again, in every ancient civilization, by the time a declining population had attracted public atten- tion, the bulk of those who performed the work of the nation were slaves. The wealth was pro- duced by those who had no share in it. Far different are the workers of this country. They are free men and citizens. They receive a constantly increasing proportion of the wealth they assist in creating. Not only have they the ballot with which to control the government of the country; they have also powerful, self-governing trade organizations for the protection of their rights and the advancement of their inter- ests. In other countries and times the workers, even when not serfs, have been confined to that division of society known as the lower classes. In America popular education, and the work of trade unionism have combined to lift whole trades into the middle class. Many unions, too, are rich, powerful and re- spected. The United Mine Workers, even at the termination of a five months' strike had over $1,000,000 in the treasury. The cigarmakers and glassblowers have each had as high as half a million surplus at one time. It is true neither our farmers nor our workers are in the enjoyment of ideal conditions of life. NOT DEGENERACY n There are mortgages and failing crops, and low prices and high railroad rates to be reckoned with by the farmer. Similarly the latter must cope with child-labor, unorganized trades, overcrowding in trades, lack of employment, and the pressure of a too merciless competition that matches men against machines and ruthlessly casts both aside when worn out. But the very intensity with which we labor, the swiftness of the American pace which daily taxes us to the limit, is the measure of our virility, our youth, our panting eagerness to achieve. It is the oppo- site of the sluggishness that precedes death. Moreover, the defects in our civilization are constantly being remedied. We are building up, not falling to decay. Progress is the key-note of all our actions. Reform is in the air we breathe. Conditions are constantly bettering, and the future is full of promise. Nor are American conditions paralleled in France. The agricultural districts of France are divided into millions of minute farms, still worked in the most primitive manner by peasants who know nothing of modern machinery or methods. The towns and villages are full of little stores where business is conducted in the fashion of a century ago. The government is burdened with an im- mense army of 900,000 employees, whose ambi- 74 THE AMERICAN IDEA tions never rise beyond a little round of duties and a little regular salary. From childhood the Frenchman is trained to obedience to his parents and to a system. The schools are formed on the military model, which crushes self-reliance and initiative. To the young man success in life means the attainment of financial security, however limited. He prefers a small, sure thing to any uncertainty. His own little farm, his own little shop, or better than all, a government office, is his ideal. To depend upon something or somebody, to be a securely attached barnacle, is the height of his ambition. Edmond Demoulins in his "Anglo-Saxon Su- periority" says: "Ask one hundred young French- men, just out of school, to what careers they are inclined, seventy-five will answer you that they are candidates for government offices. "Education is entirely planned to fit for an official career — cramming and obedience. Indeed, according to official reports, for a single vacancy you may often count thousands of candidates. "Our guiding principle in establishing our chil- dren on this (the French) side of the channel con- sists in gathering for each, by dint of economy, a dot — a portion; then we marry them to consorts similarly placed as to fortune; and in time we have them admitted, if possible, into some public office. NOT DEGENERACY 75 "Now, a small number of children in a family is an abundant source of economy. The French practice this sort of economy wholesale." M. Demoulins contends that the French lack independence and the ability to fight life's battles fearlessly, qualities which the Anglo-Saxon pos- sesses to a great degree. Nowhere are these Anglo-Saxon characteristics, force, initiative, independence, enterprise and self- help more powerfully developed than in the United States. Here every man has ambition and wants to achieve great things. The American is always ready to play a big game and take big risks, and his gains are proportionate to his daring. Every kind of business is done on a large scale. Our farms are ranches, our cobblers' shops are factories, our stores are palaces, our woollen and cotton mills are towns, our railways are systems, our industries are trusts. In short, between France and America lies the gulf that separates age from youth. The French- man desires the elimination of uncertainty, a clearly defined path to tread, and the peaceful enjoyment of an assured income, however small. He prefers economy to risk, and thinks the bird in the hand worth not two, but a dozen, in the bush. Like an old man, with his ambitions all behind him, life's treasures now are peace and security. 76 THE AMERICAN IDEA The American has the faults and the strength of youth. He is impetuous, daring, extravagant, hopeful, full of initiative and self-confidence, will- ing to take risks, and fearless of consequences. So the conditions of France and of the United States are widely different, and to solve the prob- lems of the one is by no means to throw light upon the problems of the other. If we discover that the Frenchman limits his family to increase the patri- mony of his son and the "dot" of his daughter, we may not infer therefrom that the American is influenced by any such motive. This country is not like the wornout civiliza- tions of the past in their last cycles of existence. It is not like France, which had a land with a govern- ment and centuries of history a thousand years ago. We are a young nation, in a new land. Barely have we felled its forests and measured its prairies. We still have millions of acres unclaimed by the settler, and millions more sparsely dotted with the rude cabins of pioneers. There are whole States in which there is not the population of a fourth-rate city. As a nation, the stain of the earth is yet fresh on our garments and about us still linger "The tang and odor of the primal things." Our civilization is the duplicate of no other in ancient or in modern times, and our problems can never be solved by an analysis of theirs. Our NOT DEGENERACY 77 social problems, whether political, industrial or vital, are distinctly our own. Thus when we find among Americans a strong and approved tendency to check the birthrate, it will not do to turn to the pages of history for an explanation. We must discover the reasons where we have found the condition — among ourselves. This is an American question, and not Rome nor Greece nor even the France of to-day can give us its answer. CHAPTER IV. The New Power to Decide. Before discussing the reasons for the decrease in the size of the American family, it should be understood that it is voluntary on the part of in- dlv duals. It is not a nat onal calamity which has been thrust upon us, except in so far as social forces influence conduct. It is a condition which we have voluntarily 1 created, so far at least as individuals have the power to create conditions. Civilization, it is true, brings with it about five per cent, of involuntary barrenness, and luxurious living increases that percentage to seventeen. But we are not the victims of hyper-civilization or universal luxury. Our children are few, not be- cause we cannot 2 have more, but because we will not. B The majority of our childless couples could have children if they chose; the parents of a few, could, if they would, double or treble the number. There is no doubt that Americans feel at perfect liberty to do as they wish and think wise, in regard to this matter, and that they know how to do as they wish. There was a time in America when the coming of the family was left entirely to Nature, and no one knew how many children were due till the last one 78 THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 79 had arrived. No one thought of controlling such matters, or had the vaguest idea how to do so. * Indeed, any interference with the processes of Nature would have been held to be in the last de- gree impious; for a baby was considered as much the act of God as a stroke of lightning, and the producing of it woman's first, if not only, reason for being. The old Biblical instruction to "increase and multiply and replenish the earth" was preached to the people as a divine command, and reinforced by the stern counsels of the Church. The Bible was regarded as literally inspired and its authority beyond cavil or question. The Church was to everybody a divine institution and the priest or pastor was to the people a sort of over-conscience. Naturally the Church has always been a strong advocate of large families. s In the first place it considers child-bearing as the woman's curse for sin, in accordance with the Genesis story of the fall of Eve. In the second place many children are continually through the Bible pronounced a bless- ing and an honor to man. Thus an institution officered and managed exclusively by men would take but one attitude on this question. Probably the expression of Martin Luther — "If a woman becomes weary or at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, 80 THE AMERICAN IDEA she is there to do it," was not extreme in his day. Even up to the present there are many clergymen like Morgan Dix 6 , and Canon Knox-Little 7 who take practically the same attitude though more euphemistically expressed. The view of the Roman Church is voiced by Cardinal Gibbons, who says: "A large family is a blessing. To defeat Nature in marriage is as criminal as to commit murder. No excuse is possible — neither financial reasons nor any other. The question of economics has no place, should have none, in regulating the size of families. That Catholics are taught this explains why, as a rule, they have large families." 8 Thus when the influence of the Church was dominant it was a powerful factor in maintaining a high birthrate. 9 Church members considered a numerous family as evidence alike of godly service and divine blessing; and the minister's family was proverbially pre-eminent for its size. But religion is not the supreme force in the American life of to-day. Of a population of seventy-six millions only twenty-eight millions are even claimed for church membership. » ° That twenty-eight millions include children and the irregular, whose membership is of the most nominal character. The remaining forty-eight millions are partly indifferent, partly sceptical and take THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 81 little account of religion as an authority for the governance of their lives. Even within the Church very little of the old absolute teaching remains. The higher criticism has made of the Bible a book for scholarly analysis rather than the inspired word. The pastor is a kindly friend, not the mouthpiece of an auto- cratic deity. Few, indeed, are the American clergymen who would order the members of their flocks to increase their families under pain of divine displeasure; and slight would probably be the response to such commands. Indeed, among Protestants church membership makes very little difference in regard to family. Conventions of ministers, as well as the pastors of separate congregations, have been for some years past calling attention to the decline of our birthrate, but without avail. Rev. Cornelius Brett at a recent convention > » of the Dutch Reformed Church said: "I am ashamed to report the births in my congregation during the past year. Out of four hundred and two families there have been but nineteen bap- t'sms." The Fifth Street Church of Bayonne > 2 reported but two births in one hundred and twenty-three families. In the Wayne Street Church of the same 8 2 THE AMERICAN IDEA city, out of three hundred and sixty families only seventeen births were recorded. The Federation, the organ of the churches of New York, has for seven years collected informa- tion relating to this subject over a considerable portion of Greater New York. It says » 3 there are now in Greater New York one Protestant to 3,875 of the population; in Man- hattan one to 5,987; on the East Side, one to 10,189 — showing how comparatively few are the New York people strongly influenced by Protestant religious views. It believes the decline of religious belief strongly affects the birthrate. It says: "The maximum (family) is Hebrew, the minimum Agnostic. The Roman Catholic average is higher than the Protes- tant; the positively Protestant than the indefinitely Protestant; the indefinitely Protestant than the definitely Agnostic." The following table is given: Average Percentage With Number of Given Numbers of Children Children 12 3 Protestant 1.85 28.3 21.7 19.3 13.3 Roman Catholic 2.03 24.6 20.7 19.5 14.8 Hebrew 2.54 16.6 18.7 18.7 17.1 Percentage With Given Numbers of Children 4 5 6 7 8 9 Protestant 8.6 4.7 2.2 1.1 .3 .1 Roman Catholic 10.2 5.5 2.6 1.4 .4 .09 Hebrew 12.3 8.1 4.2 2.4 1.2 .6 THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 83 These figures have been gathered from hundreds of Jewish families in each ward and thousands of Christians. In the first ward of Brooklyn only three foreign nationalities showed a record of more than seven families larger than two in num- ber. Marcus Rubin » 4 , agrees that the failure of the authority of the Church with the Biblical command "Be fruitful and multiply" is at the basis of much of the decline in the birthrate. Nor is the Protestant church any longer a unit in its advocacy of large families. The Rev. John Scudder of Jersey City in a recent sermon denied that children should be born except under the most favorable circumstances and advocated lim- ited families for people of small means. He said: 1 5 "Inveterate paupers, hopeless drunk- ards, incorrigible criminals, insane and idiotic peo- ple and such as are afflicted with consumption, scrofula and other diseases likely to injure the next generation, should be denied the privilege of re- producing their kind. A birth forbidden by law should be considered as a criminal offence and the parents should be punished by fine or imprison- ment. Science and not caprice should be the arbiter of life, and domestic sentiment in some cases must be sacrificed in behalf of the general good. 84 THE AMERICAN IDEA "The limitation of offspring when parents are competent to marry is as yet a question for the parents to determine themselves. Poor people in our overcrowded cities who allow themselves the luxury of six or eight children when they know their income is not sufficient to properly feed, clothe and shelter them, are positively cruel." Entirely different is this from the attitude of Cardinal Gibbons, when he says families should not be restricted for any cause — "neither for finan- cial reasons nor for any other." The Roman Church, too, still maintains its authoritative attitude toward its people, and com- mands their respect and obedience, especially among the ignorant poor. Among the intelligent, whether rich or poor, its authority is less potent. I questioned fifteen physicians regarding the extent to which women are influenced by church teachings in this respect. All agreed that only among Roman Catholics and Jewish people was it in a noticeable degree a deciding element, and even among them it was a waning influence. A physician who has had for many years an extensive practice and who is herself a religious woman, said: "Roman Catholics still think it is their lot to bear children and suffer, and feel that they commit a sin in avoiding this duty. But even among them and among the Jews who have been THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 85 proud of big families for so long, the better class restrict the number of their children." Dr. A., with a practice partly among wealthy \ women and partly in the Italian quarter, said: " I don't think religion affects my wealthy patients, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. They never mention religious scruples if they have any. The lower classes are different. I don't believe in their big families and would like to instruct the women how to keep the number down, but I have to be careful because the Church is so pointedly on the other side, and the people believe so firmly in it. Yes, the teachings of the Church can be considered a strong influence in keeping up the population in the crowded tenements. Cardinal Gibbons is not exaggerating in the least the power of his Church in that direction." A number of other physicians spoke similarly in regard to their Roman Catholic patients. The general opinion was that even among the intelligent there was a little more tendency to family than among Protestants or those without belief, and that among the more ignorant, where faith is strong, no effort is made to restrict the birthrate. The Italians are notable for their large families, and they are devout Romanists. The same is true of the Irish. A doctor who does a great deal of charity work said : " The low class Irish, who have 86 THE AMERICAN IDEA not yet been seized with American ambition, are very prolific, and they will tell you it is a sin to stop your family." About a year ago an Irish woman came to my door in New York begging. She told me she had six children, the youngest a babe of four months, and that her husband, owing to an injury, had not been able to work for two years. "If your husband has been unable to work for two years, why have you a four-months baby ?" I asked. She looked at me in reproachful amazement. "You wouldn't have me go against the will of God, would you?" she replied. "It's a deadly sin I'd be committing." A short time since she again appeared at my door, begging, and it was apparent another baby was almost due. Her husband was still unable to work. But her faith that she was obeying the commands of God was as firm as before and she regarded me with the same horror when I suggested a cessation of her efforts in behalf of the population. She was a devout Catholic and evidently fully accepted the dictum of the Church, as voiced by Cardinal Gibbons, that "No excuse is possible — neither financial reasons nor any other. The question of economics has no place, should have none, in regulating the size of families." » 6 THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 87 The Jewish faith still has some influence as the tables quoted from the Federation show. A num- ber of doctors agreed that Jewish people still have more desire for families than Gentiles. "I find," said one, "that few Jews are satisfied to be childless. They think it is a sort of disgrace, and they still look upon children as an expression of God's favor. Their religious training has a good deal of hold yet in that direction. They still, too, admire a large family, which few other Americans do. Yet the desire for many children has gone. A woman with a big family will be admired, but the other women do not want to be in her place." Another said: "The tradition of family remains strong among Hebrews. That has been the relig- ious teaching for so long that it still has power. Jewish women do not want many children but fret less if they come than do Christians." A physician who practices among very intelli- gent but not wealthy Jews, mostly Russians, said : "There is as much difference between Jews as Christians on that point. The more ignorant are devout, and they would consider it a sin not to have a big family. They take what come without question. But there are probably as large a per- centage of Jews as Christians with whom the term means nothing in the matter of belief. They are clever, thoughtful, analytical people, who under- 88 THE AMERICAN IDEA stand the problems of life. They use reason and decide for themselves how many children they want. Traditions or faiths are not vital to them. Such Jews, and we have thousands of them, have small families." Even the Jewish preachers, like the Protestant, are divided upon that question. While the Roman Church maintain its old attitude, both Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis hold various opinions. I was recently present during a conversation be- tween two Protestant clergymen and a doctor, where all agreed upon the evils of large families for people of limited means. A Boston minister, the father of two children, said he would consider it wrong to attempt the responsibility of more on his stipend. A Congregational clergyman, and a worker among the poor, the father of three, criticised strongly the people who give life to children for whom they cannot properly provide. ' » Numbers of lay workers in church charities have expressed to me regret for similar conditions. A Jewish rabbi in Chicago, the father of one child, has repeatedly in private conversations condemned large families. His wife alternately blames and pities a sister who has a numerous and growing brood. I have never heard any public utterance from this rabbi on this subject, but have heard him THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 89 freely express his views to members of his congre- gation. Many Jews have thoroughly American opinions on the population question and put them into practice, deciding the matter to suit themselves. The power to decide lies to-day in almost every- one's hands. The knowledge of how to control family scarcely existed in America two generations ago. Now it is practically universal. • 8 When Annie Besant brought out her pamphlets explaining how to avoid children, and lectured to the English working classes upon the desirability of doing so, she was denounced as a social enemy and in some places even stoned, and scarcely any support was given to her. To-day thousands of physicians in this country have adopted her views and make a practice of disseminating the knowl- edge she was so anxious to give to the women of the poorer classes. A physician of high standing in Illinois writes me that he is preparing " a small treatise upon the healthful prevention of large families" and his design is to "put it into the hands of newly married couples of ordinary means." He does so because he believes "frequent child-bearing and its physical drain upon the mother a fruitful cause of domestic infelicity." With him it is a matter of conscience. He says: "I have asked the opinion of several of 9 o THE AMERICAN IDEA my confreres and they say that from a humanita- rian standpoint the idea is a good one but I will be looked down upon by my brothers in the ranks. For that I do not care, for I know I can make many a happy home and save many a woman from a life of misery and suffering." Many physicians believe in small families, and make a practice of telling patients how to avoid children. "I think every woman should be in a position to have a child or not, as she sees fit," a doctor told me. "I never will destroy an unborn child, though often asked to, but will always give the other information." A great many doctors take this ground. But even those who encourage families do so with reservations. The physicians who have never advised any woman against child-bearing, and explained to her how to avoid it, appear to be few in number. A prominent New York physician lent me a book prepared for doctors and not intended to be given to the laity, in which this subject was discussed fully by a number of well known physicians. The majority of the articles were papers which had been delivered before clubs or gatherings of the profes- sion to which outsiders were not admitted. There- fore the utterances were marked by frankness and sincerity. THE NEW POWER TO DECIDE 91 A Chicago doctor said : "I am in favor of off- spring. I often say to young people who delay having children 'If you are not ready to have children you were not ready to get married.' I generally consider it a moral crime to get married and wait five years or six and lose taste for raising a family. " It is a sad spectacle, however, to see families of eight or ten children among the poor where not a single child gets opportunity for proper education and for physical training. I would not advocate raising eight or ten children except very rarely, as for instance where there is opulence and where the wife has enormous physical strength and en- durance. "Thus there are instances where the physician feels that the wife should have no more children, and as physicians we are the ones to educate the laity in regard to this matter. Let us be sincere. We have to be teachers of married people; we have to tell them the means by which to regulate these matters. While, perhaps, a few of you hesitate to express yourselves so freely, still I believe you will agree with me in what I have said." In the discussion which followed no one dis- sented from these views. This is the general atti- tude of the physicians reported. All agreed that children were desirable and condemned childless- 92 THE AMERICAN IDEA ness without reason. But all considered family a matter for regulation, and expressed the opinion that explaining restrictive methods to patients was often a duty. Twenty New York physicians assured me they made a practice of giving women professional ad- vice in regard to checking family when circum- stances suggested that there should be no more children. Many people, however, are not dependent upon physicians for such knowledge. It is widespread, almost universal among intelligent Americans. The vast majority know how to control the size of the family and do so deliberately. l • CHAPTER V. American Self-Preservation. When we find the interruption of the working of a great universal, compelling law, we must look deep for the causes. We find in this country re- production, the second law of nature, waning. Yet we are not old, our natural forces are not failing, 'the day of our vigor is not in the past. On the contrary we are a young 2 , strong, virile people, in the flush of our fruitful powers. We are at an age when to reproduce ourselves, to throw our young life forward into the future, should be a joy, a delight, the natural expression of our abounding vitality. Powerful, indeed, must be the cause that can restrain young life, in the full possession of virile powers, from giving forth its vital forces to perpet- uate its kind. The law of reproduction 3 is the second law of life, and ceases to rule only when old age saps the vital powers. Only one force in the universe is more powerful than the law of reproduction, only one law is older, only one law opposed to the law of reproduction can conquer it. That is the law of self-preserva- tion. Therefore, when we find the United States, a 93 94 THE AMERICAN IDEA young virile nation, disregarding the law of repro- duction, we are certain to find that it is because obedience is being claimed by an older, stronger law — self-preservation. If formerly the large family prevailed, while now the small family is the general rule, it is because under former conditions the large family rendered easier the struggle for existence, while now the small family is the fittest to survive. Paradoxical as it may seem, the nation is disappearing in the effort to survive. The elimination of the weak, when the struggle for existence is hard, is an old expedient with man. Savage tribes commonly destroy the infants and the old in times of famine. Only those who give immediate strength to the tribe, who contribute to its present welfare are permitted to live 4 , all who are a burden, a drag, a weight, in its fight for life, are thrown aside. We are doing exactly the same thing. We are too civilized to practice and advocate infanticide; it is against our moral code. Neither are the women of our nation so stupid as to endure all the inconvenience and suffering, mental as well as physical, involved in bearing children, only to have them destroyed at birth. We accomplish our results by checking the birthrate. Savages kill their infants; we do not have them. AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 95 We are also eliminating our old, in the fierceness of the struggle for existence. It is proverbial that "America is the young man's country," and it is almost a crime to have gray hairs. Many trades throw men out at forty or forty-five, because they are too old; some even younger than that. John Graham Brooks, in "The Social Unrest" says: s "I have heard a manufacturer of machines say that among the greatest changes he had known in forty years of business was this elimination of men who showed the least sign of age. It is these average men in the forties and early fifties that are thrown out each year in the great industries." There is evidence on every hand, that the old as well as the infant is yielding to the pressure of our present social conditions. Just as we do not mur- der our babies 6 , but instead refuse to allow them to be born; so though we do not set our old out in the forest to die, we push them out none the less surely by refusing to let them work. This subject cannot be discussed here at length, but it is of growing importance, and cannot much longer be ignored. This question of the destruction of our old, and even of our men and women in middle life who should be scarcly past their prime, will press for solution in the near future. But as the savage individual and the savage tribe differ from the American individual and the 96 THE AMERICAN IDEA American nation, so, also, does the savage struggle for existence differ from the American struggle for existence. ' Self-preservation, to the savage, means little more than it does to the lower animals — the preservation of the physical life. Not to let the body die, not to permit the tribe to disintegrate is all the savage knows or cares. Self-preservation, either individ- ual or tribal, is a simple matter to him, because the selfhood either individual or tribal which he desires to preserve is low. Mere life, mere exist- ence is all he asks for himself or for his tribe. But American selfhood, individual and national, is high. The American is not satisfied when he has achieved enough to eat. "The full dinner-pail" is not the limit of his ambitions. It is only the bare beginning of his needs. He must have not only necessities, but comforts. It is not enough that his dinner-pail be full, it must be full of the best food that the markets can supply. He must have a comfortable home in a desirable location. In it must be carpets, curtains, pictures, books and, if possible, a piano. He demands, too, good clothes and a watch and chain. He is not a simple creature with only a stomach to be filled and a hide to be kept warm. He is a complex, many-sided, highly-developed human AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 97 being; and all the needs of his nature clamor to be satisfied. He must have education, and time to read his books; recreation, and money to take him to the theatre, or concert. He expects a vacation in the summer, a half-holiday on Saturday, a short work- ing day and a big pay envelope. All these things mean "life" to the American. To fight for them is his struggle for existence. To fall short of them is to fail in self-preservation. So, too, with the American nation. It is not a handful of loosely united, crude savages, content to hunt and fish, war with neighboring tribes, live and die and be forgotten because it was not worth remembrance. This nation is a powerful, vital organism. It is a living thing, with needs, ambitions, hopes and fears. No nation has a keener or more vivid con- sciousness of itself. It is unified by its railroads, its telegraphs, its telephones and its press. It thinks and feels and acts. It laughs in its joy and weeps in its sorrow. And always it works and tugs and strains to achieve a boundless ambition. It has a great educational system — schools, col- leges and universities. It has museums, parks and libraries. It has a democratic government that gives suffrage to half its citizens. It has the most complex and comprehensive industrial system the 98 THE AMERICAN IDEA world has ever evolved. It has the commercial supremacy ' of the world and it is reaching out for every other kind of supremacy. All of these things make up the life of the Ameri- can nation. To maintain them is the national struggle for existence. This is the national self- hood, for the preservation of which the United States is fighting. In this struggle large families are a burden, a weight, an obstacle; therefore they are sacrificed. And just so long as they remain an obstacle to American self-preservation > ° they will continue to be sacrificed. > > In ancient Rome every bribe and inducement was offered to parents, but Tacitus says "Not for that did marriage and children increase, for the advantages of childlessness prevailed." And just so long as the "advantages of childlessness prevail" in America, the birthrate will continue to decline. Under former social conditions the large family was a help, not a hindrance, hence its existence. Our falling birthrate is directly due to the indus- trial and social changes of the past fifty years. Dr. Shrady, while he lauds the early American with his large family, and condemns the small family of the present, explains the reason for the difference in a sentence: "Our forefathers re- garded each child as a prize, each new son and AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 99 daughter as a help and an additional guarantee against poverty." Exactly; and he might add that our American of to-day regards each new son and daughter as a hindrance and an additional threat of poverty. ' 2 Hence the difference in the size of the fami- lies. At the time when the large family was produced and prized children were easily and cheaply raised 1 J and early commenced to add to the family in- come. McMasters gives us a picture of early Amer- ican conditions. The coarsest of fare, the roughest of clothing, the commonest of houses were the por- tion of the mass of the people. They gave to their children meagre education or none, and only a small percentage were trained for any skilled trade. And children so reared were fit for the time in which they lived. There was a place and work for them in the social organism of their day. There was large demand for unskilled labor and little call for skilled. The rough, hard, unintelligent work, the low wages and the bare living which were the lot of the early American worker awaited the boy the moment he attained the semblance of man- hood. True, the upper class American also had a large family in those early days, and he gave to his ioo THE AMERICAN IDEA children education and training, and did not set them to work until they had reached maturity. Yet even such children were simply and cheaply reared, compared to those of a similar class to-day. Moreover such education was only given by those who could well afford it, men whose fortune came to them easily from ill-paid, or slave labor. There are some people in the country who still hold the old view of the value of a child, and they still have large families. They are the people who do little for their children, let them grow up uncared for and untrained, and put them to work as soon as they are able to earn a penny. Dr. H. M. has a large practice among a low grade of foreigners, Germans, Irish and English, on the East Side of New York. She does a great deal of charitable work, and the majority of her patients are barely able to maintain life. Large families are the rule. The fathers are laborers, bakers, motormen and workers at other low-paid, slightly-skilled occupations. She said: "These people are indifferent how many children they have. The idea is that they cost little to raise and will soon be able to earn. The children grow up somehow, or anyhow, and are put to work as soon as practicable 'to earn a couple of cents,' as the expression is. They always say 'to earn a couple of cents' which may AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 101 mean anything from fifty cents to two or three dollars a week. "These people look upon their children as a sort of insurance.. The man has just a certain number of years to work. Then rheumatism, consump- tion, an accident or some such trouble attacks him and he cannot work full time. He is less active and work is uncertain. By this time his children are getting old enough to 'earn a couple of cents' and the family pulls through. A large family is an advantage to people of that type." Dr. I. E., who has a practice among intelligent foreigners, and is interested in sociological prob- lems, said: "The size of the family depends upon its bearing upon the struggle for life. In old coun- tries, especially among the peasantry, the family meant earning power. It cost little to raise a child and he early went to work. In this country the un- Americanized foreigner still feels the same. He expects his child to begin to black boots or sell papers, in childhood, and get money. In Europe and among such people here, the mind is dor- mant, life is on a purely physical basis." Dr. A. ,who has practiced for seven years in the Italian quarter of New York, said: ""The large families of the Italians are easily understood when we realize that almost nothing is spent raising the children and they begin to work almost as soon as ioz THE AMERICAN IDEA they can walk. You will find that newsboys and bootblacks always come from large families. The large family is the basis of child labor. The Italians are just like animals. They have children as freely and naturally, and they expect children to look out for themselves almost as early as animals do." These are the people who to-day "regard their children as prizes and additional guarantees against poverty." But they are not Americans, not repre- sentative of American sentiment. ' 4 Their in- dividual struggle for existence is not on the Ameri- can plane; neither are they factors in the preserva- tion of our national, American selfhood. The true, good-grade American demands a high standard of living for himself. He demands it also for his child. Moreover, he always wants the child to do more, be more and get more out of life than he has himself attained. He knows that high earning power is the accompaniment of intelligence and skill. Our industrial system is so complex, its tasks so delicate, its mechanism so fine, that almost every task demands the man or woman of alert, keen brain, carefully and exactly trained. Fewer and fewer are the places that can be filled by stupid, ignorant strength; and presently they will have disappeared altogether. But to fit children to take such a part in our AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 103 industrial life, that they may earn enough to main- tain the American standard of living, is a long and expensive task. To give to a large family the education and training necessary, and to keep up, meanwhile, the comforts of the home, is beyond the power of the average American. To rear children unfit to cope with the present conditions, is to condemn them to perpetual poverty — a herit- age no American will willingly bestow upon his offspring. These are the considerations the American has in mind when he debates the question of family, and what he means when he says he cannot afford many children. Dr. G. has been practicing for five years among middle-class and poor people, typical American working people. She is interested in sociology and has made a point of asking women who desire to limit their families, the reason. She said : " I find the basic trouble is economic. The general cry is 'We cannot afford more.' The very poor say, 'Why should we have more when we cannot feed those we have ? ' Those better off have ambitions for their children in the way of education and cannot afford many. The growing sense of responsibility in parents makes it such an expense to raise children, that the majority hesitate about having a family. io 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA "I have a patient who is the mother of nine children, all married. Not one of her daughters or daughters-in-law want more than two children, some of them will not have any. They all say they can't afford to; yet any of them is as well off as the mother was when she raised them. "I pointed that out to one of them the other day — a woman with one boy. 'Yes,' she replied; 'but see what a different life my boy has from mine. He has comfort and pleasure; we have a nice home and he has everything he needs. We are giving him a good education and he will, I hope, get along in the world and earn more than any of our family ever did. Those of us who have children all feel the same. You can't get any of us to bring up children as we were brought up — always going without everything because there were so many." A doctor whose practice includes Americans and foreigners, of an intelligent class, in moderate cir- cumstances, said: "Americans, and foreigners who have become imbue with the American idea, have small families because then both parents and children get more out of life. The newly-landed foreigner, especially if he comes from the peasant classes of Europe, thinks it is a great gain to raise a family cheaply and get them earning soon. He is not long in the country till he changes his mind. AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION, 105 He sees that it is better to have a few children and make them valuable by giving them every ad- vantage. It is better to have two children earning $20 a week each, than six each earning $7 a week. "He discovers, what the American knows, that the secret of success in the new world is education and years of training. The fittest to survive in our civilization are the trained and educated. Brain rules, not brawn. This is the American idea and it involves small families, for so much cannot be given to a big brood." A physician who told me of a marked decline of family among Jewish people did not disapprove of it, but said: "I cannot say that under present economic conditions it is desirable for poor people to have large families. I do not like to see them. In this house there is a family of seven children. The eldest and youngest are studying, they will be well educated; the rest must work. The parents cannot afford to give education to all. Big fami- lies cannot get proper opportunities or be well taken care of. It therefore seems to me sensible to limit the number of children." A young man, one of a family of nine, who is having a hard struggle to acquire an education said: "I am a pronounced enemy of the big family. See what a hard time I am having to pull myself up and get an education to fit me to 106 THE AMERICAN IDEA make my way in the world. Those of us who have less ambition will always stay down. There are so many of us that nobody could have anything. My childhood was one of constant denial and I was turned out to shift for myself half equipped. And all the time my parents were living in a grind of poverty. If there had been only two or three of us everything would have been different. I am one of the younger ones, and I can truthfully say I'd have been willing to be left out for the general good. Never will I put a big family into the world." This young man is a Jew by birth but an Agnostic. " A Jewish woman, who is slightly religious, took practically the same ground. She was one of a large family, but has only two children. She said: "Two are all we can do well for and I think it is wrong to have children unless you can give them a happy childhood and a good start in life. When I was little we always saw the children in small families having lots of dolls and toys and nice clothes and parties, while we had to go without because it took all the money to keep us in shoes and plain clothes. We all used to say then that we would never have big families, and none of us have. "Now, my two children have everything nice. David has balls, tops, kites, an exerciser, a punch- AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 107 ing bag — everything any boy has. Marion has dolls, a playhouse nicely furnished, picture books and all the toys girls enjoys. They both are well- dressed all the time. We take them to matinees, picnics, on trips and to the mountains or seashore for weeks in the summer. They are getting and will have the best education we can give them and be trained for whatever work they show fitness for. My husband and I both feel that children have a right to a good, happy childhood and a first-class start in life. It makes me happy to see them get- ting all that I missed." A fireman, who is earning $150 a month, an Irish Roman Catholic, the father of three children told me neither he nor his wife wanted more. He said: "It costs a lot to raise young ones right, and I intend to do everything for mine that can be done. If I have a big family I have to spend all my money in rent and then where do any of us come in for the rest of our living ? My youngsters are going to have a good time, and lots of schooling. You've got to have book-learning to get up in the world and I want them to beat their daddy." I asked him if the priest approved of his senti- ments. His reply was: "The priests all think we can't have too many children, but I notice I'm the one has to pay the bills." A woman with two little girls told me she was io8 THE AMERICAN IDEA very fond of children and would like more but couldn't afford them. "My husband is a car- penter," she said, "and his wages keep us com- fortable. But where would we be with six or seven children ? He wouldn't earn any more because the family was big. I want my children to be raised nicely and learn everything, so they'll be smart women; and I can do that for two. But I couldn't do much for a whole lot of them. I think two, well-brought up are better than six or seven that have to go to work before they know any- thing." A teacher in one of the public school kinder- gartens told me that a child announced to her the birth of a baby brother, and she politely remarked : "How nice that is! Your mamma must be pleased." The child, who was only six years old, replied soberly: "No, she ain't. There's so many of us she can't be glad any more. There ain't enough money." A salesman in a big Broadway clothing house said: "All this talk about big families sounds like nonsense to me. I have two children and I can't afford more. It's a plain matter of dollars and cents, and I haven't got the price. It's nice for rich people, but I don't think poor people are entitled to a big family." It would be impossible to record the statements AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 109 of the men as well as women who have explained their small families or childlessness upon economic grounds. Everywhere, except among the very wealthy, a large family degrades the standard of living and lessens the opportunities of the children for educa- tion and training for the future. Each child divides the family income into smaller parts. The large family is apt to be poor, and its members to remain poor on account of having an inferior start in life. ' s A man in Washington who is employed in a bank, has five daughters, the eldest seventeen. The mother died when the children were small and they were raised by an aunt, who, instead of getting anything for her services, constantly eked out the father's salary with her private income. The eldest girl, her education half "finished", is working in an office, and the others will take employment just as soon as they are old enough and can get it. The eldest girl said to me: "I hated to leave school at sixteen, but there are so many of us we are always dreadfully poor and I was glad of the chance to get hold of some money. You have to take what education you can get and earn money as soon as you're able when there's a big family and a small income. I'll never have many chil- no THE AMERICAN IDEA dren, I can tell you, and I keep telling the others, as soon as they are old enough to have any sense, not to either. "When I was little we had a pretty home and lived on a nice street, and we might have staid there if there had been only one or two. But soon we had to move into a shabby neighborhood and scrimp and save and live off auntie till it was enough to make any one sick and ashamed. All my cousins go to college. None of us can ever go. They've lived; we've ground along." It is a thoroughly American belief that life which is merely existence is not worth living. A girl who had been a member of a family where poverty and culture combined to make life a series of depriva- tions, said: "If I marry a poor man nothing would induce me to have children." 'But," I suggested, "if your mother had thought that way you would never have been born." "All the better," she replied. "I should have thanked her never to have had me. What have I ever had out of life ? I am a product of a high civilization, with a thousand tastes and desires, which I never could have gratified because we were poor. My parents did all they could, but they had five children, and only money enough for one. To give us educations cost them bitter privations and heroic sacrifices. My mother literally gave her AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION m life for us, for she died at forty-five, worn out. And yet, for all their sacrifices we had to do without nearly everything. I'd rather never have been born and I wouldn't have the cruelty to force on another girl the meagre life that fell to me." A young woman who was poor all through her girlhood and now earns a living which necessitates economy and careful expenditure, said to me: "You don't know how I like to see a young girl who can have pretty clothes, a nice home, a piano and all the books she wants; a girl who can go for a drive or a boat trip or to the theatre and pay for her pleasure without feeling she is criminally wasting money. I am glad to know someone is having a happy, comfortable girlhood, if I never had. I think it is a tragedy to be a young girl and miss all the things that mean so much to girls." A young woman who was reared in that cultured poverty which is so hard to endure, but who now has plenty of money, said to me: "I don't care for the pretty things I could have in abundance if I chose. I dress well, for instance, only to please my husband. But it makes my heart ache to think of myself when I was a young girl and couldn't have anything nice. When I remember my girl- hood's self, the poor, pretty, young thing who would have enjoyed nice clothes, and a chance to travel, and parties and theatres and flowers, I ii2 THE AMERICAN IDEA could weep for her in her barren, unlovely life. I wish I could bundle up a lot of my pretty dresses and send them back through the years to her. She could enjoy them as I never can." Another young woman has struggled through similar poverty to a position on a New York news- paper where she is earning several thousand dol- lars a year. She was handsomely dressed to go out with her husband, when a friend who had called said : " Kate, you never seem to enjoy your beau- tiful clothes." "No," was the reply, "John likes to see me well- dressed so I get good clothes, but why should I care ? Oh!" she said bitterly, " I had to wait too long for them. A rattle is great deal to a baby and it is cruel not to give him one. But if you keep it from him till he's twelve years old, what use is it ? I wanted pretty clothes at eighteen, but there were seven children and I was glad to be covered. I don't care for them at thirty-five. I've outgrown my rattle." It may seem a very trivial thing that young girls should be deprived of pretty clothes, parties, theatres, flowers, trips, music and similar access- ories of life. But those are very real things to a young girl. Youth is the time when such pleas- ures are most enjoyed; never again will they be worth so much. Balls and kites, dolls and picture- AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 113 books are very important to children, however older people may smile at them; and just so is it with the pleasures of girlhood. Americans believe in the high standard of life at every age and expect to provide it for their children. The wife of a lawyer in a Wisconsin town, who has two children, said in a company of women who were discussing the question of family: "I hesi- tated a long time about having my second child, because my husband was not doing well at the time, and I did not feel we could afford any more." "Well," said another woman, "after all, I sup- pose they've always had plenty to eat." "'Plenty to eat!'" retorted the first, indignantly, "as if that were anything! I think any one who doesn't get above that point in thinking of a child isn't fit to have one." " That's the way I feel,"responded a third. " It makes me so angry to hear people say of children ' Oh, they've always had plenty to eat,' as if they were nothing but animals. It takes a good deal more than eating to make even a decent life for a child." But the economic anxieties of the American parent do not end when the child has been carefully trained and educated, and in every way fitted for life. There is still a fear that no place may be found in which the child can win all the comforts 1 14 THE AMERICAN IDEA which make life worth living. Work is not as- sured to anyone, and there are always many with- out it. And the out-of-work, the man without a place in the industrial organization, is always somebody's child. Many people feel that they do not want to bring children into a world where the chances of failure and poverty are so great. A man in an editorial position which must com- mand at least $100 a week, said: "I'm glad I have no children, because I'm a dependent. I have my job, but how do I know for how long ? We are all dependents in this country now. I haven't a foot of earth in all this land to call my own. And how do we live ? Do you think I'd like to go home to my apartment house and go up seven stories and find a child of mine shut in those rooms, with noth- ing to look at but a white airshaft or rows of red tin roofs ?" A man with a good income — probably $5,000 to $6,000 a year, said: "Some ways things look very smooth just now, but I tell you men are afraid to be responsible for children, because no one knows what is coming. There's a fear at men's hearts, an awful dread. Terrible times are coming in the next twenty years, and I for one don't want a child of mine in them." Mr. and Mrs. F. T., are thoughtful, educated people, in moderate circumstances. They have AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 115 one daughter, a bright, clever girl of ten. They love the child devotedly and are giving her every possible opportunity. Yet the father said to me: "When I look into the future and consider how fierce the struggle for life is getting, I actually regret that I have a child who will have to take part in such a fight. I did not understand social con- ditions ten years ago, as I do now, or I should have felt as I now do — that it is almost a crime to bring a child into this fierce competitive strife. Just think, I can't be sure that the time will not come when my child will want bread!" The wife shared his opinions. "I wouldn't have another child on any account," she said, "I only hope Laura will never find life so hard that she will reproach me for giving it to her." This uncertainty in regard to work or business success, which Americans feel for themselves -and for their children, is the result of the intensity of our national struggle for life. The United States has attained commercial supremacy and desires constantly to increase the advantage she has attained. To this end business is being more and more thoroughly organized, and in every line of work the demand is for high grade, intelligent men. The best instance we have of American industrial organization is the oil business. Ida M. Tarbell in her history of the Standard Oil u6 THE AMERICAN IDEA Company shows us that its principle is to have not a dollar of waste expenditure, not an hour of useless labor, and not a man employed who is not of supe- rior ability in his especial calling. The result is the control of the major part of the oil business of the world. All other business tends in the direction the oil industry has taken. Everywhere are wanted high- grade men for high-class work. Not only that. Men are wanted only during the very best, most active part of life, when their powers are at high water mark. The time when a man is in demand and can command the highest price for his services is short, whether he be carpenter or clergyman, engineer on an ocean steamer or editor on a big city daily. In nearly every calling by the time he has reached forty-five the young generation is crowding him hard. Nor without reason. The pace is so swift, the competition so keen, the demands upon body and brain so great, that the vitality is sapped and people are old in middle life. ' 6 With such a short working life, men naturally hesitate to assume the financial burden of a large family. Knowing the struggle is intense, and con- stantly growing in intensity, they dare not send children into it unless well prepared. Hence they have a small family and concentrate all their AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 117 energies upon fitting each one thoroughly for life. Moreover, at every turn the man without a family has the advantage. He can hold his job lightly, and feel independent; for he has only to consider himself, or at most a wife, who can in an emergency get her own living. He is freer to strike against unjust conditions. He has to sacrifice less in the present and has less to dread in the future. He can take life easier, knock around and see the world, and after all have more of what money can buy than the man of family who is working all the time. A compositor on one of the New York dailies told me he worked only three days a week all through the summer. "I don't want to break down," he said, " so I take good care of myself. I have no children so I can afford to." An electrician of about thirty-five, who is single, said: "I've used my trade to travel all over and see the country. I only have to work about half the time to live because I've no one to keep. In that way I'm always in tip-top condition and can get the best places and wages when I do work; and I'll be strong and well when the men who are at it all the time are played out." He is a very intelli- gent man with a clear understanding of social con- ditions and is acting in self-defence. He does not intend to be crushed. n8 THE AMERICAN IDEA So in every line of American life a child is an economic disadvantage. As Dr. Shrady says, "Only the poorest classes, who would not know what the word economics, so often used in discuss- ing this vexing problem, means, go ahead and have all the children that Nature sends them." As soon as they do understand something of economics they make a determined effort to leave both poverty and the large family behind them. The majority seem to be of the same opinion as the man who said he wouldn't take a million dollars apiece for the two children he had, but he wouldn't give six cents for another. The general American attitude is expressed by Rev. John Scudder, who says: "The ambition of a man of small means should be to rear two children, instead of ten as heretofore, and give his children an opportunity to taste a few of the good things of life. Let the rich have large families. They ought to have them, for they have the means to provide for them. "President Roosevelt can well afford to advo- cate a multitudinous household, for he gets a salary of $50,000 a year, besides the income from an independent fortune. I wonder how he would enjoy his own advice if he had a dozen children and was getting $2 a day. ' 7 Circumstances alter cases mightily." AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 119 In connection with the economic reasons for restricting the family, the second form of race suicide, treated in Chapter II, must be considered. We have seen that immigrants from Europe are rapidly replacing the native population of America — that the process begun by 1820, has been pro- ceeding with accelerating speed ever since, as the birthrate has declined and the immigration in- creased. The theory has been advanced by Francis A. Walker, and sustained by other sociolo- gists, that immigration is the direct cause of our low birthrate. Gen. Walker says : ' s "Space would not serve for the full statistical demonstration of the proposition that immigration during the period from 1830 to i860 instead of constituting a net re-enforcement of the population, simply resulted in a replacement of native by foreign elements; but I believe it would be prac- ticable to prove this to the satisfaction of every fair-minded man." This position is supported by Robert Hunter, who says : • » "A lower rate of increase was to be observed wherever the foreigner came. It is not a theory but a fact that the decline in the rate of increase among the native element began in those very districts to which the foreigner came in con- siderable numbers. There was to be observed a remarkable correspondence between the number i2o THE AMERICAN IDEA of immigrants arriving and the decrease in the growth of the native population." The same line of argument is advanced by Prescott F. Hall in his "Immigration." 20 There is much to sustain this theory. The com- ing to the United States of each new nationality with lower standards of living, has had a disastrous influence upon the prosperity of the particular class with which it competed. When the early Irish and Germans arrived, they accepted lower wages for unskilled labor than the American had been receiving. The American yielded his place and moved up. Later the Finn, the Hun and Slav 2 ' repeated the process, driving the Irish and German to again compete with the American in the higher grades of labor. No such economic disturbances could take place without affecting the birth rate, for nothing is more sensitive to economic conditions. Yet the weak point in this reasoning appears to lie in taking for granted that the coming of immigration was the only or chief factor in altering economic conditions. In that case the United States, which has been almost alone in receiving a tremendous immigra- tion in the past eighty years, would be the only nation to show a declining birthrate. 2 J The facts are quite otherwise. Australia, where the immi- AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 121 gration has been slight, and akin to the native population in blood, is lamenting her declining birthrate. Canada has had a race suicide prob- lem for years in districts where foreigners are practically unknown. Knowledge of preventive checks, except among the French Canadians, is almost as widespread there as in the United States. 2 3 England, which has been giving to the new world far more than she has been receiving from other lands, shows a falling birthrate. Even in Germany, famed for its fecund race, I was assured by several physicians that already women were asking their doctors how to limit the family; and a number of Germans expressed a thoroughly American approval of small families. Since the decline of the native birthrate has been coincident with the coming of immigration, it is plausible to argue that without immigration the rate of increase would have remained stationary. But as the native birthrate in the same period has fallen in other countries, uninvaded by immigra- tion, it is practically certain that the American birthrate would have lessened without immigra- tion. The great economic change that has taken place in America in the last eighty years has been its shifting from an agricultural to an industrial nation. In early American days the wealth of the nation 122 THE AMERICAN IDEA r lay in its power to produce the fruits of the earth. The wealthy men were the large land owners. The prosperous middle-class were farmers. The majority of the poor were farm servants. The city dwellers, the mechanics and tradesmen, were in the minority. Washington and Jefferson were landed proprietors, men of distinction and wealth. Franklin, in his youth, was of slight importance because through the printing business who could expect to attain money or position ? There were no factories with thronging opera- tives and clinging machinery. Instead, flannel and yarn, cotton and linen were made in the homes ot the agricultural population. When agriculture is the predominant occupation of a nation, large families follow naturally. Peo- ple who get their living from the soil, who directly consume what they produce, are removed from the fear of want so long as they have abundance of room and a favorable climate. These were the conditions in the days when the loudly lamented large family flourished in America. There was abundance of land which gave a good return for honest labor. Families were scattered, hence simple homes and clothing were perfectly satisfactory. There was not the constant emula- tion incident to city life to create or foster expensive tastes. Work done in the home gave opportunity AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 123 for profiting by the labor of the children who be- came partially self-supporting at a very early age. 2 4 All this has changed. We are becoming — have to a great extent become — an industrial nation. We no longer boast that "Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us each a farm." Instead we ask whether Uncle Sam is busy enough to give us each a job. We still have a tremendous agricultural population but manufacturing and commerce, not farming, give the tone to our nation. The successful man makes things or transports them or sells them; he does not grow them. Our popu- lation is moving from country to city. Our build- ings are growing from four stories to forty. Our working people are depending less on the soil and more on the pay envelope. This change has not come because of immigra- tion. Rather has immigration come because of the change. To some extent the same change has been taking place all over the civilized world. It has followed the invention of machinery, with its organization of industry. Only the difference is more marked in America than in Europe. Here there was more land, greater undeveloped natural wealth than in the old crowded countries of Europe. Hence the early Americans were more prolific than the friends they left behind them. i2 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA The inventive genius of America has carried her swiftly into manufacturing. To-day the agricul- tural country of less than a century ago is sending her manufactured goods into every port, and holds the commercial supremacy of the world. 2 5 Immigration comes largely in answer to these industrial opportunities. Men who till the soil in Europe come here to work in mines, mills or fac- tories. To those districts that remain agricultural the immigration is slight. In 1905 New York absorbed 31 per cent, and Pennsylvania nearly 21 per cent. But Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and twelve other Western and Southern States got 1-10 to 1-100 of 1 per cent. 2 6 The growth of factories in the South is beginning to attract immigration there, and with the devel- opment of modern commerce and industry, immi- grants will settle there in increasing numbers. When this occurs the native population will de- cline, as it has already done in our industrial States. The coming of the immigrant will be offered as a reason; but back of the immigrant is the factory system that lures him with its offer of employment and exploits him as a cheap laborer. His presence and his competition have un- doubtedly intensified the tendency to limit the family in the interests of a higher standard of living. But the large family of early days would have AMERICAN SELF-PRESERVATION 125 continued just as long as early conditions continued and no longer. In portions of the country, such as the mountain districts of the Southern States, where immigration and our modern industrial system are alike un- known, the native birthrate is still high. The old-fashioned family yet lingers. Life is simple, ambition almost unknown and the population is essentially rural, living close to Nature and taking its sustenance directly from the soil. But it is incredible that this entire nation could have remained, under any circumstances, an agricultural people and failed to join the march of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet only so could she have retained the pastoral birthrate of her earlier years. With this industrial development have come our large cities, our strenuous rush for wealth, our new standards of living, our fierce competition for success and even for work. Through it the child has become an tconomic burden and hindrance instead of a help; and the law of self-preservation dominating the law of reproduction, the large family has disappeared from the American nation. CHAPTER VI. THE LARGER WOMANHOOD. The reasons just considered are not alone in causing our low birthrate. What is perhaps the most important factor has yet to be discussed. A large part of the tendency to limit or avoid family can be traced, directly or indirectly, to another source — the changed industrial and social status of women. Sixty or seventy years ago women had a very small and unimportant part in the organized industry of the country. Harriet Martineau, in 1834, found only seven trades open to women — housework, teaching, needlework, keeping board- ers, working in cotton factories, bookbinding, and typesetting. No woman worked for money unless compelled to do so, and then she was an object of pity, to herself as well as to others. She had the most limited choice of a calling, for the trades would not give her a training, and the professional colleges closed their doors against her. Indeed, very little education of any sort was open to her. > Naturally, women owned scarcely any property. 2 Their opportunities of saving any were slight: fathers usually left the bulk of their possessions to their sons instead of to their ignorant, untrained 126 THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 127 daughters; and if a woman did acquire or inherit anything, at marriage she lost it; for it passed into the possession of her husband to dispose of exactly as he saw fit. A single woman might engage in business if she could get capital and win the confidence of a public which held the abilities of her sex in deep distrust. But to the married woman no such possibility opened. She could not make a con- tract, sue or be sued, or own property. Who could do business with a creature so irresponsible ? Even if she took employment she was not sure of having money of her own ; for her wages belonged to her husband, who could collect and spend them as he chose. ' But, though women had very little to do with money, they were by no means deprived of labor. They contributed largely to the industry of the nation, though their work was done in their separate homes. They carded wool and spun it into yarn, from which to weave cloth or knit stockings or mittens. Earlier still they spun and wove linen as well as wool. They made their own garments, from underwear to jackets, and trimmed their own hats. They baked bread, cake, and pies, made preserves and pickles, and even vinegar and wine. In short, they took all sorts of raw materials and turned them in- iz8 THE AMERICAN IDEA to finished products, ready for immediate use. This condition of affairs lasted as long as hand labor prevailed; and much of the industry of the country was carried on by women working in their separate homes. The invention of machinery wrought a change. It took the work out of the home and put it into factories. Instead of the loom in the kitchen and the spinning-wheel by the fire, came woolen mills and cloth factories. The Massachusetts report for 1902, "Sex in Industry," says; "The precise date when women entered into the factory is unknown. They were always engaged in domestic manufacture, even from the earliest settlement of the Commonwealth, making their own apparel which they could not buy from the looms of old England. In nearly every home the fulling mill and the carding mill, the spinning-wheel and the hand loom were part of the household equipment, and it was therefore natural that their entrance into industrial life should be in the manufacture of textiles. Dur- ing the War for Independence, domestic manu- facture of all kinds was carried on in the home, and after the Revolution and the establishment of native industries, Massachusetts and the other New England States were dotted with thousands of little mills and factories, in which women con- tributed their share of the labor." THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 129 The knitting machine superseded the needles. Baking became a business, and home-made bread or cake an occasional treat. Preserving and pick- ling developed into great industries, paper-hang- ing, kalsomining, carpet-making, and even carpet cleaning passed from the hands of the housewife into those of specially trained workers in each line. Every branch of industry underwent the same change. With the invention of machinery for its performance, it passed from the home to shops or factories. 3 This was inevitable. With hand tools people could work separately; machinery demanded co- operative labor. And many people working to- gether, with the aid of machinery, so improved, cheapened and increased products that the woman in the home was unable to compete with the fac- tory. This change is as yet far from complete. There are still many homes in which a variety of indus- tries are carried on, and some products are still manufactured in the very large majority of homes. We are only in a transition stage. But we have progressed far enough to understand clearly what is happening. Women in general yet learn to cook and sew, but they no longer as a rule attempt to weave or make soap. The industries of the home are constantly narrowing and the knowl- 130 THE AMERICAN IDEA edge essential to housekeeping becoming less. More things are purchased ready for use, and in the cities a home can be enjoyed without a single article of food, clothing, or house-furnishing being prepared there. The supply of every sort of necessity, comfort, or luxury, including service, has been organized, wholly or partially, into a regular line of business, and can be obtained from those who make a speciality of it. 4 And that is the direction toward which we are tending. The home as a manufacturing center is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, because its social usefulness in that capacity has ceased. Just as machinery has taken the making of shoes, hats, watches, furniture, and pencils from separate men, so it is taking from women their age-long domestic industries and all work, regard- less of previous ownership, is becoming social. This increase in social labor created a demand for more workers, and the decrease in domestic industry left many women idle. The natural result was a movement of women out of the homes into the business and professional world. Deprived, by the action of great social changes, of their former industries, they followed where their work had gone — into factory, shop, and mill. 5 To-day, women are a very important factor THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 131 in our industrial life. The census of 1900 shows that over five and a quarter million women are engaged in gainful occupations, and less than twenty-four million men. Thus already about one-sixth of our workers are women, and their numbers are steadily increasing. The Massachusetts report "Sex in Industry" says: "The first definite attempt at presenting separately the number of males and females employed in gainful occupations was made in 1870, and the returns indicated that out of a total of 579,844 persons, 451,543, or 77.87 per cent., were males, and 128,301, or 22.13 per. cent., were females. From 1870 to 1900 the number of males employed in gainful occupations increased 427,915, or 94.77 per cent., and the number of females, 200,732, or 156.45 per cent. The in- crease in total male population since 1870 was 94.30 per cent., and the increase during the same period in the total female population was 90.81 per cent. Males have, therefore, only held their own in gainful occupations as compared with the total male population, while the number of females in gainful occupations shows a percent- age of increase far in excess of the gain shown for total female population. That females are succeeding males in certain gainful occupations is apparent, for while in 1870 they constituted i 3 2 THE AMERICAN IDEA twenty-two out of every hundred persons em- ployed, in 1900 they constituted twenty-seven in every one hundred persons." Women have entered almost every calling, with the exception of the army and navy service. There are among them doctors, lawyers, college professors, and even ministers by the thousand, saleswomen, cotton-mill operatives, farm labor- ers, laundresses, teachers, and domestic servants are found by hundreds of thousands in each pro- fession. Even the more uncommon callings are well represented. There are 946 commercial travelers, 261 wholesale merchants, 1,271 officials of banks, 100 lumbermen, 113 woodchoppers, 84 civil engineers and suryeyors, 1,932 stock raisers, 143 marble cutters, 595 harness makers, 193 blacksmiths, and 378 butchers. There are even 10 wheelwrights, 8 steam boilermakers, 2 roofers and slaters, 1 well-borer, and a licensed pilot on the Mississippi. The majority of our wage-earning and busi- ness women are single, but many of them are married. Statistics on this point are very defi- cient, but Massachusetts reports 88 per cent, single and 12 per cent, married among her women workers. 6 This does not, however, include a large number of women who earn money in the intervals of doing their housework. THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 133 The married women who now work, unlike the women of the past, can in most cases own the money they make; for in only sixteen States has a man still the right to collect his wife's wages, and in only eight does he own and control his wife's property. Naturally, with such improved opportunities, women have become property owners to a very large extent. Some women have acquired im- mense fortunes. Hetty Green, it is said, can stand in City Hall Square, New York, and see around her property of her own to the value of five million dollars. This and a great deal more she has made, as much as any one makes such fortunes. At least, she is not indebted to her husband for it. Almost every paper we pick up tells of the success of women in some line of work or busi- ness. ' One woman is making $6,000 a year from an ostrich farm; another $3,000 by growing violets. A Western woman raises animals for menageries; an Eastern one designs unique and attractive advertisements. In one issue of a Chicago weekly paper, s recording industrial pro- gress, regardless of sex, I found reports of the success or enterprise of seventy-six different women. In addition there were a great many such items as these: "At the recent competi- 134 THE AMERICAN IDEA tive examinations in Washington more than 77 per cent, of the women passed against 62 per cent, of the men." "The women of Kansas have come to the res- cue of the wheat crop. Hundreds of them, all over the State, have donned short skirts or over- alls and gone into the fields. Many of the girls are college bred, being home on their summer vacations from the State University." "There are thousands of women holding office in this country. The Governor of Colorado has appointed an entire State Traveling Library Commission of Women. Officeholding is not con- fined, however, to the equal suffrage States." But the enumeration of the women actually engaged in gainful occupations by no means comprises all who are familiar with the business world and competent to fill a place in it. A large number of women who earn their own liv- ing give up their occupation when they marry. I have been unable to obtain figures in regard to this class, but it is safe to say it is very large. Possibly one-third of the women of America under forty, and many older, either are earning money now or have done so at some period of their lives. They are thus familiar with an experience unknown to their grandmothers. Moreover, those who have never had any per- THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 135 sonal connection with the industrial world know that it is open to them and that if necessary, they can enter it. It is always an alternative in their lives. Thus self-supporting occupation outside of the home, from being almost unknown to women has become a reality to many, and a pos- sibility to all. Neither can the decline of women's former activities be accurately gauged by enumerating the women engaged in industrial pursuits. There are a large number of women who are neither doing housework nor engaged in business. They are those whose housework has shrunken to almost nothing or entirely disappeared, who yet have not taken up other occupation. Modern conveniences or methods of living have brought into existence a numerous class of women who are without work of any discription. It is customary to speak of the money-making woman as "new" because she is a product of recent industrial conditions. An equally "new" woman, a person almost unknown to our grand- mothers, is the idle wife who makes no pretence of activity of any sort. Such women formerly existed only among the wealthy classes of nations, and scarcely were found a hundred years ago in America. Now they throng our city hotels and apartment houses 136 THE AMERICAN IDEA and are so numerous as to form a distinct class. They are scarcely noticed because the divid- ing line between them and the housekeeping woman is not clearly denned in the public mind. Yet they are numerous and rapidly growing. No consideration of the industrial condition and future of women would be complete which left them out of consideration. Indeed, the indus- trial conditions tend to produce this class of women in almost as great numbers as they do the woman in business life. Industrially, American women were formerly all in one class — housekeepers. Now they belong to three divisions: 1. Those actively employed in their homes. 2. Those idle in their homes. 3. Those engaged in gainful occupations. The first class is representative of what sur- vives of old industrial conditions. The two last have been created by the invention of machinery and the decline in domestic industry. The first is decreasing, the other two are constantly in- creasing. Not only has the industrial position of women changed within two generations. They have also gained an important place in our social institutions. Not only is every line of education open to them, they have in large numbers become THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 137 educators. The big majority of our public school teachers are women, as are many of the high school teachers; and many of our colleges and professional schools have women professors. Politics is still to a great extent barred against woman, but four States of the Union give hei full suffrage, and in the majority she has some measure of political power. The laws show the effect of her growing influence in the rapid changes they have undergone. The tendency is all toward increased suffrage and more liberal laws for women. The Church has modified its attitude. Very little is heard of womanly obedience. The Gene- sis curse is not mentioned; but instead we have the "glory of motherhood." Some denomina- tions have women deacons, delegates, and mis- sionaries, and a few admit women to the pulpit. Aside from all these steps, women have created new social forces of their own. The W. C. T. U. begun by a handful of women in 1873, has reached a membership of nearly half a million, and has extended its work to every State and Territory of the Union and to over fifty-eight other coun- tries. Through this organization women have molded public opinion and affected legislation in a number of different lines. » In addition to educational and legislative work 138 THE AMERICAN IDEA for temperance, the W. C. T. U. does reforma- tory work among prisoners and in almshouses. It establishes kindergartens and school savings banks, and finds houses for unprotected children. It does rescue work among women, and has homes for the protection of working girls alone in cities. These are only a few of the activities of this great organization, composed entirely of women. The Woman Suffrage Association has almost revolutionized the legal status of women. When agitation was commenced in 1848 American women were still under the domination of the old common law which had been transplanted bodily from England at the time of the Revolution. This code was based upon the idea of the owner- ship of the wife by the husband. The provis- ions of its laws bore out Blackstone's summing up, "the married woman has no existence in law." Property, wages, home, children — even the body and the clothing of the wife, were the absolute possessions of the husband. Not so much as a grave belonged to her. By persistent and systematic work, women, organized into the Suffrage Association, have changed the general attitude of the law towards their sex, and have so educated public sentiment that all new legislation brings women nearer to THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 139 equality with men. Much of the old law still remains, in many States, but it is steadily giving way to more enlightened legislation. Suffrage, and the right to hold office have been gained either partially or fully in the majority of States. Similar work has been done in other countries. The Woman's Club movement, which orig- inated with Sorosis in 1868, now extends all over the Union and into many foreign countries. Begun as a literary and artistic movement it has extended its scope until it has become a powerful social force. In many towns and cities the women's clubs are active in municipal reform; everywhere the Federated Clubs are making a strenuous fight against child labor. The International Council of Women, with its National Councils in over twenty countries, shows the growth of women's ideas and powers. It is a strong organization, founded in this coun- try in 1888, and designed to bring the women of the world into association and understanding of one another. There are a number of women's colleges, such as Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley. There are college and social settlements of women for work among the poor of the cities. There are work- ing women's clubs to increase the social and educational opportunities of young women. And i 4 o THE AMERICAN IDEA there are trade unions composed entirely of women. Women have, even, political clubs, representing the different parties, in the States where they have not yet suffrage on an equal basis with men. » ° With the alteration in the industrial and social status of woman has come a corresponding change in public sentiment in regard to her. It was formerly the firm conviction , of every- body that a woman's place, and her only place, was in the home. Proverbs, romance, poetry, and religion united in extolling the woman who found all her interest and bestowed all her care, work and thought within the four walls of her home. It was her world, and unwomanly was she who sought anything outside of it. To work for wages was a misfortune — almost a disgrace. To attempt to enter any of the trades or professions outside of the limited number allowed to women, was unfeminine. To acquire education, or to have opinions on public affairs was to be branded masculine. To speak in pub- lic or to seek political pov/er was to become almost a social outcast. The uneventful lives of the women of the nation were left unchronicled; they were of little public interest. The files of old newspapers show how slight was the attention given to them. They THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 141 were lectured and preached to, but they must not think of replying. They were advised, and rules of conduct were laid down for them, but they were never asked for any advice. And women accepted this sentiment, and by their acceptance helped to maintain it. They seldom left home, for the best of reasons. Busi- ness tied them there just as surely as it ties a stockbroker to his office. They had a thousand interests there and none outside. Public senti- ment had a basis of right in holding that the place for women was in the home; for a large part of the indispensable work of the world would have been left undone had women neglected their ceaseless round of domestic activity. To-day the advocates of a limited "sphere" for woman receive rather an impatient hearing. Even the most conservative of them have so modified their doctrine as to allow various out- side interests, provided domestic duties are always given first and overwhelming preference. Some social interest such as a club or W. C. T. U. membership, or at least a missionary society, is usually admitted permissible, and often no objec- tion is raised to the most devoted housewife turning an honest penny in her spare time. For instance, she may do dressmaking or give music lessons in the intervals of housework. 142 THE AMERICAN IDEA It is even generally acknowledged that she may, under stress of necessity, enter the industrial world without prejudice to her femininity. The most domestic housewife incurs no disgrace if, having a sick husband or being left a widow, she work for bread. The change in public sentiment in regard to married women working is indicated by the fol- lowing editorial from the New York World, a paper very conservative in regard to all questions regarding home life. It refers to a postal regu- lation of three years since and its effects. "From Postal Reform, Divorce. "The Postmaster-General's order forbidding man and wife to hold clerkships in his depart- ment has produced its first fruits. A woman clerk, drawing $1,400 a year, announces that she and her husband, who draws $1,800, have decided to part. 'He has always spent his salary,' she says, 'and I have spent mine.' Neither cares to spend less. So Mr. Payne's 'reform' brings forth divorce. "Of course it is easy for strict constructionists to argue that a pair so easily parted are better parted, though it must even be admitted that a cutting of the family receipts almost in half is no small consideration. But the fact remains, as the World has previously intimated, that the anti- THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 143 marriage order is of more than doubtful wisdom. "Marriage does not rob a woman of the right still to be a wage-earner under approved condi- tions. Many wives are justly proud of the abil- ity to maintain their own resources and even con- tribute to the household fund. Government is in petty business when it interferes with any of these. It is in perilous business when by any of its acts it inclines to the discouragement of wed- lock and the encouragement of vicious substi- tutes for home life. "There is only one form of logic which upholds the Postmaster-General. That is the logic of the spoilsmen. The more wives out of office the more chance to reach such civil-service eli- gibles as have votes." A few years ago the married woman wishing to hold her business position would have been unreservedly blamed by any newspaper in the land. To the single woman the way is clear. We are more apt to hear homilies on the necessity of fit- ting every girl to earn her living than any expres- sion of the reverse opinion. As for entering unusual professions or invent- ing new ways of making money, the woman who does either covers herself with glory and finds fame as well as fortune for her reward. i 4 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA So far from woman being buried in the seclu- sion of home and nothing being heard about her, she now lives in the glare of publicity. The news of the day is full of her and her doings all the time. Women are of great public interest, and news of them as eagerly sought and as widely published as news about men. Neither have these startling changes in the industrial and social status of woman been wrought without producing an equally radical alteration in her personality. Under the old regime humil- ity, self-sacrifice, and obedience were assiduously cultivated as the highest of womanly virtues. "Strong-minded," "independent," "determined," were adjectives of reproach avoided by every self- respecting woman. Indeed, a woman was never "determined," she was only "wilful," for to have a will and follow it, in itself marked her as in the wrong. Even forceful women cultivated submission to their husbands as a matter of conscience, and those who defied such authority brought scandal on themselves and dishonor on their "lords and masters." But the woman of to-day, in her altered environ- ment, is a changed person. She is independent, forceful, capable, and far from humble. ' » Obe- dience is farthest from her thoughts. Civil mar- THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 145 riage ceremonies rarely contain the word "obey"; some of the churches 1 2 have dropped it; when it is uttered it is either regarded as a joke or explained as a desire to please, prompted by love — something which would be equally applicable to the husband. Self-sacrifice, formerly a cardinal womanly virtue, is no longer in high favor. Self-develop- ment is rapidly taking its place. That women without money, education, legal status, social influence, or political power should sacrifice themselves to the needs, pleasures, or advancement of men having all those advan- tages seemed logical. That intelligent, educated women with independent business interests, the control of vast social forces, and a great and growing share in the concerns of our national life should accept a creed of self-obliteration is less reasonable or probable. The modern American woman has imbibed a new doctrine, that of freedom 13 and happiness. She does not believe that she should be submis- sive, that her life should be hedged with limita- tions, or that she is foredoomed to suffer for the sins of others. Foreigners » 4 coming to this country are never known to comment upon the American woman as clinging, timid, humble, dependent, submis- 146 THE AMERICAN IDEA sive, self-sacrificing, without confidence in her abilities or inclination to protect her rights and convinced of the superiority of man. On the contrary, she is always remarked for her self-reliance, force, freedom, intelligence and capacity. She is intent upon being herself — • not the pale reflection of some one else, and upon developing the possibilities of life to the utmost. She has great self-respect, and commands the respect of others. Naturally, women sustaining such altered rela- tions to society and so changed in character hold a different relation to men. The sexes are more on a parity. Their lives are more closely asso- ciated, they have more in common and they understand one another as never before. Women to-day are not something apart from the national life, a sort of annex to the race, kept entirely for domestic service and reproduction; they are becoming people, half the nation, and growing to be considered and respected as such. Their opinions upon public questions are not ignored. Their ideas in business, law, medicine, or education are not despised, for their share of the national activities and responsibilities claims recognition and respect. A natural accomplishment of woman's inferior share in the industrial and social institutions of THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 147 the nation was her subordinate position in the home. She was not living in a world where her wishes were accorded much consideration. Relig- ion, education, politics, and business were in the hands of men who gave to the other sex such quantity and quality of each as seemed to them fitting. Similarly, the home, though called woman's world and especial "sphere" was by no means under her control. The husband and father was the head of the family — and that was no figure of speech. Wives, when they married, promised to "obey" and expected to do so. Religion impressed upon women Paul's injunc- tion, "Wives obey your husbands," and repeated to them the curse of Genesis — "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sor- row thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Education enlightened the husband but left the wife ignorant, and therefore inferior, and dis- trustful of herself. Politics planned for men and passed laws that left women at a hopeless disadvantage in every respect. Business bought and sold, trafficked and trans- ferred, but always its golden stream of wealth 148 THE AMERICAN IDEA was diverted from the hands of women to the pockets of their husbands or fathers. The husband was taught by the Church that his was the right to rule; the law supported his authority; his education and experience in the world gave him superior intelligence; and he held the purse. It was inevitable that he should dictate to the ill-taught, penniless wife whom Church and State combined to put under his control. His was the governing will and obed- ience was considered a wifely virtue. In recent years the old relationship of owner and owned is giving place to one of equality and comradeship. Man does not marry with the idea of securing a patient, gentle chattel with enough intelligence to work for him, wait on him, and minister to his physical desires. He seeks a friend, a companion, a comrade, a woman of independent personality, who will be congenial in her tastes and habits but who will live a life of her own, not be absorbed in and lost in his. Husbands are proud of wives who succeed in the business, professional, artistic, literary, or dramatic world; who attain positions of promi- nence in philanthropic, educational, or reform organizations; or who are possessed of any special ability or knowledge. Formerly marriage was all-important to a THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 149 woman and of secondary interest to a man. The stories all ended with the wedding of the heroine, for that was the settling of her career. She was merged in her husband and no more was heard from or expected of her. Meanwhile, the man pursued the even tenor of his way, his marriage being only a more or less important incident. But the growth of women's interests outside of marriage has increased the importance of mar- riage to men. The more developed woman of to-day touches her husband's nature at more points, and fills a larger place in his life. He discusses public affairs with her, confides in her the details of his business, asks her opin- ion, and frequently follows her advice. In mat- ters of common interest her wishes carry equal weight with his. In short, the American wife holds a position in the respect as well as the affection of her hus- band that makes of the American man a pro- verbial matrimonial prize. Of course, all women are not free, respected, and happy. There are wives to-day who are bullied and bossed, treated with contempt, beaten and even murdered. But, on the other hand, there are cases where, so far from the wife obey- ing, the opposite extreme is at least approached. There are men who, instead of asking self-sac- 150 THE AMERICAN IDEA rifice of their wives, yield it in fullest measure — • men who make a fetish of their wives' wishes and work ceaselessly and uncomplainingly to gratify even their whims. So, too, under old conditions, though women, as a whole, were in a position of subordination, there were always some strong, forceful ones who, whatever their status under the law, made their power felt. When men had a legal right to beat their wives few actually availed themselves of the privilege, and a minority of women would have submitted to any such extreme expression of authority. But in general there has come a great change in the relations of husband and wife. The hus- band recognizes the wife as a person with tastes, desires, ambitions, and interests of her own, and acknowledges her right to their development and gratification. He considers her as a human being, analagous to himself. Formerly he thought her quite different and could see no essential connection between his nature and hers. He wanted freedom, indepen- dence, his own interests, money, and the pursuit of happiness in his own special way. But if his wife expressed such desires he was dazed. Why should she wish such things ? She was a woman — > therefore different. THE LARGER WOMANHOOD 151 Now, because he would like to do one thing or objects to do another appears to him a valid reason why his wife might have similar wishes. Repeatedly men say, "I don't want my wife to do that. I shouldn't like to do it myself." Naturally, with such relations existing between husband and wife, the wife has a great deal to say about the size of the family. It has become a matter that can be regulated, and she has the principal voice in its regulation. Therefore, any discussion of the population question must take into full account women's views. Women, so far from being ignored, sub- mitting to men, or leaving the matter to nature, are deliberately controling the birthrate. Under old social conditions women unques- tioningly had large families. Under the present conditions they are purposely having few chil- dren. This indicates that there must be some advantage to them in childlessness. Self-pres- ervation must in some especial way interfere with the law of reproduction. If they are more anxious than men to avoid family they must have much greater reasons, for their tendency to reproduction is more powerful. Why are women ceasing to have children ? CHAPTER VII. The Price of Motherhood. Women share with men the tendency to limit family in order to maintain a high standard of liv- ing and increase the advantages to be given to each child, so that ground need not be gone over again. Aside from that, the reasons they give are many, but they can be summed up under two heads. Women are having fewer children because they wish: 1 . To avoid suffering. 2. To be free. To avoid suffering is a new idea to women. All living things instinctively recoil from pain, but women were formerly dnlled in the idea that pain was their allotted portion in life, which they might not hope to escape. Especially was this the general sentiment in regard to the sufferings of childbirth. Many children and much pain comprised the curse which an offended God put upon Eve when she sought knowledge. "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." > The first woman who resorted to artificial 152 THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 153 means to deaden the pangs of childbirth was burned alive in 159 1 in Edinburgh because she was thwarting the will of the Lord. 2 After anesthetics came into general use for other cases they were not given in confinement, and there are old-fashioned physicians still practicing who are reluctant to adminster them in such cases. • There is an idea, once universal and yet com- mon, that women have greater power of enduring pain than men because they are destined to suffer so much of it. I heard an old lady whose granddaughter com- plained of backache remark reprovingly: "My dear, you should not say anything about it. Women's backs are made to ache." A mother who had several sons and no daughter said: "I'm glad my children are all boys because there is bound to be such a lot of pain in a woman's life and a man may get through without any." In remote districts the old sentiment is still found. In a far away corner of Michigan I met, several years ago, a woman who had borne five children through the most intense agony and at the risk of her life. I asked her why she continued to have family under such conditions. She looked amazed and said : " I'm not wanting any more, but I have to take my chances the same as othe r women. That's the luck of being a woman. Only 154 THE AMERICAN IDEA my luck's worse than most." I afterwards heard of her death in confinement. Another woman in one of the Western States died with her eighth child. Her sister told me that in every confinement her sufferings had been beyond description and each time the doctor thought she could not recover. Yet in the end no one in the family seemed to think the result might have been avoided. It is often thought, too, that suffering for a child is Nature's way of increasing mother-love. Dr. Emmet Densmore says: 4 "Many otherwise in- telligent persons do not blush to avow their belief that these miseries are really essential to the love of offspring — that women would have little or no regard for their young did they not suffer in giving them birth. That a woman should suffer severely at such a time is spoken of as a wise and inevitable law of Nature, and those who escape with the least amount of danger are taunted with being most analogous with the beasts." Thus have women been taught to consider their sufferings as their destined fate, and thought any shrinking from them sinful and unnatural. Their part was to accept all the pain that came and bear it bravely. To make any outcry was a disgraceful sign of weakness. One motive for such stoicism, formerly common, was to save the husband incon- THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 155 venience. He must not be bothered with such purely feminine troubles. His wife was simply performing her duty; the incidental suffering was only natural, so what was there about it to concern him ? ' He either accepted the matter as stoically as the wife — an easier task — or if he felt distressed absented himself from home. A man in a small Indiana town, whose wife has five children makes a point of taking a business trip whenever a confinement is due. He says it would make him feel bad to be around when she was suffering. Her sister told me that it was pitiful to hear the wife in her agony calling " Joe ! Joe ! Oh, my husband, if you were only here!" But Joe's sensitive nerves could not stand the strain! Several years ago I spent a summer in a remote country district where old ideas and relations held full sway. There I found that women, although subject to their husbands to a degree almost un- believable, were blamed for every undesired in- crease of family. One mother of ten children told me, quite proudly, that her husband had never once said anything unkind to her, in spite of her numerous family. "Why should he ?" I inquired. "Weren't they his children ?" "Oh, well," she explained, "most men get mad if there's too many children. Jim Taylor raises a 156 THE AMERICAN IDEA fearful row every time there's another young one comes." 6 But in general the attitude of women and men have changed. Women no longer accept the idea that it is a religious duty to suffer; they are ques- tioning whether it is a decree of Nature and in any case they are refusing to submit to torture on either ground. » Men, too, are unwilling their wives should bear an amount of pain they themselves would consider unendurable, and are ready to make any sacrifice to save the women they love from agony. A doctor who has been practicing in New York for twenty years, and whose patients are principally women in comfortable circumstances said: "I find the chief reason for small families is the shrinking of women from pain and the unwillingness of men to see their wives suffer. Women recoil from suf- fering as they used not. Once they thought it was their lot in life and that it was a sin to avoid it. Husbands, too, formerly looked upon wives as merely meant for child-bearing and had no sym- pathy for them. Now there is a sense of comrade- ship between them. Men think of their wives as they do of themselves and realize that pain is pain, no matter what your sex. They are unwilling to have families at such a price, in pain, to their wives. I have a patient, the wife of a physician, who suf- THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 157 fered severely with her first child. She said she couldn't endure that torture again and he said he wouldn't on any account want that she should. They both want another child, but never will have one because of her. "When you see an only child in a well-to-do family it can generally be explained in that way. Most people prefer two children, but the first birth is all the wife will endure or the husband consent to for her." A number of doctors give these reasons for the small family among people who can well afford children. One physician said: "I'd like more children — we have only one — but my wife had a very hard time and I can't see her suffer like that again. It's bad enough for me to attend other women through such suffering. Men don't feel as they did when I started practicing twenty years ago. Then it was a matter of course, and the majority of husbands didn't know what it meant either. Now it is a common thing for the husband to be present, and when he sees what his wife has to go through he's satisfied to have no more family." Altogether, the indications are numerous that the suffering at present usually incident to child- bearing is having a decided effect in limiting popu- lation. Women are determined to avoid it, and 158 THE AMERICAN IDEA their husbands s are in sympathy with this deter- mination. But stronger in the American woman than the dread of physical pain is the desire for freedom and all it carries in its train — the opportunity for independence, self-development, a life of her own, and a full human share in the life of the world or for self-indulgence, ease, pleasure and idleness. Whichever the life desired the first step toward its attainment is liberty. The idea that women should be free is a new one ■ — new to themselves as well as to men. We still hear expressed admiration of obedience, humility and subjection in women, though present day con- ditions make such utterances absurd. But under former industrial and social condi- tions it was impossible for women to ever attain freedom. The basis of their subordination lay not in laws, for they change with changing public opinion; not in the commands of religion, for they progress as the sense of morality in the people rises; but in the conditions under which women worked and lived. Women were not formerly relegated to the background and generally disregarded because they were not useful. They worked as hard if not harder than women work to-day, and the products of their toil were not only useful but necessary THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 159 to the comfort and well-being of the nation. But their work rather enslaved than gave them freedom, because: First, they worked alone or in smalL groups; Second, the profit of their labor was not theirs; and Third, they could not change their employers at will. No workers in such conditions can ever be free. When people work for strangers under such cir- cumstances it is called slavery. The addition of family affection is powerless to transform it into freedom. The most important of these three disadvant- ages was that of working alone. Associated workers, with common grievances, will combine to right their wrongs. The isolated worker is powerless. Among the most defenceless classes to-day we find the farm laborers and the domestic servants. These work alone or in small groups, immediately associated with their employers. They are without regular hours of labor or a scale of wages. The same thing is true of book-keepers, office clerks and typewriters. The well-organized trades, with short hours of labor, good wages and definite duties, are those in which many people work together, not in per- sonal contact with the employer, and with oppor- tunities to consult and co-operate. That association is an all-important element 160 THE AMERICAN IDEA in gaining freedom is shown by the fact that house servants, though as a rule helpless, when employed in large numbers, combine in protest against common grievances. In one Newport house, which employs over sixty servants, the entire force struck against too long hours of labor. Waiters when in hotels or restaurants have unions, and act together, as they recently did in Chicago. If women had worked together, instead of in separate homes, they would not have sub- mitted to the limitations they accepted as their natural lot. Not to own and control the profit of their labor was a circumstance that kept women in helpless dependence. No one can be free and get a living by favor. » To paraphrase Shakespeare," You own my life when you do own the means whereby I live." The power of the purse carries all other power in its train. As long as women work and men own the product of the work, women cannot be free. This is true whether women work in the home without any right to the wealth they create, or outside the home and the husbands are em- powered to collect their wages. Not to be able to change one's employer is almost as great a disadvantage as to have no right to one's earnings. It is hard to make terms with a mar who knows you cannot leave your job. Five hun- THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 161 dred years ago in England men began to fight for the right to go where they pleased in search of work. • ° Upon this right depends much of the freedom of all workers. Yet under the system of domestic labor it was denied women. Each woman's labor market was bounded by her family circle. Nor were women anxious for freedom. Their shut-in, dependent, limited existence did not sug- gest the idea. Moreover, a deadening influence upon them was the uniformity of their lives. No effort was made to develop their indiviudal tastes or to find out for what each one was adapted. They were cut off by a sex line and their fate de- termined by birth. Of a boy parents would won- der: "Will he be a doctor, a merchant or a me- chanic ?" Of a girl there was no question. She would, of course, be a housekeeper; her sex pro- claimed her occupation. This molding process rounded off every corner of individuality, and crushed thought and enter- prise. Here and there some woman, stronger than common, revolted, but the pressure of public opinion crushed her. American women are proverbially free. Ameri- can girls grow up in an atmosphere of freedom. They share the education of their brothers and find their own abilities as great and often greater. 1 6z THE AMERICAN IDEA Womanhood brings to them practically all the opportunities it does to men. They can choose any calling they wish and find themselves unham- pered in its pursuit, and in possession of their own incomes. They can travel alone without criticism, and they are prized and deferred to in their homes. The American daughter is not, what girls once were, an inferior substitute for a son; she is more generally the family idol. Her preparation for life differs in many ways from that given her grandmother. Girls used all to be trained for domestic labor, which they were to attain through marriage. Now they are trained for the three industrial classes into which women are divided: housekeepers, wage-earners and idlers. It is still the ambition of many parents to make of their daughters first-class housekeepers, which means that they shall be taught to perform what remains of domestic labor. Others prepare their girls for self-support and encourage them in the selection of suitable pursuits. A third class allow their daughters to grow up in idleness, taking pleasure their object in life. They are taught neither to keep house nor to earn their own livings. These classes do not always find the future for which they were prepared. The wage-earning THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 163 girl may, upon marriage, become a housekeeper. The housekeeper or idler may become an orphan or a widow and enter the industrial world. Any one of the three may make a wealthy marriage and work no more. To countless American women, to attain the last is to grasp the highest good. But, though individuals step continually from one class to another, the three classes remain, and they all want freedom, though their understanding and use of it differs. But conditions have changed. The wage- earners, who include business and professional women, do not suffer the disabilities of the former domestic woman. They are part of the world, working in constant association with others; they own the money they earn, and they change their employer if they think it advantageous. Then, too, they follow all sorts of trades and callings. Their varied lives accentuate the diversities of their natures. They may choose what work they wish and make a change if they think advisable. They are also free to travel, or to use the streets of our cities night or day, alone. When women all worked at home they were supposed to have no business outside and could only go abroad under the protection of some man, whose presence de- fended them against the suspicions or insults of the rest. But the woman in business has changed 164 THE AMERICAN IDEA this. A doctor, a nurse, a reporter may be called upon to be in any quarter of a city at any hour. A foreign buyer of merchandise, an agent for real estate in different cities or a commercial traveller cannot be accompanied by an escort. Neither can such women be freely insulted. They do not burst into tears and gaze helplessly around for some less evilly disposed man and pit the two against one another. They are able to protect themselves. Sometimes they carry arms, or call upon the police. Frequently we read of some athletic woman who knocks an impertinent man down and administers instant and strenuous punishment. Naturally such a woman is respected and let alone. And for her sake other women are re- spected. The freedom she has won belongs not alone to her class, but to all women who know how to conduct themselves as if they had business, whether they have or not. The freedom of the wage-earning woman the self-reliance she has developed and the respect she commands are reflected in the lives of all other women. The housekeeper reasons that if in open market her labor would have money value it must also be worth something in the home. Often she has earned her living before marriage and she cannot be persuaded that the girl who was THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 165 worth $10, $ 1 5, or $25 a week in an office is worth nothing in a home. Therefore she takes her living as a right, not a favor, and believes herself fully entitled to her share of the family income. If deprived of it or given money grudgingly she is indignant and feels injured — she is a woman with a grievance. ' ' Even the idle woman, who does nothing at all, either in the home or out of it, the woman who boards or is waited upon by servants, has an ele- vated opinion of herself because women in general are more respected. She sees other women with money and she insists upon having it, too. Form- erly women were not expected to have money, even when they worked. Now they expect it whether they work or not. So long have work and money been disassociated in their minds that they have as yet no general realization that the two should be inseparable. Not that women are alone in this confusion of ideas, for wealthy idleness and ill-paid labor are confined to neither sex. But, owing to the experience of past centuries, work and wages are even less clearly related in the minds of woman than of men. Not only are women largely freed from the sense of monetary obligation to men, either earning their support or taking it as a right, not a favor, but they 166 THE AMERICAN IDEA have developed great liberty of action. Home is no longer their world. The business woman is perforce away from home most of the time. The housekeeper, instead of thinking it her duty to limit her interests to her household, plans her work so as to include outside activities such as clubs, charities or reform or educational work. Sometimes the idle woman also takes an interest in club or social work. More often she seeks diversion in a round of amusements — teas, lunch- eons, parties, and theatres and visits varied by shopping and attendance at the dressmakers or the milliners. The result is that all classes of American women are less in their homes, follow their own inclina- tions more, know the world better and in every way have larger, freer lives than formerly. Into this life of freedom children come as a disturbing element. They interrupt the mother's activities outside the home and limit her work to its four walls. A woman with a large family, unless she can spend money very freely for service is almost as much tied at home as ever her grand- mother was. On a small income, and with Amer- ican ideas of comfort, she is busy from morning till night contriving and managing so as make one dollar do the work of two or even three. THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 167 Thus, wrapped in domestic problems, her inter- ests limited to the few rooms to which her daily work confines her, she rapidly loses touch with the outside world. It is impossible for her to share its life, therefore it ceases to be real to her. Even with plenty of money, the mother of a large family must give nearly all her time and thought to it, because people competent to care for children are scarcely to be had at any price. The ordinary nurse is simply a variety of the domestic servant, an uncultured woman with neither aptitude nor training to fit her for the delicate task of rearing children. The mother who has an intelligent perception of the shortcomings of the ordinary nurse, and any sense of responsibility concerning her children, will, whatever her natural bent, spend herself in an effort to give them proper training. Absorbed in family cares, worn with child-bear- ing, weary from that loss of sleep which commonly accompanies the care of babies, her mind con- stantly dwelling upon a multitude of details, petty yet important, her hands forever busy, it is not wonderful that the mother of many children loses track of matters of public interest, has no time for recent books, neglects her music and is unable to share her husband's life as she did before the advent of the children. A few generations back a large family made no 1 68 THE AMERICAN IDEA radical change in a woman's life. She had to stay at home in any case; all her work was there and there was no place for her outside. She went on with her former activities and cared for the children in the intervals of housekeeping. She had to give up little; she had no outside interests to relinquish, no education to get rusty, no music to neglect and she never had been in any full sense her hus- band's companion. But the modern woman knows what she is miss- ing. She hashad liberty, and she is unhappy when her freedom is curtailed. She may even acquiesce with a good grace, yet none the less her nature chafes at the unaccustomed bonds. She is quick to advise other women not to get into the same position, and the other women are equally quick to take the warning. All this is true, though to a less extent, of the mother of a small family; the differences being those of degree rather than condition. Even one child is recognized as a handicap to liberty. To have no children means, to the majority of women, freedom. A childless woman meets at every turn the comment: "Of course you can do as you like, you have no children." On the other hand, mothers continually express the desire to go here or there, do this or that, or in some way to modify their lives, and end with THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 169 " but you see on account of the children it is simply impossible." A doctor who is a specialist in gynecology and has a practice among middle-class women said: " Every child means a division of the income and an increase of care to the mother. It shuts her in and makes her life more lonely in every way. Women are used to liberty now and they will not willingly give it up." A newspaper writer, ■ 2 discussing the tendency to small families, after speaking of the economic side of the question, adds: "Woman's enlarged sphere of action and wider range of thought have had their influence. Woman has grown much more rapidly than man in the last fifty years. She thinks, reasons, compares and analyzes as she did not do in the times of our grandmothers. She remembers, too, how her own mother was left to worry through the cares of maternity with small assistance or sympathy from the father. "Motherhood was supposed to be woman's sphere, and its joys were to compensate for its pains and cares and losses. Fatherhood took the financial burden, and motherhood bore the rest. "The modern woman does not see that man has changed his ideas materially on the subject unless it is to feel less responsible for the financial part of the undertaking. 170 THE AMERICAN IDEA "She does not think him any more willing to sacrifice time, comfort or pleasure for the joys of paternity than his predecessors were, while she is in no sense as willing to bear the loneliness and anxieties and cares of motherhood year after year, as were her mother and grandmother. She pre- fers the companionship of her husband, the enjoy- ment of the present and the distractions of the hour." So strong is this influence that even the foreign women coming into the country feel it. A physi- cian, who has been in this country for a dozen years, but practices largely among German and Russian people, said: "With women the limiting of the family is a question of the larger life. In Europe their minds are atrophied or asleep. When they get to this country they get out and hear something new. They attend lectures and meetings and begin to think. It is a new experi- ence, a great pleasure, and makes a new life. But they find a baby ties them at home and shuts them off from all this. It does not take them long to decide that there must be no more babies. Not only do our second generation of foreigners follow the American custom, but those who come over with the exception of the lowest type to whom brain activity is unknown, also cease to have children." THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 171 A serious phase of the question is the lessening of the companionship of husband and wife, which ensues upon the curtailing of the wife's liberty. In former times marriage was not expected to be a comradeship. The wife was to be a housekeeper, the mother of the family but not in any sense her husband's mental equal. Now, men and women meet as companions are attracted not only by physical charm but by con- geniality of mental tastes, and they marry upon that basis. If children come the wife cannot share her husband's pleasures, attend theatres, lectures or concerts with him; nor can she read books or even the papers as he can. He goes on growing mentally and she falls behind. Presently the finer side of the marriage has disappeared, and both are unhappy. A mother of four children said to me: "When we were married we were the happiest couple you can imagine, but after the children came it was so different. I could never go out, and I lost track of the world entirely. For seven years we were absolutely wretched — thought our marriage was a mistake. We only kept from having a divorce for the sake of the children. Then the children got a little off my hands so I could read and go out again, and to our great joy we fell in love all over again and found we were just as well 172 THE AMERICAN IDEA suited as ever. Our misery had all been caused by the shut-in life I led, which made me stupid and unhappy." A woman, who has three children, now eleven, nine and eight years old, said: "I love babies and so does my husband, but nothing would induce me to have another. The memory of the time when mine were little and I couldn't go anywhere is like a nightmare. I've heard people say that is the best part of life but it was the worst of mine. My husband and I almost grew to dislike one an- other and we quarrelled frequently, though now our home life is perfectly peaceful." Men are often opposed to family because they realize it will mean the loss of the companionship of their wives. A couple in comfortable circum- stances told me they enjoyed each other's society so much that they would not have children to in- terrupt their constant association. The husband said: "I see so many women with children go down hill mentally and cease to interest their husbands. I don't want my wife to stick in the house, and confine her conversation to items about the baby's tooth or Johnny's stomach ache." Another husband, whose wife is his constant com- panion, said: "When our two children were little we were , very unhappy. My wife could go no- where and she lost interest in outside affairs. If THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 173 we had not had strong sense and philosophy we would have been divorced. Now that the children are old enough to stay alone we are quite happy once more." This is a Jewish couple and the wife is of the strongly maternal domestic type, interested in intellectual matters and the affairs of the world only through her husband. Yet so strong is the desire for a larger life among women and so changed the ideal of marriage that even a woman of the old type feels the influence. A woman, who has raised four children, wrote to a friend who has three little ones, close together in age: "I know just what you are going through. You are desperate, I know, and probably people are making you more desperate by telling you it is the best time of your life. Do not believe them; it is the worst. You must just grit your teeth and pull hard for the next few years and then the strain will lessen. Only be careful of one thing — don't let go of your husband and get out of touch with him. I say this and yet I do not know how you can help it, for everything is dragging you apart." Another woman with three small children said : "I wanted children and thought I was prepared to make the necessary sacrifices for the sake of having them, but I had no idea what it meant. I am living a blank life mentally, with no horizon 174 THE AMERICAN IDEA beyond the nursery. I have no time to keep up with outside interests so I am drifting away from my husband continually. And what compensa- tion can I find in the children ? They appeal to my affection but by no stretch of imagination can they be credited with a capacity for intellectual companionship. Knowing all I do now, if I had it to had it to do over again I should think very seriously before having children, and I think I should decide against them." A woman, who has two little ones, said: "My husband is beginning to realize now that the children mean virtual separation between us for some years, but it has taken me till now to get it through his head. Before we decided to have any we talked over the pros and cons and I explained that my life would be limited at every turn. He couldn't see it though. After the first baby came he would run in and propose that I go off with him for a two or three days' trip or go to New York to the theatre, returning late or staying all night, as we had been used to doing. When I would refuse to leave the baby he would be so surprised and disconcerted. Then, too, he would buy books and I couldn't get them read, or he'd bring home friends and have to wait an hour before I could see them. He is getting used to these things now, and is working out his life pretty much alone. He THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 175 said the other day, however, rather ruefully: ' Well, you used to be my wife, but now you seem to be nothing but the children's mother.' " A writer in the New York Journal said, re- cently : " It is impossible for the mother of a large family to do her duty towards her children, her husband and herself. If she neglects any one of the three she is dubbed by the world in general as a poor mother, a poor wife or a woman who has lost all charm. "Nine women out of ten elect to do their duty by their children. Being responsible for their being, conscience demands that they be responsible for their upbringing, and so, swamped in motherly love, they grow further and further away from their husbands, until the only tie that binds them is in reality the tie that separates them. "No blame should be attached to the man and wife who do not desire a large family. Almost any woman can attend to the wants of three of four children — with more, motherhood becomes a care. She cannot, if she is a true woman, neglect her babies, their wants are insistent and never ending. She gives herself up to them, and gradually her husband, feeling that his wife is absorbed by her maternal cares, comes to seek his diversion else- where. "She is not as pretty as she used to be; she 176 THE AMERICAN IDEA neglects the little dainty touches to her dress that made her so attractive in the old days before the babies demanded so much of her attention. She has no time to keep up her reading, music or any other accomplishment. If he asks her to go to the theatre, baby has the croup, or she has no gown or she is too tired. "Of course, she's tired, poor little over-dowered mother. She never gets a good night's rest and her hands, brain and heart are in demand every hour of the twenty-four. "A woman is her husband's sweetheart until she becomes the mother of his children." Even an Irish laundress, the mother of five children told me: "There was never trouble be- tween me and my husband till the first baby came. Then I couldn't be the same to him and it made him cross. Next he began to stay out drinking and we had rows. You wouldn't think a man would take children that way, but it's truth I'm telling you, they do. My Maggie says she'll never have none when she's married, and she's right; she'll miss lots of trouble." Nor does motherhood offer the compensations it formerly did. When women were uneducated and their lives limited by a narrow horizon, they approximated more nearly to the lower animals. The instincts strongly controlled the nature and THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 177 reproduction was proportionately satisfying. With the growth of intelligence and the multi- plication of activities children become one among many interests, instead of all absorbing. The great scientist, Ernst Haekel, in his " Riddle of the Universe," tells us that maternal love is found in its extreme intensity in the mother-ape. As life ascends from the ape reason plays an increasingly important part in controlling the life and instincts. The highly civilized, developed, intelligent woman of to-day reasons about everything, in- cluding her husband and children. She has too many sides to her nature to contentedly merge her existence in the reproductive function. When necessity compels her to do so she is conscious of what she is missing in other ways and is dissatis- fied. As a writer says: "Maternity is not an all- satisfying occupation to the civilized woman as it is to the female animal. Children are absorbing, but not all absorbing. There remain still the wife's heart and the woman's nature, each making its demands, each calling for what the child does not and cannot give. "Maternity means months — and years — of heart solitude, unless the husband and father is ready to make his sacrifices and devote his time to the home, side by side with the mother of his children. 178 THE AMERICAN IDEA " Because so few men seem willing to do this is one reason why the modern woman is so unwill- ing to be a mother." Also, she analyzes her child, believing it quite possible he may not be worth the sacrifices she is making to rear him. To the unthinking mother it is enough that the child is hers, he is perfect in her eyes because of that fact. A cow is content with any calf, so that she has given it life. It may be a common, little, red runt, without promise of beauty or utility. She is as well pleased with it as it it were the finest thoroughbred. Of women of lower orders of intelligence and mental development the same thing is true. To own a baby is to endow it with all virtues, all graces. To such any kind of a child is all satisfy- ing. But as women develop they outgrow that blind instinctive devotion, founded only upon a physical function. They measure the compensations of motherhood by the quality of the children they produce. A clever woman with a capacity for a large life believes that there is no wisdom in con- tracting her activities and narrowing her social usefulness for the sake of a child who is inferior to herself. As heredity is uncertain every woman must always feel that she may be giving up her life for those who will amount to less than herself. THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 179 The following letter well sums up the objections of the modern woman to family. The writer is a strong-natured, clever, forceful woman of a high degree of intelligence and independence. She was in business life and was active in social reform movements previous to her marriage. She mar- ried a man thoroughly congenial in tastes, and is the mother of three children. Her husband is a manufacturer and has a national reputation as a public man. He is also a model husband and father. They have a beautiful home; the wife is amply provided with money, and is able to keep whatever help she thinks fit. She had the children willingly and takes a keen interest in their welfare in every particular. The whole situation would be commonly considered ideal. Yet so mal-adjusted is the modern woman to the purely domestic life that this woman finds her motherhood far from satisfactory. She writes: "If a childless woman is satisfied and happy, and if her husband is, I should advise her to let well enough alone. A child does not merely make an addition to your life, it is an exchange. You gain some things but you have to give up others. You cannot have what you have now if you have children. They will absorb you and divide you from your husband. "I told my husband how it would be before we 180 THE AMERICAN IDEA had children, but he would not believe it. It took him a long time to realize it. He would come in full of suggestions which were perfectly absurd in the face of the fact that there was a baby in the house. He would say: 'Let us go to the theatre.' 'Let us go such a place to dinner.' 'Come with me here or there for a few days.' I had been in the habit of going and he could not realize that that was over. All our life together was ended, at least for some years. "The child is a bond, in a way, for nature provides that people tend to remain faithful to one another when they have had a child together; but it is mentally a wedge. "I am living a life entirely separate from my husband's. My interests are 'Feed one at 12— the other at 12:20', etc. — rules and schedules and formulas. When he comes and tries to interest me in outside questions I look at him blankly. I don't know what he is talking about. It seems unreal, as if he talked of Mars. "I have a rule now which I observe whenever he starts to explain anything to me. I simply sit with a fixed grin like an idiot and preserve an attitude of attention. That is all I can do. I am too brain-weary to comprehend anything. I never have enough sleep. I am always tired. "It may be true that in a few years this will be THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 181 over, but meanwhile my life is going. I can never get it back. I am not only being stunted, dwarfed and narrowed. I have been shut right off as if I took mental chloroform. "Then women write to me and say: 'Don't lose your influence on your husband and get out of touch with him while your children are little. I did, I could not seem to help it.' Another: 'We were very happy until our children came. We had three and for eight years we were miserable. Nothing but the pressure of necessity kept us to- gether. We now are happy again.' "I am completely absorbed in the lives of three unknown creatures. I am being sacrificed and made nothing of and I don't know whether they are worth it. They are an experiment. I was a reality. Yet I have been sacrificed to them. To myself I am the most important person in the world, yet I have to become nothing, and I don't like it. I was accustomed to a free, independent life, to going and coming as I pleased, earning my own money and following the occupation I chose. I do not well endure this bondage. "People say: 'But you love your child.' I say it is not love I feel for my child; it is simply extended egoism. My child is my skin, he is my flesh, and I feel so toward him. I do not 'love' my hand, but I guard it and if it is injured my 1 82 THE AMERICAN IDEA whole being is in revolt. I wince at the least scratch. So with my child. If he suffers I am in agony. My heart is torn, not because I love him in thereal sense of the word, but because he is myself. " How can you love where there is no intelligent personality ? This child can make no appeal to my intellect. I do not approve of his morals, his brains, his purposes or his ideals. Indeed, when he is raised I may not approve of him in a single particular. In fact I am sacrificing a developed entity which to myself at least is fairly satisfactory to three ' what-is-its ' ? I do not like to take second place and be made nothing of. I am not accustomed to it and I don't like it. " Moreover, unless I can with a great leap make up for five or six years, I will never catch up. My husband is going on and I am benumbed. In the old days no one expected anything else. A mar- ried woman was supposed to be a frump and a bore and a physical wreck. Now you are supposed to keep up intellectually, to look young and well and be fresh and bright and entertaining. There is only one way to do so satisfactorily — don't have children. "Another thing every one says is: 'What will the childless woman do when she is old ?' My aunt congratulated me on my three children the other day, because I would not have a childless THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 183 old age. I said: 'You are old now, and your hus- band is dead; where are your two sons ?' 'Well,' she admitted, ' of course they are gone.' Of course they are. She sees them perhaps once a year, and less and less often all the time. She depends on strangers for companionship, just as she would have done without children. "My mother had four children but to-day she is alone on a hillside in Pennsylvania without one of her own near her. "If I knew I was raising an Emerson or an Edison I would feel content, but I have every reason to suppose mine are just ordinary babies — • the making of ordinary people — and a few more or less of them are neither here nor there in the world. I don't think two or three more added to the population is worth the price. "Children cost too much. I wanted them, but I had to pay too dear. It is not right. We should all be able to have them at a less price. Why should a race necessity be made so costly, so bitter?" When women accept the limitations of maternity in a satisfied spirit they meet criticism from those more active and ambitious. Two women, both formerly prominent in literary circles, but now devoted to and narrowed by their families, were being discussed by two friends, one childless, the other the mother of one. x8 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA "Aren't those women a terrible warning!" said one. "To think they were once bright, interesting women and now they can talk baby all day and can't talk anything else. Neither of them con- tributed a single idea to the conversation this evening." "The worst part of it is that they are so satis- fied," said the other. "They both rejoice in their stupidity so openly. They have an air of: 'Yes, I never think or read, and I'm just as narrow as I can be and it's all for the sake of my children.' It is simply appalling to see them." A young woman with two little ones spent an evening with four young women and one reported afterward their impressions. "She's the most dreadfully 'married' woman I ever saw and simply radiates domesticity every moment. We asked her to play and she said she had no time to practice now because she had to keep house. We talked about books and she said of course when a woman was married she had to drop reading. It was the same about everything, always her husband or the baby. After she was gone we four almost took a vow never to marry if it meant such concentrated stupidity. And to think she felt superior — oh dear!" It is the bright, interesting woman, active men- tally, who is approved. Even the most domestic THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 185 type of papers and magazines are constantly- laying stress upon the necessity of a broad mental life for women. In a recent number of a house- keeping magazine there was an article scoring the woman who let herself be absorbed by domestic details and failed to keep up with the times men- tally. Side by side with cooking receipts and eulogies of home life as a feminine career will be found suggestions for clubs and outside interests of various sorts. This indicates the growing con- sciousness that the home is no longer sufficient for women and that women who stay in the home are no longer sufficient -to the world, to their husbands or to their children. Great stress has always been laid upon children as being a bond between husband and wife. They are, of course, a natural tie. Children are Nature's expression of sex love. The young keep all mating animals together during the period of helplessness, while the care of the parents is needed. The long period of helplessness in human children is the basis of life marriage. The children's necessities hold the parents together till the habit of association and the multiplication of common interests makes separation undesirable. Thus marriage as an institution came into exist- ence as an accessory to the family. In its earlier stages it is secondary to family. Indeed, the more i86 THE AMERICAN IDEA important is family the less so is marriage. In the patriarchal period of development, when to have many children was the pride of man, marriage was very important and monogamy unknown. • 3 Wives were classed with oxen, asses, sheep and other possessions. • * The decline of the importance of family and the rise of the importance of marriage have been co- incident. As the wife advances to equality with her husband it becomes less essential to them to have children. The married couple are no longer united only on the basis of reproduction of the race. Indeed, the ties between them become so varied and com- plex that consciousness of the original intention of sex union is often lost. A marriage without children is a frustration of Nature's purposes. Yet to the modern man and woman it is often entirely satisfactory. More even, so delicate is the mental mating of highly developed people that children can and often do become a separating element instead of a bond. With primitive people they are the only bond. Even three generations ago they were the principal tie. For, apart from the physical and affectional union they typified, they presented the principal ground of common interest. The man had the world, of which the woman knew nothing. She THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 187 had her domestic affairs, too small for him. The children alone were of interest to both alike. Now, before marriage, both have the world, and are interested in its affairs. But marriage followed by children, leaves the man still the larger life but cuts the woman off and reduces her to a narrow round. The union is disturbed, it becomes un- satisfactory; the children divide instead of uniting their parents, and of this women as well as men have become conscious. Moreover, the altered ideas of marriage that prevail have changed it from an indissoluble bond into a terminable contract. Almost every State ' J makes provision for the dissolution as well as the contraction of marriage. The growth of divorce nas come, in some measure, as the result of the increased freedom of women. When women could get a living only through some man, a husband meant an income. Now that a woman can give up ber husband and get her own living, she has more respect for herself and expects more, She will not tolerate treat- ment her grandmother would have considered an inseparable accompaniment of matrimony. But a barrier to the freedom otherwise obtain- ble is the child. Thus children become a bond in an undesired sense — they tie women in situa- tions where they are miserable. 188 THE AMERICAN IDEA The old teaching was that the wife must endure all things — drunkenness, cruelty or infidelity ' 6 — and the unanswerable argument advanced to the occasional rebel was: "What can you do when you have a family?" I have heard of a mother, naturally kind, loving and noble-natured, instilling into the mind of a high-spirited, pure-minded daughter the idea that a wife must learn to accept licentiousness in a husband, but must not for a moment expect him to pardon the slightest moral lapse in her. When the newly-married girl rebelled against such teaching, and repudiated the double standard of morality, the mother's reply was: "A wife must keep in with her husband, no matter what he does, for what can a woman with a family do ? She can't part from them and she can't support them." > » The force of this argument women have dis- covered. Every day we hear of divorce suits com- plicated by the presence of children. Kidnap- pings, first by one parent then by the other, are of common occurrence. In all but ten States the law still gives full ownership of the children to the father, but public sentiment is so changing that judges often overrule the law and give the children to the mother. Still there are many couples, utterly mismated, THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 189 unspeakably unhappy, yet tied together by their children. In order to avoid such a possibility, many women refuse to have children. A German woman, poor and without any social theories, the mother of two children and having a drinking husband, said: "Children are in the way and keep a woman down. If I'd never had mine I'd have left my husband when he took to drinking and I was a young woman. He went after another woman, too, but I had to put up with everything because of the youngsters. A woman ought to keep free so she can walk out if she's not treated right." The young wife of a laborer said: "I'd never have a youngster for the best man living. When you have a baby a man knows just where he's got you. My chum got married when I did and was fool enough to have a youngster. She comes in to see me with her eye blacked and she daren't leave because where can she get a job with a baby ? My husband is mad enough that I won't have any, but I know better. The first time he acted up and hit me I just left him and got a job. You bet he treats me decent now for he knows I'll leave again if he don't. Just catch me having a youngster! Not as long as I live ?" A woman, who has studied this subject a great deal in different parts of the country, said: "Mar- 1 9 o THE AMERICAN IDEA riages are seldom a success. Most couples are not compatible. That is because while woman feel as free and independent as men, their position of dependence in marriage makes them miserable, and quarrels follow. But a large family prevents separation. Therefore people will not have chil- dren to tie them down. In the West women will frankly admit this, but it is equally true in the East. It is easier to get at the facts in the West. In the East women are more secretive and hide their wishes and purposes. In the West men are plentiful, easy to be had, and lightly prized, therefore women will not endure wrongs in silence for the glory of possessing a husband. They are restive in un- happy marriages, finding such connections burden- some to themselves and a detriment to their children." This limiting of the liberty of women with its consequent reaction upon marriage is true of those who still work in the home. But, after all, they, of the three classes of women feel it least, because they more nearly approach the type of woman who had the large family in the past. Changed as are the conditions of housework to-day, altered as is the housewife, she is at least a survival of the woman of the past; she does find her work in the home, however it may differ from the work of her grandmother; she still believes to some extent in THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 191 the ideas of woman's duty and sphere prevalent fifty years ago. To discover the full extent of the change wrought by the industrial and social changes in the status of women we must study those classes of women who are the complete product of those changes, the "new" women, viz.: the wage-earners and the idlers. Of the wage-earning woman it will be found that she is less inclined to marriage and maternity than the housekeeper. Where women work mar- riage declines and the birthrate falls even more rapidly than among those who find occupation in the house. Statistics on this point are limited, no account of it having been taken in the last, or any national census. > 8 Unfortunately for us, all government statisticians are men. They prepare elaborate reports on the propagation of brook trout. They make known the precise amount of destruction caused in wheat fields by parasitic beetles. But they have never yet in any country thought that the subject of woman's work and motherhood is of sufficient importance to investigate. Absolutely the only government report has been furnished by Massachusetts, and is limited to that State. But as Massachusetts is not in any way an abnormal State, a report from it may be taken 192 THE AMERICAN IDEA to represent fairly the situation in the United States. In 1850 the proportion of women workers was 13 per cent. ' 9 To-day it is 23 per cent. The birthrate in the same time has fallen from 28 to 25 per 1,000 of the population. Half the able- bodied childless women over twenty are wage- workers, and nearly half the adult women are childless. The average family has less than two children. Meanwhile, the number of women in industry had risen from 69,677 in 1850 to 329,033 in 1900. Massachusetts is a State which shows marked diminution in the size of the family. Dr. Engel- man 2 ° after exhaustive investigations in that State, declares that: "the number of children to the native American family of all classes is less than in any other country — France not even ex- cepted, which has long been known to be at the point of stagnation. "The growing children of the native American population of Massachusetts is 1.9 less. In France the rate is 22.5 per 1,000. In Massachusetts 17 per 1,000, or 6.3 births for 100 adult American women of child-bearing age. The marriage rate has- fallen. Mr. Kuczynski 2 « has also given close attention to Massachusetts. He finds 20.18 per cent, of THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 193 childless wives among native American women and 13.27 per cent, among foreign born. The decline of marriage is shown by his state- ment that 53.07 of adult native women are childless and 41.26 of foreign-born. Among those who have children he finds an average family of 1.92 among native wives and 3.01 among foreign born. That makes a rate of 1. 13 children to each adult woman and 2.04 to each foreign-born adult woman. It is significant that simultaneously with the decline of marriage and child-bearing the number of wage-earning women has steadily increased. In 1870 about one-third of the women able to work did so. By 1900 the proportion had risen to one-half. The business woman seems not to be prolific. This is inevitable because the business woman requires more liberty than the housekeeper, and it is more difficult to harmonize her occupation with a family. The housekeeper may give up her clubs, her books, her trips, even the companionship of her husband, with many a sigh. Yet in the end she remains what she was— a housekeeper. But a large family means to a business woman the relinquishment not only of liberty and interest in the larger life, it involves the loss of her business as well. Rarely can a woman manage a business i 9 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA career and a large family at once. When she does so the family is a terrible handicap. Even a few children seriously disturb a business or professional career. A doctor who has been practicing for a number of years largely among working women, said: "Women simply cannot have many children and work away from home. They can manage one or two, but not more. They find they must either neglect the children or the business, and whichever they slight they are apt to be dissatisfied. The usual way is to leave the family out." A woman dentist, with one little girl, said: "I can't have more children because I'm so busy with my profession, and I cannot get a competent person to care for a baby. I should have to give it much of my time and let my practice run down. It is out of the question." A business woman, with two children, said: "I am fortunate in having my mother live with me, for I can trust the children in her hands. In other circumstances I should not have been at liberty to have children." A doctor, with twenty years' practice and much interested in sociology, said: "The wage-earning woman fails to have children because she cannot make motherhood and industry co-existent." Another physician said: "Women in all ranks of THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 195 life are leaving housework for the industrial world and the family is disappearing in consequence. Whenawoman loves her profession she will work at it and will not have children when they interfere with it." Another said :" Women as wage-earners have com- plicated the problem of population. We have no social arrangement.to enable women to be mothers and work, so the working woman avoids maternity." A woman, who has had opportunity for studying this question extensively, said: "One great reason for decrease of family is that women wish the independence that comes from their own occupa- tion and income. They have ambitions above housework. But in order to succeed in business they must give up motherhood. Children are too much of a tie for a business woman." Very often the business woman who has children, is, at least temporarily, compelled to give up her occupation and income and take up housework. She then becomes the most dissatisfied among the housekeepers. Her life having been larger and more independent she feels its limitations more keenly. A Washington woman who was in news- paper work is now kept at home by four little ones. She constantly chafes because she is tied at home and because her independent income has vanished. She said: 1 96 THE AMERICAN IDEA " I am looking forward eagerly to the time when my children will be big enough that I can get back to work. You don't know how I enjoy talking over old times and the assignments I used to have with some woman still in the work. I'm like a war-horse snuffing the battle." Mrs. Van Vorst, in the "The Woman who Toils, " 2 2 shows the reluctance of the woman factory worker to enter matrimony or assume the responsibilities of motherhood. This, Mrs. Van Vorst, says, is due to a desire for freedom and independence. Many of the husbands of business women are not satisfied, either, to have their wives absorbed in domestic cares. The husband of a physician, him- self a member of the same profession, said: "We have just one child and would both like another, but how is it going to be managed fairly ? My wife is as much interested in her daily work as I am in mine and to have a child would compel her to give it up, or at least interfere with it. Now I would be unwilling to give up my work and I can't expect her to." The husband of a successful real estate woman said : " My wife is a hustling business woman and a great success, but what does she care for domestic details ? She wouldn't be happy tied in the house. Now that we have no children she comes and goes THE PRICE OF MOTHERHOOD 197 as freely as I do. I don't want to see her limited any more than she wants to be." To give up her profession for a family alters the marriage relations of the business woman radically. She is transformed from a free, inde- pendent equal, asking of her husband only such association and comradeship as she gives in return, into a restricted dependent, making demands upon his pocket-book as well as his heart. She loses outside interests, the calling of her choice for which she has been trained, and her own income. In- stead she has a narrowed and limited sphere of activity, unaccustomed work for which she has probably neither aptitude nor training, and is dependent upon another for money. In such changed environment she cannot be the same person, for we are largely the creatures of our environment. What wonder if the marriage suit- able under the condition existing at the time it was contracted becomes very unsatisfactory when those conditions are so altered ? Thus, children interfering even more with the life of the business woman than of the housekeeper, are therefore less desired and less frequent with her. 2 * There remains yet another class of women — the idlers, those who work neither at home nor in the business world. This class has been brought into existence by the decline of domestic industry. It 198 THE AMERICAN IDEA is so easy now to live without housework, or with comparatively none, that the women with nothing to do have become very numerous. The example of idleness is set by those whom wealth enables to relegate all household activities to servants. It can be, and is, followed to-day by women of limited means who find the opportunity for an idle life in the apartment hotel, flat or house with modern conveniences. It might be inferred that women left at liberty from other occupations would find more time and inclination for maternal cares. The reverse is the case. Failing work, life is filled with pleasure, than which nothing is more exacting in its de- mands. Wherever women are without employ- ment and make a business of social life there is a low birthrate. Recently a New York paper pointed out that on Fifth Avenue there were from 57th to 72d Street, fifteen blocks, only fifteen children. In another section of forty-five families, forty were childless and the remaining five have just ten children among them. In nearly all of the apartments mentioned in the first chapter, the women lead idle lives. In some there is no housekeeping at all. In others almost every service is furnished by the house and a maid can easily do what work remains. And it is here — where women have unlimited leis- ure and liberty — that fewest children are tobefound. CHAPTER VIII. ' THE NATION AND THE CHILD. But is this tendency to limit population a national evil ? Is the return of the large family desirable ? While individual men and women find it advantageous to their welfare to restrict the family, is such a course detrimental to society as a whole ? Considering modern civilized nations we will quickly discover that a numerous population is in itself a guarantee of nothing in the way of power, progress, intelligence, or happiness. China and India with their swarming millions are nota- bly deficient in the elements of twentieth century civilization. England, with her little island popu- lation, has circled the world with her power. A handful of her men can keep the vast numbers of Hindoos in check. Switzerland, the most complete example of democracy in the world, a country in which self-government has developed to its highest point, and the greatest degree of happiness has been secured for all, is a little group of about three million people. Scandinavia is sparsely populated, yet her people are of a high grade of intelligence, morality, and physique. There is only two per cent, of illiteracy ■ among 199 zoo THE AMERICAN IDEA them — as little as anywhere in the world. France, whose contributions to higher civilization have been second to none, has very little more popu- lation than Turkey, which is a dead weight on the progress of Europe. Germany, whose intel- lectual products rank among the highest in every department of human activity, has a population about equal to Austria, from whom we receive comparatively nothing. Little Japan, pitted against big Russia, proved herself a terrible antagonist. Nor is a high birthrate necessarily a concomi- tant of rapid increase in population. Indeed, it is usually accompanied by a high rate of mor- tality. a When large families were universal all over Europe, ignorance and lack of hygienic condi- tions made the mortality both among infants and adults appallingly high. War was the busi- ness of mankind instead of, as now, incidental to national life. Plagues of every sort swept over the world at frequent intervals, slaying mil- lions. The dirt diseases, such as smallpox and typhoid fever were never absent, and famine lurked upon the confines of every country, ready to make a descent upon it in the event of an unfavorable season, causing failure of crops. Only the persistent production of children enabled THE NATION AND THE CHILD 201 any nation to survive, and withal the rate of increase was slow. Now, improved sanitation in our cities has practically banished plagues. 3 Our railroads and steamships transporting food supplies have over- come famine, and even babies are better cared for than formerly. Our most prolific regions are still, however, those which most nearly repeat the old conditions. Larger families are found in the slums of our cities, where dirt diseases linger. Poverty keeps famine at the door, and ignorance and want combine to slaughter infants and rob adults of half their years and vigor. As a result, though the birthrate is much higher among the lower classes, almost as many adults are given to the nation by the middle class because the mortality among their children is lower. It is a common thing to meet an intelli- gent woman in comfortable circumstances who has borne two or three children and raised all of them. It is equally common to encounter an ignorant poor mother who has borne a large fam- ily and raised only two or three to maturity. Thus the decrease in mortality would of itself permit a lessening birthrate without causing any dim- inution of population. But the changes in our social conditions and methods of industry have made the modern 202 THE AMERICAN IDEA demand one of quality rather than quantity. In a cruder state of civilization immense numbers were called for who should have brawn rather than brain. They must perform hard manual labor requiring strength but not intelligence. They must, in short, be human beasts of burden. Machinery has taken up such tasks and is per- forming them better, more cheaply, and more rapidly than hand labor could ever do. Machin- ery excavates, dredges, lifts stone and handles the heavy loads of every kind of material. Every year new inventions lessen the hard manual labor which men must do. But instead of handling materials men must manage machines. This requires a higher grade of intellect, a wider range of intelligence, and more trained hands as well as brains. The old workman, stupid, unskilled, but strong, finds much less place in the present industrial system. Instead of twenty or forty such, formerly needed, some work now demands only one or two, highly skilled, intelligent men to direct the operations of a powerful machine. Such people being demanded by society, to produce them is evidently the social duty of society's members. A large family ill-trained, ignorant, and depending merely upon physical strength, becomes not a contribution to the wel- THE NATION AND THE CHILD 203 fare of the nation, but a burden and drag upon it. An obligation rests upon parents to add to society only members qualified to take part in its intellectual or industrial activities. Nor can large families of high grade ever become the rule. Parents easily discover that upon a moderate income only a few children can be given the long and expensive training neces- sary to fit them for success in any given line of work. This is equally true of the workingman with ten or fifteen dollars a week and the pro- fessional man with an annual income of several thousands. The increase of income only means an added sense of responsibilty toward children and higher ambitions for their future. Propor- tionately the problem remains the same. The meaning of this increased standard of intelligence and skill, and of our lessening fam- ilies can be given in one word — civilization. We are becoming a higher kind of people and we are following a law of life in raising our quality at the expense of our quantity. In the lowest forms of life the production is prodigious but the mortality is so tremendous that the species does not become too numerous. There are thousands of spiders hatched from every egg, yet comparatively few survive the first few moments. For all that, spiders show little 2o 4 THE AMERICAN IDEA signs of extinction. As animals rise in the scale fewer are produced at a birth, but the mortality lessens and so the species still survives. Tigers, lions, dogs, or cats have four or five, sometimes only two at a birth. Horses and elephants have usually only one at a birth. Such animals expect their young to survive. There is no wholesale infant mortality among them as among spiders or fish. They are less prolific, but having a lower rate of mortality, yet remain in sufficient numbers. The same law applies to human beings. With the growth of intelligence comes a lower birth- rate, greater care of young and adults, and a lessening mortality. Mr. Havelock Ellis, commenting upon the decline of the birthrate, says : " In this tendency of the birthrate to fall with the growth of social stability, we see a tendency which is of the very essence of civilization. It represents an impulse which, however deliberate it may be in the indi- vidual, may in the community be looked upon as an instinctive effort to gain more complete control of the conditions of life and to grapple more efficiently with the problems of misery and disease and death." 4 Yet to this retarding of reproduction there must be a limit if the nation is to remain in exist- ence. There is the possibility of a nation refin- THE NATION AND THE CHILD 205 ing and civilizing itself out of existence. s This must happen when the birthrate is less than the mortality. The American ideal family of two is evidently too small. 6 It only replaces those who marry and have families, making no allowance for the single, the childless, or for numerical increase of population. In any civilized nation there will always be a proportion of single and childless. As civiliza- tion progresses people are ruled less by their instincts and more by reason. Among the prim- itive, feeling overmasters reason. Mating, a sim- ple matter of course proceeding among primitive nations, becomes an increasing difficult problem as natures grow more developed and complex. Savages ask little of each other and are almost as well mated with one as with another. They are slightly differentiated, and find satisfaction principally upon a physical plane. Even in a civilized society, so long as women have uniform work and are trained as auxiliary and secondary to men, marriage is compara- tively easy of accomplishment. Certain approved feminine traits and characteristics are sought, and choice largely rests with the man. Women make slight demands because marriage in itself is an all-important achievement, and life offers 206 THE AMERICAN IDEA no desirable alternative. To be an "old maid" is a fate so dreaded and comprehends a life so blank and uninteresting that women are eager to escape it upon any terms. But, as varied occupations and conditions of life accentuate the different characteristics of both sexes, marriage becomes increasingly a mental mating and ceases to be universal. When women reach financial independence they are enabled to exercise the same choice as men, and to find interest in life apart from marriage. Many will then inevitably remain single. An unmar- ried woman, with an occupation and an income, is not in the same class with the "old maid" dependent upon her male relatives and consciously a failure in life. Indeed, at the present, it is apparent to any observant person that in the ranks of American single women will be found many of the highest type, mentally as well as physically. Instead of being the rejected culls of womanhood, they are often the choicest specimens, for whom no fitting mate has appeared. Similarly reproduction will never be universal among civilized people. A certain percentage of involuntary barrenness accompanies civiliza- tion and in higher stages of development that will be voluntarily increased. Reason will more THE NATION AND THE CHILD 207 and more rule. The instincts, even when allowed play, will first have been passed under the inspec- tion and received the approval of the intellect. Thus the fruitful must always make up for the failure in reproduction of the single and the childless. Mr. Grant Allen has calculated that, in order to provide for all such failures and to allow for a healthy increase in the race, every married couple must have six children. This calculation allows for soldiers, imbeciles, and cripples, three classes with which we might well dispense. It also contemplates the continuance of the present appalling infant mortality, due to ignor- ance and poverty. Even to-day, with all our sanitation and comparative intelligence and pros- perity, our infant mortality is a national menace and disgrace. ' As nature designs young life to develop, not to die, it is evident that our babies are the victims of general and deadly injustice. It would seem wiser and more humane to expend part of the energy now wasted in producing infants doomed to early death, in learning to properly care for a less number. 8 But even such increased knowledge as would reduce the unfit to a minimum and practically stop the present slaughter of babies, would not 2 o8 THE AMERICAN IDEA make an average family of two sufficient. Prob- ably three would, however, make allowance for accidents, the unfruitfulness of the single and childless couples, and keep the nation stable or slightly increasing. That we may hope to attain anything so desir- able as the checking of infant mortality is evi- denced by the fact that it is low among the intel- ligent. College women raise a larger percentage of the children they bear than any other class of women. Dr. Engleman shows that though the birth- rate among college men is lower than the average, a larger number of children to the family survive, owing to the low rate of mortality among them. It is worthy of note in this connection that in Egypt, where women were highly educated, child deaths were almost unknown, as is shown by the rarity of child mummies. But the average birthrate is too low in all classes of intelligent Americans. President Eliot shows that Harvard men average two children. Graduates of women's colleges have a lower average. Even among the working classes, Dr. Engleman finds the average only slightly over two children, and among other Americans only one and eight-tenths. We are, without doubt, as has been shown in the first chapter, failing THE NATION AND THE CHILD 209 to maintain our proper average of family. Were it not for foreign immigration we should have a falling population. At present immigration is giving to us a large rate of increase but it cannot be depended upon. Only a certain number of people in any country will ever wish to emigrate. We have already ceased to receive as many Irish, English, and Ger- mans as formerly. The Italian stream will in time be exhausted. From Europe we can only get the materials from which to make our nation. The nation itself we must maintain. To expect to permanently base a nation's population on immigration would be as foolish as to base the business prosperity of a city upon building houses. And the desirability of immigration is an open question. Therefore, we must view with alarm any birth- rate that gives an average of less than three chil- dren to a couple. Probably at present, with the high infant mortality, four would be a safer figure. To encourage such a birthrate we must con- sider carefully the reasons governing the present rate and see if the causes should and can be removed. It is useless to tell people to change their conduct if social forces push them in cer- tain directions. zio THE AMERICAN IDEA We have found that the causes are: (i) Eco- nomic; (2) the changed status of women. Under the head of economic conditions we have found: (1) The desire for a high standard of living. (2) The increased sense of responsibility in parents, and their greater ambition for their children. (3) The necessity for more expensive training, to fit children to take part in the mental and industrial life of the nation. (4) The uncertainty in regard to the future of the child. The desire for a high standard of living has been constantly denounced as a wish for unworthy self-indulgence. The beauty of poverty and self- abnegation is an old religious teaching. "Con- tentment is better than riches" is an ancient proverb. But the basis of all such teaching always has been and always will be the attempt to keep the mass of the people from rebelling while being robbed of the product of their labor to support the luxury of the few. Poverty, real poverty, is a grinding, dwarfing thing, sapping the vitality of body and mind alike. An abundance of material comforts is an evil only when it has not been earned by the man or woman who enjoys it. THE NATION AND THE CHILD 211 It is the American desire for a rich, full life, plentifully supplied, that stimulates our wonder- ful industrial activity. We must have things, therefore inventions are made, factories are built, commerce flourishes, wealth is abundant. In the nations where people are content with little, they get little. With few wants they can afford to live on small wages, and they get them. The Scotch are thrifty and frugal and their wages are lower than those of the more extravagant English. Americans demand still more in the way of every- day comforts and they receive wages propor- tionate to their needs. » High wages make money abundant, which, being spent freely, calls for enormous production. Thus business is brisk and everyone prospers. Moreover, a high standard of living raises the grade of the people. Everything a man has or enjoys enters into him and makes him a larger, more developed man. Individuals, here and there, may live a meagre life, and be the better for it. But they are those who find pleasure and growth in a purely mental life. They can turn aside from a handsome home, beautiful clothes, and the thousand and one material things that enrich life for the many, because of devotion to an idea. It may be scien- tific research, or invention, or the development 212 THE AMERICAN IDEA of a theory of society, or it may be a pure love of nature that animates them. But in any case their lives are based on an idea. But this high, philosophic state of mind is attained only by the few, and must succeed and grow out of the possession of material abundance. A Tolstoy is great because he can abandon wealth; but the contented Russian peasant is low because he has not the ambition to desire riches and what they give. The time may come when a whole nation will be raised to such heights that a life materially simple will be preferred in order that all energy may be spent in the pursuit of knowledge and mental growth. But it will never evolve from Rus- sian moujiks or Chinese coolies or patient Hindoos, content with poverty and a narrow, barren life. The increased sense of responsibility in parents is surely most desirable. It is a serious matter to force life on a human being, and it is well that people are beginning to think so. The repeated cry of the American, "I don't want any more children than I can do right by," is a hopeful instead of a discouraging sign. Indifferent parents, who produce children recklessly without regard to what care, training, or opportunity can be given them, will never commend themselves to the American mind as the ideal type. THE NATION AND THE CHILD 213 A phase of parental responsibility is seen in the struggle to equip children so that they may suc- ceed in life. And so long as our industrial con- ditions require skilled, intelligent workers, this careful, expensive equipment is a necessity. Only by reverting to outgrown conditions could the untrained people of the past become efficient. It is in answer to the demands of society that parents strive to produce high-grade children. All others are rejected or relegated to ill-paid and undesirable labor. A different matter is the over-indulgence which is so noticeable in the lives of many American children. There is no doubt that thousands of children are spoiled for life by unwise parents who can withhold nothing their little ones want. President Roosevelt very truly says: "The way to give a child a fair chance in life is not to bring it up in luxury, but to see that it has the kind of training that will give it character. Even apart from the vital question of national life, and regard- ing only the individual interests of the children themselves, happiness in the true sense is more apt to come to any given member of a healthy family of healthy-minded children, well brought up, well educated, but taught that they must shift for themselves, must win their own way, and by their own exertions make their own posi- tions of usefulness." 2i4 THE AMERICAN IDEA We have instances in plenty of the over-indulged sons of the wealthy growing up useless and dissi- pated, but among the unknown mass of the nation there are many families being ruined as surely though less ostentatiously. The simple life (not sordid or pinched, but plain), is best for children. Unquestionably there is a tendency among Ameri- can parents to give to their children too much luxury. This leads to an exaggerated idea of the expense of a family and frequently tends to unnecessary limitation. But the uncertainty of the future, and for that matter of the present, is something that must give pause to every thoughtful person contem- plating parenthood. Logically, it is the duty of every healthy person to give children to the nation, and the life of the nation is imperiled by the failure of the citizen to perform this duty. But, on the other hand, what responsibility does society take for the chil- dren so urgently demanded ? What value does it set upon those already supplied ? Who can feel that it is an imperative social duty to add to the number of children in a land where child-life is held so lightly as it is in America ? There are twenty-four thousand breaker boys toiling in our coal mines and as many child slaves in Southern cotton mills. There are children THE NATION AND THE CHILD 215 working in glass factories and running messages, and blacking shoes and selling papers, at the expense not only of their childhood but of their future manhood and womanhood — for they will never be anything but cramped, dwarfed carica- tures of humanity. ' ° Mrs. Van Vorsf'thus describes the results of child labor: "The children in Southern mills fall asleep on the floor at noon with their food in their mouths until roused by the overseer and set at work again. When through the day's labor these little children fall asleep at the table and are carried to bed unwashed and undressed, inanimate bun- dles of rags, to so lie until the mill summons them before sunrise. "Under the existing conditions they have no outlook, no hope. I never saw a rosy cheek or a clear skin among these people. These are the parchment editions of childhood on which tragedy is written. You can read the external condem- nation of those who have employed them for their own gain. The infant population, whose cheap toil is fed into the mills is doomed, early death carries hundreds out of life. Disease rots the remainder, and the dulled maturity attained by a creature whose life has been passed in this labor is not fit to reproduce itself." 216 THE AMERICAN IDEA Who will blame the man or woman who refuses to give little ones to a nation where child labor flourishes ? Who, either, can traverse the slums of a large city and see the swarming, pitiful mites on the streets, and yet think that the crying need of the country is more children ? It would seem wiser and more humane to take care of those we already have, than to add to the number. Annie Marion MacLean > * says : " It is all very well to talk of man's duty to the State in repro- ducing himself. The chief trouble with the poor in the great cities is that they reproduce them- selves too many times. One feels this keenly when he sees slum streets swarming with small bits of humanity festering in the summer sultriness. Seven or eight little children in a home where there is only bread enough for two is a monstrous outrage, and should be condemned by enlightened sentiment everywhere. "I have no quarrel with those who decry the modern tendency to 'race suicide'; they are sin- cere and their protest, no doubt, is necessary in some quarters; but to one who has spent more or less time during the summer season in the slums of London, New York, and Chicago, the crying need of 'race limitation' must be apparent. The high rate of infant mortality saves the slums. This THE NATION AND THE CHILD 217 opinion may savor of brutishness but it is born of common sense." This condition is repeated in the slums of every big city. How much do we as a nation value children when they are herded in thousands in pestiferous tenements, under such conditions that only "the high rate of infant mortality saves the slums" ? While a nation can treat its babies so, it has no right to ask for more. If there were any social realization of the value of children, those that are born would receive social care. Instead, they are left in thousands to die in tenement homes, or wear their little lives out in factories or sweat shops. Even hundreds are deliberately done away with, as the late baby-farm exposures near Phila- delphia showed. It does not look as if babies were very precious in a nation where so many are superfluous. Why not care for and rear such unfortunates instead of allowing them to be destroyed while we clamor for more ? Nor is the child of the slums or mills alone exposed to a life of misery. Poverty threatens every one. No one has any guarantee against it. Even great fortunes are swept away. Very uncer- tain is the lot of the average business man; more so that of the wage-worker. Every parent must feel that his or her child may come to want. 218 THE AMERICAN IDEA A realization of these facts is one influence in checking our birthrate. Mrs. Van Vorst reflects upon the factory-worker for her failure in mother- hood, yet she herself comments upon the unfit- ness of people of that class to reproduce themselves. Is it not well that the victims of a driving, crush- ing factory system are unwilling to furnish chil- dren to carry on the same fierce struggle for life ? It would seem, indeed, that, as Mrs. MacLean says, in those classes there is need of "race limi- tation." It is from the overworked, under- nourished, ill-housed, and clad come the thou- sands of defectives that are a public charge and of no benefit to society. Ida Husted Harper, in an article in the North American Review, says that we have 26,342 defec- tives in 180 schools maintained at an annual expense of $5,085,108. This record does not cover sixteen of the States and takes no account of private institutions, almshouses, asylums or families. There are also 130,000 feeble-minded of whom only 9,000 are properly cared for. The State of New York pays $2,000,000 an- nually for dependent children. There are 150,- 000 kept by charity, not including the blind, deaf, or feeble-minded. Twenty-five thousand mothers in childbirth are annually cared for by THE NATION AND THE CHILD 219 the public. Would not such children better never have been born ? And for all that the State does for these there are still thousands upon thousands utterly uncared for and unconsidered. As to what shall be done by society to encour- age a higher birthrate among the competent, intelligent classes, nothing definite can be said. The aim of this book is not to ofFer a solution of this problem, but merely to call attention to its existence. It is not pressing at the present moment— we have plenty of people for the time being. But the ultimate outcome of the present tendency must be considered if we would not become in time a vanished race. The opportunity to meet this and other phases of the social question is offered us by the pres- ent check in population. As Mr. Havelock Ellis says: "A community in which children are born rapidly is necessarily in an unstable position; it is growing so quickly that there is insufficient time for the conditions of life to be equalized. The state of ill-adjustment is chronic; the press- ure is lifted from ofF the natural impulse of pro- creation, but is increased on all the conditions under which the impulse is exerted. There are increased overcrowding, increased filth, increased disease, increased death. It can never happen, in modern times, that the readjustment of the 220 THE AMERICAN IDEA conditions of life can be made to keep pace with a high birthrate." That is, if we can have a breathing spell we can get our national household set in order and running smoothly. The consciousness of this brings a falling birthrate with advancing civil- ization. M. Leroy Beaulieu says: "A low birth- rate goes hand in hand with high wages and the spread of education, and appears to be particu- larly associated with democratic aspirations, and still more with a lessening of religious belief on the part of the people." Fred A. Bushee, Ph.D., ascribes the present tendency to a social law: "When men can rise, though with effort, they will have small families or none. If they cannot rise they are hopeless. If they rise easily, as in a new country, they do not limit family. This is the theory of Arsine Dumont — 'population increases inversely with social capillarity.' It acts on progressive peoples with a strong tendency to improve their condi- tion." Suggestions in regard to the duty of society to parents are now and then heard. Plainly, if social causes bring about a too low birthrate social remedies must be devised. If the advan- tages of childlessness are overwhelming, and the pressure upon parents oppressive, some attempt , THE NATION AND THE CHILD 221 at equalization must be made. If society makes high demands upon parents it must assist parents to meet those demands. What is too difficult for the individual must be done by the State. Our social responsibility to children and to the parents of children must be increased. We already pro- vide public and high school education free. That is in the right direction, but we must have more of it. Already a Senator in one of the Western States suggests that prizes be given for big families — • $10 for six children, $15 for nine. Another offers a law providing an allowance of $500 for the edu- cation of every child above six. The money suggestions are puerile. What parent with three children would consider ten dollars any inducement to have three more ? Or would again increase the family by three for fif- teen dollars ? The utter inadequacy of the amounts makes them absurd. The suggestion of a $500 education is more reasonable, if it were offered to every child above two, instead of necessitating a family of seven before the prize can be attained. In a recent issue of the Woman's Journal, Bos- ton, the editor suggested pensions for mothers. He said: "Let us hope the small family will not become the permanent American ideal. For 222 THE AMERICAN IDEA myself, I would gladly exchange our present sys- tem of pensioning men who have periled their lives for their country in battle for pensions to mothers who have periled their lives in giving birth to the future citizens of the Republic. Why not protect the mothers of the Republic against excessive toil and possible pauperism ?" To provide a fund for such purposes it is some- times suggested to tax all childless people, mar- ried or single, above a certain age. Such a tax should never be considered in the nature of a punishment. To remain single or childless must always be allowed the right of the individual. But, inasmuch as those so unhampered in the industrial struggle have a greater chance of suc- cess, it is but right that they should contribute to the rearing of the nation's children, relieving in some measure the pressure resting upon parents. We tax the single and childless to support our schools because we believe it is for their welfare as well as for that of the parents that the young be educated. We theoretically realize children now as hav- ing social value. They are not only of interest to their parents but to society. Upon them we must depend for the maintenance of the nation, of our civilization, of every work and purpose into which we are putting our interest and our THE NATION AND THE CHILD 223 energies. Thus, children are the possession and should be the care, not alone of those who give them life, but of all society. If parenthood is avoided, some compensation should be made. Those who do not desire to rear offspring should contribute to the advancement of the children of those willing to assume the task of maintaining and increasing the nation. > 3 At present the economic advantages are all on the side of the childless, and it is not wonderful that such a condition of affairs should militate against propagation, especially among the rea- soning, responsible people, whom it is most desira- ble to have reproduce themselves. But with any reasonable measure of equaliza- tion there would be a tendency to family. What- ever will lessen the intensity of the present indus- trial strife, giving any sort of assurance that work and good living wages may be had by all who desire them, will react favorably upon the birth- rate. The economic problem directly affects the problem of population. It has been proved that the marriage rate rises and falls inversely to the price of wheat. ' 4 Life is a question of food as well as sentiment, and love will not fill the cup- board. The economic problems, the questions of trusts, machinery, centralization of wealth, and the respective rights of capital and labor 224 THE AMERICAN IDEA must be settled and settled advantageously to the great mass of the American people before we can have any hope of checking the present tendency to a falling birthrate. How these questions are to be settled no one can certainly say. It may be by government ownership of monopolies and government assur- ance of employment to every citizen as a right. Or by a readjustment of our industrial system which shall limit the industrial power of individuals when it becomes a menace to society, while leav- ing open great inducements to enterprise and initiative. Or the growing labor organizations may develop till they control the various branches of industry, administering them in the interests of society as well as of their members. That some change is imminent becomes constantly more evident. But in regard to the economic problem we are awakened. It is being considered and discussed by the most thoughtful and best-informed among us. Investigations are being made in every department of our industrial organization. We know we have an economic problem, and we are bent upon solving it. With its solution one principal barrier to the reproduction of the race will be removed. Men and women at all sure that the wolf will never THE NATION AND THE CHILD 225 snarl at the door, that their labor can assure to them a comfortable home with the American standard of living, and yet permit them to give to the world well-cared for and properly trained children will not shrink from parenthood. For it must be remembered that it is natural to have children and unnatural not to do so, and under at all favorable conditions the tendency is strongly toward reproduction. Society must remove the disabilities with which parents are at present burdened, and league itself with Nature instead of opposing her. CHAPTER IX. The Race Suicide of Immigration. We have seen that our present immigration constitutes a second form of race suicide. As to whether this is good or bad for the nation, whether it should be continued or checked, there are widely different opinions. The extreme advocates > of immigration would have it absolutely unrestricted, admitting; even encouraging, all races, all individ- uals, Chinese and Zulus, the halt, the maimed and the blind, criminals, diseased and insane. The extreme opponents of immigration would bar out everyone for at least twenty years, if not for- ever. The arguments of the former are in substance : Here is a land of boundless wealth and freedom, inhabited by immigrants and the descendants of immigrants. In other lands are people crushed by tyranny imposed from above. Of these, some, inspired by a hatred of oppression and a longing for freedom, overcome difficulties and brave perils in order to share the blessings which America only, but America always, can provide. That objec- tions should be offered to the entrance of any of these people, that discrimination should be exer- cised in accepting them, is absurd in the face of the 226 RACE SUICIDE OF IMMIGRATION 227 fact that originally all America was settled 'from other countries. This is a free country — that is, free to all. It is our duty, our mission as a nation, to provide liberty for all the oppressed, education for all the ignorant and plenty for all the poverty- stricken who choose to come to us. Further, to restrict immigration is not only unjust but foolish. Immigrants have settled and developed this country. It is not yet full, therefore we must have more immigrants. Everyone who comes is a source of wealth and strength to the nation. His very coming presupposes pluck, energy, ability, a love of freedom and a longing for better conditions. Hence our immigrants are the- picked men and women of their different countries, the very people to appreciate our liberty, add to our wealth and enrich us physically. When the facts fail to fit these theories when immigrants neither receive nor bestow blessings, not unrestricted immigration but the American nation is blamed. The extreme anti-immigrationist holds exactly opposite views. He describes an American Golden Age, lying back of 1820, when the pure Americans, the Colonists and their descendants, were undi- luted and degraded by an influx of foreigners. In that period honor was the national watchword, corruption in either business or politics was prac- tically unknown, and crime was rare. Prosperity 228 THE AMERICAN IDEA was general and pauperism almost non-existent. The large families, then- common, gave certain promise of abundant future population. The coming of the immigrant has destroyed this Eden. Where he has settled standards of living have lowered, poverty has appeared, industrial and political corruption has become rampant; 2 he has lowered our stature, destroyed our literature, 3 and even driven us to race suicide, without bestowing any compensating benefits. Before we can discuss this question we must decide whether or not Americans have the right to refuse or regulate immigration. This right they have taken by establishing restrictions. To deny it, as is so often done, is to deny that America is a nation, owning the land she occupies, just as the English own England, the Germans Germany, or the French, France. That this is a free country does not mean that it is a free-for-all country. Americans have undertaken to " establish and maintain a free government and free institutions for themselves. They have not promised to ensure a like freedom to all humanity. Liberty, democracy, education and prosperity are not indigenous to the soil of the United States. If they were the Indians would have had them in abundance. All our institutions and principles were established and enunciated by the American RACE SUICIDE OF IMMIGRATION 229 people. We are not a free nation because we are living in the United States, but the United States is a free country because it was settled by free people. Thus, Americans having created Ameri- can conditions, have the right to reserve their country for themselves or to share it with others, as they may choose. Is it not the foremost duty of the United States, as of every civilized country, to conserve and develop civilization for the sake of producing a higher type of humanity ? Civilization is human- ity's most precious possession. It is the legacy of all the ages. To win it man has struggled onwards through centuries of barbarism. To degrade or im- peril her civilization is a nation's unpardonable sin. Hence, immigration should be judged by its effect in raising or lowering our civilization. . Whether the peoples of other lands will be the better or the worse for coming here, is of secondary importance. The question is not, what can America do for the immigrants, but what will the immigrants do to America ? " It is the right of the higher civilization to make the lower give way before it," says Richmond Mayo-Smith. 1 "The higher civilization has a moral right to triumph over the lower, for it is in this way that the world progresses. The duty of every nation to humanity is to see to it that the 230 THE AMERICAN IDEA higher does triumph over the lower. But it per- forms this duty best by preserving its own civiliza- tion against the disintegrating forces of barbarism." The mission of this country is not to concentrate the population of the earth in the United States and here provide them with freedom and prosper- ity. Evidently some of the fourteen hundred million must remain elsewhere. None the less, the American nation carries the burden of bringing freedom to humanity. This she cannot accom- plish by exposing her institutions to destruction » at the hands of hordes who could never have created them. « It is her duty and her best service to the world to develop a race of the highest quality, and a social system of complete democracy. The individual or the race that is detrimental to American progress, and the upbuilding of American character, should be relentlessly barred out. ' And all races or individuals that will assist America to reach a higher plane should be cordially invited and warmly welcomed. As has been shown, in Chapter II, the first im- migration consisted of peoples who were akin to the Americans of Colonial times. They were easily assimilated. It is the newcomers from Europe and Asia whose arrival has brought a tre- mendous problem. The conditions of immigra- tion have entirely changed. So have the kind and RACE SUICIDE OF IMMIGRATION 231 the quality. To-day everything is so easy as to invite the incompetent, and even the feeble-minded and the vicious. "So broad and so smooth is the channel," says Francis A. Walker, 8 "there is no reason why every foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe, which no breath of intellectual or industrial life has stirred for ages should be decanted upon our shore. Hard times here may momentarily check the flow; but it will not be permanently stopped so long as any difference of economic level exists between our population and that of the most degraded communities above. Coming now are the beaten men from beaten races, representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence. Centuries are against them as centuries were on the side of those who formerly came to us." The bulk of our present immigration is coming from Roman Catholic and military countries, in which the level of intelligence is inevitably below that of Protestant or peaceful countries. The army draws the most ambitious men, and the Church attracts the idealistic of both sexes to celibacy. "If they (the army and the Church) had been designed for the purpose, they could not have been more efficiently contrived to prevent the advance of the lower ranks of mankind." ' Those officials who come into closest contact with 232 THE AMERICAN IDEA the incoming foreigners are unanimously of the opinion that we have received and are receiving millions of the unfit. Immigration is artificially stimulated in ways that were unknown in the past. Tagged and ticketed, thousands are carried in like human cattle. The steamship companies, whose only interest it is to sell tickets, have press-gangs of agents scouring Europe for immigrants. ' ° Credulous peasants are all but forced from their homes into the steerage, and find themselves flung, destitute and bewildered, into the crowded slums of New York. In many respects, it is a new slave trade, almost as heartless and disastrous as the old. Large employers of labor 1 ', who think only of the fortunes they may make and care nothing at all for the welfare either of the country or of their employes, encourage the coming of docile peoples — the kind that could not create and cannot sustain a republic. The appalling aspect of the Packing- town and sugar refinery revelations is that the sturdy and organized workers of former times have been replaced by a servile rabble of European peasants. These imported mobs not only degrade our in- stitutions, but lower our standards of living, drag- ging our workingmen toward the peasants' sordid level of life. The hundred-years fight of the trade unions for better conditions becomes almost futile RACE SUICIDE OF IMMIGRATION 233 in the presence of these unfair competitors. It has been shown, too, that both the steamship companies 1 2 and the employers > 3 are persistently lawless in their methods. The large influx of assisted immigration > * has also become a serious social menace. Many are brought over by relatives and friends in this coun- try; some come in a debt-bondage to the steam- ship companies; and others— most undesirable of all, are thrust upon us by an expulsive movement in the communities in which they have lived. The difficulty of assimilating these immigrants — of teaching them an Americanism from which they are so far removed, is increased by their settling in colonies in the slums of our large cities ' s and in various sections of the country. » « This very natural tendency is frequently encouraged by the home countries. Through the political agent and the priest they are instructed to "maintain their allegiance to the country of their birth, transmit their earnings to the fatherland, and to avoid all intercourse with the people of this country that" would tend to a permanent adoption of American ideas." ' ' In view of such facts l s it does not seem as if this form of race suicide — this substitution of low-grade immigrants for our native stock is a wise step, or one calculated to advance civilization, develop our 234 THE AMERICAN IDEA national institutions or produce a better race. It would be right for us to yield place to a higher people. It is wrong to give way to those who are lower. To correct the present tendency, measures must be taken to exclude, by severe and thorough tests, all who are undesirable from our point of view, and to take the desirable only in such numbers and under such regulations that assimilation will be easy and certain. Such distribution as would preclude the formation of colonies and compel the acceptance of our language is funda- mentally necessary. The immigration phase of the race suicide question is even more serious than the extreme limitation of the size of the family. We have reached a stage of civilization of which the small family is the inevitable accompaniment. That it has become too small is due to causes the modifi- cation of which may restore it to safe proportions. But meanwhile, this flood-tide of inferior, prolific immigration is pouring in, diluting our American blood, degrading our American insti- tutions, and preventing the solution of the econo- mic and social problems which are responsible for our declining birthrate. CHAPTER X. Must Mothers Suffer? The strongest opposition to family is, however, coming from women. The control of reproduction is now largely in their hands, and they are un- favorable to maintaining such a birthrate as will be for the benefit of the nation. It appears that the wish to avoid suffering and the growing desire for freedom are causing a threatening dimunition in our birthrate. As to the recoil from suffering, we must consider whether or not it can be overcome. The old way of dealing with the question was to impress upon women that it was a religious duty to suffer, the fulfillment of a curse; and that reproduction was their principal excuse for being. ' This kind of teaching women will no longer accept. They have found out they are useful for other things. As to the curse of pain, they simply will not endure it. Unfortunately, enough of the old idea lingers to harm. Women still believe that Nature if not God has cursed them by making agony inseparable from childbirth. The unspeakable tortures usu- ally accompanying childbirth are generally taken for granted as much as seed-time and harvest. Yet in regard to other pain we are not so ignor- 335 236 THE AMERICAN IDEA ant. We generally recognize that pain does not accompany any of Nature's processes when rightly performed. Pain is Nature's warning that some- thing is wrong. If walking is accompanied by agony we are sure, without further evidence, that there is trouble somewhere. If pain in the stomach follows the taking of food, we know that our digestion is at fault. We should believe this, too, even though every person in the nation suffered every time he ate. Now reproduction is a natural function. A baoy is not a disease, and its advent should not be ac- companied by agony. When it is so we may believe that Nature's laws have been disregarded. That women generally suffer does not prove the contrary. It only indicates that disregard of Nature's laws is widespread. 2 That birth is not always accompanied by pain, we have ample evidence. Animals in a state of nature usually do not suffer much during parturi- tion. 3 Occasionally they do, just as occasionally they are born defective, are sick, lose their tails in a fight or otherwise suffer physical disabilities. But usually they find reproduction no inconvenience. Of the domestic animals the same cannot be said. They usually suffer more or less and sometimes, though rarely, even lose their lives in parturition. But it must be remembered that their lives are to MUST MOTHERS SUFFER ? 237 an extent regulated by man. They are fed and housed as he thinks best. Monkeys which are healthy in their native forests, living on the foods they choose,are frail, sickly creatures when subject to the ignorant care ( ?) of man. The dog lives closest to man of all the lower animals and more nearly shares man's life, food and general habits, and next to man it has the largest collection of diseases. It has been suggested that women suffer because we have not stood on our feet long enough for the internal organs to become adjusted to the new position. If that were so savage women, lower in evolution than we, and therefore less accus- tomed to the erect position would suffer more, whereas the contrary is the case. Savage women approach the lower animals in freedom from parturition pangs. Indian women have been known to stop off an hour from the march, bear a child without assistance and follow with their infants on their backs. Even among civilized women there are immense differences in the degree of suffering endured. Some are literally torn to pieces, and a vast number incur injuries from which they never recover. Many are sufferers for the rest of their lives. Others who seem to recover, eventually die of some complication resulting from the birth. A New 238 THE AMERICAN IDEA York physician told me she believed that 50 per cent, of women who had children had poorer health as a result. Every woman hears frequent recitals of tortures that would put the inquisition to the blush, which have been endured in order to bring a child into the world. But not all suffer so. Some escape with seven or eight hours of pain. Others with three or four. Occasional instances occur where childbirth is practically painless. Medical records tell of many such cases and almost every physician occasionally encounters them. If some women may escape it shows that pain is not an inseparable accompaniment of childbirth, but is a matter of accident or else an arbitrary matter. Investigation demonstrates that the increase of civilization brings increase of childbirth pain. It also brings increasingly abnormal habits of life. Our grandmothers suffered intensely when children were born. Less was said about it because the prevailing ideas on the subject debarred them from sympathy. Yet every old lady I have questioned, and I have made a point of asking this question of old ladies, has assured me she endured terrible pain in bearing children. Yet on the whole they appear to have made better recoveries and had less permanent injuries than women to-day. MUST MOTHERS SUFFER ? 239 Physicians ascribe the intensity of present suffer- ing to the highly organized nervous development of modern women ? One doctor, who has been for twenty years a specialist in women's diseases said : " Women are so nervous that they feel more keenly than the more stoical woman of the past. Living in cities keeps the nerves on edge so that every sensation is felt to the utmost. The same childbirth pangs that women formerly endured are intolerable to these." Another physician said: "The worst of the childbirth pain is due to the extreme nervous senti- tiveness of women. Our cities with their noises and their high rate of living destroy the nerves. Our women become hypersensitive and the same pains cause more torture." There is no doubt few of us are normal. Men as well as women have a low average of health. Only 3 per cent, of the nation die of old age, a- larger number of those born die before five* and thirty-three is the average length of life. Yet judged by the standards obtaining all through the animal kingdom one hundred years should be the average life. s At a conservative estimate we should be in the vigor of mental life at sixty-five to eighty or older. Instead of that every one has his or her pet diseases; dyspepsia, catarrh, etc., are almost universal. 240 THE AMERICAN IDEA We are in too big a hurry to live. If we are workers we tear our lives out in twenty years and are old in middle life. If we are idlers we are at least vigorous idlers and dissipate our energies by forty. Naturally, under such conditions our women suffer excruciating agony in childbirth. When we violate the laws of Nature in our every-day habits, the reaction is most felt in the most complex of our natural functions. A complex and delicately adjusted mechanism performing fine work of any sort is more easily thrown out of working order than one simpler in construction and having a lower function. A watch cannot stand treatment that would have no effect upon a pump. An elbow joint is less susceptible of injury than a stomach. The reproductive organs performing the highest physical function are first to feel the effects of unnatural modes of life. Men suffer to a certain extent, as the list of advertisements for "weak men" plainly proves; but there is no universal ordeal for them to undergo similar to childbirth. In any case women are more highly organized and complex than men physically and have the higher functions. Hence the reaction from wrong living is more violent with them than with men. A woman's body, in smaller space than a man's, must contain all the organs of digestion, respira- MUST MOTHERS SUFFER ? 241 tion and circulation and also carry on the repro- ductive process — the highest physical process of life. Yet, with more need of living naturally than men, women are fully as persistent violators of the laws of Nature. It is difficult to say which sex is worse, when both are so bad. Women stay in- doors, dress badly, eat rubbishy food, such as cake, candy, etc., and are continually trifling with food without eating a good square meal. They avoid exercise, and either idle or overwork. Men, though more comfortably dressed, and living on the whole more robust lives, use liquor and tobacco, eat too heavily and are reckless of sleep. Their business lives are strenuous and nervous rather than healthful. Indeed, little of the work of either sex is so performed as to give healthy exercise without overstrain. It is usually a tax and drain. We work at overspeed. But women not only suffer for their own physical sins but for those of their ancestors and for men's shortcomings as well. The sins of our ancestors are a common heritage. Women have an inherit- ance of sex weakness which weighs them down. The sins of the mothers are visited upon the daughters unto the third and fourth generation. A number of physicians testified to this. One said: "Mothers who overwork, especially indoors, 242 THE AMERICAN IDEA rob their children of needed strength. A certain amount of tissue must be constantly rebuilt to repair the waste involved in work. And an extra amount to maintain the child during pregnancy and lactation. When the work uses more tissue than is~rebuilt, the child suffers. I have a patient whose mother worked too hard when carrying her. This woman is delicate, suffered terribly in her two confinements, and has frail children. She received no constitution from her mother and had none to give to her children. "On the other hand some women are so idle that their bodies are sluggish. Their muscles are undeveloped and weak and cannot expel the child. Such women suffer and suffer for hours in a vain attempt to fulfill Nature's intention. Their chil- dren are usually feeble. There should be activity without overwork to get natural results, for mother and child." Another said: "Much childlessness and espe- cially fear of childbirth is due to the ill-health of our women. That is caused by bad habits of life, lack of exercise particularly, but also improper diet and dress." Often, too, women hesitate to transmit to chil- dren poor weak constitutions. They dread suffer- ing for little ones as well as for themselves. A woman often says: "I'm not strong enough to have MUST MOTHERS SUFFER ? 243 children. I think it's a shame to bring delicate children into the world. If you can't give a child a fair start, it is better not to have it." But women must suffer for men's wrongdoings as well as for their own. A specialist in gynecology of many years' experience said: "A cause of ill- health in women besides the strain of city life, and the greatest cause, is known and recognized among the profession, though not generally outside. That is the profligacy of men before and even after marriage. Of course, unhygienic methods of living, such as food, dress, little exercise, etc., all affect health, but combined they are less powerful than that cause. This is something we cannot tell women, and I have often heard men com- plaining of the ill-health of wives who were ill through their husbands' own fault. That causes weakness in children, too. Many a woman suffers all her life long and has a horrible time in con- finement because of the wrongdoing of her husband or her father." But there is no reason why such abnormal conditions should continue, and much reason to believe they will not. Already there is a strong movement toward health. We have physical culture books, magazines and papers. The news- papers are devoting much space to its consideration. Some women are beginning to dress rationally, eat 244 THE AMERICAN IDEA properly, exercise, work reasonably and in every way care for their health. Some men are dropping their bad habits and taking pride in their bodies. This is hopeful for the future. More of it is needed — there cannot be too much emphasis laid on physical perfection. The suggestion of a doctor that we have regular classes in the schools to teach the value and purpose of our bodies is good. She said: "We need in- struction for the young of both sexes. Boys grow up with no regard for their bodies and rush into sensual indulgences at an early age with no under- standing of the results. School lectures could be given to the two sexes separately by physicians, explaining the laws of sex and life. "The anxiety of husbands to spare their wives suffering in childbirth shows that men would not, as a rule, wantonly bring misery on wife or children. Ignorance is at the bottom of most wrong." The most advanced physicians have given up the idea that childbirth necessarily entails almost unendurable suffering. They do not agree with an old physician who gravely assured me that women were made for disease, that the conforma- tion of their bodies was such that sickness and pain was unavoidable. Everywhere one finds a growing interest in hygienic methods of life. Dress reform, once MUST MOTHERS SUFFER ? 245 scoffed at, is popular; short skirts and loose shirt waists have become the regular all-day costume for women; sports and outdoor games are commonly played; golf, rowing, etc., are giving new life to thousands of women. The small waist is actually no longer fashionable. Women who made their figures years ago on the old models are taking breathing exercises and all sorts of exercises to enlarge their waists. A fash- ionable dressmaker told me she sometimes had to pad dresses at the waist for women with the old- fashioned figures. True this movement is only in its infancy, but it is growing in strength. And to it we must look for the banishment of the suffering which makes women dread childbirth. 6 A doctor, who has advanced ideas on this line, and puts her patients upon a strict regimen during pregnancy, said: "I have no trouble with dread of pain among my patients. The course I give them precludes that. I have really almost conquered suffering. I often have patients who are not in labor over an hour and then it is not severe. One recently had a baby in fifteen minutes from the first pain." Undoubtedly improved economic conditions would do much to banish the present suffering. Women overworked and worn from the drudgery of factory, shop or home are unfit for motherhood 246 THE AMERICAN IDEA and must suffer if they undertake to bear children. But a moderate amount of work is essential to normal health. Once people in general grasp the idea that childbirth agonies' are abnormal, deliberate and intelligent efforts to avoid them will become universal. It is highly improbable that painless childbirth, or anything approaching to it will be generally attained. That would necessitate a race in a state of physical perfection that will doubtless remain, at least for many generations, a dream. But with a higher standard of health and less intense, feverish living, the suffering might be so diminished and the power of endurance so in- creased that one barrier to a rising birthrate would be removed. CHAPTER XL Social Motherhood. Analysis has shown us that of the three indus- trial grades of women, housekeepers, idlers and wage-earners, the housekeepers are the most prolific. The birthrate falls perceptibly with the last two classes. This supports the contention of those who object to women leaving old paths for a larger life. It bears out the argument that woman, the busy housewife, is the most ready to propagate the species. Is it then advisable that women remain in their homes, continuing to be housekeepers ? And is it true that those who leave this ancient occupation of the sex for other activities are recre- ants who should be urged to return to domestic life ? If we answer yes, we are at once confronted by the question, Is this possible ? And to this the answer must be, No. Women who have left the home in large num- bers, as has been pointed out, not because of a concerted intention to change their sphere of activity, not because they have at length wearied of work that has been for centuries satisfactory to them, but because they are ceasing to be useful where once they were indispensable. They have 247 248 THE AMERICAN IDEA not deserted their work, it has left them! 1 Those who remain, numerous though they are, are yet but the residue who cling to a fast disappearing industry. Little remains to them of the work their grandmothers did. A woman can be a good housekeeper to-day and yet have absolutely no knowledge of numberless branches of work which former generations of women considered essential. In the minority are the young housewives who can paper a room, mix whitewash and apply it, paint a floor, or make a rug or carpet. Even breadmaking is no longer a universal accom- plishment. A woman who has been keeping house for years recently displayed proudly her first loaf of bread. If she had baked often enough to have judged of its quality, she would have hidden it. Plenty of city women, who make a business of keeping house, and are in good repute in their profession, do not know how to hang up a washing properly, and could not iron a fine dress or a white shirt. Many of them never made a set of underwear in their lives, buy their children's clothes, and have not the remotest idea how a tailor's buttonhole is fashioned. Yet such knowledge was common among all women one generation ago, and universal twenty years previous to that. SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 249 This does not mean that housekeepers of to-day are inferior, as women, to their ancestors, but that housekeeping is a vanishing industry. Bit by bit it is disappearing. It is undergoing a process of degeneration which is the inevitable accompaniment of decay. No form of industry ever suddenly disappears absolutely. It falls into gradual disuse as some new development of machinery or invention renders it no longer necessary. It lingers long, being less and less well performed as it fails in importance. This tendency to degeneration in disappearing indus- tries is admirably presented and demonstrated by Sir Arthur Mitchell, in his analysis of civili- zation, "The Past in the Present." He treats the subject very fully. A few instances will suffice to illustrate. Sampler working was once a highly prized feminine accomplishment which gradually became less popular, then disappeared. Professor Mitchell says: "Dr. George W. Balfour has furnished me with an interesting illustration of the dying out of a practice by the process of degeneration. It is supplied by the sampler, which was worked by nearly every little girl in the country (Scotland) forty years ago, and for a hundred years and more before that time, but which is now rarely, if ever, worked by any one. Dr. Balfour has 250 THE AMERICAN IDEA given me five of these samplers — the work of five generations of ladies in one family. They are all dated at the time of working them; but no one need consult the dates in order to arrange them according to age. The oldest shows by far the most careful work and the best taste. As they come down to the latest they get ruder and ruder till we reach those wonderful tubs with inconceivable fruit-trees or flowers in them, or still more wonderful and less conceivable peacocks, worked with coarse thread on coarse canvas, and not in any respect superior, either in taste or execution, to the paintings or sculpturing of the lowest savages we know. All the young ladies who worked these five samplers belonged to a chain of families living in affluence and refinement, and it was assuredly not a want of culture or taste which gave origin to those mar- vellous birds and decorative borders in the later of them, for the parents of some of the workers were among the appreciators and patrons of Raeburn. Sampler-work was a practice dying out, and death came to it in the usual way, by a process of degradation. This is the whole explanation." The whorl is an object used on the end of a spindle in hand spinning. When in universal use it was of stone, often elaborately carved. SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 251 Now, where hand spinning has nearly died out, the whorl is often made of a piece of potato. Prof. Mitchell says of the users of a potato and a stone whorl: "This woman lived within a couple of hours' drive of a spinning mill and tweed factory, in which the best machinery was employed, yet she used a spindle with a potato for its fly wheel! Though much closer to the centres of progress than the Fetlar woman, the art of spinning, as she practised it, was in a still ruder state. From a potato to a stone whorl is progress. From a stone whorl to a potato is degradation; just the degradation, however, which we encounter as an old art wanes when a new art supplants it. The old art, in such circum- stances, does not flourish and grow stronger and better; it sickens and dies out by a process of decline." Similarly we find the village cobbler, formerly a shoemaker, capable of turning out fine, beautifully finished work, is to-day a mere mender and patcher. This is not because fewer fine shoes are demanded than before, for the demand has increased, but because machinery has taken his work to the factory and only the remnants of his trade remain. There is general recognition of this decline in the housekeepers' art; but many people, not 252 THE AMERICAN IDEA understanding its causes, deplore it. Attempts are made to revive it. Of such a nature are cooking classes, sewing classes, and the various housekeeping publications and pages in papers. All such attempts will prove futile because the causes of the decline of housekeeping as an industry are inherent in our industrial conditions. Women will not spend two days making a petti- coat which they can buy ready made for less than the price of the materials. Even elderly women, who formerly made bread, preserves, etc., and did most of the family sewing, now buy everything ready made. The women have altered their customs because of the change in the sur- rounding conditions. The housekeeping magazines try to make work for women to keep them busy in their homes, almost denuded of legitimate industry, by giving elaborate directions for fancy dishes, and trouble- some complex ways of doing simple work. One recently advised women to have separate drying towels for glass, china, earthenware, tins, cutlery, and kettles, and embroider on each set, in outline stitch, the articles for which they were to be used. Fancy a woman with two or three in family starting out to wipe a meal's dishes with six different towels ! The idea is that shifting these towels, and keeping track of them will SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 253 consume time, make the work appear complex and difficult and give it an artificial dignity. When the woman is through, she will think she has done something important. But the tendency of the times is to make house- work easy, and the housewife gladly moves with the current. The first-class modern city apart- ment hotel does everything for the woman and leaves her relieved of all household care. In varying degrees this is true of all apartment living. This has in turn affected the separate house. Landlords have found how difficult it is to induce women to desert the convenient apartment for the separate home. In some suburbs the rent covers care of the furnace and lawn and other such services. In some places a central power distributes heat to a number of houses, removing the furnace entirely. We con- stantly hear of improvements and conveniences introduced into separate houses to bring them up to the standard of convenience set by the city apartment. All such simplifications of house- keeping rob women of occupation and constantly push them into one or other of the two classes of women which are the completed product of the new social conditions: the idlers and the wage- earners. Eventually the housekeeping wife will disappear. As the present conditions intensify 254 THE AMERICAN IDEA either women will remain in the home with noth- ing to do, or seek new employment. To decide which is the more desirable, we must study the nature and tendencies of both classes. Particularly, in connection with the race problem, is it desirable to understand the relation of both to reproduction. The natural product, under present conditions, with a strong bias toward women remaining in the home, is the idler. She is produced purely by inertia. Woman has been in the home for ages, she is used to being there, to leave it requires effort, thought, activity, an adjustment to new conditions. The passive thing is to stay still, so she stays. So accustomed are we to women in the home that we rarely question what they are doing there, whether there is any reason for them being there. Woman and home have been so long associated in the human mind that the connection of thoughts is agreeable, peaceful, soothing. It requires no analysis, no considera- tion. It is usual, therefore not to be questioned. Hence the woman who remains in the home after all her work has left her, still sits peacefully entrenched behind age-long custom and meets the approval of convention-ruled minds. But what is this idler in the home ? What is her character and what her relation to society ? ! SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 255 She is a new product in America, but in the world she is old. She appears in every nation when riches accumulate. 2 She is a luxury and comes in only luxurious ages. She accompanies slavery, aristocracy, and plutocracy. She spends all her energies in consuming goods because none of her activity is put forth in producing them. She lives always off the labor of others. She is a human parasite. The principle of her life is to get, not to give. Having no legitimate work she becomes demor- alized, physically as well as mentally. She is living unnaturally, for work and responsibility are the natural portions of human beings, and she fails to maintain normal standards of health and character. She becomes enfeebled in body, and activity either grows distasteful to her or is sought in abnormal, artificial ways. These are the women who spend their days spending money. They are the daughters of the horse-leech, continually crying "give, give," to the men who pay their bills. They have no idea of the value of money, or its cost in energy and vital force, therefore they have no conscience about demanding it. They are the women who drive men to a frenzy of work that brings them to nervous prostration, premature old age, or the insane asylum. It is for such women that men 256 THE AMERICAN IDEA plunge into reckless speculations that lead to bankruptcy and disgrace. The idle, 3 supported woman has but one thought — self. To such women children become distasteful. Motherhood is founded in altruism, the sentiment of unselfishness, of thought for others. The woman who is a parasite lives a wholly self-centred existence and naturally shrinks from motherhood. The Roman matron in the days when she was active, useful, busy, was a strong, fearless mother. When continued conquests brought slaves and riches to the Romans she sank into idleness, gave way to immorality and almost ceased to bear children. Worst of all the children she did bear were feeble, degraded creatures, for the stream cannot rise above its head. Cornelia produced the Gracchi, Agrippina gave birth to a Nero. In Greece the same course of events led to down- fall. The women became parasitic, they ceased to bear, or produced an enfeebled race, and the nation went down to decay. This is the history of every great civilization which has perished. There have been other contributing causes, but primarily the force and power of the nation has been sapped at the root by the degeneration of the women through idleness. That parasitic women are the same in America as in other times, we can easily discover. No SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 257 women have a greater distaste for motherhood than the women who have no work of any sort. A very thoughtful physician who has large ex- perience among women in well-to-do circum- stances, said: "This falling-ofF in population is an old problem co-existent with civilization in certain states of development. It comes with luxury. We find it in Greece and Rome when wealth appeared. Women have become idle, therefore enfeebled. They cannot endure the effort of bearing children, they will not be both- ered with them. This is the source of degenera- tion and the decay of the nation. Parasitism in women has appeared here, and nothing more deadly can attack a nation. We have a large class of idle women, and they are just the type that idle women always are. They are nervous, high strung, hysterical, selfish. Their sex func- tions are perverted to purposes of pleasure. Im- morality among them is common. They have no stamina, they live on excitement and in the intervals of dissipation or abnormal pleasures collapse into feebleness. Such women will not be mothers from choice, nor is it desirable that they should. Their offspring are lacking in force, vigor or initiative. They cannot produce children fit to build up a great nation. Nature knows they are degenerate types and gladly sees their line perish." 258 THE AMERICAN IDEA Another physician said: "I practise among two classes of women, idle wives and professional prostitutes. It is surprising how strongly they resemble 1 each other in general characteristics. They are both selfish, whimsical, sickly, vain, and stupid. They both care only for appearance and show and selfish pleasure. Often there is not much difference in their morals. The reason is that neither class works for a living. They both get what they want by playing on the fancy of some man. It is an unworthy way of getting a living and it degrades the women who take it. If a woman is working either in her home or in business she knows she is useful and she respects herself. Besides, she has to think of others and do things for them, so she cannot be utterly selfish. But the idle woman doesn't care for a soul but herself. Whether she is married or a mistress she is busy getting all she can out oi some man, and how can she have any nobility of character ? Both these classes of women among whom I practise lack independence and intellect. They always want to be in the fashion which means wear exactly what other people wear. Indeed, that is their whole idea — to be like others. And they succeed. They are sc stupid, inane, and tame in mind that I get per- fectly wearv of them. It is the greatest relief tc SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 259 come in contact with an occasional woman who thinks and decides for herself." "These women do not want children. They may have one or two, but generally prefer not to. You may think it surprising that sometimes prostitutes have more longing for motherhood than these idle wives. I have a patient who is the mistress of a man she really loves and she begs him to let her have children. She has told me that he will not, and cried bitterly about it. I never saw a married woman in this idle class cry for a baby in all my experience." Dr. Shrady says: "The fashionable woman of to-day would rather have a dog than a baby." Dr. Parkhurst says: "Many women do not want to be bothered with children. They grudge the interruption such an event would cause in their crowded social lives. I have heard women admit this was one of the principal reasons for their dislike of children." A physician of wide experience said : " We have a large class of idle women and they will not have children. When women have become accus- tomed to living for themselves, with nothing to interfere with their pleasure, they will not en- dure the trouble children bring. The women with most time to give to children want them I past. 2 6o THE AMERICAN IDEA A physician whose practice is largely among women who are entirely idle and luxurious, said: "Their one ambition is pleasure and show. They do not want children, because children involve sacrifices and activity. These women have as an ideal the life of the very wealthy woman who has servants to wait on her continually and never lifts a finger herself. Those very wealthy women have nurses to care for their children. Those of my patients who can afford that have one or two children. Those with less money will not have the children. They have become accustomed to idleness and self-indulgence and will go to any length to avoid work or responsibility." Another physician, practising among a similar class, said: "Idle women will not have children because they are too busy with their amusements and their love affairs with other men. They are generally immoral. They live lazy, overfed lives and have nothing to think of but their intrigues. They can't be bothered with children and will not spoil their figures having them." Another physician said: "The women who sit at home and do nothing never desire children. Idleness in women always leads to childlessness." Another doctor practising among women in moderate circumstances, but living in flats where they had practically nothing to do, said : " Domes- SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 261 tic life has degenerated into a little embroidery and fancy work. Every kind of active work has almost disappeared. Large numbers of women really do nothing stirring and become weak and lethargic. Such women avoid children; they are too lazy to be bothered with them." And how of the working woman ? She, too, avoids family, though for a widely different reason. With her the conflict is not between idleness and activity, but between two forms of usefulness. She sacrifices her baby to her work. She is the woman, who having discovered that her ancient household industries have deserted her, follows her work out into the world. The superficial observer thinks her an alien among women, but in reality she is the true child of her race, the legitimate heir of her active progenitor who for ages has toiled in the home. To work, so far from being a new experience for women, is something inseparable from true womanhood. Women were the originators of industry, the world's first burden-bearers and workers. It is too long a task to review here at length the activities of women from the first crude gatherers of roots and herbs to the specialized business or professional woman of to-day. But throughout the ages from the first glimmerings of civilization by the cave fire to our complex modern 262 THE AMERICAN IDEA city life, women have always been active, per- sistent, faithful workers. Prof. Otis T. Mason, in his recent work, "Woman's Share in Primitive Culture," deals exhaustively with this subject, showing that every form of industry orginated with women and was for centuries carried on by them. He says, "It is in the apotheosis of industrialism that woman has borne her part so persistently and well. At the very beginning of human time she laid down the line of her duties and she has kept to them unremittingly." Motherhood is the very basis of industry. The mother cares for and provides for her young through the lower forms of life before the male takes any interest in them. To do so she must be active. Always among the animals the mother does more for the young and is more active than the father. This is true among human beings for a long time. Men are busy fighting, while women do all the work of the tribe. Men hunt, but the women cut up the animal, prepare it for food and make use of the hide. It is often adduced as an evidence of the oppres- sion and cruelty of the savage man that his wife so assumes the burdens of life. This is a false view. Each sex takes up those responsibilities SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 263 for which its tastes and abilities fit it. The Indian woman thinks it no hardship to weave and tan and sew. She prefers her work to hunt- ing and fighting. Uncivilized women are not forced to work; it is their nature to work, they like to do it. The unnatural idea is that women should not work. A woman without occupation is abnormal. .Women are the workers of the world and the producers of the race. It is as unnatural for them to fail in one function as in the other. And experience shows that when they cease to have work they will in consequence cease to bear children. The idle woman is leading an unnat- ural life, her instincts fail, she degenerates physi- cally, mentally, and morally, and produces either no children or worthless ones. But the working woman is the normal type. Industry is the natural accompaniment of mother- hood. Why, then, are our American working women producing few children ? Unlike the idle woman, who has lost the in- stincts of motherhood and has no desire for chil- dren, the women who work consider it a misfortune that their employment should preclude mother- hood. s A doctor who has practised for eight years, largely among women, said: "Women with 264 THE AMERICAN IDEA nothing to do have no wish for children. Business women always desire them. If they do not have them it is through fear of being unable to support them ; or else the struggle is between love of their work and the longing for children, and the work wins. Every married woman doctor of my acquaintance either wants or has children. I have heard young professional women say, 'I'd hate to think my profession would ever keep me from having a family.' "In my college class there were seven women. Three were already married and had families of four, five, and six, respectively. Two have since married and had children. One died single and the only one married and childless, married a millionaire, gave up her profession and is living an idle, self-indulgent life." Another physician said: "In my experience, business and professional women are almost too apt to have children. I believe they ought not to for the sake of their work. Yet usually I find they are so anxious for motherhood that they will risk anything for it. They are apt to marry late and give the tag-ends of their child-bearing years to the family, which is good for neither mother nor children. A friend of mine recently married at forty-five, and has a child, though I advised her against it." SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD $6§ Another physician said: "The better class) of women in business or professional life desire} children. My friends are, many of them, doctors;; and they all regard motherhood with great favor} All who are married have children, or are very) much disappointed not to have. I find a desire; for motherhood among busy women. They are in a normal relation to society and therefore have normal instincts. Idleness, not activity, destroys the instincts." J A woman who has been observing social con- ditions, especially as they affect women, for fully twenty years, in different sections of this country, said: "I'm always sorry to see lazy women with children. The poor little mites are born warped, to begin with. The mother lives . so unnaturally, with her over-feeding, late hours, and tight lacing that the child never gets a fair start. Then she never will nurse her baby — it is too much bother. "And the child's life is a round of pampering and scolding. The mother's ideal is a well- dressed doll, so the child has everything, — silks, feathers, laces, jewelry, theatres, trips, and spend- ing money, till it hasn't an interest or desire left. "On the other hand, while indulged to death, it is nagged till it has no spirit left, or is irritable. The constant cry of the mother is 'don't' and 'stop.' 266- THE AMERICAN IDEA "Such children grow up blase. They have nothing to anticipate. Neither have they any sense of responsibility. Sons of twenty-five or thirty will live off their fathers without any feeling of shame. "Business women, when they have children, I have found to be the best of mothers. Business life, unless a woman is utterly overworked, never blunts the instincts. With working women the struggle is always between the battle for life and the love of children. Babies demand so much time and cost a working woman so much. "Among all women, except the idle, who avoid children for their own pleasure, I have found a growing sense of responsibility toward children which creates hesitation. My little girl said to me before she was ten, 'I didn't ask you to born me.' Women are realizing that the children have no say in the matter, and the parents should consider carefully before conferring a life which cannot be gotten rid of if unsatisfactory. "Working women think of this because they know how hard the world is and how fierce the struggle for life. When women earn money they know how hard it is to get and how merciless the world is to the weak. That makes them cautious about bringing children here." Our industrial conditions affect the birthrate SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 267 among wage-earning women. While industry is natural to women the life-sapping drive and strain of the factory, shop and mill is abnormal for any one, man or woman. Every picture of factory life shows women and men bent and worn, anaemic and weak, from overwork. Such a life is not conducive to reproduction, and it ought not to be. While activity is essential to a rounded womanhood and a normal motherhood, overwork is detrimental to both. Women having a suffi- ciency of congenial work will be able and willing to produce normal, desirable children. Those either idle or over-worked will have either no children or children that are below par. But not only are our wage-earning women overworked. In every way our industrial condi- tions are ill-adjusted for working women to be mothers. Woman's work has until so recently been in the home that we still regard her presence in the labor marts of the nation as a sort of intru- sion, a temporary inconvenience, against which we chafe, and which we vaguely hope will soon come to an end. The idea of women as a perma- nent half of the working world has occurred to but few people and has met acceptance from still fewer. Therefore no arrangements have been made to make motherhood accord easily with industrial 268 THE AMERICAN IDEA life. Indeed, it is commonly considered an impossible combination. This is simply because the idea is new. We have thought of motherhood and housework for ages and the combination seems perfectly natural. Mother washes, irons, sews, knits, bakes bread and makes jelly, yet no one is disturbed. But when mother practises medicine or law, discounts notes, keeps books, or runs a typewriter, the public mind is distressed. It is a new combina- tion of ideas and a new thought hurts the sleepy, conventional brain. Yet any woman who has had experience of business life and housekeeping knows that house- work is not the less wearing and the more satis- factory of the two. Since the working woman is the normal type and since industry is fast disappearing from the home, it is to the woman in the industrial world we must in future look for the continuance of the race. The housekeeper will disappear, because house- work is disappearing. The idle woman, the parasite, will never mother a race. Our problem is to so adapt the world to the woman who works that she may combine motherhood with industry. It is no solution of the problem to say factory work injures women, therefore women must SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 269 stop working. Factory work injures men. But no one suggests that men should therefore live in idleness. Work must be done, and men and women must have employment. But the condi- tions under which they labor can be altered just as much and just as rapidly as our will and wisdom permit. How this shall be done, is a big question. It will require much readjustment in many lines of labor. It can not be done all at once; no great change comes quickly. But it will have to be done before this question of "race suicide" will be settled. The working woman, in the twentieth century in America, as in all ages and countries, must bear the race. As her industries cease, where she has in the past found them, in the home, society must make it possible for her to pursue them otherwhere, without detriment to her motherhood, or else see that motherhood fail. But why, it will be asked, does any woman choose work instead of motherhood ? Would not the normal woman choose the child at any cost ? For one thing the very rejection of work places her in the lists of the idle parasites, who, as a class, always despise motherhood. More- over, hers is the wiser, higher choice. The choice between work and motherhood is 270 THE AMERICAN IDEA one that should never be asked of woman. It is like asking her to choose between her right hand and her eye-sight. She is entitled to both. A perfect womanhood requires both work and motherhood. Motherhood is the highest expression of sex, the ultimate purpose for which woman, as a female, exists. But work is the highest expression of humanity, the ultimate purpose for which woman, as a human creature, exists. If she is denied motherhood she fails as a female. If she is without work she misses her place in human society. Now it is a higher thing to express humanity than sex. A cow, a sheep, a cat, even a fish, is male or female; only a person is human. Sex existed for countless ages before human beings were evolved. Sex is a wonderful, precious possession; but more wonderful, more precious, is our humanity. Hence, when women are faced, as they are to-day, with the choice between the expression of their sex and of their humanity, the forces that are making for civilization, that are lifting the race and pushing it forward cry out to her: Be human! 6 Especially strong is this impulse to-day, when our work has become so social, so interdependent, SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 271 when we are becoming conscious of the unity of the race. The more perfectly people work together — each specialized in his particular task — the higher is the civilization, and the stronger the social con- sciousness. With every passing year these con- ditions become more marked in America. And of this socialized, civilized life woman must be a part. And so she may be and is as long as she is untrammelled by the child that absorbs her time and care. At present its advent shuts her off from her industrial activities and forces her to work, not in connection with others, as a civilized being, but alone, like a primitive savage. Thus, giving up a profession or business for motherhood means giving up a twentieth century socialized, civilized life for a primitive, isolated existence. 7 Not that women generally are conscious of these motives. Each will give you a personal reason for her choice. Neither men nor women make a practise of analyzing their motives or understanding the reasons for their conduct. The mass of people obey social forces blindly, and the men and women of two generations later understand the reason. Yet some know why they act. A very compe- 272 THE AMERICAN IDEA tent woman, the owner and manager of a large business and the mother of two children, said: "Things will have to be changed socially to accommodate the business woman and make it easier for her to manage a family with her work. Women are in the industrial world and must be, and it's nonsense to talk of them leaving it. They will remain and increase in numbers, because there's no other place for them. They are the best women, because they have balance and common sense, and they produce the best children." Another woman, filling a responsible position in a large business, and commanding a yearly salary of several thousands, who is also the mother of two children, said: "The only way to solve this so-called 'race suicide' problem is to break down whatever stands in the way of our intelligent, active, forceful women having families. It is a great loss to be deprived of children. They may not be missed in early life, but just when it is too late they will be regretted. Still, mother- hood must be made to harmonize with activity in women. I think it would be a fearful thing to die and have done nothing for the race but have babies, — a rat or a cow could do as much." It is a national mistake to put barriers in the SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 273 way of capable, energetic women becoming mothers. It is too much like the policy of ancient Greece. Not from her brilliant, but from her despised and uncultured domestic women came the children. Had freedom and intellectual de- velopment been extended to the virtuous wives and mothers, who can say how long Greece might not have maintained her marvellous production of brain giants ? As a nation, we believe in the progress and freedom of woman. Newspapers and magazines herald her achievements and we pride ourselves on the long record of her victories and attainments. Then why punish our foremost women by denying them motherhood ? Why forbid to the ambitious women of the nation the satisfaction of the normal instinct of reproduction ? It is a terrible injury to progressive women to be deprived of mother- hood, and a greater wrong to the nation to lose the children of such women. Yet working women who wish to be mothers not only have to cope with conditions uncon- sciously maladjusted to their purposes, but there is frequently a determined effort made to condemn them not only to childlessness, but to celibacy The government regulation forbidding married women to retain their clerkships, and the rulings of the school boards of some cities are cases in 274 THE AMERICAN IDEA point. One might suppose that marriage and motherhood would increase the ability of a woman to understand children and make the better teachers. All sorts of substitutes for industrial activity are constantly suggested by people who realize that women must be employed, and that their old occupations in the home are being taken from them. A very intelligent, thoughtful, naturalized Ger- man, who has been practising medicine in Chi- cago for over twenty years, deplored the existence of the parasite woman, whose menace to society he perfectly understood. Yet he objected strongly to the industrial woman. He said: "We have a new feature of this problem of falling population — the woman who works. She also fails to have children, because we cannot make industry and motherhood co- existent. It is unnatural for women to work outside of the home." "But," I suggested, "the work is gone from the home." "Yes," was his reply, "but she should make herself busy. Did not the old housewife find enough to do for her family ? Did she sell her products ?" "No," I replied, "she did not sell them; but SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 275 } i neither could she buy them. They were manu- factured articles with an economic value, though they were not in the market. Now if a woman makes a garment she may find after all her labor that she has worked for a few cents, or even for less than nothing, because she could buy the article cheaper than she could make it. There is no joy in labor which you know to be value- less." "That is true," he admitted; "then let her spend her time among the poor, training the poor women in house service and care of their children. The best thing that could be done would be for well-to-do women to establish institutions where the children of the poor could be properly cared for. The rest of the time should be given to study and self-improvement. Women must work, of course, but not for money, because they displace men." This man saw the necessity of occupation for women, yet his only suggestion was charity work. To carry out his plan we must forever have a society, half of which is sunk in poverty, to provide occupation and interest for the other half. More- over, the woman whose house service has disap- peared, is to spend her time teaching house service to another woman, whose housework in reality has been subjected to exactly the same process 276 THE AMERICAN IDEA of shrinkage. She is also to establish institutions for the care of poor children. But what is she to do for her own ? Charity work seems to be the only suggestion of activity many people have to offer to the woman of to-day looking for occupation. Another physician, who has practised for over ten years among all classes, said: "Women are leaving housework and the family for industrial life. This holds true in all ranks. The senior class in our medical college is almost entirely made up of married women whose husbands have plenty of money. They are not working for money, but because they haven't enough to do to fill their lives. They can go to a store and in half a day buy as much clothing as they could make in six months. Everything from dresses to pickles can be bought ready made; there is no housework left. "When women work there is so much more money, and living is so high. People of educa- tion who would want to do well by children must have a big income. Very often the family is left out and the wife works. "It does not seem right that women should earn money if they have husbands. They should leave the places for those who need them. Though, of course, I've known women who loved their SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 277 professions so it would have seemed a shame for them to have had to do anything else. "Among poor women there is the same tend- ency. Girls can often get a job when the father cannot, or the wife when the husband fails. Women everywhere are shoving men out of busi- ness life. When women first enter any occupation they get lower wages, but afterwards their prices rise. Professional women and those in respon- sible business positions earn as much as men; also those in trades where women are in the unions with the men — as printers, for instance." "What do you think should be done ?" I asked. "I think," she replied, "there should be a crusade among women 'back to the home'; though I must confess I don't see any signs of it." "And what will they do when they go back to the home?" I asked. "Well, if they don't want to be lazy — and no woman should be that — they should work for charity or at some philanthropic work." Again charity work was the only suggestion. ' A number of women who spend all their time in philanthropic work told me they did it to occupy themselves, as they did not wish to work for money. This is, of course, simply begging the question. Doing charity work can never be an occupation for the half of the race whose domestic 278 THE AMERICAN IDEA industries have been taken from them. Plainly, women, the world's age-long workers, must have real, honest employment. They cannot kill time and pretend to be busy. The objection that women take men's work is futile in the face of the fact that work is not a sexed thing. It is the expression of human activity, and belongs to whomever can do it and will do it. Moreover, labor is a source of wealth and every worker makes his or her own wages and more. Nor can the nation afford to maintain a vast and rapidly-increasing number of women in idleness. Their lost labor means lost wealth. In addition must be reckoned the expense of their maintenance. Idle women consume as much as women who work — generally a great deal more. All the people of any nation who are consumers, without being producers, are maintained by the surplus wealth created by the workers. From this source should always come the support of children. In a crude state of industrial development such surplus is slight. All must work, and even then life is maintained at the level of bare subsistence. There is no wealth to spare for the ornamentation of life, for education, art or enjoyment. The progress of a people depends upon its ability to produce a surplus and to use that surplus SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 279 property. No better use can be made of national wealth than to remove children from industry, care for them physically, mentally, and morally and fit them for higher citizenship. Probably no worse use could be made of that same wealth than to maintain adults, either men or women, in idleness which is bound to degenerate and degrade the character. The idle women now maintained are supported at the expense of a working childhood. The wealth that might be produced by women now unemployed, their energies going to waste, would keep and care for and educate all the million and three-quarters of miserable, toiling child slaves who are growing into stunted and dwarfed man- hood and womanhood. The nation cannot afford working babies and idle women. If it has to main- tain a constantly increasing class of leisure women it continually sets bounds to its power to progress. True, the present maladjusted industrial system often makes women unfair competitors of men. As things are at present, every new worker is a menace to those already in the field. It is not because of their sex, but because they add to the number of workers, that objection is made to women in industry. Besides, women generally work more cheaply than men, and cut wages. This is because they 2 8o THE AMERICAN TDEA are comparatively inexperienced. It took men centuries to learn the necessity of high wages, and how to get them. Some trades have not yet learned these lessons and are still working for a pittance. On the other hand, women in some trades- are organizing and standing for short hours and high wages as persistently and faith- fully as men. Experience in the business world will bring all working women that position in time. Consider the organization of the Chicago school teachers, of whom the vast majority are women. An industrial life for women, married as well as single, is advocated more frequently as its necessity becomes more pressing. Dr. Simon Patten, Professor of Political Econ- omy in the University of Pennsylvania, who is accounted one of the leading thinkers on economic questions in the country, believes that the wife should be a wage producer as well as the husband. Dr. Patten builds this view not as a theory, but as a basic principle of economy. He argues that the social problem of thousands of married couples would be solved were the wife to continue a wage- earner during the early period of marriage. "The whole social problem would be solved," said Dr. Patten, in discussing the economic position of the home in society, "were the wife to become an income producer. Of course, I SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 281 refer to the young married couples where each, before marriage, is earning between $10 and $12 a week. I believe that each should continue a wage earner until the husband's income increases to at least $20, when the wife can add more to the utility of his money by withdrawing from the wage-producing class. "As the income from the man increases from $10 to $20 a week that of the woman remains stationary at $10, and then, giving herself up to the home, they both can get better and more pleasure out of the husband's income. The social pressure on the woman is to force her from the employed classes. But from my point of view I see no objection to the wife working as long as it is to the better utilization of the income of the husband." Dr. Patten believes that the same law might work to the happiness of those earning large incomes, but that the social conventions hold with such strength as to forbid it. "To my mind," he said, "from an economic and moral viewpoint, it is desirable that persons of small money-earning capacity should be mar- ried, provided both continue wage-earners. If the persons, therefore, are arrived at maturity, marriage under these conditions merely means a moral, economic, and social uplifting," 282 THE AMERICAN IDEA Dr. Franklin H. Giddings, Professor of Sociol- ogy in Columbia University, said on the same subject: "As an abstract question, the woman, whether married or unmarried, should have absolute freedom and opportunity to earn money. Take away all legal and conventional barriers and let women take their chances in the industrial world with the men." "Do you consider such employment tends to elevate the morals of the community ?" he was asked. "There is every reason why it should," he replied. "In France, where the middle classes are the most thrifty and most moral to be found anywhere in the world, the wife is usually a shop- keeper, or else she manages a- restaurant, while the husband is employed in other pursuits. There is no better moral family life than among these people. It is pure and strong. "In this country the wife of the foreigner is nearly always a bread earner, whereas the women of the descendants of American stock strive for social ambition. They live to some degree of easiness a social life within their own social circle. There is, therefore, less tendency among American women to become wage-earners independent of their husbands," SOCIAL MOTHERHOOD 283 It is a subject that is more and more discussed and must grow in public interest. So far the discussion has hinged, principally, upon the right of women to earn money, work being regarded mainly as a means of money- getting. But the chief reason why women must have work is not that they may have money — important though that is. They must have work because work is a human necessity. Work alone can save them from degeneracy. To this end, that woman, married women as well as single ones, and mothers as well as the childless, may have occupation, our social organ- ism must be adjusted. Whatever changes are nec- essary to make this possible will have to be made. What shall be done and how it shall be done is a many-sided problem which it will take all the wisdom of the nation to solve. As I said before, in regard to the purely economic phase of this question, this book is not written to offer a social panacea, but to call attention to a social problem, a problem which will press for solution within the next few decades. The whole problem of making the working world fit for women, which it certainly is not at present, faces us. The question of making women helpful co-workers with men instead of an underpaid class undermining them and stealing 284 THE AMERICAN IDEA their jobs, must be settled. In addition, comes the problem of caring for the children. If women must work, if the safety and social health of the nation depends upon a working womanhood, America will have to face these problems and find their solution. Constantly changing social problems are the inevitable ac- companiment of growing civilization. A genera- tion ago the United States had slavery to cope with. Now it has the labor question, trusts, and the woman question. They are interdependent, and more or less related to all is this falling birthrate. When we readjust our industrial system so as to give to every man who wants to work, occupa- tion, with such income as shall enable him to support a generous American standard of living, and face without fear the responsibility of a family, we shall have done much to encourage reproduction among native Americans. When we make such social arrangements that women may have work without foregoing mother- hood, we may expect such a birthrate as will maintain and rationally increase our nation. To bring about such conditions is our national task. Until it is accomplished we will not find any growth in our birthrate. "Race suicide" is a social question, and upon society rests the burden of finding its solution. APPENDIX. Chapter I. — Has the Small Family Become an American Ideal? •Elkanah Watson's prediction of population for 1900, made in 1815, was 100,235,985. ("Discussions in Economics and Statistics," Francis A. Walker, p. 120.) The early population doubled by natural increase once in every twenty-three years. ("Emigra- tion and Immigration," Richmond Mayo-Smith, p. 39.) See also "The Weak Spot in the American Republic," by J. Weston, in " The Nineteenth Century and Ajter," December, 1902. J New York papers, February 12, 1903. Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March, 1903. 'President M. Carey Thomas, of Bryn Mawr, says that while only 50 per cent, of college women marry* " college has nothing whatever to do with it ... . because the college women of the past have come from classes in which only 50 per cent, of the women do marry." (Address before the General Federation of Women's Clubs, St. Louis, May 20, 1904.) Miss Thomas does not disprove the statement that college women are disinclined to matrimony, she simply shows that another and larger class of intelligent women, the near relatives of college women, are equally inclined to remain single. 285 286 APPENDIX ♦Interviews in New York papers, February 13,1905. 'Popular Science Monthly, May, 1903. ""Education Not the Cause of Race Decline," Popular Science Monthly, June, 1903. »' 'Increasing Sterility of American Women," Journal of the American Medical Association, October 5, 1901. "Decreasing Fecundity of Americans," Philadelphia Medical Journal, January 18, 1902. "The American Birth and Death Rates," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, May 15, 1902. 8 "Our Declining Birthrate," Fred A. Bushee, Ph.D., Clark College, Popular Science Monthly, August, 1903. 9 New York World interview, February 4, 1903. ' "Such instances are frequently reported in the New York papers. 1 'The small apartment, the result of the crowd- ing in large cities is considered to be one cause of the small family in France. See "Home Life in France," P. G. Hammerton, Forum, July, 1891. 1 J The New York papers of July 19, 1905, report a case of a man earning only $5.00 a week, who is the father of twenty-two children. 1 3 New York papers. 1 *In an artic'e "Small vs. Large Families," Inde- pendent, December, 1901, Ida Husted Harper quotes similar instances from her experience. "February 11, 1903. APPENDIX 287 • "Authorized interview, Sunday World, April 21, 1901. 1 'Popular Science Monthly, June, 1903. 1 '"Nothing is sadder to see than a large family, except one with no children at all." ("Race Suicide and Common Sense," by Paterfamilias, North Ameri- can Review, June, 1903.) "Footnote to "The Woman Question." Olive Schreiner, Cosmopolitan, December, 1900 and Janu- ary, 1905. 2 'North American Review, January, 1903. 288 APPENDIX Chapter II. — Another Form of Race Suicide. 'Robert Hunter in his book, "Poverty," and Profes- sor Ross, in "Foundations of Sociology," discuss immigration as a factor in "race suicide. "J 2 Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigra- tion for 1904. 'History of the American People," Thomas Went- worth Higginson, page 223. '"Racial Composition of the American People," John R. Commons, Chautauquan, September, 1903. 'Bills of Rights, by which William and Mary were placed on the English throne in 1689. "Higginson, op. cit. page 155. 'Report of Commissioner-General of Immigration, June, 1904, Chart 11. Johnson's Cyclopedia, article on "Immigration." The Encyclopedia of Social Re- form, W. D. P. Bliss, page 108. " Principles of Popu- lation," R. T. Malthus. Edition 1872, pp. 3, 253, and 254. "Richmond Mayo-Smith, in the introduction to "Emigration and Immigration," pp. 5 and 6, defines Americanism : " (1) The free political constitution and the ability to govern ourselves in the ordinary affairs of life which we have inherited from England and so surprisingly APPENDIX 289 developed in our own history; (2) The social morality of the Puritan settlers of New England, which the spirit of equality and the absence of privileged classes have enabled us to maintain; (3) The economic well being of the mass of the community, which affords our working classes a degree of comfort, distinguishing them sharply from the artisans and peasants of Europe; (4) Certain social habits which are distinctively Amer- ican, or at least present in greater degree among our people than elsewhere in the world, such as — ready acquiescence in the will of the majority — a sense of union — a national patriotism and confidence in the future of the country." '"History of European Morals." « °See Report of Commissioner-General of Immigra- tion, June, 1904, Twelfth Census and "Cyclopedia of Social Reform" for figures given in relation to immigra- tion. 1 'Taking Watson's predictions and comparing them with the actual census returns (see table following), the late Francis A. Walker found that in the censuses of 1820 and 1830, when immigration was so slight as to be negligible, the predictions were within four one- thousandths of the actual population; and again in 1840 and 1850, with immigration amounting to 599,125 in one decade, and 1,713,251 in the second decade, Watson's predictions were as close as before. 290 APPENDIX Foreign Population Watson's Watson's for Year Population Estimate Error Decade 1790. . 3,929,214 1800. . 5,308,483 50,000 1810. . 7,239,881 70,000 1820. . 9,633,822 9,625,734 8,088 114,000 1830. . . 12,866,020 12,833,645 32,375 143,439 1840. . . 17,069,453 17,116,526 47,073 599,125 1850. . . 23,191,876 23,185,368 6,501 1,713,251 1860. . . 31,443,321 31,753,824 310,503 2,598,214 1870. . . 38,338,371 42,328,432 3,770,061 2,314,824 1880. . . 50,115,783 56,450,241 6,294,458 2,812,191 1890. . . 62,622,250 77,266,989 14,644,739 5,246,613 1900. . . 75,559,258 100,235,985 24,676,727 3,687,564 Speaking of these predictions, Walker says ("Dis- cussions of Economics and Statistics," pp. 120, 121): "Here we see that, in spite of the arrival of 599,000 during the period of 1830-1840, four times as many as had arrived during any preceding decade, the figures of the census coincided closely with the estimate of Watson, based on the growth of population in the pre-immigration era, falling short of it only by 47,073 in 17,000,000; while in 1850 the actual population, in spite of the arrival of 1,713,000 more immigrants, exceeded Watson's estimate by only 6,508 in a total of 23,000,000." Report of the Industrial Commis- sion, Vol. XV, 1901. 1 2 Otis T. Mason, Curator of Ethnology, National Museum, Washington, gives this classification in the APPENDIX 291 Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, June, 1904, pp. 161-162. 1 *Gustav Michaud, in Century, Vol. 65, March, 1903. 1 «"The Slav Invasion," Julian B. Warne. • 'Russians in 1878, 3,595; in 1880, 7,191; in 1905, 184,897. 1 'Article by W. L., in Federation, June, 1903. 1 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Decem- ber, 1900. 1 'Sermon reported in New York papers, spring of 1903, shortly after President Roosevelt's letter on "Race Suicide" was publishad. 1 'This woman said she did not go begging to any house oftener than once a yeai-, and that "no one should miss a little bit once a year to help a poor woman with a big family." 1 '"When the wages of labor are hardly sufficient to maintain two children, and a man marries and has five or six, he, of course, finds himself miserably dis- tressed." (Malthus, op. cit. Book IV, Chapter III, p. 404.) 1 8 S^e note 2, this chapter. "These (preventive checks) are so common and to familiar that it is unnecessary to enumerate them." (Metchnikoff, op. cit. p. 101.) "John S. Billings, Forum, 1893, says: "Girls of twenty years of age at the present time know more about anatomy and physiology than did their grand- mothers at the same age, and the married women APPENDIX ' 305 are much better informed as to the means by which the number of children may be limited than were those of thirty years ago." He also speaks of "the growth of the opinion that the abstaining from having children on the part of a married couple is not only not in itself sinful or contrary to the usual forms of religious creeds, but that it may even be under certain circumstances commendable." 306 APPENDIX Chapter V. — American Sele-Peeservation. 'Francis A. Walker shows that when the decline in the American birth rate began, the standard of health was rising, on account of the growth of intelligence in regard to hygiene and the diffusion of comfort incident to increased wealth. (The Chautavquan, Vol. 14, 1892, p. 657.) Transplanting a people to a new country gives it fresh vigor, makes of it a new nation and increases its fecundity. Pioneer families are notably large. But our native American birth rate is only 19.5 per thousand, while the mother country, Britain, has 29 per thousand. Foreigners come in the vigorous, therefore prolific, period of life, yet they show a decline in fecundity when compared with the lands from which they come. 2 Professor Thorndike thinks we are failing, in accordance with a natural law, that we are not young but old. But it would be unprecedented for a nation to "die a natural death of old age" in the midst of a new land, rich in undeveloped resources, and inhab- ited by a civilized people for so short a time. 3 The instinct of race preservation is sometimes denied, sexual instinct alone being recognized. This view is very fully discussed by Antono Dano, under the head, "The Race Preservation Dogma," American APPENDIX 307 Journal of Sociology, January, 1900. He contends that race preservation is not an instinct, but simply a result of following the sexual instinct, and the desire for offspring is incidental, not in any sense an expression of race love. However, the love of and pride in race, the desire to see one's nation increase appears to inhere in man from early ages. •See notes to Chapter II for such customs of savage peoples. ! The "Social Unrest," Prof. John Graham Brooks, p. 202. 6 The frightful mortality of babies in city tenement districts might not be considered less brutal than the infanticide of savages or of ancient civilizations. 'Francis A. Walker ("Discussions in Economics and Statistics," p. 447-50) shows how the barbarian struggle for existence has given place to a different, but no less strenuous form of the same struggle. 8 See Professor John Graham Brook's "The Social Unrest," pp. 94-95. »" It seems rather curious to find the people of South Africa purchasing our typewriters and cash registers. Our sewing machines go to India, Asia, and the most remote islands of the Pacific. Our telegraph instruments click in the wilds of Siberia and our telephones transmit the 'Hello' of the China- man or East Indian or Egyptian." ("The Foreign Confidence in American Manufactures," O. P. Austin, 308 APPENDIX United States Treasury Department, in North American Review. ' ""When an entire population voluntarily diminishes its birth rate, it gives indubitable proof that it severely feels the pressure of its natural tendency to increase faster than it is possible to raise the general plane of living." ("Principles of Sociology," Franklin H. Giddings, p. 336.) 1 '"It(a low birth rate)can occur only where even the most numerous, that is, the lower class, feel other wants than those of the mere means of existence, and of the satisfaction of the sexual instincts; wants, duties which probably could not be satisfied in a state of marriage thoughtlessly entered into; where the virtues both of foresight and self control are very generally practiced." ("Political Economy," William Roscher, Sec. 248.) 1 J "A numerous family being a multiplier of wants, compels the working man to offer his wages for what he can obtain, and by increasing the demand for labor, naturally decreases the price of it." ("Population and Wages," North American Review, March, 1900.) "Now a small number of children is an abundant source of economy. The French practice this form of economy wholesale. This is actually one of the reasons why France represents the largest money market. Among us a numerous family is such an over-whelming burden that do what they may there APPENDIX 309 is but one resource for the parents, and that is to elude the difficulty." ("Anglo-Saxon Superiority," Edmond Demoulin. Aristotle, criticising Plato's "Republic, "says: "One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property The neglect of this subject ... is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens." Paterfamilias, ("Race Suicide and Common Sense," North American Review, June, 1903) presents the American argument that with each child the income is more finely subdivided, and that poverty, being rightly unsupportable to the American, the family is limited. Margaret Holmes Bates, (the Independent, April, 1905) speaks of the evil effects of a growing family where "there is no increase of substance as the years go and the children come." During April, 1905, "race suicide" was discussed by the readers of the New York Globe, and in a number of letters the fact was emphasized that each child was an added financial burden and brought with it the threat of poverty. 1 'Alexander H. Everett, writing in 1823, points out that the checks of barbarism, including fear of Indians, have disappeared in the United States, while the flourishing condition of agriculture puts "abundance within the reach of all," hence the rapid increase of population. 310 APPENDIX "That which caused the growth of number through the earlier decades of our history to be so strikingly uniform was the principle of population operating absolutely without check among a people spread sparsely over the soil, with little of wealth and little of extreme poverty, and with nothing to make child- bearing a burden." (Francis A, Walker, op. cit. p. 121.) 4 An Italian who brought me ice told me joyfully that his wife had a new baby. As they already had six and were living in squalor, I expressed sympathy. His reply was: "Babies good — soon big enough to get money." 1 s " Equal opportunities for all," is no more true to-day in America than the "three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves." With the appearance of a permanently wealthy has come the permanently poor class. Robert Hunter estimates the latter at ten million, and shows how difficult it is for those born and reared in poverty to rise above it. 16 "The Social Unrest," John Graham Brooks, pp. 92, 186, 191. 1 'President Roosevelt, in his speech before the "Mothers' Congress," in 1905, severely criticised this remark of Rev. John Scudder, and pointed out the value to children of the simple life. 1 8 " Discussions in Economics and Statistics," Vol. II, pp. 440-442. See also, Prof. John R. Commons, in Chautauquan, Vol. 39, pp. 217-218; Census Bulle- APPENDIX 311 tin, No. 22; and Sydney G. Fisher, in Popular Science Monthly, December, 1895. • '"Poverty," by Robert Hunter, p. 305. 2 "Chapter VI, pp. 99-123. ""The Slav Invasion," J. F. Warne. 2 2 In 1902 a commission was appointed by the New South Wales Government to inquire into the causes of the declining birth rate in that country. Its report stated that in the last thirty years Australia has lost a natural addition of 25,000. In 1889 the decline first became marked, being 2.23 per thousand. In 1902 it was over 10 per thousand. The decrease was artificially created, many witnesses admitting deliberate restriction of family. The remedy sug- gested by the commission was to bring new blood into the country by immigration. Thus, while many Ameri- cans regard the immigrant as the cause of our lowering birth rate, Australians are looking to him to restore their birth rate, which is similarly declining. 2 3 I know this to be true from a wide and long acquaintance with British Canadians. The present Bishop of Huron (residing in London, Ontario) preaches so frequently against Canadian race suicide that he is almost as thoroughly identified with the question in Canada as is President Roosevelt in this country. Canada, like Australia, is encouraging immi- gration to make up for her small natural increase. The French Canadians alone, being devoted Roman 312 APPENDIX Catholics, primitive and simple-minded, and given to agricultural pursuits, are extremely prolific. For fall- ing birthrate in England, see "A Confidential Census on Race Suicide," by Sidney Webb, Current Literature, Jan., 1907. '♦Hunter op. cit. pp. 201 and 225. "In 1905, as in 1903, the United States led the World in the value of its exports. ' "Report, Commissioner-General of Immigration for 1905. Chart, p. 34. APPENDIX 313 Chapter VI. — The Lakgek Womanhood. 'For a full account of the position of American women, from the founding of the country to the present, see the "History of Woman's Suffrage," Introduction and Chapter I. An epitome of her progress is given in the "Women's Century Calendar," published by the National Women's Suffrage Association. See also the "Encyclopedia of Social Reform," pp. 1402-3. z Even to-day it is considered a debatable question whether women should know anything about business. See "Shall We Teach Our Daughters the Value of Money?", Popular Science Monthly, March, 1899. '"Democracy and Social Ethics," Jane Addams, Chapter IV. 'An association in New York City advertises that it will undertake shopping, dressmaking, cooking 9 housecleaning — in short, any part or all of the house- keeping. '"The Matrimonial Market," Edward Cary, Forum, August, 1896. "Employments Unsuitable for Women," Henry T. Finck, Independent, April 11, 1903. "Women Ought to Work," Ida Husted Harper, Independent, May 16, 1903. 'Twelfth Census. 'The Chautauquan, February, 1900, has two pages 3H APPENDIX filled with brief notices of books on Women's Labor. 'Boyce's Weekly, September, 1903. '"History of Women's Suffrage," Vol. IV, pp. 1045-1048. 1 "Four million American women are organized into clubs and societies. ("History Women's Suffrage,'' Vol. IV, p. 1072.) 1 '"It is perfectly evident that woman is in open rebellion against the traditional curse against the doctrine of the Pauline estimate of woman's sphere; that she has determined to assert her equality in many directions, and that she has entered and occu- pied the great field of remunerative employment.'' (Carrol D. Wright, Forum, July, 1892, p. 629.) 1 2 Ministers of the Methodist Church do not often use "obey." The new Presbyterian Book of Com- mon Worship omits it. The liberal Churches — Unitarian, Universalist, etc., never put it in the service. 1 'An interesting discussion of the status and rights of women will be found in the Independent of 1901, on dates following: January 31, April 4 and 11, May 9, 16, and 30, October 17 and 31, and December 26. 1 4 " Family Life in America," Th. Bentzon, Forum, March, 1893. APPENDIX 315 Chapter VII. — The Price of Motherhood. ■Genesis, 3-16. '"History of the Warfare of Science with The- ology," Andrew D. White, Vol. II, Chap. XIII, Sec. 10. '"This belief checked the growth of medicine even so late as fifty years ago, when Simpson first used anesthetics in obstretrics. This was held to violate the command, 'In sorrow shalt thou bring forth chil- dren.'" ("The Training of a Physician," by David Starr Jordan, Popular Science Monthly, 1903, p. 305.) •"How Nature Cures," by Dr. Ernest Densmore. 'Cannon Knox-Little, of England, in 1880, preached i n Philadelphia a sermon to women. He said : " I am the father of many (children) and there have been those who have ventured to pity me. 'Keep your pity for yourself,' I have replied. 'They never cost me a single pang.' In this matter let women exer- cise endurance and loving submission." ("Women, Church, and State," by Matilda Joslyn Gage, p. 493.) 'Women who fail to produce male heirs to thrones, titles, or properties are still considered in some degree culpable. 'A letter in the New York Herald, dated March 29, 1905, and signed "A Devoted Mother," says: "We think most of those bright letters (advocating family) were written by men. Would even our Pres- 316 APPENDIX ident be quite so gay if natural conditions were re- versed? Let Mm try it once!" B A man writing in The North American Review, June, 1903, on "Race Suicide and Common Sense," says: "I have not forgotten the day when there were women of culture and refinement who had ten chil- dren . . . the lives of those women were lives of pain, anxiety, and toil. I cannot remember in my youth a woman of thirty who was not accounted old." Of his mother and her large family he says : " I know some of them were not wanted when they came and that twelve years of constant child bearing reduced her to the physical wreck she has remained for thirty years; she suffered untold agonies and does to this day, ... I consider it brutal to reiterate con- stantly that child-bearing is woman's one function. I consider it no less brutal to ask a woman to relegate herself to the position of a brood mare . . . simply that the aggregate number of human beings may be increased. ... I am certain we ought to treat our wives better than we do. Most of us are moral cowards who make our wives suffer and then blame it on the Lord who, I believe, will resent such conduct." 9 "The moral status of woman depends on her personal independence, and capacity for self-support. 'Give a man a right over my subsistence,' says Alex- ander Hamilton, 'and he holds a power over my whole moral being.'" (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in APPENDIX 317 " Progress of the American Woman," North American Review, 1900.) 1 "English peasants were imprisoned and even branded and mutilated for leaving their home district until the Black Death made men so scarce that it did not pay to punish them, and employers vied with each other in getting workers. 1 'The South Carolina Convention of Wo mens' Clubs, 1903, discussed the right of wives to a percentage of the husbands' income. One delegate said: "I don't want an allowance. I want more. The ideal marriage is a partnership, financial and otherwise." During the summer of 1899, the New York Journal published hundreds of letters answering the question. "Do Wives Need Pin Money?" One woman said: "Lack of pin money is one of the . . . first real causes of divorce in America." All the satisfied women had control of more or less money. All who had not were unhappy. Every one, without exception, considered the wife entitled to some share of the husband's income. 1 2 Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in New York Journal. 1 3 See Westermarck's "History of Marriage," and the history of the early Jews in the Bible. Jacob had two wives and two mistresses, but the children of all four women were raised together as one family, shedding glory on their father. (Genesis, Chaps. 29, 30, 35.) 3i 8 APPENDIX 1 4 The tenth commandment says : " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, manservant, maidservant (slaves), ox, nor ass." Exodus, 30, 17. 1 'South Carolina is the only State without a divorce law. 1 '"Wifehood is the crowning glory of a woman. In it she is bound for all time. To her husband she owes the duty of unqualified obedience. There is no crime which a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him, or applying for that monstrous thing divorce." ("Woman, Church and State,," p. 493.) "The woman by marriage becomes a member of the man, therefore, she cannot put him away; for a member cannot put away the head. Divorce, so far as Scripture goes, seems to be a remedy open only to man. There seems to be no way of preventing the abuse of divorce if any principle is admitted that will extend it to a woman." (Idem, p. 490.) 1 'A smiilar experience is related in Independent' February, 1905, in an article by a Chicago writer. 1 8 I wrote the Census Bureau asking fourteen ques- tions relating to working women and maternity, and the reply was that no information had ever been gathered in relation to any of the points brought up. 1 »"Sex in Industry." 2 "Popular Science Monthly, June, 1903. See also articles by Dr. Engelman in Journal of American Med- ical Association, October 5, 1901; Philadelphia Medical APPENDIX 319 Journal, January 18, 1902, and Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, May 15, 1902. 2 l Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1901, and February, 1902; Publication American Economic Association, May, 1903, and Popular Science Monthly, May, 1903. 2 2 Mrs. John Van Vorst tells of a factory girl who is twenty-three years of age and engaged to be married. She is keeping her fiance waiting because she is enjoying the freedom of her self-supported girlhood and thinks twenty-five "time enough for marriage." "What part," asks Mrs. Van Vorst, "did the love of humanity play in this young egotist's heart?" Doubtless, however, "the love of humanity" plays and has always played a small part in the hasten- ing or retarding of marriage. ("The Woman Who Toils." pp. 83-85.) 2 3 Many women freed from domestic duties and having no incentive to go into business, find occupation for their energies and leisure in club life. As a whole, the club movement has been the expression of an awakening social consciousness in women, and is more and more making itself felt as a regenerative force. (See, "Does the Club Women Need a Defender," Woman's Home Companion, June, 1906.) But there are many idle women who find in clubdom a substitute for the regulation society round, which was formerly the only refuge of the unemployed rich. 32o APPENDIX Whether club life leads to a limitation of family, or women with few children or none have more leisure for clubs, some investigations tend to show that babies are scarce among club women, as among society and business women. A young Ohio woman, Olga Louise Cadiah, (New York Journal, December 4, 1905) gathered figures which show that the members of the General Federation of Clubs average two children and that only one woman in sixteen has a child after joining a club and one in forty-three has two. Eliza- beth Milieu' (New York Journal, December 26, 1905) reports that Boston club women average one and three-fourths children, and New York club women only three-fifths of a baby. In New York, 2,693 club women had a total of 1,718 children. The average woman who gives much time to clubs is usually past her first youth, and generally has had her children, which would account for babies coming so seldom to the active club woman. But Mrs. Miller counted all the children each woman had living, whether the children were babies or grown and married. Mrs. Miller says: "One little club woman feebly ventured that clubs are the resort of the unhappy and childless women, who, having no families of their own, accept this larger and more public field of action as a substitute for domestic activity. There may be a modicum of truth in that, but the clubs are full of happily married rich women. That they are childless may or may not be a fault. APPENDIX 321 "One very beautiful young physician, prominent in women's club work, told me that she did not have time to have any children of her own, she was so busy helping other peoples' into the world. "As women get busier they seem to have less thought and care and time for the home. Every outside call makes the call of the baby less audible. I think the woman physician's reason for not having children strikes at the root of the whole matter — she doesn't have time. When some other work engrosses her, she pushes aside the family and refuses to become bur- dened with babies. The other work seems more important." 322 ' APPENDIX) Chapter VIII. — The Nation and the Child. 'Johnson's Cyclopedia. Of immigrants to this country only one per cent, of illiteracy is recorded among Scandanavians, English, and Scotch, three per cent, among Welsh, Finns, and French, four per cent, among Germans and Swiss. The remaining nations range from North Italians, ten per cent., to Portuguese, 68 per cent., averaging about 35 per cent. J "Man is the only weed tolerated in China, and he teems everywhere. In that country missionaries should devote their best energies to urging the practice of the Malthusian doctrine. . . . Population is checked to some small extent by the murder of female infants. Famine is a constant relief. The overflow of the Yellow River thereby drowning and starving once in about every decade, hundreds of thousands or some- times one or two millions of people would be a relief but for the fact that at the same time it destroys im- mense amounts of property. In China, if anywhere, Wordsworth's assertion, 'Slaughter is God's daughter,' is true." (" China's Menace to the World," Forum, October, 1890.) "When we examine civilized nations we find a new agent at work; Nature's grandest product, the brain of man, comes into play and a new set of circumstances arises. Men, women, and children who would be doomed to death in a savage state have their lives APPENDIX 323 prolonged by civilization. The sickly arc cared for . . . old parents and the feeble fed; . . . the average life is lengthened — disease prevented. Better drainage, better homes, better food, better clothing. All these, among the more comfortable classes, remove many of the natural checks to population." "Law of Population, "Annie Besant. 'Exception must be made of consumption, which is rightly called the White Plague. From it 100,000 die annually in the United States. It has only recently been recognized as an infectious disease. For accounts of its deadly ravages, see " Handbook on the Prevention of Tuberculosis," by Ernest Poole, Lillian Brandt and others. 4 "The person who believes himself unable to sup- port children refrains from begetting them. This we may call one of the most natural duties — we might even say that the person who begets a child which he knows he is not in a position to support, is guilty of a grievous sin against civilized society and of a still more grievous one against his poor child." ("Political Economy," William Roscher, p. 286.) Herbert Spencer, in his last book, "Facts and Comments," lays great stress on the modern tendency to substitute human quality for quantity, and con- siders it the essence of growing civilization. 5 Metchnikoff points out that while man will continue to inhabit the earth, particular races may die out 324 APPENDIX owing to the decline of the family instinct. He says: "It is indubitable that more than one race has per- ished because of its lack of the instinct of family. However, it need not be feared that the human race itself will disappear because of the failure of repro- duction. But it is plain that the readiness with which devices to prevent the production of children have been adopted, shows the weakness of the family instinct in man, and opens up a problem to which the attention of moralists and legislators may well be directed. The family instinct is deeply seated, as it arose among animals more ancient than man; none the less it exhibits disturbances and aberrations in the human race capable of bringing about the extinction of peoples or nations." ("The Nature of Man," p. 105.) «"If the average family in which there are children contained but two children, the nation, as a whole, would decrease in population so rapidly that in two or three generations it would very deservedly be on the point of extinction." (President Roosevelt's ad- dress to Mother's Congress, March 12, 1905.) '"In certain districts the death-rate of children under five years of age is a matter of public disgrace . . . as high as 204 per thousand. If this rate were maintained among all the poor of 1,000,000 babies under five years, 200,000 would die annually; while of 1,000,000 babies in well-to-do districts, only 50,000 APPENDIX 325 would die." ("Poverty," by Robert Hunter, p. 150.) "Nearly half of all children born die in infancy, while the proportion in crowded cities rise even to three-fifths." "An Ethical Birthrate," by Francis Swiney, Westminster Review, May, 1901. a "It appears, therefore, to be a question not of more children being born, but of more children living. We do not want a higher birthrate, but less mortality." ("Ethical Birthrate," op. cit.) 'Edmond Demoulin's "Anglo-Saxon Superiority," is a study of the importance of a high standard living among the masses. '"The census of 1900 shows over 1,700,000 child workers, under fifteen years of age. ""The Woman Who Toils." 1 s "The Sweatshop in Summer," American Journal of Sociology, November, 1903. See also Chapter V, "The Child," in "Poverty," by Robert Hunter. 1 3 See Note 4, Chapter in for rewards, etc. 1 'Principles of Economics," by Alfred Marshall, p. 245. 326 APPENDIX Chapter IX. — The Race Suicide of Immigration. 'For arguments favoring immigration, see articles by Hon. J. H. Senner, in North American Review, June, 1896, and Independent of November 2, 1893, and January 20, 1898. Also "Wbat Immigrants Contribute to Industry," Forum, January, 1893, and "Is the New Immigration Dangerous to the Country," North American Review, April, 1904. 2 "Alien Degradation of American Character," by Sydney Fisher, Forum, January, 1893. 3 "Has Immigration Dried Up Our Literature?" Forum, January, 1894. 4 " Emigration and Immigration," p. 292. _^ 'Andrew Dickson White recently declared, in a New York lecture, that the present immigration from the south of Europe may overwhelm our civilization, as the Huns and Goths overwhelmed the civilization of Rome. The same fear is expressed by Nathan Allen, M.D., in "Lessons on Population Suggested by Grecian and Roman History," and by J. Weston, in "The Weak Spot in the American Republic," in the "Nineteenth Century and After," December, 1902. «"A grave peril to the Republic would be a citizen- ship too ignorant to understand or too vicious to appreciate the great value and beneficence of our institutions and laws, and against all who come here APPENDIX 327 to make war upon them, our gates must be promptly and tightly closed." (President McKinley, inaugural address of 1900.) '"We cannot have too much immigration of the xight kind, and we should have none at all of the wrong kind. The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country." (President Roosevelt, mes- sage, 1903.) •"Discussions in Economics," p. 447. '"European Peasants as Immigrants," by Prof. N. S. Shaler, Forum, May, 1893. "Racial Compo- sition of the American People," Chautauquan, Sep- tember, 1903. 1 "Report of Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1904, pp. 105 and 106. 1 'Idem, pp. 37-40. 1 'Idem, p. 105. ' 3 Idem, pp. 37, 38, 39. • 'Idem, p. 105. ' 5 Idem, p. 45. 1 '"The Slav Invasion, J. B. Warne. 1 'R P. Sargeant, Report, op. cit. p. 45. 1 a For effects of present immigration, see tables of Report for 1904, pp. 49-76; also charts of criminality, disease, insanity, pauperism, and illiteracy, and Hall's Immigration, chap. 7. 328 APPENDIX Chapter X. — Must Mothers Suffer. '"We call the pains of child-birth normal, since few women escape them. . . . However, we have to deal with pathological rather than with physiological conditions." Metchnikoff, op. cit. p. 244. See also "Tokology," by Alice Stockham, M.D. '"Another bizarre feature of the reproductive processes is the painfulness of child-birth. It is truly astonishing and singular to find a phenomenon essen- tially normal, from the point of view of physiology, accompanied by pain of so marked a character. No doubt other animals suffer during labor, but among the mammalia woman undergoes the severest pain." Metchnikoff, op. cit., p. 92. 3 " American Life and Physical Deterioration," North American Review, October, 1893. 4 The number of children dying under five years of age has been variously estimated from one-fifth to three-fifths. The census shows about one-fifth, but many deaths are not reported. See "Poverty," op. cit., p. 150, and "An Ethical Birth-rate," op. cit. 'Flourens ("De La Longevite Humaine") gives a century as the natural duration of human life. «" Principles of Biology," by Herbert Spencer, p. 623. 'Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton told me that she suffered in bearing her first four children. During APPENDIX 329 her fifth pregnancy she was careful of her diet and dress, exercised regularly, and lived much out of doors. The birth was painless, and Mrs. Stanton made a rapid recovery. With the two following children she was less careful and again suffered. 330 APPENDIX Chapter XI. — Social Motherhood. '"Women and Economics," Charlotte Perkins Stetson. "Democracy and Social Ethics," Jane Addams, Chapter IV. "Discussions in Economics: Women in Industry," Francis A. Walker. "The Future of Our Daughters," Forum, October, 1890. 2" Theory of the Leisure Class," T. Veblin. "The Woman Question," Olive Schreiner, Cos- mopolitan, December, 1900, and January, 1901. 3 President Roosevelt says: "those who work neither with their brains nor with their hands are a menace to the public safety." Just as Aristotle, in criticising Plato's Republic, says: "The legislator wanted to. make the whole state hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his intention in the case of the men, but he has neglected the women who live in every sort of intemperance and luxury." 4 "I cannot see much difference between a woman who sells her whole freedom and her soul to a man for life because he furnishes her with certain conven- iences, and one who sells her temporary freedom and he*- soul for a temporary remuneration, except that the former may be worse than the latter." (Carroll D. Wright, Forum, July, 1892, p. 629.) APPENDIX 331 s In a lecture before the League for Political Edu- cation, New York, February, 1905, Professor Patten, of the University of Pennsylvania, said: "The econ- omically efficient woman desires motherhood. The incompetent shuns it. The idle woman degenerates in character. Instead of being, five years after mar- riage, a better woman, she is a worse one." 'Alexander F. Chamberlain, Ph.D. (Clark Uni- versity) in an article on "Immortality," in the Century, 1904, says that among the lowest races the men con- sider themselves merely as fathers, taking little pride in any achievement of their own, but pointing always to the children they have produced; and so long as this is the mental attitude, progress is impossible. Similarly, so long as women pride themselves only on their sex functions and not their human capacities, they remain stationary. Herbert Spencer, "Principles of Sociology," Vol. I, p. 275, after showing that in low forms of life repro- duction absorbs all the attention and energies, says; "In proportion as organisms become higher in their structures and powers, they are individually less sacrificed to the maintenance of the species; and the implication is that in the highest type of man the sacrifice is reduced to the minimum." Hjalmar Hjorweth Boyesen {Forum, November, 1895, pp. 311-316) says of the early pagan German women: "Generally speaking, love was not all of 332 APPENDIX life to them, but an episode, though a highly important one. Primarily, they were human beings, secondarily, women." The degenerate Roman women, he says, "had no separate individual existence, no large public interests, their sex gradually came to take precedence of their humanity, which is the. most disastrous thing that can happen to any creature, male or female." 'A young working girl said : " I like to work because I learn more. The girls who stay at home never seem to know as much as I do, and they don't understand the world and how it is run. I like to have my own money, but best of all, I like to know and understand the world." BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hall, Prescott F. "Immigration." Metchnikoff, Elie. "The Nature of Man. Malthus, R. T. "Essay on the Principles of Popu- lation." (Edition published 1872 used for ref- erences in this book.) Demoulin, Edmond. "Anglo-Saxon Superiority." Roosevelt, Theodore. "The Winning of the West." Allen, Nathan, (M.D.) "Lessons on Population Sug- gested by Greek and Roman History." Veblin, T. "Theory of the Leisure Class." Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Emigration and Immi- gration. "Statistics and Economics." Walker, Francis A. "Discussions in Economics and Statistics. " Brooks, John Graham. "The Social Unrest." Wycoff, Walter A. "The Workers." Flint, Josiah. "Tramping with Tramps." Riis, Jacob. "How the Other Half Lives." "The Battle of the Slum." Van Vorst, Mrs. John and Marie. "The Woman Who Toils." Casson, Herbert N. "Organized Self-Help." Mitchell, John. "Organized Labor." Hunter, Robert. "Poverty." Leroy-Beaulieu, Pierre. "The United States in the Twentieth Century." 333 334 BIBLIOGRAPHY Brandenburg, Broughton. "Imported Americans." Warne, Julian F. "The Slav Invasion." Marshall, Alfred. "Principles of Economics." Wright, Carroll D. "Practical Sociology." Spahr, Charles B. "America's Working People." Commons, John R. "Racial Composition of the American People. (Chautauquan, 1903-1904.) Hadley, Arthur T. "Economics." Giddings, Franklin H. "Principles of Sociology." Roscher, William. "Political Economy." Mitchell, Sir Arthur. "The Past in the Present." Strong, Josiah. "Social Progress." Bryce, James. "The American Commonwealth." Adams, Brooks. "The Law of Civilization and Decay. " Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Women and Econom- ics." "The Home." "Human Work." Stanton, E. C, Anthony, S. B., Gage, M. J., and Harper, I. H. "History of Woman's Suffrage." Mill, John Stuart. "The Subjection of Woman." Wallace, Alfred Russel. "Human Selection." Westermarck, E. A. "History of Human Marriage." Bebel, August. "Woman in Past, Present, and Future." Gamble, Eliza Burt. "The Evolution of Woman." Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. " Commonsense About Women." BIBLIOGRAPHY ■ 335 Mason, Otis T. "Woman's Share in Primitive Culture." McLennan, J. F. " Patriarchial Theory of the Fam- %•" .Nichols, T. L. (M.D.) and Mrs. M. S. G. " Marriage. " Gage, Matilda Joslyn. "Woman, Church, and State." Kidd, Benjamin. "Social Evolution." Addams, Jane. "Democracy and Social Progress." Kropotkin, P. "Mutual Aid." Ely, Richard T. "Evolution of Industrial Society." Sinclair, Upton. "The Jungle." Wells, G. H. "The Future in America." Munsterberg, Hugo. "American Traits." BOOKS TO HAVE AND KEEP THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. A popular account of the new physics and new chemistry in their relation to the new theory of matter. By Robert Kennedy Duncan. With many illustrations. 8vo. 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The Citizen A STUDY OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GOVERNMENT By Nathaniel Southgate Shaler Professor of Geology in Harvard University and Dean of the Lawrence Scientific School "Profit and pleasure are written on every page." — Public Opinion. "A book which will be widely read and discussed." — Boston Herald. "Practical and stimulating. Inter- esting and inspiring." — Springfield Republican. "There could be nothing better for intelligent young men than to read Professor Shaler's book." — Hartford Times. "Sound advice crystallized to serve as a guide to rising generations of voters and to citizens." — Indianapolis Sentinel. X2mo. Cloth, $1.4.0 net. Postage, 10 cts. A. S. BARNES & CO. "Wholly delightful and satisfying." — Brooklyn Eagle. The House in the Woods Br ARTHUR HENRY (SECOND EDITION) " A good breezy healthful story — the more readers it has the better." — N. T. Times. " As fine as a great forest, a great city or a great man — it is a pleasure to recommend it to the reader." —N. T. 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Fifth edition. "A book to make warm friends among those fond of simple, unsophisticated human nature — humorous, pathetic dramatic. Tears and smiles alternate in this refreshing novel." — Chicago Record-Herald. "No Maine writer has ever been more widely read by Maine people than he, and this is true because no one has ever held the mirror up to character and nature in Maine so faithfully." — Portland {Me.) Press. THE HEART OF A GIRL. By Ruth Kimball Gardiner. Illus- trated by Charles L. Hinton. i2mo. Cloth. $1.50. Second edition. "Young and old will enjoy the tale, and no reader can fail to respond to the chivalric and courageous impulses of the younger heroine, who gave a square deal in all the games inci- dental to her life, aud who is as above-board and lovable as 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.' " — The Reader. "Ruth Gardiner's 'Margie' is a real child and as such the discussion of her heart is a subject not only interesting to parents of growing girls — but to all lovers of young people. The story is a searching clear-cut, eloquent piece of writing, revealing the true inwardness of its charming little heroine. — St. Paul Pioneer Press. A. S. BARNES & COMPANY, NEW YORK mm\m